Emerald City Blues by Peter Smalley Read Free Book Online

and not always pleasant smells, and every inch of it looked like every other inch. At least it did to a round-eye barbarian like me.
    Fortunately, getting lost here meant my tail would have just as much trouble finding me as I would finding myself. That was part of why I had come here at all. We threaded our way between crates and around stacks of produce, navigated past a few hundred poultry, and finally entered the back door of a brick building that looked like every other brick building in Chinatown. Except that it wasn't. A dragon dwelt here, and I felt it watching me. I might have ten years worth of rust on the skills Gerd taught me, but I would have had to be blind, deaf or stone drunk not to notice the skin-prickling hum of latent power radiating from this building.
    One out of three ain't bad odds.
    The back door to the building opened three inches, and my guide unleashed another torrent of unintelligible syllables. I waited. The door opened another five inches. More sounds. The young man in the doorway must have heard him just fine, though, since he gestured for me to enter and bowed off the old man. I echoed the bow, but my guide was already shuffling off by another route than the one we'd used. He didn't so much as glance backwards. Oh well.
    The young Chinese man evidently straddled cultures: he wore a long black changshan robe and a fedora that had seen better days than mine. He led me down a hallway lined with those walls made of translucent rice paper. I followed, getting a nice view of his braided queue. At the end of the hall he knelt on a woven mat outside a door and slid it ajar with one hand before bowing his head down almost to the woven mat. What was this? An audience?
    I stepped inside. Albert King wore a black changshan robe and an utterly unreadable expression. He was sitting in a fairly impressive chair. I didn't know all that much about the Chinese but I knew they knelt or sat on the ground unless they were Important. Maybe he had inherited his father's title after all. The door slid shut behind me with a sound as soft as a dying man's sigh. We were alone.
    "What have you brought into the Middle Kingdom?" he asked without preamble.
    "Nice to see you too," I returned, trying to catch my footing.
    "I have no time for polite words. My walls hold, but they are challenged. There is a tiger in my garden. I think it followed you here. Is this not so?" His tone was clipped and deceptively soft.
    "It is." I would anger him more by beating around the bush than by admitting the truth straight off. I hoped. "Someone attacked me last night and framed me for the burning of that warehouse in Riverside. I think whoever did it followed me from the police station downtown. I was hoping to lose her in the Mikado once I got out of the cab." Not exactly true, but close enough.
    "She has power." It was not a question. I shrugged, then grimaced and nodded. "You ask much, coming here unannounced with a tiger following your scent. I have more responsibilities to my people than when last we worked together. If you were anyone else..." He did not complete the thought. I knew exactly what he meant. I owed him big for this.
    So be it. "I'm sorry to inconvenience you , Albert. I just didn't have anywhere else to turn at the moment. Give me a few minutes, until she leaves, and I'll get out of your hair."
    "No." Albert stood gracefully. "A tiger who thinks it may enter my garden unchallenged once will do so again. It is too dangerous to be ignored. Come." He turned and led me behind another screen of rice paper and lacquered wood. I hesitated before entering the room. That sense of latent power was not so latent here. I stood on the threshold of Albert's sanctum, and that was close enough for comfort. Or for discomfort, rather; I already felt that pins-and-needles sensation of being too close to something hot. I didn't feel like going any closer, thanks.
    Albert paid no heed to my trepidation and walked to the middle of the