A sudden elation burst through me. Finally, I held an advantage.
I let my eyes slip out of focus, and brought a drunken quality to my stance. Was this how it looked to be stupefied? I wondered. Would I fool them? And which of them would act first?
It was Tom. I should have known—he needed to assert his leadership. He reached an arm out and took a grip on my left shoulder. I looked up into his eyes and saw a hardness in his face that had never been a part of Rocket’s pretty friend, and I took his elbow in my left hand and yanked him forward. Toward me. I forced out the last of my remaining breath and blew the stupefying powder at him.
If all went well, the powder would stun him, but I couldn’t wait to find out if it worked. I drew my rope dart and swung my right knee up in a spinning jump. My knee took Tom Wong in the chest and I shot my rope dart out behind me, throwing it into a spin.
Liu Qiang’s monstrous arm snapped at me, its jaws wide, its teeth needle-sharp and deadly. I dropped to the ground to evade it and its mouth clicked shut on the air above my head. I rolled backward, keeping my rope dart in motion.
Tom Wong was advancing on me. He hadn’t been stupefied. But I wasn’t surrounded any longer; there was no one behind me. The intensity of life-or-death combat filled me with a kind of burning focus. I knew where all four men were standing, I knew where Liu Qiang’s arm was, and I knew what they were doing. I could feel them, sense their presence. There was nothing in my mind but them, nothing but me and them.
I spun my rope dart faster and faster. Its whirring motion formed a barrier, but Liu Qiang’s spirit arm could pass right through the dart. With my left hand I drew my peachwood sword, holding it in reverse grip, like a dagger.
I faced the four men and the monstrous arm. For a moment everything was held in perfect stillness, like a painting, aside from the whirring rope dart.
Liu Qiang’s arm coiled in silence, pale as dead flesh, opening and closing a mouth lined with needle-sharp teeth. Its three eyes studied me, unblinking. Its eyes were the red of fresh blood, and I had a sense that nothing would make it happier than seeing me suffer. Making me suffer.
Hong Xiaohao stood back from the other men, watching them, watching me. His lips curled in a way I couldn’t interpret. He lifted his leather club, and suddenly I knew what the look on his mouth meant.
Tom turned back to face me. We assessed each other for an instant that felt like an hour. My rope dart was spinning fast enough that the iron weight could shatter stone, but Tom Wong was good enough that a rope dart wouldn’t stop him. All he had to do was get the timing right and grab the rope at just the right moment.
He grabbed the rope at just the right moment. He gave me a pretty smile, and began to speak. He was probably intending to gloat. But then Hong Xiaohao brought his club down on the back of Tom’s head.
There was a heavy thud and Tom stumbled forward. He turned to face his assailant, which gave me the opportunity I needed. I shot a kick at the back of Tom’s knee. It connected and his leg gave out under him. He dropped to one knee and I coiled my rope dart’s cord around his throat, cutting off his circulation.
“Li-lin,” he choked, “please.” He tried to drive a finger under the rope line, but he couldn’t find a hold.
Xiaohao stood back, in a defensive posture. If he had any significant amount of training, I didn’t know about it. The man from prison faced him with a look like stone, and Liu Qiang regarded Xiaohao and me almost idly. Deciding which one to go after first.
Liu Qiang’s arm reared back, coiling like a snake, and it launched forward and struck at Xiaohao with a speed that was astonishing, almost too fast to see. Its jaws snapped shut on Xiaohao’s neck. The young man’s lips said nothing, but they spoke to me of hope and loss, of decency and effort. He reached a hand toward his throat, but his arm was already going limp. Bleeding punctures opened on his neck. The snake-arm lifted him four feet in the air and tossed him aside like a shovelful of dirt. What landed on the street was a corpse.
Watching Xiaohao die filled me with a sense of horror, and a kind of helplessness I loathed feeling. The man who’d recently been to prison looked at Liu Qiang, and there was fear on his face.
Liu Qiang’s arm looked ecstatic, as though there were no greater rapture than murder. I was afraid of it, and I felt something inside me keening and mourning Xiaohao. He had sided with me, and it cost him his life. Another good man, another senseless death.
