Hidden Cities

by Daniel Fox

  With luck, none of them would be swimmers.

  WHEN HE dared, he stood up in the stern and took the oars and began to row ashore, toward that other fire.

  HE CAME to land full in the light, trusting that he had counted right and there were no other watchers. He stepped onto the sand, spread his arms wide and called out.

  “Shola, Jin! Quick now, come quickly …!”

  The shouts from the burning boat had changed, he thought; no longer desperate, the men might be more angry. It might not be Sung who they were angry at.

  He was still hopeful that none of them could swim.

  He was just drawing breath to call again—a little anxious, a little urgent—when he saw movement beyond the flames. One figure rising, another larger at her side. Both girls, unharmed, undetained: hurrying down across the sand.

  He ushered them into the sampan, saw them settled together in the bows, pushed her out into the surf again.

  Scrambled aboard, seized the oars, pulled away with heavy strokes. Everything in his body was heavy now. His muscles ached and burned, he sweated and shivered at the same time and his breath was hard to catch, hard in his throat, hard to swallow down; and still he hauled, still he drove that sampan down the coast.

  A mile in the dark, another mile. He counted strokes just to keep himself going, while the girls sat quiet and watched the water hiss and bubble by.

  The sky was tinting pale pink and blue before he stopped, before he had to stop. He sat in the stern there and cried, almost. Sheer exhaustion inhabited his body like a dense liquid pain. The sampan bobbed in the swell; the girls didn’t move, any more than he did.

  The sun came up to show him the headland he was praying for, just a little farther now. Too far to row, he thought his shoulders might never pull an oar again, but there was always a paddle in the sampan. It was a different stroke, at least. He thought he might manage that little, that far.

  He fished in the bilges for the paddle, found it floating; that was bad, that there was enough water down there to float it. He ought to bail, probably. But the headland was so close, and … Well, they wouldn’t sink between here and there. Probably.

  One of the girls made a noise, a soft cry of recognition; he glanced up, to see Jin pointing. Jin. How unexpected was that?

  It gave him strength; he dug the paddle into the water, worked the sampan through the waves.

  Into the shadow of the headland, into the creek.

  Running the bows up the little beach, with a grateful last lift of a wave to carry her farther than he could have managed. Feeling her ground on sand and gravel, barely having the strength to lift the paddle inboard before he dropped it.

  By the time he’d lifted his head to look for them, the girls were long gone, halfway up the cliff. Stopping there, unexpectedly; looking back, waiting for him.

  Again, that gave him strength.

  Over the side, one last ineffectual little drag to shift the hull a fraction higher; then he lifted out her anchor, carried it up the beach, wedged it between two rocks and left her to hope and justice.

  And slowly, slowly trudged up the cliff, in pursuit of the girls; who seized his hands one each and all but dragged him to the top.

  Where their mother was just coming out of the little temple there, and seemed to have fewer words even than Jin as she greeted them, if you could call it a greeting, standing there mewing helplessly while her hands made gestures not even she could comprehend.

  THEY COULDN’T stay. Luck or chance or the workings of the goddess had allowed them to find Ma Lin alone; that wouldn’t last. Ping Wen’s men would come again, or Tunghai Wang’s. There were no neutrals now. The local peasants would betray them, to one or to the other. With two armies claiming the ground and the temple empty of idols, there was no safety else.

  There was no safety anywhere, this side of the water. Nor perhaps beyond it, but at least no one was fighting on Taishu.

  “Will you come, mother?” It was Pao who had to ask it. Shola didn’t see the need—of course she would come, it was obvious, it was essential—and Jin was rediscovering her words little by little, but not these, not yet. Not questions.

  “I do not want to leave this,” a look back at the temple where it sat knee-deep in a hollow, dragon-roof proud of the height. “I made a promise to the goddess.”

  “Mother, you gave your daughter to the goddess,” though he thought perhaps that Jin was finding her own way back. “That’s enough, surely. And she has temples also on Taishu.”

