by Jeannie Lin
Kai barked orders to the two men who’d come with us. The three of them ran along the wall to reach the cage where they wedged their tools against the bars of the door, working to pry it open. I grabbed Po by the shoulder when he tried to run into the melee. He shot me a rueful glare but obeyed.
With no other inputs, the machine had started to circle, turning when it struck against the stone walls. It thrashed around wildly, whipping and striking its arms. Even blind, the thing was dangerous.
I tried to recall what I knew about the automatons we’d encountered in the island empire of Japan. There had been one programmed to act as a bodyguard. Its behavior was so controlled that I’d mistaken it as human for a long time. Nothing like this machine smashing through the courtyard. A guardsman ducked under a swinging arm and I caught glimpse of the orange glow in the center of the machine’s torso.
The automaton was powered by an elekiter device. Maybe if someone could break it…
Chang-wei must have been thinking the same. He retrieved a spear from the dirt, aimed it at the glowing heart, then charged. The tip of the spear stabbed into the device, sending sparks raining from it. The automaton went still. I held my breath. In the corner, Kai and the others had managed to wedge the cage door partially open.
Suddenly, the automaton whirred back to life. It struck the spear aside and charged after Chang-wei. I gasped as he disappeared from sight, trapped against the corner as the hulking machine advanced on him.
The guardsmen had scrambled to a safe distance and were attempting to reload their firearms. Desperate, I picked up a fallen brick and hurled it at the automaton’s back. My aim being as poor as it was, the brick barely glanced off the automaton’s shoulder.
Po was inspired to pick up his own brick. He ran into the fray before I could stop him.
“Ay!” the boy yelled, winding his arm back and throwing his brick at the back of the machine’s head. The metal ping could be heard through the yard.
The automaton paused, then turned around. I ran forward to grab Po and pull him aside as the metal arm swept overhead, narrowly missing me as I dropped to the ground. There was movement behind me. Glancing over, I saw that Kai and his crew had managed to free the engineers from the cage. The entire group ran back to the shelter of the citadel, but Kai broke away when he saw Po and I crouched in the dirt.
I shouted for him to stay back. The machine was swinging its arms blindly, searching for a target. All we needed to do was get out of its path, and we would be out of danger, but Kai didn’t know that. He ran forward and aimed the pickaxe at the automaton’s shoulder. The machine countered with a backhanded sweep that threw Kai halfway across the bailey. Kai thudded into the dirt. My stomach plummeted when he lay there, unmoving.
The commotion provided enough cover for Chang-wei to retrieve his spear. Gritting his teeth, he jammed the tip of the weapon into the socket at the automaton’s knee. The joint locked up, gears whirring as the machine lurched sideways. The entire thing toppled to the ground in a clang of metal. Chang-wei then scrambled for the pickaxe and swung it at the glowing elekiter in the center of the machine’s chest. He struck home once, twice, shouting in desperate rage with each blow until the device cracked in a shower of sparks. Finally, the orange light dimmed.
The whir of the gears cased. The smell of hot grease and burnt oil filled the air as the machine slumped onto the ground, now little more than a lifeless heap of scrap metal.
A long stretch of silence followed. Finally, Chang-wei lowered his pickaxe. With his chest heaving, he staggered towards the fallen engineer on the ground. Whoever it was, he hadn’t moved since I’d come to the bailey.
I rushed forward to join Chang-wei, slowing down warily as I passed the metal corpse of the automaton. The elekiter in the automaton’s torso remained cold and black.
When I came to stand beside Chang-wei, he had gone still. His face was void of any expression as he stared down at his fallen colleague. I only caught a glimpse of the body before I took Chang-wei by the shoulders and turned him away. He followed my lead like a carved puppet, his limbs heavy and lifeless.
I didn’t want to inspect the body, but as yishi, I had to be certain he was dead. Steeling myself, I looked back to the ground. The man’s skull was shattered, his face pulverized into a pool of flesh and blood. What remained was an empty cavity, much like the thing that had caused his death. I forced back the bile rising in my throat.
One couldn’t look too long at something like that without losing one’s mind. As brief as the glimpse had been, I couldn’t erase the horrid image. It would never go away.
Chapter 4
“Chang-wei.”
Chang-wei charged down the corridor as I called out to him. We had left the courtyard in disarray. Kai had regained consciousness quickly, which was a good sign. I suspected his ribs were broken and that he would suffer lingering effects of a blow to the head. He was able to walk well enough for the others to take him back to the infirmary. Another of Chang-wei’s engineers who had been trapped in the cage had suffered a broken arm.
Then there was the faceless man who lay dead.
“Engineer Chen! Chang-wei, stop for a moment.”
He didn’t stop. He shoved his way into a workroom and I stubbornly followed.
The room contained several workbenches covered in tools and mechanical parts along with a scattering of books and schematics.
“This is all garbage,” Chang-wei spat, shoving at the disarray. A pile of coiled wire fell to the floor.
I’d never seen him like this before. Chang-wei was typically so methodical and controlled. He grabbed at the papers now, stacking them into a pile until it toppled over. Unsure of how to react, I bent to retrieve the pages.
