He left my side and went to Kashmir, but I had lost my concentration, and the hint of the shoreline vanished. I put the crew out of my mind as my eyes swept the horizon. I knew it was there—
Yes, there. Clearer now. Darker. Just off the prow.
The wind turned icy, and it carried a foul smell, like sour musk. My skin was clammy against my jacket, but I did not take my eyes off the shore. We pitched upward on a swell, down on its back, and up again on the next. The rain intensified, small wind-driven drops that stung my face and lashed in bands across the black water, but I did not take my eyes off the shore. The sky darkened to charcoal and the fog swallowed Kash and Slate, but I could still see the shore as clear as a mirror.
Then the ship seemed to leap upward under my feet, and I fell to my knees as the wind and the rain simply stopped. Suddenly everything was still, and the cold darkness was absolute.
My heart throbbed in my throat. Had I been struck blind? Blind and deaf; the silence was overwhelming. Then again, so was the smell, that cloying musky odor I’d noticed on the wind. There was movement too, an odd swaying of the ship. Then I heard Slate’s laugh: wordless, delighted. Had he seen it too—our distant shore, the same shore I had seen?
The fog was gone. As my eyes adjusted, I made out the glimmer of starlight above us and the silvery moonlit shine of the glassy water below, although I saw no moon in the sky. Then Rotgut swore. He lifted the lamp at the top of the mast. It wasn’t the sky I was seeing.
A hundred feet above our heads, the light of our lanterns was glittering back at us from a ceiling studded with diamonds. In this cavern, the sky was a bowl with stars stuck on it. I recognized the constellations . . . Orion, or—in China—the face of the White Tiger of the West. And Hydrus, the Snake’s tail.
I hadn’t seen moonlight on the calm sea; rather, we floated on a rippling pool of mercury, just as Sima Qian had said. Where the waves of quicksilver lapped the shore, our light shone on the skeletons of dying trees looming over piles of shriveled leaves on browning blades of grass. Far off, at the edge of the light, the gleam of red lacquer and bronze: the sarcophagus of Emperor Qin in the center of the blasted, barren terrain. We’d done it.
I’d done it.
I was so proud of myself, it took me three heartbeats to realize the ship was listing.
The deck tilted starboard in slow motion; as the rudder twisted, the wheel spun. I grabbed for it, but it wrenched itself out of my hands. I clutched the base of the wheel and tried to haul myself to my feet.
“What’s happening?” Slate said, stumbling toward the mast and gripping it in both hands.
“The mercury!”
“What about it?”
“It’s denser than water!”
Bee had slipped down nearly to the rail, but she was arrested by her harness. Kashmir was the only one still on his feet. He sprang past me to pull himself against the port rail on the high side, but it was too little, too late. Creaking, the ship continued to tip.
I looked up at Rotgut in alarm. He was wrapped around the mast; even in the dim light I could see the whites of his eyes. The glow from the lantern he held brightened as the crow’s nest swung toward the wall and, with a crunch and a jolt, slammed into the stone. Rotgut cried out as the Temptation stopped there, the deck at a forty-five-degree angle. “My leg!”
I pulled myself up with the wheel; it didn’t budge in my hands. The top of the mast had snapped, and Rotgut’s knee was pinned between the platform of the crow’s nest and the rough stone wall. He was gripping the flesh of his thigh in pain, but he wasn’t moving, and I could see why. The slightest motion would send him scraping down the wall as the ship capsized.
“No one move,” I said, nearly afraid to breathe. “We need ballast.”
Slate closed his eyes. “I wish you’d thought of that before we got here.”
“Me too.”
“Is it poisonous?” Bee whispered, staring down at the silvery pool five feet below her. Her voice echoed oddly in the tomb.
“I . . . I don’t know. Qin believed it was an elixir, but—never mind,” I said. “Just let me . . .” I half-turned toward the hatch as the thought occurred, and even that slight motion made the ship slip sideways. Rotgut’s scream echoed in the tomb.
“Kashmir?”
“Amira?”
“The bag.”
“What bag?”
“The bag on the nail, the one I use to bail the bilge. Can you go down and empty it?”
He didn’t bother answering; he unclipped his jack line and moved along the rail, hand over hand, until he was in line with the hatch. Then he let go and slid down, catching the opening with his fingertips and swinging inside. Rotgut screamed again as he slid another foot down the wall.