Rise of the Dragon Read online

  Fang exhaled slowly through his nose. He definitely had at least one cracked rib. He’d gone down hard back there.

  He barely recalled the fire Goat was talking about, either. Maybe he was just too tired. Dockside was also prone to fires, especially in the summers. Wooden buildings all tangled together with pitch and rubbish provided the perfect fuel for a blaze sparked by a careless smoker or a lightning strike. Fang had pulled many people from burning buildings. It was one of the few events where Docksiders cast aside their differences – fire didn’t care who anyone owed allegiance to.

  “Fine. I’ll be counting on you, then. How’d you get your hands on this?”

  “It was tucked into your, uh,” Goat faltered.

  Fang glared.

  “Your waistband,” Goat finished lamely.

  If Goat wanted to do him any damage, he’d have either turned Fang in already, or would have made his blackmail pitch instead. It was nice to have someone claiming to owe him something, but Fang preferred relationships built on more tangible concerns — ones where the other person’s motivations were clear, and betrayal was predictable.

  Where does that leave me and you, Birch? Fang lay back and unfolded the paper. We still share the same goal, don’t we? I can still trust you, can’t I? Could Fang even trust himself? He’d never kissed someone like that, like a bolt of lightning from a clear sky. It had been too easy. Too natural.

  The note started in Orchid’s tidy, light characters, carefully laying out the time and place of their next meeting. Orchid was his usual contact with the Rootless Society, and a useful one at that. Her daytime work as a hostess at Abalone’s gave her access to almost all the gossip worth hearing, and her ties with the people at the River Roses meant she had all the best blackmail material. If she ever became Fang’s enemy, he’d long since decided it was probably best if he skipped town, vengeance be damned.

  But at the bottom, someone had scrawled with charcoal.

  “Be careful. I can’t always watch your back.” Birch’s handwriting sprawled into the margins and rushed over creases in the paper. Maybe, just maybe, Goat hadn’t opened the note and read it. Maybe only Birch had.

  Fang wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, remembering Birch’s lingering warmth. The letter rustled in his grasp. He crumpled it and tossed it into the fire.

  “How long was I out of it?” he asked.

  “Just a day,” Goat said, missing the cinders that leapt from the brazier. He hurriedly patted out sparks that landed on his sleeve. “Hot hot hot!” Fang ignored him and covered his eyes. He had a few more days until he had to meet Orchid. The boss would want to speak to him eventually, too. Plus he had his three elder brothers in the gang to consider.

  Maybe in the old days, gangs like the Four Winds had actually been bound by blood. But as far as anyone knew, Red Hand had no children. He’d adopted members of the gang who showed special promise — men whose skills were indispensable, and whose ambitions were almost palpable. Red Hand himself had been the adopted son of the previous boss, and had taken over when the old bastard had died.

  Fang was the fourth of the current sons. There had been others; adoption didn’t guarantee survival. Some had tried to supplant Red Hand; others had died of bad luck or been killed by their so-called brothers. Fang had watched those at the top scheme to destroy each other, and expected no better treatment from his elder brothers than they had given those whom Red Hand had chosen before him.

  Not that being one of Red Hand’s godsons was without perks. Fang wanted for nothing. His income from the gang was generous, and he had plenty of opportunities for business on the side. Not that he exploited those openings. He had enough work on his hands.

  “Has anyone come by?” he asked.

  “Umm… Some of the other brothers have stopped in. Did you mean the other big brothers?”

  Fang nodded once.

  “Not since you made it back to headquarters. I can take them a message?”

  “Not necessary. Are you done?” Fang looked down at himself, more bandage than bare skin. “You’re gonna run us out of cloth, and then the brothers’ll have to rob a costumer.”

  Goat might’ve blushed, but it was hard to tell in the poor light. He ducked his head. “Sorry, big bro. Yell if you need anything.”

  Fang levered himself up on both elbows to watch Goat go. What a strange kid. Now Fang had one more thing to keep an eye on, which he couldn’t help but resent. He didn’t trust Goat, not yet, but maybe he could be useful somehow. That remains to be seen. Fang swung his legs over the side of the table — for table it was, draped with a blanket Fang didn’t recognize.

