The little old Chinese with the rope neck didn’t open for me this time. Instead, a young Chinese with a smallpox-pitted face and a wide grin.
“You wanna see Chang Li Ching,” he said before I could speak, and stepped back for me to enter.
I went in and waited while he replaced all the bars and locks. We went to Chang by a shorter route than before, but it was still far from direct. For a while I amused myself trying to map the route in my head as he went along, but it was too complicated, so I gave it up.
The velvet-hung room was empty when my guide showed me in, bowed, grinned, and left me. I sat down in a chair near the table and waited.
Chang Li Ching didn’t put on the theatricals for me by materializing silently, or anything of the sort. I heard his soft slippers on the floor before he parted the hangings and came in. He was alone, his white whiskers ruffled in a smile that was grandfatherly.
“The Scatterer of Hordes honors my poor residence again,” he greeted me, and went on at great length with the same sort of nonsense that I’d had to listen to on my first visit.
The Scatterer of Hordes part was cool enough—if it was a reference to last night’s doings.
“Not knowing who he was until too late, I beaned one of your servants last night,” I said when he had run out of flowers for the time. “I know there’s nothing I can do to square myself for such a terrible act, but I hope you’ll let me cut my throat and bleed to death in one of your garbage cans as a sort of apology.”