Table of Contents

Title Page

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Glossary

About the Author

Books the Kylie Chan

Copyright

About the Publisher

The Turtle raises its head above the water and watches the glittering coloured lights beneath the blazing stars of the Northern Heavens, wondering why it is there.

The Serpent chokes on the polluted water, drifting to the bottom amid the mud and oil, listening to the many engines moving overhead.

They cry. There is no answer.

CHAPTER 1

I was in my office, trying to ensure a fair allocation of funds from the increased Northern Heavens tax revenue, when the intercom on my desk buzzed.

‘There is someone here for you, ma’am,’ Yi Hao said. ‘She’s very upset and says she needs to see you right now.’

‘Who?’

‘Zara. She says she knows you.’

‘Send her in.’

Yi Hao opened the door and escorted a young Chinese woman in, then left, closing the door behind her. The woman was about twenty-five, with long, snow-white hair and matching brows and lashes, incongruous against her golden skin.

‘Sit, Zara,’ I said, gesturing towards one of the visitors’ chairs. ‘What’s the problem?’

Zara opened her mouth to talk, but didn’t make it very far, instead collapsing into great racking sobs. I went around the desk and put my hands on her shoulders to comfort her, and she leaned into me, still weeping. I pulled a tissue from the box on my desk and handed it to her, and she blew her nose loudly.

The rest of the stones are accusing her of being complicit in Lady Rhonda’s destruction, the stone in my ring said. After what happened to Gold, and the activities of Demon Prince Six, we even suspect our own of treachery. It is a sad situation. The Tiger’s Retainers have been interrogating her, that is why she is distraught.

I sat in the other visitors’ chair and put my arms around her, and she clutched me.

‘Let it out,’ I said. ‘I can wait.’

She continued to yank tissues out of the box, and eventually ran out of steam.

‘My stone told me what you’re going through,’ I said. ‘It must be very tough. You can stay here as long as you like, Zara, we can look after you.’

‘I am a possession of the Emperor of the West, I must return,’ Zara said in a soft Putonghua accent.

‘If you want to stay here, I can ask him to release you. All I have to do is say the word.’

She looked up at me, her eyes red and her face full of hope. ‘If you could shelter me until this blows over, please, I would appreciate it.’

‘Done,’ I said, then to the stone: ‘Tell the Tiger.’

‘Ma’am,’ the stone said.

Good, take her for a while, see if you can get anything out of the stupid bitch, the Tiger said. We need to find the real Rhonda! My wife is out there somewhere and that stone doesn’t know anything, she’s fucking useless.

You made sure yourself that she was the real Rhonda, I reminded the Tiger via the stone.

No! the Tiger said. Not possible!

Tell the Tiger what Kwan Yin said to me, I said to the stone.

… The Lady said that Rhonda was a victim of her heritage, same as Lady Emma is, Lord Bai, the stone said. That wasn’t a demon copy of your lovely lady. It was really her. Please, sir, talk to Kwan Yin.

Fuck, the Tiger said, and went quiet.

I turned back to Zara. ‘I have the word of Kwan Yin that it was the real Lady Rhonda that was destroyed by the Elixir of Immortality,’ I said. ‘I didn’t realise anyone was giving you trouble about this, Zara; if I had known I would have told them.’

Zara let out a huge, shivering sigh. ‘I thank you, my Lady. You have saved my honour.’

‘Will you stay here with us?’

She glanced up at me. ‘May I switch off for a while in a corner somewhere?’

I nodded. ‘If that is what you wish.’

Zara addressed the stone in my ring. ‘Jade Building Block, will you tell the others what Kwan Yin said?’

‘I already have; it should be filtering back to you through the network already,’ the stone said.

She dropped her head. ‘I have been disconnected from the network for the last three days.’

The stone was silent for a moment, then: ‘Reconnect, dear one, hear what they have to say.’

Zara concentrated for a moment and her face cleared, then she collapsed weeping again.

The stone in my ring took human form and stood behind her, his hand on her shoulder. ‘Come to the armoury with me, Zara. The section for the Celestial Weapons is completely soundproofed and just what you need.’

She nodded and rose, then bowed her head to me. ‘Thank you, Lady Emma, my honour is yours.’ She went out with the stone, who nodded to me as he closed the door behind them.

I turned back to my computer just as a body landed on the floor with an almighty thump. I jumped up and peered over the desk, then relaxed; it was Leo, prone on the floor. He floated into the air, came upright, then sat in the chair across from me and collapsed over my desk.

‘Keep trying, you’ll have it soon,’ I said.

‘That’s what Meredith keeps saying,’ he said, his voice muffled by the desk. He pulled himself upright. ‘I thought I’d have it first time! I’ve spent enough goddamn time in here gossiping with you — I should have the image straight in my head.’

I waved one hand at him and turned back to the computer. ‘Just make less of a noise when you hit the floor, okay? I’m trying to get some work done here.’

‘Humph,’ he said, and disappeared with a rush of air that rustled my papers.

‘And less of a tornado when you leave,’ I said.

I’m working on it, he said.

Without the stone, I couldn’t respond. I pressed the intercom button for Yi Hao.

‘Yes, ma’am?’

‘Pass on my congratulations to Lord Leo, please, he just learned telepathy.’

‘Oh, ma’am, that is good news. I will do it right away.’

Really? You heard me?

I pressed the button again.

‘Ma’am?’

‘Please tell Leo: Yes. And tell him that I don’t have my stone on me right now, so I can’t talk back to him.’

Can’t talk back to me, eh? Let me have a think about all the things I could say to you while I have you like this.

‘Bastard,’ I said under my breath as I returned to my work.

I heard that.

Later that day, Leo dropped me off for my lunch meeting at the Mandarin Hotel with the planet Venus, the Jade Emperor’s emissary. He pulled up across the road from the Landmark in Central, blatantly illegally using the Pedder Street informal lay-by outside the Pedder Building. I hopped out and walked up to the corner to cross the road, pulling my scruffy silk jacket closer around me; the late winter wind off the harbour was cold. Every shopfront in this area housed a famous designer label and the window displays struggled to outdo each other in artistic extravagance. Some of them didn’t even show the products on sale; instead they focused on the ‘lifestyle’ they represented. Leo had been hounding me to go shopping with him along this strip to replace what he called my ‘gruesome’ wardrobe, but I’d managed to avoid it.

I entered the Landmark and took the escalators up to the pedestrian overpass across Queen’s Road into Alexandra House, an unremarkable office building with a plain, tiled lobby full of people like me who were just passing through. I walked across another enclosed pedestrian bridge over Ice House Street to the Prince’s Building, which was all shiny white tiles, glittering glass and jewellery shops displaying gemstones the size of pigeon eggs. Stern-looking Sikh security guards armed with sawn-off shotguns stood at the doors.

I passed a couple of tailor’s shops and took another pedestrian overpass to the Mandarin Hotel. A huge crystal chandelier adorned the staircase that swept from the ground-floor lobby up to the second floor. The Mandarin’s coffee shop had been on the ground floor, with large windows looking out onto the street and providing a fascinating view of life in Central — the immaculately dressed tai-tais on their way to their daily salon visit, the couriers riding their heavy Chinese-made bicycles with full-sized gas bottles in the front basket, usually wearing nothing but a pair of filthy shorts and a grimy towel around their necks. Recently, however, the coffee shop had been moved up to the mezzanine floor and renamed something that sounded more upmarket — and was therefore unpronounceable. The cheesecake was the same though, which was why I’d arranged to meet Venus there.

Theoretically I had precedence over him as First Heavenly General (Acting), but it was politically sensible to arrive there first and do him the honour of waiting for him. The waiter guided me to a table next to the window overlooking the street, and went through the tedious rigmarole of spreading my napkin, offering me the over-priced bottled water of the day, filling my huge balloon wine glass with chilled water from a silver-plated jug, and handing me a menu that was mostly blank paper in an expensive leather folder. Finally he established that I was there to meet someone and left me to wait for Venus.

Venus arrived five minutes later, accompanied by a pair of Retainers who had taken the form of burly Chinese bodyguards. He was in the form of a mid-thirties Chinese, slim and elegant, wearing a tailored grey silk suit, his long hair held in a traditional topknot and flowing to his waist. The waiter escorted him to my table, did the napkin and water thing, then hurried back to the entrance to take the bodyguards to another table nearby. A couple of diners noticed the bodyguards and took surreptitious photos of us with their mobile phones, probably hoping to catch a minor celebrity meeting with his foreign mistress to sell to a gossip magazine. Unfortunately for them, all they would get would be movement-blurred images no matter how still they held the phone.

Venus toasted me with his glass of water: ‘Lady Emma.’ It was a polite alternative to the traditional salute in a modern setting. I nodded and toasted him back, then we checked the menus. The options hadn’t changed much since we were last there so I just folded it and waited for him.

‘Lord Leo wasn’t able to join us?’

‘I asked him to come along, but he said he had some errands to attend to at the bank,’ I said. ‘He’s still establishing his identity, and the bank is giving him trouble about the new accounts.’

‘He doesn’t need to worry about these Earthly issues any more,’ Venus said. ‘Why hasn’t he taken up residence on the Celestial where he belongs?’

‘He says he belongs here with us, his family,’ I said.

Venus nodded his understanding. ‘He is unusual in his swift return to what he was doing before he was Raised. Do you think it has something to do with his Western heritage? Most Chinese are well aware of what lies in store for them should they attain Immortality. Westerners, however, seem to have little idea.’

‘That may have something to do with it,’ I said. ‘What did Meredith do?’

‘I have only recently made Master Liu’s acquaintance, I’m afraid. You should probably ask her. I’d venture a guess that she was assisted by her husband.’

I nodded; that made sense.

‘Leo must start to take his place among us, Lady Emma. He should be at your side when you are undertaking your official duties in the Northern Heavens. He is the Retainer of the First Heavenly General now, not a simple human bodyguard.’

‘Try telling him that,’ I said. ‘And good luck.’

The waiter approached us, ready to take our order, and I opened the menu and pointed. ‘Vegetarian pasta.’

‘Hainan chicken,’ Venus said, and I choked with laughter. He looked at me. ‘What?’

‘Very good,’ the waiter said, and took our menus. ‘Wine?’

‘No, thank you,’ we said together, and the waiter nodded and left.

‘What’s so funny about Hainan chicken?’ Venus said.

‘Do you know what steak frites is?’

‘It’s a restaurant in New York.’

‘No, the dish itself.’

Venus nodded. ‘Steak and chips. Horrible Western meal.’

‘Well, Western restaurants all over the world do steak and chips, from the most down-market greasy-spoon diner to the top five-star hotel restaurant. It’s everywhere, they just make it with less or more expensive ingredients and trimmings.’

‘And this has to do with Hainan chicken how?’ Venus said, then his face cleared. ‘It’s the same, isn’t it. You can go get Hainan chicken from one of those chain cafeterias, or from a noodle shop in Tsim Sha Tsui, or from a top-class hotel like this. It’s the same dish, just with different trimmings.’

‘And everybody orders it!’

‘Well, it’s good,’ Venus said.

‘Not when the chicken’s so underdone that the bones are red,’ I grumbled quietly.

‘Chicken is best underdone, it is tough when overcooked,’ Venus protested. ‘You are with a Celestial, you have no health risk!’ He realised he had been speaking too loudly and dropped his voice, his face alight with mirth. ‘The best chicken is done so that the meat is just cooked and the bones are still raw. It is a shame that in the last ten years or so they have become concerned about things like bird flu and have started cooking the chicken all the way through. Terrible waste.’

Our dishes arrived; mine was a monstrous plate of ribbon pasta with a thick creamy cheese sauce and large pieces of broccoli, carrot and mushroom. Venus’s Hainan chicken was presented on an elegant platter, with one dish holding the gently boiled and cut-up chicken; three small sauce bowls; a bowl of rice that had been steamed in chicken stock; and a bowl of the stock as a soup.

He gestured dismissively towards the meat. ‘See? Overdone. Cooked all the way through. At least they have chilled the skin so that it has become jelly — white chicken.’

‘You do realise that if they roasted the chicken, the skin would become crisp and juicy?’ I said.

‘I have had Western chicken before,’ Venus said. ‘It is good, but different. This,’ he waved his chopsticks over his food, ‘is the way chicken should be done.’

We ate in silence for a while, the waiters occasionally topping up our water glasses. Venus raised his head, his face blank, then returned to his chicken.

‘They’re checking on me,’ he said. ‘I am never left to my own devices for even two seconds.’

‘I know the feeling!’

‘At least you’re not telepathic,’ he said with humour.

‘No, so when they contact me with an emergency, I have to call them back on my mobile, or wake up this goddamn cranky stone.’

‘I resemble that remark,’ the stone said.

‘Isn’t the correct term “resent that remark”?’ Venus said.

‘It’s a lame Western joke,’ the stone said. ‘Emma uses it all the time.’

‘So my Western lameness is rubbing off on you,’ I said. ‘Compounding your Eastern lameness, making you even more lame.’

‘I have never heard anybody speak to a Building Block like that before,’ Venus said with wonder. ‘Or a Heavenly General, for that matter.’

‘Get used to it,’ the stone grumbled. ‘She’s so blunt sometimes I wince.’

‘That’s you rubbing off on me,’ I said.

‘Conceded,’ the stone said.

Venus shook his head over his rice.

We didn’t get down to business until the coffee and cheesecake, but Venus was such a charming companion that I didn’t mind the wait.

‘Generally the news is good,’ he said. ‘The residents of the Northern Heavens have made their feelings known about your solution to the energy problem; you have gained a great deal of political mileage with this one.’

‘It had nothing to do with me,’ I said. ‘It’s the Xuan Wu’s children who have made it happen.’

‘Regardless, you are the one who brought them together,’ Venus said.

‘I’ve established a small team of Celestials to search all the nearby oceans for any other children of the Xuan Wu who may have been enslaved by Six,’ I said. ‘We found one turtle and three snakes. I hope we find them all; but they themselves say that when their father is back, he’ll be able to find them quickly.’

‘That is good news. Any reports on the locations of the other two demons in that group?’

‘I have people in Thailand working together with the Phoenix’s people to search for the Death Mother,’ I said. ‘It appears that both she and the Geek have gone to ground.’

‘The Geek is somewhere in Shenzhen, correct?’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t know which is worse: the urban jungle of Shenzhen, or the tropical jungle of Thailand.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Anything else major happening that I need to know about?’

‘Not really. Simone is settling nicely into her new school. Leo is learning very quickly; only yesterday he started using telepathy.’

‘Really?’ Venus’s face went slack for a moment, then he snapped back and grinned. ‘He told me he’d come have lunch with us next time, but only if I’m buying and I wear something … to quote him … “really cute”.’

‘Stone, tell Leo that he is such a man-whore,’ I said.

Venus’s eyes went wide.

Oh snap, Leo said. Can you do me a favour and come up to the bank when you’re done there and scare the living daylights out of these assholes for me? I need backup!

Venus obviously heard it too. ‘He did not just ask you to go rescue him?’ he said.

I shrugged. ‘Apparently I do “angry gweipoh” extremely well.’

‘What is that? Angry “foreign grandmother”?’

‘You don’t see them as much any more, but back before the Handover they were everywhere.’

‘The Handover?’

‘Hong Kong to China, in ’97. Anyway, imagine this. You have a wealthy English lady, probably from an old, titled family, who’s always had everything her own way. Back in England, tradesmen came to her house at the snap of her fingers, she paid them very well for the finest-quality work, and was treated like a princess by everybody. She comes here and the quality of the work is slapdash, tradesmen turn up at eleven at night, customer service is sloppy everywhere, and nobody treats her like a princess. After a couple of years of this, she gets angry with the whole thing. The minute anything isn’t exactly as she wants it she throws a huge tantrum to get things moving. Well, that’s what Leo wants me to do for him over at the bank.’

‘Sounds like some of the local women as well,’ Venus said wryly.

‘Yeah, I saw that YouTube of the woman throwing a tantrum at the airport too,’ I said.

We were interrupted by a woman loudly arguing with the waiter about the items on her bill, and shared a smile.

I finished my coffee, caught a waiter’s eye and drew a circle in the air to indicate that I wanted the bill. He nodded and turned away to retrieve it.

‘Nothing else exciting happening?’ I said. ‘Sounds like things are reasonably under control for a change.’

‘The Demon King still tries us, but for some reason his attempts lately have been half-hearted,’ Venus said. ‘Oh! Er Lang.’

I sagged over the table, picked up my fork and drew circles in the remains of my cheesecake with it. ‘Tell me the worst.’

‘He has once again petitioned the Celestial to have you removed from your post, citing lack of competence.’

I shrugged. ‘Situation normal then.’

‘Don’t be concerned, Emma, the Celestial supports your efforts. The recent rejuvenation of the Northern Heavens is a demonstration of your suitability for the role. Remember, if the Kingdom flourishes, it indicates that the sovereign is worthy.’

‘Martin and Yue Gui should be running the place in name as well as reality,’ I said. ‘They do all the work and I’m the one getting the credit; it’s wrong.’

‘That is the way it should be. You are the supreme ruler, and they manage the day-to-day affairs for you. The generals have been freed from the more tedious administrative tasks and can concentrate on defending the Heavens, which is probably why the Demon King has slowed his efforts. It is an excellent result all around.’

‘I’d just like to know which demon it was that gave Yue Gui to me in the first place,’ I said. ‘It could have been Six, hoping to plant a spy, or another demon trying to undermine Six’s efforts by telling us about the nest under Golden Arcade.’

‘I’d say most likely it was either the Death Mother or the Geek, using one of Six’s stone-implanted Shen as a spy and at the same time undermining Six’s own empire. You can ask them yourself when you catch them.’

The waiter brought the bill and I pulled out my wallet to pay.

Venus knew better than to give me grief about the bill. ‘My turn to pay next time.’

I nodded. ‘Remind me before we order so I can get something extremely expensive.’

‘I will,’ he said. After the waiter had left he turned around to his bodyguards and nodded. ‘We’re done.’

One of the bodyguards rose and came to us. He stood fidgeting for a moment, then said, ‘Lady Emma, ma’am, I have heard very much about you from Lord Venus. May I ask you a question?’

‘Sure, go ahead,’ I said.

The waiter came with the folder containing the receipt and my credit card, and I nodded and removed them.

‘Do you give private tuition, ma’am?’ the bodyguard said. ‘My skills are weak with sword, polearm and spear. My broadsword is terrible, and I completely fail at chain staff —’

‘You exaggerate; your martial arts skills are the match of anyone,’ Venus said amiably.

The waiter stared at us.

‘Would you teach me, ma’am?’ the bodyguard said. ‘Could I come down to the Academy and learn from you?’

‘There are plenty of instructors at the Academy who are better than me,’ I said. ‘Venus has my secretary’s number; just give her a call and she’ll arrange something for you.’

The bodyguard fell to one knee and then rose again, to the bemused stares of nearby diners. ‘I would appreciate it if you could spare some of your own time, ma’am.’

‘Let me see what I can work out,’ I said. ‘I really am too busy to take on private students.’

The bodyguard nodded, grinning broadly. ‘Thank you, ma’am!’

‘Did you just ask this gweipoh for private tuition in martial arts?’ the waiter asked the bodyguard in Cantonese.

‘Yes,’ the bodyguard said. ‘She is the best!’

‘I’m not the best, and you know it,’ I said. ‘There are many, many better than me.’

‘Have you been in any famous movies, ma’am?’ the waiter said.

‘Not a single one,’ I said. ‘I’m just a teacher. Nothing special.’

‘A foreign woman who teaches martial arts is something special,’ the waiter said with humour. He bowed to me. ‘My name is Jimmy, ask for me next time you come.’

‘I’ll be sure to,’ I lied.

I rose and Venus did as well, and we shook hands. ‘Lovely to catch up with you, Venus. I’ll have my people arrange something next month; sooner if something major turns up.’

Venus bowed slightly to me. ‘My pleasure, ma’am. You’d better hurry and go rescue poor Leo.’

I picked up my bag. ‘Poor little Leo. Scared of the big bad bank.’

CHAPTER 2

I took the escalators from the enormous open area under the bank building up two storeys to the general banking hall. Leo was parked in his wheelchair next to one of the flat, square leather waiting seats, holding a stack of papers in his lap.

I sat on the chair facing him. ‘What’s it all about?’

‘They say I can’t open an account without proof of residence.’ He waved his documents. ‘These are all in your name. I have nothing that shows that I live here.’

‘Stone, can you do something about this?’ I said.

‘Let me talk to Lok about it,’ the stone said.

‘I forgot how annoying the racism here can be,’ Leo said irritably. ‘The teller took one look at me and frowned. Then, when I started talking to her, she actually turned away.’

‘It might be the speech impediment too, mate, it makes you a bit hard to understand the first time.’

‘Bah. Do you have any idea how much concentration it takes to get rid of that?’

‘Enough that it’s not worth it and people will have to learn to deal.’

