by Jeannie Lin
I was fortunate the heat from the furnace hid any maidenly blush that might have touched my cheeks.
The engine room was sweltering by late afternoon. By then, the metalwork was nearly complete. The guards insisted we go above deck for fresh air before finishing up our work.
“I should bank the fire,” Chang-wei said just as the guards were leaving. They were already halfway up the stairs, eager to feel a cool breeze. Chang-wei rushed back to far end of the chamber to seal the furnace door.
His movements were so quick that I almost missed it when he jammed a nail into one of the engine’s gauges before moving on to join us at the stairs.
***
The sky was dark when we started our return to camp, and the commander was in a foul mood.
“I said sundown,” he scowled.
Around us, the trees had faded into dark, looming shadows and the buzz of night insects filled the air. I wondered why they didn’t light a lantern. We certainly had them with us.
Instead we picked our way nearly blind through the forest. Chang-wei once again pushed the wheelbarrow while I kept close to him. The commander took the lead while the other guards surrounded us on all sides.
The group paused as Chang-wei struggled to push the wheelbarrow over a rocky patch.
“Hurry up.”
“The ground is uphill this way,” Chang-wei said, breathing hard. “And my arms are tired from the day’s work.”
I knew to be ready. Throughout the entire day, we had exchanged signs. When we had been given the order to pack up, Chang-wei had dawdled as he reloaded our supplies so there would be less visibility as the sun went down.
“You, take the wheelbarrow,” the commander ordered. “Make it quick.”
The guard to our left came to relieve Chang-wei, and my muscles tensed. That was a break in the protective ring surrounding us. Chang-wei had told me to look for such an opportunity. He would create a diversion any moment now, and I had to seize the moment and run as fast as I could, no looking back.
I started moving as soon as I heard the crash of the wheelbarrow.
“Worthless dog—”
An unexpected cry came from the rear guard, and I froze at the vicious snarl that accompanied it. This wasn’t part of the plan.
Suddenly the guard was on the ground, wrestling with something large. “Help—”
His plea was choked off by a scream of pure terror.
The formation was completely broken. The other guards rushed to the fallen man’s aid. The beast on top of him tore at him, but there was something wrong, something very wrong with the sounds it was making.
I tried to run but could only stagger a few steps. My heart was pounding too hard to think. I saw the flash of a blade before it plunged into the creature.
The thing howled with pain. Then I realized why the sounds had paralyzed me. They weren’t the growls and snarls of an animal. They were cries of anguish, of very human anguish.
The knife plunged again. Someone sparked a lantern and a yellow glow flooded the area just as a hand grabbed onto me. I screamed.
“It’s me.” Chang-wei wrapped an arm around me. His face was streaked with dirt and he was bleeding beneath his left eye.
My heart sank. Our short-lived escape had failed.
The guards had surrounded us again, but their attention was on their fallen comrade who lay bleeding, a chunk of flesh ripped from his cheek. His screams split the air.
The creature that had been pulled off of him wasn’t a creature, but he didn’t resemble a man, either. He lay curled with limbs writhing as he struggled to get up. His body had wasted away to skin and bone, which made me wonder how he had the strength to attack so viciously.
He was still howling, a desperate, soulless howl as if his tongue had been cut out. When I saw his mouth, it was completely black like a pool of tar.
The guard who had wielded the knife now stood paralyzed as he stared at the thing before him. “What sort of demon is this?”
I clung to Chang-wei. Though the man was emaciated and his clothes torn to shreds, I recognized him.
“Gao,” I whispered brokenly against Chang-wei’s shoulder. My mind didn’t want to believe it. I didn’t want to believe any man could become like this, let alone someone I had known. And only in a matter of days.
The only culprit I could point to was the opium Gao had smoked. But how had he deteriorated so quickly?
The commander approached what was left of Gao with his knife drawn. When he ended it in one quick swipe, we all felt it was an act of mercy.
Chapter Twenty-five
“There was trouble yesterday,” Lady Su remarked the next morning as I once again knelt at her feet.
Chang-wei and I had stayed up all night building the mechanical boots as well as discussing Gao’s disturbing transformation.
“It was a madman who had become feral,” I said. “We were all shocked.”
In the confusion of the attack, I prayed no one suspected we had attempted escape at the same time.
“You tended to my man. The one who was injured,” she went on. “I’m grateful.”
“Anyone would have done the same.”
“But not anyone would have had knowledge of how to bind his wound. Or ease his pain.”
Something in Lady Su’s appreciative tone raised my guard. Rather than continue the conversation, I focused instead on attaching the steel frame of the enhancements onto the lady’s legs.
The final effect was a lightweight brace that ran along the backside of her leg down to the spring-loaded soles. Her feet were covered in silk shoes, with holes punctured into the fabric at the necessary contact points. The effect was more akin to jewelry than the original clunky design that had wrapped around her entire leg.
