Shanghai (53 page)

In the light thrown by the torches, the Carver nodded and unlatched the side catches of the beautiful mahogany box that stood on the two jade pedestals, exposing the relic. The Chosen Three looked in the first portal at the image of hundreds of Han Chinese men, their long braided queues flying behind them as the thin reeds in their mouths bent against their bizarre dance.

Everyone now knew what those reeds were—and what the dance was too.

“Has it been changed?” Jiang asked.

“What?” asked the Carver.

“Bring the torch closer,” Jiang ordered as she peered into the hollow cavern in the Narwhal Tusk. “Now move it to your left.” The Carver did. Loa Wei Fen and the Confucian adjusted their positions to get a better look. “There,” Jiang said. “Have you seen the two women at the back before?”

The Carver moved the torch but did not answer the question.

“I've never seen them,” said the Confucian.

“Has someone tampered with—?”

“Not at all.” The Carver's voice was pulled back in his throat but clear in the still air of the chamber.

“So how did those two women come into view?” demanded Jiang.

“They may have been there before but …”

Jiang gave the Confucian a look that silenced him quickly, then added, “We are not fools here. We do not ‘overlook' things. Those figures have somehow moved forward.”

“How do you mean, moved forward?” the Carver asked slowly.

“Not physically moved forward, but somehow they've come into focus.”

“Indeed,” the Carver said as he stepped up to the Tusk. “Look.” He ran his hand over the top of the sacred object. Inside the cavern, the shadow of his hand moved across the ivory figures.

“Why …?”

“It's rotting,” said the Carver, “as all things must, and as it rots some sections of its surface are becoming translucent.”

“Allowing in light where there was not light before,” said Loa Wei Fen.

“So the women's figures have always been in the background,” Jiang said, then added, “I always looked for the role of women in the destiny within the window, and for all those years all I could see were shadows, near the very back of the tableau. Now, with the decay of the Tusk, these two women have assumed light and focus.”

“But I don't understand,” said the Confucian.

“Understand what?” asked the Carver, as he moved his hand over the top surface of the Tusk again.

“This Tusk is a duplication of an earlier Tusk that in itself was a duplication of an earlier one—going all the way back to the original Narwhal Tusk delivered by the First Emperor to our ancestors on the Holy Mountain.”

The Carver didn't say anything, nor did he nod agreement.

“Isn't it?” pressed the Confucian.

The room instantly filled with tension. The Assassin involuntarily placed his hand on his swalto blade. Jiang sprang to her feet. Slowly the Carver said, “There have never been copies made of the Tusk. We were always prepared to make duplications of the relic—but it was never duplicated. It wasn't necessary.”

In a tiny, awed voice, Jiang said, “Then this Tusk is the original that was given by the First Emperor to our ancestors all those years ago on the Holy Mountain?”

“Yes.” The Carver's voice was little more than a whisper. He looked at the relic and took a long breath. A silence, deep and seemingly solid, filled the chamber. Finally the Carver spoke. “This secret has been the greatest burden that my family has carried all these years.”

“Why would you keep it from us?” Jiang demanded.

“All of us in this room have secrets. It is part of the strength of the Compact. This secret we have always felt was handed to us directly from the First Emperor and our patron, Chesu Hoi.”

“But how …?” the Confucian began.

The Carver shrugged. “The ancients had their ways, which died with them. Some sort of preservative, one must assume. But exactly what preservative is another mystery of the relic. Until lately there has been almost no decaying of the ivory at all. As I said, each successive Carver prepared himself to duplicate the Tusk—but it has been unnecessary, as you can see.”

“The Tusk in front of us is the original?” asked the Confucian, still unable to come to grips with the startling truth.

“Yes,” the Carver acknowledged.

“So is it wrong to assume that what we are seeing in front of us now is what the First Emperor, over two thousand years ago, wanted us to see as the Tusk rotted?” asked Jiang.

