Call of Fire

by Beth Cato

  She stroked the leather casing, her fingers leaving streaks in the gritty mud. She felt an intense longing to know what was inside.

  Ingrid glanced up and gasped. Lee was approaching. The police officer walked beside him, his glower as dark as the clouds.

  Chapter 3

  Ingrid angled her body away from the approaching policeman and tucked the leather-wrapped object beneath her coat. She fumbled to find the drawstring at the end and yanked it through her obi. A second later and she had it knotted in place. The rain fell heavier, but not heavy enough to immediately wash mud off the sleeve of her new slicker. She grabbed her digging plank and with a quick swipe knocked a cabbage free just in time.

  “Look, Master Sato! We haven’t had any fresh vegetables aboard the airship. Don’t these cabbages look wonderful? Officer, is it all right if I take one?” She punctuated that with a bright smile.

  “Leave it, girl,” he snapped, whisking her away with a gesture.

  “I’m sorry, Officer,” said Lee. “She’s always after me to eat more vegetables, but I didn’t think she would start raiding gardens to acquire produce.”

  Lee’s light tone evoked a slight chuckle from the policeman. “You’d be better off at the market. I wouldn’t trust anything here. Could be poisoned.” At that, Ingrid dropped the cabbage for dramatic effect, though she’d have much rather chucked it at the man’s head. “Now move along. This stew may very well start to boil.” He jerked his head toward the crowd, expression grim, then moved back that way.

  The unearthed object was as warm as a cat against Ingrid’s thigh, its presence almost stroking at her senses. What was it? It was not magic, not as she had encountered it. No, this thing felt . . . holy was the only way she could think to describe it.

  As she followed Lee back to the sidewalk, she wondered if she should put the object back. The Chinese had almost certainly been the ones who buried it, but would they be back here again? Would they be able to take any belongings with them? The officer said the lot would be rebuilt as soon as possible.

  Guilt gnawed at her. Ingrid wasn’t sure if she was saving something for the sake of the Chinese or thieving from them as so many others did.

  “Those people on the street saw you near the vegetables and started complaining,” Lee muttered. “I managed to get the officer to come over instead of the mob. What the hell were you doing?”

  Ingrid was suddenly grateful for the presence of the surly officer. She glanced back. The Quakers had formed a protective barrier as the Chinese continued to rest and eat. The crowd of onlookers had grown and formed a thick wall of black hats.

  The standoff would not end well.

  “I found something buried in the garden. Something powerful. That’s all I really know. If we can find a park or someplace private, we can unwrap it and see. I don’t want to take it all the way to the airship in case you think we should put it back.”

  Raindrops trickled down Lee’s cheeks as he nodded. “I think I saw a park a few blocks this way.” He motioned up another street and they started in that direction. “I found out a few things from that woman. Uncle Moon was here. Briefly. His group made it out before all this.” He jerked his head toward the burned city street.

  “How was Mr. Sakaguchi? Was he conscious?”

  “I don’t know, Ing. Not like I had the chance to ask that much. Uncle Moon has a reputation for his lingqi, and he’s very recognizable. The woman I spoke with wishes that he was still somewhere close by so that he might be able to visit the prison and heal some of the more gravely injured people.”

  “Would that even be allow—”

  “Of course not.” Lee kicked a stone with enough force to send it bouncing across the road. “She’s cold and she’s soaked and she probably has broken ribs, judging by how she held her side. Others are hurt worse. She has to . . . she has to hope someone will help them, someone other than Quakers who will probably be burned out of the city by the end of the week.” He rubbed at his face. The water on his skin wasn’t raindrops. “And it’s not just here. This is happening everywhere. We just . . . we want a home, you know? Someplace safe. A roof overhead. Food. Family and friends nearby. Is that really too much to ask for?” He looked at his hands as he formed fists. “I feel so useless.”

  Emotion choked Ingrid’s throat and she couldn’t speak for a moment. “You’ll be able to help them somehow,” she said softly.

