The Firemaker

I

Friday

Li sat gazing into inky blackness. The candles had all burned out long ago. Just the acrid, waxy smell of them remained. He remembered being afraid of the dark as a small boy, of all the ghosts and monsters that lurked there in his childish imagination. As he grew older, he stopped being afraid, for he knew that the real monsters lurked within; fear and conceit, greed and evil. Only now, someone had let them out, and they were stalking the world, like latter-day dinosaurs, devouring and destroying everything they touched. They were out there somewhere now, looking for him. But they didn’t live in the dark, like the monsters of his childhood. They worked in offices and lived in houses. They had wives and husbands, brothers, sisters, children. They controlled and manipulated the lives of those around them, exploited the weak, starved the hungry, reaped rewards from the work of others. And they thought they were gods. Li’s hatred of them was tempered only by his sorrow for those he loved. Old Yifu; dead. His father, his sister, her little girl, her unborn child; their death warrants already signed. Margaret. He could hear her gentle, regular breathing. She slept now, but she, too, was under sentence of death. He thought of his country. All those people, their hopes and aspirations, their lives and their loves. He could see their faces in the dark. The children, happy and innocent, unaware that their future was already lost. Five thousand years of history had brought them to this dead end. He wanted to scream, to pull the house down around them with his bare hands. He wanted to tear those monsters limb from limb. But he did not move. He did not make a sound. Dead men don’t fight back. He might have thought that true once. But this dead man was going to fight, with every ounce of strength, every last breath, every final second that he had.

He and Margaret had talked for nearly two hours before she had finally succumbed to utter exhaustion, leaving him to come to terms with the things she had told him. Fear, anger, self-pity, more anger had surged through him in wave after wave, before leaving him, eventually, washed out and despairing. She had convinced him that their only option was to reach the sanctuary of the American Embassy. From there they could tell their story to the world. It was the only way to put an end to it, the only way to stop Grogan Industries and Pang Xiaosheng and all those they had corrupted in their pursuit of silence.

It seemed a hollow victory, somehow, to Li. That he should have to hide away from his fellow countrymen, skulk in the protection of a foreign power, in order to reveal the truth. It made him feel like a traitor. But he could see no other way. He was discredited and disgraced, on the run from his own police, and from a professional killer intent on killing the woman he loved.

The thought stopped him dead. The woman he loved? He struck a match and looked at Margaret as she lay sleeping beside him. She seemed utterly at peace. How could he love her? How could he love a woman he had only known for five days, a woman of another race, another culture? The match burned down to his fingers and he let it fall to the floor. But the image of her face remained imprinted on his retina. He reached out to touch her and saw his own hand in his mind’s eye, fingers running lightly over her full lips. He had never been in love before, so he was not sure how it felt, or was supposed to feel. He only knew that he had never felt like this about anyone in his life. He lay down beside her, tucking his knees in behind hers, drawing her back into his chest, gently so as not to wake her, wrapping himself around her like a protective shell. He buried his face in her hair and breathed in the smell of her. He had no idea what it was he felt for her, but love seemed as good a name for it as any. And for the first time in many long hours he felt released from torment. He would happily have died there and then, holding her in his arms. But sleep intervened. Death would have been too easy.

Margaret woke with a start and pushed herself quickly up on one elbow. There was a fine dust suspended in stripes of pale yellow light lying brokenly across the room. Li stood by the window, squinting through the gaps between the boards nailed across it. The blue smoke of his cigarette drifted lazily upwards, turning pale grey in the sunlight that fell through the slats. She felt strangely rested. Bizarrely, it was the best sleep she had had since her arrival in China.

He turned on hearing her stir. She had no idea, he knew, that he had spent the night, or what was left of it, curled around her. He thought how beautiful she looked, sleepy and blurred, not fully awake. She was all he had left now. He must not fail her as he had failed his uncle. He must keep her safe at all costs.

‘What is it?’ she asked, concerned by the look on his face.

‘Yongli and Lotus are here,’ he said, and he picked his way through the outer room at the sound of a soft knocking and opened the door to let them in.

