The Lost Plot

by Genevieve Cogman

  “I’ve seen you turn the lights out,” George agreed, “and I still haven’t figured out how the hell you managed that one.”

  Captain Venner snorted. “The woman’s a hypnotist. She gave one of your waiters a post-hypnotic order to turn out all the lights when she gave the signal.”

  That was a beautiful excuse, and Irene resolved to remember it. “We’re in a hurry. I can do some parlour tricks to impress you, or I can get on with explaining the plan.”

  George nodded and made a Go on gesture.

  “Kai here will lure the dragons to a pre-arranged spot above the river. Lily will be waiting with her tranquillizer gun. Evariste and I will guide the bullets to hit the dragons. The dragons will be knocked out and will crash into the river. Problem sorted.”

  She could see the uncertainty in Kai’s face out of the corner of her eye. She ignored it for the moment. He knew how implausible her suggestion was, but for the moment he was trusting her and not disagreeing with her publicly. She’d explain to him—and Evariste—what she had in mind the moment that they were out of Hu’s hearing. Because what she actually had in mind was far, far more destructive.

  “I still think we should just shoot them,” Lily said. Her visible eye was hungry. “Why are you so interested in saving them, Jeanette? Whose side are you really on?”

  “See, that’s one of the reasons I employ Lily here,” George commented to Captain Venner. “She asks all the right questions.”

  “I’m on the side that wants to stop this fight before any more of New York gets damaged,” Irene snapped. “You saw I was a prisoner in Qing Song’s suite—do you really think I’m on his side? When he had his wolves chasing me down the street? And I believe you could shoot one of them without us helping. But could you hit the second one as well? Before it turned on you?”

  “I could try,” Lily said, as calm as ice. But there was a note of uncertainty in her voice, and Irene was relieved to hear it. Lily wasn’t certain she could get them both. And Lily didn’t want to get herself killed. She’d stick with their deal.

  “You’re not Jeanette Smith,” Captain Venner accused. “You’re not an FBI agent either. So who the hell are you, and what’s going on?”

  A smile flickered over Lily’s face. She turned to George. “There isn’t time for this, boss. I think she can do what she’s saying, but we need to do it now.”

  “Then it looks like this is one of the few times you and I are going to be on the level,” George said to Captain Venner. He tossed back his drink. “It sounds like we’re going to need some space to work in. I don’t want any of my paying customers getting injured when the lizards crash. Are you and the other cops going to play ball and clear the target area?”

  Captain Venner bit back a growl. “Fine. If this is the only way to stop them. Where are we doing this?”

  Irene relaxed for a moment. That was everyone in agreement. She could do this . . .

  Then she caught sight of Hu, about to leave the room.

  Lily saw the direction of Irene’s gaze and, without a moment’s hesitation, levelled a gun at Hu’s head. Her finger was tightening on the trigger as Irene lunged for her wrist.

  The shot slapped into the door-frame just above Hu’s head. He froze.

  “Nobody gets killed,” Irene said through gritted teeth. “That’s my price.”

  “They just walk away?” Lily demanded. Her gun was aimed at Hu’s head again. “After all this?”

  Irene looked Lily in the eye. “Hu is not the biggest threat at the moment.”

  “Oh, if we’re making threats . . .” Kai put in, his own tone underscored with anger.

  “Hu. Come back into this room and shut the door.” Irene waited for Hu to close the door and step safely back from it before she looked at Kai. “I appreciate your feelings. But we’re quite clear on who the offending parties are. And Lily is not the person who touched off this disaster.”

  George stepped forward, pushing Lily’s gun arm down with one hand as he did so. She let him. “Miss Smith—seeing as we haven’t anything better to call you—you say you want to do this somewhere alongside the Hudson?”

  “The river,” Evariste explained, as Irene blinked in momentary confusion.

  “Right, the river. We have a map here.” George tapped the map, which had been spread across the bar. The crowd was being held back by a combination of George’s enforcers and Captain Venner’s cops. “Where do you want your ambush?”

