by Jeannie Lin
I didn’t believe him. He’d done nothing while my mother fled with my brother and I, hiding away in poverty and exile. But then again, for whatever reason, he had put himself in harm’s way to protect my mother just weeks ago.
“I know that you and Engineer Chen are close and I feel there is something you should know.” He leaned closer, offering a level of confidence that I didn’t welcome. “I have reviewed the accounts of what happened in that chamber several times, and there’s a question that I can’t answer. Aside from the Directorate, Chen Chang-wei was the closest one to the location of the explosive device. Yet he escaped any harm.” He paused, his black eyes boring into me. “Tell me, Miss Jin. How did he know to duck behind that desk so quickly?”
I nearly collided with Chang-wei outside in the corridor.
“Soling.” He looked me over. “What’s wrong?”
I stared at the container he had balanced in his arms. “What is that?”
“It’s a model. A re-creation,” he replied impatiently. “What’s happened? You look upset.”
“A recreation of what?” I insisted.
He let out a sigh. We were at odds, but I was still flustered from the conversation with Kuo Lishen. I wasn’t yet ready to accept that Chang-wei was being sent away.
“This is an acid timer mechanism,” he explained, tilting the box so I could see the glass vial attached inside. “This was how the perpetrators were able to build a delay into the explosive device. A strong acid is kept at the neck of this glass compartment. Once the acid dissolves this metal strip, the chemicals inside these two compartments will mix together—”
“You’re leaving,” I blurted out.
He looked startled. “For Shanghai,” he conceded, shifting the large container to keep it from slipping from his hands.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“There hasn’t been any time,” Chang-wei began, then stopped, his jaw hardening. “There never is any time for us, is there?”
He spoke quietly. His expression was the same thoughtful, serious one I’d come to associate with Chang-wei. His mind was always grinding away at something. I’d come to hope that, at least once in a while, his thoughts would come back around to us. The last time we’d spoken, he’d asked me to be his wife—and then nothing.
“Everything is happening very quickly. The delegation sent its recommendation to the war council and planning is already underway.”
Those weren’t the words I was hoping for from him. I bit my tongue, trying to listen as patiently as I could.
“Chang-wei,” I interjected. “Last time we spoke. You said…”
His skin flushed. “I know.”
For a moment, I had the wild thought that he no longer meant it. He’d reconsidered. He didn’t want me after all.
Chang-wei looked down helplessly at the unwieldy container before bending to set it off to the side on the ground. When he straightened at least we were able to face each other without any obstacles in between us.
“I know,” Chang-wei repeated, softer this time. His eyes darkened as he regarded me.
I didn’t realize I’d been holding my breath. “With you going so far away—”
He blinked at me, looking confused. Would he really leave with his question, the question, unresolved and hanging between us?
Suddenly the corners of his mouth lifted. “I won’t be too far. You’re going as well.”
“To Shanghai?” Now I was confused.
“Did you think you would be rid of me so easily?” he asked with a rueful smile.
He still hadn’t answered my question. Or rather, his question…the one he told me not to answer. But that was before. Did he actually want me to give him an answer now?
Chang-wei could be so frustrating. Maybe I didn’t want to marry him. I could figure it out if my heart wasn’t pounding so hard just being near him.
“Why would I need to go to Shanghai?” I asked. It was the simplest of the questions I had for him.
“Well, not quite to Shanghai. The city has been overrun by rebels and we’ll need help getting to the foreign concession through the treaty port.” Chang-wei looked very serious now. “And Yang Hanzhu has always regarded you more favorably than he regards me.”
Part II
The High Seas
Chapter 9
Ningpo was a bustling port city, a mix of languages and faces. Like Shanghai, it was one of the treaty ports that had been opened up to trade after the Opium War. I elbowed and shouldered my way through the crowd on the busy street, moving toward the teahouse on the corner. The unpleasant smell of sea and sewage hung in the air, and I was eager to find refuge. A passerby with sun-dark skin barked something at me as I brushed past. I couldn’t understand him and kept moving. He also didn’t pause. Politeness didn’t serve well on streets like these. One would get nowhere.
