Happy Holidays Fic #5
Dec. 23rd, 2005 09:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trinityvixenWe interrupt this post for an update: ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
feiran!!! I beat Cao Pi's musou in HARD MODE in Dynasty Warriors 5!!!! AND I COINCIDENTALLY GOT HIS FOURTH WEAPON! IT IS MIGHTY!!!
Ahem.ivy03 requested a The Shadow fic, featuring Lamont Cranston and Uncle Wainright. She wanted gossip columny about his disappearance, and I've interpreted it a little less than literal-like, but I hope it's still acceptable! Happy Christmas, ivy03!
Rumor Has It
bytrinityvixen
March 1934
Lauren Booth was a Rockefeller scion, cousin or similarly distant relation that her marriage to Thomas Booth, the humble owner of a machine parts factory, was almost an insult to her legacy, no matter how small it actually was. As such, she indulged herself with as much expensive company as she could to make up for it.
When Lamont Cranston swept back into town after a much gossiped-about ten-year absence, she sent a messenger to his house asking him to dinner at Fantasia Gardens--without her husband and on Lamont’s dime.
“You can certainly afford to splurge,” she cooed in his ear as he pulled out her chair at the restaurant. “You are a gentleman, through and through, Lamont.”
“Not so,” he joked, “or I wouldn’t have agreed to take you out and leave Thomas behind.”
“Ugh, Thomas,” Lauren rolled her heavily made up eyes. “The man is a homosexual. He’d only be jealous of me, I promise.”
“Why’d you marry him?”
“Oh no,” Lauren huffed proudly, “you’ll have to pry me with martinis before I confess to those sorts of secrets.”
“Lauren, you shouldn’t have told me you think Thomas is—never mind, the point is that we barely know each other.”
“We’re rich, Lamont,” she said, as if explaining to a child. “We know all we need to know about each other right there.”
“I doubt that, but I won’t argue.”
Lauren stuck her tongue out at him and batted an eye as she fished around in her purse. Eventually she produced a tapered cigarette holder, fresh cigarette, and a lighter.
“Don’t light that,” he said abruptly, startling her into dropping her lighter back into her bag.
“What? Are you some kind of stone fundamentalist or something?” She clucked her tongue at him. “What did they do to you in Europe? Teach you to pinch snuff, or something, I suppose.”
“Don’t light that, Lauren, I mean it.”
Lauren lit the cigarette.
“Darling, you have been gone too long. You’ve got to get with the times. Smoking is the new vogue. You can’t imagine how your body loves you for it when you get a fix. It’s a rush.”
Lamont did not blink as she exhaled forcefully in his direction. He took a deep breath, fighting against a choke and a surging need.
“See, not so bad, is it?”
One breath, that was it. He stood up, pushed his chair in, and waved to the bewildered waiter who was approaching with their drinks. He put forty dollars on the table.
“Eat, drink, be merry, Lauren.”
He left her gaping at his retreating figure. As he passed the coat check, he got one more whiff of cigarette smoke and almost cried. With increasing desperation, he hailed a taxi and dove inside for refuge.
He didn’t leave his blessedly smoke-free house for two days. Lauren didn’t send him invitations again.
December 1929
Ying-Koh thought better in the den. Wu never joined him in there. Wu was forbidden from using and was fastidious enough to avoid drugs of any sort. If only his countrymen possessed half his steely resolve, they’d put men like Ying-Koh out of business. Opium weakened spirits and left lesser men dependent on their next fix. The wealth of the mightiest, longest-lived empire was daily puffed away.
Ying-Koh smoked. He spent hours breathing in the lingering fumes when pipes had been extinguished for the day. Each crop cycle, he tasted the best of what his chemists produced. Any time he was ill, he replaced the offending chemist. It meant that in all of Qinghai, his was the best leaf. It bought respect that might otherwise be lacking for a wài guó rén* like him.
“My lord,” a paige by the name of Xiao bowed to him at the door. Still groveling, he held out some papers for his master and edged back to the tapestry that separated the den from the complex’s central chambers, waiting for his instructions. Servile to the nth degree, Xiao would wait with his head on his knees for hours if it took his master that long to dismiss him. And Ying-Koh had, on occasion, just to prove he could.
