I dig the cedalion out of my clutch and raise it to my eye. Faint light intensifies into crisp details. Something is glowing dimly up a set of cramped stairs. Wincing at the loudly creaking boards, I head up to the second floor.
A narrow hallway stretches along the spine of the building. The floors are made of raw timber, slats stained and scarred. Old lamps hang on the blackened walls, the ceiling smudged with soot. This building has to be hundreds of years old. The walls are out of kilter, warped floors rolling like waves. It is vaguely nauseating.
Downstairs, something thumps against the door.
Tromping over the rough boards, I rush headlong down the hallway, navigating by the faint lines of light glowing under the doorways. Holding the cedalion to my eye, I can make out the glowing shape just ahead, beyond a final closed door.
I press against lacquered wood and the heavy door glides open.
Inside, the walls are draped in fabric, dust hanging in the air. The room is cocooned in layers of silk, but otherwise empty—save for an antique table, its mahogany legs carved into dragon mouths closed on ball feet. And resting on the ornate table is a kind of glass coffin, edges wrought in gold.
Holding my breath, I tiptoe closer.
My breath expels in a burst as I see an angelic woman, lying on her back under the dusty glass surface of the coffin. She is beautiful, her eyes closed as if in sleep, wearing a gray riding dress from at least two centuries ago. Her chin is slightly crooked, a trace of stubbornness there, even in repose. Braids of blond hair are carefully arranged over her shoulders and her arms are at her sides, a long silver saber laid over her chest.
“Who are you?” I ask the empty room.
I’m sure this must be an avtomat, reconstructed and maintained as perfectly as this ancient building. Something bad has happened to her. I can see repaired skin at her throat, and there are water stains on her otherwise immaculate clothing. From the beat-up scabbard I can tell the weapon isn’t ornamental—it has been used.
“Her name was Hypatia,” says a voice.
Startled, I turn to see Elena standing in the doorway behind me, her arms crossed. The girl doesn’t look angry anymore, just tired and sad.
“She passed into sleep two hundred years ago,” says Elena. “I dredged the Thames up and down for a decade to find her vessel. Then I put her back together, bit by bit. But I never could find the most important part…I never found her heart.”
I step away from Hypatia, hiding the cedalion in my fist.
“If we find Huangdi, I could learn how to revive her,” I say. “I may be short-lived, but it’s my expertise.”
“Do you think I haven’t poured billions into research and development?” she asks. “I have laboratories on every continent. How could you solve a problem the brightest minds in centuries have been unable to even comprehend?”
“Because I’ve got something they don’t have.”
“And what’s that?”
“I’ve got Peter.”
Elena blinks, then lets out a sharp laugh.
“How could that possibly matter?”
“I’ve seen inside you. I used a bi disk to transfer power from Batuo to Peter, put a Shaolin spear through an avtomat?’s cradle and watched him die, and I found this room with a cedalion.”
I open my palm to show her the artifact.
“Elena, I grew up with an anima hanging around my neck, thinking about it night and day. The artifact you described as a sun disk in your letters to Batuo—the spiritus vitae…I think it’s the key. And I think Huangdi can give it to us.”
“The sun disk, imbued with the breath of life,” says Elena, shaking her head. “It’s supposedly a battery that has been charged with ancient souls. They say it has the ability to rejuvenate an anima, restore memory, smite our enemies—everything except cure cancer. It’s a legend, June.”
Off her skeptical look, I urge: “Elena, it’s worth trying. And if anybody can figure this out, it’s me.”
A faint smile settles on the girl’s lips, eyebrows rising.
“I thought you were just another thing for Peter to protect.”
“He tried that,” I say. “I shot him.”
At this, Elena’s smile widens.
“You’re not the first.”
“Peter means well,” I say. “Overprotective, maybe. But he’s trying.”
Elena walks to the glass coffin.
“I only ever tried to help him,” she says. “To find a way to make him happy. But after I sent Peter away…he was lost for a long time. I was afraid I had broken him.”
“Maybe you did. But I think he’s found a purpose in this.”
“To save us all, of course…oh, Peter,” says Elena, her smile turning sad.
The girl slides her fingers lightly over the glass of Hypatia’s coffin, peering at the still woman inside. The movement is familiar, as if she’s stood in this room alone and done it a thousand times before. I imagine she has.
“Who was she?” I ask.
Elena stares at the sleeping woman through the glass.
“She was my friend. Someone who saw me for what I am, and not for what I look like. Hypatia used to say that I did not need protection from the world, but that the world needed protection from me.”
“What happened?”
“The mother of silkworms, of course.”
Elena steps toward me, her eyes on my purse.
“Leizu will come for that anima,” says Elena. “But mostly, she’ll come for Peter. Her Word is darkness and she needs his light. Since she conquered her husband, I think Peter is the closest thing she’s found to a replacement. You should start running now and never stop.”
“Is that why you won’t tell me where Huangdi is? You’re afraid that Peter can’t defeat her?”
Elena’s eyes go back to Hypatia’s body, and both of them seem like ghosts in the dim sunlight falling through gauzy white silk.
“He can’t,” she says, shoulders slumping nearly imperceptibly. “Only dawn can chase away the dusk.”
Dawn and dusk. Light and dark. White and black. The symbol on my relic comes into focus in my mind—a teardrop with a solid dot inside it.
“Wait, Elena,” I say, starting to pace as I think. “Leizu’s word is—is symbiotic with Huangdi’s? The two of them created some kind of dyad, and they can only be whole together. So without Huangdi, Leizu will keep hunting Peter forever. Eventually she’ll kill him.”
“That’s right.”
“Elena, the symbols you’re talking about are yin and yang, aren’t they?”
Elena nods. She is watching me now, keenly interested.
“I’ll revive Huangdi,” I tell her. “When I do, Leizu will forget about Peter. Yin will find yang. It may be crazy, it may be nearly impossible, but it’s the only logical answer. If you want Peter to live, then you’ve got to help me find Huangdi.”
Elena pauses for a long moment, then sighs.
“I don’t know where he is. Not exactly,” she says. “His vessel is most likely somewhere in the Hubei province of China. His tomb is buried, nestled in the coils of the Yangtze River.”
“How do you know this?” asks a deep voice.
Peter stands in the doorway, the sleeve of his jacket ripped and his feet muddy.
“Favorini,” says Elena. “I contacted our maker after we fled Saint Petersburg. The old man escaped Catherine and returned to Italy. He told me where we were found.”