Kwok shoved the Doctor and Li into the back seat of the car, and slapped the roof as a signal to the driver. The car moved off. When it was out of sight, another car drew up before the steps to the house. Kwok knew this was not what HsienKo had intended, but he wanted to ensure her wellbeing as best he could; he did love her, after all. He hoped she would understand. 'Follow them,' he told the guards. He handed the driver a geomantic compa.s.s. 'When the Doctor and Li have been stranded in Orkney, kill them.'

Li and the Doctor sat in the back seat of the sedan which carried them into the fading evening light. Li was concerned, since he knew that he was expected at the station and always did what was expected of him. Also, the encounter at the house had not gone as he had expected. They should either have surrendered or fought; this course of action was unexpected.

The unexpected was Li's greatest enemy, as it made him unsure of his place in events. The sooner neatness and order could be extended to everyone, the more comfortable he would feel. The unexpected was dangerous, as one couldn't prepare a response to it. Whether it was a misplaced file or a Tong strategy, the unusual was a definite threat to the pursuit of his job.

How someone as disordered as the Doctor could perform any task was quite beyond him. Not that the Doctor seemed very active right now. He was just staring out of the window.

'Don't we get a commentary?' the Doctor asked suddenly. '

"On the left you can see the village where Lao Tze once spent a night"; that sort of thing?'

'No,' the driver said shortly.

Li leaned in close to the Doctor. 'We can escape now.'

'Not yet. If my guess about what happened to our cars earlier is right, they'll have to find a particular place to move from, and I want to examine some things about it.'

'Why?' Getting out and closing down the Tong was more important, surely.

'Because then we might be able to work out the sort of places they can go.'

'I meant why do you think there must be particular places?'

'The a.s.sa.s.sins who attacked us at the police station all had individual compa.s.ses, so presumably individual people can go anywhere. Something as large as a car is another matter. The truck I was following could have jumped between interstices at any time, so why didn't it? The only logical a.s.sumption is that the driver needed some special conditions. Also, those geomantic compa.s.ses they carry bear details on landscape features. I think that's some sort of aide-memoire aide-memoire for where they can go.' for where they can go.'

The car turned and the grey rock of a quarry stretched out below them. The Doctor perked up. 'A quarry! How very interesting!' He paused. 'It looks a lot like Skaro, actually. Or the land outside the Capitol...'

'That must be where we're going; there are trucks down there.'

'Well spotted, inspector.' The Doctor reached forward with his right hand and tapped the driver on the shoulder. 'Excuse me, but I was just ' Li saw his chance, since his left hand had been dragged forward by the cuff anyway, and swung his hand over the Doctor's. The handcuff chain caught under the driver's chin, jerking his head back.

The guard in the pa.s.senger seat tugged out a gun, but the car was too cramped for him to aim properly. Li forced the gun away with his free hand and headb.u.t.ted the guard. He then punched the driver a couple of times behind the ear, knocking him unconscious. The car started drifting off the road, but the Doctor thrust out a leg through the gap between the two front seats, catching the steering wheel with the heel of his boot. It looked more like the wheel was moving his foot, but somehow he managed to keep the car on the road.

While the Doctor was propped through the gap between the front seats with his foot on the wheel and one hand on the back of the driver's seat, Li untangled the handcuff chain from around the driver's neck. Squeezing his hand between the driver's seat and the side of the car, he reached the door handle with his fingers and opened it. The driver obediently fell out onto the dusty road, rolling into the darkness behind them.

The Doctor shifted sideways, still propped face-down over the driver's seat, and stretched his other leg down through the gap between the seats towards the pedals. He stabbed at one, and the car juddered to a halt. He knelt on the seat, then turned to sit in it and closed the door.

Li clambered through to the pa.s.senger's seat, shoving the guard out of the pa.s.senger door. He hadn't thought the Doctor had it in him. Perhaps he was innocent after all; he would still have to go to trial, though. These things had to be done properly, and if he was innocent it would have to be shown in court so that there was no stain on his character. 'Very effective. What now?'

'Now I want to look at that quarry.'

Li glanced up at the rear-view mirror. Two pinpoints of light were moving towards them. 'That might have to wait.'

The Tong had lied about sparing them, he decided. Oddly enough, it was rea.s.suring in a way, in so far as it proved that the proper scheme of things still operated.

