“And where is his vessel?” I ask, using the avtomat word.
Peter looks up. “I hoped the monk would know.”
He returns to working his way through the room. Hopping off the desk, I join in, yanking open drawers and examining their contents, searching for anything that has to do with Huangdi or the relic.
“Batuo called you Man-eater. Was that some kind of a joke?” I ask.
Peter plants his hands flat on the table and lowers his head. For a moment, I think he might be praying. His face is clipped by shadow, but in his shoulders I can see a faint quaking. Abruptly, I feel sorry for bringing it up.
How does it feel to lose a friend you’ve had for centuries? Or a brother?
“Look,” I say. “They aren’t gone forever.”
“Perhaps not,” says Peter, facing away from me and speaking in a low, quick voice. “But Leizu is coming and we are not prepared. She has been hunting this anima for five thousand years. Batuo was our last best hope to reunite Huangdi with his soul. Without his knowledge, we are—”
I put a hand high on Peter’s shoulder and pull him around to face me.
“Batuo chose to do what he did,” I say. “He chose us to solve this.”
Peter moves away from my touch, continues his search.
I spot a rolltop desk pushed against the wall. Lifting the lid, I find a stack of letters resting inside. The languages on each page vary, but I can read the names and make out the general meanings. Laying the bundle of papers on the broad desk in the middle of the room, I start making piles for each correspondent.
“And why have you agreed to that?” Peter asks. “To help me?”
I’m scanning a crumbling letter, relishing the antique flourish of a quill pen on rough parchment. But the intensity of his question makes me pause.
“Aside from trying not to get killed…I’m interested.”
Peter shakes his head in disbelief.
“What? That’s a perfectly good reason,” I say. “Most people are too caught up in the present to care about the past. But when I look at something old, when I touch it, I feel like I’m reaching into another world. A place with secrets. So, yes, part of the reason I’m helping you is because I’m curious.”
“Perhaps curiosity would be your Word, if you had one,” he says.
“Yeah, it probably would.”
Peter stalks farther into the alcove, boots thudding over thick rugs.
I move on to the final stack of letters. The first is an e-mail from less than a year ago, printed on crisp paper. Thumbing through, I see the pages farther down the stack were typed on an old typewriter. The ones beneath that are handwritten in ink, and even deeper, scratched with a quill pen on parchment.
The oldest letter is dated 1858.
“And what about you?” I ask. “What’s your Word?”
Deep in the alcove, Peter is a tall figure, moving his hands over book spines.
“You protected me while I slept, June,” he says. “And you brought me back. Though you are of the short-lived race, you have seen under my skin.”
Peter pauses, considering me from across the dim room.
“My purpose is to make justice,” he finally says, voice quiet. “It has been called pravda. It has been called other things.”
“Justice? Is that what your brother was about, too?” I ask.
“We served different masters, with different ideas of justice. Both of us haunted the battlefields of men for centuries, lending our vengeance to one side or another. Unlike my brother, one day I stopped. I learned to separate justice from vengeance, and began to devote my efforts to strategy rather than battle.”
His words remind me of the identification card I found in his wallet. Black credit cards and crisp bills and the credentials of a secret agent.
“Is that why you joined the CIA?” I ask.
“CIA, SIS, GRU, MSS,” says Peter, shrugging as he continues to rummage through a drawer. “When you have been around as long as I have, these things tend to accumulate.”
Scanning the oldest letter, I spot Peter’s name, spelled Pyotr.
On the thin parchment, tiny blocks of words are scrawled in faded Latin. The page is laid out like a technical paper, filled with detailed notes. A beautiful drawing depicts a Chinese emperor, dressed in a flat hat with tassels, sitting on a throne. Both man and throne are diagrammed, each piece briefly described. Both seem to be filled with complicated mechanisms.
A name is scratched beside the figure: Huangdi. And beside a disk embedded in the throne, the words “sun disk” followed by “spiritus vitae”—the breath of life.
Holding up the page, I step back.
This author has clearly studied the emperor and the technology he used. Checking the signature, I see the letters were sent to Batuo from a woman. And judging from the time span across all the letters, she must be an avtomat.
