“I’ve highlighted the passageways that are rarely used,” added Princess Zali.
Mei was glad she’d followed her instincts about the princess. “So how do my brother and I get into the library, if it’s locked with an enchantment?”
“Here’s the thing. The enchantment doesn’t affect the emperor himself. Or the empress.”
“You’re going to ask them to help us?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. What would they say if I told them two shady vagabonds broke into the palace in order to save a cursed village?”
“Right.”
“What you need is Mother’s seal,” said Princess Zali.
“The empress’s...seal,” repeated Mei slowly, not wanting to admit she was completely lost.
“She keeps a copy in her quarters,” said the princess with a nod. “If you carry it on you, the enchantment shouldn’t affect you. That is my best guess.”
“And I’m supposed to ask her for it?”
Princess Zali scrunched her eyebrows. “Mei, my mother doesn’t even give me the seal when I ask for it.”
The thought of sneaking into the Empress of China’s quarters and stealing from her alarmed Mei. “I can’t do that!” she cried.
“Well, I see no other way. I’d do it myself, except I’m nowhere as fast as you. Think about it this way: you’ve already broken fifty rules by infiltrating the Imperial City and impersonating a maid. Or ‘books keeper,’ as you claimed. Besides, lifting a curse from a village—and a whole city—seems like it’s worth taking the risk, don’t you think?”
“Yes, I suppose,” Mei said uncertainly. Then, louder, “Yes, it is.”
Princess Zali pointed to the map again. “Mother’s quarters are the third door down the first hallway from my room. The seal is hidden in the bottom drawer of the dresser on the left, next to a jade statue of a phoenix. She is currently having evening tea with some officials, so you have”—the princess squeezed her eyes shut in thought—“thirty-nine minutes to complete the task.”
Mei rushed to memorize the instructions. “Sorry, what does the seal look like?”
“It’s a seal of a phoenix. You’ll recognize it right away. It’s the most valuable item in the drawer.”
Mei hesitated. “I should check with my brother first, to see if he’s onboard with the plan—”
“Thirty-eight minutes.”
“All right, all right! We’ll try our best.”
“Good. Remember that I am placing enormous trust in you. If people find out I’m assisting two thieves to steal Mother’s seal, I might as well jump in a vat of boiling oil.”
“I won’t let you down,” promised Mei.
“Take the hallway to the right,” said Princess Zali. “The only person on duty is a servant who likes to get tipsy during these performances. If you run into anyone who questions your presence, tell them to bring you to me.”
“Thank you, Your High—I mean, Zali.”
The princess squeezed Mei’s hand, then let go. “Help me walk back into the theater. Act normally. Then get your task done and save your village.”
Mei, flushed with nerves and excitement, hurried backstage. Yun, for his part, had recovered enough from his lapse onstage that when his sister quietly explained their next steps, he kept his bitter thoughts to himself, and grudgingly slipped away with her into the corridors without arguing. Not a lot of people were on guard duty the night of the children’s play; it was a holiday for the entire palace. Indeed, the only obstacle was a servant snoring outside the theater doors. The twins scurried down the hallway and out into the courtyard.
“This way,” said Mei, pointing to the map Princess Zali had drawn.
The sound of chirping crickets filled the courtyards. Above, the moon glinted off the sloped rooftops and guided their path in the dark. Mei and Yun wondered if the Jade Rabbit was secretly watching them overhead. It had been seven days since the Mid-Autumn Festival, and the moon no longer was full, but a crescent, like a slice of orange.
Under the cloak of night, they snaked past the many different buildings around them and made their way to the northern side of the palace complex. They stuck to the lesser-trekked passageways that the princess had highlighted. Mei took the lead on surveying corners, making sure no one was around. Yun trailed behind her reluctantly, mumbling that this was a bad idea.
They managed to head back through the empty royal quarters. Since all the royal children were at the performance, the hallways were empty. Mei retraced her steps to the princess’s room, then followed the instructions given to her.
