Chapter Thirty-Four
THE NEW year, already so violently begun, only darkened further, just a few brief steps beyond the theatre’s doors.
‘Sir William, what are you doing here?’
‘Prince Xian.’ The Englishman’s wide grin accentuated his high cheekbones. He looked more put together than he had just a short while ago, with eyes clear and vibrant, steady on his feet. ‘I didn’t think you had such fight in you.’
Xian stared at him. ‘You saw what happened, with…’ He couldn’t bring himself to say the man’s name. ‘You saw and did nothing to aid me?’
‘Did you need my aid? It appeared you had matters in hand.’
Furious, Xian sought to push past him. But William moved fast and loomed large.
‘Stand aside, daemon.’ Xian glowered, impatience and anguish forming a foul mix in his mind.
‘Easy now. I understand you are rattled. I’ll not lay a hand on you. There’s been enough of that done for one night. Just wait.’
‘Do you think I’m a fool?’ Xian dragged his breath between clenched teeth. ‘Wait so you can betray me completely? Keeping me here whilst you wait for the guards to arrive and put me in chains?’
William huffed. ‘Why would they put you in chains, when it was that bastard who deserves them? No one is coming. They are all intent on more exciting things than a tiresome vulpine.’
‘How could you stand there and do nothing when he attacked me? Have you no decency?’ Xian shouted beneath the spray of fireworks that loosened overhead; a spectacular bloom of golds and greens.
William’s lips, damp and full, parted, then closed.
He seemed irritated, barely able to look Xian in the eye.
‘You were supposed to…I thought maybe you would…I do not know how to ignite a huli jing, I could only go by what I know as a daemon…’ He flung up his hand.
‘Fine, I should have stepped in earlier, there you have it. But a dramatic event can be helpful—’
‘Helpful in what?’ Xian cried.
‘In bringing on the first change. Never mind, it didn’t work, and by the time I’d decided things had gone far enough, you decided to finally show your teeth, and fight for yourself.’
‘First change? What are you…’ Xian held up his hands. ‘No, wait. Don’t say another word. You have told so many lies this evening I couldn’t believe a single thing that comes out of your mouth. Get out of my way, daemon.’
‘You know I could click my fingers and have you eyes melt in their sockets, for such insolence. I don’t think you understand who you are dealing with.’
‘And I don’t care.’ Xian shouldered his way past the infuriating man. ‘Go back to your madak, Sir William, and leave me alone.’
‘Are you pissy because I denied that I ever granted you a wish? Dear boy, you are no fun at all.’
The sky thundered, and the colours rained down their hues on a city where people shouted their delight into the night, and music tried to outplay the fireworks.
Xian rounded on him. ‘You do remember.’
‘Of course I bloody well remember, I’m not an ancient imbecile.
But I’m not a pleasant fellow, I wasn’t bred that way.
’ He hesitated, looking as abashed as Xian imagined the man could look.
‘I thought it would be amusing to goad you, to see what happened when a fox was taunted. I like to be amused, it’s a distraction from the unpleasantries of my life.
But apparently, when I combine madak and Moutai, I also become something of a cunt.
’ Xian frowned. The last word spoken in English made no sense to him.
‘If that means you are a shameless hùndàn who is wasting my time, then we agree. I’ll not stand here with you any longer. I will leave tonight with Song Lim, with no help from you.’
Another chorus of fireworks erupted, drawing Xian’s gaze skyward.
When he looked down, William was there, right in front of him.
‘No help from me? You rude little dog. I’ve done all this for you, and for what? To think I almost wasted my time feeling guilty a moment ago, for the lies, and the standing by while you were assailed, but I am quite over that now.’
‘Shut up! Move!’ Xian pushed at William’s chest. And unsurprisingly found him immovable.
But where his hands rested against the Englishman’s chaofu, Xian noted how the fireworks played with the light, giving his skin an orange-red tinge.
Beneath his skin, the spirit strained, stretching itself against the confines of flesh and bone.
‘Very well then.’ Sir William stepped back and turned on his leather heels at the precise moment the sky exploded with another calamitous display of brilliant colour, paired with more ominous booms. Sir William flicked his coat, and the crack of exploding gunpowder marked the moment exactly.
Above, gold and emerald points of light flickered like a swarm of fireflies gone mad.
The daemon raised his hand and jabbed his finger into the air.
Another great boom, another shock of illumination.
And cries.
Not those of delight or awe, but terror. Shouts of disarray and confusion.
Xian stared at Sir William; the daemon was bathed by an aura that mimicked flame.
‘What have you done?’
‘Amused myself. And perhaps kept a promise I made to a pathetic little prince who was even lonelier than me. But if you breathe a word of that I shall wear your russet hide as a stole.’ He inclined his head. ‘You are very angry at me now, aren’t you?’
‘I don’t have time for anger right now, William.’ Xian wasn’t angry; he was furious. ‘I must find Song Lim, let me go.’
