Chapter 4 A Good Bath
A GOOD BATH
The bath was heaven for the entire fifteen minutes Mercy sat in it. She scrubbed until all trace of salt and grime and burned furniture and brain matter was gone. Eventually, she felt almost human again.
Being clean was a luxury she would never take for granted. In the old days, before Cobra Lily had plucked her from obscurity and squalor, Mercy hadn’t ever bathed. Mostly because she hadn’t owned a tub. She’d made do with a quick rag-rinse over a sink in the evenings.
These days, with triad money and filtered rainwater coming through newly built pipes, Mercy could bask in the satisfaction of actually feeling clean. Lying here, half floating, she could almost forget about the day’s madness.
“Almost” being the key word.
I am a messenger.
Her shoulders twitched.
The demon who killed me wanted me to ask you a question.
Mercy took a deep breath through her nose.
Do you remember the island, Chen Mei Chi?
Mercy sat up and turned off the faucet. In all her years, no ghost had ever posed such a personal, shocking question. She did not remember the specifics of an island, but the dreams and waking visions were a clear indication of some lost, unremembered past.
The question could mean nothing. Over the years, she had gathered a modest reputation among ghosts and living humans alike in this district.
Outside of Kowloon, no one really knew her, but quite a few people within these walls did.
Many knew a few snippets of her past, or had heard rumors of her missing memory.
That a ghost would reference it in conversation was a little odd, but not wildly so.
The mention of a “demon” was disquieting, though.
Demons could refer to different things, from actual denizens of the underworld, to malignant gods, to particularly vicious ghosts.
Without more context, it was hard to say which the water fetcher had been thinking of.
Regardless, it was never a good thing to have one in the neighborhood.
Or, perhaps she was overthinking it. It was Ghost Month, after all, and that always came with a barrage of particularly strange encounters. The ghosts were stronger, more connected to the world of the living, and often seemed to know or say things that they should not normally.
Either way, she couldn’t sit here all day. Time to report to her boss. Mercy pulled the plug and climbed out.
The second she stepped from the tub, the heat came right back and draped over her like a moist blanket. Hot. Heavy. Suffocatingly damp. She toweled off a mix of cool water and fresh sweat, threw on some clothes, and parted the jangling bead curtain with one hand.
Her flat was well shaded, boasting freestanding fans in two corners and a slow-turning one on the ceiling.
Warding fu talismans hung over doors and on windows, to keep out errant ghosts.
Afternoon sunlight streamed through slatted blinds, hazy with dust motes.
Thirteen stories up was high enough to snag some sky, although it did get a little noisy with all the passing planes.
In the center of the room, Bao lounged on an embroidered silk cushion. One red eye opened briefly at her entrance.
“You should not even need sleep, you are already dead,” Mercy said, accusingly. “Yet here you are, napping again. I think you must be the laziest cat ever, even in spirit form.”
Predictably, there was no answer to her unjust insult. But just looking at him soothed her mood in a way that the bath had not, and she relaxed. She stroked his nose and left him snoozing.
It would be luxurious in here if she cleared the clutter, but Mercy liked owning things.
She couldn’t remember her childhood, knew little of herself before she’d arrived in the Walled City as a traumatized and penniless young woman, but her adult life had been defined and shaped by poverty.
And poverty meant never getting to own shit that you didn’t need.
So these days, she put paintings and calligraphy stencils on her walls, bought nested wooden tables inlaid with lacquer and stacked them with elaborate books she never opened.
She crammed faux silk flowers into ceramic vases, hung an eclectic collection of woks from the rafters, admired her rarely used yixing tea sets, piled up folding fans and sewing boxes and newspaper articles with odd stories; she collected cat toys and Taoist coins and jade bracelets.
Most of her possessions had mysteriously “fallen” out of various shipping containers over the years and landed in Cobra Lily’s territory, before finding their way into her flat.
Mercy carried no guilt over any of this.
Rich people had enough rich things; they could spare her a few bits.
And it made her feel safe, having it all.
As if she were insulated from the world’s troubles.
She slipped on her tiger charm bracelet—the only thing she’d owned when she arrived in the district—and sat down on her mahogany bed, a big carved thing all the way from England.
