Linnear 03 - White Ninja (25 page)

From some hidden inside pocket, Liang produced a small, black velvet box. She held it in the palm of her hand as if it were a star from heaven.

'Open the box, my son.' She intoned this as if it were a religious act, part of an ancient rite that needed completion.

So-Peng, his heart hammering in his chest, did as she bade. Inside the box he saw rows of gems.

'Sixteen emeralds,' Liang intoned in the same peculiar, almost singsong tone of voice, 'one for each principle of the Tau-tau, one for each founding member of the tanjian. It is said that their essences have been contained in these stones, sealed away at the moment of their deaths.'

So-Peng looked at the gems as if they were alive, as if at any moment they would bite his head off. He said, 'These are what the tanjian want.' It was not a question.

Liang nodded. "They want me back, they want the emeralds back. It is one and the same. The emeralds are mine; we cannot be separated. They are sacred. Their care is my sacred trust. They have power beyond mere monetary value. Here is the very essence, the heart and the spirit of Tau-tau. Here is Good and Evil, my son. Look upon the varied faces, learn to differentiate between the two. With these stones in your possession you cannot help but live the life of the righteous.'

'But what do the tanjian want with them, Mother?'

'As I said, both Good and Evil are contained here: the spirits of the original tanjian monks. Some were good, others evil. The current tanjian, corrupted by their poverty, warped by their own shifting sense of morality, seek to loose the Evil, use its ancient power for their own ends. In so doing, the Good would be destroyed forever.'

Liang's face had grown dark, disturbed as if by a flux only the two of them could detect. 'You see, there exists within these mystic sixteen gems a kind of equilibrium. Should their number be depleted, fall below nine, the equilibrium would begin to erode, and the Evil, no longer held in check, would begin its ascent to power.'

In the tiny flames from the streetlights, the stones looked dull and black, or devoid of any colour at all, so that there was about them an air of brooding menace.

At length, So-Peng tore his gaze from the emeralds.

Looking into his mother's face, he said, "The tanjian would actually kill you, one of their own?'

'I renounced their way of life when I ran off with your father,' she said. He listened for a hint of sadness in her voice, found none. 'He is still handsome, your father. In those days, how much more so he was! He was a high liver. He must have just made an important deal because he threw money around. I liked that, I suppose. But I liked the idea of getting out of the temple even more. I felt stifled there; I was never born to be a tanjian woman. And your father was completely unlike the tanjian men I had grown up around, whom I had grown to despise. He was so kind, so genuine - of course that's why he continually loses all the money he earns.'

Her smile was wistful, as if she looked upon her husband as an overgrown child, a delightful blessing who, like a tender flower, nevertheless required constant attention. 'But I was afraid of my father's wrath - and rightly so. He would not have allowed me to go had I asked him. So I didn't; I just left with your father, who knew nothing of this, of course. I have made certain that he still doesn't. Poor man! What would he make of it?'

Liang looked at her son, saw not herself but her beloved husband mirrored in those features, as the moon is reflected in the water. 'What I did was unheard of. How many laws of Tau-tau have I transgressed? In the back of my mind, I knew that I would have to pay for those sins. But another - stronger -- part of me hoped that that day would never come. Now it has.'

'Which is why you must go.'

'I cannot endanger my family,' she said simply.

So-Peng said, 'If you go there will be no family.'

She was silent for some time. 'But you see, my dearest, I have no other choice.'

So-Peng thought, She is right. But I do have a choice.

He was also dimly aware that she was withholding something vital from him. 'Tell me everything you can about the tanjian,' he said.

Liang gave him a small, sad smile. She shook her head. 'What I have already told you is far too much. The danger is too great.'

'What if you go and the danger is still present?' So-Peng said.

'Impossible,' -his mother said. 'As soon as I return to Zhuji, the danger will no longer exist.'

Then, with the direct prescience of youth, So-Peng said, 'What if you are not all the tanjian want?'

Liang had begun to tremble. 'We will not speak of this!' she said sharply. And then, in a softer tone of voice, 'Do not allow your imagination to get the better of you. If you rely overly on your gift now, it will surely fail you.'

So-Peng bowed in obedience. 'I am sorry, Mother,' he said. 'Nevertheless, I still believe that knowledge is strength.' He lifted his head at what he judged to be just the right moment. He had learned this trick from her, and it worked. Their eyes locked, but there was more that passed between them.

In a moment, Liang nodded. She began to speak, telling him every bit of lore and strategy she knew of the tanjian and Tau-tau. It was quite late when she finished.

As children, So-Peng's brothers and sisters always obeyed their mother. So-Peng did more: he listened to her. So it was that, when she revealed the background concerning her past and the philosophy of Tau-tau, So-Peng decided that in order to save both his mother and the family he needed first to explore the dark. Because there is where he would find the tanjian, the harnessers of the night and of every evil thing that made its home in the darkness.

The way into darkness, he quickly discovered, was twilight, and twilight was synonymous with deceit, within which were always elements of the truth. One could not be truthful and explore the dark, rotting corners of the world. Truth was not the currency of evil, which inhabited the darkness like a bed of thorns in a woodland glade. Neither were lies. In order to negotiate these treacherous byways one needed to speak neither one but, like an incantation, an arcane combination of the two.

So-Peng went to see his cousin, Wan, who cleaned the floors in the offices of the British chief of police. Wan, needless to say, knew everything that went on within the police precinct, which was quite a bit more than the chief of police knew.

Wan said, 'Why do you ask about these murders, cousin? They are very bad business. Even the British are reluctant to investigate. They would prefer to let the past be the past. The British are afraid. Now I am afraid.'

Nevertheless, Wan let So-Peng see everything the police had amassed concerning the incidents. So-Peng concentrated on his reading so as not to allow Wan's extreme anxiety to affect him.