Margaret sat up and wiped the sleep from her eyes as Lotus came through from the other room. She was hefting a large suitcase which she dropped flat on the floor, raising a cloud of dust. ‘I bring you clothes, and things for you to wash,’ she said. She flipped open the lid and brought out a deep metal bowl and a plastic five-litre container. She laid them on the bed beside Margaret and filled the bowl with water from the container, then handed her a plastic toilet bag with soap and a face-cloth, a half-empty tube of toothpaste and a brush. ‘You clean up. Then you dress.’ She pulled out a pale blue cotton dress with lapels at a V-neck and a belt at the waist, like Margaret had seen many Chinese girls wearing in the street. ‘I think this fit. Is too big for me.’

Margaret smiled. It was just as well. Lotus was diminutive. She made Margaret feel like a giant beside her.

Lotus waved a pair of panties at her and grinned. ‘These, too. They clean.’ She crossed the room and drew the ragged remains of a curtain across the door. ‘Men stay outside. I give you help.’

Margaret stripped off her bloodstained clothes. It took several bowlfuls of water to clean the dried, sticky, rust-coloured blood from her hands and arms and neck. Then she sluiced her face with clean water and dried herself off with a small, rough towel. Lotus watched her with admiration. ‘You have ver’ lovely breast,’ she said. ‘I have no breast,’ she added sadly, cupping what she had and trying to lift them. ‘Need wear Wonderbra for cleavage.’

Margaret smiled. ‘You are very beautiful just as you are, Lotus,’ she told her.

Lotus lowered her eyes self-consciously and blushed with pleasure. ‘Xie Xie,’ she said.

‘Bukeqi,’ Margaret responded.

Lotus looked at her and smiled in wide-eyed amazement. ‘You speak ver’ good Chinese.’

The blue dress fitted Margaret almost perfectly, the belt drawing it in neatly around the waist, the hemline dropping two or three inches below the knee. Lotus had a selection of sandals in the suitcase. ‘I borrow from my cousin and her mother,’ she said. ‘Different size. Hope one fit.’

A pair of cream slingback sandals fitted snugly on her feet, the leather worn and soft and comfortable. There was a matching cream leather purse on a long shoulder strap. Lotus had filled it with make-up and a little spray of eau de Cologne. ‘Beautiful lady must look beautiful always,’ she said. Margaret laid it on the bed beside her discarded clothes and saw McCord’s revolver nestling there among the folds. On impulse she slipped it into the purse and turned back to Lotus. She held her hand and squeezed it gratefully.

‘Thank you, Lotus. I don’t know how I can ever repay you.’

‘Oh, it nothing,’ Lotus said. ‘You my friend.’ And they embraced for several moments, breaking apart only at the sound of raised voices from outside. Li and Yongli were arguing about something. A moment later, Li brushed the curtain aside and stalked in, Yongli at his shoulder.

‘Ma Yongli doesn’t want to take us to the embassy,’ Li said. The colour had risen on his cheeks.

Margaret looked at Yongli, taken aback. ‘Why?’

‘Because it is too dangerous,’ Yongli said. ‘Where is the first place they will expect you to go? The American Embassy. They will be everywhere, waiting for you.’

Margaret glanced anxiously at Li. ‘He’s probably right.’

Li nodded reluctantly. Margaret looked back at Yongli. ‘But we’ve got to try, Ma Yongli. We can’t just stay here for ever. If it’s not possible to get to the embassy then we will think of something else.’

Lotus turned to Yongli. ‘Hey, lover, it’s no big deal,’ she said. ‘Li Yan and Margaret can stay in the car. We will walk past the embassy to see if there are police around. No one will notice us if we go after nine. There are always crowds queuing for visas.’

Li looked at Yongli, who hesitated for only a moment before reluctantly nodding his acquiescence. He could refuse Lotus nothing.

‘What’s happening?’ Margaret asked.

‘We’ll stay in the car,’ Li said. ‘They’ll check out the street.’

The drive to the Ritan legation area was tense. Li and Margaret sat low in the back of the Honda, wearing straw hats pulled down to shade their faces. Li wore a light jacket over his shirt to hide his shoulder holster and Old Yifu’s revolver. Lotus sat in the front with Yongli, talking constantly, trying to calm him. Yongli was agitated and nervous, and drove badly, almost colliding with a bus in full view of a traffic policeman on Jianguomennei Avenue. ‘Calm down, lover,’ Lotus told him, and put a reassuring hand on his arm. He took a deep breath and tried to relax and managed a half-smile.