I’m thinking she could be important.
“Peter?” I ask, looking over the top of the letter. “Who is Elena?”
40
LONDON, 1758
The masts of tall ships rise like church steeples from the Pool of London. Perched birds speckle the swaying masts, framed by a hodgepodge of edifices sprouting from London Bridge. In the distance, I can make out Hypatia and Elena, walking side by side onto a pier. I wave my arms over my head, legs buzzing from a long sprint, shouting and startling the passengers and dockworkers who crowd the wharves.
“Elena!” I’m shouting. “Please!”
Her face flashes as she glances back. Hypatia’s arm closes around her shoulder, pulling her closer. A ship is waiting for them at the end of the pier, a sharp cutter, its sails lowered, sailors preparing her for a trip to the Plymouth port for the larger voyage across the Atlantic.
It took me too long to realize.
The carriage arrived at midday, stopping a mile up the road. My ears trained by warfare, I heard the vehicle’s furtive arrival. But by the time I rushed to the road, Elena was gone, along with a small trunk of clothing and books. After ten minutes alone on the abandoned estate, without another living soul, horse or man, I began to run.
They are headed to the harbor, and from there to the colonies, likely Boston. Hypatia warned me as much. Scabbard jogging against my thigh, I accelerate toward the pier. With each footstep comes the growing realization that I have lost my sister through my own stubbornness.
“Stop! Wait!” I shout, pushing through the crowd and leaving a wake of cursing, jostled people behind me. At the end of the pier, Elena and Hypatia have reached a tonguelike wooden ramp stretching over the murky water to the ship. Their faces are lost in the shade of dozens of bobbing sails, veiled in a forest glade made of ship masts instead of trees.
Miraculously, they stop.
Waving, I gather speed toward them. Hypatia lets out a panicked shout, pushing Elena onto the narrow ramp. She draws her saber, the ring of its release audible from here, and leaps on board after her, kicking the ramp away. In a short cloak and riding dress, the woman strides aboard, shouting commands to sailors who now scurry around the deck.
Fighting a sting of rejection, I realize Hypatia’s eyes are cast beyond me. A small flock of birds take wing from the forest of masts. One lifts, then three more, another one, and then three more. Their presence sparks dread in me.
Turning, I see her. Unmistakable. A viper.
Leizu advances toward me, like a storm, gusting through knots of people with a brutal elegance that sends them sprawling and yet not cursing her, only watching her retreat, kneeling, gape mouthed with awe. In a slim black dress with long sleeves and a short collar under a gray cape, she strides with one arm extended behind her back, clutching an unsheathed sword. This time there is no hidden parasol, no decorum. Her eyes are lowered, jaw set, a mane of black hair trailing her like a living shadow.
She must have been watching the Pool all along, waiting for her prey to flee.
With a flick of her wrist Leizu unlatches her cape and lets it fl
utter to the muddy pier. Her features are vaguely Asiatic, skin light and unblemished, long fingers wrapped around a red hilt. She sweeps the long sword before her. Xuan Yuan, the divine sword of the Yellow Emperor. The sight of that weapon sends a tremor of recognition through my entire body. I have known it before, somewhere, sometime.
As the cape falls away, it reveals a layer of black armor that glitters like snake scales. Each plate has a crescent shape—made from dozens of anima, overlapping one another to form a flexible surface. Her plum-dark lips peel back, flashing canines as she dashes right past me.
This beast wears the souls of the conquered.
The dreadful realization snaps me out of my trance. Shoving, bellowing at the people near me, I rampage ahead. Carriers and carters scatter, dropping their goods as Leizu lowers her head and launches into a zigzagging sprint.
The cutter is throwing its ropes and pushing away into the congested harbor. Her crew moves frantically, motivated by the shouted commands of Hypatia. The woman stands on the bow of the ship, her cloak shining, blue fabric trimmed in white and gold. Saber up and pointing at the pier, she shouts sharp orders over the snap of the wind.
But she is too late.
