Bi-Han walked stiffly down the narrow alley with a heavy canvass rucksack on his back. He had chilled the stab wound to his abdomen with ice and bound it over with a quick field dressing, but he had nothing to disinfect it or stitch it up. Pressure and sluggish cold alone were holding back the blood at present. He was doing his best to follow the labyrinthine path back to the gate he'd entered by, but to do this he had to retrace his steps, taking him back past the KBB headquarters. He was aware of how weak the falter in his step looked, and how ripe for the taking the bag on his back was.
His progress was slow. As the sun set, the already-dark alleys became truly black. Sporadic splashes of neon light broke the dark in unhelpful, disorientating, erratic angles. They cast purple and scarlet shadows with flickering inconsistency into empty alleys and set them alive with possible threats. Bi-Han narrowed his eyes. Before him, just above head height was a corrugated iron shelf with a wooden barricade built onto it, holding up some superstructure lost to the dark beyond. He tilted his head, he didn't recognise those shapes. He was sure he would have noticed them before. Unless they looked less remarkable by the wisp of daylight he'd had earlier. He frowned and kept walking. He saw by the graffiti on the walls and the faces that turned away from him as he passed that this was a place of tight communities, none of which were his. There were potholes beneath his feet ready to trip him. There was a constant dripping above him, even though he was fairly sure it wasn't raining. He stopped when the alley before him became as narrow as his shoulders. He took a deep breath. Definitely not the way he had come. He looked up. He wasn't even sure how one could begin scaling buildings like this, or what could take his weight in the scaffolding-like complex above him. And with a heavy bag of cash on his back and a stab wound in his side… He reluctantly turned around and began walked back the way he had come.
In the dark and strange city, where nothing was a friend and any face might hand him over to the KBB, he found a knot of anxiety stirring in him. He wanted to vanish, but the shadows belonged to others. He felt awkwardly vulnerable, with no safe place to turn to. The sounds about him distorted themselves and set him on edge. He paused at one point when he heard footsteps behind him. The footsteps paused when he paused, and continued when he continued. He turned round, and instead of seeing his pursuer, heard a new set of footsteps, this time from the direction he'd been heading. He turned back around and came face to face with a lean man in a sharp suit and hat. Bi-Han squinted in the dark at him. The dark hid his face, but Bi-Han could tattoos on his neck. He was aware of footsteps coming also now from his left and right. He chanced a glance and saw shadowy figures encircling him on all sides. By their shuffle and step he could pick out maybe ten around him in the dark. He tried not to let his dismay show in his posture as he turned back to the man before him. The man took off his hat. Bi-Han winced when he recognised him.
"Qian Desheng," Bi-Han greeted with optimism he hoped didn't sound forced. "I was just on my way out. I think." He added with a faint test at humour.
The second-in-command of the KBB said nothing. The circle about Bi-Han got smaller. The people around him were smartly dressed, all with side arms and loosely rolled sleeves casually revealing twisting tattoos. Bi-Han cursed himself for letting that little knife slip through his guard earlier. He had known there might be trouble getting out of Kowloon. He had foreseen situations like this. He should have been more careful.
"How can I assist you, Mr Qian?" Bi-Han said in Mandarin. He could see the man's eyes narrow in front of him.
"Tiger just came to see me." Qian Deshung spoke in pointed Cantonese.
"Did he now." So Bi-Han had been walking the wrong way long enough for Tiger to regain his senses and flee to his masters. So much for attempting to memorise maps of Kowloon. The police records Grace had given him were all well out of date. There were several entire new tower blocks that had been absent from the plans.
"He told me he paid you what he owed the JFP. And that the matter is settled."
Bi-Han tilted his head in assent.
"He had trouble telling me this though," Desheng's eyes narrowed to thin lines, "His neck was so bruised and raw he could barely speak."
Bi-Han's chest tightened.
"Perhaps he slipped," He grated, hoping Desheng would take a moment to understand where his accusations would take them in terms of clan relations.
Desheng's black look remained. Bi-Han twitched distastefully as water dripped from above and hit the back of his neck. A long buzzing fluorescent bulb lit the second floor of a leering building to his side. It forced strange too-white light onto the wall on Bi-Han's left. Desheng's face was a mass of sharp shadow and relief.
"You will accompany me." Desheng said coolly.
