Gunpowder Alchemy

Gunpowder Alchemy

Jeannie Lin

InterMix Books, New York

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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.

GUNPOWDER ALCHEMY

An InterMix Book / published by arrangement with the author

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BLISHING HISTORY

InterMix eBook edition / November 2014

Copyright © 2014 by Jeannie Lin.

Excerpt from
Clockwork Samurai
copyright © 2015 by Jeannie Lin.

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eBook ISBN: 978-0-698-13533-8

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Qing Dynasty China, 1842
A.D.

The Emperor waited on his golden throne.

The Hall of Supreme Harmony was a place of grand ceremony and state occasion, too ostentatious for an audience of one, yet Chief Engineer Jin found himself alone before the Son of Heaven. In accordance, he had worn his best court attire: a silk robe embroidered with the bordered red banner of his ancestral line.

The Forbidden City was closed at night to all but the royal family and the Emperor's closest attendants: the palace eunuchs, the imperial guard, the harem of concubines and consorts. Despite the ordinance, Jin Zhi-fu had been summoned in this late hour to appear before his sovereign.

Jin lowered himself to his knees and placed both hands before him, pressing his forehead to the tiled floor once, then again. Three times three. Nine times for the proper kowtow. When he was done, he waited with his head lowered, staring at his hands laid flat on the ground before him. His left arm from the elbow down was fashioned from steel bones and copper muscle. Gold-tipped acupuncture needles connected the contraption to his nerve endings, allowing metal to take the place of what was once flesh. A small price to pay in service to the empire.

He was not allowed to rise or speak until addressed directly. The silence went on, and his heartbeat grew louder in the absence of sound, pounding with great force until the cadence of it filled his ears.

The Emperor's voice rang through the assembly hall like a clap of thunder. “Do we not outnumber the foreign ships?”

“Yes. Imperial Majesty.”

“A hundred men for their ten.”

“Yes.”

Jin closed his eyes and breathed slowly. He counted each throb within his chest. Each one had become painfully significant. It was said the heart could continue pulsing for a full minute even once the soul had fled.

“Why was the Western fleet not destroyed?” the Emperor demanded.

The imperial commissioner had guaranteed success. Each of the senior ministers had assured the same, as well as the grand admirals of the imperial navy. Yet here he was, the humble chief engineer, to deliver failure.

“The cannons held Wusong for days.” Jin tried to project as clearly as he could with his head bowed. “But the Western gunships—”

The Emperor cut him off with an impatient noise. He didn't want an explanation, and from that moment, Jin knew he had only been summoned for one reason.

The Ministry of Engineering had heard rumors of powerful weapons from the West. His men had worked to secure the ports. They had outfitted the forts with cannons and an arsenal of gunpowder and explosives. The nautical division had developed superior sails so the war junks could maneuver without equal through wind and water.

Yingguo
, or England as the foreigners called their land, had countered with something his engineers had never seen before. Iron-clad devil ships had roared into the harbor to tear through the war junks as if they were made of paper. The Middle Kingdom had been defeated by a fleet of steam and iron.

The Son of Heaven was perfect and infallible. If the empire had failed, then someone else, someone mortal and imperfect, was to blame.

The chief engineer could protest his innocence. He could blame the greater men who had come before him who had underestimated the English threat, but he, too, had remained silent for the sake of pride. A thousand years of pride. He had allowed the imperial navy to sail against the superior Western fleet to be destroyed and, even worse, humiliated.

“The failure lies with this unworthy servant,” Jin conceded.

A sound of rage bubbled from the Emperor's throat. “Remove this man from the Emperor's sight.”

The Forbidden Guard appeared from the recesses of the hall to take him. Jin's mechanical arm froze as their rough grip displaced the control needles. They dragged him from the hall with his feet scraping helplessly over the tile.

Perhaps his death would be enough. The engineers who served him could be spared. And his family . . . He prayed his family would remain unharmed. His wife had watched him with haunted eyes through their final embrace. Soling, his ten-year-old daughter, had curled her slender fingers tight over his as she'd walked with him to the front gate.

