

Black Jade Dragon

Susan Brassfield Cogan

Copyright 2011 Susan Brassfield Cogan

Smashwords Edition

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Cover Design by: Cogan Graphic Design  
cogangraphicdesign.com

Quotes from the _Tao Te Ching_ , translated by D. C. Lau

**About the author:  
**  
Susan Brassfield Cogan is a full time writer and occasionally amuses herself as a graphic designer. She writes things that she enjoys and she enjoys quite a lot. She has been at various times a nurse's aid, a belly dancer, an actress, a journalist, and a radio shock jock. Her career is long, varied, colorful, often exaggerated occasionally untrue. Cogan is the author of many novels: _Black Jade Dragon, Dragon Sword, Tangled Garden, The Last Gift, Heart of the Tengeri, Murder on the Waterfront_ and _The Man Who Needed Killing_. Her nonfiction works include: _Hands of the Buddha, The Buddha's Three Jewels_ , and _The Pocket Darwin._ She written numerous short stories, some of them contest winners.

Published by CoganBooks.

If you enjoy this book, please go to CoganBooks.net to get a paper copy and to find other works by this author.

The Way that can be traveled is not the eternal Way.

### Chapter 1

My name is Angela Rosarita Tanaka, but you will call me Angie if you know what's good for you.

I needed to get out of Hong Kong. To say Hong Kong cops are humorless bastards would be, well, something that's so obvious that it would be silly to say it. Even if I just said it.

If you give a man who owns a fishing boat a big enough wad of cash, he will not ask why you are giving him so much. He will pocket the fistful of bank notes and say the Chinese equivalent of "Where to, Ma'am?" In my case, "where to" was anywhere but here. I answered his question by waving vaguely to the north east. He nodded gravely. He was short—shorter than I am by about four inches—and built like a Chinese brick outhouse and he was burned dark by the sun. He could have been anywhere between forty years old and a hundred and twenty.

The boat captain gasped and focused his attention behind me. I glanced back and saw three of those famously humorless Hong Kong cops pile out of a white patrol car and begin terrifying the citizens by stopping them and asking them questions. I had no doubt the questions were along the lines of "Have you seen an American woman with red hair?" Right now the citizens were shaking their heads. Even though I had a cap pulled over my hair, I figured eventually one of them would nod and point in my direction.

The captain noticed the cops too. He wasn't born yesterday. Without another word he picked up my duffel bag and tossed it onto the boat's well-scrubbed deck. I climbed on board after it and in a few minutes the ancient gas engine had us chugging through the harbor in an easterly direction. By east he knew I didn't mean Shenzhen or Shantau. By the comforting wad of cash in his pocket he knew I meant anywhere but communist China. I would have sat on my duffel bag just for a feeling of security, but my grandfather's sword was wrapped in all my clothes in the middle of it. Sitting on that was just not an option.

Hong Kong harbor was always clogged with container ships, sight-seeing boats and the occasional picturesque junk hauling tourists around, so we were out of sight of the pier pretty fast. And then, almost by magic, we were hidden from view by an oil tanker only a little smaller than a battle star. As the harbor fell behind, I spotted a coast guard cutter zip by in the distance but after that all was peaceful. The only sound was a handful of seagulls looking for a handout and the rusty chug-chug of the engine.

When the harbor was far behind and there was nothing around me but open sea, the fisherman cast out a small net and then sat by the helm smoking a pipe. He glanced my way occasionally but didn't offer conversation. My Chinese is reasonably fluent, but I was glad he wasn't the chatty type.

He seemed mostly to spend his time frowning at a dark haze in the east. I studied it too and didn't see anything I cared about.

After a while he pulled in the net, selected an eel and chopped off its head. It was still writhing as he gutted it.

I watched for white police cutters or helicopters with their telltale red stripe. I only saw a few fishing boats pass by in the distance and the occasional island that dotted the South China Sea. I didn't see any official government anything. Maybe I just wasn't all that. Fine with me. Or maybe the stolen diamonds in the duffel bag weren't as valuable as they'd been cracked up to be.

By the time the eel and noodles were boiling over the tiny brazier, the captain seemed to be mesmerized by the dark haze on the horizon. Even I was beginning to care about it. It wasn't just vaguely dark any more. Now it was a sort of grayish yellow. That didn't seem like a good thing.

When he handed me my bowl of noodles and boiled eel, my captain spoke for the first time.

"That is a big goddam storm coming. Ping-wei is only about twenty miles that way. We'll make for it. Maybe we won't be sucked down to hell." The Chinese don't actually say "goddam" but they have plenty of equivalents. I translate loosely. They do understand the concept of hell very well—who doesn't?

The problem is that though Ping-wei is a tiny speck of nowhere, they'd have phones, television and probably even a cop or two. As rare as a red-headed American is in Hong Kong, they are pure hen's teen on those islands between the Philippines and Taiwan.

"I'll give you another thousand dollars if you try to ride it out," I said.

He snorted and shook his head. "I can't take it to hell with me."

Good point.

He didn't wait for my answer. His house, his rules. He turned hard to starboard—I think that's a right turn—and made for what looked to me was open water, but he knew his job better than I did.

I watched the angry gray-yellow bank tower up and up until it filled the sky. The gray became black down at the bottom and lightning flashes licked through it. The eel almost crawled back out of my throat as I watched it coming. The little captain stood at the wheel. Stoic. Carved out of hardwood. He studied the eastern horizon and I watched the growing menace in the west.

"There!"

I glanced in the direction he pointed. I couldn't really see it. Maybe that smudge? I wasn't sure.

The captain made for it, his broad brown face set in grim determination.

The storm towered in our wake. The swells were growing and getting belly-dropping large and the sound of thunder caught up to us. The captain didn't seem concerned about all that. He was getting wet from the spray every time we landed in a trough. He didn't seem concerned about that either.

Now the smudge on the horizon had become clearly an island but it was still so far away compared to the storm that my heart sank.

The first salty, cold wind from the storm reached us. It actually seemed to push us in the right direction.

I divided my attention between the island growing in the distance and the storm thundering our way. I didn't care about the cops any more. A nice jail cell seemed wonderful. Heavenly. Let me at it.

And then I noticed the captain had changed a little. The set of his shoulders was different. When the wind hit us he knew we weren't going to make it.

A big wave crashed over us, soaking us both and sending my duffel bag rolling for the scuppers. I dove for it. It was water resistant but not waterproof. It's not like I need those socks and that bra and grandfather's sword probably wasn't worth risking my life, but those diamonds were why I was here in this shit storm.

"Leave that!" The captain shouted over the wind. "Grab hold of something." He hooked his arm meaningfully through the wheel.

I pulled the strap of the duffel bag over my arm and then hugged the mast like a long lost lover.

The storm hit and knocked the boat sideways to the waves. That's bad. Very bad. The boat rolled sickeningly to its side.

The captain hung off the wheel shouting at the top of his lungs. I couldn't actually hear his individual words but I assumed it was a string of curses. That was what flowed through my mind. Every foul word I was told ladies don't say.

Then the boat pitched over the other way with a huge wave pouring over the side. Now the duffel bag was pulling against me and adding its weight to my own. If I hadn't had my arms hooked around the mast, that first big wave would have snatched me away.

Then the rain started. It pounded down hard bruising my head and shoulders. It was better than being pushed overboard by a wave, but only just.

Miraculously the captain got us turned around and headed into the swells—a testimony to how effective Chinese swearing can be—but the propeller wasn't in the water half the time. The wind was still at our tail and gave us a push. There was no telling if we were being pushed to the island or not. We were surrounded by a gray black wall of chaos and the storm was deciding our course. It roiled and coiled around the boat, impossibly huge, impenetrably black and powerful beyond imagination.

A wall of water towered. It climbed up and up and filled the sky, a menacing precipice. I saw it, I knew it and I screamed as it crashed down on us.

It didn't feel like water when it hit. It was more like bricks or cinder blocks or boulders. It hurt. A lot. It ripped me away from the mast, tore the duffel bag away and I knew it would tear my life away as well.

I blinked and there was nothing around me but water and nothing to breathe but water. At first everything was smothering gloom but then I noticed a black-on-black shape above me and realized that had to be the boat. If I had any hope to see another hour of life, I had to get up to it.

I swam hard, kicking with everything I had. Then I saw the duffel bag. I grabbed it. Diamonds are a girl's best friend—especially in combination with a boat.

The duffel bag was buoyant and actually helped me break the surface. See what I mean by best friend? The surface wasn't a huge improvement. The wind howled and the water was crazy but there was blessed air mixed with the spray. The boat was still upright.

Then I heard a fragment of a Chinese curse. Nothing so elegant as being born in interesting times. Four or five yards away I saw the captain's head—then didn't—and then I did. And then I didn't. At first I thought he was clinging to a piece of the broken mast and then I realized he was hung up on it and struggling to free himself. I swam toward him desperately trying to keep my own head out of the water and not succeeding one hundred percent.

The duffel bag was dragging on me. It weighed a ton and wouldn't steer worth a damn. I fought with it and saw the captain bob up and down again. Shit. Piss. Dammit. Dammit. Dammit! So much for best friends. I let go of the duffel bag and dived for the captain.

The captain still shouted curses. "Ten thousand things shit on your head!" Something similar to that. I translate loosely. But his shouts were getting thinner and more intermittent.

When I got to him he grabbed the front of my t-shirt and I had to beat him away. His eyes were wide and white, his face grayish purple. I saw a splinter of the mast had rammed through not just his shirt but the skin of his arm.

I grabbed the mast, braced my feet against his chest and kicked. He screamed. But he was free. His blood was quickly churned away by the frenzied waves.

I pulled him in the direction of the boat and he seemed to get focused enough to help me. In fact he helped push me up on deck with his good arm and then I turned and helped him, or at least I think I helped.

The boat was pretty screwed. It rolled low in the water. The wheel was gone. If the engine still existed it was almost certainly flooded. A jagged stump of what was once the mast stuck up out of the deck.

I lay on my back and let the rain wash the salt off my face. I opened my mouth to the sweet water coming out of the sky and was instantly rewarded with a salt wave hitting the side of the boat and crashing over me.

In spite of that, the storm was less. It wasn't good, but it was less bad. Thunder still boomed but lightning wasn't right over our head. The swells still lifted us mind-numbingly high and dropped us belly-quiveringly low but it wasn't all crazy chaos.

I let the rain wash me again and looked up at the churning clouds. A long black cloud soared through the others. A long, long, long black cloud. I'd never seen anything like it. A coiling black streak in the green-gray above passed and seemed to circle around the boat, sometimes dipping down into the water and sometimes soaring up and disappearing in the torrent.

And then briefly—I'm sure it was my imagination—I saw a pair of amber eyes looking back at me. Impossibly enormous eyes. And then they were gone. I'm sure I dreamed it. Certainly. I mean, of course I'm certain.
_  
_

_  
_

That without a name was the beginning of the earth and the sky; that with a name is the mother of all things.

### Chapter 2

After a while the heaving of the deck wasn't so bad and I slept.

"Ahoy! Do you require assistance?" It was a too-loud tinny voice over a bullhorn. The helpful bullhorn was in Chinese.

The captain bellowed "Mountain of shit! Damn right we do!" Again, loose translation.

I opened my eyes to a brain-stabbing bright sun. Every single spot on my body hurt. I lay there and made the decision that I'd let the men folk deal with it all. A thunk followed in short order by another.

Out of the side of my eye I saw the captain set one of the grappling hooks awkwardly with one hand. His right arm was wrapped in a torn up t-shirt that had a big splotch of dried blood on it. He threw me a meaningful look.

I groaned and pushed myself to my feet. I told the captain to sit down and set the other hook myself. It took over an hour to get to land. It was thirsty, I was hungry and I badly needed to pee. Without asking I went down to the little cabin and was pleased to find a teeny-tiny, itsy-bitsy head. When I sat, I bumped my knees against the wall. It was clearly built for someone four inches shorter than I am, but it was a little slice of heaven.

I saw a half-dozen bottles of beer in a wooden box. I pried the cap off one of them and drank about half of it in several large gulps. I grabbed a second one and went up to the deck. When I handed him the bottle, the captain thanked me with a little nod.

We sat in silence and I watched the foaming wake of the police cutter towing us. I sipped the warm beer and grieved the loss of the duffel bag and its cache of diamonds sewn into the false bottom. I wished now I'd sewn them in the waist band of my jeans. I'd decided against it because I was afraid they wouldn't survive an airport pat down and I had originally hoped I could just get on a plane for Tokyo. That turned out to not be an option, which is why I ended up on the docks bribing a Chinese fisherman. Sigh. The choices we are forced to make.

I had a quick lurch of shock when I saw our destination rise out of the haze left behind by the storm. For a moment I thought the storm had brought us back to Hong Kong. After about three or four rapid heartbeats, I saw the sky scrapers weren't as tall or as jammed together. Taipei? No. I should be able to make out the needle tip of the Taipei 101 tower and it wasn't there. Could be some place else on Taiwan. No way to tell for sure.

"Where are we?" I asked the captain gesturing to the city with my now-empty beer bottle.

"One of the Hell Realms, I think." I'm pretty sure that's what he said. I don't think he was actually frightened but I thought he looked concerned. It was more a set of his shoulders than an expression on his brown face.

"I hope the demons have food and a bed," I said.

The only response was an enigmatic tilt of his head.

They towed us into a deep harbor with city on both sides. Now that we were closer I could see that the city was older and more traditional than Hong Kong or Taipei. The docks were lined with open markets that looked as they must have looked a thousand years ago. Tall modern buildings shadowed beautiful wooden pagodas settled in elegant gardens.

There were several hills, mellowed and old like worn-down Chinese mountains. In the blue distance I could just barely make out the cone of a volcano. Naturally the smaller and trashier houses and apartments were lower on the hills and higher up the houses were bigger and better kept.

"Nine mountains," the captain said.

I counted them. Not counting the volcano, he was right. This was Shaolong. I'd heard about it from a bunch of drunks trying to scare each other with monster stories. Afterward I tried Googling it and hadn't turned up much of anything. You can see it on satellite images if you know where to look, but it often gets left off of maps.

Shaolong is also known as the Land of Nine Dragons. It's a ragged, sprawling island between Taiwan and Mainland China. Nobody claimed it, though generally people thought it would eventually be snapped up in the Red Chinese maw like Tibet. Maybe it wasn't worth it because they'd never made their move on it. Or maybe they just didn't want it. Shaolong had a reputation for being a home to evil ghosts. Or something. Accounts vary.

Eventually the police cruiser maneuvered the broken fishing boat into a slip. I stood on the deck waiting to jump to the pier as soon as it was decently possible.

I had about four thousand Hong Kong dollars in my pocket and nothing but the clothes I stood up in. I needed to say "thank you, fare well, so long, pleased to meet you" and get on the next boat that could take me out of here.

I sprang up onto the dock and made a big show of helping to tie up the boat. I was about to bid them all auf wiedersehen when I saw my duffel bag on the deck of the police cutter. It was somebody's duffel bag, anyway. Who else's could it be?

"Many apologies and ten thousand gratitudes," I said to the head cop who was consulting a clipboard with a couple of other cops. "But that is my bag. May I have it?"

The head cop managed to suppress a smile but the two others snickered.

"Your bag?" the cop said. "Yes, of course." He nodded to the other two who grabbed it and hoisted it up on the pier where it landed with a heavy wet splat. I thanked them with elaborate politeness and tried to lift it. More cop snickers. It was twenty pounds of clothes and diamonds and fifty pounds of sea water. No wonder they were laughing. This was nothing but a mess. A mess with several thousand dollars worth of diamonds in the bottom.

I turned and waved at the little captain who was having his arm bandaged by another cop from the cutter. He nodded an acknowledgement and I dragged my duffel bag down the pier leaving a wet trail behind me.

I think about my fisher captain from time to time and hope he's all right. I knew he could more than afford the repairs on his boat considering the cash I'd given him. I hope he went home and pulled tons of fish out of Hong Kong harbor and ended up rich and happy.

Meanwhile I was sort of rich and not terribly happy. If the bag hadn't held a fortune in diamonds I would have abandoned the soggy mess at the end of the pier. I was sore, achy, hungry and completely exhausted. I needed food and a bed, preferably a bed behind a strong locking door.

I heard an electronic squawk and looked back. The head cop took a call on a big 1980s-style cell phone. He frowned, listening, and then looked at me. I fought hard not to tense up or hurry, but it was time to get out of Dodge with "dodge" being the operant word. I cut between a noodle stand and a tray of wrist watches, then hoisted the bag onto my shoulders and ran.

When I was feeling more secure, I walked up to a young man squatting beside a motorcycle rickshaw eating something off a stick that I really hoped wasn't a scorpion because that's exactly what it looked like.

"Take me to a hotel," I said trying to lift the waterlogged duffel bag into the back of the rickshaw.

The boy looked me up and down as he crunched whatever nasty thing he was eating.

"Go away," he said and refused to look at me.

For an instant I just gaped at him. For a second instant I tried to remember the fisher captain's burning curses.

"Drop dead, creep." I said it in English but clearly he figured it out by my tone, because he spit little black flakes of something at my feet.

A wealthy-looking man brushed past me and climbed into the cab of the rickshaw, settling himself as if I didn't exist.

The boy grinned nastily at me, covertly made an extremely rude gesture, climbed onto his seat and roared off. The muffler definitely needed work.

I hopelessly scanned the street. This was an open air waterfront market. I needed a taxi, a bus, anything to get me someplace to rent a room for the night.

One taxi took off before I got to it. Another one had a sign that said "occupied." If there were buses, they weren't coming down this narrow crowded street.

And the sun was getting low on the hazy horizon. Crap.

Then I turned a corner and found a Buddhist temple. It was hardly bigger than four postage stamps, but it was a step in the right direction. Usually you can just walk into those places but this one was so small, I knocked.

The door was opened by a tiny old man with a round face, a shaved head and a brown robe. He looked at me with surprise that was definitely tinged with curiosity.

"May I use your telephone?" I asked before he could tell me to get lost.

"I do not have a telephone," he said politely.

I almost didn't hear it. Behind him a woman sat on the polished wooden floor in full lotus position in front of a gold Buddha that dominated the little room. She had very short black hair and wore tight black pants and a tight black shirt. A tattooed dragon coiled around her neck, traveled up her right cheek and its spiky head rested above her right eyebrow. Visible tattoos in Asia often isn't a good thing. Not a good thing at all.

And she was looking at me. Some experienced mediators can look at you as if there is nothing else in the world. You have their entire attention and focus. Considering my lifestyle I usually find it unnerving. I'm much more comfortable moving unnoticed in the world.

To say that the tattooed lady's total undivided regard disturbed me was a wild understatement. It was more than just penetrating, it was strangely unhuman.

"A million apologies," I said and nearly tripped when I stepped back from the door. The shaved head nodded and he didn't quite slam the door.

It was a huge relief to have that focused gaze cut off, but it didn't solve my problem. And it was still getting dark. I trudged down the sidewalk and gave some serious thought to boosting somebody's cell phone.

I bought a couple of skewers of fried beef. After about two bites I realized they'd told me it was beef because I wasn't Chinese. It was the kind of beef that barks and jumps up on the furniture. I ate it anyway and kept walking. If I didn't find a room soon, I would have to find a place to hide until morning. I've done that lots of times, but I'd rather not. The damn duffel bag was slowing me down and wearing me out.

Then I saw the cops. Three of them. I doubted they were the same three from the police cutter but it kind of looked like them. I looked around for a place to casually melt away, but that's hard to do when you're in a hurry. I heard a sudden blast of music and turned toward it. There was a public park across the street. A big mob of people were line dancing to blaring music from a loud speaker.

The dance area was pretty well lit with lamps and strings of what they probably didn't think of as Christmas lights. But that left a circle of darkness that was perfect for me. I found a bench that was probably empty because you couldn't see the dancers for some azalea bushes and a couple of badly placed palm trees. I knew those azaleas would be important as soon as the strollers under the trees went home or joined the dancing.

I hoisted the duffel bag up on the bench. It had stopped dripping but it didn't seem any lighter. I leaned against it and thought I would close my eyes for just a bit.

I woke when someone kicked my foot. I sat up, stiff and sore. There was a crick in my neck. The music had stopped. The park was dark except for a few distant security lights.

The little light there was, clearly showed me the outline of five men of varying heights and widths. The one who'd kicked me had a meaty neck and a round head.

Suddenly, an imaginary newspaper headline flashed through my mind.

"American woman found dead in the park."
_

_

Ridding yourself of desire will open the secrets of the way; but allowing desire will reveal its manifestations.

### Chapter 3

"You will please give me your bag," said Mr. Round Head. I think there was a please in there. I may have just imagined it. I had the four thousand Hong Kong dollars in my pocket. Around $700 American. I wasn't sure I could safely sell another diamond in this god-forsaken town but "Dead woman in park" made a powerful argument for handing over every dollar, so I did.

"Thank you. But I must have the bag," Round Head said nodding at the somewhat less soggy duffel bag beside me.

"No," I said. "Take the money and go."

Round Head threw a punch at me. More precisely he threw a punch at where I had been a moment before. I jumped over the bench—adrenaline is a wonderful thing—and dragged the bag after me.

The other four closed in on me. I kicked one in the stomach and tried to punch another—all while hanging on to the bag for dear life.

That was about as far as I got. I'm not exactly Kung Fu Panda. The other two grabbed me and tore the bag out of my hands. Round Head approached. I could see him grinning in the dim light.

I prayed I could survive this with just a few broken bones.

When the iron fist slammed into my gut the air whoofed out of me and I struggled to pull a breath into my lungs without moving my belly. He punched me again and it didn't hurt as much, though I think I heard a rib snap. My scrambled brain hoped I'd pass out soon. I didn't want to be awake for this. I was dimly aware of a stiff breeze tossing the branches of the trees over me and the smell of ocean mist. One of the men holding me howled.

I braced for the third blow but it didn't come. I didn't know to what I owed the reprieve and I didn't care. I suddenly noticed that nobody had a hand on me. I fell to my knees and persuaded my diaphragm to pull oxygen into my lungs.

Another man barked in pain and I looked up. A big mound on the grass looked like it might be Round Head. He wasn't moving. Someone else—I think it may have been one of the men holding me—darted back and forth in crazy confusion, stumbling into bushes, bumping into the tree trunks.

Someone tall, way taller than the man, all in black, executed a roundhouse kick Bruce Lee would have been proud to call his own.

From several feet away, I heard the man's neck snap and he fell like a sack of laundry.

Another one ran at full speed in the direction of the wharf. Mr. Tall ignored him.

My belly ached and every breath was a stab in the side, but there was breath. I crawled around until I found the bag. I put my hand on it but there was no way I'd be lifting it any time soon.

Another glance at Mr. Tall showed me why he was ignoring the runner. One of my thieves was trying to fight. He was hopelessly outclassed. Mr. Tall looked like he was dancing. The would-be thief was knocked to the ground and scooted back rapidly on his butt. Then he pulled what I am certain was a gun. It was hard to see at that distance but guns have their own aura. Mr. Tall spun and executed an elegant kick almost too fast to see and the gun went sailing high and then off into the dark bushes. A second kick connected with his chin. He fell sharply back and didn't move.

On my hands and knees, I crept over to the dark heap on the grass and saw I was right. This was Round Head. He didn't move. In fact, he wasn't breathing. He'd thrown his last punch. I rifled his pockets and found my cash and a fat roll of what was certainly somebody else's money. I shoved both wads into my pocket.

I crawled back to my bag and that was about all I could do. My side hurt with every heart beat. I'd lost track of Mr. Tall and his activities but everything seemed peaceful and quiet.

"Can you stand? I will take you to the emergency hospital."

I looked up and up. In the dim light, I could now see Mr. Tall was actually Ms. Tall. Also she spoke with a perfect American accent. A dragon tattoo coiled around her neck and up the side of her face. She was the woman from the Buddhist temple.

"Can you speak?" the woman said.

I realized I'd been gaping like a tourist.

"I'm sorry. Thank you for saving me," I said. I hadn't spoken English in a while. It felt like a pair of comfortable shoes in my mouth ... okay, I was in pain. I'll come up with a better metaphor later. "Are they all dead?" I asked. The answer actually surprised me.

"No. Only three. The other two will bear the tale back to Taipei."

"Oh," I answered weakly.

"Come, you are hurt. You must be seen to."

"No, no, I'm fine," I lied. Hospitals had people who would ask uncomfortable questions like "what were you doing in the park?" and "what is your name?"

"I don't need to go to the hospital," I said and attempted to push myself to my feet to prove it. I managed it but the pain made me dizzy for a moment.

I could feel her studying me with that piercing gaze I'd felt this afternoon.

"If you could just help me find a hotel," I said.

"As you wish," she said. She picked up my bag and hefted it. "This is heavier than it should be," she said.

"Sorry, it's waterlogged." I took an experimental step. Not too bad. I could walk.

"More than that," she said cryptically and slung it over her shoulder. She led me to the edge of the park and whistled at a boy sleeping in the back of his motorcycle rickshaw. He jumped to his feet.

It was the guy who'd had scorpions for lunch. He didn't seem to recognize me and was perfectly polite.

I thanked my rescuer again and climbed painfully onto the rickshaw seat. She put the duffel bag in my lap. It was beginning to stink.

In the streetlights I got a good look at her. The dragon covered most of the right side of her face. One four-fingered claw was poised at the corner of her mouth and another seemed to reach for her eye. Her pants and shirt were both leather and as tight as a second skin. Her face was a bit longer than most Asian women and, of course, she was unusually tall even for an American.

"The Inn of the Silver Snake," she said in Chinese to the guy as he climbed sleepily onto his motorcycle.

She pulled a little lump out of one pocket where I would have sworn there wasn't even room for a hand.

The lump was a little dragon carved out of black glass. It was the kind of thing you could get for a few cents in any tourist souvenir shop.

"Uh, thank you," I said.

"Give this to the inn keeper and he will take good care of you," she said.

"Thanks," I said.

"I am Long Daiyu," she said and waited.

"Um, I'm Angie. You can call me Angie."

She regarded me with opaque black eyes. "I will see you tomorrow, Angie," she said and then animated the rickshaw boy with an abrupt tilt of her head. The muffler on his motorcycle still needed work.

* * *

The old woman behind the front desk was perfectly polite and nice and clearly wanted me to get lost. She was once beautiful and still not bad. Her gray hair was pulled up in a traditional bun and I hoped the ivory comb holding it in place was either antique or plastic. My money was on the first choice. She was as elegant as an empress and my filthy self was messing up the harmony of her hotel lobby. I was salt-encrusted, my t-shirt was torn. You could see my toes through the top of one of my sneakers and somewhere in my recent adventures one of my bra straps had broken, putting just the right finishing touch on my look.

I pulled Round Head's wad of cash out of my pocket and peeled off a couple of thousand dollar Hong Kong notes. The cheesy little glass dragon fell out on the expensive and very clean carpet.

The old woman's demeanor changed like magic.

I thought for a very strange instant that she was bowing to me, but instead she stooped to pick up the trinket. She carefully held it out to me, using both hands. Everything was different. Seriously? I accepted the little dragon back from her and gave it a second glance. It didn't look at all special.

"Welcome to the Inn of the Silver Snake," she said. "Boy!" she called. "Take our guest to the Red Poppy Room."

A man, who hadn't been a boy since sometime during the last century, rounded the corner. He hefted my duffel bag which I hoped wasn't leaving a damp spot on the carpet at my feet.

All I saw when I got to the Red Poppy Room was the bed. The big, soft, delicious fluffy bed.

I gave the non-boy a tip that was probably too large but he actually smiled at me. I hadn't seen much smiling lately. I almost gave him the rest of my change.

"Thank you," I said slurring the words.

When he was gone I pulled everything out of the bag and tossed it over every available surface. It filled the room with the scent of rotten seaweed. I set the sword aside and checked the diamonds in the false bottom of the bag. Still all there and accounted for.

The bottle of oil for the sword had partially come open in the bag and some of the things were not only mildewed but oily. There was enough oil left to do what I needed. I would have to be at death's door not to take care of Grandfather's sword. I dried the scabbard with a hotel towel and then pulled the blade out. It glittered as beautifully as always and didn't seem to be damaged. I washed it down with the last of the oil. I set both the scabbard and the sword on the bedside table and hoped they would be dry enough in the morning because I was out of here tomorrow.

I almost fell asleep while I waited for the bathtub to fill. I stripped off the rags I was wearing and took one of the quickest baths of the century. I knew I stank but I didn't want to fall asleep and drown in the service of cleanliness. I spotted a complimentary robe hanging on the bathroom door. Cool. Nakedness is never a good idea when you have a lifestyle that sometimes includes a need for fast exits.

I had just rolled onto the bed when someone knocked on the door. Shit. Before I could yell for them to go away, the door opened and I dived for the sword.
_

_

The whole world recognizes the beautiful as the beautiful, yet this is only the ugly; the whole world recognizes the good as the good, yet this is only the bad.

### Chapter 4

A man stood there in a dark gray jacket on which coiled a silver dragon in the most exquisite embroidery I'd ever seen. He carried a tray with a little brown teapot and a beautiful little cup.

Suddenly I was embarrassed to be standing there with the sword in my hand. I put it back on the night stand.

"A thousand apologies," I said. "I did not call room service."

He laughed. "No apology necessary," he said. "My wife ordered me to see to your injuries."

"I'm fine," I said. I was lying, of course. My left side was hurting so bad I wasn't sure I could sleep even though I was dead on my feet.

He looked me up and down. "Most of your injuries are superficial. A rib on the left side is perhaps cracked. Your spleen may be bruised."

"No, really. I'm fine." I said. I was so fine I sat abruptly on the edge of the bed before I fell down.

He lifted the tray a little. "This is traditional Chinese medicine," he said.

Oh good, I thought. Goat hairs, mouse eyeballs and frog toes all brewed into a nice cup of tea.

He set the tray down on the table next to the sword and poured a thick brown liquid into the cup. This he presented to me with a little flourish.

Oh, what the hell, I thought. It wouldn't kill me and if I drank it he would leave.

"Thank you," I said. It was thick with sugar, which surprised me, but I kind of liked it.

