by Heidi Heilig
My heart throbbed in my throat. Had I been struck blind? Blind and deaf; the silence was overwhelming. Then again, so was the smell, that cloying musky odor I’d noticed on the wind. There was movement too, an odd swaying of the ship. Then I heard Slate’s laugh: wordless, delighted. Had he seen it too—our distant shore, the same shore I had seen?
The fog was gone. As my eyes adjusted, I made out the glimmer of starlight above us and the silvery moonlit shine of the glassy water below, although I saw no moon in the sky. Then Rotgut swore. He lifted the lamp at the top of the mast. It wasn’t the sky I was seeing.
A hundred feet above our heads, the light of our lanterns was glittering back at us from a ceiling studded with diamonds. In this cavern, the sky was a bowl with stars stuck on it. I recognized the constellations . . . Orion, or—in China—the face of the White Tiger of the West. And Hydrus, the Snake’s tail.
I hadn’t seen moonlight on the calm sea; rather, we floated on a rippling pool of mercury, just as Sima Qian had said. Where the waves of quicksilver lapped the shore, our light shone on the skeletons of dying trees looming over piles of shriveled leaves on browning blades of grass. Far off, at the edge of the light, the gleam of red lacquer and bronze: the sarcophagus of Emperor Qin in the center of the blasted, barren terrain. We’d done it.
I’d done it.
I was so proud of myself, it took me three heartbeats to realize the ship was listing.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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The deck tilted starboard in slow motion; as the rudder twisted, the wheel spun. I grabbed for it, but it wrenched itself out of my hands. I clutched the base of the wheel and tried to haul myself to my feet.
“What’s happening?” Slate said, stumbling toward the mast and gripping it in both hands.
“The mercury!”
“What about it?”
“It’s denser than water!”
Bee had slipped down nearly to the rail, but she was arrested by her harness. Kashmir was the only one still on his feet. He sprang past me to pull himself against the port rail on the high side, but it was too little, too late. Creaking, the ship continued to tip.
I looked up at Rotgut in alarm. He was wrapped around the mast; even in the dim light I could see the whites of his eyes. The glow from the lantern he held brightened as the crow’s nest swung toward the wall and, with a crunch and a jolt, slammed into the stone. Rotgut cried out as the Temptation stopped there, the deck at a forty-five-degree angle. “My leg!”
I pulled myself up with the wheel; it didn’t budge in my hands. The top of the mast had snapped, and Rotgut’s knee was pinned between the platform of the crow’s nest and the rough stone wall. He was gripping the flesh of his thigh in pain, but he wasn’t moving, and I could see why. The slightest motion would send him scraping down the wall as the ship capsized.
“No one move,” I said, nearly afraid to breathe. “We need ballast.”
Slate closed his eyes. “I wish you’d thought of that before we got here.”
“Me too.”
“Is it poisonous?” Bee whispered, staring down at the silvery pool five feet below her. Her voice echoed oddly in the tomb.
“I . . . I don’t know. Qin believed it was an elixir, but—never mind,” I said. “Just let me . . .” I half-turned toward the hatch as the thought occurred, and even that slight motion made the ship slip sideways. Rotgut’s scream echoed in the tomb.
“Kashmir?”
“Amira?”
“The bag.”
“What bag?”
“The bag on the nail, the one I use to bail the bilge. Can you go down and empty it?”
He didn’t bother answering; he unclipped his jack line and moved along the rail, hand over hand, until he was in line with the hatch. Then he let go and slid down, catching the opening with his fingertips and swinging inside. Rotgut screamed again as he slid another foot down the wall.
We waited on deck, keeping our positions as though a gorgon had flown through. My palms were slick on the wheel, but I did not adjust my hands. I did not move a muscle but to tighten my grip until my arms shook. Rotgut sighed then, and after what felt like an eon, the ship began to tilt back aright.
As soon as I could let go of the wheel, I scrambled over to the mast. Slate was already loosening the halyard. I shimmied up toward Rotgut, slowly at first, but the ship was more and more stable. I grimaced as I came eye to eye with the side of his shin; it had been skinned from knee to ankle, and blood dripped down his leg and off his toes. He screwed his face into the semblance of a smile.
