The Empress's Tomb (11 page)

“These are my grandmothers,” said Oona. “Don't bother making small talk. They don't speak English.”

“She's
your grandmother?” I gestured to a woman who didn't look more than thirty years old.

“It's just an expression.” Oona sighed. “It's not like they're related by blood.”

Out of the corner of my eye I saw the oldest of Oona's grandmothers take a sharp breath as if she had received an unexpected blow. Recovering instantly, she knelt down by the couch where we had laid the sick boy. She was at least eighty years old, with silver hair wrapped in a bun and skin covered with rivers of wrinkles. As she felt the boy's pulse, I noticed her hands were unusually muscular and her fingertips rough and calloused. She pulled back the boy's eyelids before opening his mouth and examining his tongue. Then she turned and issued orders to one of the younger women, who disappeared into the kitchen.

“Mrs. Fei says his
ji
is too high,” Oona explained. “He needs cooling tonics.”

DeeDee and I exchanged a puzzled look. A minute later, the younger woman rushed back into the room with a pot of water and a platter filled with herbs. Mrs. Fei asked to be left alone with her patient, and Oona guided the Irregulars to the nearby dining room.

“Mrs. Fei seems to know what she's doing,” said Kiki thoughtfully, taking a seat at the round wooden table.

“If she didn't, we'd all be dead by now,” said Oona. “I've never been to an American doctor.”

“What do you think we should tell her?” Luz asked. “She'll want to know where we found the boy.”

“This isn't your house, Lopez,” said Oona. “Mrs. Fei won't ask any questions. None of my grandmothers will.”

“Who are these ladies?” asked Betty. “Why do you live with them?”

“They raised me,” said Oona. “Now it's my turn to take care of them.”

“But I thought you told us you aren't an orphan,” said DeeDee. “Where are your parents?”

“My father owns factories in Chinatown. He smuggled these women into the country to work in his sweatshops. They were his slaves. I used the money from the manicure shop to pay for their freedom,” said Oona. “I think the boy might belong to him, too.”

“Your father sounds a lot like …,” I started to say.

“That's right,” said Oona. “My father is Lester Liu.”

•     •     •

Secrets are like cough syrup—they can grow more potent with time. Keep one stored long enough and what might once have been harmless can wind up deadly. Two years earlier, Oona's secret would have inspired a few hours of gossip—but none of us would have held it against her. But the fact that she'd concealed the truth for so long made me suspect she had more to hide. And the one revelation she'd already made was shocking enough. Oona's father was a dangerous man. As leader of the Fu-Tsang gang, Lester Liu had grown rich smuggling counterfeit designer shoes and handbags into Chinatown. The Irregulars had destroyed his operation in June and sent most of his gang to jail. But Lester Liu had never been charged with a crime. He was still free, and Kiki Strike was at the top of his hit list.

“Why didn't you tell us?” I demanded.

Oona grimaced. “It's not the sort of thing I'd brag about.”

The other girls were struck dumb. Luz didn't appear to be breathing. Betty was on the brink of biting off her
lower lip. Only Kiki remained unshaken. I saw in an instant that she had known all along.

“I'm not a traitor,” Oona muttered.

“Of course you're not,” Kiki assured her. “Nobody thinks you are.”

DeeDee caught my eye before turning to Oona. “You should have told us earlier,” she said scientifically. “Is there anything else we should know?”

“No,” said Oona.

“
I
think it was very brave of you to come clean.” Betty put a hand on Oona's arm.

“It sure explains a lot,” Luz added with a weary sigh.

“I need to think for a minute.” I rested my head on the dining room table. A million memories were reshaping themselves in my mind. The room stayed silent as one of Oona's grandmothers set out a pot of tea and six little teacups. When the Irregulars were alone once more, Kiki took a sip and drew in a breath.

“Now that you've all had time for the news to sink in, let's talk business.”

“Why do you think the boy we found belongs to your father?” DeeDee asked.

I saw Kiki give Oona a nod of encouragement.

“My father isn't just a smuggler. He's also a snakehead.”

