by Henry Lien
“But, Peasprout, what if—”
“No, Crick, you are not coming with us onto the sea! The magnetization is too dangerous for you.”
“That’s my decision to make,” Crick says, “but anyway, that’s not what I was going to say. Suki. Suki has three drumblades.”
* * *
“Make me die of laughing!” As soon as Suki realizes that the words coming out of my mouth are a plea, her face lights up as bright as a Festival of Lanterns. She fingers a curtain of perfectly straight bangs. “I told you, Chen Peasprout, that someday you would come begging me for help and that on that day, nothing would be sweeter to me under heaven than to laugh in your face! Well, I hope you’re satisfied now. You did this to yourself.”
“This is not about me or you, Suki. This is about the safety of Pearl.”
“Of course it is. Everything Chen Peasprout does is so important. So urgent. Is that why you always look like you’re dying to go to the bathroom?”
“Suki, it’s only three-luckieths of an hour until sunset. We don’t have time for this.”
“Excuse me, but I get to decide what we have time for. And I think we have time for me to savor every delicious moment of your agony right now. And when your Empress Dowager finally gets her hands on you, the first thing she’s going to do is bind your feet. You know that, right?”
Crick skates forward. “Please forgive us, Gang Suki. We were wrong to deny your request to join our battleband. We don’t deserve your forgiveness, yet we beg you to join our endeavor. If we’re able to stop Yinmei, we will all be considered heroes and certainly be awarded first ranking at this Annexation. Please join our endeavor.”
“There’s no way I’m joining your stupid, stupid battleband.”
“Then we beg you to allow us to join yours.”
“Crick!” Doi and I cry together. Hisashi places his hands on our shoulders, and we let Crick continue.
He says to Suki, “We took first ranking at the last two Annexations. Together, we will take first ranking if we succeed in stopping Yinmei. All of that will go under your name if you allow us to join your battleband.”
No, no, no, infuriate me to death! I watch Suki weighing the arguments. She glares at Doi and me.
Crick says, “Let them all see you save Pearl. Let them all owe you.”
Suki’s fury begins to subside as she stares at Crick.
Crick, whom she battled alongside on the Bridge of Serene Harmony during the first demonstration of battleband fighting.
Crick, who urged us to pity her and value her and use her talents rather than stew over past feuds.
Suki nods at Crick and says, “Deal.”
* * *
“I need to come along to deliver the final frequency force shot!” argues Crick as we prepare to launch our drumblades off the western edge of the Principal Island toward the Shinian ships.
“No means no,” I say. “I’ll deliver the shot.”
“You can’t.”
“Yes, I can. My forceful frequency final shots are legendary.”
“It’s called a final frequency force shot and you don’t even know what it is!”
“Then hurry up and tell me! Crick, we only have half an hour until sunset!”
“It’s not enough just to steer the coiling water dragon toward the ships. A coiling water dragon that’s small enough to steer won’t have enough force to damage a ship, much less drive between two ships fast enough to pull them into each other with its wake. You need to give the coiling water dragon a last shove. That’s the final frequency force shot.”
“We’ll all leap at it at the same time.”
“Not nearly fast enough. You need something that travels at the speed of sound.”
“That’s impossible. Nothing travels at the speed of sound.”
Crick slaps his forehead and says, “Sound travels at the speed of sound!” He lifts the giant metal-stringed shamisen strapped over his back. I remember how their magnetized strings made sound of such force that they rocked the cannonskiffs right out of the water.
He continues, “I need to hit the coiling water dragon at the last moment with a certain power chord to send it shooting between the two ships.”
“I can play the shamisen!”
“But you won’t know what chord to play! The notes in the chord will depend on the proportions among the height, the width, and the velocity of the coiling water dragon that is summoned. Then you have to select a chord composed of notes that naturally harmonize with the frequencies of these three values, or else the blast of sound will be swatted away by the coiling water dragon’s wind. I’m the only who can do that, and I have to see it to do so!”
“I’ll just try every chord.”
“You won’t have time! You have to deliver it right when the coiling water dragon lines up between the two ships!”
“Crick, I am not permitting you to go on the magnetized sea again.”
“This is to save Pearl!”
“I’m not going to risk losing you to save Pearl!”
“That’s my decision to m—”
I claw the shamisen from his hands.
“Peasprout!” he shrieks.
“Go ahead and hate me,” I say. “Everybody else does.”
I jump on my drumblade, strap the shamisen on my back, and blast away.
* * *
On the eighty-first rotation, Doi, Hisashi, and I slam our Repellers down on the spiraling water in the nest.
A twisting spear of water punches up from the center, sucking us up with it over the wall of the nest.
It hurls my drumblade back onto the water hard. I bounce on the water and spin twice before I right myself and drum vigorously to surge back toward the dragon.
Crick was right. This new, smaller coiling water dragon is so fast, so breathlessly nimble. It shrieks and whistles as it streaks across the water.
I join Doi and Hisashi. We charge forward and meet up with Suki and her two battleband mates. Our battleband mates, now. Together, our six drumblades flank the coiling water dragon in a half circle behind it.
