The Dragons of Heaven (31 page)

H
alf an hour later
, I stood outside Si Wei's door. Once I had described to Fang Shih what I needed, once I'd explained the details of my still rough plan, a mad fervor had lit his eyes and he had gone to work. No artist can resist the challenge of the impossible. I'd seen taggers nearly kill themselves trying to get at a bit of pristine underpass. Fang Shih was no different at heart.

Nothing was left but to discharge my debt, and Fang Shih had made it pretty clear how I should do that. I'd never realized he had such a soft spot for Si Wei. It made me reconsider how I had pushed to match her with Shui Yin. Fang Shih might not be much to look at, but he was solid. Didn't he deserve some hot lovin' and domestic bliss?

I shuddered at the idea of the Muppety-looking spirit getting some hot lovin' and decided that it would be best if I laid off the matchmaking for a while. I had enough worries on my plate.

Like admitting I was a manipulative ass to a dear friend.

I knocked on the wood support next to the thin, rice paper door. Something rustled, and a moment later I was looking into the wide, amber eyes of the fox-maiden. A robe of russet silk wrapped loosely around her, and the rumpled covers on the empty bed behind her indicated that sleep was eluding her.

“M– Missy?”

“Hello, Si Wei. Can I come in?” Without waiting for her answer, I entered. She had no choice but to close the door behind me. She turned to me, mouth still working.

“How… how do you come to be here so quickly? How did you find this place so fast?”

“Yeeeaaah…” The word was long, drawn out, and twangy – a complete Americanism amidst my Cantonese. Obnoxious sound. I vowed never to make that particular noise again. “It's like this. I tricked you. I played on your worry over your debt to Jian Huo, and then I followed you here because I knew that the first thing you'd do would be to warn all my potential allies that I was coming, and I needed to find Fang Shih.”

“Oh.” She sank down onto the rumpled bed, hands loose at her sides as she worked through her mistake. Poor Si Wei. It must have been quite a blow to her
huxian
's pride to be duped so thoroughly and in such quick succession by so many non-foxes. I sat next to her on the bed and took one limp hand in mine. It was cold. I rubbed the warmth back into it.

“I'm sorry. I don't want to get you into any more trouble with Jian Huo. I don't want to mess things up between you and Shui Yin. I just want to get my daughter back, and I guess I went a little crazy. I thought the easiest way to get what I needed was to play on your guilt.” This was what Jian Huo was always on about: the how and the why of doing things. Some hero I'd turned out to be.

“You are within your rights to do so.” Her hand remained limp in mine, her voice strained and distant. “I am to blame for your loss–”

“No.” I took her by the shoulders and gave her a rough shake. She was so fragile in her distress, I might have been shaking a doll. “You're not to blame, and neither am I, or Jian Huo, or anyone else except Lung Di. He's the one who did all this. Sure, we all knew it was coming; we knew what he was and what he was capable of. Maybe we should have taken more care, but he's the one who did this. He spent years planning it. If not this way, he would have found some other way to get at Jian Huo.”

She wouldn't meet my eyes. I had to try another route. “We can't let him use this to tear us apart. Because you know that's his goal, as much as anything. There were a dozen ways he could have infiltrated that nurse into Jiu Wei's house, but he chose you because he knew what it would do to you, to me, to all of us. Hell, for all we know, his real intent was to break things up between you and Shui Yin, and kidnapping Mei Shen was just the cherry on that sundae.”

“I think you and I both know this is not the case,” she said, but her amber eyes were beginning to burn with their old warmth.

“You never know. There're a lot of guys with the hots for you. Maybe Lung Di hopes he can get you to go all retro-tyrannical and help him rule the world.”

She surprised herself with her own chuckle and sagged against me, giggling harder than my joke warranted. Relief. Had to be.

“Oh,
Huxian
,” I cried in a mock voice that in no way resembled Lung Di's. “Show me who's been a bad Dragon. Whip me with your heavenly tails!”

“Shut your mouth, wyrm. Cower before my might!” She pushed me back onto the bed and loomed above me, her cruel frown spoiled every time she snorted or snickered. “Who's your
kitsune
? Say my name, bitch!”

