Chapter 2: Rui (part 1 of 4)

  The waiver form I had to sign—ink fading and paper yellowing from years of disuse—should have been my first warning to turn back. It was a rather erratic catalogue of verbose legalese that essentially amounted to screaming in my face: this is a very bad idea and you should not go through with it.

  The scribe at the Silver Crane Agency stared daggers at me the whole time I was filling out the form and signing my life away. She was a very thin, ageing Sindhughat woman whose neat, simple sari followed the silver-and-red colour scheme of the company uniform. Her pinched, emaciated face made me think I ought to have been seeing her at my day job instead, but when she spoke, her voice was clear and resonant. "I must reiterate, young man. This is highly unusual."

  I looked up and flashed her a sheepish smile before going back to a checklist of preexisting health conditions. I did my best to ignore her but the rebuke already had its intended effect, assuming that the intent was to make me more nervous than I already felt. If merely the paperwork could set me off like this, what hope did I have actually out in the field? A sheen of sweat coated my face and I wasn't entirely sure if it was due mostly to the muggy heat or my own anxiety. Occasionally, I had to pick up the pen to push my glasses back into place.

  "We use this form so infrequently, I couldn't even remember where we'd kept them," she continued, her voice growing a tad louder in her tireless effort to get me to say something ignorant so she could yell at me some more. "If Mr Seah himself hadn't vouched for you personally, I wouldn't have gone through the trouble of digging it out."

  At that, I couldn't help but look up again. Seah Choo-Kang, the legendary Lancer turned businessman and socialite—a bona fide celebrity of Temasek—had taken a personal interest in my tag-along mission? I knew he was the director of Silver Crane among his many post-adventuring pursuits but I hadn't expected that he would be directly involved in what I had assumed to be a trivial matter.

  "Mr Seah knows about this?" I asked, a little star-struck just from the idea that he had acknowledged my existence. "Is he here now?"

  The scribe scoffed. "I don't think you need me to tell you that Mr Seah is a very busy man. It's preposterous to presume he would take time out to see you off on your death wish."

  My excitement died as quickly as it had risen and was replaced by abashment. It had been a rather foolish question to blurt out but did she have to be so mean about it? I looked down again and filled out the rest of the form in sullen silence. Thankfully, the scribe seemed satisfied with her direct hit and kept quiet on her end as well. After signing my name several times on the last page with a heavier heart than I had a minute ago, I made to hand the form back.

  "You don't give that to me," she said sharply and pushed my hand back with surprising strength. "Go out into the courtyard. Second door to your left. You need to speak to our attorney next."

  "Do I really need to do that?" I exclaimed, taken aback. I was discovering today that there really was more drudgery to this adventuring business than meets the eye. "It's not like I'm about to break any laws, am I?"

  She gave me a withering look, reminiscent of ones I routinely elicited from my mother once upon a time. In her reply, she enunciated each word with painstaking care and precision, as if she were talking to a slow child. "It's free legal counsel. I suggest you take it."

  I didn't need telling three times. I nodded gravely and turned to follow her directions.

  The front office of Silver Crane Agency was unabashedly, perhaps even aggressively Luoyangese in its styling and architecture. Round red pillars supported a pavilion-shaped ceiling, from which hung several ornate lanterns. The furniture were of lacquered red sandalwood, many of them bearing intricately carved artwork. On the walls hung scrolls of calligraphy placed in symmetrical pairs, the characters distorted in the ancient style that—to my father's eternal disappointment—was illegible to me. In the centre of the room was an impressive, gold-plated statue of two cranes facing each other solemnly, bending their long, slender necks in a faithful recreation of the company's emblem. To my inexpert eyes, this piece really tied the room together, though I had to wonder, why not silver?

  In an age where it was becoming more and more fashionable for Temasekians to embrace the mingling of our four main ancestries and to cross-assimilate into each of our cultures, Seah Choo-Kang was evidently flamboyant in displaying his own heritage. I imagined he and my father would get along famously, and shuddered at the thought.

  I headed toward the double doors that opened onto the courtyard and stepped over the hefty doorsill, taking care not to touch it with my feet. Was I meant to step over with my left foot first or the right foot? The Buddhist custom my mother had taught me now escaped me, and I opted to offer a brief, silent prayer to the evil spirits to cover my bases. Even without looking back, I could feel the scribe's disapproval boring into my back.