I’d studied up on Ningpo before arriving in the city. Ships from all manner of origins docked there. Goods, legal and illegal, were shipped or smuggled through the ports. Chang-wei told me it would be like Shanghai. I had been to Shanghai and, I could say this much at least, Ningpo was not Shanghai.
In Shanghai, there had been boundaries. Places that were Chinese and non-Chinese. In Ningpo, those lines had eroded. Its rules were its own. Ningpo might be on Qing soil, but a foreign landscape had been carved out of its streets. I was the interloper here.
The teahouse was crowded in the morning hour. I entered alone, ascending the wooden steps and weaving past patrons on my way to the upper floor. I was grateful to find a seat, newly vacated, next to an open window. No sooner did I sit down did a server arrive to pour tea. Now that I was at a safe and more calming distance, I took the opportunity to survey the street down below.
It looked just as bustling from above. In Peking and in Hubei, all countrymen were required to wear their long hair braided into a single queue. It was a sign of loyalty to the Qing. Here, there was no such rule. Men wore their hair in varying lengths and styles, some with hair shorn close to their heads and others in what looked like long tangled knots. Here and there, I spied the lighter coloring of the Western sailors, still such a strange sight to me.
From the high vantage point, I could at least breathe a little easier. The air was filled with a grit of salt and steam. I sipped my tea and looked to the stairs just as a graceful figure ascended to the upper floor. There weren’t many women in this area, which was perhaps why she particularly drew my attention.
The woman met my eyes. Without waiting for an invitation, she came and seated herself across from me.
“Soling-san,” she greeted.
“Satomi-san. You look well.”
It had been a year since I’d last seen Sagara Satomi. She was dressed in a mismatch of clothing, leather and silk with no sense of origin or conformance to fashion. Which was to say she appeared at home in Ningpo. The polished handle of a firearm protruded from her belt. Her skin had darkened, taking on a warm tone from days in the sun.
“I had to be sure it was you who sent the message,” she told me.
“I was expecting Hanzhu to come.”
“He still thinks this is a trap. Though he does send his greetings. His fond greetings, I was to say.”
The server came around again to set down another cup. Satomi left the tea untouched as she continued.
“I saw that you didn’t come alone. I spotted Chen Chang-wei situated just inside the front door wearing a rather…interesting hat.” Her eyes danced with amusement.
Apparently, Chang-wei and I made miserable spies. “He bought it from a trader from Macau,” I explained sheepishly.
“Your engineer is not one for disguise. He looks like an imperial agent trying not to look like an imperial agent.”
I blushed at the mention of Chang-wei as my engineer. “I assure you this is not a trap, Satomi-san. You and I have history together. Certainly, we can trust one another?”
She shrugged. In the past year she seemed to have picked up some
of Yang Hanzhu’s mannerisms.
Satomi and I had fled through the Nagasaki countryside together, fighting armored assassins sent by the shogunate. But, more importantly, Satomi had lost her father the same as I had. He’d been a trusted engineer to the Emperor of Japan, until he wasn’t. In many ways, we were mirror images of one another. Satomi had found her freedom, escaping to the seas. I, however, had spent the last year doing the bidding of the very powers that had executed my father. I was doing their bidding now.
I shook away the thought. “If I could just speak to Hanzhu.”
“He wouldn’t have sent me if he meant to refuse you, so tell me what it is you need.”
“We need passage to Shanghai.”
Satomi made a face at that. “Shanghai was captured by insurgents last year. What do they call themselves—the Small Swords.”
“The rebels only control the old Chinese city. We need to dock in the foreign concession.”
Her frown deepened. “An even more difficult feat.”
“Not for Yang Hanzhu.”