  “Help them. God.” He shook his head. “Do you realize what you’re saying? It means bringing the full war here to America. My home, the only home I’ve known. It means the Chinese strike back and everyone suffers for it. Women, children. Those brutes back there who ached to scalp some pigtails. Those Quakers.” Lee looked at Ingrid, and she knew he was thinking of her, that she could be hurt or killed, and they were all too aware of what the ripple effects of that might be.

  Past the curved rooftops, she could see the tall trees of the park. Pavement ended. They padded through mud that was packed mostly solid. “There’s something I need to talk to you about, too. Something important.”

  “Isn’t everything important now?” He sounded too damned old and jaded. Anger and sadness caused her to blink back tears. Lee didn’t even need to shave yet. He was a child. He shouldn’t be carrying this burden.

  “This is especially important. To both of us.” She shivered, even as the strange object continued to warm the inside of her coat. “Have you ever heard of the Gaia Project?”

  “No, I don’t think so.” They stopped under the dry overhang of a building at the edge of the park. The windows were dark, the structure empty.

  Ingrid took a deep breath and she told him about the other bundle of letters that Mr. Sakaguchi had hidden for her—not the ones from Papa. The ones about the Unified Pacific’s covert plan to crush China. She explained that Cy was really an Augustus, a scion of the infamous Augustinian Company that developed the best new weapons of war. Cy had known how to disable a Durendal tank because he had designed it, and deserted the Army & Airship Corps when he saw firsthand what devastation it caused. Lee’s face turned as impassive as stone.

  She confessed that when she and Cy attended the opera the night before the earthquake, it was so they could covertly speak with Cy’s father. The two hadn’t been together in over a decade. George Augustus had known very little about the Gaia Project, only that it was a weapon that required power from an unrealistically large piece of kermanite.

  “Like the kermanite that was stolen by the Thuggees?”

  “Yes. That was why they tortured Papa to provoke the terrible earthquake, and also used him to channel the energy from the seism into the stolen kermanite.”

  “Ingrid, why are you telling me all of this now?”

  She took a deep breath. “The UP got ahold of Papa in the Hawaiian Vassal States back in January. They took him to China soon after. They . . . used . . . him to start the Gaia Project.”

  Lee stared at her. “January? You’re trying to say that Peking . . . that was him? That was the Unified Pacific? Both those earthquakes?”

  She nodded, unable to speak.

  Lee leaned on the wall as if suddenly dizzy. “Hundreds of thousands were killed in each quake. If you add in those who died of exposure and starvation afterward . . .”

  “Papa caused that. Unwillingly. But he still caused it.” Ingrid took a breath. “Lee. If Ambassador Blum catches me, she will use me the same way. I hate telling you this, but you must know. If she finds us, then you need to . . .” She tapped the center of her forehead.

  Lee’s head jerked up. “What?”

  “You know what I mean. You’re the only one who can do it. Cy wouldn’t be able to. He . . . I . . .” She couldn’t say aloud her fantasy of a future with Cy. “Fenris . . . well, Fenris would want to dismantle the whole plan the way he tears apart a machine, try to find some other way—”

  “That’s not a bad thing!”

  “If Blum has me, there’s no time to dawdle, no time to analyze. That me
ans it’s on you, Lee.” She hated the words. She hated throwing an even greater burden on him. “You used Mama’s revolver to hold off the gunman after Mr. Sakaguchi was shot. You’re carrying that other gun now, I bet. Promise me you can do this.”

  “Damn it. Don’t ask this of me.” Grief twisted his face.

  “It’s only as a last resort.”

  “And when you died, what would that do to the nearest Hidden One?”

  “Papa’s pain caused the two-headed snake to experience pain. When the snake ate him, that agony . . . stopped.”

  “I better have good aim, is that what you’re saying?”

  “I hope it doesn’t come down to this, Lee. I don’t want to die.”

  “Good. I don’t want you to die either.”

  They both exhaled shakily. Ingrid lifted his cap to ruffle his damp hair. He was almost as tall as she. “Do you think this is a good spot to open up that parcel I dug up?” she asked, wanting to change the subject. “Looks like no one’s in the park today.”

