Hidden Cities (19 page)

“They’ve been busy. We found the godown where Tunghai Wang stored all his firepots and their makings, there’s been a lot to carry. And no road. We towed it in the end, a barge on the river and a rope to shore. We’re still storing most of it on the barge, just to be safe. But it was work, and there’s not been time to do much else.”

“That’s why you’re not a soldier. The men’s comfort is the first thing. Whatever you’re here for, the work, that comes after. What
are
you here for?”
And why are we all crowded down this tight little end of the island?

“I’ll show you. If you’ll just let go of me, enough that I can walk …”

It was, of course, Chung who was holding on too tight to let them walk. Disentangling themselves from each other took a little time, thanks entirely to his stubbornness; but soon they were picking their way through the camp and into that wasted open space, the bare bleak rock of this islet.

“The water came right up over here, when the river rose,” Chung said. “We were crowded up on the bridge there, the highest point of the arch and we still got our feet wet. There was nothing left of anything, except one barrel I managed to save …”

That explained why it was all so clean underfoot, scrubbed free of soil and ash and weeds, all the litter of life. It wasn’t as empty as he’d thought, though: there was a line of pots, like storage vessels, and a line of barrels opposite. At the far tip of the island was a structure of sorts, an improvised bamboo frame.

“Why didn’t you build your camp at this end, and keep your stores down among the footings of the bridge, where you could pile them up and not worry?”

“We’d worry,” Chung answered, smiling. “No one wants to let the fire anywhere near the bridge. None of this is any safe at all. What’s in those barrels will burn just on its own, if a flame touches it. Mixed together—well. I’ll show you. That’s better than trying to explain.”

He called back over his shoulder. Men came, eager but careful: handling the barrels with a nervous respect as they filled a pot with this and that, mixed the ingredients with a long and cautious stick, sealed the pot and carried it forward.

The bamboo frame overhung the river, to let them lower a platform down almost to the rushing water.

“This is the only safe way we can do it,” Chung said. “You can’t really watch, but—well, you’ll see.”

Shen frowned at the frail platform. “Can’t you build it better than that?”

“No point. It won’t survive, however well we make it. It just has to hold the pot, just for a minute. Watch.”

The pot stood on the platform and hung against the vertical face of the island, a man’s height or more below where they stood, out of sight to anyone not leaning over. A long wick came back up to Chung’s hand.

“It wouldn’t be this long, of course, if we were using it in war. Just, this is as careful as we can be.”

Here came a man with a smoking firepot. A lidded pot, and he was still wary. Shen had never seen men so scared of what they did themselves.

Here came two men, carrying a construction of bamboo and rope and padding. It might have looked almost like the body of a man beneath a quilt. A wet man, a drowned man; it was dripping, from rain or river or both.

“We call that the dragon,” Chung said. “They wouldn’t let me call it Tunghai Wang, and I wouldn’t let them call it anyone else. So it’s the dragon, which we can all agree about.”

Shen was worried, if these men still held even that much loyalty to their former commander. Still, he was here now. That at least reduced the worry. It was being apart, being helpless that drove him frantic, not knowing what madness Chung was at now.

He said, “Nothing’s going to set that alight, it’s all water.”

“Like the dragon. You wait. You watch.”

The mock-dragon—though it still looked to him a lot more like a man—was hung out from the frame, as high as a man might jump above the pot. Then, bizarrely, everyone lay down flat on the rock. Chung pulled Shen down too beside him, before ever he touched wick to glowing coal and set it aflame.

It burned down below eye-level, below the level of the rock they lay on, and then there was nothing: interminably nothing, a long dragging wait. Bored and restless, Shen pulled himself forward to peer over the edge, see how close the flame was to the pot—

—
AND
C
HUNG
screamed, literally screamed as he scrabbled at Shen’s bad shoulder to drag him back again.

“Don’t you
understand
? It’s going to—”

No, he didn’t understand—or he hadn’t, until that moment.

Chung’s voice was cut off by a vicious flare of light and a brief and dreadful roar, as though Chung had bottled up a fraction of storm in that pot, thunder and lightning both. The frame swayed above them, a rope snapped and flailed wickedly in the air, the mock-dragon bucked and twisted amid a hail of bright flaming points flung from below.

The river hissed like a nest of snakes, smoke billowed slowly up to follow the sparks, but Shen was watching those as they rose, as they faded, as …

·  ·  ·

A
LL AROUND
him, men were covering their heads with their arms. Shen was slow still; Chung had to reach out and pull him in tight, wrap his own arms around both their heads together.

Even the dragon when she flew, she came back eventually to earth.

There was a patter of little impacts all around them. Something stung Shen’s leg, even through his trousers: stung first, and then burned.

When Chung would let him, he sat up and reached to rub at the soreness, then to find what had bitten him: a hard sharp hot little shard of blackened pot.

Bewildered, he turned and saw the mock-dragon.

Splintered, shredded, torn half apart by a blizzard of those little vicious impossibly burning things—and impossibly set aflame too, although its ripped innards were still running with water. Steaming as they smoked.

“Chung. What have you
done
…?”

“Oh, I didn’t really do much. It was Tunghai Wang who set his machines here and gave them the firepots to fling. I just happened to be here with Yu Shan and the emperor when one of the pots rolled into a flame and exploded. See, if you just throw them, they break open and the mixture inside catches fire from a fuse, and that’s what burned our friends so badly; but if you light the fire inside an unbroken pot—well. This. They erupt. Every little shard is lethal. And they’re hot enough to spread the fire too …”

They were. The frame too was aflame, and men were hurling water to douse it.