Hanzhu was considered a privateer in polite circles, a smuggler in less polite circles. He came from a wealthy family who had disowned him, from what I’d heard. After the war, Hanzhu had cut off his queue in defiance of the Emperor, but that wasn’t always who he’d been. Like Chang-wei, he’d served in the Ministry of Science under my father. He was a gifted alchemist and had a hand in refining the gunpowder fuels used to power the empire’s ships.
“Yang-san hates foreigners,” Satomi reminded me.
“You’re a foreigner,” I countered.
She didn’t flinch. “He hates the Yangguizi,” she corrected. “Though lately, he seems to hate everyone.”
I watched her expression. “How is he?”
Satomi let out a slow sigh. Taking hold of the teacup, she turned the porcelain cup in a slow circle without lifting it to drink. “A lot has happened in the course of a year.”
It must be lonely floating adrift at sea all the time. Yang Hanzhu was marked as a traitor by the Qing empire and Satomi could never return to Japan. They were both in exile.
“I wouldn’t ask this of Hanzhu if there was any other way. He may not care about the empire, but he was always close to my family. I’m doing this for them.”
“Family honor,” she murmured solemnly. “I remember what that was like. The sacrifices required to uphold it.”
“Will he see me?” I pressed.
“Is it just you and the engineer?”
I nodded and Satomi stood. “Yang-san will always see you.”
I tossed a coin on to the table and followed her to the stairs. Satomi moved with a long, confident stride which led me to believe she regularly frequented places like Ningpo.
Every table below was filled. The teahouse had become even more crowded since I came, but it was two spots near the door that drew my attention. Chang-wei was positioned at one table with his face hidden beneath a dark, wide-brimmed hat. Across the aisle, however, was another familiar face.
“You didn’t come alone either,” I remarked.
Makoto was one of Satomi’s countrymen who had also left the island empire of Japan when Chang-wei and I had made our escape. A year on the seas had given him a lean, careworn look.
I’d first encountered the swordsman in Nagasaki when Chang-wei hired him as a guide to smuggle us outside of the foreign section. His expression was one of quiet watchfulness as he surveyed the room. He and Chang-wei sat with two tables between them, quietly facing off against one another. Makoto acknowledged my presence with the tiniest of nods and stood to join us. His katana hung prominently at his belt.
“Chen-san,” Satomi greeted at the same time as she passed by Chang-wei before exiting.
Chang-wei and I had dressed as plainly as possible to try to disappear into the crowds of Ningpo. His jacket and robe were brown in color. Mine, a drab, chalky blue. But I could see what Sagara was talking about when it came to Chang-wei’s disguise. It wasn’t so much his manner of dress as it was his demeanor. Straight-spined with a sense of rigid formality. He certainly needed more than a large wool hat to look like he belonged in the squalid streets of the port city. I found it endearing.
“What is it?” he asked, seeing my smile.
“It’s nothing.”
He scrambled to his feet. “Is it done then?”
Outside the press of the crowd was once again upon us. I had to lean close to his ear to be heard.
“You know it’s never that easy with Yang Hanzhu.”
Makoto fell in behind us. For a moment it felt like old times, like it had been with the four of us in Nagasaki. Bonds formed quickly when you had to fight for your lives together.
Satomi made a path toward the docks. As we neared the customs house, we passed by a series of yellow decrees pasted onto the public wall. Rewards offered for known rebels and pirates, from what I could see. I caught the three characters of Yang Hanzhu’s name inked in red among them.
The waterfront provided a wider avenue, but was just as busy. A group of sailors passed by and Satomi slowed to catch the conversation before the sailors melted into the crowd.
“For a long time, Ningpo was the only port where the Shinajin would allow delegations from Nippon,” Satomi said over her shoulder. “There are still many trade ships that dock here from our empire. Makoto and I try to search for news, but sometimes it’s just a comfort to hear our mother tongue.”
“What news is there?” I had to practically shout to be heard.
