The Girl with Ghost Eyes (13 page)

“Mr. Wong,” I said slowly, “the Ansheng tong is my whole world. I will not work with the Xie Liangs.”

“Go to them if you need help,” he repeated, and the next words he spoke felt like he had etched them in granite. “But if my son must be killed, I want you to do it, not some Xie Liang scum.”

My eyes went wide but I said nothing. He had made certain no one else was in the room. He had advised me to seek aid from his enemies, he had given me permission to kill his son, and he had made sure no one would witness him saying these things.

I could not believe a rift had grown so wide between Mr. Wong and his son. Tom was a good man; filial piety had always mattered
to him.

The woman returned with a cup and placed it down in front of me, full of steaming rice wine. Mr. Wong offered me much face with this gesture, so I had to drink it. I took a sip and the rice wine flowed into my mouth, warm and pleasant, and left a burning sensation when I swallowed. I loved it.

“Your face is red,” Mr. Wong said with some amusement.

“Your rice wine is excellent,” I replied.

“It is rice wine,” he said. He stood then, and bowed. I stood also, bowed more deeply than he, and then I went to the door.

I walked out through the hall of whores, trying not to hear the sounds of men and women moving together on straw cots. A few moments later, I emerged into the pleasant clamor of men dining at Hung Sing, and the mouthwatering aroma of cooking.

Mr. Wong was a deep and strange man, I thought. He was caught up in conflicts both internal and external. He seemed to have little respect for women, but he showed me some respect. He encouraged me to go to his enemies for help, and yet I was certain he would show me no mercy if I did. He shared his rice wine with me today, but he had no intention of ever doing so again.

He asked me, as a kind of favor, to become his enemy. If I killed Tom, he would mourn his son. And I was certain he would owe me a secret debt.

My head full of doubts, I walked through the restaurant, out of Ansheng headquarters, and into the street.

There were seagulls crying and I heard my name among the seagulls’ cry.

Four men loitered in the street. They’d been waiting for me.

One of them was Tom Wong. One of them was Hong Xiaohao.

And one of them was Liu Qiang.

14

Liu Qiang’s arm should have ended in a stump. It would have looked that way to anyone who didn’t have yin eyes. But now there was a spirit at the end of the stump. It was sickly white and thick as an arm. It moved like an arm, but also like a snake, and it was longer than an arm should be, six or seven feet long. The spirit arm was pale as mold and it writhed like a rabid animal.

Where a human arm ends in a hand, Liu Qiang’s spirit arm ended in some kind of monstrous reptile head. A yellow forked tongue flicked out between needle-thin fangs. The snake’s red eyes—all three of them—watched me with a cruel intelligence. Whatever it was, I had the feeling it wanted to make me suffer.

The spirit-snake looked like it had been grafted onto Liu Qiang’s arm. My father’s sword had severed the bone and muscle, and somehow Liu Qiang had interwoven this snaking, dangerous spirit with his own flesh. The bones and muscles of the man’s spirit body had been torn apart and knit together into the body of this yaoguai. It must have been agony to endure the bonding.

Liu Qiang was dangerous, far more dangerous than my father had led me to believe. Powerful sorcery bound that arm to him, and I had no idea what it could do. He no longer seemed to be off-balance; his spirit arm balanced his movements, so he stalked with a predatory grace.

Somehow, earlier, when he walked into Father’s temple, he left the arm behind. Father’s talismans would have barred its entry. But that meant the snaking phantom was bound to Liu, and yet independent of him. They were two, and yet one. I had to treat Liu Qiang and his arm as two separate opponents until I knew more about the spirit-arm’s abilities—and its mind.

The spirit-arm gazed at me, hatred evident in its three red eyes. Then it opened its mouth and spoke, in a voice like claws ripping against flesh and bone. “The baby means to fight,” it said to Liu Qiang. The other men couldn’t hear it, didn’t seem to know it was there.

I stared at the monster and shuddered. “I want to eat the baby,” it said, its voice sickening as the sound of nails being driven through eyelids.

I glanced around at the rest of the men. I didn’t know the fourth man, but his short hair and shaved forehead could only mean one thing. He’d gotten out of prison recently. Barbers had clipped off his queue in prison, and now he was growing it back. He stood stiff and alert, like a city guard. His face seemed hard, almost pitiless. It was the look of an enforcer.