‘Pain in the ass.’

‘I have some documents for you; I’ve put them into Emma’s bag,’ the stone said.

I opened my tote and pulled out some freshly printed and folded papers: electricity, gas and phone bills for one of the apartments at the Old Folly, all in Leo’s name and backdated six months. I scrunched the documents a few times to make them appear older, then handed them to Leo. ‘Here you go.’

He flipped through them and nodded. ‘Okay, let’s try this.’

He turned in the wheelchair and rejoined the queue to speak to the tellers. I stood beside him. A few people openly stared at him as we waited, but we ignored them. Finally we reached the end of the queue and a light indicated a free teller. Leo wheeled himself to the window, which was too high for him to comfortably see over. He raised himself on his arms to speak to the teller.

‘Can we talk to someone about opening an account?’

She stared at him, uncomprehending, then glanced at me.

‘You do speak English?’ he said.

She continued to look blank.

‘I want to open an account,’ Leo said more slowly and clearly, trying to work around his speech impediment.

The teller spoke to me, ignoring Leo. ‘What account type you want to open?’

‘My friend wants to open a savings account,’ I said.

The teller pushed some forms across the counter to me. ‘Ask friend to fill in forms.’ She leaned back and waited for us to leave.

Leo raised the documents he was holding and put them on the counter. ‘I’ve already filled them in. The account is for me.’

The teller took the forms and skimmed through them, then looked at me. ‘He needs proof of Hong Kong residence.’

‘I’m right here,’ Leo growled, frustrated.

I gestured towards Leo. ‘Talk to him then. Like he said, he’s right here.’

The teller stared at me.

‘This is for me,’ Leo repeated. ‘I have all the documents and I want to open an account.’

The teller jumped up from her chair and quickly walked away.

‘What the hell!’ Leo said.

‘No, it’s fine. She’s rushed off to get help.’

‘Why didn’t she say something?’

‘It’s considered politer to rush off and do it for you, rather than dither around telling you that they’re going to do it,’ I said. ‘They’re used to being chastised for wasting time.’

Leo rested his hands on the arms of the chair. ‘Well, that’s stupid.’

The teller came back with a young man in a suit. He leaned over the counter to speak to me. ‘You want to open a new account?’

‘No, I do,’ Leo said.

The young man appeared to see Leo for the first time. ‘Wait here, please,’ he said and walked away.

Leo thumped the arm of his wheelchair.

The teller retook her seat and pressed the button to indicate that she was free. A local man came over and leaned around us to talk to her in Cantonese, so we were forced to move to one side.

‘Let’s just go to the other bank next door,’ Leo said, and wheeled himself around to leave.

The young man opened a door near us and nodded. ‘Please, come this way.’

Leo hesitated, then shrugged and wheeled himself through the door, with me following. The young man led us to a small, glass-walled meeting room with a tiny round table. He sat and pulled out a pen, then gestured for us to sit.

‘So sorry. Yes, we have all the documents here. Do you have your ID and proof of residence? Rent notice, electricity, phone bill …’

‘Here,’ Leo said, and passed his passport, Hong Kong ID card and the new documents across the table.

The young man flipped through the documents, checking them against the forms that Leo had filled in, and nodded. ‘Thank you, sir, this is all in order. How much were you looking to deposit to start the account?’

Leo opened his mouth to answer but I tapped his hand. Tell him to say a million dollars, I said to the stone.

‘Uh … one point three million dollars,’ Leo said. Geez, let’s make it something more believable than just a round mill, he added silently to me. Besides, if you’re gonna foot the bill, I’d better make it worthwhile, eh?

‘One point three million Hong Kong dollars?’ the young man said, his eyebrows raised.

Leo grinned evilly. ‘No, American dollars. Will I have to convert it?’

The young man looked down at the papers, then up at Leo. ‘We can provide you with a Premier account for that, sir. With a platinum credit card, priority service and special offers. If you have two million, we can provide you with private banking, which has a range of extended services.’

‘No, Premier is fine,’ Leo said.

‘Normally I would move you to the Premier Banking office floor,’ the young man said, ‘but in this case it would probably suit you better to do it here, and I can show you through when we’re done. Is that suitable?’

Leo relaxed. ‘Quite suitable.’

The young man nodded. ‘We will give you a multiple currency account, but you will need to deposit one million Hong Kong. The rest you can keep as US.’

Leo waved one hand airily. ‘No, convert it all to Hong Kong dollars, I live here now. Let’s go ahead.’

The young man nodded, took a business card holder out of his breast pocket, rose and held out a card to Leo with both hands. ‘Leave it with me for a moment, sir, and I will return shortly with the account information for you, and show you where your Premier Banking service centre is.’

‘Fine,’ Leo said, and the young man went out.

‘Money talks,’ I said.

‘He’s googling you,’ the stone said with humour. ‘He couldn’t find “Leo Alexander” so he’s now looking for … oh, this is funny.’

‘What?’ Leo said.

‘He thinks you’re Mike Tyson,’ the stone said. ‘He’s looking up photos of Mike Tyson.’

‘Humph,’ Leo said. ‘I am ten times uglier than that mother.’

‘Hear, hear,’ I said.

‘Emma didn’t do Ugly Gweipoh, she did Rich Bitch instead,’ the stone said, disappointed. ‘I like Ugly Gweipoh better.’

‘Ugly Gweipoh tends to involve burning bridges,’ I said, ‘and Leo did the Rich Bitch, not me! If we did Ugly Gweipoh we would be branded as trouble, and Leo would have problems getting his money out to buy his expensive loafers.’

‘You fill my shoes with sand again and I’ll never forgive you!’ Leo said. ‘Those were Armani!’

‘You filled my shoes with sand first,’ I said.

‘Shoes from K-Mart in Australia do not count,’ Leo said.

I raised one foot. ‘Yes, they do.’

He buried his face in his hand. ‘I give up.’

‘I thought you liked to avoid stereotyping,’ I said.

‘Stereotyping is one thing. Dressing like a street sleeper when you have a fund of several hundred million dollars —’ He stopped as the young man returned.

The bank employee looked from Leo to me, then sat at the table with a glossy folder containing all of Leo’s account information. He passed me a business card. ‘Maybe I could interest you in some private banking as well, ma’am? If you have several hundred million dollars, we can help you to manage those funds and ensure that they grow for you.’

I took his card with a nod. ‘Thank you, but I already have a private banking advisor here.’

The young man shook his head and flipped open the folder to explain the account details to Leo.

Michael stood on my right in Training Room Four, watching as I raised my left hand and summoned demon essence to fill it. ‘That’s it. Demon essence.’

Michael raised his left hand and chi glowed around it. He grimaced and the chi disappeared. He dropped his head in concentration and the chi reappeared around his hand, this time a deep purple, almost black.

‘That’s interesting. Can you do black?’ I said.

Michael concentrated again and the chi became a light blue. He shook his head. ‘Nope.’

‘Okay,’ I said. I released the Murasame from my right hand and it floated above the floor; the sword was fussy about being dropped. ‘Take my hand.’

Michael took my right hand in his left and used the connection to observe my demon essence. He gasped. ‘Damn, Emma.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘I need to spend some time on the Celestial Plane.’

‘Soon!’ Michael said. ‘How do you control that?’

‘I have no idea. Seen enough?’

Michael nodded and released my hand, then raised his own again and dropped his head, concentrating. The dark blue chi reappeared and he shook his head. ‘I don’t think I can do it.’

‘Of course you can’t. You’re my son, and I’m too yang to produce anything like that,’ the Tiger said from where he’d appeared on the other side of the room.

‘Tell Lok to freaking inform me before letting this bastard into the Academy,’ I said to the stone in my ring.

‘That is no way to greet an old friend,’ the Tiger said. He approached us, hands out. ‘Peace. Michael, I need to talk to you.’

Michael turned away. ‘I have nothing to say to you.’ He bowed slightly to me. ‘It’s kind of a relief that I can’t do it, Emma. I’ll see you later — I’m having dinner at your place tonight.’

I nodded to him. ‘I just wish I wasn’t able to do it either.’

‘Look, it’s about your mother,’ the Tiger said. ‘Can we put this aside? We both loved her, and I need your help to find out why she died.’

Michael rounded on the Tiger. ‘It’s obvious why she died. You killed her!’ He swept one hand through the air. ‘Or one of the other wives killed her in a fit of jealousy. Either way, she’s gone and you’re responsible.’ He spun to leave.

‘I know I’m responsible,’ the Tiger said. ‘And Emma is a clue as to what happened. I need you to help me find out what made your mother different.’

Michael ignored him, opening the door to exit.

‘Emma, I need you too,’ the Tiger said. ‘Come to the lab and donate some DNA. We need to find out what killed Rhonda so it doesn’t happen to anyone again.’

‘I’m a demon,’ I said. ‘That’s what would kill me.’

‘You’re not listening to me, either of you!’ the Tiger shouted, and Michael stopped halfway through the door. ‘Michael, what killed her could kill you!’ He pointed at me. ‘And you! I want to save your fucking lives here, humans. For fuck’s sake, let me!’ He dropped his voice. ‘I want to ensure that no Celestial Worthy is ever destroyed again by taking the Elixir. They should gain Immortality, not die! Hell, boy, you’ll probably achieve Immortality by yourself. But if you ever want that fucking Elixir, you’d better be damn sure that it won’t blow you up.’

Michael dropped his head. ‘Like it did my mother.’

‘I loved her,’ the Tiger said, his voice full of anguish. ‘She was my world. And now she’s gone, nothing means anything to me. The only thing keeping me going is the thought that I can stop this from happening to you.’

‘Let me think about it,’ Michael said without looking up. He walked out, softly closing the door behind him.

‘Emma?’ the Tiger said.

‘I’ll think about it too,’ I said. ‘I can only travel to the Celestial Plane as a serpent. I’m contaminated by the demon essence …’

‘We might be able to remove the demon from you if we study your DNA,’ the Tiger said.

‘Maybe. Either way, let me think about it. I’m scheduled to spend some time on the Plane next week, visiting the Northern Heavens for an update on how things are going and some hearings. I might stop in at the West to help you out.’

‘I can always send some scientists down here to take some samples if you don’t want to come to the West,’ he said. ‘Your choice. I just want to make sure that when Ah Wu comes back, he can fulfil his promise to you.’ He waved a hand after Michael. ‘This kid will be my Number One one day, and the finest I’ve ever had. But to get there, he’s gonna need Immortality, and we need to be sure that the Elixir won’t kill him.’ He disappeared.

I retrieved the Murasame from where it was floating in the air and put it back into its black scabbard. What the Tiger didn’t know was my memories of being imprisoned in a hospital-type lab being infused with demon essence had affected me; I’d suffered nightmares ever since. The idea of being the willing subject of lab experiments was something I found hard even to consider.

When I got back to my office there was an email waiting for me that made me sigh.

To: Emma Donahoe

<emmad@newwudang.com.hk>

From: Evarocks <eva95@zqphoenix.com.id>

Hi Emma,

I haven’t heard from Simone in ages, is she okay? Me and Sylvie kinda miss going around with her. I emailed her a couple of days ago and she didn’t reply.

If she doesn’t want to be friends any more, could you tell her it’s okay, I understand, but just to tell me and I’ll stop contacting her to do stuff?

Thanx

Eva

I stared at the screen for a moment, then replied.

To: Evarocks <eva95@zqphoenix.com.id>

From: Emma Donahoe

<emmad@newwudang.com.hk>

Bcc: Simone Chen

<darkchaos4682@gmail.com>

Hi Eva,

I think it’s mainly that she’s so busy with school at the moment — because of the change of schools mid-year she’s flat out catching up with the rest of her class. I’m sure that when things settle down she’ll be back in contact with you.

Emma

I quickly composed another email:

To: Simone Chen darkchaos4682@gmail.com

From: Emma Donahoe

<emmad@newwudang.com.hk>

I bcc’d the message to you so you could see, but she doesn’t know I sent it on to you.

I remember when you were five years old and didn’t have a single friend in the world. How things have changed.

E

I would get the Silent Treatment when she got home from the shops later, but it would be worth it.

CHAPTER 3

About four that afternoon, Simone contacted me telepathically. Emma, I’m going to call you on your mobile. Can you play along, please?

My mobile rang and I answered it. ‘Yes?’

Simone sounded incredibly giggly and silly. ‘Emma, can you come pick me up at Festie? I’m here with my friends and we’re done.’

‘What? Why?’

I wanna be normal for a change, Emma, can you just do this for me? I want them to see me getting picked up like a normal kid.

‘Just come and get me, please, Emma,’ she whined.

‘I suppose. I’ll meet you at the lay-by.’

‘You’ll have to come to the car park, the lay-by’s closed for some stupid roadworks or something.’ I heard her friends giggling in the background, and one of them said something. ‘Can you meet us under the P and S?’ Simone added. ‘Right down the bottom, close to the doors, please, we have a lot of stuff. Oh, and can you give Sarah a lift home too?’

I sighed with feeling. ‘I suppose.’

‘Thanks, Emma!’ she said, and hung up. Thanks, really, Emma, she added silently. I wouldn’t ask if you had a class, and I won’t ask again, okay?

‘Tell her she can ask as much as she likes if it makes her feel good about being normal,’ I said to the stone.

Simone’s voice was giddy in my head. You’re the GREATEST, Emma!

‘You won’t be the greatest when she gets your email,’ the stone said.

I rose and collected my bag.

‘Not sending Leo?’ the stone said.

‘Nah, he’s with Meredith. It’ll do me good to get out of the office, even if it is to go through the tunnel.’

It took half an hour to wend my way through the Cross-Harbour Tunnel traffic and reach the top of Kowloon City and the massive shopping mall of Festival Walk. The mall didn’t look much from the outside, a regular two-storey rectangular monolith, but inside it plunged to six storeys below ground level. I entered the spiralling ramp down to the car park, travelling a long time before I reached the boom gate. I pushed my credit card into the slot and wound my way to the bottom floor, another three levels down. The car park was deserted this far down during the day, and I pulled up next to the lobby at the bottom of the escalators below the supermarket.

Simone wasn’t there so I pulled out my phone to call her. There was no signal so I left the car and went towards the escalator lobby. As I opened the door to enter, my hand was grabbed from behind and I was swung away from the door. I didn’t really register who had attacked me; I just knew they were human not demon: three Chinese men, all of them menacingly close. The one holding my wrist was grinning at me.

I didn’t mess around; I moved as quickly as I could and took them down. I pushed just above the heart of the man holding my wrist and his knees buckled, his eyes went blank and he collapsed. I used a simple throat block to make the second feel unable to breathe for a few seconds, and used that time to hit the third under the ear on a pressure point that put him straight to sleep. I returned to the second and shoved him in the solar plexus, knocking him unconscious as well.

I was bending to check their unmoving bodies for ID when I heard panting and running. I looked up, preparing to defend myself again, and saw the Nemesis, Peter Tong. He was wearing a designer polo shirt and a pair of slacks hitched under his bulging stomach. His face was swollen with exertion and one flailing arm held a small pistol. I moved into a long defensive stance, ready to take him down before he could shoot me.

He stopped, bent over his knees to pant for a while, then stood again. ‘What happened?’

‘Put the gun down,’ I said.

He waved the gun again and I ducked as he pointed it at my head. ‘No! I’m here to defend you!’

I moved close to him, put my foot between his feet, bent my knee into him and pushed him onto his back, taking the gun at the same time. He smelt of cooking oil and expensive aftershave.

‘You idiot, you could have killed me,’ I said. I checked the magazine; it was empty. ‘You run around with an empty gun? What are you doing?’

Simone and her friend Sarah came down the escalators and hurried to us.

‘Oh, Emma, were you attacked?’ Sarah said, waving her arms theatrically. ‘What a stroke of luck that Peter was here to save you!’

‘Wait a minute,’ I said, and looked from the Nemesis, still gasping on the ground, to Sarah. ‘How much did he pay you to do this, Sarah?’

‘Oh, you know about it? Three thousand dollars,’ Sarah said. She went to Peter and held out her hand. ‘Come on, pay up.’

‘What happened?’ Simone said. She studied the goons on the ground. ‘These aren’t … These are ordinary …’ She was silent for a moment, thinking. ‘You were mugged by three men, Emma?’

‘Yeah, and Peter came rushing with his dinky cowboy gun to rescue me,’ I said.

‘Wait, he paid Sarah?’ Simone took her friend by the shoulder. ‘He paid you to set Emma up?’

‘Nobody was going to get hurt. It was just a little demonstration to show Emma how much she needs a man in her life to defend her,’ Peter said. He clumsily pulled himself to his feet. ‘What if these men had attacked you and I hadn’t been here to scare them off?’

‘You scared them off?’ Simone said with scorn.

‘Look! They all fainted with fear when they saw me!’ Peter said.

I passed the gun to Simone and she held it as if it were something contaminated. I moved into a serpent-style stance: legs spread, and palms flat and facing down like the head of a snake. I jabbed a few times at the Nemesis’s eyes, making him reel back with shock, then lightly hit him with the tips of my fingers, not enough to hurt him but enough to make him feel it. I struck his chin, throat, shoulders, chest, and then made a flurry of strikes at his stomach, not hard enough to do damage. I changed to monkey style and swept low, taking his feet out from under him, and catching him just as he was about to hit the ground. I lowered him to the floor so that he didn’t hurt himself, and stepped back.

‘I took them down myself,’ I said. ‘I’m a master of seventeen different styles of Kung Fu.’

Sarah stared at me, then turned to Simone. ‘Do you do martial arts too?’

Simone hesitated, then raised her chin. ‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s fun,’ Simone said.

Sarah turned back to Peter. ‘I did what you asked me to. Where’s my money?’

Peter pulled himself back to his feet, then hunched over, grimacing with pain. ‘I’m horribly injured! You beat me! I need an ambulance — and a lawyer!’

‘You’re a good thirty centimetres taller than me,’ I said. ‘Nobody’s going to believe that I hurt you, particularly when there isn’t a mark on you.’

He raised his shirt, revealing his white, glutinous abdomen. ‘I’m covered in bruises!’

‘No, you’re not. Get over yourself.’ I turned away from him. ‘I think you need to find a lift home, Sarah. Or was this loser going to drive you as well as pay you blood money?’

‘My driver’s on the way to pick me up anyway,’ Sarah said with a toss of her head. ‘I don’t need to call my stepmother for a lift. My real mother can’t drive, she doesn’t need to. We have a driver; we don’t drive ourselves around like domestic helpers.’ She turned to Simone. ‘Next time I think I’ll go shopping with someone interesting, not some freak who does martial arts.’

She swung her bags as she turned to go up the escalators, then turned back to Peter. ‘I know who you are, loser, and you owe me. If you don’t pay up soon, I’ll get my boyfriend and some of his friends to spray-paint your store in Central. The inside.’ She swept away.

‘Well, thank you very much,’ Simone said, grabbing her bags and storming towards the car. She turned back to yell at me. ‘Just go and ruin my life one friend at a time, Emma, why don’t you!’

I pointed at the unconscious goons on the ground. ‘How much did you pay them?’ I asked Peter.

He pulled down his polo shirt to cover his stomach, his face red. ‘I never paid anybody! I protected you from these … these … thugs!’

I moved into a serpent stance again. ‘How about protecting yourself from me?’

He opened and closed his mouth a few times, then ran away into the escalator lobby, his arms flailing.

I returned to the car. Simone was sitting in the back, leaning against the door and weeping. I reached into my bag, pulled out a packet of tissues and handed it to her. She took it without looking at me.

I switched on the ignition and drove up towards the surface.

Do you want me to recall that email? the stone said.

No.

Your call, I suppose.

Yes.

We drove home in silence.

Later, at home, Simone came into the office and sat across the desk from me. ‘You are such a cow,’ she said.

I didn’t look away from the screen. ‘Thank you.’

She sighed and put her head in her hands. ‘Sarah is the least snotty of the snotty bitches in my grade.’

‘No, she isn’t, Simone, you are.’

She was silent for a moment, then swept back her honey-coloured hair and sat back in her chair. ‘I just want to be a normal kid. Is that so hard?’

‘I desperately want to be a normal human. Not a demon. Not a snake. Just a woman. Sometimes we have to deal with what we’re given.’

‘Thanks for pointing out all the horrible things that have happened to you because of me.’

‘I think it’s more because of your father,’ I said mildly. ‘Particularly the snake thing.’

‘When he comes back, our lives are gonna be twenty times weirder again, aren’t they?’

‘Probably.’

‘I really don’t want a weird life, Emma. Sometimes, I don’t want him back; I just want to have a normal life here without him.’

I turned to face her. ‘When he was living with your mother, she wouldn’t let him do anything Celestial in front of her. That’s one of the reasons we’re in this predicament in the first place —’

‘You can’t blame Mummy for this!’ she protested.

