History Keepers: Nightship to China (15 page)

Nathan shook his head. ‘Are you really trying to tell me that a seventy-year-old woman dived off London Bridge into the Thames?’

‘As witnessed by about a thousand people on the south bank,’ Yoyo confirmed. ‘There is no limit to Madame Fang’s abilities; nor to her endurance. And with age, she becomes ever more resilient. She can survive underwater, walk through fire, glide across tightropes. She is barely human.’

‘They must have locked up the house and then gone to plant the bombs on the East India Company ships,’ Topaz surmised, trying to put all the pieces of the puzzle together.

‘And what about you two?’ Jake asked the others. ‘Did you discover anything?’

‘Yes,’ Topaz said. ‘That London is not the only city that has come under attack.’ She pulled one of Madame Fang’s handbills out of her pocket and set it down. ‘
Your ships are doomed. Your civilization too
. In the last few weeks, similar flyers have been left outside trading organizations in Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Cádiz, Marseilles and Genoa, each following an explosion either on a ship or in a warehouse.’ She fished out another piece of paper. ‘I managed to get this version, in Flemish, from a merchant with the
Dutch
East India Company.’ She held it up for Jake and Yoyo to see. ‘Different language, but the same writing, the same phrase.’

UW SCHEPEN ZIJN VERDOEMD – UW BESCHAVING OOK
.

‘Can I have a look?’ Yoyo asked, taking the flyer from Topaz and carefully comparing the versions.

‘Actually, the Dutch thought the British were responsible for the sabotage in Amsterdam last week,’ Nathan chipped in. ‘That’s why they were in London – to investigate . . . This crab really is exceptional.’ He turned to Yoyo and winked. ‘Is there no end to your talents?’

Topaz tutted irritably and steered them back to the subject at hand. ‘Which brings us to the question of where Xi Xiang has gone,’ she said.

‘I know this watermark,’ said Yoyo. ‘It’s the same on both sheets. Look there . . .’ The other three could just make out a faint imprint of Chinese characters set within the paper. ‘It’s obviously the insignia of Shen Pei-Pei.’

‘Obviously,’ Nathan agreed. ‘Remind me – who’s Shen Pei-Pei?’

‘Reclusive millionaire of the era,’ Topaz replied. ‘Right about now, he owns half of Canton. He has a giant porcelain works there, a fish sauce empire –
and
a paper factory, the largest in southern China. Where are we . . . 1612, so he must be almost eighty by now – though no one has seen him in decades.’

‘Oh,
that
Shen Pei-Pei.’ Nathan nodded. ‘I was getting him confused with the other Shen Pei-Pei – the one who breeds those funny cats with no fur.’

‘But the fact that this paper came from there tells us little,’ Topaz pointed out. ‘Xi Xiang may have simply bought it along with a million other Chinese.’

‘No.’ Yoyo tutted dismissively. ‘You’re missing the point: Shen Pei-Pei collects priceless relics – and a powerful tide stone would be the real prize of his collection.’

‘The Lazuli Serpent?’ Jake wondered out loud.

‘Precisely. He allegedly keeps his jewels in a treasure house in his garden – a golden pagoda.’

Topaz thought quickly. ‘We leave for Canton tonight. We’ll take the Nightship.’

‘The Nightship!’ Nathan exclaimed. ‘Absolutely not. I’m not doing that again. Last time I nearly detonated. And my hair fell out, remember?’

‘That’s an absurd exaggeration,’ Topaz said. ‘You moulted a little.’

Nathan eyeballed his sister. ‘It fell out in clumps! I’m not doing it,’ he insisted, stroking his lustrous mane as if it were a pet dog. ‘I’m
nothing
without my hair.’

‘If we don’t take the Nightship,’ Topaz replied, ‘we’ll lose days. We don’t have a choice.’

‘Besides,’ Yoyo chipped in mischievously, ‘you can get wonderful wigs. And that way, you could try different colours. Blond might suit you.’

‘There is only
one
colour,’ Nathan said indignantly, ‘and that is
deep auburn
.’ He emphasized his point by tossing his locks.

Jake was confused. ‘I’m sorry . . . what is the Nightship?’

‘The Nightship allows Keepers to cross to the other side of the world almost instantly,’ Topaz explained. ‘To a degree, you’ve done it before –
vaulted
over to the Mediterranean – but it’s one thing to hop a few hundred miles to the Tyrrhenian Sea; to span the globe to southern China is another matter entirely, especially when you’re maintaining the same date.’

