Queen's Gambit

by Karen Chance

  “Busy? What could be more important than—” I broke off, because I couldn’t hear myself think. “What is going on out there?”

  “That’s what I’d like to know,” Zheng said, getting to his feet.

  Which was when a small woman with a big voice came into the room, walking backwards, while yelling at—

  “Oh, shit,” I said, because I’d forgotten about them.

  Bahram and Rashid stumbled into the room, being beaten on by what looked like every toon in the place. Stilettos—of the type that Jimmy Choo makes—were brandished, fists were flung, and purses were slammed upside heads that were cowering under arms, or at least Bahram’s were. Rashid was dumb enough or proud enough to lower his guard for a moment, and got nailed by a large Birkin.

  “It was justified!” he said, staring around.

  I slunk down in my seat.

  “Is there perhaps a back door?” Louis-Cesare asked quietly.

  But not quietly enough.

  “It was justi—there!” Rashid pointed straight at our table, and he and Bahram made a beeline for us, despite being beaten up every step of the way.

  Fortunately, the club’s patrons seemed to view this as entertainment. Unfortunately, Zheng did not. “What the hell is this?” he demanded, his brows lowering.

  “He kill Bertha!” the small woman said, pointing at Rashid.

  She was an attractive, thirtyish, Chinese woman with long black hair and an expensive yellow suit made out of flowered cheongsam silk, but in a Western style. And she was human, something I knew without needing to ask. She lacked the statuesque frame of the fakes, and also their exaggerated charms. But the big giveaway was that she was hopping mad, to the point that veins were standing out on her temples.

  Lily, I assumed, although I had no chance to ask.

  “You killed someone?” I asked Rashid, in disbelief.

  “No! I killed—it was an abomination. I do not have words—”

  “Find some,” Louis-Cesare suggested.

  But it was not Rashid who found the words. It was Bahram, and they weren’t exactly words. He put his hands well in front of his chest and cupped them in the unmistakable, universal gesture for big boobs.

  I felt my spine turn to water.

  “Oh, thank God.” I sat back against the booth.

  “No, no thank God! He killed Bertha!” Lily was clearly out for blood.

  Louis-Cesare still looked confused, probably because Bahram was turned away from him, and he hadn’t seen the universal gesture.

  “He shot the tits,” I told Louis-Cesare.

  “No! He no shoot,” Lily said. “He push, right over the edge!”

  “Seriously?” I asked Rashid, whose cheeks were burning.

  “It assaulted me. I have the right to defend myself!”

  Zheng was still standing there, with an I-don’t-believe-this-is-my-life face. “You’re gonna have to pay for that,” he told Rashid.

  “I was attacked!”

  “Yeah, by a pair of tits.” Zheng looked him over. “You are a vamp, right?”

  “He’s a master,” Bahram said, munching on something. It wasn’t chicken feet, so I guessed they’d made a stop.

  Rashid’s cheeks went puce, a fact that did not stop his mouth from opening. But Lily wasn’t finished yet. “What about poor Bertha?”

  “He’ll pay for another one,” Zheng assured her.

  “I not want another one! I have Bertha long time. I want her.” Her eyes suddenly went huge. “What if she not dead? What if she down there, all alone? Hurt and—” Her hand went to her mouth. “What if monsters get her?”

  “What monsters?” I said.

  Zheng put a hand to his forehead. He stood like that for a few seconds, while Rashid continued to be assaulted. He didn’t push anybody else over any ledges, however, so I supposed he’d learned something.

  “Alright,” Zheng said. “You,” he pointed at Rashid. “Pay for the damned tits. You,” he pointed to a couple of his guys, who were just standing in the back, watching the show. “Take a car and have a look down below—carefully. You,” he pointed at me. “Come this way. I’d like to talk where I can hear myself think.”

  * * *

  We ended up in a dark red corridor with dim lighting, probably to cover the signs of a hasty construction job. Red flocked wall paper hid the plywood walls, and plush red carpet covered the floors. There were a lot of doors all along one side.

