by JC Kang
The moaning grew louder here. From her years training to be a courtesan in one of the most famous Houses of the Floating World, it sounded as if Faceless Chang was either close to bringing the woman to climax, or she wasn’t bad at faking it.
Twisting while clasping the end of the tiles, Jie lowered herself headfirst until she dangled by her waist. She gripped the arched tiles higher up with her toes and withdrew a mirror. Stretching out, she angled it to provide a view of the office.
If the antechamber had been luxurious, the office might’ve been a room in the imperial palace. A wool rug in the red-and-blue medallion design of the Ayuri South covered most of the floor, though it had been stitched so the geometric shapes didn’t line up. Exotic flowers bloomed in porcelain planters, which in turn were decorated with the five-clawed dragon reserved for the Emperor himself. Intricately carved bloodwood chairs with plush blue cushions faced a huge matching desk which would dwarf an ogre. Another door lay directly behind it.
Angled diagonally from the window, someone was sitting on the edge of the desk, leaning back with their fingers gripping the sides with white knuckles. The horns of his demon mask marked him as Faceless Chang. His back was arched and his head bent back. His hiked-up red silk robes bared smooth bent legs, the space in between occupied by the head of a kneeling woman in a pink gown. Its elegant cut was more suited to a courtesan of the Floating World than a Trench streetwalker. The slurps of a lashing tongue left little doubt what she was doing.
Or did it?
Jie’s brow furrowed. Something was wrong with the position, and it didn’t take an apprenticeship in the Floating World to tell what: the way Faceless Chang’s legs were spread, knees and ankles up. The woman’s head wasn’t moving in the right direction, and really wasn’t in the right place for…what was it called in the Floating World? Polishing Jade?
Faceless Chang’s scream of ecstasy left no doubt at all.
She was a woman.
The prostitute lifted her head, revealing the side profile of a pretty face marred by multiple cuts. Stitched in the Black Lotus Clan’s standard pattern.
It took all of Jie’s control not to gasp.
It was Lusha, once the most celebrated Blossom of the Peony Garden—its Corsage. She’d tricked Jie into an encounter which had forfeited her record virgin price, and Lilian had ruined Lusha’s face for it.
Now she was here. No wonder her pink dress had looked so familiar.
It all made sense now. When they’d first seen Faceless Chang in the marketplace, it seemed as if he’d spotted them. Just like when the surviving Steel Orchid, Gardener Ju, had spotted her a few nights before, inside the Floating World. Gardner Ju and Faceless Chang had the same build, moved in a similar fashion. And he’d joined the Red Dragons twenty years ago, right when the Floating World burned as cover for at least one of the Steel Orchids to escape the clan. Maybe the identical twin hadn’t really died in the blaze.
Chapter 12
Tian wrung his hands as he peered through the darkness at the scrambling guards. They’d seen Jie, and sounded the alarm. Patrons had already started trickling out with the Triads’ not-so gentle prodding, a handful coming up the side streets. What was he supposed to do now?
Probably nothing, really. They hadn’t really needed a lookout. After all, he couldn’t even imitate a peacock screech, and they had several ways of contacting each other. It was all an excuse. They just didn’t want him to get in the way. He folded his arms in front of his chest. If that’s—
A dark shape darted from the far side of the street to the fence.
Tian squinted. If only he could see in the dark like Jie.
As it was, the dark blob barely stood out from the rest of the sea of blackness. Like the half-elf, it crept halfway between the lights of the patrols. In quick succession, two thin lines of red light, like burning embers, flared in one of the horizontal pickets, two feet apart. When Tian blinked, the shape was standing on the other side.
How was that even possible? He had to know. He started forward, when a voice that sounded suspiciously like Jie’s reminded him to stay put. Maybe that’s what she’d said, but he was supposed to be a lookout, and surely she’d want to know about this new intruder. Even now, it worked its way toward the rowhouses.