  “That’s probably because this isn’t really a park.” Lee motioned around the corner. She looked.

  “Well, no one’s being buried today.” The building they used for shelter must have been the cemetery office or a storage building. Ingrid opened her coat and worked the strap loose from her belt. Mud streaked her skirt down to the ankle; good thing the fabric was dark.

  The leather looked like it hadn’t been in the ground long. She leaned on the wall for balance as she pulled the drawstring loose and tipped the bag forward. Dirty water gushed out. The object was still stuck inside, yet heat flashed out as if she had opened a furnace. Lee gasped.

  “Do you feel that?” he whispered. “The heat and . . . it’s like an odd tingle in the air. Do you . . . ?”

  Ingrid was astounded. As far as she knew, Lee didn’t have any affinity for magic. But if this meant that every person walking by sensed strange heat from the leather bag, they might have a problem.

  “I feel it. That’s how I knew it was in the ground. It’s like being near a fantastic, but not.”

  Lee laughed. “You can feel fantastics nearby? So that’s why you always could point out when a unicorn or pooka was being ridden close to us in San Francisco! You told me you had magical horse sense. I almost believed you.” He shook his head as he reached for the object.

  She pulled it away from him. “Be careful! This thing is searing hot, even through the bag. We don’t know what will happen when we pull it out.” She couldn’t help but think of the policeman’s concern about Chinese traps—though Lee knew about Chinese armaments and tactics and he didn’t appear concerned. Even so . . .

  She tipped the bag again, and this time let the item fall onto the ground. Cloths swaddled the thing; she found an end and pulled upward, letting the rags unwind. A large metal item about the length of a rolling pin plunked onto the mud.

  The object resembled the head of a large halberd or spear, similar to the medieval weapons she had seen in Mr. Sakaguchi’s books with illustrations by Howard Pyle, but broad and with an odd curve. The base of it had another curve, too, creating a weapon with two crescent points.

  A strange animal wail escaped Lee’s throat and he fell to his knees, heedless of the mud, his body bowed forward, face to the ground.

  Ingrid reached for him, panicked. “Lee? What is it? What’s wrong?”

  His shoulders shook. He reared back on his knees, and to her surprise, his grin was exuberant even as tears streamed down his cheeks.

  “It’s Guan Yu’s guandao. The real thing. The actual real thing.” He squeezed his eyes shut and said something in Chinese, then looked at Ingrid again with pure joy. “You found one of the greatest treasures of China, Ing. This . . . this means everything. With this, we have proof that the Chinese people can survive. Our Mandate of Heaven hasn’t been lost.”

  “Guan Yu?” Ingrid echoed, kneeling next to him. Her memory flicked back to the labyrinthine house Lee had taken her to in San Francisco’s Chinatown, and the portraits and statues of a swarthy figure with a halberd in hand. She knew from Mr. Sakaguchi’s teachings that Guan Yu was one of the ancient guardians of China, worshiped by a large swath of the Chinese populace of both Taoist and Buddhist faiths. At least, that used to be the case. As with many signature elements of Chinese culture, imagery of Guan Yu and shrines to him were now forbidden.

  “This weapon is light as solid orichalcum, but the coloration looks like a mix of metals.” Ingrid frowned. The edge was surely sharp enough to slice the protective cloth that had swaddled it, but it hadn’t. “I’m trying to remember the old stories. Wasn’t Guan Yu’s weapon supposed to be heavy?”

  “Yes.” Lee looked puzzled as well. “You can tell by the curves on the head that it’s not a throwing spear. It should be very heavy, even if it’s not mounted on a shaft. I don’t know. There are many stories of Guan Yu. They date back almost two thousand years, and they all say different things. One thing’s for sure: this is no ordinary weapon.” With reverence, he scooped the blade up, his hands shaking slightly as he dabbed it clean with his coat. “The Green Dragon Crescent Blade can’t be in the mud. We need to get this on the airship.” He began to gently rewind the cloth. “We can’t leave it here. You heard what the cop said. They’ll probably start rebuilding that burned lot within the week.”

