The Hidden Blade (36 page)

A great cheer rose from the milling servants as they were rewarded with two large urns of spirits to divide among themselves for the evening. To a one they bowed down and thanked Da-ren, the mistresses, and the majordomo. After they had settled, large bowls of liquor in hand and slurping happily, the master of the opera troupe appeared and did his speech to wish the family a multitude of good fortune and prosperity.

The performances opened with a raucous act from the
Westward Journey
. Actors pretending to be monkeys scrambled around, scratching themselves, scratching one another. The menservants responded with guffaws and much thigh slapping. Ying-ying glanced Mr. Gordon. He too was laughing, very much enjoying himself.

More sedate pieces followed, while dish after dish appeared on the tables. Ying-ying didn’t much care for Peking opera. And she was already full after six dishes. She wished Amah were back so she could enjoy the delicacies and the entertainment. She wished Amah had never left. She wanted to give her a tremendous scolding. She would never get cross with her again if only she would come back.

She felt someone’s eyes on her. To her left, Chang, the man who had once rescued Little Dragon from a life on the streets, stood just to the inside of an entrance, largely hidden from view behind a thick pillar. He beckoned her with his hand.

This was odd. What could he want with her? Besides his insistent gestures, he seemed also to be mouthing something at her, something along the lines of, “Gu-niang, please come.”

She looked around her to make sure he wasn’t communicating with someone else. No, everyone had their eyes on the stage. Chang had his eyes on her.

“I need to use the changing room,” she murmured to Mrs. Mu-he, who was raptly absorbed in an act called “The Drunken Concubine.”

“Master Keeper Chang, what’s the matter?” she asked when she had made her way to him.

“It’s your amah, Bai Gu-niang,” he answered.

“My amah?” Ying-ying couldn’t help her voice from rising. “She’s
back
?”

Chang motioned her to keep her voice down. “I had to, uh, go to the outhouses just now. On my way back, I saw your amah. She wasn’t feeling so well, so I told her to get inside, that I’d let you know she has returned.”

She wasn’t feeling so well
. Amah should have recovered completely by the end of her retreat. So something
had
gone terribly wrong.

She didn’t have money on her person to tip him, so she pulled a small gold pin from her hair. “Thank you, Master Keeper Chang.”

“I’ll come with you, Bai Gu-niang,” he offered. “It isn’t safe in the dark for a girl to walk alone.”

She didn’t want a bodyguard. But if she refused, it might appear odd. Most girls her age probably would not turn down such help. “Many thanks, Master Keeper Chang. Your heart is too kind.”

“Not at all,” he answered modestly. “If anything were to happen to Bai Gu-niang, how could I live with myself?”

Her courtyard was dark, but the gate was open. Her heart wrenched. Amah was back.

“Please don’t let me keep you from the performances, Master Keeper Chang,” she said politely. “You have my gratitude.”

“I’ll wait just a minute to make sure your amah is all right,” he said. “She might need a doctor fetched.”

A faint glimmering of moonlight entered the house with her, illuminating the outline of one of Mother’s ink paintings that hung in the reception room. Ying-ying hurried deeper inside.

At the doorway of her bedchamber, she stopped. Someone was on her bed, lying just beyond a beam of moonlight. And this person breathed loudly—a vigorous noise, full lunged and easy.

Not
an injured Amah.

“Who are you?” she demanded.

The person swung to a sitting position. “Bai Gu-niang has such good hearing. How do you know I’m not your amah?”

Shao-ye! How did he come back—and when? She had not heard anything of it. Nobody had.

She brushed aside her stupefaction. What did it matter how and when he came back? He was in her rooms and had sent for her to be lured here. Had she approached the bed, he would have dragged her in and attempted to physically overwhelm her.

He came toward her. She took a step back.

“Bai Gu-niang, don’t be shy,” he cooed. “Think how far I’ve trekked to be with you.”

