The others stepped closer, their faces trembling with excitement. They recognized that this was no tourist-shop knickknack. The workmanship was exquisite, the carvings fine, delicate.
"Where you get this?" the dealer demanded.
Zhang said nothing. He brushed a tear from one downcast eye.
"It is very fine," the dealer said quietly.
"It belongs to China," said Zhang Zingzong.
"It is mine now," the winner said, grinning.
"This is not fair!" Zhang burst out. "It is worth much more than pack of cigarettes!" As soon as he had said it, Zhang regretted his hasty words.
The dealer nodded to one of the others. He went into the back room and returned with the crumpled pack of Pandas. He stuffed them into Zhang's shirt pocket.
Zhang paid no heed. He was watching the dealer fiddle with the lid of the teakwood box. His blunt fingers pressing and worrying at different carvings, coming close to the secret catch, but never quite engaging it.
"How does this box open?" the dealer demanded, looking up in frustration.
"It does not open. It is solid," Zhang told him flatly.
The dealer looked back to the box. He shook it. It felt solid. Still, he refused to accept Zhang's word and resumed fingering the designs, seeking for the box's secret.
The catch click was like a knife in Zhang Zingzong's stomach. The lid popped up unexpectedly.
The dealer almost dropped the box, he was taken so much by surprise.
He peered into the box, his black eyes like oblique knife wounds in his waxy face.
Only the dealer was in a position to see the contents of the box. He saw them for less than a second. The image of the box's contents registered and his thin eyes seemed to explode like twin blasts of surprise.
This time he did drop the box.
Zhang Zingzong dived for it, his captured shirt collar tearing free with the violence of his lunge, leaving the man who had been holding him with only a ragged strip of cloth.
Zhang scooped up the box, pushed the contents back inside, and locked the lid in one breathless motion. He rolled out of the reach of grasping hands. A foot lashed out, scraping skin off his temple. The glancing blow barely slowed him down.
Zhang Zingzong plunged for a table. He upended it. The others recoiled from the crash of platters and flying knives and forks and chopsticks.
Zhang was halfway to the door when it suddenly opened and he found himself looking into the deadliest eyes he had ever seen.
They resembled gray agates, hard and clear. They were not Chinese eyes, although they were Asian. The face that served as their setting was like a parchment death mask.
Zhang stopped dead in his tracks, uncertain what to do.
"You are Zhang Zingzong?" the vision asked in querulous but flawless Mandarin.
"S-Shi," he breathed.
"I am the Master of Sinanju," the Asian intoned, lifting his arms as if in blessing. His draperylike sleeves expanded like wings. He resembled a monarch butterfly emerging from the chrysalis of a human mummy.
"I . . . I do not understand," Zhang stuttered.
"Know this, Zhang Zingzong," the being who called himself the Master of Sinanju said. "As long as you are under my protection, no harm will befall you."
Zhang Zingzong had nothing to say to that.
Behind him, the others were stepping around the upturned tables, their padding feet cracking broken platters into smaller pieces of porcelain.
A voice called out. The dealer's smoky voice.
"Who are you, old turtle?"
In perfect Cantonese, the Master of Sinanju replied:
"I have spoken my title. My name does not matter."
"This isn't your quarrel," he spat. "Go now!"
The Master of Sinanju beckoned to Zhang, saying, "Come to my side, Zhang Zingzong."
Zhang took a single step forward. A fist grabbed a bunch of his shirtback, stopping him.
"I cannot," Zhang whispered.
"Then I will come to you," said the Master of Sinanju.
And with a cry like a screaming bird of prey, the Master of Sinanju spread his monarch wings further and took to the air.
Later, Zhang Zingzong realized that the Master of Sinanju had not sprouted wings. But the combination of outspread arms and wild cry created the illusion of a descending winged creature.
Zhang recoiled in fear of the flapping apparition.
The fist at his back released him. A man grunted. Another screamed in pain. A table splintered under the sudden impact of a falling body. Glass broke.
Zhang looked toward the sounds. He caught a sudden vision of a man flying toward himself at full speed. The man's two converging faces met in a splintering of suddenly red glass.
The man had been sent into a wall mirror, Zhang realized.
Zhang straightened slowly, his jaw hanging open. All around him, his erstwhile captors sprawled in various states of ruin.
The butterfly-garbed Master of Sinanju stood before him, his hands seeking one another in the closing sleeves of his kimono.
"Who are these men?" he asked coldly.
"Cheaters!" Zhang said quickly. "They took all my money in a crooked card game."