Nine Gates (33 page)

“Sorry, Aunt Pearl,” came the immediate reply. “I keep seeing headlines: ‘Stealing Trade Secrets?’ ‘Competition in Chocolate?’ ‘Tong Wars?’ I know it’s ridiculous to worry about my reputation when we’re up against being murdered or lobotomized—not to mention having our world invaded—but it keeps bothering me.”

“For good reason,” Pearl said. “But for now put that aside and listen. Then we’ll have tea and work out the details.”

Albert turned to face Shen. “If you would, sir?”

“My pleasure,” Shen said with equal formality, but his eyes were shining. “I suppose Des and the rest being in the guardian domains is what got me considering doing things this way, but I think our best bet is to summon agents who are both of this world and not—agents who have a completely physical form, but who can become disembodied to work their way past wards.”

“Dragons,” Albert breathed.

“You guessed,” Shen said, looking quite pleased. “I have a good affinity with dragons, and even a few friends among the
lung
. However, I needed to make sure that I could give them a precise—‘scent’ is the best word I can think of. I can, but I fear that in order to do so, it would be best if we were as close as possible to the house.”

“So we won’t be able to completely avoid prowling around,” Pearl said. “Still, with Windy Nines to hide us, or perhaps Confused Gates…”

The kettle had begun whistling. Pearl began the routine of rinsing and pouring, her mind racing as she thought through the details.

“Can we get everything ready in time?” Albert asked.

“I think we can try,” Shen said. “It’s only a little past nine now. I don’t suppose we want to be prowling around until we can be fairly certain Deng and his guests have gone to bed.”

“Plenty of time,” Pearl agreed, and she hoped she was right.

Two in
the morning, the Double Hour of the Ox, found them sitting in Pearl’s town car on a graveled service road bordering Delight Vineyards. Behind the tall iron fence, Deng’s mansion was mostly dark and entirely quiet.

Pearl had prepared the sequence for All Green, a spell that would let her see magical workings. Her enhanced vision confirmed that she was seeing the mansion as it was, not cloaked in any illusion. Franklin and his guests had indeed retired for the evening.

Dreaming of our magic
, Pearl thought,
and the power it will bring to them.

The gently curving road they were on had two main virtues: its proximity to the property, and that it had been landscaped with trees and ornamental shrubbery so as not to be noticed. This, Pearl supposed, was so that such mundane inconveniences as plumber’s trucks or delivery vans would not mar the illusion of a genteel estate, independent and isolated behind the vigilance of its spike-topped iron fence.

Security had not been ignored along this service road. Indeed, it was more carefully attended to here than along the front section of the property. There a twelve-foot-tall spiked iron fence, gated and concealing a discreet electronic alarm system, was considered enough. Indeed it was enough, given that the main road was well lit, and routine patrols by local police swept the area for loiterers.

On the fence bordering this service road, the iron bars were more tightly spaced, and the electronic security was augmented with razor wire. A nice concealed dip—a sort of waterless moat—in the manicured sward would slow anyone who managed to top the fence, miss the wire, avoid activating the alarm, and drop to the other side.

The reason the slowing was advantageous was, of course, the dogs. Two of these—stern Dobermans with spiked collars—came and studied the town car soon after Albert parked it on the shoulder of the road in a spot where a shade tree concealed them from a casual observer on the main road. The dogs stayed on the far side of the moat: alert and curious, but uncomfortably silent.

“Franklin wouldn’t want the dogs barking every time a car came down the road,” Pearl guessed. “Their reaction might be different if we crossed the fence, but if everything goes well, we won’t be crossing the fence.”

“If everything goes well,” Albert agreed. He’d shut off the car’s headlights and engine as soon as he had parked. Now he reached to deactivate the dome light so it wouldn’t come on when a car door was opened. “If you two are ready?”

“Ready,” Shen agreed, opening the back door and getting out a little tentatively. He moved with more assurance once he’d tested the footing, reaching behind him to remove the case in which he’d stored the tools he’d prepared. Among these were elaborate scrolls that would enable him to remain in communication with the dragons he summoned—and them with him.