  Irene beckoned Kai over. “Where would work best?” she asked. “If they thought you were running from them and heading to the river, where could you lead them?”

  Kai frowned at the map. “Would there do?” he said, pointing. “About half a mile up from those piers, so that we don’t have to deal with the shipping?”

  “Sure,” George said. “Plenty of good spots there for Lily to take her shot from. Lily, you tell one of the boys which of your specials you want from your collection, and they’ll bring it right there to meet you. Can you get the area cleared, Venner?”

  Captain Venner jerked a nod. “I’ll get moving. See you there.”

  Irene found herself being hustled outside, together with Kai, Evariste, and Hu. It gave her the chance to murmur her real plan into Kai’s ear. His hand tightened on hers, and he nodded in agreement. They were urged into a waiting car, with one of George’s men as a driver and another as a guard. It seemed that George didn’t want to risk them wandering off.

  The night was as hot as an August evening, and dusty winds stroked through the air. The sidewalks were full of panicking people, stampeding in a dozen directions at once, a hair’s breadth away from full riot. It didn’t embody Irene’s worst fears yet—the falling buildings, collapsing skyscrapers, earthquakes, and thunder and ruin that she’d been imagining—but the threat of future destruction hung in the air like a promise. The earth seemed to pulse beneath her in warning. Everyone in the city could feel the dragons and the power they controlled. It was like being an insect under the magnifying glass. You were safe only for as long as the focus didn’t tighten upon you. New York wouldn’t need to be physically destroyed at this rate—it would simply tear itself apart.

  A roar cut through the night, louder than the colliding traffic or yelling mobs, and Irene felt the earth shudder in response.

  “Why are the dragons doing that?” Evariste demanded. “They’re only fighting each other, they don’t need to—to . . .” He waved his hands, trying to illustrate the shaking ground beneath them. “To do that sort of crap!”

  The car jolted as it took a corner hard, and all of them had to hang on. The traffic still on the streets had abandoned such minor suggestions as speed limits or traffic laws and was going as fast as possible. They hadn’t hit anything—yet.

  “Neither of them is going to turn down an advantage now, with them both so closely matched,” Kai said tensely. He was in the backseat on one side of Irene, with Evariste on the other, and Hu was sharing the front seat with George’s thugs. “Though Jin Zhi has the edge, if she can stay in the air. It’ll make it more difficult for Qing Song to call the earth against her.”

  Irene shivered in spite of the rising temperature. She could guess what Jin Zhi’s own metaphorical elemental affinity was now: heat. All the dragons she’d met so far had some sort of affinity to a natural or symbolic element, even if it didn’t match classical Western or Chinese patterns. Kai’s was to water, his uncle Ao Shun’s to rain or storms, Li Ming’s to cold and ice . . . she wondered what Hu’s was.

  Hu was staring out the window in a brooding silence. He was as tense as Kai, and Irene thought he was genuinely worried about his lord and master. “Are you going to cooperate?” she asked him.

  “You’re not leaving me much choice,” Hu said in clipped tones. “I only hope, for your sake, that you can make this work.”

  “Speaking of which,” Irene said, then s
hifted to Chinese, “we need to consider the aftermath.” She knew Kai could speak Chinese, and if Evariste had been able to trace Journey to the West, then he understood it too. More to the point, the two thugs in the front of the car probably couldn’t understand it.

  “What do you mean?” Kai asked in the same language. His choice of words was polite student-to-teacher, and it brought a frown to Hu’s face.

  “I mean that we may need a fast getaway. So be prepared. Please be ready to use the river against George’s gunmen if I give you a signal.” She shifted back to English again, just as the gangster in the front seat turned round to stare at them. “Evariste, we’re going to need to agree on our wording and speak in unison. It’ll magnify the Language’s effect. Have you done this before?”

  “No,” Evariste said, giving her a sideways glance. “Have you?”