‘I’m not blaming her. I’ve heard a lot about your mother, Simone, and she was a wonderful, strong, smart woman who put up with an awful lot of bullshit from your dad and his assorted cronies before she put her foot down and told him she’d had enough. She wanted a normal life too. He did his best to give her that, and he did incredibly well. Jade’s told me stories about how your mother sacrificed so much — her career, her travel, everything — and he made the sacrifice too of not taking True Form, of not travelling to the Plane nearly as much, and of staying here with you.’

‘They should have known it would end in disaster,’ Simone said, her voice small. ‘Daddy should have known. Celestials can see the future. He should never have promised Mummy not to take True Form, that was so stupid.’

‘He can’t see the future when those he loves are involved. He’s said that.’

She glanced at me. ‘Really? He didn’t know whether we’d live or die?’

‘He said he could see the possibilities, and they were all nasty. The other Celestials wouldn’t tell him. The minute your mother was murdered, he knew things were heading downhill fast and did the best he could to salvage the situation.’

‘I wonder how things would be if Mummy was still alive,’ she said. ‘She could have taken me to the Plane … Daddy would be at full strength … we would be a family.’

‘I’ve said that myself more than once.’

She dropped her head. ‘Oh, sorry, Emma.’

‘Nothing to be sorry about. But when your father comes back — and he will come back, Simone — you’ll have your family again.’

‘And the weirdness will get twenty times worse.’

‘You missed my point. He’s quite capable of being normal and having a mundane family life if that’s what’s required of him. He did it for your mother, he can do it for you. Well, as normal as is possible in this crazy town.’

She brightened but didn’t reply.

‘There won’t be the low-energy issue, and you won’t be a tiny child who can’t travel to the Plane,’ I went on. ‘It’ll all work out.’

‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘But in the meantime, I have to go back to school tomorrow and be labelled a martial arts freak because I told Sarah the truth.’

‘You know what, Simone? I think every other girl — and boy — there will think you’re the coolest kid ever ’cause you can do the arts, and they’ll ask you for demonstrations. Then, by the end of the week, they’ll have forgotten all about it.’

‘I will not give demonstrations.’

‘I don’t either.’

She smiled. ‘That was a pretty convincing demonstration you gave the Nemesis.’

‘Did you see his tummy?’

She laughed, and it was wonderful to hear. ‘It was like vanilla pudding, oh my God, so flabby!’

I dropped my voice to a low purr. ‘Sexy.’

She laughed even harder.

‘Don’t cut off your friendship with Eva and Sylvie just because they’re Shen, Simone. If you do that, you’re no better than Sarah. They can be ordinary kids, just like you, and you can go shopping with them just like ordinary girls. They like you.’

She paused, thoughtful. ‘I guess you’re right.’

The entrance to the Palace of the Dark Heavens was a huge gate at the end of a long, tree-lined avenue. The road widened there to form a circle so people could be dropped off; and in the circle’s centre was a round pavilion, about four metres across, for those who arrived directly.

When Simone and I landed there was a sedan chair waiting for us next to the pavilion, a couple of tame demons standing unmoving and patient between the carry bars. Two officials in black robes were there too, and two black, heavy-set Chinese horses stood behind the sedan chair, saddled and bridled but not tethered to anything.

The officials bowed low, saluting at the same time. One stepped forward and spoke. ‘Regent of the Dark Northern Heavens, Lady Emma, Dark Lady, First Heavenly General, Serpent Who Wears the Stone of the World. Princess Simone, Only Human Child of the Xuan Wu, Wielder of the Seven Stars. We welcome you to your palace and trust you will be comfortable during your stay. It is our desire to fulfil your every wish. The hearths are warm and the servants ready to do your bidding. Please allow us to guide you to your home in the Northern Heavens.’

I bowed my serpent head to them both individually. ‘True Lord Xu, Religious Master of Ten Thousand Magical Arts and Giver of Supernatural Aid; True Lord Yu, Religious Master of Meritorious Magnificence, Original Lord of the Transmission of the Salvific Miracle, I am honoured by your welcome and greet you most cordially.’

‘I honour your welcome, my Lords,’ Simone said, and saluted. ‘All appears to be in good order, in alignment with the forces of the Celestial and pleasing to the spirit.’

Lord Xu gestured towards the sedan chair. ‘My Ladies, if it pleases you, I have arranged this transportation to your abode in the Heavens, guarded and guided by ourselves to ensure that you reach your destination in safety and comfort.’

We nodded again and I replied, ‘This transportation is most suitable for our needs and we are pleased to take it to our palace.’

The officials bowed to us again, and we walked — or in my case slithered with as much dignity as I could muster — to the sedan chair. I coiled up in my ‘senior’ place on the seat facing forward and Simone sat facing the back. The curtains over the windows closed by themselves and there was a lurch upwards as the demons lifted the chair. There was barely room for Simone’s knees to clear the seat on my side. She leaned back and closed her eyes. The jingling bits and creaking of leather indicated that the officials had mounted their horses. The sedan chair lurched again and began its horrible swaying progression towards the palace entrance.

‘You had it exactly right,’ the stone said. ‘Well done.’

‘It’s a freaking script,’ I said softly. ‘It’s all acting.’

‘It is an important ceremony that emphasises and enhances your rule over the Northern Heavens and attunes the energy flowing in the palace to your own,’ the stone said. ‘The whole thing is vital to the health of your rule and the Heavens themselves.’

‘That is the biggest load of bull I have ever heard,’ Simone said without opening her eyes.

‘How does the Tiger put up with all this?’ I said.

‘The Tiger revels in it,’ the stone said. ‘Michael’s told you about the Harvest Festival, hasn’t he?’

‘Yeah, he says it’s like the German Oktoberfest,’ Simone said. ‘Just a huge excuse to get drunk.’

‘The Tiger performs many rituals during the three days of the festival to ensure the safety and wellbeing of his family,’ the stone said. ‘Michael would be aware of that if he were further up the hierarchy of sons. For those lower down, it’s just a big party.’

‘It’s kind of disturbing the way they wear cloth patches to indicate their relationship to the Tiger so no incest takes place,’ Simone said. She opened her eyes and grabbed the side of the sedan chair as it lurched particularly violently; one of the carriers had stumbled slightly. ‘I mean, what if they met each other outside the palace and got it on? It’s so wrong.’

The stone hesitated slightly, then said, ‘Is this something that concerns you, Simone?’

She leaned back again, her expression stiff. ‘Maybe.’

‘The tradition of “calling” is a way of avoiding this. Mortals do it to mimic Celestials.’

Simone looked interested. ‘Really? I thought it was just about using the title to show respect.’

‘It’s more than just establishing the pecking order in the family,’ the stone said. ‘It’s a way of confirming exactly how closely you’re related. Junior members of the family greet senior members by “calling” them — Poh Poh, Yeh Yeh, Wai Poh for the grandmother on the mother’s side. They establish themselves immediately so everybody present, from other branches of the family too, can straightaway see where they sit in the family network.’

‘Jade told me a story about that,’ Simone said. ‘When my mother’s parents first came to visit us in Hong Kong, I went up to my grandmother and “called” her — Poh Poh probably; I don’t remember it myself. I was used to “calling” everybody in my family, but it confused them. She just stood there and said “What?”’

‘And you were standing there waiting for the “good girl” response that kids always get when they “call” their grandparents,’ I said with amusement. ‘Culture shock both ways just in the first few words.’

‘So it’s actually a way of establishing links?’ Simone said. ‘I never thought of it that way. I thought of it — like you said — as the “pecking order” in the family.’ She grinned. ‘Human families have it easy. What about your sister’s son who’s a couple of hundred years older than you and also a tree? What do you call him?’

‘Jerk-off,’ I said quietly.

Simone nodded with mock solemnity. ‘Very well, Lady Emma, when I next “call” my nephew, I will greet him as “Jerk-off”.’

I stretched out on the cushioned seat. ‘You won’t have to; I’ll probably already have done it.’

The chair lurched again and I nearly slid off the silk cushions onto the floor. I coiled up again, tightening my grip on the silk. ‘Dammit, I hate these things!’

‘I’m not surprised Daddy bought the car,’ Simone said.

The sedan chair stopped suddenly and I landed on my back on the floor in an undignified heap. I raised my tail to give me the leverage to crawl back onto the cushion but it was too late. The curtains flipped open and there we were: Simone sitting like the princess she was, and me in a three-metre-long tangle at her feet.

The officials had dismounted and stood on either side of the door to escort us out. I flipped so that I was the right way up, shook my head, and slithered out of the chair and onto the pavers in front of the palace.

Yue Gui, Simone’s big sister, and Martin, her big brother, waited for us in the forecourt of the palace. They were dressed in Tang-style silk robes: Martin in black and silver; Yue Gui in pink and gold. They bowed and saluted us. Simone and I stood opposite them and bowed back.

‘Welcome, She Zheng Zhi, Gong Zhu, Regent and Princess,’ Yue Gui said.

‘We thank you, Gong Zhu and Wang Chu, Prince and Princess,’ I said.

‘Jie Jie, Ge Ge,’ Simone said, ‘calling’ her relatives.

‘Mei Mei,’ Yue Gui and Martin both responded with pleasure.

Simone’s shoulders slumped slightly. ‘Can we stop with the formal protocol BS now?’

Martin gave her a quick, friendly hug, then smiled down at her with his hands on her shoulders. ‘Yes, we’re done. Come inside and have some lunch.’

I held back. ‘Is Sang Shen here?’

‘No,’ Yue Gui said, amused by my dislike of her son. ‘He’s still under house arrest at home, serving his sentence.’

The four of us sat at the round, six-seater table with a couple of demon servants to attend us. We were in Martin’s apartments in the palace: a courtyard house attached to the rest of the complex by a breezeway. It was on the western side of the complex, towards the centre, next to the main apartment occupied by Xuan Wu when he was present. The informal dining room had a pleasant aspect over a small garden next to the high internal defensive wall for Xuan Wu’s residence.

‘I could provide you with a variety of different foods, Emma,’ Martin said. ‘It doesn’t have to be alive. Snakes eat dead food too. I’ve seen you eat waffles. Why don’t you just try it?’

‘Just give up, Ge Ge,’ Simone said, sounding bored.

‘My serpent form doesn’t need to eat,’ I said for the millionth time. ‘You should know this yourself, Martin, we reptiles …’ My voice trailed off.

‘Yes. We reptiles,’ Martin said, jumping on the point. He gestured towards Yue Gui. ‘We are all reptiles together. Even Simone has a reptilian form. Do not be ashamed of it! And by the Heavens, Emma, do me the honour of accepting my hospitality while you are in this form!’

‘Well, I don’t need to eat for days on end as serpent,’ I said. ‘The food I eat as a human keeps it satisfied. If I’m going to start eating as a snake, then I’ll try things at home and let you know.’

‘This should be your home,’ Yue Gui said. ‘When the Dark Lord returns, I’m sure it will be.’

‘Is it his home?’ I said.

They were silent at that.

I continued. ‘No, Wudangshan is his home. This is one of his offices. And for me it will be too. For you, this is home. Both of you. And you should be named as rulers together.’

‘That would interfere with the alignment of the Heavens and would not be accepted,’ Martin said stiffly. He relaxed. ‘Father will return, and he will retake his place on the throne of the Northern Heavens.’

‘Do you have any idea how long it’s going to take him to come back?’ Simone said.

Martin and Yue Gui shared a look.

‘You do!’ Simone said.

‘You know they aren’t allowed to tell us mortals the future, Simone,’ I said, miserable.

‘Actually, nobody knows,’ Martin said. ‘Father is too elemental, too powerful and too aligned with the forces of nature to be predicted. He is so much a part of the fabric of the universe that he cannot be seen in divination. It is like trying to predict the course of the Earth around the Sun — the Cosmos just says “It will happen, leave it alone.”’

‘Both of us have caught glimpses of him though,’ Yue Gui said, and Martin nodded agreement.

‘You have?’ Simone said, visibly brightening. ‘You’ve seen Daddy?’ She jiggled slightly with excitement. ‘Did he say anything?’

‘We have caught glimpses,’ Yue Gui said with sympathy. ‘His Turtle and his Serpent are at opposite ends of the world. They cry. They seem to be searching for one another — and for you.’

‘And for you,’ I said.

‘We are reptiles,’ Yue Gui said. ‘We lay our eggs and leave them. That is the Way.’

The demons cleared the dishes, and Martin poured more tea all around. I flicked my tongue above it to test the temperature, then carefully lowered my snout into the bowl to drink without tipping it over.

‘See? Told you you’d get there in the end,’ Simone said, waving her own teacup. ‘It just took practice.’

‘And if you used a larger bowl you wouldn’t have any issue with it at all,’ Martin said.

I pulled my dripping snout out of the tea bowl, then wiped it on a napkin laid on the table for me. ‘I’m not drinking out of a dog’s bowl, thank you very much.’

‘Dragon bowl!’ Martin said.

‘You are argumentative today, Ming Gui,’ I said sternly. ‘You need to take some time and meditate on your faults; you are lacking in filial piety towards your senior. You should be more modest and obedient.’

Simone nearly spat out her tea, and Martin’s mouth flopped open with delight.

Yue Gui toasted me with her teacup. ‘I could not have said it better myself, ma’am; you are quite correct in your clarification of Ming Gui’s faults. He should write a ten-page, seven-legged essay outlining his shortcomings and his plan for reparation.’

‘Be careful,’ Martin said with good humour. ‘I may just do that, and make all of you read it.’

Simone shook her hands over the table. ‘No, that’s really not necessary!’ She brightened. ‘But you can write an essay for me on the reproductive variety in different species of annelids.’

‘Worms?’

‘Worms.’

‘Wait, the whole phylum? That’s a hell of a lot of worms! Their reproductive variety is astounding — did you choose this topic yourself?’

Simone nodded. ‘I like worms.’ She sagged slightly. ‘But you’re right, it’s a huge topic.’

‘When’s it due?’ Martin said.

‘Two weeks from tomorrow.’

He put his hand out over the table. ‘Sounds like fun. I’ll help you. Deal?’

She shook his hand. ‘Deal. You like biology too?’

He shrugged. ‘Most interesting field of science there is. Some Celestial biology makes Earthly biology look very tame in comparison.’ He turned to me. ‘Now that we’re finished, I think it’s time to move to general matters at hand. There aren’t many cases for you to hear; I’ll provide you with a list in the morning.’

‘Is Sang Shen still going on about me living in the wrong part of the palace?’ I said.

‘No,’ Yue Gui said. ‘I talked to him and offered him a compromise.’

‘Which is?’

Martin cut in. ‘Emma, if we move the fittings from the Serpent Concubine Pavilion into the Pavilion of Dark Celestial Bliss, will you move there?’

‘That’s what I’ve been asking for! It would solve the whole problem, but they said the fittings couldn’t be moved without disrupting the fung shui of Dark Bliss. The pavilion was designed to be occupied by a human not a snake.’

‘We have a fung shui master who says it can be done with some alterations to the layout to counteract the excessive yang of a snake presence. It will mean making the northern part of the pavilion larger, adding a water feature of some sort and choosing more turtle motifs in the decoration.’

‘Sounds very nice,’ I said. ‘How much will it cost?’

He hesitated. ‘Ten jin of Celestial jade.’

‘Ten jin?’ I said, horrified.

‘That’s, like, ten ounces, isn’t it?’ Simone said. ‘About a million dollars? That’s a bit over the top.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s ten kilos. A hundred and sixty ounces. Ten cattys!’

‘That’s … what … sixteen mill?’ Simone said. ‘To add one room and a water feature? That’s ridiculous.’

‘We could have the whole goddamn pavilion knocked down and rebuilt for that,’ I said.

‘It’s made of aged Celestial teak and ebony from the plantations on the southern shores of the Northern Heavens — the trees from there take five hundred years to grow,’ Martin said. ‘The fittings are Earthly black and white jade trimmed with pure silver. The multicoloured floor tiles are semi-precious stones — topaz, garnet and tourmaline — and it will be hard to find stones that large again.’

I rested my head on the table. ‘I’ll just stay in the concubine quarters. It’s only Sang Shen who’s making a fuss about me moving.’ I raised my head. ‘Look, tell him that I’ll be happy to move into the Empress’s quarters, but he has to pay the ten jin to have it altered.’

Yue Gui nodded. ‘Good idea. I will tell him.’ She smiled slightly.

‘You really love tormenting him, don’t you, Jie Jie,’ Simone said.

Yue Gui shrugged. ‘He is in my custody to serve a sentence. And serve a sentence he will.’

‘Speaking of living quarters, there is one other matter, and then we have nothing else until tomorrow,’ Martin said. He pulled himself upright and spoke more formally. ‘Lady Emma, now that the Northern Heavens have been restored and are no longer a frigid wasteland, it would be most fitting to harmonious Celestial alignment if your family — your parents — were to be living in these Heavens rather than those in the West. This is where they belong as your family, and it is your filial duty to serve them closely. This is best achieved by them moving here.’

I stared at him, shocked. My parents had been living in the West for ten years and now he wanted them to move to a completely new — and strange — place?

‘I can’t see Nanna and Pop wanting to do that,’ Simone said mildly. ‘They’ve made a lot of friends in the West over the last ten years, Martin. I really think they’re more comfortable in the West.’

Martin opened his mouth to argue but I cut him off. ‘I will take the matter under advisement and discuss it with my parents.’

He nodded. ‘Very good, ma’am.’

CHAPTER 4

That evening Simone and I spread out on some beanbags in the Serpent Concubine Pavilion and watched a DVD together, she in her pyjamas and me stretched out next to her in serpent form. When the movie finished, she switched off the DVD and spread her arms. ‘Hug, Emma.’

I slithered next her and she held me close, my head resting on her shoulder.

‘I worry I’m gonna squeeze you and hurt you,’ she said. ‘You’re kinda soft and squishy under the scales.’

‘I think my ribs are pretty springy, and you’ve never hurt me yet,’ I said. I wished I could smile, but opening my mouth made my fangs slide down, which wasn’t a good look.

She kissed the end of my nose. ‘I’m going to bed. See you at breakfast.’

‘Night, Simone.’

She disappeared; she would travel invisible to the apartment she’d commandeered so that nobody would see her in her pyjamas. There were no human-suitable beds in my quarters.

I slithered into my own bedroom, which had a recessed floor area filled with beanbags, and a couple of infra-red heat lamps above to provide heat without light. My quarters were generally kept at a warmer temperature than was comfortable for humans but very pleasant by reptile standards. I put my head next to the edge of the sleeping recess and the stone from my ring, now in the filigree crown on my head, reached out a long green tendril and lifted itself and the crown onto the recess ledge. It grabbed a paper seal from the stack there, reached towards me and stuck the seal onto the top of my head between my eyes.

I stretched out under the ray lamps and performed a mild meditation cycle, moving my serpent chi through the length of my body. The serpent’s chi was different from both human and demon essence; darker and brighter at the same time, and colder because of my cold-bloodedness.

The stone moved around the edge of the recess so it was closer to my head.

‘You’ll be asleep yourself; you won’t know if the seal slips,’ I said drowsily.

‘You’re too casual about the consequences of losing that seal,’ the stone said.

I began to drift off, my vision blurring. ‘I’m more comfortable as a snake anyway; I doubt I’ll lose the form.’

‘I’ll make sure you don’t,’ the stone said, but I barely heard it.

The next morning I joined Simone in her apartment while she ate breakfast. She was already in her school uniform, and she checked the art deco mantle clock on the rosewood side table as she scooped up her cereal.

‘You still have time,’ I said.

She nodded, but finished quickly and bounced up. ‘I have swimming training after school so I’ll be late back.’

‘Stay down there. Monica and Leo can look after you,’ I said.

She hesitated, then shrugged. ‘Okay. I’ll come back on the weekend.’

‘How’s the swimming going?’

‘I’m second best on the team,’ she said proudly. ‘We have a meet in two weeks.’

‘Book me in,’ I said.

‘Already did.’ She came around the table, put her hand on the back of my neck and kissed the top of my head. ‘See you on the weekend, Emma.’

‘I’ll call you later,’ I said.

After she’d gone, I took myself over to the palace’s administrative centre. The Serpent Concubine Pavilion was on the western side of the palace complex, with only the servants’ quarters and the support areas — the laundry and kitchens — further north of it. There had only ever been one Serpent Concubine in the entire history of the palace, and nobody would say much about her. John had never bothered to have the Serpent Pavilion returned to a human-style dwelling, and nobody had spoken much about his reasons for that either. The servants wouldn’t even tell me whether the Serpent Concubine had died or had left him; they all suggested that I contact the Archivist for the full story.

The palace was divided into two rectangular areas: the residential section took up the northern half; the administrative section, the southern half. A four-metre internal wall with a single gate separated them, entirely blocking off one side from the other. Tradition called for the Emperor and his most senior advisors — and consorts — to be carried around the complex in sedan chairs, but John had never bothered with that, preferring to walk through the complex so he could check the status of the different areas as he passed. He was a very early — by a few hundred years — practitioner of ‘management by walking around’. In more recent times, apparently, he’d taken to riding a motorbike around the complex, occasionally doing outrageous jumps over some of the decorative semicircular bridges in the gardens. The resulting skid marks on the pristine white marble had caused the domestic demons much grief.

