Excerpt from
by
Sarah A. Hoyt
Death in the Dragon Boats; The Emperor and the Concubine’s Daughter; More Precious Than Jade
The Strange Destiny Of Enoch Jones: Apart and Away; Sorrow and Hope
The Waiting Enemy; Duty to The Ancestors; Flying the Dragon Ships
cd Red Jade held her breath as her brother set fire to the paper boats and the hordes of carefully detailed paper dragons. Her eyes wanted to close and shut out the scene, but her will kept them open, so that she saw Wen through her eyelashes as though through a dusky veil, as he approached the altar upon which the funerary gifts of their father had been set. Above that another altar had the tablets of their ancestors.
Red Jade had supervised and arranged it all. She had made her father’s women cut and glue and color and gild for days, so that on the lower jade table there stood in paper a palace – the palace her family hadn’t had in millennia. To the right of it stood row upon row of paper boats, minutely detailed, like the barges upon which Red Jade had spent her whole life. In the middle, in paper, stood the representations of the court – men and women meant to be her father’s servants in the after life. A coterie of pretty paper dolls for a harem, a group of broad shouldered male dolls for the hard tasks her father’s spirit might want done and to protect him from whatever evil he might encounter. And on the left, in massed confusion were perfect, miniature paper dragons. Herself, in dark red. Red Jade. And Wen in Blue. For some reason seeing them there, before the palace that would never be theirs, made tears she refused to let fall join with her eyelashes in obscuring sight.
Her brother, of whom she must now think as the True Emperor of All Under Heaven – though her family had been in exile for many centuries and she doubted the present usurpers even knew of their existence – held the burning joss stick in his hand and dropped slowly to his knees.
Let him not fall, Red Jade prayed, and she wasn’t sure to whom, though it might have been to her father’s spirit. Only she didn’t know if her father cared, and she wished there was someone else she could appeal to. Let Wen not fall, she told herself, sternly, and felt a little more confident. It was insane to think she could keep Wen upright and within bounds of proper behavior through the sheer power of her mind, but then she always had, hadn’t she? And hidden his addiction from her father, as well.
When had she ever had anyone else to ask for help? She saw Wen’s head start to bob forward, like the head of one overcome with sleep, his lustrous, smooth black hair falling in front of his face like a curtain. And she willed him to stay up, on his knees, facing forward.
Wen straightened. The joss stick swept, left and right, setting all the pretty paper images aflame. And Red Jade fought against the sob climbing through her throat, even as the sound of her father’s concubines erupting into ritualistic screams deafened her mind. She would miss her father. She was afraid for Wen and her own future. But in this moment, all had been done well, and Wen was behaving as he should.
She finally allowed her eyes to shut, as Wen’s voice, mechanically, recited the prayers that should set their father’s soul free and make it secure in the ever after.
Wen’s behavior couldn’t last. It could never last, and Red Jade held onto her will power, and demanded of the gods or ancestors that Wen perform his duties and that he perform them well. When the time came for the oldest daughter to come forth and say her prayers, she stepped forward. And Wen turned to her with a sloppy, lopsided smile, and she thought they must pull this off. They must.
Their father was dead. He’d been the Dragon King, the True Emperor of All Under Heaven, the last descendant of the ancient kings of China. Wen, his only son must inherit. He must. Because only Wen could protect his half-sister, the daughter of the now long-dead foreign-devil concubine.
She followed him to his room after the ceremony. It was her father’s old room, in the main barge of their flotilla. Servants and courtiers prostrated themselves as Wen passed by. They kowtowed, knocking their foreheads against the dusty boards of the floor, but he didn’t seem to notice. Wen was tired and anxious. His eyes kept darting here and there, as though he had trouble focusing both sight and mind.
The men surrounding him – his father’s advisers – probably knew as well as she did that he longed for his fix of Opium – the drug that had helped him evade his father’s indifference and prepotence until now. But if they knew it, they gave no indication of it. It was all “Excellency” this and “Milord” that as each competed with the other, asking boons of him on this, his first day in power. Repairs to this barge and additions to that one, and a promotion in the precedence of the barges for yet that one.
All of them Wen ignored, walking just ahead of them, his eyes blindly seeking, like a child whose mind is set on a treat and therefore will pay no attention to his surroundings.
At his quarters, as the entourage prepared to follow him, he spun around and clapped his dismissal to them, gesturing for them all to leave him. At the back of the group of followers, Red Jade stood, waiting, not quite daring enter the room of her newly-powerful brother without his permission. For years she’d protected him and helped him, but now he was Emperor, and now her ascendance over him was gone.
But seeing her at the back, he smiled, and motioned for her to approach, which she did, closing the door behind her.
“We’re done now, Red Jade,” he told her, in that peculiar voice in which a man’s tones fluted up into a discontented child’s complaint. The voice he’d only got after he started smoking opium. “We’re done now. I’ve done what you wanted and I’m tired.”