Wu had tallied the reports of the world outside Qinghai province for him, as he requested. The upstart Republic had an eye to eliminate all the warlords carving up the provinces of the empire. Chiang Kai-shek had defeated Wu Peifu and Sun Chuanfang some years back, when Ying-Koh had gotten his start.
The elimination of two of the three major warlords in Northern Manchuria was supposed to unify the provinces under the New Republic. Chiang wanted to prove that his government, while not the one to topple imperial rule, could be the one to lead the Chinese into prominence in this infant century. Chiang hated the opium trade, with its crippling effect on the economy and the power it gave to men outside of the government.
Men like Ying-Koh, who had risen to fill the voids Chiang’s crusade created. His foothold in the northwest was now stronger than ever, thanks to Chiang’s methods; when the government came at last for him, he could defend himself, probably to their end and not his. Still, there was more to do, more land to annex to his holdings in order to shore up his operations. He could not lay claim to Xinjiang yet, for there were too many enemies there. Gansu was dangerously close to the center, where the warlords were still being purged.
Tibet, though, to the south, was untapped territory. The Tibetans did not believe themselves true Chinese, and they abhorred most Chinese behaviors, including the smoking of opium leaf. Wu had made a note about this for him, correctly guessing that, with the political situation of the surrounding provinces harming his chances for expansion, Tibet could be their best chances for new markets. Tibetan aversion to opium would be overcome by generous application of the drug and by force, too, if necessary. He wasn’t concerned about finding customers, only cornering the market when one arose in Tibet.
“Xiao.”
“Yes, my lord?”
“I will see Wu in two hours.”
“Yes, my lord. Do you require anything else?”
“Be gone. My supply will last me here.”
Xiao left, and Ying-Koh lifted the notes on Chinese affairs to peruse the second set of papers Wu had left for him. These were such as did not require Ying-Koh to give orders on, and he never read them in the presence of others.
In late October, the stock market experiment had come to a spectacular end in America. Banks had no money, and men lost whole fortunes. No stranger to finance, especially cutthroat economics, Ying-Koh did not worry over the inheritance left to him there in another name. The bonds would be honored; he need not make arrangements.
In fact, the news cheered him. Depressed people always sought out his crops more often. There were new ways of powdering the opium and sniffing or tasting it to achieve the same ends—he’d enjoyed many of these new methods himself, though he preferred the pipe—that made shipping out of the country easier and less noticeable. With the Republic threatening to toss contraband cargo and burn opium pirates on their ships, improved means of distribution were needed.
Ying-Koh had them and now entire countries beyond his provincial borders or markets. Pushing into Tibet wouldn’t even hardly be necessary, if he could expand internationally.
Of course, Ying-Koh would do it anyway. He lit a fresh pipe.
May 1934
“I was in Austria, myself—after the War,” Oliver Campbell went on, tossing back a scotch highball in two swallows. Lamont had yet to turn down a single former friend or supposed peer who had inquired after him. Campbell’s family had gotten out of the investment business some scant months before the bottom fell out of the market, and they were all living fat until such time as they could speculate again.
Oliver passed his time abroad, which, given that that was where Lamont claimed to have been at much the same time, he felt obligated to arrange this dinner and strengthen his alibi. If someone known to have been catting it up in post-War Europe believed he had been, too, he might dodge speculation from here on out.
“Austria was—well, the place is a mess, worse than here, you know.”
“I don’t, actually,” Lamont said honestly, but winking over his wine glass. He’d never been to Austria, and even if he’d had volumes to say about it, Campbell was too drunk to listen. However, Oliver was possessed of a prurient mind, and he gathered that the less he said about his missing decade, the less he’d need to; Oliver would fill in the blanks.
“Absolute disaster,” Oliver confided in him. “The dirty krouts haven’t got two pennies to rub together. The War really did a number on them.”
“They’re still paying it off, too.”
“Absolutely,” Oliver said fervently. “Of course, I’ve seen the trenches, my dear man. Disgusting. Only things you can make grow in Austria these days are mu-mud and—” Oliver was seized with giggles, and he lowered his voice to a dramatic whisper. “Well, let’s just say if a man wants servicing, he’s got options.”