"You are very welcome. Daiyu bestows her favor on very few." He gestured encouragingly at the cup and I drained it.

"She saved my life," I said. He poured me a refill. "I don't know why she did it, but I'm glad she did."

"Among others, she guards the city."

"Really? She killed three men in front of me."

"They were wolves, jackals," he sniffed. "They hunt for prey."

I didn't like thinking of myself as prey, but I pretty much agreed with the jackal thing. "Is she a cop?"

"No," he said. "Not exactly." He gestured for me to drink again. I obliged. The tea was actually very comforting.

"What is she, then?"

He shrugged unhelpfully. "How do you feel?"

"Better," I said. That was true, oddly. I did feel better. My side still ached but the rest of me seemed to stop hurting. I drained the cup in three fast gulps.

"What's in this?" I asked, not sure I wanted to know.

"Wolfberry, dang gui, astragalus, hydrocodone and a touch of cinnamon."

I was getting intensely sleepy. "Did you say hydrocodone?" I was back to slurring words which isn't hard to do in Chinese.

"Yes," he said as he took the cup from my hand and pushed me down on the bed. "The synthesis of east and west is especially powerful..."

He may have said something after that but I can't remember it.

* * *

The next morning when I woke up, all my clothes were washed and folded. They'd even fixed my broken bra strap. A quick glance showed Grandfather's sword still lay on my bedside table. I checked the duffel bag even though it didn't look like they'd touched it. The diamonds were undisturbed.

I pulled on jeans and my best t-shirt and made my way to the bathroom. Someone had cleaned it up and left fresh towels. They also had left a plastic-wrapped tooth brush and I made use of that. My hair looked like red dandelion fluff. I kept it short for a reason. I brushed it into something vaguely resembling human hair.

I packed everything in the duffel bag. I'd paid for the room last night and now I needed a fast boat out of here and I wanted to be long gone before anybody noticed. If I worked it right I'd be out at sea before check-out time.

Most of the light in the room came from a pair of glass-paned doors that opened out on a balcony. Balconies have always been my friend. Fire escapes are my best buddies.

I was two stories above a busy street that snaked around the side of a hill. Bustling traffic flowed by. Below the hill, far, far below, the city lay stretched out. The hazy air didn't reveal a lot of fine detail. There were ancient wooden apartment buildings jammed together and a cluster of more modern concrete towers in what must have been the business district.

The sea sparkled in the distance. It was a brush painting in shades of gray and blue. Tall, soft hills sheltered the harbor. Since I was high up, I must have been on one of those hills.

However, I wasn't so high up that I couldn't climb down. A convenient banyan grew not far below. I could drop into its branches and that would be that. I laced my arm through the duffel bag's strap and waited for a good moment. The street was crowded, but a noisy ambulance or fire truck would create a distraction—even a honking cab.

I lounged against the balcony rail and waited. After about half an hour, a car stalled several yards to the west. The street was narrow, just barely wide enough for two cars to pass each other and soon lots of cars and people clotted up honking and yelling respectively.

I climbed up onto the balcony rail and looked for a good spot in the tree.

The telephone rang. Shit. I had to answer it otherwise they'd know I'd left. I pulled myself back over the rail.

The phone was a heavy black thing tethered to the wall. It even had an actual rotary dial.

"Hello?"

"Good evening, Miss Tanaka," a girl's voice said in English. I didn't remember giving the old woman my name. Obviously I must have. I know I didn't intend to, certainly not my right name.

"Yes?

"Mr. and Mrs. Long-ju have invited you to dine with them."

"Dine"? Then I realized she'd said "good evening."

"Yes, Miss. Mrs. Long-ju is sending up suitable clothing."

"Huh?" I understood the words perfectly. She had an accent but her English was better than my Chinese.

She patiently repeated the thing about suitable clothing.

"What time is it now?"

"It is 7:13 p.m. Dinner will be at 8 p.m."

"Um, okay, thanks." I hung up. Shit. First of all, it was evening and not morning as I had thought. Shit. And second, I needed them to not look for me for hours after I left, not minutes. Shit. Shit.

Well, okay. I would have the dinner, make nice and then skip out the minute I was back in the room.

About five minutes later a tap on the door revealed a girl who looked twelve years old but who was probably thirty. She had a pile of red and white silk in her arms. She introduced herself as Mei-ling.

I took the silk, handed her a dollar and tried to close the door. She prevented that.

"I will do your hair," she said.

I wanted to tell her to get lost but had a feeling I couldn't win the argument and I knew my hair was a raging mess. I agreed and ducked into the bathroom to change.

Doing my hair turned curling iron and hairspray use into an extreme sport. I didn't envy her. When I was done, Mai-ling made me admire her handiwork in the dresser mirror.

The dress was a little tight across the bosom and about three inches too short. Otherwise I looked appropriately girly. I told her she'd done a good job.

"Mr. Long-ju has asked for you to bring your sword. He admired it last night and begs a closer look."

Now that was an odd request. I would rather have the sword with me than not, but I wasn't sure the request was a good sign.

"Can you tell me where the dining room is? I didn't see it when I checked in."

Mei-ling smiled like she had wonderful news for me. "Oh, you will not go to the dining room. You will be going up to the residence. I will lead you."

The residence? Okay, I thought. I pulled the sword out of the duffel bag, doubly glad I was going to get to carry it along.

She led me to a bank of elevator doors. One set was plain brown and the other, facing on the opposite wall was covered with deeply carved and shiny silver dragons.

It was the dragon elevator we went into, of course. She pressed the up button and the door closed whisper quiet.

The elevator seemed to go up for a long time. Maybe it was slow.

It opened on an atrium that was at least four stories high, dominated by a polished steel and glass dragon sculpture that coiled around a pearl the size of a softball. It could not possibly be real unless the oyster was the size of a Buick.

But it looked real. In fact it looked realer than real. Don't ask me to explain what that means. It was beautiful beyond what I can describe. It filled my mind like the rising moon. It eclipsed everything I could have been thinking about before I saw it. I stood there for a moment and went a tiny bit nuts.

Then I wondered what I would get for it on the black market in Taipei. Bad girl, bad girl. Whatcha gonna do? The diamonds downstairs in my bag were worth a cool million but I know an entrepreneur who would trade them for 5,000 pictures of Benjamin Franklin. A pearl that size would probably give him an erection—if I could bring myself to sell it.

"Miss Tanaka?" Mei-ling was regarding me with a rigid, fixed smile.

"Beautiful sculpture," I said with great feeling.

"This way," she said and gestured to a far door. I followed her.

The room was wide. Enormous open archways revealed mountains smoky in the distance and a huge expanse of sky. The far away volcano seemed to float in the clouds.

Mr. and Mrs. Long-ju leaned together chatting. She giggled. I swear to God. Giggled. Last night I thought she was elegant but now she was really dressed up. She wore an elaborate coiffure that sparkled with every toss of her head. Mr. Long-ju leaned against her as he whispered something in her ear. She covered her mouth and tittered.

My hairdresser-turned-guide tactfully cleared her throat. The couple looked up guiltily and Mr. Long-ju got to his feet. Those people were in love—wrinkly, gray-haired, prune-eating, Geritol love. It was ... sort of cute.

Mr. Long-ju rose to his feet, clasped his hands together and bowed his head slightly. "Welcome to my home, Miss Tanaka!"

I bowed. "It was most gracious of you to invite me," I said in my best Mandarin.

He invited me to sit at a round, black lacquer table that looked like it had been made when the mountains were young. I took the chair he indicated which gave me a wonderful view of the hills and the sky.

A woman who was too tall appeared in the archway. Obviously she'd been out on the balcony—a ledge really, since it had no railing. Daiyu had changed the black leather pants for a skin-tight black silk dress. Her only decoration was the coiled black dragon tattoo. The elderly couple greeted her warmly. Mr. Long-ju bowed her to the table.

I stood back up and bowed to her as well. "Thank you again for saving my life," I said.

"What a beautiful sword," she said by way of reply.

"Ah yes!" said Mr. Long-ju, "I wanted a better look at this sword."

"Husband," said Mrs. Long-ju. "Let us begin supper."

"Yes, of course," he glanced meaningfully at the girl who still hovered behind me and then settled himself next to the missus.

Mrs. Long-ju poured tea into a little blue and white cup and then dumped it into a porcelain bowl. She refilled the cup and held it out to me. I accepted it with both hands. I didn't know if that was the polite custom or not. You will find it strange, I know, that I don't hob-nob with the rich and famous very often. Or ever. If it was not correct, Mrs. Long-ju didn't lower herself to notice. She served Daiyu and her husband with the same little ritual before pouring her own cup.

A man in a western-style butler uniform arrived with a silver platter. At first I thought it was a tray of flowers, but then I saw that it was a fish filleted artfully to look like a bed of little white lotuses and was surrounded by vegetables carved and arranged to look like a garden. The head pointed at me, which I think is supposed to be an honor, but I thought the fish's beady eye was looking at me accusingly.

The food was the best I'd had since the last time I was in San Francisco which was a disturbingly long time ago. The fish was followed by soup, then a hot pot, then dumplings. Everything was elegant, dainty and fresh. The conversation focused on the weather and books we have read. I wasn't able to contribute much to that last part but I did my best, pulling on my memories of the stuff I'd been forced to read in high school.

I don't know exactly how Mrs. Long-ju signaled that dinner was over, but I knew she got the message across to the servants somehow because everything vanished off the table and was replaced by a fresh pot of tea.

Daiyu rose to her feet in a single fluid motion. "Please," she said and held out both her hands. "I would be very grateful to examine your sword."

I'd leaned it against the side of my chair and sort of forgotten it. I reluctantly put my Grandfather's sword across her palms. It was Japanese katana made with his own hands. Daiyu pulled the blade a few inches out of the scabbard and flipped it over, obviously looking for the maker's stamp. When she saw it her eyebrows rose a sixteenth of an inch. I think she smiled faintly but it was hard to be sure.

"Very beautiful, beautifully made by a loving hand," she said. She snapped the blade home and then handed it over to our host.

Long-ju studied the scabbard carefully. I'd certainly always thought it was beautiful. It was very plain but had the patina of great age. Its dive into the drink had left it unperturbed. The wood was so hard it didn't even have any scratches even though I hadn't always been the most careful of custodians.

Mr. Long-ju pulled out the blade as Daiyu had done, nodded. He pushed the blade in reverentially and handed it back to me.

It hadn't realized how breath-holding tense I'd been until the sword was back in my hands. I should have just jumped into the banyan and taken off when I had the chance. On the other hand, that pearl out there ....

"Now," said Mr. Long-ju "Please tell us the history of your beautiful sword."

It was the very, very last thing I wanted to do. I generally don't like to tell people anything about myself. I took a sip of tea, buying time.

Daiyu didn't add her request to his but her steady, undivided regard seemed to pull the truth out of me.

"My grandfather made it after the end of World War II," I said.

"Your grandfather was a traditional Japanese sword maker?" said Mr. Long-ju keeping all trace of disbelief out of his tone. Almost all trace. I am a quarter Japanese, but I don't look the slightest bit Asian.

"He was Nisei," I said. "My grandmother was of European ancestry. Scottish, actually." I didn't add that my mother was a blond California girl who died when I was a little girl.

"So his family kept the sword-making skill alive even in America?" said Mr. Long-ju. "They are to be commended!"

I was uncomfortable telling strangers this much about myself, but Daiyu had me pinned to the mat with just a midnight look.

"That is very unusual for an American," she murmured.

"Well, it wasn't the whole family. It was just him. He ... he was interned during the war."

Mrs. Long-ju made a little noise that was half anger, half sadness. Mr. Long-ju laid his hand on the top of hers protectively.

"After Hiroshima and Nagasaki he changed. My grandmother said he went insane for a while. He went to Japan and began to study under Yoshimura."

I stopped talking. I'd already said too much. I don't tell strangers much about myself. In fact I tell them nothing at all. I prefer to be a ghost moving through the world. It's so much easier than letting people get to know me and way easier than trying to keep track of a lot of lies.

"He wanted a sword," said Daiyu. It wasn't a question.

"Yes. He made a sword and brought it home with him."

"And the sword cured his madness!" said Mrs. Long-ju with the air of someone saying "and he lived happily ever after."

He didn't even remotely live happily ever after. Master sword maker Yoshimura, who had lived on the outskirts of Nagasaki, died of cancer three years after Grandfather returned to California. A few weeks after the master's death people began to die. Bad people, violent people, criminal people. Over fifty years it was hundreds of them. A town as large as Los Angeles has an endless supply of people like that.

I knew about it. The whole family knew.

When my grandfather died, the killings didn't stop. Before long, I knew my father had taken his place. When I realized that, I stole the sword and caught a tramp steamer for Hawaii. He almost caught up to me there.

I know my father is now hunting for me. I didn't know what he'd do when he found me. He'd definitely take the sword. As for how he would deal with me, I couldn't say. He was as remote and forbidding as my grandfather had been. Someday he probably will catch up with me and I'll have to face him, but it will not be today.

Now they were all staring at me expectantly. "The sword made him into the man he became," I said. I tried to sound like it was a happy thing. I didn't fool them.

They didn't press me for any more details of my ancestry and a little awkward silence fell.

"The fish was delicious," I said to Mrs. Long-ju. "Was it swordfish?"

"It was a shark," she said. "Very good to heal injuries."

"Thank you for your great kindness." It sounds elegant in English but in Chinese it was an insincere cliché. I tried to put real feeling behind it. "It is a miracle we survived the storm. I thought I'd seen my hundredth year." One of my favorite Chinese euphemisms for death. They have a lot of wonderful ones.

"You looked very ... tired when you arrived."

That made me smile. Tired? I looked like the wrath of God. I thought again of the pearl out in the other room. That thing would keep me well dressed for the rest of my life.

"Yes, I ..." My response trailed off. The sky, which had been perfectly clear, now was partially obscured by a cloud moving fast. That would have been no big deal but there was no wind, barely a hint of breeze.

"I needed a bed that wouldn't sink in the ocean!" I said after that distracted pause.

That got them laughing. All except Daiyu who looked carved out of sandalwood and ebony.

"A dry bed is the least we could do!" said Mr. Long-ju jovially. His back was to the archway. The cloud was thickening and darkening. I thought I saw a flicker of lightning. The setting sun edged the cloud in greenish gold. Gold with a black heart. It didn't look like a silver lining to me.

"That cloud is beautiful," I said. Everyone looked. Daiyu had already noticed it. In fact, she hadn't taken her eyes off it.

"Among the beautiful clouds, Over the heavenly river, Crosses the weaving maiden," Mrs. Long-Ju quoted playfully at her husband.

Her husband smiled at her. "A night of rendezvous, Across the autumn sky, Surpasses joy on earth..."

Mrs. Long-ju giggled and they began tossing fragments of thousand-year-old love poetry back and forth. The little scene made me feel something I almost never feel—wistful. People who have as much baggage as I do, people who move through life like a ghost, do not get to play little poetry games with their lovers.

"Can you smell that?" Daiyu said to Long-ju.

Mr. Long-ju pulled himself out of the shiny pink heaven he'd been inhabiting. He took a deep breath and his demeanor changed abruptly to stern, pragmatic lines. "Tsunami," he said.

Daiyu rose, strode to the open archway and scanned the sky for a moment. Then she turned right and disappeared around the corner.

Mr. Long-ju jumped to his feet. "Many thousands of apologies," he said to me with a bow. He still had hold of his wife's hand and she looked up at him with a small frown. He bent low and kissed her fingers and then followed Daiyu, not quite running, but covering ground fast.

I'd been watching all this like a TV show with a bad plot. When I was alone with Mrs. Long-ju I suddenly felt deserted.

"What just happened?"

"They sensed a tsunami," she said. "They must see to it." She stood. Dinner was clearly over. I grabbed my sword and stood also.

Then two things jumped out at me. Sensed? See to it?

"Are they like ... coast guard?" I asked.

"They protect us," she said which wasn't much of an answer.

They weren't protecting us right this minute and the thought of that pearl, which had not entirely left my mind, grew sharp and bright. Now was a golden opportunity to take it.

Mrs. Long-ju called for servants who must have just been out of sight because they appeared instantly and began to clear the tea things away. The girl who'd guided me up to the residence was among them. With her hands full of a tray, she uttered a tiny shriek that made me jump. Balancing the tray in one hand she picked a chopstick up off the floor, an elegantly carved lacquer thing. I had a vague memory that a dropped chopstick is some kind of bad omen. She hadn't struck me as particularly superstitious. I ignored her and turned my attention to the cloud high above the hills.

The cloud grew and darkened. The sun had set but the cloud was still inexplicably glowing green. Impossible, I thought. I stood and went toward the archway.

"You must go down to the hotel," Mrs. Long-ju said interrupting my curiosity. The giggling girl she had been a moment ago was gone without a trace. The dowager empress I'd met last night stood there in her place. There was only one possible reply to her statement.

"Yes, Ma'am," I said.

She turned and almost floated to the archway, hands in her sleeves, watching the cloud.

If I was ever going to have a moment, this would be it. I went out to the atrium, walked straight up to the fabulous dragon sculpture. The pearl was there, throbbing with light and life and dripping temptation at me. I plucked the delicious orb from its hand—paw—whatever. It was heavy. My fancy dress didn't have any pockets, so I tucked it under my arm and ran for the elevator.

I heard something—I'm not sure what. I turned and Mrs. Long-ju was backing slowly through the doorway.

Then I saw what had her attention.

My first thought was "dinosaur." Things that big don't exist in the real world. It had whiskers that whipped like a cat-o-nine-tails. Its eyes were as big as car tires. That was the head. The body passed into the atrium forever and ever, amen. Long, twisty, snakelike, except that it had legs with enormous claws as long as my leg. It curled and coiled around the sculpture entwining itself with the shining silver. Its scales were a dingy gray, but polished like mirrors. Somebody started screaming. I think it was me.

Mrs. Long-ju stood between me and it, straight and hard as an iron rod.

It's not real, I thought. It can't be real. When it saw me and actually smiled ... it didn't get realer than that.

He—it—opened its maw exposing teeth like sabers.

"Give it to me," he said.

"Get out of my house!" Mrs. Long-ju said stoutly.

It wasn't even looking at her. The enormous amber eyes focused solely on me.

"Give it to me now." Then it occurred to me that it was speaking perfect English.

"I have no idea what you are talking about," I said, holding the pearl behind my back. Later I realized those were probably the stupidest words I have ever spoken in my life. I still held the sword in my free hand and it was still in its scabbard. It felt like a toothpick in my hand.

"Step aside, Venerable Elderly Mother," the dragon said in Chinese. He was an amazingly polite monster.

"You will not harm my guest," came the cold imperious reply. "You are not welcome in my house, disreputable worm!"

Best not be insulting something that could eat a Toyota Tundra in two bites, I thought.

The snake-like whiskers writhed in the air as it laughed. One of those whiskers whipped forward and wrapped around my wrist. I dropped the sword as it jerked me forward.

Mrs. Long-ju howled something inarticulate and snatched up the sword. She threw the scabbard off and holding up the naked blade, stood between me and the giant monster. She yelled something but if it was words I didn't recognize them. She chopped at the whisker wrapped around my wrist. The sword bounced off, but the whisker let me go. I lost my balance and stumbled back. The pearl slipped out of my hand and rolled accusingly across the stone floor.

He—it—smiled. It opened its maw and snaked out an impossibly long tongue. It lapped up the pearl which disappeared down the thing's gullet. I don't think Mrs. Long-ju saw it or ever knew of my scumbagery.

Then the monster roared and became indistinct. It puffed up into a green mist. The smoke solidified and condensed down into a man in shimmering traditional Chinese robes, his fingernails inches long. The man raised his arm and my grandfather's blade flew out of Mrs. Long-ju's hand spinning up and around the room like a glittering propeller. It banged against the walls showering sparks where ever it hit.

When it flew toward me, I tried to jump to grab it but Mrs. Long-ju flew between me and the whirling blade. It sliced her throat, her chest, her arms. She fell in a fountain of blood.

This time I know I screamed. The blade glanced off the floor and clattered to my feet spraying the hem of my dress with a mist of Mrs. Long-ju's blood.

When I looked up, the man was gone.
_

_

Heaven and earth are ruthless and treat the myriad creatures as straw dogs; the sage is ruthless and treats the people as straw dogs.

### Chapter 5

I tried to distract my attention away from the woman whose blood spilled out across the floor. I stared at the sword, its blade only spoiled by a smear of red and some fine droplets that landed after it had done its slaughter. I'd seen dead bodies before. Hell, this lady was the fourth I'd seen in a single twenty-four hour period.

But I'd liked her. I'd liked her and I'd liked her husband and I'd enjoyed how they were together. She could not possibly be a danger to that—whatever it was. There was no reason to kill her. And—this was the part that stung the hardest—and he'd done it because of me.

I picked up the sword. Since my fine borrowed dress was already ruined I wiped the blade down with the hem. I got the scabbard where Mrs. Long-ju had flung it against the wall and pushed the sword into it. Then I brought myself to look at the body. Even with the aged skin I could see the beautiful woman she had once been. It was clearer now that her face was relaxed in death.

But her blood was spreading across the floor and the murder weapon was in my hand. My defense consisted of "a giant dragon came in and magically killed her with my sword and then vanished. I swear!" It wouldn't help to mention the pearl.

"Angie, my girl," I said to myself. "You have royally screwed the pooch and it's time to get the hell out of here."

I ran to the elevator door. There was no down button. There was no button at all. The door was shut and the silver dragon on it was beautiful but there was no way to get the friggin' door open. I tried to push it open, but it might as well have been part of the wall.

My next plan was to try the balcony where I'd seen Daiyu and Mr. Long-ju go. That turned out to be a ledge that ran around to the right. There was no railing and it was probably ten miles down to the valley floor. Okay, maybe not, but it looked like ten miles and I was dizzy before I got more than a few steps. It was not an option. I sidled back into the room and looked around at the deserted dining table. How had the servants gotten in? I hadn't paid much attention to the servants. It's amazing how quick people like that become furniture.

My heart was about to pound out of my chest. I needed to calm down. I took a couple of deep breaths and that was all the calming I could stand.

The chamber was round. The walls were decorated with screens. One of them had to cover a door. Precious seconds dripped away while I hunted. It was the fourth screen I tried. A doorway lead to a short hall which ended with two branches. Down one way I could hear the murmur of voices and the clang and bang of a kitchen. The other way led to stairs that went down. Hallelujah!

Down I went. I hadn't got far when I heard a scream. Mai-ling, probably. She had a good, full-bodied horror movie scream. It was the kind of bloody murder scream that's as effective as a 911 call.

I'd been taking the stairs carefully in case I ran into anyone. When I heard Mei-ling sound the alarm, that suddenly didn't matter as much.

The stairs ended in a storage room full of sheets, towels and boxes of miniature soaps. Beyond that was a hall. On one side a double door led to another busy kitchen. On the other a narrower door opened on a cluttered office.

I kept going straight and through the door to the lobby. The front door and the street were only a few yards ahead. I took about two steps in that direction when I remembered I was wearing a bloody red silk dress and carrying a murder weapon. Shit.

Upstairs to my room. It was a huge risk but worth it. Out of the dress, into something unnoticeable and gone. Besides, I suddenly remembered the diamonds. Now we know what it takes to make me forget them.

In the hall I ran smack into Mai-ling and three muscular guys. She screamed and pointed at me. The four of them had the sword out of my hand and my arms behind my back before I could so much as blink. They had no trouble holding me down while we waited for the police to arrive.

The police. They were not Hong King police, but cops are cops. They didn't have guns, but they didn't need them.

I think I said stuff, an inarticulate mixture of English and Chinese. Most of it translated loosely into "I didn't to it!" The pearl loomed big in my mind. I kept seeing it rolling across the floor, the floor where Mrs. Long-ju bled out her life.

The cops didn't bother to talk to me. My innocence or guilt was not their job. All they did was what cops do all over the world. They sacked me up and handed me over.

* * *

A couple of hours later they let me take off the horrible red dress. I got prison clothes, probably what I'd be wearing for whatever remained of the rest of my life. Taiwan had the death penalty. This backwater would certainly have it too. The sword had long since disappeared. I doubted I'd ever see either the sword or those diamonds again whether I got out of this or not. I wasn't going to cry over the money or the diamonds. I could always get more of those. Taking away the sword, though, that hurt. It was probably for the best. I should have thrown it in the ocean the day after I got my hands on it. But I hadn't. I'd risked my life for it more than once. And more than once I'd stood on the deck of a ship trying to work up the courage, or the whatever, to throw it overboard.

I never had. I took care of it as if it were my grandfather himself. And as I pulled on the stained prison pajamas—the pants were a little too big and the shirt was a little too small—I thought that it had finally drunk innocent blood. Because of me.

Eventually they shoved me into a cell and slammed the door. There were other cells with other prisoners who looked at me curiously. One of them muttered something to a nearby cell mate and they chuckled. I ignored them.

I studied the cell for weaknesses. As Asian cells go, it was a pretty good one. I was going to have to get out of it somehow. The bathroom was a hole in the ground; the bed was a wooden platform. There wasn't much to work with. It was a box. I could hear other prisoners in the distance shouting, babbling and cursing. Jail made some people crazy. Some people were crazy and that's why they were here. Mental health policy doesn't vary a lot from place to place. Wait until the insane commit a crime and then lock them up.

I paced and tried to make sense of what just happened. I saw a dragon steal a pearl almost as big as my head. A dragon. A dragon covered with shiny scales. And then it condensed into a man and murdered a woman. If it had been a dream I wouldn't have told anybody about it. It was just too weird. What did I actually see? What I saw couldn't have been what I saw.

I looked hopelessly at the window high above my head. The single bare light bulb reflected off the thick glass. A glow hinted at the city outside. In my overheated imagination it hinted of other places and freedom and maybe monsters. What was that strange feeling that shivered my limbs? Was I wracked with guilt? No. Definitely not. Maybe not.

While I was trying to decide, I noticed a fog was rolling in. Not outside. Mist gathered in my cell. It smelled of the sea. I thought about calling for a guard but wasn't sure what I would tell him or her. I retreated to the wooden bed platform and pushed myself into a corner.

The mist thickened and then blackened and then became Daiyu in tight black leather. The moment I recognized her, my heart tried to climb out of my chest.

Every word of Chinese I knew flew out of my head.

"I didn't do it," I said in English. I didn't recognize my own voice.

She regarded me with eyes darker than midnight.

"You are a thief," she said in English. I concentrated on pushing myself into the corner of the wall and I still couldn't remember any Chinese.

"Yes," I answered, too terrified to lie.

"You took the pearl."

"No!" Now was the time to mention the dragon. I couldn't figure out a way to say it so I wouldn't sound like I was raving.

"That's a lie," she said flatly.

I covered my head with my arms and didn't say anything.

"You killed Long-Ju Lihua."

"No!" I saw the whirling blade in my mind's eye and the shower of her blood as she dropped to the floor. Tears burned in my eyes. "She died defending my worthless hide," I whispered into my knees. If I could have crawled through the wall to hide from Daiyu's scrutiny I would have done it. To say her gaze was undivided was an understatement. Her entire self was completely committed to looking at me. It was like being in the focus of a too bright light.

"Tell me what happened."

"You ran out on us," I said. I didn't actually mean it to come out like that.

"The tsunami was a distraction." Her eyes flickered off me for an instant. It was an instant of relief.

"A big monster came in." I almost confessed to stealing the pearl, but only almost. "Mrs. Long-ju took my sword and attacked him but he took the sword and killed her." I babbled it out all at once because it wasn't the kind of thing you linger over. When I spoke, attention focused on me in a way that made a laser beam seem soft and fuzzy.

"What color was the monster?" she asked.

I was shocked by the question. It was still gaping at her when the earthquake hit or the bomb went off or the airplanes crashed into the building.

The jail cell heaved and buckled. Daiyu stood unperturbed in the middle of it as the window above our heads shattered. I heard men screaming and cursing in the distance. Another shock and cracks crawled up the wall.

"Mr. Long-ju has discovered you are here," Daiyu said thoughtfully as the jail heaved and jolted. I tried to get to my feet. My knees seemed made of rubber.

"But I'm in jail!" I said irrationally. "And I didn't do it!" Though I might as well have, I added bitterly to myself.

A huge groan and crack sounded like someone had torn part of the building away. The inner wall collapsed, leaving only a pile of rubble between me and the hallway. That would have been important if my shaking legs would listen to me.

Daiyu stepped over to me and hauled me to my feet with an arm like an iron bar.

"What color was the monster?" she snapped.

"Kind of an icky gray," I gasped.

Then the world turned into a black mist.
_

_

Hence he who values his body more than dominion over the empire can be entrusted with the empire.

### Chapter 6

When I woke up I was lying on a cold stone floor that wasn't cracked and wasn't shaking. Two people stood over me.

"And you believe she is innocent?" said a man's voice speaking elegant Mandarin. I looked up at him and from this angle I could see black silk pants and a red silk jacket.

"No." Daiyu was just a black monolith. "But she didn't kill Lihua."

"And Long-Ju?"

"He is insane with grief. The Silver Mountain is burned to the ground."

Red Jacket nudged me with his toe. It happened to connect with the bruised rib. I winced and curled up around it.

"Get up girl," he said in English.

I pushed myself to my knees and then to my feet, rubbing my side.

Mr. Red Jacket was exactly my height. There was something about him politicians call "gravitas." Weight. He wasn't old or young. It was hard to tell how old he might be. He was handsome in a smooth, polished way. He smiled. It wasn't exactly a friendly smile.

"You have made an important friend," he said. "I do not know how or why."

I looked up at Daiyu. Her black eyes didn't even flicker. You believe she is innocent? He'd asked. No, she'd answered. I read my guilty verdict in that unwavering regard.

"I didn't hurt Mrs. Long-ju," I said into that verdict. "I liked her," I added. In my mind's eye I saw the brave Mrs. Long-ju with my grandfather's sword in her hand defending me while I stood there with a stolen pearl under my arm.

"Her blood was all over you and your sword," said Mr. Red Jacket. "You could see how Long-ju could form a conclusion."