'It mentions weapons called, for lack of a better term, throwing stars,' he said to Wan. 'Are the police holding them?'

Wan nodded, showed them to So-Peng, who gave them only a cursory look, though he was extremely curious about them. He returned to the report, asked Wan several meaningless, misleading questions, then gave him back the report. As Wan went to put it away, So-Peng palmed one of the throwing stars.

Now that he knew as much as the police did about the murders, So-Peng felt he was as prepared as he ever would be for Nightside.

Nightside was only an approximate translation of the patois word, part Malay, part Hokkien dialect. It was

an area of town shunned by the ruling British, rarely frequented by the Babas, as the Straits Chinese bora in the settlement of immigrant parents were called. The Babas, with an eye to the future; were far more respectable than were their forebears, who had endured unimaginable hardships, being brought to Singapore in the holds of clipper ships, being imprisoned there until the cost of their passage was paid for by those who promised to employ them. Subsequently, they toiled eighteen hours a day to pay off that heavy debt whose amount increased with each day's interest.

Nightside was the province of the samsengs, professional criminals breeding in the dark underbelly of Singapore. These unwholesome denizens were utterly contemptuous of Western law. They committed murder, extortion, robbery and burglary with such regularity that these crimes were to them the equivalent of a nine to five job.

Because So-Peng knew all this, he determined that Nightside would be the logical place to begin his search for the tanjian. Nightside was a place along the docks. It was filled with godowns - warehouses - bars, and clubs open until dawn. Here liquor and opium vied for prominence among a population that had little thought of tomorrow. They were a godless bunch, the Nightsiders, the concept of belief in anything excoriated by a life without either hope or purpose.

Into this pit of evil stepped So-Peng, weaponless save for his quick wits and the knowledge he had got from his mother, the facts he had gleaned from the police files.

At first, at bar after bar, he was left alone, as if he were some dim-witted Baba who had wandered into Nightside by mistake, and would soon disappear of his own accord.

When this did not occur he garnered somewhat more attention, and when he began asking questions concerning

the whereabouts of the men who had murdered the two merchants, he became the object of considerable curiosity and speculation.

A samseng named Tik Po Tak, the leader of one of the innumerable Chinese tongs, took particular interest in So-Peng. Tak was a thick-set man in his early thirties, a former sinkeh - an indentured immigrant - who had seen his two older brothers die of cholera in the hold of the Chinese junk that had brought them to Singapore on the wings of the monsoon winds.

Tak himself had emerged from that disease-ridden ship thin and tubercular. He had worked night and day to pay off the enormous debt he had incurred for not only his own passage but that of his dead brothers as well.

Within two years he had paid off the debt and, a free man, he had entered Nightside. There, he had bought a weapon with the remainder of his money, had returned to the pepper plantation on which he had toiled for twenty-four months, and had killed his former employer.

He was a famous figure around Nightside, and he was much feared. He also had amassed the most powerful tong in the Crown Colony, as the British called Singapore in those days. Rather than being intimidated by the local British police, Tak had made a deal with them - a kind of mutual non-aggression pact. The British did not hinder his affairs to any major degree. They did not dare.

When he had been a sinkeh, Tik Po Tak had been a brash young man, willing to take appalling risks for the sake of honour and freedom. In So-Peng he no doubt saw an image of his younger self and, therefore, his interest was piqued. On the other hand, he was wary. His truce with the British was at best brittle, and it would be correct to say that Tak was uneasy around them. In his opinion, any people who were more concerned with telling the

truth - and, thus, giving offence - than they were with saving face were simply not trustworthy.

Tik Po Tak sent One Eye Yan across the bar to speak to So-Peng. In that way he might observe the young man's actions, reactions and manner from a distance, the better to judge whether So-Peng was what he claimed he was or a spy sent into Nightside by the devious British.

One Eye Yan was a massive man with a notoriously incendiary temper who could intimidate the bravest British officer. But Yan had his orders, and Tak had no doubt that he would do what he, Tak, wanted him to do.

Yan said to So-Peng, 'Why are you here in a part of Singapore that does not belong to you?'

So-Peng looked at this giant of a man who was of approximately the same height as he but was perhaps twice again as heavy. 'I am looking for men who have committed murder,' he said.

Yan laughed. He brandished a long, dirty knife in So-Peng's face. 'Then you've come to the right place.' He watched So-Peng's face as he turned the blade of the knife this way and that. 'Which murders?'

"The Muslim merchants who were found with pigs' feet in their mouths,' So-Peng said at once.

One Eye Yan grunted. 'Why do you want to find these men?'

'I wish to talk with them,' So-Peng said.

Yan grinned as he put the filthy blade to So-Peng's neck. 'Your search has ended,' he said softly. 'I am one of them.' He leaned into So-Peng's face. 'Speak.'

So-Peng did not move. He knew that this giant was not a tanjian; he did not have the sense of menace about him that Liang had described. There was nothing mystical about this one-eyed man. His character was simple, straightforward. So-Peng knew that this did not make him any less dangerous.

With that in mind, So-Peng knew that the manner of his reaction now was extremely important. 'If you are who you say you are,' he told the giant, 'you will know my name.'

'Is that so?' Van said. 'Why should I know you? You're just a stripling.'

Using his gift, So-Peng reached out, touched Van's spirit with his own, enfolding it in a sense of truth. Straightforward adversaries demanded straightforward measures.

Yan grunted, took the blade from So-Peng's throat. 'Aren't you afraid that they will kill you as well?' he asked. 'Murderers are notoriously indifferent towards their victims.'

'Not these murderers,' So-Peng said with such absolute authority that for a moment Yan was taken aback.