Gunpowder Alchemy (8 page)

I began sorting through his desk, sifting through journals, ledger books and maps. A route that dotted the coastline and skirted the waters of Japan had been marked upon one of the maps. Another route ventured as far as India. These were places I had heard of, but I had no understanding of where they were located or who the people were.

There was nothing I recognized as scientific in nature. Certainly Yang wouldn't have left me in here with anything valuable, but I had to try to seek out some clue. If I returned to Prince Yizhu empty-handed, I'd have nothing to negotiate with on behalf of my family.

After about an hour, Little Jie returned with tea and a plate of dumplings for me.

“How long have you been aboard this ship?” I asked him as he set the tray down.

“Oh no, miss! You won't pry any information from me.”

With a devilish look, he was gone. I drank the tea and ate the plump dumplings, which were a mix of pork and shrimp, once again thinking of my family. The last of the rice would have run out by now. Nan was clever enough to perhaps barter away some small household items, but we had little left to trade.

Once I returned, I resolved to find other means of supporting them. I had become a burden to Physician Lo, and we had no need in the village for two healers.

The only options left to me were bleak: our family would be reduced to begging, and Tian would be conscripted to work in the mines. I could marry Merchant Hu if he would still have me, but that was hardly a solution.

After the meal, I rinsed my mouth with tea and lay down on the bed. Blowing out the lantern, I squeezed my eyes shut, as if that could make my problems go away for just one night. Despite the difficulties we faced at home, I still wanted to be there. Safe.

The bunk was surprisingly warm and not uncomfortable. Before long, I started to drift as the activity of the day caught up to me.

I thought of Yang conjuring fire out of air.
Smoke or fire?

There had been many questions I hadn't posed. The remaining ones lingered in my head like the buzz of dragonflies.

If I had another three questions now, what would I ask him? What were all those shipments listed in his ledger book? And how did he get his hands on the exorbitant amounts of silver listed beside them? What had he been looking for inside the puzzle box? How had he escaped the purge when the rest of Father's disciples had been imprisoned and stripped of rank?

And finally, what had he done that was so unforgivable that it was better to cut off his hair and spend the rest of his life in exile?

I awoke to movement and the rush of the wind outside. The entire cabin was in motion, and it was no longer the rocking sway of the vessel upon water.

The ship had set sail.

I jumped from the berth and shoved my feet into slippers before bursting out of the door. No one stopped me as I flew up the stairs.

The too-bright sun blinded me the moment I emerged above deck. A gust of wind whipped over me, and I staggered at the wideness of the sky above and the breadth of the ocean surrounding us.

Water. There was nothing but water and blue sky as far as the eye could see. The horizon looked impossibly far away, and a hollow pit formed in my stomach.

Yang was moving calmly toward the prow of the ship while the breeze whipped the shorn ends of his shoulder-length hair about his face. I tried to catch him, but he was sure-footed at sea while each rolling wave threatened to topple me.

He finally paused to speak to his crewmen, with his hands in the pockets of his long coat as he looked out upon the water. Though he had adopted Western garb, the others had not. Or rather, their mix of dress was neither recognizably Chinese nor Western.

“Yang Hanzhu!” It was rude of me to shout out his name like that, but I didn't care. I moved as fast as I could across the deck. “You can't take me with you. I have to go back.”

He barely turned toward me. The wind blew through his hair as he kept his focus on the horizon ahead. “I can't let you go. The imperial authorities are having you tracked. They would have found me.”

“I wouldn't have told them anything.”

“Doesn't matter. They have their ways.”

“This is kidnapping!” I sputtered.

“Not the worst of my crimes, by far.”

Yang strolled down the deck, sparing a cursory glance at his crewmen as they went about their duties. I had no choice but to tag after him.

“Do you know the story of Admiral Zheng He?” he asked me.

He didn't bother to face me. I was familiar with this mood. Yang was acting as teacher, presenting a lesson.

“He was a statesman and an explorer,” I replied darkly. “Song Dynasty.”

“Admiral Zheng controlled the largest fleet of treasure junks the world had ever known. He traveled to the ends of the map, visiting wild lands across the sea. But apparently these voyages were not authorized by the imperial court. Do you know how the empire rewarded the admiral's glorious efforts?”