Part of Red Jade felt sorry for him. They were of an age, she and Wen, though Wen was the son of the First Lady, her father’s official wife. Red Jade was only the daughter of a concubine with red hair and blue eyes who had been stolen off a foreign carpetship.
And though Red Jade looked Chinese, with her long, smooth dark hair, and her black eyes, she knew her eyes had as though a blue sheen and there was something to her features that wasn’t quite right, and that she was too tall. As tall as most men.
Her father had teased her about it, telling her they’d never get her a husband with that height of hers. No man would want to look up at his lady.
A husband! She would rather avoid a husband now, and she suspected she would have to fight very hard to do so. The recollection that Zhan would be out there, prowling, planning to make her his, put a cold finger of fear up her spine, and made her catch her breath in a sudden intake, and not accede to Wen’s plea. “Not yet, Older Brother. Not yet,” she said.
She saw him set his mouth to protest, and put her hand up, asking for silence, before he could speak. “Wen, we must be able to lift and move the dragon boats. I–”
He gave her one of the startlingly cunning looks that he could give – a sudden expression of knowledge that belied the normal dream-like tone of his days. “You mean you must lift them,” he said.
His look was so like her father’s, that she bowed deeply and whispered, “I do not mean to take over your...”
“No,” Wen said, and shook his head. “No, of course, not. But let’s not play games, Younger Sister. Not with each other. We both know that the dreaming opium brings interferes with the flying of the boats. I would not risk my people.” He turned abruptly, towards a table that was set at the foot of his bed. Bed and table both were gilded furniture inlaid heavily with semi-precious stones. They were very old and had come – centuries ago – from their ancestors’ palace with what furniture they could carry while fleeing the invading orders. Now they stood in uneasy contrast with the rest of the furniture in the Imperial Chamber which ranged from heavy foreign mahogany furniture scavenged from carpetships they’d boarded to improvised pieces put together from flotsam and tatters.
The boxes like the table were made of fragrant woods and covered in gold leaf and jewels. Jade had seen them open before, of course – when her father had opened them to look for something. She knew what they contained – papers and jewels, most of them magical and bequeathed to them by long-lost generations. Wen rummaged through the boxes as if he knew what he was looking for and Jade held her tongue while he did so.
“Ah,” he said at last. “This ring.” He held aloft a heavy signet ring, with a bright red stone, upon which were chiseled the characters for Power and Following. Jade, who’d never seen that ring blinked at Wen.
“Father showed me all these boxes before he died,” he said. “And he told me what each jewel and paper did. Magically, as well as symbolically. This ring was worn by our father when his own father was incapable of ruling the dragon boats, in his final years of life. His father had some sort of mind problem. The humors of his thinking flowed wrong. So our father wore the ring and with it could command the dragon boats with the magic of the Emperor. He could also command all of the Imperial power.”
“But...” Red Jade said, stricken. “I am only a woman. And my mother–”
“Was a foreign devil, yes,” Wen said, with unaccustomed dryness. But Jade, in this room, with no other ears to overhear us, you know as well as I do that you’ve been doing half of Father’s work for years. Everything that didn’t require Imperial magic. And, now...” He shrugged. “I can be the Emperor or I can dream.” He gestured towards his houkha on the small rickety pine table near the gilded bed. “I’d rather dream.”
Their eyes met for a moment. Jade had never truly discussed his addiction with him, because Wen would get defensive and change the subject. He’d never before admitted the power his dreams held over him. And never so bluntly admitted that he cared for nothing but those dreams that were already as if a presage of death.
What did he mean to do? Did he mean to leave her in charge of the Dragon Boats when he left? Did he mean, then, to have no descendants? Did he think that the Dragon Boats would accept the rulings of a woman and a woman with foreign blood in her veins?
Zhan was there. Zhan would take over. Zhan would... She felt her throat close and she couldn’t tell her brother the disgust she felt for his second in command – once her father’s second in command. Of an old dragon dynasty he was, and powerful in magic and might he might be. But she didn’t trust him. And she did not wish to be his wife. She’d rather be concubine to a refuse-gatherer.
But Wen was reclining upon his cushions and looked at her, mildly surprised, as though she had stayed much longer than he expected. He waved his hand to her. “Go, sister. I am tired. I’ve had too much reality now.”
Jade bowed and stepped backward – as she’d once done in her father’s presence – till she was at the doors. These she opened, without turning back, and left, still bowing, making sure that everyone saw her bow, so they knew she respected her brother and valued his authority.
While the guards at the door of her brother’s chambers closed the doors, she turned and walked away, linking her hands together as she did so. Her right hand covered her left, and she felt the red jewel on her finger. The jewel with the power to make the boats fly.
