Masked

by Lou Anders

  Namid raised her brow. “You play music in the core?”

  “It increases engine efficiency,” Captain Shao replied, peering down. She followed his gaze and glimpsed fragments of immense crystal shards, part of a whole crown embedded in an iron cradle that left its roots exposed to the ocean itself: a natural, necessary coolant. “The more complex the tune, the better. Musicians have become quite sought after by the military, though each core seems to respond differently. Mine prefers strings, but I know one commander who can only make fifty knots accompanied by a harmonica.”

  Captain Shao opened another narrow iron door, revealing a small cabin: bed crisply made, papers stacked neatly on a small desk bolted to the floor. Fresh night paint had been spread over grooves in the wall, casting a cool luminous glow throughout the crunched space. Not much decoration: just a small ink painting of a sparrow hidden among cherry blossoms, and a golden locket that hung from a hook. Namid felt like stooping when she entered, and straightened with caution, half expecting her head to brush against the ceiling. The air smelled humid, metallic—like blood mixed with gear grease and sweat.

  Captain Shao squeezed inside, shutting the door securely behind him. He set the lock, and she was glad. For the first time in weeks she felt safe, though it was strange being together in such a tight space. Reminded her of things she wanted to forget.

  Namid stared at the locket. “This is your cabin.”

  “I won’t have you bunking with the crew,” he replied, and then hesitated, studying her. Namid met his gaze, remaining steady, unruffled. She might have spent the past decade lost in the mountains, but she remembered what it felt like to be judged.

  “You have something unpleasant in your eyes,” she said.

  “This is a suicide mission,” he replied bluntly. “ Your suicide.”

  “Such a pessimist.” Namid turned from him and began removing the sealskin packages strapped to her body. At least ten, of varying sizes. Beneath her bare feet the floor was warm and unsteady. When she stood in one place for too long, vibrations from the crystal core rattled her bones. She unwrapped her boots—still dry—and sat on the edge of the hard bed, turning them upside down, one after the other. She carefully shook out other small parcels, which made faint sloshing sounds when she held them up to her ear. Satisfied that the contents were still whole, she set them aside and tugged on her boots.

  “How long have you been captain?” she asked quietly, not looking at him as she smoothed her hands over the tall worn leather; poking her fingers through a bullet hole or two.

  He was silent a moment. “Several years. After the Brits were rousted from the Colonies, we were ordered into the South Pacific to work with the Chinese and their fleet. I received my command at the beginning of the Opium conflict.”

  “You would die for your men,” she said, unfolding another parcel.

  Captain Shao pushed away from the door. “Who are you dying for?”

  Namid smiled bitterly, pulling free her gun. “I believe that would be your sister, Tom.”

  There was no such thing as one truth, but so far as the witnesses were concerned—and those who wrote down their stories, and couriered them across the sea to the East Americas and the Pacifica regions of New China—it seemed that some years back, British sailors had vandalized a temple in Kowloon, killing a monk, and then, after getting drunk, raged through a local village with guns blazing, taking turns with the young women and murdering men in cold blood. It was not the first time such violence had occurred, but unlike previous encounters (resulting, with one exception, in quick beheadings) Qing authorities were summarily denied access to the sailors. Who, with a great deal of sobriety, were set immediately to sea by their superior officers and ferried to India on a fast ship. Given that one of the criminals happened to be the bastard son of a duke, this was not entirely surprising.

  Ties, however, had long been strained between China and England. Not that anyone should have been surprised about that, either. Namid might have been living in the mountains, but she still heard from the trappers, Cheyenne, and Chinese gold miners who occasionally visited her home. The English, she had been told, had finally found a way to take revenge on the Chinese for trading with the colonists during the war for independence; and it was a wickedness that had taken even her breath away.

  Using the exclusive trade rights of the British East India Company, England had saturated Chinese markets with opium. So slowly, so insidiously, the imperial trade authorities had not realized the danger. Not until two million were turned into addicts. And then two million had become ten million.

