The Hidden Blade

by Sherry Thomas

  “Mr. Atwood, open the door, please.”

  He swore under his breath, but as there was no question of running away in his current condition, he only said, “Go to hell.”

  And closed his eyes again.

  He woke up feeling much better. His fever was gone, his stomach was at peace, and his joints moved without any discomfort. The newspaper crinkled as he sat up, reminding him that he had yet to scan the advertisement section for ships departing to Tientsin in the near future.

  The next moment his heart thudded most unpleasantly. Mr. Atwood, open the door please.

  He had registered under a false name. Anyone who knew his real name would be someone who meant to send him back to England. To Sir Curtis.

  Outside his window a man stood in the fading light of a winter afternoon. Not one of the men he had seen in Hong Kong—a local helper, then?

  He thought for a moment, left his bed, changed into fresh clothes, and combed his hair. Then he opened the door—there was no point cowering in the room—and came face-to-face with the man who had been waving and shouting at him as the Kaitsung steamed out of port.

  “Ah, Mr. Atwood. Good afternoon. Allow me to introduce myself—George Lafferty. I have been sent by—”

  “I know who sent you,” said Leighton. He should be afraid, but somehow he wasn’t. He was no longer fourteen. He was ten thousand miles from England. And unless he was very much mistaken, Astor House was in the American Concession, where British laws did not apply. “I am not going anywhere with you. You may show yourself out—or find out how management treats those who bother the guests of this hotel.”

  Lafferty appeared completely taken aback. “I’m afraid there must be a misunderstanding of some sort. I do not require you to come with me anywhere, sir. I am only a messenger, so to speak.”

  His surprise seemed genuine. Leighton narrowed his eyes. “What does Sir Curtis wish me to know?”

  Lafferty immediately shook his head. “Oh, no, indeed, sir. Sir Curtis is no more. I have been tasked by his widow to find you.”

  “What?” It sounded as if Lafferty said that Sir Curtis was dead. But Sir Curtis wasn’t going to die; he was going to endure until there was nothing left of him but skin and spite. “What did you say?”

  “Three weeks ago I was engaged by the governor’s office—the governor of Hong Kong, that is—on Lady Atwood’s behalf. In her cable she said that she was almost certain you would have to pass through Hong Kong, and soon. A few days after that a man came to me and delivered a photograph of you. He said he had been engaged by Sir Curtis to watch for your arrival in Hong Kong but had been recently relieved of that charge—I wasn’t sure why Lady Atwood wanted a different man to wait for you but I wasn’t about to complain. And that was how I recognized you at the harbor—with the help of the photograph. I had no idea you would go on the run. Fortunately you took the slow boat, and I was able to overtake you and wait for you in Shanghai instead.”

  “No, no.” Leighton waved an impatient hand. “Tell me the part about Sir Curtis being—deceased.”

  “Yes, he passed away about a month ago—or perhaps a little less. I read about it in the papers.”

  A month ago Leighton had been crossing the Andaman Sea, not having access to any newspapers.

  “You are sure?”

  “Well, now I wish I had made a cutting of the obituary. The paper was more than a week old by the time I picked it up to flip through, and it had caught my attention because just that day I had been engaged to deliver the cable for Lady Atwood.”

  “What cable?”

  “Yes, of course.” Lafferty reached inside his coat and pulled out a rather crumbled envelope.

  Leighton tore it open.

  Dear Master Leighton,

  Your uncle is dead. I have recalled the men he had engaged to track you down and will find someone of my own to deliver the news to you. May this greeting find you well.

  Alexandra Atwood

  “I can go write my report to Lady Atwood, now that I’ve delivered her message,” said Lafferty. “Is there anything you’d like me to convey, sir?”

  Leighton was still stunned. He scanned the telegram one more time. “You may convey my gratitude to Lady Atwood—and tell her that I remain always in her debt. And thank you for coming all this way. I’m sorry to have inconvenienced you by leaving Hong Kong so precipitously.”

  Lafferty touched the brim of his hat. “Not a problem.”