“Has he,” Lamont kept his tone flat, his expression likewise.
“Oh yes,” Olive continued to giggle and snort and rattle the ice in his empty glass. “Women, men, what’s your poison? They can take care of it.” Oliver leaned forward. “And the exchange rate—criminal what you can get for a dollar over there. Criminal.”
“You don’t say.”
“Yes, yes, I do say.” Then Oliver managed a sly, inebriated grin. “But I’m sure you know all about that. What with all the reconnoitering you did overseas.”
Here, at last, Oliver had stumbled, however inadvertently onto some truth. Lamont smiled bashfully to mask guilt.
“Oliver, you have no idea.”
September 1930
Ying-Koh dragged the girl from his pallet by her hair. She screamed pleas to her ancestors, to the family gods to protect her, to forgive her for what she’d done and for failing them anyway. In the main antechamber, members of his court, higher officers who fought for him, the chemists who oversaw his opium manufacture, and their whores all watched, amused, as the Butcher threw the naked girl out into the center of the room.
Ying-Koh ascended the dais to his chair, throwing himself into it. The girl cowered, drawing herself into a ball. No one touched her or threatened her, but she could not know that they wouldn’t because Ying-Koh forbade them.
“Wu!” Ying-Koh howled, and his clerk came bustling forward.
“Yes, my lord.”
“Do you see that?” He pointed one long fingernail at the huddled girl. “What is that, Wu?”
“She is the daughter of Hu Xuang, sire.”
“That is the tribute Hu sends me?”
Wu was used to his master’s outbursts and understood that the violence in Ying-Koh’s eyes was not directed at him. In some ways, with his quiet manner and permissiveness of Ying-Koh’s cruelty, he was more monstrous than the Butcher.
To appease Ying-Koh, he said, “Her father gave us the gift of a virgin for his lord. He expressed his wishes that she please you in any manner you chose that you might forgive his oversight last month.”
“And you believed him? Liu! Biao!” Two guards stepped forward, his most trusted for they were neither bright enough to seek lordships of their own nor stupid enough to challenge him. “Look at that, will you?” They looked. “What do you see?”
Like Wu, they were able to read their master’s will. Liu, the marginally more clever, answered, “I see a whore, my lord.”
Some of the women in the antechamber hissed and tittered.
“It seems some do not agree with you.”
“I see a liar, my lord,” Liu added. “Worse than a whore is the woman who lies about virtue she has lost.”
“Ah,” Ying-Koh smiled toothily at him, “you come around to the truth at last.” He turned to Wu. “So, what we have is a liar’s gift of a lying whore, and with that my generosity is to be bought?”
Even Biao was smart enough to answer with Liu, “No, my lord.”
“Even so,” Ying-Koh sighed, snarled smile still in place, “she might provide enough amusement to distract us until we might take out Hu’s punishment on his own head.”
Wu consulted his figures. “My lord, Hu will arrive within a week with further bribes.”
“Excellent,” Ying-Koh clapped his hands together. “His other tribute will have to last until then. I want him to see what we will have done to her before I cut off his head. Liu! Biao!”
“My lord,” they said in unison.
Ying-Koh rose from his seat, sweeping down on the girl with his guards in tow. He lifted her to her feet, sneering as she trembled and wailed.
“My gift, to you,” he shoved her forward, and Liu and Biao grabbed one of her arms each. “Teach the whore the consequences of lying to Ying-Koh.”
Ying-Koh snapped his fingers and his personal whores descended, running smooth hands over his hair and slipping inside his robes to please him even as he returned to his seat. Liu and Biao started to drag the girl off when he called them to a halt.
“No,” the Butcher said with that same malevolent smile. “No. Her end will be public, and so, too, will her punishment be. Do it here.”
The room cheered, the whores howling loudest and Liu and Biao stripped themselves, taking turns while the one held the protesting victim.
Half lost to the attentions of his servers, Ying-Koh said, dreamily, “Be careful. You may do as you like, but she must live. Fail me in this, and yours will be the next bodies to be punished.”
As ever, Liu and Biao did not fail him.