Bi-Han had to immediately keep pace with him in order to avoid being manhandled by the silent enforcers about him.
"Where to?" He hurried to keep up, hoping to direct attention away from his injury. Desheng said nothing, "I have things to say to you that Timothy Chen will not care to hear." The only other situation he'd prepared for was trying to make peace with Desheng. He had some of Grace's politics up his sleeve, but it would all be for nothing if he was taken back to Timothy Chen.
He resigned himself to being escorted in the near total darkness and silence. He found himself quickly disorientated again and his attention waning as each alley looked the same. He ground his teeth as pain flared dully from the knife wound. He was brought to a low roofed street food vendor, with a semi slatted awning extending over a number of circular tables. Desheng stopped. A number of his associates seated themselves nearby. Two remained standing behind Bi-Han. The vendor put down a hot wok she'd been tossing and cleaned her hands on a rag. She served up pan fried chicken with spring onion on a cast iron plate. She set the heavy dish on one of the tables before moving back to her kitchen. Hot steaming aroma chased its way up into the thick overgrowth of apartments lost above them. Desheng's people picked at the dish, though their eyes remained on Bi-Han.
"Name." Desheng said.
"Zho Jinhai."
"Help Mr Zho with his bag."
Bi-Han reluctantly ceded the bag.
"Count the contents." Desheng ordered, and one of his men opened it up and began counting wads of notes.
"Let me take the cash back to my people and this is all behind us." Bi-Han offered. Surely the man could see that this was the only way to stop a war. Bi-Han could feel his nerves grating over the jagged edges of this mission.
"Who do you work for?" Desheng turned back to Bi-Han.
"I told you. My orders came from Julius Hau."
"Not your orders. Who do you work for." Desheng fixed him with black eyes. Bi-Han shifted under their scrutiny, they were astute, clever, and patient. They were eyes that cut through deception, and that disturbed him. "You clearly don't work for Kenneth Yeung, he does not have the guts for this kind of manoeuvre and you are not the type to keep his company. You do not work for Julius either. This is too heavy handed a task for him. I don't doubt he gave the orders, but I suspect an ulterior motive at play for him. That means you are little more than a pawn to him, and I'm afraid to say he values his assets highly. Making you not one of them. So I'll ask you again: who do you work for?"
Bi-Han scowled at him. He shifted his weight to give some reprieve to the wound at his side. He glared at the men counting his money, and the others eating their chicken, then at Desheng. After a long sullen moment, he said,
"Grace Yeung."
Desheng's eyebrows raised. He sat back, and Bi-Han saw with relief that the man was interested. That might mean he had some leverage. He remained quiet, waiting to see what would become of the situation.
"Grace Yeung." Desheng rolled the syllables around as he said them, "Yes, that I can imagine. Although this is a long way for her to stretch."
"You have no idea."
Desheng frowned,
"Oh?"
Bi-Han stayed quiet, trying to make out that last phrase was a slip.
"So Grace fancies herself up-and-coming in the JFP?" Desheng stood and wandered between the tables. Bi-Han followed him with his eyes. Desheng went over to the cast iron dish and threw a piece of chicken into his mouth. When Bi-Han thought he wasn't watched, he shifted his weight again. "Injured, Zho?" Desheng said mildly, noticing the movement.
Bi-Han swore faintly, cheeks blushing with embarrassment.
"Take a seat." Desheng said, without turning round.
"I don't need a seat." Bi-Han found a chair pushed behind him and firm hands forcing him down. He let himself be manhandled into the seat and continued to glare at Desheng. A flicker of uncertainty crossed his features as his shirt was stripped off to reveal the weeping stab wound to his abdomen. Dark red had coloured not just the rag he'd tied, but stained his muscles and the leather of his belt. He tried to hide his concern when his arms were pulled tight and bound together behind him. He could feel the itching bindings chaff at his wrists. They were a thick coarse rope. It would be possible to eventually shatter them with cryomancy, but that was the least of his problems right now. He kept his attention focussed on his captor as Desheng walked over to him. The man stopped slightly too close, so that Bi-Han had to tilt his head back to look up at him.
"You assaulted the son of the head of the KBB." Desheng said softly.
"Says who?"
"Now is not the time for games. Tiger says you choked him in and out of consciousness."
