by Alyc Helms
I took a step back from the node, glowing with a yin-yang swirl of darkness and light, and felt a little twinge of separation tingle down my spine. I concentrated on that frisson and realized I could feel other tingles, as though someone had implanted magnets beneath my skin. Nine connections snapped under my skin, through my blood. I didn’t have much experience with this sort of thing, but I was going to take a wild guess and say that our ritual had worked.
“That’s done, then,” I murmured, swaying just a bit as all the aches and cuts and bruises of my cross-city race caught up with me. I turned to face Lao Hu, sitting on the edge of the labyrinth circle with his tail curled primly around his feet as though he wasn’t the cause of most of my injuries. “Now get the hell out of my city.”
Sixteen
Argent Ace
Doris Han opened the banquet room of the Dragon’s Pearl.
This was big. Huge. She only opened the banquet room for birthdays and New Year’s. And, apparently, State visits from my son, but I wasn’t going to let a little detail like that ruin my “you’re awesome!” puppy glow. If I let piddly details muck up my glow, I’d be dim for eternity.
Details like the Lady’s camp, which I’d found empty and abandoned when I went up to Muir Woods to see if I could find her. I couldn’t call her army. I couldn’t call my own. Not even Templeton.
My “you’re awesome!” smile dimmed, and I had to struggle to stoke it back to brightness. Banquet room, dammit!
We’d gathered an eclectic group to celebrate: Doris and her extended family took up almost half of the five tables, with Johnny and his students filling another sizeable chunk. Shimizu and Jack sat together near Johnny – for mutual defense, I suspected. Abby had shown up, looking as subdued as I was trying not to look. No La Reina, Sadakat, or Skyrocket, of course. There was no way to explain why we were celebrating without revealing to them who I was.
Mian Zi sat on one side of the seat of honor with a passel of People’s Heroes in suits matching his. Mei Shen and David Tsung counterbalanced him on the other side. And Jian Huo sat in the middle, patiently allowing Doris to ply him with all her best dishes. Every so often between all the toasting, I managed to catch his gaze from my place two tables away. Doris had put me in the cheap seats with Johnny’s other students, which I suppose was what I got for not telling her who I was after my meeting with Mian Zi. As far as most of the guests at the celebration were concerned, the heroes of the day were the three dragons and Johnny. I was a guest at my own celebration, which was perfectly fine by me. Sitting with Johnny’s students was a step up from the Han kids’ table where Doris usually put me.
We’d eaten and toasted until we could gan bei no more and moved on to the musical chairs point of the meal. Mian Zi’s people watched with blank faces – hiding horror, I was fairly certain – at all the American-born Chinese mixing and moving about. Mian Zi and Mei Shen eyed each other warily. Not talking, not with their father between them and David Tsung glued to Mei Shen’s side, but at least they weren’t fighting. Whatever had prompted them to bridge their differences at Twin Peaks, it seemed to be having a lasting effect.
I snuck another glance at Jian Huo, as I’d been doing throughout the eight-course meal. He’d ditched his usual hanfu in favor of a suit – I suspected Mian Zi had helped him there, since I’d never seen him in one. He was watching the twins as I had been, brow furrowed in a mix of concern and guarded hope. He caught me staring and gave me a nod and a slight smile that on anyone else would have been a wide grin and a thumbs up. Fuck etiquette. Doris could yell at me later. I shoved my chair back and headed his way.
“Masters. I need a moment,” Abby said, catching my arm when I would have squeezed past her. I cast a helpless look at Jian Huo, hoping for a rescue, but Johnny had cornered him.
Awesome puppy, I reminded myself, and pasted a smile on my face to hide my disappointment. “Yes?” I perched in the empty chair next to hers. “I’m glad you came, by the way.”
Abby’s shoulders were hunched, her arms not quite crossed, but hugged close to her body. I might be glad for her presence. She didn’t look glad to be there. She shrugged and answered with a closed-lip smile. “Yeah. Well. You know me and free food.”
“I thought it was booze,” I said, though there had also been plenty of that.
“That too. Hey,” Abby straightened, some of her moxy returning, “we found the leak. You know Fuller and Byrd?”
