by Jeannie Lin
“To provide support to allies sheltered in the concession,” Chang-wei replied stiffly, despite his earlier plan that I do most of the talking.
“While the Qing army mounts an attack from outside the city.”
“Yes.”
Hanzhu narrowed his eyes. “And how do the Yangguizi figure into this?”
The temperature in the room seemed to drop. I glanced between Yang Hanzhu and Chang-wei. Even Satomi, who had remained off to the side, straightened.
“The Westerners have remained neutral,” Chang-wei said evenly.
“So they say.”
Listening to the two of them speak, I was aware, more than ever, of how the Ministry of Science was an extension of the Ministry of War.
“If this plan doesn’t work, the imperial forces will need to find another way,” I pleaded. “A direct attack on the city will risk a drawn-out battle. There will be more suffering and death.”
“Soling.” I could see the tiniest cracks forming in Hanzhu’s hard exterior. “How did you become so involved in all this?”
His gaze flicked accusingly over to Chang-wei.
“The entire country is involved,” I deflected.
There were uprisings in the north and south on the mainland. The Taiping rebel army had taken Nanking as well as a string of major cities. Hanzhu had once declared that the empire deserved to fall, but I couldn’t believe he truly meant that. Not when the collapse of the Qing would come with so much bloodshed.
“You picked the wrong person to ask for help,” Hanzhu said bitterly. He and Satomi exchanged a look. “Is there anyone who isn’t hunting us nowadays? We’d need to navigate past the rebel lookouts, the imperial navy, and all of these cursed pirates who want to scrap my ship for parts.”
“I know you’re not motivated by money,” I began tentatively.
“What gives you that impression?” He patted the pockets of his waistcoat, searching until he found his cigarette case. “There’s not a single vessel in this fleet that doesn’t need repair.”
I took a breath, praying that Hanzhu wouldn’t be offended. “The imperial court will pay you handsomely with silver.”
He sneered, “The imperial court wants me thrown in prison.”
“Then perhaps there is something else you might consider. Something more valuable to you than money,” Chang-wei said.
I glanced at him in surprise.
“What is that?” Hanzhu asked warily.
“Amnesty.”
Outwardly, Hanzhu’s expression revealed nothing. He opened the metal cigarette case, seemed to remember he was near all kinds of flammable substances, and snapped it shut before shoving it back into his pocket.
“The empire has offered amnesty before in times when it was deemed beneficial to form alliances out at sea,” Chang-wei went on.
“I’m aware of the history,” Hanzhu replied coldly. A beat passed between them. “The Emperor has offered this?”
“I can propose it to him.”
“You.”
The one word said enough. How little Hanzhu trusted the empire. How little he trusted Chang-wei’s place within it.
Chang-wei nodded, as earnest as I’d ever seen him. “We once worked together for the good of our country.”
“I’d rather take the money,” Hanzhu declared with a sharp laugh. “But no amount of money is worth what you’re asking. I don’t deal in opium and I don’t work with foreigners.”
“But—”
He held up a hand to cut off my reply. “It was good to see you, Little Soling, alive and well,” he said while ushering us toward the door. “Please try to stay that way.”
I stared at the door. Hanzhu had shut it without a word of farewell, leaving Chang-wei and I standing in the passageway.
“Perhaps with some time,” Satomi suggested gently, having been herded out of the laboratory along with the two of us.
Chang-wei’s expression remained unreadable. Had he expected any different?
Satomi gestured toward the stairs, but I reached for the door instead. I slipped back inside the laboratory, pulling the door closed behind me.
Hanzhu had gone to the cabinets at the front. He was searching through the drawers, opening and closing them in sharp, agitated movements.
“Do you want to watch it all burn?” I asked loudly.
He stilled, his back to me. The Western jacket give him an angular, box-like shape. It was another layer of armor, of distance.
“You’re not doing this for profit, or even for revenge,” I pressed. “Is it just for the sake of watching everything fall apart?”
