FATAL CONTRACT

Chapter Four: The Missing Finger Tip

The car stopped at the hotel's side entrance.

Lucian got out first and stood by the door, not opening hers. He was waiting for her to descend so she would walk half a step ahead-left of him, he pressing behind. She memorized that position.

The dress had been sent by him. Dark green, shoulders covered, the waist cinched cruelly tight, just enough to flatten the hard shapes in her bodice — the photograph and the torn page pressed against her ribs, jabbing with every step. The dagger was tucked inside the skirt's fold, against the outside of her right thigh. Before getting in she had hefted it; heavier than it looked, abnormally cold — not like steel, like it had lain a night in snow. She thought no more of it and pushed it back into place.

The elevator had a mirror. She gave herself one glance. No bride.

Lucian stood behind her, to the side, eyes fixed on the floor numbers, breathing flat as if asleep.

The top floor. The doors opened and a wave of heat rolled out.

She counted once. Thirty-four faces.

She thought of the wedding day. Twenty-one black suits, twenty-one thorn brooches. Tonight the thorns were only half. The rest wore other things at their collars — an old brass button, a withered white flower, or nothing at all. And his thorn, still not worn.

Not his men.

The hall was vast; a long table formed an open circle. The head seat stood empty. As Lucian walked in, every movement halted a half-beat. No one rose. It was a finer kind of stilling — glasses frozen midair, words swallowed halfway, cigarettes pressed twice more into the ashtray.

No one hailed him. No one approached.

They only watched him pass, then shifted their gaze to the half-step ahead-left of him — to her.

A man of about fifty stood, stepped forward two paces with a smile, extended his hand halfway, then withdrew it and inclined his head instead. "Mr. Locke."

"Mr. Zhou," Lucian did not offer his hand.

The man's smile stiffened, then quickly rounded back; he turned to her: "This must be—"

"My wife."

Three words, flat as if naming a shipment. Mr. Zhou's eyes rested on her face less than a second — so brief it was like fear of looking.

She noticed his left hand. The tip of his little finger was missing, the break perfectly flat, as if sliced in one cut.

The little finger. She memorized it.

The chair at the head, Lucian did not take. He sat in the second seat to the head's right. The head stood empty. No one sat in it.

She sat to his right. His hand rested on the table, three inches from hers, not touching.

When the first course arrived, she realized she had been clutching the skirt fold all along. She loosened her fingers, one by one.

Across the table, by the window, sat a person.

Around sixty. Hair combed without a stray, gray-white, all swept back. A dark-gray suit, no brooch. A glass at his hand, its condensation already dried; he had not drunk.

He was watching her.

Not the look of sizing up a new wife. It was the look of recognizing — as if comparing against something.

She looked away first. Her father had taught her: when someone locks onto you, the first to move loses.

"The one by the window," Lucian suddenly spoke, voice so low only she could hear. "Don't look at him."

"I did."

"I know."

He lifted his own glass, did not drink, turned it once and set it down. "When you've looked enough, memorize his face. The rest, you don't do tonight."

He did not look at her. His hand came off the table and reached over to press the back of hers. His hand was cool — too cool for someone just out of this hot hall.

Two seconds. More like he himself had not decided how long to press.

She was indeed trembling.

The third course. The hall began to sound, low, like water murmuring at the bottom of a pot.

The man by the window stood.

He did not come this way. He walked toward the side door, very slowly, one hand behind his back.

As he passed the row behind her, he stopped.

He stopped a step behind her. She could hear his breathing, very light, very steady.

"Su Zhengqing's daughter," he said, voice not loud, in Chinese, each character enunciated precisely. "You look like him."

Her back went entirely cold in an instant.

He did not wait for her answer, but walked on, as if he had only been talking to himself.

She turned her head. He had already reached the side door, his back very straight.

No one looked this way. Thirty-four people, not one.

Then the lights went out.

The lights did not fully die. The row of chandeliers overhead dimmed at once, as if someone had thrown the breaker for half a second and released it.

In that half-second she heard three things: a chair scraping the floor, glass shattering, someone hissing a low curse.

The third happened very close.

A hand grabbed from her left and clamped her wrist. Not Lucian's hand. Too coarse, a layer of hard skin at the thenar, the palm dry — when Lucian clamped her wrist, he always used only his thumb on the thenar.

