Jade Dragon (18 page)

Fixx drew the big brother in and crossed over his free hand; his elbow
collided with the punk’s face and broke his nose with a solid
crack.
A
fan of blood issued out of his nostrils and dribbled down his chin. Fixx
reversed his grip and hit him again, this time with the back of his
hand. He pulled the blow—but only a little—and sent the big brother
down.

Gau threw the spike-chain at him, a glittering arc of mercury cutting
air. It made a low whoop as it crossed the space before him. Fixx
dropped and spun, ducking under the reach of the weapon, and stepped
closer. Gau reversed the move, whipping the chain around his neck and
swapping ends. Clever.

The skinny kid was using his off-hand to finger a lanyard around his
neck; he wasn’t a threat for the moment. The younger brother was
turning, trying to keep on Fixx’s periphery while Gau used the chain to
lash him. He was limping where he’d been kicked and it made him slow.
Fixx saw him telegraph a move, the lunge coming in his shoulders before
he did it. The op swept his hand across the table, catching the cup of
disgusting coffee. He tossed it and a steaming streak of fluid spattered
on the punk’s face and chest.

The chain thrummed at his head and Fixx shifted. All at once he felt his
amusement with this little diversion fade. He snatched the end of Gau s
weapon out of the air, ignoring the bite of pain from the cobra-tooth
head, and yanked it. Gau didn’t let go quickly enough and was reeled off
his feet. Fixx met him with a hammer blow punch that broke ribs and set
him on the deck, choking.

Wiping searing hot coffee from his face, the remaining brother was
distracted from the dark shape that came at him, coat flaring open in
black raptor wings. Fixx used a throat grab to choke a lungful from the
kid and then dropped him into a vacant chair. He took the boy’s
knife—another gaudy weapon that looked like it came out of an arcade
gatchapon game—and snapped it in two.

Skinny had recovered a little and stood blinking owlishly, waving a
spade-shaped push dagger. “Ghost you,” he spat, pain making his voice
rise. “I’m unstoppable…”

From the corner of his eye, Fixx caught sight of one of the glowing
billboards, the trains of gossamer words fading in and out. He paused,
turning his Sight on the punk; not the full strength of it, mind, just a
little inch’s worth. The go-ganger was heavy with pollution, an oily
blue swirling down deep in the wells of his irises. He’d seen the same
on people in Newer Orleans, and sometimes, in the daydreams. He could
sense it there running through his veins, the indigo taint of Z3N. The
boy wilted under the hard-eyed gaze, the dagger drooping.

Fixx mulled over the idea of putting him down; but then in the distance
he spotted the floating blobs of CSC security mobiles coming up for a
look-see. He left the punk behind and melted into the crowds.

On the giant datascreens Juno came to the end of her set and the
adulation from her audience echoed around the mallplex atrium like
captured thunder.

Mr Tze had a private elevator set into the corner of the Yuk Lung Tower
that faced the city proper and the span of the bay. Through thick
armoured glass he could view Hong Kong as he ascended or descended the
gleaming flanks of the corporate skyscraper. He liked to take a place
just an inch from the bowed window; there, it seemed as if he were some
powerful ghost-lord coming down from heaven, the city rising up to meet
him in supplication. Such a conceit amused him, it brought the semblance
of a smile to the hard lines of his warrior face.

Tze allowed no one to speak during the elevator journeys. He made it a
point of law that there be silence for the short duration, keeping the
moment as an oasis of tranquillity wherein he could marshal his
thoughts. The Masks, as inventive as ever, would communicate with one
another via sign language if the matter required it. Behind him now,
Deer Child and Blue Snake, one of the female guardians, discussed the
CEO’s security protocols with efficient twists of finger and arm
motions. There were many things that clamoured for his attention,
matters pressing as diverse as the effects of an arctic earthquake on
YLHI’s seabed oilrigs to the issue of a local triad leader who was not
showing the proper level of deference. But he found it hard to dwell on
such trivia, not when the Great Pattern was coming together.

If he concentrated hard enough on it, Tze could find a small knot of
boyish anticipation hiding the depths of his soul, past his careful,
most serious persona. After so long spent in service to the core goal of
the Cabal, at last he would see it come to its fruition. The idea was as
breathtaking now as it had been when he first understood the scope of
it, when the members had taken that first meeting in the ruins of a
small town in the Gobi Desert. In that place, as they walked about
inside hazmat suits turning over glassy fulgurites fused from sand,
finding the bodies of couples merged into dead amalgams of flesh, Tze
had been touched by truth. The knowing had set him free.

