Scale-Bright (2 page)

Between curtain-cast shade and dawn-light the archer god might have smiled. "Then other children would've said you meant your aunt and uncle, called you a liar, and pelted you with whatever mortal children pelt one another with these days."

"Rocks and mud balls, I'm afraid." She yawns and stifles it behind her hand.

This time Hau Ngai chuckles as she lifts Julienne in her arms without effort. "Mortals," she says as she tucks Julienne back into bed, "never truly change."

* * *

When Houyi makes the call to her wife she expects an argument and, as so often, that is what she gets.

"If you weren't out to butcher every single demon in Hong Kong." The intake of Chang'e's breath is an effort to keep calm. Houyi imagines her in a park, a field, somewhere under an open sky gold-blue with daylight. "If you didn't have this reputation for being a rampaging zealot who massacres indiscriminately. If not for these, do you believe one of them would've been after my niece's life?"

"Yes," Houyi says, rebalancing the phone. "Demons hardly need encouragement to act on their instincts. Scenting us on her is reason enough."

"They aren't animals."

"Technically many of them are."

Another sharp inhalation. "I'm not going to debate the
technicalities
of demonkind. Had you left them well enough alone instead of heading out every other night to slaughter them by the score they'd have found no provocation to do this."

"This is the first time they've gotten close to Julienne."

"They don't need a second. I'm not going to expect her to defend herself from demons."

"I could teach her to, but in the meantime I've given her something to carry. I do mean to keep her safe."

"I know you do; I know you will keep her well. Sometimes I feel like I ran away and left you with an illegitimate child to raise." On the other end Houyi hears an old woman's voice raised in song. Clacking of wood on wood, the purr of thread turning to fabric. "It's not that I don't wish I was at your side. It's not that I don't resent how little time we have together."

"I understand that. When this has calmed down, I will…" The strength of her reaction to Chang'e—to her wife's absence—always catches Houyi off-guard, like a shot that's gone astray without reason. "I'll find the viper. Perhaps negotiate an agreement."

Chang'e laughs, without humor. "That'd be new. Do try it, even so."

The last echo of Chang'e's voice dies away.

Houyi stands on the first letter of HSBC, ancient myth-feet resting on logo black on red, under which throbs a mad rush of numbers and commerce and machines: trades riding cellular waves and fiber optic, fortunes made and shattered in minutes. She does not shade her eyes. Centuries of driving the sun chariot have inured her; the light and heat only remind her of the trajectory, the making of dark into dawn. It's not a duty she may shirk for much longer.

The height gives her half of Hong Kong to peel open, but though she can see as far as she needs—and narrow her attention where she wills—the city is a hoarder of secrets, of blacked windows sealed tight, and what do reptiles excel at if not hiding and slithering in the shade?

Houyi pinches the strand of hair she's plucked out of the sofa. No scales: the demon was not so slovenly as that, to revert to fangs and a tail as long as skyscraper shadows. From her shoulder Houyi unslings her bow, and choosing an arrow knots the hair to its tip.

Notch. Pull. Loosen. The motions come easily, an extension of arms and fingers, a release of tension pleasant-familiar as nostalgia. The arrow sails high. It flashes once, a verdant burst.

A direction; a beginning. She has located the trail.

Houyi steps off the edge of the building, and follows.

* * *

Temple Street at night: too many foreigners, too many smells. Billboards warm the air even in winter, and in summer it is sweltering. Here is too far from waves and harbor, too far from the breathing brine.

A street opera enacts snatches of drama—behind the powder and paint each actor could be woman, man or elsewise. One plays the part of Daji, Nuwa's fox, luring an emperor to her embrace and his dynasty's demise. Houyi appreciates their grace, their ability to perform in the limited stage eked out from gaps between pedestrians and stalls. The actors are not without aptitude, and the accompanying band if strident manages to spin noise into poetry. But she will not find her quarry here. Too obvious, too garish.

Vendors hawk stringed coins not unlike what young men used to buy during imperial examinations seasons. Zodiac animals in glaring gilt line tables cheek-to-jowl with paper-mache icons of Chairman Mao. Houyi lets the crowd carry her forward, moving at its pace rather than her natural gait. Intuition and hunter's sense will serve her here, not tracks on asphalt. None exists in any case; the city fleets, overwriting and overwritten.