But the jewel only worked if the Emperor had power. Had Wen’s dreams damaged his power? And if so, would the boats fly?
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cd Enoch Jones walked along the carpetship port’s narrow cobblestoned passageways between the deeper indentations of the carpetship docks. Above those square indentations, the carpets floated, just inches off the ground, tethered down with strong ropes. And above the carpets, buildings of various sizes and shapes – the carpetships themselves – rose.
Enoch looked at the carpetships and counted the various exotic flags – Turkish and Armenian, Russian and French – flying from their prows, his incurious eyes denoting he’d traveled much and none of it was new. And he hoped he fit in and looked the part of a carpetship magician who’d been doing this for very long and had no other expectations in life.
He was a tall, spare man with chiseled features so regular he might have posed for one of the portraits of angels painted during the Italian Renaissance. Except that his features were just a little too spare, a little too strong, he might have looked unmanly. As it was, he merely looked refined, an appearance that betrayed his noble origins.
Anywhere else but in a carpetship port, someone would have noted the contrast between his features and the much worn, shabby suit he wore, his heavy, almost military boots, and the rubbed and scarred travel bag on his shoulder. But here, he merely looked like a carpetship flight magician, that strange breed of men who went from port to port and from ship to ship, rarely lingering more than a few days in one place, and who, more often than not, were renegade noblemen, fugitives from justice, or other shady characters.
Enoch felt shady enough to fit the part. The gleaming pale hair he’d once worn smooth-clipped to his head had been allowed to grow just a little, so that he looked as though he’d fallen on hard times. His once pale skin now sported the reddish tan of someone who’d lived much in the sun and wind. His clothes, too, which had once been carefully tailored and made of the best fabrics money could buy, had been lost in the wilds of Africa. In their place, he’d acquired serviceable, slightly worn second hand clothes made of good material. These too had once been tailored, but not for him. They molded uneasily on the body his errant life had given him. The coat stretched tight across shoulders that had been forced to lift greater weights and more often than he could ever have expected just a year ago. And coat and waistcoat and shirt, all hung loosely over a waist that his frequent, intense use of magic, had made far slimmer than it had ever been before. He looked just as he meant to look. In fact, he couldn’t have planned every little detail better, had he tried to.
The carpetship port in Venice was built just outside the city and it was rumored that all of it – docking spaces and walkways – had been built on platforms on stilts. Until it had been built, a century ago, there had been no houses around it, or else, they’d been the houses of some village that the city had since absorbed. Now it seemed impossible to imagine the carpet port as anything other than a carpet port and the enclave around it was a bustling, busy multinational behive.
On assigned docking spaces, over carefully laid cobbles, carpetships from every country fluttered – bright-fringed, new carpets supported multi-story pleasure ships. Frayed carpets supported tramp carpetships that carried the junk of Europe to other continents. And there was everything in between, too – merchant ships, troop transport, each of them bustling with activity. And near the docking ramp of almost all of them, a blackboard stood, propped on a sort of easel. The blackboard listed when the ship would be departing and for where, and what kind of personnel it needed.
Almost all of them, at the very top, advertised their need for a flight magician. This was because of the kind of men magicians had to be. To begin with, almost all of them had to be of pure noble blood. The clear, muscular power required to allow them to make the heavy constructions of wood and glass and metal sail upon the currents of air and to obey the course he set for them.
This requirement barred from such a job those half-magicians and quarter-magicians, those by-blows of noblemen who filled other such magical jobs and made the textile factories and the trains of England hum while producing the goods with which England flooded the world and held her Empire.
Instead, the work devolved upon poor second sons of noble families that had squandered their fortunes on amusements. Or bastard sons whose parents were both noble. Or yet, young men who had committed one of those crimes for which even noblemen got punished.
Very few of them flew the same ship on two voyages. Rather, they moved from ship to ship and from continent to continent, crisscrossing the globe like forsaken nomads forever barred from their birthright. Which they were. Which Enoch was – if not forever, at least until his mission was done.
His name and everything about him had been arranged to fit with the role he’d chosen – the only role that would allow him to travel haphazardly all over the globe and to not attract attention. For months now, always moving and attracting no attention had been the twin goals of his existence, the only way he knew to stay ahead of those who, doubtlessly, were trying to capture him.
But this time, it was different. This time he had to go to Africa and as far down into Africa as he could manage, since his goal was in South Western Africa.
Oh, he knew no carpetship flew where he wanted to go, to the secret village atop of a sacred mountain, where the first avatar of mankind hid. But if he could just take a ship to a larger African city, he could always rent a small flying rug to make it from there on his own.
Once the idea would have terrified him. Once he would not have dreamed of going into Africa without an entourage of carriers and without the comforts of civilization. Such a time was long past and it seemed to Enoch that he had been a wholly different man, then.