February 1934
Wainright Barth met him as he stumbled down the gangplank. His uncle had grown lean over the years he’d been gone, the corners of his eyes were lined with worry. Yet he lightened upon seeing his nephew, pulled him into the tightest bear hug Lamont Cranston had ever yet received. And, despite being a grown man, Lamont broke down into tears on the docks.
“It’s all right, boy,” Uncle Wainright soothed him. “You’re home now, that’s what matters.”
Uncle Wainright had taken a squad car to meet him, as the family vehicles were tucked away in storage at the house. He observed peaceable silence as he drove Lamont along Broadway before cutting east on thirty-third. A veteran of the Spanish-American War, Wainright was familiar with the jarring effect of returning home to find the place much changed. He left Lamont to it.
Lamont drank in the scenery, the majesty that was Manhattan reaching for the future, and the misery of those left behind. Women in fur coats strode past crumpled heaps of helpless humanity. Men in suits chucked change at beggars, laughing when the poor souls grabbed desperately to keep the coins from going into the gutters. A penny lost meant nothing to the man throwing it away, but meant a meal to the man who caught it on the ground.
More than that, he saw men he recognized by carriage if not by face. They were men who traveled in packs, always at the center, always able to command one of the others to run forward and tend their need. Warlords. Only, in America, they called them “gangsters.” Lamont remembered being among their number once. All he could see now was one word tattooed across each of their foreheads: enemy.
“Well, this is your stop, lad.”
Uncle Wainright eased the car to a stop in front of the old family home. It was abandoned, had been since Lamont left for Europe on a business venture and hadn’t come back for ten years. He didn’t feel like reoccupying it, as if the shades of people living in it—the spirit of himself from a decade previous—wouldn’t know him and would reject him.
“But,” his uncle said slowly, “seeing as you’ve been hell-tossed on a boat for some weeks, how’s about we get you a drink before we go in?”
“I’d like that, Uncle Wainright.”
“Off we go then.” He steered them to a small Irish pub, one that had changed hands several times all those ages ago when Lamont had grown up in New York. It managed to remain Irish, but O’Tooles became Haggerty’s became Duncan’s. Wainright led him straight to the bar and had them two pints inside of thirty seconds.
“Welcome home, Lamont.”
“It’s good to be back,” he toasted with his uncle, clinking glasses but sipping instead of chugging back his beer like Wainright.
When he noticed this, Uncle Wainright became very serious—setting-aside-his-beer serious—and frowned without speaking for a full minute. For that short while, Lamont felt pierced through, as if his uncle possessed the mystic powers of seeing straight through to his soul and not the other way around.
“Kid, we’re gonna talk about this once, okay?”
“Yes, sir,” Lamont found himself humbled, reliving the moment when his know-it-all twenty-year-old self skipped town, ignoring the (wise) nattering from only man he’d ever known long enough to consider a father.
“You missed the war, thank God Almighty for that.” The bartender crossed himself and looked displeased by Wainright’s use of the Lord’s name, but his uncle didn’t pay him any attention.
“I’ve seen war, Lamont. It’s ugly, it does things to fellows. Chewed up or spit out men I thought were stronger than Samson. They lived like haunts if they avoided offing themselves. It’s brutal.
“But there’s war and then there’s war. This last war, well, there will never be another like it, not in our lifetimes. The Great War,” Wainright shook his head bitterly. “Bunch of stupid bastards getting ahead of themselves and making misery for the rest of us. And I’m guessing that misery over these is probably ten times worse.”
Lamont opened his mouth to say…something, but he closed it when his uncle held up a hand.
“You don’t have to tell me. What’s left of those places…I’m sure you thought you could brush it off, but you couldn’t.” Uncle Wainright’s eyes got a bit watery. “I told you not to go, but this isn’t about me saying so. It’s about me saying…” he paused, as if unsure himself, “What I’m saying is you don’t have to be anything to anyone, me included, until you’re ready to come out of where you’ve been. Okay?”
“Yes,” Lamont sighed, grateful and relieved in a rush that made his whole body ache with the force of it. “Thank you, Uncle Wainright.”
“Well, you’re welcome.” Wainright raised his pint for another toast, this one hardy enough to send the foam on both their drinks crashing over the sides of their glasses. “Fuck war,” the old grunt growled.
“To war,” Lamont seconded. To wars ended for the Butcher and to wars beginning for the Shadow.
