“Peter,” I call again.
He doesn’t have to breathe, I’m thinking. He doesn’t have to breathe and I do. Cold water is soaking into my boots and I’m going to drown in this black hell.
“Peter!”
I hear a strange whining noise. It’s Peter’s body, creaking. Something cracks inside him and I hear the rip of clothing. A crack of space opens up. The avtomat has made it through the crevice. Water droplets flash in my headlamp as they fall through the space where he was. Now, I see the way forward is impossibly narrow, sheer walls flowing with clear water seeping from overhead.
A whimper forms in the back of my throat.
“June,” says a voice in the darkness. I see the flicker of Peter’s headlamp. His lips and cheek appear in the gap, scratched and dirty. “I am here.”
He’s broken his ribs to make it through.
“I can’t make it,” I say, swallowing, feeling dust on the back of my throat. Racing with adrenaline, my body is tense against the rock. Without realizing, I have started to wriggle away from the gap.
“June, you can,” he says. “I know you can.”
“No,” I gasp. “I’m not avtomat, Peter. I have to breathe.”
“You are strong. You can make it.”
Any strength I had is gone. All that’s left is panic and despair.
“I’m not strong, Peter. I left you. In Batuo’s sanctuary, I tried to leave you—”
“I know,” he says. “You came back. And you won’t stop now.”
I pause, blinking, my cheeks wet.
“How can you know that?” I ask.
His fingertips push in through the gap.
“Because you are much too curious ever to turn back, June,” he says.
I snake my hand forward, curling two of my fingers around his. They feel strong.
A sobbing laugh fights its way out of me. The relic is hard against my chest, imprinting its fractal pattern into my cold, numb skin. Even now it feels warm, even in this frozen pit.
“Fuck, Peter. Fuck this. Oh my god—”
Elbow bent, I push my face into the crevice. Water cascades over my cheeks, colder than my body can register—so cold it feels like a sheet of flame. Closing my eyes, I keep pushing, letting the stream slip over my nose and mouth. In the pounding blackness, I imagine the mountain has swallowed me. Rock scrapes my face, my chest and hips, and I exhale every last molecule of oxygen in my lungs. Keeping my body small, I shove forward with all my strength, pushing until I feel the water flowing over the nape of my neck.
Faintly, I hear Peter speaking, almost a chant.
“Come on, June,” urges Peter. “You can do this.”
Panic beats behind my eyes, lungs throbbing for oxygen, and I shove my arm farther through the breach. Peter’s hand clamps on to my forearm. I try to scream. Nothing comes out as he pulls my arm, nearly popping it out of its socket, hauling my body through the blunt crevice, ripping my clothes, branding me with a full-body bruise.
Pain claws through my body, my lungs, and my mind goes blank.
Then I tumble out into blackness, crying, wheezing for breath. Dropping without looking, I curl into fetal position. I lie for a long time on the rock. After a little while, I notice there is a warm hand on my shoulder. I put my hand over his and hold it.
Finally, I open my eyes and look up.
A black sky full of bright blue stars shines down on me. At my feet, a shimmering silver river undulates away under the night sky. Blinking in the dim light, I can make out the silhouettes of people—dozens and dozens of them, all around us. It is an army, the soldiers stock-still and inanimate, wielding spears and swords and bows.
“We are here, June,” says Peter. “Huangdi’s tomb.”
“How—how did you know I could make it through?” I ask, my throat raw.
“You could not go back,” Peter says. “Leizu has followed us in.”
48
CHINA, 3000 BC
My body is sprawled in the frozen mud of Stalingrad, but my mind is transported to an impression of the past. Memories rush over me like a surge of river water, pulling me under. Submerged, visions of my other life appear. Bits and snatches, growing into a tumbling flood of images and sounds that cascade through my mind.
I remember.
In this age I am called Lu Yan. I am holding simple leather reins in gauntleted hands, settled on the wide back of a gray stallion. The horse is strange, with a primitive blue-black stripe running along its spine and parallel lines raking over its shoulders. Not a horse, I think. This memory is of a tarpan—an extinct megafauna brought here by barbarian raiders from the steppe.
Clutching its back with my thighs, I keep the barely domesticated beast under my control. Few men can ride this steed—the father of wild horses.
We avtomat ride them with ease.
Beside me, Leizu urges her own, smaller mare into a trot to match stride with mine. Her fingers are curled into its blue-black mane. She wears a white silk dress that curls and flaps in the wind, trailing behind as she effortlessly controls the wild animal. Her features are angular and sharp, made of ceramic planes—clearly avtomat, yet she is more refined than the leather and whalebone of Favorini’s workshop.
Together, we ride wild beasts over a sea of swaying grass.
“General,” says Leizu, bringing her horse alongside mine. Too near.
I nod to acknowledge the empress, glancing back to the mountains by instinct. Huangdi and my army swarm the broken rock, far from here. Ensconced in cloudy peaks of stone, my master rules men and avtomat for as far as the eye can see. Leizu smiles at my hesitation, her lips bright against an ivory face.
Pushing a stray lock of hair over her ear, she chides me.
“My husband is busy attending to our great retreat,” she says. “From this distance, anyone will assume we are having an innocent conference.”
“He would not approve of us—”
“Talking? Very well. If you wish, I can talk. And you can listen.”
Leaning in her saddle, she puts a hand over my gauntlet, tracing fingers over the ornate metal. I allow her to turn my hand over and touch the rough leather of my palm. Her touch is like the fall of snow, fingers hard as stone.
“You are strong, Lu Yan,” she says to me. “My equal, perhaps. But I fear for your future. Together, you and I—”
“Should race,” I finish for her, turning in my simple leather saddle and pulling my hand away, “while the day is fine.”
A flash of anger pinches her face, quickly disappearing. She considers for a moment before pointing, long sleeve wavering in the breeze.
“To the cliff’s edge,” she says. “To the dragon’s tooth.”
Already spurring her horse, she sweeps past.