The Doctor looked up too. 'Why does n.o.body ever leave me alone for five minutes, eh?'

Kwok had finally got round to having some dinner, when he saw the uniformed schoolboy crossing the hallway outside. He never had any doubts that he would return, but where was HsienKo? Leaving the rest of his dinner untouched, Kwok jogged upstairs to their quarters. The room was empty, but the discarded j.a.panese garb lying on the floor of their quarters told Kwok as much about HsienKo's whereabouts as a note would have.

He fished his locket out from inside his shirt and held it thoughtfully. 'Perhaps she had the right idea.'

A rushing twenty-foot waterfall poured into the largest of a series of linked pools of crystal-clear water. Trees with huge waxen leaves bordered the secluded lagoon, which was watched over by ancient statues left by some long-forgotten civilization.

Letting the waterfall bombard her was refreshing, but not something that could be endured for too long. Relaxing in the pools warmed by the tropical sun, though, that was another matter. She lay back and drifted, feeling the tension leach out of her and into the water. Next time she wouldn't take such a risk, she decided. It didn't do to tempt fate like that.

'I thought I'd find you here.'

She opened her eyes to see Kwok sitting on a flat rock. She was glad to see him; it was just like old times, and she could almost imagine that Shanghai was as far behind them in terms of obligation as geography. 'I needed this.'

'Did it work?'

'We won't have to worry about j.a.panese counterintelligence tracking us here; not with their local head cremated along with all his files. Nor can they trace me, now that my tragic geisha has been publicly blown to pieces by a bomb in her car.'

'Then all that remains is to go to the Jade Emperor.'

'Yes.' Suddenly she felt more melancholy than relaxed.

'Once the way is open, our work will be finished. Tomorrow we'll leave Shanghai after I've arranged for cover on duty. We can't have anyone noticing that so many of us have gone.'

Although her profession was somewhat unstable, it was part of what defined her, and the end of any part of her lifestyle was a loss of sorts. She stood, the fine silt seeping around her toes most agreeably, and caught the towel which Kwok threw. 'I suppose that having something isn't always as nice as wanting.' She didn't always feel as certain as she appeared, and this was one of those times.

'When that something is Weng-Chiang, you'd be right.'

'I know, but the bonus is worth having. Travel broadens the mind.'

'And which is more important to you?'

She shook her head. He already knew the answer to that.

'Let's go home.'

Li reached for his gun as the other car approached, but his fingers closed on empty air before he recalled that the guards had confiscated it. He and the Doctor had abandoned the car, and watched from behind a rock as the guards who had followed them examined it.

They seemed to be having some sort of argument with the driver and guard from their car, both of whom had returned to undoubtedly painful consciousness. Such were the wages of sin, Li thought dismissively. The guards split up, combing the scrubby land around.

The Doctor held up his dog whistle and blew on it. 'Those look like the trucks that left the house,' he muttered, 'so K9 should still be around.' Sure enough, an electrical whirring heralded the arrival of the Doctor's mechanical pet.

Unfortunately, it also attracted the attention of the guards.

'Stun them, K9!'

The metallic animal whirled to face the startled guards, and Li blinked as flares of red light sparked between them. The guards fell in rapid succession. Li was astounded. Such a machine would be invaluable to any group in these times.

Perhaps he could sequester it as evidence before the Doctor's trial...

The Doctor was looking at the edge of the quarry. 'If those trucks are here for the same reason we were brought here, they must be worth taking a look at.'

'We go back to the house,' Li corrected him. 'Procedure.'

'You proceed back there, then.' There was a faint sensation of movement on Li's left arm, and the cuff dropped from around the Doctor's wrist. Li looked at the now-empty cuff dangling from his wrist. 'A trick I learned from Jesse James.'

Li scooped up a gun from a fallen Tong guard. 'You could have done that at any time, if it was so easy. Why didn't you?'

'Because the fact that I was content to remain under arrest when I didn't have to should help convince you to trust me.'

Li thought about this. A guilty man with such a skill would have escaped long ago, or had K9 shoot him. 'What do you plan to do?'

'Examine those trucks and the geology of the quarry. There must be some reason why vehicles have to come to certain places to jump between interstices, when individual humans don't. At least, those a.s.sa.s.sins didn't. Remember, the compa.s.ses have landscape features listed, so they must correspond to some type of nodes in the Earth's telluric currents. Or you can arrest me again, and by the time you get a force together to return to the house, everyone will be gone.'

