Eagle (11 page)

AnGangseh offered him a smile. “Lovely. Won't you please do me the favor of closing the window shutters?”

HukJee's nephew promptly obeyed.

“I don't like the looks of this,” HukJee said to his nephew. “Perhaps you should leave.”

“Or perhaps you should come ssstand a little closer to me, Big Boy,” AnGangseh said in a soft voice. She
beckoned to HukJee's nephew with a wiggling fore finger, and he ambled toward her like an eager puppy.

Tonglong kept his eyes on his mother's finger. As HukJee's nephew lumbered close, AnGangseh drove the long nail at the end of her wiggling forefinger into the side of the big man's neck.

HukJee's nephew dropped to the floor in con vulsions, his neck instantly swelling several times its normal size.

HukJee gasped.

Within moments, HukJee's nephew stopped convulsing, his oxygen-depleted brain no longer sending signals to his oversized muscles, or anywhere else.

AnGangseh glared at HukJee. “Has your nephew delivered my message?”

HukJee wiped a tear from his eye. “Yes,” he said through clenched teeth.

“And what is that message?” AnGangseh asked.

Gigantic beads of sweat began to run down HukJee's bloated forehead and cheeks. “The message is, if I don't give you any information I have, you will kill my family. Then afterward, most certainly, you will kill me. Considering how close you both are to the Emperor, I should keep in mind that there is nothing I nor anyone else can do about it.”

Tonglong nodded approvingly. “I've always heard that pigs are intelligent creatures. Now I know this to be true. I will ask you one more time, HukJee—what is your best guess as to Ying's current location?”

HukJee took a deep breath and exhaled. He wiped
more tears from his eyes. “If I had to wager my life, which it appears I do, I would guess that Ying is on a quest for dragon bone.”

“Dragon bone?” Tonglong said. “Why?”

HukJee shook his behemoth head. “How am I supposed to know these things? I only heard that a young girl with short hair purchased a small quantity of dragon bone in a village upstream early yesterday. Apparently, she wanted more, but everyone was sold out. She was seen leaving with another individual in a skiff. They headed farther upstream. Since rumors claim she looked just like the girl in your new wanted posters, perhaps the person with her was Ying.”

“That has to be them,” AnGangseh said. “She went upstream, you sssay? Clever girl.”

“Indeed,” Tonglong said. He glared at HukJee. “Is this all you know?”

“Yes,” HukJee replied. “I swear on my life, and on the life of my poor nephew.” He sniffled.

Tonglong turned away from HukJee and whispered into his mother's ear, “Where do you think they are going? Back to Kaifeng to search for the bandits?”

AnGangseh shook her head. “The Grand Canal is upstream.”

“Of course,” Tonglong whispered. “The map! Ying is going to follow it while looking for dragon bone. He would not have destroyed the scroll the other night unless he had another copy. The girl must be going along to help him. He knows he cannot show his face. We need to track them.”

AnGangseh nodded.

Tonglong straightened and turned to HukJee. “Here are your orders, you oversized, sniveling ham hock. Send word through your network of black-market suppliers that Ying and a young girl with pale skin and short brown hair will be traveling south along the Grand Canal seeking powdered dragon bone. No one is to sell them any until further notice. Violators will have to deal with me personally. I need you to set up a system to track their positions and keep me apprised. My mother and I will be traveling that way with the Emperor in the coming weeks. We shouldn't be difficult to find. I look forward to hearing from members of your network along the way.”

HukJee swallowed hard, his numerous chins jiggling. “I understand.”

“Pleasure doing business with you,
Pig,
” Tonglong said. He stepped over HukJee's nephew and walked out of the office, his mother slithering along beside him.

Y
ing sat alone in the skiff on the bank of the Grand Canal, half a
It
south of a nameless village. He was waiting for Hok to return on foot in the fading daylight. She had visited ten similar villages over the past week and had searched each for dragon bone, but had returned empty-handed every time. Ying was beginning to lose patience.

Ying and Hok had reached the Grand Canal the first night they shoved off together, and since then the scenery had changed little. The canal was wide, more than one hundred paces across, with stone walls protecting the shores of the villages. Outside of the populated areas, however, the canal walls fell quickly away to become muddy, unprotected banks, giving the appearance of a typical river.

Ying knew that the canal stretched for more than a thousand
It
from end to end and was dug entirely by hand. It was the country's main north/south route for transporting goods and was considered one of man kind's greatest accomplishments. Some said even greater than the Great Wall.

Ying was not impressed by many things, but the thought of hundreds of thousands of men working together, digging for years to complete the Grand Canal, gave him pause. He was certain they would have been under pressure to complete it in a certain time frame, and wondered how long it actually took.

Time was something Ying felt he was running out of. While they had not encountered any major obstacles, he and Hok were not making great progress. Not only were they stopping often for Hok to fruitlessly shop for dragon bone, but there were stretches of the canal where the land sloped so steeply that locks were required to raise and lower boats.

The locks were another marvel of engineering, but one that Ying could do without. They cost money and time to navigate, and every one meant a chance that he and Hok might be recognized. Whenever possible, they would navigate the locks in the middle of the day, when boat traffic was heaviest. With so many boats jostling for position, bumping and crashing into one another, no one bothered to scrutinize Ying's masked face or Hok's turbaned head.

Outside of the locks, Ying and Hok traveled mostly at night, sharing the duties of rowing with the skiff's oar. One would row while the other slept.

During the day, they would try to find an uninhabited bank near a village where Hok could shop. While she hadn't found any dragon bone, she'd found plenty of other things to purchase. Beyond necessities such as food, Hok had replaced the herb bag that she'd lost in the fight club fire and was slowly filling it, village by village. She complained about the poor selection and inferior quality of most of the herbs, though. She especially complained about the high taxes.

