Precious Dragon Read online

  “That red person,” Underling No said. “I’m sure I’ve seen her before.”

  “It’s a woman, then?” Chen asked. “We weren’t sure.”

  “Definitely female,” Underling No confirmed.

  “The shadow-masks,” the Lesser Lord said. “Those are used by the Ministry of Lust. Each Ministry has its particular style of armour and weaponry, you see: it is an ancient dictate imposed by the Emperor, to make sure that everyone can be identified.”

  “Our informer didn’t seem sure,” Chen said.

  “You see, your informer is merely a staff member at the hotel, not a civil servant. Ask anyone involved in administration and they would have been able to tell you, others, probably not. But I can say with some certainty that these people come from Lust. And that creates a problem.”

  Chen sighed. He’d thought as much.

  “You see,” the Lesser Lord said, with a degree of embarrassment that suggested he was aware of a loss of face, “There’s always a delicate relationship between the Ministries. I’m sure you understand. Power in Hell is always an unstable thing, with various governmental departments enjoying a closer or more distant relationship with the Imperial Court. At present, the Ministry of War is enjoying some degree of support, but the Emperor is always more wary of our department than of others, and to be honest, most of the previous Majesties have been close to the Ministry of Lust and this administration is no exception. I’m sure you can understand why.”

  Chen thought that he understood very well. The Emperor didn’t trust the Ministry of War, because War was the obvious Ministry to stage a coup. The Imperial Court approved of Lust, for reasons that were, indeed, perfectly obvious. If the Ministry of War started a campaign against Lust, particularly one that revolved around the presence of a Celestial and thus was likely to bring the Imperial Court into even worse diplomatic odour with Heaven, then the Emperor was going to be displeased with War. And that would probably result in loss of funding for War’s currently massive campaign, perhaps a change of Minister (which might directly impact upon poor old Zhu Irzh, quite apart from anything else, given his recent familial connections), and who knows: obliteration of War from the central square of Hell and relegation to some even more squalid lower realm. It might be farfetched, but a rather similar fate had recently befallen the now-rebuilt Ministry of Epidemics, after all.

  “So the situation will have to be handled with an element of diplomacy, as regards our esteemed absent guest,” the Lesser Lord was saying, and Chen heard: we’re not sticking our heads above the parapet for some Heavenly bint.

  “The Ministry will of course support in theory any actions you may wish to undertake.”

  You go and get her back and we’ll deny any knowledge of it if you screw it up.

  “And we look forward to welcoming Miss Qi back within our portals.”

  Just get on with it, all right? And I don’t want to hear about it in the meantime.

  “I commend your subtle approach,” said Chen. Very well, then, you lily-livered Hellspawn, we don’t have any choice but to let you off the hook. “I’m sure the Ministry will act honourably in supplying us with any relevant information, however.” How do we get into the Ministry of Lust?

  “I have spoken with the Minister and naturally, he understands the situation.” The Lesser Lord gave a relieved nod towards his desk, on which sat a scroll. The Lesser Lord turned and stared hard for a moment out of the window, during which Zhu Irzh leaned forwards and neatly appropriated the scroll. “I don’t think we have anything further to discuss.”

  “I appreciate your delicacy in this matter,” Chen replied.

  “Underling No will show you out. You might like to visit one of the blood cafés: you’ll find them on the other side of the square. Jin’s does a rather pleasant lunch.”

  Chen and Zhu Irzh, with fulsome protestations of gratitude designed to restore the Lesser Lord’s diminished face, followed Underling No back down to the atrium.

  “I’ll take you to Jin’s,” Underling No said. “My cousin runs it. It’s a nice place.”

  Rather curious, Chen agreed. They needed to formulate a plan of action, preferably somewhere in which they could not be easily overheard, although given current magical practice it was difficult to say how realistic that was. But he did not understand why Underling No was being so helpful, nor did he trust her.

