Uncle Chuck brought out some of the food they’d stored in Blossom for emergencies (like the one they were in)—some canned stew, granola bars, and fruit cocktail. A few people, seeing that they had food, made attempts to steal some, but between Gaga’s snarls and Belamie’s sword, it was made crystal clear that no one would be stealing from them.
“Poor souls,” Jia said. “I wonder what will happen to all these people? Where will they go?”
Matt didn’t want to think about it too much, because it was simply too much. He couldn’t worry about everything.
They ate their food in awkward silence. Albert continued to look at Belamie with a mixture of fear and awe. He had only just met Mrs. Hudson, and it seemed to jar him to see her as the legendary Captain Bonnaire. She paid him no mind, almost pretended that he wasn’t there until Albert spilled some of his stew, and some of it splattered onto her boot. She snapped at him and Albert recoiled. Ordinarily Matt would have been delighted to see Albert get a bit of chastising. It served him right. But in this case it was only heartbreaking. Belamie Hudson was always kind to everyone.
They all settled down to sleep, finding spots inside or around Blossom. Belamie remained close to Matt. He tried to imagine that she wanted to protect him as his mother, but he knew it was more about the fact that he had the compass. She wasn’t going to let it out of her sight, and Matt had a feeling she wouldn’t close her eyes until she knew he was asleep.
But sleep was miles away for Matt. The events of the day swirled in his brain. His dad. Corey and Ruby. The way they had unraveled and disappeared.
This is all your fault!
Don’t let go, Matt!
The image of them, their voices in his head, it made his heart race and pound in his chest. He tried to redirect his thoughts, think of something besides the horrors of the day. He counted to a thousand. He did multiplication in his head. He listed off the elements in the periodic table. None of it helped. Finally, he started humming a song, almost without thinking.
Belamie sat up very suddenly.
Matt stopped his humming. “What’s wrong?”
“What is that?”
“What’s what?” He sat up and looked around, thinking she must have seen or heard something in the dark that looked suspicious or threatening.
“That melody you were just humming.”
“Oh.” Matt suddenly realized what he’d been humming to himself. “You—my mom, I mean—used to sing that to me. When I was little, whenever I had a nightmare, she’d sing it.”
“My mother sang that to me,” Belamie breathed. She looked at him, held his gaze. Matt could almost hear her singing those words to him now in her low, warm voice.
When you feel lost and all alone
Look to the sky and you’ll find home
He saw just a flicker of the mother he knew, and maybe a bit of recognition for her as well, but it was gone as soon as it came.
She clammed up. Her face became a mask. “It’s a fairly common song, I think,” she said, and she lay down again.
Matt lay back down, pulled his blanket up to his chin. That burning ache returned to his chest. He reached inside his pocket and pulled out those scraps of time tapestry. Another thread pulled away and disappeared, and again Matt felt something unravel inside of him, like a corresponding thread in his own soul had just disintegrated. The feeling was gone in an instant, though, and he clutched the fabric tightly in his fist until he finally fell asleep.
Matt woke to gray light and a roaring engine. He jumped up from his sleeping place on the ground, thinking it must be the Vermillion and Captain Vincent. His mom must have thought the same because she was on her feet in an instant, searching for the source of the engine. Albert, too, scrambled to his feet, tripping over his blankets.
“I’m sure that’s the Vermillion,” he said. “Captain Vincent’s come to rescue us!”
But it wasn’t the Vermillion. It was a military tank, rolling through the wrecked city. A soldier was sticking out of the hatch with a loudspeaker. “All persons in the city are to report to the pyramid! Food, supplies, and fresh water will be distributed. Medical treatment is available.” Another soldier popped up and repeated the words in Spanish, then French, Russian, Chinese, and a host of other languages, including Greek and Latin. Clearly, they knew they were dealing with unusual circumstances.
