Gateway (24 page)

CHENGLEI’S OFFICE WAS
a long, high-ceilinged room that over- looked the back lawns and ran half the width of the third story. It could be accessed from two hallways feeding from two different stairways, and each doorway was blocked by a heavy red-velvet curtain held back by a golden rope. The extended bank of windows took up one entire wall, but the other long wall was covered with art and artifacts. Chenglei started his presentation by taking Daiyu on a little tour.

“I love this cloisonné mask for its soft colors and intricate detail, but I do not believe it was ever worn, even in a ritual ceremony,” he said as they paused to admire one item. “It looks too small, don’t you think? Unless our ancestors from Yazhou were much tinier than we are today.”

“Perhaps it was a child’s mask?” Daiyu suggested.

“That is what some scholars have considered. But it seems very heavy for a child, don’t you think?”

“What was the purpose?”

“Ah! No one knows. Unfortunately, that is the case for many of these items.”

They moved on to study a dragon about the size of Daiyu’s forearm, carved of apple-green jade and accented with gold on its eyes, its tongue, its talons, and its tail. “Can you believe it? That item is more than a thousand years old,” Chenglei marveled. “What artisan took up his tools to liberate this creature from insensate stone? Who was he? A craftsman who produced masterpieces for emperors? A student who practiced his skills late into the night? Was he arrogant enough to believe that his work would last for centuries or humble enough to hope that he could sell his figurine to buy another meal for his wife and starvingdaughter?”

His words filled Daiyu’s head with images of Han artists industriously bent over workbenches, their eyes intent, their expressions enraptured. “Will anything you or I create last long enough to make people wonder about us ten centuries from now?” she asked in turn.

He turned to her, delighted. “Precisely! What mark will we makeonourworld?Whatgoodwillwedo,whattreasureswill we produce, to make people remember us long after we have moved on?”

“I have never had such an ambition,” she admitted.

“Well, I have,” Chenglei said. “And a girl like you has as much right to change the world as a man like me.”

She was filled with a sudden excitement—he was right!
Anyone
could make an impact on the world—followed by the swift realization that such sentiments were not quite as popular in Shenglang as they might be back in her own iteration. She cast her eyes down. “My aunt does not encourage such thinking,” she said in a low voice.

“Well, your aunt might not know as much as I do,” Chenglang said, sounding amused. “I have had experiences that Xiang could never hope to match.”

Before Daiyu could answer that, a servant was stepping through one of the red-curtained doors and bowing low. “Prime Minister,” he said, “Chow has arrived to speak to you on a mattter he calls very urgent.”

Chenglei sighed. “And if it is the matter I asked him to investigate for me, it is very urgent indeed.” He turned to Daiyu. “Most honored guest, I am afraid that—”

Daiyu was already backing away toward the curtained door through which they had entered. “I will not take any more of your time! Thank you for sharing your treasures—and your thoughts—with me. I feel immeasurably enriched.”

“It is I who am the richer,” Chenglei said.

She was halfway out the door when she heard Chenglei speak to his servant. “I need ten minutes to read a report. Bring Chow to me after that.”

“Yes, Prime Minister.”

Head bent in thought, Daiyu descended the great curved staircase that led two stories down to the main foyer where they had all congregated on the night of the Presentation Ball. She was almost on the ground level when she realized that two people were coming in the front door.

“Niece, see who I found arriving at the prime minister’s house to call on you!” Xiang exclaimed, drawing Quan through the door with the air of someone about to present an expensive gift. “He is so impatient to see you that he cannot even wait till nightfall!”

“That is only partly true,” Quan said with a grin. He was comfortable enough with Daiyu now to add a little humor to the ritualized conversations. “I also thought I could make myself valuable by offering to take you on any last-minute errands you might need to run. I know that women always require some final accessory to make their outfits complete.”

“Oh, Daiyu is always forgetting something,” Xiang said with a wave of her hand. “I am sure she will be grateful to you for your thoughtfulness.”

“Most grateful,” Daiyu agreed. “Aunt, may I go with him now?”

“You must first tell your host that you are leaving,” Xiang said in a scolding voice. “How rude! To simply leave a man’s house without a word of explanation!”

