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Chapter Three

John poked his head around my bedroom door. ‘Simone’s asleep. Want to come with me to check the work at Hennessy Road?’

I pulled away from my computer. ‘Sure.’ I gestured towards the book in his hand. ‘How far did you get?’

He opened the book and held it at arm’s length to read it. ‘Eeyore losing his tail.’

‘Now you know why she called her little donkey Eeyore.’

He grinned. ‘I didn’t realise Taoism had penetrated Western society at such an early date. Certainly when I was in England in the twenties, nobody had heard of the Tao.’

‘I don’t think the Taoist references are deliberate, the author was just a very wise man.’ I pulled my copy of The Tao of Pooh from the shelf above my desk and tossed it to him.

He caught it easily, then opened the book and held it away to read it.

‘Holy shit,’ I whispered. I worked it out. It was May now; only four months since Kwan Yin had last fed him energy, but he’d been severely drained when the demons attacked us in Guangzhou a few weeks ago.

‘John, could you call Leo silently for me, please?’ I asked.

He glanced up from the book, concentrating. Leo appeared in the doorway behind him. ‘Yes, my Lady?’

‘Do you have your reading glasses, Leo?’

Leo pulled his small round reading spectacles out of his breast pocket. ‘Yeah, why?’

‘Give them to Mr Chen.’

‘No,’ John said.

I rose and leaned on my desk. ‘John, you look mid-forties. Is your human form mid-forties?’

‘I am four and a half thousand years old.’

‘No, John. Does your human form have the characteristics of a man in his mid-forties?’

John glanced at the glasses in Leo’s hand, then down at the book. He took the glasses from Leo and slipped them on, then looked at the book in his hand. His eyes widened. He removed the glasses, looked at the book, then put the glasses back on. ‘No.’ He sagged, took the glasses off again and handed them back to Leo.

‘It’s only four months since you saw the Lady,’ I said.

‘Oh my God,’ Leo said softly.

‘Do we need to take you back now?’

‘No,’ John said. ‘This is just the human form slipping from my control. I am becoming more human as I lose energy and my characteristics as a Shen fall away.’

‘Don’t risk it, John. If you’re running low on energy we’ll go to Paris.’

‘I’ll last a couple more months,’ he said quietly. ‘We’ll go in July or August, just before Simone starts school.’

I pushed away from the desk. ‘Okay. Thanks, Leo. Now let’s go check on the work at Hennessy Road.’

‘Am I all right to drive?’ John said. ‘I don’t want to risk you.’

‘I don’t wear the glasses to drive,’ Leo said. ‘It’s only things close up you need them for.’

‘Damn,’ John said softly.

‘I’m surprised you haven’t complained of headaches from the eye strain,’ I said.

John’s face was miserable.

‘Healing himself.’ Leo sighed with exasperation. ‘Take him down to Central tomorrow to buy some reading glasses before he wastes all of his energy.’

‘We’re going to Hennessy Road right now. Can you guard Simone for us?’ I said.

‘Sure.’

I stopped in the doorway. ‘How come you wear reading glasses, Leo? You’re too young to need them yet, aren’t you?’

‘It’s ’cause I’m such a brainiac,’ Leo said.

John drove in silence along Magazine Gap Road towards Admiralty. The city lights glittered between the trees. He carefully negotiated the winding turns as we went down the steep hill.

‘It’s not that big a deal,’ I said.

He didn’t reply.

We meandered through the highrises and took the overpass into Garden Road. Old Government House sat on the left, empty now that there was no Governor. The Chief Executive chose not to live there because of the poor fung shui. The towers of Admiralty loomed above us, still bright with office lights.

‘John.’

He ignored me.

‘John, you just need to guard your energy. Be careful. If you want to go to Paris sooner, tell us.’ I turned in my seat to see his face. It was rigid with control.

He turned into Queens Road, four lanes both ways and still full of buses and taxis. He pushed his way through the stop-start traffic onto Hennessy Road, then eased into one of the dark, narrow side streets to enter the building’s car park. One of the demon guards smiled, opened the door and waved us in. A large sign next to the entrance warned that it was private parking only.

The Hennessy Road building was perfect for our purposes. It had been built in the mid-seventies, and the external walls were covered with tan tiles. Each floor was about two hundred square metres, and there was a floor of shops on the ground level, with two basement car park levels. We’d kept the shops; they provided the building with camouflage. A fashion boutique and a stationery shop leased the ground floor units, both run by friendly Shen who lived as humans.

There was only one van left in the car park; all the other human workmen had gone home. John didn’t even bother parking in a space; he just left the car in the middle.