“It’s not broken. Looks worse than it is.” He wiggled his toes and then hissed through his teeth. “But it feels worse than it looks.”
The crow’s nest was smashed, but the pulley below it was intact. I clipped Rotgut’s harness to the halyard, and Bee and Slate lowered him to the deck. I climbed down after him, and by the time I’d arrived, Slate was using his shirt to staunch the blood. He looked up at me. “It’s like road rash.”
“You know I’ve never ridden a bike.” I wrinkled my nose at the sight of the wound; when daubed clear of blood, the scrape was the pale pink of the bottom of a rose petal. “There’s a first-aid kit in the cupboard under the desk.”
Slate put Rotgut’s arm around his shoulders and helped him stagger to his feet. “Come on. I’ve got some painkillers.” Rotgut laughed, and I made a face as they hobbled off toward the map room.
I found Kashmir downstairs, sluicing water from his bare arms. I picked up his shirt—he’d tossed it in a wet linen puddle on the floor—and wrung it out into the open hatch of the bilge. “Good job,” I said to him, tossing him the shirt.
“Quick thinking,” he replied, clapping me on the shoulder. Then he smelled his shirt and wrinkled his nose. “I think there was a dead whale in that bag. A small one, but still.”
I laughed. “Change, then. I know you have plenty of clothes.”
I went into my own cabin then, to get Joss’s map, but I stopped when I stepped in a puddle. The porthole was shut—the water had come from Swag’s bucket, upended on the floor by the starboard side. I grabbed it and swore; the little dragon was nowhere to be seen. I pawed through my things, but he wasn’t under my quilt or in my jewelry box.
My hands stilled, and I chewed the inside of my cheek. There was nothing else I could do. He knew where the pearls were when he wanted to come back. I threw a couple of dresses over the puddle to soak up the water and grabbed the map case, slinging it over my shoulder.
I joined the others back above deck. When I saw Kashmir, I shook my head, impressed. I was still bedraggled from the rain during our journey, but he’d even combed his hair.
I stood beside him at the rail. The air was chilly in the tomb, and it soaked into my wet clothes and curled next to my skin. Together, we peered into the dim gloom. Waves from our sudden appearance still rippled against the sculpted shore to portside, the representation of the coast of China, where the emperor rested in the central place of honor. His servants would be elsewhere.
All except one. His favorite.
“It’s very quiet,” Kashmir said.
“It is.” The sound of the water, the ship, our voices, all were swallowed by the darkness, and nothing came back out of it. Beyond the circle of light from the ship, there was no sign of life. The only movement here was our own.
Kash sighed and shrugged one shoulder. “Better than the alternative, I suppose.”
My head was still light from the thrill—or from exhaustion—but I could still clearly recall the map I’d used to bring us here. “The terra-cotta armies would be in a side chamber,” I said, crossing carefully to the bow. The sea of mercury was bordered by the stone wall; was that deep shadow halfway down its length a doorway? “We’ll need to row over there.”
Together with Kashmir, Slate and I stared at the dinghy.
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��It’ll tip without ballast,” Slate said.
“I know.” I wrinkled my nose. “It won’t be pleasant rowing in a tub of bilge water.”
“Tell me about it,” Kash said, shaking back his wet curls. “The bag is empty anyway. You don’t have a magic pocket full of lead, do you?”
“This might be the only time you’ll find me regretting giving up that aboriginal water toad.” I folded my arms and sighed, trying to think. “We need something very heavy.”
“Or a different boat,” Slate said. “Something flat, with more surface area. Like a really big tray. Something stable.”
Kashmir tapped his chin. “Could we take the doors off the hinges downstairs and nail them together?”
“We need an outrigger,” I said. Kash and Slate looked at me. “Like the Hawaiians used on their sailing canoes. Or a catamaran.”
