Tails You Lose

by Lisa Smedman

  She spotted the address halfway down the block. The shop was a tiny one with a barred window that overlooked the street and a short flight of worn stone steps leading up to its front door. A battered electric sign hung above the doorway, its light flickering behind the name of the shop: National Coin & Stamp. The sign looked as though it had been there a century, as did the shop. Someone was moving around inside; Night Owl hoped it was the man she was looking for.

  She turned her bike in the direction of Waterfront Station and parked it at the back of a Metermate lot, in the shadow of a Eurovan that had two hours plus on its meter. Using a handful of the parking tokens she'd boosted, she purchased six hours' worth of time. If the Red Lotus did spot her bike, she wanted them to think she'd be away from it for some time. With luck, they'd assume she had taken the Seabus over to the North Shore.

  Night Owl hurried across the parking lot, turned right at a bronze statue of an angel carrying a soldier up to heaven, and pushed her way in through the front doors of Waterfront Station. The large, echoing building was busy day and night, a meeting point for the SkyTrain, Seabus and express trains. People streamed through it in all directions: down escalators to the subway and train tracks, along the elevated walkway that led to the Seabus dock, or up escalators to the sky-cab stops on the roof. Still more people clustered in knots at its soykaf stands for a quick jolt of caffeine or stood and watched the eleven o'clock news on the enormous Tribal Newsnet screen that filled one wall.

  Night Owl slipped into a washroom and exchanged her wet jacket and jeans for a dry pair of pants and the expensive suede jacket Kageyama had given her. She blew her wind-tangled hair dry at a hand blower and combed it until it hung straight and neat. Then she squirted cream onto the Beijing Opera mask she'd painted her face with earlier and scrubbed away the diagonal slashes of black and red and blue makeup. When her face was clean, she stared at herself in the mirror, relaxing her posture and trying to keep the smirk off her face.

  "Hello, 'Alma,' " she said. "Ready for your next run?"

  Outside the washroom, she cached her wet clothes inside a storage locker and then pulled out the cellphone she'd boosted earlier from the apartment. She flicked past the message that had been left for her in the daytimer, asking her to name the time and place for a meet, and past her response: MEET WITH YOU? ONLY IN YOUR DREAMS, AL. Then she scrolled down through the list of telecom and cell numbers that had been stored in the cell's memory, past the entry EGON, HOME to the one that read

  EGON, NATIONAL COIN & STAMP. Highlighting it, she thumbed the dial icon.

  When an automated answering function cut in, she disconnected and then called the same number again. Once again, the answer was automated: National Coin & Stamp is now closed; please call back again. Our store hours are—

  "Frag off," she whispered back at it. "I know you're there. Pick up."

  After five more tries, the cell's monitor screen illuminated. The bearded dwarf it projected gave her a harried glance before returning his attention to something out of vidcam range as he spoke. "The store is closed, and I'm in the middle of taking inventory. What's so important that it can't wait until tomorrow?"

  The telecom that was capturing the dwarf's image was positioned at about waist height; it was probably sitting on a shop counter. His hands bobbed in and out of the field of view as he picked up and stacked plastic envelopes filled with brightly colored stamps.

  Night Owl was holding the cell at arm's length. She tilted it so that the phone's vidcam would get a good shot of her face. "Egon?"

  He looked back up. "Oh, it's you, Alma. What do you want?"

  Paydata! Night Owl had suspected that this fellow Egon and Alma knew each other—Alma wouldn't have his home telecom number otherwise. Now she had to hope that they weren't such good chummers that he'd see through Night Owl's charade.

  "Do you remember the appraisal you did for me, about a year ago?" she asked.

  "Of course: three coins from the Qing Dynasty, fair condition, no detectable magic, worth about thirty nuyen each. I hope you're not still casting fortunes with them—handling the coins will reduce their value."

  Night Owl nodded, impressed with the man's memory. He'd listed every significant piece of data on the appraisal fax she'd found in the drawer in Alma's apartment. The dwarf either had a photographic memory or cybernetic data storage. She hoped that his memory for body language wasn't quite as precise.