The four of them had me surrounded. In a fair fight I might stand a chance against four unskilled men. But Tom Wong used to spar with Rocket, and Liu Qiang had trained alongside Father, so at least two of them had some training. And there was no telling what Liu Qiang’s monstrous arm could do.

I do not hide from monsters, but facing them here, on the street, I couldn’t hope to win. I could only fight and die, and then they would come for Father while he was still recuperating, and then there would be no one left who could stop their plans. I knew what I needed to do. I needed to get away.

“Tom,” I said, facing him, “don’t do this.”

My husband’s friend looked down and away, then looked back to me and shrugged. “Sorry,” he said.

I turned to Xiaohao, whose lips were pursed and inexpressive. “Xiaohao,” I said, “two years ago you wanted me for a wife.”

He said nothing, only smiled; and in his grim smile I saw a world of confusion. Hong Xiaohao had no idea what he was doing here. He had wanted to become a little brother of the Ansheng tong, and now he was involved in schemes he didn’t understand. I gave a frustrated huff.

The man without a queue leered at me. “My Tiger Style can kick apart your Crane Legs,” he said.

Tom Wong backhanded him, knocking the leer off his face. “Never,” Tom said to the other man, “never talk to her like that.”

The other man wiped blood from his lips. “I don’t understand,” he said.

Tom’s voice was hard as iron. “You can fight her, you can even kill her if you have to,” he said. “But never forget that she’s my friend’s wife. You will show him respect. Do nothing, say nothing, that will cause Rocket to lose face. Do you understand?”

The short-haired man dropped his eyes and nodded.

I stared at Tom, taken aback by the intensity of his feeling, the contradictory impulses of a man who would allow me to be killed but protect me from insult. There was a part of me that still cared about my husband’s friend, and maybe there was a part of him that still cared about me. But it wasn’t about me, I realized; it was Rocket, my dead husband, who mattered to him.

“Tom,” I said. “Let me go. You were my husband’s friend.”

“You think I’ve forgotten that, Li-lin?” Anger and pain distorted his pretty face. “I’m doing this
because of
Rocket!” Tom shouted.

“What are you saying?” I felt dizzy. I felt ill. It felt like a wound had been torn open, and all I could do was watch the blood seep out, oblivious of all else. “Tom,” I began, “if you think my husband would support what you’re doing, you never knew him at all.”

“Of course he wouldn’t support this, Li-lin! He was a hero. But there’s no place for heroes anymore.” Tom looked at me with anguish in his eyes. “Rocket was the strongest. No one could match his skill in kung fu. And none of it mattered, none of his strength and courage and brilliance mattered when they shot him,
pow pow.”

Tom Wong was quiet, facing me.

“My husband died, Tom, and no one mourns him more than I do,” I said. “I am your friend’s wife, and I have been faithful to him, his chaste widow, and yet you allowed a man to bare my skin and cut me. How can you justify the things you’ve done?”

Tom’s eyes were hollow with old pain. “Everything is different now,” he said, his voice bitter. “When they shot him, everything changed. That’s when I realized the old ways aren’t enough. We can’t live by the old rules, Li-lin. Kung fu is useless when they have guns, and magic is worthless if you won’t use it to kill your enemies.”

“Tom,” I said, shaking my head. “You don’t know the horrors you’re stirring up. A weapon is as good or evil as the hand that holds it, but magic doesn’t work that way. Liu Qiang’s magic is
filthy.”

The monstrous arm made a sound then, a hideous screech like iron against bone, and I realized it was laughing.

“Want to eat the baby’s hands,” it said, in its horror of a voice. It wanted to eat me, but it wanted to cripple me first. I didn’t comprehend why anything would hate me so much.

Liu Qiang’s lips were trembling. He stepped closer to me and yelled, “You call it filthy, but it’s stronger! After tomorrow night, everyone will know my magic is stronger!”

Tomorrow night. I made sure I would remember it. And then Liu Qiang blew stupefying powder in my face.

*

I had been learning for as long as I could remember.

The women at the mission taught me English. They taught me to add, subtract, multiply, and divide, to weigh ounces and pounds, to measure inches, feet, and miles. Everything else, my father taught me.