I wanted to demand once more that Yang turn his ship around, but there was no speaking with him until the lesson was done. “The Hongxi Emperor had Zheng He's ships set on fire,” I replied begrudgingly. “And his voyages struck from the record.”

Yang stopped abruptly to turn toward me. “The Emperor didn't merely destroy Zheng He's treasure ships. He was destroying his own fleet, crippling the imperial navy. Why do such a thing? Why cut off his own hands and feet?”

“Because the Emperor feared Zheng He's legacy would outshine his?” I ventured.

“Because he feared the knowledge Zheng He had gained. The admiral had opened up a window to the outside world, and the Emperor's advisers found the very idea dangerous—a world that extended beyond the Middle Kingdom. He didn't want his people to look outward. Ignorance, Soling. Ignorance and fear. Do you see why I can't help you?”

I shook my head. I didn't understand.

Yang exhaled sharply, composing himself. “Do you know the reason your father had to die? It wasn't because we were defeated by the
Yangguizi
. It was because when the first ports fell, your father tasked his most trusted men to analyze why we were losing the war. And when we found that it was due to the superior ships and weapons of the West, he advocated that we study their methods and adapt their ways to our own. And then he knelt before the Emperor and presented this report—a report that told the Emperor that his Majesty was wrong. He was inferior, he was not infallible, and his empire was crumbling. That is why Master Jin-fu was executed. For insulting the Son of Heaven rather than insisting that he would rule for a thousand years.”

I stared at him, shocked into silence. My entire body had gone numb, and I felt the weight of a thousand stones pressing down onto my shoulders.

“That was why they wanted all of you,” I said in barely a whisper.

Yang's mouth twisted cruelly. “Because of pride. Because to the Emperor, a thing said could be unsaid, if everyone who has heard it is silenced.”

The worst of it was that everything Yang told me made sense. My Father would still be alive if he hadn't been so intent on finding answers. I looked away, broken and defeated.

“And now there is a new Ministry of Science,” Yang remarked quietly. “They build monuments to the Emperor to praise his greatness. Your beloved empire gains knowledge only to destroy it. They fear it more than anything else. Do not trust them, Soling.”

But Chang-wei wasn't like that. Neither was the crown prince, who had been tutored by my father.

“Prince Yizhu is not like his father,” I began weakly as I tried to explain what I had learned.

I argued and begged with Yang then, but mostly I was arguing with myself. Had I been fooled into believing the empire was worth fighting for?

Yang would hear none of it, not even when I asked to be left ashore to make my own way home. All this time, the crew continued with their tasks, paying me no mind as I followed at Yang's heels.

“Then what do you intend to do with me?” I demanded.

“I told you I would never harm you.”

I don't know if I felt worse or better that he needed to tell me that. “But I can't stay on this ship with you. My mother and brother need me.”

“You'll be returned to them.”

“When?”

“When it's safe.”

I stormed off to return below deck, shutting myself once more in Yang's cabin. Within the hour, I heard a sound that made me jump once again to my feet.

It was the whir of a mechanical engine down below. The rumble of machinery vibrated through the floorboards and filled my ears.

When I came above deck this time, I could tell without question we were moving faster. I could hear the chug and grind of the gears from deep below deck that propelled us forward.

Yang had lied to me. This ship only appeared to be a sailing vessel on the outside. Yang had a combustion engine and the gunpowder to fuel it.

The salt air breeze that had floated around me that morning now whipped by as the ship cut through the water. This time when I called out Yang's name, no one could hear me above the roar.

A quick search of the deck revealed he was no longer there. He had disappeared down below, and I went to search him out. I found Yang in a large chamber toward the back of the ship.

He stood at a worktable with his coat removed. He was wearing only a white shirt beneath, and his sleeves were rolled up to his elbows.

A shelf packed with books and scrolls lined the opposite end of the room. Another long table was set against one wall. The implements arranged upon it sent a pang of nostalgia through me. There were glass vials and containers of various sizes along with tools and burners.

