by Heidi Heilig
“Well,” Kashmir said. “You came very close.”
“Shh.” Joss was slick, but would she go so far as to sell me a worthless map? I racked my memory. The warriors were supposed to have come to life in the tomb; clearly that hadn’t happened. Yet. How could I get a bunch of clay men to come to life?
Clay men that came to life . . . various gods and goddesses often breathed life into clay men and women, including the goddess Nuwa, in Chinese mythology, but she was apparently declining to make an appearance. Golems were made of clay and given life when a person wrote the magic word on their foreheads, but golems were a Jewish myth.
I decided to try it. I believed in golems, didn’t I? I just had to remember the magic word. I shut my eyes to concentrate. “It’s Hebrew for truth,” I said.
“Quoi?”
“I’m thinking. The Hebrew word for truth brings them to life. What’s the word?”
“I don’t speak Hebrew.”
“Quiet!” I pressed the bridge of my nose. “Truth. Truth. But the trick of it is when you erase the first letter, the golem stops because the word spells . . . spells death. Emet! The word is emet.” I squeezed the last bit of water from my hair into my cupped palm. Then I dipped my finger and wrote EMET on the general’s broad forehead.
The thirsty clay absorbed the water, and the letters faded.
Nothing else happened.
“Damn.”
“Maybe they don’t speak Hebrew either.”
“No,” I said slowly. “They wouldn’t.” A thought kept buzzing by, like a mosquito in my ear.
“You have any other magic words?”
Something about Chinese tradition and numbers . . . and Joss the day we first met. “Four,” I said. “Four is death.” Swag raised his head from my chest and hissed. “Shh. Five is wu and it sounds like ‘me’ but also ‘not.’ Me and not me. So fifty-four would be . . .”
“Me, dead?”
“And not dead.” I dipped my finger in the water again, and the shadow of my hand passed over the general’s eyes. I wrote the characters in Chinese, as Auntie Joss had written them for me on the chart she’d sold me—my number, and my mother’s, the numbers that would control my fate. The marks shone wetly on the clay forehead, and for a moment, everything was still as I held my breath.
The numbers started to fade, and I dropped my hands by my sides, the water in my palm dripping down my fingers. Swag shifted on my shoulders. “Nothing.”
“It was a good try.”
“Maybe Slate has some ideas? We can go back to the ship and . . .”
“And what? Amira?” Part of me was aware he was speaking, but I didn’t answer. I was too mesmerized by the eyes of the general, no longer blank, but glowing with scarlet light.
It faded as the letters faded, but I turned to Kash, flushed with triumph. Swag was still hissing in my ear, and Kashmir’s eyes shone with wonder in the glow of the lamp.
Then the light was ripped away, like a sheet pulled off a painting, as a dark shape screeched out of the shadows and leaped at his throat.
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Glass smashed, and the sky herring scattered to the corners of the room. A black form crouched on Kashmir’s chest, growling; the thing was almost the size of a man, but it smelled of rot, and the sound it made was inhuman.
Kash’s knife was pinned under his hip. His hands were pressed up under the creature’s jaw as it twisted, wet teeth snapping as it shrieked in fury. With every cry, the herring darted, throwing shadows behind them. Kashmir’s eyes widened, white in the dark: the thing had its claws around his neck.
I drummed the beast with useless fists, but it didn’t even feel the blows. I whirled and yanked the bronze sword out of the general’s grasp, swinging wildly—the flat of the blade connected, but the sword bounced out of my hands. It clanged like a bell on the stone as the thing howled and arched backward. Kashmir finally threw it off, but it rolled to its feet and turned to me.
I stumbled back and fell under an onslaught of gray teeth. My shoulder hit the unforgiving stone, and then the back of my head. For a moment the world was bright with pain. Then the shadows in my vision blurred with sudden tears, and all I could see clearly were two bloodshot eyes.