Already the heat was stifling, the sun beating in through the windscreen as they drove east. Margaret’s hand sought Li’s on the back seat and held it tightly. But they said nothing. They crossed the flyover at Dongdanbei Street, past the CITIC building, sitting impatiently at every set of lights, Yongli drumming his fingers on the wheel. There was a high police presence on the main boulevards, pale blue-and-white squad cars cruising frequently by, officers in green, sharp-eyed and watchful. But people in the streets were blissfully unaware, going about their everyday lives, happy in ignorance of the RXV virus that lay dormant within them, or the desperate attempts of a young policeman and an American pathologist to make them aware of it.

Margaret stole a glance at Li. ‘Did you tell Yongli?’ she whispered.

He shook his head. ‘I did not know how.’

It is a dreadful thing to have to tell someone they are going to die. Margaret felt guilty now at the relief she had felt the previous night after she had unburdened herself to Li.

They passed the Friendship Store, and at the junction with Dongdoqiao Road, Yongli turned left, cutting across the flow of traffic and making a U-turn into the westbound cycle lane, where he drew into a parking place. His face was glistening with perspiration as he turned. ‘You wait here. We’ll approach the embassy from Silk Street and let you know how it looks.’

Li shook his head. ‘No. We will be too conspicuous just sitting here in the back of the car.’ He leaned across Margaret to look out of the window. ‘We’ll wait for you in there.’ He pointed to a Deli France French-style coffee shop.

Li and Margaret watched for a moment as Lotus and Yongli pushed their way up the bustling length of the Silk Street market, jostling with pushy traders and eastern European tourists in search of big-buck bargains to ship back to Russia by rail. It was a narrow street crowded with stalls up either side. Colourful silk garments embroidered with gold Chinese dragons hung from stands and partitions; great rolls of material were sold by the bundle or the length. Traders smoked and shouted and spat and threw old tea leaves from jars on to the sidewalk. Corrugated plastic overhead shaded them from the sun. It was an ideal approach to the American Embassy, crowded and noisy. At the top end, where the lane emerged into a broader, tree-lined street, would be the tail of the queue that stretched daily up to the embassy’s visa department. Li took Margaret’s hand and they went into the Deli France café and ordered two cappuccinos. They waited in silence.

It was, perhaps, only twenty minutes before Yongli and Lotus returned. It just seemed longer. They slid into seats beside Li and Margaret and Yongli shook his head. ‘The place is crawling with cops, Li Yan. You wouldn’t get within a hundred yards of the place.’

Lotus said, ‘He’s right. They are everywhere, watching for you.’

Margaret didn’t need a translation to know what was being said. Although it was what she had expected in her heart of hearts, she was still disappointed. She felt a dread sense of despair creeping over her. ‘What are we going to do?’

In English, Yongli said, ‘I have been thinking. The nearest international border is Mongolia. There is a train to Datong, and it is not so far from there. It is very remote, and the border is thousands of kilometres long. They cannot guard the whole length of it.’

II

Yongli was gone four hours buying their tickets. When he got back, he was pale and solemn. ‘Cops everywhere,’ he said to Li. ‘And they got your face pasted up all over the station.’ He shrugged hopelessly. It was what they’d expected. There didn’t seem anything more to say.

Lotus was boiling up a pot of rice on a single gas ring that screwed into a small gas canister. She had four bowls, but to her surprise, and hurt, Li and Margaret both refused any. Instead, they hungrily devoured some of the fruit that Yongli had bought for their journey. Margaret, in turn, watched in despairing silence as Lotus and Yongli scooped rice from their bowls to their mouths with wooden chopsticks. She glanced at Li, who could not even bring himself to look. There was no point in telling them not to eat it. The damage was done. To Li and Margaret as well. But Margaret could only think of the cholera toxin genes, the cauliflower mosaic and the RXV virus particles, and God knew what else, in the genetic make-up of the small white grains. It made her feel physically sick.

They ate in a tense silence, each with their own private thoughts, and afterwards Yongli took a map he had bought and spread it out on the cot bed. He dropped the train tickets on top. ‘Three tickets,’ he said. ‘The train leaves Beijing just after midnight, gets into Datong at seven fifteen tomorrow morning.’ He tracked the route of the train with his finger and jabbed at the dot on the map that represented the city of Datong on the border of Shanxi province and Inner Mongolia. ‘You’ll have to hide up during the day while I get us some transport. We’ll leave as soon as it’s dark and drive across Inner Mongolia overnight. We should reach the Mongolian border before sunrise. I’ll drop you there, return the vehicle, and then come back to Beijing. No one will know where you’ve gone.’

