Breath of Earth Page 27

  “Pardon me, gentlemen,” said Cy, his voice as good-natured as if he passed them in a park. He weaved between the stunned men.

  Lee stepped aside to let Cy through. His face was mottled in a camouflage pattern of purple and blue bruises. “About damn time. What did you do, take the cable car up to Nob Hill for a picnic? And is that blood?” His words hardly slurred now.

  “Not ours,” Cy said. “And the picnic’s been postponed.”

  Ingrid wanted to say something, but she was just too tired. The weak morning light angled through the exposed diagonal support beams of the tower and draped a stripe of shadow over her face.

  “Good to know. Now, boys, it’s been nice chatting, but I believe we’re ready to embark. Mister, you should really get that hand looked at. Thuggees get all the reputation for poisoning, but maybe chinks know a thing or two.”

  Cy headed up a narrow stairwell and took care to tuck in her head and feet at the turns. Lee’s footsteps rattled behind them.

  “Fenris should be pleased,” Cy said over his shoulder. “Maiden flight and folks are already lined up to ride.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s odd for me to say this, but I wish they were a higher-class sort.”

  “No, you don’t. You’d have a lot harder time if it was a family with kids standing there and begging to board.”

  “Already dealt with that, and damn it, yes, it was worse. Sorry for the language, Ing. You can talk right? Ingrid?”

  She opened and closed her lips but didn’t manage more than a few limp jabs of her tongue.

  Another flight up. “She’s barely conscious. Her fever’s too high. Every time she vented, another aftershock hit. The back-and-forth is wearing her out.”

  “I hear my friends coming up the stairs. I better play guard. Hey!” Lee yelled downward. “I hope nobody else has a naughty finger. Or head.”

  It was strange, being up this high. She could sense the distance from the ground. It made it easier to think, even if it didn’t do anything to offset the energy already inside her. Shadows shifted, and then they were on the deck of the platform. Wind blasted her face. She caught a brief glimpse of the city sprawled below and sucked in a sharp breath.

  Very quickly, Cy turned her face away to a view of the bay with Goat Island and the shore of Oakland beyond. Plumes of smoke drifted from that city, too. He hopped up a small wooden staircase, his body bowed over hers. She didn’t have the strength to look around, but she sensed the claustrophobic interior of the Palmetto Bug.

  “Could you have been any slower?” Fenris’s voice carried down a short passageway.

  “Yes,” snapped Cy. “We could be dead. Ingrid, I’m going to set you down on the floor right here. Fenris, we’ve got to head toward Mussel Rock.”

  She slid out of his arms and caught herself on a palm to prop herself up, just barely. Her fingers rubbed at the tatami mat, taking in the slickness of the woven straw. Such a comfort to find a floor cool to the touch and in a color other than blue. She let her eyes close.

  “Where’s that?” yelled Fenris.

  “South! Toward San Bruno Mountain! If you left the warehouse more often . . . !” Cy’s words ended with a growl as his heavy boots pounded away.

  “Damn. You have been to hell and back.” Ingrid felt Fenris’s presence over her. “Once we lift off, we’ll get you cleaned up, okay? I loaded up on food and supplies. Hang in there.” His voice softened to a surprisingly feminine timbre. Fingers glanced her cheek.

  The engine revved with a soft purr. The floor vibrated. Half asleep, Ingrid started with panic as if another earthquake had struck. Her eyes opened. She had never been on an airship before. She had always been afraid of being aloft, of completely severing her connection with the earth. Now, if she had had the physical energy, she would have wept in relief. Male voices rumbled together and then Cy burst through the open hatch with Lee about two steps behind.

  “Go! Go!” yelled Cy. He yanked on a tether and pulled up the hatch. The stairs attached to the door collapsed flat with a clang. The airship lurched upward, Ingrid’s guts threatening to bounce higher than the rest of her body.

  “Hey, Ing.” Lee crouched beside her. “Sorry I couldn’t linger before the shindig last night. I had a lot to do. Don’t ask where I got these, okay?”

  She felt his hand, icy cold against hers, and the hardness of stones pressed against her palm. She gasped. Her spine arched as the kermanite siphoned away energy. The wavering lines of the world didn’t waver quite so much. Sweat dribbled down her temple.

