Cape again thought of Sally-the Sally he knew. “One problem with your theory.”
“What?”
“Girls tend to grow up into women.”
Xan scowled. “By then they’ve chosen a path,” he said. “You can’t change who you are just because you’re old enough to drink. No one, not even a woman, can change their past.”
“Maybe not,” said Cape. “But they can make their own decisions.”
Xan waved his right hand dismissively. “Free will is an illusion, gwai loh.”
“Our fate is set?”
Xan nodded.
“Then why do you keep looking over the edge of the roof?”
Xan stopped circling and looked impassively at Cape.
Oh, swell. You pissed him off.
“He’s got a point, Xan.” The voice was muffled slightly, making it hard to pinpoint the location, but it seemed to come from directly behind Xan.
Xan whirled and thrust his right arm forward, his hand open and turned sideways.
Cape watched as a chain twenty feet long shot from Xan’s sleeve, its barbed tip flying through the air toward the bamboo stand at the edge of the roof. By its speed alone, it would impale anyone in its path. The sound of wood splintering was followed by a sudden clang of metal against metal, and Xan lurched forward, suddenly off-balance as the chain was torn from his arm.
Xan grunted and peered into the darkness as he rolled sideways, changing his position before a counterattack could begin.
He was too slow.
Three shuriken whistled through the air, the first two spinning over Cape’s head, their sound the only way to track them. The third throwing star also made a sound as Xan bellowed with rage. Turning his head, Cape saw why.
The six-pointed star, three inches in diameter, was embedded deeply in Xan’s right knee. He staggered and brought his left arm up in a swinging motion as he struggled for balance. Metal darts glinted in the half-light from the moon as they flew from his hand. Xan strained his ears for sounds of impact, but as he shifted his weight onto his left leg, a shape darker than the shadows materialized behind him.
The wooden sword swung low and wide, knocking Xan’s legs out from under him. Even as he fell, Xan managed to pull a knife, a tanto, from his belt, but the sword caught his wrist on the backswing with a loud crack. The knife slid across the roof, coming to a stop between Cape’s legs, the point of the blade barely penetrating the crotch of his jeans and nicking his thigh.
Cape’s breath hissed through his teeth in a mixture of primal fear and relief. With an effort, he tore his eyes from his crotch and saw the cloaked figure had dropped the sword to bring both hands down in a chopping motion, so fast that Cape never saw the impact, but Xan’s head jolted sideways. The hands came up again, repeating the strike, Xan slumping face-first onto the tiles.
From where Cape was sitting, spread-eagled at knife point, he couldn’t tell if Xan was still breathing. He didn’t need Sally to remove the black cloth from her face to know who had come to his rescue and almost castrated him in the process.
Sally shook out her hair and looked from Cape to the knife and back again.
“Oops.” Sally winced apologetically. “A couple more inches and that would have really hurt.”
“A couple more inches…you referring to the knife, or was that meant to be ambiguous?”
Sally smiled and shrugged her shoulders.
Cape exhaled loudly. “Thanks.” He nodded with his chin toward Xan. “I take it you know him.”
Sally looked down at Xan and nodded slowly.
“He was my…” She started to say teacher but stopped. When she turned to Cape, she had a bemused expression on her face.
“Let’s just say I grew up in his shadow.”
“Don’t you think you were a little rough on him?”
Sally looked at Cape, a slight smile on her face but her eyes as cold as emeralds.
“Do you have any doubt he would have killed you?”
“Nah, he was just warming up to me.”
Sally shook her head. “You’re delusional.”
Cape let it go, holding his arms up and back as Sally cut the ropes binding his wrists. Both arms tingled from lack of circulation.
“Ready to go?” he asked.
Sally shook her head. “Not yet.”
She walked over to Xan and turned him over. Blood soaked his pants around the right knee. Sally pulled the throwing star free and Xan grunted but remained unconscious. She wrapped the cloth that had been covering her face around the knee and pulled it tight, then turned to Cape and held out her hand.
“Hand me those ropes.”
“You sure?”
“Definitely,” replied Sally. “He’s coming with us.”
Chapter Fifty-three
One-eyed Dong never claimed to be a brave man, and though he’d count himself smarter than most, he considered his real strength to be self-awareness. He knew he could never adapt to the new Dragon Head, so he left. Well, he fled, but that’s only because he couldn’t trust the bastard not to kill him. Dong was as mercenary as anyone else, even if he did have better table manners, and the Dragon Head couldn’t risk him jumping to a rival clan.
Zhang Hong, the previous Dragon Head, had lasted a long time, as respected and trusted as a career criminal could be-bold, visionary, and undeniably ruthless, but still fair in his own way. He honored his ancestors and kept to the code. But his son, Zhang Hui, was a bloody shark. Dong had no doubt Hui had killed his father to become Dragon Head. He suspected Hui would knock off his own mum if there was profit in it.
His only hope was to keep moving long enough for Hui’s greed to be his undoing. But sitting in a tunnel beneath a strange city, Dong wondered if even he had the patience to wait that long, or if his desperate circumstances would force him to act. He was running out of cities, and his chances were getting worse the closer he came to being cornered. He rolled his glass eyeball back and forth, letting the noise lull him into a trance where time and distant enemies held no sway.
Footsteps broke his reverie. Shen, the taller of his two guards, was approaching the desk. Shen and the other guard, Lok, were brothers whom Dong had rescued from abject poverty by recruiting them into the Triad. Fearless young men with flexible moral constitutions were always in demand, so Dong made arrangements to have money sent to the boys’ family every month. They were fiercely loyal and had risked everything by coming along on his self-imposed exile.
Lok’s name meant happy, and he certainly was, even in this cluttered, damp basement that had become their base of operations. Shen’s name meant deep-thinking, but tragically he was as dumb as a dish of soap.
Dong popped his eye back in and waited patiently for Shen to speak. After a minute of looking hopefully at the eager young man, Dong exhaled loudly and made the first move.
“Yes?”
“A package was delivered.”
“Where?” asked Dong. He hadn’t heard the trap door, and Lok had moved to guard the rear tunnel.
“At the opening of the south tunnel. Lok went out to buy more food at the grocery that stays open all night, just a few blocks away. I disabled the trap door and covered for him. He found the box ten feet inside the tunnel, where it opens near Stockton Street.”
“And?”
“I have the package.”
Here we go, thought Dong. “And?”
“I opened it.”
“And?”
“I thought you’d want to know what was inside.”
“What?”
“I said, I thought you’d want to know what was inside the package.”
Dong blew out his cheeks. “What was inside?”
“A note,” replied Shen. “And…something else.”
Dong decided he wasn’t a patient man, after all.