Clockwork Samurai

Also by Jeannie Lin

Gunpowder Alchemy

Clockwork Samurai

Jeannie Lin

InterMix Books, New York

AN IMPRINT OF PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE LLC

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CLOCKWORK SAMURAI

An InterMix Book / published by arrangement with the author

Copyright © 2015 by Jeannie Lin.

Excerpt from
Gunpowder Chronicles
copyright © 2014 by Jeannie Lin.

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eBook ISBN: 978-0-698-13534-5

PUBLISHING HISTORY

InterMix eBook edition / December 2015

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Penguin Random House is committed to publishing works of quality and integrity. In that spirit, we are proud to offer this book to our readers; however, the story, the experiences, and the words are the author's alone.

Qing Dynasty, 1852
A.D.

One might think that it was difficult for a woman to become a physician, and even more difficult to rise in the ranks of the imperial palace. But both assumptions are untrue.

Women have ailments and concerns that are particular to the female sex—there is no denying that. And every emperor since the First Dynasty has kept a harem of wives and consorts and concubines that had to remain in good health. And as no grown man, other than the Emperor, could be allowed near his precious imperial women, harem physicians were traditionally eunuchs or women themselves. It was for this reason that I had been appointed to the Court of Physicians, deep within the Forbidden City. I had considered it a great, great honor at the time.

Each morning, I would arrive at the apothecary before dawn to light the medicine stoves. Then I would get to work.

Today I was scheduled to visit the harem. I had a book containing the names of the imperial concubines and all the various medicines they were required to take. With the book in hand, I headed toward the storage room.

There must have been a thousand remedies stored in the cavernous chamber. The rosewood cabinets stretched from floor to ceiling, with rows upon rows of meticulously labeled drawers. Inside, one could find every herb or plant known to man. A cure for every ailment and disease, from ginger root for stomach pains to elixirs containing ground pearl and quicksilver rumored to grant immortality.

There were even medicines imported from the West that I had only recently begun to study. The other physicians regarded the bottles with a wary eye. I tended to agree. Who knew what had been mixed into those strange liquids?

I set the book down, page open to the first set of ingredients, and placed a porcelain bowl beneath the dispensing basin. A series of winding tubes snaked out from the cabinets leading into the receptacle. At the base of each of the cabinets was a set of brass dials.

All I had to do was turn the dials to indicate which ingredients I needed. Once the correct symbols were aligned, I pulled a lever and the cabinets whirred to life as the gears inside engaged. The drawers shifted open and closed, releasing the desired amount of each herb down the delivery tubes. By now, I knew the combinations by heart. My hands flew over the dials, aligning the symbols with a satisfying click and pulling the lever. After the first set, I replaced the bowl and started on the next set of herbs. Longan berries, ginseng, angelica.

I gave each bowl one last check before carrying them back to the stoves. Then I poured the contents into separate brewing pots to steep.

Each formula had been prescribed by the head physician to warm the blood and awaken the internal organs. And most important of all, to increase fertility. Yizhu had been Emperor for over a year now, having taken the throne before I was
appointed to the physicians' court.

The empire did need an heir, but to my knowledge women became pregnant fairly well without the aid of special teas and treatments. This was part of the ritual of the palace. The Forbidden City was ruled by ritual.

As fast as I tried to work, it always took me hours before the process was complete. The sun was high by the time I started ladling the mixtures into serving bowls. I had nearly finished when a messenger was announced.

The dragon insignia on the servant's robe sent the maidservants scurrying aside. This was a messenger from the Inner Court.

“The Emperor summons Physician Jin Soling to the Palace of Heavenly Purity,” he announced.

I was still standing with ladle in one hand, empty bowl in the other, and barely time to wipe my brow. The heat from the stoves had turned the chamber into an oven.

Even as unpresentable as I was, there was no questioning an imperial order. I gave a few brief instructions to the attending eunuchs, then followed immediately behind the messenger as he made his way through the courtyards and corridors toward the heart of the Forbidden City.

I hadn't spoken to Yizhu since he took the throne. Despite residing in the palace, I'd barely seen him. By tradition, Yizhu was still in mourning for his late father, and I couldn't imagine why he'd want to speak to me now.