  They crossed the square. Chen glanced back at the Ministry of War. It had been nice to feel that he’d had some support, even though it had lasted only as long as a conversation and he hadn’t really believed in it anyway. He glanced at Zhu Irzh, striding along with his black silk cloak whipping around his heels, and once more thought how strange it was that the two people closest to him were demons. Inari, he could understand: there was love there, and gratitude. But Zhu Irzh had owed Chen nothing, been owed nothing, and he’d still put himself on the line on a number of occasions. The demon dismissed it with a characteristic insouciance, but even so, Chen thought it was significant. To their left, the Ministry of Lust rose in bloated opulence. Chen hoped that the Lesser Lord had slipped them some information that was actually useful, like a map. The thought of breaking into the Ministry was daunting, but he’d done worse. It was just a bigger version of a demon lounge, wasn’t it? And they’d been in plenty of those. In his gut, however, Chen knew that this was not quite true. The Ministry of Lust was a primary source of much of the world’s corruption. Horrible, to think of poor Miss Qi incarcerated within its fleshy walls.

  “It’s this one,” Underling No was saying. Chen looked out across a range of blood cafés, all with their telltale barrel signs and characteristic dark crimson awnings. They all looked the same to Chen, but Underling No led them to a café at the end of the row and ushered them to a seat. To Chen’s relief, this was outside. There was not just the issue of potential eavesdroppers to consider, but also the question of the smell. Blood cafés and emporia smelled of, well, blood, and Chen found it fairly nauseating after prolonged exposure.

  “What can I get you?” asked Underling No, transformed into an anxious, if unlikely, hostess.

  “Just some tea,” Chen said quickly. “Ordinary, black tea. Or green, if you have it.” Anything but red.

  To his surprise, Underling No bustled away without demur and returned a few minutes later carrying a teapot, along with a bottle of blood beer that she set in front of Zhu Irzh.

  “We’d better have a look at this so-called information,” Chen said.

  Zhu Irzh, after a glance around, took the scroll out of his pocket and rolled it out onto the table top. To Chen’s relief, it was indeed a map.

  “Yeah, this is it,” said Zhu Irzh. “It’s definitely the Min of Lust. Look, here’s the central dome.”

  Chen studied the map. It showed a number of levels and storeys, including one at the bottom that appeared to depict the cellar.

  “Makes sense to go in below ground,” Chen said, grimacing. He’d had rather too much experience of Hell’s sewer system. Then, he was startled as a mailed hand shot out and grasped his wrist.

  “Take me with you,” said Underling No.

  25

  Embar Dea stood on a shelf of ice, looking upwards. They were to leave in an hour, when the sun sank down across the western ocean, one of the halfway points of the day when the veils between the worlds were thin. Embar Dea was worried about the journey. Her strength had already been sapped by the voyage here, by the cold of the seas and the struggle through the ocean currents, as well as the burden of the pearl. She did not know whether she could make it as far as Cloud Kingdom, but she had no other choice. She could not stay on Earth, the Dragon Prince had explained to her. The dragons must act as one, now, in the face of the oldest of enemies; it had been decreed.

  Embar Dea understood this and there was a kind of peace within that understanding. If she died on the way, plummeting out of the heavens and back into ocean like a cold comet, then it would be worth it. She was the oldest; she would have
to die some day. The souls of dragons do not pass into Heaven or Hell, for they are already travellers between the worlds. Once she died, Embar Dea knew, she would be extinguished, forever gone, but a little soul-fragment would remain, passing into the group soul of dragonkind, and that was enough. But the worry was still there: even dragons have a lingering fear of mortality.

  So she waited on the ice, watching alone, until the other dragons came out, one by one in the greening light, and joined her.

  The Dragon Prince Rish was the first to fly. He leaped from the ice shelf, spreading black-silver wings and soaring out across the waves. The falling sunlight caught the water, glittered red, and then the dragon from the south followed him, shooting like a blazing coal into the sunset. One by one, the others left, until only Embar Dea was left standing on the shelf as they flew, circling around and around, singing encouragement down to her. The sea thundered against the ice shelf, the waves rising to a froth in the growing wind, and the sky was filled with the rattle of scales.