“What's a snakehead?” asked Luz.

“They smuggle people into the United States,” Oona explained. “Poor people who need work. They promise a snakehead thousands of dollars to get them here, and when they arrive they have to pay off the debt. Until they do, they're practically slaves. My father makes them work all day and all night in his sweatshops.”

“What if they refuse?” asked DeeDee.

“Sometimes they're beaten,” said Oona. “Sometimes they're killed.”

“Is your mother involved, too?” I asked.

“I don't know much about my mother, except that she was one of Lester Liu's clients. She died the day I was born. When my father found out that I was a girl, he didn't want anything to do with me. He gave me to Mrs. Fei. She and her friends at the sweatshop took care of me.”

Luz was outraged. “What's his problem with girls?”

“In China, boys carry on the family name. It's their duty to take care of their parents when they get older. When girls grow up, they join their husbands' families, so many people consider them worthless. My father is very old-fashioned. To him, I was just a waste of money.”

“You're joking!” cried Betty. “Has he ever met you?”

“A professional criminal couldn't hope for a better child,” DeeDee added.

“I did meet him once,” said Oona. “When I was ten, Mrs. Fei told me about my father. She said he was very rich, and I knew my grandmothers could barely afford to feed me. So every day, I'd put on the only dress I had and go out to look for him. I thought if he saw me, he might want me back. Then one day I found him standing outside one of his sweatshops. He was talking with two men about a secret shipment they were expecting that night. They knew I was listening, but they didn't care. They thought I was too stupid to understand. After they were done, I went up to Lester and introduced myself as his daughter. At first he laughed. Then he told me I was nothing until he said otherwise.”

“That's terrible!” A tear dangled from Betty's false eyelashes.

“What a jerk,” Luz agreed, though she didn't use the word
jerk.

Oona continued. “It's okay. I got even. I went straight to the police and told them about the shipment. They raided the boat as soon as it entered the harbor. It was filled with statues that had been stolen from a temple in Cambodia. His men were arrested, but Lester Liu got away. He was on a flight to Shanghai before the police could question him. The day he left, he sent me a note. All it said was:
When I return, I will find you.”

“I don't mean to rub it in, but you should have told us,” said DeeDee.

“I was hoping I wouldn't need to,” Oona admitted. “I thought he might have forgotten about me. It's not like I managed to hurt his business. He's done even better since he left for Shanghai. Half of Chinatown is here because of him.”

“Maybe he
has
forgotten about you,” Luz offered optimistically.

Oona frowned. “Wait here. There's something you should see.” When she returned, she set a rectangular cardboard box in front of Luz. “Lester Liu sent me this. Go ahead, take a look.” Luz peeked inside the box as if she were expecting to find a scorpion or a severed ear. Instead, she pulled out a dragon. It was a bronze statue of Fu-Tsang, the Chinese dragon that guards hidden places and the symbol of the fierce gang that bore its name. Someone gasped. It may well have been me. “Recognize it?” asked Oona.

We had all seen the dragon before. Several months earlier, I'd found it in a handbag that belonged to a kidnapping victim named Mitzi Mulligan. The ancient statue had provided the crucial clue that led us to the Fu-Tsang's lair where Sidonia Galatzina had been hiding the girls she'd kidnapped, hoping to lure Kiki to her death. The same night that police raided the hideout, the dragon mysteriously disappeared.

“You know what
that
means?” Oona was trembling.

“It means he knows you're a part of the group who busted his smuggling operation,” I said. “You're in
big
trouble, Oona.”

“Yeah,” she agreed. “Which kind of makes me wonder why he invited me to dinner.”

“What!” Luz exclaimed.

“He invited the rest of you, too.”

“What?” It was Kiki's turn to be surprised.

“You were missing when the dragon came in the mail,” Oona tried to explain. “I wanted to talk to you first, but by the time you were back, we were too busy hunting squirrels and searching for intruders.”

“Are you saying that Lester Liu knows who I am?” Betty was almost swooning from the shock.

“I don't think he knows your name,” said Oona. “The note just said
Kiki Strike and your talented friends are welcome.”

