Heart and Soul (51 page)

THE LAST GAMBIT

They would never have approached Yangcheng from
the air if they’d known what awaited them. Unfortunately, as they saw the expanse of the lake shine from a distance—and, at the same time, a slew of rugs, each of them carrying several English soldiers, rise from the ground to surround them—Nigel regretted the fact he did not have the gift of foretelling.

“Land,” one of the soldiers on a nearby rug said, “or we shall use our powersticks, which have been charged against weres.”

Jade landed. The English soldiers surrounded them.

“Give us the ruby. Slowly, please,” one of them, an officer—though Nigel was too tired and confused to know which—said. “Else we shall have to fire.”

And Jade, speaking through a dragon mouth, her words bitten off and deformed by teeth and tongue not designed to pronounce words, said, “You cannot give them the ruby. You cannot let it fall into their hands.”

“I must, Jade. Else they will kill us. And then they will still take the ruby.” His searching eyes had discerned the crouching shape of another Chinese dragon among them. Zhang. So this was his gambit. And it was just possible that he’d won. If Jade and Nigel were killed, what would stop him from killing Wen—if the emperor was even back from the underworld—and taking over the country? He had delivered to the English that which he’d promised—both of the rubies that held all the power of the universe. He’d now get to rule China for the infinitesimal period it would last, before the rubies were delivered to the queen and the queen tore the universe apart.

And then, like a sound out of a dream, Nigel heard, from above him, the sound of sails flapping in the wind. Everyone looked up simultaneously.

High above but descending fast was an army of barges, and junks, all converging on them.

A BROTHER’S DUTY

“I told you that was Zhang’s last gambit,” Third Lady
said. “I could sense it, even though foretelling is not one of my stronger powers.” She was dressed in pants and jacket and stood beside him, holding a saber.

Wen had told her that she could not join the battle, but she was allowed to stand within the Imperial barge and defend it, should that become needed. “But I don’t think it will,” he said. He was attired in his best jacket and pants, and the few days that had passed since his return had given an even greater glow to his eyes, a healthier color to his skin. In fact, it had amused Third Lady—busy researching the location and protocol for the council of dragons—to watch First Lady and Second Lady trying to get his attention and his favors. They’d seemed quite content to ignore him before.

Wen had told her that, once this was resolved—once he was safely on the throne of China—he would gladly divorce his first two wives and make her his first lady. He would even admit publicly that his first two unions had never been consummated, and he was quite willing to find the two ladies, against whom he bore no malice, decent and honorable husbands.

Third Lady, who also bore them no malice, thought that, doubtless, her father would think that this was a great advance for the Fox Clan. But she did not care. She had what she wanted—Wen’s love, and the hope of a child by him sometime in the future.

Now she watched as Wen expertly, using the hand signals propagated from boat to boat, commanded the barges to form a circle, roughly encompassing the British rugs.

“They’re trying to rise,” Third Lady said.

Wen gestured. The junks, much more numerous than the rugs—much more numerous than the barges, too—came to hover above the barges, effectively forming a ceiling above which the rugs could not lift, even as the barges settled in a ring around the rugs.

“Surrender,” the British captain shouted, with more courage than sanity, “or I will order my men to shoot, and we have were-loaded powersticks.”

“I understand that,” Wen shouted back. He spoke Chinese, as had the British commander. “However, those barges will stop your charges from reaching my men. And your charges are finite, while I have a lot of men. Fire for all you’re worth, but afterward, I’ll let my dragons attack. Have any of you heard of mercy from a flying junk pirate? Particularly when you’ve kidnapped the sister of the leader?”

There was a long period of hesitation. One or two powersticks fired, their charges losing themselves harmlessly between the boats. But in the end, there was the sound of powersticks being laid down.

From the middle of the English rugs, Zhang rose. “I will not be denied so easily,” he said. “I have not waited for so long for nothing. You must fight me.”

But Jade must have changed, because her human voice came from down where Third Lady could not even see her. “Rivers of China, dragons of the rivers, dragon children of the first dragon, come and meet in council now, I ask you.”

Suddenly, without word or warning, dragons rose. Only these were bigger dragons than Third Lady had ever seen. Much bigger than Wen. Some of them were bigger than the barges. Red and yellow, green and gold and silver, the dragons gathered around the circle of the barges.

“Oh Emperor Wen,” the dragons said in one voice, which made the Earth shake, “we have agreed. The Mandate of Heaven decrees it. You shall sit on the Dragon Throne.”

There was a moment of silence, then from below came a voice that spoke Chinese but that, nonetheless, managed to sound incredibly British as it said, “I must have the other ruby now, thank you. No, I don’t think you want to hold on to it. You see, I am about to remove the cloak from its power. Remember Charlemagne had his man fetch it from the depths of Africa. He didn’t go himself. Those whose heart is tainted by ambition will die if they hold the ruby. The only reason the rubies are in danger at all is that intelligent, evil men can use pure but misguided men to obtain the jewels for them. They can drain the rubies, but they cannot touch them. So why would you wish to touch it?”

THE POWER OF THE RUBIES

Jade had changed and invoked the dragons, and the
dragons had confirmed Wen. While Jade dressed, in the midst of an assembled circle of Britishers and Chinese, putting on her clothes almost casually, Nigel realized her nudity disturbed him more than it bothered her. Or, at least, it disturbed him that she should be naked where other eyes could see her. He had handed her the clothes he’d carried as soon as he could, but she dressed unhurriedly. And Nigel realized perhaps she was keeping the British minds occupied while she waited for the palace to rise.

After a while, he said, “It isn’t rising. Why not? They made your brother the emperor.”

“I think,” Jade said, quietly—so quietly no one but those closest to them would hear her—“that you have to use the rubies.”

And then Nigel had demanded that the commander of the British detachment give him the ruby. He was sure he had it, for no one, not even the most casual of Britishers, would allow a native to hold on to such a thing.

He finished with, “I have seen my own brother, Carew Oldhall—” and smiled at the flinch. “I see you know the name—I’ve seen him, as I said, burned to cinders before my very eyes, as he touched the ruby with his overambitious hands. That was his undoing. And I can do the same to you, easily enough. If you have ambition. If your heart is not pure. If you are not merely acting on orders. How pure is your heart? Can you swear to it?”

He’d taken Soul of Fire from his pocket, and held it in his hand, in plain view, and removed the cloaking from it, so that the light shone full on everyone. He knew that light felt like it could penetrate the hearts of men, and make their vilest desires known to themselves. Such a form of self-knowledge, he’d seen, was the worst punishment. He’d intended to remove the cloaking from the ruby before he handed it over, but he could not be sure that among the Englishmen there wasn’t more than one motivated only by a pure sense of duty and honor. On those, the rubies would not work at all, which meant there was a very good chance that he would have lost the rubies. And, quite possibly, his and Jade’s lives.

Now he watched as Zhang moaned and tried to crawl away, and the captain faltered and reached for something from his breast pocket. “Take it, take it,” he said, and flung it at Nigel with a shaking hand.

Nigel removed its cloak as the ruby fell onto his palm.

Holding a ruby in each hand, the brilliance from them burning the entire area with light, like a twin sunset, he called, “Ancestral palace of the Dragon Emperors, rise!”

There was a quake under their feet. People screamed and jumped out of the way as the ground cracked and trembled, and trees moved, and the lake spilled.

Nigel fell, holding on for dear life to the two rubies, thinking that the Earth would presently swallow him.