Margaret looked at the map with a deep sense of foreboding. Even assuming they managed to cross the border undetected, they would have a long and difficult journey across mountainous territory to Ulaanbaatar. They had no passports, very little money, and if they succeeded in reaching their destination they would then have to try to gatecrash one of the Western embassies. It was a desperate venture. ‘We’ll never make it to Ulaanbaatar on foot,’ she said.

Li said, ‘I’d thought we would catch a train.’

‘Of course,’ Margaret said. ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’ And Li thought her tone carried a little more of the Margaret he had come to know and love. ‘And if we get stopped, without passports?’

Li shrugged. ‘I guess we’ll be arrested. Do you have a better idea?’

She didn’t. She glanced at Yongli. ‘At least let us do this ourselves, Ma Yongli. There’s no need for you to take the risk. We can get to the border on our own.’

Yongli shook his head. ‘No you can’t. The pictures of Li Yan are posted everywhere. And his face is being broadcast on every television station. It would be almost impossible for him to hire a car without being recognised. Even in Datong. Also, the police will be looking for two people, not three. So it will be safer for you.’ He turned and smiled at Lotus. ‘Lotus will telephone the hotel and tell them I am sick. I will be back in two days. They will hardly know I have been gone.’ He grinned, he, too, a little more like his old self. ‘Easy.’

The remainder of the day crawled by, hot and airless in the confined space of the abandoned house. Outside, the sky turned pewtery, the air tinted a strange purple hue, temperature and humidity rising as a hot wind sprang up from the east, rattling the boards at the window. There was a storm brewing, and the atmosphere, already tense, grew oppressive.

Margaret slept off and on in fitful bursts, curled up on the cot bed. One time she woke up to see Lotus and Yongli squatting together in the far corner of the room, whispering to each other. Li stood by the window, keeping eternal, edgy vigilance through the slats of wood. Another time she drifted briefly into consciousness and saw that Lotus had gone. Yongli sat, back against the wall, smoking a cigarette, his eyes closed. Li was still at the window.

She dreamed of her childhood, long summer holidays spent at the home of her grandparents in New England. Home-made lemonade with crushed ice, drunk in the shade of leafy chestnut trees by the lake. She saw herself swinging on her grandfather’s arm, the old man strong and brown, his silver whiskers contrasting with his tanned, leathery face. Her brother fishing off the end of the old wooden landing stage. And then he was gone, the sound of his voice calling for help and the frantic splashing in the water. It seemed such a long way away, and no one was paying any attention. She was running around her parents and her grandparents, screaming at them. Jake was in trouble. Jake was drowning. But they were more interested in the contents of a large wicker picnic hamper set out on the lawn. Except for Grandfather, who was sleeping in the deckchair. She shook his arm, the same one she had been swinging on. But he did not stir. She shook and shouted and shrieked, until his head tipped towards her, his old straw hat running away down the slope on its brim. His eyes were open, but there was no life there. A small trickle of blood ran from one nostril.

She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came. And suddenly it was raining, big heavy drops that stung the skin, and a group of men in black oilskins were pulling Jake from the water. His eyes, too, were open, a trail of green slime oozing from his nostril, where blood had run from her grandfather’s. His mouth was open, and a large fish with popping eyes was struggling to escape from it.

Margaret awoke with a start, heart pounding, the sound of rain battering on the broken-tiled roof of the derelict house. It was dark outside. The erratic flame of a candle ducked and dived and threw light randomly among the shadows of the room. Li had abandoned his sentinel position by the window and was sitting on the end of the cot bed. Yongli still sat against the wall, smoking. Lotus was squatting on the floor packing food and clothes into a leather holdall. She looked up as Margaret swung her legs to the floor. ‘You okay?’ she asked, concerned.

Margaret nodded and wiped a fine film of perspiration from her brow. ‘A bad dream,’ she said.

Lotus got up and sat on the bed beside her. She had something black and soft and shiny in her hands. ‘This is for you,’ she said. ‘You must wear tonight.’ It was a shoulder-length black wig with a club-cut fringe. ‘I borrow from friend in theatre. Is good, yes?’ Margaret pinned up her hair and pulled the wig on. It was uncomfortably tight. She took a chipped make-up mirror from her purse and squinted at herself in the candlelight. The contrast of the pale, freckled skin and the blue-black hair was startling.