After we’d climbed out of the car I stopped him with my hand on his sleeve. ‘Are you embarrassed about needing glasses?’

He sighed with feeling. ‘It was one thing having clothing bought and made. It was another dealing with human weaknesses and needs. But this . . .’ He pulled his arm away, turned and looked into my eyes. ‘This is my effectiveness as a warrior. If I can’t see well, how can I defend you and Simone?’

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Easy. If you closed your eyes and worked blind, what’s the highest level of demon you could take down?’

‘I could take down the King himself without needing to see.’

‘How many Snake Mothers could you take down blind?’

He smiled sadly. ‘You’re right, Emma. You’re always right. I don’t need my eyes.’

‘See? It’s not that big a deal. And when we’re in Central tomorrow, you are not going to give me a hard time. Instead, you are going to sit quietly and let them test your eyes.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘Now let’s see Gold about your Academy.’

He turned and gestured for me to lead. ‘Our Academy, Emma.’

‘Do you have any idea how good that sounds?’

He grinned. ‘Yes.’

Gold met us at the lift lobby, smiling and jolly as ever. He wore a tan polo shirt and a pair of tan slacks, setting off his golden-brown hair. ‘Come up to the fifth floor. We’re nearly finished there.’

Like most Hong Kong buildings, the Hennessy Road tower didn’t have a fourth floor. ‘Is there a fourth floor at all?’

‘Nope, fourth is skipped,’ Gold said. ‘Do you want to renumber the floors? We can have the lifts altered.’

‘Not worth the effort,’ I said. ‘And when we have Western kids coming in, they’ll learn that “four” sounds like “death” in Cantonese, so it’s bad luck.’

We exited the lift at the fifth floor. The lobby was plain brown tiles, with a single door leading directly ahead.

‘This will be a training floor,’ Gold said. ‘Two training rooms, ten by twelve metres each. For large classes of juniors.’

We went through the door to a small hallway with two more doors. Gold opened the one on the left and guided us in. There were several workmen still there.

‘And I said to that fucker, you watch your shit, because if you don’t, you’ll find it shoved up your ass —’ The workman speaking saw us and fell silent.

‘They’ve nearly finished painting the ceiling,’ Gold said. ‘After that we can put the mats in, and the lowest ten floors will be ready for the juniors to commence training.’

John dropped to one knee and inspected the mats piled in the corner. How many Immortal Masters have returned?

All but three, my Lord, Gold said. They are in the Western Palace, ready to assist in moving the students down here when Bright Mansions is ready.

‘Are the workmen human?’ I whispered.

Yes, Gold said. Can you understand them?

‘What? You mean they’re speaking Cantonese and I can understand them?’

Gold grinned. ‘Good. It’s working. And it’s Fukien, not Cantonese.’

I had a sudden evil idea, and called out to the workmen. ‘How long before you’ll finish painting the ceiling?’

They stared at me with their mouths open. One of them snapped out of it. ‘About an hour, miss.’

‘Thanks.’ I turned to Gold. ‘What’s next?’

‘We’ll meet with Jade in the sixth-floor common room and talk about the budget.’

‘Oh, damn. Budgets.’

‘Miss?’ one of the workmen called.

I turned back to them. They grinned at me. ‘How come you can understand our dialect?’

‘Magic.’ I grinned back. ‘Come on, let’s talk to Jade and have this over with. I hate dealing with accountants.’

After Jade had gone, I tapped the papers into a stack. ‘I need a folder to put all this stuff in.’

A black manila folder materialised in front of me. ‘Thanks, Gold.’

I leaned on the table and looked at John. ‘You’ll need to rewrite the orientation material. The students will probably appreciate some information on the new location, and they’ll need help adjusting to life in Hong Kong.’

Gold grinned broadly. John glared at him.

‘What?’ I said.

Neither of them spoke.

‘You’d better tell me before I start shouting, guys.’

Gold gestured towards John. John grimaced. ‘Gold has been harassing me to write orientation material for years, and I’ve never done it. No time. But nobody else can do it; it has to be me.’

‘That’s his Lordship’s decision, not mine,’ Gold said, his boyish face cheeky. ‘I think anybody could do it. But the Dark Lord disagrees.’

‘I’m the only one with the expertise to prepare the material,’ John said. ‘Nobody else has the knowledge to do it. Not even you, Gold.’

‘John, after we’ve been to Central tomorrow, we’ll sit down together, and you can tell me what you want to say, and I’ll write it,’ I said. ‘We can do it together.’

John hesitated, then put his hands out. ‘Oh, all right. You’re the only one with the brains to do it anyway.’

Gold’s face lit up with a wide grin of triumph, making him look even younger, barely out of his teens.