John’s welcome in the various sections of the palace would have been very different from mine. As my three-metre-long snake form slithered through the gardens, the demons either froze with terror or skittered away. I’d gone through all the support sections the first time I’d visited the palace, greeting the demons and trying to allay their fears, but to no avail. Maybe their reaction had something to do with the Serpent Concubine; they might have had bad experiences with snakes in the past. Or maybe it was just that I brought back nasty memories of the Snake Mothers in Hell. Then again, maybe it was just because I was a snake.

I reached the wall that divided the residential and administrative areas. The gate building was set on top of three terraces, each bordered with black marble balustrades. The building itself was around ten metres to a side, built of gunmetal-coloured stone with a traditional upward-curving, black-tiled roof. It had thick hardwood doors on both sides reinforced with metre-wide black metal studs. I slithered up the three flights of stairs and found the reception area empty, except for four humanoid demon guards at the gate’s two doors. They stood to attention as I passed and thumped their chests with their fists, but their expressions weren’t happy.

The administrative section of the palace was much more open and formal. The main buildings sat on three-tiered terraces in the centre of the rectangular area, while smaller buildings — for the support staff — flanked the sides. At the far end of the dividing wall was another gatehouse: the main entry into the palace. The long avenue up to the palace was visible through the gate’s open doors.

A group of officials were waiting for me with a sedan chair, all of them on one knee. I nodded to them and swiftly slithered around them to avoid the chair. They jumped up and followed me, then stopped and saluted again when Martin appeared on the top balcony of the central administrative building. He waved to me and came down the steps.

‘Rise,’ he said to the officials as he came closer, and they all rose and bowed again. He waved them away. ‘I will guide Lady Emma to the hearings.’

I accompanied him up the stairs.

‘The petitions should only take a couple of days,’ he said. ‘Since the energy has returned to the North, the residents have had much less to complain about and the petitions have dried up.’

‘That’s wonderful news,’ I said.

We entered the Pavilion of Dark Justice together, and all those present fell to one knee. The pavilion was rectangular and made of gunmetal-coloured polished stone with a black roof, same as the other buildings. The doors to the hearing room opened in front of us; inside, officials sat behind desks and gathered the information required for the day’s proceedings. The petitioners would wait their turn in luxuriously appointed waiting rooms along the sides of the pavilion, with demon servants shuttling backwards and forwards to tend to their needs.

Lily, one of the court administrators, rose from her desk and walked to the doorway. ‘All salute Regent General Da Na Huo and Tai Zi Ming Gui, the Bright One.’

The staff fell to one knee and saluted us.

‘Rise,’ I said. ‘Return to your duties.’

They returned to what they’d been doing without any fuss.

‘They finally got it,’ I said with relief.

‘Well, some of them have worked for more traditional Shen,’ Martin said as we entered the hearing room and climbed the dais to the throne. ‘An order like that could be a trick to see if they were truly showing respect.’

‘Sounds stupid to me,’ I grumbled under my breath as I pulled myself up onto the black silk cushions. ‘Okay, what have we got?’

Lily approached with a document printed from one of the computers in the office. ‘Not many changes to the list I emailed you last week. Three disputes on the ownership of demon servants, as in the email. One new case, not previously mentioned: about the parentage of a particularly fine colt that was born over at the House of Ling only yesterday —’

‘The mare dropped?’ I cut in. ‘I must go have a look.’

‘It’s palomino, Emma,’ Martin said.

I hissed with amusement. ‘Somebody’s stallion’s been sneaking around! No way could that mating produce a palomino.’

Lily winced. ‘There is some suggestion that the colt was fathered by a horse demon.’

‘Do we have horse demons here?’ I said.

Both of them nodded.

‘You have a list, right?’ I said.

Lily nodded again. ‘On my desk, ma’am. There are three or four possible fathers.’

‘The owner of the mare is petitioning … for what?’ I said. ‘We just do a DNA test, establish the father, slap a fine on the owner of the demon stallion for failing to control the animal, end of story.’

‘The owner of the mare is petitioning that the owner of the stallion be reprimanded for not controlling his demons. She says the mare has been ruined by carrying a demon foal and she wants a very large sum in compensation.’

‘I see. When’s the hearing on that?’

‘It’s one of the last — I knew you’d want to see the files first,’ Lily said. ‘You must order the DNA test and then decide on how much to fine the owner of the stallion.’

‘It’s possible the owner of the sire may claim the colt as well,’ Martin said.

‘As soon as you provide me with all the details, and we establish the colt’s parentage, we’ll take it from there,’ I said. ‘What else?’

‘One other petition delivered just yesterday — Sang Shen —’

I hissed with frustration. ‘Sometimes I almost wish he had been executed!’

‘Sang Shen has raised the price of the leaves from his mulberry tree exponentially,’ Lily said. ‘The Blue Dragon has requested a mediation to discuss renegotiating the contract for provision of the leaves.’

‘He’s a tree, they’re his leaves, he can set the price. Tell the Dragon to get lost,’ I said.

‘He’s charging ten times the weight of the leaves in Celestial Jade.’

That stopped me. ‘That’s insane!’

‘The worst part is that the Dragon is prepared to pay something close to this, but he wants to squeal about it first.’

‘This is a bad precedent. Other leaf suppliers will raise their prices to match Sang Shen’s, and the rise in costs will drive up the price of silk,’ I said, lowering my head to think. I looked up at them. ‘Ensure that this is a completely closed court; this is an extremely private matter between Sang Shen and the Blue Dragon. Nobody must know that the Dragon’s silkworms eat the leaves from Sang Shen’s tree.’

‘I think part of this lawsuit is Sang Shen trying to make it known that he is the provider of the leaves,’ Martin said.

‘That sounds like him,’ I said. ‘He vowed to the Dragon that he wouldn’t reveal himself as the source of the leaves, but he’s been dropping heavy hints in the public domain ever since. He’s followed the letter of the agreement but definitely not the spirit.’

‘You could reprimand him for that and order him to fix the price of his leaves,’ Lily said.

‘That would not be fair to either of them. I must hear this in secret, and emerge with a judgement that’s fair to both of them.’

‘What if neither of them agrees with your decision?’ Martin said.

‘If both of them are upset about the decision, then I think I’ve succeeded in mediating it fairly,’ I said.

Three days later, on the evening before the final day of hearings, I was settling down to sleep when a demon servant crept into my quarters and hesitated beside the door.

‘Don’t be afraid,’ I said gently. ‘Tell me.’

‘The Lord of the East, the Blue Dragon Qing Long, is here and requests audience, madam,’ the demon said, its voice barely above a whisper.

‘Show him into the formal salon,’ I said. After the demon had gone I tapped the stone with my nose. ‘Hop back on — the Dragon wants to talk to me.’

The stone grumbled quietly as it floated its setting onto the top of my head. I twisted my head a couple of times to make sure the crown fitted comfortably, then I slithered to the salon. The audience chamber was the place where the Emperor and his concubine would formally meet and discuss any issues arising from the management of the household. I couldn’t imagine John ever using it — he wasn’t a fan of formality — and so wasn’t surprised that the furniture, which was probably at least a thousand years old, appeared as new. I slid up onto the black and silver silk cushions of the throne, which was two metres long and intricately carved with serpents.

The Dragon was escorted in by the demon; he fell to one knee in front of me, saluting. ‘This humble servant greets his master,’ he said, then rose again.

I bowed my head. ‘You are welcome, my Lord. Please, sit and drink tea with me.’

A stool that looked very much like a piano stool was brought for the Dragon, and a small table with tea was placed in front of him. The demons were so quiet and smooth in their movements it was as if the furniture arrived by itself.

I stretched out on the soft cushions, enjoying the sensation on my serpent belly. ‘What can I do for you?’

The Dragon raised his teacup. ‘Finest Celestial tea I’ve had in a long while, ma’am.’ He sat slightly straighter. ‘I know you don’t like wasting time on formal protocol, so I’ll get straight to the point. I hear that you are living in this pavilion designed for a concubine rather than in the Empress’s Pavilion as is fitting.’

‘The architect estimates a cost of ten jin of jade to make the necessary alterations to the Dark Bliss Pavilion. I’m just as comfortable staying here, so we won’t be making the changes,’ I said.

He nodded, unsurprised. ‘That is a great deal of money, ma’am. But if you extended the Pavilion of Dark Bliss, the fung shui aspects would be perfectly aligned. As well as that, you would have more room for your clothes, your make-up, all your feminine necessities —’

I cut him off. ‘Snakes don’t need clothes or make-up. Where is this going?’

‘One day you will be able to take human form here, ma’am, I’m sure of it. If you were to extend Dark Bliss as they have suggested, it would not only improve the harmonious resonance of the building, it would provide you with more space for all your needs.’

‘I fail to see where this is heading, Dragon.’

‘I would hate to see a beautiful lady such as yourself unable to make herself as attractive as she possibly can for the return of her lover. I would like to help.’

‘You want to help? How?’

‘How about I pay for the additions to the pavilion? It would be my pleasure, ma’am. I know that the Northern coffers have been drained by the recent difficulties, while the East remains strong. Let me do this thing for you.’

I hesitated a moment, studying him, then said, ‘And what do you want in return?’

‘Well, I will have more of a budget for the renovation if I do not have to pay such ridiculously exorbitant prices for the leaves for my silk factories.’

I stared at him, stunned.

He shrugged and smiled slightly. ‘You are a beautiful woman, Lady Emma. It is such a shame that you do not have the space to allow you to enhance your appearance to the utmost — for your Lord, of course. With the space for proper baths and personal care staff here, you would always look your best. I can provide you with clothing assistants, make-up artists and hair designers. You will want for nothing.’

I opened my mouth then closed it again.

‘So, would you like me to pay for the alterations?’ the Dragon said, his face full of hope.

‘I tell you what,’ I said, ‘I will take your offer into consideration when I am hearing the case tomorrow.’

He bowed his head again. ‘That is all I can ask for: some small amount of consideration for the care I am taking of you.’

‘Yes, I’ll be absolutely damn sure to remember that you tried to bribe me to give you a sympathetic outcome,’ I said with force. ‘I’ve half a mind to find in the tree’s favour without even having a hearing. In fact, I should double whatever price he’s asking for his leaves.’ I moved my head and the first metre or so of my body closer to the Dragon’s face. ‘You insult me by attempting to corrupt me. Is this the way you do business in the East?’

The Dragon replaced his teacup. ‘This is the way I do business everywhere, because it’s the way business is done.’ He disappeared.

‘Asshole!’ I said, and slithered down off the throne and headed back to my sleeping quarters.

‘You should do what you said you’d do: find in the tree’s favour tomorrow,’ the stone said.

‘No, I’m going to hear this case fairly and impartially,’ I said. ‘The fact he’s tried to bribe me doesn’t change the facts of the case, and I will hear it based on the facts rather than on how much I intensely dislike the two parties involved in it.’

‘Which one do you hate more?’ the stone said.

I slid into my sleeping pit. ‘If I had a choice of which one I’d hang upside down over a scorpion pit, I’d choose both of them.’

‘Would you like me to order you a scorpion pit? I can get one about three metres across, filled with the most enormous, highly venomous scorpions you ever saw. Hours of fun for the whole family.’

‘You’re worse than they are,’ I said, and stretched out to sleep on the cushions.

CHAPTER 5

The next morning I entered the court for the final day of hearings. The guards fell to one knee and saluted me, then rose and held their swords in front of them. I nodded to Lily and Martin, slithered up the dais and onto the chair behind the desk. A demon servant took up position next to me, ready to turn the pages of the documents, saving me the embarrassment of having to turn them with my mouth.

‘First case today,’ I said, ‘the horse one; about time we had something interesting. Bring the case of Ling versus Toi.’

Ling and Toi entered the room and kneeled before me; they were both dragons in human form.

‘Up you get,’ I said, and they rose, their expressions suspicious at my informal tone. ‘I’d like to hear from your own mouth, Mr Toi, exactly what the hell you were thinking when you did this.’

Toi, a slender, elderly gentleman in a black silk robe, was the owner of the demon stallion. He bowed his head slightly to speak. ‘This was an accident, Lady Regent. The stallion concerned broke from its restraints in the middle of the night and went to Honoured Miss Ling’s residence under its own volition, probably drawn by the scent of her fine mare in heat.’

‘You had the stallion restrained?’ I said.

‘It was in a high-walled stall, but it managed to escape,’ Toi said. ‘I do not understand how such a thing could have happened, ma’am. I provide the best accommodation for my beasts. This will never happen again.’

I turned to the woman, who also wore a black silk robe, probably dressed down to show her distress. ‘Miss Ling, you claim that the mare is ruined and request compensation of ten jin of Celestial Jade. Has the mare been injured by bearing the foal and cannot bear any more for you?’

‘She has been contaminated by the demon essence of the stallion,’ Ling said, her jaw clenched with anger. ‘This foal is half-demon and an abomination. I will never be able to sell another foal from the mare, as any future foal will be tainted by the fact that the mare has been covered by a demon. The mare is worthless.’

‘I have investigated this claim — something along the lines of a Celestial urban myth — that once a female animal has been impregnated by a demon, the demonic essence remains.’ I nodded to the demon secretary and she pulled out the folder containing the DNA samples. ‘I have scientific evidence that this is not true: the mare’s future offspring will not be contaminated in any way.’

Toi gave Miss Ling a triumphant look.

‘That’s as it may be, ma’am,’ Ling said, ‘but everybody still believes it, and my mare’s foals will no longer be as prized — or as valuable — as they once were.’

‘Madam,’ Toi said, ‘please, go to the stables and view the colt. It is exceptional. I do not dispute that it is the progeny of my stallion, but I do dispute that the foal is an abomination. The mother is quite capable of bearing many more fine foals, both pure animal and half-demon.’

I checked the notes in front of me. ‘You request ownership of the colt and have offered Miss Ling two jin of jade for it. She is asking for ten, which is the value of the mare and any future progeny she would have borne.’

Miss Ling spread her arms. ‘This mare is only seven years old, she had many more years of fruitfulness in her. This is a tragedy.’

‘If he paid the ten jin, would you give him the mare and the foal?’ I asked Miss Ling.

She nodded, sober. ‘That I would, ma’am.’

‘I would like to see this mare again and view the colt.’ I called towards the back of the courtroom: ‘Hey, Lily, do we have time this afternoon? What else do I have on?’

‘Only one more, scheduled for 2 pm, ma’am,’ Lily called back, to the shock and amusement of those present. ‘The closed hearing.’

‘Only one more? That’s a relief.’ I slithered down off my chair. ‘Get the demon driver to bring the car around, I want to have a look at these horses.’ I nodded to Lily. ‘Arrange the usual witness and note-taking rigmarole, will you?’

‘Sure thing, ma’am,’ Lily said, and went out to organise the details.

I saw Toi and Ling share a lightning-fast look and realised this whole thing was a setup. I stopped, nearly changing my mind about seeing the horses — but what the hell. Foals were cute. I raised my snout to them. ‘Want to come in my car?’

They bowed, formal again, and agreed. I sat in the front next to the driver, and Toi and Ling sat side by side in the back.

These two ever been an item? I asked the stone.

If the stone could sigh, it would have. Emma, with people who live this long, I think everybody’s been an item with everybody else at some stage. These are both dragons, and not related to each other; he’s spawn of Qing Long and she’s one of the daughters of the Dragon King. Of course they’ve ‘done it’.

I turned my head to see them. ‘I think I should just cut to the chase here. Do you want to give the foal to me or to Simone?’

Ling opened and closed her mouth a few times, then glanced at Toi, speechless.

‘I have no idea what you are talking about, ma’am,’ Toi said.

I rested my chin on the top of the car seat. ‘You two want to dispel this myth about demon essence ruining animals. You arranged for the stallion to “escape” and impregnate the mare. I’ve heard how fine this mare is, Miss Ling; the White Tiger has been trying to arrange for his own stallions to cover her — he’s jealous as all hell about her. You’re taking me to look at her so I fall in love with the foal and want to take him as my own — or as Simone’s private riding horse. If I take the foal, your mare will become even more prestigious and people will be forced to overcome their prejudice about demon essence contaminating livestock if they want to buy any further foals from her. Am I correct so far?’

Toi sat back, his face full of shock. ‘I’d heard how intelligent you are, ma’am, but this is exceptional.’

‘I just put two and two together,’ I said. ‘It’s a great idea. You should have contacted me before. I would be happy to take the foal and prove to the Celestial that this myth is untrue. Stone, is Simone out of school yet?’

‘No, she’s still in class,’ the stone said. ‘Lunch isn’t for another hour or so.’

‘Too bad, she misses out on cute baby horses,’ I said.

Noooo, Simone wailed in my head. Cute babies! I love cute babies!

Ling and Toi shared a grin.

‘How about I take this one, the demon spawn,’ I said. ‘Simone can take the next one, the progeny of one of the Tiger’s stallions or something, a pure animal horse that she can ride here in the Heavens. I’ll have to take mine down to the Earthly and ride it there; I can’t really do much as a snake.’

‘That’s what we were hoping for, ma’am,’ Miss Ling said. ‘We would gladly give each of you such a steed in return for your endorsement that the myth is untrue.’

I hissed with amusement. ‘I won’t let you give them to me, I’ll pay you fair recompense for them. It is not right for the ruler to take gifts from the subjects.’

They bowed their heads, obviously delighted at the turn events were taking.

‘I think the prestige you’ll gain from me and Simone both riding this mare’s progeny will override any prejudice people have about the demon thing,’ I said. ‘I’ll arrange for the Tiger to make his most prized stallions available to you —’

‘He already did, ma’am,’ Ling said, cutting me off, then bobbed her head. ‘I apologise for interrupting.’

‘Is he in on this too?’ I said.

‘He may have had something to do with this, yes,’ Toi said.

‘I am going to tear his whiskers off,’ I said. ‘Trying to put one over on me. Who does he think he is?’

I love you too, baby, the White Tiger said into my ear. I told these two morons that you’d see through their little plot, but they thought you’d be as stupid as his dad — Qing Long — and they’d have to go through all this roundabout bullshit to get where they wanted to be. Stupid assholes, both of them, typical dragons. But it’s a good cause: this mare of hers is a freak of nature, exceptional animal, and his stallion is one of the finest demon horses anywhere. Anything to make people get over this ‘contaminated by demon’ bullshit! Oh, and if you like, I’d be delighted to train the little bastard for you when he’s old enough to be backed.

Miss Ling’s estate sat on the hills to the south of the capital of the Northern Heavens, with large post-and-rail paddocks and a central equestrian complex. She provided riding, racing and war horses for the Celestial community, and had recently diversified into competition horses as well. Her longstanding rivalry with the White Tiger was well-known throughout the Celestial and there were sometimes bets placed on which of the two would win a particular equestrian event.

The foaling yards were close to the main house for easy monitoring. We entered the stable block and Miss Ling guided us to the mare in question; she was located in one of the stalls, its floor lined with sawdust bedding. The foal was with her, gambolling around the stall. Its legs looked impossibly long and it seemed unable to control all four at once; each splayed out in a different direction and the foal glared at them, as if ordering them to behave. The mare watched with bemused tolerance and obvious affection.

The mare was an eventing horse, a thoroughbred that excelled at both dressage and show jumping. Miss Ling had won a couple of Earthly competitions riding her, and there had been much speculation in the Celestial about the price the foal would command when Miss Ling had the mare serviced with frozen semen from one of the world’s top eventing stallions.

‘The stallion that provided the semen was black, with no dilution gene, and everybody knows it,’ Miss Ling said. ‘This mare is bay, and also has no dilution gene, so a palomino or buckskin from the cross is impossible.’

‘My demon stallion is palomino, however,’ Mr Toi said. ‘There was a reasonable chance that he would throw a dilute foal, which would be a loud signal to everybody that my horse was the father. We succeeded: the foal is palomino, red dilute, and a fine little horse. Everybody in the Celestial is aware of the parentage, and they’ll have to get over their prejudice about demon foals if they want to take advantage of this mare’s progeny in future.’

‘It was worth the risk,’ Miss Ling said. ‘We planned to gift this half-demon foal to you; then give a natural-horse foal from one of the Tiger’s stallions to Princess Simone. After that, future progeny will be …’ She searched for the word.

‘A free-for-all,’ I said. ‘Everybody will want one.’

‘We’re hoping that some may even want full brothers to this one as well, since you or the Princess will be riding it,’ Mr Toi said.

‘How dark’s the dad?’ I said. The foal had a cream body with a lighter cream mane and tail; it would take a while for his adult colour to show.

