Author's note: I finished earlier than I thought I would, so here you guys go. To more sensitive or legitimately traumatized readers, I give this warning: there is a suicide attempt in this chapter.

"Come tell us how you slew them old Arabs two by two:

Like the Zulus, they had spears and bows and arrows!

How bravely you faced one with your sixteen-pounder gun,

And you frightened them poor natives to the marrow!

Come out, you Black and Tans, come out and fight me like a man:

Show your wife how you won medals down in Flanders!

Tell 'er how the I-R-A made you run like hell away

From the green and lovely lanes of Killeshandra!"

-Dominic Behan

"What's going on here? Where the hell is that chipmunk witch?"

Though the voice sounded faint through the blood roaring in Sally's ears, she recognized the timbre: it was the cat who had punched her the day before. She tore her eyes away from the open grave and looked through the congregation behind her, who had also turned around: the cat stood a few yards away, arms across his heavy chest. He now wore the scarlet Boxer robes and peasants' sunhat instead of paint. It dawned on Sally that what made him so visible, was torchlight. At least thirty torches flickered behind him, each held by a sneering, red-clad Boxer. A half-rusted sword hung from the cat's belt.

Knuckles put himself between the cat and Sally as the mourners shied away from the light. He cracked his neck. The rest of the able-bodied men joined him: Xin and Falun, short, heavily scarred alligators, and a young bat named Cixin. "Get lost, Chu!" Knuckles growled, "We're paying our respects!"

'Only four?' Sally thought. In spoken Mandarin, the word "four" sounded exactly like the word for "death".

She looked back at the retreating mourners: muttering fearfully, they soon melted into the dark slum around them, just as Vanilla had made them practice every week. Sally's mind followed them, but her legs would not obey her orders to stand up. She continued to weep.

The cat didn't budge, but looked to his comrades and mouthed "Four." The other Boxers nodded warily, and began to fan out behind him. "Tell me where she is, and we will!" he barked, "Where is she!"

Sally tried to reign in her grief, tried to breath through her nose, in; but it was no good. Her nose was flooded with snot. She took a big gulp of the rapidly-drying air, then let it out. It would have to do. She stood up. "I'm here," she croaked.

Knuckles glanced over his shoulder at her.

"I'm here," she said, more strongly. Standing up somehow made her feel better. She brushed past Knuckles and stood just in front of him. "What would you say to me, Chu?"

The cat bristled, then cried out: "Zhang has made his anger with us known, witch!" Agreement rippled through his comrades, and he nodded before continuing: "The day we knock you to the ground for fun, he gives us a drop of his rain, to mock us. He needs more done to end this drought!"

Sally was very tired. "What makes you think I am a witch, and one who can bring back the rains?"

The cat scowled. "You and your master came here two years ago, yes?"

Sally shook her head. "Three."

"And all that time, you foreigners all taught Peking to ignore our ancestors, to disparage the spirits of our very homes!"

Louder affirmations and jeers came from the other Boxers. A boar spoke up: "And for all that time, not one drop of rain on Peking!"

"Nor on Shandong!"

"Or anywhere in Manchuria!"

Sally shook her head.

"You've cursed us!" the cat continued, "and we demand that you lift that curse! Allow Zhang to be pleased with us again!"

"And if not," the boar closest to him said, "This entire neighborhood will burn tonight."

Sally drew her father's Peacemaker from her belt. She then threw it, landing a yard short of the cat's feet.

The cat looked at the weapon, then at her, puzzled. "What's this?"

Knuckles put a hand on Sally's shoulder and squeezed. Hard. 'Stop,' his grip said, 'Run. I'll handle this.'

Sally jerked herself away, never taking her eyes off the cat as she advanced on the pistol. She picked it up, cocked the hammer, and held it out to the cat by the barrel. "Take it," she commanded.

Bewildered, the cat took the offered weapon, but Sally's hand didn't leave the barrel. She kneeled, and placed the muzzle dead center of her forehead. Then she let go. "Please," she breathed, her mouth twisting, "Lift the curse." Her eyes squeezed shut. A moment passed.

What seemed like ten years passed.

The barrel grew warm against her forehead. Her eyes creaked open, hot and stinging, and the cat's face was barely legible through the fresh tears. The barrel trembled for a moment, then pulled away. Sally fell at the cat's feet. Whatever words had been on her lips turned to sobs.

"This isn't a witch," the cat muttered, and then he let out a shaky laugh. He looked to his comrades. "Not a witch," he repeated aloud, "Find the rabbit and that pink one. Their spells must have driven this woman mad."

"What about Knuckles and the others?" the boar asked.

The cat grunted. "Smoke them out."

He pointed out ten of his Boxer brethren, and ten torches flew through the air. They landed on the long, thatched roof of the church.

"What do we do with her?" another voice asked

A pause. "We'll bring her with us."

"A foreigner? Before the Qing?" the boar cried.