‘Maintaining the same date?’ Jake was struggling to understand.

Yoyo stepped in. ‘Maybe I could explain more clearly? To
vault
in the first place, we must enter the time flux. Usually the greater the number of years we are travelling backwards or forwards in time, the easier it is to hop from one part of the world to another. If we’re keeping the
same
date – London 1612 to Canton 1612 – we essentially have to enter the time flux, go back a few hundred years, then immediately forward again – a journey that can have strange side effects. That’s the Nightship. Obviously I’m simplifying.’

‘It’s much more civilized to set sail and take a few leisurely hops from sea to sea,’ Nathan told Jake.

‘More civilized,’ Topaz pointed out, ‘but more time-consuming.’

‘Well, then, it has to be the Nightship,’ Jake agreed. ‘Time is what we don’t have.’ He looked around at the others. They were all diamonds, Valiants – young, powerful agents – and he suspected it would take all their focus to make this jump. An older agent would never risk it.

‘We set off immediately,’ Topaz said.

‘And what about me, Miss St Honoré?’ Yoyo asked. ‘Would you still like me to go all the way back to Point Zero?’ She looked at her rival with a twisted smile.

‘I think she should come with us, Topaz,’ Nathan said.

‘I have to agree,’ Jake added.

Topaz sighed. ‘Miss Yuting . . .’

‘Please – call me Yoyo.’

‘I am in no doubt as to your capabilities. However, you are a loose cannon.’ Topaz took a deep breath. ‘That said, since we are going to Canton and you are an expert in that part of the world, I suppose there is some sense in taking you with us.’

‘You won’t regret it, I promise you,’ Yoyo vowed.

‘But you need to understand: I am in charge and you must obey my orders at all times. Is that clear?
Yoyo
?’

‘As a bell.’

The two girls stared at each other. ‘I will send a Meslith to the commander and explain the situation,’ Topaz said grimly. ‘She won’t like it at all, but it can’t be helped.’ She held out her hand towards Yoyo and they shook on it. ‘And please, call me Topaz.’

Before they set sail, the girls went to check that the
Kingfisher
, Galliana’s yacht, was secure (they had no choice but to leave it in Jacobean London for the time being – until it could be picked up by someone from Point Zero) and to collect the rest of Yoyo’s things. Suspecting that the mission was bound to go beyond London, Yoyo had brought quantities of money with her – Chinese currencies in particular. Topaz was so relieved to see it, she decided not to ask Yoyo whether, like the yacht, it had been stolen.

A short time later, with Jake at the helm, they cast off and started back downstream towards the North Sea.

Jake glanced over his shoulder at the city behind him. London, his home town; and he was leaving it once again, sailing into the unknown. As he surveyed the labyrinthine warren of streets, the million points of light that seemed to encase the city in a golden aura – so different from the London he’d grown up in – he realized it was the place that had shaped his life.

Sudden memories surfaced, long-forgotten moments in his life: the day he had first ridden a bike . . . his father letting go of the saddle on the crest of the hill in Greenwich Park . . . the green of the trees rushing towards him; the day he had begun school . . . the smell of his new uniform . . . the uncertain faces of his classmates; the birthday when it reached a hundred degrees . . . the neighbour’s cat, panting on the pavement; and the blackest day of all – that November afternoon when his parents had told him that his brother would not be coming home.

Jake shuddered as he recalled being asked to sit on the sofa, his mother’s face blotchy with tears, the coldness of the room, the radiator gurgling as the heating fired up. Jake had gone to bed that night in a daze, unable to take it in.

A week later, he had come back from school early and gone to Philip’s room. The door was slightly ajar. The familiar sign declared:

Adventurer Within!

The room was colder than the rest of the house, and Jake could see his breath in front of him. He had inspected the shelf of medals and prizes. (Philip was a brilliant sportsman, as well as a bright pupil. Unusually for someone so talented, he was also popular. It was not just the shy kids he helped who looked up to him, but the tough ones too. Girls as well; even the loud, unruly ones became a little gentler in Philip’s presence.)

Jake had turned and examined the rest of the room: the bedside table with its pile of books telling of fascinating places and people from history; the bed itself, usually quite messy, the duvet now smoothed down and the pillows plumped up. The sight had made him realize, for the first time, that Philip was not coming home. Suddenly the cold had seemed unbearable and Jake had left the room. In three years, he had never gone back in . . .

