by Jay Lake
Al-Wazir watched for an inlet by the failing light of day. Even better, he hoped to spot an island with dryland growth standing permanently above the tide. The moon’s track glowed in the sky, lit with the golden fire of sunset, but the sea was already purpling, and he could see a first few stars of evening. The wind was shifting, too, as it always did with nightfall in the tropics.
Al-Wazir had no desire to be on the open water in the dark. Not in this wee unstable rig.
Water exploded next to him. Al-Wazir bit off a curse and looked upward to see one of the Chinese airships several hundred feet above. Sparks flared where grenadoes tumbled down from on high.
He grabbed at the carbine. It was lashed to the mast, wrapped in broad leaves from a fleshy plant growing back along the river. He’d covered the firearm in the fat from a potto he’d killed, in hopes of some protection from the salt air. Several moments passed while he picked at the greasy knots, even as the raft began to buck on the surf it was now passing through with the landward turn of the wind.
The carbine came free at the same time that one of the grenadoes struck the deck. Al-Wazir got the impression of something red and hissing; then a tremendous crash both deafened and wetted him. He tried pulling the trigger. All there was to shoot at were bubbles, and his mouth was filled with salt, and the water boomed like the footsteps of his angry father come home after a long night of drinking.
Daylight brought more than dark dreams of cold hell. Or perhaps the end of dreaming had brought daylight. He was still cold, though, except where he burned like fire.
Something touched him. Al-Wazir tried to push it off, but his arm tingled and dragged. He realized the touch was cold and strong as he was rolled over on his side.
The rush of nausea came as a great surprise. Seawater, bile, blood flooded his nose, his mouth, even up into his head. He seemed in greater danger from drowning of this effluent than he had in the arms of the ocean itself.
Hands pounded his back so hard that a rib cracked with a shooting flare of pain. Al-Wazir burped out a quantity of sand and mud, and another rush of bloody, stinging water, then closed his eyes and gasped awhile.
“I’ve fresh water upon your being ready for it,” said a familiar voice.
Ants, thought al-Wazir, there are ants upon my body. He tried to speak, but managed only a wretched croak.
The hands pulled him onto his back and into a pool of stinking, warm fluid, and dribbled something on his face. Fresh, sweet water. Al-Wazir began to sneeze, his nose, so offended by the sand and bile, now fighting back. He could not drink. The sneezing made the injured rib flare and flare again.
Ribs. He was hurt more than there.
Finally he opened his eyes and sobbed.
Boaz—it had to be Boaz, no other Brass would have come to his aid—handed him a rag soaked in water.
Al-Wazir closed his lips around it. He didn’t even suck, just let the water drip into his raw, wounded mouth, and from there down his scoured throat.
There was sun in the sky, but it was dappled by green palms wound with vines. He was on land, then. His eyes met Boaz’ blank gaze. Al-Wazir wanted to ask, but words weren’t in it right then.
Boaz nodded. “You were floating amid the tide, bearing a piece of vine tight clutched in your hands. Had you been asea facedown, you most assuredly would have been long dead.”
“Hmm,” al-Wazir managed.
“There has been a strange vessel off our shore. In communication with the hostile airships hovering in the heavens above. It surfaces from beneath the waves, then slips once again from sight.”
“Ch . . . Chi . . .” He couldn’t manage more.
“Sleep. I shall locate some fruit, with ripe, sweet flesh for you.”
Al-Wazir meant to protest that, but his body would not cooperate.
“They scan the shoreline.” Boaz wiped down one of the Brass lightning spears with a leaf as he spoke. “We shall essay a departure this night. This position is too exposed.”
Voice seemed to have returned to al-Wazir, in thin, hoarse measure. He was largely intact as well, with no important limbs or parts missing, though he would swear every portion of his body was bruised, scraped, or sprained. “Chinese,” he said. “In the Bight.”
“Verily. I would take you back to the Wall, if you could but permit such an expedition.”
