Part 17 (1/2)
Chueh-min shrugged. ”They are our allies against the j.a.panese,” he answered. ”Politics are eternal. China has been conquered before and will be conquered again: always she rises, China still. Like the Phoenix. Look, do you see the dirigible?” He raised an arm and pointed.
Chueh-hsin turned his head to follow the cascade of teal and emerald and golden electric lights across the sky. The dirigible's side was picked out in a pattern of a phoenix and a dragon-turtle, and Chueh-hsin sighed at its loveliness. His preoccupation was interrupted by Chueh-min's voice, hesitant and almost reverential as he dropped his gaze from the dirigible to its lights, reflected in the broken surface of the bay.
”Did Xiumei really go back to her family?”
Chueh-hsin did not answer directly. He pressed his fist against the center of his breast, easing his breathing. ”She was unhappy after you left, first younger brother.”
Chueh-min lifted one hand and pointed out over the bay. ”Then she's out there now?”
”No,” Chueh-hsin said, unwillingly. ”I said she wanted to go home. I did not say she did.”
”Then where is she?” Chueh-min glanced over, his voice too carefully casual.
Chueh-hsin smiled to himself, knowing that even the bright moonlight was not enough to reveal so slight an expression to Chueh-min. Something must have showed, however, because Chueh-min glanced quickly away. ”Where I can keep her,” Chueh-hsin said. ”Hurry. The moon will set soon, and we are only halfway there.”
Chueh-min's shortcut led them unerringly toward the winking lights of the little town at the end of the peninsula. Chueh-hsin followed in his brother's footsteps. They did not speak of Xiumei again.
Chueh-hsin could not say when he first became aware that something was wrong among the mountains. Perhaps it was the faint sallow light that did not fade as the moon set, but seemed to rise from behind the hill to the left as if starlight soaked the earth of its far flank. He laid his hand on Chueh-min's sleeve and turned him toward the light. ”Do you see it?”
”Yes,” Chueh-min said, and set off in that direction without hesitation, the exhaustion gone from his step as he scrambled toward the spiked crest of the ridge.
Chueh-hsin had no choice but to follow until Chueh-min halted at the lip of a staggering cliff.
There was a valley below, a narrow steep-sided niche between mountains that would be almost completely inaccessible to a man on foot. Gullies and treeless cuts, furred green in verdant gra.s.s, ran down to a ravine that seemed to have only two exits. A worn switchbacked trail ran up a steep incline on the far side of the valley, toward the road which they had abandoned for this more direct route, and from which the valley was s.h.i.+elded by an even higher ridge. On the near side, a rope ladder dangled the height of the cliff face.
Electric torches lit the scene below. Men in dark uniforms hurried-efficient, purposeful as ants-around the site in utter silence. Chueh-hsin caught his breath as if the heavy rasp of it in his throat could carry far enough to give them away.
In the center of the activity, at the bottom of the valley, gilded red and crimson in the light of the torches, slumbered a dragon. Chueh-hsin could see the stout, black cables twined across its back, pinning each five-toed extremity to the ground. Chueh-hsin glanced at his brother, but Chueh-min had eyes only for the scene below. ”The Governor must know of this,” Chueh-min said.
”As he must know of the other news you carry?” Chueh-hsin could not keep the bitterness out of his voice. In all the truth of it, he did not even try.
”This is the other news I carry,” Chueh-min said. ”I didn't know it was here already, elder brother.”
”The dragon? But he must know, if he's sent all those men-”
”That's not a dragon,” Chueh-min said patiently. ”It is an airs.h.i.+p. And those men are j.a.panese.” This time he did meet Chueh-hsin's eyes. And then cursed softly under his breath and yanked Chueh-hsin away from the edge of the cliff, as the bustle below increased. The men threw the dragon's tethers free, and slowly-majestically-the amazing animal rose.
It writhed in the sky like a serpent, its thousand-yard length glittering as it rose. Its throat glowed blue with flame, jaws working like the mouth of a horse champing the bit, and Chueh-hsin could see that it was somehow lit like a paper lantern from within.
”No airs.h.i.+p could look so real,” he murmured. He might have stood hopelessly and watched its gold, five-toed claws clench and twist on air, but Chueh-min clutched his wrist and dragged him into a staggering run. ”They'll bomb the palace from the air.”
”Worse,” Chueh-min called over the thud of their feet on the gra.s.s, the sporadic rattle of gunfire behind them. They must have been seen when they started to run. ”It breathes fire. It's here to destroy the Governor's palace. The people will see the Imperial dragon rise from the mountain to destroy the British overlords. There will be an uprising-”
And worse still, Chueh-hsin thought, hearing the amplified cries of pursuit above and behind them as the gra.s.s lit sharp-edged and white beneath their feet, the dragon-s.h.i.+p's searchlights coming to bear. The j.a.panese will walk into a China already softened by war. Chueh-min stumbled, his sandaled feet sliding on the gra.s.s, pulling Chueh-hsin into the orbit of his arms and rolling with him as they fell. Bullets sang around them: Chueh-min s.h.i.+elded Chueh-hsin in the curve of his arms. And Chueh-hsin curled himself taut around the hard-sh.e.l.led object that jabbed his bosom as they rolled.