He scanned the tablets with an intent eye, almost not seeing the ships to which they were attached. When he read Cape Town and a departure date that day, then he looked up, to see that the ship was British and a pleasure carpetship. Not quite so upscale as that in which Enoch had once traveled, it was upscale enough. Three stories and newly built, looking like a small palace in wood and glass, it would transport people of Enoch’s own class. Which, he thought to himself with a sigh, was good, since it usually meant better food than could be obtained on cargo carpetships, or those that carried penniless immigrants.
Enoch bounded up the plank used by personnel, at a quick lope, and hailed the man at the top – an employee in the blue and white uniform of the carpetship company, the Indian Star as proclaimed by the letters embroidered on his cap. “Hello, I am a flight magician.”
The man gave him a quick once over that seemed to take in both his refinement of features and his shabby clothes and come to the conclusion that he was typical of his breed. A shrug dismissed the personal appearance of Enoch Jones as such. “The captain is this way,” the man said and, turning, without seeing if Enoch followed, led him up a flight of stairs, and through the maze of utilitarian tunnels that defined the carpetship’s flight deck. At the end of one such narrow corridor, faced in unpainted wood, he knocked on a door.
Someone answered from within, and the man opened the door. “It’s a flight magician, sir. Or says he is.” The words seemed to denote not so much a doubt of Enoch’s words as a suspicion of all flight magicians as a class.
“Ah. Send him in, send him,” said a hearty voice from within.
The man stepped aside an Enoch stepped into a surprisingly well-lit and well appointed room. It was as large as the library in Enoch’s parents’ estate, back in England, and the furnishings were much the same – well built bookshelves in dark wood, vast armchairs in which one could ensconce oneself with a book. Closer at hand, there was a massive desk covered all over with papers, and at the desk sat a portly man with salt and pepper hair and a kindly expression.
He half rose as Enoch came into the room, and extended his hand. “Captain Portsmouth of the Indian Star line,” he said.
“Enoch Jones,” Enoch said, clasping the hand with a firm grasp and releasing quickly. He opened his bag and retrieved his papers from within. A sheaf of them, they detailed his last ten jobs and the recommendations from his captain.
“Jones, eh?” the Captain said, with a hint of amusement in his voice that denoted he knew very well it was an amused name. “Original, at least,” he said, as he unfolded the papers. “Our last three carpetship magicians were Smith.”
Enoch made no response and kept his face impassive. Captain Portsmouth, after a quick look at him, looked down at the papers in his hand and scanned them quickly. “Served on the Light of the Orient, did you?”
“Yes sir,” Enoch said, casting his mind back to remember, and retrieving the image of an upscale cruise carpetship which he had flown to India. Pleasant place with unusually nice personnel accommodations.
“Not on its last voyage, I take it?” the Captain said and then, with another quick look at Enoch. “No, since no one survived.”
“Sir?” Enoch asked, in genuine confusion. Had any disaster befallen the Light of The Orient? Unlikely. Though disasters happened and carpetships plunged down from the sky, it was so rare that all the papers carried news of it and Enoch would have heard or read of it wherever he was.
His genuine surprise earned him a look of shock from the captain, “Good God, man, haven’t you heard?” He glanced at Enoch’s papers again. “Well, you flew in it almost six months ago, didn’t you? And last month you were in... America? Well, perhaps the news hadn’t reached there yet, or perhaps the colonials didn’t think it important enough to talk about.”
“Sir, I am quite at a loss to– ”
“The Light of the Orient was taken by pirates,” the captain said, drily. “Those Chinese pirates in what they call The Dragon Boats. It was on a trip to Canton, when it was taken, and in the remains there was found enough of their type of weapons, and fragments of one of their flying barges. So it is believed it was taken by them, and all, passengers and crew alike either killed or taken into who knows how degrading a captivity.”
“I... I’m sorry.” Enoch said, feeling faint at the idea of the lovely and hospitable carpetship being destroyed and gone forever. Through his mind ran faces to which he could no longer set names, the faces of the personnel who had worked with him then. His young assistant, the deck hands... “Dead?”
The captain took a look at his face and, reaching for a bottle of brandy on the desk poured some into a decanter. “Here man. You look as white as a ghost. Yes, dead. Three more ships like that in the last two months, but that one was the biggest and best known one. And it took the most people down with it. Those Chinese devils are getting more and more daring. Not that we have anything to fear from them. We are flying quite a different route, straight over the Mediterranean to North Africa, and then across Africa herself, to Capetown. Not the sort of route haunted by Chinese pirates.”
“No,” Enoch said. “I imagine not.” But he thought that the friend whom he’d met recently and who’d given him the two jewels – the most powerful magical jewels in the world – that he was taking to the depths of Africa, had told him some confused tale about being followed by a Chinese dragon for months.
