Shanghai Steam

by Calvin D. Jim

  Qin Yun scooped up the little dragon, which sat up in her hands and snapped its toothy jaws as if pleased with itself. So life-like!

  Qin Yun’s pride swelled in spite of the mayhem she had caused. She would be a mechanic. And build lots more little dragons, to hunt down rebel death birds. They would never drop ordnance on the retinue guarding the crown prince again.

  If only her White Lance service wasn’t necessary.

  “What is going on in here daughter?”

  Qin Yun stiffened. Father still managed to sneak up on her, even though the din of mother’s weapons practice had been gone from the house all these months.

  Keeping her back to him as he came up, Qin Yun quickly flipped open the breastplate on the dragon’s midsection, reached through cricket remains and twisted the small onyx crystal slaved to the steam engine. She wiped dead cricket goo on her pants.

  With a last twitch the wings went still, then the bright red eyes dimmed to black. Qin Yun gasped as qi flowed back into her. She turned to her father, who glanced down at the dragon with disapproval.

  “You will never pass your Ordeal if you play with toys more than you practice with your weapons,” he warned. The hairs on Qin Yun’s neck rose.

  “What harm is there for me to study mechanicals? I have another year to get ready for the Ordeal.”

  Father’s lips flattened into a line as he looked past her to the cricket cage with its four survivors. Qin Yun cringed as they sang in the Qin family code, “Hush! You’ll wake Father!” repeating her words over and over.

  Father brushed past her and crouched down to pick up the cage. His eyes went cold when he saw the two crushed crickets on the floor. He took several deep breaths, then stood up, latching the lid.

  “Where are the other two?”

  She moved the dragon behind her back. Father shook his head.

  “What do you think Admiral Yehenara will say if I offer him four crickets when he comes tomorrow? He will say I mean his death!”

  “These were for Yehenara?” Qin Yun couldn’t hold back her shock. “How can the Emperor suspect his first wife’s brother?”

  Father’s eyebrows rose slightly. “He is Manchu, of course.” Mistrust of Manchu nobility was in the blood of Qin family, ever since the Manchu tried to usurp the first Ming emperor back in the 1400’s.

  Father shook his head, ignoring her question. He put his ear to the cage. “Four crickets … or none. You’ve traumatized them.”

  Qin Yun moved closer, her face over the cage, and Father let her.

  “Peace, little brothers,” she sang softly, investing hope into the words. Emotions mattered when it came to crickets. She repeated the phrase, pausing after each time, waiting for the little spies to calm and clear their memories. She had practiced it in the homes of the high and mighty during her cricket tending visits, after harvesting coded conversations. An honorable job for those born to wuxia families.

  Qin Yun cradled the dragon gently and stepped back.

  “They will quiet soon.”

  “But still there are only four,” Father said. He tucked the cage under one arm and held out his other hand. Qin Yun sighed then handed over her creation. He braced the mechanical beast against the cage and peered down in through the open breast plate. His thumb brushed the small cube of onyx.

  “A qi crystal? This is very dangerous, daughter. Give it too much of your qi and you could lose yourself.”

  She hadn’t expected him to recognize it. Attaching the onyx qi crystal to the engine was the key to making it so small. It eliminated the control drum. The entire engine was no bigger than a walnut.

  Qin Yun stuck out her chin. “Better than the pierced metal rollers those horrible wind-up death birds use.” His eyes went flat at the mention of death birds so she hurried on. “And I only breathed a little qi into it. To test the airworthiness, to see if it would—”

  “Destroy half of our next shipment?”

  Qin Yun curled her toes inside her cloth shoes and looked down at them, finding no proper response.

  “Daughter, if I knew you would be sharing your qi with mechanicals—”

  “But Father, you should have seen it fly!”

  He didn’t quite manage to suppress a smile. He handed back the dragon then rubbed the back of his neck.

  “The only other cricket breeding concern in Shanghai is at the White Lance Chapter House.” He took hold of her shoulder, his eyes stern. “You must take up White Lance early, to pay them for replacements. They won’t take money for them.”

