Doctor Who_ The Eleventh Tiger Part 6

'Does it say "except for gwailos"?'

'No, but -'

Kei-Ying released the ear just long enough to give it a clip with his hand, then twisted it again.

'No buts! No exceptions. This Chesterton needs a physician.

I am a physician, therefore I will help. You will be a physician too, so the same rule applies to you.' He released his son.

Fei-Hung rubbed his ear. 'I bet their physician wouldn't help you if the situation was reversed.'

'That,' Kei-Ying said patiently, 'is why we should help. If you dislike someone, why would you want to be like him?' He turned to go back inside, then paused to curse. 'I forgot to ask Cheng about that box.'

They had been so completely sidetracked that Fei-Hung hadn't thought to mention it either.

'Just a moment,' he said. 'I have seen those people before!

We pa.s.sed them on the Baiyun road.'

'So we did! And the old man, the Doctor, said they'd just arrived. Perhaps the box is theirs.' Kei-Ying nodded to himself. 'I shall ask them, at dinner.'

'What about Cheng's cart?'

'Tell Jiang to take it back to the Hidden Panda.'

'Jiang?' It seemed a rather menial task for another teacher.

'Jiang.'

7.

Once the last bolt was thrown, and the shutters closed against the darkness outside, Cheng relaxed a bit, letting out a long breath. Then he set about looking for his eye.

He found it under the table nearest the door, and picked off the bits of grit and sawdust that had adhered to it. He looked at it, reluctant to put it back in after its journey around the floor. For the first time in his life, he felt a little guilty about not keeping the place any cleaner than a drunken dock worker was likely to notice.

The broom in the corner looked welcoming for a change.

'Maybe tomorrow,' he told it. He went back behind the bar and used his teeth to pull the stopper out of a bottle of Kao-liang. He poured some of the liquor into a mug and dropped his gla.s.s eye into it, rolling it around to clean it. Then he dried the eye off carefully, put it back in its socket - it stung, despite his efforts to remove the alcohol - and drank the liquor, as he didn't see any point in wasting it.

He lifted the bottle and took it through to the kitchen, where the giant Pang was trying to chisel off the crust on one of the overused woks. 'Drink?' he offered. Pang took a couple of swallows from the bottle.

'What a day,' Cheng sighed.

'Almost like the old days.'

'Yes, almost. Except that there was no profit in it. It'll cost us to replace those chairs.'

There was a rapping on the shutters next to the door, a simple long-short long-short code. Cheng opened the door and let in a wiry, white man with a squashed nose and weathered face. He wore simple local clothes, but couldn't disguise his military bearing or walk.

'You're late,' Cheng told him in heavily accented English.

'Captain Logan had me putting a couple of men through punishment drills as soon as we got back from Qiang-Ling.

He's a wee s.h.i.+te, that one. The kinna man whose mouth bleeds every twenty-eight days, if ye take my meaning.'

'Hardly the way for a soldier to talk about his superior officer?'

Sergeant Major Anderson shrugged the comment off. 'I've been in the army since he was naught but a babe in arms, and I'll be there when he's retired to some soft desk job in London.' He looked towards the door to the cellar. 'Now, d'ye have something for me?'

Cheng nodded, happy that the small talk was over. He lit a small lamp and led Anderson down into the spiced depths of the cellar. The s.p.a.ce under the inn was filled with boxes and barrels, and the occasional rat that Cheng hoped would have the sense to keep out of the way. Apart from food and drink, there were small piles of lanterns in the corners and even a dancer's lion costume.

Cheng led the Scotsman to a small pile of crates and patted the topmost one. 'A Russian s.h.i.+p came into the docks yesterday. This was on board.'

He put the lamp down, pulled a knife from his belt and levered the top off the crate. There were bottles inside it nestling in straw. Cheng lifted one out and tossed it to Anderson, who caught it easily.

The sergeant major pulled the stopper out and sniffed.

'Smooth stuff,' he said admiringly. He put the stopper back in. 'How many?' .

'Just what you see here. Six crates, twelve bottles each.'

Anderson nodded thoughtfully and Cheng could see the wheels turning behind his eyes, the beads sliding along the mental abacus to work out what to offer in exchange.

'Three boxes of rifle ammunition.'

'Five,' Cheng countered immediately - through force of habit. Three would have been fine.

'Four.'

'Done.'

'Deliver them to the scullery at Xamian in the morning.

Your boxes of bullets will be in the linens as usual.'

'That's fine.' Cheng led Anderson back up to the kitchen, where Pang was counting up stock. 'How is Megan?'

'Och, she's fine. I had a letter from her this week. She's settling in to her new school nicely, she says.'

'That is good to hear,' Cheng said, and meant it. He'd never met this Megan, but she seemed like a good person, from what Anderson had told him. They shook hands on the deal.

'Tomorrow morning it is.'

Then Anderson was gone, and Pang paused in his work.

'Jiang's waiting for you upstairs.'

Cheng groaned, but ascended to the cleaner, private dining level. The furnis.h.i.+ngs here were much the same as on the ground floor, but a few watercolours hung on the walls and every table was part.i.tioned into its own little booth. Here the slightly better-off clientele could eat and discuss business without having to look over their shoulders at a crowd.

