Red Phoenix. Kylie Chan
as much as I’ll ever need.’
‘You are such a pair of fools,’ Ms Kwan said.
‘You forgot happy,’ I said.
‘That too,’ John said.
‘Happy,’ I whispered.
Ms Kwan rose. ‘I will spend some time with Simone now, but I don’t think I will need much. She is remarkably resilient.’
‘That’s because she has Emma,’ John said.
In the dining room, Emma, John said into my head mid-afternoon.
Gold and John were waiting there for me. Gold was in his usual human form: early twenties, slender and jolly, with cute dimples and a kind smile under his shock of golden brown hair. Architectural blueprints covered the table.
Gold wore a smart tan suit, but both John and I were dressed in our usual at-home clothes. John had on a pair of scruffy black cotton pants with a shredded hole in one knee, topped by a fraying faded black T-shirt. His long hair had already come out of its tie. I wore a pair of plain jeans and a shirt, and my hair was a mess as well.
‘Where’s Jade?’ I said.
‘She’ll be along later, to do the costing,’ John said. ‘Right now she’s trying to find someone to reset the seals on the apartment. They are completely blown, anybody can come straight in.’
‘What about demons?’ I said.
‘After the Attack there aren’t that many left, but we will have to be vigilant,’ John said. ‘Make sure the front door is locked at all times.’
‘Okay.’ I looked down at the blueprints. ‘Are these the Mountain?’
‘Yes.’ Gold spread them out. ‘Each page covers about half a hectare.’
‘Western measures?’
‘We took an architectural firm from New York to the Mountain,’ Gold said.
‘You took architects from New York to the Celestial Plane? What did they say when they found out they were going to Heaven?’
‘They thought they were in China,’ John said. ‘They were very impressed. Some of them went back to Hubei Province later, and were thoroughly confused. The Earthly Wudangshan is nothing like this one is. Was,’ he corrected himself, wincing.
The blueprints were a mass of yellow highlighter. ‘Is the highlighter the damage?’ I said.
‘Yes,’ Gold said. ‘Areas completely destroyed have a cross through them with highlighter. Partial damage is just marked.’
I checked the sheets. There were about twenty pages of detailed plans, with a single master plan showing the whole Mountain. The buildings clung to the hillside below the seven peaks, surrounded by a wall. Yellow highlighter splashed all over the plans: about two-thirds of the buildings had a cross through them, and every other building seemed to be marked. It was obvious where the demons had broken through the wall — it was covered with highlighter; with more yellow where they had cut a swathe through the buildings.
‘Holy shit,’ I said softly. ‘This is really bad.’
‘Emma!’ John said sternly. ‘Really!’
‘What?’ Then I understood and grinned. ‘Leo said you’d dismiss me if you heard me using language like that.’
‘He wasn’t wrong,’ John said. ‘Most unfitting.’
‘Deal with it.’ I flipped through the blueprints. ‘So what’s first?’
‘We need to get the school up and running,’ Gold said. ‘Right now there is no training taking place. We have lost an extensive number of both Disciples and Masters. There are insufficient Disciples to defend the Mountain if the demons attack again.’
‘It will be a while before they try me again,’ John said. ‘Every demon in Hell was called to the Attack.’
Gold looked at John, wide-eyed. ‘Every one?’
‘Every single one.’
‘No,’ I said, and they both looked at me. ‘We had four down here as well. A house demon, a Shape Shifter, a Snake Mother, and Simon Wong. Those four are the ones that blew the seals on this apartment.’
‘You faced a Mother?’ Gold said with awe.
‘Leo took it down,’ I said. ‘I didn’t have anything to do with it.’
‘You looked a Mother in the face and didn’t run?’ Gold said.
‘Run? I was protecting Simone. Of course I didn’t run.’ I grinned. ‘Ugly, aren’t they?’
Gold shook his head. ‘Remarkable.’
I glanced down at the blueprints. ‘We’ll need a list of the remaining students, a list of the remaining Masters and their areas of expertise, and what we have left in the way of training spaces. Then we can match them up and see how we go.’
They were silent, so I looked up. They both stared at me, speechless.
‘What?’ I said. ‘Is that wrong? Do they train differently on the Mountain to how we do here?’
John grinned. ‘I’ll go out and leave you to it.’
‘Don’t you dare! You know your students and Masters better than anyone.’ I jabbed my finger at him. ‘You stay right here!’
Gold’s boyish face lit up and I rounded on him. ‘What?’
He raised his hands. ‘I don’t have those lists, ma’am, the link between here and there is down. I’ll have to return to the Mountain, log into the network and copy them onto a CD.’
‘You have a LAN there? Wait, you have a link between here and there? Between Earth and Heaven? How does that work?’
‘Rather complex use of Celestial Harmony. Did it myself. I put in the Mountain LAN after I was assigned to the Dark Lord, that’s a standard network. Had nothing before I arrived,’ he said, looking pointedly at John, who ignored him, ‘but most of the hardware was damaged in the Attack. I had an off-site backup in the Western Palace, so the systems are already up and running, but the link between here and there is down, so I’ll need to go myself and take a copy of the lists.’
‘Go then,’ I said. ‘And bring back a hard copy as well, if it’s not too big.’
‘My Lord?’
John didn’t look up from the blueprints. ‘Orders from the Lady Emma are to be treated as orders from me.’ Then he glanced sharply at Gold. ‘Make this clear. To all.’
Gold bowed slightly. ‘My Lord. My Lady.’ He disappeared.
‘Sorry, John, I don’t mean to tread on your toes,’ I said. ‘Let me know if I cross the line.’
He looked at me, expressionless, then his eyes wrinkled up. ‘I think you’re drawing a new one.’
While we waited for Gold to return, John flipped through the plans. ‘Only about a third of the buildings are useful, and none of them are training or residential.’ His voice softened with pain. ‘Hall of the Purple Sky, East Hall, West Hall, Dragon Tiger Hall, all gone. Some of those buildings were more than a thousand years old.’
‘We’ll rebuild it, John. It will be better than it ever was.’
He dropped into a seat at the table. ‘I don’t know what to do. It will take years to rebuild the training pavilions, and the dorms have been demolished. The White Tiger has been a true friend in looking after the Disciples.’
‘How long can they stay at the Western