I tried to push the beast away, but it clung tight, all bone and sinew under my hands, though the weight of it crushed the air out of me. The creature screamed, and so did I, until its hands closed around my throat. I scrabbled at the bony fingers as my lungs burned and my ears rang; weakening, I stared, face-to-face with the thing. It wasn’t a thing at all.
Then Swag leaped—a gleam of gold in the wavering light. The wild eyes widened and the hands loosened their grip; I was coughing and curling up and reaching out as my attacker fell away and hit the stone with a wet crack. Kashmir loomed over the prone form, raising his knife. In the shadowy light, Kash’s own face looked like a skull.
“No,” I said, wheezing, my breath stuck high in my throat. “No!” I waved my hand like a flag of surrender. “It’s a person. Oh, God, it’s a person.”
Kashmir lowered his hand, then sheathed his knife. Our attacker lay sickeningly still. I crawled over to push back the stringy hair with shaking hands. Lifeless eyes stared out of sunken wells. My heart thundered in my ears, but even accounting for starvation, those eyes were unfamiliar to me. “It’s not her.” I choked on my relief; I could breathe again, but the air was so sour. “It’s not her.”
Swag was wrapped around the skinny throat like a golden collar, teeth deep in the loose flesh, blood dripping through his coils and spreading in a black pool on the floor below. My palms were wet with it. I wiped my fingers on my trousers and cupped the man’s wasted face in my hands, my shoulders heaving. “I killed him, Kashmir.”
“No, amira, it’s all right—”
“It’s not all right. If not for me, he’d be alive!”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Not for long.” Kash knelt beside me and put his hands on my arms; they were searingly hot.
“But I could have helped him if—if—” But I couldn’t think of the end of the sentence.
“Amira,” he said again, rubbing my skin, warming me. I let go of the dead artisan and Kash pulled me against his chest. “Shh,” he said, patting my back as I shook. My head was ringing like a struck bell, and just as empty. “It was going to happen. His fate was sealed the day the tomb was. There’s nothing you can do.”
With my eyes shut against the shadows and the scent of clove filling my nose, my heart started to slow to the rhythm his was beating. He stroked my hair, and it was hypnotic; my arms were so heavy and his, so warm. I didn’t know how long we sat close together in the tomb—an hour? An eternity? But then something sharp pricked my leg, and I jumped.
It was only Swag, peering up at me and testing the air with his tongue. Abruptly, I straightened up and wiped my face on my damp sleeve. Then I took a deep, shuddering breath, picked up the dragon, and put him back on my shoulders. “Let’s get the soldiers and get out of here.”
The sky herring were schooling in a corner, and Kashmir used his shirt as a net while I scraped soot from the walls above the burned-out lamps. He took the other lamp off the bow of the dinghy and tipped the fish inside. Then he brought the light to where I stood before the general with black and bloody hands.
We marked the foreheads of fifty-four warriors; it seemed like an auspicious number. Their eyes began to glow and their bodies move. Each soldier stood differently: some slouched, some favored one leg. One scratched his thigh as he waited. What patience, what artistry it must have taken to create eight thousand individual warriors from a changing mold. How many of the artists had pounded their skilled hands on the thick bronze doors at the end of the hall?
Was the man I’d killed one of them?
I shook off the thought. Kashmir was right. There was nothing I coul
d do; it had already been done, hundreds of years before I was born. But I forced myself to take one long look at the artisan lying dead in the corner. I had no magic words to bring him back to life.
Then, with fifty-four pairs of eyes watching, Kash and I stood on the steps leading to our little dinghy and waved the soldiers after us. “Follow me!” I shouted. Thank all the gods, they did.
Kashmir steered us back down the canal, using the oar as a rudder. We were pushed on a swell of mercury created by the contingent as they marched behind us, waist deep in quicksilver. We stopped before the archways, in the last room on the right. I marked the sailors with soot and scribed a name on the prow of the junk: the 54. As I led my army toward the Temptation, Slate’s face was as pale as the moon above us, and in the sharp shadows of the lantern light, I couldn’t tell if his expression was pride or fear.