Once they had cleared the Thames estuary and entered the North Sea, Topaz appeared on deck with four doses of atomium, which the agents drank swiftly. No one spoke; there was a serious atmosphere.

‘Nathan, we need fresh eyes at the helm – would you take over from Jake now?’ Topaz asked. ‘We’re using the north-north-east horizon point,’ she added, nodding at the map. ‘It will be less risky.’

Jake relinquished the wheel, turning to see the last of Britain’s coast disappear behind him. There was a gust of wind from the east and he shivered with cold.
China
, he thought to himself.
I’m going to China
.

He looked round at the Constantor. The three rings that guided them to the horizon point were inching closer together. In the centre was a metal globe with engraved lines tracing the continents. Jake found the British Isles, and then Europe, Arabia, India, Siam, and finally China – the bulging cheek of Asia.

Keeping one hand on the wheel, Nathan reached down for the helmet he had placed at his feet and put it on. ‘It might improve my chances, hair-wise,’ he explained.

Jake looked round at Topaz. ‘Should we be doing the same?’

Her hand made circles in the air beside her ear to indicate that Nathan was totally mad. ‘It won’t make the slightest difference,’ she whispered to him. Then she smiled. ‘I’ve never been to China either. I’m glad we are taking the trip together.’ Her indigo gaze lingered on Jake a little longer than usual.

‘Thirty seconds to horizon,’ Nathan called.

Jake glanced again at the Constantor: the rings were all but touching. The ship began to shudder and Topaz clutched Jake’s arm. Yoyo noticed and reached for his hand, squeezing it tight.

Nathan counted down: ‘Ten, nine, eight, seven . . .’

The ship creaked and rumbled. As usual, a whirlwind sprang up out of nowhere, encircling them. Colours flashed, and there was a sound like an explosion. Jake saw diamond shapes shooting in all directions as he flew out of his body. As his alter ego soared into the atmosphere, away from the curving earth, he wondered why the others had made such a fuss about the Nightship: it seemed like every other horizon point; in fact, it was smoother than usual. It wasn’t until he had almost reached the zenith that he noticed the difference.

He began to spin head over heels – faster and faster; soon the earth was flashing by every fraction of a second. He wanted to be sick and found himself closing his eyes. Blind, the sensation was just as strange, but less nauseating. Eventually the spinning stopped, and Jake wondered if he had returned to himself on the
Thunder
. He opened his eyes and found himself suspended in the black void of space. Panic engulfed him as he realized that the Earth was nowhere to be seen. Had he travelled so far out of his body that he had lost his own planet? Terrified, he searched the heavens for the blue ball. Finally he realized that he had been turned upside down and that the Earth was hovering below his head.

In this topsy-turvy position, pulled by invisible forces, he began to move forward, circling the globe, slowly at first, then at an astonishing speed. ‘How?’ he found himself crying out. ‘How can I travel this fast?’ He tried to make sense of it, while knowing it was pointless to do so: it was not he himself travelling but his alter ego. He was aware of three tiny shapes ahead of him. Then they were gone.

A second later, the apparitions began.

The journey from a horizon point was often accompanied by visions of the past – but these ones appeared to Jake upside down too. He saw snow-capped mountains and forests of bamboo bending in the wind. There were patchworks of fields, half under water, and wide, winding rivers. There were fortresses with roofs that curved up at the edges, curious pagodas, and palaces topped with golden tiles. He saw a wall that travelled into infinity, and an army marching across the frozen tundra.

He closed his eyes against the images, and soon felt himself falling, headfirst. He flew towards the ocean, towards a land he didn’t recognize.

‘China?’ he said, craning to see as the Orient took shape beneath him.

Suddenly he spotted himself on the deck of the
Thunder
, standing with the others; in a flash he returned to his body. He stood there panting, his head whirling, then rushed over to the side and vomited. As he got his breath back, Nathan put his arm round him.

‘You all right?’

He nodded. Nathan passed him a handkerchief, and Jake managed to croak, ‘How’s your hair?’

Nathan had already removed his helmet. He shook out his
deep auburn
locks and announced, ‘We may all breathe a sigh of relief – it seems to have arrived in one piece.’

Jake looked out across the sea, a still expanse of cornflower blue disappearing towards a golden horizon. Only now did he notice that he was sweating. ‘We’ve arrived all right?’ he asked.