Chapter 1: Shanghai Breezes
Its funny how it sounds as if you're right next door
When you're really half a world away
I just can't seem to find the words I'm looking for
To say the things I want to say
I can't remember what I felt so close to you
It's almost more than I can bear
Though I seem a half a million miles from you
You are in my heart and living there
Sara sat on her bed in the hotel in Shanghai, writing. Not paperwork, for the first time in a long while, but a letter. The sad strains of one of her favorite songs had never seemed so appropriate to her as she sat there, writing a letter to someone she missed so much she felt like half of her heart was missing.
I miss you so much, dearling,
she wrote. I was walking in a local park with the head of ChangAhn Enterprises today, and I could hardly keep my mind on the conversation; all I could think of was you. I miss you, Logan.She started a new sheet of paper with a sad chuckle. It was costing her a fortune in stamps to send these long sixteen-page letters home to the mansion, but she had so much to tell all of them, and she was homesick, for the first time in her life, she was homesick for a place and people. I've never felt homesick for anyone, or anywhere, before. You are the first.
It had never felt like this before. Even as a child, moving from military base to military base with her father, she'd never felt homesick. The closest thing she'd ever felt to being homesick was leaving the Tai Chi monastery in the Chinese mountains, where she'd spent ten years while her father had been stationed in China. The other kids on the base made fun of the monks, so quiet, moving around the monastery and through the town unpretentiously, but she had found their silence refreshing, and their gardens beautiful. One afternoon she'd gotten into a fight with the lead girl in a gang of other military brats, and had hurt the other one badly. Fearful of what her father would say, she had escaped to the gardens with their peace and solitude. One of the monks had found her there, dusted her off, picked up her spirits, and then offered her sanctuary when she needed it. Over the next ten years she had learned Tai Chi from them, and other more valuable lessons like keeping her temper. It had been a shock when her father had been transferred back to the states when she was sixteen, and she'd had to leave. She had cried in anger, but had no choice but to pack her things.
The pain of leaving then was nothing like what she felt now. She had thought, wearily and bitterly over the last year, that if she had known getting Meredith Pharmaceuticals up on its feet after a six-year slump would be so difficult, she would have done what the company manager had said; declared bankruptcy and sold the company. Her life had been nothing but travel since November of the previous year. She had visited the Washington DC offices first. That was manageable, since she could still come home each weekend. But when she had gotten to London, and found herself compelled to spend four months there she began to feel worried. The Moscow branch had required a two-month stay; Tokyo had required six.
Then a company in Shanghai about opening an office there had approached Mark Harmon, her company manager. She had been compelled, again, to stop in and look, and the offer had been opportune. She had agreed to the opening of the Shanghai branch; then found there was no one to open it and run it. So she had stayed, overseeing the hiring of staff, doctors, and lab technicians, a full staff of managers and personnel. Her two-week stay in Shanghai was now going on seven months, and she was desperately homesick. She could barely wait for Mark Harmon to return, so she could go home.
"Good morning, Sara!" came a cheerful voice at her office door, and she looked up, startled. Mark Harmon, manager of Meredith Pharmaceuticals, stood in the door, and she nearly upset her chair jumping up to greet the man who by now was a very dear friend/business advisor.
"Mark!" She gave him an enthusiastic bear hug and planted him in a chair facing her desk, and in a complete defiance of her own rule she sat on the end of her own desk. "How was the graduation?"
Mark Harmon sat back in his chair and smiled. Sara had sent him back to New York to see his daughter graduate from Columbia. He had practically promised Sara anything she wanted if he could be there, and she, remembering how much she had wanted her own father at her graduation from the same university, had told him to go.
"It was wonderful," he said. "I am the proudest father in the world, Sara, I swear I am. And she graduated second in her class. Second! She's going to work as a journalist for National Geographic. They already asked her. It's a wonderful opportunity, and she's ecstatic." He looked at her, and his smile faded a bit. "Sara, how long has it been since you went home?"
"Too long," she said, unable to hide the longing in her voice. "We were in London the last time I got to go home, and it was only a day."
"Are you worried your young man will forget you?" he teased gently, noting the lines in all the wrong places for a woman only twenty-nine, five years older than the daughter he had seen a few short days ago.
"Oh, no," she smiled warmly, "never that."
"Still, better not to chance it, eh?" he stood, running an arm around her shoulders. "Go home."