  "I'm just a few blocks from your shop, at Waterfront Station," Night Owl told him. "Can I see you? I need some information on a rare coin."

  "Now?" The dwarf shifted out of the monitor screen's field of view as he turned to look at something behind him. "It's nearly eleven-thirty."

  "Have you ever heard of the Coins of Luck?" Night Owl asked.

  "One of them is here, in Vancouver." That got his attention.

  Egon stared directly into the cellphone's vidcam, his eyes wide. He'd heard of them, all right. He wet his lips. "Do you . . . have it?"

  Night Owl had already decided not to extend her bluff that far—if the dwarf asked her to describe the coin, she wouldn't be able to. She chose her words carefully; she didn't want to slip up and start using shadow slang—not when she was posing as a corporate wageslave. "Let's just say I'm moonlighting for the person who owns it—someone who wants to remain anonymous. He's hired me to provide some additional security, but he wasn't willing to tell me much about the coin itself. I thought you could fill me in. I want to know what I'm dealing with."

  "Let's talk about this in person," the dwarf said. "Come to my shop."

  The monitor blanked, and Night Owl grinned. "Bytebrain," she whispered derisively. She folded the cellphone up and jandered out the doors and down the street, toward National Coin & Stamp's tiny storefront.

  It took the dwarf a couple of minutes to open the front door after she knocked. Night Owl stood with her jacket tented over her head, both to fend off the rain and to screen herself from passing cars. There wasn't much traffic, but she didn't want to take any chances. Not with both the Red Lotus and Strange Eyes gunning for her.

  The dwarf rolled open the inner, barred door and then opened the door of the shop itself. He stood only as tall as Night Owl's waist, but his stocky frame probably matched hers kilo for kilo. His hair was blond and trimmed short, as was his beard. Despite the fact that the shop was closed, his tie was still neatly knotted at his neck. The cuffs of his dress shirt were pinned together with cufflinks made from gold coins.

  "Sorry to keep you waiting in the rain," he apologized. "I had to speak to the watcher spirit first, so it would accept your presence in the store. And thanks for the tip on the security system, by the way. It saved me a bundle of credit."

  Night Owl nodded as she stepped into the shop. If the coin dealer hadn't just thanked her, she would have assumed he was warning her that the shop was magically guarded. But when she pulled off her dripping jacket and turned to drape it over one of the stools that lined the display counter, Egon didn't even flinch at the handgun holstered at the small of her back.

  Night Owl looked around at the shelves and counters that filled the tiny shop as Egon closed and locked the door. Binders filled every shelf, and the counters were covered with metal drawers filled with clear plastic folders, each holding a single coin, old-fashioned "dollar" bill or stamp—mediums of exchange that had survived into the twenty-first century, only to vanish with the advent of the credstick and the Matrix. A large windup clock sat on a shelf behind the counter, its antique mechanism ticking loudly, and the shelves held dusty-looking books rather than optical chips. Everything in the shop, it seemed, was the product of a forgotten era—except for the cred slotter on the counter. Egon had one foot, at least, in the twenty-first century.

  It took Night Owl a moment to spot the shop's watcher spirit, which was as insubstantial as a ghost; she could only see it out of the corner of her eye. It was gnome-sized, with a heavily wrinkled face, its eyes closed and covered by coins that clung to his ey
elids as if glued there. The spirit sat crosslegged inside a glass-fronted display case, as still as death. Night Owl got the impression that it could see through the coins on its eyes, though, and was watching her every move.

  Egon rolled the bars back into place across the doorway and turned to face Night Owl. He obviously trusted "Alma" enough to lock himself inside the shop with her—sometimes posing as a corporate suit had its advantages. Either that, or he was determined to keep her inside until she told him everything she knew about the coin.

  Night Owl had the reverse in mind.

  "Tell me about the Coins of Luck," she prompted. She pulled a stool into a spot where a tall shelf screened her from the street and sat with her back against the wall. "What are they worth, and what are they capable of?"

  She'd already decided that the coin she was supposed to have must be magical—money alone wouldn't account for a dragon being interested in it.