She was growing so tall now. He'd somehow missed that part, with the war with the foreigners taking up all his time. He would only be able to watch over her now in spirit.

Jin Zhi-fu emerged from the hall to the towering shapes of the Forbidden City and the stark night sky above. He was nothing more than dead weight now, a burden, a thing as the sentinels pulled him further into the hidden depths. His body grew slack and his knees refused to hold his weight.

He was afraid to die after all.

The war was already over, though no formal surrender had yet been issued. Jin had known it since Canton fell a year earlier. More strongholds followed: Tinghai, Ningpo, Wusong, Shanghai. A slow death sentence of a thousand cuts, slice after relentless slice. It was ill omen to speak of failure, so no one had said anything. They had all of them remained so very quiet.

Qing Dynasty China, 1850
A.D.
—Eight years later

I felt heat rising up the back of my neck as I walked past the center of the market area. Past all the places where any respectable young woman would be found. Everyone knew what lay at the end of the alleyway. We liked to think that because it was at the edge of our village, that dark little room was hidden. A secret thing. If no one spoke of it, it didn't exist.

By the same rule, everyone knew there was only one reason anyone went out there.

Though there were no eyes on me, I could feel them all the same. Linhua was small enough that there were no secrets. It was small enough that people didn't even pretend not to know.

The back door was buried deep at the end of the lane. As far as I knew, no one ever used the front entrance. I knocked twice and stepped back. After a pause, the door slid open, the corner grating against the dirt floor. The man who stood behind it gave me a wide grin. “Ah, Miss Jin Soling.”

A sickly sweet smell wafted into the alleyway. Though faint, the pungent floral notes were unmistakable. Our village wasn't large enough to have a grain store, yet we had an opium den.

“Shang,” I greeted.

Cui Shang was thin, long in the face. I knew he was ten years older than me and his father was a widower. Once, a generation before, their family had worked a plot of farmland, but now the Cui family had no other trade besides opium.

“Are you here to try a pipe with me, Miss Jin? It will take away all your burdens; remove that worry line always hanging over your brow. You might even be pretty without it.”

I held out my palm to display the two copper coins, half of my earnings from Physician Lo that day.

“I have this week's payment.”

“That's not enough,” he said.

“This is how much it always costs.”

Shang scratched the side of his neck with one bony finger. “Don't you know? The runners have raised their prices. News is there was a fire in the docks in Canton. Several large shipments of opium were destroyed.”

“I haven't heard anything of it.”

He shrugged. “It's the truth.”

I kept my face a mask. He was trying to play me like an old fishwife in the market. “This is all you'll receive.”

Shang tried to stare me down, his lip curling into a scowl. Straightening my shoulders, I stared right back even though my pulse was racing. I was taller than most of the other girls in the village, but at my full height he was still half a head taller. Though constant opium use left him gaunt in appearance, he was still stronger than me.

I had my needle gun in my pocket, a spring-loaded weapon I kept with me when I had to travel on the lonely roads that surrounded the village to tend to patients. If Shang tried anything, all it would take was a single dart in his neck or torso to immobilize him, but I couldn't draw with him so close.

With a shrug, he disappeared into the den while I shifted my weight from one foot to the other. It had been a long day. Old Lo had sent me far out to the edge of the rice fields for the monthly visit to farming huts. Now it was late and my family would be holding our evening meal to wait for me.

Ten minutes passed by and he had not yet reappeared. I loathed to go inside, but I was prepared to do so when he finally emerged.

“I had to give you a smaller amount,” he announced with even less of an attempt at politeness than before. “You can't expect any special treatment, acting so superior all the time.”

Without argument, I held out the cash, which he took after thrusting the packet into my hand. Inside was a pressed cake of black opium. I slipped it into the pocket of my jacket and didn't bother to say farewell before turning to leave.

“
Manchu witch
.”

He spat on the ground behind me. My face burned at the insult, but I didn't stop. I hated knowing that in a week I would be back.

By the time I reached our home, I was still livid. We lived in a small village, and the walk wasn't nearly long or strenuous enough for me to forget.