  “Embar Dea!” the Dragon Prince called. “Embar Dea!” and then he cried out her name again in the ancient tongue, the tongue that dragons used before the coming of humankind and the coming of the ice, when demons and celestials alike roamed the plains of the great continent of the changing world, and the dragons held sway over ocean.

  When she heard that name, Embar Dea was compelled to respond and the Dragon Prince knew it: he had seen the need to help her. He called out the name again and again, and the other dragons picked it up and sang it back to her, so that the air reverberated with the power of her name and Embar Dea spread her creaking wings and let the power drive under them and lift her upward.

  The ice shelf fell away, dwindling beneath her to a tiny patch in the middle of the waves; from this height, the domes of the sea palace looked like a handful of mouse skulls, fragile and frail. Embar Dea spread her wings further and rushed out across the sea, diving until the spray spattered her scales and then she rose up and out, following the Dragon Prince who was rising now into the darkening sky, as distant as a blown leaf.

  She was flying for the first time in years, free in the airs of Earth. It took a great deal of will power to go after the Prince, not to soar off across the waves, leave the twilight world behind. But the Prince sang her ancient name, weaving it into a tapestry of the names of the other dragons, words that could not have been spoken in a human voice, and she rose and followed and flew.

  Up and up, until the sea palace was no longer visible and the sea was a great dark curve against the wall of night. Embar Dea saw the last rim of the sun, a rind above the curve, and then it sank and was gone. The stars blazed, mirrored now by the scatter of the lights of Earth, the cities of the world. As they rose, Embar Dea drew closer to the other dragons, flying in tight spirals now, winding themselves up from the Earth and out of its magical field. Embar Dea looked up and saw that the veil that parted the worlds was drawing aside, a glowing shimmer of light across the sky, hiding the stars.

  Up and up and the veil was all around them, hiding the world from view and Embar Dea felt the wrench and tug as the magic of the human realms was gone and they were through into the upper levels. Heaven lay ahead, a line of bright shore, but before that were towers of cumulus, huge sweeps of cirrus cloud against a burning blue sky, anvil thunderheads around which the lightning of flame dragons played in bursts and lashes of light.

  Cloud Kingdom. Memories thousands of years old came rushing back: riding the winds of Heaven, dancing on the shores of the sky. Her mother, the Mother of Dragons, a vast sinuous shape against the cloudscape, rarely glimpsed and always a sign of great change. There was a new Mother of Dragons now, drawn from the heart of Cloud Kingdom long after Embar Dea and her siblings had come to Earth. Embar Dea did not know her; it seemed strange, to have a Mother that was younger than herself. But she did not care about that. She was thankful to have reached the end of her journey, to have made it alive. With the others, she glided through the sparkling air between the clouds. Other dragons were coming to meet them, coiling and curling through the air, and Prince Rish flew to meet them like a black arrow. Embar Dea followed, going home.

  26

  Mrs Pa stepped onto the shore, still holding the buns and the iron tea-kettle. No one had paid her any attention as she crossed over the decks of the boats—there were some advantages in being a harmless old lady—but her skin prickled all the same at the thought of what might be watching. She hoped it would take her for the cleaner. As she took a careful step down onto the sandy shingle, the tea-kettle jumped in her hand. Startled, Mrs Pa dropped it and as it fell, it flowed into a badger once more. The badger, foursquare on the shore, gave itself a violent shake.

  “Where are they?” Mrs Pa whispered, feeling horribly vulnerable.

  “Not far, I think,” the badger said. It sounded rusty, as iron would if it could speak; perhaps the creature retained aspects of its other form. It trotted swiftly into the scrub and trees beyond the tideline and Mrs Pa followed it, stepping over driftwood and floats, dead fish and the oily scum that marked all of the city’s shores.

  She was glad to get under the shelter of the trees, where it was shadowy and cooler. The sun had now almost set and there was a faint refreshing breath from the sea, which glowed with its own light as though a captive sun lay beneath the waves.

  “Ah,” said the badger, and Mrs Pa saw two huge red eyes floating in the darkness between the trees. “Mistress.”