“That would be a rather empty pleasure.” Slowly, he turned to face me. “Why do you keep working so hard to defend the empire?”
“I’m not protecting the empire.”
“It destroyed your family,” he reminded quietly.
His mood had changed now that it was just the two of us.
“My family still lives in Peking,” I told him honestly. “My mother and my brother. We can’t all just go jump onto boats and drift about at sea.”
Hanzhu grinned, challenging my assertion with his smile alone, but there was something flat behind his eyes. Tinder without a spark to ignite it.
“The Qing Emperor doesn’t deserve your loyalty,” he admonished lightly.
“This is the world we live in.”
It was the world I knew, even if it was a flawed one. I wanted my family to not only survive but thrive within it. The rebellion brought its own kind of madness and its own injustices.
“What about your family? Aren’t you concerned for them?” I asked.
The Yang family had been involved in the salt trade for generations and ran a large merchant fleet. Hanzhu been a fugitive for ten years now, separated from family and country. He might be more comfortable than most at sea, but everyone had their limits.
Hanzhu’s smile disappeared. “My family will have no problem surviving regardless of who controls the empire. They were born of this kind of strife.”
“My family won’t be so fortunate.”
His eyes darkened. The rebels were taking cities and slaughtering the Manchu. Perhaps he could dismiss the bloodshed and suffering as unavoidable, but I couldn’t.
Hanzhu held my gaze for a long time before letting out a slow breath. “I don’t want to watch it all burn,” he said finally. And then, “How much silver are we talking about?”
Chapter 11
The exchange happened in the dead of night. The imperial ship landed upon the agreed upon location and unloaded the cargo on to the dock. A small team stayed behind with the enormous crates while the imperial ship sailed away.
By the next morning, Yang Hanzhu came in with his head ship and fleet to retrieve the goods. I was relieved to see Kai among the crew as they worked to load the goods. I didn’t recognize the others.
Chang-wei had disembarked to supervise the loading while I remained on board the war ship. From the size of the cargo, I imagined we’d be here for hours.
“Little Soling, off on another adventure,” a gravelly voice said behind me.
I turned around to see Liu Yentai, stout and covered in soot. Heavy leather gloves covered his hands and forearms. His mask and goggles were pulled down to reveal a wide grin. “That scoundrel Yang didn’t tell me you were on board.”
“Old Liu. I should have come down to see you,” I began guiltily.
Liu Yentai waved away my apology. “Everyone forgets the engine room when things are running smoothly, eh?”
In truth I was so occupied with negotiating our passage that I’d forgotten. Liu Yentai had been close to our family since before I was born. He took my side by the bow to view the activities below.
“Chen Chang-wei,” he said thoughtfully.
Chang-wei and his crew had rigged a pulley to lift the crates into the hold.
“That boy’s still in the Ministry,” Liu remarked.
Chang-wei and Old Liu got along well from what I recalled. M
uch better than Chang-wei and Hanzhu did. I imagined Liu was like a grandfather who looked upon all of us as children who needed to scrape up our knees, fight amongst each other, and eventually find our way.
“How is your mother?” Liu asked fondly.
“She’s much better,” I said and meant it. “She’s happy. Doing calculations again.”
“That’s what it would take,” he said with a laugh. “Do you know she was part of the team that built the first imperial airships? Not that she would know a thing about how an engine fires or what needs to be done to lift the structure. But if you stripped everything down to the numbers, she would know what would work and what wouldn’t.”
“Maybe one day she and you will be able to see one another again,” I suggested.
His cheerful mood immediately darkened. “I don’t think that will ever be.”
Liu had escaped Peking with Yang Hanzhu after the war and had stayed away from the mainland for a decade, preferring a life of exile. Even though he still wore his hair in the traditional queue, braided and wrapped around his neck like a scarf, he was as much of an outsider as Hanzhu.