“The security heads I met at the Academy?” Shit. That was quite the leak.
Abby grimaced. “Also the missing Anglin brothers. We caught them when they tried to spring Morris. They’ve been slowly infiltrating Argent for years. Chillybritches is going to have them all moved to our own island facility.”
“She must be furious.”
Abby chuckled, the laugh of someone who hadn’t been caught in the crossfire of Sylvia Dunbarton’s fury, I suspected. “And not terribly quiet about it. Open office plans aren’t known for being soundproof. Lots of people taking personal days this week.”
The lull in our laughter carried on just a bit too long. Abby sighed and scraped her fingers through her hair. “About Asha…”
My own smile dimmed. I wasn’t sure whether to congratulate her on her victory over her nemesis or comfort her on the loss of her sister. “Abby–”
“I got a delivery yesterday. My office. A carpet. The carpet. And I was just wondering if maybe she might have…”
“I don’t know,” I said, tugging her forearm before she ripped out any hair. “I went to the Lady’s camp. The one in Muir Woods. It was abandoned. Everything left behind. I can’t call on her allies.” Or mine. I’d spent hours trying to summon Templeton, to summon… Anne… and only gotten a migraine for my troubles. “I don’t know what happened to either of them.”
“Then who–?”
“Lao Hu pays his debts. And I suspect he’d see you as Asha’s next of kin.”
“Yeah. Right.” She toyed with the ends of her chopsticks. She’d hardly touched her food. “I guess it’s true that you can forgive anyone, even your own relations.” She stood abruptly. “I need to go. Have a good party.”
I watched her slip out the banquet room doors, taking the last vestiges of my urge to smile with her. I’d been trying not to think too deeply about what had happened to Asha or the Lady. Asha, because even though she’d sold me out, I still felt guilty for putting her in the position where she felt she had to. And the Lady because…
Because Abby had been right about family.
Mian Zi and Mei Shen had drifted close enough to each other that I was able to grab each of them before either one could raise a stink. I dragged them behind the rickety bamboo screen that Doris used to hide the folding chairs and tables when the banquet room wasn’t in use.
“Shut up. Don’t say anything,” I told them and pulled them into a three-way hug. After a few moments of stiffness, they both relented. Mian Zi even hugged back.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered into their hair, a blending of long and short. Mei Shen’s sharp, lemongrass scent mixed with rich clove from Mian Zi. I breathed deeply, the way I used to when they were mooplings. It was the scent of contentment. Of home. “I’m so sorry I left. That I didn’t say goodbye.”
They didn’t respond beyond squeezing harder. I didn’t expect them to. Forgiveness wasn’t the necessary response to an apology. It had to be earned. As did reconciliation. I released them and nudged them back.
“You.” I poked Mian Zi in the chest. “David Tsung isn’t so bad. And if it turns out I’m wrong on that, then wouldn’t it be better if you were at your sister’s side rather than standing in judgment? And you,” Mei Shen got a similar poke. She rubbed her sternum, frowning. “You’re the one making this a competition with your brother. You aren’t loved less. You aren’t trusted less. You aren’t viewed as less than him. Not by me or your father or Mian Zi. So who are you trying to prove yourself to, other than yourself?”
I gave them both individu
al hugs and turned my back on their jaw-dropped shock. “I love you both. Work your shit out.”
I left them behind the screen. Jian Huo wasn’t in his seat of honor anymore. I slipped around the edge of the room, looking for where he’d run off to.
“He’s outside,” Johnny said, rocking onto his chair’s back two legs so he could block my path. Despite stuffing himself through eight courses, Johnny had a plate of phoenix claws in front of him. He gnawed on a chicken foot and continued to block my path.
I sat. “That obvious I’ve been stalking him?”
Johnny shrugged and spat a nail into his palm. “I could say I’ve known you for a long time, but the real answer is yes.”
I chuckled. “In that case, get out of my way before I kick those chair legs out from under you.”
“Hold up a second. That lawyer friend of yours.”
“Jack?” I scanned the room. He and Shimizu had latched on to Andrew Han, Doris’ eldest, who seemed to be translating between them and one of the People’s Heroes. “What about him?”