Smaller than I, Leizu reaches the end of the pier first. She moves like spilled wine, flowing between people, sliding through the shifting spaces. And as I crash through luggage and frightened passengers, I can only watch with a tight throat as she vaults aboard the ship.
Leizu lands, perched on the wooden railing.
Silhouetted by a wavering stripe of sunlight on the dark river, Hypatia leaps from the bow, slowed in my eyes by the power of the moment, her saber poised over her head in both hands, cloak flowing behind her like angel wings. Cresting the sun, she is a vision of light as she falls toward the crouched figure of Leizu and her dark copper blade.
As the blades ring, a thousand people stagger.
Heads turning, a murmur rises up. I stride through the last of the crowd, briefly losing sight of the ship in the dirty faces of a silenced multitude. For this instant, these mortals are deeply, animalistically aware that they are in the presence of something greater than themselves—something humanlike, but not of man.
I smell smoke.
A rising haze illuminates long fingers of dusky sunlight. Hypatia, curls of blond hair flying, is a blur of white and gold. Falling through shadow and light, she trades ringing blows with the darting form of Leizu. I hear the cackle of rising flame, see the deckhands scattering for buckets, some leaping overboard.
A lantern has smashed, spilling its fuel. The wick has lit a heap of furrowed sails piled on the deck. Low curls of flame already writhe across the loosely gathered canvas, sheets of smoke rising from it.
Standing at the edge of the pier, I press my saber against my hip, kneel, and dig in my boots. I break into a sprint toward the drifting ship, launching myself off the dock with the force of a cannonball. Soaring over the foul water of the Thames, I crash through the deck railing with both legs and roll, scabbard slapping the hard wood of the deck.
I can’t see Elena.
The fire is alive, growling, thick smoke already pluming. The canvas sails were dry as tinder, cultivating a blaze that will make a quick meal of this wooden ship. Crawling to my feet, the world fades into a hellscape of light and dark. High above, the mast has erupted with a bright mane of climbing flame. Specks of ash drift like snowfall through crimson rays of sunlight. Bodies are sprawled across the deck, efficient sprays of arterial blood glistening in crisscrosses over the wood.
And strange blue flashes of light are strobing through roiling smoke.
“No!” I shout, charging.
Leizu stands in the bow, both hands over her chest. Her armored cuirass has been pulled down, the throat of her dress torn wide open, her breasts exposed. Azure lightning streaks from a relic trapped under her fingers, pressed between her collarbones, the flaring light stinging the air, dancing in veinlike traces away from her body.
The monster is feeding.
Elena is crouched below the bow, on the main deck, surrounded by a curtain of flames. She holds a stiletto in each hand. The body of Hypatia is at her feet. The woman’s head is tilted back, neck exposed and lips twisted into an expression of agony. Her sword lies a few yards away, half engulfed in flames.
Hypatia’s throat and chest have been savagely ripped open, gear work and ribs exposed—her anima taken.
I leap across blazing timber, eyes on my sister.
Something dark flickers in the flame and Leizu’s blade slashes through smoke. Elena pirouettes away from the attack, her small blades folded against her forearms. A child-size demon, fearless, she leaps back at the swordswoman. Leizu retreats, her body twirling, skipping off the heaped corpses of deckhands and avoiding the twin fangs of Elena’s weapons.
Like the shatter of glass, I hear it—Leizu is laughing.
Then a stiletto connects. With her impeccable logic, Elena has managed to find a pattern in Leizu’s shifting defense. The laughter ceases.
I am between them.
Saber drawn, my shashka absorbs a killing blow and is nearly wrenched from my grip. And then she is upon me, Leizu’s face, inches from mine. Bright embers die against the black scales of her unholy armor. One hand closing around my throat, she presses a dagger against my belly.
“You arrived,” she says, smiling. “Finally.”
Before I can react, she stands on her tiptoes and presses soft lips against mine, tugging at my lower lip with her teeth. I twist away as her dagger pierces my rib cage, the tip spearing urgently toward my relic’s cradle. Off target, I throw myself back before she can stab me again.
“Strong!” She laughs.