“First hallway, third door,” she said.
Yun grumbled under his breath. “I still don’t think we should trust the princess,” he insisted. “Why did you tell her the truth?”
“Because she’s like us, in many ways.”
“Um, Mei, you’re talking about a princess in the imperial court of China. That’s like comparing a butterfly to a gnat.”
“Fine then, don’t trust her. But at least trust me.” Mei’s voice was tinged with annoyance. “Besides, it was a good thing I did,” she added. “I was able to find out information about the library and its enchantment.”
“I could have told you that!” said Yun, exasperated. “Everyone who’s read the history of the imperial courts knows the Imperial Library is locked with an enchantment, and only the emperor and empress can enter with special seals. Baba even told us so, remember?”
Mei didn’t answer.
Yun started to say something more, then decided it wasn’t worth it. His sister’s memory had never been as good as his own. Mei often went by gut instinct; Yun went by memorization and strategy. It was one of the things that used to frustrate him whenever they played games. One time, in an infamous game of backgammon with the other village kids, Mei lost her and Yun’s entire pot because she refused to listen to Yun’s advice. “It was just bad luck,” she’d said dismissively, to which Yun had argued that backgammon was a game of skill, and they’d have won if she had been paying attention like he was.
They started to turn into the corridor, then blanched. Two guards were heading toward them from the other end. The guards were deep in an argument and did not seem to notice the twins. In that valuable split second, Mei and Yun jumped back around the corner and knelt in the shadow. They held their breath, the noise of their pounding hearts drumming in their ears.
The voices of the guards grew louder as they approached.
“...your own fault for betting such a priceless heirloom,” one of the guards was saying.
“How was I supposed to know he’d cheat?” the other guard argued.
“Doesn’t matter. You should never bet anything you can’t live without, especially in a card game. Anyway, you don’t know if he cheated.”
“I’ll bet he did. He always wins, that sneaky rat...or should I say crane?”
The second guard laughed. “Mm-hmm, he does look like a bird.”
Mei and Yun remained still. It was too late to run for the exit. They could only hope against hope that the guards wouldn’t turn toward their direction as they passed.
The guards rounded the corner, armed with bows and arrows on their backs and heavy swords at their sides. They disappeared down the other end, still squabbling. Mei and Yun waited until their voices completely faded down the hallway.
“That was too close,” Yun muttered, wiping his forehead.
“Let’s hurry.” Mei led the way and stopped in front of the third oak door down the hall. “This one.”
They stood still for a few moments, then Yun cautiously knocked on the door. Nobody answered. Quietly, as Yun muttered under his breath about how they really shouldn’t do this, Mei pushed on the door.
It was locked.
“Uh-oh,” mumbled Mei. “I think Princess Zali forgot about this part.”
Yun swallowed. “This is what always happens,” he said through clenched teeth. “You never think ahead. It didn’t occur to you to ask the princess about the
door to the empress’s quarters?”
“Give me a break, Sir He-Who-Freezes-Like-a-Dummy-Onstage.”
Yun’s expression hardened as he moved Mei aside to examine the doorknob. He knelt down until his eye was in line with the keyhole. It was the size of his thumb. The grooves inside didn’t seem overly complicated.
“Maybe the princess didn’t forget,” Yun said after a moment. “She probably assumed we could get past this locked door, if we’ve been sneaking around the Imperial City. Although we haven’t actually been picking any locks...until now.” His gaze landed on Mei’s butterfly pin. “Let me borrow that.”
Mei reluctantly handed over their mother’s hairpin.
Yun slid the sharp end of the hairpin into the keyhole. Picking a lock requires mostly concentration, but having good close-up vision proves significant advantage. Yun was able to see the grooves that lined the inside of the lock. His keen ears were also able to hear whether the faint click of the mechanism worked. He moved the pin slowly, carefully.
At last, the door slid open.