“How weirded out would you be if I asked him out?”
It was a good thing I wasn’t balancing my chair on two legs, or I would have toppled over. How weirded out? Very. On every possible level. I couldn’t think of a greater mismatch. Except possibly Jian Huo and myself. I smiled. “Go for it. I’ll stock up on popcorn.”
Johnny cleaned his hands on a napkin, strangling it as I suspected he wanted to strangle me. “The more you make fun now, the more teaching moments I’ll be inclined to have during our next session.”
“Mmhmm. Worth it. I’m gonna…” I gestured to the door. I had my own mismatch to pursue.
The front two legs of Johnny’s chair hit the floor. He stood and twisted a few of his purple-red spikes. I don’t think I’d ever seen him nervous. “Shit. I hate this part.”
“Go get him, tig–” I broke off. I was never using that phrase again. “Er… you’re a Giants fan, right?”
“Yes. Because I have a soul.”
I patted him on the shoulder and used it to push him in Jack’s direction. “Then you’ll do fine. Good luck.”
“You too.”
As much as I wanted to watch, I slipped out of the banquet room and through the busy restaurant. I tracked Jian Huo through the kitchens to the alley behind the Pearl. It reeked of the usual trash and piss. It was the wrong place for him, for the conversation I wanted to have. Seemed I didn’t have much of a choice, though.
“I was afraid you’d left,” I said softly.
He turned, took a step toward me. His hair was looped over his arm so that it wouldn’t drag in the alley muck. “I was making ready to. I have made my farewells to our hostess and the other guests. I only waited to say the same to you.”
I touched the loop of hair hanging over his arm, letting my fingers trail through it. Little sparks of lightning kissed my fingers. Shit, I’d missed this. Missed him. “Will you come by the house later?” I asked, wishing my pickup line didn’t sound quite so much like a pickup line.
He lifted my hand, kissed my fingers, and then very deliberately pushed it away. “Missy, you know I cannot. It is as I said before. I cannot stay, or I will be tempted to meddle as my brother does. You must live your life.”
Yeah. Right. Apparently I must live my life alone. I searched for some argument I hadn’t already made when a voice from down the alley interrupted us.
“I can come by your house if my brother will not.”
For fuck’s sake. I glared at Lung Di, standing only a few feet away.
“Get out,” Jian Huo told him, saving me the trouble.
Lung Di spread his hands, one gloved, I noticed. He wore his usual suit and an overcoat of black wool. He and Jian Huo looked like the brothers they were. Only Jian Huo’s hair differentiated them. “But I must congratulate and reward my champion. It is only proper.”
I placed a hand on Jian Huo’s arm – the one not supporting his hair – to stop him from lunging at Lung Di. Not because I was Lung Di’s champion. Because if anyone was going to kick his ass, it would be me. “It’s fine. I’ll handle him. Johnny won’t thank you guys for leveling Chinatown, and if he kills me… well, that’ll solve a lot of our problems.”
Jian Huo’s face showed nothing, but his arm flexed under my hand for several tense moments before he turned his back on Lung Di. “I will wait inside until I am sure you are safe,” he said, and strode back into the Pearl.
I studied Lung Di, wondering if it really was possible to beat the smirk off someone’s face.
He tugged on his glove, paying my scrutiny no heed. “Once again, you neglect to invite me to your parties. Recall what happened the last time you failed to do so?”
“You kidnapped my kids. And I gave you that.” I nodded at the glove pulled over his withered hand.
The gloved hand flexed into a fist. I’d been joking about the killing of me, but maybe I shouldn’t be pressing my luck. He could still backhand me. Again. “So. Reward?” I said, hoping I could get rid of him quickly and painlessly. Like lancing a blister. “Oh, and I have your book.”
Lung Di took a step closer. “Keep it. With these new wards of yours, it is safer here than anywhere else.”
I sidestepped to maintain our distance. I wasn’t letting him within backhanding range. “I don’t want–”
“Keep it safe,” he said, ominous as Gandalf pawning off the One Ring on a clueless hobbit.