The soldiers swarmed aboard, and Bee and Slate made fast the junk, throwing ropes between the 54 and the Temptation and winding them tight around our cleats. Meanwhile, I took the leather case in my hands and pointed Kashmir toward the bronze beach.
He drew up close to the edge, where liquid met solid metal, near a withered pomegranate tree, the red fruit hanging shriveled on the branch. Careful not to touch the shore and risk angering the emperor, I threw the map up above the line of the mercury, just as Joss had asked. Should I call to her? What would I say? Would she even know me? But she was waiting in the dark, and sick. Poisoned. I closed my eyes and put my thumb on the spot between them.
“Are you all right?” Kash said.
“I’m thinking again,” I said irritably, but the thought was gone, and my shoulder was throbbing where I’d fallen. I had done what she’d requested, and the fact she’d been there to ask me to do her this favor was proof it worked. She hadn’t asked for anything more. It was enough.
No. Maybe for her, but not for me. Gingerly, so as not to capsize us, I crawled up toward the tip of the dinghy and unhooked the lantern from the bow.
“Closer, Kash,” I said, but he had already dipped the oar, bringing our skiff near enough for me to lean out, my arm shaking, and set the lamp ashore beside the map.
I watched the lonely pool of light as we rowed back to the Temptation, the last lantern to shine on Qin’s final realm. It must have been beautiful when he’d been laid to rest—an underground Eden, full of the fresh scent of fruit and flowers, the jeweled stars glimmering above. Qin thought he’d rest forever in a heavenly afterlife, but the effigy of his empire had faded faster than his crumbling kingdom above. Joss had said it herself. Everything must come to an end. In every myth, paradise is meant to be lost.
Slate helped us raise the dinghy, but he gasped when he helped me over the rail. “What happened?” He reached toward my face.
I pulled away from his hands, not wanting to be touched. “Just . . . fate.” I wiped my sleeve across my cheek—blood, thick and tacky. “It’s not mine.” I clenched my fists, suddenly angry. “What’s the use?” I shouted into the dark, my voice echoing in the cold stars. “Why do we bother if all we do is what was written a thousand years ago? What’s the point if we can’t try to change things?”
“Oh, Nixie.” My father reached out again and I let him; my rage had burned too hot and flamed out quickly. He stroked my cheek with the back of one finger. “I always knew one day you’d understand.”
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Before we left the tomb, I emptied out a wine bottle and dipped the mouth carefully into the quicksilver. I knew mercury as a poison, but Qin had believed it was a cure-all, so I tucked the bottle away in my room, just in case I was ever brave enough—or desperate enough—to test it. I left Swag in his dry bucket and sent Kash back to the bilge to wait with the bottomless bag.
Then I took the helm.
The return passage was as gentle as a blessing. The foul air of the city of the dead was pushed aside by the fresh trade winds of the tropics. The still silver sea melted into moonlit waves, and the unchanging diamond ceiling lifted away to reveal the deep black velvet of the starry night. Here we were, back in paradise; Blake’s map had worked after all.
I sighed. Then I licked my teeth and spat. The miasma of rot had left a film all over my skin. Et in Arcadia, ego.
Slate stood beside me on the quarterdeck as we sailed, his face to the wind, his expression inscrutable. He had said nothing for hours: no instruction, no conversation . . . no praise. Finally I spoke. “Trouble, Captain?”
“What? No.” He clasped behind his back and walked toward the rail to stare at the sea. “No trouble at all. But I wonder . . .” He turned and came slowly back. “I wonder if you really needed that map.” He cocked his head, studying me. “This may be your native time.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Kashmir shift on his feet. I blinked. “My what?”
“You were born in . . . well, sixteen years ago or so. You belong in Hawaii. In 1884.”
“I belong here, Captain,” I said quickly. “Aboard the Temptation.” The response was almost automatic, and for the first time, something about it rang false in my ears.