  Egon walked behind the display case that held the watcher spirit and stepped up onto a platform that brought him up to eye level with Night Owl. "The Coins of Luck are extremely old: they date back to the Xia Dynasty. That alone makes them worth several hundred thousand nuyen. But as you've alluded, there's another reason for their great worth: they're said to be powerful magical foci. According to legend, each brings a different kind of luck: prosperity, longevity, fertility and happiness."

  That slotted. Happiness—fu—was the character the dragon had said was on the back of the "hollow" statue that Chiao had hired her to steal. Night Owl had gone with her gut instinct—backed up by a coin flip—that Egon would know about the Coins of Luck, based on the fact that he did thaumaturgical testing on Alma's coins. The long shot had paid off. She'd come to the right man.

  Night Owl leaned forward. "What's the legend?" Egon's eyes gleamed. "The Coins of Luck were supposedly created two thousand years ago by the lung wang—the 'dragon kings' of Chinese mythology, dragons who controlled the seas, rains and winds. The coins were given to humankind as a test, to see whether mortals would use the bounty they conveyed for good or for evil.

  "The men and women who received the coins prospered and became the rulers of their people. But as you would expect in a story like this one, the mortals weren't satisfied with one coin apiece. They went to war with one another, each trying to acquire the other three coins."

  Night Owl raised an eyebrow. "They weren't satisfied with just one kind of luck?"

  "It wasn't just that. According to legend, the coins collectively can grant special powers of divination. They can predict the optimum moment at which to cast a spell—but only if they are used together as a set. The last time this was said to have happened was in the thirteenth century. When the Mongols attacked Japan in 1281, the Japanese emperor used the coins to predict the precise moment at which his priests could summon up a hurricane. Their 'divine wind' smashed the Mongol fleet and destroyed the invading army." Egon shrugged. "Of course, this may all be nothing more than legend. This was long before the Awakening, in an age when magic shouldn't have been possible."

  Night Owl nodded, caught up in the story. The coin she'd been sent to boost was even more valuable than she'd imagined. No wonder the dragon had been interested in acquiring it.

  "Over the next few centuries," Egon continued, "the ownership and whereabouts of the coins were unknown. It wasn't until 2057, when the dragon Dunkelzahn died and his will was read, that three of them resurfaced. The Coin of Luck that conveys longevity, called the Shou Coin, went to the great dragon Lung. The Feng Coin, which brings fertility, was willed to a woman named Sharon Chiang-Wu, wife of the CEO of Wuxing, Incorporated.

  "The third of the Coins of Luck, the Lu Coin, was left to an impoverished fisherman in Hong Kong. Rumor had it that this man did some great service for Dunkelzahn, and the dragon wanted to reward his family with great wealth. Unfortunately, the reward brought only death: the fisherman Sun Yat-sun was gunned down by Yellow Lotus gangsters who were attempting to steal the Lu Coin. Its whereabouts are currently unknown.

  "As for the fourth coin, the question of whether Dunkelzahn ever owned it is open to speculation. The Fu Coin wasn't mentioned in his will. But whoever owns it must be a very happy person, regardless of their circumstances."

  That slotted with everything Night Owl had learned so far. Akira Kageyama certainly seemed happy enough—but then, having a net worth of several million nuyen probably helped. Whoever said that credit couldn't buy happiness had never lived from credstick to credstick.

  "What do the Coins of Luck look like?" Night Owl asked. She wondered if she'd be able to pawn one of Alma's coins off on Strange Eyes or the dragon Chiao. It wouldn't fool either of them for long, but it might buy her a little time.

  Egon picked up the packages of coins and stamps that were spread out on the counter, neatly stacked them to one side, and reached into the display cabinet—his hands brushing past the watcher spirit—to pull out a leather-bound binder. He set it on the space he'd cleared and flipped open its clear plastic pages, each of which had multiple pockets holding coins.

  "They look like these," he said, pointing to a half-dozen badly pitted coins. "The Coins of Luck are similar to other coins produced during the Xia Dynasty, except for the fact that they never tarnish. They also have some kind of magical protection on them that only very powerful magicians can see past."