"Yes," I said. "I watched her murder. I can describe the man who did it."

"Very well, do so." He had sober brown eyes with dark red flecks in them. It would have required a greater effort of will than I was capable of to not do exactly as he asked.

"Average height, long fingernails, dressed in a traditional robe." Black hair, brown eyes sort of went without saying and I suddenly realized there was something familiar about him.

Mr. Red Jacket's eyes sparkled with dangerous light. "And the monster, as you call it? What color were its scales?"

I glanced at Daiyu. I'd hoped she hadn't mentioned the monster thing.

"They were a muddy gray."

"That's not possible," he said mostly to himself. He glanced at Daiyu and got nothing there. "Very well," he said. "We must find him before Long-ju hears a dragon had a part in this." He didn't say that to me. He spoke past me to Daiyu. I might as well have fallen through the floor.

"Let me help you," my mouth said before the rest of me could take a vote.

"No. Derkein will speak to Long-ju," Daiyu said. "I will find the pearl. It is most important that we recover it. It's more important than anything else."

"It can't be," I said bitterly about a half instant before I realized I should be keeping my mouth shut.

"It is," she said.

"It has certain important properties," Red Jacket said.

"I understand it's probably worth a fortune, but it wasn't worth Mrs. Long-ju's life," I said. I was beginning to be fairly certain that horrible feeling that choked me was, indeed, guilt.

"I will show you why she gave her life for it," Daiyu said.

Like Mr. Long-ju's dining room, this room had wide archways that looked out over the night sky. There was a sliver of moon but no odd clouds. Fire flickered on distant slopes shrouded with glowing smoke. Silver Mountain, I assumed.

More fires glittered here and there on edge of the city.

"It has begun!" said Red Jacket who'd followed us to the ledge. The city sparkled below us. It would have been beautiful if not for those ugly little fires.

"What's begun?" I asked.

"War. The people make mindless war on each other."

"You mean like a riot?"

"They fight for no reason," Daiyu said. "Right now the police will control them, but soon..."

"How can the pearl make them do that? It doesn't make sense."

"As I said," Red Jacket's smile was awash with sadness. "It has very special properties."

"I have special properties. I can get it back," I said.

Red Jacket raised an eyebrow. "You are an accomplished thief, but we can't protect you from Long-ju. You are safest with the Hong Kong police."

"No! You can't send me back there!" I looked from one to the other. I couldn't believe they could possibly know about my problems with the Hong Kong law.

Daiyu shrugged. "Your photo came over the police wire. You are a common criminal.

That stung. I lifted my chin, "Not that common," I said.

Red Jacket laughed. It was a good solid laugh and almost made me smile.

"Perhaps so," he said, amused. He somehow managed to be fatherly without looking much older than I am. "But if you stay here Long-ju will find you and tear you to pieces. A police cutter will take you to Hong Kong in the morning."

* * *

Daiyu walked away from the dizzying balcony and the disturbing plumes of smoke roiling up into the dark air. She seemed to assume I'd just follow her. I expected to be clapped in irons next. It didn't happen.

She led me down a wood paneled hallway and then up some stairs.

"Is he your boss?" I asked. I followed her like we were just friends walking along while looking desperately for any avenue of escape.

"He is Derkein. He is the Chief of Police but also the head of my ... family."

I hadn't pegged her as having an extended family, but pretty much all Chinese people do. She probably had a granny who was pressuring her to get married. I took a look at her as I passed through a heavy door. No. Nobody pressured Daiyu into anything. And I couldn't imagine her with a granny.

The door led to a nice big room with a nice big bed. It also had nice iron lattices over all the windows. They might let in sunlight tomorrow but would not be letting me out any time soon. I was glad the room faced away from the burning city.

My battered and stained duffel bag lay on the elegant bed like a wart on the face of a beautiful woman.

Grandfather's sword was nowhere in sight. I was lucky to get back my clothes and maybe even the diamonds if the police hadn't found them. I was never going to see that sword again.

As chatty as always, Daiyu closed the door without another word. The sound of that door closing rattled me. I ran to it and tried to pull it open. I didn't really expect to get anything out of that and I didn't. It might as well have been nailed shut.

I stood there in the middle of the floor shivering. Monsters, burning cities, police, jails, prisons, and pearls on steroids. An elderly woman getting herself killed defending my worthless carcass. It all rolled over me for a few minutes like a freight train.

I went to the window. Darkness. Shadowy hills blocking out stars.

The bed was covered with an elaborately embroidered coverlet in pale yellow. The figures were the endless coils of a Black Dragon. Someone had rendered it in delicate silk stitches, an almost exact replica of the tattoo that covered half of Daiyu's face.

I pulled my duffel bag off it. I suddenly hated seeing it there.

I dumped everything out on the floor. The false bottom was still intact and the diamonds were still there. I changed out of the prison clothes and back into my t-shirt and jeans. I dug out a few of the sparkling little rocks and shoved them in my pocket. I was probably going to need something to bribe somebody and I wouldn't be able to do that with my spare pair of holey blue jeans.

Then I had nothing left to do but think and that wasn't good. There was a small shelf of books. All but a few of the titles were Chinese. I recognized the characters for "Dream of the Red Chamber," so I pulled out that one and took it over to the bed. I couldn't stand to have my raggedy ass on that coverlet so I pulled it down and stretched out.

I needed to think and I didn't want to. Struggling to read a language in which I am pretty much illiterate helped with that. On the other hand if you can only pick out one word in five, it's hard to follow a narrative thread. Great pictures, though.

When I woke up I'd been dreaming that Mrs. Long-ju hadn't died and I hadn't stolen the pearl. It was all just a silly misunderstanding. Mr. Gray Monster spoiled it all when he flew in the window and bit off Mrs. Long-ju's head.

I sat up breathing heavy. Starlight showed me the iron lattice on the windows. I groped around for the lamp on the little table beside the bed and got it switched on. It didn't help much. It created a pool of light beside me and threw thick shadows into every corner.

There was no clock in the room and no way to tell how far away morning might be.

Mr. Gray Monster filled my mind along with thoughts about that goddam pearl. More times than I could count if I could just walk away from some sparkling beautiful, expensive thing, everything would be fine. But I didn't and it wasn't.

I sat on the bed in the tiny pool of light and brooded about the slightly familiar Mr. Gray Monster. Damn. Him. He could have just taken the pearl and cleared out. There was no need to kill her. She was no real threat to him. Dammit!

I worked hard to make it all his fault. After all, Mr. Gray Monster was, well, a monster. But I couldn't swing it. If I hadn't stolen the pearl, she wouldn't have been there defending me. Case closed.

When I'd chewed all that totally to death, I noticed the dark corners of the room weren't as dark. It must be almost dawn.

Which meant I had a more immediately pressing problem. Hong Kong. I really, really doubted I'd be safer there. Really. Almost certainly not.

I got up and looked at my pile of clothes on the floor. I rifled through them and extracted my passport. All the money was gone. That's probably why the cops didn't look any further and missed the diamonds. I'd have to find a place to sell one. Whatever.

I tossed my passport into the empty bag and looked around the room for something heavy.

I found a cast iron foo dog on the bookshelf propping up a heavy book of essays by Lin Yutang. I dropped both the book and the dog into the bag.

Then I went to the door and took some deep breaths. I screamed. I can do a good blood curdling scream and it comes in handy from time to time. I waited a couple of seconds and then screamed twice more—pushing with all the breath in my lungs. I hoped I didn't have to do it many more times. It was playing hell with my vocal cords.

I heard running feet and some clicks that sounded like the door being unlocked.

I stepped to one side. I couldn't take on Daiyu, so if it was her I planned to pretend it was all a bad dream. The door opened.

It wasn't her. A sturdy man in a guard's uniform stepped through the door. I swung the bag, aiming it at his back between the shoulder blades. I couldn't hit him in the head. I wanted him down, not dead. It all didn't come off as clean as I liked. I had to take a second swing, but that knocked him down and I went out to the hall and slammed the door shut behind me.

A quick, frantic search for a bolt or lock. Found it. Locked him in and ran.

I had no actual idea where I was headed. Out was the best I was hoping for, that and not running into Daiyu or more servants.

My heart pounded hard enough to hurt my bruised rib. This just couldn't possibly work. Any second I was going to run into a big tattooed woman with a Bruce Lee complex and then I was going straight to jail.

But it didn't happen. I passed a couple of servants who stared at me curiously, but they didn't make a fuss so I smiled and waved and got myself out of their sight.

Every flight of steps I saw that went down, I took them. Through a doorway, I caught a glimpse of the balcony with big archways open to the sky.

Then down again. I came to a giant room dominated by a giant Buddha. It sat on the back of an equally giant dragon carved out of ebony—or maybe black lacquer. I didn't take a close look because on the altar at the feet of the Buddha, lay my grandfather's sword.

That stopped me in my tracks. I looked around. Nobody in sight. I should just go and leave it there. I should have thrown it away a long time ago.

I couldn't move. After about three rapid heart beats I still hadn't moved. Time to go, Angie, my girl. I thought to myself. Tick-tock-tick. Hong Kong police.

"Shit." I ran toward the altar, snatched up the sword and shoved it in the bag with Lin Yutang and the foo dog. I slung the whole thing over my shoulder.

Then behind the Buddha I saw a short hall and a door with windows on each side. The sun was up and light streamed through those windows. That was a door to the outside.

I ran toward it with the bag heavy on my shoulder. Yes. Unlocked. Yes. Outside. And yes, a narrow path that looked like it went down the side of the hill. I ran out and then stopped for a couple of heart pounding minutes in the yellow morning sunshine. It was all way too easy. She let me go, damn her. It didn't matter. I was out.

And I'd freakin' remembered where I'd seen Mr. Fingernails aka Mr. Gray Monster. For the first time in a coon's age I felt like laughing.
_

_

Its upper part is not dazzling; its lower part is not obscure. Dimly visible, it cannot be named and returns to that which is without substance.

### Chapter 7

An hour later I wasn't feeling so bubbly. I got down into the city without incident.

The first thing I saw on the edge of town was the burned shell of a house. Recently burned, as in still smoking.

Okay, well, that happened in cities. No big deal. But I remembered the little fires from last night and it made me edgy. Surely nobody in town could have heard the pearl was stolen. And if they did, why would they care enough to burn random things down?

I headed for the waterfront. Shaolong wasn't a big city by Chinese standards. In China, the population of Sacramento County wouldn't make a country village. But Shaolong was big enough and sort of jammed together around the harbor.

After I got into town, one of the first issues I needed to address was the fact that I look so distinctive. I ducked into a beauty shop and stole a black wig. I was in and out before the shampoo lady could as much as look up.

That took care of the mop of orangey red hair. A snatched pair of sunglasses took care of the blue eyes. I still didn't look remotely Asian but people stopped doing a double-take when they caught sight of me.

Thievery isn't actually my vocation. It's really more of a pursuit. It's only my day job. I'm really an actress.

Just kidding.

I found the park where I almost made headlines and took a rest while I looked around. A large group of people were doing tai chi. A guy in a bright blue Mao jacket led them and even though he looked about a hundred and three years old, he was as supple as waving grass.

I watched the traffic go by and thought maybe I should pick up some food. The last thing I'd had to eat was some jail house rice balls. The great advantage of being able to pay for things was that it is easy. Anybody can do it. You don't need special skills. Not to mention that people don't scream and shout at you. They just smile and say "Have a nice day" or the cultural equivalent.

I stood and walked toward the street. I knew should try to sell one of the diamonds before I went much further with my adventures, but I had somebody I needed to track down.

I saw the very person I was looking for before I got to the edge of the park—the rickshaw boy. And I thought I never had any good luck. He lazed beside a row of parked motorbikes. When I climbed into his cab, he jumped to his feet.

"Where to—" he did a double take. "Hey, get the hell out of there." My disguise was wasted on him.

"The price of a trip must be someone tall and tattooed," I said. "Perhaps you will consider this as a substitute." I held up a small diamond between thumb and forefinger. I would rather have offered him paper money. This little diamond was enough to buy him, his ancient motorcycle and several of his relatives, but one does what one must. It flashed fire in the morning sun.

"What do you think that piece of glass is going to buy you?" he sneered.

"A little conversation worth less than a piece of glass," I said to him. "What is conversation but a little air from the lungs?"

I could almost hear the foul language bubbling up in his mind, but his doubt seemed to beat it back. When a disreputable looking American offers you a chip of glass, it's worth the benefit of some doubt.

Maybe.

He hesitated. Above him I saw a long, long, long gray cloud drift over the city. A spark of lightning flashed from the leading edge.

"Perhaps we could have this conversation over in the park," I said. "Someplace secluded." I needed to get out of sight and under the trees seemed to quickest bet.

"Get out of my rickshaw," he said.

I sighed. "Allow me to show you a family heirloom," I said and pulled grandfather's sword out of my bag. The rickshaw boy's eyes got big but so did those of the bodega clerk who saw me through the store window. The clerk grabbed the phone and it wasn't hard to guess who he was calling. Police.

"You're going to cut off my head in public?" The rickshaw boy's eyes darted left and right.

"Take me someplace less public and I won't do it. I only like to behead people with an audience."

Without another word he got on the motorcycle that pulled the cab and roared down the street as I worked to sheathe my sword. I didn't notice he'd flown past the park because I was watching the cloud. It almost certainly had a silver lining and that wasn't good.

The cloud coiled around a tall apartment building and set a string of laundry on fire. I had a feeling that was only a prelude. I saw a tongue of lightning streak out and hit the side of the building like a fire hammer.

Then my view was cut off as we rounded a corner, the cab on two wheels. And then into the open doors of a garage full of scattered, broken motorcycle parts.

The cab stopped so abruptly I almost fell out. The rickshaw boy twisted around in the saddle of his motorcycle to face me.

"The diamond," he said with his hand out.

I'd been gripping it so hard I'd almost cut my hand. "So now it's not a piece of glass?" I said. I held out my hand and he snatched at the glittering thing as if it would evaporate.

"You remember me," I said. I took off the sunglasses.

"The drowned rat prostitute criminal," he said as if it were all one word. "And thief," he said as the diamond disappeared into his pocket.

"The other night you took a rich bastard customer instead of me," I said. "He had long fingernails like a Mandarin." I didn't actually remember the fingernails but I remembered that face. I had tried to remember more about him and hell, those fingernails might be retractable, but describing a face isn't that easy.

"Lyu." He spat the name like a curse.

"Who is he?"

"He's nobody," he said glancing at me sideways.

Sneaky bastard. He knew more than that. He was just trying to get another rock out of me. It was pissing me off. Not a chance!

"Perhaps I will cut off your head and ask your face," I growled. "Tell me who he is."

He gave me a disgusted look. I didn't make a move toward the sword. Neither of us moved for a moment. He was slim but muscular. His baggy Filipino shirt was a faded Hawaiian print. He was older than I first thought, and not as skinny. But I dearly wanted to punch him in the face. I felt like I'd just had a huge jolt of caffeine or adrenaline. I was shaking and my heart thudded.

"That's it? A name?" I snapped. "That diamond is worth enough to buy your ass for the rest of time."

"My ass is not for sale."

"Give my diamond back then." Fury flicked along my nerves like fire.

"I'm too busy fucking your mother."

I launched myself at him clawing for his throat. I knocked him down and we rolled on the floor.

Looking back on it I had no idea why. As insults go, it was in itself an insult. It was so vapid and clichéd it meant he didn't care enough to send the very best. But in spite of that I saw red and murder boiled up in my heart. I didn't even think of using the sword. It wouldn't have been personal enough. All I wanted in the whole wide world was warm blood pouring out of him.

I'm not sure I ever actually hit him. When my mind cleared, the only reason I didn't have my hands around his throat was because he was about six times stronger than I am and he was lying on his back holding me at arms length above him.

I folded up and kneed his elbow. He yelled and dropped me on top of him. I could feel the throb of his heart and my own hammered in my chest. The stolen wig had fallen over my eyes and I shook it off.

WHAT IN THE HELL WAS I DOING?

I thought that just as I realized that the rickshaw boy was yelling something. He was calling for help. When a door burst open in the back of the garage, I realized the words were someone's name.

"Tian! Tian! Tian!"

Someone grabbed my arm and yanked it back. Then my wrist and elbow were bent at angles they really didn't like to go. I froze and realized I really hated lying on top of a strange man who clearly hated me.

The feeling must have been warmly mutual because he threw me off. The person holding my arm let it go before it ripped out of the socket. I rolled and jumped to my feet, my right arm aching and almost useless. My cracked rib reminded me dully of its existence.

I was screwed up in more ways than that, though. This was the bald monk I'd seen before in the tiny temple with Daiyu. He stood there looking at me mildly as if we'd just been chatting. He was even smiling a little.

I was shaking like I'd just been kicked, which I may have been. I didn't remember. My anger had vanished as quickly as it had flared up.

The rickshaw boy got up, fingering the scratches and bruises on his neck. Seeing them embarrassed me. I felt like I should apologize. "I'm sorry," I said before my better and worse self could take a vote on it.

"You'd damned well better be," the rickshaw boy growled. That's another rough translation. He wouldn't swear in front of the monk, but his meaning was crystal clear.

"Gao, it would be wise to accept her apology," said the monk gently.

Gao muttered something to the floor that might have been "apology accepted" or just another curse.

"I don't know what happened," I said to the monk. "I do not normally..."

"Go insane," he finished for me in English, smiling sweetly. Is it just me or did he seem to be under reacting to my sudden insanity?

"You know Daiyu," I said.

"Yes. She is a mutual friend," he said. "I am Monk Tien." He clasped his hands together and bowed to me.

"Uh, yeah, she's a mutual friend," I said. Not really true, but best not to argue.

"Stop that barbaric barking and speak words, you stupid bitch." Gao was ignoring the fact that the monk started it.

Then I felt it again. That wave of murderous rage. I growled and threw a punch at Gao.

The monk trapped my wrist without any seeming effort and in the same easy, almost lazy way he also intercepted the punch Gao was throwing. He looked from one of us to the other and his eyes twinkled as if something were funny.

The fury drained away almost as if the monk were pulling it out of my arm.

"What in the holy hell is going on?" I asked. He knew. He had to.

Before he could answer, someone screamed outside the garage door. The scream was followed by shouting. The shouts—what I could make out—were all curses. Monk Tien darted toward the door. Gao and I followed.

There was a lot more going on outside than a few screams and curses.

Riot. People were smashing things, ripping them apart, beating on each other, red faced and shrieking. One old woman was thrashing a man with her umbrella. He fought back, but he wasn't getting the best of the exchange. The apartment building a few blocks away was belching smoke out of its upper story windows.

The bald brown-robed monk was running around separating people and calming them with a word or two. Surprisingly, Gao was doing something similar. He ran up to the old woman and jerked the umbrella out of her hands. He said something to her that made her blush. He shook the umbrella at her and she turned and ran.

I stood there like a lawn ornament. I thought I should be helping, but these people looked insane and having recently been insane myself I wasn't sure I wanted to wade in.

Then I saw a man rip a small child out of a woman's arms as she screamed abuse at him. He lifted the struggling kid above his head and threw him.

Oh shit. I ran flat out and managed to catch the kid in my arms as I fell forward and landed painfully on my knees and elbows. The kid wet his pants. I came close to doing it myself.

The mother stomped over and jerked the kid out of my arms. "Let him go you leprous whore," she said. She dragged the soggy kid off into the crowd.

"You're welcome!" I shouted after her.

I got to my feet, rubbing my sore elbows and looked around. Monk Tien was shoving a yelling man into a car, talking softly back to the garbled noise coming out of the man's mouth. Gao, the rickshaw boy stood on the sidewalk in front of a drugstore clasping the wrist of a teenage girl. He had his other hand on the chest of a boy about the same age, talking fast and hard. The girl wrenched herself free and dove for the throat of the boy. Gao snatched at her but missed and the two teenagers rolled on the sidewalk, clearly trying to strangle each other. Gao grabbed them each by the arm and pulled them apart, clearly stronger than he looked.

Then a middle aged man ran out of the drugstore screaming something about "my precious daughter." His precious daughter was trying to claw Gao's eyes out with the help of her boyfriend. The father of the precious daughter was carrying a baseball bat and obviously planned to strike a home run with Gao's head.

I ran up and slammed into the precious daughter's dad, spoiling his aim. Then I had his full attention. He shouted an incoherent stream of abuse at me and raised the bat again. I barely managed to catch it as it swung heavily at my head. It slammed into my hands, jarring my entire body. I clung to it desperately.

I happened to notice the girl burst into tears and suddenly her boyfriend looked embarrassed. Gao released them and they ran off together. Meanwhile I was hanging onto the bat while dear old dad cursed and tried to jerk it back.

"I could use some help here!" I yelled at Gao. He did the most irritating thing he could possibly have done. He grinned.

Then he snatched the bat, pulled it out of dear dad's hands and threw it hard across the street where it smashed the window of a tea shop. Oops. Dad ran after the bat like it was the precious thing and ignored the fleeing daughter.

"You kept him from flattening my head!" Gao laughed. How could he laugh? I was shaking from the adrenaline and the relief. Then I thought of something.

"You owe me," I said, ignoring the fact that technically we had saved each other. "Tell me where you took Lyu, the guy with the fingernails."

He laughed again, then hesitated, still smiling. He seemed to think it over.

"Pine Mountain Monastery," he said at last.

"Thanks!" I said. I didn't totally believe him, but I'd go with it.

"I will convey your greeting the next time I fuck your mother," he said then he turned and disappeared in the throng.

The street darkened like a cloud had covered the sun. I looked up. The sun was still there because it glinted off silver scales. A long, long, long horizontal column of scales, sliver bright, dazzling to look at. A rumble of thunder shook the street.

I dropped and rolled underneath a nearby melon stand. The silver dragon hadn't seen me.

I was sure of that because I was still alive.

After a micro eternity the silver body passed and the almost feather-like tail snaked between the buildings, trailing fury and chaos in its wake.

I started to roll back out from under the melon stand but then I stopped. A blue van drove up with the character for "police" on the side. That's one Chinese character I can read very well. The van was closely followed by a blue SUV. The back of the van opened and—not a big surprise—a half dozen cops jumped out. The rioters who noticed them fled. The ones too busy wailing on each other got a cop referee. The SUV had a couple more cops and Derkein, still in his red jacket. He joined in the arresting and breaking up action.

It was ballsy, I thought. I'd never heard of a chief of police getting his hands dirty this way. I carefully scooted a little deeper under the melon stand. Derkein taking the trouble to actually do police work was admirable, but it needed to not include me.

I enjoyed watching him work. He never got angry. He seemed to break up fights just with the force of his personality. Very cool. The street got quieter and quieter. The police had handcuffed and shoved the worst of the combatants into the van. Derkein, Monk Tien and the cops seemed to be talking sense into the rest of them. Then people started nodding and looking embarrassed. A few began cleaning things up.

It occurred to me whoever owned the melon stand would be back momentarily if he or she wasn't one of the ones in the van.

I eased to the very back where the vendor would stand. Then I crawled on hands and knees toward a gap out of sight of the street.

That's where Daiyu sat in black leather, her dragon tattooed face composed in the deep peace of meditation.

She turned her midnight gaze on me and then stood.

"You will come with me."

_

_

Between yea and nay how much difference is there? Between good and evil how great is the distance? What others fear, one must also fear.

### Chapter 8

I thought about running. I looked at Daiyu's tall, slender back and discarded the idea. It had taken her, what, a little over an hour to find me? Where would running get me?

I followed. She led me around the corner and then around another. I was back at the motorcycle garage. My duffel bag was still flopped in the seat of the rickshaw. I'd forgotten it existed. I grabbed it as I passed.

Daiyu went in the door Monk Tien had come out of. We were in the tiny temple with the giant Buddha. Daiyu bowed to the Buddha. I did the same. When in Rome. Then she led me to a small side door.

Like the Tardis the temple was bigger on the inside. This was an open, clear room well-lit by small windows high on the wall. The room looked more Japanese than Chinese.

"Please sit. I will make tea while we talk." I noticed we were back to American English.

I looked around for a place to sit. There were thin bamboo mats on the floor but no chairs or any furniture except a tiny kitchen in one corner and a nearly bare altar with just one candle and a scroll hanging behind it depicting Bodhidharma crossing the mountains. I'd seen a million cheap copies of that picture. This one didn't look fake.

I picked a random spot and sat. The room was so clean and pretty, it made me wish for a bath.

"You're going to ship me off to Hong Kong. What is there to discuss?"

She filled a kettle and lit a flame under it.

"You are a thief," she said over her shoulder.

"We covered that."

"And you are innocent of the murder of Lihua."

"We covered that too. Derkein doesn't care."

She set little cups on a tray. "Derkein doesn't care," she said and then pinned me with that look. "But I do."

My heart skipped a beat. I hadn't noticed how hope had completely left me until that moment. She was going to send me straight to jail, right? Now hope sent up a few green shoots. "What do you mean?"

"You saw who killed her. You watched it happen."

"Uh, yeah," I said.

She didn't respond until she set a tray with pot and cups in front of me. She knelt with the grace of a Geisha which must have been tough to do in those tight leather pants.

"Long-ju is a very kind and loving person," she said.

In my mind's eye I saw the lightning bolt blast the side of the apartment building. "I'm sure—deep down—he is," I said.

Daiyu sighed and took a minute sip of her tea. "Right now he is grieving."

"So do I hide out until he's done grieving?"

"The best thing to do is send you to the Hong Kong police. Derkien is right about that."

"What's the next best thing?"

Daiyu fixed me with that steady, focused attention. "There is no next best thing," she said. "If you are on the island he WILL find you and in his wrath he WILL tear you to pieces."

"The Hong Kong police are beginning to sound a little better to me."

"Good." She paused and seemed to turn inward. "Because if he destroys you, it will destroy him."

"That would be terrible," I said weakly.

"Yes. I will find the pearl and restore it to him. I will find Lihua's murderer and lay him at Long-ju's feet. If he has killed you, the remorse will destroy whatever is left of him. I mustn't allow that to happen."

"No, you mustn't." I still felt wobbly but, in spite of everything, I still wanted that pearl. Every cell in my body wanted it. What kind of hold did that thing have over me? I do get irrational cravings but this pearl thing was insane. I picked up my tiny teacup and downed it in a couple of gulps.

"Tell me what he looked like," Daiyu said and elegantly refilled both our cups.

I thought about stalling by asking who she was talking about, but I decided against it.

"He had brown hair, brown eyes and looked Chinese," I said. She didn't look annoyed or impatient at my sarcasm, merely thoughtful. "He had insanely long fingernails." I added. I was opening my mouth to say "The rickshaw boy told me his name is Lyu" but thought better of it. I just have too long a history of not sharing information with anybody. I might need that name or the name of his destination as bargaining chips later. There was no way to know.

Her eyes narrowed a little. She could tell I was holding something back.

"Was his face round or long?" she asked.

"Not long but not moon-faced either. Rather handsome, actually."

"What was he wearing?"

"A robe, kind of a traditional Mandarin thing."

"The color?"

I thought about that. It didn't have a color I could pin down. "It was an icky gray."

"And the monster's scales?"

"The same thing. Gray. Not a silvery gray like that thing over the city. Gray like lead."

And on and on. She probed and asked and probed more. She made me describe the entire episode over and over, asking the same questions in different ways. After a while she got to her feet as gracefully as rising smoke and drifted over to refill the kettle and make fresh tea.

Then she settled down across from me again.

"You saw the insanity in the street," she said. It wasn't a question. To my great relief she was changing the subject.

"Yes," I said. "I felt it. It's horrible. What is it?"

"Long-ju lost two precious pearls in one day. His suffering is like a poisonous cloud. It will infect everything on the island until nothing else lives. And then, perhaps, he will die of the poison also."

"So you're saying that big silver dragon is controlled by Mr. Long-ju."

Daiyu actually looked a little surprised. "No," she said. "The silver dragon is Long-ju."

I knew that. My mind would have none of it but my gut knew it. I wanted to close my mental eyes and not think about what she just said. What she'd just said also hurt my mental ears. But...

"Mr. Long-ju is a dragon sometimes," I said.

"No, he is a dragon all of the time, but sometimes wears a human shape like a suit of clothes."

That hurt my actual ears. "The murderer is a dragon all the time and the guy with the long fingernails was just his human form," I said. "You're making Hong Kong seem a lot more attractive." My lips were a little numb.

"Your thieving should be punished but there's more to this than you understand. I may need your help."

"I'm not sure how good I would be at slaying dragons," I said. "I think you've got the wrong girl."

She shook her head. It made the dragon tattoo on her neck coil like it was alive.

"A dragon can only die by suicide or by being torn apart by another dragon. Only a dragon can kill a dragon."

"Oh, well, darn," I said. "I guess you'll have to turn me in to the cops."

Her smile completely changed her face. She should do it more often.

Then I had a thought. "Didn't Derkein talk to Long-ju? Surely by now he should know what really happened. Why come after me?"

"Because he refused to believe a dragon did this. He believes you killed his beloved and he believes you have the pearl. If Derkein couldn't persuade him otherwise, nothing will convince him."

Somewhere along in there I lost it. It was all too much. I shook my head trying to clear it of all the insanity I'd just been calmly discussing.

Stubbornness, thy name is Angie. "Dragons are a myth," I said, even though I knew the monster I'd seen with the three-foot teeth and the nine-foot whiskers...wasn't a myth. My mind had kept slipping around it but it wasn't a CGI dinosaur and it wasn't a movie.

"You are very nearly correct," Daiyu said. "There are only nine of us left."

"Us?" I squeaked.

"Yes. Once there were many of us. But Cixi, the last Empress of China persuaded a traitor to kill nearly all the dragons in China. Only a few of us escaped." Daiyu took a tiny sip of tea. "She would have nothing rival her power."

"So there are only a few left?"

"Yes, we fled here. Heaven took her revenge. Mao Zedong was born the same year."

I suddenly couldn't catch my breath. Oh, yeah, nine dragons. Nine real dragons. Only an idiot wouldn't know that. My hand shook so hard I was spilling the tea. It was hot. I made a serious effort to calm down.

