The Rebellion Engines

by Jeannie Lin

  My mind was racing. Chang-wei had described something like this. Not for a lock, but for a timing mechanism. The one what was used to trigger the explosive at the citadel.

  “Would you know how to make one?” I asked

  “Of course. I designed this lock when I was in the Ministry of Science.”

  I swallowed. Hanzhu couldn’t have been responsible for the explosion that had killed half of the Directorate. He was isolated at sea. He didn’t even know where the Factories were or what they were producing.

  More importantly, Yang Hanzhu wouldn’t kill so indiscriminately. His crimes were for destroying property, particularly opium.

  “Hold this for me.” Hanzhu shifted aside so I could grab onto the spike. “Hold it in exactly this position and hold it steady.” He picked up another iron bar from the array of tools before pausing. “You do want to know what’s inside, don’t you?”

  I nodded, my stomach knotting. “The acid lock. Is this a common design?”

  “It’s pretty simple in principle, but I can’t imagine the exact design is too common. Ah, there it is. Hold still.”

  Hanzhu withdrew the iron bar and then used the head to pry open a hidden panel beneath the lock. He reached a hand inside and felt around before straightening.

  “It will take both of us to lift the lid,” he said.

  I repositioned the lantern. Then I wedged the iron spike beneath the lid while he did the same with his tool. Together, we carefully raised the wooden cover and pushed it aside. Inside, I could see the large glass receptacle filled with a clear compound, just as he had described. Packed into the crate beside it were various metal plates and joints. Hanzhu reached inside to retrieve the most recognizable piece.

  He turned the metal object around in his hands. “I’ve seen something like this before.”

  Hanzhu held up what looked like a large samurai helmet. It was the head of a killing machine.

  I cornered Chang-wei in the galley. He was seated on a stool with Satomi across from him. Her father’s journal and an oil lamp flickering between them.

  “You didn’t tell me the truth,” I accused.

  He stood abruptly, blinking at me in confusion. Then he saw Yang Hanzhu standing just behind me and understood.

  “I didn’t lie,” Chang-wei asserted.

  “You said we were transporting weapons to allies in Shanghai.”

  “These are weapons,” he replied, too composed.

  Not firearms, but automatons that didn’t require any hands to wield them. My throat clenched as I realized I must have always known this was what Chang-wei was planning. I just hadn’t wanted to acknowledge the truth.

  “You can’t control those machines. You know you can’t.”

  Satomi looked from me to Chang-wei. “What machines?”

  “Much like your father’s karakuri,” Hanzhu chimed in casually. “Though I doubt these are meant to serve tea.”

  Chang-wei straightened. “I don’t see how this changes anything,” he remarked, jaw tense. “When does a smuggler care what he’s transporting?”

  “Changes nothing for me, but it must make some difference to you, Brother,” Hanzhu said, his tone cutting. He came forward to stand beside me. “Why so secretive, Chen? Why the lie?”

  Hanzhu looked to me as he spoke the last part.

  It did make a difference to me. From the moment Chang-wei had first proposed these machine soldiers to the Emperor, I had assumed it was to build up our defenses against foreign invasion. Then, when I’d learned they were to be used against the rebels, it was supposed to be in order to face the rebel army. But to use such weapons inside Shanghai—to have killing machines rampaging through the city streets where families dwelled…

  “Kuo Lishen didn’t take you away from the automatons,” I realized. “You were just tasked with taking them into battle.”

  “I have to see this through,” Chang-wei said.

  “There are innocent lives in Shanghai,” I protested. “You yourself said the machines were not ready.”

  His face was a mask. “They’re ready enough. We considered everything, Soling. This is the best we could do.”

  Hanzhu sighed, “The impossible dilemma of trying to remain honorable while doing dishonorable things.”

  Chang-wei kept his eyes on me. “The Qing army is stretched thin. Every day the rebels grow stronger and we grow weaker, unless we can stop them now. The Factories couldn’t produce fast enough to make a difference on the front line, but we can succeed in a targeted attack on the base of the Small Swords in Shanghai.”