They stepped into the empress’s chamber. It was as beautiful as Princess Zali’s had been, but bigger and even more lavish. There was not a spot in the room that was bare; every spare inch was adorned with red silk wallpaper or plush carpet, or else was brimming with artifacts. There was a long desk with glittering beauty supplies: tiny pillows of face powder, scarlet red lip paint, gilded combs. Mei instinctively thought of Mama, and whether any of these held the same magic as her butterfly pin.
Next to a sleek statue of a phoenix was the dresser that the princess had told Mei about. While Yun groaned over and over, “I can’t believe we broke into the Empress of China’s quarters,” Mei hurried to the dresser and tugged on the bottom drawer. It wouldn’t budge. She tried the upper drawers, which opened easily.
“The bottom one’s jammed!” she grunted.
Yun studied the polished wooden drawers carefully. They didn’t seem to have any keyholes. “Let me borrow the hairpin again.”
Sometimes the drawer in their father’s desk also became jammed whenever a scroll got caught in the side. Yun stuck the pin into the narrow side space of the empress’s drawer. After a few swishes, Yun plucked out a crumpled paper-thin scarf that had wedged itself behind the drawer. It then opened with ease, revealing exquisite green jade pearls, pendants, and black onyx beads.
“We’re looking for a seal of a phoenix,” said Mei, ignoring her brother’s slightly smug smile. “It’s the most valuable item in the dresser.”
She reached for a flat pendant that had the imprint of a dragon, tossed it aside, grabbed a tiny seahorse molded from smooth stone, tossed that aside, then held up a fistful of loose gold coins. Funnily enough, every single item seemed like it could be the most valuable item in there.
“We need to get out of here soon,” Yun reminded her.
“I’m hurrying!” snapped Mei.
She dug deeper through the drawer of treasures. There were multiple seals inside: a circular seal of a peacock, a tiny seal of a serpent with jade beads for the eyes, even a seal depicting a rabbit raising its head toward the moon (it did not resemble the real Jade Rabbit particularly well; its hind paws were much too small). Her fingers curled around a heavy silver square. As soon as she felt it, she knew it was the right one.
“Look.” She revealed the item gleaming in her palm. Engraved on the square was an image of a phoenix, its wings spread over its head.
It was the empress’s seal.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
十七
The Magical Library
The twins crossed a short marble bridge on the southern side of the palace complex and reached the pavilion. The single-story building looked almost shabby in comparison to its neighbors; there were no gilded roofs, no gleaming columns. But looks were often deceiving.
They entered the unguarded hall (for who needs guards when there’s a protective magical enchantment in place?), went past the giant bronze statues, then down a long corridor. At the end of the corridor was a pair of heavy-looking doors. The left had a giant blue-green emblem of a coiled dragon, the other, a phoenix. The phoenix matched the one on the empress’s seal.
Mei’s skin prickled. She hesitated, not completely sure if they should go through with the task after all. Breaking through a locked door was one thing. Breaking past enchanted doors was something else entirely. Nothing was off the table when magic was involved.
Yun, sensing her hesitation, said, “We’ve gotten this far. No point in turning back now, unfortunately.”
“Here goes nothing, then,” Mei muttered.
She held the empress’s seal up to the towering doors. She felt a tingle shoot up her arm. Hoping that was a good sign, she squeezed the seal and pushed on the wooden phoenix above her. The door to the Imperial Library slid forward with a loud groan.
The windowless room was dim, the only light coming from the soft glow of lanterns in the corners. Dark oak shelves of worn books and scrolls lined the paneled walls—thousands upon thousands of scrolls. The place seemed to have no ceiling, as some of the bookshelves were several stories high, the topmost rows fading into the dark and looking no bigger than the twins’ thumbs.
Their mouths agape, they walked deeper into the room. With each step, more bookshelves, display cases, and tables appeared to materialize out of thin air. The room seemed never-ending.
“Where do we start?” asked Mei.