  The client rooms, I guessed. They must have been soundproofed, because I didn’t hear anything as we walked along. But not that well soundproofed, judging by the expressions that crossed Louis-Cesare’s face, which ranged from slight amusement, to wincing sympathy, to—

  “What? What was that?” I asked, because it had looked a lot like envy.

  “Tell you later.”

  “Well, at least you’ll tell me something later.”

  That did not get a response before we entered a large office at the end of the hall. It was a semicircle with almost a full wall of windows behind the desk. It looked like it had been scavenged from some high-end spa or executive’s corner office, which it probably had. The authorities had better things to do these days than police the wreckage, and supernatural Hong Kong had a history of repurposing everything from pirate ships to the ubiquitous rickshaws.

  “Can I see the tat?” Zheng asked, before he even sat down.

  He looked over the item that Hassani had given us while we took chairs in front of the desk. It was a huge, old-world, dark wood item that Zheng had come up with somewhere, and that looked like it might have been part of one of the aforementioned pirate ships at one time. It had small, carved figureheads for posts—tits out, of course, which actually fit in with the overall ambience around here—and wooden curlicues that almost matched the wallpaper outside.

  It was elaborate enough to give the office a feeling of luxury, despite the fact that the plywood walls were still bare.

  Well, almost.

  There was a set of kinetic armor that I’d seen Zheng wear in battle once, hung on one wall, with occasional arcs of what looked like electricity jumping from one little trefoil decoration to another. There were some weapon’s cabinets in the same dark wood as the desk that were hedging the door, where I supposed their contents would be handy. And there was an old, expensive Persian rug on the floor, in blues and yellows and whites, covering most of the unstained boards.

  But it was the view that stole the show, with all kinds of strange vehicles filling the skies and several other floating gardens looking like green clouds in the distance. This wasn’t an area with a lot of skyscrapers, and the ones that did exist weren’t in direct line of sight. Giving me the surreal sight of an entirely floating city, with nothing underneath but air.

  It could have kept me occupied for hours, but Zheng didn’t need them.

  “Shit.” He didn’t look happy.

  “You know what it is,” I said, pulling my attention back to the tat.

  “I know some things about it.” He put it on the desk and looked up, and he had his poker face on. “But I need a guarantee first.”

  “We’re on the same senate—” I began hotly.

  “Yes, and I just finished explaining why that doesn’t help either of us if we don’t align. Look, I get it; you two don’t speak for the old man, wherever the old man is. But you do speak for you, and you have influence with him. I want a guarantee of an alliance between us, and an assurance that you’ll work on Mircea to get him to at least consider my proposal.”

  “Which is what?” Louis-Cesare asked warily.

  Zheng shrugged. “What I said. The consul isn’t fond of us—any of us, and from what I hear, that includes him. The day may come when we’ll all need friends. I can be a good friend, to those who’re good to me.”

  “That’s damned vague,” I pointed out.

  The big, handsome face was sober. “When you’re talking about this kind of stuff, it’s best to be vague. I’ll be more direct with your fat
her, if he wants it.”

  Louis-Cesare frowned. “You ask for a great deal. How do we know that your information is worth it?”

  Zheng lit up a cigarette and sat back in his chair, allowing the smoke to wreath his head. “I’m not offering merely information. I can help you. But it’s dangerous, and I want to know that it’s worthwhile.”

  “It’s worthwhile if we get Dorina back,” Louis-Cesare said, “not otherwise.”

  “Hey—” I began.

  “And if she’s already dead?” Zheng demanded. “You’re still going to want a pound of somebody’s flesh—”

  “If she’s dead, we’ll be taking a great deal more than that,” Louis-Cesare said grimly.

  “Exactly. And you’ll need help—”

  “We won’t need help with vengeance, I can assure you.”