Chueh-hsin could never have described what happened after. He lost one sandal as they tumbled down the long, green slope, suffering bruising collisions with rocks and earth. Chueh-hsin gagged at the sound of green twigs snapping, not knowing at first if his own bones had broken or Chueh-min's. The eggs in his sleeve pocket crushed like teacups under a big man's boot. Chueh-hsin fell atop his brother and heard a bubbling groan, spread himself wide across Chueh-min's body to absorb the expected impact of bullets.
The airs.h.i.+p slid overhead, gleaming like the moon it eclipsed, silent except for the tremble of wind against its taut, scaled skin, and nothing touched Chueh-hsin at all.
He pulled back and rolled over, amazed, watching that long sinuous body glide by like a living river of gold. And then he heard Chueh-min cough wetly, and heard his brother's slick, soft hiss of pain. ”Chueh-hsin.” Not so much speech as the bubble of a voice from a great deep.
”Don't talk,” Chueh-hsin said. ”You're hurt.”
”I'm dying. At least one bullet has entered my back,” his brother answered, matter-of-factly, and black s.h.i.+ning blood dripped from the corner of his mouth. He gasped between each word. ”Run to the Governor. Can you run, elder brother?”
”It's no use,” Chueh-hsin said. ”I can't outrun an airs.h.i.+p. And we have no duty here-”
”You owe me this.”
”I owe you nothing.”
”Your duty as my elder brother.”
”As you fulfilled your duty as my younger brother when you went into the pay of the British? Or as you fulfilled it when you f.u.c.ked my wife?” He stopped, appalled at his own bright-edged words, and pressed his hand against his bosom. The turtle-if the turtle had been crushed- He pulled her out, a hard dome of jade no larger than his palm, and tried to see her in the moonlight. He smelled his own sweat, the fermented reek of the thousand-year eggs, the hot red iron of Chueh-min's blood. He held her cupped in his palms, close to his face, turning to the copper moonlight and tilting his head as if, through the darkness, there was any chance at all that he could see a jagged crack marring the green of her sh.e.l.l.
Huddled close within her carapace, she didn't stir, even when Chueh-hsin blew across the opening for her head, to let her taste his breath.
”Xiumei?” Chueh-min said, or tried to say. Chueh-hsin cupped his fingers carefully around the turtle in his palm, and reached out with his other hand to take Chueh-min's.
He looked down, surprised. Chueh-min's fingers lay slack and boneless between his own, and his eyes reflected the moonlight dully, slitted open beneath clotted lashes.
”Xiumei,” he said in answer, as if Chueh-min could hear him, and turned his head to follow the inner-lit silhouette of the dragon against the star-scattered darkness above. Fire wreathed its mouth, the mechanical jaw working through what must be some fantastic contrivance. Chueh-hsin dropped his brother's hand and stood, the contracted turtle held up before him like an offering, and imagined he could hear the shouts of terror as the puppet-dragon came down on the Governor's palace.
The turtle lifted her head and watched with her husband as the dragon fell. She blinked tiny, rice-paper lidded eyes in the moonlight, and turned her gaze to Chueh-hsin. ”Free me, honored husband,” she said, ”and I will call my father to put an end to that paper dragon.”
Chueh-hsin bit his lip. ”Obedience is a wife's duty,” he said.
”It is,” she answered. ”As loyalty is a brother's. Chueh-min saved your life, my husband-”
He watched the incandescent gold ribbon of the dragon turn against the night sky, watched it begin to descend, still dripping fire, upon the tea-shops and the houses near the palace. ”Call your father,” he said.
”Will you free me, Chueh-hsin?”
”Call your father,” he said, and the turtle closed her eyes and withdrew her head into her sh.e.l.l.
”Promise-”
”Call your father.” A third time. ”I will promise no such thing.”
Her sigh was as faint and brief as Chueh-min's pa.s.sing breath. ”Honored husband. It is done.”
Chueh-hsin tucked his wife into his breast pocket, and lifted his brother's body over his shoulder, and carried them both up the ridge to watch as a k.n.o.bby, jade-dark shape as vast as the island under their feet rose above the gleaming ocean beyond the bay. Its bulk against the greying horizon was nothing but a shadow, the rough shape of a turtle, domed sh.e.l.l and lamp-lit golden eyes. One of its hands broke the surface, five grasping moon-white talons reflecting starlight like a s.h.i.+p's masts carved of ivory. Tendrils streamered from its head and back.
Chueh-hsin held his breath as the dragon-turtle cast a searching glance across the island and rose into the air, its dark k.n.o.bby outline silhouetted against the stars, as unlike the s.h.i.+ning fantasy of the puppet airs.h.i.+p as a mossy shrine is unlike a paper lantern. Ineffectual flashes of light sparked off its sh.e.l.l, glittered around the puppet airs.h.i.+p like fireflies. Their report reached Chueh-hsin seconds later, and he realized he heard gunfire.
His brother's weight hung against his side like a sack of meat, and sticky wetness plastered his robes to his body, but he would not put his burden down. He stood on the ridgeline and watched the airs.h.i.+p make a grand slow turn and bear down on the mansion and the town, the dragon-turtle sliding across the sky toward it, just perhaps in time.
In time. After all, in time. There was no contest when they met. The dragon-turtle moved through the airs.h.i.+p like a stone through a paper fan, and tore it into burning, drifting shreds, which settled over the town as the dragon-turtle settled back into the sea: in abject silence, once the screams of falling men came to their end.