“Leave them,” Chang-wei snapped, his voice shaking. “It all needs to be burned.”
He fell back, brow furrowed and expression hooded. There was an uncommon wildness about him. A crack in the stone foundation.
“Was this sabotage?” I asked tentatively.
“No. It was all me. This is my failure.”
I tried to reach for him, but he sank down onto a stool and laid his head into his hands. It was frightening to see Chang-wei this way.
The skin on the back of one hand was discolored. “Let me see,” I said gently.
He tried to pull away, but I moved slowly and remained firm. I took hold of his wrist as if he were made of glass.
“It’s a burn,” I said.
It must have happened when he destroyed the elekiter device. Chang-wei turned his face away from me as I inspected the wound. He breathed hard, struggling to regain what little composure he could.
I glanced up. “Does it hurt?”
“We’ve been pushing hard day and night,” he choked out, refusing to look at me.
“I know.”
“There’s nothing to show for it.”
“It will be alright—”
“Liu is dead.”
I couldn’t find anything to say to that. Chang-wei took a shaky breath and, for the next long moments, there was nothing but awful silence between us.
“How long has it been since you slept?” I asked finally.
He turned to look at me. His eyes still had the dark and haunted look I’d seen before, but there was a wild light inside now. His fingers curled over mine. Without a word, Chang-wei pulled me close. Suddenly he was kissing me, his mouth closing hungrily over mine with a lost and desperate energy he’d carried with him from the bailey.
He circled his arms around me, but I was too startled to respond. Chang-wei was always in control of his emotions, but after everything that had just transpired, all of his control had been torn away.
Nothing about this felt right. I broke away from the kiss. “We can’t.”
He still held onto me, his embrace gentle now. “I know.”
It had been a long time since we’d last kissed and this wasn’t the way I’d hoped for it to happen.
Chang-wei’s eyes were c
lear as they looked upon me, though his expression remained troubled. Even when a knocking came at the door, he refused to look away.
“I can’t talk to them right now,” he said, his throat tight.
His hands fell away as I stood and went to the door. It was one of Chang-wei’s assistants. I spoke to him briefly before closing the door again.
I seated myself on a wooden stool beside him. “I told him you were assessing the problem.”
“The Directorate will demand a full account. I’ll have to go before them.” He rubbed a hand over his eyes. “Just not right now.”
“You should rest,” I said again, hurting for him.
His thoughts were fragmented. Every line in his face, his very posture revealed how exhausted he was. Down to the bone. I didn’t have any answers for him, but if Chang-wei didn’t rest he was going to break — if he wasn’t broken already.
“An endeavor like this should take years,” he muttered. “I pushed too hard. I lost control of it.”
“You need to rest,” I repeated firmly.
There was a sleeping pallet stashed in the corner. The engineers must have been working night and day. I unrolled it and set Chang-wei upon the bedding.
“The official review is just days away,” he protested, as I lowered his head down on the pallet.
I didn’t know what that meant. “Just a few hours,” I urged. “To clear your mind.”
He reached out to grab my hand as I rose. “Stay with me.” A hint of desperation crept into his voice. “I’ll sleep if you stay with me.”
It was inappropriate. Everyone outside knew I had followed Chang-wei into the room and there would be talk, but I was afraid of what would happen if I left. I lowered myself down beside him. His eyes remained open, watching me.
“I’ve failed, Soling.” His voice caught. “This entire mess is my fault.”
He took everything too personally.
“Sleep,” I implored. “You promised.”
He finally obeyed me and closed his eyes. Sleep didn’t come until a little while later, but it did come. I watched as the tension drained from him. His breathing deepened and fell into a heavy rhythm, even if his body never relaxed completely.
The Directorate was asking too much of him. The Emperor was asking too much.
His queue had fallen over his face, catching on the edge of his collar. I smoothed the braid away from his face. His brow remained creased as if he were still awake and searching for a solution.
I’d come to feel so much for Chang-wei. Even though we were no longer betrothed, I still cared deeply for him.
When I was certain Chang-wei was soundly asleep, I rose and went to the door. Po was hovering in the passageway to give me a report of what was happening. I sent him for bandages and ointment.
Chang-wei’s hand still needed tending to. Though a burn was the least of anyone’s worries, my thoughts were fractured as well. It would help me to keep busy. A minor wound was something I could actually treat and make better.
As I crossed the workroom to return to Chang-wei, I almost stepped on the papers he had shoved to the floor. I bent to pick them up, but the one at the top of the pile made me pause. The writing on it was unintelligible to me, but I recognized the language. It was the left-to-right snake script of the Yingguoren.
The paper was in Yingyu—in English, as they called it. The ink was still fresh.
I hid the paper with the foreign writing into the middle of the pile. It was dangerous having a letter like that around for the wrong people to find. Fear and distrust of Western ways had only gotten worse since the war. Foreign holdings within the treaty ports had grown in size and wealth, while civil war tore our land apart.
I was only able to keep Chang-wei away from the vultures for a few hours. He slept the entire time, as promised, even if it was a fitful sleep.