‘I look ridiculous,’ she said.

‘No. We hide your round eye with make-up and cover your freckle with powders. You look like Chinese girl.’

Margaret glanced at Li. He shrugged. ‘It’ll be dark. The lights on the train will be low.’

Lotus looked at him, hesitated a moment, then said, ‘Li Yan… I have not had the chance to say thank you.’

He frowned. ‘What for? You’re the one who’s helping us.’

‘For getting me out of that police cell,’ she said.

He looked at her blankly. ‘What police cell?’

Yongli’s voice came out of the darkness from across the room. ‘She got picked up by Public Security, remember? I came and asked for your help. You said you would see what you could do.’ There was a tone, a hint of accusation in his voice.

Li remembered now with a pang of guilt. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I never got the chance to do anything.’

Lotus frowned, genuinely puzzled. ‘But they let me go. They said there had been a mistake. I thought…’

‘But it was a mistake, wasn’t it?’ Yongli said.

Lotus looked very directly at Li. It seemed important to her that he believe her. ‘They said there was heroin in my bag. But I have never taken heroin in all my life, Li Yan. I swear to the sky.’

Li was uncomfortable, almost embarrassed. ‘Then, like Yongli said, they must have made a mistake. Maybe it was someone else’s bag.’

‘What’s going on?’ Margaret asked, disconcerted that the conversation had lapsed into Chinese. She sensed a tension in their words.

‘It’s nothing important,’ Li said. ‘History. We’re only looking forward now, not back.’ His words were for Lotus and Yongli more than for Margaret.

A terrific crash from outside startled them all. Li sprang forward and immediately extinguished the candle. The darkness that engulfed them felt almost tangible, as if they could reach out and wrap it around them. All they could hear was the pounding of the rain on the roof and the tug, tug, tug of the wind at the wooden boards on the window. Margaret heard someone shuffle carefully across the floor and into the outer room. Lotus’s breathing was quick and close beside her. She reached out and found her hand and held it, and felt Lotus grasp her arm with her other hand, fingers squeezing tightly.

The faintest grey light gave form to the room around them as they heard the front door scrape open. Margaret saw Yongli cross the room to the inner door, where he stooped to pick up a length of wood and hold it like a club. Then the door banged shut and they were plunged again into a darkness that was frightening in its density. The rasp of a match on sandpaper, a tiny explosion and a flare of light burned into the black, and Li came back through shielding the flame from the draught of his movement. ‘Tiles off the roof,’ he said, and stooped to relight the candle. None of them had realised, until then, just how stretched their nerves all were.

Yongli dropped the chunk of wood he had been clutching and squinted at his watch. ‘Anyway, it is time we were going,’ he said.

III

Rain continued to fall on the sodden capital. The streets were shiny wet, reflecting all the night colours of the city, like fresh paint that had not yet dried. Thunder rumbled distantly amidst the occasional flash of lightning. The police presence seemed, if anything, greater than it had earlier in the day. Li knew that Public Security expectation of a quick capture and arrest would have been high, and that with political pressure being brought to bear by interested and increasingly desperate parties, the hunt would have been stepped up. He took some grim satisfaction from the fact that their continued success in eluding the police would be creating growing panic in the breasts of Pang and Zeng and the executives of Grogan Industries. But fear of exposure would make them even more dangerous, like wounded tigers. The greatest immediate risk for Li and Yongli and Margaret would be at the station. All points of departure would be under close scrutiny. Li thanked the heavens for weeping on them this night.

He wondered, briefly, where Johnny Ren was. Now that he knew who had employed him, it was no surprise to Li that Ren had been able to move about so freely, evading detection. No doubt he was long gone, safe in some place beyond the reach of the Middle Kingdom.

He stroked the whiskers that adorned his upper lip and chin, a strange, unaccustomed wiry sensation between his fingers, yet another acquisition from Lotus’s theatrical friend. He felt guilty now at the way he had treated her in the past, his lack of concern when Yongli had come looking for his help. They could not have got this far without her.