“Yes, Aunt. I’m sorry, Aunt. I will seek out the prime minister right now.”

“I will wait here,” Quan said.

Xiang headed straight toward the rear of the house, no doubt looking for one of the other guests to brag to about Quan’s courtship of her niece. Daiyu flew back up the stairs, hoping to arrive in Chenglei’s office before Chow was ushered in. Surely it had not yet been ten minutes?

She was almost at the red velvet door when she heard voices through the curtain, and she stopped, disappointed. Could she leave the house without Chenglei’s permission? She crept close enough to hear, wondering if this was a conversation she could interrupt.

“And you have located the traitor Feng?” Chenglei was asking.

“We believe we have, Prime Minister,” a man replied. His voice was soft and subservient; the word “unctuous” came to Daiyu’s mind, though she had never used it in her life. “He has been living with a family in the
cangbai
district of Shenglang.”

“And? I hope you have apprehended him, Chow.”

“Not yet. He slipped away when we tried to corner him this morning. We followed him, but he mingled with the workers stepping into the river to gather
qiji
stones.”

Chenglei uttered a sound of deep frustration. “And that is where he stillis? Grubbing about in the mud, hiding among the stonepickers?”

“We believe so. We have men roving up and down both sides of the river, ready to catch him if he tries to leave.”

There was a short silence. Daiyu could almost feel Chenglei thinking. As for herself, she couldn’t think; she could scarcely breathe. This conversation made it obvious Chenglei was far more worried about the dissident Feng than he had earlier led her to believe.

“And you’re positive he is in the riverbed at this very moment?” Chenglei asked.

“No,” Chow replied quietly. “He may have managed to elude us. He may have escaped up the eastern bank while we were getting men into position. But we were very fast, Prime Minister. I believe he is still there.”

“Then open the gates,” Chenglei said.

At first, neither Chow nor Daiyu understood what he meant. Chow said, “Excuse me, Prime Minister?”

“Open the gates to the river,” Chenglei said, enunciating very clearly. “Let the water sweep him away.”

There was a moment’s silence while even the sinister Chow seemed shocked. “Every laborer in the river will drown, Prime Minister.”

“Stonepickers are easily replaced,” Chenglei said dismissively .“This is the best chance we have had in weeks to silence the rebel. Open the gates.”

There was a slight sound. Daiyu imagined Chow was bowing. “Yes, Prime Minister. It shall instantly be done.”

Daiyu was halfway down the first flight of steps before she even realized she had moved. Her heart was a misfiring cannon booming inside her chest; her lungs were mangled sacks laboring against a vacuum.
Flood the river! Drown the stonepickers! Murder Feng . . . and murder Kalen. . . .

She had no plan, she had no clear thought in her head except to plunge down the steps and burst out the front door, then run and run and run all the way to the river. She could not possibly make it in time. However Chow had arrived at the mansion, it undoubtedly had not been on foot. Could she catch a trolley? Would it beat Chow’s vehicle to the waterfront?

She took the final three stairs with a leap and skidded onto the patterned carpet of the foyer, almost somersaulting across the floor. “Daiyu!” someone exclaimed, and she looked up in astonishment to find Quan staring at her.

She had completely forgotten he was there.

“Quan,” she said breathlessly, and dashed across the wide room to lay her hand on his arm. “Quan—my good friend—I have just realized—there is something desperately important that I need. I must have it, I must have it right now. Can you take me? Can you drive me to the riverfront?”

He had instantly put his hand over hers in ac omforting fashion, but now he frowned. “To the riverfront? But what—”

“Please,” she begged, tugging him toward the door. “There is no time to waste. I will explain on the way. But please, please hurry.”

He hesitated only a moment—a traditional man whose instincts clearly warred with his affection for this unpredictable girl—and then grabbed her hand and started running. “Let us go!” he cried.

His car was idling in the curved driveway, guarded by admiring servants. The two of them leaped in and Quan wheeled away from the house, driving in his usual manic fashion. Daiyu clung grimly to the seat, scarcely noticing as he swerved around trolleys and wove through traffic, careening around the narrow corners without slowing down. Too many thoughts scrambled through her mind for her even to care that Quan risked both of their lives with his hazardous driving.
Chenglei is evil!
and
I should have used the bracelet
and
I’ve been so foolish
clamored for attention, but the only thought she could really hold in her head was
Kalenwilldrown,Kalenwilldie....