"Thanks, Mark," she grabbed her briefcase and began to put her laptop in it, then sat down suddenly, hard. "I can't," she said, looking stricken. "There's the meeting with the Shanghai major tonight over dinner, and tomorrow there's the opening ceremony. I have to be here, Mark, I can't go." She looked crushed. For a moment it looked like she would be home for Easter, that Sunday, but it wasn't going to be. "I won't be able to leave until Sunday morning, at the earliest."
"Then rest," he urged her. "Take the day off. Go sightseeing, or something. There are lots of tourist spots, lots of things to do. I'm sure you could find something to do before the dinner tonight."
"Really?" She looked hopeful. "You mean it?"
"Really." He made shooing motions toward the door. "Go on. Do something useless for the day."
She spent the day ducking in and out of shops, buying souvenirs for her friends at home. A lovely shawl for Storm, sky-blue with lacy white clouds. A set of good polishing stones for Betsy, for her katana. A good thick wool blanket, for Charles, it a pattern of warm earth tones. A silk sweater for Scott the exact color of Jean's eyes, a jade ring for Jean and an assortment of jade jewelry and little trinkets for the others Finally, weary with shopping, she stopped in at a small Buddhist temple on her way back to the hotel and just sat there for a long while. She finally sighed, got up—and almost ran straight into a small monk wearing the traditional saffron yellow robes of a Buddhist priest. "I'm sorry," she stammered, fumbling in her mind for the smattering of Chinese she knew "I'm sorry—"
"You are the one," he said, looking eerie, almost otherworldly, in the flickering light of the altar candles. "I have seen you, the silver warrior woman who will save the world. But a skilled warrior woman needs a weapon worthy of her. In order for you to defeat the black bird from the stars you must have a good weapon. Here." He pointed to the seat in front of her. "Use it well."
Sara followed the pointing hand and saw a long, silk-wrapped object on the seat. A prickle ran up her arms as she reached for it, and she knew what it was before she picked it up. It was a sword, but unlike any she'd ever seen. The adamantium blade seemed to glow silver in the light of the altar flames, and she gently touched the edge of the blade, and gasped as her finger came away cut. A drop of deep red blood welled up from the tip of her finger, and she started to bring her finger up to her mouth. The monk caught her arm and turned her wrist, guiding it to the hilt, where she saw a strange violet stone. It was odd, because swords meant for use were usually not ornamented. The monk pressed her bleeding finger to the stone, then to her throat, where Logan's necklace still hung around her slender throat. It might have been her imagination, but she would have sworn that the stone flared with a violet flame in its depths for just a moment when she touched it. The stone in her necklace suddenly throbbed in response, and flared for a moment white-hot before it became quiet again, but she felt something subtly different in her necklace.
"What--" she turned to the monk standing before her. He was gone. She looked around the shrine frantically, called "Hello?" several times, and even ran out into the street looking for the man, but saw no one. The setting sun reminded her of her dinner engagement, and she returned to the sword, wondering how to get it up to her hotel room. The hotel had metal detectors.
"Oh well," she shrugged, "If they take it away then I guess I'm not meant to have it." She wrapped it in the length of scarlet silk it and its scabbard had been lying in (silk that she could feel was pure, and so finely woven she was sure it was the legendary stuff that could pass through a woman's ring) and exited the shrine.
She was stopped as she walked into the hotel lobby, as she knew she would be, and the guard asked her to open the object. She was shocked to find that the finely woven silk had become coarse woolen plaid, and not a particularly pretty pattern, either. The gleaming silver blade in it had become a plastic and aluminum affair, such as one would find in a cheap tourist's souvenir shop and buy as a toy for one's children to play with. The guard had laughed, and waved her on, and Sara hurried up to her room. Once in the privacy of her room, she looked again at her burden. The sword gleamed silver-blue in the lamplight, and the wrapping was once again the finest silk. Unable to comprehend it, she slipped the sword under her bed and hurriedly dressed for the dinner.
She brought Mark up to her room later on the pretense of discussing some minor point of business, but left the sword out where he could see it as she talked. Mark picked it up, swinging it in the air a couple times, and laughed. "Sara," he said, "You didn't tell me you had a child back at home you were buying presents for!"
"I don't," she said, surprised, then temporized, "I have a friend at home whose little boy loves swords and stuff. I thought he'd like that."
"Thoughtful, thoughtful Sara," he stood up them , and patted her shoulder. "Get some sleep, dear, you look all worn out. And remember to start packing, you're going home the day after tomorrow."
Home! Sara had almost forgotten her incipient return in the complex problem she had been handed that day. She scrambled into bed happily. She would go home the day after tomorrow!
Tired from the day's activity, she was asleep almost as soon as her head hit the pillow.