  All I could think of were the lives lost at the factories. The lives lost on the ship. And more lives yet to be sacrificed in Shanghai. Each one a separate equation.

  “This is the best solution,” Chang-wei insisted, as if it would make it true.

  “It’s not,” I replied with a heavy heart. “It’s just the easiest one.”

  Chapter 16

  Over the next days, we sailed into the shipping lanes that would lead us to the port of Shanghai. I grew apprehensive as we neared the international settlement. We gathered topside on the quarterdeck as the first promise of land appeared on the horizon.

  “Will we be detained by the Yingguoren?” I asked Hanzhu.

  He shrugged. “Hard to tell. No one entity controls the foreign concession. Shanghai has been carved up and sectioned out like a slaughtered pig. There’s also a lot of looking the other way.”

  “Our agreement is with the Meiguoren,” Chang-wei said. “We’ll bypass the Yingguoren section to dock farther down the river.”

  The Americans. The British. More nations had laid claim to the treaty port in the time since I’d last been to Shanghai.

  Conversation between all of us had been limited since the attack and the subsequent discovery of the automatons. I’d spent the last few days looking after the injured crewmen. From what I’d heard, Chang-wei was involved in repairs on the gun-deck and for the main mast. Despite being on the same ship, we’d seen little of one another until now. Chang-wei made an effort to catch my eye, but I didn’t know what to say to him, so I made the excuse of needing to check on the others down below.

  When I went to see Hanzhu to report on the health of his crew, he made a proposal.

  He was in the laboratory, coat removed and sleeves rolled up. A series of glass vials and tubes had been set up with a flame burning beneath one beaker. The contents inside bubbled steadily away while Hanzhu bent over a notebook, scribbling something into the margins. He looked up as I entered, a set of steel-rimmed goggles hiding his eyes.

  “Master Yim is doing better,” I reported, hating to interrupt. Of all the injuries, the barge master’s were the most serious. “He’s awake and alert and able to drink water.”

  “You’ve changed, Soling.”

  I was taken aback by his directness. Hanzhu moved away from the apparatus and came toward me, removing his goggles. “You disappeared somewhere over the last year.”

  I bit my lower lip nervously. I’d forgotten that Hanzhu had some secret connection in Peking, maybe even in the imperial palace, but whoever it was hadn’t known about Hubei.

  “Now you’ve changed. You’re different,” he continued, not entirely disapproving.

  I smiled faintly. “I’m older?”

  “It’s like you’ve seen things.”

  I had seen things.

  “This is not the first time you’ve witnessed death,” he pressed.

  But it still gutted me every time. Even when I didn’t know their names or their stories. I still mourned the crewmen we’d lost in the battle just days ago. “Why does this matter to you?”

  “Don’t go to Shanghai,” he replied bluntly. “You don’t want to.”

  “What else would I do? Stay here on your ship?”

  He shrugged. Grinned. “It’s becoming a haven for lost souls.”

  “It’s not exactly safe.” Hanzhu was constantly under attack by anyone and everyone.

  “N
either is Shanghai. It’s all becoming battlefield, Soling. You should realize that before going to Shanghai to save Chen Chang-wei from whatever fate he’s chasing.”

  “It’s my fate too.”

  “It doesn’t have to be,” he said gently.

  “Chang-wei asked for permission to marry me.”

  Yang Hanzhu fell silent at that. It was hard to imagine there had been a time when both Chang-wei and Hanzhu were discussing marriage with my parents. It wasn’t particularly to be wed to me as much as to my family.

  “I’m surprised it took Chen so long to get around to it,” Yang said after a pause. “As proper as he…claims to be.”

  As far as insults went there was no bite to it. Yang regarded me, his eyes searching. “I don’t hate Chen Chang-wei. I don’t even dislike him. I actually want very much for him to be able to take care of you and…all the other things. Chang-wei is only dishonest with you, Soling, because he’s dishonest with himself.”

