The Girl from Everywhere (30 page)

Kash sighed and shrugged one shoulder. “Better than the alternative, I suppose.”

My head was still light from the thrill—or from exhaustion—but I could still clearly recall the map I’d used to bring us here. “The terra-cotta armies would be in a side chamber,” I said, crossing carefully to the bow. The sea of mercury was bordered by the stone wall; was that deep shadow halfway down its length a doorway? “We’ll need to row over there.”

Together with Kashmir, Slate and I stared at the dinghy.

“It’ll tip without ballast,” Slate said.

“I know.” I wrinkled my nose. “It won’t be pleasant rowing in a tub of bilge water.”

“Tell me about it,” Kash said, shaking back his wet curls. “The bag is empty anyway. You don’t have a magic pocket full of lead, do you?”

“This might be the only time you’ll find me regretting giving up that aboriginal water toad.” I folded my arms and sighed, trying to think. “We need something very heavy.”

“Or a different boat,” Slate said. “Something flat, with more surface area. Like a really big tray. Something stable.”

Kashmir tapped his chin. “Could we take the doors off the hinges downstairs and nail them together?”

“We need an outrigger,” I said. Kash and Slate looked at me. “Like the Hawaiians used on their sailing canoes. Or a catamaran.”

Working together, we fashioned a crude outrigger out of the repair kit we kept in the hold. Laying one beam parallel to the dinghy, we attached it with two perpendicular crosspieces, one at the bow and one at the stern, and lashed the whole contraption together with sisal rope. Then we lowered the boat to the mirrored surface; it sat there as light as
a leaf on a pond.

“Let’s be quick,” Bee said. “Ayen says it’s crowded here. The air is thick with spirits.”

I sucked air through my teeth. “Are they dangerous?”

She took a moment to answer. “No . . . they only miss the light.”

I shivered as a drop of cold water from my damp hair trickled down my neck and ran down my spine. Slate laid his hand on my arm, his face serious. “Kashmir and I can go. Rest if you’re tired.”

“Rest?” I couldn’t keep the disbelief off my face. “And miss this?”

The captain squeezed my shoulder. Then his brow furrowed. “What is that, there?” he said, tapping the leather case on my shoulder.

I hesitated. “A map.”

“Of what?”

“It’s 1886. Joss gave it to me.”

His eyes narrowed. “Chinatown? The Great Fire?”

“She asked me to bring it here.”

He dropped his hand to his side, tapping his fingers on his thigh, his eyes distant. “It’s odd,” he said finally.

“What is?”

“I found that map rolled up inside another one.”

I almost asked which one, but then I realized I knew. “The Mitchell map. The Sandwich Isles. The one you arrived on first.”

He nodded, his face grim once again as he stared out into the shadows on the bronze shore.

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K
ashmir climbed down into the dinghy, and I followed after him. The rowboat bobbed a little when I settled in, but the modifications made it very steady. I was put in mind of those pond striders, the water-walking bugs. I let Kashmir man the oars. He shipped one, laying it in the bottom of the dinghy, and pulled the other out of the oarlock to use like a paddle, with two hands, leaning in and pushing through the mercury first on one side, then the other.

We sculled along toward the massive stone wall, and I closed my eyes to better see my memory. “According to the map, this central part of the tomb is rectangular, with canals leading out in each cardinal direction. Along either side of the canals are the rooms where the warriors are.”

“Why are you whispering?”

I opened my eyes and kicked him. The boat bobbed, and I froze for a moment. Kash had the decency to stifle his laugh. “The soldiers seem quiet so far, but I don’t want to press our luck,” I said, my voice low. “The story is, they guard Qin’s riches and his actual . . . person.”

“So, his decaying body?”

“Yes. Don’t touch it.”

“Wasn’t going to.”

“And don’t take anything.”

“You’re no fun.”

