The Eleventh Tiger by David A McIntee Read Free Book Online Page B

wooden door. There was a strange feeling in his fingertips, as if the flesh was trying to ripple against the bone inside. He jumped back. ‘Magic?’
    ‘Maybe... The man who owns the Hidden Panda does deals of some kind with one of the Englishmen at Xamian. Perhaps he’ll know something about this.’
    Kei-Ying turned on his heel and marched out of the temple.
    Fei-Hung was glad to follow.
    It didn’t take long for them to return to the city. They came in past the docks this time in order to have a shorter walk to the Hidden Panda. As they neared it they could hear shouts, and the occasional crash of pottery or furniture. People in the street were looking towards the junction where the Hidden Panda stood.
    Fei-Hung hoped the trouble wasn’t there; his father’s friend was almost certainly a good man simply by virtue of being his father’s friend, and Fei-Hung didn’t want such a person to be hurt. He started running, his father matching him stride for stride.
    Through the open framework of the ground floor Fei-Hung could see a fight going on. The inn was in uproar. Labourers and merchants alike were struggling together in a knot of bodies in the middle of the floor.
    Two hefty men - dock workers, perhaps - were restraining an older white man. A white girl was trying to pull them away from him, while a white woman was clawing at the knot of men trying to break them up. A few other men dotted around were using the chaos to settle private scores, or just joining in for fun.
    Fei-Hung ducked to avoid a stool that was thrown through the door as he entered. Behind him, his father caught it and set it down beside a table. ‘Cheng! What’s going on here?’
    Kei-Ying demanded of the innkeeper.
    The scar-faced innkeeper paused in his bouncing of a man’s head off the bar top, and gestured towards the scrum.
    ‘It’s Chesterton -’
    He broke off as the man he was grappling with fought back and hit him with a backhanded blow. Cheng’s glass eye clattered to the top of the bar and fell to the floor.
    Fei-Hung had never met this Chesterton, but he’d heard the name spoken by his father and some of his father’s friends. They didn’t speak well of him. Fei-Hung wondered what his father would think of this fight if the man he spoke ill of was losing it.
     
    Wong Kei-Ying hesitated momentarily at Cheng’s words. Then he turned back to the group of men who were pummelling a figure on the floor. It wasn’t a fight - it was a mob beating, pure and simple. Even if the figure was the Chesterton he had heard about, he didn’t deserve this. To be beaten in a fair fight, yes; but not this.
    Kei-Ying stepped in with a twist here and a sweep of the arms there, and the men stumbled away clutching wrists and shoulders. As the group parted, their fun over, Kei-Ying could see that there was indeed a European man on the floor.
    It was Chesterton, just as Cheng had said. His features were the angular sort that westerners found handsome. His torn and stained clothes were strange - perhaps a new fashion from Europe.
    There were two women with him. The older of the two was striking-looking and dark-haired. She had been the one trying to break up the gang. A few of the men had scratches on their faces that would take weeks to heal, and Kei-Ying had no doubt her nails had been responsible. Unusually for a European woman, she was wearing trousers instead of thick layers of skirt.
    Kei-Ying could tell that the younger woman - no more than a girl, really - was European even before he saw her face. Her hair was an impossibly light shade for either Han or Manchu.
     
    When she turned, he saw she had large eyes and a delicate chin.
    He glared at the rabble around the Hidden Panda’s ground floor. ‘All right. You’ve had enough fun for one day. He isn’t going to shrug this off, and he’s probably beyond the point of feeling anything more you could do anyway.’
    ‘Wong-sifu is right,’ Cheng said. ‘You’ve done what you wanted and