“Chung, that’s—that’s
wicked
 …”

“Yes.” He beamed at Shen, like a man who has finally learned to soldier. “Let me practice more, let me build a machine to throw them with and learn how short to cut the wicks, so that they explode before they strike, and then we can give the emperor a weapon to win any war …”

iao liked these people, these clansfolk.

He wasn’t so sure about their home, a closed valley among remote hills; this was far and far from any life he knew. Anything he valued.

For jade, though: the chance of jade was worth a sacrifice. And there were other compensations, more immediate, a full belly and an easy day; and the respect they showed him, all unforced. He knew himself to be an idiot here in the forest, and nevertheless they called him Master Biao and deferred to him as though his little wisdoms were worth far more than theirs, even in their own country.

He loved that.

And this, he loved this, that they came to him to say, “We are walking the bounds of our clan claim today. We will meet our neighbors on the heights, and not fight, because they are doing the same. It will be a good thing if you are there.” This was more than a welcome, almost a demand.
Be one of us, be one with us
.

Well. He would do that.

First, he did need to be a doctor. This was Yu Shan’s family compound, but Siew Ren was here. That was inappropriate, Biao understood. Yu Shan’s mother had not spoken for her at the last clanmoot, had not been able to speak for her because the boy himself wasn’t there to be presented and approved. Ancient customs might be no more than token when the young people had known each other all their lives, but still: by clan law he had no claim on
her, and she should have gone back to her own family, higher up the valley.

Yu Shan had brought her here regardless. It seemed as though, in his guilt—too late, in every way that mattered—he needed to claim her any way he could. Which meant physically, her presence in his home; and physically again, his presence at her side, by her bed, hour by hour and day by day.

Biao thought he would drive her demented, and wondered what the treatment was for that.

So far, she didn’t seem to care. He wasn’t quite sure that she’d noticed. She was caught up in the immediacy of pain, wrapped entirely in her ruined flesh and skin; she paid no heed to the world even a breath beyond. Or perhaps she hid from it. Better to hurt, perhaps, and not worry how to live beyond that, crippled and scarred. She hated to be touched now. Yu Shan thought that was because any touch hurt her, even his, even the most gentle; Biao thought it was because any touch was a reminder of the world,
all of this is waiting for you
, the rest of her life, hard and unremitting and worse perhaps than pain.

Biao was the only one whose touch she would allow. Not even Yu Shan was let doctor her.

This was his morning, then: that he woke in the little hut he slept in all alone, rather to the scandal of his hosts; he washed with the family at the well, and spoke of this and that, and today they invited him to walk the bounds with them; and then he made a brew and cooled it and went in to his patient.

Siew Ren too had a hut to herself, because her cries and moans kept people wakeful. There was a handful of children in the compound, but children sleep through anything; it was the adults who lay disturbed and restless in the common house because Siew Ren was far beyond sleep, beyond caring. Pain was a knife, whittling at her, fining her down. Sometimes what it cut away fell out as sound.

She was quiet this morning. Quiet so far. Yu Shan was there as ever, crouched at that little distance that he’d learned: close
enough that he could reach her in a moment, far enough away that she didn’t feel loomed over, about to be touched. If she opened her eyes and saw him there, she wouldn’t flinch away.

Probably.

Biao bustled straight past Yu Shan and dropped onto the dry earth floor beside her pallet.

Her eyes opened, her face twisted in the dim door-light. Lips turned back from teeth: it was her new version of a smile. At least, Biao had decided to read it so. He beamed back down at her, and lifted the lid from the bowl he carried.

This was the hard thing, night and morning and through the day. All her burns, which meant half her body, must be bathed with this. She must be lifted and turned and touched all over, most particularly where she hurt the most, where her skin was gone and her flesh was raw and weeping.

She didn’t trouble to try not to scream.

Every time they did this, Yu Shan would try to help, to hold her; and she would bat him away with vague terrible gestures, wild awkward arms and flopping hands. She would lean sobbing into Biao’s grip, though he found it almost impossibly difficult to hold her and turn her and dab at her all at once. He was sure that he hurt her more than necessary, just through having it all to do himself. But she couldn’t be persuaded, she would not have Yu Shan touch her.

Today, when it was done, when she was lying back and lying still, settling into the steady embrace of her pain again, Biao felt an unaccustomed twist of sympathy for Yu Shan, like a knife in the gut. He did not ordinarily rate himself a kind man, or a generous one; perhaps he was being a doctor, thinking as Tien would, seeing the world her way.
At last
, Tien would say. Seeing two patients, both in need.

Biao said, “Yu Shan. When Siew Ren has drunk her tea and eaten what she can,” another brew and a bowl of congee with certain herbs in it, which he would prepare and Yu Shan feed to her
spoon by spoonful, a duty she allowed, “come walk the bounds with your clan, with me.”

He shook his head, but Biao was ready for that. His voice rolled on almost without pause. “For her sake, Yu Shan, not for yours. Let Siew Ren rest an hour or two without you hovering above her. Your desperation is an obstacle to her recovery.”

It was cruel, which worked well with his new sympathy: balance over all, this way and that. Yu Shan gazed up at him for a moment, then unfolded his limbs and stood slowly, towered above him, nodded with a brutal care. No words: he seldom had anything to say anymore. That nod was effort enough, almost praiseworthy.

Biao stepped back to let the young man blunder out into the day. One last glance at Siew Ren, who didn’t move, he didn’t expect her to: pain enclosed her like a shell its nut and she lay utterly still, encompassed within it, but her eyes were on Biao.
See what I do for you, how I work for your comfort?
Even in this dimness she could read that, even though he stood against the dazzle of the door-light. Her gratitude might be useful to him yet.