  It was the first time he wasn’t taunting or testing. For once, Yang Hanzhu looked serious and even concerned. He didn’t have the answers any more than Chang-wei or I did. His approach was to take to the seas, lash out, burn things. It wasn’t productive, but I didn’t know if assembling killing machines to march against our own countrymen was any solution either. It only had the appearance of purpose.

  There was a hissing sound behind us. The beaker above the flame was bubbling over.

  “On my father’s head—” Yang swore and rushed to turn off the heating element.

  I moved to help him but held back.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, attending to the spilled chemicals with a rag. “Nothing that would melt through steel here. Just a distillation process.”

  “I didn’t mean to distract—”

  “I’ll just start it again. I have enough of these samples.”

  As he tidied the workbench, I could see several yellow paper packets lying next to a mortar and pestle on the back counter, triggering some inner instinct. My pulse skipped.

  “What are those?” I asked.

  He followed my line of sight to the packets and picked one up to present to me. “Cessation pills. They’re supposed to reduce cravings for opium.”

  I turned the packet over in my hands, barely able to breathe. “Why are you studying these?”

  “They’ve been distributed in opium refuges and missions all over the empire,” he replied as a matter of fact. “The formula can be quite varied. Sometimes it’s nothing but a mix of bicarbonate and ginseng. Some have a low dose of morphine which is, interestingly enough—”

  “Derived from opium. You and your opium studies,” I mused absently. The label was different from the ones that Mother had in her possession. The characters on this one were stamped in red.

  When I looked up, Hanzhu was leaning back against the counter to watch me intently. “What is it, Soling?”

  “I was just wondering if these work.”

  He shrugged. “Yes. No.”

  “You were studying a peculiar affliction caused by opium before,” I prompted.

  He nodded. “Now I wonder if it wasn’t the opium that caused the sickness, but rather the intended cure.”

  I stared down at the packet in my hand. Yang and I had encountered what we’d thought of as a disastrous side-effect of opium-smoking. The condition made the afflicted out-of-control and violent, practically rabid.

  Since that first encounter, I’d seen the phenomenon emerging throughout the empire. First in Changsha and then occasionally in the alleyways of Peking. I warned anyone who would listen about the strange affliction.

  “My mother—” I choked out in alarm.

  “What of your mother?” Hanzhu asked, eyebrow raised.

  Hanzhu didn’t know my mother had been addicted to opium. It seemed too private of a matter to bring up — even if Yang Hanzhu had been close to our family in the past.

  Fortunately, my mother had stopped using opium, but I was constantly worried that Peking would bring back the dark memories and pressures that had caused her to seek out opium in the first place. Mother promised me opium was no longer a temptation for her, but she’d been tempted enough to visit a dispensary.

  “How is Jin Furen?” Hanzhu asked.

  I recalled how my mother had supposedly favored Yang Hanzhu over Chang-wei as a suitor.

  “She’s…she’s well.” As well as I’d ever seen her. I’d get a message to her to be rid of the cessation pills once I landed in Shanghai. “My mother is working for the Ministry again.”

  A sudden realization came to me. As close as she was to Chief Engineer Kuo’s inner circle — did she have a part in this current strategy? Mother had a talent for separating options into numbers. This life for that life. The equations.

  “Back under the loving care of the empire,” Hanzhu remarked cynically.

  “Mother needs to feel useful.”

  As did I. We were trying to reclaim our lives, our home. I couldn’t pretend that the war hadn’t happened or that the imperial council hadn’t targeted my father, but I could hold that pain inside if it meant my brother would have a future.

  Hanzhu refused to let go of his wounds. He’d stand his ground and fight against the tide.

  “If the Qing empire falls, there are worse monsters waiting to take its place,” I told him.

  “Are they really any worse?” he countered.

