“Yeah, well.” Marla ran her hand through her short hair, bits of scalp flaking away. She’d never had dandruff in her twenties. Getting older had its advantages, but dandruff wasn’t one of them. “This isn’t a fight I can win, not head-on. Susan’s planning to cast a spell to get rid of me, but she hasn’t thought through all the implications, and her spell’s going to wind up wrecking my city, too. I can respect her desire to kill me—she wants my position, and she knows I’m not about to retire anytime soon—but I can’t forgive her for risking Felport.”
“So Lao Tsung can help you stop Susan’s spell?”
“Lao Tsung knows where to find something that can help me. The Cornerstone. But don’t go throwing that around to the local sorcerers.”
“Ah,” Rondeau said. “An artifact? I hate artifacts. Things shouldn’t look at you, and that old weird stuff always seems to be paying attention.”
“I thought you liked attention.”
Rondeau rolled his eyes. “We’re under a time limit here?”
“One that gets shorter every minute we stand here talking. Have I satisfied your curiosity? Can I get on with saving my city and my life now?”
“You never told me why I’m here. You could’ve left me behind with Hamil to, like, muster the defenses or something. You might be the first one up against the wall when the revolution comes, but Hamil and I won’t be far behind.”
“It’s…not like that,” Marla said. Explaining the nature of Susan’s spell would be too complicated, and it wasn’t something she was comfortable thinking about, beyond taking the measures necessary to thwart it. “Besides, I need you here to lift heavy things, guard doorways, and deal with any other shit I’m too busy to bother with.”
Rondeau grinned. “A man likes to feel useful. Lead on.”
“Do you think we can find a live chicken around here?”
“Maybe if we search high and low.” They set off toward the hanging paper lanterns, pagoda storefronts, and crowded afternoon sidewalks of Chinatown.
“I don’t know why Lao Tsung decided to live in this shithole quakemeat city,” Marla said. “He came here to find the Cornerstone, but then he stayed.”
Rondeau grunted. “We’ve only been in San Francisco for an hour. You hate it already?”
Marla spat on the street. “Pretty white city by the bay, my ass.”
“Don’t forget ‘cool, gray city of love.’”
“Yeah, I feel the love,” Marla said, stepping over a pile of dirty stuffed animals someone had left on the sidewalk.
“I think it’s nice. You’re just jealous because we don’t have cable cars back home.” He glanced up a side street. “Not that I’ve seen a cable car yet.”
“It’s January,” Marla said. “There should be snow in January. A little fog is no substitute. I feel out of place. Far from my center.”
“Well, yeah. It was, what, your second time on an airplane? I thought you were going to strangle random strangers during the layover in Denver. Haven’t you ever taken a vacation?”
Marla laughed, and Rondeau nodded. “Me neither. This is my first one.”
“This isn’t a vacation. It’s a matter—”
“Of life, death, and destruction, I know. That doesn’t mean I can’t take in the sights, right? What’s the point of staying alive if you don’t live a little?” They entered the closely packed streets of Chinatown, where off-season tourists wandered among the food stalls and the stores, picking through wares spilling out onto the sidewalks. There were tanks full of tightly packed wriggling fish, and wooden crates filled with strange fruit. The street signs had both English names and Chinese characters, and there were lots of fanciful architectural touches—faux pagodas made of wood on top of buildings, gold-painted facades, bamboo fences. “I love this place,” Rondeau said. “There’s nothing like this back home.”
“Because our city never had a ghetto for underpaid, persecuted immigrant Chinese laborers in the 19th century,” Marla said.
“I suspect San Francisco won’t be offering you a position as a tour guide anytime soon.”
“I distrust, on principle, any city that encourages me to leave my heart behind when I go.” Marla abruptly stopped walking, and Rondeau almost bumped into her. “Hmm, there it is again.”