“The gaijin were granted trading access in Nippon, but without the devastation of a war.”
Chang-wei had gone to Nagasaki a year ago hoping to forge an alliance, but our two nations were separated by more than a stretch of sea. Japan had been closed off to the outside for hundreds of years and both the Qing emperor and the shogunate were set in their ways.
The dock was filled with all manner of travelers. Unlike Shanghai, which had separated the foreign concessions into specific areas outside the walls of the old city, Ningpo was a stewpot mixture of seafarers. There were the lighter-skinned Yangguizi amidst darker-skinned traders from Macau. Regardless of clothing and origin, they all had the sun-baked and wind-swept look of those who sailed the seas. A mix of languages flowed into the ports where they all merged together to form a common language. The Canton dialect of the south seemed prevalent. Out of every five words, I recognized one.
“Passengers,” Satomi announced to a representative from the port authority, slipping a silver coin to him in the same breath. She kept on moving.
We navigated through the wooden docks to a sleek vessel with furled sails.
“Has Yang traded ships?” I asked. Yang Hanzhu had always sailed on a massive war junk.
“Yang-san won’t set foot in Ningpo,” Satomi replied. “Or any other port controlled by the imperial authority and especially not the treaty ports. He’s become more suspicious.”
“More suspicious?” I asked.
“He’s instructed me to bring you to him.” She regarded Chang-wei. “And you as well, Chen-san. But the only way to see him is to sail out with us.”
Chang-wei looked to me.
“It’s where he has the advantage,” I said quietly. “He won’t speak with us otherwise.”
He calculated the risks and came to a decision. “Out to sea then.”
Chang-wei stood beside me on deck as we watched the shore recede.
“I hope he can be reasoned with,” he said. “There are many lives counting on us getting to Shanghai.”
I couldn’t see how the plan was in any way reasonable. If we managed to get Hanzhu, a noted outlaw, to smuggle us into Shanghai, we would then have to collaborate with foreigners. All of this to re-capture the city from insurgents.
“I trust Hanzhu,” I told him.
Chang-wei took in a breath. “I don’t.”
Yang Hanzhu had saved our lives more than once. I didn’t understand the nature of the rift between them. They’d onc
e been colleagues and had referred to each other as brothers — though that may have just been a courtesy. Whenever Yang Hanzhu and Chen Chang-wei came face-to-face, there was an undercurrent of discord between them. Like two poles of a magnet refusing to come together. When asked, all they would tell me is that they disagreed on everything and always had.
Given that Yang Hanzhu had cut off his queue and declared himself an outlaw while Chang-wei still served the imperial court — these things were obvious signs of the greater rift between them.
Chang-wei continued, “My contact in Shanghai tells me the Small Swords have fortified the old city. The rebels made an agreement with the foreign powers to leave their territory in the concession alone as long as the Westerners don’t interfere. The ports in the foreign concession are still open for trade. In fact, they’re even busier now that the customs house is unable to levy any tax on their shipments. Our best chance of getting into Shanghai is through the foreign concession.”
“Your contact is that Yingguoren — Burton?”
I pronounced the foreign name as well as I could. Burton was a foreigner, nearly as tall as Kai, with square shoulders and a square face. He was pale-skinned with shockingly yellow hair. When I’d met him, it was the first time I’d seen anyone who looked like that. Whether Chang-wei considered him a friend or just a useful ally, I wasn’t quite sure.
“He’s not from Yingguo. He’s Meiguoren,” Chang-wei corrected. “American.”
I didn’t know if that was better or worse or all the same. We had never gone to war with Meiguo, but they brought in opium all the same, caring nothing for our laws.
“When we see Hanzhu, I think it’s better if you speak to them,” Chang-wei suggested.
“I’m not so sure about that—”
“It’s possible he’s sympathetic to the Small Swords in Shanghai, which would mean stop all negotiation immediately. And then, possibly, try to escape with our lives.”