“So tell me, Daiyu!” Quan called over the noise of the rushing wind and the screaming of a teenage boy who jumped out of his way. “Why are we dashing so madly to the riverfront? This is not at all what I expected.”

There was no way her tortured brain could come up with a story that made much sense. “There is—something I had told Xiang I would buy—before the celebration tonight,” she said. “We saw it one day in a shop near the riverfront. I lied—I told her I had it already—and I don’t. And I just remembered. She will be very angry with me if I appear without it.”

He shook his head, looking baffled and amused. “Sometimes you women are hard to understand.”

Oh, you would have an even harder time understanding if I told you the truth.
“We can only be grateful that men try to understand us even so,” she agreed.

As they approached the river, traffic grew denser, and Quan was forced to slow down. Daiyu felt herself straining forward on the seat, as if by sheer will she could force the car through the tangles of vehicles and knots of pedestrians with their carts. They were close enough to the river now that Daiyu could spot the bright slash of the red lacquer gate, close enough that the streets narrowed into an almost impassable warren of twisting circles and cluttered alleys. Quan found his way blocked by a large vehicle that appeared to be delivering goods to a shop. Cursing under his breath, he whipped around a corner only to faceadeadend.Whenhetriedtobackup,theexitwasclogged with cars that had come to a complete standstill.

“Will you please move your cars?” Quan shouted over his shoulder. “We have very urgent business to complete!”

There was no time to waste. “Forgive me, Quan. You have been most kind,” Daiyu said, and jumped down from the seat.

“Daiyu! Wait a moment! Daiyu!” he shouted after her.

“Meet me at the chocolate shop in half an hour!” she called over her shoulder. Not because she expected to join him there, but because she thought otherwise he might come after her, and she could not risk that.

She could not risk anything.

Rounding the corner, she accelerated into a flat-out run. Pushing past the men and women in her way, darting into and out of street traffic if that route looked faster. Every minute counted, every second. She needed the shortest, most direct route toward the gate, toward the river, toward Kalen.

How close was Chow? How long would it take him to find the workmen to raise the gates?

She burst free of the last cluster of buildings and onto the broad stone swath of yin-and-yang symbols that separated the city from the riverfront. She could see them now, the stonepickers bending over the great muddy expanse of the emptied riverbed, moving with slow deliberation across the littered landscape. Which one was Feng? Which one was Kalen?

Wasn’t every laborer in the Zhongbu someone’s friend, someone’s beloved?

She’d had no plan, she’d had almost no coherent thought, but as she raced toward the river she saw the bell tower and instantly knew what she must do. She altered her course to run in that direction, calling out Gabe’s name before she was even close enough for him to hear. A few people idly standing along the riverbank turned to give her curious looks, but no one seemed alarmed. No one seemed to realize that the world was about to end.

She arrived at the base of the bell tower, staggering a little, her breath coming so harshly that she felt like a knife was sawing across her rib cage. “Gabe!” she panted, then louder. “
Gabe!
Ring the bells! There’s been a terrible mistake—ring the bells!”

There was no answer, and Gabe didn’t poke his head over the edge of the tower. Daiyu felt a fresh surge of horror. Had Chow beaten her here? Had he murdered the bell ringers so that no one could call the stonepickers out of the river? Furiously she shook the gate, and the broken lock came open in her hand. She would have to climb to the top of the tower herself.

Forcing her trembling, exhausted legs to function, she dragged herself up the spiral staircase, gasping for air, feeling her hands shake on the railing, moving as fast as she could. “Gabe,” she tried again every time she could gather enough breath, but he never answered. She dimly remembered Kalen saying that Gabe had found a girlfriend with whom he spent all his time. It was still fairly early in the morning, and the stonepickers usually worked till noon. Perhaps he had simply assumed that he could chance arriving late... that there would be no reason to summon the stonepickers out of the river before their usual time. . . .