“England.” Too many words at once were difficult.
Boaz checked something at the spear’s head. “Not this route, not upon this day. Might you be able to reach England from the Indian coast of Africa?”
“The . . . Wall . . .” Al-Wazir racked his memory. He’d never served on an Indian Ocean station. There much of the simmering conflict between England and China was played out. The Atlantic had always been his haunt. But he knew there was a base at Mogadishu to watch for Chinese attempts along the Wall.
Though the Royal Navy had certainly not lived up to its purposes if two Chinese airships were now cruising the Bight of Benin. Not to mention whatever had been in the water.
Pleased that clarity of thought seemed to have returned, he tried once more for clarity of speech. “Mogadishu. Just north of where the Wall meets the Indian Ocean.”
“I can convey you there far more readily and safely than I might be able to escort you north across Africa, let alone travel upon the waters.”
“Then let us go.” Al-Wazir could not remember having felt so flat and helpless in all his life.
Boaz gathered the chief in his arms as if the big Scotsman were nothing more than a load of firewood. The Brass man turned his footsteps into the green depths of the jungle, away from the edge of sea and sky where death wandered above.
CHILDRESS
Five Lucky Winds steamed into Tainan harbor with sailors ranked along the deck, flags flying from her tower, and staffs mounted at her bow and stern. A red silk dragon snapped in the stiff breeze above a blue ensign. Childress knew the names of none of the sigils, but their intent was clear enough.
We are home, the flags proclaimed. Victorious and mighty, the sea having bent her back once more to our lash.
The coast here was flat with hills rising in the land beyond. The harbor was a lagoon, entered through a channel between sand banks. The Beiyang Navy had claimed much of the waterfront.
Sendai had been nothing more than dockside shacks compared with the bustling brawl of Tainan. This could have been Boston, Childress realized. Even to the airship masts, though she would not have recognized the ships themselves that floated there.
More impressive were a series of very large buildings seemingly designed to house grounded airships. The vessels never touched down, so far as she knew—these must be construction facilities.
She could see two other submarines in port, along with a variety of larger, heavier iron ships. Great turreted guns protruded from their decks. The long barrels of the weapons were oddly graceful.
Flags flew everywhere on those ships, and on the shore. People teemed along the docks—not a welcoming party, but simply a thickness of populace she might not have been able to envision without seeing it herself.
Captain Leung swept his hand wide to indicate the extent of the waterfront. “This is the home port of the Beiyang Navy. We were removed from Weihai a decade ago, but have made ourselves stronger in this place.”
She was shocked. “Your Emperor expelled his own navy?”
“China has many navies,” Leung said. “The Beiyang Navy is the most modern and the proudest. We turn our face to the blue waters of the outside world instead of the brown waters of home.
“Home is more . . . prestigious.” They’d discussed this before. She simply hadn’t quite realized how literally he’d meant what he’d said about the way affairs were organized in China. The idea of a sovereign nation mounting competing forces to struggle against one another for funds and patronage seemed strange to her, until she considered the regimental system that still formed the backbone of the English army.
But that was men and
flags, not these expensive, terrible ships.
Leung spoke up again. “Some battles are still fought by little wooden ships slipping among the islands of the Andaman Sea and such quiet places. That world is largely gone from us, driven away by English aggression and the march of progress. An impudent man might remark that the Imperial Court takes little note of England and even less note of progress. I, however, shall refrain from such untoward observations.”
“Indeed,” muttered Childress, hiding a smile.
Then Five Lucky Winds followed signal flags into her berth, with much shouting and whistling and casting of lines.
There was an odor the likes of which she had never before encountered—bodies and horses and oiled metal and smoke and the salty scent of Chinese cooking, mingled in a scent so strong, it might as well have walked around on two feet, slapping people. Though the docks teemed with people, the wharf at their berth was clear of most traffic. A squad of men in blue uniform stood there, backed by a small mob of people of all ages and genders dressed in loose black clothes.