The guard walking ahead of it froze, the lamplight stopping with him. The intruder walked right into it.
It wore a brimmed hat and blue scarf around its face.
The Blue Reaper! He stepped back into the darkness, even as the light from the next guard approached.
How could this be? Unless…though this Blue Reaper was stocky, he wasn’t as large as the man he and Jie had encountered. And Yuna had said the Blue Reaper targeted Nothori Empaths. The man they’d faced had gone after Jie; and while girls were still out playing on the other side of the Trench, they’d all cleared out of the marketplace on this side.
There were two Blue Reapers. Or, one Blue Reaper and someone taking advantage of the Blue Reaper’s notoriety. Now why would the real one be here?
To finish the job he’d started with Andris, in all likelihood.
Neither of the Triads seemed to have taken note of him, and for Tian, it had been hard to keep track of him when he stepped into the light, then back into the dark.
The second guard stopped where the Blue Reaper had entered and studied the fence. “This is strange.”
“So is this.” The first one knelt down, reached through the fence, and picked something up. It was the spot Jie had entered. Maybe she’d dropped something? “A long, thin blade. Maybe it belongs to our intruder. What do you see over there?”
Tian gritted his teeth. Jie’d dropped evidence of the clan. He peered into the line of dark between the two lamps, and again, thin, vertical lines of light, like burning embers, appeared in the wall of the building.
“A straight burn line in the bamboo.” The guard shrugged. “Maybe I just never noticed it before.”
Now the two lights converged as the second guard met the first.
The Blue Reaper had disappeared from the last spot he’d been in.
“Men!” called a voice from above.
Tian looked up.
Another Triad stood in the same second-floor window that Jie had entered, beckoning. “Guard the side entrances!”
The two men on the ground saluted, and ran off to opposite sides of the building.
Tian tapped his chin. He was supposed to stay here, but those red lines of embers called to him. And the Blue Reaper. None of their plans had taken him into account. With a quick check to ensure no one was around, he hurried over to the Blue Reaper’s—what did Jie call it?—insertion point. It was too dark to see, and using a light would alert anyone nearby to his presence, so he felt the burn lines with his finger. They felt smooth, no different from— Pain flared in his finger and he jerked his hand back.
One of the spots had a sharp edge. He pushed on the bar, and it slid free. In the dim light, it looked like the edge was a perfect cut, like a dao sheering through rolled reed mats. He walked through, and then reset the wood into the fence, where it glided into place perfectly.
Too perfectly. A saw would’ve left a gap.
Maybe this was a bad idea. Gulping hard, he crept over to the spot by the building where the Blue Reaper had last been. Muffled sounds came from inside. Two horizontal boards were nailed across the wood shutters. In the darkness, the burn lines were just barely visible in the seam between the shutters and the outer edge. He gave the shutter a light pull, and it swung open, faster than he could control it.
He ducked down.
When nobody came to investigate, he rose and peeked in.
The stink of yue assaulted his nose, which scrunched up of its own accord. Eighteen square tables, each with four chairs, fanned out from the center of the room in a disturbingly haphazard fashion. Mahjong and other game tiles lay scattered across the tabletops. The Red Dragons were hustling many of the patrons out, though some games continued, with me
n casting quick glances over their shoulders at the guards. For now, none were looking at him.
“Hurry,” a gambler said at a nearby table, motioning to a game where they were removing four coins from a rotating platter.
Which way would the Blue Reaper have gone? The departing patrons would’ve seen him if he’d headed in that direction, so the other?
He swallowed hard. This could get him in big trouble, but he needed to warn Yuna and Jie about the Blue Reaper. He set his hands on the windowsill, bent his knees, and jumped.
And didn’t reach high enough to straighten his arms. He landed back on the ground. Maybe Yuna was right about him needing to lose some weight. He tried again, this time using his toes to scramble up the side of the wall. The dirt layer on it didn’t make the climb easy. Arms straightening, he leaned forward. His weight listed, and he tumbled headfirst into the room.