There, they picked through the remains of the failed summoning, they
read the cantrips and reviewed the splinters of tape that had not been
obliterated in the thermal bloom. They came to understand the mistakes
that had been made. Tze, in particular, had embraced the challenge with
the fresh, untrammelled zeal of a convert. It was nothing less than the
key to the mastery of the human soul that was being offered to them. It
dwarfed the dreams of empire that Tze nursed. The Great Ones offered not
just the earthly powers of prowess, of wealth and influence—those Tze
had earned already—but more. The road marked out by the King of Rapture
was the gateway to lordship over the most primal of human emotions;
desire.

Tze felt that now, a need so great it made his blood ache. It was sweet,
a perfect salve for the ills that had coloured his existence. Oh, his
had not been a life of tragic circumstances and terrible hardship, far
from it. Tze had grown to manhood in the bosom of a moneyed mainland
clan, fed and educated with the finest that could be bought. It was
there he had come to understand the full might of intemperance, that the
majesty of a man flowed not just from the breadth of his appetites, but
also from the extremes to which he would be willing to take them. It was
only on the edges of what lesser types called “morality”, beyond
abstract, foolish concepts like “ethics” where a man could honestly know
himself. And in that knowing would come mastery, not just of the self,
but of others. All others.

He had no words for it then, in the days when they called him Black Tze
behind his back, and scattered like birds when he came to take prey. But
it made him strong; and eventually Tze came into the orbit of people who
could open the way to him. The Gates of Sensation unlocked to his touch,
and the ennui that had threatened to engulf him was wiped away. So much
had changed since then. Tze’s marriage to the Cabal was a second birth,
a gift giving that he would soon repay with the lives of the world.

He pressed his hands to the window. It was fitting that it would begin
here, birthing from the skies above this city. When it was done, when
Hong Kong was ablaze as New Gomorrah, he would be the one to ride the
Jade Dragon’s back and take the first succulent taste of the world’s
fresh terror.

The light outside the lift vanished as the elevator dropped past the
lobby atrium and through the basement sublevels. Tze caught a warped
glimpse of his own face in the darkness beyond the glass and paused to
wipe a thin line of drool from the corner of his mouth with a silk
handkerchief.

With a chime, the lift doors opened and the Masks moved with him into
the underground car park. Tze took three steps from the elevator before
he stopped abruptly. “Intruder…”

It was only when he hid himself in the back of the delivery truck that
Ko realised Feng wasn’t with him. He threw a worried glance up at the
gap beneath the roller door and saw the swordsman as the vehicle pulled
from the kerb. Feng turned his face away, like he was sad and angry all
at once.

For a moment Ko was upset, but then he mashed that feeling down with the
hammer of his churning rage. One thought of Nikita beneath the webs of
life-support sensors and he was high with fury The anger had shifted and
changed since he left the hospital. At first impotent and directionless,
the call from the salaryman had provided him with sudden, perfect
clarity. Now Ko was aimed like a laser, he had a name to give form to
his pain. This Mr Tze, this phantom creep with his cashwhore flunkies,
he was where the blame lay. That the guy on the phone from the
expressway might have been playing him, maybe lying to Ko to get him
jumping through hoops, that was something that the go-ganger never gave
a moment to consider. This was not a matter of careful reflection and
thought. Ko was a loosed missile, homing in on a target. He could not
see past the moment of his rage’s release, destruction looming large in
his mind. The thief had never felt the urge to commit murder so strongly
in his entire life. Every other consideration was secondary to that.

Vengeance. This man is going to pay.

In a back street lock-up in So Uk, he turned over crates of old engine
parts and cartons of fake Peacefuls cigarettes, dragging an oily toolbox
from a shadowed corner. Inside there were two Beretta automatics and
fistfuls of hollowpoint bullets rolling loose. Generally, guns were a
last-ditch tool for go-gangers, the street punk code short on firearms
and long on bare-hand fighting or bladed weapons. It was a holdover from
when the gun was seen as a badge, something you earned the right to
carry only when you stepped up to join the Bamboo Union or the 14K as a
Red Pole. The triads and the cops didn’t like the gangers having guns;
those were toys for the big boys. Ko loaded all the clips he had and
weighed the weapons in his grip. The gun oil smell reminded him of his
father, but he forced away any thought of that before the man’s face
could fully form in his mind’s eye. In the back of the truck, he took
out the guns again and looked at them. They hadn’t been fired for
months, lying there in the dark wrapped in greasy rags, and now it was
too late to test them.