“Our escort,” Leung said, “and the stewards and servants of our sailors.”
“Your sailors have stewards?” Somehow she hadn’t expected that.
“Yes. Even the least of the men among the Iron Bamboo fleet is great here in Tainan. With nothing to spend their wage on, it is banked. Some may be drawn down to a servant or two to keep their houses and care for their wives and children.”
“I cannot imagine a British tar with a manservant at home.”
“Then I sorrow for your tars, madam.” He bowed. “Please wait here in the tower. I must attend certain formalities.”
Leung slipped down the ladder and onto the deck to dismiss the greater part of his crew. An unlucky few remained behind to secure the ship. Looking past the soldiers and servants, Childress could see mechanics and quartermasters waiting beyond a bamboo barrier to approach Five Lucky Winds and begin their work as well.
It was a homecoming for everyone but her.
And Choi, said an honest, painful voice inside her head. Choi, and Anneke, Captain Eckhuysen, the Mask Poinsard, and all the others who’d died aboard Mute Swan.
Her anger had faded with time and familiarity, but its thin ghost still haunted her.
Leung came for her not long after, as the mechanics and quartermasters flooded past. “I am claiming you as my honored guest,” he told her quietly. “The petty officer commanding the detail wishes to bind you, but I have convinced him otherwise by virtue of both my rank and my sheer force of character.”
He glowered as he spoke, causing Childress to wonder what else had been said. “The petty officer can scarcely be threatened by one old Englishwoman.”
“It is not the woman he would put in chains, Mask Childress. It is all of England, present here only in your slight form.”
She smiled, then followed him down the ladderway, out across the deck and up the gangplank to the wharf. There the petty officer glowered his distaste for perfidious Albion but held back an obvious impulse to hard words and harsher orders. That was clear to Childress even across the gaps of language and culture.
Instead he formed his men up before and behind her. They marched Childress out the gate and along the waterfront toward a building with red lacquered pillars fronting a far more utilitarian three stories of windowed stone.
As she’d learned of much of China, the building was a mix of tradition and practicality. The center held to the oldest ways, the edges tried the newest, and the churn between them maintained the Celestial Empire.
She wondered how it was in England, and whether she would ever get to see the differences for herself.
They approached their destination quickly enough. The petty officer seemed ready to march his detail right through the great bronze doors, but Leung halted him with a set of rough-barked orders. With obvious bad grace, the petty officer detached himself from his men and led them inside.
It could have been any lobby in the British empire. The decor differed only in the pattern in the rug and the nature of the paintings on the wall. Electrick fans depending from the high ceilings whicked round and round against the tropical heat. Clerks worked behind little cages like bank tellers. A man at a desk was setting appointments. A number of people, both in and out of uniform, sat on benches like so many tired passengers waiting for a train that might never come.
The three of them marched to a creaking elevator, then rode the wrought-iron cage in silence to the top floor. The petty officer threw open the door and shouted them out. Childress wondered how he’d thought to bring his squad up this little conveyance, which had barely fit the three of them. Perhaps that would only have been a show for the lesser folk in the lobby.
“The Admiral’s English is poor,” Leung whispered to Childress.
She resisted the urge to shrug. “My Chinese is even more so. We shall find our way.”
The petty officer stopped them in front of a set of doors painted red, studded with brass knobs. Some device or sigil had been removed from the center of each upper panel to leave only a blank disk slightly elevated from the wood around it. Childress could see the ghost of an outline, but had no luck in making it out any better.
Their escort knocked twice, sharp, smart raps. He then favored Childress with a narrowed glare intended to melt her.
Someone called indistinctly from within. The petty officer threw open the door and stepped back. The sour, angry expression was still strong upon his face.