It was all Enoch could do to resist checking the two jewels resting in a flannel pouch beneath his loose shirt and waistcoat and coat. Instead, he threw back the brandy, its caustic sweetness calming some of his panic, and he told himself he would get the jewels to Africa. He would get them to Africa safely. No one would intercept them.
The quest for these jewels, the mission of returning them to their proper place, as the eyes of the oldest avatar known to mankind had distorted all of Enoch’s life, had ruined his marriage, had sent him, destitute and lost, careening around the world. But this was the last leg of that voyage, and once the jewels were out of his hands he could return to England and to his parents’ estate and resume again his place in the world. He could dispel his aged parents’ fear that he had died. He could start anew.
The captain had looked at the papers again. He folded them briskly and handed them back to Enoch. “They look well enough. You are hired. We depart almost immediately. The passengers are boarding as we speak, and I was afraid that we would have to delay. However, you’re here, and if you can set your things in your quarters and be ready to operate the ship in half an hour?”
“Of course, sir,” Enoch said, taking the papers and putting them back in his bag, amid his three changes of underclothing, his two spare shirts and a lion tail, ears and pelt which he kept as a powerful fetish, since he, himself, had killed the beast to which they’d once belonged. And he’d done it almost with his bare hands.
The captain had rang a bell on his desk, and presently a sharp featured little man opened the door. Without looking up, the captain, who had started writing something upon a massive log book, said, “Please take mister Jones to the flight magician quarters, if you please, Andrew.”
The man led Enoch down a bifurcating corridor to what felt to him like the south end of the flight deck, where he threw open a door to show him a small but tidy room, with bed, desk, armchair and a small bookcase outfitted with a few books that – if Enoch’s experience from other carpetships counted for something – would be what his predecessors had left behind. The furniture would all be attached to the floor, and the bookcase had strips of leather that went across the spine of the books to keep them in place when the air around the carpetship became turbulent.
Enoch put his bag on the bed, and turned to see that Andrew hadn’t left, but instead stood in the open door, looking intently at Enoch. When Enoch’s gaze met his, the man managed to look at once disgusted and disdainful. “The flight deck is that way,” he said, pointing. “Down this corridor, and then down the fifth to the left, and all the way up that, till you come to the flight deck, which I trust you’ll recognize as such?”
Surprised by the barely veiled hostility echoing through the man’s commonplace words, Enoch blinked. “Yes, yes, I am sure I will. Thank you so much.”
“And don’t go putting on airs,” the man said. “All of you flight magicians might be Lords in disguise, but I know your kind, and I know you’re no more trustworthy than a snake and no more worthy of respect. All the Mr. Smiths and Mr. Jones who’ve ever served on this ship are always trying to make off with something – pens or paper or anything at all they can sell. Our last Mr. Smith even tried to steal from the passengers’ decks. That might happen in other ships, but I am the steward in charge of the personnel on this ship, and I’m serving you notice it won’t happen on my watch.”
Before Enoch had time to recover his breath, let alone answer, the man slammed the door shut and left Enoch alone with his confusion.
Oh, Enoch didn’t doubt that most flight magicians were no better than petty thieves, or, in fact, that most of them were petty thieves. By their very nature, as men who felt dispossessed of their true inheritance, they would tend to be shifty. Let alone that most of them had been dispossessed due to their defects of character.
But Enoch was not one of them. Just over nine months ago, Enoch had been the scion of one of the oldest and most respected noble houses in England. He’d been sent upon a mission by the Queen herself. And the mission couldn’t have been any nobler, harking, as it did, back to the first true king of Europe.
Charlemagne had established his kingship and his power by sending an envoy to Africa, to steal the jewels that formed the eyes of the oldest avatar of mankind. Those jewels – it was said – held all the magical power of the world. The man who bound them could bind the magic of Earth to himself and his descendants forever.
The mission had only half succeed, as Charlemagne’s man had brought back only one jewel. But that alone had been enough to make Charlemagne the ruler over all of Europe.
Alas, the great king had failed to count on human frailty. His power, thus acquired, had indeed passed on to his descendants and to them alone. But noblemen weren’t any better known for being monogamous than was the normal run of man. Bastardy and poverty had meant many of Charlemagne’s descendants had mingled with the common populace till, in the nineteenth century, almost every European held some magic and enough of them held sufficient magic to band together and create new industries and new fortunes. These new fortunes, in turn, undermined respect for nobility, and turned the whole world upside down.
Queen Victoria, alarmed by this degeneracy and the revolutions it engendered, had send Enoch – then Nigel Oldhall – to Africa, to search for the other jewel and bind the power to her.
But on the voyage, Nigel had learned better. He’d learned both of human suffering and injustice that made him doubt the right of European noblemen to rule the whole world, and of the dangers the destruction of both jewels would bring. And so, while Nigel’s friend, Peter Farewell, had headed for India to look for Soul of Fire, the jewel that Charlemagne had almost destroyed, Nigel had taken the other ruby – Heart of Light – and crisscrossed the world with it, staying just one step ahead of any possible magical detention and of all who would want to possess it.