Then Daiyu's lean, leathery form became indistinct and incoherent. The room filled with sea air. She disappeared into thick black mist which filled the room, surrounded me and obscured everything. Just as with Mr. Gray Monster, except in reverse, the mist solidified. In front of me, all around me, coiled an enormous black dragon. Its head was longer than I am tall. Its eyes were amber and the size of car tires. They were the eyes I'd seen while lying on the deck of the fishing boat. They were the eyes that regarded me from the midst of the storm.

Now, they studied me inscrutably. I got to my feet, ready to run, but the shiny black coils filled the room and surrounded me like a giant anaconda. Her claws were at least three feet long and as sharp as swords.

To say I was terrified would be to damn with faint horror. I couldn't move. I couldn't breathe. My knees wanted to buckle but I didn't let them because I wanted to run. I would have run if I could have taken a step in any direction.

"Dragons," I said. "Fair enough." I had trouble pushing air past my vocal cords. I don't know if it was a smile but she opened her mouth and, though I thought her claws looked long and sharp, they were nothing compared to her teeth.

"Yes, dragons," she said. Then the room filed with mist and the scaly coils disappeared into it. When the air cleared, I stood looking at a young woman who sat cross-legged in front of me. Dressed in black leather, she was tall by Chinese standards. The dragon tattoo coiled around her neck and up the side of her face. It seemed to be keeping an eye on me.
_

_

What cannot be seen is called evanescent; what cannot be heard is called rarefied; what cannot be touched is called minute. These three cannot be fathomed and so they are confused and looked upon as one.

### Chapter 9

A while after Daiyu condensed back down into a human I managed to unfreeze enough to sink back down on the bamboo mat. The cold teapot sat between us. Her fingernails were filed to points. I'd never noticed that before.

I pressed my hands against my knees because I was shaking so hard I was afraid if I moved much more than that, I'd fall to pieces.

She just sat in front of me quietly cross-legged, sipping cold tea and carefully not looking at me. The adrenaline rush slowly let me go, but I was still afraid to move. The dragon tattoo that coiled around her neck and up her face, well, it now looked almost asleep. Maybe it was. My disbelief had been beaten into abject submission.

When I could talk again, I wanted to use the moment of lucidity to plead for my life. I decided against it. Other than the toothy dragon grin she hadn't threatened me and I didn't want to give her any ideas.

Then suddenly she lifted her chin and seemed to be listening intently.

"Give me all your diamonds," she said.

"Go to hell." I said it politely. I swear I did.

The sun was blotted out of the windows followed by a roar, not far away, loud enough to deafen a rock star.

"Mr. Long-ju," Daiyu said as if she hadn't heard the roar. "He can smell the diamonds."

I jumped to my feet and dug the diamonds out of my pocket. Another roar shivered the wall, it was closer. The sudden silence afterward made my ears ring.

"We need to get the hell out of here!" I said in a stage whisper.

She shook her head. "He won't destroy the meditation hall."

She took my duffel bag, slit the bottom with a fingernail and poured out the rest of the diamonds along her foo dog, the volume of Lin Yutang and the little carved black dragon. I hadn't realized that last item was still in there. I gaped at her.

"How did you know there were more diamonds?"

"I can smell them too." The pocket of her leather pants, like the Tardis and this meditation hall, were also clearly bigger in the inside. She pulled out a roll of cash, picked it up and the little black dragon from the pile in front of her and held them out to me. "You must go to the Street of Blue Cranes," she said. "I will send someone to look after you and help you escape."

I took the money and the trinket and shoved them in my pocket without another word. I thought of counting the money, but I knew it was my wad and that of the dead Mr. Roundhead.

I watched dumbly as she pulled my grandfather's sword out of the bag. She strolled—I swear it was causal—over to the bare little altar. She plucked a sword and scabbard out of the air. She replaced the blade in the scabbard with Grandfather's sword. Then it vanished.

"What in the hell are you doing!" It was my own roar, if very pale and thin by comparison to Mr. Long-ju's effort.

She strolled back to me holding nothing in her hands.

"This is one of my family heirlooms," she said, perfectly echoing what I'd said to Gao earlier.

She draped something over me. When it touched me, it became visible. Grandfather's sword in a black sheath, with a coiled black dragon carved on it. It hung from a strap like a ninja sword.

"He might also sense the sword because it has Lihua's blood on it, but I will not force you to part with it," Daiyu said. "Treat it with great care and respect. Your grandfather's sword was made to slay evil but was forced to drink innocent blood. It is very dangerous now."

She scooped up all the diamonds and then headed for what I swear was a blank wall. A door opened at her touch.

"Go," she said. "I will placate Long-ju for as long as I can. Wait at the Street of the Blue Cranes."

I looked at the door. Nasty-assed cobwebs decorated a set of moldy old stairs leading down into the dark.

* * *

For several yards the tunnel was cow-belly black. I groped along a wall that I would rather have not touched. I smacked into another wall. It was damp. I hated that. I was forced to go left or right. I chose right. It turned out to be a good choice, well, sort of. The good news was an archway that had enough light on the other side to look dimly gray. The bad news was the smell would knock you over. It was the sewer.

Breathing through the nose was an almost painful experience, but I couldn't bear the thought of sucking THOSE molecules into my mouth, considering what they were molecules of. I began to curse Daiyu and her bogus escape. She did this deliberately. I was certain.

A grating every few yards kept the sewer from being pitch black. Nearly every grating opened in a heavily populated area. That was a bad thing. It was several hours until dark. That was a bad thing. It was all made worse by the fact that I was hungry and I'd had three cups of tea which had the usual effect. I did not want to squat in this nasty place.

I started whispering curses out loud as my anger rose. I walked faster and faster skipping around lumps of God only knows what. Electricity crackled along every nerve. Before long I was running and screaming abuse at Daiyu. I wanted nothing but her blood. I wanted my teeth in her throat. I wanted to tear her to pieces.

A black shape appeared in front of me. I whipped out the sword and slashed at it screaming.

Then it all stopped. What. The. Hell. The dark shape was a rag dangling from a grating. It was now two rags. I stared at it shaking.

I had to get in front of this. I had to stop letting an overgrown lizard manipulate me. Had to.

And if it caused a riot I had to get out of this sewer. I climbed the nearest ladder and pushed the grating up.

The riot was already in progress. I saw the police van trying to push its way down the street through the people rubbernecking or running around screaming.

I ran hard down the street away from the van. I was getting stares again. I needed to steal another wig. To these people I must look like an ambulatory lollypop. Cherry flavor.

When I felt like I'd put enough distance between me and the madness, I found a public toilet and took care of my most pressing problem.

I dropped into a store and bought an honest-to-God Coca-cola. It was cold but didn't taste right. I also bought a couple packages of cookies. Breakfast of champions.

When I paid, I asked "Can you tell me where to find Pine Mountain Monastery?"

A middle aged woman took my money. Her eyes were as hard as two black stones.

"No," she said. She shoved my change at me. "Have a nice day," she added.

I took my stuff and cleared out. I actually bought a hat from a street vendor. Paid for it and everything. See? I can be honest. Sometimes.

I saw a motorcycle rickshaw go through an intersection a few yards away. I couldn't tell if it was Gao. Something about that guy bothered me. I couldn't put my finger on it. Rickshaw drivers were about a half step above street beggars. Poverty breeds crime. For me, dishonesty was more of a turn of mind. For a rickshaw boy, it would be a revenue stream.

It was more than that, though. Why did he call me a thief? Maybe one thief can spot another.

I munched my cookies thoughtfully. Then I saw Monk Tien. He saw me before I could dodge out of sight.

"Good morning," he said.

"Good morning," I said.

"You did very well earlier, saving that child," he said.

"Hey, no problem." I answered. Now go away, I added mentally.

"Daiyu asked me to look after you," he said.

"Did she? I don't really need it."

"Most likely not," he said with a pleasant little smile.

I wanted to ask him about the monastery and he'd probably tell me. But it would take him about five minutes to pass that info on to the Dragon Lady.

"I work alone," I said.

"I can see that," he replied. He was matching my stride step by step even though he wasn't much bigger than my small sea captain. I realized I actually had no idea where I was going but I sped up. I turned left, then right and then left again.

"So I don't need you to look after me,"

"I agree," he said. He didn't break stride. Even though we were side by side, I felt like I was running and he was chasing me.

Then I saw with a shock that I was at the Street of Blue Cranes. I'd been leading HIM. Yeah, right.

Now, I really needed to get rid of my little bald shadow.

"So we both agree I don't need you. Please go away." That's a loose translation of what I actually said. I added all kinds of polite and elaborate verbal curly-cues which Chinese has in abundance. I turned to walk away. Then I thought of something. "Tell Daiyu—" When I looked back he was gone.

Okay. Good. I must have added enough of the right kind of curly-cues or I'd pissed him off. Either way, good.

When I turned to get out of this cursed street, I saw the cops. One of them smiled broadly when he saw me. Not a common reaction. He pointed at me and then pointed at the sidewalk in front of his feet. That gesture was a bit more familiar.

I smiled back at him but didn't mean it. If curses could kill, Daiyu was dying in agony right now.

"Hey, leprous diseased whore!"

Who else could that voice be addressing? I turned. Gao grinned evilly. I jumped into the seat of his rickshaw. "Go!" I spat.

I didn't actually expect him to help me, but he must have disliked the police more than me because he roared off at full speed.

The familiar two-toned police whistle shrieked behind me. In a few hundred rapid heart beats the police were lost behind us in the traffic and I hoped I'd never see the Street of Blue Cranes again.

When we turned enough street corners that we couldn't hear the police, Gao slowed down to a less breakneck pace.

"Where are we going?" I called up to him.

He glanced back and shrugged. "Wharf?"

I realized we were in the waterfront market. I recognized the vendor who sold pooch on a stick.

"Not yet. Take me to Pine Mountain Monastery."

He smiled. His teeth were broken and jagged. "You are one crazy bitch."

"My opinion of you is quite similar," I said. It was the closet Chinese equivalent of "Right back atcha." He laughed.

"Pine Mountain Monastery," I repeated.

He shrugged again. "It hasn't been a monastery for a hundred years."

"That's not a huge surprise. What is it really?

"A prison."

* * *

Prison, I thought as he negotiated the city streets and then up a barren hill. The road snaked up and up through dry gray boulders. I'd asked a guy I barely knew who obviously didn't like me, to take me to a prison.

I was glad I had an invisible sword. I might need it. Once we were up on the mountain, the city below seemed very peaceful. There was no silver dragon cloud in the sky. I knew in my gut it wouldn't last, but for now it was all good.

When the barbed wire ramparts above a beautiful stone castle heaved into view, I began to question the wisdom of my current plans. Pine Mountain Monastery had sounded all cool and peaceful. Pine Mountain Prison was giving me the willies, but it was all I had. It was follow this little trail or get on a boat with nothing. I'd done that before but ... it's not that I cared about those diamonds that much, but that pearl.... It was more than just valuable. It was more than beautiful. It ... was it worth risking my life? I told my better angels to shut the hell up.

Gao, being no moron, didn't go directly up to the big iron gates that stood where quaint wooden ones had probably been a hundred years ago. Before we got there, he pulled off the road and cut the noisy motorcycle. He ordered me to get out of the cab and I helped him hide the whole rig behind a pile of rocks and stunted scrub trees.

"You owe me another diamond," he said.

"Screw you," I replied but I did pull out a hundred dollar bill and hand it to him. It was probably worth ten times what I owed him.

"Paper?" he scowled. "I wipe my ass with paper."

"If you plan to wipe your ass with that, hand it back."

He shoved it in the pocket of his baggy Bermuda shorts. "I'll save it for later," he said.

I eased around the rocks and looked up at the prison gates. A high, thin tower above it went up almost to the clouds. The whole thing was surrounded by a wall and there were guards along the top. I could see their helmets and the barrels of their nasty-looking rifles. I must admit, though, that all rifles look nasty to me.

"I need to get in there," I said more to myself than to him.

He snorted. "Damn. Those cops on the Street of Blue Cranes would have been a big help."

I shot him what I hoped was a withering glance. "That's so funny, I'm sure I will laugh at it tomorrow."

He laughed at it now.

Then a thought sliced through my irritation.

"When you delivered the guy with the fingernails, did you drop him off at these gates? Or is there another entrance?"

Ha! His expression froze! Then it relaxed into a slight smile. Apparently his better angels talk to him too.

"Give me another diamond and I'll show you where."

"Show me where and I'll give you another diamond—if I get in safely." I didn't have another diamond, but he didn't now that.

"And you are a diseased, lying whore," he said still smiling his jagged grin. Insults seemed to roll as easily off his tongue as they did off mine. I like that in a man.

"So we have a deal?" I asked.

He shrugged. "I can't take you around by the road, the guards will see us. So we go this way." He jerked his thumb at the rocky wilderness behind him.

"Fine. We have a deal?"

He didn't answer but took off picking his way through the broken rocks.

It was quite a hike. For most of it I worried he was taking me on a wild goose chase so he could roll me for my cash or maybe just have a good horse laugh at my expense.

Eventually, though, we found a stand of actual pine trees and he led me into the thicket. As we walked under the trees, the forest became more tended and park-like. Before long we came to an opening in the trees that looked down on what once must have been the monastery garden. The road—which would have been more convenient—had narrowed and become a driveway. A black sedan sat parked beside an open round gate.

"That's where I dropped him off," Gao said with a jerk of his head.

"Thank you and have a nice day," I said in English and then took off toward the gate.

"Wait!"

I was pretty much expecting that. I turned with my eyebrows innocently raised. "Huh?"

"The diamond!" Gao held out his hand and wiggled his fingers in a "gimme" gesture.

"I said after I'm in."

He laughed at me. "You think I'm either going to go in there with you or wait out here for you?"

"You get your diamond after I'm in," I said. Since I didn't have a diamond, pretending to be a dolt was all I had.

"You smoking sack of pig shit, you don't—" Suddenly he froze. Every line of his body seemed to be listening hard.

I almost said something, but decided to shut up and listen too.

Something moved in the trees and it wasn't a breeze. I pulled Grandfather's sword out of the invisible scabbard which made it, well, visible.

The rickshaw boy jumped back.

"Where the hell did you get that?" he whispered.

"None of your business," I said. I'd have been a lot happier if it was a gun. On the other hand shooting people isn't my style.

The trees rustled as if the wind only concentrated on one or two trees at a time and it seemed to be heading our way. Whatever it was, it was big. A thought of the silver dragon flashed through my mind. No, this wasn't that. He'd be blasting the trees with lightning bolts, not sneaking through the branches.

"Do you have any idea what that—" I said as I turned to Gao. He was gone. There wasn't even a puff of smoke where he'd been standing. I hadn't heard him take off but whatever was in the trees was a bigger problem.

I was still looking around for him when something heavy fell on top of me.
_

_

This is called the shape that has no shape, the image that is without substance. This is called indistinct and shadowy. Go up to it and you will not see its head; follow behind it and you will not see its tail.

### Chapter 10

I lay under the trees not able to move, a pair of hands around my throat. I peered at the dragon-tattooed face above me.

"Hey, Daiyu," I said. "Can I have one of those diamonds back? I need to pay off the rickshaw boy."

She frowned. The dragon head above her eye seemed to glare at me malevolently.

"What rickshaw boy?" she said.

"Well, the one that was here a little while ago," I choked out past a not quite closed off windpipe. I thought for a split second she was going to snap off my head but she turned me loose.

"What are you doing here?" she asked.

"You scared the shit out of me," I said rubbing my sore neck.

"I intended to," she said. "What are you doing here?" she repeated. I couldn't think of a plausible lie on such short notice but I thought of something at the last instant that wasn't the whole truth.

"I got an anonymous tip that the pearl thief might be here." I pointed to the prison below. Maybe my mouth just isn't capable of the whole truth. Did you ever think of that?

Daiyu didn't answer. She merely raised her eyebrows a millimeter.

I felt a need to fill that piercing silence. "After all, I have a murder wrap hanging over my head."

Silence and an inky gaze that went all the way to infinity.

"I want to clear my name and save the city before the silver dragon destroys it." I tried to sound a little tired and resigned. World weary.

Silence. I couldn't look at her. She seemed to be waiting for something. Spiky black hair, black dragon tattoo, black leather. It was like talking to an obsidian totem pole.

"The pearl..."

I jumped. It spoke!

"...is very precious and very rare. It is not something you may possess."

Now it was me that was struck dumb.

But not for long. "I agree it's beautiful and probably valuable," I said when I found my voice. "But the city..." I gestured vaguely in the direction of town. "He's going to destr—"

"Tell me about the rickshaw boy." She'd interrupted mid-word.

"His name is Gao." I was going to try to work the "anonymous source" line but I couldn't figure out how to do it. "He picked up a man who looked like the man who stole the pearl." I should have lied. I should have said anything but that. Since then I've come up with a half-dozen plausible lies that would have worked perfectly.

"Why didn't you tell me about him immediately?" If she'd been a cop it would have been a rhetorical question. Dragons don't bother with rhetorical questions, I have discovered.

"I didn't remember I'd seen him until later." Good lord, I didn't believe me and I knew that was true!

"And the thief was brought here?"

"Yes, that's what Gao told me."

She nodded sharply.

A cloud covered the sun and a burst of thunder shivered the trees. Christ. You never get used to it. I looked up and there was the long, long, long, cloud covering the sun. The cloud had silver scales and eyes the size of car tires.

Daiyu grabbed my arm so hard I thought the bone would crack. "Come!" she snapped. "He will sense me."

I blinked and the world vanished. When I blinked again I was lying flat on my back and the world was still gone. Gone, but smelled like musty old earth and I was on hard stone and it was cold. Was sitting up an option? Did it matter? I decided to sit up whether it mattered or not. I had hands and a face because I rubbed the latter with the former. I checked for legs. I still had them.

"Hello?" I called. I could hear myself and I echoed a little.

"Hush!"

I took a deep breath and slowly let it out.

So Daiyu was in the black nowhere with me. I waited. I could hear rustling and pebbles rattling against each other.

Then a faint glow illuminated Daiyu's face. The dragon tattoo was indistinct. She was blowing on something cupped in her hands.

I got to my feet. I was shaky but standing worked.

She had a lump of rock or coal or something in her hands and as she blew on it, it glowed brighter and brighter. Okaaaayyy. She could turn into a dragon, she could teleport, why would it be a shock that she could blow on a rock and make it glow? I watched, fascinated. The rock was looking a little melty but it was putting off a decent light and some warmth also, which was a good thing. This cave, or whatever it was, gave me the shivers.

"Isn't that burning your hands?" She gave me a look that shouted "shut up!"

Yes, Ma'am. Shutting up, Ma'am.

She strode off down a tunnel or cavern or something. Her legs were a lot longer than mine and she was hurrying. If I didn't run, I'd be alone in the dark. I ran. I couldn't see my feet or the walls, but her outline glowed in the reddish light and I ran after that.

Not being much of a distance runner, I started falling behind. My legs burned. I'm in pretty good shape but I'm no athlete. I'd been jogging along behind her for God-only-knew how long but I'd guess half an hour. The cave, the tunnel was endless. I wasn't.

"Stop!" I called hoarsely with all the breath I had left. I wouldn't have heard me, but she did. She stopped and turned. The light etched her face in reddish black shadows. The stone had melted into a gloopy liquid in her hand. That's got to hurt, I thought. If it did, not a trace of it reflected in her face.

I stood and panted while she simply watched me. When my breathing caught up with my oxygen needs I asked her how much further.

"Not much further, then we climb."

"Climb?" My heart sank. "Can't we just fly? You know, do that thing you do?"

"What thing would that be?"

"You turn into smoke and then you turn into a dragon. Dragons fly. Why climb when you can fly?"

She tilted her head slightly and then said "Smoke?"

"Well, not exactly smoke. Maybe a mist. When you went through the change you became a big black cloud of smoke and then a big black dragon. Didn't you know that?"

She shrugged off that question as if brushing off a fly. She seemed to examine her own mind. Hush, ladies and gentlemen, Madam Daiyu is thinking.

I waited.

"Tell me again the color of the dragon who stole the pearl and killed Lihua."

I shrugged. "I told you. It was a kind of icky gray like lead. His robe was the same color." Then I realized Daiyu never wore anything but black and I never saw Mr. Long-ju in anything but light gray or silver and his cloud was silver.

"But his smoke was green," I said.

She favored me with one of her rare smiles. "That is the answer to my very next question."

"Is there a green dragon?" I asked, but I knew the answer.

"Yes."

I grinned back at her. "In that case, do that thing you do and let's go get the bastard."

She pierced me with a dark gaze. "Don't do that," she said. "Don't call him that. Lyu is a young dragon and wild, perhaps even foolish. He is the tangled weeds in the valley, beautiful, but untame. I have suspected he was the thief but not a murderer..." she shook her head. "Not a murderer," she whispered almost to herself.

"We still have to go get him," I said. "We have to do something."

"Getting him, as you call it, will not be easy. And I can't do that thing I do. This is the belly of Yan-wu, the white dragon. He sleeps and we must not disturb his dreams."

"Yeah, that would be a really bad thing."

She ignored my sarcasm and turned. "Come," she said.

"Yes, Ma'am."

She walked slow enough that I didn't have to run, and it turned out to not be much farther.

The climb wasn't that bad either. She shoved the glob of liquid rock into her mouth like anybody else would hold a flashlight between their teeth to free up their hands.

Then she hoisted me up the rock rubble like I didn't weight more than a child. On the way up, it occurred to me that if we'd just been in the belly of the white dragon, this must be his asshole, but I didn't share that joke with my companion.

Finally there was very dim light ahead and Daiyu spat out the molten rock. We emerged in some kind of basement. There were slits high up that let in faint light.

She led me up some steps and through a heavy wooden door. Then we were in a broad stone compound with high walls. It took me a second to realize where we were. The sun was getting low in the sky, but after all the darkness it was dazzling.

Then I heard the familiar double-toned whistle and a shout.

"You bitch!" I yelled.

We were back at the Pine Mountain prison. We were actually inside the compound. Uniformed men with guns stampeded at us from every direction. "Bitch, bitch, bitch!"
_

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Your name or your person, which is dearer? Your person or your goods, which is worth more? Gain or loss, which is a greater bane?

### Chapter 11

"Bitch, bitch, BITCH!" My brains were so rattled I couldn't think of anything else to say. And besides, that word was expressing my feelings perfectly.

"Please calm yourself," Daiyu said from the depths of her own perfect, and yet irritating, calm.

Bitch, bitch, bitch, I thought silently and tried to take some calming breaths. It didn't work. Before this little exchange was finished we were surrounded by lots and lots of really big guns. I'm pretty sure there were men attached, but I don't remember them clearly.

Daiyu looked at the guards like they were Sunday afternoon picnic companions. One man emerged from the blur of weaponry by lowering his gun and stepping forward.

"You are under arrest," he said. He didn't sound 100% confident that was actually the case.

"Take me to Lyu," Daiyu said.

Our arresting officer seemed relieved to hear her say that. However, I noticed he didn't order his men to stop pointing their rifles at us. Actually I noticed their rifles were pointed mostly at me.

We all trooped through a wide door at the back of the compound. Daiyu led the way, seeming to have forgotten that she was under arrest. I walked beside her but I twitched every time I thought about those gun barrels at my back.

Now we were surrounded by bars and cells filled with men who all watched us keenly. Prison is boring. We were a show. I expected to hear a bunch of crude cat calls, but all the prisoners were watching us silently as if waiting for the next thing to happen. Silent. Were they a little scared? It was hard to tell. Maybe they knew it wasn't good to catcall a dragon. Not good for the health. Lots of the inmates had tattoos on their faces and necks but nothing as elegant as Daiyu's.

We were herded onto an ancient metal elevator with as many guards as they could stuff in with us. I was smashed against the back wall and could hear but not see the door clang shut. The elevator rose with a rusty rattle.

Nobody was pressed against Daiyu. I could feel the tremor of the guards' fear. They seemed to be more scared than I was and I would have not thought that was possible.

"I hope this is part of your plan," I said to Daiyu in English.

She gave me one of her silent, opaque looks.

"Dragons may be hard to kill," I said. "But humans are highly perishable." She didn't respond and I didn't really expect her to.

The elevator shuddered to a stop and the doors creaked open.

Daiyu's house and Long-ju's house were big, open, airy and elegant. Opulent even.

This had all the elegance of an airplane hangar. It was built on the same plan as the other dragon houses, but was bare and undecorated. The equivalent of Long-ju's soaring atrium should have been beautiful but there was no sculpture, no nuttin' just the empty room opening out to the empty sky.

Our guards prodded us across into what would have been the dining room in Long-ju's house. They didn't come in with us. In fact they retreated back to the elevator.

Two people sat cross-legged facing each other with a low table and a shogi board between them. One of them was the pearl thief. His fingernails were still nine inch talons and he manipulated the game pieces with chop sticks.

His companion had a much more sensible manicure. But, that was all that was sensible about her. She had blue hair and her face emerged from a collar of blue tattoos. Like Daiyu, her tattoos had a dragon theme but they coiled around her neck all claws and spines. When she caught sight of us she jumped to her feet. Her body became indistinct and a little smoky. Lyu jerked his head sharply, indicating the archway open to the sky. Blue girl nodded and expanded into a cloud of blue smoke. She flowed out the wide archway and became a glittering collection of sapphire jewels against the sky.

It was unsettling to say the least.

Lyu turned, smiled and rose to his feet as gracefully as ever I had seen the Black Lady do it. He was wearing khaki cargo pants and a tight dark green t-shirt that said "You are crunchy and good with ketchup."

"Welcome to my home Long Daiyu," he said. "Please sit. I will call for tea." He gestured to the recently vacated cushion with his wickedly clawed fingers.

He didn't look at me or acknowledge that I was standing there. Apparently I was just so much chopped liver. That was annoying.

"We meet again," I said.

He turned to me, surprised as if I'd popped up out of the floor. "Ah, yes," he said. "The thief. I have a cell already prepared for you."

I turned to Daiyu in mock astonishment. "I think we have a pot-kettle situation here."

Mr. Fingernails laughed. "The black pot calls the kettle black!"

I'd made my smart-ass remark in English and he'd responded in Chinese.

"Yes, we are both thieves," I said "But you murdered a nice old woman."

The air suddenly went hot like someone had opened an oven.

"Shut up, Angie," Daiyu said.

I didn't feel like shutting up but that hot breeze was coming from Mr. Fingernails, so I did as I was told. His eyes seemed to grow and flicker with a bitter light.

"Why?" Daiyu said to him.

"It is the way of heaven to take what has in excess in order to make good what is deficient," he replied.

"Why?" Daiyu asked again.

He didn't smile and didn't spout poetry. He wasn't disappearing exactly but he was getting a little indistinct. A green mist seemed to rise up off him.

"I am wise in silence," he said. "I speak without words." He'd used words to tell us that. I didn't think it was wise to point it out.

"It doesn't matter why," I said to Daiyu. "He did it. He's the guy."

She didn't look at me or say a word. She studied Mr. Fingernails with that singular undivided gaze of hers. He didn't seem to enjoy it any more than I did.

"Where is the pearl?" I asked. I didn't expect any kind of answer but I sort of got one.

A long tentacle snaked out from the green mist around his shoulders and came straight at me. Before I could react, it jerked the sword from the scabbard on my back.

"And yet you have the murder weapon," he said. He seemed sober. Almost sad. "I can smell Lihua's blood on it. You can smell it too, Daiyu."

I'd cleaned that sword myself. There was no blood on it.

"Yes," Daiyu said. The dragon that covered half her face seemed to stir and get darker black.

Lyu dangled my grandfather's sword from the tentacle like it was a lollypop stick.

"Give it back." I'd meant to just say it, but instead I growled it.

He ignored me. "You are dragon," he said to Daiyu. "I am dragon. This human is nothing."

"A creature in its prime who harms the old has strayed from the path," Daiyu said. Poetry. This was pissing me off.

"Give that sword back to me!" I know I should have kept still. I'd seen the power of this monster but I couldn't stop myself. He didn't glance my way. This time I didn't have any words in my growl. I ran up to him, punched him in the face and grabbed the tentacle. It sizzled. I yelled and jumped back. Blisters were already forming in the palm of my hand.

"You bastard!" I spat.

My view of him was cut off by a tight black leather column. Daiyu leaped and the sword went spinning. It spun an unnatural length of time and in an unnatural way. It flew around Daiyu and after me. I ran backwards until I smacked into a wall. The glittering blade chased me. I watched it, my mind filled with the static of terror.

Then it froze in the air. Not quite still, as if it quivered, eager for my blood.

Lyu grinned. "So are you her pet snake? Or is she your pet monkey?"

Daiyu was silent for about a count of three. Then: "A creature in its time doing harm to the old goes against the way. That which goes against the way comes to an early end."

He snarled and his teeth were growing. Take note: judgmental, accusatory poetry is a bad move.

"You have brought death, fire and terror to our land," Daiyu said to Mr. Fingernails. She sounded like a judge going over the list of charges. "I must know why you broke faith with the Kindred and the very land we protect."

"I DID NOT!" he roared. And when I say he roared, I mean full-throated dragon thunder. My ears popped and rang. Apparently he didn't like that accusation.

"I saw you!" I had a sword at my throat. I should have shut the hell up. But you know me. "I watched you do it!"

When he roared, he lost definition and disappeared into green smoke. A dragon grew out of the smoke.

Daiyu didn't take any time changing or bother with a smoke phase. She was suddenly a giant black monster. They slammed into each other. I thought the crash would bring down the house.

I could hear the howling of the prisoners down below. Apparently they'd overheard the louder parts of this conversation.

Whatever held the sword lost interest and the blade clattered to my feet.

I snatched it up. I wasn't sure what I'd do with it, but I liked having it in my hand.

The giant coils of the two dragons intertwined and thrashed, battering against the walls. Claws the size of garden rakes slashed at shiny black scales and emerald scales without doing much damage.

The emerald dragon sank giant harpoon teeth into Daiyu's flank and, coiled together, they rolled out the broad arch and into the sky.

Suddenly the room was quiet except for the noise of the riot that seemed to be going on down in the prison. I was still holding the sword. The blade was still shaking or maybe it was my hand.

