"Yes, best get dressed quick as you can.

Hurr--"

The fire alarm bell at the nearby Harbor Master's office began tolling, startling them. With sudden apprehension she smelt the smoke and heard the muffled shouts from outside and saw the glow through the window curtains and gasped, "We're on fire?"

"Not to worry for the moment but best get dressed quick as you can and come next door, I'll unbolt the connecting door." He hurried out. She slid out of bed. Under her peignoir she wore pantaloons and boned chemise. Hastily she stepped into her crinoline that was already laid out for her and picked up a shawl.

"She's all right, Tai-pan," she heard Jamie say as he unbolted the connecting door.

"She's getting dressed, let me help you downstair--"

"When she's ready."

Jamie started to say something, changed his mind, both of them still conscious of their lunchtime clash and neither prepared to compromise. He opened the window.

In the front garden and street below, clerks and servants were milling around, Vargas amongst them, onlookers and others from the various Legations gathering, but no flames that he could see.

"Vargas!" he shouted. "Where's our fire?"

"We're not sure, senhor, we think it's just part of the roof. Men with the fire captain are already there but Brock's upper story is alight."

Jamie could not see next door so he hurried back into Angelique's boudoir and pulled the curtains aside. Fire had taken a good hold of the front of Brock's--a two-story structure similar to Struan's--where the main bedrooms would be. Smoke billowed from the open windows. He could see teams of men passing along pails of water trying to douse the fire, Norbert Greyforth supervising--the Brock fire teams drilled as often and as ruthlessly as he himself had drilled Struan's. Whipped by the breeze, flames were being dragged with the smoke to reach across the gap.

Just my luck to be burned out by their godrotting fire, he thought sourly then leaned out of the window.

"Vargas," he shouted, "get men and water up here--douse this side! When we're clear, help Norbert." I hope the bugger burns and all of Brock's with him, that'd solve the stupid duel for all time.

There were no other fires that he could see from here, other than one far down the promenade in Drunk Town and two in the Yoshiwara. The smell of burning wood and oil and clothing and the tar that they used on the roofs overpowered everything though there was a taste of sea salt on the breeze.

Inexorably his attention went back to the flames from Brock's that sought them. The wind pushed the flames closer. He willed them to die, afraid of fire--the croft that he had been born in had burned one foul winter night when he was a child, his father dead drunk as usual and his younger brother consumed, he and his mother and sister barely escaping with their lives and little else, soon to go to the work house and vile years until they were rescued by Campbell Struan, kinsman of Dirk Struan, on whose land his father had toiled.

"Vargas! Hurry up for Christ's sake!"

"Coming, senhor!"

Now the promenade was packed, everyone in the streets ready to help and give advice, others with much shouting forming a water bucket line from the huge fire tank of sea water that was within easy reach, army units from the tented barracks joining the throng. Samurai were running towards them from the North Gate to help--any fire a threat to them also. Southwards, and on the other side of the canal, one of the Yoshiwara houses was burning brightly, more cries and alarm drifting on the wind, but that blaze seemed contained and not a major danger and, thankfully, nowhere near where Nemi would be.

The sweat was pouring down his back. He felt sick with relief that Malcolm was safe. Since lunch he had been brooding in his office, furious his search for prospectors had leaked, beside himself with worry over the duel, and his future.

Never once had he conceived he would ever be involved in such a quarrel, or be forced to leave the Noble House, or Japan, except for ill health or an accident, before retiring in five years at the ripe age of forty-four after twenty-five good years of service, rung by rung. Now, with Malcolm alienated, and Tess Struan furious with him, his promotion, retirement--his whole future was in jeopardy.

What to do, he had been worrying, then the shocks turned the world upside down, his precarious mortality had been rammed home to him again and then, when the jolts had ceased and he could reel to his feet, his glands and the memory of the debts he and his family owed the Struans had sent him scurrying upstairs, petrified for Malcolm's safety--after all he was in charge and this youth little more than an invalid. Tai-pan? Sorry, Malcolm, Norbert's right, your ma's in command. If you hadn't been wounded you'd have rushed back to Hong Kong when she said, none of this would have happened, you'd be taking over the reins and in a year or so you'd-- "Jamie... could you do me up?"

Blankly he turned. Angelique was standing at the doorway, back towards him, the front of the off-the-shoulder crinoline held up and the back open. For a second he almost shouted at her, That bloody dress's crazy for Christ's sake, we're on fire! But he did not, just hastily did up the top button and shoved a shawl around her and hurried her into the next room where she at once went into Struan's open arms. A team of men rushed past the open door with full buckets.

"Best get out, sir..." someone shouted.

"Time to go, Tai-pan, all right?"

"Yes." Malcolm went for the door as quickly as he could. With his two sticks he was slow-- disastrously slow had there been a real emergency which all three of them knew, Struan most of all.

Now there was tramping above them in the attics, men pounding, the smell of smoke worse, adding to their anxiety.

"Jamie, take Angelique out, I'll make my own time."

"Lean on me an--"

"For Christ's sake do it, then come back if you must!"

Jamie flushed. He took her arm and the two of them hurried out, men overtaking them with empty buckets, others staggering in with a full load.

The moment he was alone, Struan groped back to his chest of drawers, rummaged under some clothes and found the small bottle that Ah Tok had refilled this afternoon. He swigged half of the brownish liquid, re-corked it and put it in the pocket of his frock coat, sighing with relief.

Angelique swept down the staircase and out through the front doors. The clean air was welcome. "Vargas!" Jamie called out.

"Look after Miss Angelique for a moment."

"Certainly, senhor."

"Please allow me, Monsieur," Pierre Vervene, the French official said grandly. "I will escort Mademoiselle Angelique to our Legation--she can wait there in safety."

"Thanks." Jamie rushed back inside.

Now she could see that their roof was burning, not too badly at the moment, but not far away from their suites, the flames from Brock's still licking the side of their building. Well-trained samurai, kimonos tucked out of their way and masked against smoke inhalation, had ladders against one of the walls. Some scaled it as others with signs and shouts motioned men to bring buckets that were quickly handed to the topmost man who hurled them where they would do most good. An angry shaft of flame sought him but he ducked, covered his face and held on, then once more went back to fire fighting. She caught her breath, thinking how strong and brave the man was and how helpless Struan had become, how little he could do to protect her in an emergency, how he was more and more of a weight, more and more of an invalid, every day more querulous and less and less fun. What of my future? A tremor went through her.

"Nothing to worry about, Mademoiselle,"

Vervene said in French, a tassled cap covering his bald pate. "Come along, you're quite safe.