Kylie Chan: Red Phoenix

‘Run? I was protecting Simone. Of course I didn’t run.’ I grinned. ‘Ugly, aren’t they?’

Gold shook his head. ‘Remarkable.’

I glanced down at the blueprints. ‘We’ll need a list of the remaining students, a list of the remaining Masters and their areas of expertise, and what we have left in the way of training spaces. Then we can match them up and see how we go.’

They were silent, so I looked up. They both stared at me, speechless.

‘What?’ I said. ‘Is that wrong? Do they train differently on the Mountain to how we do here?’

John grinned. ‘I’ll go out and leave you to it.’

‘Don’t you dare! You know your students and Masters better than anyone.’ I jabbed my finger at him. ‘You stay right here!’

Gold’s boyish face lit up and I rounded on him. ‘What?’

He raised his hands. ‘I don’t have those lists, ma’am, the link between here and there is down. I’ll have to return to the Mountain, log into the network and copy them onto a CD.’

‘You have a LAN there? Wait, you have a link between here and there? Between Earth and Heaven? How does that work?’

‘Rather complex use of Celestial Harmony. Did it myself. I put in the Mountain LAN after I was assigned to the Dark Lord, that’s a standard network. Had nothing before I arrived,’ he said, looking pointedly at John, who ignored him, ‘but most of the hardware was damaged in the Attack. I had an off-site backup in the Western Palace, so the systems are already up and running, but the link between here and there is down, so I’ll need to go myself and take a copy of the lists.’

‘Go then,’ I said. ‘And bring back a hard copy as well, if it’s not too big.’

‘My Lord?’

John didn’t look up from the blueprints. ‘Orders from the Lady Emma are to be treated as orders from me.’ Then he glanced sharply at Gold. ‘Make this clear. To all.’

Gold bowed slightly. ‘My Lord. My Lady.’ He disappeared.

‘Sorry, John, I don’t mean to tread on your toes,’ I said. ‘Let me know if I cross the line.’

He looked at me, expressionless, then his eyes wrinkled up. ‘I think you’re drawing a new one.’

While we waited for Gold to return, John flipped through the plans. ‘Only about a third of the buildings are useful, and none of them are training or residential.’ His voice softened with pain. ‘Hall of the Purple Sky, East Hall, West Hall, Dragon Tiger Hall, all gone. Some of those buildings were more than a thousand years old.’

‘We’ll rebuild it, John. It will be better than it ever was.’

He dropped into a seat at the table. ‘I don’t know what to do. It will take years to rebuild the training pavilions, and the dorms have been demolished. The White Tiger has been a true friend in looking after the Disciples.’

‘How long can they stay at the Western Palace?’

‘As long as they need to, he says. He doesn’t mind at all—the Disciples are providing a useful exchange of skills with his Horsemen.’ He sighed and tied his hair back. ‘The training pavilions are gone, and there isn’t any open space suitable for training Disciples because of the steepness. Only the most indestructible Celestial Weapons made it; all of the other weapons are gone. And my Disciples have nowhere to live. The Mountain is effectively out of action and nobody will be learning the true Arts for many, many years.’

‘Can the Masters teach at the Western Palace?’

‘Not with the Tiger’s women around. The Disciples are confined to barracks.’

‘I see.’ I sat next to him, and pulled the plans closer. ‘Monica!’

Monica poked her head in the door. ‘Ma’am?’

‘Tea, tikuanyin, and three cups, please.’

‘Ma’am.’ She pulled her head back into the kitchen.

‘You’re a mind reader,’ John said.

‘Will she ever call me Emma again?’

‘Nope.’

‘John.’ I turned to him. ‘Should I tell her about the situation? That I can’t marry you until you come back because you’re a Shen?’

‘Monica has made it very clear that she doesn’t want to know anything,’ John said without looking up from the plans. ‘When Michelle hired her she tried to explain that we weren’t a normal household, and Monica said, “Don’t tell me, ma’am, I don’t want to know. Just tell me what to do.” She’s terrified of the strange things that happen, but she loved Michelle, and she loves Simone, so she stays and puts up with us.’

‘We have to protect her then, and make sure that nothing scares her.’

‘That’s what Michelle said.’

‘How long were you and Michelle married, John?’ He hesitated, expressionless.

I turned away and shuffled the plans. ‘Sorry, don’t bother.’

‘We were about to celebrate our fourth anniversary when it happened,’ he said, wistful. ‘Simone was only two.’

‘Oh my God, you were hardly married any time at all!’ I lowered my voice. ‘Does Simone remember much?’

‘I don’t know. She won’t talk about it.’

Gold reappeared with a stack of printouts. ‘My Lord. My Lady.’

John rose and pushed the blueprints aside. ‘Okay, let’s see what we have here.’

I stood up and riffled through the lists. ‘Hey, many of these names aren’t Chinese.’

‘Of course not,’ John said. ‘I take the best, it doesn’t matter where they’re from.’

A good proportion of the names were Chinese, but there were some recognisably Anglo-Saxon ones, plus Japanese, Korean, and even African names. It was a complete cross-section. I scanned the Anglo names: many of them were women.

‘Did you have separate dorms on the Mountain?’ I said.

‘For the different nationalities? No, of course not,’ John said, and then, ‘Oh, for men and women, of course. Except for those who are married or bonded to each other.’ He saw my face. ‘No, I’m not slow. I’m just cold-blooded, like you said.’

‘Get out of my head.’

‘I’m not in it,’ he shot back. He turned over the lists. ‘Let’s see the Masters.’

This list was much shorter. There were only about fifteen names.

‘So few, John?’

‘They gave their lives for the students, Emma. Even the human Masters. They were killed by the demons.’ He put his hand on the list. ‘These are the Immortal Masters that have returned. And a small group of mortal Masters who were too old or frail to take part in the battle.’

‘How many students died?’ I said.

He sighed with pain. ‘Almost half. Nearly three hundred.’

I flopped to sit. ‘Holy shit. Masters?’

‘Nearly all of them. About fifty.’

‘How many of the Masters were human?’

He sat next to me. ‘Of the ones that were killed? About three-quarters, love.’

‘How will you tell their families?’ I whispered. ‘Three hundred and fifty people.’

He put his head in his hands. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Do their families know where they were?’

John was silent.

‘No, my Lady,’ Gold said. ‘Most of their families thought they were learning martial arts on Earthly Wudangshan. This is the greatest loss that the Mountain has seen in centuries. Even the Celestial Ones have become involved in dealing with this issue. A decision is yet to be made, but the consensus is that the Celestial will erase the existence of the students from the Earthly.’

‘They’ll never have existed at all?’ I said.

‘It’s the kindest way, Emma,’ John said into his hands.

I was horrified. ‘How often do you Celestials interfere with us like this?’ I said. ‘You just make people not exist?’

‘This will be the first time in history, my Lady,’ Gold said with remorse. ‘There has never been a need for it in the past.’