  The leaden look in his eyes as he brushed past chilled her. “I will request your invitation to the Ordeal.”

  Qin Yun’s skin flashed fire and her heart hammered against her ribs. The Ordeal of the White Lance. She had always known she would face it. One member of every Qin generation submitted to it, ever since Qin Liangyu, the first Ming emperor’s Honored Ally, led her White Lance troops against the Manchu usurper three hundred years ago. It was her family’s sacred duty — her sacred duty.

  “Now? I still have a year! Why not ask them to loan us four crickets, until we can replace them when the next clutch hatches!”

  Father stopped, his eyes pitiless.

  “Ever since Qin Liangyu saved the empire, this family has never begged a favor. Or failed to deliver what the Emperor needs. We will not start now.”

  “But … I’m not ready.”

  Her father twisted his lips as if he had just swallowed a rotten egg. “Then daughter, you will die.”

  The crickets fell silent.

  Astride Ping, her mother’s retired warhorse, Qin Yun trotted up Liangmaqiao Lu. Mother’s white lance clicked against the sword sheathed at her hip. These weapons had followed mother into service for thirty years, the last five guarding the crown prince during his visits to Shanghai.

  Until an assassin’s death bird killed her.

  Qin Yun couldn’t even hate the prince for surviving the attack. She would never have been allowed to build mechanicals, had the Ming not come to power. Qin Yun sighed to settle her nerves, then kicked Ping forward into a trot.

  The old gelding dropped back into a walk near the gate of White Lance Chapter House. Qin Yun dismounted and rang the heavy iron bell out front. The sun had gone down in the hours waiting for the invitation to come after Father sent word. The streets felt lonely. Only the clop-clop of a single-horse carriage broke the late night quiet. Inside a small lantern illuminated a young laowai woman and an older gentleman. A father and daughter, she thought, laughing together. Even as angry as she was at him, it made her miss Father.

  Qin Yun handed Ping’s reins to the apprentice who came to meet her. She gave him the scroll with the contract her father offered: her early entry to service in exchange for four cricket spies. She took the mechanical dragon from her saddle bag. When the stable man left, she opened the breast plate and looked into the dead black eyes of her clockwork beast.

  “If I die, carry my last moments back to Father,” she whispered. “So he knows I have honored our family.” She breathed qi into it until the eyes glowed red.

  Its fore claws flexed around her fingers and the jaws opened, emitting a lick of fire. The dragon spread wide its wings then hopped to her shoulder, digging into the thick cloth of her tunic. She pried the dragon loose and set it on the bell post, cautioning it to stay.

  The door to the chapter house opened revealing a courtyard framed by dim walkways. Gaslights set along the second floor balcony rails cast flickering shadows on the flagstones.

  Qin Yun brandished the white lance in one hand and held the sword down at her side, then stepped through to be greeted by the sound of steel scraping over leather. Mother’s words rose up, given to her when she was barely old enough to hold a sword.

  There is just the Ordeal. No ceremony. When you cross the threshold holding the White Lance they will come. You are a daughter of Qin Liangyu. Never forget who you are!

  Five female warriors streamed into the courtyard, dressed head to
toe in black. They drew swords as they formed a loose circle around her. The first one darted in, blade high, then swung down for an overhead cut.

  Qin Yun’s knees felt watery but she willed herself to stay upright as she met the blow. She twisted her sword so the adversary’s blade slid harmlessly past her shoulder. Then a scrape of leather on stone to her left. She spun, extending her lance to sweep the opponent’s feet. The others moved in, tightening the circle, so that any step back drove her into a different opponent. One cut split the fabric of her tunic, then there were two, then four, six, eight.

  Eight shallow cuts. If any opponent judged her unfit, the cuts would turn lethal. She tried to return the blows, but her strikes were clumsy.

  Cut, step back, cut, step back again.

  The tallest of the warriors leveled a killing blow straight at Qin Yun’s neck.

  Qin Yun’s mechanical dragon came screeching in and deflected the lethal blow.

