Damn. I hated that. It took most Chinese a very long time to loosen up. Australians were usually cheerful and relaxed right from the start; Chinese stayed stiff and formal for ages.
‘Lady Emma’s time is limited, she has a class to teach in an hour, so we will dispense with the formalities,’ John said. ‘Let me introduce everybody —’
‘Don’t bother,’ I said. ‘I’m hopeless with names; I’ll just forget them straightaway. Let me ask you your names when I need them, and I’ll try to remember them. But I’ll probably have to ask you all more than once. If anybody’s offended by that, let me know now.’
Nobody said anything. The Generals all watched me, emotionless.
Great.
I looked around the table. Eight of them, standard-looking Chinese men, all very stern, all middle-aged. A variety of shapes and sizes, all wearing old-fashioned Chinese lacquer armour, some with short hair, some with the more traditional long hair. A couple of them looked really severe and scary, but three had definite twinkles in their eyes.
I stole a glance at John. He was already taking notes. I took a deep breath. Okay.
John slid an agenda across the table to me. I didn’t look at it immediately; I watched the Generals.
‘First item,’ John said. ‘Demons.’
One of the severe-looking Generals leaned forward and put his hand on the table. ‘The Fifth Battalion has had one hundred and fifty demons attain perfection in the last year; the Fourth has had only five or six. The Fifth has no new recruits; the Fourth has had seventy-five. We need to transfer the new recruits to the Fifth.’
‘They will stay where they are,’ John said.
‘The Fifth is undermanned.’
John didn’t move or speak.
‘My Lord,’ the General said, obviously impatient, ‘you need to set up some sort of administrative procedure for the allocation of the demons. We need to ask you every single time, and every time it’s different. We need something down on paper to define the methods you use for allocation.’
‘Lady Emma?’ John said.
I glanced down at the agenda and nearly gasped. He’d read my mind. At the bottom of the first page was a diagram of the table with names where everyone was sitting. He’d even used phonetic spellings, not pinyin, so that I could pronounce the names easily. I shot him a quick, grateful glance. His face didn’t change but his eyes sparkled.
‘General Song,’ I said. The General didn’t move. ‘I thought that all of you had been Raised and were Immortal.’
All of them straightened slightly at that.
‘That is true,’ General Song said.
‘Then why do you want the Dark Lord to write down administrative procedures? You want to make a rod for your own back? You start with the paperwork, it never finishes. You make rules, then you have to make exceptions. Endless exceptions. And the rules give you no flexibility. You can’t take each situation as it comes. If Lord Xuan wants to allocate the demons differently each time, then it’s his prerogative. He knows what he’s doing. He probably doesn’t even have a set of rules; he just does it how he sees fit at the time.’ The General’s face didn’t move at all while I made my little speech. ‘Frankly, I can’t see how you’ve attained Immortality if you want to put everything down on paper.’
All of the Generals heaved a sigh of relief and relaxed. A couple of them even smiled slightly.
John spread his hands over the table. ‘See? What did I tell you.’ He pushed his agenda away. ‘Right. Now let’s have this meeting.’
‘You mean that was a test?’ I said.
‘They didn’t believe me,’ John said.
I glanced around at the Generals. Now all their eyes sparkled at me, even though their faces were still grim.
‘Will all of you stay in the same seats at the table until I have you worked out?’ I said.
All of them nodded without saying a word.
‘There are thirty-six of them altogether, Emma,’ John said without turning to me. ‘Hopefully we’ll be able to rotate everybody through so that you can meet all of them. I’ll give you a diagram each time.’
‘Okay.’ I shrugged. ‘Meeting. Let’s get this over with.’
One of the Generals raised his index finger slightly. ‘One Two Two. Tell us.’
‘It’s easier to tell everybody like this rather than directly one at a time,’ John said, explaining. ‘Questions can be asked, information can flow, ideas can bounce. One Two Two. Gold has been cultivating a police officer in the investigative squad . . .’
I glanced down at the agenda. A short message was written underneath the diagram in John’s English scrawl. I tried to tell them but they wouldn’t believe me. Can’t wait to see the looks on their faces. Oh, and by the way, give them hell.
I tapped on the door of John’s office. ‘Come in, Emma,’ he said.
I entered and sat across the desk from him with the school calendar in my hand.
‘You know you don’t need to knock. I can feel you coming. When’s spring break?’ he said.
‘April,’ I said. ‘Same time as Easter. About eight weeks from now.’
He didn’t say anything, he just watched me expressionlessly.
‘If you won’t make it that far, then we’ll take Simone out of school for a week and leave Michael here,’ I said. ‘Try not to push yourself too hard, love.’
He glanced down at his hands. His face was still expressionless.
‘Simone’s not ready. She can’t defend herself. If something really big comes after us, there’s nothing we can do. You have to stay longer,’ I said.
He looked directly at me. His eyes blazed.
‘Can you sense it?’
He shook his head.
‘We need you. I knew we should have done it at Chinese New Year.’
‘If I go into a coma before April, call the Lady,’ he said.
‘A coma?’
He shrugged and smiled slightly.
‘If you go into a coma, how long will we have to get her here?’
‘Hours.’
‘What if she’s in retreat, John?’ I said desperately.
He shrugged again, but the smile had disappeared.
‘We should do it before April then,’ I said.
‘I want to leave it as long as I can. I only have two more.’ His face was rigid with control. ‘I will need at least ten days.’
I glanced at the calendar. ‘You’ll get it. The break is two weeks altogether. We’ll have fourteen days, so we can go to London as well. You want me to organise the trip to Europe?’
‘No. I won’t make it to Paris. It’s too far from my Centre now. I’ll arrange something else.’
‘How long will you last afterwards?’ I said, studying the calendar.
He leaned back, grimaced, and retied his hair. ‘December if we’re lucky. Earlier if we’re not. Probably earlier.’
‘December.’ I counted the months. ‘And then August next year . . . the end.’
‘Probably