Pearl, meanwhile, had gotten out of the passenger side of the front seat and was moving closer to the main road. There she set about the routine that would create Confused Gates, that very useful spell that did not so much conceal as create a lack of desire to pay attention to a particular area. They didn’t know how often the police came down the main road, or whether their patrols ever made random sweeps down the side roads, so a little misdirection seemed in order.

While Pearl was setting up her Confused Gates, Shen was placing the finishing touches on a spell with the deceptively simple name “Dragon.”

Unlike “Windy Dragons” or “All Winds and Dragons” or several other spells that contained “dragon” in their names, “Dragon” actually summoned one of the resident dragons of an area. Chinese dragons were distinctly elemental creatures, associated primarily with water in the popular imagination, but integrally connected to earth as well.

Feng shui might be translated as “wind-water,” but more accurately the science involved the manipulation of the ch’i of an area. In deciding to use dragons to fetch the two mah-jong sets, they were taking a great risk, for it was unlikely that a sorcerer schooled in the Chinese traditions would have ignored his local feng shui. However, Shen was certain he could find a dragon—or two, for it would be better to send a separate messenger after each set—who would be willing to cooperate with them.

“There must be some local
lung
Deng has overlooked,” Shen had assured Albert. “In fact, it’s likely that while he has taken care to propitiate them, he has done so without binding them. Dragons,” he added, a wicked grin lighting his
face, “do not care to be bound. They tend to resist bindings. When they do, you have earthquakes and tsunami to deal with.”

“Or at least broken pipes,” Albert replied.

Albert assisted Shen to set up a portable altar, a neat little device about the size and height of one of those trays on legs sold to facilitate the idea that eating breakfast in bed could be an elegant experience. This wasn’t as easy as unfolding the legs and setting it down relatively level on the gravel surface. A feng shui compass must be used to align the altar with the appropriate forces. Reading the tiny figures on the complicated dial with only a shielded pocket flashlight was a trying task.

Once the altar was in position, Shen set thin sticks of pure incense burning at the two upper corners. Pearl, standing back from the road so that a chance car would not ruin her night vision with its headlights, caught a teasing trace of the heavy, musky odor of freshly lit incense and wondered what the still-watching Doberman pinschers thought of it.

Pearl’s job at this point was to keep watch, and if by any chance a car did turn in to the road, provide a sufficient distraction that Albert and Shen could get the altar stashed away. Therefore she did her best not to pay attention to what Shen was doing, although she knew when the soft murmuring of words in the distinctive Chinese of the Lands Born from Smoke and Sacrifice shifted from rote spell sequencing to conversation.

Pearl did not hear the reply, which told her that Shen had contacted at least one dragon. Some time later—after four passes of a patrol car, and three passenger cars had all done their part to raise her blood pressure—she heard Shen’s voice beginning the spell sequence once more.

One dragon
,
then
, she thought.
Or did he fail and end up having to start all over?

She longed to ask, but years of discipline at keeping her mark, not missing her cues, kept her at her station. Her feet, even in sensible shoes, were beginning to ache enough to be
a distraction when Shen shifted to speech once more. This time she thought she heard the word “Monkey,” and felt marked relief. Shen would have sent the first dragon after the Ox set, order and method being part of the Dragon’s nature. If he was asking this one to go after the Monkey set…

She changed her angle slightly so that she could still keep an eye on the road, but also study the mansion behind the iron fence. It remained darkened as before, the same lights glowing mutedly in the same places.

Good
, she thought.
Iron. I never considered that, but I bet that fence is meant as security against magic. It would provide some against most European traditions, but our abilities are unimpaired.

Pearl glanced at her watch. This was taking a long time, longer than she had expected, longer, she thought, than Shen had expected. A quick look showed her that Shen was kneeling on the ground in front of the altar, his head bent, his arthritic fingers resting lightly on the elegant calligraphy that represented the two dragons he was guiding.

“Here comes the first one,” Albert said, his softly spoken words reverberating with relief and triumph.