*wài guó rén = foreigner
feiran!!! I beat Cao Pi's musou in HARD MODE in Dynasty Warriors 5!!!! AND I COINCIDENTALLY GOT HIS FOURTH WEAPON! IT IS MIGHTY!!!Ahem.
ivy03 requested a The Shadow fic, featuring Lamont Cranston and Uncle Wainright. She wanted gossip columny about his disappearance, and I've interpreted it a little less than literal-like, but I hope it's still acceptable! Happy Christmas, ivy03!Rumor Has It
by
trinityvixen*****
March 1934
Lauren Booth was a Rockefeller scion, cousin or similarly distant relation that her marriage to Thomas Booth, the humble owner of a machine parts factory, was almost an insult to her legacy, no matter how small it actually was. As such, she indulged herself with as much expensive company as she could to make up for it.
When Lamont Cranston swept back into town after a much gossiped-about ten-year absence, she sent a messenger to his house asking him to dinner at Fantasia Gardens--without her husband and on Lamont’s dime.
“You can certainly afford to splurge,” she cooed in his ear as he pulled out her chair at the restaurant. “You are a gentleman, through and through, Lamont.”
“Not so,” he joked, “or I wouldn’t have agreed to take you out and leave Thomas behind.”
“Ugh, Thomas,” Lauren rolled her heavily made up eyes. “The man is a homosexual. He’d only be jealous of me, I promise.”
“Why’d you marry him?”
“Oh no,” Lauren huffed proudly, “you’ll have to pry me with martinis before I confess to those sorts of secrets.”
“Lauren, you shouldn’t have told me you think Thomas is—never mind, the point is that we barely know each other.”
“We’re rich, Lamont,” she said, as if explaining to a child. “We know all we need to know about each other right there.”
“I doubt that, but I won’t argue.”
Lauren stuck her tongue out at him and batted an eye as she fished around in her purse. Eventually she produced a tapered cigarette holder, fresh cigarette, and a lighter.
“Don’t light that,” he said abruptly, startling her into dropping her lighter back into her bag.
“What? Are you some kind of stone fundamentalist or something?” She clucked her tongue at him. “What did they do to you in Europe? Teach you to pinch snuff, or something, I suppose.”
“Don’t light that, Lauren, I mean it.”
Lauren lit the cigarette.
“Darling, you have been gone too long. You’ve got to get with the times. Smoking is the new vogue. You can’t imagine how your body loves you for it when you get a fix. It’s a rush.”
Lamont did not blink as she exhaled forcefully in his direction. He took a deep breath, fighting against a choke and a surging need.
“See, not so bad, is it?”
One breath, that was it. He stood up, pushed his chair in, and waved to the bewildered waiter who was approaching with their drinks. He put forty dollars on the table.
“Eat, drink, be merry, Lauren.”
He left her gaping at his retreating figure. As he passed the coat check, he got one more whiff of cigarette smoke and almost cried. With increasing desperation, he hailed a taxi and dove inside for refuge.
He didn’t leave his blessedly smoke-free house for two days. Lauren didn’t send him invitations again.
*****
December 1929
Ying-Koh thought better in the den. Wu never joined him in there. Wu was forbidden from using and was fastidious enough to avoid drugs of any sort. If only his countrymen possessed half his steely resolve, they’d put men like Ying-Koh out of business. Opium weakened spirits and left lesser men dependent on their next fix. The wealth of the mightiest, longest-lived empire was daily puffed away.
Ying-Koh smoked. He spent hours breathing in the lingering fumes when pipes had been extinguished for the day. Each crop cycle, he tasted the best of what his chemists produced. Any time he was ill, he replaced the offending chemist. It meant that in all of Qinghai, his was the best leaf. It bought respect that might otherwise be lacking for a wài guó rén* like him.
“My lord,” a paige by the name of Xiao bowed to him at the door. Still groveling, he held out some papers for his master and edged back to the tapestry that separated the den from the complex’s central chambers, waiting for his instructions. Servile to the nth degree, Xiao would wait with his head on his knees for hours if it took his master that long to dismiss him. And Ying-Koh had, on occasion, just to prove he could.