  “Whoever hid the guandao would want it with you, anyway,” Ingrid said. As she watched Lee wrap the blade, she wondered how many artifacts of China were scattered across the world, how many were buried—as with the guandao—or dragged around by refugees. Many had likely been looted. The thought depressed her.

  “Maybe. Maybe not. I know who I am, what I’m supposed to be, but there’s a reason few people know of my ancestry. Some people might die for me. Many more would want me dead.”

  Ingrid shook her head in disbelief. “The Chinese people are being butchered by the Unified Pacific. Why fight among yourselves, too?”

  His motions slowed. “It’s never that simple, Ing. You know that. China is huge. Tribes and families have been fighting and killing each other for centuries. God, the nineteenth century alone was a bloodbath. It’s impossible to know how many men were killed because they didn’t have a proper haircut. A haircut!” He referred to the Manchu queue hairstyle, a shaved forehead and long braid in the back; it had been a mandatory sign of loyalty to the Qing Empire. Now the meaning had been reversed; the style was worn by Chinese rebels who fought against the UP.

  Lee continued, “During his Restoration, Emperor Qixiang tried to unify the Manchu and the Han peoples, declaring them to be equal, but a piece of paper can’t erase centuries of subjugation and hatred. It was all too little too late. By then, Japan had Manchukuo and prepared for their full invasion.”

  Qixiang, the father Lee had never known. The emperor who could have willingly ceded China to Japan and lived out the rest of his life in the Summer Palace. Instead, he had joined the last wave of refugees allowed inside America. He died of smallpox in San Francisco over a decade before. Lee had been born to a loyal concubine about the same time.

  “Now the tongs are the only leadership we have. We’re so scattered, Ing. Even more so with San Francisco gone. We’re all just trying to survive, and it’s still easier to think in terms of families, instead of trying to see the Chinese as one people.” He finished wrapping the ancient weapon and slid it back inside the bag. “But this . . . this is hope. Like encountering the qilin.”

  Ingrid more often heard of qilin by their Japanese name of kirin; the Chinese term was not acceptable to use in public. Mr. Sakaguchi had even had a decorative statue of a kirin in their backyard, where it was intended to bring luck to their household.

  “What was that like? Does a qilin really float?”

  The legends said that the creatures’ pacifism was such that they floated when they walked over grass so that they wouldn’t hurt a single blade. They also only visited those destined to be esteemed rulers or sages; it was said one had visited Confuci
us’s mother before his birth. Some of Mr. Sakaguchi’s old books in Japanese ranked kirin as the most powerful of all fantastics and Hidden Ones. It wasn’t merely what they could do—it was what their presence meant. But they were also largely considered extinct—if they had ever been more than myth at all. Which is why Lee’s seeing one was nothing short of remarkable.

  “Yes. It hovers just over the ground. Everything about it is celestial.” He shook his head in clear awe. “You don’t know how much I’ve wanted to tell you about this, Ing. I’ve actually seen a qilin twice. The first time I was five. Uncle Moon found me in the orphanage, the qilin beside me in a cot. He regarded its appearance as confirmation of my identity.”

  “I understand why you had to keep it a secret,” Ingrid said, her voice softened by awe. She knew Lee had been raised by nuns for the first years of his life and felt detached from his Chinese identity for years after that; sometimes, that feeling still plagued him. He beckoned her forward.

  Ingrid used the wall to help herself stand, and trailed him into the rain. “And the second time?”

  He was quiet a moment. “The day your mother died.”

  “What?” That was the last thing Ingrid expected him to say.

  “I was in the backyard. It was during that awful gap between Mrs. Carmichael’s death and Mr. Sakaguchi’s arrival home. You weren’t fully there. You wouldn’t leave her bedroom even though the city had already taken her body. I couldn’t get you to talk. Laugh. Eat. Anything. I didn’t know what to do. I started questioning everything. Me, as some bridge between China, America, and Japan? As an emperor? How could I help my people when I couldn’t help you, someone so dear to me? The qilin came and kept me company.”