“If only we’d been able to find her,” Liu said with a sigh.
“Find her?”
He looked back at me. I could see the pale outline around his eyes where the goggles had been. “On the day of your father’s execution, the Ministry was in disarray. I commandeered an airship and several of us planned to make our escape on it. Yang Hanzhu went to find your mother.”
I remembered that night. All of those memories were cloaked in darkness like a dream. Tian was only a baby. Our housekeeper, Nan, was holding him as she told me to pack our things. Mother was in my father’s study speaking with a man who had come to the house telling us we needed to go.
“Kuo Lishen,” I murmured.
“What?”
“It was Chief Engineer Kuo who came to our house that night,” I realized. “To warn Mother.”
“That bastard. He wasn’t Chief anything then. Just a do-nothing, know-nothing, rich and worthless egg of a turtle!”
I stared at Old Liu in shock. If my memories were correct, Kuo Lishen might have been a know-nothing climber, but he must have helped smuggle us out of Peking that night. Much later, we learned that imperial authorities had come that very same night and burned down our house. What would they have done to us if we had stayed?
A sudden thought came to me. “Old Liu, who else was with you in the airship?”
“There were five of us, all members of the Ministry. We needed enough people to operate the airship. For a while, we stayed together, but gradually went our separate ways. Those men were still young with their life ahead of them. They’d come from their hometowns to Peking. With the Ministry gone, they could still return to their families.”
Liu was reluctant to tell me more. Chang-wei was still part of the Ministry and thus loyal to the Emperor. By association, I suppose I was as well.
“We’ll have a chance to talk more soon enough as we sail for Shanghai. You can tell Old Liu all the news of Peking and what you’ve been doing,” he said cheerfully.
I nodded though it had been more than a year since I’d been in the capital. And I didn’t know what I could say about my life when we weren’t supposed to speak of the Factories to outsiders.
Thinking about the Factories, however, reminded me of something I was still trying to figure out.
“Do you know anything about this symbol?” I pulled out a paper from my pocket and unfolded it to show to him. I’d drawn what I could remember of the spoked wheel pattern I’d seen on the amulet that Little Guo had worn.
Chang-wei had suspected that the sabotage had come from one of his engineers. I wondered if it was possible that the rebels had infiltrated the Factories with someone from outside who had that knowledge.
“It looks like a wheel or a gear,” I explained. “I was wondering if it might be familiar to you.”
Liu merely frowned at the drawing. “Never seen it before.”
We were interrupted by Liu’s apprentice, a boy who’d grown quite a bit taller since I’d last seen him, at that phase when his arms and legs looked just a little too long for his body. He must have been sixteen years by now. Like Liu, he wore a leather apron and gloves with a face mask pulled down below his chin. They were nearly copies of one another, though the apprentice was now taller than his master.
“Master Liu.” He held a metal carrying case which I presumed contained Liu’s tools.
“Are you called Benzhuo or Congming nowadays?” I asked him. Liu was in the habit of calling his apprentice Clumsy or Clever, depending on his mood. I didn’t know if he had ever been given another name.
The boy, who was really a young man now, smiled at me shyly. “Still ‘Clumsy,’” he revealed.
“He’s always Benzhuo, this one,” Liu said gruffly. “We should be worried now that he’s taking on his own ship.”
“Just the engine room,” Benzhuo clarified for me.
“Just?” echoed Liu. “Running the engine is more important than being captain.”
There was some maintenance on the other ships they needed to see to while the fleet was ashore. I watched the two of them disembark, young and old. Old Liu might call his apprentice clumsy, but I see the pride in his eyes. What he said was true about the value of running the engine. With piracy and smuggling on the rise along the coasts, ships run on gunpowder or steam were the fastest in the water. The advantage of a good engineer who could keep things running smoothly could mean life or death.
The smaller vessels that had sworn allegiance to Yang had been fitted with gunpowder engines, but each one also required resources. There were constant repairs, parts for replacement, a supply of gunpowder, food, water. What used to be a single war junk under Hanzhu’s command had become a collective.