‘The stallion is a very brilliant gold with a completely white mane and tail,’ Mr Toi said. ‘This little fellow will probably be just as rich a colour.’ He leaned on the stable door to watch the foal. ‘My demon stallion is one of the finest mounts on the Celestial — smart, reliable and loyal. If this foal shows any of his traits he will be exceptional.’

‘Sometimes such a mating can produce a fully natural animal,’ Miss Ling said. ‘But we’ve had the foal tested and he has demon essence flowing through his blood.’

‘What are the general implications?’ I said. ‘Will I need to take any special care if I have him as a saddle horse?’

Ling and Toi both shook their heads.

‘My stallion is highly intelligent, to the point of being self-aware,’ Toi said. ‘And this foal seems to have the intelligence of an extremely smart animal. I don’t think you’ll need to give him special attention, and he won’t ever talk —’

‘You stay away from my mummy!’ the foal yelled, sounding like a small boy. He was standing in front of his mother, gangly legs spread wide for support, his tiny carpet-like tail twitching with aggression and his teeth bared.

‘Well, how about that,’ Toi said with amusement.

‘I’m not going to hurt your mummy,’ I said to the foal. ‘I like horses.’

The foal lowered his bulbous forehead, still glaring at me. ‘You look like something that would eat horses.’

I lowered my head as well. ‘Well, I don’t. Usually I take the same form as these two people here, and I look after horses.’

The foal looked back at his mother, who was apparently accustomed to all sorts of Celestial creatures viewing her and was unperturbed by my presence. He glanced from Ling to Toi, unsure.

‘Your mummy isn’t worried about me,’ I said.

‘Mummy’s not real smart,’ the foal said. He backed up slightly so he was closer to her. ‘She don’t talk.’

‘This foal just became worth ten jin of jade all by himself,’ Toi said, still amused. ‘He’s smart and courageous and isn’t afraid to speak his mind.’

‘I can’t take him as a saddle horse now,’ I said. ‘He’s much too valuable as breeding stock.’

Ling and Toi both shook their heads.

‘No, no,’ Toi said. ‘Half-demon horses aren’t useful as breeding stock, they’re always sterile. We can geld him for you and you can use him as a riding horse, no problem at all.’

‘I don’t feel good about doing that to a sentient creature,’ I said, watching the foal.

He overcame his fear and approached me cautiously and with curiosity, although his tiny tail still flapped with agitation. ‘Are you talking about me?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘We think you are very beautiful and all of us want to own you when you grow up into a fine, strong horse.’

He stared at me with round, liquid eyes. ‘You think I’m beautiful?’

I lowered my head even further so my nose was level with his. ‘I think you’re the most beautiful little horse I’ve ever seen.’

‘Aww, gee.’ He dropped his head and turned away. He skittered back to his mother, butted her belly a few times with his nose, and began to suck noisily, his tail going round like a propeller.

‘He may not need gelding if he gets the right training and the hormones don’t fill him full of attitude,’ Toi said. ‘We’ll just have to see how he goes. If by six months he’s attacking people on sight and mounting everything he can, you can make the decision then.’

‘He’s a total sweetheart,’ I said.

‘So, would you like to take him as your own and give Simone the next one?’ Mr Toi said. ‘We’ll have the mare covered by a natural horse that’s the right mix of quality and temperament to give Princess Simone a saddle horse that’s smart, reliable and has enough talent to do anything she likes with it.’

‘She may want this little guy,’ I said. ‘I’m not too fussed either way. Let’s see what happens after she’s taken a look at him.’

Ling and Toi both stood formally with their hands in front of them and bowed their heads to me.

‘Ma’am, you have done a great thing here. With both you and Simone riding horses that are half-brothers from this mare we will finally be able to destroy this prejudice that exists about half-demon animals,’ Toi said.

‘I can’t believe anybody would be prejudiced against something as exceptional as this foal,’ I said as we made our way to the main house.

‘He is exceptional, ma’am,’ Ling agreed. ‘It is very unusual for a half-demon horse to talk.’ She nodded to the demon servant that opened the door for her. ‘Most half-demon horses are small, weak and dull. But Mr Toi’s stallion is different, and I hope all his progeny turn out to be as exceptional as this little one.’

‘Where did the demon stallion come from?’ I said.

‘He just turned up,’ Toi said.

We sat on the rosewood couches in the living room and a demon servant brought tea. Miss Ling poured.

‘I was demon-hunting in the mountains of Fukien when I came across this stallion,’ Toi continued. ‘He was injured, and appeared to have been pierced by some sort of lance several times. I tamed him and brought him here. He’s been a fine, intelligent and brave steed for me and is now my preferred mount when demon-hunting. He is completely fearless.’

‘He talks too?’ I said.

‘That he does, ma’am,’ Toi said.

Miss Ling shrugged. ‘We took a gamble that Mr Toi’s stallion would sire something special. This is his first covering and the results are beyond expectation.’

‘Our plan worked out far better than we could have hoped,’ Toi said, and he and Ling shared a smile.

‘If the Dark Lord were still ruler here, would you have discussed your plans with him from the start?’ I said.

They both paused for a moment, thinking, then Miss Ling nodded. ‘Probably. He is always straightforward in his dealings and works hard to overcome prejudice in all its forms.’

‘But because I’m a woman, you felt you needed to play this charade?’ I said.

They both appeared concerned and I rushed to reassure them. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not upset about this. I just want you guys to feel that you can approach me the same way you could approach John … Xuan Wu. I want to build a good relationship with the citizens of the North.’

‘It was more that you are from the Earthly, ma’am, and Earthly politics usually involve manipulation instead of honest dealing,’ Toi said. ‘You are not resident on the Celestial and not an Immortal. People on the Earthly are usually out for themselves first, working to promote their own interests.’

‘Well, I’m not like that,’ I said. ‘I work for the good of the citizens of the Heavens first. I don’t feel I’m doing a terribly good job, but hopefully by the time Xuan Wu returns I won’t have made a complete mess of it.’

I lowered my snout and delicately sipped my tea; it was sow mei, my favourite. I felt a quiet rush of satisfaction at managing to drink it without spilling any.

‘What the Dark Lady is trying to say,’ the stone added, ‘is that none of you need to play games to get things done. All you have to do is contact her, say what you need and she’ll work hard to get it for you. You should pass the word along.’

‘Uh … yeah,’ I said.

One of the demon servants, appearing as an elderly man in traditional black and white, came to us and bowed. ‘The Princess of the Northern Heavens is here.’

‘Show her in, don’t make her wait!’ Miss Ling said, gesturing quickly with one hand.

Simone came in and leaned over the back of the sofa to kiss the top of my serpent head. She smiled at Ling and Toi. ‘Can I see the baby?’

They both rose and formally bowed to Simone but she waved them down. ‘Please, you know I don’t like this formal rigmarole. I’d just like to see the foal, if I could.’

‘You’re supposed to be in school,’ I said.

‘They won’t notice I’m gone if I run back quick enough. It’s nearly lunchtime anyway.’

I slithered off the couch and onto the floor. ‘Do you mind if she takes a look too?’

‘Not at all,’ Miss Ling said, and guided us back out to the stables.

The foal was curled up at his mother’s feet, dozing. He pricked up his ears when we entered but didn’t open his eyes.

‘He’s so pretty,’ Simone whispered.

‘Would there be any issue with him travelling between Heaven and the Earthly if Simone decided to take him?’ I said.

‘He was born here so can travel to both Planes when he is old enough,’ Toi said. ‘He can be tamed with the Fire Essence Pill if he shows demonic tendencies.’

‘Then he would probably be a better match for you, Simone,’ I said. ‘I can only ride on the Earthly, so I might as well get a natural horse.’

‘Can I go in and pet him?’ Simone said.

Miss Ling nodded, smiling slightly. ‘Of course. Take care of his hooves when he tries to stand up.’

She opened the stall gate and Simone carefully approached the foal. He opened one eye and looked at her with curiosity. ‘You smell nice.’

‘He talks?’ Simone said in disbelief.

He dropped his head, shy. ‘Is that wrong?’

‘No, no,’ she said. ‘It just means that you’re special.’ She kneeled and raised one hand cautiously towards him. ‘Can I touch you?’

He raised his nose to sniff her hand, then licked it. ‘You taste good too.’

She carefully ran her hand over the soft hair of his mane between his ears and down the front of his face. He nuzzled into her hand. ‘You feel nice. I like you.’

Simone’s face softened.

‘I can’t take him now,’ I said with amusement. ‘She’s smitten.’

‘When you grow up to be a big, strong, beautiful horse,’ Simone said gently to him, ‘will you let me ride you and take you all over the place and show everybody what a special horse you are?’

He studied her appraisingly. ‘You won’t be too heavy?’

‘Not when you’re all grown up,’ she said.

He pulled himself clumsily to his feet and she quickly moved back to avoid his tiny, sharp hooves. He stood and watched her, his tail flicking, then he glanced towards me, Ling and Toi. ‘Do I get to choose who rides me?’

Simone put her hand out towards him. ‘I think you can choose between me and the snake lady, who loves you just as much as I do.’

He shoved his forehead into her hand. ‘Then I choose you, ’cause I really like you.’

She bowed her head as she stroked his ears. ‘My name’s Simone.’

He licked her hand again. ‘I don’t have a name.’ He dropped his head and eyed her shyly. ‘Can you give me a name? I’d really like that.’

‘I’ll have to think of something that’s as impressive and handsome as you are,’ she said. ‘I can’t just call you Freddo Frog or anything.’

‘Freddo Frog! I love that!’ He gambolled around the stall, flicking his tail. ‘I’m Freddo Frog, the wonder horse. I belong to Simonny, the wonder girl!’ He turned to her and reared, then dropped and kicked out his tiny back feet. ‘Freddo Frog and Simonny!’

Simone fell to sit on the straw, hysterical with laughter. Freddo lay down next to her and rested his head in her lap, gazing up at her. ‘Thank you, Simonny.’

She cupped his head with both hands. ‘You’re welcome, Freddo. Can I come and visit you every day?’

‘I’d like that,’ he said.

Sorry, Simone mouthed to Miss Ling over the top of his head. She switched to silent speech. You should choose a stud name for him; you can’t call him Freddo Frog!

‘Ling’s Golden Freddo (DX) it is,’ Miss Ling said.

‘DX?’ Simone said.

‘It’s an indicator we put at the end of the stud name to show demonic offspring,’ Miss Ling said. She turned to me. ‘What does Freddo Frog mean anyway?’

‘It’s a small chocolate bar that you can buy in Australia,’ I said. ‘Simone loves them.’

Ling gestured with her head towards Simone and Freddo. ‘I think this is love as well.’

‘You have to go back to school, you know that, Simone,’ I said.

Freddo popped up onto his feet again, excited. ‘Can I come with you?’ He stamped his hooves and looked from me to Simone. ‘Can I?’

‘Your mummy won’t be able to come with us,’ Simone said. ‘You should stay with her here — she has good milk for you to grow big and strong.’

‘Oh yeah,’ Freddo said, eyes wide. ‘I’m hungry!’

‘Oh, he’s definitely your horse,’ I said to Simone as Freddo started nursing again.

Simone rose and brushed off the sawdust. ‘You don’t mind, Emma?’

I moved back as Miss Ling let Simone out of the stall. ‘Not at all. He’s perfect for you; a steed fit for a princess.’

Freddo stopped feeding and turned to look at us. ‘You’re going, Simonny?’

‘You eat and then have a big sleep so you have lots of energy when we play tomorrow,’ Simone said.

‘Okay!’ Freddo returned to his mother, his tail frantically waving as he sucked.

‘We need to get back to the palace, I have one more hearing,’ I said. I bowed my head to Ling and Toi. ‘Please, if there is anything you need that I can help with, do not hesitate to contact myself, Ming Gui or Yue Gui.’

Ling and Toi bowed, their hands held formally at their waists. ‘We appreciate your time and presence, my Lady,’ Ling said, ‘and look forward to serving you in future.’

Simone put her arm around my neck as we made our way back to the car. ‘Let’s have lunch with Martin and Yue Gui before I go back to school,’ she said. ‘Five dollars says Martin tells the story about the archery contest again.’

‘You’re on,’ I said. ‘He only told that one yesterday, no way would he think to bore us with it again.’

Simone grinned. ‘Five bucks, all mine. I’m rich!’

CHAPTER 6

Sang Shen entered the courtroom accompanied by his mother, Yue Gui — Simone’s older sister — and a single demon servant. The Blue Dragon was attended by five lithe young women in multi-layered Ming robes. Both Sang Shen and the Dragon stepped forward, kneeled and saluted me, then rose again.

‘Sang Shen,’ I said.

Sang Shen saluted. ‘This humble Shen is present and honoured.’

‘Qing Long.’

The Dragon glared at me with his turquoise eyes, flicked his long hair over his shoulder and gracefully saluted. ‘This …’ I watched with amusement as the words stuck in his throat. ‘This humble Shen is present and honoured.’

‘The applicant will present his case,’ I said.

Sang Shen gestured towards his demon servant and the servant passed him a scroll. He opened it and read aloud: ‘This humble tree Shen provides mulberry leaves whose quality and purity are unmatched on any Plane. Since this Shen’s death sentence was suspended, and the Heavens have been rejuvenated by your own most wise and generous self, his leaves have become even richer and more beneficial, and the silk produced by worms fed on these leaves is unparalleled in quality, the finest silk that has ever come out of the East.’

‘That’s because it’s the East,’ the Dragon said under his breath.

‘The respondent will remain silent until given leave to speak,’ I said with relish.

The Dragon flicked his long hair again and subsided.

‘This tree Shen therefore has raised the price of his leaves accordingly.’ Sang Shen closed the scroll with a snap. ‘If the buyer does not wish to pay the premium, then the buyer may look elsewhere.’

‘Bluff,’ the Dragon said.

‘You were warned,’ I said.

The Dragon bowed gracefully to me, making a point of bowing low.

‘You may state your case,’ I said to him.

‘This is extortion,’ the Dragon said. ‘The leaves are not worth this amount. This criminal is still being held at your pleasure, ma’am, and he does not deserve to accrue wealth while paying for his crimes.’

‘What does that mean — “held at her pleasure”?’ Sang Shen said. ‘I resent the implications of this slander!’

‘It means that I have had you incarcerated to pay for your crimes,’ I said. ‘It’s an archaic English term. He’s been doing his homework, probably to try to ingratiate himself with me.’

‘No more than this tree Shen has infiltrated your family and tried to ingratiate himself with your stepdaughter,’ the Dragon said.

‘That was unnecessary; he is family,’ I said. ‘And so are you, East Wind. Let me summarise the case. Sang Shen wishes to charge a premium for his excellent leaves; and Qing Long says he doesn’t have the right because he’s a prisoner of the Court of the North.’

‘This is true,’ the Dragon said.

‘My leaves are truly excellent,’ Sang Shen said.

‘Geez, that sounds so wrong,’ I said. ‘Okay. Record my judgement.’

Sang Shen and Qing Long exchanged venomous looks.

‘You two go and set a value for the leaves together. Sang Shen gets ten per cent of it, held in trust until his sentence is served. The rest is to be converted into Earthly currency and donated to Earthly charities as proceeds of a convicted criminal. No details of this case are to be discussed outside this courtroom.’

‘He’ll just inflate the price by ten!’ the Dragon protested.

‘Then refuse to pay,’ I said.

‘Ten per cent makes the sale of the leaves scarcely worth it,’ Sang Shen said.

‘Then refuse to sell,’ I said.

Both of them glared at me, furious. The Dragon waved one arm in disgust and turned away. ‘This is not a fair result. You have made the product even more expensive.’ He stormed out without saluting and his attendants stared after him, dumbfounded.

‘How am I supposed to make a living with you taking the majority of my income?’ Sang Shen shouted, his brown face livid with rage.

‘You’re a convicted criminal by your own admission and you should not be earning a fortune while incarcerated,’ I said. ‘Remember, Sang Shen, this agreement you made with the Dragon is confidential. I am warning you now: if anyone discovers that the Dragon is buying the leaves from you, I will hold you responsible and you will receive none of the income from your leaves.’

He made some incoherent, spluttering noises, then stormed out as well.

Yue Gui’s face glowed with suppressed amusement as she came up to the bench. ‘That was the most fun I’ve had in a while. Well done, Emma, you thoroughly pissed off both of them. What a triumph.’

‘He’s your son, Yue.’

‘And it’s about time he grew up.’ She saluted me and turned to address the Dragon’s servants. ‘Why are you still here? Follow your master.’

One of the women stepped forward and bowed with her hands clasped in front of her. ‘By your leave, ma’am, we have a favour to ask of the Dark Lady.’

‘Come forward,’ I said.

The five of them walked towards me with tiny steps, delicate ladies-in-waiting. The lead attendant stopped next to Yue Gui and the others stood behind her.

‘My Lady,’ the lead woman said. ‘My name is Purple Jade.’ She bowed again, obviously nervous, and looked back at the other women. ‘We have a request for you. We wish to ask you this thing in confidence.’

‘Don’t be afraid,’ I said gently. ‘Just ask.’

‘We would prefer to speak to you alone,’ she said.

‘Yue Gui is Councillor of the Northern Heavens and one of my most trusted aides. She will keep this matter confidential. You may speak freely in front of her,’ I said.

Yue Gui bowed slightly. ‘I thank you, ma’am, but if this matter is to remain confidential …’

‘No, stay. You can advise me if this turns into a Celestial matter,’ I said.

‘The Dragon is a harsh master!’ Purple Jade said, almost an explosion of emotion. She stopped, seemingly surprised at her own outburst. She pulled herself together. ‘We would request that we be allowed to work for you, ma’am. Please, we wish to be freed from his service and to serve you instead.’

The other women nodded, their eyes downcast in deference.

‘Are you demon servants?’ I said. ‘I see you as humans, not demons, but if you are tamed demons then you’re his possessions and I can’t take you.’

The woman glanced at Yue Gui. ‘This matter really should be confidential, ma’am. It is between us, you and the Blue Dragon. We are human, not demon. We are third-generation servants of the Qing Long. Our mothers and grandmothers were servants.’

‘Wait,’ I said sharply. ‘Are you paid for your services? You’re not forced to work for him?’

Purple Jade nodded, still nervous. ‘We are paid, we are free to choose to work for him, ma’am. He pays extremely well. We would be happy to tell you the details of our arrangement with him, but not in front of the honoured councillor.’

‘Phew,’ I said. ‘For a moment I thought that asshole had human slaves. Would you like to return to the Earthly and live normal lives?’

‘No!’ she said, eyes wide at the concept. ‘We live long and illness-free lives here on the Celestial Plane. We do not wish to descend.’ She bowed lower, trembling. ‘We just request that we be allowed to join your service instead of his. As his sovereign, you are within your rights to requisition us.’ She leaned in to whisper: ‘You and you alone. Please, ma’am. We know a place we can go to discuss this in private.’

‘Right, this is getting way too obvious. Summon the Blue Dragon,’ I said.

The women squeaked with dismay and stepped back. The Blue Dragon stormed into the room, strode up to my bench and quickly saluted. ‘You summoned me, ma’am?’

‘Check these servants of yours to see if they’re demon copies, please.’

The Dragon turned his turquoise eyes on the women and they stopped pretending to be servants and straightened. The lead one raised her arms. ‘Now!’

The other four changed from women to fake water elementals, two metres tall and roughly human-shaped. One of them flew up and engulfed me in a sphere of water. I held my breath but knew I wouldn’t last long. Then everything went black and suddenly I could breathe again. I tried to move but I was encased in something.

I have you, the stone said. I’m strong to water. I think they forgot that I’m here.

‘Can you lift me out of the water elemental?’

I’m doing as much as I can. These people had better find a way to destroy these elementals quickly, because I can’t bring any more air from outside for you.

‘So that’s a no and I’m suffocating,’ I said.

Just relax. They’re fighting them. Sang Shen came in as well, and he’s helping. Yue Gui has called guards. Oh, good, she’s lifting us …

I felt the vibration as the stone hit the ground, and it split open in front of me. The Dragon had taken True Form and stood beside Sang Shen facing the four water elementals. The woman leading them had gone; probably already destroyed. Yue Gui changed to turtle form and stood on the other side of Sang Shen, who had summoned his spear and held it towards the elementals.

‘Can you talk? Turn and we will spare you,’ I said to the fake elementals.

They didn’t reply, they just changed form to spheres, obviously planning to engulf us and drown us. One enclosed Sang Shen, who stood rigid inside it, his nut-brown face blank with concentration. The Dragon tried to take a bite out of one, but it oozed around his jaws and reformed over his head. Yue Gui was enclosed by the third, and the last one came for me.

I slithered back out of the way. I couldn’t fight these in serpent form, there was nothing to hit.

Sang Shen loaded his spear with shen energy, making the tip glow blazing white, and the elemental exploded into a cloud of steam. The Dragon thrashed his head around, trying to free himself from the globe of water but unable to shake it off. Yue Gui’s turtle face was serene as she glowed white with shen energy and made her elemental explode. She concentrated and the elemental coming for me exploded as well.