Yesterday, Peter Farewell had given Nigel Soul of Fire – restored to its former power – and both jewels now rested in the pouch beneath Nigel’s clothes.
By returning them to the avatar, Nigel would restore order to the world. Once the jewels were together and in their proper place, they would hide themselves and their village from prying eyes and minds.
Until then, Nigel must remain Enoch an anonymous member of that curious breed of vagabonds – carpetship flight magicians.
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cd Red Jade saw Zhan before she lifted her eyes. Or rather, she sensed him standing just ahead of her, his hulking, broad shouldered presence barring her way. Amid the various milling courtiers, only he stood alone and squarely in her path.
He was a tall man, taller than her, and though he was close to her father’s age, he could still be said to be very handsome. His dark hair showed very few white threads, and though he wore his beard closely shaven – unlike most men in the Dragon Boats – he let his moustaches grow long, framing his broad, sensuous lips. Jade had heard his father’s women talk and giggle about him, and they claimed his dark eyes were intense and hot like banked fires. But Jade could not see anything attractive in him.
She could not remember a time when she had not been afraid of Zhan and dreaded him. She remembered being very small, maybe two or three, and coming out of her mother’s quarters to find Zhan in the hallway. And she remembered running back and into the safety of her mother’s arms, though she couldn’t even say what she’d thought Zhan might do to her if she didn’t have such a protection. Surely even Zhan, arrogant as he was, wouldn’t have dared hurt the daughter of the True Emperor.
Since adolescence, Jade had found other reasons to dread the man. He looked at her with a covetous sort of hunger – the type of look she imagined a ravening tiger might give a juicy buffalo. It made her shiver and blush and look away and, more often than not, this caused him to chuckle drily.
This danger, she knew, was more real than any she might have imagined as a toddler. Zhan was her father’s second in command, because he was the most noble man – after the Emperor – of the Dragon Barge leaders. His family was descended from Jade’s own family, sometime back, from a minor prince who had gone on to start his own dynasty. As such, he had royal blood in his veins, and was entitled to almost as much respect as Wen and Jade, herself. If Wen’s father were to marry her off, whom else would he choose for a husband? Few of the land-bound nobility even knew that Jade was their equal, let alone their superior, and most of them were descended from the interlopers and not proper noblemen of China at all.
But Jade didn’t want to marry Zhan and now she made sure the look she gave him was full of haughty chill. “Ah, Prince of the High Mountain,” she said, addressing him by the title that his family had worn many centuries before.
“My lady,” he said, bowing in the most correct way possible. But he didn’t get out of her way, and he straightened almost immediately, and his eyes challenged her.
“Is there something you require of me?” she asked.
“Only to know when his majesty, the true Emperor, intends to make the Dragon Boats fly. By tradition, he won’t be fully in power till he does, and until then, it leaves power.... in dispute.”
Jade forbore to understand what Zhan might mean by that last word and whether he intended to challenge Wen. Instead, she said briskly, “His Majesty is tired. He’s given me the ring and the power to fly the boats myself.”
“You?” Zhan asked. He looked at Jade as though she had suddenly grown a second head.
She inclined her head once. “Myself, as his nearest in blood. I will be able to channel his power whenever he doesn’t feel like exerting it.”
“But...” Zhan said. He looked like a man who had made a perfectly laid-out plan that had gone unaccountably wrong. Like a man who’d been standing on his own two feet till the rug was suddenly pulled beneath him.
“Yes?”
“But... I’d talked to his majesty your father, and I’ve ... I meant to talk to your brother too... But... I don’t know if you...”
Surprised that Zhan could be so discomposed – Jade had never seen him in less than perfect control – Jade lifted aloft her left hand with the oversized ring and the jewel of power on it. “I hold the power of the True Emperor,” she said, simply, even as her heart thumped hard in her chest and she wondered if Wen was in fact the true Emperor, if his magic, damaged as it would be from Opium, would be able to lift the dragon boats.
Zhan looked... worried. Knowing him, she very much doubted that he was worried she wouldn’t be able to fly the boats. After all, if Wen couldn’t make the boats fly, then Zhan could kill him, and the power would devolve, naturally, upon him. While Jade might believe that anyone else would regret the need to kill the children of his old friend and master, she very much doubted that Zhan was one of those.
So what was worrying Zhan? Looking up, she signaled, wordlessly, that she was willing to listen to him. He looked part frustrated, part nervous. “This way, Princess,” he said, and led her to a side of the room, away from the milling courtiers.
“It is about the jewels of power,” he said as soon as they were isolated enough that no one else would hear them. “The twin jewels.” He spoke the words with reverence and so close to her face that his hot breath tickled her cheek. He smelled of ginger and garlic.
