“But you said—”
I said the creator of the Chimei intended them to be fearless and impossible to kill. He achieved the first goal, however disastrously. He nearly achieved the second goal. Nearly, but not quite.
He did not allow for dragons.
Sun Mzao gathered a body whose nose-to-tail length might have stretched out over the entire twice-a-football-field span of his landing pad. He crouched, then sprang for the sky. The great wings unfurled fully and beat once, twice, again . . .
And he disappeared.
“Ah, good,” Li Qin said. “Sam heated the water for us before he left.”
NINETEEN
The city of Luan; Shanxi Province, China; nineteenth day of the eleventh month of the forty-fourth year of the Ching Dynasty
FOUR people waited outside the home of Chen Wu Yin, the man who held the license for collecting night soil in the district where the sorcerer had taken up residence—two hungry, desperate women, a middle-aged man, and Li Lei.
She had planned to arrive after the women, who came every day. She had not planned on the man.
He had long hairs growing out of his nose. Li Lei regarded those hairs with disgust. How had he heard that the collector would have a job available today? After all Li Lei had gone through to make that possible, it was patently unfair for the man to be here.
She’d needed to find a young employee, one without a family of his own who would be left behind to starve. Whatever bribe or blackmail the sorcerer had used to procure his place, it had been effective. The sorcerer controlled the city and its gates. It was not too difficult to slip a single person through the gate, but smuggling out an entire family without the proper papers would have been impossible.
Then she’d had to persuade the young servant man to leave. She had plenty of coin, which is a fine persuader, but by then she hadn’t been able to speak to him . . . or to anyone. In the end, she’d had to use one of the three stones Sam had given her as part of her training.
If he thought she was foolish to have used his gift on such a paltry target when she could simply have killed him, well, he could laugh at her later. If she had a later. If not, he might still laugh. But she hoped he would also burn things. A great many things.
Oh, she had considered killing the man. She was not squeamish, whatever Sam said. She could have told herself that the man died in service to the city or even the whole of China. Sam believed the sorcerer would not be satisfied with a single city, that his power would only grow . . . as would that of his leman, whose hunger was never sated. Eventually the sorcerer might turn his eyes on that shiniest of baubles, the emperor’s court.
He could do great damage there. His lover could do even more.
But Li Lei was not here to save China, the emperor, or even the city. Nor was she here to further Sam’s plans and manipulations. Her eyes had been open from the first. He had said he would have a use for her, and had bound her to fulfill it when the time came.
She called him Sam. That was a little joke between them, born of a punning game he enjoyed. To others he was Sun Mzao, much-storied and seldom seen. According to the peasants, he had lived in the mountains near Luan for one thousand years. According to the scholars, he had been killed many years ago at the Battle of Shanhaiguan, where he had fought against the Mongol invaders.
Sometimes the scholars were silly and the peasants wise.
Sun Mzao had known that the sorcerer and the Chimei would come long before they did. He had first called to Li Lei when she was fifteen, knowing she would one day run to him—and that she was the tool he would need to act against the Chimei when the time came. He had told her none of this until he considered the time right.
But he had not known Li Lei’s family would be killed. She did not blame him for it. He was what he was.
Still, she was not here for him, or because of the word she’d given him when he took her as apprentice. She was here because the sorcerer and his lover had taken those who were hers.
“Lad, you might as well look elsewhere,” said the man with the hairs in his nose. “You know I’ll be chosen instead of you or those two poor women.”
He was right, but Li Lei did not wish to agree. She ducked her head to hide her scowl—she had difficulty at times appearing properly subservient—and shook it in a firm negative.
“You were told to come here, eh? I guess you can’t disobey, but you waste your time.”
Li Lei wondered why a healthy man of thirty or so would seek a job hauling feces. He wasn’t starving or coughing or marked by the pox, but there must be something wrong with him. Well, he did not wear the queue, which was stupid, but there were still those who resisted the Manchu emperor’s edict for his Han subjects. Personally, Li Lei found it convenient. With her head partially shaved and the rest of her hair drawn back in a braid, people looked at her and saw a boy of fourteen or so. It never occurred to them she might be female.
The man shrugged and turned away. “Don’t be sensible, then.”
Perhaps she was not the only one who’d thought that working such a lowly job might gain her entry into the sorcerer’s residence. It was a disconcerting thought. He might be a thief.
Was he with a tong? Surely he would have threatened her, if so . . . but no, he thought she was no threat to his getting the job. How would she get rid of him? She did not want to kill the man, even if he did have disgusting nose hairs.
The battered door of Chen Wu Yin’s house opened. His wife stood there, eyeing the four of them. Chen Wu Yin’s wife was very fat, very shrewd, but Li Lei had learned that she was prone to stealthy acts of kindness.
“So, you want a job, eh?” She studied the peasant man out of eyes reduced to new-moon slits by the greater moons of her cheeks. “Oh, quiet, quiet,” she told the two women, who had begun bleating of their need for a job. “You know I do not send women with Wu Yin. My honorable husband has no sense with women. I do not know why you still come.”
Li Lei knew why they came. Chen Wu Yin was a lecherous old goat, which was why his wife would not hire women. But when others were not around to take note, she often found an errand for these two women, and paid them with a bowl of rice. Li Lei thought she was wise not to let her kindness be known. Too many would show up at her door, looking for handouts or small jobs. She couldn’t feed all the city’s poor.
As for how Li Lei knew of it—why, it was winter, and Li Lei had learned much as apprentice to Sun Mzao. Chen Wu Yin’s wife liked to be warm. She kept a small fire burning most of the time; Li Lei had listened through the fire. It was a use of magic, yes, and so a risk, but the sorcerer could not purge the city entirely of magic. Fire-listening took very little power for one of the fire-kin like her, and could easily be mistaken for some charm the woman had bought, if it were noticed at all.
“Mistress,” the peasant man said, his voice soft, his gaze appropriately downcast, “I have hopes you might have a job for me. I am a good worker—strong and healthy—and I have a wife and two small sons. I need to work.”
“Hmm.”
Li Lei had a sudden inspiration. From behind the man’s back, she pointed at him and made the sign for tong. The woman might not recognize it, but if she did—
“You look strong enough,” she said grudgingly, “but I have promised to speak with my cousin’s wife’s sister’s son today and see if he can do the work. It is a matter of family, you understand? If he does not work hard, I will speak with you again.” For the first time she looked directly at Li Lei. “Well, boy? Are you going to keep me waiting forever? Come in, come in.”