Heart and Soul (8 page)

Through Nigel’s head, almost as if it were a story he had heard long ago, went the memory of his flight some months ago in which the only amusement to while away the time when he’d not been on duty on deck, had been to learn saber fighting from a colleague and underling of his, a magician from Morocco who plied his rounded scimitar with vicious ability.

Now Nigel was glad of that training as he parried and counterattacked and parried again. Not that he could fight like the Chinese pirate. But he fought like a man desperate not to dishonor himself, not to lose the most important objects in the world. He could see in the pirate’s expression the bewildered look of the expert meeting a confused but determined opponent, who might do anything at all.
There is nothing as scary as the armed amateur,
he remembered his sword master in England saying.

He was conscious of a couple of slashes, one to his shoulder and one to the front of his body. He assumed that they had not touched his skin, as he felt no pain. He couldn’t understand why the ground was growing slick under his feet, unless he was sweating so much that the sweat pouring out of him was making his footing unsteady. But it could not be that, he thought, as he stepped backwards to avoid a series of savage slashes from his opponent.

If he was sweating that much, surely his eyes would sting, and they did not. They felt only slightly unfocused, as though someone were projecting a vision, but not very well, so the edges faded and distance didn’t seem to matter.

His opponent swept the saber from side to side, and only Nigel’s quick reflexes prevented his being disemboweled. He heard something fall to the floor and frowned. His innards could not be hard. They could not make that sound as they hit the floor. And then he remembered the jewels and put a hand down. It met with soaked fabric. And he looked up again, realizing he’d lowered the saber and expecting to meet with a lethal strike from his enemy. But the man had stooped to pick something up and was running madly toward the violated glass front of the ship.

The jewels. He must have picked up a jewel. Had he picked up both jewels? Nigel could only remember the sound of one hard object hitting the floor. Nigel looked down and realized he was bleeding. He must have bled a lot, because the front of his clothes were soaked, as well as his legs. And he must be dying, because as he looked up, he saw an angel.

She was the most unlikely angel he’d ever beheld, insofar as she was definitely Chinese, with long blue-black hair and the heavy-lidded eyes of the kind. But her lips, her nose, the whole of her oval face were so beautiful that he couldn’t think of her as anything but angelic. And her clothes, wild and colorful, might be Chinese in cut and design—a short jacket and loose pants—but suited her so exactly that they could only be celestial raiment.

Her gaze, turned to Nigel, was alarmed—panicked, perhaps—and she spoke in perfect, accentless English. “Did he get both jewels? Answer me!”

Nigel tried, but his tongue would not obey him. He felt the saber fall from his hands. He felt his knees hit the deck. He tried to mumble the prayer his nurse had taught him, when he had been a very young boy carefully watched in a nursery in the Oldhall estate in the England he would never again see.

“Now I lay me…” he said. His last thought was to cast renewed magical force at the flying spells, willing them to fly the carpetship where it needed to go, to not let it fall. It took what remained of his facing strength, but it must be done. Just because he was going to die didn’t mean he was willing to let those he was responsible for perish.

“…down to sleep.” And darkness descended.

IN FLIGHT

Jade had followed Zhang down to the flight deck.
Followed Zhang, because he had gone ahead of her, through the fighting raging on all levels. Thinking that wherever Zhang was, the jewels were sure to be, Jade hurried down a spiral staircase built of ornate wrought-iron, past a vast salon empty except for a gleaming white piano, onto a deck of small rooms and narrow corridors.

She avoided crew members that attacked her, but tried not to kill them. Her mother had been one of their people and Jade wondered, sometimes, if she might not meet one of her relatives unaware in these circumstances. It seemed unfilial to kill her mother’s relatives.

Following the greatest noise, running and squeezing past presses of fighting men, she found the carpetship flight deck, where the glass had been melted away by some of the other dragons from the Dragon Boats.

She found Zhang screaming at a blond, slim man, demanding the Jewels of Power. The man refused and, possessing himself of a saber, began to fight Zhang.

Jade, holding her own saber, stared, not knowing on which side to intervene or how. If the jewels were as powerful as Zhang had said, and not essential to keep magic and the world together, then Jade should join in on his side. On the other hand, if Zhang was lying, and if what Third Lady had said was true—that he’d sold out to the English—then she should join in on the Englishman’s side.

That the Englishman fought like a demon, holding his own against Zhang, before whom trained fighters crumpled, Jade could see. Oh, it was obvious that Zhang was superior. Yet though he wounded the Englishman, the Englishman kept on coming, a berserker, possessed of a lethal will to fight.

From a purely aesthetic perspective, she found herself admiring the dancerlike grace of the Englishman’s movements, the quickness of his hand, the ability with which he struck a guard or feinted with what had to be—to him—a wholly alien weapon.

Trained to fight with saber and sword from early childhood—at the whim of an all-powerful father who delighted in her—Jade could admire ability when she saw it. Both of the men fighting, back and forth across the flight deck, amid other men struggling together, were clearly more able than the others. Even if one was a master and the other just possessed of single-minded determination.