  Efforts to halt the import of drugs would have eventually led to war, but it was said by some that the Kowloon murders were the final straw. The Emperor ordered all British sea ships seized and their cargos burned. Dirigibles were shot down, torpedoed with cunning gunpowder kites and blazing missiles.

  And the British, in turn, declared war.

  But even the risk of China falling to England would not have been enough to bring Namid down from the mountain. No matter how much the fledgling American government—and the Chinese officials from the Pacifica court—begged.

  Until the rumors changed everything.

  It took three days for the submersible to reach the southern China coast. Twice they encountered mines, and both times swimmers—Scots-Irish colony lads and former Chinese pearl divers—had to be sent out to cut the nets with their bare hands and weight the explosives with iron balls to sink them to the bottom of the sea. No other way around. The British war machine was thorough.

  “The Emperor has already relocated his children and most of his wives to the Chinese colonies on the Pacific coast,” Captain Shao said on their last evening together, drinking oolong tea and snacking on dumplings that the cook had made specially for Namid. For the most part, Shao had avoided her until now; and she had obliged by keeping her own distance, mingling with him only at meals, or the few concerts she had attended in the engine room, sitting quietly in the corner while the boys played twisty jigs to the humming crystal core.

  “South, in the gold country,” he went on, “though I’ve heard rumors that his oldest sons will be journeying deeper inland to live with the Navajo. The Brits never could keep up with the natives, and the Emperor wants his heirs to learn about survival in case they must return to fight for their kingdom. He thinks his family has gone soft.”

  “Everyone saying yes to you all the time will do that,” Namid told him absently, studying the last of the Imperial military reports that he had saved for her, some of the complicated characters scribbled in obvious haste on rough sheets of raw silk. “The iron maiden that destroyed my transport could have hit, in three days, any part of New China territory. It might be there now. Our air defense is strong, but all it would take is one good strike.”

  He looked at her as he did only when they were alone: with thoughtfulness, a glimmer of warmth, and a sadness that Namid could hardly tolerate. “Fears of air attacks aren’t why you were called back. Or why you agreed.”

  “The envoys told me stories,” she admitted, touching the revolver holstered to her hip. No need for a weapon on the submersible, but its weight helped her think. That, and the crew enjoyed seeing it. She had used a rifle during the war, and it was her firearm of choice, but the revolver was a recent invention and Namid found that she liked having the ability to shoot rounds in quick succession. Not that she had been aiming at much of anything but fir trees for the last decade; though occasionally, some men had thought to visit her mountain home in the hopes of murder and reputation.

  “Stories,” Captain Shao echoed flatly.

  She gave him a hard look. “They told me things that no one could have made up.”

  “A trap, then.”

  “No.” Namid stroked the revolver, and then her thigh; feeling the puckered scars beneath the clothing she had borrowed from one of the crew. “Not this time. They know I’m alone and not a threat. Not anymore.”

  Captain Shao mad
e a small sound. Namid looked at him sharply, but he made no effort to hide the faint amusement darting against his mouth.

  “Queen of the Starlight Six,” he said quietly. “Most feared band of riders on the continent. I heard once from a captured British sailor that mothers still tell children stories about you, to scare them into being good.”

  Namid shrugged. “They also say I’m ten feet tall, a Cheyenne princess who can change into a wolf. And that my eyes are capable of looking into a man’s soul and burning it free of his bones. Which, apparently, is what I did to an entire army of Brits off the Atlantica coast, leaving corpses that were little more than ash.”

  “Well,” Captain Shao replied, “you always terrified me. ”

  “That was your sister,” Namid shot back, looking again at the golden locket hanging on his wall; and then him, searching for Maude in his face. “I was the quiet one.”

  He rubbed his face and leaned back in the chair with his eyes closed. Their knees brushed, and for a moment she was a child again, sitting on the swing her father had built, and that all the children fought and made bets over, simply because it could go higher and faster than any other. A swing built for a child who possessed similar strengths of speed and power.