  “Grandmother!” Precious Dragon ran forwards and Mrs Pa reached down to give him a hug, her heart hammering in relief.

  “Precious Dragon. You’re all right.”

  “Mrs Pa, I’m so sorry.” Close to, Inari looked strained, her face gaunt and even paler than usual. “Something came up out of the water. I did my best to fight it off—it wasn’t a demon, not of any kind that I know.”

  Mrs Pa gripped her hand. “You looked after Precious Dragon and kept him safe. That’s all that matters.”

  “The thing was unpleasant,” Precious Dragon said. He sounded grave and measured, like a middle aged man commenting on a regrettable business lunch.

  “Do you know what it was?”

  “I have never seen anything like it before. It was strange, as though the form it took was not its natural form, but a shell which it wore.”

  Inari stared at him. “You didn’t tell me that.”

  “I have been trying to work things out.”

  “We can’t go back to the boat,” Inari said. “It might come back or something else might come, and you see, Mrs Pa, I am not a warrior. My husband is not here. I’m sorry to be so feeble.”

  “You’re not feeble at all,” Mrs Pa said. “But I am. I saw what came to my house. I couldn’t do anything to stop it.”

  “If it came to your house,” the badger said with slow logic, “Then it knows where you live and we cannot go back there, either.”

  “Then where can we go?” Mrs Pa asked.

  “The temple of Kuan Yin,” said Inari. “My husband used to be under her protection.”

  Mrs Pa stared at her. “Used to be?”

  “Yes. Unfortunately, he disobeyed her instructions when he rescued me from Hell and she renounced him. She has helped him since, however.”

  “Well, so I should think,” said Mrs Pa. “After all, she’s supposed to be merciful and compassionate. It doesn’t sound very compassionate to renounce your servant because he helps someone else.”

  “Gods are weird,” said Inari. There was a short silence.

  “Anyway,” Mrs Pa said. “You still think that her temple is the place to go?”

  “It’s the only place I can think of,” Inari said. “Unless—oh, wait! I’ve had an idea.” She sank down onto a nearby tree trunk. “Last year, Chen and Zhu Irzh helped some people. One of them was the son of the Celestial Emperor.”

  “My word,” said Mrs Pa faintly. “That’s quite something.”

  “He had a friend, a human woman. She died, in a batt
le. But because of the friendship, she’s still living here in Singapore Three. There was a ruined temple to the Emperor’s son—he didn’t like being worshipped so it fell into decline. But his friend decided to restore it and now she’s its priestess. We went to see them once, at the Water Festival last year. It’s a nice place now. I think we should go there rather than bother Kuan Yin again. You see, I don’t have any other friends here. Chen and I can’t socialise, because of what I am.”

  “Well, it sounds like a plan,” Mrs Pa said. She felt rather stunned. First, all this business with Mai and Precious Dragon, and then here she was, about to start hobnobbing with the son of the Celestial Emperor. But someone of that status would surely be able to protect them from unknown demonic assassins? Wouldn’t they? “Where is it, this temple?”

  “That’s the only problem,” Inari said. “It’s right over on the other side of the city. And it’s dark now, I don’t want to start wandering about, especially after what’s just happened. You must know how it is with hellkind. Some humans can see us, like yourself, others can’t, but I don’t want to take a risk.”

  “Well, we’ll wait until morning, then,” Mrs Pa said. She sat down beside Inari. “Would you like a bun?”

  “Mrs Pa, you must have been sent from the gods yourself,” Inari said with a wan smile. “I’m hungry.”

  Precious Dragon curled up beside Mrs Pa after they had eaten, and the badger sat next to Inari, eyes glittering in watchfulness. A day’s cleaning work, and then the excitement of this evening, had made Mrs Pa exhausted, but she could not sleep. Inari’s head drooped and Precious Dragon’s breathing deepened, but Mrs Pa and the badger sat wakeful late into the night, until the stars hung low over the harbour and the mournful hoots of passing boats sounded out across the water.

  Much later, however, Mrs Pa woke. At first she was completely disoriented, then memory came back in a rush. The badger was growling low under its breath.