"Hardly reliable testimony if he was unconscious half the time."
Desheng ignored him,
"He says you – did something to his friends. Keeps blathering about witchcraft..."
"And what do his friends say?"
Desheng's brow furrowed,
"They admit to being unconscious during the affair..."
"Sounds like bullshit corroboration then."
Desheng's jaw clenched and his glare simmered with violence barely held in check. Bi-Han felt a shiver run down his back. He found it mildly thrilling to be in the presence of someone who frightened him. It put new bravado in his blood to make up for the quantity that was bleeding through the poor bandage. He flexed his shoulders, making the tattoo on his back roll and dance. There was an empty silence that Bi-Han felt might be there for him to inject an apology into. He took his chances and filled it only with a cocky smile. A heavy punch gushed the air from his belly. Bi-Han folded under the impact of the blow and hissed through his teeth. Pain throbbed through his side worse than it had when the knife first stabbed him. He felt blood seep in wider circles through the bandage and soak down his leg. He sucked in his breath and sat straight again with difficulty. The enforcer who'd hit him stood tall again and stepped back.
"I admit to perhaps deserving that." Bi-Han looked up at Desheng again, "I may have been a little rough with Tiger, but I have a-" He winced as the pain in his side flared again, "I have a proposal for you."
"You tortured the son of my boss." Desheng said emptily.
"Torture is such a strong word."
"I will show you it can be much more than that." Desheng signalled with a hand, and the two enforcers stepped forward.
"Of course, the past can change." Bi-Han said quickly.
Something in the way he said that caused Desheng to raise his hand again and pause the punishment.
"What does that mean?"
Bi-Han regarded him through hooded eyes, hands twisting in his bonds to ease the irritation.
"I think you know."
"Speak plainly while it's still permitted."
"The… son of your boss, you said. Well, I mean, he wouldn't be that... if your boss wasn't your boss." A smack of pain hit his jaw and sent the world spinning in and out of darkness. Bi-Han spat blood onto the floor at the feet of the man who'd hit him.
"Hold," Desheng said, a little too late in Bi-Han's mind. "What is Grace planning?"
"The hff-" Bi-Han spat again, enjoying the distaste on his captor's face as he did so, "The real question is, what could you be planning."
"I do not need the half-baked plans of a JFP underling in order to secure my control over the KBB. If I wished its leadership, I would have it. I respect Chen's leadership and serve him loyally."
"Like fuck you do." There were rehearsed lines for this, but agitation, pain and the shattered remains of his plans spat fire into Bi-Han's words. He flinched as the enforcer stepped closer, but Desheng stilled them again. Bi-Han was grateful for the opportunity to clarify, "I've seen your eyes. The way you look at him. The way you stand. The way you wait. I know it because I've done it all my life. You're biding your time for the perfect strike. You want this clan like you want the breath in your lungs." Members of the Lin Kuei had been executed for uttering less than that. Bi-Han swayed on his chair, not caring too much either way just now. It felt so freeing to say the words. Like liberating them gave his soul wings. What he would give for the freedom of no shackles, no masters, no rules, no servitude. Just power, control, and sweet release from all the necessities shouldered on him for so long.
Desheng pushed him back in his chair with one hand.
"You're bleeding out and half delirious."
"But also right, yeah?"
"See to his wounds. And untie him. We can't send him back to the JFP like this."
"Can you send me back with all that cash please, or Julius'll send me on another cracked up suicide mission." Bi-Han closed his eyes and let his head loll back. He felt the cords of his wrists snap free and he rubbed blood back into them.
"In the habit of pissing off important people, are you?"
Bi-Han gave a wonky smile as he let his wound be redressed, lifting his arms up so Desheng's men could unwind the bandages and clean it,
"Something like that."
Desheng crouched down so that he was eye level with Bi-Han. Bi-Han instinctively drew back, wary,
"I don't know what Grace Yeung has planned, but I'm curious." He said softly, "I have no interest in backing loosing sides, but neither have I any interest in starting clan wars. Do you understand?"
Bi-Han wasn't sure was he was getting at, but he nodded anyway because the man was armed and a hairs breath away, and two enormous enforcers were binding a currently very painful injury.