  He turned to leave.

  “Wait, please,” said Leighton.

  He took a handful of Mexican dollars, which was much preferred by the people of the Far East for the purity and consistency of their silver content, and handed them to Lafferty. The man smiled broadly, thanked him, and departed with a rather jaunty gait.

  When he was gone, Leighton slowly closed the door and sank into a chair. Sir Curtis, dead. No more men who hunted him. No more dreading being taken back to Rose Priory—or someplace far worse.

  He was…he was free.

  His shock was still too great for him to feel euphoria—or even relief. But he understood now that everything had changed.

  He understood that it was a whole new world.

  He cabled his mother. He cabled the misses McHenrys’ niece in New Zealand. He wrote a letter to Mr. Cromwell, Herb’s solicitor, asking for his help in finding out the whereabouts of Mr. Colmes—so many boxes he and Herb had sent to Mr. Cromwell, he had the man’s address memorized, whereas he had no idea how to reach his own family solicitor.

  He did not try to contact Herb, because there was no telegraph service between Shanghai and Peking, and he would arrive in person sooner than a letter could.

  The next day he was on a Jardine, Matheson, and Co. steamer, headed for Tientsin. His second day upon the choppy East China Sea, however, all the same awful symptoms came back. His head throbbed, his joints were stiff with pain, and his temperature was so high that his own breath scalded the skin beneath his nostrils.

  The next day he was much better, the day after torturous. But the day after that, as he disembarked in Tientsin, he was again well enough that his main thought was the acquisition of a passport and the arrangement of transports.

  He was in luck. The passport was speedily granted, and a Frenchman who had organized relay ponies along the route for a swift trip to the imperial capital could not start for another week. Leighton gladly took over this preexisting arrangement and set out with a guide, a Chinese Catholic who spoke fluent French.

  It snowed the entire way, the landscape silent and white except for squares and strips of scarlet paper inked with Chinese characters and affixed to every door and pillar they passed. The words on the long strips were couplets expressing good wishes and blessings, the guide explained, and on the red paper squares was the character for good fortune—Chinese New Year was barely a fortnight ago and everyone was expressing their hopes for a year of peace and prosperity.

  As they rode inland, the snow kept falling and the temperature kept dropping. Leighton had not been anywhere so cold in a very long time. The wind bit right through his coat. His fingers were quite frozen in his gloves, and he’d stopped feeling his nose and ears hours ago.

  They pressed on, changing ponies every few hours. It was as the walls of the imperial city loomed ahead in the deep twilight that Leighton started to shiver uncontrollably. He was burning, his head pounded, and it was all he could do to hold on to the pony and keep going.

  “Are you not well?” his guide asked in French.

  “I may need a physician,” he answered, grimacing.

  Night had fallen. The city was dark—what street lamps there were seemed no more than candles in latticework boxes backed with paper, the light they emitted so faint as to be nearly useless. In the nearly unbroken shadows, his awareness reduced to only the sway of his horse, the painful numbness of his fingers, and relentless heat parching his throat from the inside.

  They stopped. Vaguely Leighton perceived an impressive gate. The
guide explained that they had arrived at the British Legation. He didn’t know Peking very well, but he was sure Leighton should be able to find a qualified physician within.

  Leighton slid off his horse. He barely managed to pay the guide the second half of his money before he dropped to his knees, too weak to remain standing anymore. Then he slumped sideways into a bank of snow.

  Voices cried out in alarm. He felt himself lifted and carried. He drifted in and out of consciousness until he was violently shaken.

  “Young man, have you been having periodic fevers that recur every other day or so?” asked a gray-haired, stern-looking man, peering down at him.

  He nodded weakly.

  “You’ve passed through or near the tropics recently?”

  He nodded again.

  “Lack of appetite, nausea, body ache?”

  He dipped his chin an infinitesimal distance.

  “Well, we had better get you started on quinine immediately. You have malaria.”

  The medicine was thrust at him. He swallowed obediently, even though it was extraordinarily bitter.