She drops onto a cracked plastic stool without invitation or solicitation. The palm-reader looks up at her, startled to find someone who looks so obviously local giving her patronage. She is mid-forties, tired and trying to hide behind cosmetics: young for a palm-reader, which indicates that like most lining this street she is better at reciting a chiromancy manual than reading fate-lines. For foreigners' benefit the woman wears a cheongsam.

Clipped palm charts flutter as she unhooks her magnifying glass. The smile she gives Houyi is thin-lipped, impatient. "Good evening, miss. Is there anything specific you're after?"

Houyi hands over a couple hundred-dollar bills. "A consultation," she says amiably; even if the palm-reader knows no talent, she will see that Houyi's lines are not quite what they should be. They would suggest Houyi has already died once, an interruption in the tributaries of her destiny. "I've had a reading done before, but it wasn't favorable. I'm considering a surgery to change that. Do you have recommendations?"

An honest chiromancer would have told her the idea is absurd, but this one apparently has a plastic surgeon for a brother-in-law and has pages of advice on what Houyi might want to change, which part to keep and which to overwrite—"The one for your lifespan of course, and if you have conjugal troubles..."

Houyi's smile stiffens. So she has. Such a mortal thing, to turn a corner and find uncertainty lying in ambush against understanding that has outlasted dynasties.

While the woman speaks she takes the opportunity to acquaint herself with table, charts, equipment, brushing her fingertips over the naked lightbulb. The viper has been here, and often; the deep pouches under the palm-reader's eyes are not just sleep deprivation. A touch here, a touch there, like a tongue lapping at a teacup's lip.

She lets the barest sliver of her vigor seep into the woman. Chang'e will not like it, berating her for being too much the god, too free with her protection. These days it seems they are constantly in the middle of a disagreement or verging on the next. Just as well they found Julienne already a woman grown, not a fifteen-year-old orphan, or they would have worse debates over how to rear the girl. Neither of them would have adjusted well to the parameters of parenthood.

She pays the palm-reader an additional fifty, far more than the "consultation" is worth, and leaves for a noodle shop. It is noisy, far too hot, and quite perfect for contemplation. In her days she would have found a remote spot, drawn weapons, and sharpened them—but remoteness in Hong Kong is a commodity rarer than gold and far more precious. She's learned to align her thoughts to noise, to sharpen her alertness on the whetstone of distraction. The steam brings her the smells of red pork, soy sauce and pak choi.

The god's intent pricks her skin long before he enters the eatery.

"Marshal Tianpeng," she says as he arrives along with the waiter, who sets out a bowl of noodle and a plate of youtiao she didn't order.

"Nobody's called me that for eons. Zhu Baije, these days. Your courtesy is peerless, as ever."

Physically he is imposing: a former commander of some eighty-thousand celestial soldiers can be nothing less. But his presence, she's always felt, is very small. Houyi regards him in silence, long enough for him to begin fidgeting with his youtiao.

"Beautiful Houyi," he wheedles, "why so cold? Are we not friends of old?"

"You were sent to earth in swine form for making unwanted advances toward my wife. Though I see, of course, that you've since regained a shape more manlike." She tries a spoonful of soup, finds it insipid. The beef brisket is an improvement, seasoned and braised with a sure hand, someone with a zeal for strong flavors.

"That was centuries ago!"

"You were entirely aware that not only was Chang'e married, she didn't want men in general, nor you in especial; you didn't even take the trouble of becoming a woman to woo her. I'm concerned that she couldn't protect herself—as is obvious, she could and did—but I'm unable to comprehend why you've decided to join me for a meal."

"Chang'e seemed lonely, and at the time you were absent from heaven…"

"Banished to mortality in the human realm, yes. Very humorous, if you think about it, given your own sentence. But I wasn't aware the absence of one partner signals a marriage's dissolution. Not that I have ever leafed through a book of heavenly laws, to be sure. Perhaps you can enlighten me."

He holds up his hands. "How cross are you, truly?"

"Marshal, can you not tell? Here I understood you were the final authority on women's fickle moods. Indeed reports say that
fickle
was what you called my wife when His Majesty summoned you for judgment."