  “You brought kermanite?” Cy crouched on the other side. Together, they fully blocked the tight hallway. “I was just getting our stash.”

  Ingrid licked her lips. Blood still lingered in the creases. Cy scooted back, and seconds later he had a canteen to her lips. He placed gentle fingers beneath her jaw to assist in tilting back her head. His touch almost felt as good as the cold water on her raw throat. She was certainly giving the Reiki plenty to work on.

  “Thank you,” she whispered to Cy.

  “No need to worry about that,” he said. “Here. Fill these up, if you please.”

  Jagged kermanite the size of marbles rolled into her palm. She curled her fingers to cover them as more power drained away. Some of the terrible tension in her chest eased, though her heart still raced as if it held as much power as the kermanite.

  His hand brushed her brow. Funny, how his touch felt so distinct from Lee’s. Cy’s hands were large, the skin soft and rough at the same time, while Lee’s fingers were fine and slender—more like Fenris’s really. Ingrid snorted. The fever still had a firm grip on her. The city below was destroyed and here she was, waxing philosophic about her friends’ hands.

  The city had been destroyed.

  She shoved herself off the floor, handcuffs rattling.

  “Whoa! Take it slow!” said Cy. The man and boy had each gripped her by a shoulder as if to hold her down. Her injured shoulder now felt sore more than outright painful. “I can fold out the bunks—”

  “I need to see,” she said.

  “Can you even walk?” asked Cy.

  “I won’t know unless I try, will I?”

  Gritting her teeth, she took a tentative step. Lee backed off, but Cy didn’t let go; he knew better. Ingrid leaned on the smooth orichalcum sheeting of the wall. Her legs wobbled, but they did work. Mostly. Her knees seemed to have a case of amnesia and couldn’t quite recall to go rigid at times. She caught herself against the wall, and Cy’s grip tightened enough to hold her up.

  “I still want to know how you got bloodied like that,” Lee said behind her. “Did you have to run through a slaughterhouse? And roll in manure?”

  “The whole city’s a slaughterhouse,” said Cy.

  “I didn’t even expect you to be here, Lee,” said Ingrid. She panted from exertion. “I thought you’d . . . go with the others.” With his people, the people he somehow commanded.

  “I have my reasons,” said Lee.

  “Lee, I’m really not feeling up to cagey responses.”

  “Why, I can’t be here because I enjoy your company?” He scowled. Ingrid heard it in his voice.

  She rested at the doorway to the cabin. The five-foot walk had drained her like a fifty-yard dash.

  Three glass panels shielded the cockpit. There was enough space for two chairs side by side, and additional wooden seats flanked the doorway. Ingrid had expected artistry in Fenris’s engine design, but the finery of the cockpit was far beyond her expectations. A waxed mahogany-and-copper dashboard held meters and monitors depicting numbers that she couldn’t comprehend in the slightest. The whole thing shone as it emanated a sharp chemical scent. Vents in the floor and wall gushed excess heat circulated from the engine room. The two pilots’ seats looked like fancy office chairs with their legs chopped off, the heavy wood and leather set upon pedestals.

  And then there was the view beyond the window.

  The Bug hovered near Alcatraz and looked south. The waters of the
bay looked deep and peaceful compared to the smoking wreck of San Francisco. Exposed crosshatched lines demarcated block after block of charred and crumpled masonry. A few tall buildings still stood, but they looked small compared to the pillars of smoke that stretched to the clouds. Red and orange flickered from the debris.

  With an audible blast, a Behemoth-class dirigible exploded with a spurt of brilliant white flame, setting off a cascade of pops as the two flanking crafts lit up. A string of tugboats sailed that way, water cannons already aimed at a warehouse as it caught the fluttering gasbags.

  “Do you think your building is . . . ?” she asked.

  “Oh, it’s gone.” Fenris shrugged. “The place was cheap and old. If the earthquake didn’t do it, one of the fires from the dock will get there.”

  She swallowed a dry lump in her throat. Her house was in a better area, but that didn’t mean anything. There were things that belonged to Mama she would have loved to have—a necklace brought over from Norway, the old family Bible with its genealogy, a few rings and things, an ivory knife that Papa gave Mama. There were possessions she would have grabbed for Mr. Sakaguchi, too, like his grandfather’s katana set that had survived more than one earthquake on its native soil, and some old books that he particularly treasured.