  The courtyard was just as impressive as the front facade. It opened into a space that I imagined could fit several scores of adventurers swinging their swords and spears for demonstration. Behind the buildings across from me, I could see rows of trees extending farther out, suggesting there was an even bigger space likely used for training purposes. Silver Crane was reputedly the premier adventuring outfit in Temasek, and certainly looked the part at first glance.

  I turned left as per the instructions and walked toward the west side of the courtyard. The low-set buildings here also exuded the elegance of ancient Luoyang, with patterned windows and awnings lined with miniature lion statuettes. Upon closer inspection, I saw that each lion had a slightly different pose and expression. The pattern possibly repeated somewhere but it nevertheless showed an exorbitant amount of attention paid to details most visitors would never notice.

  I counted two sets of doors. The second set was slightly ajar. I walked up to them and paused, unsure what the correct action would be. This was still Temasek; I should have felt free to behave how I would anywhere else in the city, but the solemn grandeur of the buildings compelled me to search my mind for traditional customs I hadn't thought about in years. Do I knock? That somehow felt wrong. But what else could I do? Shouting for attention also didn't seem right. Eventually realizing how ridiculous I must look—standing there with my right fist held up to one of the doors—I finally made up my mind to go with the knock. Just then, the side of the door that was already ajar swung fully open, revealing a stout figure wearing a silver-and-red changshan and a bemused expression on his face.

  "Can I help you?" the man said in a deep, booming voice.

  "Hello," I said weakly, and noticed that I was still holding my fist in the air. I hastily put it down and produced the waiver form in its stead. "I'm signing in for my civilian tour. I was told I needed to speak to an attorney?"

  His face lit up. "Now that's something I don't see every day. Come in, come in."

  From his accent and dark tan, I guessed that the man was Hongtoonese. I was mildly surprised that someone of his hulking physique would be a lawyer for Silver Crane rather than be out in the field roughing it out with Maladies. I followed him into what was presumably his personal office, darker and significantly more cramped than the front office, with furniture that were just as expensive but less elegantly arranged. Stacks of paper filled shelves or overflowed on tabletops, with some even scattered about on the floor. I tried not to step on any loose pieces of paper before sitting down on a cushioned chair that was pointed out to me.

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  The attorney sat down with a thud across from me, resting his hands on yet more stacks of paper in front of him. Even when sat, I could feel his towering presence. He smiled amicably but didn't seem interested in speaking first. I hesitantly pulled up the waiver form again.

  "Uh, did you want to see this or...?"

  "Oh that? Just put it over here," he boomed, nodding his head in a general direction toward the desk. This gesture told me nothing of a specific landing spot so I just placed it on top of a pile of documents that appeared closest to the centre of the desk. As far as I could tell, he never looked at the form again for the rest of the meeting. Instead, he stuck out a massive hand toward me. "I'm Ihaka Tangaroa."

  I shook his hand, or rather, meekly offered my own hand to be swallowed up. It was a surprisingly gentle handshake.

  "Ruihong Tao. Please call me Rui."

  "Ahh, that's right, you're Lucy's brother, aren't you? Welcome, welcome."

  "Thank you. And thank you all for looking after my sister."

  "Are you kidding? We love her here!"

  "Do you... work with her much?"

  At this, Ihaka gave me a sly look.

  "What, you think because I'm a paper-pusher, I don't get to hang out with the talent?" he said, and I instantly felt myself blush. There was good humour in his tone, but I felt mortified all the same. What he said was almost word for word what I had thought but I hadn't expected it to be spelt out quite so bluntly. Seeing my reaction, he burst into a booming laugh. I took the opportunity to laugh along, as if I were in on the joke. But Ihaka stopped laughing almost as abruptly as he had started. Still wearing a big smile, he continued. "So, how's business? Kill anyone yet?"

  "What?" I gasped. It felt to me like a very strange way to carry the conversation, but I supposed the most direct way for me to be involved with a lawyer in my line of work would have to be by killing or maiming a patient. "No. Not yet, thankfully."

  Having spoken something that could prove to be an ill omen, I said another silent prayer to the spirits of my ancestors—something I did out of pure habit passed down by my parents.

  "That's a shame. What specialty?"

  "Radiology."

  "Ah, well, there's your problem, isn't it? Hard to kill someone just by looking at them."

  Ihaka chuckled at his own joke again. As amusing as he might find himself, he wasn't exactly correct in this. As a Radiologist, I had some authority on diagnoses, which of course meant that I could be held accountable for incorrect or missed findings that might lead to a patient being mismanaged. But I obliged him with another chuckle of my own. I didn't see a need to advertise my own dangers to society.

