by Jeannie Lin
The speaker was a stocky man wearing a leather apron and heavy gloves who stood half a head shorter than Yang. His face was darkened with soot, and the hair in his queue was noticeably gray. Behind him, a young boy of about fourteen years who was similarly clad and covered in soot apologized profusely.
Yang addressed the engineer. “Save the explanations, Liu. We need this running immediately.”
It was the first time I had seen a working gunpowder engine. Whereas the junk was built of wood, its heart was steel, and intricately fashioned. The size of the engine was remarkably small, and the bulk of the chamber was taken up by cogs and moorings that connected the contraption to the rest of the ship. Black smoke billowed out of one of the cylinders now. I coughed at the grittiness in the air.
Both the men turned at the same time. The elderly man spoke first. “Is that—”
“Stay focused,” Yang cut in, turning back to the engineer and his apprentice. “How fast can you get this engine working again? Without it, this storm will tear us apart.”
As if to emphasize his point, the vessel suddenly rose, then dropped, leaving a sick, falling feeling in the pit of my stomach. I steadied myself against the doorway. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
Engineer Liu ignored me to bark at his apprentice. “Bring water! We need to cool the chamber enough for me to check the pistons.”
I followed the boy as he scurried outside. I found two buckets against the wall while the boy lifted the lid off the iron caldron I had passed outside the engine room. It was used to store water. I remembered similar ones in every courtyard of the Ministry building, so that fires could be immediately controlled.
I thrust one of the buckets into the apprentice’s hands before dipping mine into the cauldron. Water sloshed over the side in my haste and I rushed back into the engine room.
Engineer Liu was busy closing off a series of valves and gaskets. “Pour the water into that funnel there.”
He pointed toward a receptacle high above my head, and Yang lifted the bucket from my hands before I could comply. Stepping onto a small ladder, he tilted the water over the funnel. I followed the network of pipes that snaked out from it, presumably carrying water to cool critical parts of the machine without contaminating them.
“If you bring the engine all the way down, it will take too long to power up again.” Despite Yang’s protest, he took the second bucket from the apprentice and tipped it in without argument.
“You worry about keeping this ship afloat, I’ll worry about this beast!” Liu snapped.
I ran back out to scoop more water with the boy immediately on my heels. We repeated the process two more times before Engineer Liu chased Yang and me out of the room.
“Away with you. I need to concentrate.”
Yang took me by the arm. He spared one tense glance back into the engine room before directing me up the ladder.
“We should get some air. Even with the ventilation shafts, it gets difficult to breathe in there.”
Back up in the lower deck, I could tell that the storm had become worse. The commotion in the engine room had drowned out the roar of thunder and the crash of the waves. Most of the crew were gathered in the galley area and around the berths. A group of them had started a game of dice, likely to distract themselves just as I had with my strange tales. Conversations continued in a quiet murmur.
“There’s nothing to do but wait it out until Liu fixes whatever he needs to fix.”
I could tell Yang wasn’t happy with that. He led me back to his cabin while Little Jie trailed behind us. “Did the engine explode?” the boy asked. “Is the ship on fire?”
Though the urchin had directed his questions to me, Yang took the liberty of answering. “No. And no. There was a miscalculation in the amount of gunpowder. One of the cylinders has been damaged, that is all.”
Jie stared at him wide-eyed, not comprehending.
“Everything will be fine,” Yang concluded, leaving it at that.
We had reached the captain’s quarters, and Yang removed his coat to place it onto the hook. His shirt beneath it was only in a slightly better state. He combed a hand through his hair to push it away from his eyes. I would never become accustomed to how short it was.
“All these days aboard the ship and I’ve never seen Liu or his apprentice before,” I remarked.
“Engines are complicated things requiring constant maintenance and care. One does not become an engineer without preferring seclusion.”
I thought of the spider’s web of pipes and gaskets in the engine room and the shelves full of spare parts kept on hand. With heat stressing the metal and soot griming the gears, the machine would have to be cleaned and calibrated.
There had always been a divide between the scientists and the engineers in the Ministry. Yang showed a typical scientist’s wariness toward moving parts. In terms of rank, the scientists had also held themselves superior to the tinkerers who got their hands dirty working machinery. Scientists were more closely aligned to the illustrious scholars where engineers were akin to laborers.
At that moment, the ship lurched violently. Yang reached out to steady me as I stumbled, and I might have hung onto him longer than was proper. I was frightened, truly frightened that I would end up below these waters forever.
“How long do storms last?” I asked shakily.
A crooked smile flitted across his lips, which told me the silliness of my question, but Yang banished it immediately. “My ship has handled much worse,” he assured gently.
“But you told Engineer Liu this storm would tear the ship apart.”
“I was exaggerating to push him along.”
“Or lying now to make me feel better,” I argued.
“Mèimèi,” he said quietly, in such a way that the words sounded entirely different; as if they’d never been spoken before.