  Qin Yun looked on in horror as the dragon turned and dove at the warrior, tearing her hood to reveal a woman her mother’s age. The warrior grabbed for the dragon but it darted away and looped for another run, this time flaming. Her tunic caught fire and the woman cursed. The dragon came around for a third attack.

  “Stop!” yelled Qin Yun. She swung her blade to knock the dragon away. The warrior dropped to the ground, rolling while one of her friends followed, slapping at the fire. The others closed in on Qin Yun.

  She raised her hands, and dropped her weapons, hoping surrender might save her, or at least salvage what was left of family honor. The dragon lay crumpled on the ground, and the sight of it broke her heart.

  “Stand down!” shouted a man with a heavy German accent. His voice came from the shadows, at the end of the courtyard. Her opponents stepped aside and Qin Yun fell to her knees next to the broken dragon. The breastplate was bent in and she couldn’t see if the engine was still intact.

  A skinny laowai man with chopped yellow hair strode over, led by an ancient woman in a red qipao, her hair piled up on her head like a Miao matriarch. The laowai smelled of metal and smoke and his soot-stained shirt had tiny cinder burns all over it.

  “Did you make that?” he asked, pointing at the dragon. She nodded, holding it loosely against her chest. The old woman laid a hand on his arm.

  “Wait, Herr Dekker,” she said, her eyes widening when they fell on the dragon. She turned to Qin Yun. “I am the Voice of this House. You will call me Older Sister.” She gestured for Qin Yun to rise.

  “A person so ill-prepared for the Ordeal, who chooses to protect a future sister by destroying a thing she loves … such a person shows promise.”

  Older Sister motioned to the shadows behind her. A girl ran up and handed her a metal medallion. A white lance blade had been etched in the center. She hung it around Qin Yun’s neck.

  “From now on,” said Older Sister, giving her a scathing look, “your training, which is sorely lacking, is your first duty. The crickets will be delivered tonight. Welcome to White Lance Chapter House.”

  Qin Yun let out her breath and with it she felt her dream of becoming a mechanic drifting away.

  But while she lived, there was hope. White Lance Troops led useful lives. They had purpose. She would hang on to that.

  Giving up mechanicals was small penance to pay for her life.

  Wasn’t it?

  Older Sister glanced at the German in sooty clothes. “I believe our mechanic will have interest in this ingenious device.”

  Herr Dekker nodded and Older Sister turned back toward Qin Yun. “If you wish, you may become his apprentice during your free hours.”

  Qin Yun could barely breathe. All she ever craved was to hunch over a workbench, building things. Older Sister was not done.

  “And I would not object, should he allow you to repair your dragon.”

  Qin Yun bowed to Older Sister. “If it pleases the Voice of the White Lance Chapter House.”

  Herr Dekker stepped closer and gave her a friendly wink. “Yah, and maybe we make a bigger one after that.”

  Older Sister clapped her hands and the courtyard was flooded by the women of the White Lance, coming to meet their newest sister.

  * * * * *

  Amanda Clark lives in Oregon and spent four years working in China. She has a PhD in Physics, two black belts, and is a graduate of Viable Paradise Writers Workshop. She hopes to read all the books and write all the stories she wants to before she dies.

  Moon-Flame Woman

  Laurel Anne Hill

  The crumbling rock on the vertical face of the mountain yielded to Cho Ting-Lam’s probing finger. It clung like crushed grains of rice to the crevice between her nail and skin. Her next target had a weak spot. Good.

  The lowered, hanging basket holding her in the air swayed as she changed position and the late morning wind strengthened. Suspended ropes held by old Master Ye and his men far above her now snagged on jagged stone. Yet this Sierra Mountain was not her only adversary. Also formidable was that barbarian, Superintendent Brockton Tim. If only she knew Brockton’s weak spot, she would target his corresponding lack of enlightenment.

  Because of Brockton, she must break through five feet of this granite mountain before next twilight faded. Five feet. A distance equaling her height plus the length of her middle finger. Yesterday, when work on this new railway tunnel had begun, she — disguised as a man — and her fellow countrymen barely blasted through two feet. Failure today would further erode her dignity, although far less than when her father sold her into slavery. Failure could also explode her into countless fragments.