I fumbled for the sheath hanging at my back. The carved black dragon coiled around it had eyes made of tiny pearls. In spite of my shaking hands I managed to line up the tip of the sword with the scabbard and push the blade in.

An image of that beautiful living pearl filled my mind. It was realer than real. It pulsed with life and beauty. It was nearby. I could feel it.

Out in the sky the two dragons fought. They were like a dark storm disturbing the sky, a ball of lightning and thunder.

I had a golden opportunity to get the hell out of there. It was time to go. It was time to boogie. Time to make like a tree and leave.

But I could see that pearl. I held the scabbard in my hands and stood there with the pearl shining in my mind like the moon.

Then I realized my sense of the pearl was coming from the scabbard. I couldn't smell the pearl, but I could almost taste it. I could feel it like moonlight and starlight.

I traveled around the edges of the room, senses wide open. I avoided the archway that showed me the dragon fight going on outside in the sky. I also went right on by the atrium that led to the elevator. Looking back, this was all very stupid—abysmally, brain rattlingly stupid. The kind of brainless lack of foresight that mentally challenged people everywhere look down on. Part of my brain was screaming hysterically "get out of here!" The rest of me was out-voting it.

Behind a curve of the wall I found a narrow door with equally narrow steps going up. I threw myself up those stairs as if a long lost lover were up there. Except it was more than that. I have some long lost lovers and I would not have gone up those stairs for any of them, or all of them put together.

After what seemed like four million steps I realized this was the tower I'd seen from down on the road. I'd thought it was some kind of a guard tower. Obviously I was wrong. Three times I came to a landing with a door. Each time I opened the door knowing it was a waste of time. One door opened onto what looked like a bedroom, one was a hallway and one was a treasure room stuffed with art and everything valuable you can think of. That one gave me pause, but the pearl wasn't there. It was above. So I made a mental note, slammed the door and continued my slog up the stairs.

Finally I came to the top. There was nothing above me but the vault of the sky. The dragon storm still thundered but had moved off a little further. Then I saw five dragons like classic Chinese embroidery in the sky converge on the ball of clouds and lightning, Ruby, Sapphire, Topaz, Amethyst, and Gold, all diverging from five different directions. Well, okay, that situation was being taken care of. The pearl was here. I looked around. Nine enormous foo dog statues, each the size of a buffalo.

And each and every one of them had a pearl in its mouth.
_

_

There is no crime greater than having too many desires; there is no disaster greater than not being content; there is no misfortune greater than being covetous.

### Chapter 12

I turned and turned hoping to spot the real one. That wasn't going to work. I went to the one nearest the steps and put my hand on the pearl in the foo dog's mouth. It was smooth and pretty. I touched the next one. Nice. The next. Lovely. The one after that. Very pretty.

In the distance, the storm of dragons grew. I ran to the next pearl. Close but no cigar. The next. No. The dragons were coming fast. There was wind and the crash of thunder. It felt a little like a real storm except the wind was hot.

There were only two more foo dogs. I ran up to the second to last one. It was like my mind lit up. I quivered and grasped the pearl with both hands. It was warm and throbbed like a living thing. All the fakes were nice rocks. This one was alive and it was mine. I pulled on it. The foo dog wasn't going to give it up easily.

Of course not.

The snarling, howling cloud of dragons was coming my way. It was tough to see individuals but none of them was looking at me. Not that it mattered right at the moment.

Somewhere during my trip up the stairs I'd slung the scabbard over my shoulder. Now I pulled it off. Suddenly my grandfather's sword and the ancient magical scabbard were just a handy stick.

The snarl of dragons roared closer. A tangle of seven dragons is big. Hard to explain how big. It was like a jewel-encrusted freight train coming right at me.

I stuck the scabbard into the dog's mouth and pulled hard. The dragons were almost on me. The static from the lightning bolts was making my hair stand on end. That's okay. It always looks like that.

Something roared right over my head I jerked in reaction and the pearl popped out. Adrenaline is a wonderful thing. The precious, beautiful orb rolled across the stones. I dived after it.

I managed to fall on top of it just as it rolled within a few inches of the edge of the platform. As I grabbed it, I saw down, down into the blue never-never. Over my head the dragons were going at it hot. I didn't want to look up, but I didn't think any of them noticed me. I felt I would have known if one of them had, because a lightning bolt would have been involved.

I held the pearl like it was an infant and crawled on my knees and elbows to the stairs which, fortunately, weren't far.

I was several steps down when I realized that my grandfather's sword was still up with the foo dogs. Shit. Piss. Dammit to hell. I added a few Chinese words I knew were just as foul, if not a little worse. I looked at the pearl. It was beautiful. It made my hands look beautiful just holding it. I should have gotten rid of that sword a long time ago, I told myself.

Then I set the pearl down on a step and ran back up to the platform. The gray stones were bare.

The instant I wasn't touching the scabbard, it had gone invisible. Shit. But I knew where it had to be. Fortunately, the warring dragons had settled down. Five dragons hung against the vault of heaven, ringing the black dragon. Mr. Fingernails in his Emerald Dragon form was nowhere in sight. None of my business. I darted toward the foo dog with the empty mouth and tripped over the invisible scabbard. I ripped what was left of the knees out of my jeans. However, the cursed thing blinked into visibility for a second and then again when I grabbed it. I slung it over my shoulder and ran for the stairs. I didn't slow down, scooping up the precious pearl on the fly.

Now all I needed to do was break out of prison. Easy-peasy.

Actually that turned out to be a lot easier than I expected. I realized I probably didn't have to take the rusty old elevator down to the prison yard. The residence almost certainly had a private entrance. A dragon didn't need to use a door, as such, but a man did and Mr. Fingernails was sometimes a man. No, I told myself, he was always a dragon, but sometimes he looked like a man.

In any case, there was a door. That door led down a long winding set of stairs and ended at a little courtyard. The gate opened on the driveway that I had seen from above. The black sedan was still parked there. I am not mechanically inclined, so car theft has never been part of my repertoire, but I was sorely tempted to give it a try.

After about a minute's debate I headed down the road. I missed my duffel bag. I didn't relish walking through town with a honking big pearl under my arm. I missed those diamonds too, come to think about it. Damn Daiyu! I searched the sky for the dragon confab and couldn't see them.

I barely had enough cash to get me to Taipei and once I was there ... I looked down at the pearl. It glowed. I wasn't sure I was going to be able to part with it.

I followed the driveway until it met the road. I hunted for the motorcycle rickshaw among the rocks but it was gone. I took off walking.

When I got a little closer to town there was some traffic and I was able to flag down a taxi. "Waterfront" I said to the driver. He was middle aged and bored. He didn't say a word about my pearl, my appearance or anything else. He just nodded and took off.

On the way to the waterfront we passed Daiyu's little meditation hall and I tried not to notice it.

Here and there in town blocks at random were trashed and vandalized.

"People have gone insane," said the driver, nodding to one stretch of wreckage. It startled me. I hadn't pegged him as a chatty one.

"Seems like it," I said. I didn't want to bring up dragons if he didn't. I had no idea how much ordinary people knew about them.

"The council needs to do something about it." He fell silent as he edged his way through a street crowded with pedestrians who ignored cars.

"Yes," I agreed. Whatever. I directed him to pull over several yards from a cargo ship that looked dilapidated enough that it might take an unauthorized passenger for not too big a pile of cash.

"They'd better do something or we vote 'em out," my driver said, completing his thought.

"I agree," I said shoving a bill at him that would cover the fare and a small tip.

"Derkein could kick their asses in gear," he added, taking my money with a nod.

"Keep the change," I replied and slipped out of the car.

"What's that?" he asked, nodding to the pearl.

None of your goddam business, leaped to my mind. "I belong to a softball team" is what came out of my mouth.

He nodded, put the cab in gear and drove off. I don't think he actually bought the softball thing, but whatever.

I bought a bag of oranges from the first vendor stand that had them and dropped in the pearl. I felt a little better when it wasn't in plain view of the world.

I made my way to the cargo ship and in exchange for almost every dime I had left they "hired" me as an ordinary seaman. That's what the records would show, anyway. I signed my name on their log as "A.R. Tonka." Kinda close. To my annoyance they weren't leaving until dawn and they wouldn't let me just hang out on the ship until they sailed. I was told pointedly to come back then. I have no idea what that was all about, but I had a feeling I should be there an hour or two before their departure time in case they planned to skip without me.

When I was back on the street, I fished an orange out of the bag, peeled and ate it while I leaned in the doorway of a building with a "for lease" sign in its window. I needed some place to be for a few hours and had almost no money left. I had to think about that.

"What? Out of prison already?"

Oh, shit. That was a familiar voice. I turned. Gao, the rickshaw boy sat lounging in his own cab. The asshole had to be stalking me.

"Go the hell away," I said.

He grinned a jagged evil smile. "You owe me a diamond."

"I lied. I don't have any diamonds." I spat the line at him. I really did wish he would just vanish in a puff of smoke. I'd settle for me to be able to do it. My ship out of this hell hole sailed in the morning and I didn't want this jerk spoiling my exit.

"Now there's a shock. You lied. What's in the bag?"

"It's a big lump of eat shit and die." That sounds better in English. In Chinese it just sounds kind of gross and silly. That's probably why he laughed.

"Give it to me," he said. Suddenly serious.

"I told you I don't have another diamond."

"Give me the bag," he said. He hopped down from the rickshaw seat and was suddenly standing too close to me. I thought about the sword at my back, but I wasn't ready to use deadly force.

"Get lost," I said. I'm taller than most Chinese but I suddenly noticed this one towered over me.

He just answered with a very cold smile. People were beginning to stare. A couple of them looked scared. I wondered why for a couple of seconds and then realized they thought we were about to become homicidally insane.

If Gao grabbed that bag, they'd be right.

I stepped back away from him. I hated being within reach. He was stronger and heavier and I could never take him unless I suddenly acquired Daiyu's Bruce Lee skills and I wouldn't use the sword on him.

The blindingly obvious next question jumped into my mind. Why did he want the bag? It looked like a bag of oranges, not a bag of diamonds. I wasn't being mugged for my oranges. This guy was as strange as a three-tailed mouse ... could he sense the pearl? Maybe he did think the diamonds might be in the bag. That had to be it.

His eyes widened when I reached into the bag and narrowed again when I pulled out an orange. I tossed it into the air and caught it.

"If you wanted me to share, you could have just asked nicely," I said. I punctuated the last word by throwing the orange at him with everything I had. I got him right in the bridge of the nose. Good shot! I congratulated myself and turned to run like the wind.

I've used that trick a dozen times. It should have worked. I hadn't run a half dozen steps when I felt him grab my arm.

Shit.

I jerked my arm free and almost lost the bag. I took about two more steps and he grabbed the back of my shirt. I whirled and kicked at his knee. I got his shin. He let go of my shirt and I aimed a kick at his crotch. He caught my foot and I went down hard on my butt. He twisted my ankle and I rolled over. He turned loose of my foot and dove for the bag, still in my arms. His face met my fist.

"Stop! Stop! Oh, please stop!" A woman in a blue smock had rushed up to us. She seemed almost in tears.

"Stop! Calm yourselves!" said a man who'd been behind a fish stall a minute ago.

Gao and I both paused for just a second to notice this new development. Then he tried to snatch the bag again and I bruised my knuckles on his chin.

Two other passers by arrived to plead with us to be calm and civilized. Hands were grabbing us both. Then I heard the inevitable.

"Someone call the police!"
_

_

What is firmly rooted cannot be pulled out; what is tightly held in the arms will not slip loose...

### Chapter 13

A man and a woman, one on either side, pulled me away from Gao and hauled me to my feet. I could feel them trembling. Their eyes were large and frightened. Gao was putting up more of a struggle. Four or five men clung to him and pulled him down the street a few yards.

"Oh, I ..." I rubbed my face and shook myself. "I think the madness is passing." I allowed myself a noble, wan little smile. "Thank you, my friends."

This got me a couple of relieved smiles in return, though every one of them seemed to be watching me closely for signs of insanity.

Gao was still doing a good job being insane. He fought snarling and yelling with the men holding him down. Another man had joined them and an elderly woman had run up to shout helpful advice.

I could hear a police whistle in the distance. That was my signal to leave.

"Thank you again, friends," I said. "Now I must go home to my children." The woman who still had hold of my arm nodded rapidly as if that was a really good idea.

I took off walking as fast as I could without making a big deal out of it. I didn't want to get too far from the waterfront because at dawn my butt would be on that boat, come hell or high water.

The longer I walked, twisting and turning, looking for a good place to hide, the harder I wished for something to eat, a bath, clean clothes and with as many adrenaline jolts I'd had today, some sleep would be a welcome addition to the agenda.

I ducked into lunch counter and fortified myself with a noodle soup thick with codfish flakes. They actually had a western-style public restroom and I got to wash my hands and face. I enjoyed this simple little ritual completely and thoroughly.

Afterward, I ordered more tea and just sat there for a while. I needed to rest, I needed to think, and I still needed to hole up someplace until dawn.

Through the window I saw a homeless man stroll by. The world over they look about the same—aggressively filthy, carrying everything they owned in a cart or bag and their faces reflected the blasted look of someone who walks every day elbow to elbow with the weather, death and humanity's indifference.

I watched him dig in a trash can I wouldn't have touched with tongs. When he pulled out a fish tail and munched down on it, I had to look away and take a big sip of my nice clean tea.

When I looked back up he was slowly moving off. Then I had an idea for a great place to hide for the night. Well, maybe not a great place, but a place where absolutely nobody would think to look for me.

I tossed my last two coins beside my empty tea cup and went out. The homeless man hadn't got very far. I followed him. I knew this would be tedious and disgusting and I was right. I kept him in sight but I could have followed him from the rich aroma. I'm sure his armpits were the epicenter of that smell.

The sun was setting. Sooner or later he would go to ground. I didn't know what I'd do if he slept in a card board box. Mug him for it? That would require touching him. Ugh. I was hoping for an alley or some kind of hobo jungle hang out.

I figured with my ragged jeans and holey t-shirt I'd pass if the light wasn't good. I was still following him when it got truly dark. I was about to give this up as a bad idea when he vanished.

I heaved a sigh and went to where I last saw him standing. After a little groping around I found a shattered door standing ajar. This was the warehouse district. Security lights cast deep shadows. This particular building had busted out windows and part of the roof missing.

Right this way, Madam, your hotel room is waiting, though it wouldn't exactly be the Red Poppy room.

I slipped through the door without touching any of it. The warehouse currently stored trash, rat droppings and a smell that was almost a solid thing—a mixture of filth, rot and feces that I can't describe and you wouldn't want me to.

There were a couple of tiny fires on the concrete floor which provided dim light. Shadowy lumps circled around them. "Wretched refuse" leaped to mind. These folks breathed about as free as it was possible to get. Most of them would probably be happy with a lovely clean prison cell.

I found a piece of cardboard that looked like it had been used as a bed before. I shook it out before I sat on it even though I doubted it would get rid of all the roaches, fleas and unknown disgusting things. It was a psychological thing more than a practical one.

I wrapped the sack tight around the pearl and shoved it up into my tee shirt which I tucked into the waistband of my jeans. It wasn't much, but it would leave my hands free. I sat on my piece of cardboard and tried not to think of the gross, squishy things underneath it. I sat with my knees pulled up to my chest and my arms wrapped round my legs, kind of hunched over protecting the pearl. I settled in to keep watch.

I don't know when I fell asleep but when I woke, there were two additional fires. One of them was fairly close to me. In fact, I was in its circle of light. Three men sat facing it only a few feet away. If I got up and moved, it would attract attention. I carefully shifted my position, awakening every single bruise and sore muscle in my body. And in the last few days I'd collected quite a few of them. I fantasized about aspirin.

Two of the three men around the fire were the usual beggars. One of them had a giant boil distorting his cheek. The other could have been the man I followed here—or not, they all get that blasted look after a while.

The third one was an old man with a heap of white hair. He squatted in the way Asian men do, hanging off his knees. I can maintain that pose for about ten minutes before excruciating pain forces me to sit. I'd seen Chinese men squatting like that for hours, smoking cigarettes and gossiping. This old man wasn't talking. Every line of his body spoke of pain and exhaustion. His hands were papery and claw-like. The other two men kept glancing at him as if he made them uneasy.

There was something odd about the old man and out of sheer boredom I studied him. There was nothing else interesting to look at. After a while, the reason for his strangeness gradually dawned on me. He was clean. His white hair floated around his head like a silver nimbus. Filthy, greasy hair doesn't do that. Then I noticed his clothes were in good repair. The other two men were clad in torn, filthy mismatched rags. The old man was ... well he looked okay. His clothes were certainly in better shape than mine.

He was hunched over his knees so I couldn't see much of his face. He looked up once when the man with the boil said something and I got a glimpse of long silver beard and long wispy mustaches.

If the man who had spoken required an answer, he wasn't going to get it. The tilt of the old man's head and the arch of his back yelled "Shut the hell up" louder than words.

The man with the boil didn't try more conversation. The man without the boil curled up on his right side on top of whatever nasty stuff littered the floor. I was drifting off again when the old man began to make noises.

That woke me up.

His ancient, knobby shoulders shook and he made a raw choking noise deep in his throat.

Boil man watched for a while, then he stood and melted into the dark. I should have taken a hint from that, but I didn't. Instead, I watched the old guy. He shook and fell over on his side trembling and making those horrible noises.

The nonboil man snored softly. Not a light sleeper, then. The old man's fit didn't stop. I told myself that as long as he was making noises, he was breathing and therefore okay. If he stopped suddenly I might do CPR or something. Mouth-to-mouth was out of the question, of course. I never owned a cell phone. GPS issues prevented me carrying one. I didn't know if Shaolong had 911 or if emergency services would even come to a place like this at night.

Mr. White-Hair's fit intensified. He got louder and he started knocking his head against the floor.

Shit. I had to do something. I dragged my piece of cardboard over closer to him. No way was I going to sit on that floor. I put my hand on his thin shoulder.

"Ancient Uncle," I said. "Please stop. You will harm yourself."

He stopped pounding his head on the floor, probably more out of surprise than because of my request. He didn't stop the odd choking noises. I suddenly realized he was weeping.

"May I take you to the emergency hospital?" I'd dump him outside and run, but even that would still be nice of me, right?

"Go away."

It was kind of an inarticulate growl. I decided to pretend I didn't understand.

"Are you ill?"

He pushed himself upright. He had something icky sticking to his forehead.

"Leave me," he roared. It was way, way too loud to come out of that frail old man.

Then I recognized him and an instant later, he recognized me.

And I had a lump in my t-shirt that was neither a goiter nor a third boob.

In response to the old man's roar, the rats left the ship in a stampede. Mr. No-boil jumped to his feet obviously not needing much transition from sound asleep to running full out.

He joined the heard of people stampeding for the door. I should have been one of them, but I sat there frozen, looking into the face of death.

"Mr. Long-ju, I'm—" I'd been about to extend my condolences on the death of his wife, but the words stuck in my throat.

He opened his mouth. And kept opening it in a huge unnatural gape. His teeth grew.

He exploded into a gray cloud. I jumped to my feet and stumbled backwards to the door. I drew my sword. It looked like a toothpick compared to the fangs I saw emerging from the cloud.

The warehouse filled with giant silver coils that glinted here and there from the little fires now mostly scattered on the floor. He roared. A hot blast of wind knocked me down. I jumped to my feet and waved the sword.

"Get back." I meant for it to be a yell, but it came out more like a squeak. I backed up and he didn't. I waved the sword and may have nicked a whisker. Maybe not.

He roared again. Then, mouth still wide open, he pounced. His tongue lashed out and wrapped itself around me. I screamed and slashed with the sword but did him no injury at all. I had a glimpse of jagged fangs as he pulled me in and I was in the belly of the beast.
_

_

Who can be muddy and yet, settling, slowly become limpid? Who can be at rest and yet, stirring, slowly come to life?

### Chapter 14

Three times in my life I have been surprised to wake up. Once I'd been shot point blank in the head. I didn't remember being knocked aside by an officer attempting an arrest, but that's what they told me in the prison hospital. The bullet left a furrow along the side of my skull. I have a scar somewhere under that wild red mop I am pleased to call my hair.

The second time was a lunatic whose mother I'd stolen. It's complicated. I was actually stealing a Ming vase worth the annual income of several small countries. How was I supposed to know Mom's ashes were inside it? The unhappy son decided the best way to get revenge would be to drive us both off a cliff. I thought watching the rocks at the bottom of the canyon hurtling at us at thirty-two feet per second, or whatever, would be the last thing I'd ever see. I really hope I'll never see it again. Fortunately it was a really, really expensive car and the airbags saved us. Mom got smashed all over the canyon floor, but her son only got two broken legs. I got a broken arm, a broken collar bone and my jaw still aches in cold weather.

And this time.

This time I wasn't just surprised to wake up, I was stunned. In fact I thought the afterlife was a black, charred and burned out landscape. Considering how unvirtuously I'd lived life, it wouldn't have been a shock. Then I remembered I don't believe that bullshit and sat up to look around.

Long-ju wasn't in sight. Everything that could burn was either cold ashes or still smoldering and smoking. High up the side of the hill above me towered a giant heap of twisted metal, melted and fused together by excessive heat.

Speaking of things being barbecued, why was I alive? Not that I wasn't glad about it. And furthermore why was I running around loose? Given the fact that I was alive, I would at least expect to be locked up unless dragons had a hell of a catch and release program.

I was not surprised to find the pearl and my sword were gone. There was a neat slit in my tee shirt where the pearl had been. Now everyone was going to get a fetching glimpse of my belly button.

I shouldn't worry about an old sword or a fabulous pearl. I should be grateful I was alive, free and reasonably undamaged. I'd been eaten by a dragon and lived to tell the tale. How many people get to say that?

I shouldn't worry about material possessions when my life is at stake. But I do and don't do a lot of things I shouldn't and should ... or whatever. You get the idea.

Instead of hunting for a way out of there, I was hunting for a sword and a pearl.

When I found the road I realized ground zero was the Inn of the Silver Snake. I could only tell where it had been by the landscape. It had been virtually obliterated.

A couple of cars had been parked out front. Everything on them that could be burned away had been. The glass and metal parts looked melted around the edges.

While studying those cars I knew I should get out while I could and perhaps avoid becoming a crispy critter, but ...

One way, the road was blocked with tons of charred rubble. The other way was relatively clear so I trotted down the road. Dawn was still a while off. If I hurried I could still get to the ship by sunrise. I didn't want to hurry down there. I wanted... No, dammit, I needed to run, not walk to the nearest exit.

That turned out to not be a problem. I should have realized my freedom was too good to be true. When I rounded the first bend in the road, an old man with a heap of silver hair sat cross-legged, seeming to meditate. A rock a little bigger than a soccer ball sat in front of him. It glowed, casting lurid red light on his haggard features.

Mr. Long-ju seemed to have aged a hundred years in the last few days. His hair had been neatly trimmed salt and pepper when we met. Now his face was a mass of wrinkles and bags. His joints twisted and gnarled. He was all in gray and his blue-veined hands rested almost helplessly on his knees. His eyes were closed.

I remembered the wrenching, rending sobs that seemed to tear out of him in the filthy warehouse. If dragons can take any shape they want, then obviously this withered body reflected how he felt.

I should have been terrified—I could distinctly remember the teeth going by as I slid down his gullet—but I wasn't.

Okay, I had a fear rush when I saw the sword, safely in the scabbard, lying on the ground in front of his bony knees next to the pearl. I had another small jolt when I realized the scabbard was visible and nobody was touching it.

He looked up as I approached. His eyes were both hard and hollow at the same time. He regarded me in a way that was both uncomfortable and difficult to describe. His mouth stayed hidden under the long, drooping silver mustache.

I down sat opposite him on the other side of the glowing stone.

I didn't know what to say. I was afraid if I tried to offer my condolences again he might burn me to the ground.

But you know me. I absolutely cannot keep my mouth shut.

"Why am I alive?" I asked.

He leaned forward and touched the scabbard with one finger that looked like a bird claw.

"Daiyu is my betrayer."

"What? No! She was with you when Mrs. Long-ju was killed."

He shook his head. "She went north and I went south. There was no tsunami, merely an echo in the waves.

"A false alarm to draw you away," I said.

"Yes, of course, you knew." Bitterness almost choked off his words.

"No! I'm guessing! It was simply too convenient. The killer wanted you out of there."

"So you could do your work." He got indistinct for a moment. I thought I was going to meet Mr. Silver again.

"No! I didn't kill her and neither did Daiyu. You guys were friends and I had no reason to do something like that."

He shook his head as if a fly were bothering him. He lifted his claw from the scabbard and rested it on the pearl.

"You lust for it," he said. "I could feel your lust that night. I did not take you for a murderer but all humans who see the pearl lust for it."

It was good to know it wasn't just me.

I hadn't planned to do something as stupid as confess to stealing the pearl. But I withered in the heat of that post-apocalyptic gaze.

"I took the pearl. I'm a thief but I have never killed anyone." That was true. I'd never owned a gun and I couldn't ever bring myself to more than threaten anyone with the sword. That's why it traveled around in my duffel bag most of the time.

"And besides," I continued. "Daiyu didn't have a reason to kill Mrs. Long-ju. She was a friend to both of you."

He lifted the pearl a hand that looked more claw-like than ever.

"Daiyu has always been a warrior. For many centuries she guarded the pearl. My beloved Lihua," his voice broke over the name. "Desired the pearl as all humans do. I persuaded the Kindred to allow me to guard it. It could never be hers but she could preside over it."

He brooded for a long time, staring at the orb in his hand. Was the dark less dense in the east? Was dawn coming? Tick, tick, tick. I'd love to get to the ship with my pearl and my sword, but just my hide would be sufficient.

"So Daiyu plotted to kill my beloved and regain the pearl," he said at last.

"That is simply not true," I said helplessly.

"She is your friend," he said.

"Yes, she does seem to have taken an interest in me." I silently added "dammit" to that sentence. "I don't know why, but that doesn't mean she would murder someone, not even for that." I nodded to the pearl. And suddenly remembered the three dead men in the park. Well, that wasn't murder, I told myself hastily.

"She has killed many thousands in battle," he said as if he could hear me thinking. "One frail woman..." he struggled to get a hold of himself. "One more would be nothing to her."

He set the pearl down beside the sword as if they were Exhibit A and Exhibit B. I had a feeling that's what they were going to be eventually. I cursed the weakness that had led me to steal that pearl.

Okay, we could play "No she didn't/yes she did" until the cows came home. If I ever hoped to get out of there I'd have to take another angle.

"Mrs. Long-ju was killed by the emerald dragon, Lyu. At least I think he did. A bunch of the dragons helped Daiyu fight him. You had to have seen the fight."

He nodded. "It took all six of them to capture and bind her."

"What?" A cascade of fear washed over me. "I found that thing at Lyu's house," I said gesturing at the pearl. "He's the thief and killer."

"He summoned all the dragons to help him capture her."

"No." I whispered it. I didn't have breath for more. Suddenly I wanted to cry. Maybe Mr. Long-ju and I could sit and cry together.

I told him about confronting Lyu. I told him about climbing the tower. I told him about the foo dogs. He was as still as a stone and, in fact, looked like he was meditating again. I might as well have been telling this story to the glowing rock between us.

I waited for an answer. I didn't get one.

"What are they going to do with her?" I asked.

He didn't look up, but opened his eyes a crack. "They will destroy her and a new dragon will be born."
_

_

Some things lead and some follow; some breathe gently and some breathe hard; some are strong and some are weak; some destroy and some are destroyed.

### Chapter 15

He looked like an old man, but he wasn't. That became clear when he rose to his feet with strength and grace. People with frail gnarled limbs don't do that.

I barely registered it. My whole mind was filled with No! No! No! They could not possibly kill Daiyu! No! No! The extreme wrongness of it settled on me like a poison cloud.

Long-ju scooped up the pearl and the sword and headed up the hill.

"Come with me," he said.

It took a second or two for his command to sink in. "And if I don't want to?"

"I will kill you here," he said with profound calm.

"Oh." There was no good place to die but this blasted, burned out landscape was worse than most. I got to my feet a lot less gracefully than he did.

The path wound up and up the hill. If I stopped, he stopped and looked back. Those glances kept me moving even though I knew this was probably my last walk. I was going to be killed by a dragon and that's pretty cool but dead is still dead. I had to figure a way out of this.

And the idea of Daiyu being killed was beyond unthinkable. I mean, what am I? Nothing. A thief. Living fat one day, holey tee shirts the next. Daiyu, though, was ... important. She was a work of fine art. She was so much more than I am that it was impossible to even think of us as the same species ... which, I guess, we're not.

Eventually, I realized we were headed for the twisted and burned dragon sculpture. That's where the pearl belonged. That's were Mrs. Long-ju died.

Mr. Long-ju led me up a long, winding set of steps. There was no banister or railing which was more than a bit disquieting. Sometimes I could catch glimpses of the city through gaps in the rubble. It seemed like a hundred miles below.

"Is she in jail down in the city?" I asked the deceptively frail-looking back of the old man.

He turned. "Who?"

That was annoying. He knew who. "Daiyu," I said.

"She is on White Mountain."

"That narrows it down."

He looked at me blankly for a moment and then he got the sarcasm. "The White Mountain is where the Kindred will meet and pronounce her fate."

"So they've already decided she's guilty," I said.

"Right now they are discussing it. When I show them these things, the discussion will cease."

So she's not quite guilty yet, I thought. I kept having one thought that kept bruising me like it was a rock in my shoe.

If I hadn't stolen the pearl none of this would have happened. Mrs. Long-ju wouldn't have needed to try to defend me. She'd still be alive and Daiyu wouldn't be on death row. And I wouldn't be in this incinerated and smoking hell, walking to my own place of execution.

Eventually, we came to a stone platform that had once been the atrium. The dragon sculpture was barely recognizable. It was black and twisted, the tail, the eyes and whiskers all burned away. The claws had melted and were now frozen drips of metal.

Then I saw a skull, small and fragile, amid a few scattered bones.