“Young Master should first pay his respects to Da-ren,” she said coldly.

“I shall.” He laughed. “After tonight. After raw grains of rice become cooked.”

After raw grains of rice become cooked
, a reference to things that could not be undone.

He lunged for her. To her surprise he was using a martial-arts stance, the Eagle Attack, his fingers hooked like talons, swooping down the way a bird of prey would seize a hapless barnyard hen.

For a split second she vacillated. What sweet satisfaction she’d derive from ramming an elbow into his kidney, or smashing a heel into his groin. Instead she ducked low, slid past him, and spun around. The exit was now behind him. Her only good option was to outrun him and return to the relative safety of the middle hall.

“Bai Gu-niang is agile,” he said, sneering. “I like that. Imagine how she’ll wriggle in bed.”

He came at her again, in a Winter Bear stance. She swerved left, then right. Once past him she did not look back, but she did not leave the way unimpeded for his pursuit: She upended a table and two chairs and emptied a large writing brush holder. Some twenty writing brushes clacked to the floor, then rolled about in every direction.

Behind her, Shao-ye bumped into something and tripped. He cursed loudly. Her heart pounding, her feet barely touching the ground, she sprinted out of the courtyard—only to be stopped by Chang.

“Bai Gu-niang is out so soon?” he asked, his voice full of apparent concern.

She would have run by him without a word. But something about him jarred her, and made her stop short.

He was a good two hand widths taller! What happened to his pronounced stoop?

“Young Master has just made his way back from Canton, thousands of
li
over a treacherous winter sea,” he said smoothly. “The first person he wishes to see is Bai Gu-niang. Isn’t Bai Gu-niang the least bit touched?”

For the first time she took a good look at him. He stood in a stream of moonlight, his face clearly lit. He was younger than she had supposed, in his early forties as opposed to his fifties. His gaze was sword-keen. And his breaths…

Cold fear inundated her. He was an arm’s length away, and she could not hear him breathe. He had not been some random servant bribed to trick her. He had been chosen for a reason. If anything, he had taught Shao-ye those stances of martial arts, but the young wastrel had been too dissolute to learn them properly.

Crash!
Shao-ye must have fallen down again. Her mind churned madly. Time was short. How could she extricate herself now?

“I am humbled by Young Master’s affection,” she said, pretending to be shy, “but Da-ren would not be pleased if I pledged myself without his prior permission.”

“What Young Master wants, Da-ren will eventually want for him,” Chang said calmly, pitilessly. “Gu-niang might as well bow before the inevitable.”

Ying-ying took a deep breath. Inside, Shao-ye had almost reached the door. It was now or never. “Without a matchmaker? Without even the proper rituals— Da-ren!”

She stared into the far end of the walled alley. Startled, Chang turned to look. Ying-ying sprinted in the opposite direction, toward the middle hall.

He cursed and came after her.

Ying-ying had thought herself light soled. But she could barely hear anything over her thunderous footfalls. It was only the cold sweat between her shoulder blades, the sense of absolute menace, that told her he was catching up to her.

She let fly Mother’s fur-lined cape and hoped that it would land on him and slow him down. It did, but only for a second. Up ahead, a new wall loomed. The path was about to end in a perpendicular alley. She cut to the left. Another left and then a right turn, and she would be within view of the middle hall.

With a sound like a flag lashing in the wind, Chang catapulted past her in the air, landed, and blocked the left turn she was going to take. She didn’t think. She took the right turn and kept on running.

“Why, Bai Gu-niang? Why make it so difficult on yourself?”

Her heart sank. She wasn’t winded yet. But if she opened her mouth she’d slow down for sure. Yet his smoothly delivered words had no impact on his speed. Instead he was gaining on her again. Worse, there was a good chance he was toying with her.

Once again he launched himself into the air, landing ten paces ahead of her to barricade the way. If she stopped, she was doomed. She was no match for him.