Tom Wong sprang to his feet. Raging, in a burst of motion, he yanked the rope from my hands and threw it to the ground. Foolish, Li-lin. I let a moment of grief rob my focus and now Tom Wong was free to attack me again.
He came at me like a thunderstorm. He was furious now, and his indiscriminate onslaught was all power and no finesse. I pushed aside a cross punch, elbowed him in the ribs, and took a step back.
Rage made him imprecise. That gave me an advantage. I needed to use that, to feed his anger.
“Oh, Tom,” I said, taunting, “here you are in front of Hung Sing, your father’s restaurant, in plain view of the street, and a woman forced you to your knees. Such a loss of face.”
He looked around. People were walking by, pretending they had seen nothing. A corpse lay on the street and no one would ever admit seeing him die. Men climbed down from a cable car and immediately looked away from the street fight. The line of men in front of Hung Sing stared resolutely forward, not looking. No one was looking, but everything was witnessed, and everything would be told, and told again; where there are people, there is gossip.
“Such a loss of face,” I repeated, shaking my head.
Tom’s muscles were rigid. Self-control didn’t seem to be one of his gifts. “Face,” he said, “is the old way. This world has no place for heroes any longer, and there’s no place for face, or filial piety, or sworn brothers. Only power matters. Power is the new way. Kill her, Mr. Liu.”
I switched the peachwood sword to my right hand. Liu Qiang’s spirit arm watched me, its three eyes cunning. It knew what peachwood could do to it.
“Power?” I asked. “You expect power from Liu Qiang?”
“Oh yes, Li-lin,” Tom said, his eyes bright with a sense of glory. “More power than you’ve ever seen.”
Keeping myself safe with the peachwood sword, I bent down and retrieved my rope dart. I faced Tom Wong and said, “You know, Tom, my father pissed in his face once.”
Liu Qiang gave an enraged, inarticulate shout. I stuck out my tongue at him, then turned and ran.
Behind me I heard Tom Wong say, “Let her go. There’s no way she can stop us.”
I went home and added a name to the Hall of Ancestors. “Hong Xiaohao,” I said, “I would not be your wife, but you were a good man. I will wail at your grave.” I touched the paper with his name on it to my forehead, then lit a candle. “I will light a candle each day,” I said, “for forty-nine days, and burn you paper offerings.”
There were tears in my eyes as I thought of Xiaohao. He had wanted to marry me, but even though I had rejected him, he had stood up for me when I was alone among my enemies. He did it, knowing it would gain him nothing, knowing he would probably die for it.
“I will find you a wife,” I said. “A woman who died young. And I will perform a ghost wedding for the two of you.” He would be able to have a family in the lands hereafter. It was the best I could do for him.
I went next to the Tong Sheng, the celestial almanac. With both hands, I took the heavy tome and leafed through its thin rice-paper pages until I found the next day’s charts. For a few minutes I studied the charts, committing the astrological relations to memory.
Then I walked to the infirmary and filled Father in on everything I had learned. I told him what Mr. Wong had told me, what Liu Qiang had said, and I told him of Hong Xiaohao’s death.
“This is going to happen tomorrow night?” he said.
“Yes, Father.”
He looked away, his expression contemplative, severe. “There must be a reason for that. I nee
d to know what kind of spell would be most auspicious for tomorrow night. Ah Li, you will go and study the star charts in the Tong Sheng.”
“Father, I—”
“I will need to know tomorrow night’s readings, the ten celestial stems and twelve earthly branches in yin.”
“Father—”
“Which of us speaks first?” he asked.
I hung my head. I felt ashamed for being disrespectful toward my father, but frustrated too.
“While you are there, make sure you learn the aspect of the moon and its location during the hour of the First Earthly Branch. Commit all that to memory and return here at once.”
I took a frustrated breath and let it out. “Father, I studied the Tong Sheng before I came here.”
He looked at me, startled. I let a moment pass, but I had learned, long ago, not to expect praise. I said, “Tomorrow night, it will be the Earth phase, Dog year, Autumn season, Mountain trigram. Tomorrow night the lunar month is Earth, the celestial stem yin is wu, and the terrestrial branch yin is xu.”