“Anywhere, I guess.” Yun carefully unfurled a scroll from a nearby shelf and studied the Chinese characters. It was a list of dates and what the past emperors ate for dinner each night. He put the scroll back, then unrolled another one. That one was a list of palace officials and their birthdays.
They browsed different sections of the library. As the minutes crawled by, they became more and more stressed. It was not only tiring going through the scrolls one by one, but it was also disheartening each time one of the twins unfurled yet another page of unhelpful material. So far, they had learned what the current emperor ate each night (he did eat a large amount of mushrooms, Yun noted), the names of his favorite officials, the amount of silk slippers the empress purchased and what colors they came in (492, and mostly red), and the number of dumplings made from the Tang Dynasty up until then.
After an hour or so, Yun put back the scroll he was reading. His eyes were bloodshot as he glanced at the rest of the massive library. “This search could go on for a while,” he said. “We need help, or we’ll be here until dawn and still may not have found anything.”
Mei closed the book she was skimming. She knew it was partially her fault—she should’ve clarified with Princess Zali exactly where the records of arrests were kept—but she refused to admit her mistake in front of her twin.
“We just need to find the section that keeps criminal records,” she said. “Think. Aren’t you supposedly good at puzzles?”
The words were bait, and both twins knew it. Yun, like his sister, could never turn down a challenge when it played to his strengths.
He looked around the gigantic space and, for the first time, really thought about it. Where would he keep such sensitive records, if he were the emperor? Certainly not near the front. No, he’d keep those in the back, where they were less likely to be swiped. He followed his instincts and kept walking. Mei trailed behind skeptically.
The room grew dimmer the farther they went. Then a soft, white glow caught their eye beyond several tall bookshelves. They followed the light until they stood before an enormous stone display case. Inside was a single, wooden box, carved with crisscrossed patterns and tiny windows so that they could see the inside, which was full of floating white-and-black spheres the size of cherries. There were about a dozen or so, drifting slowly like fireflies at night, rotating so that the twins would first see the black half, then the white half. The thick stone case protecting the box and the orbs looked unbreakable. No doubt these were some of the most heavily guarded treasures in the palace.
&
nbsp; “What are those?” said Mei.
“I’m not sure,” answered Yun, staring at the floating orbs.
Beneath the cage was a shiny scroll. They read the inscription.
Yin and yang.
These ancient relics have been preserved since the beginning of time.
May the two worlds combine and live in harmony.
They watched the orbs for several moments, entranced by their soft glow. Then Yun’s gaze fell on the wall of closed cabinets behind the display case. Five locked chests lined the bottom. To the left of the chests was a row of books with dark blue bindings.
He grabbed a book from the shelf. There they were: records of arrests—thousands upon thousands throughout history, arranged by name of city.
“City of Ashes...City of Ashes...” Yun searched the pages under the light of the floating orbs, tried the next book, then the next.
“The city wasn’t always ashes,” said Mei. “Before Lotus’s curse, I mean. I bet it had a different name.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “What do you think it was? City of Walls? City of Mountains?”
“Well, not walls,” said Yun. “Because those were built later to keep in Lotus and her magic. But you’re right, it did have a different name. I know we’ve heard it before.”
Together, they called to mind the stories Grandpa had told them, and what they’d seen themselves in the City of Ashes. They thought of the Temple of Fire, and the paintings Lotus had looked upon with longing on its walls. And that’s when Yun remembered.
“Blossoms,” he whispered. “It was called the City of Blossoms.”
Mei grinned, and Yun did, too. He hurriedly studied the book in his hand. A moment later, he flipped to a page and pointed to it excitedly. “Here! A list of crimes recorded for the City of Blossoms. Theft of a paintbrush, theft of calligraphy ink, family dispute, vandalism, another theft...” He squinted at the characters. “Wow, so many of these thefts involve stolen art supplies. The city must’ve had a ton of artists.”
“Just like Grandpa said.” Mei joined her brother and read over his shoulder. “Skip to the last ones,” she said. “The city fell right after Lotus’s husband was arrested and killed.”
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