  “And I can assure you that you will. You don’t know Hong Kong, especially now—”

  “Then let us say that any agreement would be contingent upon us finding Dorina—in whatever condition she may be—and upon your information and aid being material to her retrieval. If it doesn’t help us, you get nothing—”

  “Hey!” I said, a little more forcefully.

  “—and, of course, there will be further conditions—”

  “Aren’t there always?” Zheng asked sardonically.

  “—which will have to be negotiated, although that can wait until—”

  “Hey!” I slapped the desk, hard enough to rattle the few items on it.

  Both men stopped to look at me.

  I frowned at Louis-Cesare. “We need to talk.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes, now.”

  “I’ll step outside,” Zheng offered.

  “We will,” Louis-Cesare said, which made Zheng raise a big, black eyebrow. As if offended that we might think his office was bugged. But he didn’t object, probably because the whole damned place was.

  We stepped out. And immediately wished we hadn’t, or at least I did. Because the hallway was already full.

  “No, she better!” Lily was saying, as I started digging through my purse.

  “What are you—” Louis-Cesare began, watching me.

  “Just wait a minute.” The bag was larger than the one I’d lost, an experimental type that I’d left on the plane when we went to Hassani’s, because I was still getting used to the idea. It had come courtesy of the same guy who’d designed the graffiti gun, the father of a war mage friend who loved to tinker with strange magic.

  And this was about as strange as it got.

  Not that it looked like it. It was almost a clone of my other purse, both big, black leather numbers, although this one had an extra wide opening. It also had an added feature, if I could remember how to turn it on . . .

  “That’s absurd,” Rashid was saying, with a sneer. “These . . . things . . . of yours are not superior to real women.”

  “Oh, no?” Lily pulled a petite brunette, who had just left a room with a client, into the argument. “You like big bust? Big bust!” she said.

  Louis-Cesare made a sound and I looked up. I don’t know what Lily had done; I hadn’t seen her do anything. But the girl’s former A cup was suddenly full and running over, to the point that she popped a couple of buttons on her shirt. One of them hit Bahram, who was eating again, but he didn’t seem to mind.

  Unlike his friend.

  “That!” Rashid said pointing, and appearing outraged. “That is absurd!”

  Lily made a disgusted sound. “You not know what you talking about! You like the booty? There you go, big, big booty!”

  She held a hand over the area in question, and the brunette’s backside suddenly ballooned outward, until a Brazilian supermodel would have been envious. And until I feared for the integrity of her skirt. Fortunately, it stretched.

  “Stop that!” Rashid demanded angrily, as the girl flexed one side and then the other, getting used to her new assets. And then twerked a little, because who wouldn’t have?

  But Lily did not stop. “You like big lips? There you go. Big lips!”

  The girl suddenly looked like a Juvéderm ad. Rashid started to say something, which by the look of things would not have been polite. But then Lily looked down the hall and saw us. “Tell me what real girl can do that?” she said proudly.

  “The Kardashians?” I offered.

  “They not here!”

  “Finally!” Rashid said, striding down the hall toward us. “I need to talk to you—”

  “Maybe later,” I said, grabbed Louis-Cesare by the hand, and ducked into an empty room.

  “That won’t hold him,” Louis-Cesare pointed out, as I slammed the door.

  “It doesn’t have to. You ready?”

  “For what?”

  “For this,” I said, and pulled him inside—my purse.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Dory, Hong Kong

  It was dark, until I fumbled around in my pocket and found a light. It was only a cigarette lighter, which is a useful item to carry when you regularly fight vamps, even if you don’t smoke. I clicked it, and the flame lit up our faces with a dim, golden glow, although the rest of the space remained in darkness.

  Louis-Cesare’s face was showing a certain amount of surprise, which was valid.

  “What is this?” he asked, glancing about.

  “Fey tech. I got trapped in one of these once. You remember; you came in to get me.”

  “You mean the laboratory.”

  I nodded. “That would be the one. Some dark mages folded over a flap of non-space to make themselves an illegal lab that nobody could find, because it didn’t exist in real space. I thought I’d repurpose the idea for something good.”