He listened closely, doing calculations in his head. “Earth produces Metal, conquers Water, is conquered by Wood, masked by Fire,” he said in a mumble. “Stem and branch in yin, born from stars and branching to earth, is wuxu.” He seemed lost in thought for a moment, then he turned his eye toward me with a sudden sharp focus. “And the aspect and position of the moon during the hour of the First Earthly Branch?”
“The moon will be sparkling, in the palace of Wei.”
“Wei, the Gateway of Man,” he said. “Subconstellation?”
“Jishi, Father.”
“Jishi …” A stricken look crossed my father’s face. “It couldn’t be. He wouldn’t dare. And yet the corpses …”
“What, Father? What is it?”
He closed his eye. He sat, tense, in a silence so thick and woeful it seemed almost like he was trying to make the whole world change just because he wanted it to change. When the powers of shadow were at their strongest, the moon would be in the subconstellation Jishi—and Jishi means Heap of Corpses.
His eye shot open. “Liu Qiang,” he said. “That rotten toad. I’m going to rip his intestines out and stuff them in his mouth.”
I hesitated. “Father, what is he planning?”
Father said nothing. He turned his eye to the window and brooded. After a few minutes he looked at me.
“Do you know the story of the Kulou-Yuanling?”
Kulou meant skeleton, and a yuanling was a kind of vengeful wraith. But the terms, added together, meant nothing to me. “No, Father,” I said.
He looked out the window again, and despair ruled his face. “I know of only one Kulou-Yuanling in all the history of China. There was a man who raised one once. It was seven hundred years ago, when the Song Dynasty ruled in China. Have I told you about the Song Dynasty, Ah Li?” Father was slipping into teacher mode.
“The Song was a period of great accomplishment, Father.”
“It was the Chinese who invented the first compass, you know. During the Song Dynasty. We printed the first paper money. Even before the Song, it was one of the Daoshi who made use of the first Fire Medicine. Do you know what the white folk call Fire Medicine?”
“Yes, Father,” I replied. “Gunpowder.”
“The Song was a great period for the Daoshi. There was a temple in the north, called Golden Shrine for Contemplation of Spirit. And it was a marvel, Ah Li. It was resplendent in red and gold, and its smoke tower was a hundred feet high. There was a pond in the courtyard where it is said the deities would come to bathe. The adepts at Golden Shrine for Contemplation of Spirit spent decades consolidating the Dao Canon.
“Sometimes they found scrolls and books of vile magic. Wicked spells sprout like fungus, anywhere they can. They came along the Silk Road, like so much other commerce. The Daoshi at Golden Shrine for Contemplation of Spirit gathered foul magic from lands as far away as Japan, Malaya, and Siam. There were even instructions on how to perform dian-si-shuei, the death touch. Five strikes that kill a man in an instant.” My father shuddered at the thought. Then he was quiet for a moment. “Golden Shrine’s adepts locked all these evils away in a Plague Box. They cleansed the world of such vile forms of magic. It was a tremendous achievement, Ah Li. But then,” he said, and his face tightened at the words, “there were the Nuzhens in the north of China.”
He’d spoken about the Nuzhens before. The next words he spoke were going to be “dirty savages.”
“Filthy savages,” he said. “The Nuzhens refused the benevolent rule of the Song Dynasty. They united and began fighting back. They would kill people, patriots who stayed loyal to the Emperor. There were so many of the vermin, Ah Li. A horde of barbarians swarmed through the north like locusts.
“The Senior Abbot of the Shrine at Golden Shrine for Contemplation of Spirit wasn’t going to let some dirty savages destroy such a marvel. So he unlocked the Plague Box where the yao shu scrolls were quarantined, and there he found a spell that would be strong enough to fight off the Nuzhen hordes.
“The spell required the corpses of a hundred men,” my father said.
Things were beginning to make sense, in a sickening way. It was the logic of the Dao that appealed to me, the way everything added together in a system of perfection, a system of balance. It made me feel ill to think of a Daoshi who perverted the Dao. A Daoshi had resorted to yao shu, filthy magic. It was grotesque.
“To raise a Kulou-Yuanling,” my father continued, “it takes the corpses of a hundred men who died badly. A hundred men who were murdered, who were crushed or starved to death. But even that isn’t enough. Those hundred men must be unremembered. A hundred men whose corpses are unburied, whose names are not intoned in any Hall of Ancestors.”
