by Daniel Fox
With the palace behind them and no one chasing, they were just three children abroad in the city, in the night. They might have been anyone, going anywhere. They had good and obvious reasons to shun noise and lamplight, to sidle into alleys and avoid company. No one who saw them would think twice, except to wonder if they could be caught and kept, or caught and sold.
Perhaps no one saw them at all, or else no one who saw them could be troubled to chase. They climbed the high valley side, and here might have been harder than escaping the palace; there was no wall but here the soldiers were watching for an enemy army, they had reasons to be alert. All their attention was bent on the horizon, though, they weren’t looking for anyone slipping out of the city. Or if they were, they weren’t interested in children. Perhaps they thought it made sense for children to be leaving. The edge of the city was like unhemmed silk: houses fraying into gardens, gardens into paddy. It wasn’t hard to slip between one house and another, to walk the paddy paths in moonlight.
Even so it was a surprise, at least to Pao, to get away unchallenged. The girls were almost unimpressed, so much they trusted him. It seemed more than half a game to them, ducking into shadow when he waved them down, scuttling forward when he beckoned them. If terror could keep them safe, then yes, he would terrorize them if he could. Until then, he would keep his terror to himself; and them too, hug them to himself in the secrecy of his heart, his terrified heart.
AWAY FROM the city and the road, almost lost among the shifting paddy paths, he supposed that they could talk now. It was still better not, though, for fear of voices carrying over flat water.
Besides, it seemed he had nothing to say.
These paths were too narrow to go side by side and hand in hand, as perhaps they all wanted to. Also he wanted to go first, in case they ran into soldiers—the emperor’s or rebels or the governor’s, it made no difference now—but if he walked in front he was always looking back to check on the girls, worse than useless. So they went in order of size, and smallest first. Shola led once again with Jin’s hands on her shoulders, eyes watching over her head; Pao came last, his hands on Jin’s waist for her comfort, his head peering around hers.
They might have looked foolish if anyone was watching, they were certainly slow—but they couldn’t go faster than Shola in any case. He could bottle up his impatience with his words, with his hope, with his fears. Step by step, bank by bank, path by muddy path they came to where they needed to be; and no one prevented them, no one threatened them, he thought it was a triumph.
He thought they had earned what they had come for.
Only now came the real adventure, now he really had to be a hero.
They wanted a boat, and there was no hope of taking one from Santung harbor, watched and guarded as it was by men and nature too, a tidal rip and a harbor bar. There were no boats elsewhere, anywhere else along the coast, except for here.
The goddess will see you safe, Old Yen had said. There was doubt in his voice, which was unexpected and not comfortable; but he said it anyway, and then he said it again. If you have one of her children with you, she will see you safe.
If they had a boat, perhaps. Perhaps she would. If they could get to sea.
THERE WAS the boat, Old Yen’s bastard boat. Much bigger than a sampan, barely smaller than a junk: too big for one to sail alone and yet he had, young Pao, he had done that, brought her all across the strait and beached her here.
She wasn’t on the beach now. He knew that. They had tried to sail her off a lee shore without Old Yen’s hand on the tiller, his eye on the sails, his voice whipping orders. Without the blessing of the goddess, Old Yen had said, but even he didn’t sound as though he meant that.
No surprise that they had failed. Ill conceived and ill made, she was a stubborn and contrary creature; she needed a stubborn and contrary master even at the best of times, in a good wind on fair water. She needed Old Yen. Pao could fake it, for a while, in the deep. Shallow seas had betrayed him; it was luck—or the goddess, perhaps her, he had best believe in her tonight—that had brought him and his boatload safe to shore.
The boat too, safe and whole. She rode at anchor, close offshore: waiting for a kinder wind, a bolder soul, fresh orders.
Not unwatched, of course. He knew that too.
Hunkered in reeds in the lee of a dune, he lay with the girls packed close on either side and peered forward.