  Between foreign invaders and murderous rebel factions? The Taiping rebels hated the Manchu. Yang and Chen Chang-wei were both Han, but I was Manchu from my father’s bloodline.

  The Emperor was far from a capable and just benefactor, but he was young and he was trying to hold up the country. If the Qing government were to collapse, it would be like floodwaters breaking through a dam. There would be no stopping our many enemies, or the bloodbath that would follow.

  “On the night your father was executed, I went to gather your family,” Hanzhu reminded me. “There was room in the airship, but we had to go quickly. When I came to your house, your mother had already fled.”

  I remembered saying farewell to my father in the courtyard. When Kuo Lishen came to our gate later, I had hoped it was my father returning, but it wasn’t.

  Suddenly we were packing. Then we were leaving. I’d wanted to hold Mother’s hand, but she had Tian clutched to her. Nan, our housekeeper, was the one who had pulled me along. If we had left in daylight, I might have clearer memories of what our life had been like in Peking. The memories that persisted were of that night and fleeing into the darkness with what few belongings we could carry.

  “Things would have been very different if we had gone with you,” I murmured.

  “You would have been among friends,” he said gravely. “We would have found a way to survive together.”

  Instead, we had been alone and shunned in the tiny village where we’d settled. Mother had fallen into dark times. There was the opium. The rice basket that was always empty. I’d sold our possessions to stay alive.

  “You should be among friends now,” Hanzhu went on. “No one knows what the future will bring, but you do know that there will be untold danger in Shanghai. Stay here, with me, with Satomi, until the danger is past. We can protect each other.”

  It might be a ship of lost souls, but Yang Hanzhu’s war junk had come to my rescue before. He might be hunted by the authorities and wanted by the law, but he was in control of his own destiny. I couldn’t say the same for Chang-wei. Or for myself.

  “And then you can still marry that do-gooder Chen Chang-wei when all is done,” Hanzhu added charitably. “You know he’ll find a way to survive this madness to fulfill his promise. We all thought he was dead after being captured by the Yangguizi only to have him turn up alive. It’s obvious there’s fate between the two of you.”

  The word sounded strange coming from Hanzhu. He wasn’t one to speak of fate. His proposal hovered over me like a storm cloud, as did his earlier warning.

  It was all becoming a battlefiel
d.

  I found Chang-wei at the bow of the ship as we navigated the river. He leaned forward on the rail, watching the movement of the water and the shifting view of the shore. From here, we could see the first glimpse of Shanghai in the distance. The waterway would take us through to the Bund, to the docks that served the foreign settlement.

  The river was clogged with traffic. Ships flew flags from a web of nationalities and authorities. Overhead, airships could be seen heading to and from the landing ports. Here, Yang’s ship would disappear into anonymity.

  I rested my arms on the rail, my pose mirroring Chang-wei’s. He looked lost in thought, a hundred things going through his mind. Yet I could tell he was acutely aware of my presence by the slight stiffening of his spine and the minute raising of shoulders. He was waiting for something. Almost bracing for it.

  It was late in the afternoon, the sunlight flashed bright into my eyes in a last dance before fading beneath the horizon.

  “This war will continue with or without you in it,” I told him.

  His knuckles tightened over the rail. “I can’t wash my hands of this, Soling. I proposed the machines to the Emperor. I brought us to this moment.”

  When he spoke of us, he didn’t mean he and I. He meant the empire.

  “You had an idea,” I protested. “It was just a beginning. You still have a choice.”

  “To stop?” Chang-wei shook his head. “That’s not my choice. This can work, Soling, but only if I’m there to make sure that it does.”

  “You can’t control those things—”

  “I can now,” he insisted.

  I stared at him, searching his face for answers. He looked away. “I found a way to do it. This last month.”

  The last month when he’d worked night and day with hardly any sleep.

  “We can save lives,” he said quietly. “Prevent all-out war.”

  I didn’t know if I believed it, but I was certain that Chang-wei did. When Chang-wei made a promise, he committed himself to it fully.