‘Ah, there now…perhaps I did not waste my time after all. You are quite radiant now, fox prince.’ He waved his hand up and down Xian’s body.
‘What are you—’ Xian’s words died on his lips.
Radiant was hardly the word. His skin shone with hues of autumn’s fire, spilling from him in waves; so intense it permeated through the layers of his gown. Far brighter and grander than the aura that came after William’s kiss. It made his joints ache, and shivers run the length of his body.
‘What is happening to me? I feel peculiar, like I’m…’ The waft of smoke struck him.
Not the gunpowder stench of the fireworks, but that of a signal pyre; blazing fiercely to send its message great distances. His senses crackled with warning. The aches intensified, and the red fringe he’d experienced in his vision earlier now returned.
‘You feel like what?’ William prompted. ‘Are you having a fit of some sort?’
‘Don’t you smell that? There are fires…’ Xian stared beyond Williams’s shoulder. ‘Everywhere…’
The reek made his eyes water, his hands jittery with nerves.
‘I don’t smell it,’ William said. ‘but I am not a fox who is born fearing the forest fires.’
‘So you did not set any fires?’
The Englishman didn’t answer straight away, wrinkling his perfect face to consider.
‘Not intentionally. But I have arranged it so that every single firework Feng has in his collection will be seen tonight, even those intended for the next fifteen days of celebrations. He’ll have nothing left for the Lantern Festival, which I’m sure will vex him.
’ He shrugged. ‘But really, what does it matter if this place burns down? Neither you nor I are staying here.’
Panic prickled along Xian’s skin, making it itch so fiercely he scratched at his arms.
‘Are you mad? There are innocent people here. Song Lim…’ Xian rushed at the Englishman, determined to make his way past. William grabbed him, his hold fierce.
‘Your shoemaker might be dead already. Don’t waste your time,’ A spray of green flowered in the sky above them, its boom deep and rumbling and beating its way into Xian’s bones.
‘Let go of me,’ Xian cried.
‘I’m doing you a favour. Forget the shoemaker. Let him burn.’
Xian’s skin seared, his entire body shaken by a cruelty beyond words.
Fury choked him, his chest too small to contain a heart that pounded like a gong.
Xian punched at the man who held him, kicking and screaming, livid and wild.
His entire vision streaked red. He raked his nails down the side of William’s face, and blood flowed.
The Englishman laughed, his eyes aflame. ‘Oh you are so close now. Do you think he’ll cry for you as he burns?’
A terrible ache struck Xian, his spine cracking as he arched against the agony. William released him, and Xian went to his knees; jaw rigid, throat tight. Every bone in Xian’s body shifted, grinding against its neighbour, the cracking resonating in his ears.
‘What is happening…to me,’ he gasped.
His hands were bloodied at the fingertips where black nails pushed from his flesh; tapered at their tips to a sharp point any knife would envy.
William stood over him, the fireworks framing his head like temporary halos.
‘Finally. I thought we’d never ignite you. Best not to fight what was always mean to be, prince of the huli jing.’ His smile was hard to define; it seemed too distant to discern.
Xian let his head drop, the strain upon his neck too much to bear. At every joint, he burned with painful fire. He was afire, just as the buildings that burned.
A firework spluttered above, like daybreak descending.
His body snapped, broke and remade itself, and his fine hairs became coarse and thick and covered him over.
The world grew larger, and he a different creature in it.
Xian’s pieces put themselves back together.
Every hiss of new cartilage stretching, every urgent growth of hair, every reformation of his bones, foreign yet familiar.
Run. Run. Run.
Xian moved on padded feet, stepping from a pile of white and gold. He sniffed at it, his black nose damp and searching. It was not snow; it was not sand.
It was not important.
He peered out into a world of amber. His thoughts fleeting. His tail a raised banner at his back.
A man stood nearby, a glowing man. He held two shoes.
Slippers. Dazzling and unique.
Mine. Mine. Mine.
But the fox did not hunger for the shoes. Only for their maker.
His whiskers twitched; his russet fur bristled.
The glowing man knelt beside him, whispering in his pointed ears the name of the place he would find refuge in. The name settled into the fox’s mind, where it would be kept safe until it was needed.
‘Now, get on with you, little prince, and stop flicking your ears at me like that.’ Beneath the man’s words rumbled a great and terrible power.
The fox heard it all. But he was not afraid.
‘I’ll keep these slippers, and if we meet again, I’ll know it is you, for your shoemaker made them to fit no other. What a lucky creature you are.’
The fox sniffed the air and caught wind of the other prince’s great loneliness; the gaping emptiness that festered beneath his fire.
He turned his head. Hiding from that pain.
A distant scent brought the fox to rigid attention; the essence faint beneath the madness, but bringing his new and agile body to life.
Song Lim. Song Lim. Song Lim.
The fox prince bared his teeth, lengthened his claws and with a push from powerful haunches, he ran.