  “Me neither,” Irene said. She felt a manic cheerfulness descending on her. It was the far-too-familiar sensation of being so neck-deep in trouble that it couldn’t get any worse—hoping your feet would hit the bottom before your nostrils went under the surface. She recalled the good old Macbeth lines of I am in blood stepped in so far, and so on. Except that it always could get worse.

  Be positive, she counselled herself. Kai knew what he had to do.

  Two gleaming bodies collided in the night sky above with a crash that shattered the glass in street lamps and building windows up and down the street. Their car rocked on its wheels, and the driver swore as he jerked the steering wheel to the right, dragging the car out of the way of an oncoming vehicle that had veered off course.

  Irene braced herself and slid back the window on her side, leaning out to get a better look. She saw the two coiling figures falling through the sky together, wrapped around each other in twists of gold and dark green like intricate embroidery. Then the two dragons broke apart, spiralling out into a wide circle that was clearly a preparation for another attack. Irene pulled her head back into the car. “How much longer?” she demanded of the driver.

  “Ten minutes, lady. Five if we’re lucky.”

  Irene took a deep breath. To distract herself, she asked Hu, “Out of curiosity, what touched off this particular fight?”

  “They were already at cross-purposes,” Hu said. “Then my lord saw, through the eyes of his pets, that the prince had arrived and taken you under his protection. He used strong language, blaming the lady Jin Zhi for interfering. She commented on how his carelessness and laxity had caused the current situation, and . . .” He shrugged.

  “One might wonder if there was some past connection between Qing Song and Jin Zhi . . .” Kai speculated disingenuously.

  “I couldn’t possibly comment,” Hu responded. He looked as if he would have liked to say something stronger, if not for his position.

  Irene filed the whole past-liaison thing under blatantly obvious.

  “Almost there!” the driver called over his shoulder. “Get ready to hop out fast.”

  The car drew up with a screech of brakes and the four of them scrambled out, followed by their escort. Kai took a deep breath of the river air and immediately looked happier. On one side of the street rose the buildings of New York, and on the other side lay the wide dark expanse of the Hudson River. Irene couldn’t restrain thoughts about there being nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. Farther south, she could see the lights marking the ends of the piers, and the dark outlines of ships. Heat brought the stink of petrol rising from the concrete, overlying the smells of water and sewage. Several trucks were drawn up near where they’d parked, and Irene took care not to stare at them too obviously. If Lily had told George what she wanted, and if George had complied, they were one step closer . . .

  Evariste licked a finger and held it up to the air. “There’s going to be a storm if it gets any hotter,” he said. “The sort with lightning.”

  “That’s all we need,” their escort muttered.

  Then a distant roar echoed across the city, and the shadow of a tremor touched the ground beneath their feet. The surface of the river rippled in the glow of the street lamps, and distant alarm bells sang in disharmony with car horns and screams.

  Irene looked at Hu and Kai: they both had the same expression of grave concern, as though an unmentioned line had been crossed. But it was Hu who spoke. “That was my lord Qing Song. He’s begun to call the earth to aid him.”

  She didn’t want to think what would happen to New York if the tremors became any worse. “Is there anything you can do?” she demanded of Hu. “I apologize if it’s rude to ask, but is there anything you can summon?”

  Hu’s face was such a perfect mask that Irene realized she must have touched a very deep nerve. “Sadly a person of lesser ability like myself cannot command such power,” he said, with the sort of forced politeness that came from extreme personal bitterness. “I could not possibly challenge the higher nobility on that level.”

  Irene pondered the taste of foot in mouth, and decided that apologizing further would only make it worse. Instead she turned to their escort. “Where are George and Lily?”

  “Looks like that’s them now,” he said. She turned to see a cavalcade of oncoming traffic rumbling in their direction, a limousine with an escort of police cars.

  “Right.” She gestured for the others to join her. “Once Lily’s in position for the shot, then we’re good to go. Kai, are you ready?”