“What twin jewels?” she asked.
He sighed. “This is why I’d prefer to speak to his majesty. Women are not told these things, nor are they supposed to enmesh themselves in the affairs of men.”
Jade thought of Wen who, by now, would be well lost in his opium dreams. He might have heard of the jewels – or not, considering that their father had never been very fond of Wen. If he’d told anyone secrets of state, he was far more likely to tell them to Jade. And since he never had, she assumed Wen would not know either. Which was, at any rate, pointless, since in his dream he would be in no state to make decisions. Instead of speaking, she simply raised her hand, with the ring on it.
Zhan made a sound like a balloon prickled. “There are two rubies of great power, upon which the whole power of the world rests. The whole magical power.”
“Impossible,” Jade said. “For if that were true, then none of us would have magic or the ability to use it.”
Zhan made a sound that might have been a cough or an hastily swallowed put down on the mental power of women. Having heard him deliver such opinions before, Jade suspected it was the second. “I mean,” he said in the tone of a master who is barely holding back from caning a disobedient pupil, “That the jewels anchor the power of the world. That without them, no one in our world would be able to hold magic. Beyond that...” He shrugged. “Many centuries ago, it is said the kind of the foreign devils stole one of them and made the magic in it his own, so that magic would pass only to him and his descendants. Which is why the magic in Europe goes only to a few families and those it follows. And why European mages are much stronger than those in other lands – the Dragon Boats People excepted, of course.”
“Ah, a legend,” Jade said, managing to convey in those words the disdain she felt for Zhan.
He recoiled as though slapped and for a moment, as he looked up at her, his dark eyes burned with unmistakable hatred so strong that it shocked even her. But almost immediately he smoothed over his expression into the vague, deferential gaze he usually gave her. “It is a legend with a lot of truth,” he snapped. “The queen of the foreign devils, Queen Victoria,” he pronounced the name as an imprecation. “Thought so too. She sent envoys of her own to find the remaining jewel. Almost a year ago it was. I found out about it, with my own foreseeing magic, and I have followed their exploits ever since. Even though they found the other jewel, and they took it, they didn’t give it to the queen who sent it. Instead, one of them took the jewel and the other went in search of the old spent jewel... which he found and healed somehow. Now one of the envoys has both jewels, and I know where he is headed. I can feel him and I had a vision that told me which carpetship he will be traveling on.” Zhan’s eyes burned with light, as if he were feverish, or else, as though they’d become hard, reflective glass. “We can intercept the ship,” he said. “We can take the jewels.”
“Why should we?” Jade asked, taken aback by the naked lust in the man’s voice. “Why should we take jewels that are doubtless well guarded and will probably be followed?”
Zhan looked at her as if she had taken leave of her senses. “They are the most powerful jewels in the world,” he said. “They contain power over all the magic on Earth. Whoever holds them can deny magic to everyone else by means of a simple ritual. He could rule the world.”
Jade couldn’t think of anything that Wen would want less than ruling the world. And if it were to devolve upon her shoulders, by default, it was more burden than she needed.
“Then your brother would truly be Emperor of All Under Heaven,” Zhan said.
“He is Emperor of All Under Heaven,” Jade snapped.
“In name, at least, but with this...” Zhan’s voice dropped and slid, caressing like velvet. “With this, he could rule like your distant ancestors. He could take over the palace and the rule of the interlopers.”
On this Jade paused. Getting back their proper place was something difference. Since the invaders had taken over the land of her ancestors, they’d lived like pariah’s and semi-nomads upon the Dragon Boats. Most people thought them mere pirates, vagabonds, people of no account. To be able to recover their position and power was something that Jade could not turn down. In fact, it was something she thought it would be a sin against her ancestors to refuse. She must try it, if it were at all possible.
And, a secret, almost unheard thought whispered, if she were to recover the throne of her ancestors, then she could find someone else to take over looking after Wen and she, herself, could choose a husband from all the noblemen in the kingdom. Not many might aspire to marry the daughter of a Dragon Boat Pirate, but how many would vie for the sister of the Dragon King?
“Ah,” he said. “I see that you know your duty.”
“Perhaps,” she said, unwilling to concede anything. “But how are we to accomplish this daring feat? Yes, we’ve attacked carpetships before, but– ”
“Your own mother came from one,” Zhan said.
“As I well know,” she snapped, curtly. “But surely if this carpetship is carrying such a treasure as you describe – if it is any more than mist and legends – then it will have an armed escort. Are you suggesting that our Dragon Boats are enough to face the wrath of the devil-queen’s army?”
“No escort,” he said, making a dismissive gesture with his hand. “No armed men. This man, who carries the jewels, is no longer working for his queen, nor is he traveling with her permission. He is attempting to return the jewels to Africa–”
“To Africa?” Jade said, in dismay, thinking of the distances they would have to fly to intercept such a carpetship. Not only that, but they would fly over many peopled lands, many places where others were bound to see them. And then, her magic being bound to the Kingdom, she wasn’t sure at all if it would work over foreign lands.