"I'm going to let you go." Desheng continued, "I'm not letting what you've done to Tiger go, I'm letting you go because keeping you here is like keeping an unexploded bomb in my home. I shall keep Tiger quiet for the next few weeks. But if I haven't been compensated for my generosity by the time Timothy Chen realises the full extent of your offence… then there will be war."
"Got it, Mr Qian." Bi-Han slipped back into Mandarin and saluted vaguely.
Desheng gave him a withering look, but the immediate threat Bi-Han had sensed earlier was gone from him.
"Do I get my money?"
Desheng indicated the bag should be handed back to Bi-Han.
"And an escort to show me the way out of this fucking maze?"
"Watch your tone." Desheng growled. He gave Bi-Han the enforcer who'd been beating him as a guide. Bi-Han gave a half formal bow that was stunted by his wound and the lack of blood in his head. He was slightly slow getting his bearings, but very quick to leave Desheng's presence and the heavily armed escort eating chicken at the street food shop.
Bi-Han was lead around the back of the shop and then up a rickety set of steps, that soon became a series of ladders. The ladders clung to the sheer side of the buildings and in places creaked with rust. Bi-Han climbed without complaint despite the wound and the heavy canvass bag back on his back.
Just when he thought the enforcer was toying with him, he found himself the roof of the world. The rooftop of Kowloon was a smudge of dark in a sea of light – an island of shadow in amidst the bright of all Hong Kong by night. Antenna from a thousand thousand homes grew as a thick forest with wiry arms that stretched black against a distant silver moon. Bi-Han shielded his eyes after the dark of the streets below. A crumble of thunder peeled behind him and he felt specks of rain on his cheeks.
"Not something you see everyday" He murmured. He was urged on by the enforcer who was eager to tread the precarious rooftop route before the rain slicked everything to slippery treachery. Bi-Han followed him warily. The bridges between the rooftops were at times little more than wooden planks laid between buildings. The bright night lights of Hong Kong only served to cast everything around them into deep silhouette, obscuring detail and hiding the deep depths of a fall from this height.
Bi-Han paused again when the rain started to fall more heavily. It flashed white about him, refracting the neon from the city beyond as it fell. There were few sights that awed him any more, but Kowloon by night was unlike anything he'd ever experienced. It possessed a raw energy to it that felt more alive than any other place he'd visited. The city wasn't planned, it wasn't permitted, it just was. It lived, it breathed, it did whatever it pleased and dealt with its own darkness in its own way. Bi-Han had thought no such place could exist in this world. To him, life was structured by the Lin Kuei, while the lives of civilians out there, in the world, were structured by institutions just as malicious and claustrophobic in their demands and reach. But Kowloon. In Kowloon one could be alive. He tilted back his head. A rush of sweeping rain came hovering over the roofs in a sheet of sound. Rain beat down around them turning the blackness wet and shining. Bi-Han let the sudden downpour take him, keeping his face upturned to the pound of rain on his skin. Lives he could almost imagine beyond the Lin Kuei walls raced down him like the fresh wings of the storm. Another toll of thunder shook the air and splinter of fork lightening cracked the jagged rooftops into sharp relief.
"Always landed with the psychos." Bi-Han heard the enforcer grate under his breath before he grabbed Bi-Han's bicep and pulled him into shelter.
An hour later, Bi-Han was standing, drenched, beyond the limits of Kowloon. A sodden bag of half a million in cash was on his back, along with the tattered remains of his shirt, and a series of now purpling bruises on his wrists, jaw, and as a welt across his stomach. He walked to a payphone and laughed aloud hysterically on finding he had no change. The absurd amount of money he was carrying and he couldn't even make a phonecall. He dialled for the emergency services.
"What service do you require?"
"Police."
"State the nature of you emergency."
"Need a lift. JFP. I'm on Lok Sin Road, edge of Kowloon. Send a car to take me to Grace Yeung." He hung up. Coming out on top of a war against the police had its perks. He leaned back against a wall and looked up at the outer face of Kowloon – towering about the neighbourhoods surrounding it. Bi-Han sighed, for the first time feeling like he had left behind a home.
Author Note: When things start going bad for him, I bet he just gets more sassy. Sorry for the delay this week, I'm travelling at the moment. This'll probably be the chapter for last week and this week. Got a little more work to do on my buffer before I'm happy posting. Thanks for all your comments and kudos - real nice to see folks are still enjoying what has become quite a long story!