“Hao Xiongdi,” I whispered. Good Brothers, a euphemism for angry ghosts.
“Yes, Good Brothers. But more than that,” he said, “for their manner of death must remain with their corpses. A red miasma must linger where they died. They need to have died so badly that their death contaminates the very land.”
He was quiet for a few moments, contemplating. When he spoke it sounded like he was giving a lecture. “The spell to raise a Kulou-Yuanling is similar to the spell to make a quanshen. A quanshen is dangerous enough, and it is only a single dog that died badly. Ah Li, can you imagine a monster comprised of a hundred men who died badly?”
I shook my head. He turned his eye toward the window again. “It was an Earth Dog year, in Autumn, governed by the Mountain trigram. On a night when the stars were aligned in yin, ten celestial stems to twelve terrestrial branches in wuxu, the Senior Abbot of the Shrine gathered the corpses of a hundred men. When eleven o’clock arrived, the moon was sparkling in the court of Jishi, and he performed the ritual. He raised a Kulou-Yuanling. The monster was taller than temples, and it made a noise that shook the hills.
“When the Nuzhens came to pillage Golden Shrine for Contemplation of Spirit, they found a giant monster waiting for them. The Kulou-Yuanling crushed them, Ah Li. The Nuzhen hordes fell before its onslaught as though they were insects. It ate them alive, and the sound of human bones crunching in its teeth made even the bravest of them flee.
“But the Kulou-Yuanling remained hungry. The Daoshi’s control over the giant monster had its limits. The monster went out at night and devoured whatever it could find. Cows, horses, and people. The Kulou-Yuanling took them in its enormous hands and ate them alive. And still the giant monster remained hungry.
“So the Senior Abbot of the Shrine set out to destroy the Kulou-Yuanling. He was of the Seventh Ordination but his spells were not enough. He recruited every farmer from the countryside, and they fought it with spears, shovels, and hoes. The Senior Abbot used his magic and rallied the Five Ghosts, but they could do no more than slow it down. They used Fire Medicine. Rockets, fireworks, and even primitive flamethrowers. But nothing worked, and all the Kulou-Yuanling needed to do was shout, and men would double over, clutching their heads with pa
in.
“Eventually, somehow, the Senior Abbot managed to defeat the Kulou-Yuanling.”
“How, Father?” I asked.
“It is not known,” he admitted. He was quiet for a long moment. On his face I saw the signs of old pain, internal struggle. “Do you know the name of the Senior Abbot at Golden Shrine for Contemplation of Spirit, Li-lin?”
I shook my head.
“His name was Li Zhenren,” he said.
My eyes widened. “Li Zhenren, the founder of the Maoshan lineage?”
“Yes,” he said. “The founder of my lineage. Li Zhenren defeated the Kulou-Yuanling. When the Nuzhens came again, he gave up Golden Shrine for Contemplation of Spirit, and fled to the south of China, with the Song Dynasty. There he founded the Maoshan lineage, dedicated to fighting spirits and suppressing yao shu.”
He lay quiet, and I thought about what he’d just told me. All of it. For seven centuries, our lineage had been fighting monsters. We guarded the Ghost Gate, we appeased spirits or exorcised them, we fought monsters and sometimes we died fighting them. And this, all of this, eighty generations and more, all of it, was the result of one man trying to undo the harm he’d done. Li Zhenren raised a Kulou-Yuanling. He violated a hundred corpses to craft a monster.
Thinking of the corpses, thinking of a hundred dead men, gave me a sick feeling. I touched my stomach, and felt where Liu Qiang had cut me. The cuts still stung. Anger still coursed through me. I still wanted vengeance for what he had done to me, but somehow, that seemed small now. The cuts were small.
I wondered what Tom Wong would want with a Kulou-Yuanling. He was going to kill Bok Choy, that much was obvious. But a simpler spell could do that. A spell that didn’t require a hundred corpses.
Then I remembered something Tom had said to me. “Power is the new way,” he told me. Power. That’s what Tom was after. He had watched my husband die and then he started thinking about power. Craving it. My husband’s death taught him that guns are more powerful than martial arts. And Tom wanted something more powerful than guns.