"Centuries—"

"We're all immortal, Marshal. Pretend that I am a man. Your equal, if you will. Would you expect a husband to let pass this slight?"

Tianpeng looks down at his plate, shredded remains of youtiao: fried dough going limp in a cooling puddle of oil. "Houyi, your words cut deep."

"They don't need to. I do carry weapons. But to save us both time and keep up some semblance of manners you could tell me your reason for having sought me out."

"Ah," Tianpeng says. "Ah. About that. I have what mortals would call a... liquidity problem."

One of the waiters is scowling in their direction. They've kept their table too long. "We can talk as we walk. If you must."

Food smells linger on them. From the marshal she catches a cloying hint of cigars. An odd choice, and no suggestion of liquor. The Tianpeng she knew in heaven was so fond of drinks he offered to dig her a wine lake as wedding gift.

The market has frayed with the lateness of the hour; stalls are packing up and the opera troupe is gone, leaving behind synthetic feathers and tatters of faux silk, a promise of the next performance. Come daylight the street will have acquired a seediness, an emptiness of spirit that comes with storefronts shut like clenched fists and garbage bags on the footpath.

She stops at an apothecary to buy candied dates for Chang'e, then remembers that Chang'e is not here, will not be here for a long time. She buys them anyway; they will keep, and her wife always eats compulsively after she's off a plane. "Liquidity problems," Houyi says as they pass a bakery offering the last of its egg tarts at half price. "Do I understand that right, Marshal? You have financial troubles. How did you come by them? You're a god."

"Mercy and pity, Houyi! A pig for three hundred years."

"It's been how long since—" She glances at him sideways. "No, don't tell me. You've been trying to purchase women's attentions."

Tianpeng rubs the side of his temple. "Of all people you can surely appreciate that! Chang'e is unmatched in beauty, but one can't possibly be enough. It does no harm to have many loves."

"Marshal, I suggested that you pretend I'm a man as a rhetorical bid—one I hoped would bring you a glimmer of self-awareness. This seems to have met with abject failure.
I
understand the virtue of fidelity. I enjoy it." Houyi shifts the phantom weight of her quiver. "But I'm not entirely unsympathetic to your plight. Are you acquainted with demons?"

The god tugs at his beard, uneasy. "Not by choice. This is an infested city."

"Yes, it is rather. If you can introduce me to one who might speak with me regarding a specific demon, it'd go some way to make amends for the slight you offered my wife. We can discuss your bank accounts after that."

1.2

What Hau Ngai imparted stays and shows. Julienne's never been clumsy, but today she balances better, toes and heels graced with recall of ballet lessons. As a child she hated them both in concept and practice, the delicate shoes so quickly worn to ruin, the costumes with their performance of pinkness and gossamer blue, the obligation of glittering smiles.

When her parents died it caused no grief, only perfunctory numbness. Enveloped in that, a gift: she could finally stop fluttering her arms as though they are paper, she could finally graduate from ballet to Julienne.

People notice. One of the new girls—hitherto reserved—smiles at Julienne often; she doesn't seem able to look away and their supervisor Mary has to snap at her to get back to work.

Julienne doesn't return the smiles, though a day or two ago she would have. Will this effortless charisma last even a week, and afterward will the new girl realize Julienne isn't interesting after all? Hau Ngai's temporary grace won't make up for dull conversation, for Julienne being herself.

By her third hour she's convinced customers to buy a laundry list of gaudy brilliance, diamonds almost too large to be genuine, emeralds and sapphires in latticework to clutch at throats and depend from ears, heavy as urban ennui. With each sale Mary jots something down on her phone; Julienne imagines she can hear a brain clicking like an abacus.

Her body thrums with an urge to run, to leap, to be more than it is.

Mary is behind her. "Julienne." A nod at a customer looking at a spotlighted case: in it, rubies set in platinum. Necklace, bangle and earrings that together can reduce a body from comfortably middle-class to homeless poverty overnight.

She switches on her professional smile—elegance over simpering, expertise over eager-to-please—and glides over. The man is thickly built, his suit tailored, gold everywhere and a Rolex that might even be real. Clean-shaven head and eyes like an owl's: immense. "Sir," she says, "does this set interest you?"