Wade and the Scorpion's Claw

by Tony Abbott

  “Which is now in San Francisco,” I said.

  “Which is perhaps in San Francisco,” Mr. Feng said. “You see, the Ming artisans created not one jade scorpion, but five. One for the true relic, and four slightly different scorpions as decoys. Each of the five jade figurines was given its own identical mechanical box.”

  “Whoa, we didn’t know that,” I said, glancing at the others.

  Becca raised her eyebrows at me. “Right?”

  “Thus, while each outer box is the same, tiny markings on the four decoys themselves lead to the true relic, as, in fact, the twelve relics lead to one another,” Feng Yi continued. “All five scorpions remained in the vaults of the Forbidden City for nearly five centuries. Until thirty years ago, when a thief broke in and stole them—all five of them. Because the Order was just as frantic to locate them, the Guardians were convinced that the thief was, in fact, not a Knight of the Teutonic Order.

  “Remember now, only one of the five jade scorpions contained the original relic of Copernicus’s astrolabe. Unless a person uncovers a clue left by Copernicus himself, there appears to be no way to tell the five figurines apart. When I rose up in the ranks of the Eastern Guardians, I worked with Mr. Chen to locate the true Scorpio relic and bring it safely back to Beijing. Over the years we have located three. All three were beautifully constructed decoys. But Mr. Chen happily located a tile to a fourth box. Our experts have read the markings on the decoys, and I am nearly certain the true relic is here in San Francisco. Markus Wolff, who is no fool, believes it also.”

  We sat there, mesmerized, trying to take it all in, adding this to what we’d learned from the spice box. The poem inside it was still a mystery, and I really didn’t want to share it, but I thought Mr. Feng could at least shed some light on the strange non-Chinese character at the end. Could I trust him enough to let him see it?

  “So the German man is working with the Star Warriors,” said Becca. “Is that because of the China connection?”

  Mr. Feng’s lips were set in a grim smile. “Exactly so. He recruited them in Beijing. You see, Wolff is like his name: a fearless, relentless hunter. He will use any means possible to find the relics for Galina. Alas, because Vela has crossed paths with Scorpio in this very city, Wolff now hopes to obtain both with a single move. You are his target now. Perhaps it is good luck that we, too, have crossed paths at this same moment, yes?”

  Luck? I didn’t believe in luck anymore, good or bad. Nothing was a coincidence where the Copernicus Legacy was concerned. Nothing.

  “Can I ask why you don’t know your fellow Guardian in San Francisco?” Dad asked.

  Mr. Feng breathed out a long breath. “After the passing of your friend Heinrich Vogel—Uncle Henry, to you children—the Guardians’ communications network was broken. For good reason.”

  “I understand,” my dad said. “But how can we find the relic now?”

  “We . . . ?” Mr. Feng ran a slow hand over his long hair and brought it back to rest on the table in front of him. “Dr. Kaplan, you are in the center of a war. In the trenches, so to speak. Do you want to be here? I suggest you do not. You have your family with you. So that we Guardians may do our job, the task that centuries have prepared us for, perhaps you can tell me what you have discovered. If, for example, you have some Chinese script, I can decipher it for you. . . .”

  It was the gentlest way I’d ever heard of saying Tell me everything you know; then go away.

  I glanced up at my dad to see how he’d take this. He smiled, like he had when we were talking across the room. For some reason, Becca had been watching the two of us. Maybe because she was smart and could “read” people and thought through stuff before she said it, she seemed to catch on to our caution. Before anyone could say anything, she turned to Lily. “Inside the spice box there was a character. Dr. Powell from the museum said she couldn’t identify it. Maybe you can, Mr. Feng. Lily, the photo of the symbol?”

  “I made it my wallpaper, plus there’s the spice box and the poem you can help with,” she said, opening her phone, but Becca snatched it gently away before she could show Mr. Feng anything.

  “Ah, you have the images of the spice box here, do you?” Mr. Feng said, leaning over as Becca enlarged the image of the non-Chinese character for him.

  He studied it, taking in every detail of the brush strokes.