"Heaven itself is in the Qing's blood, isn't it?" the cat said, "Maybe the Empress can cure her."

'I should've stayed.' That was all Knuckles could think as he ran. If he had been drunk, he would have waded into those damned Boxers, and killed at least three of them. Broken their backs, at least. Maybe the others would have taken out one or two each. Sally would've come back from whatever insanity had possessed her, and she would've run before the other Boxers overwhelmed them. He was sure of it.

But he hadn't been drunk, and the idea of leaving Amy to pick up the pieces had turned his feet away from Sally. Falun, Xin, and Knuckles had been stunned by the girl's suicidal gesture, but Cixin had kept his wits. The kid was no longer a pickpocket, but Knuckles was glad that he'd retained that thieves' instinct to immediately run from situations like this. Knuckles had reacted a few moments after Cixin, yanking both Falun and Xin by the arms as he took off into the night. After the first turn down the back alley behind the church, the darkness and two more turns had separated them. It didn't matter: each man knew where they were supposed to meet up.

Five blocks north, at the intersection of a spice market and a wild game market, Vanilla had maintained a discreet but neat apartment for entertaining Western diplomats, local dignitaries, and most importantly, prospective donors. Per Vanilla's evacuation plans, the apartment block was the church's rendezvous point, at which another head count could be made before they retreated to the Legation Quarter. Luckily, the path to Legation Quarter was a perfect straight line from the apartment, only two miles long.

What Knuckles didn't know, and indeed only what the Qing Empress and a handful of her generals knew, was that the neighborhood of Vanilla's congregation was home to more than just a ramshackle longhouse that served for their beloved chapel.

When the torch flames finally caught a dry spot in the otherwise damp thatch roof, the fire entered the church. It hungered for dry wood. It found some in the rafters below the thatching.

Sally was quiet. The stay of execution had somewhat cleared her mind, and it began to work. Why on earth did she do that? 'I could have shot him,' she thought, 'I should have.' The Boxers would have been the ones who fled, with their faith in bulletproof magical clothing shattered. Then a bleak voice in her mind added: 'Until the next time they saw you. Then what?' Her eyes fell on Chu's belt, and her father's pistol. The laquered oak grip of the Peacemaker glistened in the torchlight, just a yard distant.

Though Chu forbade her death, that hadn't stopped his companions from throwing a few punches as they pushed her down the darkened streets, with Chu taking point. Chu had sent all but three of his men-very young men, she realized, *boys*-after Knuckles. The rest followed her and Chu as a sort of honor guard.

"Oh, Chu!" The boar whined, dramatically putting his hand to his forehead, "No one among us poor, fattened devils is more cursed than I! End my pain, my love!"

The other two guards, lithe otters, guffawed. They made finger-gun gestures at the boar, then at Sally. "Pow, pow! Shā, shā!" *Kill, kill!* One of them gave her a hard cuff on the ear and laughed when she began sniffling again. "Go on, witch, cry! Cry away the drought!" He loudly mirrored her sniffling, then gave her a shove.

Chu stopped, easily catching Sally before she plunged into a muddy patch on the street ahead of him. He surveyed his companions with a cool eye. They gave back a puzzled stare. After moment, he set Sally on her feet and led them down another turn. "This way," he said, "We need to be at the Palace Gate by dawn."

Down the support beams, the flames crept. It soon found the floorboards, the beds, the benches, the books, the letters; and it grew more ravenous when it found a forgotten oil lamp in Amy's bedroom.

Atop the Tartar Wall, Sonic saw a thin column of smoke trail upward into the half-light of the half-moon and stars. It was about two or three miles east, he judged as he brought a pair of field glasses to his face. Dim red light shone at the base of the column, and the quills of his neck stiffened. 'Fire.' Ghosts of Cameroon and death appeared in his mind. He heard the bull elephant again, whose agonized roar had turned to bone-deep shrieks as the flames finally swallowed him whole, and the toxic scent of burning acacia sap reached through time to fill Sonic's lungs once more. He tried to shove both of them away, but it was no good: they retaliated with the heat. God, the heat! Nothing was worse than the sensation of your own blood cooking, even as you-

Tails' gentle voice reached through the storm of memory. "What is it?"

In this tinderbox of a city, there was nowhere for him to run this time. The only option was to fight. "Find me thirty volunteers," Sonic ordered, "and as many refugees, buckets, and spades as we can spare."

"Spades?"

"We're putting out a fire."

Gleefully, the fire devoured the chapel. But it wasn't enough. The support beams, which had saved the building from several floods, split open from the heat and fell apart. The ceiling caved in. A hundred thousand embers roared into the sky and fell upon on the surrounding houses.

One of these houses, just half a block to the west, contained one of the Qing's many, many, dirty little secrets: a cellar, filled with barrels and crates. If Sally had seen them, she would have recognized the branding on the crates: Acorn and Sons Armaments, Ltd. The ammunition inside began to cook.