The Six Messiahs - Mark Frost [33]
Kanazuchi had been visited by his dream again last night; one image leaped out with the solid clarity of a lead worth pursuing.
Chinese faces working in a tunnel.
His first two days in Dai Fow, the Big City, New Golden Mountain—what these Chinese called San Francisco—had failed to shed light on this mysterious image. Menials like these ignorant slum dwellers were of no use. He had considered cultivating the local merchants, but they spoke a more cultured dialect than the guttural Mandarin of the peasants he'd made the crossing with; it would take another week to master its nuances and they were notoriously tight-lipped to anyone outside their social tongs. His other option was to move beyond the ghetto into the white sections of the city, but every person he had spoken to in Tangrenbu had warned him not to. A wave of anti-Asian rage had swept through America in recent years; in Chinatowns up and down the western coasts, crimes of violence against Asian immigrants had grown steadily worse—murders, riots, lynchings. Whenever the whites needed someone to scapegoat for their economic misfortunes, the "yellow peril" was emphasized in public sentiment and these acts of racial barbarity inevitably followed. What more could you expect from such uncivilized people? Kanazuchi was hesitant to go into white areas, not for fear of being attacked, but only because killing any white men in public would trigger unnecessary complications.
First things first: A more direct path to the information he sought might lie right in front of him.
The man two beds down had settled, breathing strained but slow and regular. Kanazuchi shouldered his bundle and stepped between the sleepers, careful to avoid the four creaking floorboards. He stopped at the bed of the trustee next to the door. Using the tip of his wakizashi—his long knife—he delicately slipped the room key undetected from under the trustee's pallet. A length of rawhide secured it to a slat; he slit it with a flick of the wrist.
One minute later, he stood in the hallway, eyes already conditioned to the darkness. The air pungent with the smoke of the joss sticks burning on the shrines; each one still packed with fruit and coins. Kanazuchi examined the dust on the floor; no one had moved through the hall since their doors were locked at midnight, two hours before. He drifted to the center of the hall near the stairs, blended into the shadows, stood still, and listened.
Sleepers breathing in the four rooms on his floor. In the rooms above and below. Cockroaches scuttling behind the walls. He pushed the reach of his extraordinary senses further out; an old, familiar exercise, slipping into it as easily as a well-worn garment.
An alley cat tipped a trash can outside. Rats foraging. A carriage clipping by. Drunks laughing. The shrill negotiations of a prostitute. Horses shifting, stamping their feet, snorting in the stables next door.
Footsteps; nearer.
He reeled the net of his senses back in and cast it down to the tenement's first floor.
One man entered. Heavy. Tall, by the length of the stride. Western leather boots. A sack dragging on the ground behind. Rattling, hissing like a snake. A soft scoop, then the clink of coins falling together. Banging sounds; a clash of tinny cymbals.
Sleepers waking on the lower floors. Fearful whispers. Cowering. No one moving from his pallet.
Footsteps climbed the stairs. Second floor. Drumbeats, cymbals louder: hissing and rattling. More coins collected: moving closer.
Terror spread through the building. Prayers mumbled, worry beads clacking frantically. Kanazuchi turned his mind away from the chattering peasants and toward the leaden footsteps coming up the stairs.
The demon turned at the landing. A bulky, intimidating figure; dragon's head, feathered limbs, avian claws clutching a tambourine that banged against its hip. Large burlap sack behind, bumping up the risers.
As the demon reached the third floor, a coin dropped at its feet; it stopped, looked down. Gold;