  “Quiet, but savage,” he murmured. “That’s what Maude would say. Nor are those stories far wrong. If you’ll recall, I was part of the unit brought in to dig the graves.”

  Namid shuffled his papers into a neat pile, unwilling to remember. “We arrive tonight?”

  “You know we do.”

  “Your orders are to wait for a day, and then go.”

  “With or without you.”

  “It will be without me.” Namid finally looked him in the eye. “You’ll wait for a messenger who will tell you whether or not I succeeded.”

  Captain Shao stared for a moment, and then leaned forward—so quickly, with such menace, her hand flew to her gun. She moved faster than he did, and suffered a vision before he stilled: her weapon raised at his head, trigger pulled, with blood and brain and bone; and the aching silence, the terrible silence, suffocating the roar of the shot. She could taste the gunpowder on her tongue, and feel the burn of the recoil in her shoulder.

  But it was not real. Not yet. Not ever. Namid forced herself to relax, even as Captain Shao stared from her eyes to her hand, still pressed to the revolver at her hip.

  “They all said you were dead,” he murmured stiffly, as though he could hardly force the words past his lips. “And if not dead, then ruined. No one could imagine another reason for you to abandon your responsibilities. Not when you had so much power. Not when someone like you was needed in the rebuilding.”

  “Someone like me,” she whispered, unable to move her hand. “I was a killer.”

  Captain Shao shook his head, but that was instinct, in the same way she had reached for her gun—and she listened for reassurance and heard none—watched his eyes and saw only his memories: of blood, and bone, and the gristle of decay under days of hot sun. No denying truth. No denying how much she had done in the name of others and herself.

  “It was not your fault,” he said.

  “My time was over,” she replied, wishing he would understand, ashamed that she wanted him to. Just a little truth between childhood friends. Something the rest of the world would never comprehend.

  But there was no opportunity. A bell chimed, and a sharp whine cut through the hull. The engine quieted, signaling the beginning of a steady drift. Three days, and now they were done.

  “Well,” Captain Shao said softly, still watching her with that grim, unbearable sadness.

  “I know,” Namid replied, and finally forced her hand away from the gun.

  A boat was waiting for her when she broke through the surface of the ocean. A small craft, little more than a slab of wood laden down with fishing nets and fat cormorants squatting inside bamboo cages; so flimsy, a two-mast junk would have sunk it with merely a swipe. Namid said nothing, though. It was night, and she could see the stars. She had almost forgotten what they looked like.

  Captain Shao joined the swimmers who guided her from the submersible. It was against protocol for him to leave his vessel, but none of the boys who saw her off made mention of their commanding officer abandoning them, if only temporarily. They said good-bye in the same way they had said hello—with silence, and respect, and fear. Namid thought she might allow herself to miss them, but only because she could not abide the thought that their deaths would mean losing one of the few people who remembered her in pigtails.

  Her belongings were strapped to her body, wrapped again in sealskin, along with a set of dry clothes. Captain Shao, who had stripped down to a special suit made of shark hide, pushed her out of the water into the boat; helped, from within, by its sole occupant: a young Chinese woman. Her hair was shorn so close to her scalp that even in the darkness Namid could see the cuts and bruises in her skin, and a deep red welt, nearly a scar, that covered her throat. Her movements were slow and pained. Captain Shao frowned, giving her a hard, thoughtful look.

  Namid leaned over the edge of the boat, gripping his forearm tight as she could. He tore his gaze from the other woman and did the same, his knuckles white, seawater streaming down his face. Beyond the harsh rasp of their breathing and the lap of waves against the boat, she heard distant booms, one after the other, raining down into her bones.

  She tried to release his arm, but he held on, pulling himself so close the boat tipped dangerously sideways.

  “No mercy,” he whispered. “Don’t you dare.”