There were structural attachments at the knee and ankle and thin copper wires to connect the impulses from the acupuncture points to the metal frame. The boots would move with her, as if it were part of her own flesh and bone.
After testing the basic movement of her foot, I stood back. “Try to stand now.”
She braced her hands against her chair and pushed up. Her jaw was tight with anticipation, and I found myself holding my breath.
Lady Su took one step and then another and then stopped. I started toward her to check the controls when I noticed there were tears in her eyes.
“I haven’t walked like this, without pain, since I was a little girl,” she said softly.
She began moving again, walking from one end of the tent to the other. Her gait was steady and even. “No more tiny lotus steps.”
“Your weight is absorbed by the springs,” I explained. “You won’t feel anything.”
“I feel everything,” she disagreed. “I feel everything.”
For the next moments, she walked, turned. Even ran a few steps. She made a small jump and the springs adjusted accordingly. When Lady Su sank back into her chair, her eyes were bright.
“I used to love to run as a little girl. I was so fast, I could outrun my brothers. We used to race by the river, while I imagined tigers chasing me,” she told me, her voice thick with emotion. “You’ve given me a great gift.”
I felt a prickling sensation at the corners of my eyes but ducked my head quickly. “I’m very happy to do so.”
“You and your engineer as well, Miss Jin. Your skills are indeed very valuable.”
The feeling of unease returned. When I raised my head, the lady was regarding me with a thoughtful expression and my stomach plummeted. “Three days ago, you promised me—”
“I know exactly what I promised,” she interrupted. “I wouldn’t think to destroy such talent.”
“But you won’t let us go.”
“I can’t.” For a moment, she almost looked apologetic. “I know that you sense something is coming. Trust me when I say yo
u are safer here than you would be in Changsha.”
“Don’t try to convince me you are doing this out of kindness,” I muttered.
Chang-wei wouldn’t stand by while the rebels attacked the city, and I knew he couldn’t stand to live among traitors. Sooner or later they would force him to renounce his allegiance to the empire.
It’s death for me, he had told me.
“Let Chang-wei go,” I said. “And I’ll stay.”
Her eyes narrowed on me. “You’re willing to sacrifice yourself for him?”
“Chang-wei is only here because of me. He has no part in this.”
She shook her head gravely. “That isn’t possible.”
At that moment, a violent tremor shook the earth. I stumbled and Lady Su shot to her feet. The springs and stabilizing mechanisms within the boots adjusted, allowing her to maintain her balance.
“What is that?”
“Just an earthquake,” she said, maintaining her composure better than I.
The ground lurched again, and it was as if someone had pulled a rug out from beneath me. I fell to my hands and knees as the earth rumbled. The sound of it was louder than I’d ever experienced in an earthquake. I swore I could hear the shift and grind of rock beneath me. There were screams from outside, followed by a shout of “Fire!”
Despite the unsteady ground beneath her feet, Lady Su glided smoothly to a trunk beside her sleeping pallet. I wondered if it was our invention that gave her extra stability.
I paled as she pulled out Chang-wei’s firearm.
“I am making a mistake,” she declared, looking pointedly at me. Then she turned the gun around and held out the handle. In her other hand, she held the rest of our traveling pack with my needle gun as well as the bladed fan. “Go.”
I stared at her from the floor, stunned.
“Go,” she repeated. “My men are occupied with other things. I won’t send them after you.”
Rather than dissipating, the shaking had become more violent. Dragging myself to my feet, I took the gun from her and shoved it into my sash.
“Stay away from Changsha,” Lady Su warned.
She stood tall and straight, as proud as any warrior, and bid me off with a final nod. I stumbled from the tent.
Outside, the world was in chaos. A fire had broken out at one end of the camp. I realized with dismay that it was in the direction of the work tent that Chang-wei and I had shared.
With my heart pounding, I quickened my step only to be thrown sideways by the sway of the earth. I was tossed just as I’d been on Yang’s ship in the storm, but the trembling was unpredictable. I had experienced earthquakes before, but none that were so prolonged.
The inhabitants of the camp had come out of their tents, many of which had collapsed. Most of the men and women were too stunned to do more than crouch and wait for the shaking to stop. As I continued on, the smoke thickened and I heard shouts of “Get water!”
Several tents had caught fire. My breath caught when I saw that our tent was completely engulfed in orange flames. Chang-wei had lain down to get some rest before I had gone to present our creation. We had both been up the entire night. He was exhausted.
I couldn’t move. I tried to cry out to him, but my throat had constricted so tight that I choked on his name.
“Why do you look so heartbroken, Soling?”
The familiar voice sank deep into my soul and I spun around.
Chang-wei was there, standing immediately in front of me. “Let’s go,” he said, taking my hand.
He started running with me alongside him. I held on tight to his hand even once the rebel camp was far behind us.
***
We stayed away from the river where the rebels had positioned lookouts. Instead we moved deeper into the forest, using the trees and dense brush as cover. Occasionally there were slight tremors from the earthquake, but the shaking subsided for the most part.