Ko raised the weapons to shoulder height and sighted down the barrels.
He had seen a picture of Tze, just once, on the cover of the
HK
Herald.
He remembered it clearly because it was such a rarity, some
photographer catching a split-second glimpse of the man. There had been
a story that the guy who took the still vanished off the street the
following day; so it went, the
Herald
had been sent more pictures,
this time of the photographer, but not in the kind of state they could
print in a national newspaper.

Ko’s face was a mask of concentration. He drew his focus inward,
waiting. Now he lived on a clock from second to second, his mind framed
on that face and nothing else. The robot truck rumbled through the
security gate of the Yuk Lung tower and rolled down the incline to the
lower levels.

“Tze!” Ko burst from the shadows of a concrete stanchion close to the
CEO’s idling limo and opened fire, the pistols slamming out shots.

Deer Child reacted instantly, dragging Tze behind him and stepping
into the line of the fire. Many of Ko’s bullets went wide, smashing into
the walls and skipping off the limo, but a handful of rounds struck the
chest of the bodyguard and a single shot fractured the perfect sheen of
Deer Child’s porcelain opera mask. The guardian stumbled backwards,
bleeding heavily.

One of the Berettas made a high-pitched noise and jammed. Ko let it drop
and kept on firing, brass casings glinting as they ejected into the air.

Blue Snake produced a series of throwing knives from concealed wrist
holsters and threw them at Ko. The kid was quick enough to dodge one,
but not enough to avoid the second. The lightweight stiletto hit Ko in
the sternum and threw him to the ground with the force of a freight
train. Ko lost the other gun and lay there, wheezing.

Seconds had elapsed. Tze disentangled himself from Deer Child’s
twitching form and found the duty security officer; neither he nor his
men had got off a shot.

“Sir, I—” he began, his face flushed. Blue Snake had another knife, and
she slit the man’s throat with it. Tze walked on to where Ko had fallen.
He paused to brush a speck of lint off his suit as Blue Snake hauled the
youth off the ground.

Tze examined him. “Ah, the folly of youth.” He leaned closer. “Do you
know why no one ever tries to take me out, boy?” He smiled. “Because no
one is that stupid. Except you, of course.”

“Go,” Ko managed. “Fuck yourself.” He spat a mouthful of blood and
spittle into Tze s face.

The older man carefully wiped it away, and then licked his fingers,
smiling. “That fat fool running the 14K… I think perhaps he can earn
his way back into my good graces with this little urchin.”

“Sir?” said Blue Snake.

“Take this interloper to the docks and tell Hung I want an example made
of him.”

Frankie started as his car rolled to a halt. He saw someone being
bundled into a vehicle, bodies under sheets, and blood on the tarmac.
“What the hell?”

Tze approached, smiling. “Don’t be concerned, Francis. Just a small
security incident. A trespasser.”

He saw a face, just in the instant before the car door slammed, heard a
string of gutter swearing. Oh shit. I know that voice. The car thief.

Tze patted him on the shoulder. “Take care of things here, will you? I
have some business to attend to in the city.”

Frankie watched them go, the stink of fresh cordite and violence in his
nostrils.

The distinctive colourations of Chinese Opera masks have a series of
layered significances that go beyond the mere portrayal of a given
character. A blue face (such as that seen on Xia Houdun) is indicative
of someone possessing the traits of dedication, ferocity and shrewdness;
a green face (like Zheng Wun) means the character is reckless, likely
prone to sudden violence and a surly nature; figures like Guan Yu (a
noted Chinese warrior) bear a red mask, which highlights the soldierly
traits of fidelity, valour, heroism and decency; yellow (such as Tu
Xingsun) indicates a level-headed person but also someone with the
qualities of ferocity and determination; black masks like that of Judge
Bao Gong indicate selflessness as well as a coarse, aggressive manner;
white (traditionally a colour associated with death in the Far East)
marks the villain of the piece, highlighting the sly and the wily, the
underhand and treacherous (such as the fiendish Qin Hui); finally, the
special colourations of gold and silver are employed only on characters
who come from beyond the human realm, such as gods and ghosts. The
function of the mask in these plays is not only to provide cultural cues
to the audience but also to establish a palette of known archetypes, in
stories that form a key part of the myths of the Chinese people. On some
level, the masks create an aura of power for the performer wearing them,
a way in which they can subsume themselves into the role and tap into
the pure strengths of the character.