Jiang was indeed waiting. He was tall and thin, with a slightly s.h.a.ggy moustache, and wore a white tunic over black trousers. His clothes may have been plain, but they were well tailored. 'Jiang-sifu,' Cheng said. 'What can I do for you?'

'Lei-Fang has called a meeting. On the junk.'

'Let me get my coat.'

The junk was a large, two-masted s.h.i.+p that could slide over the Pearl River quietly and steadily, as placid as a swan. Only a couple of sailors were visible on deck, doing whatever sailors did with ropes and suchlike. Cheng had never been to sea and, on a river, preferred a boat he could row himself.

He and Jiang had ridden in a wagon to the northwest of the city, to a small dock where a ferryman was waiting with a low, wide boat. It had taken a further half-hour to reach the place where the junk was moored, and Cheng had pa.s.sed the time by telling Jiang about the day's ha.s.sles. Jiang seemed amused, which made Cheng wonder whether telling him had been such a good idea.

Then, as the setting sun enriched the sky ahead, they had reached the junk. It sat high on the water, its sails glowing in the late afternoon light, its planking the colour of pale tea.

The ferryman guided the boat in under the shadow of the junk, and one of the sailors let down a rope ladder. Cheng and Jiang quickly scrambled up it. At the top, Cheng looked down and saw the ferryman push the boat away and glide across to the near sh.o.r.e to wait.

Cheng stepped down on to the main deck and ducked through a low door. To his surprise, Lei-Fang was waiting in the companionway outside an ornate gilded door. He was a little older than Cheng and Jiang, but he seemed to have aged twenty years since Cheng last saw him barely a month ago. He still wore his militia uniform, which surprised Cheng as these meetings were supposed to be covert.

'Some sort of emergency?' Cheng asked.

'I'm not sure. Something strange is happening.'

'Strange?'

'You'll see.' Lei-Fang sounded as worn and worried as he looked.

Cheng didn't like this at all.

Lei-Fang knocked on the door. 'Enter,' a voice called out.

And they did.

The room inside was fit for a palace - a far cry from the simple captain's cabin, strewn with charts and scrolls, of Cheng's last visit. Now the chamber was filled with ornate lamps and statuary, and the most expensive furniture and carpets he had ever seen. At the far end was a low dais.

Cheng stopped short as he saw the three men on the raised area. They were all strangers to him; the familiar faces he had served with for the last couple of years weren't there.

All three men had short hair, and none of them had shaved their foreheads. One man was sitting, firm yet relaxed. His hair was grey, as was his wispy beard. The other two men stood flanking him. One was lean, with an angular, handsome face. The other was squat, almost as wide at the shoulders as he was tall, his face almost square.

They were complete strangers, yet somehow Cheng recognised them. He couldn't believe his eye. Those three faces were burnt into his consciousness in a way that even his father's face was not. They weren't dressed in the robes of monks any more, but he recognised them as if he had last seen them yesterday, not two years ago.

The abbot leant closer to him. His eyes didn't glow today, but Cheng suddenly felt as if he knew what it was like to be a haunch of beef in the hands of a butcher a.s.sessing the grain before slicing the meat.

'I know you, don't I?' the abbot asked.

Terrified, Cheng nearly blurted out 'yes'. He bit his tongue in time and shook his head. He thanked all the G.o.ds and ancestors he knew that he didn't seem to be as important to the abbot as the abbot had been to him. Then he remembered that he had grown his moustache since their last meeting, and that he had no gla.s.s eye back then, just a patch over the socket.

The abbot didn't blink, even though he held Cheng's gaze for a full minute. 'Perhaps you have delivered reports to me before.'

'I...I don't think so,' Cheng replied. Then he blurted out, 'Who are you?'

'I am your superior. You may call me Lord, or Master.' The abbot Cheng remembered from nearly two years ago spread his hands to either side. 'These are my generals. You will call them General, or Sir.' He smiled, not unkindly but with steel.

'Now kneel before your lord.'

The abbot watched as Zhao and Gao moved off the dais to flank Lei-Fang, Jiang and Cheng. He had never seen the latter pair before, as far as he could remember, but Lei-Fang had told him who would be attending. A servant came in with an urn of tea.

The abbot relaxed in his favourite seat. It was lacquered wood, padded with velvet. Everyone knelt until he spoke. 'Be seated, please.'

The visitors took plush seats of their own.

'It has come to my attention that there is a certain amount of dissent among the ranks.' The abbot smiled, and enjoyed the way the three men looked even more nervous when he did so. 'Perhaps "confusion" would be a better word than "dissent"? I gather that there are some in the Black Flag who are uncertain whether merely to campaign against the Manchu, to join the Manchu and campaign against the gwailos, or to campaign against everyone who isn't Black Flag.' or to campaign against everyone who isn't Black Flag.'

'There are factions, my Lord, it is true,' Jiang agreed.

'Quite so,' said the abbot. 'The answer, of course, is simple.

The Black Flag should campaign against whomever its sovereign lord tells it to. Loyalty and obedience are mortal enemies of confusion - and powerful, invulnerable enemies they are.' He looked towards the tea servant and snapped his fingers. 'Refreshments.'