Something crashes and the ship lurches, leaning dangerously, water gurgling up to flood the splintered decking that still rests above the waves.
“Hypatia!” shouts Elena.
A few yards away, Hypatia’s body is sliding toward lapping black waves. Elena dives toward her, grabbing hold of lifeless arms. The girl digs in her heels, face lost in her hair, but Hypatia is too heavy, her limp body skidding toward the water.
“Leave us be!” I shout to Leizu.
She swings, the attack glancing from my saber, staggering me, forcing me to retreat downhill, closer to the water. Elena is desperately holding on to Hypatia’s body. Head down, she seems blind to the world. Human corpses are all around us, caught on railings and wrapped in fallen rigging, some of them alight, skin boiling and mouths vomiting smoke.
A terrific crack rends the air and a collective gasp rises from the spectators on the pier. The decking shifts again as something groans and splinters.
“Elena!” I shout. “Go! Please!”
Parrying Leizu’s attacks, I desperately move toward the girl. Kneeling at the water’s edge, she finally loses grip of Hypatia. The fallen avtomat slides, her body limp, rolling into the dark water and disappearing. Like a sleepwalker, Elena stands and gazes across the flame-licked waves toward the pier. In the distance, human spectators are packed together, a low skyline of silhouettes against bloody dusk, faces illuminated in snatches of flame as they watch us battle.
Grinding, disintegrating, I hear the center mast coming down.
I lock a hand on Elena’s shoulder and shove her away. Above, the mast streaks across the sky like a flaming sword. Elena plunges overboard as I sheathe my weapon and turn. A dark figure vaults toward me through a rain of falling coals. But before Leizu reaches me, the wooden pillar detonates against the deck like dragon’s breath.
Flame erupts over her shoulders, devouring her body as she reaches for me, screaming, falling. My eyes close against a shock wave of heat. Sightless, I plunge backward into the cold silence of the river.
Elena is lost in the water. Leizu is burning.
When I kick to the surface, what’s left of the mast is rolling across the leaning ship, one end splashing into the water, steaming and spitting. The remains of the cutter are sinking fast, canted to the sid
e, great bubbles of air percolating the foul water. A curtain of steam has risen to join the smoke, obscuring the sky.
Tossed and smashed on chalky waves, I hug a piece of floating wood and kick for a shore I cannot see. My body fills with water, but I’m still buoyant as I push through detritus and half-burned corpses. In this purgatory of gray mist and hellish cold, time passes slowly, drifting with the river current.
Eventually, I hear voices.
On the muddy shoreline, the city’s poorest are looting the remains of the ship, dragging corpses, yanking off boots and rings.
I stagger to shore.
Craning my neck, I scan the water for Leizu. She is nowhere to be found, nor her damnable birds. The entire harbor has turned to smoke and bits of flame. Nearby, human vultures go about their work quietly and quickly, but I hear faint, raucous laughter echoing from farther up the street.
The cobblestones are gleaming with a ragged trail of water.
A group of half a dozen men are lumbering up a nearby alleyway like a beast with six heads. In their grasp, they carry a small, struggling body, held aloft. The gaggle of drunken men cast demonic shadows on the walls as they stagger together; like a rat king with fused tails, they are dragging my precious, beautiful Elena.
I have haunted the streets near the docks before. I have dragged debtors from these splintery wooden buildings with thin walls that conceal women and girls, muffling their cries and the moans of their clientele. I watch silently as the men enter a long wooden building with a red lantern hanging outside.
Hand on the hilt of my saber, I follow.
41
OVER THE ATLANTIC OCEAN, PRESENT
Stretching my legs, I sigh and wriggle deeper into the luxurious white leather seat of a private jet. The G650’s engines hum quietly outside as we slice through thin clouds, cabin thrumming with smooth thrust. The remains of a meal I just devoured rest on the seat next to me, waiting for the attendant to return.
He’s in the galley, mixing a champagne cocktail.
Across from me, Peter sits with his long legs drawn in, stiff as ever. Sunlight cuts through the window and illuminates the lower half of his face.