Sang Shen thrust his shen-loaded spear into the sphere engulfing the Dragon’s head and water splashed everywhere as it disintegrated.

The guards ran into the room, but it was too late: the Shen had taken care of it. We all stood there panting and staring at each other.

The stone folded up and floated back into my crown. I need a nap. Hold my calls, please.

Sang Shen pulled the shen energy out of his spear, held it upright in front of him and pointed an accusing finger at the Dragon. ‘They were yours!’

‘They were demon copies,’ I said. ‘More and more of them are showing up. They’re almost undetectable. My stone was probably too worn out from changing form to record them. Your servants are probably dead, Qing Long.’

‘I’d like to know when that happened,’ Qing Long said with menace. ‘Those girls were some of my best.’

‘You walked out and left them here,’ Sang Shen said.

‘They can look after themselves,’ Qing Long said. He changed back to human form. ‘There’s no way of detecting these copies?’

‘My staff have been sharing the information on this for a while,’ I said. ‘You have to run regular sweeps through your human staff to detect them; they’re not immediately recognisable as demon copies. Didn’t you get the information?’

The Dragon swiped one hand through the air. ‘I’m far too busy to read every memo that crosses my desk. I have staff for that.’

‘Then I suggest you go back, find that memo, read it and check the staff who are supposed to pass that information on to you,’ I said.

The Dragon’s expression changed from angry to concerned and he disappeared.

‘They were trying to get you alone,’ Yue Gui said. ‘They can only be destroyed with shen energy.’

‘And I can’t manipulate energy at all in this form,’ I said.

‘Are they everywhere?’

‘No, they show up in groups whenever their master’s planning something. First time I’ve seen copies that can change to elementals though. Usually they’re copy humans that turn out to be demons.’

‘Something new,’ Yue Gui said. ‘Always a bad thing.’

CHAPTER 7

After the Sang Shen and Blue Dragon hearing I headed out from the main administrative building to one of the smaller buildings skirting the large courtyard. The building was a row of rooms all opening onto the terrace overlooking the courtyard; it reminded me of an Australian motel — all it needed was the cars parked out the front. The room at the far north end of the structure, closest to the residential part of the complex, was my office; and instead of bumping up the stairs, I gripped the balustrade and slithered up it.

Firebrand, the other administrator, and Lily were there already, going through the massive piles of documents related to the cases I’d heard over the past three days, deciding which needed to go down to the Earthly for future reference and which didn’t. There was a pile on the desk at least twenty centimetres tall.

‘That’s not the papers going down with me, is it?’ I said.

Lily and Firebrand shared a look, then both pointedly ignored me and continued shuffling through the transcripts.

Simone and Leo appeared at the door, Simone holding the handles of Leo’s wheelchair.

‘Ready to go yet?’ she said.

‘It’s only three o’clock, you haven’t finished school yet,’ I said. ‘What are you doing back here?’

Leo glared up at her. ‘You’re ditching school to take us? You should go right back down there, missy.’

‘Okay,’ Simone said, and disappeared. She reappeared a moment later. ‘But it looks like you’re ready to go and I’m the only one who can take you.’

I sighed with resignation. ‘Okay, but just this once.’

‘Sure thing, ma’am,’ she said. ‘Just this once, until next time.’

We landed outside my parents’ house in the Western Heavens. Simone guided Leo’s wheelchair to the front door, then pressed the doorbell. We heard footsteps and Simone grinned and yelled, ‘Nanna! Pop! We’re here!’

My mother opened the door and hugged and kissed Simone, then crouched to kiss Leo on the cheek. ‘Here’s our beautiful girls and our handsome man. We’ve been waiting for you.’

My father came up behind her and Simone hugged and kissed him too. He held his hand out to shake Leo’s. ‘Leo, mate, good to see you.’ He squeezed Simone around the waist. ‘How’s my little girl?’

Simone jiggled with excitement. ‘I just got a new horse! He’s only a baby and he talks!’

‘A talking horse, eh,’ my father said, bemused. ‘Come inside and tell us all about it.’

My mother reached one hand towards me. ‘Come on, Emma, don’t hang back. You’re part of this family too, so come on in.’

I took the smallest serpent form I could and followed Leo’s chair inside.

‘So you’re Immortal now, eh?’ my father said to Leo as he handed him a large mug of instant coffee. ‘But you’re still paraplegic. How does that work? I thought Immortals were like gods or something, all perfect.’

‘Emma can tell you how it works,’ Leo said. ‘She knows more about it than I do.’

‘They remain in the form they were in at the moment they were Raised,’ I said. ‘That’s why John’s hair’s always coming out — he was Raised straight after a big battle and his hair was a mess.’

‘Why Chinese men — particularly warriors — choose to have long hair is completely beyond me,’ my father said, shaking his head. ‘It’s always coming out — must be a damn nuisance.’

‘You can ask John about that when he returns,’ I said with humour. ‘He’d occasionally lose his temper about it and have something of a rant.’

‘I can’t imagine John losing his temper, he was the coolest man I’ve ever met,’ my mother said.

‘Is, Nanna,’ Simone corrected her. ‘He’s not a was, he’s an is. He’s out there somewhere, and he’s going to come back for us.’

‘Sorry, sweetheart,’ my mother said, and patted her arm. ‘You know what I mean.’

Simone gave her a friendly squeeze. ‘Yeah, Nanna, I know.’

Everyone sat at the dining table, and I took a larger serpent form and rested my coils on the floor. My mother put a bowl of tea in front of me and I sipped it, enjoying the fine flavour of the Tiger’s best tea.

‘Can you do Immortal stuff, Leo?’ my father said.

Leo grinned, then his wheelchair rose about five centimetres above the floor, hovered and dropped with a rattle. ‘I’m getting there. I can walk if I need to, but it takes a lot of effort. It’s easier to do the black lion thing. I occasionally change into a lion at the Academy so I can get around easier. It’s fun — it freaks everybody out.’

‘A black lion,’ my father said with wonder. ‘I saw you at Rhonda’s wedding, you were huge. Congratulations, mate, it was a sight to see when you were Raised.’

‘And then poor Rhonda exploded everywhere,’ Leo said, his face falling. ‘Michael’s still getting over that. He’s refusing to believe it was his mother; he won’t give up searching for her. Kwan Yin even told him it was really her, but he wouldn’t listen.’

‘I hope it works out all right for him,’ my father said.

‘Your brother was here,’ my mother said to Simone. ‘He said we have to move to the Northern Heavens. Something about Celestial Harmony.’

‘You don’t have to move there unless you want to,’ I said. ‘Martin’s just being old-fashioned.’

‘Well, that’s a relief,’ my father said. ‘Because we’re happy and settled here; we have a lot of friends in the Tiger’s family and we really would prefer not to move.’

My mother flipped open her mobile phone and texted someone. ‘Just telling Jen you’re here, Emma, she wants to see you.’

I shrank my serpent form slightly smaller so I could only just see over the table.

My mother glared at me. ‘Don’t be like that, Jen’s as proud of you as we all are. Look at you, some sort of general, and Regent, whatever that is. Everybody talks about you in the same sort of voice they used to talk about John.’

‘What, you mean scared?’ Leo said with amusement.

My father pointed at Leo with triumph. ‘Damn straight.’

My mother tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Brendan! It’s rude to point.’

‘And bad luck,’ he added, still amused. He leaned on the arm of his chair to speak conspiratorially to Leo. ‘Did you know that this is villa number four? It has 3A on the letterbox, but everybody knows it’s number four. Nobody would live here until we arrived.’

‘We Aussies don’t care about silly things like bad luck numbers,’ my mother said, busying herself making more tea and pulling out a packet of Australian biscuits. ‘The Tiger’s pleased he finally has someone living here.’ She waved the biscuits at Simone. ‘Tim Tam?’

Simone jiggled with delight. ‘I haven’t had one of those in ages.’

‘Oh, those evil things,’ Leo said. He raised one hand. ‘A couple over here too, ma’am, if you please.’

‘Emma?’ my mother said.

‘Oh, Emma doesn’t eat in snake form,’ Simone said dismissively.

‘Good. More for us,’ my father said with a wink.

‘Why not? That means you never eat while you’re up here in Shangri-La,’ my mother said. ‘That’s just silly, Emma.’

‘Yeah, she goes for days at a time without eating,’ Simone said through a mouthful of chocolate biscuit. ‘She’s probably starving right now; she’s been up on the Celestial for three days and hasn’t eaten a thing.’

‘So go find me a live rat or a bird,’ I said softly.

They were all silent at that.

The doorbell rang and my mother’s face lit up. ‘There’s Jen now.’

My sister Jennifer and my friend Louise came in. Jennifer grimaced when she saw me, but Louise came right up and tapped me on the head.

‘That you?’ she said.

‘No, I’m a wild, venomous python and I’m going to eat you,’ I said.

‘Cool, it is you,’ Louise said, and sat at the table. ‘Oh my God, are those Tim Tams?’

‘Help yourself, love,’ my mother said, and Louise didn’t need to be asked twice.

Jennifer stayed on the opposite side of the room from me, her face rigid with restraint. ‘Uh, hi, Emma. Good to see you.’

‘I didn’t know you had a snake phobia,’ I said.

Jen grimaced again. ‘Sort of.’

‘Chicken,’ Louise said with a grin. ‘Emma’s not gonna hurt you, Jen. Oh,’ she turned to face me, ‘the reason we’re here is to invite you to a party in the main part of the palace tonight. Can you come? A lot of the girls would love to meet you.’

I hesitated. Simone was right: I was starving and couldn’t wait to get home to eat. But it would be fun to spend some time with the girls. ‘Sure.’

‘Cool. Oh, and by the way,’ Louise leaned closer to me and grinned, ‘pythons aren’t venomous.’

‘Just mention the Nemesis and this one becomes extremely venomous,’ Simone said, still munching on the biscuit. ‘It’s just like a Harlequin romance: she hates him but he pursues her, sure that one day she’ll see exactly how great he really is.’

‘He’d be great turning green and foaming at the mouth,’ I said quietly.

‘See?’ Simone said with triumph. ‘Venomous!’

The party was held in the Tiger’s Grand Audience Hall, which was filled with wives of about the same age as Louise — most of them wearing skin-tight miniskirts — together with many of the Elite Seraglio Guards, some in uniform and some in designer outfits, obviously off-duty. A dance floor had been set up at one end of the hall, complete with disco ball and laser lights. One of the Tiger’s sons had set up double turntables and was acting as DJ. I felt the music vibrating through the floor beneath my coils.

Louise and Jen guided me out through the French doors along the side of the hall into the garden decked with coloured fairy lights. A buffet had been set up here, and many of the wives stood around eating or sat at the tables on the lawn.

‘Isn’t this awesome?’ Louise said. ‘We have one of these every couple of weeks; we alternate with the twenty-somethings. Sometimes the Tiger wanders in and then it gets really wild.’

A trio of giggling women approached us cautiously.

‘Excuse me, but are you, like, Emma?’ one of them said.

I bowed my head slightly. ‘Yes, I’m Emma.’

‘The Dark Lady? The real one?’

‘That’d be me.’

‘We were wondering,’ she glanced at her two friends, ‘if there was, like, anything you need? Anything we could do for you? How about some PR work or secretarial stuff?’

‘I can type,’ one of her friends said.

‘I worked in a fashion magazine before I met the Tiger,’ the other one added. ‘I can help out if you need it.’

‘Why would you want to work for me?’ I said, suspicious. Then I realised what they were after. ‘No, I’m sorry, I won’t tell the Tiger to give you more time if you do things for me. I don’t work like that.’

‘How about I share my skills as a personal shopper and you have a quick word with Tigger on my behalf?’ the first girl said.

‘I think I just said no,’ I said.

‘Louise,’ one of them said in a drawn-out whine, ‘tell her to get us more time with him. We’ll let you in on the deal.’

‘Honey,’ Louise said, ‘she won’t even talk to him on my behalf and I’m supposed to be her best friend.’

Another group of wives approached, five of them this time. ‘Is this Emma?’ one said.

‘Yeah,’ replied one of the women from the first group. ‘The real one.’

‘Hey,’ said one of the newcomers, ‘I just wanted to say thank you. You helped us all out and we appreciate it.’

There was a chorus of assent from the other wives.

‘What did I do?’ I said.

One of them turned to address the rest of the women in the garden. ‘Hey, guys, this is Emma! The Dark Lady! The snake one!’

More wives gathered, smiling with encouragement. Some of them burst into spontaneous applause, a few of them cheering.

‘What did I do?’ I repeated. ‘Is this because I defeated Demon Prince Six?’

‘No, silly,’ one of the wives said. ‘We want to show our appreciation because you got that uppity bitch Rhonda out of our faces and now we’re all equal again.’

‘Yeah!’ some of the others shouted. ‘Way to go, Emma!’

I slithered away and back into the hall as fast as my coils could take me. Louise and Jennifer had to run to keep up.

‘Emma, wait!’ Louise shouted after me.

Suddenly the music stopped and all the lights in the hall came on. I stopped, dazzled by the brightness.

‘Emperor present. All show respect!’ a Horseman shouted from the main entrance. In a single smooth movement all of the women and guards present fell to their knees, their heads bowed.

The Tiger walked in, came to me, fell to one knee, saluted, then rose again. ‘Hope my girls are showing you a good time, ma’am.’

I pulled out the oldest excuse in the book. ‘I need some air.’ I turned to Louise and Jennifer. ‘I need to talk to the Tiger alone, if you don’t mind.’

‘Whoa, listen to the boss lady,’ Louise said. ‘Top-secret, superhero god stuff, eh?’

I slithered out of the hall, the Tiger following me. When we were some distance from the crowd I stopped. ‘They just gave me three cheers for killing Rhonda,’ I said, my voice hissing with frustration. ‘Bitches.’

‘That they are,’ the Tiger said, glancing back at the hall. ‘Not many women aren’t. Particularly when things get tough.’

I glared at him. ‘That goes for me too, I suppose.’

He put his hands on his hips and smiled slightly. ‘You more than any of them.’

I turned away. ‘Make it quite clear to them that I had nothing to do with Rhonda.’

‘I have. They need someone to hero-worship, and you’re it. Some of them have started learning the arts from the Masters here. You’ve even inspired some of them to talk back to me.’

‘I think Rhonda would have had something to do with that as well,’ I said, turning back to look at him. ‘Now I see why she said you had to be dragged tail-first into the twenty-first century.’

‘I love the twenty-first century; health care is at an amazing level. Used to be if my wives went down to the Earthly for a trip, they’d come back with all sorts of nasty shit and die in no time. Now, just about everything’s curable.’

‘Doesn’t it bother you — you living so long, and them ageing and dying?’

He concentrated on me. ‘You worried about Ah Wu ditching you because you’re getting old?’

‘Actually, no. But it must be hard to lose so many that you love.’

‘Meh. They live a good, long, healthy and luxurious life here, and they die and I move on.’

‘Damn, you’re a callous bastard. Don’t you mourn them?’

‘I prefer practical. I lose a few a year — I’m not spending all my time mourning them, that’d be a waste. They live a good life. That’s worth celebrating.’

The sweet scent of fresh, young blood wafted over the lawn and I raised my head. ‘What’s that?’

The Tiger sniffed the air. ‘Just some birds.’

A woman walked past with a couple of small children, both about five years old. She wore a traditional long silk tunic with matching leggings, and the children wore pantsuits in black cotton with toggles and loops, their hair shaved except for a topknot each. When the woman saw the Tiger she dropped to one knee, bowed gracefully, then rose and continued.

The scent was coming from them; the children in particular exuded the wonderfully sweet, rich scent of fresh blood. It drew me closer. The woman saw me approaching, grabbed the children’s hands and ran. I didn’t think; I just pursued them. One of those children would keep me satisfied for weeks, and the feeling of swallowing it whole would be precious indeed. If I grabbed it and squeezed hard enough, it might even take bird form and be even more delicious to eat.

One of the children tripped and sprawled on the grass. The mother saw how close I was and changed to phoenix form. She spread her wings protectively over her children and burst into flames.

Something grabbed me by the throat from behind and hurled me to the ground, holding me there. ‘Go,’ a voice said, a throaty rumble, and the phoenix changed back to human form and hurried her chicks away.

The pressure holding me down didn’t give way. ‘Now listen to me,’ the voice said, and I recognised it as the Tiger. My senses began to return and I shrank with horror at what I’d nearly done.

‘You can let me up,’ I said.

‘Not quite yet, she’s still too close,’ the Tiger said. ‘Listen up. You’d better fucking start eating when you’re on the Celestial Plane or I’ll make a complaint to the Jade Emperor. That was a mighty close call there; she’s one of my oldest and most respected wives.’

I didn’t reply, still stiff with shock.

‘Did you fucking hear me!’ the Tiger rasped.

‘I hear you, I’m just …’ My voice trailed off. ‘I can’t believe I just did that.’

‘Start eating on the Celestial Plane,’ the Tiger repeated with force.

‘Can you help me?’ I said, my voice small.

‘The people in the Northern Heavens are the ones to ask,’ the Tiger said. ‘Go talk to them. They’ve had experience with Ah Wu’s Serpent. My staff just bring me big, bleeding chunks of African wildlife.’

He released my head and I raised it, then turned to him. ‘I am so sorry, Lord Bai Hu, please accept this small serpent’s apology.’

‘Apology accepted,’ he said gruffly. ‘Go home to the Earthly and have something to eat. Then, when you have time, come back and talk to your Retainers here about food in the Heavens. If this happens again I’ll make your life complete hell.’

Simone transported Leo and me back to our Hong Kong apartment later that evening. She was flushed and excited from spending time with the family.

‘I’d better head to bed,’ she said. ‘I have a test first thing tomorrow.’ She hesitated. ‘Are you okay to take human form, Emma?’

I changed and shook myself out. ‘No problem at all.’

‘You could at least conjure some clothes with no holes in them,’ she said, and slipped out of the living room before I could think of a suitable retort.

I went into the kitchen. Monica opened the door between the kitchen and her room; she was already in her pyjamas. ‘Can I get you anything, ma’am?’

‘It’s okay, go back to bed,’ I said. ‘I’ll make some noodles for myself.’

She came into the kitchen and closed the door behind her. ‘I’ll do that for you, ma’am.’

I went to her, opened the door and pushed her back into her room. ‘No, you won’t. It’s late, and I can look after myself. I know where everything is. Go back to bed.’

She grimaced. ‘At least leave the dishes for me to clean up, ma’am.’

‘Whatever you say,’ I said, not meaning it.

She went back into her room and closed the door, and I proceeded to raid the fridge for some ho fan, baby bok choy and vegetable stock to make myself some soup noodles. I checked the use-by date on the cans of cat food in the bottom of the cupboard; they were still good. Maybe this time they would get eaten before they needed to be replaced.

Leo wheeled himself into the kitchen and I waved the cooking chopsticks at him. ‘Want some?’

‘Nah, I ate in the West while you were at the party,’ he said.

He went over to the drip coffee machine set up on a low benchtop on the other side of the kitchen and poured himself some strong black coffee. He inhaled deeply as he brought the mug to his mouth. ‘Need to get one of these sent up to the Northern Heavens — they don’t have a single decent coffee machine there. The only coffee I could get was some sort of awful coffee-coconut mix that they make on Hainan Island.’

‘Oh, I tried that, it was foul,’ I said. ‘When do you think you’ll be able to carry yourself up there?’

He took another sip of coffee and made the wheelchair spin around by itself so he was facing me. He grinned with pride. ‘Getting there, won’t be long.’

‘You moved the chair too fast — you’ve spilt coffee in your lap,’ I said, and turned back to the noodles.

‘Dammit!’ Leo said, and whizzed out the door towards his bedroom.

CHAPTER 8

The next morning Yi Hao followed me into the office and placed my large desk diary on my desk. She was wearing a smart navy business suit with a white shirt and matching navy pumps. ‘Not many appointments today, ma’am. Things have settled down here very well recently.’

I dropped my tote bag into my desk drawer, sat down and grimaced when I saw my overflowing in-tray. Then I grinned up at her. ‘Looking professional, Yi Hao. You’d pass for a local businesswoman.’

She fidgeted with pride. ‘Some of the younger students have been helping me.’

I leaned on the desk. ‘Do you want to go further than just being my secretary? You can go study if you like.’

She appeared horrified. ‘Ma’am, please do not wish such a thing on me! It is a dream come true for me to be acting in this capacity for you. Now…’ She looked down at the diary, professional again. ‘You should tell me when you give humans my phone number, ma’am. A man called Chang called me and I had no idea what he was talking about. He is being held on the first floor until you decide what to do with him.’

‘Chang?’ I said, confused. ‘I have no idea. What does he look like?’

‘Big!’ Yi Hao exclaimed. She spread her arms. ‘He looks like a … a … big man!’