  “Not this one. There is no one else, to care for this.”

  “There is no one but these,” her two daughters, “us,” her two daughters and himself, “to care for you. You matter more than a robbed-out house. Come with us, mother.”

  She hesitated, but then Jin—Jin!—said, “Come,” and that was it.

  THAT WAS it, except he had to get them there. In the sampan, which was never meant to cross even a narrow sea; and which he could not row, not possibly, not now.

  She had a mast, she had a sail. He knew how to use them.

  He knew how the wind might lay her flat in its enthusiasm, might overturn her altogether if he was careless, if it was skittish, if the sea was rough.

  He knew that the dragon was a jealous mistress of the strait, that she ate men when she could if they tried to cross.

  He knew that the old man thought the goddess would protect her children from the wind and the sea and the dragon too.

  He thought that Old Yen had been right, before this.

  Before Jin started to find her own way back.

  He wasn’t sure at all that the goddess could still speak through her; that the dragon would avoid her; that the weather would be kind above and around and beneath her. Not anymore.

  And still, he saw no choice. They could stay here and wait for soldiers, or they could chance the sea with all that she implied.

  · · ·

  AT LAST, as they had to, they went to sea.

  IN MID-STRAIT, with nothing but his own hard-acquired skill to keep them afloat and heading mostly in the right direction, they saw the dragon.

  Who flew above them, over them, past them: directly on toward the mainland, from that jut of stone they called the Forge. If she looked down, if she acknowledged them, no matter. She didn’t stop.

  one

  rivately, Ma was impressed.

  He couldn’t actually admit to that, because Tunghai Wang was raging at his side. But this was Ma’s territory, this was what he did, and he could see it being done well all around him. He knew what work must have gone into this, what thought, what planning. It was nothing easy, to make it look so easy.

  He couldn’t yet quite see the point of it all. Not just to enrage Tunghai Wang: that was welcome, no doubt, but incidental. Ma was sure of it. So was Tunghai Wang, which only added to his fury. Summoned here—summoned in defeat, which was a new experience, and unwelcome in itself—he had at least expected to be the point and purpose of the meeting, and was not.

  Ma thought that Ping Wen had something to show them. He couldn’t imagine what, except that it would be an expression of power. Ping Wen had served two emperors and betrayed one; he had committed himself to Tunghai Wang, and betrayed him too; this was a bid on his own account, but surely not for Santung. Santung was no good to anyone, a soft fruit squeezed between two fingers. Even if he had made it defensible, a soft fruit with a hard shell. For what …?

  THE DAY began with a banner against the sky. Long and green, twisting in the wind as the dragon did; flying above the valley-ridge, perhaps a mile north of the city.

  The camp was full of the news of it, of the meaning. Tunghai Wang, this summons you.

  Not Ma. Why would the purveyor-general go to such a meeting? He had no claim, and no reason.

  And yet he came to the generalissimo at his breakfast and said, “Take me, and the monksmith too. When you go up to meet with Ping Wen.”

  “Why?”

  Because I had a messenger
in my room last night, because of course Ping Wen has spies among your army just as the emperor does, just as you have spies in Santung and on Taishu too because I set them there.

  Of course he couldn’t say that, it would be to say because Ping Wen wants me there, us, the monksmith and me, which would be to say I am a traitor too. He wasn’t even sure that was true. His loyalty was as complex as his work, and it tended to the same thing: results. What else could matter more?

  He said, “Because whatever happens today, you will call on me later to arrange matters for you, to work with Ping Wen or against him. It will be easier for me to understand the needs if I have seen, if I have heard the two of you together. If I know what he wants, and how he means to achieve it.”

  “I can tell you—”

  “No. You don’t see the same things I do. You will see his strengths, and how to break them. I will see his needs, and how to supply them.”

  “Or how to cut him off, if he defies me.”

  “That too.”

  It was undeniable. Whatever Ping Wen did or thought to do, he could not support Santung through a siege. Tunghai Wang would starve him out eventually; Ma might see a way to do it sooner, find something that he needed more than food.