  Namid forced herself to smile, though it was faint, grim, and felt like death. “Stay safe, Tom.”

  His jaw tightened with displeasure, and something else, too much like desperation for comfort. Namid jammed her hip against the edge of the boat and reached down, ready to pry his fingers off her arm. His grip was beginning to hurt, and his men were staring.

  But he let go before she touched him. Let go, as though burned, and pushed away from the boat—and her. He treaded water, holding her gaze, and she did not look away, or blink. Just held on, in the only way she knew how: with memory, and heart, and the certain knowledge that distance was always safer.

  The Chinese woman began rowing. Namid raised her hand. Captain Shao did not. He stared a moment longer, and then dove. His men followed him in silence. Swallowed, as though their flesh was made of sea and shadow. She knew better than to watch for them, but found herself doing so anyway.

  “Are you ready?” asked the other woman softly. She sounded as though she was from the Mainland south, perhaps even Kowloon, which spoke a different Chinese dialect entirely; though her tone was educated, even refined. Namid was accustomed to Mandarin, having been born to a Cheyenne mother in the territory of New China, but she had spent most of her adult life out east in the Colonial Americas, speaking English. Sometimes she still had trouble with the various accents of the native Chinese (and the Europeans, as well), though enough gold miners had come around the mountain over the past ten years to give her practice.

  The woman’s breathing turned ragged, accompanied by a faint whistling grunt every time she pulled at the oars. Her movements were awkward. Blood seeped from the deep welt in her neck. Namid scooted forward, and without asking, placed her hands on the slender wooden grips. Cormorants clucked, shifting their wings, and in the distance, low crashing booms still rumbled. Familiar, even after ten years.

  “You’re injured,” Namid said, as the other woman leaned slowly away from the oars. “The Emperor should not have sent you.”

  The woman touched her throat, and then her shaved, nicked scalp; a flick of a delicate wrist, so that her frayed black sleeve fell down a fine-boned arm. Namid would have thought her a Buddhist nun had it not been for the fine weave of her dark clothing, as well as the look in her eyes, wild and hard. “I was uninjured in the beginning. Nor was I meant to meet you here. Everyone… everyone else… was captured. I was the only one who escaped.” She swallowed heavily, look
ing at the birds, the ocean, anywhere but at Namid. “You are not what I expected.”

  “I am Namid MacNamara,” she replied, because she had never found a better answer to that statement, not even after hearing it for most of her life. No one was ever who he or she was supposed to be; not even Namid could say for certain that she knew herself completely. Truth rested only in action; the rest was mystery.

  “I am Xiao Shen Cheng,” said the woman, after a brief hesitation.

  Namid was focused on the horizon, where a faint orange glow had appeared. As such, it took longer than it should have to recognize the name. But when she did, everything stopped—everything—and the boat began to drift. She stared at the woman, letting it sink in; and suffered disbelief, and dread.

  “You came too late,” whispered the Empress, rubbing her pale hand against bloodshot eyes. “My husband is dead.”

  Namid forced herself to breathe. “How?”

  Shen Cheng gave her a disdainful look. “It was a sustained effort. We fought well. But the Emperor had sent our crystal skull away with the children, and the remaining core was not powerful enough to feed the lines. When the Juggarnauts came, we could only slow them.”

  Namid sat back, struck with a chill. Juggarnauts. She had heard that name from the envoys—heard it for the first time in a decade—and then again in the imperial court on the Pacifica coast; from the mouths of the silver bullet aircrew, and on the submersible, whispered when the boys would see her coming. No one ever thought she could hear them, but that was the curse and the gift of being who she was. Only Captain Shao had refrained from speaking of those skull-enhanced men and women—but that was because he was also Tom, and shared the pain.

  Behind them, below, in her bones, Namid heard a low oppressive groan, a rumble that rose from the sea through the bottom of the boat. A despairing sound; and the answering swell that lifted them was unnatural and stomach-roiling. Something brewing in the water. More than one submersible. A battle.