Li could have simply shot him or looked for a telephone to round up all the criminals, but something told him that the Doctor knew what he was doing. Trust had a lot to answer for, but the Doctor had indeed earned a measure of trust. Besides, the places that could send a car to its destination instantly were no use without the understanding of how it operated. That must now be the most important prize, he could see. He couldn't let thieves and traitors exploit it alone. 'You'll wait here?'

'Yes.'

'If you're tricking me, I will kill you when we see each other again.'

'People are always saying that to me, you know. It must be a fashion or something.'

Woo knelt with his eyes closed in a plain and spartan room, trying to be as one with the kami kami the spirits all around. The few furnishings in the room included a suit of quilted armour on a mannequin, a straw dummy and a pyramid-shaped stand holding four blade weapons. A the spirits all around. The few furnishings in the room included a suit of quilted armour on a mannequin, a straw dummy and a pyramid-shaped stand holding four blade weapons. A tanto tanto knife was at the top and longer weapons on the wider lower parts of the stand. The lowermost slot was empty, as he held the scabbarded knife was at the top and longer weapons on the wider lower parts of the stand. The lowermost slot was empty, as he held the scabbarded katana katana from it in his left hand. from it in his left hand.

He let himself breathe more deeply and slowly, the better to judge the moment at which his spirit would be best able to draw the sword most gracefully. Iai-do Iai-do was a very meditative art, allowing the mind and body to focus on that one perfect moment. Woo practised every day, morning and evening. was a very meditative art, allowing the mind and body to focus on that one perfect moment. Woo practised every day, morning and evening.

There was something very relaxing about it, despite the tensions that maintaining the same position for minutes on end produced. That was much of the point: to learn the art of patience while awaiting the perfect moment to strike.

That waiting was an art he had long since mastered, but about which he could not afford to become complacent. He had waited so long already for his life's perfect moment to strike, and knew that it was still some few years off. He could make some progress, of course. As Yan Cheh he wondered whether the anonymous coiner of the phrase for him had known how apposite it was he could lay the groundwork for what was to come. Making his true stand, though; that would have to wait.

Things were becoming more difficult, however. The Tong of the Black Scorpion were acting outside the parameters he had predicted, while the Doctor and Romana were wild cards.

A dark thought clouded his mind; could they be working for the Sakura Kai?

It was unlikely, but the Society had found him twice since he slipped from their leash in Hong Kong. Neither team had had the chance to report back, but the precedent was there. He dismissed the thought; the Sakura Kai wouldn't trust the gaijin gaijin enough to send them after him. enough to send them after him.

He'd been a patriot then, but now the Society called him traitor. Part of him was incensed, but mostly he damped down that feeling. It was a great irony, for he felt that the Sakura Kai were the traitors, not just to the Empire, but to everyone. The name was completely innocuous, and their fears about the Empire's dependence on almost charitable imports were understandable, but their solutions were dangerous.

Woo had seen the spectre of Hachiman reaching out across the Empire in preparation for war even before Marco Polo Bridge and the invasion of Manchuria. Even he, however, hadn't expected the Sakura Kai and the cohorts in the army's Kodo Ha faction to resort to government by a.s.sa.s.sination.

Then had come last year's revolution. The official line was that it had failed, and that the Tosei Ha faction of the military had kept control, but Woo knew better. So too did the Tosei Ha, who had since altered their policy.

Woo had gone by that time. His family had always been honourable and Woo had been no exception. He had known that the best way to work against this insidious treason in the Empire was to use the skills and position the traitors had given him against them. First he had had to die, but that had been no problem.

But it takes so many years. Oddly enough, it was true that he had also become distracted by the pleasures of being a good host. Protecting the club had been the convenient reason he had given Romana for his lifestyle, but he had been surprised at just how easily the lies had come. In a way, he knew, it was becoming true. He had to avoid such distractions, he reminded himself. His life had but one purpose.

He still knelt there in the spartan room, hand on hilt. In a flash, it felt as though the katana katana's hilt pushed itself into his hand and flickered through the air like a leaping salmon. There were always pieces of his puzzle to act upon, after all, even though the full thing must wait.

