Upsetting the Balance

He took a watch from his pocket, looked at it, and quickly replaced it “Fifteen minutes,” he said. If you openly showed you had a watch these days, you ran the risk of being mistaken for one of the little devils’ rich running dogs, or, conversely, having the lackeys think you were a resistance leader who needed to know exactly what time it was so your raid would go as you’d planned. If you were, in fact, such a leader, you didn’t want people to know it.

Fifteen minutes. Save for when she was in labor, Liu Han had never known time to pass so slowly. “Will we be able to hear the songs we’re listening for?” she asked, guarding her meaning in case any of the people milling around was a spy.

“Oh, yes,” Nieh assured her. “I’m sure my friend from the Big Wine Vat will sing very loud and clear, and he is far from the only man in the chorus.” He lowered his voice, careful even though he was speaking in code. “This song will be heard all over China tonight.”

Liu Han hugged herself, partly against the numbing cold and partly from excitement. If all went as she hoped, she would soon have the beginning of her revenge on the little scaly devils who had brought her so much grief. A boy ran past her with a bundle of strips of paper in one hand and a paste pot in the other. He found a blank stretch of wall, slapped paste onto it, and put up a couple of the strips. Then he ran to look for a spot where more might go.

“You had a clever idea there,” Liu Han said, nodding toward the ragamuffin. “Picking boys who can’t read makes it harder for the little scaly devils to trace those messages. All the boys know is that someone gave them money to put them up.”

“Doctrine,” Nieh said. “If you use someone for a purpose like that, the less he knows, the better.” He chuckled. “Our singers are the same way. If they knew just what sort of songs we were asking them to perform, some of them might want to do something else instead.”

“Yes.” Liu Han thought about doctrine. Nieh often seemed to know what to do without having to consider first. The thing he called doctrine told him what he needed, almost as if it let him toss the coins for theI Ching inside his own head. That made it a valuable tool. But he also sometimes seemed unable to think outside the framework his doctrine gave him, as if it were not tool but master. The Communists in the scaly devils’ prison camp had acted the same way. She’d heard Christian missionaries gabble about a Truth they claimed to have. The Communists thought they owned truth, too. It sometimes made them uncomfortable allies, even if she could never have struck the little devils such a blow without them.

Nieh Ho-T’ing was casually tapping the palm of his hand against a trouser leg. His mouth shaped silent words: eight, seven, six…

As he said the wordfive, a sharp, deepbang! came from inside the walls of the Forbidden City. “Early,” Nieh said, “but not so bad.” The grin he was wearing belied even the partial criticism.

He’d hardly finished the sentence when anotherbang! went off, and then another. Liu Han felt as if she were drunk onsamshu, though she’d had nothing stronger than tea. “We give the Emperor a happy birthday,” she said, and added the emphatic cough for good measure.

Two more bombs went off among the scaly devils, then one, then silence. Nieh Ho-T’ing frowned. “We had eight arranged for in all here in Peking,” he said. “Perhaps two timers failed, or perhaps they ran late and the little devils found them before they could blow up.”

That made Liu Han remember the bombs had not got in among the little scaly devils by themselves. The Communists had promised her they’d care for the families of the beast-show men killed in the explosions, and she believed them; they had a good reputation in such things. But money did not pay for the anguish the wives and children of those men would know. She knew how hard losing a family was. It had happened to her twice now.

Had she not had her idea, those beast-show men would still be living, working at their trade. She hung her head. Hurting the little scaly devils might justify what she’d done, but could not make her proud of it.

The little devils’ hissing alarms started going off. Gunfire came from inside the Forbidden City. That wasn’t the raiders. That was the little scaly devils, shooting either at innocent people (there were waiters and other servants who’d also still be alive and well if she hadn’t had her idea; she remembered them, too) or at one another.

Suddenly Liu Han and Nieh Ho-T’ing stood almost alone, not far from the walls of the Forbidden City. People in Peking had seen a lot of war. They knew that, when explosions went off anyplace nearby, going elsewhere was one of the best ideas you could have. She started drifting away with the crowd, and tugged at Nieh’s sleeve when he didn’t move fast enough to suit her.