A lamp burned on the boat herself, to show just where she swam. Closer at hand, a fire blazed on the beach. Half a dozen men squatted in its light, to show how outnumbered they were, Pao and his girls. A sampan—Old Yen’s own, that normally bobbed at the boat’s tail except when he had it hauled aboard—lay drawn up on the sand, close to the lapping tide and just in the flicker of the firelight.
Slowly, gently Pao pressed one girl and then the other more deeply into the shadows, stay here. Don’t move.
He felt Shola suppress a giggle, and waited for the urgent little nod that followed, I promise.
Jin looked at him, all solemnity and trust—and then she nodded too, independently of her sister.
Buoyed, he wriggled back down the landward slope of the dune and then scuttled behind its shelter, parallel to the shore until he was far from the girls, surely far and far from any chance of those soldiers spotting him.
Up to the brow again, and a careful look through tussocks of sourgrass. The fire was a fierce glow that couldn’t possibly find him at this distance; the boat’s lamp was almost invisible, just a shifting speck above the dark mass of the sea, a star that swayed in place.
Now his nerve almost failed. He had meant to slither down to the sea’s edge with all caution, and he almost couldn’t move.
In the end, he could only do it at a run: his arms pushing him upright, his legs hurling him stupidly down over rocks, no chance to see where he was putting his feet, just the glimmer of moon on water to draw him forward.
He was lucky again, or else he was watched over. Once he staggered, as one leg sank knee-deep into an unexpected rock-pool; once his foot slipped on salt-wet weed and he fell, tumbling, rolling. But he rolled on sand, and rose up unharmed, and plunged on.
At last bare feet felt the tickle-touch of water. The next step took him ankle-deep, the next up to his calf. He splashed on unheedingly, trusting that the long line of breaking surf would mask what noise he made.
A wave soaked him to the waist; the next lifted him off his feet altogether. A gasp escaped him, as much relief as anxiety. He waited for the rise of another wave, sighted the bobbing lamp of the boat and started to swim.
IT WAS a long, draining pull and he was tired already, but that was the tiredness of constant tension, trying to look every way at once, having to go slow where he most wanted to hurry. This was the weariness of honest work, and welcome.
He still couldn’t forget the girls, left behind and waiting. That would be worse than this, he thought: having nothing to do but wait, obliged to trust. He would hurry now if he could, but here too he was obliged to go slow. The goddess might gift him favor, but the sea was neutral. And heavy, so heavy. He heaved armfuls of water aside, he dragged himself forward stroke by stroke, he peered ahead and thought that the boat mocked him. Holding at the very limit of its anchor-rope, maybe even dragging its anchor, drifting farther away as he struggled to draw closer …
Not the boat, it was the sea that mocked; and all mockery is a lie. At last the hull loomed above him, and here was the anchor-rope to hold on to, to hold and gasp and shudder in the tide’s slow tug.
A wave slapped him in the face one more, one last time. Pao swallowed salt, gripped the rough sodden cable with rough sodden palms, heaved himself out of the water.
Wrapped his legs about the rope, wondered vaguely if he could be seen from shore and what the men would think, what strange creature was pulling itself up from the sea. He wished that the girls could see him and the men not, but that was impossible—though the girls would be looking and the men might not …
HAND OVER hand he hauled himself up, feeling water run out of his clothes, hearing the dribbles of it splash down like little betrayals.
No voices came at him, no cries of alarm—but one wary man aboard would be plenty. Drawing his blade in silence, padding barefoot across the deck, waiting for one weary boy to drag himself over the side. One swift blow, one dead boy, all hopes betrayed and the girls abandoned to a fate worse than any he had saved them from.
Even a skinny boy couldn’t fit through the hawse-hole where the cable ran. He had to reach up, one hand and then the other, lift his head into view.
Bobbing up at deck-level, blinking in the sudden lamplight, appallingly visible but half blind himself, needing time to squint the water from his eyes. He was almost waiting for the blow, or at least the glint of light on steel as it fell, his last moment of awareness because surely he wouldn’t feel the blow itself, the split of his skull before his ruined body fell back into the water …
NOTHING, AND nothing. He waited too long, not quite believing; still nothing. No blow, no voices, nothing.