“Are you afraid that you can’t fly the boats that far?” Zhan asked. “Perhaps we should ask his majesty–”
“No,” Jade said. His majesty would be fairly out of his head by now, and probably not much more use than an infant. “No.” Her mother had told her, far back in childhood, that a good part of her magic was from her – from the foreign devil side of Jade’s ancestry. Surely that would be enough to allow her to fly the Dragon Boats wherever she needed to. Jade would make it work. If that was what was needed.
“Very well, then. I have drawn a map from my vision.” From his sleeve, Zhan pulled a scroll which he opened, showing Jade where they were, and where the carpetship would be when they reached it.
Jade looked at the vast expanse of undulating lines which she supposed signified the ocean in between, and bit her lip, but said nothing.
“So, milady, do you think you can make the boats fly?”
“I’m sure I can make the boats fly,” she said. “By the power of my brother, the Emperor.” She glared at Zhan and swept past him, to the place where the Emperor stood while making the prayer that caused the boats to fly. It was a place on the deck, just outside the Emperor’s quarters, looking out over the entire flotilla of dragon boats. “If you’re sure we can take the carpetships.”
“That I am sure of. This ship is no stronger than the Light of the Orient. And your father and I took that easily just last month.”
Jade did not dignify that with an answer. Instead, she stepped out onto the flat, polished deck. She could feel courtiers follow and more or less assemble in a circle behind her, as they waited for her to make the boats fly.
She heard the conversations between courtiers diminish from normal voice to whispers, and finally from whispers to a heavy silence. The news must have spread among all of them that she was supposed to use her brother’s power and cause the boats to fly. She could sense the doubt and confusion in all their minds. Those who knew of Wen’s problem with opium, would doubt Wen’s ability to wield any power. And those who didn’t know of it would, of course, question Jade’s ability to borrow his power.
Their doubt pricked at Jade’s consciousness like spikes on a torn bush, as she concentrated on making the boats fly. She said, in her mind, the prayer she’d heard her father say hundreds of times before, but nothing happened.
She folded her hands, her right hand feeling the strength of the ring. Was she imagining it, or was the stone on the ring warm to her touch? She took a deep breath. Her father always said the prayer aloud. Perhaps she too would have to. But what if the prayer failed?
Jade choked back a cackle. It didn’t matter if she failed. That was something she didn’t need to worry about at all. She was as sure as she could be that if Wen’s power failed her, and him, that absolutely, then neither of them would last long enough to worry about anything ever again. And then the Dragon Boats would be Zhan’s problem.
Taking a deep breath, she started reciting the prayer, to the gods of wind and air, and to her ancestors, the spirits of every dragon king, and to the spirit of her father who until just a few days ago had been the dragon king. She begged them to take the dragon boats and bear them aloft and allow them to follow her commands.
After she finished the prayer there was a long, expectant silence, and then the whispers started again, behind her, in various tones of worry. Did she read menace in the voices? Or was it truly there? And if there was menace, how long would it be before someone slipped a dagger between her shoulder blades and before someone ran into Wen’s room and murdered him where he lay in his endless dreams?
Suddenly it seemed to her as if the jewel beneath her right fingers caught fire. Warmth and light shone from it, displaying the bones of her fingers, opaque, through her skin. She made a sound of surprise and removed her hand, and the red light of the jewel shone over all the dragon boats, slowly growing to encompass them. And then the boat rocked beneath her fingers, rising, rising, like a bird slowly taking to the wing.
With her left hand, where the ring was, she pointed above and to the east, in the direction the boats were to take. As one, like the many limbs of a winged bird, they rose, bright and tattered under the sun – dragon boats with their elaborately carved prows, their multicolored sails, their shabby decks, their multitudes of gaudily dressed dragon lords.
And Jade, mentally so relieved she could have fallen to the ground in a swoon, took a deep breath and refused to let anyone see how scared she’d been. She cast a triumphant look at Zhan. Was it her impression or did he look a little disappointed.
But he looked something else too, she thought. He looked excited. And greedy. They would go on this raid at his command – she didn’t think he would have dared lie about this – but if he thought Jade would be confined to the women’s quarters as she normally was when a raid started he was out of his mind.
The twin jewels, with their power, were too rich a prize to trust ambitious Zhan with them. No, Jade thought. This was one raid she would be in on. Her father had taught her to fight as well as the men her age. And though he hadn’t encouraged her to go to battle, she was as capable as most. More capable then Wen. She would put men’s clothes on and join the fray.
Zhan could not be trusted out of her sight. And she had no intention of letting the dragon throne be stolen from under her family’s hands.
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