  “Repurpose it how?” Louis-Cesare asked. He could probably see more in almost complete darkness than I could, but this deserved better lighting. I fumbled around on the wall until I found the switch and flicked it.

  “What . . . did you do?” he asked, his eyes widening, and amazement in his voice.

  “That.”

  I gestured around proudly at what looked like a simple, cement walled room with a concrete floor and no windows. But the bare bones didn’t tell the whole story—not by half. Because this room . . . was filled with wonders.

  I’d spent half of my convalescence moving things around, getting it just the way I liked. There was a squashy armchair to sit in, for cleaning guns and bandaging wounds and just resting in between bouts. There was a light overhead, just the bare bulb for now, but I was thinking about getting a decorative fixture to spruce things up. There was, of course, a beer fridge, and it was fully stocked, because what am I? An animal?

  But the real story was what was scattered around, covering almost every available surface. When I designed this place, I had thought of it as fairly expansive, because I’d assumed that I’d be filling it via the contents of my own, rather thin, bank account. But afterwards, I’d found another solution.

  Or, to be more precise, Ray had found it.

  “You gotta see this!” he said, taking my hand and all but pulling me down a set of stairs at court.

  “See what? And why are we going to the dungeon?”

  “It’s not a dungeon. What is this? The middle ages?”

  “No, but this house does belong to the consul,” I reminded him. And she’d always kind of struck me as pretty damned medieval.

  “Yeah, that’s the point,” Ray said excitedly, as we all but ran down a narrow set of stairs that I’d never seen before. Of course, that probably had something to do with the fact that they were hidden by a painting, a corridor, another painting, and a set of bookshelves, but trust Ray to suss them out, if there was something valuable to be found.

  I just didn’t know what yet.

  “I mean, I knew they hadda have it somewhere,” he was babbling. “But I couldn’t find it—”

  “Find what?”

  “—after all, we’re at war. Even if they didn’t have one before, they’d have to have put somet
hing together—”

  “Ray. One what?”

  “—and knowing her Stinginess, I didn’t figure on her letting it too far outta her sight. So, it had to be here—”

  “Ray! What had to be here?”

  “That,” he said, grinning, and threw open a door—to Ali Baba’s cave. Or it may as well have been.

  Damn, I thought, staring around. I’m gonna need a bigger room.

  And I did, most definitely. But I hadn’t had a chance to address that yet, the original one having been pretty damned costly. So, I’d made do.

  Which was why the now rather small-looking space was crammed with shelves of guns, ammo, grenades, and a grenade launcher—easily enough to fight a small war. And cabinets of magical charms, potion bombs and spelled objects, sufficient to make a war mage drool. And decorative displays of more old school weapons mounted on the walls, with fans of everything from swords and pikes to knives and axes.

  “The senate’s armory,” I explained, as Louis-Cesare moved forward, appearing as stunned as I had been when Ray had first showed me. “Or as much of it as I could steal, anyway. The room is also soundproofed, so we can talk freely.”

  But Louis-Cesare wasn’t talking. Louis-Cesare was exploring, particularly the rack of swords, rapiers and cutlasses on a nearby wall. They’d just been piled up in dusty chests at the consul’s, because nobody really used them anymore, so I’d helped myself. And, of course, I’d taken the pretty ones.

  I guessed I must have chosen well, because Louis-Cesare took down one of the rapiers and slashed the air with it a few times. Then looked up at me, his eyes shining.

  “I used to have one like this as a boy. It is an antique.”

  “Have that one if you like. I took it for you.” I sat on the chair. “I don’t do a lot of fencing.”

  “I could teach you.”

  “Maybe someday.”

  I watched him slash the air some more, and make a few pretty lunges, with his body extended and his form perfect. He never looked so at home as when he had a blade in his hand. It almost didn’t even seem like a weapon anymore, after he picked it up, but more like an extension of his body.