My heart beat faster. I was standing closer to him than I was supposed to; staring at him longer than I should have been.
The moment was broken when I felt a tug on my hand. “Miss, the engine is running again,” Little Jie said.
I could feel the purr of it down below; not yet the full roar as it was at full power, but building slowly.
“There.” Yang ran his fingertip playfully down the bridge of my nose, grinning as if we were out of danger, though we were far from it. “Now let us escape this demon of a storm and find the sun again.”
***
We did see the sun again, as Yang promised. On the day I saw the first ray of light break through the clouds, I stayed up on the main deck for hours. Everyone’s spirits seemed high, and the crewmen greeted me in a more familial manner.
“The air after a storm always feels fresher,” Headman Zhou told me. “The sun warmer.”
Zhou was Yang’s second-in-command, a surprisingly affable man whose beard was just starting to gray. Despite his seemingly mild demeanor, he was unquestionably strict in enforcing the rules of the ship.
I had to agree with Zhou as I tilted my face toward the sky. Overhead, a large falcon soared through the air with wings outstretched. I was surprised to see it so far out at sea, but perhaps it had been blown out by the storm, just as we had been, and was now finding its way home. Its shadow momentarily passed over me, leaving me breathless with a sense of freedom and renewal. This was a good moment.
Yang was sound asleep down below. He had stayed up for nearly two days, coordinating between the ship navigator and Engineer Liu to steer the ship from the storm. I relinquished his cabin as soon as he allowed himself to retire.
I didn’t mind lingering out here after being huddled away for so long. I even found myself looking forward to when we could return to the laboratory and continue our work. Yang’s experiments had convinced me that he hadn’t forsaken the empire. After the cannons and gunpowder had failed during the war with the foreigners, Ya
ng had changed strategies. He was still fighting the war in his own way. Maybe it was best for the empire that Chen Chang-wei continued to build his war machines while Yang searched to cure the addiction that was robbing the empire of its lifeblood.
I didn’t know what my place was in all this, but there was a restlessness growing within me. I could no longer stand back and do nothing. I could no longer remain asleep.
“Pardon me, miss.”
Engineer Liu’s apprentice stood behind me, head bowed with hands folded in his sleeves. I hadn’t seen him since the first night of the storm and hardly recognized him save for his clothing. His face was scrubbed clean of soot and his face mask was pulled down around his neck, revealing a youthful face.
“My master apologizes for imposing, but he wishes to speak with you.”
I was taken aback by the extreme formality. “Certainly.”
Ducking his head, the apprentice hurried back down into the hold as if escaping the sun.
“What is your name?” I asked as I followed behind him.
“Benzhuo, miss.”
“Your name is ‘Clumsy’?”
“That is what my master calls me, miss. But only part of the time. When he’s happy with me, he calls me ‘Clever.’”
The gruff old engineer certainly seemed the eccentric type. I wondered if he had come up with a nickname for me after our brief encounter.
“How is everything down below?”
“As usual.”
“The repairs weren’t too difficult?”
“No, miss.”
I made one last attempt at conversation. “How long have you apprenticed with Master Liu?”
“Three years.”
Not once did he glance back my way as he answered, and I thought of Yang’s remark that engineers tended toward being recluses. One would have to be a recluse to be shut up inside that tiny chamber for so long without going mad.
Down in the engine room, Liu was still checking and adjusting valves even though the machine was silent. As soon as the young apprentice delivered me, Benzhuo took hold of a rag and set about cleaning out some piping without needing to be told. Clumsy or not, he was very industrious.
Liu squinted at me through the glow of the lanterns while his hands finished their last task. “It is you,” he said finally.
“I apologize, sir—”
“Ah, you don’t remember me? Liu Yentai.” The engineer pulled his face mask down below his chin and blinked at me expectantly. I could do nothing but blink back, trying my best to find some sense of recognition.
“I gave you a windup frog for your first birthday,” he prompted.
My eyes lit up. I couldn’t remember Liu, but I remembered the toy. It would hop about the room, changing directions in random fashion while I chased after it. At some point, our dog had pounced on it and damaged one of the legs. After that the frog would only hop in a sad half circle before the gears would grind to a halt.
Mother had put the clockwork creature away in a cabinet for safekeeping, promising Father would try to get it repaired. For all I know, it had been left in that very spot when we fled, forgotten like so many little things from our old life.
“You worked in the Ministry with my father.”
Engineer Liu beamed proudly. “You look like your mother,” he said with delight, waving a finger at me. “She was one of the quickest, cleverest minds I have ever encountered.”
I was shocked. “Mother?”
“An accomplished mathematician in her youth.” His hands had gone back to work on the machine as he spoke, as if the habit had become ingrained. “Without a doubt, she stood out among the candidacy that year.”
“But women are not allowed to sit for the imperial exams.”
Liu chuckled. “No, Miss Jin. They are not.”