“It is a very logical conclusion, perhaps the only possible conclusion,” replied the Carver.

Everyone in the deep cavern in the Warrens allowed that surprising fact to find a place in their hearts.
No longer was this a clever replica that confronted them, now it was the original message from the Holy Mountain—and the relic, as it decayed, was changing its focus, bringing new things literally to light … talking to them.

“It's guiding us,” Jiang said. “First there are the two women …”

“And they're oddly dressed,” the Confucian said.

That had escaped the others. Jiang pulled back from the Narwhal Tusk as a shock of recognition rocked her. “Look at their feet,” she said.

Only one had the tiny, bound feet of a high-born woman, and her clothing was clearly Beijing style—Manchu aristocracy. The other woman wore a courtesan's robes with the large, wide central sash of a brothel madam—a belt not dissimilar from the one that Jiang now carefully moved beneath her cloak.

“What does all this mean?” the Assassin asked.

“That it is women's turn to step forward,” Jiang said as she knelt again to get a closer look at the Tusk. Then she turned away from the portal and looked at the Carver. “Is the Tusk being carefully guarded?”

This surprised everyone in the room.

“Why do you ask?” demanded the Carver.

“Because the Beijing Manchu woman has a sword in her hand.”

* * *

THE DOWAGER EMPRESS LEANED on her ceremonial sword as the mid-winter midnight procession passed by offering tributes.
So hollow,
she thought, remembering when, as a young girl, she had received the tributes for the first time. Then, they had been offered not only in
supplication but also in fear. When the Q'ing Dynasty was a great power in the world, not a desiccated skeleton picked dry by the European carrion birds. She nodded as the delegation from Annam placed several large ivory tusks on the dais in front of her. She acknowledged the tribute with the slightest wave of her bejewelled fingers. Then the representative from Bengal stepped forward and presented a large, beautifully engraved box. He flipped open the beaten copper latches and turned the box toward the Dowager. Three large rubies sat on a velvet mound. The Dowager had always loved rubies, but her eyes, much to her surprise, were drawn back to the tusks from Annam. She lifted the ceremonial sword in her hand and allowed its point to rest on the widest part of one of the ivory tusks. The sword's tip penetrated the ivory. A synapsal flash triggered a memory in her ancient mind and the word
carved
came out of her mouth in a throaty burp. Instantly her assistants were there to inquire, “Excuse me, Highness?” “Is there something you wish, Your Majesty?” and a hundred other little requests that tried to justify their continued employment in the Forbidden City. She turned from the fools and called for her Head Eunuch.

“Madam?” Chesu Hoi asked.

She pointed at the tusk with her sword and once more allowed the tip to cut into the surface.

Again her Head Eunuch asked, “Madam?” then added cautiously, “Is there something with which I can be of assistance?”

She thought about that for a moment, then responded, “Not assistance.”

“Ah, then what, Madam?”

She looked at the man. He was almost as old as she. He was the only old person she allowed near her person.

“What would a History Teller make of an ivory tusk, do you suppose?”

Chesu Hoi thought momentarily of contacting the Carver in Shanghai but discarded the precaution and said, “I am not trained as a History Teller. In matters of history, I am closer to the History Chronicler of old, as you well know, Madam.”

She did know. “Are there any History Tellers left? A History Chronicler is of no earthly use when it comes to legends.”

“Legends, Madam?”

“Yes, legends. Legends of carvings in tusks.”

* * *

“DO THE TWO WOMEN CHANGE our position in the prophecy?” the Assassin asked.

It was the question on all of their minds. They all knew that the White Birds on Water had landed and that the darkness they brought with them had intensified for years, but it was also clear that there was a step, still hidden behind the closed second portal—or perhaps several steps—missing between the White Birds landing and the building of the Seventy Pagodas.