Wu had tallied the reports of the world outside Qinghai province for him, as he requested. The upstart Republic had an eye to eliminate all the warlords carving up the provinces of the empire. Chiang Kai-shek had defeated Wu Peifu and Sun Chuanfang some years back, when Ying-Koh had gotten his start.
The elimination of two of the three major warlords in Northern Manchuria was supposed to unify the provinces under the New Republic. Chiang wanted to prove that his government, while not the one to topple imperial rule, could be the one to lead the Chinese into prominence in this infant century. Chiang hated the opium trade, with its crippling effect on the economy and the power it gave to men outside of the government.
Men like Ying-Koh, who had risen to fill the voids Chiang’s crusade created. His foothold in the northwest was now stronger than ever, thanks to Chiang’s methods; when the government came at last for him, he could defend himself, probably to their end and not his. Still, there was more to do, more land to annex to his holdings in order to shore up his operations. He could not lay claim to Xinjiang yet, for there were too many enemies there. Gansu was dangerously close to the center, where the warlords were still being purged.
Tibet, though, to the south, was untapped territory. The Tibetans did not believe themselves true Chinese, and they abhorred most Chinese behaviors, including the smoking of opium leaf. Wu had made a note about this for him, correctly guessing that, with the political situation of the surrounding provinces harming his chances for expansion, Tibet could be their best chances for new markets. Tibetan aversion to opium would be overcome by generous application of the drug and by force, too, if necessary. He wasn’t concerned about finding customers, only cornering the market when one arose in Tibet.
“Xiao.”
“Yes, my lord?”
“I will see Wu in two hours.”
“Yes, my lord. Do you require anything else?”
“Be gone. My supply will last me here.”
Xiao left, and Ying-Koh lifted the notes on Chinese affairs to peruse the second set of papers Wu had left for him. These were such as did not require Ying-Koh to give orders on, and he never read them in the presence of others.
In late October, the stock market experiment had come to a spectacular end in America. Banks had no money, and men lost whole fortunes. No stranger to finance, especially cutthroat economics, Ying-Koh did not worry over the inheritance left to him there in another name. The bonds would be honored; he need not make arrangements.
In fact, the news cheered him. Depressed people always sought out his crops more often. There were new ways of powdering the opium and sniffing or tasting it to achieve the same ends—he’d enjoyed many of these new methods himself, though he preferred the pipe—that made shipping out of the country easier and less noticeable. With the Republic threatening to toss contraband cargo and burn opium pirates on their ships, improved means of distribution were needed.
Ying-Koh had them and now entire countries beyond his provincial borders or markets. Pushing into Tibet wouldn’t even hardly be necessary, if he could expand internationally.
Of course, Ying-Koh would do it anyway. He lit a fresh pipe.
*****
May 1934
“I was in Austria, myself—after the War,” Oliver Campbell went on, tossing back a scotch highball in two swallows. Lamont had yet to turn down a single former friend or supposed peer who had inquired after him. Campbell’s family had gotten out of the investment business some scant months before the bottom fell out of the market, and they were all living fat until such time as they could speculate again.
Oliver passed his time abroad, which, given that that was where Lamont claimed to have been at much the same time, he felt obligated to arrange this dinner and strengthen his alibi. If someone known to have been catting it up in post-War Europe believed he had been, too, he might dodge speculation from here on out.
“Austria was—well, the place is a mess, worse than here, you know.”
“I don’t, actually,” Lamont said honestly, but winking over his wine glass. He’d never been to Austria, and even if he’d had volumes to say about it, Campbell was too drunk to listen. However, Oliver was possessed of a prurient mind, and he gathered that the less he said about his missing decade, the less he’d need to; Oliver would fill in the blanks.
“Absolute disaster,” Oliver confided in him. “The dirty krouts haven’t got two pennies to rub together. The War really did a number on them.”
“They’re still paying it off, too.”
“Absolutely,” Oliver said fervently. “Of course, I’ve seen the trenches, my dear man. Disgusting. Only things you can make grow in Austria these days are mu-mud and—” Oliver was seized with giggles, and he lowered his voice to a dramatic whisper. “Well, let’s just say if a man wants servicing, he’s got options.”
“Has he,” Lamont kept his tone flat, his expression likewise.
