“Eat shit, bastard!”
The clay-vessel bandit shrugged. He jabbed the customer in the neck with two fingers and watched dispassionately as the man crumpled to the floor.
The first bandit rose, rolling his shoulders and cracking his neck. “I wish you’d teach me how to do that, Ah Sang.”
The clay-vessel bandit was known as Tet Sang to his friends. “You’d only do useless things with it,” he said. He gave the devastation around them a pointed look. “What are you going to say to the owner?”
“I paid him already,” said the first bandit, but he wasn’t interested in Mr Aw’s feelings. He fumbled in his robe, taking out the poster. “Look. What do you think?”
Tet Sang read the heading aloud: “Notice regarding the incorrigible criminals, enemies of the Protectorate, Lau Fung Cheung and his men.” His face darkened. “It was only a matter of time before we started drawing attention, I suppose.”
“At least it’s free advertising,” said the first bandit, who happened to be Lau Fung Cheung. “Maybe we’ll get new business.”
“It’s one thing to be known as men willing to bend the law,” said Tet Sang. “But nobody wants to hirewanted criminals.” He studied the portraits, his head to one side. “You’re better-looking in real life. The artist must be somebody’s cousin.”
Extraordinarily, Lau Fung Cheung blushed.
“Are you done?” said Tet Sang. “Can we go?”
“I haven’t finished my drink,” said Fung Cheung. His table and soya bean milk had somehow survived the battle. He picked up his glass and sipped from it. He made a face. “Cold already.”
His sworn brother rolled his eyes. Mr Aw, lurking behind the counter, yelped and ducked when their eyes met.
“Drink up,” said Tet Sang. “I’ll settle the bill.”
The men put up such a fuss about moving on that Tet Sang gave in and said they could stay till morning. They’d set up camp in a patch of scrub outside town, concealed from the main road by a tangle of bushes, ferns and creepers. They’d hear any mata crashing through the undergrowth long before they were found.
Still, if Tet Sang were an enthusiastic Protectorate official on the hunt for bandits, this was the first place he would look. An ambush by the authorities was the last thing they needed right now, with the goods they were carrying. He was restless all evening, jumping at every hoot of a passing owl.
“You’re like an old woman,” said Fung Cheung, the originating cause of all this anxiety. “Don’t worry so much. That Mr Aw is not stupid; he won’t be making a report. Even if he does, they won’t send out the mata for a brawl in a coffeehouse.”
Fung Cheung must have known he was speaking nonsense. The Protectorate would send out their forces at the merest whiff of bandits, and any trouble at a Tang-run coffeehouse would be presumed to involve bandits. Tet Sang gave him a look but only said:
“I’m not worried. I’m on my guard. That’s different.”
There was always someone on watch at night, but that night it was Ah Hin, who’d had a little too much beer at dinner. It was a wonder his snoring didn’t wake them all up, but it wasn’t that that snapped Tet Sang’s eyes open shortly after midnight.
He was fully awake in a moment. He threw himself on the intruder, rolling them onto their back.
The waitress from Weng Wah Coffeehouse stifled a squeak. Her alarm changed to relief when she saw Tet Sang’s face.
“It’s you, brother!” she said, pleased. “I was wondering which one you were. You all look the same in the dark.”
The others stirred. Ah Hin leapt up, shouting:
“Big Brother! Intruder! Fire! Attack!”
Fung Cheung was on his feet, his knife at the ready. “Ah Sang, you caught him? Who is it?”
Tet Sang sat back on his haunches, letting the waitress go. She dusted herself off fastidiously.
“Nobody,” said Tet Sang. “Just a woman.”
Someone lit a torch and the scene blossomed into clarity—the groggy men rubbing their eyes and reaching for their weapons; the bald woman with her calm, infuriating smile.
“A nun,” the waitress corrected him. “A votary of the Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water.”
This was for the benefit of their audience. Tet Sang already knew it, and from the gleam in the waitress’s eye, she hadn’t forgotten this.