The sheets were a messy tangle, because Mercy had never understood the point of making beds.
Why bother when you were only going to sleep in it later?
She ran a comb through her short hair, then walked through the front door of her flat.
Outside, in a broad shared hallway, she turned right and took the stairs to the topmost level—where her boss lived, in the flat above her own.
One deep breath to calm her nerves, and she stepped through lacquered wood doors and into Cobra Lily’s living space.
“Living space” was the wrong description. It might have been intended for that originally, but Cobra Lily had repurposed it. Everything precious or valuable was stored elsewhere. This space, with its bare wooden floors and high ceiling and mirrored walls, was for training.
The leader of the Snakeskin triad occupied the center of the room, sword in one hand, lean form draped in a loose robe as she moved languidly through a series of poses and stances. Her movements came from no single recognizable school, but a blend of techniques picked up through the years.
Mercy watched in respectful silence, waiting for her boss to finish practice.
Cobra Lily carried an undeniably powerful presence.
She was a handsome woman in her mid-fifties—only a sliver older than Mercy herself—with fine lines softening the corners of her eyes.
Sleek, dark hair was shot through with silver, giving a dramatic flair to her profile.
Snake-patterned tattoos ran up her arms, across her back and collarbone, and all the way under her chin; they seemed to writhe in the shifting light as she moved.
The years had not bowed Cobra Lily, only honed her sharp edges and forged steel in her spine.
“There you are,” the triad queen called out. “Feeling any cooler, Chan?”
“For about half a second, but I’m already too hot again.” Mercy walked over on damp feet, toes sticking to the wood slightly. “Having fun, boss?”
“I am.” Cobra Lily spun, arced her blade, swept it down. “Join me, sometime.”
“Hah! In another life, maybe.” After years of hard work and staying one step ahead of hunger, Mercy took great satisfaction in being comfortably chubby and deliberately lazy.
It was a luxury to be both. “Besides, I’m happy with my knives.
” They were easier to throw and easier to hide than any sword.
“You limit yourself.” Another spin, the blade curving across with perfect control. “I think you could be a truly wonderful fighter, if you wanted.”
“So you have been telling me for years.” Mercy thought of Rat Tattoo lying on the ground earlier, her blade pressed to his throat, and the whisper inside her head to catch him hold him drag him; she winced. “I prefer not to encourage violence in myself. More than I already do.”
“Stubborn as an old turtle,” Cobra Lily said, laughing, and came to a stop. Not remotely out of breath from all that exertion, despite the thin sheen of perspiration on her skin. “Did the job go well?”
“Another waiting woman. You were right, someone in the family had killed her.”
Mercy nearly mentioned the water fetcher, then decided it wasn’t worth the trouble. She dealt with ghosts all the time, every single day, because it was her job to do so. Reporting each encounter to her boss was unnecessary and tedious, particularly during Ghost Month.
“I see.” Cobra Lily brushed past to reach the weapons rack. The sword clanked as it slotted into place. “Was it the husband?”
“No, no. Her husband was already long deceased. It was the grandson. Soon as she got sick, he locked her in, took her money, and left her to die.” Mercy paused. “He’s been taken care of. By the grandmother.”
“Ouch. Very rude for a young man! Still, that makes me glad I sent you to handle it, and not someone more … traditional.”
Mercy smiled. “One day your intuition will let you down. And then I’ll be stuck dealing with a ghost I cannot handle.”
“Nonsense. Who is better than you at speaking to ghosts? What can you not handle?”
“Anything that needs actual exorcism, for a start. Talking only solves certain problems.”
“As a businesswoman, I disagree. Talking both causes and solves most problems,” her boss said, dryly. “If we had simply exorcised the ghost, then a murderer would have walked free, and perhaps killed again.”
“True. It is important to know the story behind a death.”
“Exactly,” Cobra Lily said, with a languid wave of her hand. “Besides, it is so much fun when you do it your way.”
Mercy thought of the bystanders who had fled screaming from the elderly woman’s indiscriminate fire breath, and twinged with guilt. “I’m not sure fun is the right word, boss.”