One quarter hour before sunset.
We beat more fiercely on our drumblades than we ever have just to keep up with the coiling water dragon. All six of us bank and swoop together to anticipate its sways and lurches as it charges across the water.
It tips to the left and then suddenly lunges hard to the right.
Doi and Hisashi immediately veer with it, executing a synchronized fanfare on their back drums that slaps the coiling water dragon with their blades, sending it back on its course.
The water under our blades tosses as the coiling water dragon plows ahead of us. Our drumblades buck and plunge over the heaving water until our teeth feel like they’re going to rattle out of our mouths.
Wave upon churning wave of drumbeats tumble and cascade over one another. Above our music, the coiling water dragon screams and whines as it tries again and again to dart away from our circle. Every time, we pound and leap up and fling our drumblades at it in coordinated launches and bring it back, like dogs nipping at the tails of their quarry.
Ten minutes before sunset.
We’re halfway to the Shinian ships. The coiling water dragon begins to do something different. Tendrils of water sprout from the column of its body, sweeping around it like black tentacles. They whip down on the water at us. We careen and dodge to keep from being struck by them.
Three tentacles of water come swiping around toward us.
“Look out!” I cry.
Suki’s two girls take the first tendril right in the face, flipping backward off their drumblades. The rest of us crouch down on our drumblades as the tail of water passes over us.
The second tendril swings at us low. We all pound down hard on our back drumblades and leap over it.
We are immediately met by the third tendril coming at us at chest level. The tendril takes Suki hard, slinging her clear away from the coiling water dragon, and shooting her rolling drumbl
ade straight at us.
Doi, Hisashi, and I leap up off our drumblades to avoid being hit by the tendril and sliced by Suki’s drumblade. Doi and I sail over them and come down on our drumblades on the other side. However, the silly ornamental tail-fan of Suki’s drumblade clips the seat of Hisashi’s drumblade, sending it spinning straight at me.
I beat hard on my drums to pivot out of the way, but I’m not swift enough. Hisashi’s drumblade hits my two front-left drums and slices clean through the kelp-leather skin atop them.
As Hisashi, Suki, and Suki’s battleband mates swim back to their drumblades bobbing on the water, Doi begins to drum toward me. I shout, “No, keep going! I’m all right! Don’t let it go off course!”
I lift the flaps where the blade ripped through my drum skins. So all I have now on the left side is the back drum. I’ll have speed, but not precision. How am I going to be able to line up the final frequency force shot so that it goes directly between the two Shinian ships?
Someone else should take the shot.
But we only get one try. One try, on which the fate of three million people depends.
It’s too great a failure to ask someone else to risk. As captain, it’s my responsibility to bear.
The dislodged battleband mates get back on their drumblades and the six of us speed forth, catching up with the coiling water dragon, and with coordinated leap after leap like rolls on a drum, we prod and thrust it back on course.
Seven minutes before sunset.
We explode forth in a storm of drumming and blast toward the ships.
Six minutes before sunset. The ships are twenty li away.
The thunder of drumming sends us charging forth like a stampede of enraged horses.
Five minutes before sunset.
We’re going to get there in time. With time to spare to find the right chord to play.
Lucky minutes.
With a final burst of speed, we strike and hammer with all our might on our back drums and hurtle toward the Shinian ships.
Five li away, the ships loom before us, their masts as tall as the coiling water dragon, sails ready to receive the wind.
I unsling the giant shamisen from my back. I place my fingers on the metal strings for the notes he, yi, and che, the most basic chord, and strum as hard as I can with the pick. A blast of sound shoots forward into the coiling water dragon before us.
Nothing.
The impact of playing the chord destabilizes my damaged drumblade, and I wobble dangerously.
Lucky li away from the ships.
I place my fingers on the strings to play the notes for shang, gong, and liu and rake the pick over them.
The sound bursts forth and strikes the coiling water dragon. It wobbles, then regains its center of gravity.
Three li away.
I play chord after chord.
Two li away.
Nothing.
Three minutes left before sunset.
Peasprout, you brought this on yourself.
As leader, you made decisions that no one wanted to make.
But you also made decisions that no one wanted you to make for them.
You should not have decided for Crick whether this endeavor was worth the risk to his safety.
You should have—
Something careens in front of my view, then steers alongside me.
Crick. On his drumblade.
Half his face is smeared with the blood pouring from his nose, the red swept back in streaks along his cheeks, ears, and neck by the wind from his pursuit of us.
He looks as if he’s going to faint.
I make to toss the shamisen toward him, but he weakly shakes his head.
Crick looks at the form and motion of the coiling water dragon before us as it races toward the Shinian ships. He lifts one hand in the air and gestures with his fingers in a tortured position.
A five-fingered chord. Formed of the notes he, yi, che, fan, wu.
One li away.
Two minutes before sunset.
I stretch my fingers out to form the strange, unprecedented chord. I slash the pick down across the metal strings of the shamisen.
A ferocious wave of sound roars from the instrument in my hands.
