"We will rescue her, Chesterton," the Doctor told him. "We will. But you can"t just rush off and fight your way in."
"I can slip in. Disguise myself..."
"I see, and can you disguise your face as that of a Chinaman?"
This stopped Ian in his tracks.
"Exactly."
"I"ll go," Fei-Hung said. Ian looked at him in surprise.
Behind the young man his father sported a momentary smile of pride.
"I can"t ask you to fight my battles for me."
"There is no "my" battle," Fei-Hung said quietly. "There is only right and wrong. And that battle is everyone"s."
Ian felt a momentary swell of thanks, and a general pride in humanity. "Thank you, Fei-Hung. I can"t say enough to thank you for even thinking that."
"We"ll all go," Kei-Ying said suddenly. "Tham, Iron Bridge, Beggar Soh, all of us."
The Doctor nodded his agreement. "And Major Chesterton will want to be involved. I will speak to him and see if I can borrow some of his men. That will take time, so I suggest that you," he indicated Fei-Hung, "act purely as a scout. Check out the lay of the land and see if Barbara is still there."
"The Doctor is right," Kei-Ying said. "You scout ahead and we will follow."
Fei-Hung nodded. "Yes, Father."
Beggar Soh interlocked his fingers and looked out from under his brows at Fei-Hung. "It seems we have a Tiger Cub,"
he grinned.
Fei-Hung walked out of Po Chi Lam on what might be his last night on Earth. He knew he was probably overdramatising the situation, but tomorrow he would undertake a journey as a compatriot of not just the Black Flag or the Guangzhou militia, but also of the Ten Tigers of Guangdong - or three of them, at least.
He found himself outside Miss Law"s window without consciously realising that this was where he was going. He tapped on the window quietly so as not to disturb her parents. After a moment she opened it, and let him in to her small fruit-scented bedroom.
"Fei-Hung." She hugged him. He inhaled the scent of her hair, freshly washed but not perfumed. It was natural and pleasant.
"I wanted to see you tonight," he said. He wanted to continue, to tell her that she might never see him again, but the words caught in his chest.
"Something"s wrong," she said. "Is it your father?"
"No. I... I have something to do. Something dangerous."
He didn"t want to say any more. Barbara"s face floated into his vision, wracked with sobs and angry tears as it had been when her beloved was fallen. He closed his eyes as he embraced Miss Law, and Barbara"s face became hers, weeping and lamenting for him.
"Whatever it is," she whispered into his ear, "you know I will believe it right."
He swallowed hard, trying not to imagine the pain she would have in her heart, or the all-encompa.s.sing numbness that would freeze her mind if she saw him dead or crippled.
He didn"t want to go. What sort of lover could put his beloved through such a trauma?
He pulled slightly away from her, so that he could look at her. "I can"t go."
She touched his face. "You"re afraid."
Fei-Hung shook his head. "I"m not afraid of anyone. It"s just-"
"You"re afraid of hurting me. Or upsetting me." She held his gaze. "Tell me honestly, Fei-Hung. Is what you"re going to do dangerous?"
"Perhaps." In truth, he didn"t know, but he could guess.
"Probably. I"m not afraid of death or injury, but I can"t put you through the emotions that you would feel if either of those things happened. I"ve seen it on the face of a friend of my father"s when her man was beaten and broken, and I would rather not have such a look in your eyes, whether I was there to see it or not. It would be as if I was attacking you."
She held him tighter, and the sound of her breath next to his ear was as natural and soothing as the surf on a beach, or the pa.s.sage of a bird"s wing through the air.
"You wouldn"t even have considered going if it wasn"t in a just cause."
"No, I wouldn"t."
"Then the cause is... ?"
"The woman I spoke of, a friend of my father"s, is being held hostage to force her man to commit murder. I hoped to find her, and free her."
"Then if I was selfish enough not to let you go and the man was killed, or the woman died by her captor"s hands, it would be as bad as if I had slit those throats myself. Could you inflict that upon me?"