Three days later we sat together in the dining room at the Peak for a follow-up.

‘Do we have a nomination for a chair for the meeting?’ Gold said.

‘No, we don’t,’ I said. ‘And if you pull that “voted and seconded” and “minutes of the last meeting” crap ever again, I’ll take your head completely off. I don’t have time — I have an assignment due next week, and Simone’s only going to sleep for about half an hour.’

John made a soft sound of amusement. I ignored him.

‘Very well, my Lady,’ Gold said, unfazed. ‘First matter: housing the Disciples in Happy Valley. About a quarter of the flats are vacant now, but we need to make arrangements for who goes where.’

John explained. ‘The barracks on the Mountain housed a large number of juniors together with a senior supervising: standard military style. As they moved up through the ranks they received more private accommodation. We can’t do that here; the walls have to stay put, they’re supporting walls.’

I flipped through the papers in my black folder. ‘I don’t have a copy of the floor plan, Gold. Do you have a spare?’

Gold waved one hand and a floor plan appeared in front of me. ‘Thanks. Four three-bedroom, four two-bedroom units to a floor. That’s nineteen to a floor with one supervisor. Too many; we need a common area and some study rooms.’ I thought for a moment.

‘You think so?’ John said.

‘What we’ll do is give the supervisor one of the three-bedroom units, make the other two bedrooms study areas, and the living room a common room for all of them.’ I scribbled on the paper in front of me. ‘How many students to a floor?’

‘Seventeen students, one supervisor to a floor,’ Gold said. ‘Twelve floors will handle two hundred and four. Enough.’

‘What’s the cube root of six thousand, seven hundred and fifty-three?’ I said.

‘To how many decimal places?’

‘Ten.’

‘Eighteen point nine zero one six one five one five eight —’

‘Stop. How come you can do that?’

‘Do what, my Lady?’

‘I’ve noticed that. You can do enormous sums in your head.’

‘Not in my head, and it’s part of my nature, my Lady. Can we return to the logistics of the accommodation? I’d like to finish it before Simone wakes and starts pestering you.’

‘Simone can go to Leo,’ John said.

‘Use your super Shen mega-powers, John, and see that Leo’s taken Monica out to the market,’ I said. ‘When Simone wakes up she’ll be right in here annoying us.’

‘Mega-powers. You make me sound like something out of a Japanese superhero show.’

‘You are ten times weirder than anything on those shows, and that’s saying something.’

Gold grinned. ‘Even the Beetle Boys?’

‘It’s close, but even them.’ I checked my notes. ‘Okay, junior Disciples, twelve floors. How about we give the seniors their own units, or let them share? Is that acceptable?’

‘Quite acceptable,’ John said. ‘It will be smaller than the Mountain, but that’s Hong Kong.’

‘How many floors, Gold?’

‘Probably about ten; plenty of room.’

‘There will still be room for you and Jade?’ John said.

‘Yes, my Lord. That leaves the top four floors.’

‘The mortal human Masters can go there,’ John said. ‘I’ll take the walls out; they’re not supporting walls at the top. We’ll make some big penthouses for them.’

‘I’ll get right onto it,’ Gold said. ‘I’ll move in some tame demons to clean up the empty units and prepare them. Next item.’ He checked the agenda in front of him. ‘Armoury. My Lord?’

‘That’s your area of expertise, John.’

John sighed, pulled his glasses off and rubbed his eyes. ‘Only a handful of the most robust Celestial Weapons made it. Some of them are very special. I don’t like the idea of them staying on the Mountain without the Celestial Masters to guard them.’

‘Do we have room here for them?’ I said.

‘The seals are set. The answer is: yes,’ John said. ‘Gold.’

‘My Lord.’ Gold nodded and scribbled some notes. He glanced up at John. ‘Seven Stars?’

John leaned back. ‘Seven Stars is the most destructive weapon ever forged. But it was forged for me. It will not shine for another. Leave it where it is. Only my most trusted lieutenants have access. It is safe.’

Gold was silent for a moment. Then he spoke softly. ‘I really am most profoundly honoured, my Lord.’

John waved him down. ‘The forge is undamaged. Gather the forge staff and put them to work. I want them replacing weapons as soon as possible.’

Gold nodded and scribbled some more. ‘My Lord.’

‘Also, go shopping for me. Hunt around the Earthly suppliers. I don’t want anything too poor in quality, it would be a waste of time teaching with rubbish. See what you can turn up.’

‘My Lord, I’ll see what I can do. I’ll go to Japan, they have always made quality blades. Don’t expect too much though. The art of crafting a fine weapon that isn’t a firearm is becoming lost.’