Hok told Ying that the Emperor had placed a heavy tax on all medicinal herbs, so people had begun to purchase their herbs from black-market dealers, who sold items without tax. Legitimate herb vendors— who also happened to be trained doctors—were stocking fewer and fewer items, and what they had on their shelves tended to be old. Hok disliked the black-market vendors because most of them didn't have the slightest clue how the different herbs should be used, but she quickly found she had no choice but to buy from them.

Hok told Ying that if they could remain in any given village for two or three days, the vendors prom ised they could get her most any item she desired, including dragon bone. The black-market vendors in every village were part of the same vast network that had runners carrying items between the villages and larger cities daily. Ying and Hok discussed this and decided that waiting that long in any one place was not an option.

Rather than wasting time while Hok shopped, Ying was keeping himself as busy as his recovering body
would allow. Hok had recently purchased a small tarp, and he had just finished rigging it up with branches and rope to create a large canopy over the front half of the skiff. The canopy would block the late-summer sun, as well as the occasional raindrops. It would also provide some protection from the prying eyes of soldiers, who often perched atop bridges along the canal, peering into boats as they passed beneath them.

Ying heard someone approaching, and he quickly adjusted the black silk scarf over his face. He stared upstream, his eyes straining in the dim evening light. He couldn't see very well, so he stood and accidentally bumped his head on the canopy frame.

A moment later, Hok appeared with her herb bag slung over her shoulder. She was wearing a new green dress and matching turban.

Ying relaxed.

“The boat looks different,” Hok said. “I like the canopy. Nice work.”

“It will take some getting used to,” Ying replied, rubbing his head. He pointed to the sides of the skiff. “I also scuffed up the exterior and added a few scratches and gouges. This skiff was too well cared for. Tonglong and his men will never recognize it now.”

Hok nodded.

Ying looked Hok's outfit over. “You look different, too. Good idea buying those clothes.”

“Thank you,” Hok said.

“No luck finding dragon bone?” Ying asked.

Hok shook her head. “It's the strangest thing. Was it always this difficult to locate?”

“Sometimes,” Ying said. “Especially in these small villages. Few people can afford it, so few vendors carry it.”

“Maybe we should just forget about the dragon bone,” Hok suggested.

“Not on your life,” Ying replied.

Ying knew that Hok wasn't convinced the small amount of dragon bone they did carry was helping him, but even she could not refute his faster-than-normal healing rate. The herbs she'd been applying to his wounds were certainly part of it, but it seemed something more was helping him quickly regain his strength. Perhaps it was all the extra rest he was getting. Regardless of the reason, in a few days Ying would be more or less back in fighting shape.

Ying thought about the next big city they would come to, the city of Xuzhou. It was located about one-third of the way between the Yellow River and the very end of the Grand Canal at Hangzhou. Xuzhou was where he had had his face carved. The dragon bone he'd carried for much of the past year had come from a vendor in Xuzhou, too. Ying was fairly certain he could find the man again. At the rate they were going, they would be there in four days. He was anxious to get there.

“We should get moving,” Ying said.

“I agree,” Hok replied. “Let's shove off.”

Hok leaned forward to climb into the skiff, and

Ying noticed a green jade crane dangling from a silk thread around her neck. He pointed to it. “You had that in your hand when you escaped the fight club, didn't you?”

“Yes,” Hok said.

“Where did you get it?”

“I took it back from General Tsung while we were fighting.”

“I mean, where did you get it originally?”

Hok climbed into the skiff and looked away. “I'd rather not talk about it.”

“No?” Ying asked, curious. “Not even a little?”

“No.”

Ying decided to let it go. He and Hok had traveled in relative silence the entire time. No reason to go and ruin a good thing by asking her a bunch of questions.

Ying jumped out of the skiff onto the bank and gave the boat a big push to free it from the mud. He scrambled back aboard, and they set a course south down the Grand Canal, toward Xuzhou.

Hok took the first shift working the oar. Once they reached the center of the canal, she lashed it in place and let the canal's gentle current carry them downstream. She went over to Ying's side and began to silently rewrap the dressing on his injured shoulder.

Ying watched Hok work. The more she helped him, the less he thought about getting rid of her. She had had plenty of opportunities to take his life, or simply let his life slip away, but she hadn't done so. If she wasn't a threat, perhaps he should just let her remain
with him. Of all his former brothers, it seemed it was his sister who might understand him most. It made sense, because she had grown up an outsider, too. First as a girl pretending to be a boy, and now as the pale-skinned, brown-haired daughter of a Chinese woman and a round eye.

Ying looked away. It seemed there were now round eyes everywhere, especially in the large cities. The foreigners brought trade, and trade brought money.

Ying couldn't help but think about Tonglong. Tong long had a taste for life's finer things and had al ways admired people with money. Ying had seen it firsthand. Ying recalled how upset Tonglong had been about his burning the map. Ying had never dreamed that Tonglong might have been interested in the dragon scrolls from the very beginning, maybe even before they attacked Cangzhen Temple. Ying had wanted the scrolls so that he could learn dragon-style kung fu. Tonglong had wanted them for other reasons.

Ying assumed that Tonglong must have heard the rumors that floated around the fight clubs about a secret dragon scroll map that led to a dragon's hoard of treasure. Most people assumed that it was a bottomless pile of gold and jewels, but those with more intimate knowledge knew that it was so much more. Beyond an impressive collection of precious metal and stones was supposedly something far more valuable. It was said that the treasure also included four legendary white jade swords and a set of white jade armor. Whoever wielded one of the four swords and also wore the
armor was believed to be the rightful heir to the Emperor's throne.