"No." Fei-Hung was torn. He would be harming her either way. "I can"t go, but I can"t not go "The man I love wouldn"t put a selfish concern above saving an innocent life. And I doubt he could really love a woman who did that either." She smiled, tears in her eyes that made him want to break down into sobs. It wasn"t guilt that made his cheeks wet, but the sheer quant.i.ty and strength of his emotions.
"If I... ?" He swallowed and looked at the floor. He cursed the fact that he couldn"t control his tongue as well as he could control the rest of himself.
"When I come back, will you marry me?"
"I thought I was going to have to wait until our fathers arranged it." She kissed him. "Yes, of course."
"Then I suppose I"ll have to come back alive."
In his bedchamber Barbara"s words echoed around Qin"s mind, chasing him and snapping at him, and not letting him have a moment"s rest. Madness, she had suggested, an incomplete spell for immortality. Even possession within possession. This was not what the wizard had promised him.
Qin kicked a table over and the noise drew Gao. The general burst in, sword at the ready. He put it away when he saw that there was no-one else in the room.
Qin continued to rage, and tore at the grey hair that had begun to grow again from his borrowed scalp. "Who am I?
What am I?"
"You are the First Emperor of China -"
"No!" He whirled on Gao pointing a silencing finger. "I have memories of rulership, of pa.s.sing laws, of ordering executions, of leading my people to battle... but those are the only memories I have. If I founded a dynasty why do I not remember my sons? If I had sons, why do I not remember?"
"It must be something in the abbot"s mind resisting you."
"There is no abbot"s mind!" Qin stopped and turned to the mirror he had been using to judge his new face in earlier. "Or is there?" He felt a fear that he had never known before. He thought he had been afraid of death, terrified by it, but now he felt something far more disturbing.
"Am I a fiction - a diseased part of this abbot"s mind? Do I really not exist at all, except in my own imagination, in a head I only think I have taken possession of from its rightful owner?"
"If that were true, how could you remember your life two thousand years ago?" Gao asked.
"How do I know that I do?" Qin demanded. "How do I know that what I remember is a true memory, and not just a dream or a wish that I think is a memory?"
"The gwailo gwailo woman must be a sorceress; she has bewitched you. Let me kill her for you," Gao pleaded. "The pleasure in her suffering will remind you of the truth, and she will no longer poison your mind with her evil. Let those who love you serve you." woman must be a sorceress; she has bewitched you. Let me kill her for you," Gao pleaded. "The pleasure in her suffering will remind you of the truth, and she will no longer poison your mind with her evil. Let those who love you serve you."
"She must not die!"
"Why not?" Gao asked.
Qin realised that he didn"t know. He wanted to say, "Yes, kill her," but the words would not come. "Because it is not fated," he snapped at last.
"Then it is time to fetch her. We must go tonight. The conjunction is upon us."
Qin realised he had almost lost track of the time. He nodded. "Bring her outside."
Gao saluted and left. Qin went outside. There, Zhao was waiting. The rage in Qin"s mind had burnt itself out for now, but he knew it would be back and shivered inwardly at the thought.
Gao soon dragged Barbara out to meet them and Qin grabbed her by the wrist. Light blazed from his eyes and mouth and he raised both hands. Zhao and Gao stepped forward, the light from their eyes and mouths joining the light from Qin"s, and raised their hands too. Electric fire crackled around their forearms and fingers, and lashed out like grasping claws.
The lightning merged between the three monks and s.n.a.t.c.hed and tore there, ripping a hole in the air. Through the ragged gap, which was edged with actinic fire, Barbara could see a dusty hillside covered with the stumps of cut-down bushes.
Qin reached a hand back and grabbed her wrist. Then he stepped through the hole, pulling her with him.
3.
Beggar Soh and Vicki had described their journey back to Guangzhou in great detail. It was simple enough for Fei-Hung to follow it in reverse. He had taken a small sailing dinghy, leaving a few coins on the jetty at the docks where it had been moored. The tide was coming in and had given the boat a much-needed boost upstream. He had beached the dinghy as soon as he saw the tops of the junk"s masts in the distance and gone the rest of the way on foot.