Pearl permitted herself a quick look in the direction of Franklin’s mansion. Invisible to most, a
lung
, the Chinese dragon, swam through the air, propelling itself with the strength of its long tail and two hind legs, its front legs clasping the long, flat rectangular box that held the Ox’s mah-jong set.

Shen did not stir from where he sat behind the altar, not even when the
lung
arrived with its prize. Albert stepped forward to receive the box, thanking the
lung
with exquisitely elegant politeness.

“The task was not too difficult,” the
lung
replied. “The box was locked in another box. The door of the second box was locked, but that could not stop me. I went through, and carried out the box in the same way.”

Pearl understood what the
lung
meant. Not being limited
to one plane of existence, the
lung
had entered the “second box”—presumably a locked safe—and then transferred the mah-jong set to an alternate plane. Still within that plane, it had made its retreat.

The maneuver avoided whatever wards Franklin had in place because the
lung
was not an intruder, but associated with the warded area.

Pearl added her thanks to Albert’s and was surprised when Shen did not add some flowery speech of his own. She looked over, and saw that he remained fixed before the altar. His head was bent forward, his shoulders slumping. Even in the poor light, he looked grey and drained.

“Shen!” she said, hurrying to his side, trusting her Confused Gates to defend the road. She laid a hand to one side of Shen’s face and found the skin cold and damp.

He shuddered slightly beneath her hand, but when he spoke it was not to her.

“Albert, take over,” he said, his voice the merest wheeze.

Pearl began to kneel, to ease Shen to one side. “Let me. I’m already here.”

Shen shook his head. “No. Albert can be Dragon.”

Pearl understood. The abilities of each of the Thirteen Orphans overlapped more or less, even as the Twelve Earthly Branches overlapped, but the Cat—the one Orphan who did not belong to traditional Chinese lore—had an ability that was unique. The Cat alone could take on the aura of another Orphan, temporarily impersonating that Orphan.

“Copy-catting,” Shen’s grandfather, the Exile Dragon, had called the ability, laughing as he did so, although like all of the Twelve he had been distinctly astonished when the ability first became evident, for no one would admit to having formulated or designed it. It had simply happened, as if the Cat, like the original twelve, connected to some force greater than the individual.

Albert came hurrying over, understanding what was needed of him. The first
lung
had started to disperse into the
surrounding elements, but as soon as Albert had taken Shen’s place before the altar, Shen called after it in a voice stronger than before.

“Brother, I beg you…”

The
lung
paused. Pearl sensed annoyance balanced by curiosity, but the curiosity was stronger.

“Yes?”

“Your neighbor, he who also came to my aid, is in some difficulty.”

“Oh?”

Pearl tensed, reached for the sword she was not wearing, for a sword would have been very difficult to explain if they were stopped by local authorities. She looked over at Franklin’s mansion, but the mansion remained as before.

“He, too, was asked to bring forth a box and its contents, but the thief who took that box removed some of the tiles and scattered them throughout her chamber.”

“Clever!” the dragon cheered. “But deserving of cleverness in return. How the thief will cry out when she finds all her treasures taken.”

“So we thought,” Shen said. “Will you assist us then?”

In answer the
lung
drew itself back from the surrounding lands and turned back toward the mansion. As it passed over the Dobermans both dogs whined uneasily, knowing something was wrong, but unable to find that wrongness with nose or ear or eye.

Pearl crouched next to Shen, reaching for his wrist so she could check his pulses. Tigers were not healers as were Rabbits, but then again, a warrior benefited from knowing how to perform basic first aid. Shen’s pulses were all wrong, some too fast, others too slow.

“Breathe,” she said. “You’ve used too much ch’i too quickly. What happened?”

“As I said,” Shen said, “the
lung
was distracted when it found not one signature to follow, but something like ten. Tracy Frye not only hid parts of the mah-jong set around her
room, she was sleeping with the box under her pillow, her arms wrapped around it.”

“Not so good,” Pearl said, opening her purse and taking out a small bottle of water. “Here.”