  “I am surprised, or perhaps not so surprised,” he said. “Dr. Powell certainly knows the peculiarities of Ming court dialects. I must assume she was lying to protect the relic. The Order reaches everywhere.”

  Becca frowned at the warning. She liked Tricia—we all did. Certainly the young, friendly curator hadn’t seemed to be lying.

  “Do you know what the symbol means?” Lily asked, reaching for the phone, which Becca wouldn’t release.

  Mr. Feng traced his fingers slowly in the air. “It is the character called fēng huǒ tái. It means, ‘tower with beacon.’ There are many towers in San Francisco, some skyscrapers, but fewer with beacons atop them. Guardians have a deep sense of tradition. I believe the character is pointing us to an older tower. Such as the tower on Telegraph Hill. It is called Coit Tower.”

  “Do you think the relic is hidden there?” Darrell asked.

  “It is indeed possible. You may leave your things here while we have a look. My limousine should be close by—”

  We heard a sudden crash from the front of the restaurant. Customers shrieked. A table went over; dishes shattered. Liang rushed into the room, his face dark with fear. He uttered some quick words to Mr. Feng, who jumped to his feet, throwing stars in his hands.

  “The Star Warriors! They have found us!”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “I should have known!” Feng Yi snarled, leaping up from the table. “Wolff’s bag must contain a GPS microchip. Everyone down—”

  We heard the Star Warriors barreling through the tables in the dining room, but there was no time to escape. We hit the floor as they tore the door from its hinges and pushed Liang roughly to the wall.

  Feng Yi crouched and scattered a handful of throwing stars over our heads. Several of the black-clad warriors fell to their knees screaming, clutching their sudden wounds. One spat words in Chinese at Mr. Feng.

  “Never!” he cried, and a second round of stars flew. The warriors retreated back into the restaurant’s main room and shot their weapons from there. Plaster and glass exploded behind us.

  I felt a rush of cool air from outside as the diners fled the restaurant.

  “Hurry! Out!” Liang yelled, his first words in English, as he pulled a pistol from inside his chef’s uniform and shot at the attackers.

  Dad snagged our bags and pushed the girls through the swinging door Liang held open, then tugged us into the steamy kitchen with him. I looked at Lily, who was staring wide-eyed at Feng Yi, whose hand was bleeding. The cooks shielded themselves behind the counters and on the floor. Feng Yi managed to fling more stars back through the door before it swung closed. Liang, firing occasional pistol shots, slipped in behind us.

  “Quickly now,” Feng Yi shouted. He and several of the cooks pushed a massive, industrial-size refrigerator in front of the door. “This will only give us a few minutes. Follow me.”

  He hurried us out of the kitchen into an alleyway outside. The sky was blue-black now, and the streetlights and store signs spotted the alley with deep shadows. We started toward the street, but several men blocked the way and ran toward us.

  “This way!” Feng Yi yelled. He pulled down a fire escape ladder from the wall behind us, and we scrambled up as fast as we could. “The roof connects to the temple next door. We can elude Wolff’s men and escape through the pagoda.”

  We followed Feng onto the roof—Lily first, then Becca, then Dad, me, and Darrell. One by one, we were out and running breathlessly across the roof, which was flat except for the multiroofed pagoda straddling the temple. “This way!” Feng Yi called as he bounded across the roof, looking back over his shoulder at the fire
escape stairs. I shot a glance at Darrell. His forehead was bright with sweat, his eyes wide.

  Dad, Lily, and Becca had already disappeared through the pagoda’s small doorway. Darrell and I tried to follow, but we were suddenly cut off by a rain of throwing stars from Wolff’s men, who were swinging up the stairs and onto the top of the building. Their stars tore up the roof in front of us. There was nowhere to go. We froze where we stood. The terrifying men advanced slowly. I looked around. Feng Yi was nowhere to be seen. Dad, Becca, and Lily were inside the pagoda, probably racing down to the street and safety without realizing we weren’t right behind them.

  The Star Warriors spread out with a series of identical moves, like a line of robot killers doing a ballet. We backed up until we couldn’t.

  Darrell groaned under his breath. “I don’t like our options.”

  “We have options?”