She awoke to a sudden sound. It was silent, stealthy, sounding like someone were trying to get into her room without being heard. She reached for the touch-lamp on her bedside table, and touched it. Nothing. There was no electricity.
There was a stealthy scraping somewhere beside her bed, and she reacted, springing out, thanking god that she had been too lazy to put on a nightgown that night. If she had to move fast she couldn't be hampered by all that cloth. She grabbed for the sword under her bed, thanking her luck that she had left it there, now in easy reach. It seemed to almost fly into her hand, and to her utter shock, a violet glow started at the hollow of her throat where her necklace was, and at the hilt of the sword. It swirled around her eyes, and suddenly she could see three figures around her, all dressed in black and moving silently.
"Get out," she declared tersely. "I had a long day, and I don't feel like dealing with this." She assumed a defensive stance.
A bullet whizzed toward her out of nowhere, and Sara's mind dimly registered the fact even as her body moved to block it. She was shocked as her arms, of their own accord, seemed to come up and block it. The bullet pinged off her blade and went off somewhere in the darkness. Even as she tried to assimilate this new ability of hers, the sword was pulling her into motion, this way and that, blocking and parrying the shadowed figures that seemed to come after her, swift as lightning. But she moved faster than they, and they dropped back. One of them spoke in a low, grating voice. "We are the Guardians. Give it to us, outlander. It was taken from us without our knowledge."
"Chang belongs to me," she heard herself say in flawless Chinese, and blinked. Where had she learned that, much less the sword's name? "He accepts me as his wielder. I will not gainsay his choice. Leave, before he takes exception to your interference and does what he wishes to do. I am not so strong-willed yet as to oppose his desires for long."
"So be it," the man said. "Carry him well, Bearer, and return him when he has served his purpose." And they were gone, as if they had never been there to begin with.
The light in the handle of the sword winked out, as did its reciprocating glow in her necklace. And a second later, Sara herself slumped unconscious to the floor, exhausted beyond measure at the sudden expenditure of energy the sword had required of her.
She awoke stiff, her body aching from fatigue. She stretched herself out, carefully, working the knots out of her muscles caused by sleeping on the floor, and carefully tucked the sword—Chang—into its scabbard and its wrapping of silk. She barely knew how she made it through the day, so tired was she from the previous night. Mark noticed, but chalked it out to being tired and overworked, and after the opening ceremony, he ordered her to go back to the hotel and pack for her trip home, and rest. She slept peacefully that night, not bothered by dreams or any unexpected intrusions.
She woke, refreshed and ready for the long flight home. She dressed in record time, and Mark drove her to the airport. On the way, they discussed their plans. They settled it that she needn't come back. He swore that he could manage just fine here for the few weeks after the opening, and then he would return to New York as well. He practically ordered her to stay in New York, at home, and that the company, having run for so long with no guidance, would not now fall apart because she took a vacation. Seventeen months was a long time to be gone from home.
'The hard part is over, Sara," he told her as he helped her carry her bags to the baggage area. "All you really need to do now is an annual inspection if the company's branches. You trust me, don't you?" he asked her.
"Implicitly," she said fervently.
"Let me make the small decisions for you, then. Anything that's big enough to need your personal attention I will bring to you when I need to. Relax. Enjoy yourself with your young man."
Sara smiled to herself as she went through the baggage area after he left her. He would probably be startled if he ever saw her 'young man.'
The customs officials stopped her when they saw her package, as she suspected they might. They didn't even ask to see it; they brought her immediately to the office of their commander, telling him that she was smuggling national artifacts and treasures out of the country. She could understand them perfectly; something that had only just started happening when she picked up the Sword. They chattered away in Chinese before her, assuming she could not understand them, as she stood there and worried that by the time they got around to even noticing she was there, she would have missed her flight. Finally she interrupted them politely but firmly. "Excuse me," she said to them in Chinese. "If you would care to examine it, I can assure you it is only a cheap souvenir toy I purchased for my nephew," and she unwrapped the sword. The wrapping was once again plain wool, and the sword itself was once again plastic and aluminum. The commander stood and ushered her out with the most gracious of apologies, and she hurried out feeling somewhat guilty as he turned to his subordinates and harangued them.
None of it mattered when she got out of the terminal at JFK and saw her beloved waiting there for her. She dropped her bags and ran, calling his name, rushing into his arms, and giving him a long, lingering kiss that was broken only by a realization that breathing wasn't optional. They went back, picked up her bags, climbed into the van (he had driven Xavier's van in anticipation of the baggage she would have) and went home.