There was indeed an arched doorway, twenty feet high, midway along the wall. Kash turned the boat toward it, and as we approached, the light from our lantern illuminated the damp stone, which was marred at even intervals by sooty black streaks above the burned-out oil lamps. But the lamps could not have been dark long. I smelled the scent of sweet oil and bitter flame, cutting through the sour odor that seemed to permeate my very skin.

“There’s something wrong.”

Kashmir froze in midstroke, beaded droplets of quicksilver dripping from the oar. “Care to elaborate?”

“In the legend, Sima wrote the lamps would burn forever, and they’re out.”

“It makes sense,
amira
. There is not enough oil in all the world to burn forever.”

“No, I know, but in the myth, they’re supposed to last. So were the trees, but they’re dying too. Then again . . .” I bit my lip. “Sima didn’t draw the map.”

“Who did?”

I was, nervous, for some reason, to say it aloud. “I think it was Joss.”

“Ah.” We sculled along for a moment in silence. “So. Do you suppose she believed the soldiers would come to life? Or that they were no more than fancy pottery?”

“But why would she have sent us if . . . ugh, that’s a stupid question.”

“We’re here now. We might as well check.”

Our little boat passed between two huge archways that opened onto rooms where matching junks were moored, their beautiful red lacquer sides studded with gold coin-shaped reliefs. The masts were rigged with silken sails, ready for the terra-cotta sailors who manned her ebony deck.

“That’s lucky,” I murmured.

“Hmm?”

“If this works, we can tow one of the junks back with us and use it to get into Honolulu Harbor,” I explained. “The
Temptation
is pretty recognizable.”

Beyond those chambers, there was another opening, this one smaller and set above the waterline with stone steps leading up. Kashmir pulled us near enough for our light to crawl inside; painted pottery horses stood, hitched to chariots cast in bronze. They were absolutely immobile.

“Wait,” I said as he dipped the oars. I lifted the lantern higher, inspecting the shadows at the corner of the doorway, and then I flinched.

“What?”

I pointed. Starkly lit and edged in shadow, I could make out a bloated hand, reaching through the doorway toward us, as though in supplication. That was the source of the smell. We were breathing in the dead.

“A grave robber?” Kashmir pushed us off from the bottom step.

“No . . . Qin had the artisans who built the tomb buried with him, along with his chief officials and . . . and his favorite concubines.” I took a shallow breath; the air was heavy, suffoating. “The exits were sealed with tons of earth.”

“But Joss escaped.”

“Yes.” I took another breath, the strap of the leather case tight across my chest.

Kashmir and I continued down the waterway, passing a space made up like a stable, with more horses and foals tended by terra-cotta grooms. Next we saw a room filled with replica officials holding clay tablets and scrolls to tally up the emperor’s riches, then a chamber of clay concubines, every delicate face cast in an everlasting smile . . . a smile that seemed familiar to me. In the lap of one kneeling form lay the head of a dead artisan, as though he’d laid down to rest.

In the dim light, I could just make out two huge bronze doors at the end of the quicksilver canal, cast with reliefs of dragons ascending to heaven. Debris was piled high at the base of the doors, the mercury pooling and seeping through the rubble—no . . . not rubble. As I stared, I recognized the shapes of heads and hands, arms and legs. Bile rose in my throat. The masons and artists, the tile setters and painters, the sculptors and plaster workers and carpenters and gardeners who had used the best of their skills for the glory of their emperor had found their way here, to die before the bronze gates cutting them off forever from the country they had re-created in this necropolis.

My heartbeat was fluttery, irregular. Was Joss really here somewhere, holding on? Should I look for her?

What was she eating?

Then I gasped and pointed.

Immediately, Kash raised the oar like a club. “What is it?”

“Something’s moving!”

“Where?”

“Look, the ripples!”

Both of us stared at the surface of the mercury; the rocking of our own boat had marred the patterns, but after a moment he saw it too—a trembling V, something small swimming toward us.