  “No wonder I’m sore,” he muttered. A straw pallet on the floor would’ve been more comfortable. Only monks and old women were foolish enough to think that sleeping on something so hard was good for the body. And I’ll probably have to stay here a while before I can go home. Fang kept a separate residence from the compound, which wasn’t unusual; even his reasons for doing so weren’t particularly unique. None of the godsons liked having all their comings and goings easily observed.

  He had to admit, though, that Goat’s bandaging job wasn’t bad, just excessive. It was probably good that Fang had awoken before the kid tried stitching shut every hangnail and scrape, too.

  So Birch stepped in while I was down. Why did he have a note from Orchid? And why was he following me? The simple fact that the Knives hadn’t killed Fang was probably something he owed entirely to Birch. He wanted to be skeptical, but instead he was grateful. The last thing he remembered clearly was fighting his way out of the mansion and into the courtyard. There had been too many Knives to count, and no room to maneuver. He’d almost fought his way out of the gate, but…

  Fang rubbed his forehead and winced at encountering a tender lump. Even for him, fighting an entire gang was too much. But he’d come out victorious in the end, and the Moon Knives would probably spend months eating their own instead of tormenting peasants and enslaving them.

  The Four Winds would do just that in their stead. Fang paced around his bare room, wrestling with the knowledge that every step he took to get closer to his foe also made his foe even stronger. Each step took him a little closer to the knife’s edge, and that much closer to his own limits. This time, he was afraid, he may have finally found the boundary he couldn’t cross. He was only a man, after all.

  ⁂

  A few days passed without Fang hearing more of the Rootless Society or Birch. Inside the Four Winds' headquarters, the usual activities had taken on something of a festival air. More junior members scurried around at all hours on errands whose nature Fang didn’t care to know.

  Boar’s head was nowhere to be seen. Fang had been surprised to find it wasn’t hung over the front gate or dangling from a pole at the docks. In fact, the lack of any immediate reaction was underwhelming. If his fellows hadn’t congratulated him on doing the deed, he would’ve thought someone else had stolen the credit. Or perhaps he’d been kicked in the head one time too many and hadn't actually defeated Boar.

  As it turned out, the gang had taken great pains, to honor him in their own way. A couple of his followers had taken it on themselves to set up a rotating guard of his canal apartment, which allayed Fang’s worry that his place would be looted or worse. It made leaving the compound less urgent, at least while he waited for Red Hand to summon him.

  And when that time finally came to pass, Fang had already recovered some of his strength from resting out of boredom and restlessly practicing around the compound. His followers were at first timid in bouts, but a couple vicious layouts got them in the proper fighting spirit. Fang didn’t need anyone to go easy on him just because of some scrapes. Goat received the particular honor of receiving the most knockdowns, but Fang got laid out a few times as well. The pain and fatigue only made him more fired up to practice, not less.

  Fang pulled on his best robes, somber dark things he’d bought with his first prize money years ago. The robes were tig
ht in the shoulders, but it was a look that got him many appreciative glances, so he’d stuck with it. His black belt was new, a gift from Red Hand. It was decoratively knotted, and each knot tended to stab into the kidneys, so he tied it over a cloth for extra padding. He didn’t mind discomfort, but he didn’t seek it for its own sake. He pulled up his long, straight black hair into a formal knot and carefully ensured not a stray bit was out of place. If he looked sloppy, he’d embarrass Red Hand, and that opened him up to too many dangers. The boss appreciated effort, and Fang hadn’t climbed this far by being lazy.

  Then it was his best pair of slippers, beaten free of dust by one of the lower brothers. Fang felt almost at his best in such a getup. It was hard not to feel like he was on top of the world when in his best clothes.