They wouldn’t have left the boat abandoned. Why burn a light on an empty boat?
Whoever was aboard must be in the cabin, unless they were in the holds below. Pao took a breath, set his hands flat on the deck and lifted himself over the edge in one swift thrust. Rolled under the rail, felt the boat pitch a little beneath his weight but surely not enough to notice, not if you were asleep in the comfort of the cabin, he was a skinny thing and oh please let them be asleep …
Squatted on the foredeck there, stupid as a moth in lamplight, listening, listening:
hearing his own heartbeat, hard and brutal in the cage of his ribs, trying to hammer its way out;
hearing the drip-drip of the sea still leaving his hair, dropping onto the deck, trying to hammer its way through;
hearing the wind in the rigging, the sea against the hull, both slow and soothing and long-known;
hearing another sound, regular and inappropriate, unfamiliar.
Taking a moment to understand it, and then taking a slow and tentative breath, still wary, still listening.
That was the sound of one man snoring, in the cabin there.
Only the one …
IF THERE were others, they were not watching the deck. He was right there in full sight and no one called out, no one came.
Even so. He did actually need to move.
Eventually, he did.
Keeping low, scuttling like a beetle, he crossed to the open cabin window and peered inside.
There was a man, yes, sprawled on the bunk. Just the one, and not likely to wake anytime soon, to judge by the dark heavy bottle that lay on its side below his hanging arm. Pao was long familiar with such bottles, and the sour oblivion they blessed their owners with.
He didn’t quite believe that Old Yen’s goddess could actually arrange such matters, even on the old man’s boat, but still: this was perfect, ideal, and he wanted to be grateful to someone, and who else was there?
Besides, gratitude was not only owing, it might be politic. He had to go back into that puddle of light now. And take it away. Sooner or later, someone ashore was bound to notice.
Not scuttling now—pulling himself deliberately straight, indeed, walking into the light as though he was a man known to be aboard and not at all lying drunk in the cabin—Pao collected the lantern from where it hung by the steering oar at the stern.
He made his way up past the cabin, masking the light with his body as he passed the window, for fear of waking the sleeper with its dazzle. He made no effort to mask it from the shore. Let them see this; he was a dutiful man, making his round of the boat he had been set to watch. Or else he had heard something, forward: likely only a rat, but he was going to investigate anyway. The call of duty masked the call of the bottle.
Pao added a realistic sway or two as the boat rose on the swell, as she tugged a little at her anchor.
Here was the rise of the foredeck; here was the little door that gave access to the hold below. Pao lifted the latch and drew the door open softly, softly; he took a breath and ducked his head and stepped down into the dark and the dank and the ingrained smell of fish.
The lamp he carried did little to counter any of that. Its inquiring light only pointed up the depth of the shadows that closed around him; its small flame flared yellow in the salt of the air and couldn’t hope to work against the damp, like the breath of sea contained; the smell of oil only floated above older, darker smells, as oil itself floats on water.
Long before Pao was pressed into his service, when he must still have been just a fisherman with never a thought of emperors or rebels or dragons freed and risen, Old Yen had filled his holds with flotsam. The boat was legendary in Taishu-port for what had come out of it this summer, what salvage and what garbage.
Even so, not everything had come out. Old Yen had not given up all his treasures. He had been compelled to make space mostly for men going back and forth, imperial soldiers rescued or raiding-parties delivered ashore; and men can duck their heads and keep low. At first glance all his holds looked empty. Until anyone looked up.
All manner of things hung overhead, in old nets stretched between hooks. There were oars and beams and ropes in plenty, everything a working boat might need for jury-rigged repairs; there were casks and sacks and baskets, because Old Yen was still a fisherman when he wasn’t ferrying troops; there were lengths of ancient driftwood and other gleanings from the sea, that had no obvious use at all except in Old Yen’s mysterious mind.