“At least there’s some kind of order in this chaos,” Gaga said, wrapping her knitted blanket tightly around her shoulders. Matt was glad to know that something was being done to help all these displaced people. They were all time castaways now. He wondered how many more there were throughout the world and all of time. Maybe his dad and Corey and Ruby hadn’t really disappeared, but had been discarded into another time and place, and they only needed to find them. But when he thought about the way they had disappeared, how they had seemingly come unraveled, he felt whatever had happened to them was altogether different than what had happened to these people. He closed his eyes, and the images of Corey and Ruby surfaced in his mind, each of them clinging for life, Ruby begging him not to let go. But he couldn’t see their faces. Not clearly, anyway. They were distorted somehow, like they were underwater, and when he reached for them, they disappeared. He only heard the echo of Corey’s words.
Your fault.
Your fault.
Your fault.
He opened his eyes, looked down at his clenched fist. The scraps of their time tapestries were still there, but it looked as though they had faded. Or maybe they were just dirty. He didn’t want to let go of them, but maybe he shouldn’t be touching the tapestries so much. He folded them back up and slipped them in his pocket.
“I think we’d better leave now,” Belamie said. “We don’t want to get swept up in all of this.” She gestured to all the people around them who were now starting to make their way toward the pyramid, holding on to what few belongings they had. It was like a dozen rivers of humans all flowing toward the pyramid.
They packed up their things and cleaned up their general camp area. Matt thought it hardly mattered, given the state of things, but Gaga was insistent that they not be “litterbugs.”
Uncle Chuck distributed more granola bars for breakfast, and Haha brewed some coffee for the grown-ups on the little gas stove in Blossom. With a cup of hot coffee in her hands, Belamie warmed toward Haha a little.
“You remind me of someone,” she said, studying Haha’s face. “We haven’t met before this, have we?”
Haha looked a bit awkward. “Don’t think so. You’re probably thinking of my son. We look a lot alike.”
“No, we don’t,” Uncle Chuck said. “I take after Mom.”
“I meant my other son. Your brother.”
“Oh. Right. My brother.” Uncle Chuck shook his head a little. “Brother . . .”
After everything was picked up and stowed away, they all piled inside of Blossom. Albert hesitated at the door. He kept looking around, clearly hoping the Vermillion would appear and rescue him, but there was no sign of the ship or the captain.
“Get in, Albert,” Jia said. “Time to go.”
Albert frowned but got inside and shut the door.
Somehow it felt more crowded inside Blossom, even though they were fewer in number. Maybe it was because they weren’t as comfortable with each other. They had to shift a few things around a bit, and Matt felt a small pang when his mother tossed one of Ruby’s sneakers aside and muttered something about how hideous the future fashions were.
Uncle Chuck sat in the driver’s seat with Gaga in the front passenger seat. Haha was crouched in the spot between them. Albert and Jia sat in the back seat, on opposite sides, leaving Matt and Belamie to sit together at the small table. Matt pulled the compass out from under his shirt. His mom’s hand twitched when she saw it, and he almost thought she was going to try to steal it again, but she took a breath and folded her hands in her lap. Still, she looked at it with a longing that made Matt uneasy. Even with the promise she had made, sh
e believed the compass rightfully belonged to her. Oddly, in a roundabout way, it did. He did give it to her, after all. Or Quine did, anyway, and he always felt she understood how to wield it better than he did, even though he had invented it.
“Uh . . . ,” Matt said. “I’m not sure where or when we’re going, exactly?”
They all turned to Jia. “Oh!” she exclaimed, as though she had forgotten her role in all of this. “I’m sorry. Let me think . . . We need to go to the late 1600s, I think around 1680?”
Belamie scoffed. “You think? You don’t know?”
Jia shook her head. “I’m sorry, I don’t. I was very young when I left, only six or so.”
Belamie rolled her eyes. “Well, this is turning out just as I thought. A bunch of children trying to take charge. Try sometime in 1688. That’s what Quine’s letter specifies. Set the dials sometime in that year, that should set us right. And the coordinates are thirty-nine degrees north and one hundred and sixteen degrees east. That will take us outside the walls, at least. I’ve never been able to travel directly into the city. You don’t want to take us directly into the city. We’ll be killed on the spot.”