  “One,” he said, “and I guess if you only have one, it’s not really an option, but it sounds more hopeful to say it that way—”

  “Are you still talking?”

  Someone barked a command, and the men charged—then immediately started collapsing in groans. Throwing stars showered down on them from above like a monsoon in Guam.

  “Yes!” I crowed, then suddenly felt an ironlike grip on my forearm. It was Feng. His hand was like a winch, dragging me up to the lowest of the pagoda’s three roofs even as he kept hurling stars at the men. They split apart, then tried to regroup. After I was safe on the landing reshouldering my bag, which had slipped down my arm, he reached for Darrell and swung him up with ease. We rushed around to the far corner of the sloping roof, away from the Warriors.

  “We ascend one more roof to another entry inside,” Feng whispered, digging his hands into his pockets for more stars.

  Darrell and I were safely out of range when there came a single gunshot from the direction of Wolff’s men. After the delicate tinkling of metal stars, it sounded like an explosion, smashing into the pagoda tiles behind us. Mr. Feng cried out; his pant leg was slashed and bloodied. He fell awkwardly and slid down the tiles, grasping wildly for something to hold on to. Wolff’s bag slid from his shoulder and flew out away from him, as if it was going to tumble down into the street below.

  I threw my bag off, flattened on the roof, and reached for him. But I only managed to snag the strap of his black satchel. I tried to hoist it back over my shoulder to free my hand, but the bag was heavy. I started to slip. “Darrell!”

  I pedaled my feet on the slick roof tiles, desperate not to slip off. There was another muffled shot, and Mr. Feng howled in pain. I reached out as far I could, but he was sliding too fast.

  “Help!” he cried. “Help!”

  Darrell’s grip was on me like a vise. I swung out with my free hand but managed only to graze Mr. Feng’s fingertips.

  The man dropped suddenly to the roof below, rolled once to the edge, and disappeared over the side.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  I yelled. I must have yelled. Air rushed from my throat, but all I heard was Feng’s scream—a long fiery echo that drove into my ears like a hot dagger. Then it ended, and traffic, car horns, music roared like a waterfall. I tried to look over the side, but Darrell, braced flat on the lip of the roof, had his hands clamped on my wrist.

  “Don’t dangle, you dope!”

  He reached behind him, took hold of a railing, and pulled me. I was able to swing my foot higher, then higher, until it caught the ledge, and he dragged me back onto the pagoda roof.

  “Come on,” he growled. “We have to get out of here.”

  I crawled after him through a small door in the center of the pagoda and slid down to the floor inside. Someone was blubbering. Maybe it was me? Yeah, definitely me. Darrell couldn’t get a word in.

  Besides the waterfall in my ears, I was actually wet. My shirt was once again soaked with sweat. Darrell clamped his arm tight around my shoulder and led me to the stairs. We stumbled down through the temple to street level. Dad and the others rushed over to us, but there wasn’t time to talk. He took charge right away, drawing us into the alley again. Or was it a different alley? I wasn’t sure. I just had to follow him. Becca was on one side of me, Darrell on the other. Dad and Lily led the way.

  After a while, the open sky was above us. We were in a park, next to a tall building, and there were redwood trees all around. It was nearly completely dark by now. I wasn’t sure how we’d gotten there, or if the star throwers had followed us. I was shivering with fear and cold.

  “He’s dead,” I said. “Feng Yi is dead. I couldn’t hold on to him.”

  “Wade, look at me,” my father said, his voice very calm and comforting. “Wade, listen. Maybe he’s not dead. Maybe he . . . landed somehow. He’s an acrobat, remember. And there would be sirens.”

  And then there were sirens, winding closer on the crowded streets behind us. Still quaking, I focused on Dad’s face. It was growing very dark behind him, like the sun had set all over again. Dark as night, like the cave at the end of my dream. Then his face was dark, too.

  Then I passed out.

  I woke up two or three minutes later. We were in the same park as before, only this time I was lying on the ground under one of the thick-trunked trees. Dad, Darrell, Becca, and Lily were all around me, like that scene in The Wizard of Oz where Dorothy wakes up and realizes it was all a dream.

  Except it wasn’t.