Shanghai had become a booming commercial centre under the rule of the
Fan Kuei,
and immigration into the city from all over China had increased every time there was chaos in the countryside—which was an ever more frequent occurrence. The city now had more than enough labourers to build the Seventy Pagodas, but no pagodas had been built. The massive statements of European and American power had been erected along the Huangpo, but these were not pagodas. In fact, although Chinese sweat built Shanghai, the Chinese
owned few of the buildings outside of the walls of the Old City. Shanghai's second most profitable business was real estate, which, just like its first business, opium, was almost entirely controlled by the
Fan Kuei
. True, wealthy immigrants from Ningpo and Canton had begun a housing style of their own by building traditional interior courtyards with frontage on streets. They called them
shikumen,
or “stone portals,” referring to the carved stone structures overtop of the entrance door. Newer, often less expensive homes, built with access to alleys rather than streets, were called
lilong,
and a few had such extravagances as sanitary fixtures and electricity. But the majority of the Chinese in Shanghai could never dream of owning
shikumen
or even
lilong
. They were poor people from the country who had come by boat down the Grand Canal and then along the Yangtze. They ended up anchored in the murky waters of the Suzu Creek. New arrivals lived on their boats. When the boats began to rot, either from natural causes or the creek's vile pollutants, the family pulled the boat ashore and lived in it on land. When the boats collapsed, the peasants used the materials from the boat, especially the reeds from the roof, to build a hut in which to live. The Shanghainese, with their cruel sense of irony, named these structures
gundilong,
or “rolling earth dragons,” the joke being that the word for dragon,
long
, is the same as the word for cage. Few of these people ever managed to move from their “rolling earth cages.” Only the very talented and the very fortunate moved past straw shacks to the stone buildings of the
lilong
or
shikumen
.

Money was being made by the fistful in Shanghai—but not by the Chinese.

All about them was the darkness caused by opium, but how were they to get to the promised light that was the Seventy Pagodas?

“Will there be more figures revealed?” asked the Assassin.

“Who can tell?” replied the Carver. “It's likely that there are more figures ready to come to light.”

“More prophecies,” Jiang said. “The Tusk must be kept safe. Should it fall into the wrong hands …”

“The Tusk is as safe as it's always been,” said the Carver.

“Not good enough now,” spat out Jiang. “Now we must assure its safety. Assure it!”

The Carver nodded but said nothing. The newly revealed figures were interesting, but the mysterious central, closed portal was surely more important, and he, unlike most of the previous Carvers, had a scientific bent—a mind that led him to want to experiment on the portal that Q'in She Huang, the First Emperor, had said could be opened only “by people in the darkness of the Age of White Birds on Water.”

A heavy series of concussive sounds, yet more fireworks over the Huangpo River, filled the cavern.

* * *

LI TIAN IGNORED what he thought of as senseless banging and readied his rocket.

December 31, 1889

Jiang had left orders to set aside the south wing of her French Concession house for the Tong members. She didn't like them, but thanks to her family's deal with the Colombe family, at least her protection money was paid to the French authorities, not to the likes of these thugs. There was a special price charged for the girls' services at Jiang's to Tong members—double what everyone else paid.

Jiang was considering doubling even that as she arrived back from the Warrens. Then she saw the large-eared young man—and his knife.
Where are my guards?
she wondered. Then there were more men like the one with the knife. One knocked over a Go board, sending
the pieces skittering across the floor and garnering a loud protest from an old player. Before Jiang could calm the Go player she noticed a young man carrying a pearl-handled pistol she recognized as one belonging to her private bodyguard. She watched as the “the knife's” men filtered through the crowd in her reception chamber in choreographed patterns that bespoke both youth and savagery. Then she felt him at her side. His body was pressed up tight against her hip—his taut sinew against her soft curves—but she felt no tumescence between his legs.

“Evening, Miss Jiang,” Tu's surprisingly light, slightly lisped voice murmured.

“Good …”

But that was all she managed before his hand pushed through the slit in her dress and covered her sex. “Do you smell it, Miss Jiang?”

“What?”

“The reek of change.”