A great cage of steel encased the palaces and halls of the Inner Court where the Emperor and his Grand Council held court. The sight of the dome made my blood run cold. To me, it looked as if the Inner Court had been imprisoned.

The fortifications had been put in place after the empire's defeat against the
Yangguizi
. The dome, with its black metal bars, ran counter to a thousand years of palace architecture. There was no elegance or beauty to it. Along with the dome, imperial builders had erected watchtowers and cannon fortifications around the city. The imperial air fleet had tripled in size. Though our treaty with the
Yangguizi
restricted them to the trading ports, the Grand Council knew an airship fleet could reach Peking within days.

I stepped beneath the dome where a spiderweb shadow blocked out the sun, allowing it only to filter in through tiny lines and squares. Immediately the air felt heavier. When we reached the main courtyard of the inner palace, the feeling of dread only worsened.

The triple halls of the Inner Court had been built with an eye for beauty and harmony, but that was all ruined now. The steel cage had come down to block out the heavens. It had been installed with a heavy hand, without any sense of balance. It told us danger was everywhere. The invasion was already upon us.

The Palace of Heavenly Purity rose from a white marble foundation, as if floating above the clouds. The messenger stood aside as I climbed the steps toward a set of brass studded doors. They swung open as I approached, pulled by an invisible hand.

Inside, my heart pounded as I passed beneath the watchful gaze of the palace guards. The only thing that moved was their eyes as they tracked my every footstep.

The breath rushed out of me when I saw the throne at the end of the cavernous audience hall. Emperor Yizhu sat upon the carved seat, which was gilded with gold leaf and framed on either side by red columns. Each column was inscribed, but I had little time to read the words. Yizhu was staring down at me from behind his desk—the desk from which he determined the fate of the land.

I bowed and lowered my gaze before moving forward. My father had been summoned like this. He'd made this very same long walk on his last night on this earth.

At the foot of the dais, I started to kneel but was met with an impatient huff.

“Come,” Yizhu spat out. “The Emperor has no time to wait.”

My eyes flicked upward. Even though it was a direct order, I remained frozen. I had known Yizhu before he was emperor, but even then he'd frightened me.

“Well?” he challenged.

Though he sounded cross, the last part held a hint of informality. I set one foot upon the dais, and then another. An attendant came forward to set a tray upon the desk before retreating. I was left alone on the platform with the Son of Heaven.

Yizhu was dressed in an imperial yellow robe embroidered with a dragon, the eternal symbol of the Emperor, but the material seemed to hang heavily upon his shoulders. There was a gauntness about his face as he scowled at me with his eyebrows stabbing sharply downward.

A year had done much to transform him. Not long ago, he'd been a haughty young prince with grand ideas. Now he was a too-young emperor with a troubled empire.

At twenty, he was only a year older than me, but he seemed much older. Not in his face, which had a decidedly youthful look, or his hair, which was jet-black and braided into a thick queue in the Manchurian style. It was in his eyes.

Those eyes spoke of sleepless nights. The shadows beneath them were deep and haunted.

“Closer.” He waved me up the final step and gestured toward the tray. “I have two armies battling in my head. Neither one will surrender.”

Yizhu squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed a hand over his temples. I finally saw what the attendant had set down before him. The tray was lined with a set of long silver needles.

“They say you can work wonders, Physician Jin. Rid me of this headache.”

His eyes remained closed as I scanned the instruments. Certainly they had been tested for any poisonous substances. Even so, I was nervous about laying my hands on our sovereign. What if I made some grave mistake?

“Are you suddenly afraid of me, Jin Soling?”

Yizhu's eyes slitted open as he taunted me. He had the characteristic broad forehead and sharp cheekbones of the Aisin Gioro clan. It wasn't a handsome face as much as it was a face of authority.

“You are the Son of Heaven, Imperial Majesty.”

It was explanation enough.

“You weren't so afraid of me the first time we met.”

I was more uncomfortable with this informal tone than when he was agitated with me, so I didn't answer. There was no way to win when sparring with an emperor. Best to focus on the task at hand.

