Hidden Cities (48 page)

Satisfied, he uncorked the lantern’s reservoir and sloshed oil briskly over everything, wood and rope and bamboo. Pao’s first lesson from Old Yen had been what a hazard fire was aboard a
boat, how careful he needed to be. He was the opposite of careful now. It was just as well that the old fisherman wasn’t called on to do this himself; it had been his idea, but it was Pao’s to do.

Pao spread oil as far as he could over the heap while he preserved the flame in the lamp; then he swung the lamp and tossed it in among the tumble in the hold.

And watched how the flame flickered, how it reached, how it caught and spread; how it took hold in the shadows and then reached out, oily ropes like wicks drawing it into the well of the boat, bright flame leaping, high and higher …

W
HEN HE
was sure, Pao slipped over the side again, swam to the anchor-rope again. Caught hold one-handed and hung there, treading water lazily while he watched for movement on the shore.

H
E COULDN’T
believe how long it took them to notice that the boat was on fire. Perhaps they had more of those bottles, perhaps they’d drunk themselves too into stupefaction? If so he was wasting his time here: wasting more than time, destroying Old Yen’s boat for nothing.

Cold undercurrents numbed his feet, his legs. He swayed like weed in the turning tide, and felt the water drag his dreams away. He ought to climb back aboard, quick, do what he could to control the fire before it caught hold too deeply in the timbers of the boat, before all chance was lost.

L
ASSITUDE HELD
him, unless it was despair. He did nothing but cling on, watch and wait. Even from here, with his head barely above water, he could see the fire reflected in the dark sea’s mirror, every washing wave carrying glints of it toward the shore. Oh, surely, surely one must carry far enough to notice …?

A
T LAST
, at long last one did. There was a sudden flurry of figures, the movement he’d been watching for: a stumbling run toward the
dark low profile of the sampan. It was probably funny to see, their awkward urgency, if you were closer. If you didn’t care quite as much as he did, if you weren’t quite so cold.
Don’t laugh, girls. Keep your silence, just this little more …

A
S THE
sampan dragged itself slowly through the surf toward him, he heard voices even through the water in his ears. Panicked voices, contradictory: what was best to do, what was the only thing. How this could have happened, how that sot Sung could have let it happen, made it happen, watched it happen and done nothing, nothing …

T
HEY ROWED
the sampan clumsily to the well and scrambled up, barely troubling to tie on before they were over the side. Pao counted them aboard, all six of them, all that he had counted in the firelight ashore.

Perfect again. He made his slow way down the side, listening to their confusion—Sung must have caused this, knocked something down and dropped the lamp, and where was Sung anyway? Staggered off drunk, fallen overboard, where?—while he struggled to make his own limbs work as he needed them, just this little longer.

He unhitched the sampan from the boat, gripped her stern and kicked hard to set her drifting off. No one was looking, apparently; even so, he didn’t pull himself over the side until she was outside the fall of firelight. With luck they’d blame themselves, these men, and work the harder to put that fire out.

With luck, none of them would be swimmers.

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

H
E 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.

T
HEY 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.

T
HAT 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.

·  ·  ·

A
T LAST
, as they had to, they went to sea.

I
N 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.

 

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 …?

T
HE 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?