They parked the car a couple of streets away from the station and, huddled in waterproofs under black umbrellas, hurried through the dwindling late night traffic. The concourse was deserted. A few travellers, waiting for taxis, sheltered under bus stands and the awnings of kiosks that during the day would sell fruit and vegetables and cold drinks to thirsty passengers. A queue trailing back into the night had formed at the main entrance to the station, where baggage was being checked through X-ray equipment, and officers of the railway police were randomly scrutinising passengers’ papers.

‘We’ll never get past them,’ Yongli whispered as they approached the back of the queue. ‘If they check our papers…’

But Lotus had more fortitude. ‘You said it yourself, Ma Yongli. They are looking for Li Yan and a yangguizi. Not two Chinese couples.’ She glanced at Margaret. She had a waterproof scarf tied down over her wig. Her make-up was crude, but in the bad light of the station entrance, she would pass for Chinese at a glance. Li Yan’s whiskers were convincing. Lotus only hoped that the brim of his hat and his umbrella would shield them from the rain. She had little confidence that the gum would hold in the wet.

More travellers joined the queue behind them as they shuffled forward, making slow progress to the baggage checkpoint. The rain still battered down on them, dampening conversation in the queue. But it was also making the officers checking the queue, after long hours of toing and froing in the wet, less conscientious than they might otherwise have been. They made a cursory check of the documents of a young couple in front of them, and then waved Li and the others through without a second glance. Yongli checked through their holdall and they were into the station. He was pale and trembling, and enormously relieved. They didn’t stop to look back, but hurried forward to the gate that opened on to their platform. The train stood huffing and chuffing impatiently, great clouds of steam rising into the night. The platform was heaving with passengers searching for compartments, friends and relatives hugging and kissing them farewell, children waving to aunts and uncles or parents embarking on long journeys, all under the watchful eye of a stern-faced female attendant at the ticket barrier. Li knew her type at a glance. Officious, bureaucratic, unbending. She would slam the gates closed at three minutes past midnight exactly, shutting out all latecomers, even if the train itself were late in departing. She examined their tickets and waved them through brusquely.

On the platform Lotus gave Yongli a long hug and then kissed him and held his face and told him to be careful and come back to her safely. He was choked, almost tearful. ‘I’d do anything for you, Lotus,’ he whispered. ‘Anything. I love you.’

She gave Li a kiss on the cheek and told him to look after her man. Then she embraced Margaret in a long, desperate hug. When they broke apart she said simply, ‘Good luck.’ She bit her lip as she watched them climb aboard. Yongli leaned down and kissed her again. A whistle sounded, and reluctantly she turned and hurried away into the station before the gate clanged shut. Yongli watched her go with moist eyes. He turned at last, and the three of them made their way into the crowded Hard Class compartment to find their seats among the damp travellers who squeezed into every corner, opening baskets of food and flasks of tea, making themselves comfortable and preparing for the long journey ahead. Margaret heard someone noisily dragging phlegm up from their throat and gobbing it on to the floor. She shivered with disgust, but didn’t dare look, keeping her head down, face shielded by the black hair of her wig. She prayed no one would speak to her and was startled when Li whispered, ‘If you can sleep, lean against my shoulder.’ She nodded and he put an arm around her. He touched his whiskers self-consciously to make certain they were still there, and glanced at Yongli. But Yongli was lost in a world of his own, pressed up against the window, wiping a hole in the condensation to try to see out. There was little to be seen, though, in the dim lights of the empty platform.

Another whistle sounded, somewhere up ahead a light flashed, and the train jerked and then moaned, and started pulling painfully out of the station, creaking and groaning as it gathered speed. As they emerged from the station, trundling and rattling across a great conjunction of lines, Margaret inclined her head a little to see out of the clear patch Yongli had rubbed in the window. Raindrops spattered hard against the glass, running city lights down the pane in wavering, jagged streaks. A flash of lightning threw the skyline into sharp relief for a brief moment. Less than a week ago she had driven into Beijing in the heat of a Monday afternoon, with the hope of an escape for six weeks from a life that had barely seemed worth living. Now, just five days later, she was leaving in the dark and the rain, a fugitive, guarding a life that seemed all the more valuable for the sentence of death that had been placed upon it. She clung tightly to Li. She wasn’t even going to try to analyse her feelings for him. All that mattered was that she wanted to be with him. For all that she might have lost, still she had found something precious. Something worth living for — even if that life had only a short time left to run.