I searched my memory. ‘No idea. Okay, I’ll go down after we’ve been through the diary. When’s my first appointment?’

‘In half an hour you have a meeting with General Ma.’

‘Good. Did you give us at least an hour?’

‘Yes, ma’am. After that, no more appointments.’ She gestured with her head towards the in-tray. ‘You’ll need some time to deal with this.’

I sagged over the desk. ‘You all hate me.’

She touched my arm. ‘You know we don’t, ma’am. Now go check on this human that you seem to have collected.’

I went down to the first floor, the armoury, the most secure area inside the Academy building. Master Liu, dressed in jeans and a scruffy Batman T-shirt, was waiting there for me with a massive Chinese man, nearly as tall as Leo and heavily muscled. He was sitting morosely in the holding room but jumped to his feet when he saw me. ‘Lady, help me!’

‘This was Demon Prince Six’s driver and general assassin-about-town,’ I said to Liu.

Chang grimaced. ‘Tell your janitor here that I am not a criminal. I was under an oath, but now I am free.’

Liu’s mouth flopped open with delight. ‘Janitor?’

Chang glared at him with derision. ‘I want to speak to you alone, ma’am, without this lackey around.’

‘What word did that come out as in English?’ Liu said.

‘Lackey,’ I said.

‘It was far more obscene and derogatory in Chinese,’ Liu said.

I turned to Chang. ‘Remember when I told you that Liu Cheng Rong hadn’t died six hundred years ago; he’d attained Immortality?’

Chang made the most lightning-fast double-take I had ever seen. He glanced from myself to Liu, then swiftly fell to his knees in front of Liu and touched his head to the floor. ‘This humble, worthless piece of dung profoundly apologises for this insult and prays that you will allow him to assist you with his skills as a Shaolin master.’

Liu’s face went thoughtful as he looked down at Chang. ‘Hmm.’

‘I was a disciple of Shaolin before I lost my way, Master. Please, help me to retake the oaths and return to the Path,’ Chang said, still with his forehead on the floor.

Liu rubbed his bearded chin. ‘Interesting. How long have you been outside the temple?’

‘Six years,’ Chang said with misery. ‘I made some terrible mistakes and I want to atone for them.’ He glanced up at Liu. ‘Master, please help me.’

Liu gestured to him. ‘Get up. Tell me what you have done.’

Chang rose, a swift and elegant movement. ‘I have killed,’ he said, almost a moan of despair. ‘I have broken my vows. I wish to retake them and follow the Path once again.’

Liu rubbed his chin again, studying Chang. ‘What was your reason for straying?’

‘Wealth,’ Chang said. ‘I saw the wealth of the West and wanted it for my own. I have since learned that wealth is an illusion and cannot bring true joy. For the last three years I have lived in misery, serving one who was truly monstrous and evil.’

‘If you believe in the concept of evil then you still have a long way to go,’ Liu said.

Chang’s face crumpled and he dropped his head. ‘The temple gave me only empty words and hollow rules. I have yet to see the full truth inside them.’ He looked back up to Liu, full of hope. ‘Help me to see the True Way.’

‘Very well,’ Liu said. ‘But it will not be easy.’

‘Tell me what I need to do, Master.’

Liu concentrated for a moment, and Lok appeared out of the armoury. ‘What?’ he said. ‘I don’t have all day. I have three junior weapons classes this afternoon and half those dipshits don’t return their weapons when they’re done with them.’

Liu gestured towards Chang. ‘I got you a new assistant-cum-janitor. Give him all the worst jobs.’

‘About time,’ Lok said, and raised his snout towards Chang. ‘You look like a nice strong one, you can do the heavy lifting for me. Not having opposable thumbs is a pain in my doggy ass.’

‘I am fully trained in the arts of Shaolin!’ Chang protested. ‘I was in the temple for twenty-three years! I’m better than any human I’ve fought, I was teaching juniors at Shaolin, and you want me to work as a cleaner? Assisting a dirty demon dog?’

‘Forget it,’ Liu said, and turned away. ‘Never mind, Lok.’

‘What an asswipe,’ Lok said, heading back to the armoury. ‘Dirty demon dog indeed. I had a bath last week. Nearly killed me.’

‘I’d be wasted as a janitor,’ Chang said. ‘I can help out with the martial arts training here. Use me! Help me to find the Way!’

‘You are so far from the Way that you do not even see the Path when it is placed before you,’ Liu said.

Chang turned to me. ‘Lady, don’t waste my talents.’

‘Come with me, I’ll see you out,’ I said.

I went to the lifts and pressed the button to go down to the lobby. What a waste — so intelligent and talented, and so damn proud he couldn’t see the redemption being offered him.

‘I need an assistant,’ Lok said, pausing. ‘You should make him stay.’ Then he gave a full-on dog bark of surprise.

I saw the glow reflected off the lift doors and turned to see what was causing it. It was Kwan Yin in Celestial Form, seated on a lotus blossom, a radiant field of shen energy pulsing around her. Chang fell to his knees and prostrated himself, while Liu and I quickly dropped to one knee. Lok bowed his shaggy head.

‘You do not need to bow to me, Emma, we are family,’ Kwan Yin said, her voice sounding the same as it always did. She changed from Celestial Form to her normal human form of a middle-aged Chinese lady, slim and elegant in a white silk pantsuit. She held her hand out to me and raised me, then pulled me into a gentle hug. ‘You are like the promised to my own child.’

‘And you are like another mother to me,’ I whispered into her ear. The fragrance of lotus and jasmine floated around her. I pulled back. ‘Has something happened?’

Ms Kwan gestured towards Chang. ‘This has happened.’

Chang didn’t look up from the floor; he lay there as if frozen.

‘One of the most intelligent prospects we’ve seen here in a long while,’ I said. ‘Gifted with language, very perceptive, and one of Shaolin’s finest practitioners. Shame he never managed to perceive the gist of the Teachings.’

‘He is full of pride,’ Ms Kwan said.

‘That he is,’ Liu said.

‘But he has potential,’ Ms Kwan said.

‘Not while he’s so damn up himself,’ Liu said with amusement. ‘Are you going to fix him, Lady? I don’t think he deserves it.’

‘All deserve what they receive, Liu; you of all people should know that,’ Ms Kwan said. She gestured towards Chang, who still hadn’t moved. ‘Rise, Chang, let me see you.’

Chang pulled himself together and rose.

‘You have been given an opportunity here, little one,’ Kwan Yin said to Chang. ‘You need to learn humility. If you will be guided by these Immortals, you have a chance to become much more than you are. You say that you wish to retake your vows and return your feet to the Path. Are you sincere?’

Chang bowed his head. ‘I am sincere, Lady. I am weak.’

‘You are not weak,’ she said, ‘you are too strong. You are rigid and unyielding. You will break before you bend. You need to learn to become weak. If you let them teach you, you will learn.’ She raised one hand towards him, palm up. ‘Will you retake your vows and serve with humility?’

He opened his mouth to reply but she turned her hand around so the palm faced him. ‘Before you answer, Chang, be aware that if you say yes, you will not be living with dignity or esteem. You will be performing menial, dirty tasks in the service of a dog, living without luxury for many years. Are you willing to debase yourself to learn?’

Chang hesitated, his expression full of conflict.

‘You like your comfort,’ she said with amusement.

‘That I do, my Lady,’ he said, looking miserable. ‘I have experienced poverty and hardship and I do not wish to relive them.’

‘Very well. Yes or no?’

‘What will happen to me if I say no?’ he said.

‘Nothing,’ Liu said. ‘We will take you downstairs and let you go.’

‘What will become of me then?’

‘You will live a life of ease and comfort. You will be employed as a bodyguard by wealthy humans, and return to the life you knew while you were serving Six. You will have wealth and women and luxury, as you did then,’ Kwan Yin said.

Chang’s expression cleared. ‘That life was meaningless! Yes, my Lady, I will retake the vows and serve the dog.’

‘Serve well,’ Kwan Yin said, and disappeared.

‘General Ma is here, Emma,’ the stone said.

‘I have to get going,’ I said.

‘We can handle the rest,’ Liu said. ‘I know you just agreed to work for the dog, Chang, but are you sure?’

Chang didn’t hesitate. He strode to Lok and fell to one knee before him. ‘Master.’

Lok made a small barking sound deep in his throat. ‘Good.’ He turned to head back to the armoury. ‘Come with me; you can help me find out who didn’t return their weapons.’

‘Send him up to me later. We’ll have a small ceremony for him to retake the vows,’ Liu said. ‘Remember the precepts as well, Lok: he won’t be eating after noon, no alcohol, no girls …’

‘You don’t need to remind me, I know the whole deal,’ Lok said.

I pushed the up button on the lift. ‘I’ll see you guys later.’

‘Oh, and if you happen to be in the markets anytime soon,’ Lok began, but the lift doors closed on me. Cow’s heart! he finished inside my head.

General Ma and I went down to the coffee shop on the ground floor of the Academy building for our meeting; he’d developed a taste for hazelnut lattes and couldn’t get enough of them.

‘Now, you have to understand that there is minimal discourse between the Platforms,’ Ma said, waving his latte. ‘Just as the Earthly Plane is the World of Ruin to the Celestial, so the Celestial is considered Ruin to the higher Platforms.’

‘But you move between worlds without difficulty,’ I said. ‘So the residents of the higher Platforms must come down to the Celestial now and then.’

‘That they do. But we never announce ourselves as Immortals when visiting this Plane,’ he said. ‘And most of the Bodhisattvas do the same when they come down to the Celestial.’

‘But it’s different — you aren’t allowed to tell people on the Earthly that you exist,’ I said. ‘Everybody on the Celestial knows that Bodhisattvas exist, and people like Kwan Yin visit you all the time.’

‘There is nothing to stop us from revealing our Immortal nature to those on the Earthly,’ he said. ‘But you tell someone you’re a Taoist Immortal and watch them make your life a complete misery for the next hundred years or so, wanting you to share the secret. Totally not worth it.’

‘I thought you weren’t allowed to tell people anything?’

‘There are topics we’re not permitted to discuss. Our existence is well-known, however, so that’s not off limits.’

‘I see,’ I said. ‘You’re not allowed to talk about death, the afterlife, stuff like that.’

‘Maybe,’ he said, smiling knowingly.

‘So Nu Wa is on a higher Platform, for Bodhisattvas? Can I even go that far?’

‘No, Nu Wa exists on the Celestial, in the Kunlun Mountains in the West, same Plane as the rest of us Immortals,’ Ma said. ‘You won’t have to travel to a higher Platform to see her.’

‘So I can go see her without too much difficulty. I can just ride a cloud with Simone.’

‘She’s up too high. No cloud can carry you that far. You have to walk the last two hundred li or so.’

I shrugged. ‘Okay, I’ll walk.’

‘In the snow.’

I shrugged again.

‘As a snake, Emma.’

‘Oh.’

‘No other serpent has been that far. I suggest you start working now on a way to keep you warm while you make the trek.’

‘Something all-over and padded maybe,’ I said. ‘And Simone can carry me.’

‘I doubt if even someone as powerful as the Princess can carry you all the way,’ he said. ‘Ever seen a documentary about climbing Everest?’

‘No way. It’s that high?’

‘It’s twice as high,’ he said.

‘But that would mean it’s in the lower part of the stratosphere! There wouldn’t be enough oxygen to breathe!’

‘Exactly.’

I dropped my head. ‘Geez, this is crazy.’ I remembered what John had said. ‘What about the Three Pure Ones? He said to see them first.’

‘They are on the First; you do not visit the higher Platform first. You should see Nu Wa on the Third — the Celestial Plane — before even thinking about visiting the First.’

‘The Second is the Heaven of Perfection and Enlightenment?’

‘Where the Buddhas exist, yes. The Three Pure Ones are on a higher Plane again. They are not living beings; they are more like concepts that occasionally choose to take human form and annoy the hell out of the rest of us.’

‘What’s the highest Platform like, Ma?’

‘The First Platform is so far removed from reality — from space–time as we know it — that it is difficult to describe it as even existing.’

‘Have you been there?’

‘Once or twice, when Ah Wu was in serious trouble and we needed some really high-end help. It’s not a place I’d recommend to anyone; the experience of being there twists your mind and can affect your sanity.’ He finished his latte. ‘Before you run off to do this stupid thing, I have made an appointment for you to see the Archivist. He may be able to help you.’

‘Thank you,’ I said with feeling. ‘I’ve been trying to see him since just after John died, and he’s ignored me completely. I even pulled rank and he still ignored me.’

He opened and closed his mouth, then smiled. ‘“John died”. That’s a strange way of putting it for those of us in the know. Ah Wu is not dead, he still shows up now and then.’

‘On the Earthly, you cut someone’s head off, they’re dead. I’ve made a habit of saying that John died so people on the Earthly don’t try to have me committed; and people on the Celestial see it as a joke in extremely poor taste.’

‘So you win either way,’ he said, understanding.

‘I’m getting old and forgetful,’ I said with a grin. ‘It’s easier to tell everybody that he died, but sometimes I talk to the office staff of Chencorp about him coming back and they think I’m crazy.’

‘You’re not getting old. You look younger every day. You need to find a mountain with a nice spring and some —’

‘I don’t have time for pine nuts and springwater. Go away,’ I said. We rose and shook hands. ‘Thanks, Ah Guang, I appreciate your time. And props for getting the Archivist to talk to me.’

‘No problem at all,’ he said.

When I reached the door, I found it was stuck closed. The clatter of cups and the murmur of conversation ceased and the room became eerily silent; everybody in the coffee shop except Ma and myself had disappeared.

I didn’t mess around: I summoned the Murasame and it appeared in my hand. Ma took Celestial Form: a red-garbed warrior with flames on his robes and bright red hair down to his waist. A pyramid-shaped gold brick appeared in his left hand and a sword in his right.

‘Do you know what’s caused this?’ I said.

‘Wong Mo,’ he said, and gestured towards the door. ‘Incoming.’

Life continued as usual outside the shop windows; nobody noticed that I was holding a long black sword and standing next to a ten-foot-tall, red-robed god.

The doorbell rang. Ma was right: it was the King of the Demons, in normal human form, wearing a maroon silk shirt and black jeans, his blood-coloured hair held back in a ponytail. He spread his arms. ‘Emma, sweetheart, you don’t need that thing with me. I’m here to help.’ He saluted Ma. ‘Magistrate Ma of the Only True Power.’

Ma nodded back. ‘Wong Mo.’

I dismissed the sword. ‘Now I know why Simone hates being called “sweetheart”.’

The Demon King gestured towards the table where Ma and I had been sitting. ‘May I speak to you alone, Lady Emma?’

‘Anything you have to say, you can say in front of my most trusted lieutenant,’ I said.

‘Bah, she should be your lieutenant,’ the Demon King said to Ma. ‘You’re a heavenly general, one of the leaders of the Heavenly Host, right hand to the Dark Lord himself, and here you are babysitting a young female mortal.’

‘Just goes to show how far apart we are,’ Ma said. He moved to stand behind me as a Retainer.

I sat at the table. ‘Now, what did you want to talk to me about?’

‘You’re searching for ways to clear the demon essence from you. Just let me do it, dear Emma, and you can be ready for him when he returns.’

I rose again. ‘If that’s all you’re here for, you’re wasting your time.’

He spread his hands without rising. ‘Maybe we can negotiate something.’

‘As long as it involves me prostituting myself to you, we have nothing to talk about.’

He didn’t move, hands still spread. ‘As I said, maybe we can negotiate something.’

‘What do I have that you want, except for demon spawn?’ I said.

‘Oh, many things,’ he said, jolly. ‘Safe passage Above, certain Celestials who have been a complete pain in the ass to me, some homely women … There are any number of things I could name.’

‘I do not negotiate with demons,’ I said stiffly.

He leaned over the table and grinned at me. ‘You’re doing it again.’

‘Good,’ I said. ‘That means I know exactly how to deal with you.’

‘Whatever,’ he said, and rose.

Noise clashed around us and the people in the coffee shop reappeared. Ma quickly changed back to his usual human form.

‘Let me send you some suggestions of what would be a suitable trade for your humanity,’ the King said. ‘Have a look through, and if you see something you like, let me know. You still have my phone, don’t you?’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Neat trick how it always changes to the latest model.’

‘Only the best for my Emma,’ he said, and disappeared.

‘Doing what again?’ Ma said.

‘Sounding like John,’ I said.

He nodded. ‘That you do sometimes.’

‘Do you think I’m his Serpent, Ma?’

‘You’ve been in the same room as his Serpent, ma’am, and not even he can be in three places at the same time.’ His face changed to thoughtful. ‘No, I take that back. I don’t think there’s much that he can’t do.’

‘Thanks for that, that was just what I needed to hear,’ I said. I nodded to him, more serious. ‘And thanks for hanging around.’

‘I would have been more comfortable leaving and letting you face him alone as a display of my faith in you,’ he said. ‘But protocol demanded that I remain in my capacity as Retainer.’

‘I know, and I appreciate it. Either way.’

‘I’ve given your secretary the details of your appointment with the Archivist,’ Ma said. ‘Talk to him before you go traipsing off to see Nu Wa; you may be able to avoid seeing her altogether. The Heavens know, last time someone visited her it caused a war.’

‘Nobody’s been to see her since the Shang/Zhou?’ I said.

He shook his head. ‘Nobody’s been brave enough.’

‘Would a visit annoy her? I really don’t want to walk into the home of one of the most powerful Shen in creation if she’s pissed.’

‘Impossible to tell. Nobody’s spoken to her in thousands of years. Even before that, she was a recluse. You know the stories: she is as ancient as time and as powerful as nature. Approach her cautiously.’

‘If the Archivist can help me, I won’t have to approach her at all.’

‘That would be the ideal situation.’

He saluted me quickly and we went out together. I took the lift back up to the Academy; he disappeared.

CHAPTER 9

When I returned to my office the White Tiger was stretched across the doorway in True Form. Even lying down he was nearly a metre tall.

I glared at him. ‘What are you doing here? I just left your palace last night. And how am I supposed to get any work done when I can’t get into my office?’

‘You and Ah Wu are as bad as each other, working your asses off,’ the Tiger said without moving. ‘A real leader delegates everything and spends their time eating and screwing. I only need to work at most about ten minutes a day, and even then it’s just “yes” or “no”. When are you going to learn?’

‘I prefer a more hands-on approach and less eating and screwing,’ I said. I gestured towards him. ‘Get out of the damn way.’

‘Yeah, well in your case, with the vegetarianism and celibacy, you might as well be hands-on and keep yourself distracted. I don’t know how you do it.’ He rose, stretched out his front legs like a house cat and scraped his claws on the carpet. ‘I need to talk to you.’

‘Don’t tear up my carpet!’ I said.

He moved to one side and I opened the office door to let us both in.

‘Shall I order a cat-scratching post, ma’am?’ Yi Hao called from her desk.

‘Yes, please,’ I called back, and closed the door on her giggles.

‘Oh, very funny. I eat demons like that for breakfast,’ the Tiger said.

I opened the office door again. ‘And a giant-sized cat collar and bell,’ I added.

Yi Hao screeched with laughter.

I closed the door and sat behind my desk. ‘Just the person I wanted to see. I need help.’

He took human form, leaned against the wall, crossed his arms over his chest and scowled. ‘I told you to talk to the people in the Northern Heavens about feeding your serpent.’

‘Not feeding the snake. John told me to go see Nu Wa, and I think I’ll need a hand with that.’

His expression changed from suspicious to resigned and he flopped to sit in the chair across from me. ‘That’s a big ask. Anyone with any sense stays well away from her.’

‘It shouldn’t be that bad, Bai Hu. It’s only on the Third Platform —’

‘How do you know about the Three Platforms?’ he said.

‘Oh, come on, Bai Hu, its full name is Seven Stars Sword of the Three Platforms. Do you think I’m stupid?’

He rubbed one hand over his face. ‘I keep forgetting exactly how much you aren’t.’

‘So I need to see Nu Wa on the Celestial, but I’ll need a hand getting there because of the cold. You’re the perfect person to help, being the Lesser Yang.’

‘I pull out full yang anywhere near you and you’ll be incinerated. Like being in the centre of a nuclear blast. Maybe you are stupid.’

‘She’s up about twice as high as Everest. It’ll be bitterly cold, there won’t be enough oxygen for a mortal like me to breathe —’

‘So wear a spacesuit,’ he snapped. ‘I’ll even provide one for you.’

‘And I have to go in serpent form since it’s on the Celestial. Do you have a long, narrow spacesuit you can lend me?’

He sighed loudly, leaned back and put his hands behind his head. ‘The things you ask for. A snake spacesuit. Now I’ve heard everything.’

‘But you have ordinary human spacesuits?’

‘Of course I do. Some of the wives are thrillseekers and love being taken up into orbit. After a nasty accident where I became …’ he hesitated ‘… distracted, I decided to make them wear spacesuits when I take them up there.’