  · · ·

  WHEN THE generalissimo set off, then, an hour later—full of intent, but grinding his teeth none the less, knowing himself all too obviously summoned under the eyes of all his army—Ma rode with him, and the monksmith too.

  The night visitor had been most particular about that. Ma understood that he himself was invited only because of whom he could bring with him.

  There was some comfort in that, knowing that he was not the purpose of the intrigue. It was the same discovery that had enraged Tunghai Wang, but Ma never had been one for the front line, first into the breach. He had his courage, and it was of a different sort. Frightened for himself, he would have been no use to anyone. Secure in his unimportance, he could watch what use was made of the monksmith and add that to the account of his knowledge, use it in his turn.

  Also, secure in his unimportance, he had no qualms about bringing his boy. There was comfort in that too, in the familiar figure trotting at his stirrup, holding station in the corner of his eye. If something happened—to Tunghai Wang, to the monksmith—Ma would not be alone in the aftermath. He could manage armies, solitary at his desk; he was not so good at managing himself. He would not have done so well last night when the spy came, without his boy there beside him.

  With Ping Wen and Tunghai Wang squabbling like vultures over the carcass of Santung, with both of them plotting and himself only marginally privy to their plots; with the monksmith to watch, knowing that he mattered in ways that neither of them knew; with his boy to watch him, a hand when he needed help and a sharp young eye, seeing things he wouldn’t think to look for—Ma might not be ready for the day, but he was as ready as he ever could be and almost eager for it.

  Certainly eager to get off this accursed mule and face what must be faced on his own feet, as a man should, balanced and justified in his own eyes and in the eyes of those who loved him.

  THEY SHOULD have walked in any case, he thought sourly, or else had men carry them in chairs. There were men enough, even after the generalissimo’s recent catastrophe. These beasts were only for pride, the arrival of a soldier and not a surrendered man; and the generalissimo’s pride would not let him ride the road where he personally had met his catastrophe, all too recently. Black scars on the road, ash in the air—no, he could not ride through that.

  So he turned aside too soon, to follow wayward paths through wood and scrub where the beasts were confused and unwilling, untrusting. Ma at least had his boy to take the mule’s head and lead it forward through mud and shadow and bamboo. Trained to the open battlefield, horses of a more delicate temper twitched and shied as this unfamiliar world closed around them. Even where it opened into paddy they were uncertain of their footing, on narrow mud paths between stretches of still reflective water. Their nervousness delayed the whole procession, fed Tunghai Wang’s temper, fed it more when at last he surrendered his pride and summoned bannermen to the horses’ heads.

  The paddy was empty, where the season’s second crop of rice should have been ripe and ready for harvest. Only these lowest stretches still held water. No one farmed on land where soldiers lurked; and as the men climbed the ridge, they found walls down and ditches blocked, whole terraces crumbling. That was the bitter residue of the dragon’s typhoon that had brought ruin to the generalissimo’s plans before, calling an end to a battle half-fought when he was poised to win it.

  The higher, the drier. It hadn’t rained for days, for weeks; springs and streams still fed the lower paddy, but not the height of the ridge. The path there was easier for the horses, all dried mud. Tunghai Wang dismissed his bannermen to the fore again, but Ma kept his boy at the mule’s head. If he needn’t watch how he rode, he could ride with his eyes ahead, high ahead, on that flirting banner and the curious structure rising beside it.

  The banner spoke of a northerly wind, blowing steadily offshore: fine wind for an invasion they could not mount, either of them, Ping Wen nor Tunghai Wang. The generalissimo had no means to cross the strait. The governor might have both boats and safe passage—Ma’s spies spoke of a child blessed by a goddess, able to repel the dragon, fetched unexpectedly from Taishu—but he dared not deplete his forces in Santung for any adventure against the emperor. If his attention slackened, if he let himself be distracted, the generalissimo would find a way in behind his guard.