  The Four Winds’ compound was as fine as the Moon Knives’ place in its own way, though it wasn’t many generations old. The outer wall was stone and plaster topped in pale green-glazed tile, a nod to the celadon wares whose export had long ago made Deepwater a wealthy port. The buildings within were mainly wood, built in a style fashionable fifty or so years ago, when laborious woodwork had been somewhat cheaper. These days, a more natural look was the fashion for newer buildings, but Dockside wasn’t the kind of place where perfectly good buildings were torn down just because the look was dated. All the wood in the compound was kept painted a deep shade of green that was nearly black, and never allowed to fade. The papered windows and sliding doors were kept in good repair. Perhaps not the finest paper, but fine enough.

  Sometimes Fang fantasized about having a place of his own like this one day, on the rare occasions he allowed himself to think of a future unburdened by his mission. He didn’t need a place as large or as grand, but something fine, something his own. There was nothing left in his old name, the name he’d abandoned as an orphan. All of that had been gobbled up by greedy men a mere child had been powerless against.

  Deepwater was a merciless city in an empire so old that it had lost all but the ghost of the human passions. The Empire of Ten Thousand Cities didn’t thirst for silver, conquer foreign shores, or even build grand monuments to gods or men. It simply waited. Once, when he was a child, Fang had seen a map of the world. The empire squatted in the middle of it like a gigantic tortoise. The barbaric hordes of the north and the petty kingdoms of the seas might vie over scraps, but the empire abided. The only desire that moved it was a stubborn unwillingness to change. Only rebellions ever forced the imperial throne to act.

  And sometimes even those couldn’t provoke a response.

  Fang walked along the wood deck. He’d had to endure listening to the lowest rank members scrubbing it for hours. The rail was almost spotless. One could even see the fingerprints of those who’d lazily gripped it. He passed the summer kitchen, where a small gang-within-a-gang of servants labored away at what would be the night’s victory feast — the first stop, really.

  The servants had been a concession after a failed assassination attempt had left a large portion of the Four Winds’ top leadership violently ill. What everyone had thought to be merely bad fish had actually been a conspiracy involving the Moon Knives and the Deepwater guard. It had been unexpected, if only because the guard rarely even showed their faces in Dockside, let alone interfered with gang matters.

  That incident must have prompted Red Hand to target Boar rather than any of the Demons’ higher ups. Anyone who worked with the city authorities invited those same authorities to interfere with the long-standing order of Dockside. They beckoned chaos in. It was a move that had offended almost every gang, large and small.

  Of course the Rootless Society had made hay of it. Fang found himself smiling as he mounted the last stairs to the upper landing.

  There was a soft murmur as he entered Red Hand’s audience hall. It was a large space decorated almost like the throne room of a warlord, including weapons mounted on the walls and frivolous columns that had nothing to do with the structural demands of the main house. The sliding doors were open to the courtyard below, admitting the cool breeze as dusk approached.

  Fang wasn’t the last to arrive. Red Hand sat in his fur-bedecked chair and gave Fang an approving smile. His elder brothers were arrayed on both sides, with one-eyed Jun and surly Big Wei on the right, and smirking Two Coins Ranu on the left.

  If any of his elder brothers could give him a run for his money in a one-on-one fight, it was Jun. The man was built like an ogre and easily the largest of the fighting men in Four Winds. He was also the hardest to read — unlike the others, even the younger brothers, Jun rarely seemed to maneuver for Red Hand’s favor or for advantage. If he did, it was covertly, and thus Fang tried to keep respectfully clear of him. One day, Fang would have to find a way to take him down, but for now he watched and learned.

  Big Wei, however, was politically dangerous and mercurial. As the lowest of the three eldest godsons, he openly hated Fang, who was his nearest competitor. He had his nose in a number of schemes and was perhaps one of the best negotiators in the gang — where negotiations required terrorizing and intimidating the other party. Big Wei’s ruthless nature had earned him the nickname Shark, but to Fang, he was just a buzzard. If no one feared Big Wei, no one would follow him. He commanded none of the loyalty that Red Hand or even Jun did.

  Then there was oily Ranu, whose wealth was only exceeded by Red Hand’s. Ranu was a sunken-chested, flabby, snake-tongued man whose avaricious squint meant doom for just about any business it fell upon. Ranu’s rackets and confidence games had helped build the Four Winds into one of the most powerful gangs in Deepwater, and for that, his authority was second only to Red Hand’s. It was Ranu, too, who’d steered Four Winds toward profitable and dangerous contraband like brown tar and slaves.