This would be a quick end to his misadventure. He looked around…
…only to find no one was paying attention. Rising, he brushed himself off and started toward the left.
He skidded to a stop near a table where the dealer had just dumped a pile of coins onto the rotating platter. The four patrons leaned forward, eyes roving. He looked. Twenty-three coins in all; the dealer started removing four coins at a time until only three remained.
“Number three wins.” The dealer tossed a clinking bag of coins on the table in front of one of men.
This had to be Cover Coins, a game of pure chance. Father sometimes played it with other nobles, bidding favorite pieces of jewelry and other trinkets. The dealer poured another mass of coins, thirty-five this time.
Tian pointed to the previous winner. “You win again!”
Five sets of wide eyes shifted him to a split second, with all but the dealer’s returning to the pile of coins on the platter. The dealer turned and beckoned to a guard.
A stupid mistake! Time to get out of here. Tian started toward the next room, when a familiar voice cried out in the one behind him.
“Mama,” Yuna was saying. “I’m a good girl now.”
He froze. Yuna always spoke like a grown-up, using big words. Now, she sounded her real age; like Princess Kaiya, even. He crept back with the flow of patrons.
In the next room, Yuna looked different. She’d always carried herself with elegance as a Seedling in the Floating World, and played a convincing role of downtrodden child of the Trench. Now, though, her expression looked desperate in a different kind of way.
“Yuna?” asked a grown-up woman. The blood was draining from her face with each of her rapid breaths.
“Yes.” Yuna started forward, arms outstretched.
“Yuna? You know her?” An even younger boy in the red tunic of a Red Dragon pushed forward.
“Uh, no.” The woman swallowed hard. “I… I just overheard them say her name.”
Anger flared in Tian’s cheeks. If this was really Yuna’s mother, how could she just deny it?
“Then why did she call you Mama?” Another boy joined the first. Standing together, they had to be brothers. And their faces looked like Yuna’s.
Yuna’s slumped shoulders straightened. “Because she is my mother. I am your sister.”
Still clutching the old doll with the intricate stitches, Little Mikayla burst into tears.
“Is it true?” the first boy said.
“Yes.” The woman’s expression hardened. She pointed at Mikayla. “Did the priests knock you up? Or did you come back and start hooking? You’re just as bad as your brothers.”
Tian clenched his fists. A voice that sounded suspiciously like Princess Kaiya’s in his head urged him to go to Yuna’s defense. Another voice, which was undoubtedly Jie’s, told him to stay hidden.
Yuna’s cheeks flushed as she shook her head. “Heaven’s Dew hasn’t even arrived.”
“Dew? What the hell is that?”
Tian wondered, too. The clan members in the Floating World had talked about it. How Heaven could have dew didn’t make any sense.
Yuna looked from the twin boys, to the stragglers among the crowd of departing visitors, to the Triads. Her face glowed brighter than the Floating World lanterns. “This is Aunty Luo’s daughter, Mikayla.”
The mother’s brow furrowed. “Mi-what?”
“Feng Mi is her name in our language.”
The woman’s head tilted. “She had another child?”
“I don’t get it.” The second boy jabbed an accusing finger at her mother. “You said our sister died after you gave her away!”
“You’ll all be dead if you don’t shut up.” An older, lanky Triad snapped his fingers at a group of Triads. “Come on, we’re taking them to Faceless Chang.”
One of the men grabbed Yuna’s wrist and yanked her along. Little Mikayla’s beloved ragdoll fell to the floor, and she burst out crying. The other Triads prodded Yuna’s mother, and her brothers followed.
Screams erupted from below.
“The Blue Reaper!” a man yelled, voice muffled by the floorboards.
Tian scooped up Mikayla’s doll and hurried after Yuna.
Chapter 13
Head reeling from the revelation that Faceless Chang might be the remaining Steel Orchid, Jie pulled herself back up to the rooftop. Discretion was the better part of valor, and it would be better to take this information back to the clan, formulate a foolproof plan, and strike with twenty operatives.