She barreled toward him. That caught him by surprise. When he realized at last that she meant to crash into him, he stuck out a foot, angling for the acupuncture points on her leg.

She pretended to trip and aimed her fall squarely on his shin. He yelled in pain and fell backward. They went down together. She sprang up and kept on running.

The alley went on forever before another turn presented itself. She angled into it. Almost too late she heard the sounds of small objects hurtling at her. She slowed down just enough to avoid most them, but one hit her solidly in the upper thigh.

It hurt, the metallic ball. Luckily it just missed a major acupuncture point—had it hit a finger’s width higher, it would have rendered her leg useless for hours. But the pain was searing enough that she would be able to only shuffle along, an injured hare easy for the fox to snare: The ball must have barbs.

She dropped to the ground facedown. Let him think that he had temporarily paralyzed her. She’d use this lull to remove the barbed ball, then circulate her chi to relieve pain and restore her strength.

“I didn’t wish to hurt you, Bai Gu-niang, but you gave me no choice,” Chang said, standing over her.

She made little whimpers of agony. She didn’t have to pretend: The barbed ball had hurt like a ghost’s teeth when she’d yanked it out. “My legs…my legs…”

“Best let them stay that way until I get you back to Young Master,” he said.

He bent down to pick her up. With all her might she kicked him in the face. He jerked back, but she still caught him on the neck. He made a grab for her foot, but had to jump out of the way as she threw at him the barbed ball she had dug out.

She leaped to her feet and ran as if all the ghosts of the underworld were behind her. Except that Chang was far more menacing—and now she had enraged him. An intersection came up ahead. Da-ren’s concubines lived in these parts. Ying-ying needed to go left. But she turned right. Just after the turn was a side door into the youngest concubine’s courtyard.

She pressed herself into the doorway and held her breath. Chang careened past her. She ran in the opposite direction. Within seconds he had realized his mistake and was on her tail again.

“You stinking daughter of a whore,” he snarled.

His voice sounded so close that all the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. Her left trouser leg had a cold, damp spot of blood. The muscles in her thighs burned. Her lungs felt ready to cave in. But fear drove her to run faster.

Another wall loomed ahead. If she took a right turn here and then the second left turn, she’d emerge onto the small plaza before the middle hall. She bore right. More barbed balls hissed after her. She was forced to run in a zigzag pattern.

Chang was close enough to breathe down her neck. He made a grab for her hair. She ripped off her heavy gold locket, almost the size of a plate, and threw it into his face.

The left turn came up. Just a few more strides. He launched more barbed balls—a vertical wall of them, blocking the left turn, leaving her no choice but to run straight on. There were no more left turns on this path, only a right turn where the path ended.

She barely avoided having her neck gripped as she made the right turn. But what was that up ahead? A person, a man walking. And not just any man, but Master Gordon, judging by the walking stick he swished—Chinese men never used canes unless they must.

“Help! Help!” she yelled in English.

He spun around. “Bai Gu-niang? What’s the matter?”

Behind her Chang stopped. A foreigner was a tricky addition to any situation. They were above the law, answerable only to their own kind. But for any Chinese who trespassed against them, the foreigners demanded the stiffest penalties.

“That man’s trying to abduct me,” Ying-ying said, panting, pulling Master Gordon along as she continued to run. Chang wouldn’t let her return to the safety of the middle hall. But a man who wished to have his head remain on his shoulders would think twice before invading a foreigner’s dwelling. “Take me to your rooms.”

“Abduct you?” Master Gordon was astonished. “For ransom?”

“For Young Master.”

“The fourteen-year-old?”

“The other one.”

“But he’s in Canton.”

“He’s back.” Alas.
Alas
.

“I see.”

Ying-ying’s stomach dropped in alarm—Chang had sneaked up on them and was now directly behind. She yanked at Master Gordon to run faster. Too late. He crumpled like last year’s straw toy—Chang had sealed his acupuncture points.