Ohmygod, omygod, omygod ... the expression whirled around in my head. These were the bones of Mrs. Long-ju. Omygod. I tried not to look at them. I looked at the old man instead. He still carried the pearl and the sword as if they were funerary offerings.

Those bones are why he'd brought me here. I was to die at the scene of my crime.

Long-ju set the pearl gently among the bones of his beloved. My pity for him and his lost love fought for air time with my fear. The fear won when he pulled the blade out of the scabbard.

He was going to kill me with the murder weapon.

"Look," I said. My voice shook. I was actually a little surprised I could talk. "You can't—"

"Kneel," he snapped.

"Screw you." It popped out in English. It startled both of us. I backed away. He stepped forward. I circled to my left, he turned to shadow me.

"You will die!" he snarled. It was a much bigger snarl than could have come out of that mouth.

"Both of us are innocent!" I squeaked.

"Neither of you is innocent!" He had me on a technicality there.

"But we didn't kill your wife!" I waved a hand at the bones. The pearl glowed with beauty among the piled charred detritus that had once been a woman who carried herself like an empress.

"Silence!" He roared it loud enough to make my ears pop.

Then I thought of something. The pearl was about the size of a soft ball. I snatched it up and threw it hard at his sword hand. It hit him in the side of the face.

Well, whatever. He dropped the sword and I dove for it, snatched it, rolled away and jumped to my feet. Adrenaline. Still a very good thing.

"Beat it!" I said, hoping I sounded evil. He simply regarded me with what I imagined was disbelief. "Go away! Leave me alone!" The last command was really more of a whine. I expected him to turn into a dragon and eat me for real this time.

He took a step toward me and I swung the sword. It felt utterly natural in my hand. It always did. I didn't think. I just reacted like the blade was doing it for me.

It neatly severed his head from his body. He dropped like a wet side of meat and his head rolled over and over until it was black with soot and cinders. It came to rest next to one of the melted dragon claws.

Then I did something I hadn't done in decades. I burst into tears. I stood there and howled like a child lost in the mall. I stood there and cried hard for maybe an hour or two or maybe it was just a couple of minutes.

Eventually, I made myself stop. I couldn't stand there and cry forever, even if that's what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. How could my grandfather do this kind of thing over and over? How could my father? Between them they'd murdered hundreds of people. Criminals and bad people, but still ... people.

I wiped my face on the tail of my tee shirt which probably didn't help my appearance much. I looked around for something to wipe down the sword. The only thing that wasn't black charcoal was Mr. Long-Ju. I cleaned the blade on his jacket. This got the tears running again, but I managed to fight them back. I also took the scabbard, which had become invisible again, from his hand.

I stood, returned the sword to the scabbard and slung it over my shoulder. I saw the white pearl looking clean and lovely in the ashes. I wanted it. "All humans desire it," he'd said. Well, I proved I was human. I wanted it bad. The former owners were dead. I was alone and there it was. There it was. I wanted it but I couldn't bring myself to touch it.

Then I turned and started down the hill. I walked down the road barely visible in the burned ashes and charcoal of what had once been trees and flowers and maybe even people.

The Inn of the White Snake had a full staff. The cooks, the bell boy, the girl who'd done my hair—not to mention all the guests staying there. Were they incinerated with everything else? If they were, I supposed that should have made me feel better about killing Mr. Long-ju. It didn't. Two wrongs don't make a right and neither do twenty wrongs.

The road wound along the face of the hills and was blocked to the south. It would have been a quicker way down to the city but I didn't have the physical or emotional oomph to climb over or around that blackened rubble, so I went the other way.

The sun rose and I'm sure a rust-bucket cargo ship somewhere down below sailed with every penny of my money in the captain's pocket.

I was broke. I was stranded. I'd just killed somebody and somebody else was about to be killed because I'm a stupid, greedy bitch. I was out of sorts. Not a single sort left.

The road was empty—imagine that—and I didn't see a single soul for more than an hour. I came to a crossroad where, naturally, there was a fruit stand, a noodle wagon and a tiny bodega along with a couple other buildings including a gas station. It had the usual row of motorcycles against the concrete building. One of them had a rickshaw attached. There was no telling if it was Gao's and I didn't see him anywhere.

If I'd had any money, I might have bought something to eat, but on the other hand I wasn't very hungry.

I went up to the fruit seller who had a nice face. "Can you tell me how to get to White Mountain?" I asked.

His eyes widened. "No one goes there," he said.

"They're expecting me," I said. There as an outside possibility that was true.

He looked me up and down. I looked literally like hell because I was pretty much covered with ashes and soot. I'd probably be afraid to look at my own face.

"You look like animal dung," he said.

"So do you, but I don't count it against you," I replied.

He frowned. Some people have no sense of humor.

"White Mountain," I prompted.

He spat. "About five kilometers that way," he said with a jerk of his head. "You will come to a road between two hills. Go to the right." He spat again in case I didn't notice him doing it the first time.

I clasped my hands, bowed, and thanked him in my most florid and elaborate Chinese.

Five kilometers. The jerk of his head had indicated the road going east. That is, up. The road wasn't level and eventually began switching back and forth in order not to have a 45 degree incline. I hoped it wasn't five kilometers as the crow flies because that would easily translate into 20 road kilometers. After I'd been walking a couple of hours, I knew I was either almost there or almost half way there. I was beginning to be sorry I hadn't tried to steal something to eat.

There wasn't much traffic on the road and what little there was trickled out as I got higher. A little stream crossed the road and after I drank my fill, I followed it into the bushes.

As soon as I was out of sight of the road, I stripped down to my underwear and washed in the icy water until I was reasonably certain I didn't look like a chimney sweep down on her luck. I beat my t-shirt and jeans against a tree until they were merely dirty. I cut the jeans off with the sword above the holes in the knees.

I got dressed again and felt better. It would have been nice if a girl in a red riding hood would wander by with a basket of goodies for grandma. I could mug her for them. A Chinese peasant could probably put together a fourteen course meal of weeds and insects from a patch of woods like this, but that would not be me. I didn't have a belt or I would have tightened it.

Up the road I went. I wasn't sure what I expected at the top of White Mountain. What made it white was billions of sea shells. As I got higher, the patches of white got bigger. Eventually I rounded a bend and saw it—a white stone temple. It was probably a fort or a castle but to me it looked like a temple. It had a wide open archway above a cliff just like all the other dragon houses.

Okay, I'm here, I thought. Now what?

I didn't know what. I hadn't the slightest idea what. Not a hint of a clue.

But Mr. and Mrs. Long-ju had died because of me and they were good people. Daiyu was more than good. She was epic. I wasn't worth her death. I had to stop it somehow.

The road wound around the temple toward what I assumed would be the front door. Clueless as I was, I still didn't think the front door would be a good idea. I knew there would be a side door, probably several, but the least likely to be watched would be that landing platform above my head.

I looked up at it. Way above my head. When I was very young, I did a bit of rock climbing. Of course it was with pre-set anchors and a safety harness. Free climbing was for suicidal morons.

One suicidal moron, coming up.

At first it wasn't too hard. The boulders were big and spaced pretty well but about halfway they started being smaller and looser. And I was running out of steam fast. I would pull myself up a couple of yards and then I'd have to stop and listen to my screaming muscles. When they would quiet down, I'd climb another couple of yards.

At one point I looked out over the valley. I probably shouldn't have done that. There's something a little intimidating about miles and miles of lazy blue air below and around you.

I turned around and focused on the rock in front of my face. Nice rock. Nice solid rock. Since I was standing on a tiny ledge, I took the opportunity to rest and flex my fingers. A sprig of green caught my eye. Not much grew on this rocky slope. The green sprig turned out to be a strawberry vine. A single red strawberry, barely bigger than a fingernail, hung tantalizing off it. I plucked it and popped it into my mouth. It was more delicious than anything I've ever eaten or could ever hope to eat.

Somehow that little burst of sweetness gave me the strength to haul my sorry sad ass the rest of the way up to the platform.

Fortunately, the room was empty. It gave me a chance to lie like a rag doll and rest for a few minutes. Maybe more than a few.

I eventually pushed myself to my feet and looked around. The room wasn't just empty. There was no furniture, no decorations on the wall. There was a disturbed coating of dust on the floor and that was it.

Someone had been here recently but before that, not for a long time. I went to an open doorway and the dust wasn't even disturbed. I looked around and decided to follow the scuff marks.

They led me to a hallway and up a flight of stairs, which led to a room open to the sky. It had once been an indoor garden. Vines covered the wall spilling down from what must be the top of the mountain, softening the chalky white stone with greenery. Trenches around the edges of the wall were filled with weeds and a few tiny yellow flowers.

Daiyu sat in a cage in the center of the room, her back ramrod straight. She was meditating and looked like she'd grown up out of the rock floor. Her cage was taller than I am and made out of bones, elaborately and beautifully carved to look almost like lace. I couldn't bring myself to interrupt. Something about her was so complete—or something—I couldn't put my finger on it. So I just sat down with my back against the wall and waited.

I watched her. The dragon tattoo on her face looked asleep. Maybe it was meditating too. I should learn how to meditate, I thought. If I survive to see another sunrise, I'll seriously consider it.

"Why are you here?"

I jumped. It spoke.

"I ... I'm here to help you escape," I said. That sounded really, really lame.

She glanced at me sideways. I think she almost smiled.

"Do I need help escaping?"

"Yes. They're going to kill you," I said.

"What concern is that of yours?

The question made my throat hurt. "You're here because of me. Because of..." I couldn't say it out loud. "Anyway you're innocent. I can't let them kill you for something I did."

She raised an eyebrow. "Lyu killed Mrs. Long-ju, not you."

"Then tell them that! Defend yourself!"

"Not yet," she said. "Nor will you accuse him. I require you to remain silent. I need some kind of proof beyond the word of a human. They will not believe he has betrayed us. You cannot lie to a dragon, but they know I can deceive them."

"Trust me, I can lie to you," I said. It was almost funny.

"Trust me, you can't." The corner of her mouth turned up about a sixteenth of an inch. From her that's a belly laugh.

"Yeah, well, in any case she died because of me and...there's more." Now I was going to confess to murder. I'd never confessed to anything before in my life. "No confession," was practically a personal motto.

"I killed Mr. Long-ju," I said. "I didn't want to, but I did."

"No, you didn't." She said it flat.

I saw his head rolling over and over through the ashes. "Trust me. I did."

"Trust me. You didn't."

Yeah, whatever. I stood up and pulled out the sword, also known as the murder weapon. "Scoot back and I'll chop off the lock. You beat it and I'll stay and explain." The door of the cage was fragile and delicate and an elaborate and bejeweled lock held it shut. I swung back as if the sword was an ax.

"Stop!"

I froze.

"These are dragon bones. They will kill your sword."

Not break. Kill.

"Daiyu, I think I've already killed the sword. After I'm dead, I want you to throw it into the sea."

"As you wish," she said. "But do not strike the bones. Your sword can't cut them."

I blinked and lowered the sword. "Okay...Wait! You can't just turn into smoke and evaporate out of there?

"No. I am caged in the only way I can be."

"Dragon bones are your kryptonite?"

She raised an eyebrow.

"Oh, come on. You've never heard of Superman?"

She tilted her head as if thinking and then sat up straight again.

"You may now plead your case," Daiyu said to me.

I whirled. Derkein, the Monk Tien and four jeweled dragons stood behind me.

_

_

When going one way means life and going the other means death, three in ten will be comrades of life, three in ten will be comrades of death, and there are those who value life and as a result move into the realm of death, and these also number three in ten. Why is this so? Because they set too much store by life.

### Chapter 16

The Monk Tien regarded me with twinkling eyes. A faint hint of a gentle smile softened his round face, made even rounder by his bald head. Derkein seemed to exchange unreadable glances with Daiyu.

The individuals in dragon form had the bulk of my attention. Each of them was huge. The indoor garden room had seemed large before. Now it was crowded. All together like that they looked like a wall of jewels. Emerald, gold, sapphire and amethyst. The scales on their coiled bodies sparkled and shone in the light spilling down through the light well.

Their eyes, this close, and this many, were almost unbearable. That thing of regarding you with absolutely undivided attention apparently was not unique to Daiyu. It was like being naked in front of a billion light bulbs. I wanted to turn my back, but I was too frozen and transfixed to move.

So I stood there and fried for a while in front of a half dozen dragons. The two in human shape didn't disguise or change that dragon gaze. Just because their eyes weren't three feet across, didn't lower the discomfort factor.

"Which case do you wish to plead?" said Derkein. His voice was deeply calm but held a trace of regret. He was clearly not happy about any of this.

It took me a second to figure out how to talk. I'd suddenly forgotten how.

When my speech centers unfroze I said "Daiyu is innocent." My voice seemed thin in my ears. We were speaking English. That was good. I doubted I could pull together enough Chinese words to gibber.

The dragons all glanced at each other but nobody said anything. I remembered what Long-ju had said about Daiyu killing thousands. Maybe "innocent" wasn't the word I was looking for.

"She didn't kill Mrs. Long-ju and didn't steal the pearl."

"Where is the pearl?" this was from Lyu, the emerald dragon. From a mouth the size of a Volkswagen. Bastard.

I thought of the pearl, white and perfect among the charred bones of Mrs. Long-ju. I'd already reached my quota of confessing that day, so I launched into the story of how Mrs. Long-ju had died. I left out the part about me taking the pearl. It wasn't vital to this telling.

"What color was the dragon?" asked Derkein. He knew. He'd asked me that before. This was for the benefit of the audience.

I glanced at Daiyu and had a three second clash of wills. I lost. "Sort of an icky gray," I said.

"There are no dragons of that color," said the Sapphire dragon. It was a woman's voice.

"That's what I saw." My voice sounded rough and nasty compared to hers.

Derkein turned to Daiyu. "Did you kill Mrs. Long-ju and steal the pearl?"

"I was in the north looking for a tsunami that didn't exist."

"Where is the pearl now?"

Daiyu shrugged and looked at me. I didn't want to discuss the state of affairs as I left them on Silver Mountain.

I turned back to Derkein and the wall of dragons. There are lots of ways to tell a lie. I chose one of them.

"I don't have the pearl and I didn't kill Mrs. Long-ju. I liked her. A gray dragon magically manipulated the sword without touching it and Mrs. Long-ju threw herself in front of it to save my life. " Those last words were some of the hardest I've uttered in my entire life before or since. On the other hand you will notice I did not answer the question.

"We are being asked to believe that one of us used your magic sword to kill Mrs. Long-ju." To my relief the pearl was no longer the topic of discussion. Derkein's tone told me loud and clear he'd expected a better story than my sword whirling all by itself through the air.

"You are dragons," I said a little stung by his words. "You don't exist. You are all a myth, a poetic metaphor. If you can exist, a magic sword can exist."

Monk Tien laughed. It seemed to me that the dragons were also amused, especially the emerald one.

"Once you believe something impossible," said the monk. "Nothing is impossible." He looked around at his fellow dragons. "Nothing is impossible," he repeated and laughed. It was a happy laugh that actually made me feel better.

"Daiyu didn't kill Mrs. Long-ju," I said stubbornly. "She doesn't belong in that cage."

"All of us are dangerous," said the monk suddenly sober. "We are all caged," he added cryptically.

"I only see one of us caged," I said.

"That is true," said Derkein. He raised a hand and I felt the sword jerk from my hand. The brown monk snatched it out of the air before Derkein could grab it.

Mr. Emerald lifted a handful of claws and I felt myself pushed backwards. I went all goofy for a moment. Just a moment. The world turned into a confused mist and I was blown backwards. I felt the dragon bones comb through me as I melted through them. It hurt, but in an incoherent crazy way.

When I fell back into the right shape in space and time, I was standing in the cage beside the quietly seated, still as a rock, Daiyu.

"What?" I shouted when my voice condensed into my throat. "I'm innocent! We both are. That's the God's truth!" I'm a liar. I absolutely hate it when I tell the truth and nobody believes me.

"You appear from nowhere, a ragged thief," said Ms. Sapphire.

"Daiyu uses her influence to get you into the Inn of the Silver Snake," said the gold dragon, a deep man's voice.

"You were invited to supper at her request and at her request you brought a sword." This was supplied by Amethyst, also a female.

"Mr. Long-ju and Daiyu were lured away," said Derkein.

"You and your sword were alone with Mrs. Long-ju," said Mr. Emerald.

"The servants find you with a bloody dress and sword," Derkein said. "Daiyu helped you escape from jail."

"That is her scabbard hanging from your back," said Mr. Emerald. He seemed to really be enjoying this. Lights danced in his enormous eyes. You did it, you bastard, I thought. You're the one who should be in this cage. The power of Daiyu's will kept my mouth shut.

I ran to the bars, grabbed them and tried to shake them. That was a useless gesture. They could have been iron anchored in the heart of the earth. No wonder they would have killed the sword.

"Let us out! This is nuts. It's all nuts! Nobody on earth is a better person than Daiyu!"

That last remark slipped out. If I could have rewound time to take back those words, I would have. On the other hand, they were stone cold true. Maybe I just have an aversion to telling the truth.

The emerald dragon circled around the cage. Daiyu looked like she was in a galaxy far, far away, perfectly still, perfectly poised. I could see both of us in the polished emerald scales, reflected hundreds of times.

"Tien is correct," he said. "We are all caged by our illusions and delusions." Now he had the cage entirely circled with his body. He rested his chin above our heads. His whiskers hung through the bars. One of them was so close I could have reached up and jerked on it. Which I was sorely tempted to do.

"Above all that," he said lazily. "The two of you came to me with the pearl. When I would not endorse Daiyu as its keeper, she attacked me. I took the power of these dragons to subdue her."

Derkein attitude had shifted a little. Through most of this he seemed detached and somber, like he was wishing he was somewhere else, doing anything else. Now a glint of fire flashed across his face as he listened to this pack of lies. Daiyu came awake and focused on him as though all of a sudden he was the center of the universe.

"Therefore, it is incumbent upon us...." Mr. Emerald must have noticed he'd lost his audience. He trailed off and rumbled low in his throat.

Monk Tien had stopped smiling. All the dragons seemed to have changed mood. I'd dropped off the radar. Fine with me, but I wanted to know what was going on. Something in the air had changed.

Then I noticed an odd thing. The plants clinging to the rock walls were curling up and turning black around the edges. The little yellow flowers ringing the floor in their trenches of soil were nodding and then crumpling like wadded up newspaper.

All the dragons except Daiyu were becoming a little indistinct around the edges. It was like I was seeing them all with cheesecloth on the lens. Daiyu remained vivid. Lyu, still coiled around our cage, began to puff up into emerald smoke.

It was like any second now all the dragons were going to turn into people and all the people were going to turn into dragons.

Daiyu stayed perfectly still, gazing at Derkein. Only the dragon tattoo in her neck seemed restless, even though it didn't move any more than the impassive face it decorated.

Lyu had puffed up into smoke until only his eyes were visible. They still twinkled but the glint had a much harder edge to it. He drifted up like a cloud toward the sky above and then re-solidified and streamed away as if a wind blew him out of sight.

Then Daiyu turned and looked at the doorway I'd come through earlier. It was the first time she'd moved so much as a muscle.

When I saw what came through the door, I made some kind of noise. My knees buckled and I landed on my butt.

Mr. Long-ju walked in. He was filthy, covered with blood and soot. In one hand he carried the pearl, beautiful and shining in his filthy claw-like hand. Under his other arm he had tucked his head.
_

_

When the people lack a proper sense of awe, then some awful visitation will descend upon them.

### Chapter 17

I didn't like seeing dragons. They so violate the sense of what can and can't exist. It was like my mind rejected the idea of them and had to be constantly re-convinced. So my mind would have rejected them if given half a chance.

Mr. Long-ju walking in the door with his head tucked under one arm was more than I could take.

I focused my entire attention on his robe and the smear of blood where I'd cleaned the blade of my grandfather's sword. That smear of blood on his robe was a testimony of the horrible thing I'd done. I didn't like focusing on that. It was horrible, but less ghastly than the bloody stump of Mr. Long-ju's neck. I would never have killed Mrs. Long-ju. But I'd definitely cut this man's head off. Maybe I did kill his wife and I'm just bat-shit crazy.

I couldn't raise my eyes to the dead face under his arm with its smears of ashes and black soot spoiling the elegant silver mustaches.

Okay, I couldn't look just then but that one previous glimpse had burned itself into my brain. Maybe for a while there, I WAS bat-shit crazy.

Mr. Long-ju's headless body walked up to Derkein and set the head and the pearl side by side at his feet. Then Long-ju knelt and sat back on his calves.

Derkein knelt also. He would have been eye-to-eye, if Mr. Long-ju's eyes hadn't been on the floor with his head.

"Who—" Derkein seemed to be having trouble forming words. He started over. "Who ... did ... this?"

Mr. Long-ju's headless body turned. He raised a bloody and blackened sleeve and pointed one claw at me.

I thought I was already scared. It was nothing compared to the horror of that silent finger pointing straight at me.

I've had fingers pointed at me lots of times, but this was a sword running me through, transfixing me with guilt. I cowered. I wanted to cry but my eyes were dry and hot.

The vines and flowers were all now crispy as if blight had wiped them all out. I remembered what Daiyu said about him being poison.

"You did this," said Derkein to me.

I couldn't force a word out of my mouth. I whimpered but I couldn't turn it into words.

Mr. Long-ju leaned over and picked up his head. He set it on his neck—a raw stump, I could even see bones—and it fused back together perfectly. He was still bloody, filthy and about a million years older than when I first met him.

The eyes opened, so did the mouth. "She did this," he said.

"Daiyu is her master," said Derkein. It was if he dragged the words out of himself. He was totally not a happy camper.

Mr. Long-ju bowed his recently reattached head. "Yes," he said. His face didn't have much expression. He stood, picked up the pearl and threw it hard back down on the floor. It shattered into thousands of pieces. I wanted to faint. Fortunately I'm not the fainting type.

The dragons all had a reaction similar to mine. Shock. Horror. Disbelief.

"Fake," said Derkein. "That was not the pearl."

"No," said Mr. Long-ju in a haunted voice.

Derkein set his shoulders. He seemed to steel himself to what he had to say next.

"Dragon death," said Derkein. He pronounced it like a sentence but there was a trace of a question in his voice.

"No," said Mr. Long-ju. The word was soft. Almost sane. "The volcano," he said.

The other dragons seemed to sigh. It was like they'd been tense, holding their breath, waiting for a doom that had fallen when the fake pearl shattered.

Monk Tien frowned and tilted his head.

* * *

The dragons had surrounded Mr. Long-ju. He was almost completely obscured with sparkling, jeweled dragon coils. It was one of those extremely rare moments I wished for a camera. It was bizarre and beautiful. It would have been far more entrancing if the word "volcano" hadn't been introduced.

I turned to Daiyu. "Volcano? What the hell does that mean?"

"I'm not to be killed for my crimes."

"Your crimes? That's bullshit, but otherwise not killed is good."

The dragons were talking to Mr. Long-ju in soft, rapid Chinese. The dialect was something I didn't recognize. I suspected it was a language people don't speak any more.

In little glimpses, I could see Mr. Long-ju stood with his newly reattached head bowed. I didn't get the impression he was listening. His face was a tragic mask, closed off in grief, the dragon speech flowed over him like water and he didn't bother to answer.

After a while they all fell silent and stood in a still tableau.

The sapphire dragon became blue smoke and arose into the sky. That seemed to be a signal to the others. Several dragons taking off all at once created a breeze that scattered the dead plants and turned the withered leaves into dust.

Mr. Long-ju was the last to go. He turned into his dragon self almost as a leap into a nearly colorless cloud. His scales no longer shown. Now they were dead white and many of them were black with tarnish.

He turned and regarded first Daiyu and then me. He didn't say anything. The suffering in the black depths of those enormous eyes said it all. The agony of his grief washed over me and I could feel my eyes burning in response. The more I fell into those eyes, the more despair and pain grew in me until I was sick with it. I wanted to vomit. I wanted to scream. I wanted to kill anything to make it stop. Burn something. Burn my entire being. To scrape, scrub, cut, slice...anything to make the pain stop...

Suddenly a black wall stood between me and all that pain.

"Go," Daiyu said into the well of his torment. "You must not do this. Rest on your mountain and grieve. In holding fast to the way a sage does not desire to be full. Because he is not full, he can be both worn out and yet new."

Poetry? Seriously? Yet the relief that Daiyu was shielding me from all that misery was palpable. I felt weak from it. Scorched and poisoned as the dead vines.

"I cannot," he said. At least it was something like that. A total negation.

Then he was gone. He just flew straight up and away. Something ugly released me suddenly. I sat down on the floor of the cage.

Oh, yeah. The cage. That was a bigger problem than a miserably unhappy dragon.

"So how do we get out of here?" I asked. Daiyu was thoughtfully contemplating the sky where Mr. Long-ju had disappeared.

"We don't," she said simply. She descended gracefully into a lotus seat, clearly preparing to go back into meditation.

"Maybe you don't, but I do," I said. I stood up again and started testing the white bars one after another. They still might as well have been iron. The floor was a tight lattice of thin bones. I might be able to cut through them if I had a jackhammer in my pocket.

"Tell me about the volcano," I said trying to reach my fingers through the bars to explore the lock. It was an exquisitely jeweled and delicate thing. I definitely would have loved to break it off and stick it in my pocket. Truth be told I actually tried to do that. "What are they talking about?"

Daiyu looked like she might have shrugged if she'd been another person. "They will throw this cage into the volcano."

"With us inside," I said through a tight throat.

"Yes."

"A live volcano, I assume."

"Technically, yes. There is a lava pool in the bottom of the cone."

"But they didn't agree to dragon death," I said. I knew I was missing the main point but I didn't have the nerve to look at that just yet.

"Yes, the lava will not kill me. I can't die that way."

"But I can." There was the pesky Main Point.

"Yes. You will die instantly."

"Well, that's a comfort." My voice shook too hard to make it a decent joke.

She tilted her head a fraction to acknowledge my attempt.

"But if you can't die," I said, backing away from the Main Point. "Won't that mean you burn in the lava...I mean...won't it hurt?"

She looked at me and yet didn't see me. "Yes."

"And that means it will hurt a lot...forever," I knew I should shut the hell up but talking about this was better than the Main Point.

"Yes," she said. She didn't move, her face set in ivory.

"That ... sucks," I said.

"Yes."

Nothing happened after that for a while. I thought a lot about the Main Point and cried a little out of self pity.

Daiyu sat there, an obsidian statue. Black Jade Dragon. She seemed like stone.

I tried to meditate too. I'm lousy at it. I really need to have somebody teach me how to do it right. My mind jumped around running, leaping, chewing and trying to escape that goddam Main Point problem.

I finally gave up and paced around the cage. I could circumnavigate it in six steps—or five or seven depending on how I tinkered with my stride.

After a while I realized I was both hungry and thirsty but the Main Point eclipsed my physical discomfort.

Night fell. I slept from time to time but woke up frequently with dreams about scary monsters going to kill me. And every time I woke up, it was all true.

At dawn a shining gold dragon and a sparkling sapphire dragon filled the room around the cage. They lifted us up and carried us out to the wild blue yonder.

There were still a few stray stars glittering in the paling blue-gray sky. Without a Main Point it would have been breath-taking.

As it was, my breath was taken but not by the beauty around me.

The volcano I'd seen from the deck of the ship, the one that can be seen from pretty much all parts of town—that volcano—grew bigger as we approached and then we flew up the side of the mountain. It hadn't erupted in centuries. Trees and flowers grew out of the pulverized volcanic soil and through the cracks and breaks of long frozen black lava flows.

There was no foliage inside the crater. The fumes rose sulfurous and warm, promising heat down below.

The dragons flew into the crater lowering the cage down and down as the fumes thickened and there was less real air. Now the heat was beginning to blossom. I had a brief mental image of a frog in a pot slowly coming up to the boil.

"Hang on to something," Daiyu said.

"What difference would that—" The gold and sapphire dragons dropped the cage and I grabbed the nearest bars. This is what a broken elevator must feel like. We hit the smooth wall and bounced, then hit again and began tumbling over and over. It made the world crazy insane and this was what the clothes in a dryer must feel like. Except these clothes were screaming and cursing.

Daiyu became indistinct and disappeared in a black cloud. The black mist pressed against the bars like we were in a bell jar. The mist pressed against me also. It pushed me against the cage and stopped my clothes-in-a-dryer tumble.

The tumble stopped but not the slide.

"The black jade dragon."

"What?" I heard it as speech, but there was no mouth anywhere in sight.

"The dragon I gave you. Give it to me."

My mind was way too busy being terrified to scrape together a question. I found my hands, found my pocket, dug out the trinket and then numbly wondered with to do with it.

A hand appeared from the mist, snatched it and threw it through the bars at the blur of black walls sliding by. The little dragon protruded, half buried in the glass. A tentacle snaked out—except it was probably a whisker—and wrapped around it.

And then we slid into the lava pool.

_

_

If heaven and earth cannot go on forever, much less can man. That is why one follows the way.

### Chapter 18

I was all mixed up. It hurt. Death wasn't supposed to hurt. I had that on good authority. And it still hurt, a roasting sunburn after too many hours on the beach. Burning your mouth on a hot slice of pizza but all over your body. I twisted and writhed in the pain and couldn't fight because it engulfed me.

And then I thought to stop fighting and just observe the pain. I knew that wasn't my idea. Daiyu was messing around in my mind.

And then I wondered what I was using to think all this stuff. My brain was supposed to be french-fried extra crispy. Brains don't think under those conditions.

And then I realized Daiyu was keeping me alive. My molecules were not as mashed together as they normally are. I was all mixed up with her magic, super-duper molecules.

I wasn't sure what I thought about that. Was it okay? Or kinda gay? I'd never met a woman I admired before. On the other hand I didn't meet many admirable women. On the other other hand, Daiyu wasn't technically a woman or even a human. I decided to observe those thoughts too.

So I did. The pain kept creeping back, which meant observing or having thoughts was like listening to a radio through static. The static got louder or softer depending on whether I was thinking or observing.

I hadn't thought about eyeballs or looking or any of my other senses except wracking, boiling agony or not agony. But suddenly I could see light.

