Blue Dragon

Dismissed.
    I gently shook Kathy off, squeezed her hand, and rose. I didn’t look behind me as I went out and called the lift. The entire Academy was eerily silent.
    I took the lift to the top floor, went into my officeand sat behind my desk. I moved a few papers around and absently checked my email. I felt completely empty.
    Then it was as if a circus arrived outside my door. There was a huge commotion in the hall; people shouting. I raced to the door and threw it open; the entire lobby was full of clamouring students.
    ‘There she is!’ somebody shouted.
    A chorus of voices. ‘Lady Emma! Lady Emma!’
    ‘Whoa, whoa, calm down, everybody,’ I said as loudly as I could. ‘What the hell is going on?’
    Leo came out of the lift, followed by another dozen students who’d crammed in with him. He came to me and shrugged, smiling slightly.
    ‘What the hell is going on, Leo?’
    The stairwell door opened and John came out. He’d been in the training room directly below us with the seniors and had come up the stairs rather than the lift. He stopped when he saw all the students then came to me too.
    The minute the students saw John they all went quiet, fell to one knee, saluted, and pulled themselves silently to their feet.
    The three of us turned to face the students. They were crammed in the hallway in front of us, overflowing into the lift lobby.
    The lift doors opened and another dozen students tried to squeeze in.
    ‘Get to the lift and stop it, Leo, before somebody gets hurt,’ I said.
    Leo pushed through the students, pulled his wallet out of his hip pocket and jammed it into the lift doors, forcing them to remain open so that the lift couldn’t leave.
    ‘Do not for a minute think that any of you are staying,’ I said loudly, and the shouting started all over again.
    Silence!
    That worked.
    One at a time, alphabetical order, in my office. Whose surname starts with A?
    Five students raised their hands.
    Okay, in my office. Bs are next. Everybody whose surname does not start with B, return to your room. I will call the Cs, but I will do it by surname for the Chinese. Out. Now.
    Somebody pulled Leo’s wallet out of the lift and returned it to him, then the students silently took the stairs back down with the regimented discipline that we would normally have expected from them.
    ‘Whoever’s first, in the office, come on,’ I said, and young Cynthia Anderson came forward.
    John, Leo, Cynthia and I went into John’s office.
    ‘This is administrative, you don’t need me in here. How about I send them in for you?’ Leo said.
    ‘Good idea,’ I said, and John nodded. We sat around John’s desk with Cynthia, a very fair redhead from New York. ‘Well?’
    ‘My Lord, Lord Xuan, Lady Emma.’ Cynthia took a deep breath. ‘If I could, I’d like to stay—take a job here in Hong Kong, if I can, and learn off the seniors who are staying. Only once or twice a week, just to keep my skills up. I really don’t want to go home. I want to stay here.’
    ‘How many seniors are staying, John?’ I said.
    ‘All of them,’ John said. ‘Two-thirds of them are staying now. The other third,’ he said with a sigh, ‘will go home for a couple of weeks, then come back. They want to keep their skills up, and they want to stay here with us.’
    ‘Me too!’ Cynthia said. ‘Even if it’s only twice a week. Even if it’s learning from a third year. I want to stay!’
    ‘We’ll think about it,’ I said. ‘Your safety is paramount, you know that.’
    ‘My safety is entirely unimportant,’ Cynthia said. ‘I don’t care if I have to walk over hot coals, I want to stay here with you. Damn it, Lady Emma…’ Her voice broke and she pulled herself together. ‘My Lady. The Academy, the Mountain, the Folly, this is my home. The other students, you, Lord Xuan, Master Leo, you are my family. I’ll risk it all to stay here.’
    ‘As I said, we’ll think about it. Dismissed, Cynthia,’ John said, and leaned back to share a look with me. ‘Send the next one in.’
    It became apparent before we even reached the Cs that they all wanted the same thing. We didn’t have much choice. Even if we did send them home, they’d be on the first flight back to find work, find a place to live, and sneak into the Academy to learn from the seniors.
    Both of us were pleased, even though we were concerned for their safety. But we didn’t need to say it out loud. Words weren’t necessary.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
    A fter we’d