  Once more, Ting-Lam leaned into the shallow excavation. This time she scratched with her long stick in the film of dirt on the rock face. She drew the Chinese characters representing her clan’s hero, the brave swordsman Wu Sing. With luck, Wu Sing’s harmony of spirit would ready this section of rock for her by stealing the stone’s energy. If only he could erase her personal shame, too. Give her a husband and a chance to bear sons. Then she could cast off her male disguise, reveal the secret Master Ye already knew.

  Oh, revered ancestor Wu, protector of the poor, she thought. I need your power. Beloved master of the martial arts, he was, resident of the bamboo spirit house that hung from the Gingko tree in her father’s garden, so far away from California. She would need Wu’s help, as always, when she again fired Master Ye’s moon-flame gun at this wretched barrier of mountain stone. Well, her own qi and modest ability to affect its flow could not call forth the gun’s mystical light and drill holes in granite. She was just a novice with weaponry, even less accomplished than she was at Baguachang, Master Ye’s martial art.

  “We have a tunnel to dig,” old Master Ye called in Cantonese from his perch on a granite outcrop fifty feet up the mountainside. “Before 1868.”

  “Yes, Uncle.” Such sarcasm. This was only 1866.

  She always worked too slow or too fast. Bound her breasts too tight against her chest. Didn’t bind them well enough. Ye, as critical as a new bride’s mother-in-law, so often found fault with her actions. Still, Ye treated her far better than the other men who had owned her. And he understood this fledgling tunnel must grow five feet deeper by nightfall or Brockton would insist on using more dangerous explosive mixtures.

  There. She completed the Chinese characters, the most important of the one hundred she could read and write. She stepped backward into the center of the basket, raised the goggles from her neck to her eyes, let her straw hat slip down against her upper spine, then hefted the weighty moon-flame gun to her shoulder. Keeping her balance in a rocking basket was no easy task. Sunlight glinted upon the round brass chamber and the slender barrel, flared at the base. The glass dial sparkled, ready. All arises from emptiness. All returns to emptiness. May the rock accept these sayings her grandmother had taught her.

  Ting-Lam pressed the trigger.

  A thin stream of blue light like mystical moon glow streamed from the gun’s barrel and struck the target area, obliterating T
ing-Lam’s mark. Rock sizzled and spat. A little column of gray smoke arose, as though from an opium pipe. The smoke thickened, darkened and billowed. All things of this world interconnected. Ting-Lam felt oneness with the rock. The oneness told her the narrow, blue beam had penetrated two feet. Far enough. She released the trigger.

  “Gelatine rod next,” she called to Master Ye, and prayed the nitro glycerin in it wouldn’t kill her.

  “Send up gun, first,” he shouted, as though he feared she would light today’s fuses before the weapon-tool was safe.

  Ting-Lam slid the gun into its canvas sack. Two tugs on the bag’s lift rope and the device Ye had invented — one of many reasons he got paid better than the other railroad laborers from Southern China — ascended toward the top of the slope.

  “Gun on its way,” she called, so other workers above and below would know her progress.

  Now for an explosive stick, the eighth and final one she would plant today. She slid the gelatine rod wrapped in crimson paper into the still-warm cavity within the mountain. Black powder — even dynamite — made her less nervous.

  “May eight remain a lucky number and all eight sticks explode together.” The wind played with the loose sleeves of her blue smock as she inserted a fuse cap around the rod’s end.

  “How much longer?” Ye shouted.

  “After I walk circle.”

  Ting-Lam walked her tiniest Baguachang circle, a square comprised of four steps, really. As the hanging basket rocked, the toes on one foot practically touched the side of her other heel. Her palms faced her chest, as though she prepared to engage a human opponent in a sparring match, her long black hair braided in a queue and out of the way. Blasting gelatine mixed too strong had killed two of her people in a different tunnel yesterday.

  Calmness. She must let that quality flow from her circular movement, from her breathing, the way she twisted her wrists with grace and cupped or flattened her palms. Yes, Baguachang facilitated the flow between body and mind.