  “Yes,” Kai said. “At least they won’t be bothering you. They’ll be focusing on me.” He glanced up at the skies. It wasn’t quite nervousness. It was more the controlled readiness of a man preparing for a fight, where he knew the ground and his enemies, even if the odds were against him.

  Irene touched his wrist. “Be careful.”

  “While getting between two of my kind who might be fighting to the death?” Kai was almost laughing. He caught her in an unexpected embrace. “Be careful yourself,” he muttered into her hair. “If George thinks he doesn’t need you any longer—”

  “I know,” she murmured back. “And you know what to do. Be ready.” For a moment she didn’t try to pull out of his arms. His presence, his safety, was reassuring. It was far easier for her to handle risks to herself than to be putting him in danger yet again. I am hopelessly compromised, she thought. Just as much as Evariste.

  She occasionally daydreamed about being the sort of character in a story who could faint and leave everyone else to sort things out.

  But that wasn’t going to happen.

  “When we make a break for it,” she continued, “you take Evariste and Qing Song—once he’s in human form. Hu can’t retaliate if you’ve taken his master hostage.”

  “I’d rather be carrying you,” he murmured in her ear.

  “We have to get everyone out and make sure Hu doesn’t pull a fast one. Trust me.” It was like one of those logic problems where the narrator had a single boat and had to get a fox and a rabbit and a bunch of carrots across the river, without having any of them eat the others. How else were they all supposed to get out of this world without leaving someone behind, or having Hu fly off with Irene or Evariste at his mercy? Kai could only carry a couple of people, and this was the best she could come up with. “Think of somewhere safe to take us, so we can finish negotiating. You’ll be the one navigating, after all.”

  She gave him a last squeeze and let him go.

  “Not interrupting anything, am I?” George enquired as he came strolling up with Lily behind him. Lily was now carrying an oddly shaped large rifle with an oversized barrel slung openly across her back.

  “Getting ready to go,” Irene said firmly. “Where will Lily be wanting to take the shot?”

  “Behind those trucks should do nicely for cover,” Lily said, without the slightest betraying flicker of expression. “You and the other Librarian can come across with me and set yourselves up.”

  They followed Lily, with Kai and H
u a few paces behind. Lily unslung her rifle and broke it open, demonstrating the cartridges.

  “How come you found something like this so quickly?” Evariste said. He was developing a rabbit-in-the-headlights look again.

  Lily gave him the sort of smile that would have suited a fox. “I’m a Girl Scout at heart, Mr. Jones. I’m always prepared. You should see my merit badge collection.”

  Irene was taking the opportunity to check the trucks. They were full of crates, which were laden with unlabelled clear glass bottles. “What’s in here?” Irene asked, checking that she had what she needed.

  One of the gangsters shrugged. “Gin,” he said. “Straight from Holland—”

  Another rumble drifted through the ground beneath their feet.

  “Distilled downtown in a bath-tub, you mean,” Captain Venner said with a snort. His cops were spreading out to secure the perimeter, but he’d joined what was technically, Irene supposed, the command group for this operation.

  “I’m greatly disappointed in you, Captain,” George said. “It’s a proper high-class operation, even if there’s a possibility it’s not from Holland.”

  Irene took a deep breath and nodded. “Gin. Right. Very well, gentlemen. Please will everyone stand well clear of blast range. And stay back when things get messy.”

  Kai nodded to Irene and Evariste and stepped into the empty space between the trucks. The air around him began to glow. There were gasps from the assembled gangsters and cops, and they drew farther back towards the perimeter.

  Irene could hear the sound of guns being cocked. “Stand down!” she called. “He’s on our side.”

  And in a flash of light it wasn’t a human standing there any longer: it was a dragon, perhaps ten yards long, horned and serpentine, like something out of a classical painting. He carried himself with a natural pride that made the humans around him look unfinished and pitiful. The street lamplight gleamed on Kai’s dark blue scales, turning them into sapphires that glittered as he flexed his wings. Behind him the waters of the river seemed to flow faster for a moment, as if encouraged by his presence.