Part 18 (2/2)

Before I left the room, I snapped a few high-res pictures. My instincts were telling me I'd missed something, but I couldn't figure out what.

I'd expected He Lai to be waiting for me outside. She wasn't. In her place was another Xuyan: a dapper man dressed in red silk robes. He had no insignia of rank, but I was not fooled. There was steel in his bearing and in his gaze; not someone you'd want to cross.

”I suppose you are the investigator Mother hired to track down He Zhen,” he said.

I did not miss the way he referred to He Chan-Li; in Xuyan, it could only mean one thing. ”You would be the fiance?” I asked.

He smiled, displaying yellow teeth. ”Wen Yi.”

”Jonathan Brooks,” I said grudgingly, still looking at him. He was not pure Xuyan--although his skin had the waxy yellow cast I a.s.sociated with Xuya, his features were distinctively Chumash Indian, the original inhabitants of Fenliu. ”What are you doing here?”

Wen Yi smiled again--in an angelic way that was starting to get on my nerves. ”I wanted to talk to you.”

”You are talking to me.”

He looked amused. ”You Americans are so uncivilised. Sometimes I wonder why you come into Xuya at all.”

I did my best impression of a smile, though it was thoroughly insincere. ”Some of us like it here.” Not entirely true: I'd never have moved past the Rocky Mountains if I hadn't had a fifteen-year jail sentence hanging over my head in Virginia. The United States took foreign sympathies very seriously, and even though Mei-Lin was only half-Xuyan, the state police had judged our love a crime. ”What are you doing here?” I asked.

Wen Yi looked surprised. ”I'm family.”

”Not yet.”

”Almost,” Wen Yi said. ”The marriage was to take place in a month.”

There was something in the way he spoke--it wasn't the absolute confidence the sentence brooked. It was--anger? I'd learnt to read Xuyans, to see beneath what Americans thought a smooth, calm facade. Had I been asked what Wen Yi felt, I would have said rage. But why?

”When did you last see He Zhen?”

”We had...a meeting scheduled seven nights ago, but she never came.”

”What kind of 'meeting'?”

”I do not know,” Wen Yi said. ”She said she had important things to tell me, but would not say what.”

Liar. Smooth and smiling, but a liar all the same. He had seen her that night, I was ready to bet.

”Can you tell me about her?” I asked.

”A lovely girl,” Wen Yi said.

”Is that all you have to say about her? You two were engaged.”

He shrugged. ”An arranged marriage, Mr Brooks. You know how things go in Xuya.”

”A marriage for the sake of Leiming Tech?” I said. ”You don't sound so worried that He Zhen's gone.”

He raised mild eyes to me, but I could feel the anger simmering within. ”I am worried, Mr Brooks. You would do well to remember that.”

”Is that a threat? If that is all you have to offer--”

Wen Yi was not looking at me. He said, ”She was a beautiful, charming girl. When she laughed, it was as if the sun had risen in the room.”

”You think she's been kidnapped? That she's run away?” I didn't believe that. Running away required planning; He Zhen would have taken her laptop, as well as the money in the drawers of the bedside table.

He started. ”No. She'd never run away. She was such a devoted daughter.”

”I see.”

”If you have any information on her whereabouts,” he slipped me a glossy card, ”call me.”

And that was likely all he had come here for. He played the part of the besotted fiance very badly--save for his worry at her disappearance, which sounded genuine. Which did not mean anything--he could still be afraid that I'd find out he was behind all of it.

I watched Wen Yi walk away; when he was gone, I went into the main building, where I found He Lai waiting for me. She had a lacquered box in her hands. ”My daughter said you should have this.”

Inside the box was the tracking implant. I bowed to thank her, and asked, ”You knew her well?” I asked.

He Lai's eyes watched me, expressionless. ”She was my only granddaughter. How could I not know her?”

”How was she, in the days before she disappeared?”

”She was in high spirits, but then the engagement had just been finalised after a year--”

”How did she feel about the wedding?” I asked.

”She was happy,” He Lai said. ”Wen Yi is a man of status in the community. She was going to be an adult--”

”And move away from this house?” I asked, and when I saw her wince, I knew I was right. ”So she and your daughter did not get on.”

”Zhen always showed proper deference.” He Lai looked defiantly at me.

”I do not doubt that,” I said. But there were other ways to disobey. Still, it was looking more and more unlikely that He Zhen had run away. Whatever her quarrel with her mother, He Zhen would have been out of He Chan-Li's reach in a month. Raising a furore in Fenliu would have been counterproductive.

And whatever had happened to He Zhen, why had her room been searched? What had they thought to find there, and had they found it?

All questions to which I had no answer.

I raised the pendant I'd found in the drawer, dangled it before He Lai's eyes. ”Does this mean anything to you?” I asked.

He Lai's face twisted. ”It's Zhen's favourite.”

”It's not Xuyan,” I said.

”No. Zhen's father brought it back from a business trip in Tenocht.i.tlan. It's a glyph that means 'Good Omen' in Nahuatl.”

”I thought He Zhen was very young when her father died.”

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