Working together, we fashioned a crude outrigger out of the repair kit we kept in the hold. Laying one beam parallel to the dinghy, we attached it with two perpendicular crosspieces, one at the bow and one at the stern, and lashed the whole contraption together with sisal rope. Then we lowered the boat to the mirrored surface; it sat there as light as a leaf on a pond.
“Let’s be quick,” Bee said. “Ayen says it’s crowded here. The air is thick with spirits.”
I sucked air through my teeth. “Are they dangerous?”
She took a moment to answer. “No . . . they only miss the light.”
I shivered as a drop of cold water from my damp hair trickled down my neck and ran down my spine. Slate laid his hand on my arm, his face serious. “Kashmir and I can go. Rest if you’re tired.”
“Rest?” I couldn’t keep the disbelief off my face. “And miss this?”
The captain squeezed my shoulder. Then his brow furrowed. “What is that, there?” he said, tapping the leather case on my shoulder.
I hesitated. “A map.”
“Of what?”
“It’s 1886. Joss gave it to me.”
His eyes narrowed. “Chinatown? The Great Fire?”
“She asked me to bring it here.”
He dropped his hand to his side, tapping his fingers on his thigh, his eyes distant. “It’s odd,” he said finally.
“What is?”
“I found that map rolled up inside another one.”
I almost asked which one, but then I realized I knew. “The Mitchell map. The Sandwich Isles. The one you arrived on first.”
He nodded, his face grim once again as he stared out into the shadows on the bronze shore.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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Kashmir climbed down into the dinghy, and I followed after him. The rowboat bobbed a little when I settled in, but the modifications made it very steady. I was put in mind of those pond striders, the water-walking bugs. I let Kashmir man the oars. He shipped one, laying it in the bottom of the dinghy, and pulled the other out of the oarlock to use like a paddle, with two hands, leaning in and pushing through the mercury first on one side, then the other.
We sculled along toward the massive stone wall, and I closed my eyes to better see my memory. “According to the map, this central part of the tomb is rectangular, with canals leading out in each cardinal direction. Along either side of the canals are the rooms where the warriors are.”
“Why are you whispering?”
I opened my eyes and kicked him. The boat bobbed, and I froze for a moment. Kash had the decency to stifle his laugh. “The soldiers seem quiet so far, but I don’t want to press our luck,” I said, my voice low. “The story is, they guard Qin’s riches and his actual . . . person.”
“So, his decaying body?”
“Yes. Don’t touch it.”
“Wasn’t going to.”
“And don’t take anything.”
“You’re no fun.”
There was indeed an arched doorway, twenty feet high, midway along the wall. Kash turned the boat toward it, and as we approached, the light from our lantern illuminated the damp stone, which was marred at even intervals by sooty black streaks above the burned-out oil lamps. But the lamps could not have been dark long. I smelled the scent of sweet oil and bitter flame, cutting through the sour odor that seemed to permeate my very skin.
“There’s something wrong.”
Kashmir froze in midstroke, beaded droplets of quicksilver dripping from the oar. “Care to elaborate?”
“In the legend, Sima wrote the lamps would burn forever, and they’re out.”
“It makes sense, amira. There is not enough oil in all the world to burn forever.”
“No, I know, but in the myth, they’re supposed to last. So were the trees, but they’re dying too. Then again . . .” I bit my lip. “Sima didn’t draw the map.”
“Who did?”
I was, nervous, for some reason, to say it aloud. “I think it was Joss.”
“Ah.” We sculled along for a moment in silence. “So. Do you suppose she believed the soldiers would come to life? Or that they were no more than fancy pottery?”
“But why would she have sent us if . . . ugh, that’s a stupid question.”
“We’re here now. We might as well check.”
Our little boat passed between two huge archways that opened onto rooms where matching junks were moored, their beautiful red lacquer sides studded with gold coin-shaped reliefs. The masts were rigged with silken sails, ready for the terra-cotta sailors who manned her ebony deck.
“That’s lucky,” I murmured.
“Hmm?”
“If this works, we can tow one of the junks back with us and use it to get into Honolulu Harbor,” I explained. “The Temptation is pretty recognizable.”