It flies over the water and blasts into the coiling water dragon.
The coiling water dragon shoots forward between the two Shinian ships with such speed that the vacuum makes my ears pop.
As it passes between the two ships, it veers closer to the ship on the right, stripping planks off it as it goes, shredding its sails, and snapping its mast.
It sends the ship on the left spinning in place, then drags it along, filling its sails, serving as the wind it was waiting for.
Sending it westward.
Back toward Shin.
I turn away from watching the coiling water dragon driving far off into the distance. I frantically scan the sea behind me and spot Crick in time to see him close his eyes, sway, and slide off his drumblade into the water.
The bottom lip of the amber sun touches the line of the water on the horizon.
With what sounds like a sigh and then a howl, the winds of the Western Belch rise and sweep us into the churning water.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-EIGHT
I wake to find that I am lying on a futon that is not my own. When did I lose consciousness? Did the Western Belch drag me under and nearly drown me? I slip on my skates and burst out of this room into the corridor.
I’m in the Hall of Benevolent Healing. Down the corridor, sitting on a bench, I find Doi and Hisashi looking completely unharmed.
“Where’s Crick?” I snap at them.
“Doctor Dio won’t let anyone in to see him yet,” says Doi.
“I have to see him,” I demand.
“She said you’ll be the first to see him as soon as she’s done,” she answers.
“Where’s this Wu Yinmei?” I seethe, looking at Hisashi.
He says, “In the suite at the northern end of the hall.” He avoids my gaze. His face is the color of bones. He was the one who vouched for Yinmei’s character.
“What did you know about her plan?” I bark at him. “Because you knew something. And by knowing something, you played some part in harming Crick.”
When Hisashi says nothing, I turn to Doi.
“And you,” I say. “You made me spare her. You made me doubt my own instincts as much as your brother did. You, too, played some part in bringing the harm that has come to Crick.”
Doi also says nothing, only reaches into her pocket. She takes something out and flings it all the way across the hall so that it bounces among the walls.
The second button. That she was going to give to the girl she loved.
“Peasprout,” says Hisashi. “I don’t blame you for being furious with me. But before you go in there, there’s something that you have a right to know. The coiling water dragon disabled the ship with Yinmei on it. However, Doi and I caught Yinmei and forced her to tell us the truth. The truth is that she gave a letter orb to the other Shinian ship that got away. In it, she told the secret of the salt and how to use it to destroy the pearl.”
Doi adds, “But the senseis don’t know that. They think the Shinian soldiers abducted Yinmei. Captain Cao and all the other captured soldiers confirmed that. The senseis think Yinmei was a victim. They know nothing about the leaking of the secret of the salt.”
So we’re in as much danger now as ever. More so. The Empress Dowager will be coming for us.
“Peasprout,” says Doi in a hush. “We have to warn the senseis that Shin has the secret to destroy our city. But if we tell the senseis that Yinmei sent back the secret of the salt, she will almost certainly be killed as a foreign spy and threat to Pearl.”
Hisashi says, “We don’t know what to do.”
They both look at me with round, pleading eyes.
I’m so tired of difficult decisions. I never asked for them.
I say, “Leave me alone. I need to
go see Crick.”
I sit alone outside the chamber where I am told he is being held. I wait and I wait, and at last, Doctor Dio comes out of the chamber in which Crick rests.
I bolt up from my seat.
“Can I see him?”
Instead of promising gloom and death, she says softly, “Hush. He’s asleep. Go to your dormitory. I’ll send for you when he awakes.”
“Is he going to be all right?”
“You are the sister?”
“Yes.”
Doctor Dio says, with a new gentleness that chills me, “His heart is too small. You might want to send for your parents immediately.”
As she skates away, I silently repeat to the closed door behind which lies my brother, Your heart is not too small, Crick. Your heart is not too small.
This is all Yinmei’s fault. And I’m going to make her pay. I skate to the suite of chambers where Yinmei is recovering.
When she sees me enter, Yinmei pushes up from her drumchair and stands. She asks in Shinian, “How is Crick?”
“Don’t you dare ask after him!” I hiss at her. “He trusted you. He stood up for you. He was your friend. We all were. We let you into our battleband. We let you into our hearts. And you broke our battleband, and you broke our hearts!”
“What I did broke my own heart, too.”
“Oh, enough of your startling mystic viewpoints. I protected you, even when you knew about the forcedrums and the pearlstarch and the drumblades and the magnetizing of the sea and the coiling water dragons. But now, you’ve harmed my little brother.
“I’m going to tell the senseis that you know about the secret of the salt and that you sent that back on the ship to the Empress Dowager. You’ve put all of Pearl in danger. But you’ve put yourself in even more danger. Because you betrayed us, but you failed to get away. And now you’re going to pay.”
I turn to race out of her chambers.
“Wait!” she calls out. “You deserve some answers, Chen Peasprout.”
I know I shouldn’t, but I stop. “Yes, I do deserve answers.”
“You are the lock, and I am the key,” she says.
“You’re admitting you’re the spy of the Empress Dowager?” I ask.