“One might say it was divine intervention,” Chang-wei said, handing me back my travel pack.
Inside were my acupuncture case and clothes. Lady Su had returned our weapons, allowing us to defend ourselves, but my father’s box was gone. A pang of sadness hit me deep inside. I had so little left that had belonged to him. The puzzle box was something I could hold and touch, but perhaps it had served its purpose. It had led me to his two disciples; to Chang-wei and to Yang Hanzhu, who was now sailing upon the seas on his own mission of redemption.
As I slung the pack onto my shoulder, I realized something. “How did you have enough time to pack?”
Chang-wei met the question with a bland expression that I now recognized as him pretending to conceal something that he really wanted me to discover. “The capital is due south. We’ll need to move quickly.”
When I had left, my needles had been strewn all over the worktable. We had been doing final calibrations on the boots. Not only had he packed all of my belongings; he had packed his belongings as well.
“You set the fire,” I deduced.
A flicker of satisfaction crossed his eyes. “It wasn’t hard to smuggle enough gunpowder from the engine room.”
I had caught Chang-wei sabotaging the engine while we were using the furnace. I interrogated him about it now.
“All the gauges and sensors have been tampered with. The first time they attempt to fire up that engine, it will rapidly overheat and become unusable—if it’s able to run at all. I removed a few key valves as well. I couldn’t allow my work to be used by traitors.”
“I would hate to make an enemy of you, Chen Chang-wei.”
A small smile touched his lips. “That would never happen.”
I believed he truly could have escaped the Yangguizi if he had set his mind to it, even while across the world in London. Instead, he had remained to gain their secrets. I remembered that I had one of their weapons tucked into my belt. Having it in my possession made me uneasy, so I gave the pistol back to him. He opened the chamber. “I hope I’m not forced to use this.”
“Lady Su promised me she wouldn’t come after us. She has other matters to tend to.”
Grimly, Chang-wei hid the gun in the front of his robe. “Matters of treason and insurrection.”
We knew for certain that Changsha would soon be under attack. What we didn’t know was whether we could get there in time to warn the city. And even if we did, was it too late for us to stop it?
Chapter Twenty-six
Exhaustion came on quickly. I’d had little food and no sleep, and we were hiking through a wooded area where there were no paths to aid us. Though the rush of our escape fueled me through the morning, by afternoon I was walking in a trance. Chang-wei didn’t look much better. Over the last half hour we barely spoke a word to each other as we trudged forward.
We slept using the brush to conceal us, too tired to even designate one of us remain awake to keep watch. It was a small blessing that Lady Su hadn’t sent anyone after us as she’d promised.
Over the next two days, we traveled when we could and rested fitfully. Our journey was plagued by more earthquakes. There was one the next night and a few small tremors as we made our way through the forest during the day.
“We’ve had many in this area over the last few years,” I told Chang-wei. “They’ve contributed to the growing unrest among the villagers.”
Along with the string of dry seasons and bouts of famine, earthquakes were signs of ill favor from heaven. Lady Su wasn’t alone in believing that it was time for this dynasty to fall.
“Folk beliefs can be very powerful. Some are so strong, they attain the level of prophecy,” Chang-wei replied. “Do you know one of the earliest functions of the Ministry of Science was predicting where in the empire there had been an earthquake?”
Father had told me the story of the invention of the earthquake detector, the circle of toads or turtles or dragons, eac
h holding a brass ball in their mouths. I enjoyed hearing it again from Chang-wei. It passed the time and distracted me from the growl of my stomach.
“Whenever there was an earthquake, the ancient emperors would immediately dispatch a deputy to go investigate and assess what damage had been done,” he recounted. “These men certainly must have seemed all knowing, riding from the capital to the far provinces faster than news could carry.”
“Now the imperial court doesn’t appear so divine and all-powerful.”
Chang-wei wiped a hand over his brow. “We are the sorcerers and soothsayers now.”
But the engineers and scientists of the Ministry were far from all knowing. The Yangguizi held dominion over us in our own homeland, and we didn’t have the weapons to chase them out. Or perhaps it was the will to fight that we lacked.
What if our next ruler wasn’t crown prince Yizhu, or even a rebel usurper, but a conqueror from the West?
It was a soul-wrenching thought.
“We should have considered making mechanized boots for ourselves,” I remarked dryly to lighten the mood. “I can feel every step over these last days in the ache of my feet.”
“I can build you an automated carriage,” Chang-wei suggested.
“Better a flying machine.”
“With bones of made of twigs and wings feathered with leaves.”
I could only manage the barest of smiles, but there was a warmth building in my chest. A single candle in the darkest night seemed to shine so much brighter. That was what Chang-wei’s presence felt like to me as we labored on toward the walled city of Changsha.
***
The fortifications of Changsha emerged from the horizon like a sunrise. At first I couldn’t believe that we had finally made it. If I could have run to the gates, I would have.
Chang-wei stopped me as we came closer. “Is the city already under siege?”
