“No.” I slapped my hand down on the paper and slid it off the counter. “Not from you.” I rolled it up and started for the door, and then, from the corner of my eye, I saw the serpent was still moving, and not from the natural rocking of the liquid in the jar.
Out of the center of the ring of golden coils, a scaly head lifted above the waterline, blinking its emerald eyes. The creature had tiny backswept horns and short whiskers on its chin; it wasn’t a snake at all. I’d only seen a sea dragon twice before—once at the edge of a mythic map of Thailand, and once frolicking in a fjord in the eighteenth-century Baltic Sea. I leaned in close, my breath fogging the jar.
A forked pink tongue tasted the air, once, twice, and then the animal moved urgently toward me, sliding up and down inside the container as if trying to find a weak spot. Tiny pearlescent claws scrabbled against the glass.
“I told you he wasn’t dead,” Auntie Joss said. She lifted the lid, and the dragon rocketed upward to clutch the rim of the jar, the water dripping off his scales. He cocked his head and peered at me.
I forgot my anger. “He was my mother’s?”
“For a time.”
Wonderingly, I reached out my hand; he leaped onto my wrist and scrambled up my arm, tiny claws pricking my skin through the fabric of my dress. Before I could stop him, the creature went straight for my neck and closed his jaws around the pearl at my throat.
“Oi!” I tugged hard on the necklace; it popped free of the dragon’s jaws. He strained toward it, but I closed my hand around the gem.
“What have you got there?” Auntie Joss said, leaning in. “What is that? Are you wearing pearls?”
“Just one.” The pink tongue tickled my fingers, exploring for weakness.
“He must be hungry,” she said. “I can’t afford to stuff him, price of pearls being what it is.” She held her hand out again.
The dragon settled around my neck, nestling into my shawl, his nose wedged into the O formed by my forefinger and thumb—still wrapped tight around the pendant—and his tail draped down my collarbone. He was as smooth as a snake, but unlike those cold-blooded creatures, he was warmer than my skin. I tucked the roll of paper under my arm and dug my hand into the purse for some coins, pressing them into her palm without counting them.
She rubbed her fingers over the coins. “I forgive you for calling me a charlatan. His name is Swag. It has no meaning in Chinese. Good-bye.”
I almost left without another word, but I paused in the doorway. “I am looking for something else. Maps, if you have any to sell. Or if you know anyone who does.”
Her eyes were wide and entirely disingenuous. “Maps of what?”
I clenched my jaw. “You know what sort of maps. I’ll pay for good information.”
She nodded like she’d won. “I’ll send tothe ship for your consideration. I may have something for you.”
The way she said it made me uncertain whether I should have asked. But I pulled the shawl tight and left the shop, very aware of the smooth weight of the little creature around my neck, and by the time I’d gotten safely back to the Temptation, I’d forgotten to wonder about what she might send my way.
"Rotgut, I need a big pot.”
“Of what?”
“Just a pot.”
He was standing over a pan where pork belly and pancakes popped and sizzled. The heat in the galley was hellish, and he was wearing only his orange du bi ki, the loincloth rag he’d made out of one of his old pure-cloth saffron robes. It was covered in grease stains, and his arms were spattered with tiny dark scars from frying oil. He was so skinny it was hard to imagine he’d ever eaten before.
As if to help me picture it, he grabbed a piece of bacon and tossed it, still sizzling, into his mouth. “Just a pot, hmm? Let’s see.”
He clanged through his collection, some hanging from hooks, some stacked haphazardly on shelves, some shoved in the corner behind the barrel of oil. He scooped a stack of coconut bowls out of a large cast-iron pot and handed it over.
“This’ll rust.”
“You need it to hold water?” He put the cast iron back on the shelf and ran his fingers down the row to a beaten copper kettle.
“Saltwater.”
“Saltwater! Just a pot, you say. You need glass.” He passed me a bowl.
“Too small.”
His hands fell to his sides. Rotgut was usually quite patient, but there were limits; he’d left his monastery for a reason. “What,” he said, very deliberately, “do you need it for?”