sake and he threw his cup at her, kicking it when it bounced off the floor. She crawled on the floor to retrieve the cup and he yelled something else at her in Russian.
“There is still so much we do not know about ourselves,” Geaxi said and she reached in her vest and pulled out the Stone, clenching it in her fist. She started to turn toward the Russians and I stopped her, putting my hand over hers and holding it to the table.
“Not here, not now,” I said. “We
Her hand loosened under mine and her eyes looked away toward the stones in the garden. Then she smiled. “You are too young to sound so wise, Zianno. Shall we leave?”
“Yes,” I said, and as we rose to leave, Geaxi helped the girl up and out of the drunken presence of the Russians. Walking past them she whispered,
The
The delays did give me more time to spend with Geaxi. I found out when and where she was born (51 BC on the island of Malta) and when she met Sailor (AD 480 after the Fall of Rome). I learned her parents had died naturally after living long lives among their friends in Malta, tending a large olive grove where she had practiced her climbing skills as a real child. I found out little else about her personal history, but still enjoyed her company.
I asked her many questions about the Fleur-du-Mal. She answered some, but admitted that, until recently, she had considered him irrelevant. She told me that Unai and Usoa were the experts on the Fleur-du-Mal and one other whom we might or might not meet, Zeru-Meq, his uncle. When I heard the names Unai and Usoa, I immediately asked how and where they were. I had often wondered, but never inquired. Geaxi said they were in New Orleans, or had been, following the movements of the Fleur-du-Mal. Then she corrected herself and said they had been following the “rumors” of his movements. She said the Fleur-du-Mal was often harder to track and find than Sailor. He was unpredictable, completely unpredictable. But he could be a connection to Opari and so they persisted, as they had for centuries. Geaxi said she doubted he was a connection, but now, after Baju, he might be capable of anything. I had my own memories to verify that.
We disembarked, secured what little luggage we had, and made it through customs easily. After that, it was a madhouse. All China and half the rest of the world seemed to have docked in Shanghai. There were ships of every size and shape coming and going. The docks and wharves were filled with anything and everything that could be bought or traded. I heard languages I’d never heard, saw faces I’d never seen. This was Shanghai, the true gateway to China, and it was chaos.
We looked for Sailor and would never have seen him, even though he stood just fifty yards away, except he was the only thing not moving. He was standing next to a rickshaw and staring at us. He wore a bright red and gold robe with wheels or circles embroidered around the edge and a round straw hat with a flat top and a drawstring pulled tight under his chin. He looked like a circus puppet. I glanced at Geaxi and she didn’t seem to think it odd in any way.
We made our way over to Sailor, dodging through the maze of people and goods, and without a greeting except to look in our eyes, he said, “This way.” A man with the thinnest shoulders I’d ever seen loaded our luggage on the back of the rickshaw and then pulled the three of us to a section of Shanghai known as the Chinese City, the oldest part. We were almost twenty-five days overdue and I wondered if Sailor knew about Baju and what had happened.
We stopped in front of a shop crowded next to a hundred others on a street crowded next to another street just like it. There were a thousand sounds and smells, a few of which made you want to know the source, but most of which didn’t. It was a shop that sold nothing but funeral trappings. And far from being grim and somber, it was bright with color everywhere. Crimson satin coverings for coffins hung aloft and around on the shelves or under glass cases there was apparel for the dead; richly embroidered robes, slippers, and headgear. There were priests’ robes and white cotton raiment for the mourners. Somewhere in the shop there was everything for a proper and glorious Chinese funeral.
Sailor led us quickly to the back of the shop and through a door to the private living quarters. It was cramped but fairly clean, with a single window that opened onto a narrow alley and very little light. He took off his straw hat, laying it carefully on a nightstand, and without being asked, gave me answers to the questions I had been pondering.
“There was a cable waiting for me when I arrived,” he said, “from Owen Bramley. It was good that I had not let Kepa’s son, Gotzon, sail with me.”
“Were you assaulted?” Geaxi asked.
“No,” he said and looked at her strangely. “I was thinking of Gotzon and how he would have felt if he had heard the news of his brothers here, so far from home. It has been a long time since I have lost someone as close as Baju. I know Gotzon would have felt helpless, as I have.” He fell silent and stared at the sapphire on his finger, rubbing it with his thumb and turning it around and around. Then he looked up at Geaxi. “Did they get the Stones?”
Geaxi glanced at me before she answered. “Yes and no,” she said.
Sailor looked puzzled. “I do not understand,” he said and looked over at me.
Geaxi told him the whole story, leaving nothing out except the few moments we were in the Bitxileiho, for which Sailor needed no explanation. She slowed down when she told him about me and the Stone with no gems and the man with thin eyes dropping the pistol. Sailor did not react and she went on until she got to the part about Baju. She took her beret off and clenched it in her hands. She started to speak again and then stopped, looking away from both of us toward the single, airless window.
I let a moment pass and then told Sailor what Baju had whispered to me as he was dying. Sailor’s puzzled expression returned, but he said nothing. He walked the few steps over to Geaxi and took her hand in his. Then he spoke to me.
“I have often suspected this about the Stones,” he said. “Your father and Baju and I used to discuss it, but we would never have defiled a sacred trust merely to satisfy our curiosity. It is ironic, no? That we have solved this mystery in such a horrid manner and for such an empty purpose.”
I watched him. I watched him look inside himself and I could almost see him sitting with Baju and my papa and others on a cliff somewhere in a remote part of the world, talking of the mysteries of Life, and the Stones, and of being Meq. I could see them all sitting there, knowing so much, sharing so much, and being careful with each other and the Truth. Now, another one from that circle, another friend, was gone.
“Tomorrow we begin our search,” he said. “This news, more than any other, tells us who we seek first. We must find Zeru-Meq. It will be difficult, yes. He is unpredictable, completely unpredictable, but I know he is in China.”
“That’s what Geaxi said about the Fleur-du-Mal,” I said.
“It is true. That is where he learned his unpredictability, from his rather unusual uncle. Fortunately, his uncle is not ‘aberrant.’ There is a difference. If the Fleur-du-Mal is responsible for Baju’s death, he will tell Zeru-Meq about it. He will be compelled to do so.”
“How do you know?”
“You will have to ask Zeru-Meq the source of that. It has always been so. When the Fleur-du-Mal has acted ‘badly’ and is proud of himself, he always finds his uncle to boast and brag of it. It is a mystery.”
“What about Opari?”
“We have exhausted every lead, rumor, and trace of her in Asia. If she is still in China, Zeru-Meq is the only one who will know it. There is a problem, however.”
“What is that?”
“Zeru-Meq is nearly as difficult to find as Opari herself.”
I looked at Geaxi. She was not despondent, but as close to it as she had ever been. Sailor let go of her hand and sat down on a bed that was really no more than a bench. As he did, the sash holding the red and gold robe came undone and the robe opened. Underneath, he was wearing a cotton shirt, trousers, and his leather boots
