“Of course,” Wong murmured.
En Lai was not a man given to public displays of affection, but he hugged Hei Bai back when the boy wrapped his arms around him, and listened to his account. When Jules came to his study, and knocked, and entered, En Lai told his son, “See to your things, and those of your teacher, as a good student ought.”
Hei Bai went outside, but he lingered within earshot.
“Come out into the breezeway with me, Jules,” he heard his father say, and the boy went around to the corner, where a tall wall joined his father’s study to the rest of the sprawling compound, and enclosed the inner garden.
The wind blew some rain sideways, and they wiped moisture from their cheeks. En Lai considered what need to be said.
“First, I want to thank you, for bringing him home, alive.”
“Sir.”
“Don’t you ‘sir’ me!” En Lai snapped. “You are my wife’s creature, and have no loyalty to me. We’ve sparred, many times, since you came to this household with her. I win the battles, only to lose ground.” He inclined his head. “It’s odd, but you always seem to make me, a merchant, use your terms. Why is that?”
Jules wisely made no answer. It wasn’t a question, really.
“Fighting you is like quarreling with the wind; useless, unproductive, and divisive. You have your partisans among my household, and there is no more devoted guardian and teacher for my son.”
Again, Jules waited him out.
“He’s not your grandson, Jules.”
Hei Bai started, and put his hand to his mouth, biting on a knuckle.
“I know he’s not,” the old man said, slowly.
“Mei Zhen isn’t your daughter, either, but she loves you like her own father. And you have given her, and this house, years of able and loyal service.”
“Are you thinking of dismissing me?”
En Lai chuckled. “It’s a good idea. I seem to have it about once a week.” He sighed. “You know that I won’t, though.” He glared at Jules.
“You are a loose cannon. A law unto yourself and you leave chaos and bodies in your wake, when you decide to act. In your defense, you don’t fail.”
“I love my son, Jules. You, of all people, know what a gift from Heaven your ‘Little Master’ is. My… first wife died, in childbirth, along with our son. He would have been our fifth child. She wanted to give me an heir.” En Lai was quiet for a moment.
“Mei Zhen, my beautiful pearl, she was my brother’s idea. I think… I think that he is afraid to run our house, our interests. Be that as it may, I am happy, Mei is happy. We have a son, and two more daughters,” he added, ruefully. “He is a dutiful heir, growing into a brave, capable young man. Thank you, Jules.” His voice was deceptively light. This was not a man who bared his soul with ease.
“But don’t get him killed with stunts like this one. You would live to regret it.”
“I suppose that I would, at that,” Jules said, thoughtfully.
Hei Bai walked away, back to his teacher’s rooms. He had much to think about.
***
Above them, in the heavens, the wreck of the Corpus Christi was in daylight again. A shadow passed over it, something big, and it came to a stop. Smaller shadows moved, man-sized.
Epilogue: Hannah
Huck, Hannah Clinkenbeard, was standing on a bridge, over a pond. Three faces surfaced in the black water beneath her feet. The vacant eyes accused her, and she could see a bullet hole, in one cheek. She couldn’t see the rest, but Huck knew that there were two more bullet holes, one to the heart, and another in the small of the throat. She cried out, and tried to turn away, but she could not, not at first. Then she heard her little sister singing, and she did not want to turn, but had to. She had no control over any of it.
Melody was skipping down the path, as a three foot six white mouse, singing “Three Blind Mice.” Huck realized her friend, Hei Bai, was there, beside her sister, and he waved his bloody sword at her. Then he swung it at Melody’s neck, like he was chopping wood, which was wrong, he was too good a swordsman to do that, and the blade just kept falling…
Huck woke up screaming. She lay back, sweaty, as she realized it was a dream, a nightmare, and that she was in a strange bed. Her family was in By-The-Sea, Shanghai, for the wedding of her cousin Bruce, and Ma Chun Hua, and they were staying with at the Ma residence, a compound on the edge of the city, as big as the main house, barns and workshops of her family’s ranch up in the North Country. Adrenaline led to shakes, and nausea, and her stomach heaved. She got to the chamber pot just in time.
She washed her face, then dressed, and went out, into the main garden. The moon was setting, and she worked out for herself that it was a few hours before dawn. She heard voices, and left the path, to hide. She wanted to be alone with her thoughts.
A man and a woman walked past her, and Huck recognized Jules Le Croix, Hei Bai’s servant and teacher, and Miss Lois, Lois Charles, who was maid and assistant to Mei Zhen, Hei Bai’s mother. They spoke quietly, so that she did not hear what they said. Jules walked her to her door, on the second floor of the servants’ wing of the residence, on the far side of the garden. He came back, slowly, and stopped where Huck crouched among the bushes.
“Couldn’t sleep?”
“Bad dreams.”
“Want to talk about it?”