  Everything was gone. Even if the objects remained, she couldn’t stay. Not with Ambassador Blum after her.

  Even more, Blum was after Mr. Sakaguchi. Ingrid needed to find him first.

  “Here, Ingrid, have a seat,” said Cy, pointing behind him. It was a curt motion, with his arm so long and the space so cramped.

  She let her body slide down the wall and onto the seat directly behind Fenris. A safety strap was a lump against her derriere. Cy climbed into the other crew seat, while Lee lowered himself onto the stool just across from her.

  “Give me your hand,” said Lee. She did. He pried a needle from his sleeve and began to pick at the lock of her handcuff.

  “You’re full of surprises,” she whispered. He caught the handcuff as it unlatched and motioned for her other hand.

  “You don’t know the half of it, Ing. People are looking for me.” Lee’s voice was so quiet it almost blended with the soft purr of the turbines. He set aside the second cuff.

  Ingrid rubbed her freed wrists. “What exactly are you saying, Lee?”

  The boy sighed and glanced at the seats ahead of him. “It would really make it easier on all of you if I lied. Most people in Chinatown know me by association with Uncle Moon, and there’s power enough in that. He’s probably one of the best lingqi doctors of the past hundred years. Everyone fears him.”

  “So, you’re saying that the people looking for you might kill us?” asked Fenris. “You do realize there’s an existing queue for that, right?”

  San Francisco was behind them. To the right sprawled the Pacific, and below rolled green hills wearing their spring finest.

  “Yes, well, some people like to cut in line.” Lee leaned against his knees and looked over at Ingrid. “Mr. Sakaguchi took me in. I was told, ‘Go there. Be a servant and a student. Learn.’ When a tong gives an order, you listen. I knew that, even if I didn’t know what it meant to be Chinese through the first years of my life.

  “I wanted to hate Mr. Sakaguchi. I did hate him, at the start. Somehow, that changed. He never treated me like a slave, or even a servant. He let me read books from his library, any book I wanted. I knew a boy in Chinatown whose hands were cut off because he touched one of his master’s books. Mr. Sakaguchi wasn’t like that.”

  Ingrid smiled softly. “No. We probably had the best education available.”

  “Probably.” He smiled back, a lopsided and painful expression. “That was the whole point, that education. I’m expected to know everything American, Chinese, and Japanese.”

  “You do know everything,” Ingrid added.

  “I play the shadow well enough, I suppose, but it never seems like enough. Maybe if I’d known more . . .” He shook his head.

  “You spied for your uncle.” Cy looked over his shoulder as he pried the goggles over his head. The leather band, sticky with blood and muck, practically tore away from his hair. White circles of clean skin framed his eyes. He tweaked his glasses on the arch of his nose.

  “Of course. Any Chinese in the city knows to pass along information. It’s how we survive.” Ingrid couldn’t help but flinch, and Lee saw and sighed again. “Mr. Sakaguchi’s smart. He knew what I needed to do. It doesn’t mean I told them everything. It doesn’t mean I told them about you, Ing.”

  “Does Mr. Sakaguchi know who you truly are?” she asked.

  “Yes. And if you’re going to play this game, you’ll have to know, too.” Lee Fong’s gaze met hers, dark-eyed and fierce. “I’m the last living child of Emperor Qixiang, and I’m here as your volunteer hostage so you can get Mr. Sakaguchi back alive.”

  CHAPTER 20

  “Emperor Qixiang.”

  “Yes,” said Lee, clearing his throat.

  Despite being with him on a daily basis for five years, Ingrid stared at Lee as if seeing him for the first time. His father, the model of that priceless statue in Chinatown? Lee Fong as the figurehead of the Chinese rebellion, the greatest enemy of America and Japan?

  For God’s sake, she’d engaged in tickle wars with him.

  “But weren’t your early years spent in a Catholic orphanage?” she blurted out. “How . . . ?”

  “My mother was known to be one of Qixiang’s concubines, the only one to stay with him through the end. But even more, the qilin acknowledges me.”

  Ingrid stared. A qilin. Known in Japanese as kirin, represented in the fawn-sized dragon statue Mr. Sakaguchi kept in the backyard. A fantastic so rare they were regarded as extinct or mythological. They were ancient and divine judges who only appeared to sages or rightful rulers.