I lost it for good then, and Si Wei joined me. Every time the laughter ebbed, one of us would catch the other's eye, and we'd be off on another round. We were left lying side-by-side, limp as noodles and groaning over our aching bellies.

“I am forgiven, then?” she asked, rolling to her hip and propping up on one elbow.

“Yes. Of course.” I reached up and smudged away the tracks of tears that ran down her cheeks. These were from our hysterical laughter, but they weren't the only tears she'd shed recently. It was a simple gesture, motherly, like I would have done with Mei Shen or Mian Zi when they cried. There was nothing sexual intended in it, but when I stroked her cheek, Si Wei's breath caught. She leaned closer.

“Promise?” she whispered against my lips.

Her lips were warm, firm, yet petal soft. Her mouth tasted of spice and chocolate, rich and sweet. She pressed me into the bed, her hand skimming up my side to cup at the base of my neck, the perfect combination of aggression and deference, and I let her because I was busy trying to figure out when we'd gone from joking to serious, and when exactly we had become kissing friends, and why hadn't we become kissing friends a
long
time ago? The edges of her robe parted, revealing a line of ivory-pale flesh. She pressed against me, the heat of her body slipping through the thin silk of my robes. My nipples tightened at the feel of her breasts pressed against mine, and I fumbled for something to hold on to. To make sense of this. I dislodged the sticks holding up her hair, and it slid around us in a curtain of russet silk, smelling of ginger. I inhaled deeply. Wrong color. Wrong scent.

My libido stumbled at the thought, and I pushed back from her. I slid up the bed until I could be free of the heat of her body and the lure of her kisses. She crouched over my legs like a vixen over its prey. I gulped a deep breath and was again assailed by the scent of ginger.

“Jian Huo's on his way, isn't he?” I already suspected the answer, but the question gave me a moment to get my bearings. “You sent a message that I might be coming here, and he told you to stall me if I did.”

She sat back on her heels, her pretty, oh-so-kissable – stop that! – mouth twisted into a moue. “First I am tricked by you, and now I cannot even seduce you. Perhaps I should forfeit all my tails.” One slender hand trailed up my leg. I scrambled from the bed.

“Trust me,” I panted, trying not to look at my friend with newly-opened eyes, and wishing like anything for a cold shower, “if it weren't Mei Shen at stake, I don't think there's a power on this earth that would stop me from–” I gulped, and inched toward the door. “Uh. Yeah. Well, you know.” That's me, glib to the end. I got to the door and fumbled it open. Si Wei crouched on the bed. She didn't seem inclined to chase after me. I suppose she could assure Jian Huo that she'd used all her wiles and still failed.

“Tell Jian Huo I love him, even if he does play dirty. Oh, and tell Shui Yin he's an idiot if he lets you get away.”

“I will. And Missy? After this is all over?” She cocked her head to one side, and her hair slid across her shoulders with a whisper of silk. The scent of ginger wafted toward me. She slid off the bed and closed the distance between us in a few quick steps, leaning close enough that her lips brushed my ear. “Perhaps we will… talk.”

“Vixen,” I grumbled as I pulled away and jogged down the hallway. Behind me came the sound of her light, teasing laughter.

M
y jog became
a sprint as I neared Fang Shih's workshop. Like most spirits, time for him was more of a suggestion than a hard and fast rule. He had assured me that it wouldn't take long – relatively speaking – to make what I'd asked. But that same convenient temporal malleability meant that I didn't know how long I had before Jian Huo arrived. Why, with all this bendiness of time, did it threaten to take years to get Mei Shen back? Yeah, I didn't get it either. Zen
koans
were easy compared to the complex relationship that spirits had with time.

I shot into the cluttered workshop to find Fang Shih polishing his masterpiece with a soft, black cloth. He glanced up when I came in, folding the cloth around my prize and hiding it from view. He teetered over to me, scooped up my knapsack, and slipped the black-wrapped package inside. He handed me the bag with a worried look at the door.

“It is done as well as it can be. It will be up to you to make him want it. Don't let him look too closely, or all will be revealed. And take care you do not harm yourself on it. There are dark magics woven into it that blood is sure to awaken.”