  So: two men caught in a sullen squabble, neither of whom could reach for what he wanted more. Ma was intrigued to learn how this tale would turn next—and what that was, that angular construction close by the banner there.

  Before they reached it, he had recognized its bones. Had he not seen to the erection of such machines himself, and the feeding also: numbers of earthenware pots, quantities of oil, of black powder, flowers of sulfur, more?

  He knew by length and weight and substance just how those machines were put together and how used, how many men they took. This was similar, and yet not the same. Its arm was longer, and there were too many ropes; it had a net sling rather than a solid cup to hold and hurl its projectiles. It had two young men climbing all across its gaunt height and arguing tightly, while its team squatted in the poor shadow of the rocky ridge.

  More to the point, Ma couldn’t see the point of it. There were its missiles, familiar pots and curious woven baskets that wouldn’t hold the liquid fire he knew. He remembered sheets of flame in the sky, fireworks as weapons—but at whom would Ping Wen hurl them, up here? Not at the generalissimo, surely. That man had learned their lesson already, which was why he came when summoned. Giving him—and, more to the point, giving Ma—close sight of these new machines would not be useful to Ping Wen, whatever he had in mind.

  His boy clicked the mule to a halt and Ma slid off, awkward and ungainly as ever. He was sorry to let Yueh see him this way in this company, but what could he do? A man was what he was, whatever circles he moved in, however high he rose.

  This had been the topmost terrace of the paddy. Now, in the wake of the dragon’s ruinous storm, it was a field of bare flat mud: dry mud, his boots found on landing, sun-baked to a desert dryness. He still didn’t understand why they were here, why Ping Wen would have chosen such a site for such a meeting.

  Or why the war-machine, or why that other structure men were working at, a rough forge built from stones out of the broken wall. Smoke wrapped itself around them; the air shimmered and rang with hammer blows, iron on iron on stone.

  Ma found the monksmith at his side, alert and interested. “They are making chains.”

  “Are they?” Ma couldn’t see so much.

  “Of course. Excuse me …”

  And he was gone, to join the smiths around their furnace. Ma felt more confused than ever, looking around. Beyond the forge was a little group alone, two men sitting on the broken wall with at
tendants. One at least seemed to be a cripple. Squinnying across the distance, Ma thought that was Ai Guo the torturer. Tunghai Wang had left him behind in the city, intending to reclaim him later. Well, he was in another’s hands now; that was the price of confidence. The other man might be General Chu Lin, who had turned pirate and then traitor. Why he would still be with Ai Guo, why either of them would be here—these were questions wanting an answer Ma did not have.

  Beyond them was an older man even more alone, standing where he had presumably been set, among a group of temple figures. More were set at intervals all around, like fence posts, like a ring of torches in the night.

  Beyond him again, Ping Wen with an entourage. Among his followers was a woman with …

  A woman with a tiger. On a chain.

  A jade tiger. Ma had never seen one living, though he’d owned a skin once, a gift of the old emperor, long lost and left behind.

  This was madness, and yet not. There was purpose here, grim purpose, and nothing to do with Tunghai Wang. Who knew it, perhaps. And was walking across the baked ground to join Ping Wen, to discuss it, perhaps. Ma should be with him, but he preferred to stay here, to hold himself apart, to watch this all work out. He had played his part already, bringing the monksmith here.

  Also, he distrusted everything suddenly, including the assumed truce that had brought them here. There was violence everywhere, in that machine and all these machinations, in chains and hammer blows and heat, in the tiger and its woman and every man here: violence contained, potent, ready. Even the temple idols were a trap.

  Ma had his courage, and he would keep it here, beside his boy.

  THE TWO great men, governor and generalissimo, met on open ground and bowed respectfully to each other, just as much as they each thought protocol demanded. Ping Wen had served Tunghai Wang before this, both openly under the late emperor and covertly under the new; he stood now as imperial governor, and might reasonably claim an equality he had lacked before. One outside the city and one inside, both held absolute dominion.