  “Didn’t Qixiang die of smallpox here in California about fifteen years back?” asked Cy.

  “Yes. I never knew him.”

  Cy leaned on a chair arm to frown back at Lee. “How does the heir to the Qing Dynasty end up with a Japanese warden?”

  “This Sakaguchi seemed a bit overly involved,” added Fenris.

  Lee grimaced. “I wasn’t allowed to ask.”

  “Not allowed?” Fenris’s voice rose in pitch. “If you’re the emperor’s kid, who’s to tell you what you can or can’t do?”

  “Emperor of what? Cities that look like that.” Lee gestured sharply behind them. “Even in Chinatown, only a handful of people know.”

  It was bad enough that the UP thought Mr. Sakaguchi was somehow involved with the kermanite theft and the auxiliary explosion. If they knew he’d been hiding Qixiang’s heir, approved by a qilin, on American soil . . .

  “I don’t understand why Mr. Sakaguchi kept you so close, Lee. He knew something bad was going to happen.” She paused. “But he kept me here, too, even with the potential for other terrible things.”

  “A few months ago he called me in to talk.” Lee stared away, frowning. “He said the Unified Pacific had targeted him. He said he could fire me. Accuse me of theft or something, give me a good excuse to keep my distance. The danger was, the timing could make me look even more suspicious. I told him I would stay, continue as normal. Uncle agreed.”

  “Mr. Sakaguchi knew who your uncle was?” asked Ingrid.

  “Yes. I was carrying messages to Chinatown for him. I have for years. They were in code; I couldn’t read them.”

  “You tried?” asked Cy, an eyebrow arched.

  “Of course he tried,” said Ingrid. “This is Lee. He’s like a kitten, his nose into everything.” She felt the urge to ruffle his hair, as she often did, but resisted touching him. The emperor’s son and heir. “You . . . you think they will kill Mr. Sakaguchi, then. Eventually.”

  Lee sighed. “He’s not going to cooperate. He doesn’t want all us Chinese dead, but he’s not going to help power rods or engines that’ll be used against Americans either. Plus, he’s Japanese. There
are going to be some who’ll want him dead from the start, just for that. With the earthquake, the tongs on the run . . . it’s complicated, Ing.”

  Always. “How long do we have?”

  “I don’t know. Weeks, maybe.”

  Mr. Sakaguchi, working with a tong. Keeping Qixiang’s heir in his own household. She wanted to grip her ojisan by the lapels and ask him, Why? Why work with such dangerous people, knowing that if the balance tipped, they would turn on him? Why fight for Papa, knowing the attention it would bring?

  She knew the answers all too well. Because Mr. Sakaguchi was a fool. A darling, wonderful fool who wanted to save the world, no matter the danger it brought upon himself.

  Wherever you are, Ojisan, I will find you. I will save you.

  “Ambassador Blum and Captain Sutcliff were right,” she whispered. “Mr. Sakaguchi was a traitor to the Unified Pacific. To Japan. But not to the United States.”

  Cy granted her a small smile. “He’s not alone in those sentiments.”

  Cy was hiding for those same reasons. And then there was Mr. Roosevelt. He and Mr. Sakaguchi had plotted something for years. All their concerns about Japan, and what would happen after China was subjugated. Did Mr. Roosevelt know the truth about Lee? Mr. Sakaguchi had trusted Mr. Roosevelt enough to tell him about Ingrid’s deviant geomancy, after all. Once Papa was captured overseas, Mr. Sakaguchi had made sure Mr. Roosevelt wouldn’t take the fall with him.

  She wanted to trust Mr. Roosevelt—for so many years, he and Mr. Kealoha had been Mr. Sakaguchi’s dearest friends—but he was also an Ambassador like Blum. When Mr. Sakaguchi advised her and Lee to go to Mr. Roosevelt, he didn’t know Ingrid’s power would be revealed, that Ambassador Blum would join the hunt.

  Good God, where were they supposed to go? What were they supposed to do? Who could they trust?

  “Wait, wait.” Fenris shifted around. The airship tilted slightly and he adjusted the steering without looking forward. “Blum? Did you say Blum?” He looked at Cy, one eyebrow raised.

  “Don’t tell me you had dealings with Ambassador Blum as well!” said Ingrid.