The three of them stared at each other, shocked, as Qing rose up out of the waters of the reservoir and came towards them on the shore, her ground-sweeping garments completely dry and faintly shining under the bright sun.
‘We need to save Mum!’ Harley wailed, his stomach in knots. ‘Dad might have shady underworld connections, but Mum’s a nurse! She knows as much about kung fu-ing baddies as I know about bedsores. Which is exactly zero. What are we going to do?’
He turned to Schumacher with clenched fists. ‘Where would the Grandmaster’s men be taking her?’ Harley’s voice was desperate. ‘Is that plane we left back in Macau fuelled up and ready to go?’ He didn’t even know where to point the plane, but he knew they had to act quickly.
His mum. In the clutches of ruthless, hairless martial arts masters! Harley could hardly breathe.
Schumacher shook his head ruefully. ‘I imagine the Spark Corp jet is somewhere over South America by now. The pilots indicated they had an urgent run in the vicinity of, um, ah …’ The big man’s voice trailed away as he bit his tongue in an effort to not give away vital operational secrets.
Qing’s voice was very quiet. ‘Zhu told me, before she left with xiaǒ didi, that we’re doing it all backwards — before the magician cast her into the last vase, she saw him fight our second-eldest sister Huang Long, who resisted being placed into her vase so mightily that the magician sustained a terrible injury. As he imprisoned her at last, Zhu heard the magician mutter that Huang’s punishment was to rest for an eternity in the shadow of the Wŭyí Shān. It’s on the east coast. I must go there next! There is a famous stream there, with nine bends. Overlooked by a stone peak, shaped like a girl …’
Qing’s gaze seemed very far away, as if she were already navigating a distant body of water, looking down at it from a great height. Schumacher and Harley could tell it was a place she knew well, and that she had once loved. Qing murmured, ‘I have to go. I know I can find her.’
Schumacher turned to Harley with some urgency. ‘The Grandmaster will be taking your mutti to Shanghai. Your dad’s probably already there. It’s where the Grandmaster runs his vast empire from. He has a compound there almost as big, and as grand, as Beijing’s Forbidden City. Rumour has it, Junge, that no one who has broken in has ever emerged alive. But we will do it!’ Schumacher’s eyes shone with an unholy light that seemed to say, Challenge accepted!
‘I know a Bavarian guy,’ he added, eagerly, ‘in Jiangmen. Who can move anything and anyone. He’s got good connections in Shanghai. But we need to go.’
‘But the voice on the phone said we had to bring the other three vases or it’s curtains for Mum and Dad!’ Harley exclaimed, torn. Part of him desperately wanted to go with Qing to save her sister and see the magical river with nine bends. But another screaming part of him knew that Schumacher was right – they couldn’t wait. The other vases might never be found. It could be years before Harley saw Ray or Delia again. If ever. He swallowed.
Schumacher’s expression was thoughtful as he placed a hand hesitantly on Qing’s silk-clad shoulder and was immediately and painfully zapped for his troubles. Wincing, he said, ‘You must put family first, the same way Harley now must. This is where our paths diverge, Prinzessin. May we one day meet again. And soon.’
Qing nodded once at Schumacher, and then at Harley, before her outline seemed to fray at the edges and collapse inward. A great wind rose that caused Harley and Schumacher to cry out and cover their faces. If they could have forced open their eyelids, they would have seen the wind driving the waters of the reservoir into a great and spiralling vortex, individual droplets catching the sunlight and shining like diamonds.
With a final gust so fierce that it drove both of them to their knees on the banks of the reservoir, Qing was gone – a streak of azure and gold lightning undulating away to the east, before being lost to the blue of the wide sky.