She hadn’t been sure what to expect from Admiral Shang’s office. Certainly Five Lucky Winds had not contained a trace of opulence. The submarine was a machine, designed for a machine’s purpose, the bodies of men only furthering those ends. Ashore, amid wealth and power, people tended to serve their own purposes, no matter what oaths they’d sworn, no matter what commission they bore.
Except for its size, this office was ordinary. A polished wooden floor that could have been found in half the buildings in New Haven. Square double-hung windows facing the cranes and wharves of Tainan harbor, the noise and bustle and heat echoing in through their raised lower panes. A large desk, carved and ornamented in a style unfamiliar to her, but still unmistakably the lair of a bureaucrat. It might have fit nicely in the dean’s office back at Yale.
There were certainly differences in style—instead of portraits of ships or famous dead men, the walls were hung with long, narrow paintings mounted on silk, weighted at the top and bottom to keep them straight. The room smelled of oils she didn’t recognize, and incense she’d never encountered before her time aboard Five Lucky Winds. The side tables had tea and wine services of curious design.
The only strangeness was the absence of chairs on which guests might find refuge. Admiral Shang apparently believed in holding his meetings standing up. Certainly he was standing now.
She was inexperienced at assessing Asian quality, the countenances and habits of dress of Asian quality, but Shang was a strange man even to her foreign eye. He was taller than any Chinese she’d met thus far.
Tall was only the beginning of it. Shang had hair like brittle straw, which he wore long, and a face as pale as snow. His features were unmistakably Asiatic, but he seemed albino, like the pink-eyed white rabbits one of the children in her neighborhood back in New Haven had raised and sold for the cook pot.
Though she was less equipped to assess Shang’s attire, the white brocade robe he wore seemed out of place. There had been very few people on the docks dressed in white. This had all the formality of a bishop’s rochet to go with its unusual color. The pale fabric only called out the paste color of his skin.
Of course, she thought, how would he turn away from it? Shang had embraced what marked him out, rather than attempting a pointless concealment.
There was also a sharp gleam in those narrowed eyes. He seemed as suspicious as the petty officer. A quick rattle of Chinese, in which she caught a few familiar words—“vessel,” “voyage,” “Atlantic”?—provoked a long response
from Leung. The captain did not seek to placate the admiral, but neither was he overtly confrontational. Rather, their conversation volleyed back and forth for several minutes. Shang’s eyes never leaving Childress.
When the give-and-take ceased, Shang bowed low. “Ma sue ka Shi Da Sz, welcome.”
She puzzled over that a moment before catching her own name in the strange syllables. “Hsieh hsieh, Admiral,” she replied, thanking him in Chinese.
Leung took a formal pose, back stiff and chest thrown out. “The admiral bids you greetings here in Tainan. He offers you the hospitality of the Beiyang Navy.”
She knew how to decode the hidden warfare behind such politesse. Even across languages, the dance was clear enough. His carefully chosen words signaled that she was being kept here in the naval base. And he decidedly had not mentioned the hospitality of the city or the Celestial Empire as a whole.
“I thank the admiral,” Childress said as graciously as she could, speaking slowly in case he understood any of it. “His hospitality is a welcome grace note to the courtesy shown me aboard Five Lucky Winds.”
Meaning: I prefer the protection of the captain.
Shang smiled when Leung rattled that off in translation. He responded at some length, with a series of questions and answers.
Eventually Leung cleared his throat. “I am to explain something in my own words, though I still speak for the admiral. Do you understand the intent?”
Childress was fascinated. “Yes.”
“It would be normal practice of the Imperial Court at a time such as this to exchange invitations to exquisite services of tea and rice wine. The two parties would pass veiled insults and subtle threats in an attempt to test one another’s resources. Each would to compose poems upon the virtues of the season and matters of the heart, until someone tired of the game. Such contests can go on for weeks, even months and years, as the player who yields first loses much advantage. His face is taken away, and he is known for a buffoon and a peasant among his fellows. Even his concubines will laugh behind their fans.”