“Oh yes,” Olive continued to giggle and snort and rattle the ice in his empty glass. “Women, men, what’s your poison? They can take care of it.” Oliver leaned forward. “And the exchange rate—criminal what you can get for a dollar over there. Criminal.”
“You don’t say.”
“Yes, yes, I do say.” Then Oliver managed a sly, inebriated grin. “But I’m sure you know all about that. What with all the reconnoitering you did overseas.”
Here, at last, Oliver had stumbled, however inadvertently onto some truth. Lamont smiled bashfully to mask guilt.
“Oliver, you have no idea.”
*****
September 1930
Ying-Koh dragged the girl from his pallet by her hair. She screamed pleas to her ancestors, to the family gods to protect her, to forgive her for what she’d done and for failing them anyway. In the main antechamber, members of his court, higher officers who fought for him, the chemists who oversaw his opium manufacture, and their whores all watched, amused, as the Butcher threw the naked girl out into the center of the room.
Ying-Koh ascended the dais to his chair, throwing himself into it. The girl cowered, drawing herself into a ball. No one touched her or threatened her, but she could not know that they wouldn’t because Ying-Koh forbade them.
“Wu!” Ying-Koh howled, and his clerk came bustling forward.
“Yes, my lord.”
“Do you see that?” He pointed one long fingernail at the huddled girl. “What is that, Wu?”
“She is the daughter of Hu Xuang, sire.”
“That is the tribute Hu sends me?”
Wu was used to his master’s outbursts and understood that the violence in Ying-Koh’s eyes was not directed at him. In some ways, with his quiet manner and permissiveness of Ying-Koh’s cruelty, he was more monstrous than the Butcher.
To appease Ying-Koh, he said, “Her father gave us the gift of a virgin for his lord. He expressed his wishes that she please you in any manner you chose that you might forgive his oversight last month.”
“And you believed him? Liu! Biao!” Two guards stepped forward, his most trusted for they were neither bright enough to seek lordships of their own nor stupid enough to challenge him. “Look at that, will you?” They looked. “What do you see?”
Like Wu, they were able to read their master’s will. Liu, the marginally more clever, answered, “I see a whore, my lord.”
Some of the women in the antechamber hissed and tittered.
“It seems some do not agree with you.”
“I see a liar, my lord,” Liu added. “Worse than a whore is the woman who lies about virtue she has lost.”
“Ah,” Ying-Koh smiled toothily at him, “you come around to the truth at last.” He turned to Wu. “So, what we have is a liar’s gift of a lying whore, and with that my generosity is to be bought?”
Even Biao was smart enough to answer with Liu, “No, my lord.”
“Even so,” Ying-Koh sighed, snarled smile still in place, “she might provide enough amusement to distract us until we might take out Hu’s punishment on his own head.”
Wu consulted his figures. “My lord, Hu will arrive within a week with further bribes.”
“Excellent,” Ying-Koh clapped his hands together. “His other tribute will have to last until then. I want him to see what we will have done to her before I cut off his head. Liu! Biao!”
“My lord,” they said in unison.
Ying-Koh rose from his seat, sweeping down on the girl with his guards in tow. He lifted her to her feet, sneering as she trembled and wailed.
“My gift, to you,” he shoved her forward, and Liu and Biao grabbed one of her arms each. “Teach the whore the consequences of lying to Ying-Koh.”
Ying-Koh snapped his fingers and his personal whores descended, running smooth hands over his hair and slipping inside his robes to please him even as he returned to his seat. Liu and Biao started to drag the girl off when he called them to a halt.
“No,” the Butcher said with that same malevolent smile. “No. Her end will be public, and so, too, will her punishment be. Do it here.”
The room cheered, the whores howling loudest and Liu and Biao stripped themselves, taking turns while the one held the protesting victim.
Half lost to the attentions of his servers, Ying-Koh said, dreamily, “Be careful. You may do as you like, but she must live. Fail me in this, and yours will be the next bodies to be punished.”
As ever, Liu and Biao did not fail him.
*****
February 1934
Wainright Barth met him as he stumbled down the gangplank. His uncle had grown lean over the years he’d been gone, the corners of his eyes were lined with worry. Yet he lightened upon seeing his nephew, pulled him into the tightest bear hug Lamont Cranston had ever yet received. And, despite being a grown man, Lamont broke down into tears on the docks.