She felt no fear. Her first thought: someone had cut those lights.

Second thought: the dagger was at the outside of her right thigh.

Before she moved, a left arm came from behind her right.

The arm crossed her shoulder at an angle, the wrist turning inward to clamp her right shoulder, pulling her back. The force was loose and fast — one pull, then released.

She was yanked back half a step and slammed into a chest.

The lights flickered then, and dimmed again.

Her nape tingled.

Nothing to do with rescue.

She had seen this move.

Rain. The black umbrella. One broken rib. And that hand — reaching from behind her right, the wrist turned inward, the inside facing up, delivering and then going slack, the person never stepping around to her front.

Identical.

Her breath stopped in that instant. She could feel the heartbeat of the person behind her, through a layer of cloth, very steady, far steadier than hers.

"Steady," Lucian said behind her.

The lights held steady.

The man who had grabbed her wrist was being pressed to the floor by two others. His right cheek against the carpet, his right hand still clutching a shard of broken glass, a dot of red at its tip.

Not one person in the hall stood. Thirty-four faces, all watching the man on the carpet in silence.

Lucian's left hand still pressed her right shoulder. Pressed a little harder than before.

Then he let go.

She turned and looked first at his left hand.

Cuff buttoned to the very top, the hand already withdrawn.

More than one man would shield like that; her father's old men were full of them. She had told herself this at the wedding, and said it again tonight. By the second telling, even she no longer believed it.

He stood behind-right of her, a pace and a half away. No expression on his face, tie still seamless.

"Your hand," he said.

She looked down. Her right hand held the dagger. When she had drawn it, she could not recall.

A dot of red at the blade's tip, and a thin wet line of red running back along the edge.

Not her blood. That man's hand had been opened by a cut, from the thenar to the wrist bone.

She did not remember making the cut. But she had.

Lucian looked at that cut for two seconds. Then he reached and took the dagger from her hand — very lightly, two fingers pinching the blade's spine, like lifting a sheet of paper from her.

She thought he would take it away.

He did not. He wiped the blood from the blade with his cuff, carefully, from the hilt nearly to the point. Then he turned the hilt toward her and pushed it half an inch close—

and stopped.

Then drew it back and slid it into his belt.

Last time was the same. Halfway offered, then withdrawn.

"Next time don't grip it in your palm," he said. "The blade slips."

The banquet went on in its original form for another twenty minutes.

Not a dismissal, but a clearing. The man on the carpet was dragged away without a sound, and no one asked his name. Someone crouched to scrub the carpet, scrubbing hard until the nap stood on end.

The car was dark. The driver, behind a pane of glass, could neither see nor hear.

She sat on the left, he on the right. Between them, the space for one more.

The car had gone three blocks when she spoke: "What's his name."

"Who."

"The one by the window."

Lucian did not answer at once. The lights outside swept his profile, one by one.

"What you want to know is his name," he said, "or why he knows your father."

"Both."

"Tonight you get only one."

She turned to look at him. He was not looking at her; his eyes were on the window.

"His name," she said.

"Zhou Jingshan."

What she had wanted was the name of the man who killed her father. What he gave was the name of a man who knew her father.

But this was the first real thing she had taken tonight — not given by him, but chosen by her.

The first man to approach had been a Zhou. The name she had just taken was also a Zhou.

She took it first for coincidence.

The car turned in through the mansion's iron gate.

She suddenly remembered something she had not had time to think about until now.

The man on the ground, when he was pinned, she had seen his left hand.

The tip of his little finger was missing. The break perfectly flat.

Identical to Mr. Zhou, the first to approach at the banquet.

She said nothing. Tonight he traded only one answer; this one she would keep, to trade next time.

She pressed this matter to the very bottom, gathered with the photograph, the torn page, and the un-wiped stickiness in her palm.

The car stopped. Lucian got out first and stood by the door, waiting.

The same position as when they left.

As she got out, he suddenly spoke:

"Tonight's cut you made," he said, "was not something I taught."

She stopped.

"Nor something your father taught."

She looked up at him. His face under the porch light, half bright, half dark.

"The blade was mine to give," he said.

Then he turned and climbed the stairs, not looking back.

She stood watching his retreating back. Her hands empty; the blade on his belt.

The man who killed her father — or so she told herself — she had met him tonight, and learned his name.

This she had believed for half the night.