Huck stood, and he held out his hand, and she took it. He led her to a ledge of rock by the pond and at the foot of the bridge where she had met Hei Bai, not two days ago. It just seemed like longer, she thought.
He made to hold an imaginary chair out for her, and she smiled, curtsied, and took her seat. He sat beside her, and pulled out a carving. There was a little light, from lanterns around the edges of the garden. Huck recognized the wooden revolver he had been working on, the other day, while he sat here, by the bridge, and Hei Bai had introduced her to Meng, the river dragon. She wondered where he, or it, was. Jules rubbed a spot of something, on the wood, and seemed satisfied. There was a little hole in the handle of the wooden revolver, which he passed a length of leather cord through, and tied a knot.
“Who did you make that for?”
“You, I think.” He handed her the carving on its cord.
“You… don’t know?” Huck looked at him, and then the pendant, and put it over her head.
“Certain things come to you, if you are patient. I’ve learned the trick of waiting for things to reveal themselves.” Jules smiled. “I would not have believed that, myself, when I was your age.”
“How many people have you killed?”
“Just humans, or do you include the river dragons?”
“Both.”
“I honestly don’t know. I’ve killed a lot of people, mostly river dragons, but most of the men I’ve killed were here, on Tien Shan.” Heavenly Mountain. He looked at her face, seeming to see behind it.
“It’s a good thing, that it bothers you.”
“I suppose.”
“Three men who tried to hurt you and your sister, are dead. Alright, maybe they didn’t have to die, but they did, and you and your sister are safe. He- Heck, I’m safe, and so is the Little Master. I appreciate it.”
“Maybe if I was-“ She stopped.
“Hannah…”
“I’d like you to call me Huck. My friends do.”
“Huck, don’t take this the wrong way, but you knew this might happen the first day you picked up a gun. Was it your idea, or your fathers?
“Mine,” she answered, slowly.
“But it made him proud of you, and you did it, at least a little bit, for his approval?”
She nodded.
“This is a cliché, and the guy who put the first gun in my hand said it because he liked the sound of it, but- ‘A gun is a moral responsibility.’ If you fire it, you’ve made a choice, and you’d better be ready to live with it.”
“So... how do you do it?”
Jules sighed. “Sometimes your opposition makes it very, very easy
. Other times… Huck, there are much worse things than having to deal with killing three bravos who intended you and yours harm. I hope you never have to deal with that.” He stood. “Let’s go raid the kitchen. I’m hungry, and I’ll bet you are, too.”
***
Jules made them omelets, with green peppers, chopped ham and tomato. While he finished up, the cook came in, to start breakfast for 60 or 70 people.
“Ay yah!”
She chased Jules around while Huck laughed. Jules kept ahead of her, or ducked easily, as she charged from one end of the kitchen to the other. Her assistants and prep cooks didn’t dare laugh with Huck, but they were enjoying the show. Finally, wheezing, she collapsed in a chair and glared at Jules whiles she got her wind back.
Jules slid the omelets into two rice bowls, and handed one to Huck, along with chopsticks. He saluted the cook crisply, “Ma’am,” and added, to Huck, “I think we maybe should…retreat?”
The cook shook her heavy fist at them, and got out of the chair to go about her business.
“How do I eat an omelet with chopsticks?” Huck said, curiously, as they found seats in the room where the servants took their meals. She crossed her eyes, looking at the slick, lacquered chopsticks.
“Jules?” When she still didn’t get an answer, she looked up, and said, again, “Jules?”
He had a bemused look on his face, and he rubbed the chopsticks together, like a man stropping a knife, then he put them in his right hand, demonstrating. He tapped the tips together, like a crab opening and closing his pincers, then lifted a folded corner of the omelet, and bit off a mouthful. Huck copied him, with rather more difficulty.
“Practice, practice!” Jules said in a high voice, and she giggled. “This is a skill, like shooting a gun, or putting people at their ease, making people like you, bending- No. Turning a person’s will inside out, so that they want to do yours.”
“What… what are we talking about?”
“The famous Clinkenbeard Charisma.”
Huck shook her head. “People talk about that, as if it was magic. If there was any truth to it, why are we the third-most powerful outfit in the North Country? Why doesn’t my father and uncle run, um, everything?”
Jules tucked into his omelet, and ate half of it, before he answered. “I understand why you would be confused about this. Let me see if I can explain.” He held the chopsticks up and drew an imaginary ‘one’ in the air. “First, I work for Ma En Lai, but I serve Mei Zhen and the Little Master. En Lai is very powerful, and the house of Ma is wealthy, but… They have many enemies, competing merchant houses, political rivals, that sort of thing.”
“Secondly,” he went on, making a ‘two’ in the air, “The Clinkenbeard boys, your father and your uncle, have a different kind of wealth, a legacy of their mother, your grandmother. People work for En Lai, and he is a generous man, but they do not love him. They fear and respect his power and ability.”