Beyond those chambers, there was another opening, this one smaller and set above the waterline with stone steps leading up. Kashmir pulled us near enough for our light to crawl inside; painted pottery horses stood, hitched to chariots cast in bronze. They were absolutely immobile.
“Wait,” I said as he dipped the oars. I lifted the lantern higher, inspecting the shadows at the corner of the doorway, and then I flinched.
“What?”
I pointed. Starkly lit and edged in shadow, I could make out a bloated hand, reaching through the doorway toward us, as though in supplication. That was the source of the smell. We were breathing in the dead.
“A grave robber?” Kashmir pushed us off from the bottom step.
“No . . . Qin had the artisans who built the tomb buried with him, along with his chief officials and . . . and his favorite concubines.” I took a shallow breath; the air was heavy, suffoating. “The exits were sealed with tons of earth.”
“But Joss escaped.”
“Yes.” I took another breath, the strap of the leather case tight across my chest.
Kashmir and I continued down the waterway, passing a space made up like a stable, with more horses and foals tended by terra-cotta grooms. Next we saw a room filled with replica officials holding clay tablets and scrolls to tally up the emperor’s riches, then a chamber of clay concubines, every delicate face cast in an everlasting smile . . . a smile that seemed familiar to me. In the lap of one kneeling form lay the head of a dead artisan, as though he’d laid down to rest.
In the dim light, I could just make out two huge bronze doors at the end of the quicksilver canal, cast with reliefs of dragons ascending to heaven. Debris was piled high at the base of the doors, the mercury pooling and seeping through the rubble—no . . . not rubble. As I stared, I recognized the shapes of heads and hands, arms and legs. Bile rose in my throat. The masons and artists, the tile setters and painters, the sculptors and plaster workers and carpenters and gardeners who had used the best of their skills for the glory of their emperor had found their way here, to die before the bronze gates cutting them off forever from the country they had re-created in this necropolis.
My heartbeat was fluttery, irregular
. Was Joss really here somewhere, holding on? Should I look for her?
What was she eating?
Then I gasped and pointed.
Immediately, Kash raised the oar like a club. “What is it?”
“Something’s moving!”
“Where?”
“Look, the ripples!”
Both of us stared at the surface of the mercury; the rocking of our own boat had marred the patterns, but after a moment he saw it too—a trembling V, something small swimming toward us.
“Wait . . . is that . . .” Kashmir lowered the oar, and a moment later, Swag’s reptilian head popped over the edge of the boat, quicksilver beading on his gold scales.
“How did you get out here?” I said, my voice hoarse with relief. He didn’t look to have suffered from his swim, and the mercury slid right off. Still, I reached out to him gingerly, and he clambered up my arm to settle on my neck. “Stay,” I said, hoping he would obey.
“I see soldiers,” Kash said then, pointing toward the last doorway on our right. I stroked Swag’s smooth scales, hot against my skin, as we bumped against the steps.
Kashmir lifted his lantern. The light threw crazy shadows, but everything else was still: the taller generals, the kneeling archers, the straight-backed spearmen. My legs shook as I climbed out of the dinghy, careful not to touch the mercury.
“Hello?” I said, my voice swallowed by the closing dark, my breath purling in the air. “Ni hao?” No sound returned but the dripping, far away, of a trickle of water. The silence of the dead was the sound of despair. I reached for Kashmir’s hand and stepped through the door.
Although they all stood in straight rows, no two warriors were alike. Every face was different: fierce determination, boredom, pride. Their uniforms varied as well, painted in greens and blues, pinks and lilacs, bright colors with no single soldier the same as the next. They held real weapons, fine swords, spears with bright bronze tips, graceful wooden bows. All were still, but every stony gaze was almost lifelike. Almost.
I stood face-to-face with an imposing general, his armor washed with Han purple, his hair pulled into a high knot. The lamplight gleamed dully in the painted orbs of his terra-cotta eyes. I moved on to an infantryman and rapped my knuckles on his hollow chest. It sounded just like a flower pot. None of these statues displayed the slightest interest or inclination in waking up and walking about.