“Wait . . . is that . . .” Kashmir lowered the oar, and a moment later, Swag’s reptilian head popped over the edge of the boat, quicksilver beading on his gold scales.

“How did you get out here?” I said, my voice hoarse with relief. He didn’t look to have suffered from his swim, and the mercury slid right off. Still, I reached out to him gingerly, and he clambered up my arm to settle on my neck. “Stay,” I said, hoping he would obey.

“I see soldiers,” Kash said then, pointing toward the last doorway on our right. I stroked Swag’s smooth scales, hot against my skin, as we bumped against the steps.

Kashmir lifted his lantern. The light threw crazy shadows, but everything else was still: the taller generals, the
kneeling archers, the straight-backed spearmen. My legs shook as I climbed out of the dinghy, careful not to touch the mercury.

“Hello?” I said, my voice swallowed by the closing dark, my breath purling in the air.
“Ni hao?”
No sound returned but the dripping, far away, of a trickle of water. The silence of the dead was the sound of despair. I reached for Kashmir’s hand and stepped through the door.

Although they all stood in straight rows, no two warriors were alike. Every face was different: fierce determination, boredom, pride. Their uniforms varied as well, painted in greens and blues, pinks and lilacs, bright colors with no single soldier the same as the next. They held real weapons, fine swords, spears with bright bronze tips, graceful wooden bows. All were still, but every stony gaze was almost lifelike. Almost.

I stood face-to-face with an imposing general, his armor washed with Han purple, his hair pulled into a high knot. The lamplight gleamed dully in the painted orbs of his terra-cotta eyes. I moved on to an infantryman and rapped my knuckles on his hollow chest. It sounded just like a flower pot. None of these statues displayed the slightest interest or inclination in waking up and walking about.

“Well,” Kashmir said. “You came very close.”

“Shh.” Joss was slick, but would she go so far as to sell me a worthless map? I racked my memory. The warriors were supposed to have come to life in the tomb; clearly that hadn’t happened. Yet. How could I get a bunch of clay men to come to life?

Clay men that came to life . . . various gods and goddesses often breathed life into clay men and women, including the goddess Nuwa, in Chinese mythology, but she was apparently declining to make an appearance. Golems were made of clay and given life when a person wrote the magic word on their foreheads, but golems were a Jewish myth.

I decided to try it. I believed in golems, didn’t I? I just had to remember the magic word. I shut my eyes to concentrate. “It’s Hebrew for truth,” I said.

“Quoi?”

“I’m thinking. The Hebrew word for truth brings them to life. What’s the word?”

“I don’t speak Hebrew.”

“Quiet!” I pressed the bridge of my nose. “Truth. Truth. But the trick of it is when you erase the first letter, the golem stops because the word spells . . . spells death.
Emet!
The word is
emet
.” I squeezed the last bit of water from my hair
into my cupped palm. Then I dipped my finger and wrote
EMET
on the general’s broad forehead.

The thirsty clay absorbed the water, and the letters faded.

Nothing else happened.

“Damn.”

“Maybe they don’t speak Hebrew either.”

“No,” I said slowly. “They wouldn’t.” A thought kept buzzing by, like a mosquito in my ear.

“You have any other magic words?”

Something about Chinese tradition and numbers . . . and Joss the day we first met. “Four,” I said. “Four is death.” Swag raised his head from my chest and hissed. “Shh. Five is
wu
and it sounds like ‘me’ but also ‘not.’ Me and not me. So fifty-four would be . . .”

“Me, dead?”

“And not dead.” I dipped my finger in the water again, and the shadow of my hand passed over the general’s eyes. I wrote the characters in Chinese, as Auntie Joss had written them for me on the chart she’d sold me—my number, and my mother’s, the numbers that would control my fate. The marks shone wetly on the clay forehead, and for a moment, everything was still as I held my breath.

The numbers started to fade, and I dropped my hands
by my sides, the water in my palm dripping down my fingers. Swag shifted on my shoulders. “Nothing.”