Irene found herself being hustled outside, together with Kai, Evariste and Hu. It gave her the chance to murmur her real plan into Kai’s ear. His hand tightened on hers, and he nodded in agreement. They were urged into a waiting car, with one of George’s men as a driver and another as a guard. It seemed that George didn’t want to risk them wandering off.
The night was as hot as an August evening, and dusty winds stroked through the air. The sidewalks were full of panicking people, stampeding in a dozen directions at once, a hair’s breadth away from full riot. It didn’t embody Irene’s worst fears yet – the falling buildings, collapsing skyscrapers, earthquakes and thunder and ruin which she’d been imagining – but the threat of future destruction hung in the air like a promise. The earth seemed to pulse beneath her in warning. Everyone in the city could feel the dragons and the power they controlled. It was like being an insect under the magnifying glass. You were safe only for as long as the focus didn’t tighten upon you. New York wouldn’t need to be physically destroyed at this rate – it would simply tear itself apart.
A roar cut through the night, louder than the colliding traffic or yelling mobs, and Irene felt the earth shudder in response.
‘Why are the dragons doing that?’ Evariste demanded. ‘They’re only fighting each other, they don’t need to – to . . .’ He waved his hands, trying to illustrate the shaking ground beneath them. ‘To do that sort of crap!’
The car jolted as it took a corner hard, and all of them had to hang on. The traffic still on the streets had abandoned such minor suggestions as speed limits or traffic laws and was going as fast as possible. They hadn’t hit anything – yet.
‘Neither of them is going to turn down an advantage now, with them both so closely matched,’ Kai said tensely. He was in the back seat on one side of Irene, with Evariste on the other, and Hu was sharing the front seat with George’s thug. ‘Though Jin Zhi has the edge, if she can stay in the air. It’ll make it more difficult for Qing Song to call the earth against her.’
Irene shivered in spite of the rising temperature. She could guess what Jin Zhi’s own metaphorical elemental affinity was, now: heat. All the dragons she’d met so far had some sort of affinity to a natural or symbolic element, even if it didn’t match classical Western or Chinese patterns. Kai’s was to water, his uncle Ao Shun’s to rain or storms, Li Ming’s to cold and ice . . . she wondered what Hu’s was.
Hu was staring out of the window in a brooding silence. He was as tense as Kai, and Irene thought he was genuinely worried about his lord and master. ‘Are you going to cooperate?’ she asked him.
‘You’re not leaving me much choice,’ Hu said in clipped tones. ‘I only hope, for your sake, that you can make this work.’
‘Speaking of which,’ Irene said, then shifted to Chinese, ‘we need to consider the aftermath.’ She knew Kai could speak Chinese, and if Evariste had been able to trace Journey to the West, then he understood it too. More to the point, the two thugs in the front of the car probably couldn’t understand it.
‘What do you mean?’ Kai asked in the same language. His choice of words was polite student-to-teacher, and it brought a frown to Hu’s face.
‘I mean that we may need a fast getaway. So be prepared. Please be ready to use the river against George’s gunmen, if I give you a signal.’ She shifted back to English again, just as the gangster in the front seat turned round to stare at them. ‘Evariste, we’re going to need to agree our wording and speak in unison. It’ll magnify the Language’s effect. Have you done this before?’
‘No,’ Evariste said, giving her a sideways glance. ‘Have you?’
‘Me neither,’ Irene said. She felt a manic cheerfulness descending on her. It was the far-too-familiar sensation of being so neck-deep in trouble that it couldn’t get any worse – hoping your feet would hit the bottom before your nostrils went under the surface. She recalled the good old Macbeth lines of I am in blood stepped in so far, and so on. Except that it always could get worse.
Be positive, she counselled herself. Kai knew what he had to do.
Two gleaming bodies collided in the night sky above with a crash that shattered the glass in street lamps and building windows up and down the street. Their car rocked on its wheels, and the driver swore as he jerked the steering wheel to the right, dragging the car out of the way of an oncoming vehicle that had veered off-course.
Irene braced herself and slid back the window on her side, leaning out to get a better look. She saw the two coiling figures falling through the sky together, wrapped around each other in twists of gold and dark green like intricate embroidery. Then the two dragons broke apart, spiralling out into a wide circle that was clearly a preparation for another attack. Irene pulled her head back into the car. ‘How much longer?’ she demanded of the driver.
‘Ten minutes, lady. Five, if we’re lucky.’
Irene took a deep breath. To distract herself, she asked Hu, ‘Out of curiosity, what touched off this particular fight?’
‘They were already at cross-purposes,’ Hu said. ‘Then my lord saw, through the eyes of his pets, that the prince had arrived and taken you under his protection. He used strong language, blaming the lady Jin Zhi for interfering. She commented on how his carelessness and laxity had caused the current situation, and . . .’ He shrugged.
‘One might wonder if there was some past connection between Qing Song and Jin Zhi . . .’ Kai speculated disingenuously.
‘I couldn’t possibly comment,’ Hu responded. He looked as if he would have liked to say something stronger, if not for his position.
Irene filed the whole past-liaison thing under blatantly obvious.
‘Almost there!’ the driver called over his shoulder. ‘Get ready to hop out fast.’
The car drew up with a screech of brakes and the four of them scrambled out, followed by their escort. Kai took a deep breath of the river air and immediately looked happier. On one side of the road rose the buildings of New York, and on the other side lay the wide dark expanse of the Hudson River. Irene couldn’t restrain thoughts about there being nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. Further south, she could see the lights marking the ends of the piers, and the dark outlines of ships. Heat brought the stink of petrol rising from the concrete, overlaying the smells of water and sewage. Several trucks were drawn up near where they’d parked, and Irene took care not to stare at them too obviously. If Lily had told George what she wanted, and if George had complied, they were one step closer . . .
Evariste licked a finger and held it up to the air. ‘There’s going to be a storm if it gets any hotter,’ he said. ‘The sort with lightning.’
‘That’s all we need,’ their escort muttered.
Then a distant roar echoed across the city, and the shadow of a tremor touched the ground beneath their feet. The surface of the river rippled in the glow of the street lamps, and distant alarm bells sang in disharmony with car horns and screams.