The sun was high and hot, the air too humid for sweat to evaporate. The wet air trapped scents, bringing a rich mélange to his nose. There was the river itself, wet and pungent, heavy with smells of fish, green growing things, and decay. The now-familiar smells from the boat itself—wet hemp, sun-warmed wood, rice, old grease, and the mingled scents of those he’d traveled with. A thousand more scents came from the city. Peppers and ginger, anise and cabbage. The smoke from cooking fires. Sewage. Rot. Flowers. And humanity in all its sweaty, musky forms.
The docks at their other stops had been busy, bustling places. The docks at Lang Xin doubled that. Cargo of all sorts, from the bales of cotton being off-loaded from the boat next to theirs to the crates of birds a thin man was piling onto a two-wheeled cart—birds that looked like small chickens but smelled like pigeons. All sorts of foodstuffs, from fish to cabbages, onions to eels. A child of nine or ten wandered along the pier, twin baskets weighing down his shoulders, calling what Rule’s translation charm whispered was, “Fresh pears! Fresh pears for sale!” A pair of young men staggered drunkenly, arms around each other, singing loudly. The charm rendered those words for him, too. Most of them were obscene. An old woman gave the young rowdies a condemning look.
Another old woman approached Rule from the rear of the boat. “You want an apple,” Grandmother informed him and handed him a large, lumpy red fruit that was certainly not an apple.
He eyed it. “What is it really called?”
Grandmother pulled a second fruit from the bag and handed it to Gan. Which must look odd to anyone watching, as she seemed to have handed it to thin air. “Píngguǒ. Which means apple.”
She was in a mood this morning, wasn’t she? He grinned at her, then took a big bite of the lumpy fruit. It was good, tart and crisp. More like a pear crossed with a mango than an apple, but good.
“The prospect of action makes you cheerful.”
“It does, yes.”
She sighed. “I suppose it is the wolf.”
“Wolf and man are in accord this morning.” Although he was troubled that he hadn’t heard from Lily yet. Before, when he was far away, it had been hard for her to make contact. But he was here now, in the same city. Surely he would hear from her soon.
Soon. Such a difficult word. He turned over in his mind all that would happen soon, clicking off the points in his plan. And took another bite of lumpy fruit. “The people here must have named this after something familiar. Called it an apple because it’s red. I hadn’t realized they had apples in ancient China.”
“Apples originated in China.”
According to Grandmother, almost everything originated in China. “We need to get moving.”
“Mei Bo will be ready soon.”
The boat father was going to take them to the Yóupiào Jú—the Stamp Office. Regular traders like the Siji received their stamps from agents there at the docks, but visitors like Grandmother and Rule had to go to a Stamp Office. A small fee or tax was charged on all commerce arriving at or passing through any of the cities with magistrates, and a stamp was issued to show the goods were lawful. Grandmother hadn’t yet paid the fee, as gems were mostly exempt, being used often in lieu of coins. But the exemption didn’t apply in Lang Xin. Here she had to declare her diamonds and pay the fee.
Rule hoped the boat father would be quick. He wanted to get their plan in motion. He looked out over the river and summoned patience.
Even the river was crowded here. Sampans by the dozens. Flatboats, one-way-only crafts that would let the river carry them and their cargo downstream. Two chún-chún were docked here in addition to theirs. They’d already encountered the crew of one of the chún-chún in Liangzhou. The other was docked on the next pier over from theirs, close enough for the crew to call out cheerfully to the boat father when he finally emerged from the shed at the rear of the boat, dressed in his best clothes—still a plain tunic and trousers but made of good cloth, the blue dye still bright. He’d exchanged his usual straw hat for one rather like a sailor’s with its turned-up brim, black with bright embroidery on the brim. He carried the pouch that held the official mail.
“Cousin!” the translator charm whispered in Rule’s ear, and “Mei Bo, you old robber! How was your trip?”
“A good trip,” the boat father called back. “No thieves, and only one dragon!”
His cousins on the other boat were suitably astonished and demanded the story.
“They don’t remember that they already visited us,” Rule murmured to Grandmother.
Her eyebrows lifted. “Did you doubt it?”
Actually, yes, though he wouldn’t say so out loud. Rule wasn’t easy about depending on ensorcellment so much. It was reassuring to know that the “forget” part of Grandmother’s instructions worked. Now if the more complex part worked as well . . .
“Later,” the boat father called back to the cousins who had already visited his boat. “We will lift a cup together, heh? And I will tell you about the dragon who held me in his claws. I must go, but later, we will talk!”
Lang Xin doubled everything, Rule thought as, at last, he followed the boat father from the boat onto the dock. People, noise, the crates and nets and boxes of commerce. And the stakes. The stakes went way up the moment his foot hit the hard wood of the dock.
Mei Bo walked ahead with his daughter and one of his sons. The other son would watch the boat, a duty he’d drawn by losing at the dice game last night. The son with them wore a hat similar to their father’s. Mei Ling’s head was bare, her hair shiny in the sun. Both of them wore blue, though in different shades.
Rule’s little group had donned their best clothes, too. He wore the least-faded of his two shirts with a new pair of trousers, ones with legs that reached all the way to his ankles. He now had a straw hat like many of the locals wore to protect his face from the sun—and shield it a bit from passing eyes. Grandmother had on a new, bright red shirt with her worn black skirt. Gan didn’t wear new clothes. Because no one would see the little one, she’d donned her original clothing—her adventure gear, she called it—the khaki shirt and pants with pockets everywhere. But she’d added a new hat. It was an incredibly bright green, shaped like a beanie, with red embroidery and a yellow pom-pom at the crown. He had no idea where she’d found it. She positively strutted down the pier.
“I have been thinking,” she’d told him last night, her odd little face deeply serious. “And I do not see how you could do this without me.”
He could have answered so many ways. Luck would play as large a role as any one of them. Maybe larger. So would Reno, though he might put the green dragon in the same category as luck, as both were impossible to predict or manage. He might have pointed out that their success depended on all of them. On Lily, whose mindspeech gave them an edge their enemies did not suspect and could not match. On Cynna, who was a powerful spellcaster and a Rhej, able to draw on the clan memories. The spawn, for all their power, lacked Cynna’s magical expertise, or Alice Báitóu wouldn’t have negotiated so hard to obtain some of Cynna’s spells. Then there was Grandmother. If anyone was essential to their success, she was.