And the pain eased. It slowly flowed away. Things started to solidify and resolve. I tried not to get excited about it. Maybe this is death. Maybe pain does go away when you die. Pain is a body thing. No body, no pain.

I did have a body, though. I could feel it getting heaver as it cooled. I ached in several places but it was ordinary take-two-aspirins aching. It's probably how I would have felt yesterday if I'd been paying attention.

I opened my eyes to a solid wall of shiny, polished dragon scales. I could see dozens of reflections of myself. I looked like holy shit. My hair was singed almost down to the scalp. I had a bruise on my left cheek and I looked like I'd been wracked with tortured agony for years instead of a few minutes.

I was packed so tight in dragon coils I couldn't really move, but I looked around.

We were literally saved by a whisker. The dragon, the Angie Tanaka and the cage dangled from Daiyu's whisker wrapped around the little statue jammed into the black volcanic glass.

There were cracks in the glass around the little jade dragon. I wasn't going to pay attention to those.

"How long can you hang like this," I asked.

A giant eye rolled in my direction.

"For the rest of your life," she said.

"I was afraid you'd say that. Is there anything I can do?"

"Yes. Move your left foot. You're standing on my tail."

"Oh, sorry," I said and shifted my left foot a couple of inches.

We dangled. There was a bit of a cool breeze. That was nice considering I thought I'd never feel anything like that again.

"So what's the plan?" I asked.

"This is the plan," she answered.

"Oh," I said. "Shit," I added.

I unhappily studied the dozens of copies of my unhappy face reflected in Daiyu's scales.

I kept an eye on the cracks around the little jade dragon without meaning to. I distracted myself by thinking about the last few days and all the crazy things that had happened. The craziest thing of all was how much I cared about some of these monsters. Daiyu went without saying. I also wanted to fix Mr. Long-ju's grief even if he did try to eat me.

I was disappointed that Gao turned out to be the emerald dragon. I didn't run into many people that were sorta kinda like the kinda person I am. In spite of the fact that we hated each other I thought we'd made a connection right up to the moment he tried to cut my head off.

Then I had a thought.

"There's something I've been meaning to ask you for days but I've never had a moment," I said.

"Yes?"

"We seem to be having a moment now."

"What is it?" If she'd been anybody else the question would have been impatient.

"Why did you send me to the Inn of the Silver Snake? Why are you helping me?"

She didn't answer right away. I thought maybe she was too busy keeping us alive to have a little conversation.

"You abandoned your treasure and saved the fisherman."

"But I didn't want to!" I just don't know how to stop when I'm ahead.

"But you did. I saw you."

"That was you I saw in the storm."

"Yes."

"Damn." I couldn't wrap my brain around it all. But I have to admit my brain had been a tad overworked lately.

A cloud passed overhead. A long, long, long cloud. My heart sank. I didn't want to look up. I did anyway.

Instead of the tarnished silver I'd expected, a glittering coil of topaz drifted overhead. Topaz? I think there'd been a topaz dragon in the mob I'd seen from the roof of the prison. I held my breath. Friend or foe? It flew by close, taking a long time at it. I caught little glimpses of Daiyu's dragon face and my mug reflected in topaz scales.

Then a handful of claws the size of hockey sticks grabbed the cage and lifted it up into the sky.

* * *

The topaz dragon set the cage down in a cave obscured by scrubby pine trees. By the time we landed, Daiyu had turned back into herself, or at least the shape I was more comfortable being around.

Once we were safely on the ground, the topaz dragon shrank and melted and the Monk Tien solidified in the midst of the yellow-brown cloud.

"It's you!" I said.

He smiled and bowed, clasping his hands inside his sleeves. Then he stepped up to the cage and breathed on the lock until it was cherry red. There was a little soft pop and the monk pulled open the gate. I glanced at Daiyu.

"Why couldn't you have done that?" I said.

"The cage takes away my fire. It mutes much of my dragon nature."

"Bones do that? Don't you have bones in your own body?"

"The cage is built from the bones of imperial dragons," she said. I think I was supposed to be impressed. I think I was.

The cave we were standing in was small and clearly a monk's hermitage. There was a narrow sleeping platform, a crate of bottled water and another crate of packaged dried noodles. The dragon-bone cage took up most of the floor space. It was utterly untouched by the lava and gleamed white in the dim light.

Daiyu opened a bottle of water without asking permission and drank it in four long pulls. Before she drained it, the monk had another open and held it out to her. They completed this little ritual a few more times. When he handed her the sixth bottle she shook her head and gestured in my direction.

I was thirsty and I was going to ask for a bottle but I'd never seen Daiyu obviously need anything before. She was almost like a superhero or a living sculpture. This touch of humanity made her more real somehow.

"Thanks to both of you for saving my life," I said. "I thought I was toast. Literally."

"It is important for the Kindred to believe you are toast for a while," said Monk Tien.

"Indeed?" Daiyu looked a little surprised. "Long-ju has had his justice. I hoped that might begin his healing."

"Come," said the monk. "There is something you must see." He led us out of the cave and along a narrow little track through the woods. The path wound up to the top of the hill. Before long I was played out and wishing I'd grabbed another bottle of water.

Eventually, the monk held up his hand and parted some bushes. We were thousands of miles in the air.

Okay, not really, but the city spread out below. Several plumes of smoke rose. A new burned off area covered the two hills on either side of Silver Mountain and had eaten everything green in a wide swath almost down to the city.

"Shit," I said softly. "It's getting a lot worse, isn't it?"

Daiyu studied the devastation. The tattooed dragon head above her eye seemed to glare malevolently.

"Yes," the monk said into the silence. "Revenge is never as sweet as one thinks it will be."

I'd taken revenge a couple of times and it wasn't half bad. Of course, I didn't have as much skin in the game as Long-ju. Most of my stuff was petty shit. Then I had a thought.

"Are you implying that you had yourself thrown into a volcano to make your friend happy?"

Daiyu gave me one of her most inscrutable looks. Then she turned to the monk, clearly having dealt with a pointless interruption.

"Did Tyu recant his story?"

"No."

"Good"

"Wait!" I interrupted again. "Are you okay with his lies? He's the pearl thief!"

"Yes," Daiyu said with profound patience. "But we must remain silent for a while longer."

"Why? Wouldn't it be best if the real guilty party confessed?"

"Not yet. Eventually he must."

I realized with a pang that if and when he ever did confess he could truthfully point the dragon talon straight at me for my part in Mrs. Long-ju's death.

I watched the city burn and I realized my life wasn't worth a hill of beans in this crazy-mixed up yadda-yadda. I'd have to take my medicine when it came down to it. Maybe I'd get a nice jail somewhere with no volcanoes.

Best to keep a good thought.

"We've got to get his pearl back," I said. I had their full attention and when you're talking about dragons giving you their full attention, you're saying something. "I can't return his wife, but getting the pearl back is something I can do. I thought I already gave it back to him. I left the pearl with his body—the real pearl."

Daiyu raised her eyebrows a sixteenth of an inch. "You had it? You left it?"

"Yeah. I stole it from Lyu and then Long-ju snapped me and it up. He was going to kill me, but I killed him first."

The monk smiled and tilted his head.

"Okay, I cut off his head. That's usually fatal," I said, a little defensive. I had a feeling if they weren't dragons they'd be laughing at me. Of course, if they weren't dragons, none of this mess would have happened.

"And you are certain you left the real pearl behind." Daiyu was burning a hole in me with that steady focused gaze.

"Yes. I'm definitely certain. It was the real pearl. Obviously something happened after I left."

"Yes," said the monk with a little smile. "Someone took the real pearl and substituted a fake."

"Lyu had a bunch of fake pearls. Some of them were pretty close to the real thing. If we find the real pearl and give it back to him, Mr. Long-ju will stop all this," I said.

"Possibly," said Daiyu. "But you are supposed to be dead. If he discovers otherwise he'll simply destroy all life on the island. After that he might turn his attention to Taiwan or China herself."

I contemplated the columns of smoke rising from the city and the dying foliage creeping down from the hills.

"All righty then," I said. "I'll find the real pearl and get Lyu to confess to the killing. Easy, peasy."

The monk laughed. "Heaven and earth will unite and the sweet dew will fall!"

My bullshit brag rattled something loose in my head. Something I didn't have time to pay attention to right now.

Daiyu was not amused. "Derkein and the others will search for the pearl," she said soberly. "You must remain dead until it is found. Until that time I shall go back to the volcano. Tien will help you escape the island. You may continue your life of crime elsewhere."

I resented the life of crime snark, but the thought of her walking back into that lava overwhelmed my irritation. Okay, maybe the two things combined a little.

"Screw that!" I growled. "You can't offer yourself up as a sacrificial lamb while that green creep is out there thinking he got away with murder."

I figured that would piss her off, but she surprised me by looking almost careworn. "Long-ju is my friend and I grieve for his madness. Lihua was my friend also and I grieve her death." She turned as gracefully as a dancer and headed down the path. That was that.

At least she clearly thought that was that. I took off after her. I was running and she was walking but she outpaced me easily.

When I got back to the cave a glittering topaz dragon blocked my way.

I hadn't had a good last few days. The run down the path almost killed me. I stood in front of the cave leaning on a tree trunk as my breath tore though my throat.

"She can't do it," I panted, when I could talk again.

"It is by her choice," said the giant topaz head. I could see distress in those enormous eyes. He wasn't entirely on board with this plan. He knew what it would cost her.

"You can't let her. I know where the pearl is."

That wasn't exactly a lie.

Monk Tien wasn't buying. For the first time I saw a spasm of annoyance on a dragon face. He abruptly condensed down into a man. For a brief moment his skin was gleaming topaz.

Behind him I could now see Daiyu had put herself back into the cage. The dragon tattoo seemed asleep. When I saw her, she opened her eyes and saw me.

"You do not know where the pearl is," she said hollowly.

The monk seemed to be studying me.

"No, I don't," I said. "But I think I can find it."

That was close enough to the truth. Monk Tien seemed to relax but Daiyu pierced me with That Look.

"Wait. Hide here and let me hunt for it." I tried to sound confident and authoritative, but I was actually pleading.

Daiyu abruptly glanced away.

"No. If any dragon sees you, they will know I am not in the volcano."

"Not necessarily," I said. "And I'm pretty good at being sneaky."

"And if they see you, they will kill you instantly."

That merited some thought.

"I'll take that risk," I said before I'd given the idea due consideration.

"No, you won't," Daiyu said. She closed her eyes. The conversation was over.

"Bitch." I swear I didn't mean to say it, it slipped out.

Monk Tien took my elbow. "Come," he said.

I jerked away from him and nearly broke my arm doing it. "You can't let her go back in that volcano. You've got to let me try to fix this."

He didn't look at me. He wasn't any happier about Daiyu's plan than I was. He tugged on me and my choices were come along or lose the elbow.

So I decided to come along. Then I stopped. "Can I have my sword back?"

He seemed to think it over and then he lifted it off his shoulder where it had been hanging invisibly the whole time. Or at least I assumed so. As I hung it over my own shoulder, I thought when this was over I was going to do it. I was going to throw the thing in the sea. Grandfather was dead. The sword needed to be dead too.

Monk Tien led me down the path to the edge of town. He didn't have hold of my elbow the entire way, but he never got further away than an easy reach. He led me behind an outlying gas station and then a brown mist rose from the monk and the world got all mixed up for a little while.

"I have changed our appearance," he said. He had become a rather obese young man and I—judging by the papery wrinkled hands—looked somewhat older.

"Come along mother," said the young man. His little smile looked familiar.

"Oh, thanks," I said. "I've always wanted to be a hag."

His smile broadened. "Becoming an ancient hag is the happy conclusion of a life!"

I said something very unkind and unhaglike.

The monk's amusement and my annoyance faded as we walked through the streets. Shop windows gaped in empty shards. Here and there at random were piles of things that had been burned. People were beating on each other with fists and miscellaneous debris.

One apartment building was a raging inferno with half crazed and entirely exhausted looking firemen struggling to put it out while people stood around shouting into each others faces.

The town had gone insane and it was pissing me off.

Monk Tien kept hold of my elbow. It was irritating. I kept thinking I should be able to ditch him. I was good at that. He held my elbow like an owner holding a dog on a leash. That was pissing me off.

It was getting mad at the Peugeot that tipped me off. Peugeots are deliberately designed to not piss off anybody. In the volcano I had detached and observed the most excruciating torture. Surely I could observe the hell out of this too.

Then out of nowhere somebody bashed the monk in the head with something that looked like a twisted piece of car bumper. My slightly obese young son hit the pavement hard.

A guy who looked like he was probably a waiter in real life gloated down at the man on the pavement. He would probably never know he'd coshed a dragon. The waiter had blood spattered on his crisp, white shirt.

Then he noticed me and snarled.

Monk Tien, who still looked like the fat kid, jumped to his feet far more agilely than the fat kid should have been able to. The withered old lady I was supposed to be took off like a jackrabbit.

The dragon couldn't be killed by a waiter, but I could be. And furthermore this gave me a chance to get the hell away.

I ran randomly for a while until I couldn't run any more. That didn't take long, but I was out of sight and that was all that mattered. I needed more water and I needed something to eat but I didn't have a dime in my pockets and no time for a brief crime spree.

I headed toward the waterfront. That was quite tricky because the mayhem seemed to intensify the closer I got to the docks. My nerves crackled all over my body. I would dearly have loved to punch somebody. And nobody would notice if I did because I wouldn't have stood out of the crowd.

Just observe the anger, I told myself. Just observe. This isn't yours. It's being pushed on you. Just observe. I observed myself dodging a young woman swinging a shopping bag at me and then I observed myself knocking her down. Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! I scolded myself.

I spotted the meditation hall down the street and ran for it. It was intact and undamaged. In fact this street was empty and peaceful.

With every step I took toward the meditation hall I pushed through a silent storm of fury and despair. I fought it. I observed it. I observed the hell out of it and then I observed my appearance in a shop window. I didn't look like an old hag any more. I looked like Angie Tanaka, all singed red hair, filth and bruises.

Then another reflection joined mine in the window. Long white hair, long white mustaches and a white robe. Mr. Long-ju.
_

_

The sage does not show himself, and so is conspicuous; he does not consider himself right, and so is illustrious; he does not brag, and so has merit; he does not boast, and so endures.

### Chapter 19

I turned to face him. The pupils of his eyes were missing. His white eyeballs were all I could see. It was creepy as all get out.

"I want to talk to you," I said. I didn't want to sound angry but I know I did. He was the epicenter of all the insanity washing over me.

"You're dead," he said. He didn't sound the least bit surprised. His voice was coldly flat.

"Obviously it didn't take." This time I was able to control my tone a little better.

He seemed to lose interest in me and casually melted a hole in the hood of an abandoned taxi. He did it by just resting his hand on it.

"You've got to stop that," I said. "People are dying. That horrible feeling you've got ... you're giving it to other people who did nothing to harm you."

The pupils of his eyes returned for just an instant. For about the count of one they were normal brown Chinese eyes. Maybe the real Mr. Long-ju was still down there somewhere under the anger and the grief.

"I will kill you again," he said. "I will kill you over and over again."

My hands were shaking. I didn't feel like explaining that it doesn't work that way.

"You could do that," I said. "But it will not return your wife to you."

He replied by burning another hole in the taxi.

"You killed me once already," I growled. "Do you think doing it again will make you feel better?" I was still pissed off and fighting to get it under control. I shouted "Did it make you feel better?" Get a hold of yourself, I thought. Observe. Observe.

"You took my love and my honor," he said.

"Someone did. It wasn't me, but even if it was, killing me or everyone on this island over and over will not bring Lihua back."

He rested his fingertips on the hood of the taxi and melted five holes at once. The paint caught fire briefly.

"I can't bring her back," I said. "But I think I know where the pearl is."

Those silver white eyes could glare as piercingly as Daiyu's black ones. "You took it," he said.

"If I took it where is it? Where did I get the fake pearl to put in its place?" He didn't answer, so I pushed on. "The emerald dragon is your wife's killer and he stole the pearl. I took the pearl from him and you took it from me."

He shook his head. He might have been denying what I said but it looked like he was trying to clear the cobwebs out of his mind.

"If I bring the pearl to you, will you stop all this?" I waved my hand in the general direction of the mayhem.

He didn't answer and I couldn't tell what the silence meant, but he'd stopped burning holes in the taxi. It was a step in the right direction.

"Look," I said. "Take a break. Give it a rest. Go home and get some sleep." I thought about the burned out mess of the Silver Snake Inn. I hoped that wasn't his primary residence.

It was a stand-off. We listened to the roar of a distant fire punctuated with screams and police and fire sirens. It was the soundtrack of hell and that non-silence may have been what persuaded him.

"You have until sunset," he said. "Then everyone dies."

* * *

He left me standing there with my mouth gaping open. Then all the sick fury and despair I'd been fighting back released me and I nearly staggered with relief. The world became quieter. More crashingly ordinary.

Ordinary is good.

I didn't make straight for the meditation hall. For one thing I was afraid Monk Tien might be there. I rounded the corner and found the motorcycle garage. Naturally it was locked.

Normally that wouldn't make much difference to me, but my burglar tools were probably still in my duffel bag somewhere in the meditation hall if Daiyu had left them there. Or not. It didn't matter. I kicked the door in. In the context of the general devastation in the city, a smashed door wouldn't stand out.

The garage was dark and smelled of stale axle grease. Nobody was there. I had kind of hoped the Gao would be hiding inside but that would have been too easy.

I sighed. Easy had never been a part of my lifestyle.

I headed for the other door. The giant Buddha peacefully dominated the little temple. I glanced up at the broad, happy face. Must be nice, I thought, to be free of suffering. Then I shrugged mentally. Suffering is what I do best.

No, I corrected myself. I was here to do what I do best. I was here to steal something.

The temple was only a few steps across. I took those steps and eased open the door to the meditation hall. As I hoped, it was empty.

I studied the altar where Daiyu had lifted my invisible scabbard. It was bare except for a flickering candle that hadn't burned down a millimeter since I'd seen it last. The ancient painting of Bodhidharma still hung on the wall above it.

I hesitated. If my hunch was wrong, not only was I screwed, but also the whole world—or at least this little part of it.

But I wasn't wrong. I groped around on the empty table and found the pearl almost immediately. In fact I almost knocked it onto the floor. Bingo. What better place to hide it other than in "plain sight"? This building had some kind of protection mojo on it and apparently the altar can hide things from even dragon eyes. Nobody would think of looking for it here. Nobody but a thief who was always unconsciously looking for places to hide things or where other people have hidden things.

When I lifted the pearl off the altar it became visible.

"Hello, drowned rat prostitute criminal."

I turned. The rickshaw boy stood outlined in the door.

"Hello turncoat traitor criminal illegitimate son of a fox," I said. I know the fox thing isn't much in English but in Chinese it's nasty.

He smiled. "Traitor?"

"You bastard. You and that emerald dragon traitor criminal are behind all this."

"Ah, a drowned rat prostitute criminal who is also mentally deficient."

"Screw you. You stole the pearl up on Silver Mountain to incriminate me and Daiyu. Lyu killed Mrs. Long-ju and you're working for him." The scene flickered through my mind leaving behind a trace of bitterness. "Why? Why? For this thing?" I lifted the pearl. Okay, it WAS beautiful. I loved touching it. I loved the weight of it in my hands. Still...

"Hand it over," he said. "Or you join Lihua in the next life."

"Eat shit and die," I said. I whirled and darted to the wall beside the altar. I kicked in the invisible door and ran down the moldy stairs, taking them two at a time. I ran through the stinking sewer not trying to hold my breath because that would be impossible so I pulled in filthy, nasty air that tasted shitty and I don't mean that as a metaphor. When I got to the first ladder up to a grating, I took it.

Somewhere along in there I noticed Gao hadn't chased me as I thought he would. Hell, I didn't think I'd get more than a few feet. Flight was just worth a try. But there was nobody behind me, no sound of running steps. Okay, whatever.

I pushed open the grating wishing I'd discussed a rendezvous point with Mr. Long-ju. I actually had no idea where I should look for him but I'd be willing to bet he'd be on the mountain with Lihua's bones. It was an important bet, but I had until sunset to figure it out. No problem.

I knew I shouldn't have allowed the expression "no problem" to enter my mind.

When I lifted the sewer grating and crawled out of that filthy place, Gao was standing there waiting for me.

"Crap," I said with great feeling.

He laughed. "Give me that thing." He nodded at the pearl.

"Screw you." Hadn't we been over this just a few minutes ago? I turned and ran. I knew I didn't have enough juice left to run very far. Too much kicking, falling, climbing, getting burned to a crisp, etc. going on lately. I needed a meal and a good night's sleep. Maybe in my next life.

And again he didn't seem to be following me. This time I was more suspicious and when I slowed down to catch my breath, I made sure I was tucked into the tiny passageway between a drug store and a strip joint. I followed the passage to an alley.

I had a minor problem that might become major if I didn't do something about it. I still had the pearl in my hands right out in the open where everybody and their brother-in-law could see it. When I got to the alley, the problem almost solved itself. A plastic grocery sack was blowing in the breeze, tumbling over and over. I snatched it, dropped in the pearl and tied the whole thing to a belt loop.

It was a relief. I got to be relieved for about thirty seconds.

Gao lounged against a parked car at the mouth of the alley. All I could think of was a string of vile, filthy words in a couple of languages. I said a few of them aloud.

"Tell your boss he's an asshole and I'm not turning over the pearl to him," I said finally. The rickshaw boy was pretty muscular and I knew that statement was as about as empty as it gets, but, as you may have noticed, not everything that comes out of my mouth is rational.

"He'll take it from you," Gao said. He looked like he was trying not to laugh. It was very irritating.

"He can try," I said and drew the sword. I held it in front of me with both hands.

Gao didn't stop smiling. He didn't shift his position. He still lounged, arms crossed, looking like the picture of relaxed and insolent loutishness.

Then he started to lose definition. My belly dropped. I knew what that meant. Mist spread around him. Green mist. It seemed to blow like smoke except it wasn't obeying the breeze. And then it coalesced into shining, glittering emeralds. Lots of them. His body filled the street. People screamed and ran. I really, really wanted to be one of them but stood my ground. He didn't work for the emerald dragon. He WAS the emerald dragon.

"Do you really think you can hurt me with that sword?" he said. His whiskers seemed to have a life of their own whipping around his head.

"No," I said. Then I turned and ran down the alley. At least that was the plan. A green whisker snaked around my waist and pulled me back. I hacked at it with the sword, but the blade just bounced off.

The alley dropped away sickeningly fast as he lifted me into the sky.
_

_

A weapon that is strong will not vanquish; a tree that is strong will suffer the axe. The strong and big takes the lower position, the supple and weak takes the higher position.

### Chapter 20

The earth dropped away, the people looked up screaming and pointing and running for cover. I barely managed to hang on to the sword. I wanted to vomit. I wanted to faint. I didn't do either one but I did struggle to breathe. My entire weight was suspended from a whisker wrapped around my waist. This caused a very serious restriction on my diaphragm—you know, that muscle that pulls air into your lungs. I gulped little sips of air, gasping and barely keeping myself from getting dizzy.

And dizzy would have been a problem anyway because the city had become a blur down below. From this height I could see the blackened hills and the devastation of burned terrain heading down to the edges of the city. I recognized the prison as we flew over it. The deadly wave of blackened forest lapped at its walls. When I saw we were headed that way, I figured that's where we were going but we didn't stop there. The emerald dragon took me higher and higher to the top of the mountain above the prison, to an open stone platform. It looked for all the world like a landing pad for a helicopter, but way bigger than a heliport.

Mr. Emerald set me down with a hard thump. He pulled his whisker away and I lay there on my back pulling sweet, sweet, air into my lungs. My fingertips were numb and so were my lips. I had a feeling I wouldn't have survived a much longer trip.

The dragon wandered around me. I don't know what he was doing. Checking the perimeter? I didn't really care until I felt strong enough to stand up.

When I did stand I thought maybe I should put the sword away. I wasn't going to injure this monster with it. But it felt good in my hand, almost a comfort. The pearl still dangled from my belt in its tacky plastic grocery bag.

Eventually the beautiful emeralds coiled up in a tight knot in the center of the platform and descended into a man. Gao. Except now he also looked like Lyu, like a blend of the two with fingernails nine inches long. It was a handsome, muscular blend. He didn't smile or gloat, like your standard movie monster. The expression on his face was serious and somehow...complicated.

"Was there ever a real rickshaw boy?" I asked.

He flickered a smile. "Yes, he's still working peacefully down by the waterfront. He doesn't make much money because he's still being rude to potential passengers."

"When did we actually first meet?" It's not like I really cared, but I knew what he was going to do next and a long conversation would lengthen my life. Possibly just by the length of the conversation itself, but whatever.

"When you threatened to cut my head off."

"Oh, yeah, that. Well it was an empty threat. I wouldn't have actually done it."

"I know. I knew then."

"Why me? You deliberately went after me. You didn't have to put up with my silly threats and you certainly didn't care about that diamond."

"I wanted to know why a drowned rat prostitute criminal had a bag of diamonds and I also wanted to know why Daiyu had taken an interest in you."

"So what did you find out?" I was running out of questions fast and my main question "are you going to kill me?" kept pushing to be asked.

He shrugged. "Nothing, really. I don't understand why she's protecting you."

"It's probably best if we keep it that way," I said. "The diamonds are gone and Daiyu has been buried in hot lava." Notice I said "has been" and not "is"? I was hoping he wouldn't notice. I couldn't tell a lie to either Monk Tien or Daiyu and I had a feeling I couldn't directly lie to Mr. Emerald either, but there's more than one way to lie.

"And obviously," I continued. "You've got the pearl in front of you and that's all you really wanted." Something rose up in me at those last words. I saw Mrs. Long-ju lying in her blood. I saw Mr. Long-ju sitting in her ashes and burned bones. I saw them laughing and quoting poetry together. Something happened. I was getting lots of air but I felt like I was choking.

A shadow flickered across Gao's face. Those long, wicked looking fingernails twitched. Complicated and not happy.

"Yes, that's right," he said, his words like so many stones. "Give it to me and I will finish this." He reached out his hand, the fingernails suddenly looked like talons, and something rippling and hot flowed from them. The stream of heat touched the plastic bag holding the pearl. It evaporated in a puff of smoke and the pearl fell to my feet.

I raised the sword. "Come and get it, asshole."

He raised his hand as he'd done back in the Inn of the Silver Snake. The sword spun out of my hand and whirled just above my head.

"I'm sorry I must kill you," he said. He didn't really sound sorry. "I promise it won't hurt."

I ignored him and watched the sword spinning above me. I saw him move out of the corner of my eye. Just before he got to me I jumped up and snatched the hilt, plucking it out of the air. The instant my feet hit the pavement again I slashed at him.

To my surprise—and his too, I think—a bloody gash gaped on his forearm. He barked a little shout and clapped his hand over it, blood oozing through the fingers and dripping down the impossibly long nails.

"Did that hurt?" I said. I slashed at him again, slicing through the skin on his knuckles. He gasped. Again I slashed at him, this time the side of his face. He growled at me and lunged. I took a few quick steps back.

His eyes narrowed and green smoke rose from him, closing the cuts. "Stop it," he said. "This is just delaying the inevitable. You can't kill me with that thing."

I ran toward him and slashed at his ribs. They suddenly gaped and intestines pooched out. He howled in pain.

"Did that hurt?" My voice tore out of my throat. "Do you think it hurts as much as Long-ju hurts?" He pushed his guts back in and a green mist enveloped him. I slashed at him again but I'm not sure I connected with anything but smoke. "Does it hurt as much as the people in the city? As much as Lihua hurt? Huh?" I slashed at him again opening another gash that exposed a rib. He screamed, an odd animal sound. "Does it hurt? Was it worth it? Was it worth doing all that for a Stupid. Fucking. Rock?" I punctuated those last words by chopping at him. A stupid fucking rock I wish I'd never touched. A stupid fucking rock I wished I'd never seen.

He backed down and puffed up, becoming just a green cloud. I expected a whisker or a claw. I stood with the sword raised above my head waiting. I expected a huge mass of emeralds next. Emeralds with teeth and claws that can't be cut with a knife, even a really, really sharp one. I would fight him. I was too mad not to. If Daiyu was right, it would kill the sword and it would certainly kill me. I'd care about that later, if there was a later.

He surprised me. When the mist cleared Gao was standing there again. No cuts or slashes or even scars. The look on his face was not complicated now. Now it looked like someone about to commit murder.

He took a step toward me and then stopped, his attention snatched away. His gaze focused on something behind me. I whirled.

Bruce Lee stood there. No, I mean actually Bruce Freakin' Lee. He wore loose black pants and no shirt the better to show off his washboard abs. I gaped. His artfully shaggy hair blew around his face in the breeze and his fists were ready. He shifted his position and uttered a couple of those silly little noises he makes.

I gaped some more. I glanced back over my shoulder. Gao seemed stunned. Then I had a thought and looked back. That wasn't Bruce Lee in _Fists of Fury_ or _The Big Boss_. This was Bruce Lee from the final scenes of _Enter the Dragon_.

Daiyu.

Bruce flew at the rickshaw boy with both feet. He caught Gao neatly in the head knocking him flat on his back.

Gao jumped up in a smooth motion and tried to belt Bruce in the mouth. Naturally all he hit was a forearm of steel and then got a black-slippered foot in the gut.

They fought. I retreated to the edge of the platform. It was too far for me to jump to the ground so I had to be content with watching the show from the edge and hope they didn't roll over me. They changed shape, shifting from people to dragons and back to people again. Daiyu mostly kept the Bruce Lee impression but occasionally Bruce had a black dragon writhing on his face and around his neck.

Eventually they both dropped the human pretense and were dragons, coiled and thundering and deadly. They flew up into the sky and then down again hurling lightning bolts. Shards of black and green gems sprinkled the platform around me. Emeralds are beautiful but the black dragon was something out of the pit of darkness—polished, sleek and inevitable.

It was hard to tell if either of them was winning. Both of them were scoring damage, but neither seemed to be seriously hurt or slowing down. I wished hard I could help somehow instead of just standing there like a lawn ornament.