“Not while I’m with you,” Jia said.
“We’ll see,” Belamie said, clearly not sure she believed Jia really could gain them an audience with the emperor, even if she was his daughter, but Jia seemed confident. That was enough for Matt.
“Set the dials, Mateo,” Belamie said.
Matt obeyed. Blossom’s engine roared to life. The bus began to shift, and they were off.
18
The Kangxi Emperor
1688
Beijing, China
The Forbidden City
Jia had never before been so nervous for any mission in all her days as a time pirate, and she had to work extra hard to hide it. She didn’t want anyone to see how scared she was, how uncertain, especially Matt. She couldn’t let him down, not after all that he’d been through, so she squared her shoulders and held her head high, even though she was a wreck inside. She was going back to China. Back home. Home. What a strange, powerful word, that it could stir so much inside of her, things that lay dormant for years. She’d almost forgotten who she really was, where she came from. She had told the story of her being just an orphan from China so many times for so long, she had almost come to believe it herself.
They landed in the moat surrounding the Forbidden City. Blossom had transformed into a junk, a small Chinese ship, flat-bottomed with two orange-red sails.
The Forbidden City was surrounded by a wide moat and closed in by high stone walls. Only a few sloped, red-tile roofs could be seen above them. Jia had never been outside the walls of the Forbidden City, save for the few moments before Captain Vincent took her on board the Vermillion. In her younger days, this had been the whole world.
“It doesn’t look like time has been disrupted here,” Matt said.
No. It looked just as she remembered.
They sailed toward the edge of the Forbidden City, where guards were posted with swords.
“They look kind of serious,” Matt said. “What if they don’t believe who you are?”
“Then we’re in trouble,” Belamie said. She kept her hands on the hilt of her sword, though Jia knew it wouldn’t do them any good, no matter how skilled and fierce a swordswoman she was. If Jia did not convince the guards, they’d be lucky to be taken prisoner. But she wasn’t going to let Matt believe for one second that they might be in any kind of danger.
“They’ll believe me,” Jia said. “When I show them the amulet.” She brought it out of her pocket. It too had almost been forgotten, pushed to the bottom of her memories.
“Let me do the talking,” Jia said. “The rest of you should remain quiet unless directly spoken to, understood?”
They all agreed, even Belamie. They were all looking to her now.
When they reached the edge of the moat, Jia greeted the guards. She had, of course, practiced her Chinese plenty with Matt, and done some studying on her own from time to time, but she had always been a little reluctant, and the words had never felt quite right coming out of her mouth. Now, as if returning to this place and time had unlocked something in her brain, the language seemed to slip off her tongue without a thought, as though she had never left. It felt oddly comfortable, and to her surprise, empowering. This was her native tongue, and she was speaking it in her native country, in her original era.
The guards were stiff and eyed the odd grouping with deep suspicion, especially Albert, Jia noticed. He was so pale and completely not Chinese in every way, but then Jia showed them her amulet, and their expressions and stances changed drastically. They each bowed low to Jia and helped everyone out of Blossom. Matt stepped beside Jia.
“I know I can’t take these dudes,” he whispered in her ear, eyeing the guards and their armor and weapons. “But I’ll be your moral support.”
She smiled. “Thanks. You’re my hero.” And she knew that he really would be very soon. She wondered how it would all play out. In her memory, she saw herself speaking to her father on his throne, and then Matt appeared and took her away, but she was never quite sure why, and she still didn’t fully understand. There must be a reason.
