Page 60 of Night's Reckoning
What’s going on in your head, Tiny?
16
Tenzin did go out and play dodge the seagull when all the humans went to sleep, which was a game she’d never heard of before Ben had mentioned it. It was far more entertaining than she’d anticipated. Then she flew back to the coast and estimated how far she would be from her Shanghai house. A little over three hours if she was guessing correctly. Not bad, though if dawn was too close, she’d have to find shelter.
It felt good to orient herself over the vast ocean. It was necessary to know where your exits and safety points were at all times.
“How many exits? Come on, Tiny. How many exits?”
“None!”
“Wrong. Kick out the front window. One. Break open the side doors. Two and Three. Moon roof. Four. In this small a room, four exits are more than enough.”
She’d been terrified riding in a truck for the first time. Bumping over narrow mountain roads in a vehicle that leaned and creaked. He’d forced her to ride with him since she’d dragged him to the far western edge of China on slightly false pretenses. She’d only gone along with it to assuage him. Then she realized that a vehicle could be a death trap, even for a vampire.
He’d reassured her by playing that silly exit game. Tenzin couldn’t remember the last time someone had reassured her. She was not someone others reassured. She was the one they looked to when they were afraid.
And now she and Ben had been hired for a job that Tenzin might hate even more than the one they’d done in the caves in Puerto Rico. Water was not her friend. Diving in the ocean for amusement was not a thing she did. Large bodies of water were lovely to fly over but otherwise to be avoided at all costs. Being wet, even in rainstorms, sapped her strength and made her amnis less powerful.
So why had she taken this job? She could have told Cheng it was his own headache. She could have refused her father. She’d refused both Cheng and Zhang many times before.
You knew you could draw him in.
He can’t resist a challenge.
It’s the one thing you can give him. A challenge.
She ignored the annoying voices and started back toward the ship. Whatever had possessed her to take the job, she was committed now. She would find whatever was left of the Laylat al Hisab and return it to her father.
The Night’s Reckoning.
She had to smile. It was an utterly extraneous gesture, giving a sword to Zhang. Somehow, that made Tenzin want it even more.
Also, she’d told Ben the truth. The vampire world had experienced upheaval before, but nothing in over a thousand years had shifted the power balance like Saba’s takeover in the Mediterranean. The Council of the Ancients in Alitea was an unknown quantity. The last thing that anyone needed was Arosh and Zhang being pushed into a territorial war.
Of course—in Tenzin’s opinion—certain parts of Central Asia could do with Arosh’s firm hand, but no one had asked her, and she wasn’t going to delve into politics. She’d been the general who had commanded her sire’s forces in the past, and she had no desire to lead an army of immortals again. Especially not wind vampires.
Ben had an American saying that perfectly described the experience:herding cats.Commanding an army of wind vampires was like herding cats.
She spotted the lights of theJinshéin the distance. It was easy to identify because of the helicopter pad, but descending to the ship put the scope of the undertaking in perspective.
Cheng was correct. It was a very big ocean.
Though the wreck was located in a busy shipping lane, they were still the only ship for miles around. They’d had to obtain all sorts of permits and licenses from the human government, but Cheng and the university had taken care of that. The only thing Tenzin had to worry about was finding her father’s sword.
The search site was spread out over miles, and within that, they had to find the probably scattered wreck of a twenty-meter dhow that—in the best-case scenario—would be covered in sediment, otherwise very little would have survived. Their hope was that the ship had sailed during the tail end of monsoon season—when storms were less likely to hit—and had been struck by an unexpected typhoon. No one knew for sure if that was why theQamar Jadidhad never reached Penglai, but that was the suspicion. If a typhoon was to blame, the boat could have been covered in mud and other sediment kicked up by the storm, only now revealing its secrets a thousand years later.
According to Cheng, theywantedmud and sediment, otherwise the frame of the ship would be entirely gone and the treasures it had transported would have drifted away or been too greatly degraded.
The seal was hopeful. Kadek’s survey was hopeful.
But they could use all the luck they could get.
Lying on her back in the warm breeze of the East China Sea, Tenzin stared at the moon, the full, round moon shining bright over the ocean and drowning out the light of the stars.
When she’d been alive, the moon had been her talisman. It was the guardian of the mother, bringing milk and blood in turn. Milk to feed the children and blood to seed new life. Like a woman’s body, the moon was always changing. It was the heavenly breast. The rounded belly. The lover’s cheek.
Tenzin stripped the clothes from her body and lay prostrate to the eternal moon.