“Nevertheless,” he said. “This may be what you find past the edge of every map. The place you return to again and again. This may be your home, whether you like it or not.” He watched me, as though waiting for me to say something, but I had nothing to say. I only stared out over the prow at the island as we approached. She waited for me, as patient as a mother.
We’d sighted a bay to the south of our position, and we pulled close enough to shore to drop an anchor. The north side of Oahu was lit by nothing but moonlight; if there were people living along the shore or in the deep valleys, they had long since put out their fires.
Somewhere, on the other side of the mountains, Blake was in his bed, his hands still stained with ink from the map he’d drawn. Was it only hours ago that I’d seen him? It felt like centuries.
After the ships were made secure, I stripped down to my underclothes and dove from the bow into the cool blue sea. The waves were silvered by the moon, but so different from the quicksilver sea of Qin’s dead kingdom. Diving in and out of the water, I felt entirely renewed.
Well, almost entirely. I couldn’t shake the sense there was something I’d missed in the tomb, a thought I’d almost had, a question I’d almost answered. I hated this feeling; my mind kept casting about and pulling up other thoughts in the process, and they swarmed around my head like flies.
I filled my lungs with air and rolled into a dead man’s float, my eyes closed, my ears below the waterline, trying to clear the distractions. I hadn’t seen Joss in the tomb, but she’d told me she had seen us. In 1866, when Slate first came to Honolulu, she must have recognized the ship, perhaps even before Slate came to her shop to sell his cargo . . . and to meet my mother. In 1884, Joss would soon be burying the crate, stuffed with the money she’d gotten from Mr. D, so she could uncover it in her youth. That, and a map of 1841. And an elixir as well, for her “condition.” She said she’d been poisoned; was it weeks of exposure to the mercury? Or had she lost hope just before our arrival?
Poisoned.
I remembered then the wharf rat I’d embarrassed by asking the meaning of hapai. Bubbles streamed slowly through my lips and up along my cheek.
Lin had been in her mid-twenties when she met Slate. She’d have been born in 1841, or thereabouts.
I lifted my head, the breeze cold on my face. Salt dripped into my eyes as I treaded water for a long, still moment. Then I plunged below the surface, twisting in the cool clean water, holding my breath until it hurt, until my lungs clenched like fists, until I could not concentrate on anything else.
I burst into the night air and took a painful breath that cleansed like fire. Then I heard a short laugh from above. I blinked away the saltwater; there was Kash at the rail. “You were under so long I thought you’d drowned!�
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“No such luck!” I called back.
“I’m beginning to think I’ll never inherit that hammock.”
I climbed up the ladder at the stern. The night breeze gave me gooseflesh after the warmth of the water. Kashmir met me on the quarterdeck with a thick towel. His own hair was still damp, and he’d changed into a fresh shirt. He started to wrap the towel around me, then he winced.
“Your shoulder.”
I glanced at the ugly purple bruise and made a face. “You know, you shouldn’t spy on a lady bathing.”
“Reconnoiter is a better word,” he replied easily. “Besides, it’s not a bath unless you use soap. You should try it.”
“I thought I smelled something strange.” I sniffed him; he smelled of bitter almond. Then I squeezed my hair into the towel. “Maybe someday,” I said, starting toward the hatch, but as I stepped away, Kashmir caught my arm.
“Amira—”
“Yes?”
“Are you really all right? You seem . . . distant.”
When the answer came to me, it was not a lie. “I’m fine.”
His eyes searched mine. “I . . . you did very well at the helm. I am—amazed.”
Pride, like a mouthful of sweet wine. “Thank you, Kash.”
“The captain was wrong,” he called after me. “You belong on a ship.” But it very nearly sounded like a question.
I went downstairs to find fresh clothes. As I pawed through the trunk, I caught sight of the map of Carthage, waiting for me. I pushed a jacket over it. Then I dressed and took a moment to look at myself in the mirror. My own eyes stared back.
It was only when I was leaving the room that I noticed Swag was not in his bucket.