Fuck. “Thanks,” I muttered. “Always wanted my very own monkey’s paw.”
“Oh, I’m certain you’re smart enough not to make any wishes in its presence.” Lung Di held up his hands. “I am kidding, of course.”
Right. Still, I was definitely going to be careful about anything I said in the vicinity of that book. “So, you’ve thanked me. You’ve rewarded me. You can mosey on now.”
“Oh, the book wasn’t your reward. Just another duty for my champion.”
I was fairly certain I didn’t want anything that Lung Di wanted to give me. “And duty is its own reward. So really, there’s no need to–”
“Are you sure?” He reached inside his overcoat and pulled out a familiar-looking gauntlet with four stones embedded in it. Coral. Glass. Opal. And a blood-dark shimmer that flitted up and landed on my shoulder, wings snapping shut with a soft click.
I took the gauntlet. The leather creaked from the strength of my grip. “Where…?”
“Brought to me by those still loyal to me. I searched where they discovered it, but found no other traces of your rat or… anything else.”
So it didn’t mean anything. It didn’t mean Templeton was gone. It didn’t mean Anne was gone.
“So you see, I’m not such a bad guy,” Lung Di murmured. Somehow he’d gotten close enough to touch the little scarab on my shoulder. Red Rover’s carapace fluttered with a rapid tick-tick-ing, and he raised his back end like an angry stink bug threatening to let loose.
I was in complete agreement with the little guy. I didn’t want to be grateful to Lung Di. I definitely didn’t want to see him in shades of grey. Even if he had been the one to keep the Voidlands in check for who knew how long. I retreated and transferred Red Rover to my other shoulder. “Doing good sometimes doesn’t make you good.”
“No. It doesn’t, does it? I suspect the same could be said of many people. My brother. You. Your grandfather?”
I shivered at the way he lingered over that last taunt. Savoring it. “I’m going inside now. You’re leaving,” I said. I’d learned my lesson several times over. Listening to Lung Di’s truths brought me nothing but misery. I’d find some other way to get the information I needed.
“Of course. Enjoy your victory celebration.”
Victory celebration. Right. I trudged inside, Templeton’s gauntlet hitting my thigh with every step.
* * *
Argent’s China Basin headquarters were too new to have found their own identity. I’d wondered during our brainstorming sessions to find Asha why they didn
’t have an extensive campus somewhere on the Peninsula – that seemed more Argent’s style. Sadakat had informed me quite primly that Argent didn’t follow the pack, they led it. Abby had laughed and said that Argent’s huge, quasi-military base near Gilroy might have something to do with it.
I parked my replacement Triumph at the edge of the entry plaza and strode past the obligatory public art, a towering amoeba of polished chrome. In some ways, Argent’s struggle was my own writ large – how to maintain identity in a world that was quick to discard old for new.
Tom was waiting in ambush for me in the lobby. “Hey, Old Man. You got a minute?”
My steps slowed. I diverted off my path to the security desk but didn’t quicken my pace. I’d been dreading this conversation. Possibly avoiding it, even.
“Tom,” I said, softer than I usually was with him. “You’re looking recovered.”
He smiled sheepishly and rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah. And I never properly thanked you for that.”
I looked for the uncanny valley, but it was all straight road and smooth skies where Tom was concerned. Sweet lord, Argent’s techs were geniuses. They hadn’t just nailed basic human expressions. They’d nailed earnestness. Gratitude. Charisma. I was more frightened of that than just about anything else I’d been through these past few weeks.
“No need,” I said. “As I recall, you also rescued me from a rather dire plight.”
Tom led me to the elevators. “Don’t think that makes us even. The medics told me I was pretty banged up inside. Took ‘em days to sort me, and I’m still not feeling...”
I set a hand on his arm when he fell silent, staring at the lift console. “Perhaps you shouldn’t jump back into things so quickly.”
“I don’t remember much of what happened on that island. What they did to me. I guess they used some powerful sedatives to keep me out and get me talking. Who knows how much classified intel I gave up. At least nobody in our other facilities was hurt because I couldn’t keep my trap shut.” He pressed a hand over his face. He looked tired. He looked... sad.