‘I do not believe you sometimes! Someone died because you can’t keep your mind off your gonads?’

He shrugged. ‘Can’t stop me being what I am.’

‘Where do you have the suits made? Maybe I can get a special suit designed.’

‘I’ll see what I can do. A human suit might be okay; if you can make yourself small enough, we can just pop you in. Leave it with me. But I want something in return.’

It was my turn to be suspicious. ‘What?’

He grinned. ‘The blood sample you promised you’d give me when you visited the West. You never coughed up. So you’re coming down to the shoebox that passes for an infirmary in this place and giving me some right now.’

‘I never promised any such thing.’

‘Beside the point now, ’cause if you want something to keep you warm and alive when you visit Nu Wa, you’ll provide it anyway.’

‘Oh, okay.’ I went around the desk and opened the door. ‘Yi Hao, is Edwin in the infirmary?’

Yi Hao’s face went blank for a moment, then she nodded. ‘He’s there, ma’am, and asks if there is a problem.’

‘Tell him we’re coming down to give the Tiger a blood sample from me. It isn’t enough that the damn cat gets our best students when they’re fully trained, now he wants my blood as well.’

‘That’s a lie and you know it,’ the Tiger growled behind me. ‘The Jade Emperor gets your best graduates and you leave me with the rejects.’

‘If you don’t want my rejects, let me know, because there are more people asking for our graduates than we can spare. I’m sure some Celestial residents would be delighted to take them.’

‘Just give me the damn blood so I can get the fuck out of here,’ he said.

‘Mind your language in front of my rejects.’

‘Humph.’

After we had given the blood sample to the Tiger, I asked him: ‘Do you think you can carry me to Wudang? I have a couple of things I need to do. Won’t take more than thirty minutes.’

‘Which one?’ he said.

‘Celestial.’

He studied me appraisingly. ‘No. You’re too fat.’

I changed into serpent form. ‘I love you too.’

We landed in the main forecourt of the Celestial Wudang Mountain, an area about a hundred and fifty metres to a side and tiled with dark grey slate. It was used for the grandest displays of martial arts and the regular Taoist ceremonies held at the Mountain. The Hall of Purple Mist, majestic with its black roof and polished slate walls, stood to our north, facing Imperial south. To the east and west stood Dragon Tiger and True Way Halls. The Golden Temple rose on the highest peak behind Purple Mist, at least another hundred metres above us. Its gold walls and roof shone in the brilliant Celestial sun.

The Tiger put his hands on his hips and looked around. ‘I haven’t been here in a while. Good job on fixing it up.’

I slithered towards True Way, heading to the part of the complex where the forge was located. ‘I don’t like coming up here. It’s too quiet.’

The Tiger stopped and I waited for him. The only sound was the breeze whispering through the buildings and the rustle of the pine trees that covered the hillside around us.

‘I see what you mean,’ he said. ‘Wudang was never this quiet. There was always the noise and shouting of the Disciples, and the drums and chanting in the temples.’ He shook his head and caught up with me. ‘Spooky.’

We walked together along a narrow path that cut into the hillside. About three hundred metres on we came to a soaring arched bridge that straddled the deep gorge between the peaks. The breeze carried clouds below us, making the deep green pines in the gorge disappear and reappear. I led the Tiger around the edge of the peak and through a narrow passage to the next peak. A complex of smaller buildings, without open areas for practice, stood at the end of the passage. There was more noise here — no voices, but the gentle background sounds of people busy about their lives. As we neared the forge, the smell of burning and clanging of metal being struck became apparent.

‘Good to see the Wudang forge back up,’ the Tiger said. ‘Must send some orders in.’

‘Go right ahead,’ I said. The revenue from the sale of some Wudang weapons would be welcome. ‘Tell your friends. We have plenty of demons trained and working; we can handle any size order.’

He grinned at me. ‘You give me good price, okay?’

‘Yeah, dream on, Devil Tiger.’

We walked down four flights of stairs, flanked by small cypress trees, to the forge itself, with its well-worn rough stone bricks and clumsily put-together walls. The demons working there dropped to their knees when we entered, touching their heads to the floor; a couple of them fled in terror.

‘You may rise,’ I said to the head demon. ‘I’ve come to check the status of the sword being forged for the Black Lion.’

The head demon pulled himself to his feet and grinned broadly. ‘We will be fitting the handle tomorrow, ma’am, it has nearly cooled sufficiently. Please, come and see.’

He guided me past the cowering demons to the racks in the oven where weapons were gently cooled from the forging process. Cooling them too fast would make them brittle. He gestured towards a single black sword resting on the highest rack by itself. The simple metal spike that would be the base for the handle looked incongruous protruding from the slender black blade.

The Tiger eyed it appreciatively. ‘Is it too long?’

‘The Masters say it’s the best length for him,’ I said.

The sword was almost two metres long and Japanese katana style. There’d been some discussion about the most suitable blade for Leo to wield, and the consensus among the Masters and the forge staff was that for someone of his size, the light and slender but balanced and deadly katana style was the way to go. I hoped Leo would appreciate it.

The handle sat on another rack nearby. It hadn’t had the final leather wrap put around it yet and its studded black metal gleamed in the lights of the forge. It was decorated with the head of a black lion, mouth open to reveal its fangs. The lion’s eyes were covered with a strip of red paper, so that a demon could not possess it before it was blessed and its spirit entered it.

‘What are you going to wrap it in?’ the Tiger asked the head demon.

‘Ray skin,’ the demon said. ‘Maybe even some thick sharkskin if we can get our hands on it.’

The Tiger glanced up from the handle. ‘Don’t wrap it yet. I have some skin taken from one of the biggest sharks that ever lived. I caught it a couple of hundred years ago, with my own claws, off a tiny fishing boat in the South China Sea. I had the skin tanned; it’s not black, but you can dye it. It would be perfect.’

The demon grinned with delight. ‘My thanks, sir, that would be more than suitable.’

‘Thanks, Tiger,’ I said. I turned to the demon. ‘When are you planning to put it together?’

‘We were planning to wrap and fit the handle tomorrow, sharpen the blade the next day, and then have it blessed three days from now,’ the demon said. He bobbed his head at the Tiger. ‘Now we will wait until the sharkskin arrives.’

‘I’ll have it here for you tomorrow,’ the Tiger said.

The demon shrugged. ‘Then it will be right on schedule.’ He nodded to me. ‘You can present it to Lord Leo anytime after that, ma’am.’

‘I’ll need to send out invitations, so at least five days after that,’ I said.

My next stop was the mess hall, where the head caterer, a human Immortal, was preparing food for the demon workers.

‘The sword will be ready in three to four days,’ I said. ‘Can we hold the presentation ceremony in about nine or ten days?’

He quickly checked the calendar. ‘Neither of those days are auspicious, but the day after, eleven days from now, is a good time to give gifts.’

‘Done,’ I said. ‘I’ll have Yi Hao give you a list of who to invite.’

He nodded. ‘Looking forward to it, ma’am, it’s way too quiet around here. I’m sure the demons that turned from the service of One Two Two will be delighted to see the Disciples back here where they belong, celebrating.’ His smile faded. ‘Is there any word on the possibility of changing you back so that the Academy can be moved back here? That is what we all want to see, ma’am, the buildings and courts full of students again.’

‘I have some leads that Xuan Wu himself gave me,’ I said. ‘They sound difficult but I’m determined.’

‘That’s good to hear, ma’am.’

I led the Tiger back along the narrow path cut into the side of the cliff and to the main forecourt in front of the Hall of Purple Mist.

‘Before you take me back down, could you give me a few minutes alone in the temple?’ I said.

The Tiger changed to True Form and stretched out on the stones in the sunshine. ‘Go right ahead. I’m not going anywhere.’

I slithered up the narrow stairs to the temple. The Celestial version of the Golden Temple was double the size of the one on Earthly Wudangshan. Statues of the Xuan Wu — the snake/turtle combination of John’s True Form — guarded each side of the entrance, the snake wrapped around the turtle’s shell and disappearing into it where they touched. Inside the temple was a statue of John in Celestial Form — a black-skinned human with wild hair and a small goatee, sitting on a throne and holding a sword across his knees. The sword was Seven Stars. A snake and turtle were beneath each of his bare feet. An altar was laid out in front of him, holding two vases of flowers, cups of wine and burning incense. A screen stood behind him.

I curled up my coils and sat in front of his effigy. His black fierce face gazed at me and he seemed ready to leap up and cut off my serpent head with the sword.

I meditated on the lives of those who had died because of the battle between Heaven and Hell. Charlie, Rhonda, Regina: women who had died caring for others rather than fighting, the way so many women in the world’s conflicts died. The Disciples who had died defending the Mountain — the stronghold against the forces of Hell. April, whose naivety had killed both her and her child. The fox spirit who had died trying to hide herself and protect her child, who had died anyway. All the stone Shen destroyed by Six. It was a long list and I wished I could shed a tear for them all, but it wasn’t possible in serpent form. Many of them had chosen their path and died with honour, but for some their deaths were what those in the military blithely called ‘collateral damage’ and dismissed as part of the necessity of war.

Even though John was God of the Arts of War, he had never revelled in war and had always sought negotiation first. He was a study in contradictions, being the greatest fighter in existence and at the same time holding a deep abhorrence for killing. It didn’t stop people from dying, however. Always so many people giving their lives, even more so recently because John was no longer present to protect them.

I raised my serpent head. I wasn’t a fighter of his calibre but I would do my best to protect those who needed protection. I nodded to John, and his statue stared fiercely back at me.

I turned. I was on top of the highest peak in Celestial Wudangshan and the view was breathtaking. The mountains below me spread as far as I could see, their bases covered in mist and their peaks jagged and sharp. Something to do with the altitude and the geography made it seem that all the lower peaks were facing this highest peak and bowing to it. I turned back to glance at John’s statue and bowed to him. My warm, caring, generous, reptilian god.

I went down the stairs to the waiting Tiger.

‘Okay, I’m ready to head back to work,’ I said.

‘Did he appear to you?’

‘No.’

‘I’d expected his statue to take on a life of its own and come charging down to carry you away.’

‘He’s in two pieces at opposite ends of the world. Not very likely to happen.’

‘Has he appeared to anybody recently?’

‘Not since Chinese New Year.’

‘Okay.’ The Tiger touched my snout with his nose and carried me back to the Academy. He bowed on one foreleg and disappeared.

Gold was waiting for me outside my office. He jumped up as soon as I appeared and followed me inside. I sat at the desk and he shut the door and sat across from me, his face alight with excitement.

‘I can see you have something to tell me, so go ahead,’ I said.

‘I have a lead on Shenzhen. It seems that peasants are travelling there to work in the factories, and not leaving. At all. Ever.’

‘Couldn’t they just be falling through the bureaucratic cracks?’ I said. ‘This is all done on paper, I’ve seen it. When you go through immigration at Lo Wu, you fill in a mountain of bureaucratic forms that they don’t even look at. They just stamp them and then put them in a box for filing. There must be some pieces of paper that don’t make it through to data entry, even if they do have a computer system.’

‘They do, and I’ll have to investigate more; all I have at the moment is a hunch. A stone I know was working on the update of the China Bureau of Statistics’ databases and, in a fit of nostalgia, looked for a human ex-lover. He found her — but once she moved to Shenzhen her records disappeared; in fact, she’s disappeared completely. Normally people have to continue to pay taxes in their home province even if they move to the city to work, and she stopped doing it. He checked her residential, health, work permit and family planning records too — and found nothing. She’s gone. No death record either.’

‘More than one person has disappeared like this?’

‘Several hundred.’

I grimaced.

‘I know what you’re thinking, ma’am: there are millions of people travelling into Shenzhen, and many of them want to disappear to avoid being sent back to their villages or to avoid paying taxes back home. But there seems to be some sort of pattern to the disappearances, and we want to do some analysis on the data.’

‘How big’s the database, Gold?’

It was his turn to grimace. ‘Huge. Even the current year’s data is in the terabytes. Older data is kept separately. It’s a nightmare.’

‘You’ll have to go down to crunch that.’

‘Even with three stones linked up, it would take about a day completely offline. Possibly longer.’

‘Do you have a couple of friends who’d be willing to do this? I know how you stones hate being used as computers.’

‘Calcite — my friend who worked in the Bureau of Statistics — will help. We just need to find one more.’

‘Don’t look at me,’ the stone in my ring said. ‘I’m not leaving Emma alone after what happened last year.’

‘Oh, good point,’ Gold said. He went quiet for a moment, thoughtful, then stopped moving completely, not breathing or blinking.

‘Gold, stay alive,’ the stone said.

Gold came back with a start. ‘Oh, sorry.’

‘This has you more upset than usual,’ I said. ‘It’s not often you forget to live.’

‘This sounds like a threesome,’ the stone in my ring said.

Gold wiped one hand over his face. ‘Not a threesome. She’s my great-great-granddaughter.’

‘Five generations?’ my stone said.

Gold nodded.

‘And you worry about her? You’ve been human way too long,’ the stone said.

‘Her great-grandmother was one of my wives at the tea plantation,’ Gold said. ‘When the Celestial found out that I’d helped steal the tea, they only gave me five minutes to put my affairs in order before I was taken to the Celestial Plane. I never really had a chance to say goodbye to them and to make sure they were cared for. The demon servants took off, then the local warlord found out I’d gone. He kept my wives as his own, but when he found that one of them was pregnant he threw her out, leaving her with nothing.’

‘She did well to survive.’

‘She was forced to do things that I’m not proud to be responsible for. Now our descendant, Ah Fua, has disappeared.’

‘This is ridiculous. I bet she doesn’t even keep a tablet for you,’ the stone said. ‘Five generations is way past any accountability.’

‘Her mother does. She has an ancestral tablet for me at home, and one for my whole generation in the temple. Ah Fua doesn’t need to do it because her mother does everything, even sweeps the graves. They’re good, diligent children.’

‘Do they know?’

‘Of course not, Dad. Now, if we’ve finished with the interrogation, I’d like to find another stone who can help locate Ah Fua.’

‘I wonder if Zara would mind helping,’ I said. ‘She’s still in hiding in the armoury, it would keep her busy.’

Gold’s face lit up. ‘She says yes.’ He grinned broadly. ‘I’ll go arrange it.’

CHAPTER 10

Simone, Leo and I had dinner together that evening, just the three of us.

‘The appointment with the Archivist is tomorrow after school,’ I said to Simone. ‘Don’t forget. I’ll need you to take me.’

She gasped, her eyes wide. ‘Oh, no! I’ve arranged to take some of my friends out on the boat after school tomorrow!’

‘You never asked me,’ I said.

She stuck her chin out at me. ‘I don’t need to. It’s my boat.’

‘Point taken; but I’m your guardian and you’re not an adult. Therefore I am legally required to be aware of where you are at all times.’

‘I’m going on the boat after school tomorrow,’ she said, stubborn.

‘I think an adult should go along with you, just in case,’ I said.

‘You have to go see the Archivist, and Leo’s …’ Simone hesitated, obviously not wanting to hurt Leo’s feelings. She changed what she was going to say. ‘Leo’s no good on the water.’

Leo grimaced but didn’t say anything.

‘How about Michael then? All the girls will think he’s the coolest thing ever.’

‘I told them girls only; they wanted to bring some boys but I said no, just all girls is more fun,’ Simone said. ‘They’ll get really annoyed if I bring Michael. I don’t need anyone along, Emma, really. The demons will look after us.’

‘I’d like to go,’ Leo said.

Simone’s expression softened. ‘You sure?’

He nodded with a false smile. ‘Sounds like fun. I want to meet your friends.’

Simone shrugged. ‘Okay. We can have fun pretending we’re related.’

‘Sounds like a plan,’ Leo said, his smile becoming more genuine.

‘I still need to get to the Archivist. Can you drop me there and be back in time for your cruise?’ I said.

‘How far is it?’ Simone said.

‘I have no idea,’ I said. ‘I thought General Ma was going to tell you where it is.’

Simone unfocused, concentrating, then snapped back, obviously happier. ‘It’s fine, it’s just next to the Celestial Palace. He said you can take the stairs in Wan Chai and then someone can summon you a cloud to take you the rest of the way. I don’t need to take you.’

‘Can Ma do it?’

She concentrated again. ‘No, he’s busy. I’m asking around … what time is it tomorrow?’

‘Three.’

She nodded, still concentrating, then snapped back. ‘Your stone is supposed to have all of this info, Emma. It’s gone to sleep again, hasn’t it?’

The stone didn’t reply.

She shrugged. ‘Michael will wait for you at the Celestial Palace at about two forty-five and take you across on a cloud. Problem solved.’

It was quicker to walk the kilometre or so from the Academy to the Celestial Gateway than to drive. I walked along Hennessy Road, the air thick with the fumes of the passing traffic and burning my throat and eyes. At Southorn Playground — a concrete soccer pitch painted green, used by locals to sit and talk, and by young people to play basketball and soccer — I took an escalator up to the pedestrian overpass. The overpass straddled the busy streets of Wan Chai — Lockhart Road, Jaffe Road and then finally Gloucester Road, five lanes each way and packed with cars and red taxis. The overpass led into the mezzanine floor of Immigration Tower, which was full of Filipina domestic helpers suffering the tedious all-day wait for their work visas. Before I’d met John I’d often spent the whole day here myself, waiting for hours in the cockroach-infested halls rich with the ripe aroma of the over-used toilet facilities, being shuffled from counter to counter and interviewed by bored or aggressively irritated immigration officers. The waiting areas had recently been upgraded, but the bored bureaucrats behind the desks remained the same.

The walkway continued out of Immigration Tower and into Central Plaza One, an office tower that had once been Hong Kong’s tallest building. It was triangular in cross-section, and each wall had a bank of lifts to go to a different section of floors. All of the fittings were triangular to fit with the theme, including triangular gardens on the ground around the tower. I walked through Central Plaza, across another small walkway and into the office tower connected to the Convention Centre. I passed a number of international convention attendees, their large identity cards strung around their necks. They were loudly discussing some sort of plastics manufacturing in American and French accents.

I turned right out of the Convention Centre complex and walked across another road to Great Eagle Centre, which sat right on the edge of the water. It and its twin tower, Harbour Centre, had massive advertising signs spanning their first to third floors — they were visible from all over the harbour and featured in any night-time Hong Kong postcard scene. I could see the Star Ferry pulling into the Wan Chai ferry terminal below me, and a few double-decker buses waited in the bus station. I took another overpass to the Hong Kong Exhibition Centre, then an escalator down to the ground. I’d walked more than a kilometre without touching the ground.

The Hong Kong Exhibition Centre had a large open area on its ground floor and a rectangular fountain with dragon-head spouts. Behind the fountain stood a replica of Beijing’s Nine Dragon Wall, the gate to the Celestial Palace.

I didn’t immediately approach the wall; instead, I went to the roadside, where two large bronze statues of qilin stood facing the traffic. Known as kirin in Japan, they were Celestial creatures with the body of a horse, the head of a lion, the horns of a deer and the feet of a goat; most interestingly to me, they were also covered in scales like a reptile. Westerners often referred to them as Chinese unicorns, and although their appearance was not very unicorn-like, their nature was similar. They were divine creatures of pure light, fleeting and rare, not even composed of yang or yin but somehow transcendent of universal essence. It was regarded as a blessing to see a qilin. I never had, and knew that only very few of my Celestial acquaintances had ever seen one.

I turned away from the qilin and walked up to the Nine Dragon Wall. As I approached, the wall grew from two to four metres high and spread to twice as wide. The marble balustrade guarding the front of the wall descended into the ground and the sounds of human life around me ceased. The dragons came to life and writhed to the centre of the wall to greet me.

I reached into the large Sogo shopping bag that I’d brought with me and pulled out a range of local snacks. I waved one of the boxes. ‘Strawberry pocky is who?’

‘Me!’ said a gold dragon; it whipped its head out of the wall and took the box of pocky in its mouth. The lid opened and all of the iced biscuit sticks flew into its mouth at the same time. The box disappeared.

‘Damn, you’re greedy,’ I said.

‘Any more in there?’ the dragon said, eyeing the Sogo bag.

I raised a box of tiny hollow koala-shaped biscuits filled with icing. ‘Koalas?’

‘Chocolate?’ one of the purple dragons said.

‘Mine!’ another dragon said, and snatched the box out of my hand, then slithered to the end of the wall to enjoy the biscuits in peace.

I raised another couple of boxes. ‘I have strawberry and vanilla koalas here …’ They floated out of my hand to two more dragons. I checked inside the bag. ‘Chiu Chow iced mini biscuits …’

‘No way,’ a blue dragon said, staring wide-eyed at me. ‘Really?’

‘Give them to him, he’s from Swatow,’ said a purple dragon through a mouthful of koala.

I passed the Chiu Chow biscuits to the blue dragon and checked the bag again. ‘I feel like Santa at Christmas. I have … barbecue beef, spicy pork, Portuguese egg tarts …’

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