I listened in fascination as he recounted the tale of a reclusive young man who showed up to the academies. He kept to himself and his studies, doing as little as possible to attract attention—but so much so that it had the opposite effect. Especially when his scores emerged at the top of his class during the provisional exams.
“That young man was your mother!”
The story was so farfetched, Liu must have invented it. I thought of Mother lying in her room with the shutters closed, her lungs filled with smoke. Who was this brash young woman the engineer was describing?
But then, I remembered how mother had taken control of our household after Father’s execution. She’d swallowed her grief and found a new place for us to start anew before shutting herself away.
I was grateful to have a new image of her: young, reckless, brilliant. I secreted away this new knowledge like a gift.
The old engineer finished some adjustment and tapped his wrench lightly against an iron pipe, head tilted to catch the sound. “This is why men of science like Yang find this work to be so difficult. He keeps on telling me to write it down, each detail and step of maintaining this machine. But it is impossible to describe knowing the feel and sound of when the gaskets are tightened enough or the pistons need replacing. There is art to this. Benzhuo over there is only starting to learn all of this creature’s tricks.”
Benzhuo lifted his head at the sound of his name but immediately bent down again to keep on working.
“Yang wants to believe there is a clear answer to everything. An equation for the human mind. Our frailties must be chemical impurities, our flaws due to a predictable reaction. Not so.” He sighed long and loud. “Sometimes men are weak. Sometimes fate is cruel.”
It appeared that both Liu Yentai and his apprentice were sorely in need of rest, but the old engineer insisted that night was day and day was night down in the engine room. The chamber beside it was their private quarters in which the two of them caught snatches of sleep when the engine wasn’t in use.
I left them shortly after, hoping they would use the opportunity to rest up.
When I returned to the second deck, Yang had awoken. I wanted to point out that he’d only had a few hours of sleep, but he was in a grumbling mood, so I brought him tea and a bowl of stew from the galley.
Yang was dressed and at his desk when I entered the cabin, though his face was still haunted by dark shadows. He hadn’t shaven, giving him a rough appearance. There was a map spread out on the desk, which he was frowning at.
“The storm took us off course,” he explained when I asked him what was wrong. “And also drained our store of gunpowder. We’ll need to sail by wind power until we reach the next port.”
He took the tea from me, giving me a grateful look as he took his first sip. Though I knew it was not a good time, I brought up the prospect of returning me to the mainland.
“As soon as possible, if you could,” I added, which earned a small bark of a laugh from him.
“I can’t have you fall into enemy hands.”
“Our countrymen are not your enemy.”
“They are,” he said with a dark look. “In more ways than you can imagine. We are our own enemy.”
I switched tactics, hoping for a better result. “You took Engineer Liu in during the purge.”
He nodded. “We fled Peking together. I had my family’s wealth; Liu had access to the Ministry’s airship. There were others with us, but we all scattered to go our separate ways. We all knew that one day the empire would come after us to reclaim what it had lost.”
Yang was trying to protect me, but there was a wild light in his eyes. I tried to explain it away as lack of sleep and the strain of fleeing the storm, but I began to doubt Yang’s dedication to finding a cure for opium addiction. His determination had twisted into obsession, and I feared he would take the rest of us down that same path of madness.
Chapter Twelve
By the next day, Yang and I were back in the laboratory. He came to ask that morning whether I would return to assist him
and I agreed. Even though we fell into the usual routine, a rift remained between us.
We worked in silence for the first hour. I performed a series of tests on each sample, just as Yang had shown me, and only spoke when I needed to, which wasn’t often.
“You know that you’re not my prisoner,” Yang remarked wryly.
When I looked over, he remained with his head bent to his task.
“But you won’t let me go.”
“Soling, after what I’ve seen—” He shook his head. “I have a sense that things are going to get worse quickly on the mainland.”
“But you can’t run forever. Surely there is still something or someone in all of China that you care about?”
Yang shook his head regretfully. “You can come with us,” he offered after a pause. “We have need of a physician on board.”
“But what of my family?”
“Bring them here.”
He offered it so readily, as if it truly were that easy. I hadn’t told him of Mother’s addiction, and I doubted Yang would tolerate opium on board his ship. Even if he would, I didn’t want my family stowed away, in exile from our homeland. We had already been living in exile all these years.
Our conversation was interrupted by the sharp ring of a bell.
“What is it?” I asked as Yang shot to his feet.
“Trouble,” was all he said before leaving the laboratory.
I took it upon myself to quickly stow away all the chemicals and pack up the various implements. Back in the storeroom, my hand hovered over the drawer where I had discovered the mysterious vials of dark red liquid several days earlier. What was it that had launched Yang on this quest?
As I emerged from the lab, it seemed the bell had summoned everyone to the upper deck. The level was empty, and as I climbed the stairs, I could hear the hum of conversation from all the men gathered above.
Yang had a spyglass pointed to the sky. His crew surrounded him, waiting. Overhead, I could see the outline of bird.