My family stayed in three small rooms surrounding a patch of dirt where we attempted to grow vegetables. I hesitated to call it a courtyard. The moment I set foot inside the front gate, the scent of cooking rice floated from the kitchen. I also heard a wail coming from one of the sleeping chambers: “
Soling, Soling, Soling . . .”

Each call of my name pierced into me a little bit less. I went to the kitchen even though the cries grew louder.

Our maidservant Nan was at the stove, stirring a pot of congee for our evening meal. My eight-year-old brother Tian had his head bent over a notebook at the table. The flicker of an oil lamp illuminated the pages.

“I am sorry I'm late,” I told them.

“No, no need to be sorry,” Nan soothed. “Everything is still hot. Come sit.”

The old maidservant had been with us in Peking. She'd stayed with Mother and me when we'd relocated to Hunan province. There had been other servants with us then, though they had gradually drifted away. We could no longer support other servants besides Nan. By now, she was family.

Tian closed his notebook and laid it onto his lap as soon as I sat down. The third chair remained empty.

“How was school today?”

“Good,” Tian mumbled.

From the sleeping chamber came another cry. “Soling!”

I pushed on. “What did you study?”

“We practiced calligraphy.”

Tian played along admirably, though he kept his head down as he spoke. Nan ladled rice porridge into two clay bowls and set them before us. I picked up my spoon but set it down when I heard my name again, this time accompanied by a low moan.

“Go to her,” I said quietly.

Nan nodded and I slipped the cake of opium from my pocket into her hands before she left. Tian spooned the watery rice porridge into his mouth even though it hadn't been seasoned yet.

It had been less than a day since we ran out of our supply. Nan had prepared a pipe for Mother last night before she had gone to bed. When there was none in the morning, she refused to eat or even drink. She claimed she was too sick to keep food in her stomach and had gone to bed.

We had gone without opium for almost two days once. I had tearfully begged Mother to stop, and she had even more tearfully agreed. After ten hours, she started crying that her skin was alive, that it was being torn away. I don't remember who broke first, me or her.

And now Mother was getting worse. I tried to deny it, but she was getting worse.

I stood to finish setting the table myself. Nan had prepared a plate of fried bean curd, sliced thin so the portion would stretch further. There was also a tiny dish of salt and pickled vegetables from our cellar.

Only when I was near the stove did I notice the bruise on my brother's cheek, on the side he'd kept painstakingly turned toward the wall. I sat down again. Using my chopsticks, I picked up slices of bean curd to drop into his bowl.

“You need to eat more, Tian. And stop getting into so many fights,” I reprimanded.

He bent his head lower. I knew it wasn't his fault, but I scolded him anyway. So he could at least save face.

My brother wasn't weak. He was just too quiet, too serious. He was different. Our family was different. When we came to Linhua village, the rumors were already circling, most of them true. We were from Peking, exiled, disgraced Manchurian aristocracy among Han villagers. No matter how long we lived here, that was all we would ever be.

“Will you look at my drawings, Soling?” Tian asked once he was finished with his bowl.

“Show them to me.”

I tried to be kind to him now after scolding him earlier. An uneasy peace had descended over the house. No more cries came from the sleeping chamber, but Nan hadn't yet returned.

I stacked the bowls beside the wash bin while Tian retrieved his books. He sat down and opened his notebook, turning the pages carefully by one corner.

A pang of emotion took me by surprise. My brother hadn't even been one year old when we lost our father, yet there was so much of Father in him. In the way he bent his head over the page and the deliberate, thoughtful way he touched the world around him. Tian would pick up stones and turn them over and over, before setting them back down exactly as he'd found them.

Tian had hardly known Father's expressions, yet whenever my brother bent over his sketches or his lessons, there was the same wrinkle across his forehead. The same look in his eyes with a crease in the corner as if his mind were a thousand
li
away.

The drawing showed a crane by the water with wings partially unfolded. I moved my chair to get a closer look. It wasn't a pretty picture, nor one infused with majesty or emotion. My brother's sketches were studies in structure; of shapes and their joinings.

“Very good.”

