The Dung Lord looks up, surprised. "Not money? Not jade? Not opium?"

Hock Seng shakes his head. "A ship. A fast clipper. Mishimoto-designed. Registered and approved to transport cargo to the Kingdom and throughout the South China Sea. Under the protection of her Majesty the Queen…" He waits a beat. "And your patronage."

"Ah. Clever yellow card." The Dung Lord smiles. "And I thought you were truly grateful."

Hock Seng shrugs. "You are the only person who has the influence to provide such permits and guarantees."

"The only one who can make a yellow card truly legitimate, you mean. The only one who could convince white shirts to allow a yellow card shipping king to develop."

Hock Seng doesn't blink. "Your union lights the city. Your influence is unparalleled."

Unexpectedly, the Dung Lord forces himself out of his seat, stands. "Yes. Well. So it is." He turns and shambles across the patio to the edge of his terrace, hands behind his back, surveying the city below. "Yes. I suppose I still have strings I can pull. Ministers I can influence." He turns back. "You're asking for a lot."

"I give even more."

"And if you're selling this to more than one?"

Hock Seng shakes his head. "I do not need a fleet. I need one ship."

"Tan Hock Seng, seeking to restore his shipping empire here in the Thai Kingdom" The Dung Lord turns abruptly. "Maybe you've already sold it to others."

"I can only swear that it is not so."

"Would you swear on your ancestors? On your family's ghosts all walking hungry in Malaya?"

Hock Seng shifts uneasily. "I would."

"I want to see this technology you claim."

Hock Seng looks up surprised. "You haven't already started to wind it?"

"Why don't you demonstrate now?"

Hock Seng grins. "You're afraid it is a booby trap of some sort? A blade bomb maybe?" He laughs. "I do not play games. I come for business only." He looks around. "You have a winding man? Let us both see how many joules he can put into it. Wind it and see. But do be careful with it. It is not as resilient as a standard spring, because of the torque it operates under. It cannot be dropped." He points at a servant. "You there, put this spring on your winding spindle, see how many joules you can shove into it."

The servant looks uncertain. The Dung Lord nods agreement. A sea breeze rustles across the high garden as the young man sets the kink-spring on its spindle and settles on the winding cycle.

Hock Seng is suddenly seized by new worry. He confirmed with Banyat that he was taking one of the good springs, that it had passed QA, unlike the ones that always failed and cracked as soon as they started their winding. Banyat assured him that he should take one from a certain stack. But now, as the servant prepares to lean on his pedals, doubt flares. If he chose wrong, if Banyat was wrong… and now Banyat is dead under the feet of a crazed megodont. Hock Seng couldn't confirm one last time. He was sure… and yet…

The servant leans against the pedals. Hock Seng holds his breath. Sweat appears on the servant's brow and he looks over at Hock Seng and the Dung Lord, surprised at the resistance. He changes gears. The pedals turn, slowly at first, then faster. He begins cycling up through the gears as his momentum increases, jamming more and more energy into the kink-spring.

The Dung Lord watches thoughtfully. "I knew a man who worked at your kink-spring company. A few years ago. He didn't spread his wealth around as you do. Didn't curry favor with so many of his fellow yellow cards." He pauses. "I understand that the white shirts killed him for his watch. Beat him bloody, robbed him blind, right in the street, because he was out after curfew."

Hock Seng shrugs, forcing down memories of a man lying on cobbles, a ruined mess, broken already, begging for help…

The Dung Lord's eyes are thoughtful. "And now you work for this company as well. It seems like an unlikely coincidence."

Hock Seng doesn't say anything.

The Dung Lord says, "Dog Fucker should have paid more attention. You're a dangerous one."

Hock Seng shakes his head emphatically. "I only wish to reestablish myself."

The servant continues to pedal, cranking more joules into the spring, forcing more energy into the tiny box. The Dung Lord watches, trying to hide his astonishment as the process continues, but still, his eyes have widened. Already the servant has pushed more energy into the box than any spring its size should accept. The cycle whines as the servant pedals. Hock Seng says, "It will take all night for a man like this to wind it. You should take it to a megodont."

"How does it work?"

Hock Seng shrugs. "There is a new lubricating solution, it allows the springs to be tightened to significantly higher tensions, without breaking or locking."

The man continues to pour power into the spring. Servants and bodyguards begin to gather around, all of them watching with a certain awe as he cranks away at the box.

"Astonishing," the Dung Lord mutters.

"If you chain it to a more efficient animal-a megodont or a mulie-the calorie-to-joule transfer is nearly lossless," Hock Seng says.

The Dung Lord watches the spring as the man continues to wind. He is smiling. "We'll test your spring, Hock Seng. If it performs as well as it winds, you'll have your ship. Bring the specifications and blueprints. Your kind I can do business with." He motions to a servant and orders liquor. "A toast. To a new business partner."

Relief floods through Hock Seng. For the first time since blood washed his hands in an alley long ago, since a man begged for mercy and found none, liquor flows in Hock Seng's veins, and he is content.

13

Jaidee remembers when he first met Chaya. He had just finished one of his early muay thai bouts; he can't even remember who he competed against but he remembers coming out of the ring, people congratulating him, everyone saying that he moved better even than Nai Khanom Tom. He drank laolao that night, and then stumbled out into the streets with his friends, all of them laughing, trying to kick a takraw ball, drunk, absurd, and all of them flushed with victory and with life.

And there Chaya was, closing her parents' shop, propping up the wooden panels that secured the storefront where they sold marigolds and newly reengineered jasmine flowers for temple offerings. When he smiled at her, she gave him and his drunk friends a look of disgust. But Jaidee felt a shock of recognition-as if they had known one another in a past life, and were at last meeting again, fated lovers.

He had stared at her, stunned, and his friends had caught the look-Suttipong and Jaiporn and all the rest, all of them lost when the violet comb epidemic hit and they went into the breach to burn the villages where it had struck, all of them gone-but he remembers them all catching him staring, suddenly stupid with infatuation, and how they teased him. Chaya looked at him with a studied contempt and sent him stumbling away.

For Jaidee, it had always been easy to attract a girlfriend, some girl either pleased by his muay thai or his white uniform. But Chaya had simply looked through him and turned her back.

It took him a month to get up the nerve to return. That first time, he dressed well, shopped for temple offerings, took his change, and slipped out silently. Over the course of weeks he dropped by, talking with her more, establishing a connection. At first, he thought that she knew him for the drunken fool trying to make amends, but over time it became apparent that she had not made the connection, that the arrogant drunk on the streets that night had been completely forgotten.

Jaidee never told her how they first met, not even after they were married. It was too humiliating to admit to what she had seen in him that night on the street. To tell her that the man she loved was that other fool as well.