“When's the dinner party?” asked Kiki.

“Friday,” Oona replied.

“A day and a half.” I could almost hear Kiki's mind whirling away. “I wish we had more time to prepare. In any case, I don't think all six of us should go. If it's a trap,
we don't want to be in the same place at the same time. Ananka and I will be happy to escort you, Oona.”

“Thanks for volunteering me,” I said, wondering why I always got the unpleasant assignments.

“Don't mention it.” Kiki winked.

“By the way,” Oona added with a nervous smile. “The dinner is formal. You'll both need evening gowns.”

Mrs. Fei poked her head into the dining room just as I let out a groan. The timing was so perfect that for a moment I suspected she'd been listening. She spoke briefly with Oona.

“The boy's awake,” Oona announced.

As the other girls quickly filed out of the room, I pulled Kiki back. I jerked her arm a little too hard, and she turned to me with a tight smile that made it clear I'd come close to getting punched.

“You knew about Lester Liu, didn't you?” I whispered.

Kiki's ice-blue eyes studied me. “Yes,” she said.

“How long have you known?”

“From the beginning.”

“Don't you think you should have shared that information with the rest of us?” I pressed her. “We're supposed to be a team. We can't have secrets like that.”

“You mean I should have told
you,
right? Don't take it personally, Ananka. It wasn't my secret to share.”

Though Kiki made a good point, I hated to think that she and Oona had hidden the truth from the rest of us—as if we were too stupid or childish to handle it. I remembered a thousand little looks that had passed between them over the years, and I suddenly felt like a fool.

“How upstanding of you,” I sneered. “But this wasn't some harmless little secret. In case you've forgotten, the Fu-Tsang helped your aunt try to kill us. If Lester Liu's daughter had decided to go over to the dark side, you'd be dead right now.”

Kiki refused to bite back. “The first rule of being a team is trusting one another. And if you trust someone, you let her keep her secrets. When she's ready to tell you she will. You don't have to know
everything,
Ananka.”

“Why not? Why should I trust Oona if she doesn't trust me? How do I know she's not hiding something even more dangerous?”

“Oona was worried that the rest of you would see her differently,” Kiki bristled. “Don't prove her right.”

•     •     •

In the living room, we found the boy sitting with his back against one arm of the couch, his legs stretched out in front of him. Mrs. Fei had tucked a blanket around him, and someone had washed his face and combed his black, chin-length hair. His thin head wobbled when he saw the six Irregulars enter the room, and his long, tapered fingers clutched the blanket. Oona pulled a chair beside the couch and spoke to him in Hakka. At first the boy merely gaped at her. He wasn't the first person I'd seen struck dumb by Oona's beauty. Finally he worked up the courage to reply in a hoarse voice.

“His name is Yu,” Oona translated. “He's sixteen years old, and he's from Taipei. He wants to know where he is and who we are.”

“Tell him he's in New York. Tell him we rescued him from the rats,” said Kiki.

“And then ask him how he got into the tunnels,” I added.

Yu's eyes passed over each of us before he spoke again.

“He says about a month ago he was kidnapped on his way to school. Two men grabbed him and took him to a boat. There were lots of kids inside—at least twelve, maybe more. He recognized one of the girls. She went to the same school. He wanted to talk to her, but the guards watched them day and night. The trip was very long, and many of the passengers got sick. When the boat stopped, they were tied up and put into large wooden boxes and driven to a building. He tried to escape, but he was caught and thrown into a room away from the others. That's where he discovered the door in the floor.

“He says he was lost in the tunnels for several days. He doesn't know how many. He couldn't find a way out. There was no one down there. Just giant rats and skeletons. He thought he had entered the underworld. When he was too exhausted to keep running from the rats, he crawled into a box and waited to die.”

“What about the Chinese statue we found?” Kiki asked. “Where did he get it?”

“He says there were many wooden crates on the ship. A board on one had come loose. When he stuck his fingers inside, that's what he found. He kept it hidden in his schoolbag. If he ever escaped, he thought it might help the police identify the kidnappers.”