As to the imperial bounty on Yang Hanzhu’s head, the Emperor understood how the knowledge men like Hanzhu and Chang-wei carried with them were potential weapons. There was a similar bounty on Liu Yentai and any of the former Ministry members who were still known to be alive. The former Emperor had turned his back on learning and science and any advancement that had been deemed foreign. The ignorance had forced the people who could have saved the empire into hiding.
Or even worse. Into rebellion.
After several hours, our cargo was finally loaded onto the flagship. Chang-wei was coming onboard with Kai and the rest of our team when they were met by Satomi and Makoto.
“We’re here to escort you below deck to a holding area,” Satomi explained.
I hurried over to them. “Is this necessary?”
“It’s necessary.”
Beside her, Makoto didn’t move or speak, but I was more than aware that he was samurai, or former samurai, and was armed with two extremely sharp swords. Hanzhu was conspicuously off-deck.
“It will only be until we are underway to Shanghai,” Satomi explained. “There are logistics that need to be attended to beforehand.”
“I understand,” Chang-wei replied. When he met my eyes, his expression remained neutral.
The others with him didn’t appear to share the same sentiment, but Chang-wei was in command. Kai looked the most anxious of all. Makoto watched the larger man with an eagle eye.
We descended below deck and were ushered into a compartment. There were chains attached to the wall. At the sight of them, Kai turned to flee. Both Chang-wei and I had to reach out, a hand on each massive shoulder, to still him.
“The chains will not be used,” Satomi said gravely. “I apologize that this is how Yang-san feels he must treat even his friends. There is more light up here than down in the cargo hold.”
“How long?” I asked.
“Not long,” was all she would tell me.
They left, locking the door behind them. For a holding cell it wasn’t the worst. There was enough space for us to sit on the floor, even stretch out. There were six of us inside, with me, Chang-wei, Kai and the three
others who were assigned to this mission. I learned that the men had been staffed at the citadel and were part of the engineering corps.
Kai retreated to the corner, looking miserable.
I went over to him. “Are you afraid of enclosed spaces?” I asked quietly.
He shook his head. Shortly after the ship moved out to open water, I realized why Kai was so nervous. He suffered from seasickness. His complexion took on a decidedly green look as he sank his head onto his arms.
“He was this way the entire way to the island,” one of the engineers reported.
After knocking on the door, someone finally came and I was able to ask for preserved ginger from my medicine case. I didn’t know if it would help, but Kai took it from me with a grateful look before sinking his head back down.
Everyone else had settled into their spots in the cell. I went to Chang-wei who sat with his back propped against the bulkhead. He had pulled out his journal from his jacket, prepared to pass the time patiently in contemplation.
He glanced up as I approached. “It’s not so bad. I would have expected to be locked in the entire time rather than just for the time they need to replenish supplies. Yang likely has supplies stashed in an enclave somewhere and he doesn’t want us or any of his many enemies to discover it.”
“Is this what this is?”
“I’m almost certain of it. We’re going to make a run on Shanghai. We’ll need gunpowder.”
Hopefully it wouldn’t be long before we were released. I had spent a good deal of time at sea, usually on Hanzhu’s flagship. Though I didn’t suffer from seasickness, I did prefer the fresh air above deck whenever possible.
One benefit of the current arrangement was we that had a moment of privacy away from Yang Hanzhu and his crew.
“Would you really have petitioned for amnesty for Hanzhu?” I asked.
Chang-wei directed his gaze back to his journal. “He doesn’t want it.”
“But would you have pleaded with the Emperor on his behalf?”
“I would have tried.”
Chang-wei’s position within the imperial power structure was uncertain, but he had managed to convince the Emperor more than once. He was the one who had proposed an alliance to Japan. He was also the one who had submitted plans for the manufacture of the automatons.