The guards led them through the gates of the Forbidden City, past smaller buildings where servants lived. She saw a few of them repairing the roof of one of the buildings, others repairing faulty steps or pillars. The Forbidden City had thousands of servants and craftsmen and guards, all of them living within the walls, never allowed to leave or have their own families. This was their entire life. She squinted, trying to see if she might recognize any of them, but they were too far away. When she was little, before she left on the Vermillion, one of her sanctuaries had been the craftsmen’s quarters. She knew no one would look for her there, and it was where she first fell in love with building and fixing things. For hours she watched her father’s servants carve and craft and forge. One of the servants had taken a liking to her, had even forged her a little hammer and taught her the basics of craftsmanship and engineering. She touched the little hammer she always carried with her. Li Lianying. That was his name. She’d forgotten so much, but it was all coming back now, like a veil was being lifted.
They walked through gardens of orchid and magnolia trees in full bloom, ponds with lotus blossoms floating on top. The smells brought back memories. The wives having tea in the gardens, always strategizing for power and influence, the children playing games around them, having lessons with tutors. Jia always running, always hiding.
Her heart skipped a beat as they walked along the stream that ran through the city, and she saw a group of children, about seven or eight of them. Some of her siblings, she realized. She recognized some of them, even remembered their names. There was Prince Yinxiang, and Wenxian, her sister closest to her in age, though her mother never allowed them to play together. Wenxian was a princess of the first rank, a daughter of an empress, while Jia—or Quejing—had merely been the daughter of one of the emperor’s consorts.
“Who are they?” Matt asked quietly, nodding to the children.
“The emperor’s children, a few of them anyway.”
“A few? You mean he has more than that?”
“Yes. I can’t remember how many exactly. It was hard to keep track.”
“The Kangxi emperor had three dozen children,” Belamie interjected from behind them in a dry, matter-of-fact tone. “Twenty-four sons and twelve daughters.”
“Thirty-six kids?!” Matt exclaimed in a whisper though his voice squeaked a little. “How is that even possible?”
“Well, he had several wives,” Jia said. “My mother wasn’t his only wife, you know.”
“Oh,” Matt said, and seeing the discomfort on his face suddenly made her uncomfortable.
“It was a common practice among emperors in China,” Belamie added. “One of the emperor’s most important duties was to produce an heir in order to ensure that their lines continued to rule and the
empire would thrive. Having many wives to bear him many children ensured this.”
Matt nodded. “Right. Makes sense.”
Jia had never given much thought to her family dynamic, how it would seem to someone outside her time and country. To her it was just the way things were. But now, after viewing it through Matt’s eyes, she was suddenly self-conscious of how strange her family must seem. Matt must have sensed her discomfort because he leaned in and said in a low voice so only she could hear, “It’s all good. I mean, it’s not like I have the most conventional family on the planet.” He glanced briefly at his mom, who didn’t know him, and his grandmother and uncle, who were roughly the same age.
Jia smiled a little. She had traveled enough to know that families came in all varieties and sizes. Family meant different things at different times and places. Sometimes it was about survival. Sometimes it was about power and names and bloodlines. And sometimes it’s just about love and wanting to be together. This was why she often thought the Hudsons were the most wonderful family in the whole world, because they chose each other. She had wished more than once that she could be a part of the Hudson family, a true member of their crew. But now the Hudsons were no more, and though it might mean nothing to the rest of the world, it seemed as great a tragedy as any she’d witnessed, and her heart ached for Matt. Oh, how she hoped her father could help them!
The guards led them to another set of gates, these ones extremely tall, painted red and gold. The door opened to a spacious courtyard. At the end stood a large square building with many red pillars and a sloped, double-tiered red-tile roof. Jia paused for a moment to take it all in.
“Is that your father’s palace?” Matt asked.
She nodded.
“The Hall of Supreme Harmony,” Belamie said, her own voice full of awe. “The most sacred building within the Forbidden City. This is the place where the emperor was crowned, where he held his wedding ceremonies, and where he meets with his most important guests.” Clearly, she’d researched this place a good deal. Jia had done a little bit of her own research in Wiley’s library, but to her this place was more than just a sacred building. The very pillars had memories inside of them, the walls full of stories of those who built them and those who had lived inside of them, including herself.
The Forbidden Lock Page 18