Red Bamboo's jolly face is a grinning theatrical mask while he has the dagger to my throat.
"RED BAMBOO." Abora leaps up, catlike, her dexterity as a musician and dancer on full display. "After all we have done for you!"
"Pretty words are sugar to a man who is starving," Red Bamboo hisses.
I wish I could come up with some snarky postmodern superhero line about how he sounds like a fortune cookie factory threw up. But, with a dagger to my throat, I just sit there.
He mocks me, grinning, looking like a Chinese opera villain. He could audition for the part of the Joker in the next Batman movie. "Is this the emperor that faced down Ao Yin and Baphomet and Lamashtu? No wonder the Consortium thinks they can seize your inn."
Daji stands, giving him the benefit of her full height. "I wish we had thrown YOU into the river and let you choke on milk and honey. You do not touch what is mine."
"Oh, back off, you tarted-up demigod," he says in that slasher-movie-villain voice.