“It’s all right, boy,” Uncle Wainright soothed him. “You’re home now, that’s what matters.”
Uncle Wainright had taken a squad car to meet him, as the family vehicles were tucked away in storage at the house. He observed peaceable silence as he drove Lamont along Broadway before cutting east on thirty-third. A veteran of the Spanish-American War, Wainright was familiar with the jarring effect of returning home to find the place much changed. He left Lamont to it.
Lamont drank in the scenery, the majesty that was Manhattan reaching for the future, and the misery of those left behind. Women in fur coats strode past crumpled heaps of helpless humanity. Men in suits chucked change at beggars, laughing when the poor souls grabbed desperately to keep the coins from going into the gutters. A penny lost meant nothing to the man throwing it away, but meant a meal to the man who caught it on the ground.
More than that, he saw men he recognized by carriage if not by face. They were men who traveled in packs, always at the center, always able to command one of the others to run forward and tend their need. Warlords. Only, in America, they called them “gangsters.” Lamont remembered being among their number once. All he could see now was one word tattooed across each of their foreheads: enemy.
“Well, this is your stop, lad.”
Uncle Wainright eased the car to a stop in front of the old family home. It was abandoned, had been since Lamont left for Europe on a business venture and hadn’t come back for ten years. He didn’t feel like reoccupying it, as if the shades of people living in it—the spirit of himself from a decade previous—wouldn’t know him and would reject him.
“But,” his uncle said slowly, “seeing as you’ve been hell-tossed on a boat for some weeks, how’s about we get you a drink before we go in?”
“I’d like that, Uncle Wainright.”
“Off we go then.” He steered them to a small Irish pub, one that had changed hands several times all those ages ago when Lamont had grown up in New York. It managed to remain Irish, but O’Tooles became Haggerty’s became Duncan’s. Wainright led him straight to the bar and had them two pints inside of thirty seconds.
“Welcome home, Lamont.”
“It’s good to be back,” he toasted with his uncle, clinking glasses but sipping instead of chugging back his beer like Wainright.
When he noticed this, Uncle Wainright became very serious—setting-aside-his-beer serious—and frowned without speaking for a full minute. For that short while, Lamont felt pierced through, as if his uncle possessed the mystic powers of seeing straight through to his soul and not the other way around.
“Kid, we’re gonna talk about this once, okay?”
“Yes, sir,” Lamont found himself humbled, reliving the moment when his know-it-all twenty-year-old self skipped town, ignoring the (wise) nattering from only man he’d ever known long enough to consider a father.
“You missed the war, thank God Almighty for that.” The bartender crossed himself and looked displeased by Wainright’s use of the Lord’s name, but his uncle didn’t pay him any attention.
“I’ve seen war, Lamont. It’s ugly, it does things to fellows. Chewed up or spit out men I thought were stronger than Samson. They lived like haunts if they avoided offing themselves. It’s brutal.
“But there’s war and then there’s war. This last war, well, there will never be another like it, not in our lifetimes. The Great War,” Wainright shook his head bitterly. “Bunch of stupid bastards getting ahead of themselves and making misery for the rest of us. And I’m guessing that misery over these is probably ten times worse.”
Lamont opened his mouth to say…something, but he closed it when his uncle held up a hand.
“You don’t have to tell me. What’s left of those places…I’m sure you thought you could brush it off, but you couldn’t.” Uncle Wainright’s eyes got a bit watery. “I told you not to go, but this isn’t about me saying so. It’s about me saying…” he paused, as if unsure himself, “What I’m saying is you don’t have to be anything to anyone, me included, until you’re ready to come out of where you’ve been. Okay?”
“Yes,” Lamont sighed, grateful and relieved in a rush that made his whole body ache with the force of it. “Thank you, Uncle Wainright.”
“Well, you’re welcome.” Wainright raised his pint for another toast, this one hardy enough to send the foam on both their drinks crashing over the sides of their glasses. “Fuck war,” the old grunt growled.
“To war,” Lamont seconded. To wars ended for the Butcher and to wars beginning for the Shadow.
*wài guó rén = foreigner