My yin eyes were the result of an imbalance, and it was important to him to balance my yin with yang. So he taught me the martial arts of Mount Wudang, and he taught me the Dao.

He taught me through repetition and he taught me through scorn. I studied the Daolu Registers until I could name eighty thousand gods and demons. I could not count the hours spent practicing taiji postures, or the hours scribbling with my left hand, drawing down the moon through my closed eyes, until I could write in ghostscript.

Of all the forms of learning, I loved sparring the best. I loved standing up, facing an opponent, ready to strike or be struck. There was something about those moments facing an opponent, all my skill and intelligence pitted against another human being in a few minutes of all-consuming alertness.

But I also loved listening to my father when he would tell me stories. He told stories of the immortals and stories of the Daoshi. There were stories of men brave enough, clever enough, or hungry enough to overcome monsters. There was a man who sold a ghost into slavery, and another man who fried a ghost and ate it. He told me stories where men married foxes, women fought like men, outlaws stood up to injustice, immortals could speak in thunderclaps, and evil men practiced the forbidden skill called dian-si-shuei, the death touch—striking five points along a victim’s body to cause instant death.

I was ten years old when my father told me about the scholar Wang Zhaosu. Wang made some philosophical arguments about the nature of the universe. His arguments made little impression on me. What I remembered of Wang Zhaosu was that he was capable of turtle breathing.

Wang Zhaosu could take a single breath and make it last for eight minutes. Eight minutes of heightened awareness.

I was ten years old and turtle breathing became my obsession. Slowing the breath, awakening the spirit. When Father was busy I practiced it. I would inhale deeply and let the vital breath fill me. The vital breath moved through me with an electric tingling to the tips of my fingers.

Twenty-second breaths. Thirty-second breaths. Ninety-second breaths. I got better and better.

I was up to five minutes. Two and a half minutes breathing in, two and a half minutes breathing out.

Liu Qiang blew a puff of yellow powder in my face. I had no time to inhale. That meant I had to hold the breath in my lungs. It meant I had two and a half minutes before I needed to gulp down air.

After so many years of training, holding my breath brought mental clarity. It brought instant-to-instant focus and a deep calm from which I could make decisions. A cloud of yellowish powder floated in the air near my face. And all these men thought I had been drugged.

A sudden elation burst through me. Finally, I held an advantage.

I let my eyes slip out of focus, and brought a drunken quality to my stance. Was this how it looked to be stupefied? I wondered. Would I fool them? And which of them would act first?

It was Tom. I should have known—he needed to assert his leadership. He reached an arm out and took a grip on my left shoulder. I looked up into his eyes and saw a hardness in his face that had never been a part of Rocket’s pretty friend, and I took his elbow in my left hand and yanked him forward. Toward me. I forced out the last of my remaining breath and blew the stupefying powder at him.

If all went well, the powder would stun him, but I couldn’t wait to find out if it worked. I drew my rope dart and swung my right knee up in a spinning jump. My knee took Tom Wong in the chest and I shot my rope dart out behind me, throwing it into a spin.

Liu Qiang’s monstrous arm snapped at me, its jaws wide, its teeth needle-sharp and deadly. I dropped to the ground to evade it and its mouth clicked shut on the air above my head. I rolled backward, keeping my rope dart in motion.

Tom Wong was advancing on me. He hadn’t been stupefied. But I wasn’t surrounded any longer; there was no one behind me. The intensity of life-or-death combat filled me with a kind of burning focus. I knew where all four men were standing, I knew where Liu Qiang’s arm was, and I knew what they were doing. I could feel them, sense their presence. There was nothing in my mind but them, nothing but me and them.

I spun my rope dart faster and faster. Its whirring motion formed a barrier, but Liu Qiang’s spirit arm could pass right through the dart. With my left hand I drew my peachwood sword, holding it in reverse grip, like a dagger.

I faced the four men and the monstrous arm. For a moment everything was held in perfect stillness, like a painting, aside from the whirring rope dart.

Liu Qiang’s arm coiled in silence, pale as dead flesh, opening and closing a mouth lined with needle-sharp teeth. Its three eyes studied me, unblinking. Its eyes were the red of fresh blood, and I had a sense that nothing would make it happier than seeing me suffer. Making me suffer.