  And when he was allowed to lie down again, he said to the doctor, “Please, sir, can you have someone send a note to Mr. Herbert Gordon? He said I can find him by asking at the British Legation and I have come a long, long way.”

  “You rest,” the doctor said gruffly. “I will see what I can do.”

  Quinine was almost worse than malaria.

  Leighton vomited. A sharp pain skewered his abdomen. He couldn’t lift his head without being overcome by waves of dizziness. And his ears rang: He was sure the room was quiet and the night still, yet from time to time, for stretches of a half hour or longer, he would be plagued with a noise inside his head like that of steam whistle, until he was sure he would go deaf from its needle-thin and relentless pitch.

  But the doctor assured him that those were fairly common symptoms in reaction to quinine. “You are young and strong. The reactions will go away as soon as you finish your course of treatment.”

  Toward dawn Leighton fell into an exhausted sleep. For the first time in years, he dreamed of the day of Father’s death. Except this time, as he entered the room, it was Sir Curtis slumped over the desk, a hole in his head.

  He woke up with his ears ringing. Staying completely still, his eyes shut tight, he waited for the noise to cease, afraid that the least light or movement would cause it to prolong—or grow even louder.

  At times he thought he heard the rustling of the pages of a book, the swish of fabric, and even the slight creaking of a chair as a sitter’s weight shifted. There could be another person in the room, or the sounds could simply be further manifestations of his tinnitus.

  Finally, after enough time had passed for the Deluge to have receded, the inside of his head quieted. Slowly he opened his eyes and looked up at a ceiling of green and gold tiles set in a delicate latticework. It was hard to judge exactly what time of the day it might be: The dim gray light of the room could be that of near dusk, or the middle of the day under a leaden sky.

  The chair creaked again. Very carefully Leighton turned his face toward the sound, expecting to see the doctor or a nurse. But it was a bearded man in a dark blue-gray tunic in the Chinese style—though he was clearly a European, judging by his blond hair.

  Herb! Leighton had only ever seen him clean shaven, but there could be no doubt about it.

  “It’s you,” he croaked. “It’s you.”

  Suddenly the room was as bright as his memories of Starling Manor, of poppy fields under a cloudless sky.

  Herb came forward hesitantly, almost as if he were sleepwalking. Then he closed all the remaining distance, knelt by the bed, and took Leighton’s hands in his. His hands shook just perceptibly.

  “My dear boy. My dear, dear boy.” Tears rolled down his face. “This morning, when the message from the legation came, I…You have no idea…”

  Leighton squeezed his hands. “I have every idea. You came back to us once, remember?”

  Herb wiped his eyes with the heel of one hand. “That was only three months.”

  “That was forever—or so I believed. This was always just a matter of time. You knew I would come and find you as soon as I could.”

  Herb’s face shone. “Yes, I did. I always did.”

  “So, what does one do around here for fun?”

  Herb laughed, even as more tears splashed onto his cheeks—those were the first words he had ever spoken to Leighton. “Well, it goes without saying that you must visit the Great Wall, the Ming Tombs, and the Temple of Heaven. You should experience a teahouse-theater. And you must try candied haws—this is the season for them, and they are sold on skewers on every street corner.

  “I might be able obtain permission for you to call on my employer’s residence; then you can see where I live, a very elegant little courtyard with a bamboo grove inside. And if I arrange it really carefully, I might even be able to present you to one of my pupils—more a friend, actually—a beautiful young lady of mixed blood who has been studying English with me and teaching me Chinese.”

  What a fortunate girl, to have had Herb’s company all these years.

  Fear returned to Herb’s eyes. He gripped Leighton’s hands tighter. “But are you sure you are safe here? What if—”

  He forgot he had yet to tell Herb the news. “Sir Curtis is dead.”

  Herb shot to his feet. “My God. My God.”

  “I know. You can go home now. We can go home together.”

  Herb’s lips moved. “I—I can’t make sense of it. Both my rational understanding and my imagination fail me.” He looked back at Leighton, his face full of wonder. “Do you think this is how a seed feels when it finally breaks through to the world above? That nothing will ever be the same again?”