So absorbed was Jade in their contest that, when one of the Englishmen attacked her, she whirled and dislodged the blade from his hand—further administering him a blow with the flat of her saber to the top of the head, knocking him out—almost by feel, without ever taking her eyes from the fight before her.

Twice, the Englishman wounded Zhang, at wrist and shoulder. Twice, Zhang struck the Englishman. It was clear that both of them were tiring and yet that the contest could go on a long time without either getting the advantage over the other.

And then, from a slash across the Englishman’s chest and middle, which Jade would guess was no more than skin-deep, something fell. It rolled, shimmering red, across the blood-smeared floor.

Zhang hesitated. It was the tiniest of missteps, the smallest of hesitations. Seeing it, the Englishman rushed forward one step. Zhang came out of his momentary trance and swept the saber up and in an arc. It was clear he meant to behead the blond man. But the man stepped back and turned slightly. The saber cut deep into his shoulder.

The Englishman looked surprised, but not mortally wounded. Zhang made a sound of annoyance and dove for the jewel on the floor. Jade dove at the same time, thinking that whatever the jewel was, it would be safer with her. Zhang looked at her. For a moment their gazes met. Zhang smiled a feral smile.

And then…and then he ran to the edge of the ship, where the Dragon Boats were moored.

Jade didn’t know what she expected. That he would run across one of the mooring ropes and into the Dragon Boat? That he would try to make his way across and take command?

But instead, he stood at the opening for a moment, poised. He looked over his shoulder at her, his eyes full of calculation. And then…and then he jumped, changing into his blue dragon form and flying away.

Jade ran after him by instinct. “Stop him,” she screamed at no one in particular. “Stop him now!”

She was met with incredulous stares. Those who understood that she wanted Minister Zhang stopped were doubtless too smart to show it. Everyone knew Zhang was fearsome in both forms and, though they might not have the slightest idea what he’d done or why Jade wanted him stopped, they would surely not want to face him in combat.

“Stop him,” she said, again, but despairingly, and then turned back to the Englishman, who was still standing where he’d been, looking blank, like a man who is about to lose consciousness. She felt him do something, magically, but she wasn’t sure what it could be, as she surged over to him, demanding, “Did he get both jewels? Did he? Answer me.” She’d only seen Zhang pick up one of the jewels, but she thought he might have taken the other one before she arrived. At least, she could not imagine why else he had left like that, in one swoop, declaring his lack of loyalty to his sovereign and to the people of the Dragon Boats, where he’d been born and raised.

But the man, looking at her, dropped his saber and took his hand to his heavily bleeding shoulder. “Now I lay me,” he said, “down to sleep…”

The words were familiar to Jade, the words of a prayer her mother had taught her in distant childhood. Jade hesitated, then shook her head. “No, the jewels,” she said. But the man fell to his knees and then onto his face. She could see him breathing, and she could see the sea of red pouring from his shoulder. She bent down to search him. He wouldn’t be alive long and, besides, the Dragon Boat people lived by stealing things from the carpetships. If he still had the other jewel, it would do him no good, and it could save her people.

But as she turned him over, she felt his magic. He’d left it on, intent and focused, as people might leave a magelight burning long after they’d fallen asleep. His magic was powerful, strong, though utterly alien to her. It felt somewhat like her mother’s magic. But her mother had been a lady of small magic, whose ability to do any useful work had been further impaired by what she ironically called a proper education. As Jade understood it, the exclusive academy her mother had attended made sure that the young ladies in their care learned how to keep house with magic, and how to help their children should they experience health difficulties. And little more. After all, as Miss Austen had ironically pointed out in the person of her odious character Mr. Collins in
Pride and Prejudice,
a young lady who was as proficient in magic as those gentlemen who might court her would undoubtedly strike everyone as unnatural and unfeminine.

This man’s magic was neither unnatural nor feminine. It seemed to be as much a part of him as Jade’s own dragon magic was a part of her, and yet he seemed powerful enough to keep it going even after he lost consciousness. And what the magic did—even as it ate away at his remaining strength—was keep the carpetship flying toward their destination in Africa. She could feel its currents, its determined force.

Jade took only a few seconds to realize that without this magic the carpetship would have already fallen, careening down and killing everyone aboard, her people included, since this was the carpetship flight magician. There had been raids when this had happened and Dragon Boat people were lost. And if Zhang knew he’d attacked the carpetship magician, he didn’t care what happened to the ship.

But he knew, of that she was sure. If he’d not gotten both jewels—and she had a sense he hadn’t—only the fear of the crash to come had kept him from doing so. He had to know he’d mortally wounded the flight magician. But he could not know this man was possessed of a supernatural sense of duty.

Retreat,
she screamed mentally, putting the force of Wen’s ring—the force of Wen’s power—behind her scream.
Retreat now. Flight magician wounded. The ship might crash any moment. Retreat now.