  “You went out like a light,” Darrell said. “Click. First you were there; then you weren’t. I thought you died. We all thought you died. But you didn’t, because you opened your eyes just now, which is a good sign. I’m just saying. If you think you’re dead, you aren’t.”

  “Darrell,” Dad said. “Give him some space.”

  I breathed in. Lily pulled a plastic water bottle out of her bag and held it in front of my face. I sat up, leaned against the tree, and drank until I couldn’t anymore.

  Becca sat on a stone bench facing me, but she kept glancing nervously over her shoulder. She wore a crazy scared sort of . . . what? Smile? Maybe because I was still alive, or maybe because she was in shock, like me, and couldn’t make her face do any other expression.

  My fingers were sore. I realized they were still clenched tightly around the straps of Markus Wolff’s black satchel, while Darrell had snagged mine from the pagoda roof. Lily slipped the satchel off my arm and set it on the bench next to Becca.

  “Where are we?” I asked.

  “A place called Bierman Park,” Dad said. “I remembered it from when Sara and I were here. We’re out of Chinatown, a few blocks from the restaurant, not far from the bay. I thought we might want to be in a public place. But I don’t know how long we can stay here before they find us again.”

  “That’s okay, because we have to get to the tower,” I said, sitting up. “Just as soon as my head stops pounding.”

  Darrell gave me a hard look, then stood up, looking toward the water. “Mine is pounding, too. Not because I nearly died but because I forgot to thank my brother for saving my life.”

  “Oh, sorry,” I said. “Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it,” he said. Then he breathed out. “Listen. Does anybody feel weird about Tricia Powell? I mean, I kind of trusted her. Why would she lie about the Chinese symbol of the beacon tower? Lily, can you try to look it up with those magic fingers of yours?”

  She smiled. “Of course.”

  “What would we do without you, Lily?” my dad said as her thumbs flew over the little keyboard on her phone.

  “I don’t want to say,” she said, swiping the screen at whatever results she was getting. “But it probably involves a lot of blank looks.”

  I sat there, my arms and legs completely wasted, but more and more my brain was starting up again. It winked and snapped at me. Beacon tower. Feng Yi versus Tricia Powell. Who was lying to us?

  Then Lily found something. “And this is why I get paid the big bucks. Or I will when I get a job. ‘Tower with beacon’ or ‘beacon tower’ is not
just one character. It’s three. See?”

  She enlarged the image.

  Not one of them looked anything like the symbol inside the spice box.

  “Mr. Feng really studied the symbol,” said Becca. “I watched his eyes, the way he traced it in the air in front of him. So he was trying to deceive us?”

  “We don’t know that,” my dad said softly, almost tentatively, as if he might not believe what he’d just said. “He rescued us twice. Why would he lie if he’s a Guardian?”

  “Is there some way he could not be dead?” Darrell asked.

  “But how could he not be?” I said. “I let him fall.”

  “You didn’t let him fall,” my dad said, correcting me.

  “Dead or not,” said Lily, “I think Feng Yi knew exactly what it meant. Maybe he told us ‘tower with beacon’ to throw us off? He didn’t want us to keep going, remember. He said we were involved in something too big for us.”

  “Wolff said that, too,” I said, remembering the Honolulu airport.

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” my dad said. “One thing is certain. If Mr. Feng turns out not to be a Guardian, and if he’s still alive, he might now know something we don’t. The real meaning of the symbol.”

  “Which I stupidly showed him,” said Becca.

  “Not at all,” Dad reassured her. “Showing him the symbol has just told us that he may not be someone to trust.”

  “We do still have the poem,” said Becca. “Luckily, I didn’t give that away. Wade, you have the translation in your notebook. Maybe we should read it again.”

  A group of men in dark jackets suddenly walked by. We all froze for a moment, thinking they were more of Wolff’s men coming to finish the job. But they kept on walking. One of them told a joke. The others laughed, and they trotted past. Right. Other people were still leading normal lives, having regular conversations, going out for dinner. Sometimes you forget that.

  My dad got to his feet and slung the black satchel over his shoulder. “You know, I’m not sure sitting out in the open is the best idea after all. Wade, are you okay to walk?”