  “Yes,” Leighton answered. “It’s a whole new world.”

  A knock came at the door and the same physician from the night before stuck in his head. “Mr. Gordon, I’m afraid I must ask you to leave very soon. It’s time for Mr. Atwood’s next dose of quinine, and he should not be disturbed afterward.”

  “I promise you, Dr. Ross, I will be no trouble at all,” Herb pleaded his case. “I will sit and read my book and not speak a single word to my young friend here.”

  “I am sure you are a man of your word, Mr. Gordon. But my assistant and I will both be in here at various times, and it’s too small a room for all of us to be cramped together,” said Dr. Ross firmly. “Besides, your young friend here is going to be good as new in a few days. Then you will be able to catch up without any deuced interference from dour old Scottish doctors.”

  This made both Leighton and Herb smile.

  “All right, then. I’ll make myself scarce,” said Herb. He set a hand on Leighton’s shoulder. “Have I told you yet how very extraordinarily glad I am to see you, my dear boy?”

  Leighton didn’t know why, but the tears that he had been able to hold back until now were spilling unchecked down his face. “Yes, you have. You have from the very beginning.”

  Herb wiped once more at his eyes, bent down, and kissed Leighton on the forehead. “I will be back tomorrow.”

  “Yes, tomorrow,” said Leighton.

  What a wonderful word, tomorrow. And now they had all the tomorrows in the world.

  Leighton reacted no better to quinine this time. Afterward, he was so weak he could barely lift an eyelid. But Dr. Ross’s assistant, a young man named Miller, told Leighton that Herb had left behind some things for him—“A letter and a small package.” So now, with a mighty effort, he lifted his hand to feel for them on the nightstand.

  He came across the letter first. It was from Mother.

  My dearest son,

  I fervently hope this letter finds you, and finds you well.

  Mr. Gordon and I had exchanged letters early on in his exile. But my subsequent letters were returned, citing that they could not be forwarded. So it was quite remarkable that his somehow found me here in San Francisco, more t
han a year after it had been posted.

  I replied to him right away, and I will include this letter with my reply, in the hope that should you find yourself in Peking before you find yourself in San Francisco, you will come across it.

  And now I clutch my head, unsure how to proceed. So let me go back to the day I discovered the package you had secreted away in one of the trunks that I had brought from England. Until I married Mr. Delany and moved into his house with Marland, I opened that particular trunk only once, to retrieve a few of my favorite books. And your secret was buried a foot and half farther down.

  There I was, supervising the moving and arrangement of several hundred books, when a maid came to me with a carefully wrapped bundle and asked what ought to be done with it. When I saw everything inside, I was overwhelmed. Your father was my first love, and I never felt anything but the greatest respect and affection for him, even after I realized he could never love me the way I loved him.

  That afternoon I spent poring over the photographs, because it was the part of his life that I never saw—the part of your life that I never saw.

  I wept and wept, partly because I thought you had shoved everything in my trunk in order to scrub Starling Manor of any reminders of your father and Mr. Gordon. That you had repudiated them as thoroughly as you had repudiated me. I am ashamed to tell you this, but not only did I believe every word of censure you spoke, I believed it more than I believed anything else in my whole life.

  Your uncle played a part, of course. After what he had said to me, I had felt so unclean, so degenerate, that I quite despised myself—it was therefore not too difficult to imagine that everyone else must despise me too, if they only knew. But the other part—the far greater part, I must add—had been my own gross stupidity.

  How could I, who had only ever known kindness and acceptance on your part, come to give credence to the idea that you were in fact a boy of unrelentingly harsh views? I do not know, and I will never forgive myself.

  But there I was, sobbing away, when I came across a crumpled piece of paper: an unfinished letter from you. Most likely you never intended to include it, but it somehow found its way inside. In the letter you begged for my forgiveness, because you felt you had to do whatever was necessary to keep Marland and me safe.