They coiled tightly around each other looking like a necklace for the Empire State building. I have no idea how dragons fly. There are lots of pictures of dragons with wings, but the ones I've met in person don't have them. The dragons I know fly by wanting to or by willpower.

And this tight coil of gigantic jewels suddenly seemed to forget to do something important to keep itself in the air. They fell to the platform like a freight train. The world jolted me off my feet and big cracks snaked out from the point of impact. Daiyu landed with the emerald dragon on top of her.

She seemed stunned. Just for a second—maybe just for a split second—but it was enough. The emerald dragon plunged his teeth into her neck.

It was the first time I heard a dragon scream and I hope to never hear it again. She writhed and twisted, pulverizing the stones underneath her but the green monster didn't let her go. Then she went limp and her tongue lolled out of her loose jaw.

I screamed a pale echo of the dragon cry. It didn't just tear out of my throat but out of every cell of my body.

Then the emerald dragon turned his attention to me. He climbed over Daiyu like she was so much rubble and strolled in my direction. His dragon gaze focused on me. Undivided regard. There was nothing in the world but me and those eyes. Me, those eyes, and an incoherent storm that raged through me.

I wanted to hurl abuse at him, but my mouth wouldn't form any real words. That stony dragon stare came at me, slowly, deliberately, a million-watt light focused right on me. I don't like to be noticed.

I ran toward him screaming...nothing, really just noise. I ran toward those eyes, and that scalding stare. And I plunged grandfather's sword into one of those eyes.

I got to hear another dragon scream way too soon after the first one. The emerald dragon jerked away and almost pulled the sword out of my hands. There was thick, dark blood dripping down the blade.

I fell back onto the seat of my pants. Then a shadow fell over me and I looked up. Something was falling out of the sky. I didn't have the strength or the time to jump up and run out of the way. I rolled and rolled until I couldn't any more and hoped it was enough.

Whatever it was, landed on the emerald dragon like a shroud. A net. A net made of bones stitched together. He struggled a little more and then stopped, panting. Then he noticed, at almost the same moment I noticed, the black column of smoke rising high up into the sky. We both watched as it gently drifted down and resolved into Daiyu, tight black leather pants, tight black shirt, spiky black hair and dragon tattoo restlessly twitching across her face. It occurred to me for the first time that all that black leather was probably not clothing but actually her skin.

"Are you all right?" I knew it was a pointless question but one must ask.

"Yes."

"What happened? It looked like you just fell out of the sky."

She shrugged. "Turning back is how the way moves; weakness is the means the way employs."

"Yes," I said. "That explains everything."

I nodded to Mr. Emerald. "Can he get out of that? Do we need to tie him up or something?"

"No." She almost smiled at the thought of "us" doing anything to him but you know how she is. "Monk Tien will be here in a few moments with the cage."

"Are you going to drop him in the volcano?"

She shook her head. "The Kindred will decide his fate. That's not for me."

I noticed the pearl had rolled away, completely forgotten. I retrieved it. As beautiful as ever, it radiated peace and elegant beauty. I held it out to Daiyu.

"They'll want this. You should make sure they get it."

Daiyu regarded me darkly, but she didn't take the pearl.

"Are you going to let me go?" I asked. "You don't need me any more. You could just take me to the—"

"You are about to do something you have never done before in your life," she interrupted.

I'd survived a typhoon in a little fishing boat, I'd been eaten by a dragon, and I'd been dumped in a volcano. I couldn't imagine what she could possibly be talking about.

"What?" I said. I was not at all sure I wanted to hear the answer.

"You are going to return something you have stolen."
_

_

There may be gold and jade to fill a hall but there is none who can keep them.

### Chapter 21

I stood there contemplating the pearl. Return it? I didn't want to. It was perfect and beautiful. It glowed in my hands, seeming to soak up the sunlight and give it back as moonlight. I rubbed at a tiny smudge with my thumb. Ash. It was a flake of ash from Silver Mountain.

"Yes, I'll return it," I said. "You can take me there now. I'm ready."

There was no answer. I looked around. There were no dragons. I was utterly alone on the platform.

"Damn you Daiyu!" I yelled into the empty air. Daiyu had no way to know I'd made a deal to meet Long-ju before sunset. Shit. I should have told her immediately, but how was I to know she'd pull a vanishing act? Communication is always the key to everything.

I glanced at the sun. It was mid-afternoon. The sun wouldn't set for quite some time but Silver Mountain was miles away. I had to get there before sunset or the entire island was toast. Literally toasted.

I wasted an hour trying to figure out how to get down from the heliport? —dragiport?—nah, it didn't roll off the tongue very well. Eventually, I did it by the simple fact of finding a narrow flight of stairs down to the ground. This hill was untouched by Long-ju's wrath for the most part. I found a narrow path that headed generally downward. Before I'd gotten very far, I began to see the withered trees and dead grass. They weren't burned, as such. In fact it didn't look like a fire had swept through. It was creepier than that. It looked like a killer disease. Rot or blight. The ground was littered with the curled up blackened leaves of trees. Bushes were withered and grass crunched underfoot, also dark, almost moldy. Here and there some bush clung to life but it was clearly a losing battle.

It got worse the further down I went. When I finally hit the paved road it truly did look like a forest fire had eaten everything as far as the eye could see.

A guy on a motor scooter passed. I waved my arms and yelled for him to stop but the he didn't more than glance at me. He was going way too fast. Shaolong is an island. I'm not sure where he thought he was going, but I couldn't really blame him. If I had some way to do it I also might try to just drive away from this devastation.

The road snaked around the face of the hills and probably didn't get much traffic even in normal times. Now that Long-ju had vented his misery, there was really no place to go up here.

I found a badly scorched gas station with a little store attached. I'd planned a little shop lifting but that proved not to be necessary. The place was deserted. I stole a bottle of water and a package of dried tofu chips. They taste better than they sound. As I snacked, I fiddled with the cash register trying to get it open but no luck.

I took second bottle of water and put it in a sack with the pearl. Rested and refreshed, I pushed on.

I couldn't stop thinking about the pearl and how beautiful it was. I kept thinking I should just take off, get myself on a ship somehow and get out of here. Let the chips fall where they may. That's the Angie Tanaka I know and love. And yet I kept walking for Silver Mountain. I kept walking and I kept arguing. Some of the time I was even arguing aloud. I drank the bottle of water. I took the pearl out and looked at it. I polished it on my filthy t-shirt.

Then I came to a crossroads. Literally and figuratively. I could see the city below. Parts of it were still smoking but other than that it looked peaceful. Long-ju was keeping his word so far. A few hundred yards down the hill I could see healthy green foliage. I had an impulse to get away from all this moldy black death around me.

Without any further discussion with myself I turned and headed down to the city. I had the pearl. I wasn't giving it up. Possession was nine-tenths of the law. That's how the cookie crumbles. Read 'em and weep. Tough titty. Life sucks and then you die. Or whatever. I was keeping it. I couldn't even think about selling it. It was just...mine.

A gray sedan came barreling down the mountain at about 100 miles an hour, swerving all over the place, not even attempting to stay in a lane or anything close to that. The driver was a middle aged woman with wide, terrified eyes. She was running from a monster. At least that was the first thing that popped into my head.

She nearly ran into corner of the abandoned gas station and knocked down a sign that said "Cigarettes here" in Chinese characters. She turned the wheel madly to avoid smacking into the gas pump and then the car was headed straight at me.

I yelled and dove for the bushes. I felt the breeze of the sedan's bumper pass me. The pearl, of course, fell out of the sack and began rolling down the hill. I scrambled after it on my hands and knees. It rolled to rest in a little hollow and when I reached out to snatch it back I noticed something.

The grass in the little hollow was fresh and green. I looked around. There were no similar pockets of greenery. Everything else was black, crisp-curled and diseased. I picked up the pearl and set it down in another tuft of blackened grass. Health spread through it, the leaves uncurled and freshened. It looked like a dried out flower in a vase sucking up water. It's hard to describe. I set the pearl at the base of a bush and watched as the leaves unfurled and the black faded into healthy green. When I looked back at the little hollow where it had initially rested, the weeds there were already curling up and dying.

Shit. Piss. Dammit!

I scooped up the pearl and headed back up to the road. Silver Mountain was still six or seven miles away and the sun was low on the horizon. I probably couldn't make it before sunset but I had to try.

I didn't make it. They were the longest miles I've ever walked. I'd started out the day roasting my ass in a volcano. I couldn't remember my last meal other than sack of dried tofu and I'd finished the second bottle of water an hour earlier. If I could have started out fresh I probably could have jogged it in an hour, maybe less if I was really hurrying. But hurrying was simply not possible. I was used up and running on empty. When I found the half melted rock where I'd had my conversation with Long-Ju the sun was below the horizon and it was rapidly getting dark.

I didn't see him anywhere. He was probably down below burning the city to the ground. I was too late. I was thirsty, exhausted and there was a blister on my left heel that was probably bleeding. It certainly hurt like hell.

Still, I had to try to find him. "Long-ju!" I yelled. It wasn't loud. I didn't have enough left in me for loud. I climbed up to where the inn once stood calling whenever I thought I could push out the air for it. By the time I got there, the dusk was thickening and a few stars were beginning to peek through the purple sky.

Then I saw a silver form hunched over. I almost sat down on the ground just out of sheer relief. I didn't, though, I staggered over to him.

"Mr. Long-ju?" He didn't answer. He was sitting, knees drawn up, cradling something in his arms. I sat down beside him in a pile of ashes and cinders. "Mr. Long-ju?"

In the last of the dying light I saw what he cradled. A skull. The sight of it nearly ripped out my heart. Tears stung at my eyes. I leaned forward and gently pulled the skull out of his hands and replaced it with the pearl. I set the skull gently down on the clearest patch of ground I could see among the litter in front of us.

Then I waited. Tears kept dribbling down my face and occasionally I would wipe them with the hem of my filthy t-shirt. I'm sure I was an extremely unlovely sight but now it was dark and nobody had to see. That was good.

We sat in silence that way for a long, long, long time. Hours, maybe. There's no way for me to tell. Eventually Long-ju looked up and seemed to become aware that I was sitting there and he had something different in his hands.

"She was more than beautiful," Mr. Long-ju said.

"Yes," I answered. I don't think I really needed to say anything.

"The world is full of beautiful women. But none were like that."

Anything I could reply would be crap cliché and I didn't feel like it was needed. The knot in my throat hurt so hard I wasn't sure I was even able to say anything.

"In a thousand years I had never seen one like Lihua." He said her name like the exhalation of breath. Her name left him like he was breathing out for the last time. That out breath glowed in the darkness and surrounded the skull in front of us. The light grew and towered up and solidified into a shining light.

And there she was, looking as she must have looked in the flower of her youth. Yes, she was beautiful. And yes, she was more than that. She had the pure, singular dragon gaze but it came from eyes that were utterly and completely human. She embodied grace and elegance and something beyond both things. The vision of her glowed and then thinned and then gradually faded away until we again sat in the dark.

I leaned over and put my arm around Long-ju. He surprised me by leaning toward me, accepting the embrace. He burst into tears and then, dammit, I did too.

* * *

Sometime during the night Daiyu found us. I'd fallen asleep and I think Mr. Long-ju had also. She surrounded both of us and the world went black. God, I hate that. I wish there was another way to do it. I know I'm being disassembled into my constituent molecules and there's always a chance there'll be pieces left over when I got put back together.

I didn't get to complain about it. When I woke up I'd actually been sleeping and lay in a bed in the same room I'd escaped from about half a lifetime ago. The foo dog statue hadn't been replaced. I got up and wandered around until I found the bathroom. I stripped out of my nasty tee shirt and jeans and dumped them on the floor.

"Take those out and burn them," I said to the open air.

Then I took an actual bath and washed my pathetic hair which hadn't quite been buzz cut by the volcano.

While I was luxuriating in the hot water someone had broken into my room and left fresh clothes, milk tea, fried bread and dumplings. My old duffel bag had been cleaned and repaired. I put on the clothes, which turned out to be black silk pajamas that were way too long in the sleeve and way too long in the leg and a little too tight in the chest. I rolled up the sleeves and the pant legs. They'd do. Besides it was silk. Can't complain about silk.

I hadn't quite finished the last dumpling when Daiyu walked in. She was dressed in the same black silk clothes I was wearing except hers fit like they'd been made for her. Which they probably had been.

"Come," she said, chatty as always.

"Where?" I asked.

She didn't answer, but just turned and walked back out again. I followed her to the wide archway that looked out into the wild blue yonder. I kind of knew what was next so I braced myself for it. She surrounded me and everything went black.

I resumed living in a place that was sickeningly familiar. The lip of the volcano. Seven dragons roosted round the crater, Gold, Silver, Ruby, Topaz, Amethyst, Sapphire, and, of course Daiyu, in her dragon form, was black jade. I was the only human form.

Gao stood in the center of the dragon bone cage. His left eye was red and swollen shut. The cage hung over the crater with no visible means of support.

"Oh," I said. My stomach was suddenly twisted up. They weren't going to kill him. Much. "How long?" I asked Daiyu. Her shining black dragon head turned to me.

"About a hundred years," she said.

"My God," I gasped.

When they lowered him into the lava he became a green cloud with enormous eyes the size of car tires. I wanted to look away, but he was staring directly at me. Now there was a black flaw in his left eye but it was seeing me. His expression was ... complicated. Not angry, not sad, not frightened. No super villain "curses foiled again!" Just something I didn't understand. Something completely not human.

When the lava closed over the top of the cage, the dragons—all except Daiyu—rose into the sky and streamed off in different directions.

I suddenly realized Daiyu was in her human form and standing next to me, also gazing into the glowing lava along with me.

"I absolutely hate this," I said.

"As do I."

"They are going to torture him for a hundred years. It would be better to just kill him."

"No, death isn't better."

"Oh, really?" I was suddenly pissed off. "How can you say that?"

"When you are dead you cannot learn to regret."

I still hated it but that shut me up.

Okay, it shut me up for a minute or so. "Did he ever say why he did it?" I asked.

"No."

"Bastard."

Daiyu pulled out a little red envelope, the kind people stuff money into and give to their kids on New Years Day. She handed it to me.

"What's this?"

"The diamonds."

"You're returning my diamonds?" I said, incredulous. I opened the envelope. Sure enough. They glittered coldly at me.

"No, I'm returning THE diamonds. You will return them to the one who owns them."

"Don't bet your last foo dog on that," I said as I pushed the envelope into my pocket.

I think the black dragon tattoo on her face winked at me, which is impossible. Daiyu almost smiled.

THE END

Thank you for reading my book! I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

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Below is an excerpt of _Dragon Sword_ , Book 2 of the Black Jade Dragon series, available here on Smashwords.

### Chapter 1

I needed to steal something.

I don't mean I really wanted something in particular. I mean I wanted to steal something.

So to scratch that itch I was climbing up the side of the Twelve Treasure Museum to a hidden floor not open to the public. It was supposed to be haunted. That was perfect. Perfect for me anyway.

I'm Angie Tanaka, the one woman crime wave. That's what it says on my business cards. I stumbled across this museum one day when I was bored and feeling too much like an upright citizen.

A hint of sea breeze ruffled my hair. I studied the shadows around me, making sure I was still alone.

The city of Shaolong lay sleeping below—as much as it ever slept. The museum was on a hill above the town. There are nine mountains, not counting the volcano. Most of the island is straight up, straight down or clinging to the side of some hill or other. The only flat stretches are along the seashore.

I pulled myself up onto the roof—the first level of the house, anyway. It was an old-fashioned Chinese pagoda built like a wedding cake. The outside was covered with the Asian version of gingerbread. The carvings and embellishments had a dragon theme, but a lot of things were decorated with dragons Shaolong, the Land of Nine Dragons. Real ones. I'm being honest here. I bullshit a lot—I was kidding about the business cards—but not about this.

I rested for a minute on the ledge or balcony or whatever this was and looked for the small window I'd seen when I cased the place in daylight.

I adjusted the sword hanging in a scabbard at my back. I probably should have left it at home. Heck, I should probably throw it into the sea, but neither thing was going to happen. This sword was a katana made by my grandfather in Japan right after World War II. It was a hero's sword and though I am about as far from being a hero as you can get and still be standing on planet earth, I couldn't turn it loose. Not yet. Someday. But not yet.

Daiyu had given me the sword's scabbard and it was beautifully carved with, naturally, a black dragon with tiny seed pearls for eyes. It had a nifty feature in that it was invisible and made the sword invisible. I could touch it, feel it and even see it when I was holding it in my hands, but nobody else could see it. Cool, huh? It meant I got to wear a Ninja sword all over town without causing talk or unwanted police attention.

I started the last leg of my climb. I'd already been all over the museum—open to the public, remember? It had some gorgeous, expensive and rare things, probably looted from the Chinese coast in the 19th century. This house had belonged to the last warlord of Shaolong. His only child had been a girl who'd died young. When the old man finally gave up the ghost, the city made his house a museum and declared themselves a democracy.

I'm pretty sure Chiang Kai-shek tried to get involved but the islanders told him to kiss off—or Chinese words to that effect—and he, strangely, backed off. Maybe Taiwan was enough for him. Who knows. That dragon thing may have been an issue.

I looked up sat the window above me and began the last leg of my climb. I have dragon issues myself. A couple of them thought I needed to be rehabilitated. Yeah, well, everyone should have their dreams.

It didn't take long to get to the window. It was shuttered, of course. I had a packet of tools in my hip pocket but this looked like all I would need would be a flat head screw driver which I had the foresight to bring along.

The shutter popped open easily. Looking back, I think that should have been a warning. My life is never easy. Never.

When the shutter swung open, an overwhelming sense of hunger seized me. Hungry? Seriously? Stealing stuff is meat and drink to me. I don't think much about food when plying my art, but right now I'd trade my right arm for a peanut butter sandwich or maybe a couple of fingers for an energy bar.

The unusual hunger was also warning. Who knew? Not I. I slid into the window and landed on a thick, dusty rug.

I smiled to myself in the dark. This must be what climbing Mount Everest feels like or playing Carnegie Hall or finding a diamond ring in a box of Crackerjacks.

I pulled out my flashlight and played the beam around. Nice furniture, cabinets, rugs, other than the thick coating of dust, this must be what it all looked like when the warlord was alive.

Suddenly the itch, the hunger, the intense longing to possess something washed over me so hard I was shaking. I was a vast, hungry, needy maw.

I grabbed the handiest thing near me—a porcelain fish so beautifully made it almost looked alive. I tried to stuff it into the bag I'd brought but the fish was too big. I turned it this way and that trying to get the bag around it, but it just wouldn't go in. Shit. I set it down, not quite hard enough to break it. I wandered around the room opening drawers, boxes and cabinets. A couple of ivory-handled paint brushes went into the bag and some signature chops. A nice cinnabar stuff bottle. Some badly tarnished silver jewelry. All of them got stuffed in my bag which still felt like an empty sack.

I moved from room to room pilfering, rifling and stuffing. My hands still shook and I felt hollow. I was definitely going to stop at an all-night noodle stand on my way home.

I had saved the bedroom for last. That's where the old warlord had been found dead. Not that I believe in that ghost nonsense, but an old house in the dark of the night is moderately creepy.

The bedroom was remarkably empty of anything valuable. No statues or little boxes of jewelry. Lots of books, scrolls and heavy furniture. One shelf had really old photographs, a middle aged woman, a baby, a little girl. A jar that looked like it was carved out of a single piece of ivory attracted my attention, but it was full of ashes. I knew those ashes weren't from the fire place. I couldn't take it. I set it back on the shelf next to the photographs and made sure it was back exactly as I found it.

At the foot of the bed was a black lacquer platform holding a beautifully carved box about the size of a foot locker. The lid opened easily. Inside, on a bed of red silk, was a heavy book covered with dark blue cloth closely embroidered with all kinds of fabulous animals, including the inevitable dragons. I closed my fingers around it greedily.

I clumsily held it in one hand while trying to turn pages with the hand that held the flashlight. The paper was heavy and each page was covered with vivid, lifelike paintings of animals and people surrounded with elegant black calligraphy. The entire book was made by hand and almost certainly worth a bleeding fortune. There was no way I was going to get it in the bag. It was bigger than the fish. I stuffed it in the top of my pants and covered it with my tee shirt.

"Hello."

I must have jumped three feet in the air.

I whirled. A girl stood there in red silk pajamas. She looked maybe ten years old and had large eyes in a tiny face and long black hair loose around her shoulders. She flinched in the flashlight beam so I aimed it at her tiny feet.

She'd spoken in Chinese, so I asked my question in the same language. "Who the hell are you?" I said when I could breathe again.

"I am Poppy. Who the hell are you?" She said it in a sweet little voice that seemed to merely echo my question mindlessly.

"Angie," I said with uncharacteristic truthfulness. "What are you doing here, Poppy? This is—" I stopped myself from saying something like "this is weird" which it totally was. "This isn't a good place for a kid in the middle of the night," I said. I didn't know what to do next. Like, for example, I wasn't available to escort her to wherever her parents lived. Not with my bag of booty hanging off my belt and a big honking book stuffed in the top of my pants.

A little frown pinched her face. "This is my home," she said.

Okay, freak out. I had an impulse to run to the window, climb out and maybe fly down to the ground if I had to.

But I'm stupid. I didn't do that. Geeze, sue me. She was a child.

"No, Sweetie, you can't live here. Where are your Mommy and Daddy?"

She still had a little frowny wrinkle between her eyes and she tilted her head. "Mother and Father are dead," she said.

"An Auntie? An Uncle?" She shook her head.

My adrenal glands shouted "time to go!" Shut the hell up, I whispered back. When your adrenal glands talk to you, though, you should probably listen.

"So you're here all alone?"

Again, a shake of her head which both did and didn't reassure me.

"You are here," she said.

My earlier freak out was microscopic compared to this one.

"Well, I'm sure they will be along soon," I said in a shaky babble. "Nice to meet you, Poppy."

I tried to run backwards out the door without tripping over something. I took the flashlight with me, leaving the little girl in darkness.

The little girl alone in the dark. My intense feelings of assholery drove me to turn around and go back into the room. It was empty. I searched every nook, cranny, under the bed, in the box where the book had been, in every cabinet, cupboard—any place I could think of that could hide a kid that size. I called and called and didn't get a whisper of an answer.

The bedroom only had one door and I had been running through it like a gold plated coward. She couldn't have gotten past me.

There was nothing to do but search the rest of the rooms. That took several nerve wracking minutes but no luck. They were empty.

All righty then. I had tried, I told myself. It didn't work. I felt like a creep as I headed for the window. I called her name as I went and flashed the light in every direction. Nope. I told myself I'd drop an anonymous call to the cops when I got to a phone. It would have to do.

Oddly, climbing down the side of a building isn't as easy as climbing up. Plus my hands were still shaking. I caught myself from falling twice and still landed in the street pretty hard.

I didn't move for a while. I had my bag of boodle, the book was still secure in the top of my jeans, I hadn't broken my neck and I wasn't saddled with a kid. I felt ahead of the game.

The putt-putt of a motor scooter pushed me a little deeper into the shadows.

Everything was okay, right? I'd tip off the cops that a little girl was in the museum and then it would be their problem. My stomach still felt as hollow as an empty tin can. After I made my little phone call to the cops I'd find that all night noodle stand and call it a day. Or a night. Or whatever.

When I stood up, I had a sudden crazy feeling that my bag of loot was actually empty. I dug through it frantically and couldn't find anything missing.

I needed to get the hell out of there bad. I wished I'd brought my own motor scooter. But I had this idea that thievery would require stealth, so I'd walked up to the museum. Now, I ran through the dark street and nearly got hit by a farm truck coming down out of the hills. It was loaded with melons. I shouted abuse at the farmer who didn't bother even to slow down, just shot me a one-finger salute with a bored look on his face.

Then I sprinted for the cement walking path that led directly down the side of the hill and into town. I knew where it ended up. It ended at the big park in the middle of town which was called by the Chinese version of the New Yorker's creatively named "Central Park."

If the produce truck was headed down to town that meant there would be others and that meant that dawn was not far away.

I needed to get home. Shaolong is mostly Chinese, a few Japanese and the rest a mix of the folk who wander around the South China Sea. There are a few Americans. Not many. They usually prefer the flesh pots of Taipei. I am an American with a shocking mop of red hair. That makes me really easy to describe to the police.

I didn't indulge these night urges all that often but when I did, I needed to be home before the sun came up.

Now let me explain the expression "home." I have two homes. One is a beautiful and elegant mansion on top of Black Jade Mountain. It is filled with gorgeous stuff that didn't belong to me and never would. That's where anybody important thought I was tonight.

My other home is mine. It's a little room above Happy Parrot tea and noodle shop where I keep the alcoholic landlady in a generous supply of Blue Girl beer to pretend I am a nice young woman who leads a quiet life. Everything in the room belongs to me. I'd bought some of it honestly. Most of it, especially the small items, had been lifted from other people. However ownership was acquired, it was mine all mine and nobody but the boozy Mrs. Chin knew anything about it.

That's where I needed to take my little bag of booty before the sun came up.

That was the plan.

"Good Morning, Angie," said a smooth voice speaking American English.

I closed my eyes for a moment, heaved a sigh and turned around.

Daiyu isn't American, she's just a really good linguist. All dragons are. She looked like an ordinary Chinese woman, except that she was unusually tall, taller than I am. And except she had short, spiky black hair. And except that she was dressed in black leather that fit her like skin. And except that she had a dragon tattoo that wound around her neck and up the right side of her face. The dragon's head rested above her right eyebrow.

She looked perfectly normal with all the exceptions just noted. But she wasn't normal. Chinese dragons can take human shape. They may look like humans. They may act like humans. But it's important to remember whatever they look like, however they act, they are always dragons.

"Hello, Daiyu. I don't suppose I could possibly persuade you to leave me the hell alone?"

She answered with an eloquent shrug.

She focused her bottomless black gaze on me. When dragons focus they don't mess around. It was like being skewered. What's worse, she was a couple of steps above me which meant she towered over me more than usual. What's even worse was her regard was usually just bare attention. Tonight it was laced with what couldn't possibly be anger ... could it? She was never mad. Never even irritated.

"You have disturbed something that should have remained sleeping. You have taken something really valuable," she said. "Give me the bag."

The Chinese have a lot of wonderful ways to tell somebody to go to hell. I selected one and said it.

She tilted her head. That would be her only reply. She was never going to swear back at me.

"You aren't my boss!" There was nobody in sight. Yelling was probably okay. "You aren't my mommy! You can just freekin' go to hell!"

"Those who misbehave suffer in this world. All suffer when they know the pain inflicted on others." She was quoting some kind of scripture She did that. It was even more annoying than her silence.

"Oh, bullshit. I don't steal from poor people. This stuff hasn't been touched. Nobody wants it!" I was shrieking but I didn't care. My throat burned and I was shaking. I clutched my little bag of stolen goods as if it held the crown jewels and the secret of eternal life with cherries on top.

She raised her hands and in the dim light I could see the black smoke curling up from her fingers. She didn't say anything. She wasn't going to argue back. Why bother?

I drew the sword and held it up. It needed both hands to hold it properly but that meant I'd have to let go of the bag.

Daiyu's eyes widened a little. No fear. Only a touch of surprise.

"You can't have it," I snarled. This was all stupid. I can see it now. I couldn't hurt her with that sword. Not only could I not bring myself to use it against someone who looked human even if she wasn't, but ... dragons can't be hurt that way.

It was more an emphasis than a threat. Daiyu almost certainly knew that. The sword had been at my side through thick and thin for the last few years, ever since I'd stolen it from my father. It had a lot of evil clinging to it. My grandfather not only made it with his own hands, he'd killed a lot of people with it too—evil people, criminals, murderers, people who had it coming. My family has issues. You don't want to hear about it.

I tightened my grip on the bag. "This is my stuff and you can't have it." Yes, I know that statement was hypocrisy on steroids, but whatever. I gripped the sword hilt so hard it's amazing I didn't break it or the hand holding it.

Her hands were now just black smoke that drifted my way. I watched, hopeless tears stinging my eyes, as the smoke surrounded the bag of stolen goods. It simply disappeared right out of my hand.

Then the smoke withdrew and Daiyu held the bag. I screamed and dove at her. Daiyu has skills that make Bruce Lee look like a clumsy oaf. She merely dodged and I tripped on one of the stone steps, landing hard and skinning one of my knees.

"You must address this problem sometime," she said as if we were just having a little chat. There was no accusation in it. If anybody else had said it we would be having an intervention followed by a lecture on "thou shalt not steal."

I looked up at her, fighting back tears. I couldn't win a wrestling match with her. Wrestling with a dragon isn't a good idea under the best of circumstances.

"If you take it away from me I'll just steal it back. It's mine."

"The things you steal are not yours no matter where they are located," she said.

"You're a self-righteous bitch." Bitterness rose in my throat. "I'll steal it back," I repeated.

And then, oddly, my stomach reminded me I was hungry. I felt hollow, empty.

"Angie?" A tiny silvery voice called my name.

We both jumped. It doesn't take much to startle me. It takes a lot more to startle a dragon. A little girl in red silk pajamas stood on the steps above us.

Daiyu became blurry. "Angie, give me your sword," she said.

The command flashed through me like electricity. "Hell no!" I roared.

Above us, Poppy seemed to glow with her own light.

Smoke suddenly surrounded me and I could feel the sword dissolve like the bag did. When I could see again, Daiyu had the sword in her hand.

Then she transformed into a glittering obsidian dragon in a single leap. She flew straight up, becoming just a black outline against the stars.

I nearly tore my throat out screaming abuse at her as she faded into the night.

I was alone, with Poppy skipping down the steps toward me, surrounded with an eerie light.

I was shaking like a starving dog and I just wanted to keep yelling at the place where Daiyu used to be.

"Angie, come back! I need you," Poppy called in her piping child's voice. She glowed. She freakin' glowed and shimmered a little. It refocused my attention to the matter at hand.

I made a little inarticulate noise. Need me? Shit!

I turned and ran, but only because I can't fly.

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