“A surgical strike,” Rondeau said. In the silence that followed, he sighed. “Surgical. See? Because he cut out—”
“We get it, Rondeau,” Marla said. “I’d better check out the back room.” She jumped over the counter and sidled up to the concealed door, sliding her hands along the wall to find the catch. She pressed on a lightly discolored section of the wall, tsking in her mind—that was sloppy of her nemesis, to let the frequent pressure of fingers lead to visible wear on a hidden switch.
She heard the click of some mechanism engaging overhead, and tucked herself into a forward roll just in time to avoid the arc of a slicing pendulum-blade that swooped down out of a concealed slot overhead, then back up into its place in the ceiling. “Shit,” she said, angry with herself. She’d assumed the Chinese sorcerer was being sloppy, when he’d actually set a completely non-magical trap that depended on the victim’s overconfidence. She wouldn’t underestimate him again, and she began to think that maybe Rondeau was right about the Thing on the Doorstep trick. A sorcerer who liked hidden traps like this might like the ultimate hidden trap of residing in an unexpected body. She stood up and looked at Rondeau and B.
Rondeau was sniffing at a tin of what Marla could only hope was tea, while B was staring at the ceiling, his mouth slightly open. He still didn’t quite have the hang of this new world he’d found himself in.
“The door’s probably reinforced,” Marla said, “so kicking it’s unlikely to do much good, and I’d hate to shake any more nasty surprises loose. We’ll have to figure something—”
The door swung open with a click. The lights in the back room were turned off. “Marla,” said a doleful voice from beyond the door. “My enemy.”
“Ch’ang Hao?” she said.
“Yes,” said the voice. “I received your message. I am sorry I did not find you. Please come in.”
“You want to turn a light on first?” she said. Voices could be impersonated, and she wasn’t exactly confident in her safety even if this was the real Ch’ang Hao.
Ch’ang Hao laughed. “The electric lights are broken in here. But I’ll do my best.” Several faint glows appeared on the floor of the room, sinuous ropes of greenish light. Marla squinted, and saw that they were bioluminescent serpents, crawling steadily out from the center of the room. Some of the snakes climbed up the walls, and from there to the hanging overhead surgery lights, where they wound themselves. After a few moments the room was filled with green light, and she saw Ch’ang Hao sitting on the metal table that had, yesterday, held her friend Lao Tsung’s body. Ch’ang Hao held the garter snake Marla had sent to him in his hand, where it wound around and around his fingers like a set of living rings.
“So what happened?” she said.
“I tried to kill the master, and the apprentice attacked me. I performed a simple spell, to see which mind lived in which body, but it failed. I believed I had done it incorrectly—such magics are not the focus of my skill, after all. I think now that my spell was blocked. At any rate, I lunged for the master, or the one I believed to be the master, and the apprentice cast a spell that made me stop in mid-leap, hanging paralyzed in air.”
“A bug-in-amber spell,” Marla said. “Go on.”
“They would have done more, perhaps imprisoned me again, but I began to grow. I can still grow a bit despite the cruel bondage you have chosen to leave me in. As I grew larger, my hands and feet extended beyond whatever field paralyzed me, and I was able to grab for them.”
“Not bad,” Marla said. “How did anyone ever imprison you in the first place?”
“I grew drunk at a celebration, and woke in chains,” he said. “But that was long ago, before my enemy the sorcerer was even born. He inherited me from his own master, who had inherited me in his turn. But this new master was still clever enough to escape me. Before I could grow large enough to reach for them, they fled. The paralysis faded soon after.”
“Why didn’t you go after them?”
Ch’ang Hao stared at her. “Ah,” he said, after a moment. “You have not tried to leave yet, then.”
Something went cold in Marla’s chest. “Oh,” she said. “We can’t leave.”
Ch’ang Hao nodded.
“It’s a pitcher plant.”
He nodded again. “I had assumed the shop was sealed off from the world entirely, but then the snake you sent arrived, and I realized it was still possible to enter. It is, alas, impossible to leave. The door is gone. I am no longer trapped in the dark box where the new master kept me, and I am no longer trapped by threads of compulsion, but I am still trapped, here, in this shop. That is why I could not heed your summons.” He hung his head. “That is also why there is so much wreckage. In my wrath, I smashed the shop. I regret the outburst. It was unseemly.”