After all, the identical twin that she and Tian had killed two days before had proven skilled in combat, able to avoid a tight barrage of throwing stars thrown at her back. This one might be equally talented, if all the old stories about them were true. And the Triads were aware of an intruder. She’d know about her twin’s death, and be prepared for a possible Black Lotus strike.
Her languid moans, however, suggested she hadn’t given the possibility of imminent death much thought. At this moment, she was alone and vulnerable, and by the time the clan was ready she might’ve already gone to ground.
The time to strike was now.
And soon, because the flurry of activity in the other rooms indicated the Triads were coming in force to warn Faceless Chang. The door she’d locked and barred probably wouldn’t hold them for long, and the ruckus they’d raise trying to ram it open would be just as good a warning as any verbal alert. It was time to get Tian to try his best rendition of a peacock, so that Yuna could create a distraction.
He would be scanning the windows, not the roofline, so Jie would need to lower herself one more time to allow the light from the window to silhouette her. She looked to the corner where Tian was hiding…
…and had to suppress a curse.
He wasn’t there!
This had to be done now. Jie crept across the rooftop to the easternmost of the rowhouses, and lowered herself at the closest of the two windows. Like all the others on the second floor, its shutters were open. Partially-closed bauble lamps cast the room in a dim light. A large canopy bed made of bloodwood sat at the far end, and a matching armoire lay between two windows opposite her. The porcelain wares all shared the same imperial motif as the antechamber and office, and brush paintings decorated the walls. For a Steel Orchid, famed for their unparalleled feminine wiles in their heyday, Faceless Chang had an austere, masculine taste in décor. Or at least, kept up the appearance of masculinity.
Listening for any signs of life, Jie grabbed the top of the window, twisted, and swung in. The thick wool rug, which covered almost the entire floor, made her landing silent. A quick scan revealed no weapons, but as a former Black Lotus operative, Faceless Chang would’ve hidden throwing stars, knives, poisons, and who knew what else in the floorboards, rafters above, or who knew what else. There might also be booby traps.
With no time for searching the room, Jie crept toward the door. She opened it slowly, finding it well oiled; if Faceless Chang had abided by her training, the door would open silently to the point she could slip out. Jie continued opening it until the crack provided a view of the desk. The l
ine of sight was almost perpendicular to her original position from the window, exposing Faceless Chang’s back.
Her head was tilted back, enough to reveal her closed eyes through the slits in the demon mask. She was screaming in the throes of ecstasy, brought there as only a Blossom of the Floating World could accomplish.
Heart fluttering, Jie buried memories of Lilian. Drawing a throwing star, she waited for Faceless Chang to straighten and provide a clear shot at her back.
Bucking forward under Lusha’s skillful ministrations, Faceless Chang exposed her back. Jie threw open the door and flung the star.
Faceless Chang dropped back-first to the desk. The star whirled through the space she’d just been, and passed just over Lusha’s head. It lodged into the opposite wall with a thunk.
It was just like the other Steel Orchid, who’d avoided a sure shot at her back! Jie drew her knife and surged in.
Faceless Chang tilted her head back, hypnotic brown eyes peering through the demon mask to meet Jie’s. Without breaking her gaze, she rolled over onto her stomach, hands flat on the desk, ready to spring up. “Ju Jie. I’ve been waiting for you.”
Of course she had. There was probably some kind of trap. Still, Jie’s head spun. Faceless Chang had used Jie’s fake surname, Ju, from when she’d been a Floret at the Peony Garden, so maybe she didn’t know everything about her.
“Ju Jie?” Lusha now stared as well, eyes gleaming with baleful hate. “It really is you.”
“But your surname really isn’t Ju, is it?” Faceless Chang said, more statement than question.
Maybe she did know. Almost tangible suspicions niggled in the back of Jie’s mind.