I knew all the names because he had taught them to me, gifting me with sugared almonds when I named them all correctly. I had been a worshipful child in the presence of a doting mentor.

This was the man I remembered. He had papers fanned out about him in a semicircle, and a journal lay open, which he used to keep notes.

“You've built a laboratory on your ship,” I said.

Yang looked up, his arm reclining along the worktable. “How else could I continue my work?”

With all his talk of turning his back on the empire, I was certain he had forsaken his practice as well. What use did a privateer have for the sciences?

“What is it you study down here?”

As I came closer, Yang straightened abruptly and closed his journal. I caught the scrawl of a chemical formula before the pages disappeared beneath the leather-bound cover.

“A little of everything. Whatever catches my interest,” Yang replied, casually resting the crook of his arm over the book. “Days out at sea can be very long. It helps to remain occupied.”

At the Ministry, Yang had researched incendiaries and explosives. The alchemy of fire. I looked over the close quarters of the workshop. It would be madness to experiment with such materials here. My father had lost his arm in what was supposed to be a simple experiment. An accident here could set the entire ship aflame.

Despite the fact that I was being abducted—for my own protection, as Yang claimed—I found myself extremely curious about him and what had happened after he fled Peking.

“How did you come to be the captain of this ship?” I asked, offering a truce for the moment.

He took the offer. “My family has been in shipping for generations. Did you not know?”

I shook my head, feeling a bit shy. Yang had never mentioned anything personal about himself, and as often as I had hovered about him like a little hummingbird, I had never asked. He gestured for me to take a seat beside him and I pulled up a stool.

“I come from a line of merchants, quite humble,” he said with a quirk of his mouth. “But wealthy. Do you know the foreign devils have a term ‘filthy rich'? My family was wealthy enough to pay for an expensive academy education for their oldest son, the same type attended by better and more exalted names than mine. Our attempt to buy into rank and status.”

“But you were accomplished enough to pass the entrance exams yourself,” I protested.

“Soling.
Mèimèi
.”

So I had been elevated in status from an impressionable child to a little sister. He cocked his head and gave me a half smile that told me how sheltered he still found me. Amusingly so. I stiffened at his indulgent look.

“There is nothing money can't buy,” he remarked.

I looked about the chamber. The laboratory appeared well stocked, and it had to have been expensive to have a laboratory built into a trading vessel.

“Do you still have ties to your family?”

“Of course not.” His pleasant expression faded. “It is a good thing my ancestry was low enough to be beneath the empire's persecution. In any case, I'm dead to them as much as I am to the empire. I don't exist.”

“But you're not dead.” I started to argue with him again, but he froze me with a dark look.

“I'm suddenly valuable because I have something they want,” he said, biting off the words. “Just like you're suddenly so
valuable
, after being forgotten for so many years.”

I knew from Yang's tone what he was insinuating. I was only valuable to the crown prince as bait.

“Do you remember Chen Chang-wei?” I asked. “He's allied with the crown prince now.”

Yang's eyes narrowed. “Engineer Chen.”

I nodded, watching his reaction as I held my breath. He stood and reached for the waistcoat that had been folded and laid over the table.

“Chen Chang-wei,” he repeated slowly, a crease appearing over his forehead. With great deliberation, Yang slid his arms into the coat and pulled it over his shoulders. “Do not trust that man.”

“Why shouldn't I? Wasn't he also one of Father's trusted disciples?”

Yang shook his head. Chang-wei had claimed that the two of them had never gotten along and now I wondered why. I had only seen Peking and the Ministry through the innocent eyes of a child.

“Whatever he was to you once, that was all in the past,” was all Yang would tell me.

Between Chen Chang-wei and Yang Hanzhu, I didn't know who to trust. They had both been in my father's inner circle.

Perhaps neither of them could be trusted. I had left home on what was to be nothing more than a two-day journey, but I had been taken against my will, not once but twice, to do someone else's bidding. If I had known I was to become a gambit to be tossed back and forth, I would have never set foot on the road to Changsha.

“Now let me give you a tour of the ship.” Yang paused at the doorway and beckoned for me to follow. His demeanor was once again cordial. “You'll be a guest on board for at least a little while.”