Li waited amidst the shrubs under the raised patio at the side of HsienKo's house until the two guards on patrol had pa.s.sed around the corner. Then he leapt up on to the wide patio bordering the french windows. He kept glancing carefully round, though there was little likelihood of anyone approaching the house from this direction. That was why he'd chosen to go in through this side door rather than the main one.

One didn't spend much time in the police force, Li thought, without learning some of the opposition's tricks. He hadn't expected to be using those skills himself, but some things were necessary for the good of all, and so he had no qualms about using a thin-bladed knife to slip the catch on the windows.

Slipping quickly inside, he closed the windows and stepped out of the rectangle of crisp moonlight that framed him. He paused to allow his eyes to adjust to the darkness and could soon make out the strange lines of the edges of furniture, picked out in the moonlight. He started towards the far wall where the door was most likely to be.

Movement dragged Kwok into fuzzy wakefulness, and he shook his head, trying to blink the sleep from his eyes. Once he had adjusted to the light, he noticed that HsienKo was sitting up and looking around, though everything remained dark. He pushed himself up, putting his arms around her shoulders. 'Is something wrong?'

'Someone is in the nursery.' She closed her eyes to concentrate, and Kwok allowed himself to grimace in distaste.

He had no qualms about killing when it was necessary, but the demonic creature which HsienKo had gone to such lengths to recover chilled him to the marrow. It used to belong to Weng-Chiang himself, Kwok knew, and even he had fallen victim to it. He dreaded the day when it might turn on HsienKo, and often wished she would allow him to destroy it before it got the chance.

HsienKo tilted her head as if watching something. 'You can't get out,' she said aloud. 'Step into the light where I can see you.'

Li started sidling towards the french windows, but stopped as a leering little figure with a knife interposed himself between Li and the gla.s.s. 'You can't get out,' it gasped in an almost childish voice that had a faint hint of creaking and rotted wood. 'Step into the light where I can see you.'

Li had held his fire for fear that his opponent was a small child, but as he stepped into the rectangle of silver light, Li saw that he was mistaken. The small figure ahead was dressed in a j.a.panese school uniform; but this was no child; its painted features seemed to mock his confusion with their twisted leer.

In fact, it almost seemed to be an unliving creature; an automaton of grotesquely carved wood, animated by some less scrupulous Taoist necromancer.

He told himself not to be so stupid obviously it was a midget wearing some sort of tribal mask to frighten the already jumpy opium rats who did the Tong's legwork. He had stepped into the light as instructed, being careful to stay out of range of the midget's knife. He drew his Browning and slipped off the safety, levelling it at the leering dwarf. 'Don't move. You're under arrest.'

HsienKo smiled despite herself as Kwok lifted her unfettered hair free and draped a silken robe around her shoulders. Don't move, indeed; who did the fool think he was dealing with?

'Who is it?' Kwok asked finally, letting her hair fall back over the silk.

'The police inspector who was here earlier.'

'One of Du's lapdogs, without a doubt.'

'Of course. The Great Circle are getting bolder if they think they can walk unheeded into the lair of the Black Scorpion.'

'You should have let me kill him.'

She considered this. 'Probably, but there are greater concerns than Du's desire for a monopoly.' She closed her eyes with an amused smile, watching Li again, and concentrated on movement.

The dwarf tilted the knife slightly, causing it to flash with reflections as he stepped slowly towards Li. Li was under no illusions as to how deep and deadly a cut the blade could make. He steadied the gun with his free hand and shot the dwarf between the eyes.

Sparks flashed from the surface of the mask, the dwarf reeling backwards under the impact. He straightened again, and continued forward. Telling himself that the mask must be armoured though he knew there was no such strong armour in the world Li fired again and again.

This time the bullets scarcely caused a misstep, and the dwarf continued onwards, tiny wisps of smoke rising from the charred patches on its face. Li backed away shakily, feeling the blood drain from him. He kept firing, more sparks and puffs of smoke twitching the thin cloth of the dwarf's uniform.

In a matter of moments, Li realized that the slide on the gun had jammed back now that it was empty, and the trigger had only clicked when he squeezed it. But the dry clicking sound of an empty gun against an armed opponent wasn't nearly as unnerving as the throaty and gurgling chuckle that emerged from the dwarf. It sounded like a hungry animal that was delighted to be gorging itself.