The town was deserted. He had expected at least some of the guards the abbot had lured from the Black Flag still to be around, or maybe some prisoners, but there was no-one. The town was completely empty.
Next, Fei-Hung slipped down to the lone jetty. The junk was still afloat. A couple of guards patrolled the deck, so he felt confident that the town wasn"t permanently abandoned.
The junk was being kept ready for use.
Fei-Hung slipped quietly aboard and put both guards down with rapid punches and kicks to the head. He tied them up quickly so that he could search the junk in peace. It was empty. No-one was aboard except for the guards, and Fei-hung left them bound and gagged when he left. They would be able to talk to his father and the others when they arrived.
The old monastery was his ultimate destination. This was where Vicki had said she and Barbara were held prisoner.
Fei-Hung"s confidence about finding Barbara was fading. He had found the place easily enough, but the absence of people suggested she might already have been killed or removed. He began to hope that he would find nothing, and therefore that she had been taken away somewhere else. He didn"t want to find her body lying alone in the abandoned building.
The main doors of the monastery were ajar, and Fei-Hung didn"t touch them as he squeezed past in case they squeaked and alerted anyone within. A short corridor led him to the main hall. There was a dais and a few stools, but no statue of the Buddha, no incense burners, no religious paraphernalia of any kind. Fei-Hung didn"t like it at all. Whoever had removed all this had turned a sacred s.p.a.ce into just a s.p.a.ce.
He looked for a door that would lead deeper into the monastery. It would probably be behind the dais, he thought.
He spotted it quickly and pulled it open.
Two men blocked his path. One was lean and carried a staff. He matched the description of the one Ian had seen, called Gao. The other, whom Vicki had called Zhao, was like an ox standing on its hind legs. On any other day Fei-Hung might have been afraid as well as wary, but not today. Today he was simply relieved, because they were indeed men and not whatever that thing near the temple had been.
Gao lunged forward with the staff while Zhao circled round to stop Fei-Hung from getting away. Fei-Hung was happy enough with that; if the pair were wrong about what he wanted to do, their tactics might also be wrong.
He dodged back from the whirling staff, pretending not to notice Zhao closing in behind him. When the muscular general was close enough, and about to attack, Fei-Hung hit him in the gut with a tiger-tail kick, without looking round.
Zhao doubled over and toppled, but Gao redoubled his attack. Fei-Hung blocked as best he could, careful to block against the man"s forearms rather than the wood itself. If he could stay in close enough, Gao wouldn"t be able to swing the staff well enough to use it with enough momentum to do real damage.
Then Gao unexpectedly swung the staff down, sweeping Fei-Hung off his feet. Fei-Hung rolled immediately, narrowly getting out from under the edge of Zhao"s foot as it slashed towards his neck.
He sprang back to his feet to engage the unarmed Zhao again, keeping the man-mountain between himself and Gao.
Fei-Hung was faster with his kicks and punches, but Zhao"s muscles were like iron. All Fei-Hung"s punches rebounded from Zhao"s forearms, all his kicks from the outsides of Zhao"s calves. Suddenly the tip of Gao"s staff was jabbing past either side of Zhao"s head, and Fei-Hung had to dart his head aside like a pigeon to avoid it.
He needed a breathing s.p.a.ce to a.s.sess his strategy and acquire a useful weapon. He stunned Zhao with one of his father"s speciality no-shadow kicks, then push-kicked him back into Gao. Both men tumbled in a heap crushing the black wooden throne.
Fei-Hung used the rebound from the kick to flip backwards, and s.n.a.t.c.hed an umbrella from a stand near the door. He would have preferred a proper sabre or broadsword, but the main shaft of the umbrella felt as solid in his hand as any staff would.
His breath burnt his lungs, but he was excited by this rather than pained. He felt he had the measure of the two generals and, while he respected their skill and refused to feel comfortable enough to underestimate them, he was satisfied they did not outcla.s.s him. All that mattered was that he did his best. Live or die, he would be doing his best for his friends, his country and his beliefs.