Huangdi leans forward, torso grinding. Peter could easily pass as a human being, his muscled shoulders wrapped in a dusty tactical jacket and his head lowered as if he is praying.
The emperor shakes his head in wonder.
“You great knowledge. First Men.”
“No, Huangdi,” says Peter. “There are no First Men. We are dying.”
Twisting his head a notch, the emperor turns to me. My hand tightens on Peter’s shoulder, uncertain. Under fierce eyebrows, Huangdi’s mouth sets downward, lower teeth bared at me in a scowl.
“Kurt vit. Hooman.”
“She is called June,” says Peter. “She is an artificer. A great mechanician. It was she who revived you—”
“Blasphemie,” says Huangdi, reedy voice trembling with rage. “Sanctum.”
“Huangdi,” says Peter, palms up, “our race is nearly extinct. Will you share your knowledge and revive the lost?”
The old robot’s face does not change, its gaze venomous over a mask of cracked porcelain. Sitting still, he almost seems to be a statue again, carved into rock along with the dragons of his elaborate throne. There is so little connecting this thing to us—barely an attempt made to appear human. It leaves me wondering about the humanity of whoever made him.
“How many live?” asks the emperor finally.
“Dozens, maybe fewer. Survivors prey on one another. With your knowledge, anima can be restored. A new age can begin.”
The old robot nods and Peter visibly relaxes.
“One day,” says Huangdi. “Not today.”
The emperor leans forward, finger rising.
“Kill her,” he says, voice building, hooked finger pointing at me.
Backpedaling away from the throne, I watch Peter’s sloped shoulders as he rises. Beyond him, the old man glares down at us like a scarecrow. Hesitating, Peter turns to face me, a brawny silhouette tinged in blue starlight.
With a creaking grind of porcelain plates, the emperor stands. The remains of his black and yellow robe cling to his ceramic body as he growls: “Obey, Lu Yan.”
Peter takes a step, a hand resting on the hilt of his dagger.
“Peter?” I ask, backing away. “You’re not serious.”
“June,” he says. “Be calm.”
He takes another careful step forward, squeezing his eyes closed as he draws the dagger scraping from its sheath.
“This isn’t you, Peter,” I urge, my back pressing against the clay knuckles of a silent warrior.
Huangdi pitches his voice in a high, angry whine: “Obey.”
I lean into the wall of hard clay. Peter’s reassuring bulk is terrifying now, looming and unstoppable as his broad chest blots out everything.
He closes a hand over my mouth.
“Leizu is here,” he says. “Watching.”
Huangdi shouts again, urgent: “Now!”
The pressure of his bulk against my chest increases, squeezing my breath out, the sculpted ridges of quilted armor grinding against my spine.
“Take the sun disk,” says Peter. “I will find you. I promise.”
Before I can respond, he pushes me away into the dark ranks of warriors. He turns to face the throne, shoulders pulled back defiantly.
“Huangdi,” he calls to the throne, voice shaking, “I have lived a long time. Fought for a long time. Served tsars and emperors and…and little girls. I did not wake you out of loyalty. I woke you because our people must live. And if you will not give me your knowledge, then I will take it from you.”
“Ego sum verbum. I am your Word.”
“I have no Word,” Peter says.
“Blasphem—” begins Huangdi.
A sharp crack explodes from the far wall, rumbling through the cavern. Across the expanse of clay warriors and streams of mercury, a slab of stone shatters into a chalky avalanche. Shards of rock shower across the room, plinking off the backs of clay warriors. Leizu has decided to come inside, and it sounds like she has friends.
“Your wife is here, Emperor,” I call to the throne.
“And this time,” adds Peter, “I will not protect you.”
52
CHINA, 3000 BC
The cold of Stalingrad is pushed from my mind as another sliver of memory falls. I see Elena’s face, painted with bright panic. She has another name here, too—but I recognize my sister’s porcelain cheek, the way it looked in Favorini’s workshop. She and I are running through a primeval forest, hand in hand, wet branches striping our elaborate silk costumes as we fling ourselves between thick tree trunks.
I remember.
Slipping, I fall over a tree root and roll over a rocky spillway. Scraping my hands through dirt and chalky stone, I scramble back onto all fours. My sister dances more nimbly down the hillside of broken rock, her dress billowing behind. As she throws herself from boulder to boulder, her wrists spill jewelry, hoops of metal and gemstones and ribbons of weightless silk.
Beyond the bright stain of her robes against the cliff face, I glimpse the tunnel to Huangdi’s tomb—a narrow, crooked gouge in a sheer rock face at the base of the dragon’s tooth plateau. My sister is a master strategist, and a master of escape routes. She led us through a miles-long labyrinth of abandoned excavation tunnels, many partially collapsed, before we spilled out of that anonymous hole.
“Memorize this path,” she whispered to me in the tangled passages, calling out each twist and turn in a small voice. “We may need to come back.”
As I watch, Leizu emerges from the opening. I’m sure she would have lost her way in the maze, but she must have followed our sounds.
Elena lands beside me, spattering mud onto my face. She latches a hand on my shoulder and tugs me to my feet.
“To the river,” she says.
Seconds later, we are threading between trees to the bottom of the ravine. The mother river coils herself over the land like a silk thread dropped from the heavens. The yellowish water moves sluggishly, choked with silt, carrying the momentum of a dissolved mountain. The riverbank is scabbed with black, muddy rock that sprouts an occasional stunted tree.
The wide river grinds past us relentlessly, deceptively slow and flat.
“We cannot cross,” I call to my sister.
Elena doesn’t respond, only points farther down the river. I look, hanging by one hand from the wet bark of a slanted tree. Ahead, a series of flat rocks partially span a waterfall, anchored in the center by a huge anvil-shaped rock. The current surges against the stones where they sit in the riverbed, oblivious, embedded like molars. Beyond them, a haze of mist rises like dragon’s breath.
The great waterfall is roaring.
A barbed arrow claws a bright weal from the bark of the tree trunk beside my hand. I spring forward, running along the tree line toward the stones. My sister runs ahead of me, her hair shaking loose from a bun. Higher up the ravine, I glimpse my brother filtering toward us through trees. He carries a short bow and a bouncing quiver.
More arrows glance over rock and puddles as we sprint. I take Elena’s hand in mine and we hold on to each other for balance, pushing out onto the spine of black stone. Leaping between jagged angles of rock, we pick our way farther out into the river, searching for a way across. But beyond the massive anvil rock, we find nothing.