  "Don't mind me asking," Ihaka said, turning serious again at the drop of a hat, "but I'm just curious how you came up with the fees for this civvy tour? Hard to imagine it's even possible on a young doctor's salary."

  "Oh, I didn't have to pay, actually," I said, not yet realizing the gravity of that fact. "I brought it up with Lucy and she said to leave the rest to her. Why, is it that expensive? How much would it be normally?"

  "Depends on the quest of course, but for a high-risk hunt like this one, I think it's 10,000 taels."

  My eyes bulged, a chill ran through me, and I felt my heart race. Surely, I heard wrong. "Excuse me?"

  The lawyer let off another short burst of laughter at my reaction. "10,000 taels, mate. It pays to have connections, don't it?"

  Unbelievable. A thousand taels could buy an estate in the wealthiest part of Jurong. I couldn't even fathom what ten times that amount could buy. Apparently, at least one item eligible for purchase was a chance to tag along with adventurers on a deadly Malady hunt.

  "Between you and me, I think the fee is meant to be a deterrent more than anything. Not sure you can exactly put a market price on something like this. Mind you, that didn't stop a few rich and crazy folk from forking it over in the past, but the last one must have been more than a decade ago. It's honestly a wonder that Mr Seah even agreed to this, but he must have his reasons. Helps if it was Lucy that asked for it. Like I said, we love her here. You better not make her look bad!"

  Ihaka laughed some more while I continued to try and regain my wits. I already knew that my sister had taken well to her job but just how influential was she that she could help me waive a 10,000-tael fee? She and I had both been working for just three years but evidently, there were staggering differences in the marks we'd made in our respective fields.

  "Alright, alright, enough chatter. Let's get down to business," Ihaka said, once again dropping his laughter and putting on a serious look in an instant. "Did you have any questions about the form you signed?"

  I glanced at the waiver form that remained untouched since I laid it in the middle of the desk. To me, it had seemed like a standard legal document for its purpose, relieving Silver Crane of all liabilities in the event that I be injured or killed during the quest. I thought of the ones who had done this before, a decade or more ago as Ihaka had mentioned. As rich and crazy they very likely would have been, surely none of them were deluded enough to think that this undertaking wasn't without its substantial risks. So it wasn't really my legal position that I was worried about but rather my own resolve. "I do have a question, but not about the form. Do you remember... those guys who went on this civilian tour before, did they ever tell you why they did it?"

  The lawyer maintained his business face but there was a glint in the eyes he trained on me. "Oh, they probably did tell us, but I don't think it was anything all that memorable. I think one of them wanted the experience for a book he was writing? Another said she was doing it for her son, but damned if I can remember how that added up. But I suppose that's the point, isn't it? You don't put down more money than most people have seen in a lifetime, don't leave the comfort of your home to risk getting trampled by an Aurochs or have your neck snapped by a Mud-leaper... unless you're doing it for something deeply important to you, something probably only you can truly understand. Am I right about that, doc?"

  I didn't answer straight away, mulling over my own reasons for putting myself in harm's way. I worked at a hospital, and that meant I'd seen up close the kind of damage an Aurochs or a Mud-leaper could do to the human body, and I could feel myself going white at the thought. And though I didn't have 10,000 taels of my own money to spend, making this tour happen hadn't been without its costs, both professional and personal. Were my reasons worth the risk and sacrifice? I found myself nodding in reply, pale face and all. Across from me, Ihaka leaned forward slightly and spoke more quietly. "Are there any alterations you would like to make to the form?"

  I thought I knew what he was doing. He was giving me an out. He could rip the form in half right now, and I could walk out the door and go back to my civilian life, safe and sound. This was my second clear warning... to which I shook my head no, probably with more certainty than I felt. A moment passed between us and Ihaka nodded, his friendly smile returning.

  "Right, doc, that's me done, then," he announced while standing up, knocking a few documents off his desk in the process. I followed suit, though more carefully. "When's this quest of yours departing, anyway?"

  "Thank for your help, Ihaka. We're leaving in three days."

  "Right. In the meantime, don't work too hard, yeah? Keep yourself fit and rested."

  "Thanks, I'll try."

  This time, I was first to offer my hand. And though it disappeared again into the adventure lawyer's grip, I was convinced that this second handshake was firmer than the first one had been.