“Don’t ask me. I didn’t understand half of Shifu’s teachings.” Yao mimicked their master’s unflappable tones. “Do not do. To go up, first look down. The perfect square has no corners. What does all of it mean, anyway?”
“That we haven’t achieved the Way.” The sense of failure smothered Wei like a familiar old blanket. “That we’ve wasted our master’s time and dishonored his teaching.”
“Nonsense.” Yao waved away the conclusion with an ease that Wei could only envy. “You take everything too seriously, which has always been your problem.”
“This is who I am. I don’t know how else to be.”
“If you want to be something different, do something different.”
Wei frowned. “I don’t recall that maxim from Shifu’s teachings.”
“That’s because he didn’t come up with it.” Yao slapped his chest. “I did.”
Wei’s reply was cut off by a roar rising from the crowd. One of the arm wrestlers had defeated the other, and people were cheering or groaning, depending on how they’d placed their wagers. The winner strutted around the table, flexing his brawny biceps as he took his lap of victory to the chants of, “Ha-rold! Ha-rold! Ha-rold!”
“Who’s next?” A slim ginger-haired man threw the challenge out to the crowd. He gestured to the pile of money on the table. “For a mere crown, you can wrestle Harold the Hammer for a chance to win this purse!”
“You should do it,” Yao said in an undertone. “The winnings could pay for equipment at the clinic, and you could beat that fellow without blinking an eye.”
Wei ignored his shidai. He had no interest in participating in tavern games.
Others didn’t hesitate, however. A cove stepped up, big as a mountain, with a ragged scar running down the side of his neck and into the collar of his shirt. Beneath his bushy salt-and-pepper hair, he had a craggy face and deep-set eyes.
He slapped the required coin on the table.
“Name’s Jacob,” he said in a deep, rumbling voice. “I’ll wrestle with you.”
He and Harold the Hammer took their places at the table. As Harold made a show of stretching his arms, Jacob rolled up his sleeves…and Wei’s heart pitched into his ribs. For an instant, he didn’t trust himself, wondered if it was an illusion. Like a mirage a lost traveler in the desert conjures out of desperation.
“Blimey,” Yao whispered. “Do you see what I see?”
The tattoo twisted like a vine up Jacob’s forearm. It wasn’t an exact replica of the one Wei had glimpsed on his enemy, but the pattern was undeniably similar. Similar enough to be inked by the same hand.
This Jacob could be a link to my foe.
Wei was on his feet, Yao at his back as he strode to the table. He shoved past several men who grumbled, but whatever they saw in his face made them back down. He got next to Jacob, his blood rushing as the similarity between this tattoo and the one he sought was even more pronounced up close. The creeping vines and leaves were nearly identical; in place of the deadly nightshade flowers, however, this man had crosses on his arm.
Wei reached to grab the other man and found himself held back.
“Patience, shihing,” Yao said softly. “If you start a brawl, we’ll have to take on the entire tavern. You don’t want to risk losing the cove in the melee.”
Wei realized that Yao was right. He nodded, forcing himself to breathe, to think.
“Take your positions, fellows,” the ginger-haired man said.
Harold and Jacob planted their elbows on the table and clasped hands.
“On your marks. Ready, set…wrestle!”
The shouts of the audience were deafening as each man struggled to gain the upper hand. Yet for Wei, the sounds faded to nothing. His mind grew quiet, his focus sharp. He saw only the man named Jacob whose forearm bore the key to finding his family’s killer. Jacob’s face was ruddy with exertion, sweat trickling down the deep grooves of his forehead. His tattoo slithered and quivered like a live thing as he fought to bring down his opponent.
The men’s hands moved a fraction in one direction, then in the opposite way. Their muscles straining, they glared at each other, jaws clenched. On the outside, they appeared equally matched, but Wei knew who would win. He saw it in Jacob’s gaze: the glinting assurance of a cat playing with a mouse. It allowed him to plan his own trap.
Seconds later, Jacob slammed his opponent’s hand down on the wood.
In the ensuing explosion of groans and cheers, Jacob took his lap around the table. When he returned, Wei was waiting for him. He eyed Wei up and down, and a slow sneer spread across his features.
“Want to play, Chinaman?” he taunted. “For you, it’ll be a pound for a chance to win this ’ere pile o’ blunt.”