Taking hold of his arm, I carefully folded back the long sleeve and pressed two fingers to his wrist.

“The imperial physicians have been worthless. If nothing else, you have a woman's touch.”

I fought to keep my hands steady. That was not how an emperor spoke to a nameless servant, which is what I wished to be right now. His gaze burned into me while I continued to search for his pulse.

“There is nothing irregular,” I reported. “I will try to balance the flow of qi at the source of the pain.”

“Go on, then.”

Yizhu closed his eyes once more and laid his head back as I selected a long needle. The tail was capped with silver and the body tapered as thin as wire. My hands steadied as soon as I positioned it between my fingers.

Holding my breath, I reached up to touch his cheek. Using two fingers, I pulled the skin tight and inserted the first needle just to the left of his nose.

The Emperor didn't flinch. The points were so fine and the contact shallow enough that there was no pain. I continued with the next needle.

“Better,” he said after I had set most of the points on his left side. His breathing had slowed, grown deeper.

“This treatment is only temporary. His Imperial Majesty must resolve the source of the imbalance to truly eliminate the pain.”

“Resolve the source.” His lip curled, and the flow of energy through the needles faltered. “Can you tell the Emperor how to remove the foreign devils from our ports? Or how to crush the rebel armies ravaging the countryside?”

“That is beyond my capabilities, Imperial Majesty.”

“Beyond my greatest generals as well, it seems.”

He fell silent, but tension gathered along his spine and through his shoulders. A muscle ticked along his jaw.

“Breathe,” I reminded him softly, hoping I hadn't overstepped my bounds.

The Emperor exhaled, and I measured the pulse at his neck before adjusting the needles. The next set of insertions traveled along his neck. Yizhu remained still and silent while I worked.

When I glanced up from the task, his eyes were open once more and looking directly at me.

“When I was a child, I remember exploring the workrooms of the Ministry of Science. A young girl once dared to reprimand me.”

My face heated. I moved to his other side and said nothing.

“My attendants were quick to drag the child from my presence and have her beaten for her insolence. That little girl was the chief engineer's daughter.”

My father had been one of Yizhu's tutors. It was too much to hope that he'd forget. The Emperor never forgot any
transgression against him, no matter how small.

“Not many have ever dared to correct me in such a fashion, Physician Jin.”

Yizhu's mood seemed to twist about like a snake in the grass. For all I knew, he was just trying to amuse himself. I longed to be done with this task so I could go, but I didn't dare rush through it. One wrong point could mean my head.

From outside the hall, a crier announced the commencement of the daily court hearings. I froze, startled the Emperor would have me here during official proceedings, but he seemed to think nothing of it. The members of the Grand Council filed in, each sinking to his knees in a kowtow before rising to take his assigned place before the dais.

Most of them were senior members of the court, of whom I knew nothing aside from the rank denoted by their headdress and court robes. The youngest of them, however, was easy to recognize. Yixin, prince of the first rank, bowed before his half brother.

Yixin was younger than the Emperor by two years. A bout of smallpox during childhood had left his face pockmarked, though he was otherwise not unattractive. At eighteen years, he had the same slender build of his half brother and the same aristocratic features, down to the stubborn set of his jaw. The Emperor's mirror image.

These were the men who controlled the fate of the empire, and I was completely out of place here.

A functionary approached the Emperor to present a booklet with the first petition. My heart raced as Chen Chang-wei entered the audience hall along with an elder official.

It had been months since I'd last seen Chang-wei, and we'd only chatted briefly about my brother's studies. Our respective positions kept us apart, but I didn't realize until then how much I looked forward to seeing him. A chance meeting felt like a gift.

To my eyes, he was notably handsome, with well-defined cheekbones and a strong chin that tapered slightly. His eyes had a way of taking in everything and cutting it down to its component parts. Outwardly, he was well studied and well mannered, but he had a thoughtful expression that promised a thousand untold secrets.

I couldn't look at him without feeling a tug deep in my chest, but it was just a faint echo of the past. Of the life I'd once been meant for. We had at one time been promised to each other, but the arrangement had fallen apart with the rest of my world when my father had taken the blame for the empire's defeat at the hands of the foreign devil ships.