“It’s not all right. If not for me, he’d be alive!”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Not for long.” Kash knelt beside me and put his hands on my arms; they were searingly hot.
“But I could have helped him if—if—” But I couldn’t think of the end of the sentence.
“Amira,” he said again, rubbing my skin, warming me. I let go of the dead artisan and Kash pulled me against his chest. “Shh,” he said, patting my back as I shook. My head was ringing like a struck bell, and just as empty. “It was going to happen. His fate was sealed the day the tomb was. There’s nothing you can do.”
With my eyes shut against the shadows and the scent of clove filling my nose, my heart started to slow to the rhythm his was beating. He stroked my hair, and it was hypnotic; my arms were so heavy and his, so warm. I didn’t know how long we sat close together in the tomb—an hour? An eternity? But then something sharp pricked my leg, and I jumped.
It was only Swag, peering up at me and testing the air with his tongue. Abruptly, I straightened up and wiped my face on my damp sleeve. Then I took a deep, shuddering breath, picked up the dragon, and put him back on my shoulders. “Let’s get the soldiers and get out of here.”
The sky herring were schooling in a corner, and Kashmir used his shirt as a net while I scraped soot from the walls above the burned-out lamps. He took the other lamp off the bow of the dinghy and tipped the fish inside. Then he brought the light to where I stood before the general with black and bloody hands.
We marked the foreheads of fifty-four warriors; it seemed like an auspicious number. Their eyes began to glow and their bodies move. Each soldier stood differently: some slouched, some favored one leg. One scratched his thigh as he waited. What patience, what artistry it must have taken to create eight thousand individual warriors from a changing mold. How many of the artists had pounded their skilled hands on the thick bronze doors at the end of the hall?
Was the man I’d killed one of them?
I shook off the thought. Kashmir was right. There was nothing I could do; it had already been done, hundreds of years before I was born. But I forced myself to take one long look at the artisan lying dead in the corner. I had no magic words to bring him back to life.
Then, with fifty-four pairs of eyes watching, Kash and I stood on the steps leading to our little dinghy and waved the soldiers after us. “Follow me!” I shouted. Thank all the gods, they did.
Kashmir steered us back down the canal, using the oar as a rudder. We were pushed on a swell of mercury created by the contingent as they marched behind us, waist deep in quicksilver. We stopped before the archways, in the last room on the right. I marked the sailors with soot and scribed a name on the prow of the junk: the 54. As I led my army toward the Temptation, Slate’s face was as pale as the moon above us, and in the sharp shadows of the lantern light, I couldn’t tell if his expression was pride or fear.
The soldiers swarmed aboard, and Bee and Slate made fast the junk, throwing ropes between the 54 and the Temptation and winding them tight around our cleats. Meanwhile, I took the leather case in my hands and pointed Kashmir toward the bronze beach.
He drew up close to the edge, where liquid met solid metal, near a withered pomegranate tree, the red fruit hanging shriveled on the branch. Careful not to touch the shore and risk angering the emperor, I threw the map up above the line of the mercury, just as Joss had asked. Should I call to her? What would I say? Would she even know me? But she was waiting in the dark, and sick. Poisoned. I closed my eyes and put my thumb on the spot between them.
“Are you all right?” Kash said.
“I’m thinking again,” I said irritably, but the thought was gone, and my shoulder was throbbing where I’d fallen. I had done what she’d requested, and the fact she’d been there to ask me to do her this favor was proof it worked. She hadn’t asked for anything more. It was enough.
No. Maybe for her, but not for me. Gingerly, so as not to capsize us, I crawled up toward the tip of the dinghy and unhooked the lantern from the bow.
“Closer, Kash,” I said, but he had already dipped the oar, bringing our skiff near enough for me to lean out, my arm shaking, and set the lamp ashore beside the map.
I watched the lonely pool of light as we rowed back to the Temptation, the last lantern to shine on Qin’s final realm. It must have been beautiful when he’d been laid to rest—an underground Eden, full of the fresh scent of fruit and flowers, the jeweled stars glimmering above. Qin thought he’d rest forever in a heavenly afterlife, but the effigy of his empire had faded faster than his crumbling kingdom above. Joss had said it herself. Everything must come to an end. In every myth, paradise is meant to be lost.