‘I know. Search out the antique weapons markets as well; there are some excellent old blades that could serve us well. We may even be able to pick up some more Masamunes — anything from that school would be worth having. Don’t worry about the expense, the cost is worth it. If you’re not certain about authenticity, let me see the blade. How is work proceeding in Hennessy Road?’

‘Very quickly. The demons work day and night. Only noise restrictions are holding us back.’

‘This really is working out very well.’

Four weeks later we met in the new conference room on the ninth floor of Hennessy Road.

‘Happy Valley,’ Gold said without any preliminary meeting nonsense. ‘The residents are complaining about the noise of the renovations. They are cancelling their leases and moving out.’

‘Good,’ I said. ‘Offer the remaining residents a reward to leave.’

‘I already did,’ Gold said. ‘The building should be ours by September.’

‘That fits perfectly,’ I said.

‘We need to employ people to look after the units,’ Gold said. ‘Cook, clean, things like that. I thought at first the Disciples could do it themselves —’

‘Of course they can’t,’ John said. ‘They’re exhausted at the end of the day. And some of them are studying as well. We can’t expect them to cook and clean for themselves on top of that.’

‘The Dark Lord is quite correct,’ Gold said. ‘So we need to hire people to help out.’

‘You can’t employ domestic helpers,’ I said. ‘It wouldn’t work.’

‘Why not?’ John said.

‘Have you seen those women on a Sunday in Central? They all meet there. There must be thousands of them —’

‘About eighty thousand, last time I counted,’ Gold said.

‘You were there on a quiet day,’ John said.

I continued, ignoring them. ‘And they’re all discussing their employers. They’d find out in no time flat —’

‘About the unusual nature of the residents of Turtle’s Folly,’ John said. ‘And how everybody seems able to speak Tagalog, regardless of where they’re from, because of the language charm Gold put in.’

Gold and I stared at him, speechless.

Eventually I found my voice. ‘How the hell did you know I call it that?’

John took his glasses off and leaned over the table to glare at me. ‘I know everything that happens on my Mountain.’ He leaned back. ‘I think it’s a good name for Bright Mansions. Very bad move, buying it at the top of the market like that. I’m doing a nice piece of calligraphy. Took me a long time to find a correct translation for the word “folly”.’

‘You’re not.’

‘I am. I’ll have it done in brass and put it over the door.’

‘You’re joking,’ I said.

‘Deadly serious. I’ll buy a couple of stone tortoises and put them on either side of the entrance as well, just to make the point.’

Gold’s mouth flopped open.

‘The Chinese Disciples will refuse to live there,’ I said.

‘They won’t have a choice.’

‘Xuan Wu Xuan Tian Shang Di,’ I said very severely, ‘Celestial Highness, Dark Emperor of the Northern Heavens, if you do this stupid thing your shell is in very serious trouble.’ I glared at him. ‘Simone will have to go in there sometimes, and I do not want to have to explain this to her, particularly about how it relates to your true nature.’

‘My true nature as the egg of a turtle, or my true nature as a motherless bastard?’

Gold made a quiet choking sound.

‘Both!’

‘Oh, all right.’ He leaned back, slipped his glasses on and gave it up. ‘But only for Simone. And I will definitely do it when I come back and she’s old enough to understand.’

‘You will be the one to explain it to her then. Which are you anyway? Turtle or tortoise?’

Gold sounded like he was strangling.

‘Same thing, same essence,’ John said without looking up. ‘Turtle in water, tortoise on land. The Tiger is the essence of all the great cats.’

‘And the Phoenix is bird essence. I understand. What about the Dragon?’

‘Essence of arrogant bastard.’ John gestured with one hand. ‘Gold.’

Gold flipped frantically through his notes. ‘Where were we?’

‘Staff for Turtle’s Folly,’ John said. ‘Emma’s right. Overseas or local domestic helpers are out of the question — they’d find out too much about us. I’ll send some of the Masters out demon-hunting and see what they come up with. Should be okay to put newly tamed low-level demons in there with so many senior Disciples and the Masters to keep an eye on them.’

‘Very good, my Lord,’ Gold said, taking notes.

‘We need to buy a couple of buses to carry the students between Wan Chai and the Valley,’ I said.

‘Easily done, my Lady.’ Gold looked up and shrugged. ‘I have nothing else to do.’

‘I’ll talk to the Masters about a demon-hunting expedition,’ John said. ‘And I’ll need to put that calligraphy in a safe place so you won’t find it and destroy it before I come back.’

‘The Disciples will be out of the building and back on the Mountain by the time you come back,’ I said. ‘There won’t be any place to put it.’

John took his glasses off and put them in their case. ‘I’ll find somewhere.’