  Night Owl slid from her stool and moved closer to the counter. She leaned over the book, studying the coins and committing them to memory. Each was about five centimeters wide and had a square hole that took up a good third of the center of the coin. The designs on the front of each coin were worn almost smooth; she could barely tell that they were Chinese characters. "How can you tell one Coin of Luck from the others?" she asked.

  "According to what I've read about the Coins of Luck, each has the same four characters on its face," Egon said. "It takes an initiated magician to work through the magical protection on the coin. Once through, one character—fu, lu, shou or feng—will glow in the astral."

  He stroked his neatly trimmed beard with one hand as he speculated aloud. "The whereabouts of two of the coins are known: Lung lairs someplace in China, and Sharon Chiang-Wu resides in Hong Kong. Neither has expressed interest in selling their coin, despite repeated requests from dealers around the world. Which begs three questions: which of the other two Coins of Luck is here in Vancouver, who owns it, and is he or she interested in selling?" His voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. "I'm sure I could find a buyer."

  Night Owl was trying to decide how best to politely decline the offer when a Ford Americar rolled to a stop on the street outside the store. The headlights went out, and the driver—an Asian man—stepped out into the rain.

  The watcher spirit leaned forward to look, its head shimmering as it passed through the glass front of the display case. "He's here," it said in a voice that sounded like coins jingling together.

  Egon peered out at the darkened street, speaking to Night Owl over his shoulder. "Ah, good. I hope you don't mind, Alma, but I invited a friend to join—"

  Before he could finish the sentence, Night Owl had drawn her gun. She'd recovered her Ares Predator from the Magic Box, with Tatyana's help, and now its perforated silencer was pointed directly at Egon's head.

  She understood, now, why it had taken the dwarf so long to let her into the shop. He'd been on the telecom to this fragger.

  She flicked off the safety of her gun. At the click, Egon swallowed nervously.

  The man outside climbed the stairs and knocked on the shop's front door. From where he stood, he wouldn't be able to see Night Owl.

  "Who is he?" Night Owl gritted.

  Egon started to lift his hands from the counter but thought better of it. He glanced ruefully at the watcher spirit, which was ignoring Night Owl, its gaze fixed on the door like an expectant dog. "Alma—relax. His name is Lei Kung. He's made a study of the Coins of Luck. He . . . knows quite a lot about them."

  "Who's he run with?" />
  Egon's eyebrows rose. "How did you know he was a shadowrunner?"

  Night Owl glared, angry at herself for slipping into street slang. "Who does he work with?" she corrected herself.

  "Kung is strictly independent. Perhaps I should have warned you that he was a shadowrunner, but I assure you he's not a criminal. He deals in information only. I've used him myself, to crosscheck the legitimacy of some of the items my shop deals in—and the credentials of those who are selling them."

  Night Owl didn't like the sound of that last part. Keeping her gun hidden, she leaned out from behind the display case and took a good look at the man through the glass in the door. He was about thirty or forty, with a mustache that was no more than a tuft of whiskers at either side of his mouth, and thick, shoulder-length black hair that was streaked with wide orange stripes. He wore a clear plastic rain jacket over tight black jeans and a long-sleeved black T-shirt woven with gold threads that gleamed under the streetlights. The jeans disappeared into high lace-up boots.

  Night Owl pulled back into the shadow of the shelf as the fellow knocked on the door a second time and waved at Egon. "I don't recognize him."

  "You wouldn't," Egon said. "He's from Hong Kong. He only came to Vancouver a couple of months ago. I assure you that, even though he's a shadowrunner, he's not dangerous."

  Still holding the gun on Egon, Night Owl pulled the SkyTrain token from her pocket and flipped it into the air. Heads, she'd talk to this Lei Kung. Tails, she'd tell Egon to send his friend packing.

  She caught the token and slapped it down on the back of her left hand, which she'd turned slightly while still holding the gun. Heads.

  She reholstered her pistol. "All right. Let him in." Egon hurried to the door and opened it. The man who had been waiting outside entered the shop, flicking rain from his fingers.