He was old enough to wear his hair braided into the queue required of all male subjects of the Qing Empire. I tried to touch a hand to the nape of his neck, a gesture that Tian seemed to hate lately. He gave an impatient shrug and I withdrew, trying not to feel hurt.

While Tian continued to work on his sketch at the table, I finished clearing away the rest of the dishes, making sure to leave enough food warming for Nan. She usually ate by herself once we were done. For some reason, it was important for her to maintain that faint boundary between master and servant.

“I'm going to be taking a trip tomorrow,” I told my brother once the kitchen was tidied.

“Where to?”

“Changsha with Merchant Hu. Now time for bed.”

Tian didn't move. “Why Changsha?”

“This is an adult matter.”

That meant that there would be no more discussion. He was still my little brother, and with Mother—with Mother the way she was lately, I was the head of the household.

An eight-year-old boy shouldn't need to worry about the price of rice and eggs. When I was a child in the capital city, clothing had appeared like magic. I was never afraid that the dinner table would be empty.

Tian closed his notebook and rubbed his thumb over the spine in disappointment. He was growing old before his time, watching and listening to all around him. This village was too small for him.

My brother belonged in the academies of Peking, studying mathematics and the sciences. He should be groomed for the engineering exams once he reached manhood. It was in his blood, but it wasn't possible. Not here.

“To bed, Tian.”

My voice cracked. My brother didn't seem to notice, or at least pretended not to. Good boy. He brushed the back of his knuckles over his bruised cheek, tucked his books and writing case close to his side, then headed out toward the room that he shared with Nan. I watched him disappear into the house while I breathed the evening air in deep and let the coolness of it sting against my skin.

Sometimes, through the mist in the autumn or while my eyes were closed at night, or even while they were open and staring at the herbal cabinets in Lo's shop, I could almost see the gilded buildings of Peking; the sprawl of the city with its towering pagodas and sparkling ponds. Once more, I walked through the hallways of the Ministry of Science as I'd done as a child. I could smell the sharp, chemical perfume of the laboratories.

I needed to wake up.
Wake up
. Even though I knew I was no longer sleeping.

Beyond the walls of our humble home were the tiny shops and homes of our farming village. Thatched rooftops, dull wooden hovels. Narrow streets of packed dirt and straw.

The house was quiet now, which meant Mother wouldn't stir for several hours. Maybe when she woke again, I could get her to eat something.

With the oil lamp in hand, I went to the storeroom beside the kitchen. The space was kept desolately clean with the bins and jars mostly empty. Even mice sought better prospects. The basket in the corner held a layer of rice that was no more than a finger deep. The entire province was feeling the aftermath of a poor growing season.

The wooden panel at the back of the storeroom creaked as I pried it open. I wedged my arm through the opening and rummaged around until my fingers wrapped around a solid object.

Over the last years, we had gradually sold and bartered away our family treasures except for the few trinkets kept hidden here. I pulled out a bundle wrapped in green silk.

Brushing away the dust, I untied the cloth. The light from the lamp flickered across the polished steel inside. Even after all this time, it remained untarnished.

A puzzle box, my father had called it. The cube was the size of a large grapefruit and appeared to be made of several panels all welded perfectly together.

I rotated it in my hands, running my fingertips over the surface. On first glance, the sides appeared uniform, but as I turned it, the light reflected off to reveal a geometric pattern of shaded squares and diamonds. Yet the metal was smooth to the touch and seamless to the eye. Only the right combination would open it.

I tightened my grip and the honed edges cut into my palms. When the Emperor had stripped my father of his title, all of his inventions and records were seized and destroyed. His name was removed from the records of the imperial exams.

The imperial guard had come to our house after Father's arrest and ransacked his personal study. The metal puzzle box had always been kept upon his shelf, but on that day, it wasn't there. I found it later, forgotten in a trunk of clothing that had been hastily packed.

All I had left of Father was this trinket. I found the secret panel and slid it forward, activating the mechanism inside. With a whir of gears, the box shifted and opened only to reveal another closed compartment. A puzzle within a puzzle. I had loved this box so much when Father had first shown it to me.

“It's very valuable,” Father had warned, putting it up high so I couldn't snatch it up in my little hands whenever curiosity struck.