During that time, I applied ointment to the burn and bandaged his hand loosely. The skin had turned an angry red color. It would blister and crack but would eventually heal over several weeks. The worst of it would be the pain.
I was more concerned for Chang-wei’s mental state. I didn’t know if Liu, the engineer who was killed, had been a close friend, but that didn’t matter. Chang-wei was Head Engineer. He would claim full responsibility for all of the men in his charge, for better or worse.
From the sketches and models in the workroom, I could see all of the work that had gone into building the automaton. Unlike the rest of the staff, I had an idea what the various parts that were being molded and forged would eventually become. I knew of the hitokiri assassins and karakuri machines that had inspired Chang-wei’s design. I had been present when he had revealed his vision in grand fashion before the Emperor.
Chang-wei had proposed an army built of machines. Rather than sacrifice the lives of our countrymen, we would dispatch automatons, like puppets without strings, to fight in our stead. But the Emperor was so eager to have his mechanical army that the Factories were being pushed to the breaking point. The engineers in the citadel had taken unnecessary risks and they had paid for it.
Our people were still sacrificing their lives without ever setting foot on a battlefield.
Several hours passed before another knock came at the door. Inspector Hala came himself this time and I lacked the authority to send him away. Regardless, I braced an arm against the doorway and stood firm when he started to enter.
Chang-wei came up behind me. “Inspector Hala.”
His voice was rough from having just awoken. Hala’s gaze darted to Chang-wei then back to me. I stepped aside so Chang-wei could address him properly.
“The Directorate awaits your incident report,” Hala said.
“I’ll have the report prepared by first light tomorrow.”
“The Directorate would prefer you deliver a report in person. Immediately.”
A chill went down my spine. Chang-wei would be held responsible for everything that had gone wrong. Knowing him, he would insist on taking responsibility, but it wasn’t entirely his fault. No one person could claim sole responsibility for everything that had happened here, except for the Emperor and his Grand Council. Their unreasonable demands had ground everyone to the bone.
But that sort of talk against the throne was forbidden. I bit my tongue and prepared my retreat, ducking into the passageway and sweeping past Hala.
“Yishi Jin.”
It was Chang-wei who called after me. It was the first time I could remember when he’d referred to me in such a stiff and formal manner. Hala was still watching.
“Engineer Chen,” I replied in kind.
“Thank you,” he said, lifting his bandaged hand. He held my gaze for a long time after, even though the inspector was waiting.
As I turned to go, something unexpected happened. Inspector Hala caught my eye as well. Instead of the steely glare that I expected, he gave the smallest of nods. As if we were collaborators in a scheme.
Chapter 5
Two days later, I learned exactly what was meant when they spoke of an official review. Representatives from the imperial court were scheduled to visit Hubei. There would be someone from the Ministry of Science as well as members of the Emperor’s council, all anxious to check on the progress of their war machines.
Outside of the citadel, the work crews were pushed to get all the assembly lines fully operational. They removed broken equipment and scrubbed down or replaced anything with signs of fire damage. It was so much theater and all for nothing. What the imperial court wanted to see wasn’t in the factories, but at the citadel where the engineers had been working to assemble the machines behind raised walls.
On the eve of the official visit, I took my acupuncture case and made for the citadel. I told the guards at the gate that I was Zhuzhi yishi and needed to see Engineer Chen. After a brief delay to check on this and that, they let me in without much hassle. Why hadn’t I attempted this earlier?
Chang-wei was in the same workroom, though it had been tidied up, sw
ept and organized. To prepare for the imperial visitors, like the rest of the compound, I was sure. I cared more about how Chang-wei was doing.
“I came to check on your hand,” I said.
He lifted it with a questioning look, as if he’d forgotten it was still bandaged.
“If it heals improperly, you might lose feeling or mobility. That would be disastrous for our illustrious head engineer.”
The corners of his mouth lifted the slightest bit at my exaggeration. He appeared much calmer than the last time I’d seen him, though there was an odd stiffness about him.
He surrendered his arm to me then, stretching it across the worktable. I unraveled the bandage and held his hand gingerly in mine to examine how the burn was healing. The patch of ruined skin ran over most of the back of his hand and his fourth and fifth fingers.
Chang-wei’s fingers were long and dexterous. I stared at them, the memories of the last time I’d been alone with him in this room flooding back. When he’d kissed me as if he couldn’t help himself.
He was subdued now. So restrained that it made me wonder if my memories were even real.
“Is it bad?” he asked quietly.
“I have a salve to aid the healing. You should also apply oil as it heals,” I told him, avoiding his eyes. “It will help the new skin and keep it from tightening and scarring.”
“I have scars from another electrical burn,” he recalled.
I did look up then. His eyes were fixed onto me, searching and intense. He was referring to the marks on his chest. I’d used an elekiter device to restart his heart when it had stopped beating.
“I’m fortunate you’re always around to heal me.”
My heartbeat quickened. “This one isn’t so bad.” I focused on covering his hand with a new bandage, hoping he couldn’t see the flush rising to my cheeks. “You were the one that saved us.”
He’d run up to the automaton to disable it, even after seeing how easily it could kill a man.
His expression clouded over. “I didn’t save everyone.”