“The Clinkenbeards are the key to the North Country, and there are some places, here in By-The-Sea, where the Old People, the former soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army and the Legion Estrange, and the castaways from the Cee Cee, the Corpus Christi, are waiting for another Captain Hannah Clinkenbeard.”
Huck stared at him, and chewed on her omelet. When she had thought a bit, and swallowed what she had chewed over, she asked, “Did you know my Grandmother?”
Jules nodded. “I served under Captain Cee, and I fought and spilled blood for her, and the United States Air Force, and the U. S. of A. She was a formidable woman, and I need to go up there and pay my respects.”
“They buried her…” Huck began, and stopped.
“Next to her First Officer and little Malcolm. Yes, I know.” He saw her expression. “I remember when that happened. Between losing her third son and your Aunt Margaret, that was a very bad year.”
“Not the worst year.”
“Well… That first year was very bad. There were murderers and self-murderers, plus the race riots.” Jules sat back and remembered. “I was very busy.”
Huck considered leaving it alone, but she wanted to know. “Doing what, exactly?”
“Well, I rode with a white hat, some days, and a black hat, on others. It was what needed to be done. Hoarders, horse-thieves, rapists, the previously mentioned murderers, they all either swung, or else…” He pointed with his chopsticks, at the wooden revolver. “By and by, we started to get a little more order, about when the stork started to make deliveries.”
“Come on, I’m not Melody. I know where…” She stopped and looked thoughtful.
“Yes?’
“Are you and Miss Lois, you know?” Her face got red.
“Well, that’s something. And Something I can’t talk about, because I don’t kiss and tell-“ He frowned, and Huck giggled.
“So there was kissing?”
“You are about this close to losing your street cred as a tom-boy, little miss.”
“What’s ‘street cred’?”
“A long story, I’ll tell you some other time. It involves the mean streets of New Orleans and Chicago. Old Chicago, I mean, not the ruins. Another something I can talk to you about, like guns and killing, but, ah, relationships…” He made a face. “I’m too old for this.”
“Don’t you like Miss Lois?”
“You are going to insist on talking about this, aren’t you?”
“Maybe.” She popped the last of her omelet in her mouth, and smiled, an evil little grin.
“Yeah, I like her. Too much to want her to-“ He ground his teeth. “Ma petite, you are not to go repeating this, dongma?”
Huck smiled. “You call Melody ‘ma petite’, coz you like her, right? Yeah, my lips are sealed. Spill it!”
Jules rubbed his face with his hand, and looked at it, remembering. “I’m seventy-three. That isn’t old, on Earth, but on Tien Shan, that makes me a dinosaur, ready for the grave. Let’s just say, me and Lois were to continue on. Ignore the age difference, get married, have a kid. Boy or a girl, doesn’t matter. Well, If it was a girl, I’d like to still be able to scare off the…” He looked at Huck, taking in the evil grin.
“Forget about growing old, together. I am old. One day, I’m not going to be able to ignore that. This shoulder is gonna lay me up for weeks, or months. To think, we used to have tech that could glue the bits together, artificial blood and white cells, to turn a casualty around in hours. He- Heck! I don’t see how I survived fifty years on this planet.”
“You never know what’s going to happen,” Huck said.
“That’s the truth.” He saw she was looking at him, expectantly. “What?”
“My cousin Bruce got married the other day, to Hei Bai’s half-sister, Chun Hua. And then there was all that excitement, at the wedding reception…”
“Girl, I like your gift for understatement. Bruce got shot, you and Hei Bai and the ‘little rodent’ got taken, and we got you back, alive. Thanks, in no small part, to you and Hei Bai,” Jules told her.
“And Melody! Larry the jerk had her riding with him, to keep us in line. Melody pulled both revolvers before he could stop her, and tossed one to me!”
“Ah, that’s what happened. I had wondered how you got into the fight, so quick. No offense. ‘All power and glory’ to the little rodent,” Jules intoned, and Huck giggled again.
“So, what I’m getting at is this,” she went on. “You just don’t know. Are you saying that you’re too old, or that the rest of your life is too short?” The evil grin was back.
“You’re a little young to be giving me advice about life, ma petite,” Jules growled.
“Even if you need it?” Both of their heads whipped around, to where Miss Lois was leaning against the open door.
“I think I’ve just been out-foxed by a couple of hens,” Jules complained. Lois came over, and leaned down to steal a kiss, which he stole back with interest.
“You didn’t get much sleep,” Jules said.
“And you didn’t
get any.”Seeing the look on Hucks’ face, she blushed. “Talking!”
“Sit down and compare notes, then, or whatever. I’ll go sweet-talk Cook.” They did, and Jules did. Through a window in the kitchen, he saw that the sun was just above the horizon, and he thought, this is going to be a good day.
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