  If Ranu made a request, it was treated like an order. Men who displeased him met grisly fates or simply vanished — likely spending the rest of their days working themselves to death in some quarry in the middle of nowhere. Ranu was the most senior of Red Hand’s godsons and was practically the boss’s right-hand man.

  In Fang’s opinion, Ranu had pretensions of being the power behind the throne. The not-so-subtle way he often edged slightly behind it didn’t improve that perception any. The wise junior brothers feared him; Fang loathed him above almost anyone else and was eager to see him fail.

  After all, the greatest heights led to the hardest falls.

  Fang knelt in the center of the room as the rest of the junior brothers filed in and lined the walls and outer railing. Having so many eyes on him at once was invigorating, but his heart pounded. Red Hand wasn’t a flighty man, but Fang couldn’t help but be nervous. Goat had seen that letter. It had been a few days since then, but it wasn’t entirely impossible this was all a setup for Red Hand to demonstrate that his knowledge and power were beyond everyone’s expectations. Fang couldn’t help but feel he was baring his neck for an executioner’s sword.

  But Big Wei looked angry rather than pleased, so it was unlikely Fang was about to be knocked off. He reminded himself that almost everything else had gone right. Even his ultimate defeat served a purpose — he’d been overcome in service to the Four Winds and still survived. Those were odds even Ranu wouldn’t have gambled on.

  “For almost thirty years, I’ve led this family to greatness and power,” Red Hand said. “In that time, I’ve fulfilled every promise I’ve made to you men. There are those among you who remember the first promise I made when I took on the Four Winds name. I said then that I would never abandon a faithful brother. That I would reward loyalty and hard work. That I would never forget a slight against you.”

  Fang hedged a swift glance up at his elders. Ranu looked smug as ever; the others hadn’t changed. Red Hand was warming to his subject. The old man loved his speeches.

  From the corners of his eyes, Fang could see some of the old-timers nodding. There were few of them, as this work didn’t lend itself to a long and healthy life, but the veteran brothers were as fiercely loyal to Red Hand a
s any soldier was to the emperor. Red Hand’s ability to inspire that kind of fanaticism made him the most dangerous boss in Dockside. The men didn’t want any other boss at their backs during a gang war, that much was certain. Red Hand didn’t lie, and he didn’t forget an insult to his men. He didn’t overlook threats to his power, either. Fang knew that all too well.

  “A full dozen of you swore to me not ten days ago to bring me the head of the Moon Knives. So why is it that only one of you went forth and kept your word?” Red Hand smashed a ringed fist against the bronze arm of his throne. The clash startled some of the members, and they shuffled back. “Even my favored sons. All but one of you failed me.”

  Fang felt his face freeze into a stony mask. If the others thought he enjoyed their humiliation, they’d make his life a living hell.

  “You swore, but only one of you took action. And to him went victory.” Jewelry clinked. Someone walked into the room. Fang glanced up again as a familiar stink followed. A younger brother bearing a tray now stood between Fang and Red Hand. Fang didn’t need to see what was on that tray to know what was being presented — Boar’s huge and probably not very well-preserved head. Someone gagged and was hushed by his fellows.

  “And what have the rest of you done in that time? Schemed, certainly, and tried to gain advantage over your fellows. None of you have struck a blow against our rivals to make up for your lost honor. Fang has taken up that banner for you, and I am proud to call him my son.” The old man rose from his throne and the tray-bearer bowed and scurried away backward, not wanting to chance Red Hand’s temper. He grasped Fang’s shoulder and gestured for him to rise.

  Now on his feet, Fang could see the hardened faces of his elder brothers and knew he was in for a storm of shit in the coming weeks. Red Hand had, deliberately or otherwise, painted a target on his back. It certainly wasn’t beyond the old man to do something like that on purpose. Of course he wanted to test his minions. Fang bowed to the old man and to his elder brothers.