“I won't. I won't. Thank you.” I bent to give him a quick hug, which he tolerated with a grudging
humph
of breath.

“Templeton?” I called out, looking around. A sack under one of the workbenches rustled, and the rat came tumbling out in a stream of multicolored gems.

“I have found them, Missy. The very best of the lot!” His whiskers twitched with excitement. I eyeballed the pile of stones around him, sparkling with rainbow fire. I doubt he'd ever seen such an array of colors in all his ratty life in the Shadow Realms. He held out trembling paws, which were clasped around three stones. I bent down to inspect his prizes. Slowly, as if worried they would be snatched away, he opened his paws.

The first bauble was a bit of coral, violently pinkish-orange and twisted into an agonized shape of bony knobs and hollows. The second was a misshapen fire opal, the fractured face alight with licks of green, blue, red, and violet flame. The third was a thick chunk of bottle-green glass, edges softened by years of immersion in saltwater, thick bubbles of imperfection frozen forever under its liquid-clear surface.

I glanced again at the pile of cut diamonds, rubies, sapphires, and emeralds that surrounded him. A dozen types of lesser stones – topaz, amethyst, aquamarine – winked at me as well. Templeton shook his paws with an exasperated grunt, as if unable to understand how I could tear my gaze away from his treasures to look at the dross beneath him.

“You're… sure?” I asked.

“Yes. These are the best. The very best.” He tore his earnest gaze from mine to look in wonder at the baubles. “I have never seen anything more beautiful,” he whispered.

“All right then,” I said with a conviction I did not feel. It only mattered that Templeton thought they were. The baubles were just part of the pledge in the bit of sleight-of-hand I was putting together. I turned to our host with a resigned sigh. “Fang Shih?”

While we inspected Templeton's treasures, the other spirit had cocked his head to one side, as if listening to some distant sound. Now he turned back to me, eyes wide. “Yes. Yes, take them. Only go. Now!”

My response was cut off by a loud, angry roar. It reverberated through the entire workshop, coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. I cringed away from it. Templeton squeaked and jumped about five feet straight up, nearly losing his death grip on his baubles. Even Fang Shih flinched.

“Go,” the spirit urged.

“Right. Thank you. C'mon Templeton.” I reached down to grasp the rat by his scruff and took two steps toward a shadow cast by a large brazier. My move put me in line-of-sight of the door; without thinking, I glanced down the hallway.

The building shuddered with another roar. Lung Huang – I could not imagine this ancient, angry god as Jian Huo – snaked down the hall in a rush of wind and wet. He filled the entire passage. The scales of his sinuous red, green, and gold form shredded the thin paper walls, digging long furrows into the wood supports. Tiny storm clouds roiled around him, complete with miniature chains of lightning. His eyes burned with rage.

“MISSY!” he roared, closing the distance between us. With an apologetic grimace, I tightened my hold on my rat and my pack and stepped into Shadow.

“
I
do not think
your monster is coming, Missy,” Templeton said, so quiet, and with so many huffs leading up to it, that I wondered how long he'd been gathering up the courage to tell me what I already knew.

“It's not a monster, Templeton. It's a
qilin
,” I explained through gritted teeth.

“You've said it is a creature of shining light?”

“And purity, yeah.”

“Sounds like a monster to me,” he muttered. I guess the shadow rat had a point.

I shoved away from the deadfall log I'd been sitting on. Templeton didn't deserve my frustration. I'd frittered away the night in a futile attempt to salvage my plan. The sun was coming up, and I hadn't managed anything more effective than fiddling with my pearls. I could have done that just fine at Jiu Wei's temple.

“I think you're right,” I conceded. “I don't think she's coming.”

“Then we can leave this place?” Templeton's paws clenched around his baubles, his whiskers twitching with enthusiasm for this new plan that didn't involve monsters of light.

“This place” was a clearing in a nature park somewhere in southwest Shanghai, unremarkable and indistinguishable from a thousand other city parks except that it seemed more earnest to me – but that just came from too many viewings of
It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!
on my part. We had passed the night here uninterrupted. Dawn threatened in the east, greeted by the calls of herons and the chirp of crickets.