Setting the lamp down behind him and reaching high, Pao could just unhook one edge of the nets hung in the forehold here.
He thought he could control what came down, slide out what he wanted, piece by piece …
HE WAS wrong about that. It was all held more slackly than he’d thought, and the things themselves were heavier. There was a sudden cascade, and nothing he could do but shelter his head in his arms, try to shield the lantern with his body and hope, just hope that this chaos of noise didn’t wake the sleeper, didn’t reach the shore, oh goddess, help me now …
PERHAPS SHE did. In the silence that followed the collapse, he listened for snoring and heard nothing, heard nothing, heard—
HEARD A snort and then a snore, and then more snoring.
HE LOOKED with satisfaction now on the jumble of flotsam spilling out of the hanging nets, across the floor of the hold. So much dry wood, so much rope and woven bamboo matting, it was just what he wanted. Not quite where he wanted it, yet. He seized a bundle of worn canvas and dragged it up the steps and out into the night, letting it unroll as he went. And followed that with loose coils of fraying cable, long splintered bamboo poles, anything he could haul out swiftly.
Satisfied, he uncorked the lantern’s reservoir and sloshed oil briskly over everything, wood and rope and bamboo. Pao’s first lesson from Old Yen had been what a hazard fire was aboard a boat, how careful he needed to be. He was the opposite of careful now. It was just as well that the old fisherman wasn’t called on to do this himself; it had been his idea, but it was Pao’s to do.
Pao spread oil as far as he could over the heap while he preserved the flame in the lamp; then he swung the lamp and tossed it in among the tumble in the hold.
And watched how the flame flickered, how it reached, how it caught and spread; how it took hold in the shadows and then reached out, oily ropes like wicks drawing it into the well of the boat, bright flame leaping, high and higher …
WHEN HE was sure, Pao slipped over the side again, swam to the anchor-rope again. Caught hold one-handed and hung there, treading water lazily while he watched for movement on the shore.
HE COULDN’T believe how long it took them to notice that the boat was on fire. Perhaps they had more of those bottles, perhaps they’d drunk themselves too into stupefaction? If so he was wasting his time here: wasting more than time, destroying Old Yen’s boat for nothing.
Cold undercurrents numbed his feet, his legs
. He swayed like weed in the turning tide, and felt the water drag his dreams away. He ought to climb back aboard, quick, do what he could to control the fire before it caught hold too deeply in the timbers of the boat, before all chance was lost.
LASSITUDE HELD him, unless it was despair. He did nothing but cling on, watch and wait. Even from here, with his head barely above water, he could see the fire reflected in the dark sea’s mirror, every washing wave carrying glints of it toward the shore. Oh, surely, surely one must carry far enough to notice …?
AT LAST, at long last one did. There was a sudden flurry of figures, the movement he’d been watching for: a stumbling run toward the dark low profile of the sampan. It was probably funny to see, their awkward urgency, if you were closer. If you didn’t care quite as much as he did, if you weren’t quite so cold. Don’t laugh, girls. Keep your silence, just this little more …
AS THE sampan dragged itself slowly through the surf toward him, he heard voices even through the water in his ears. Panicked voices, contradictory: what was best to do, what was the only thing. How this could have happened, how that sot Sung could have let it happen, made it happen, watched it happen and done nothing, nothing …
THEY ROWED the sampan clumsily to the well and scrambled up, barely troubling to tie on before they were over the side. Pao counted them aboard, all six of them, all that he had counted in the firelight ashore.
Perfect again. He made his slow way down the side, listening to their confusion—Sung must have caused this, knocked something down and dropped the lamp, and where was Sung anyway? Staggered off drunk, fallen overboard, where?—while he struggled to make his own limbs work as he needed them, just this little longer.
He unhitched the sampan from the boat, gripped her stern and kicked hard to set her drifting off. No one was looking, apparently; even so, he didn’t pull himself over the side until she was outside the fall of firelight. With luck they’d blame themselves, these men, and work the harder to put that fire out.
