A moment of silence, as though the ship itself, and all on board, couldn’t take in what had just happened. But then the noises started, timbers groaning like a dying giant, men yelling and a terrible splintering noise right above their heads as one of their masts toppled and crashed upon the deck.
Mei Hua looked around, in shock as much as fear. The porcelain tea service and the oil lamps had all broken, but their spilled oil had formed islands of blue flame upon the floor that were already catching on the scattered silk bedclothes and hangings. She got to her feet and began stamping them out before they could take hold. The door flew open and three bodyguards rushed in, one with a great gash in his scalp, a whole side of his face gleaming with fresh blood. They joined her stamping out the fires, like a troupe of comic dancers. Then the men helped the admiral to his feet and swept him away to take command of this disaster, leaving Mei Hua on her own.
The rules of the ship were clear and uncompromising. As the admiral’s favourite, she wasn’t allowed unescorted out of the harem or the admiral’s private quarters. If a crewman should so much as see her, both she and he would be put immediately to death. But there were no eunuchs here, no guards either, and she had to get to her infant son, make sure he was safe. She went to the door, peeked out. The passageway was dark and abandoned.A terrible shudder ran the length of the ship. It felt like the end had come, but then it just died away again; and it made her realise that the old rules meant nothing any more.
She covered her face with a scarf, made her way to the steps. Two officers came charging breathlessly up, desperate not to be trapped below when the ship sank. She let them pass then hurried on down. The ship lurched slightly to the side; she had to put her hands against the wall to keep her feet. A man limped towards her, whimpering and cradling his arm. Another man was crying out for help from inside his quarters, his door broken and blocked. She tried to open it for him but it was no good, and her son wouldn’t wait any longer. She hardened her heart and left him.
Down more stairs, the air thick with incense from the sticks they burned to mitigate the stench of a boat too long at sea. Water splashed around her ankles. A soldier was lying face-down in it, his arms above his head, prostrating himself to the gods he’d just gone to meet. She took a thin-bladed knife from his belt, stepped over him and on. The water grew deeper, splashing around her knees and then her thighs. Lamp-light flickered ahead; she could hear the shrieking of her fellow concubines. She reached the harem’s antechamber to see that fat monster Chung Hu and two other eunuchs on guard outside the barred door, following their orders to the letter, keeping the women and children confined even as they drowned.
Chung Hu saw her and bellowed in anger. He’d always hated women, as though he blamed them for cutting off his balls, taking his vengeance with countless small cruelties. She turned and fled, fighting through the water. Chung Hu came after her, yelling to his comrades to follow. The water grew less deep, making progress easier, but for Chung Hu too. He grabbed her shoulder; she turned and stabbed him with her knife, its thin blade sliding sweetly through the jelly of his eye into the malignant grey mass behind. He fell with a grunt face-down into the water. His two subordinates stared at her almost in awe, as though they’d thought Chung Hu invulnerable; but then a great wave of water washed by them and reminded them of their peril. They fled past her to the steps, taking the oil lamps with them.
The water was waist deep by the time Mei Hua made it back to the antechamber, the concubines still shrieking in terror and despair. She felt out the two wooden bars and lifted them free. Sheer weight of water pushed the door open, allowing all her friends and their children to spill out, wailing in relief. In the darkness, she had to shout for her son. Li Wei had him. Mei Hua took him gratefully, clasped him against her chest, ran with the others for the steps. Water was flooding down from above; they had to fight to reach topside. The open deck was crowded, not just with crew and soldiers and other passengers, but with livestock too: piglets, dogs, oxen and chickens that had got free from their pens and now were running loose.
The concubines scattered in all directions, each intent on saving herself. Mei Hua went in search of the admiral. Bao Zhi was his son, after all, even if he refused to recognise him. A splintered spar swung down from high above and speared the belly of an old man in astronomer’s robes, hoisted him up again into his beloved stars. Old men were fighting like furies for the lifeboats; she begged one or other of them to take her child, but they were only interested in saving themselves. She offered the admiral’s jewellery as payment, but what use were gems in a shipwreck? An officer grabbed her ruby necklace anyway, pushed her down and swung his club at her. She turned and took the blow upon her backside, then scuttled away, hugging her wailing son against her breast, stroking his hair and whispering reassurance.
A sheet of lightning lit up the sky. She could see rain and spume that she hadn’t even noticed until now. She was almost at the prow, she realised. She’d never been this far forward before. A second sheet of lightning showed the great dragon figurehead rearing up above her, its wings spread either side as though in flight, Mei Hua riding upon its back as it soared above the world. The things they’d seen, these last few years! The places they’d visited! Yet what did that count for now? She suffered a sudden and exquisite longing to see her mother just one more time, to show off Bao Zhi to her sisters. And so close, too. Just yesterday, the admiral had shown her on his globe how far they’d already journeyed, how few weeks remained to home and their heroes’ welcome.
Another great shudder ran through the ship. Another mast toppled. Everywhere on deck, people were screaming. Mei Hua sobbed with fear and hugged Bao Zhi against her. Six nights before, she’d dreamed of a woman in red walking towards her across the water, beckoning to her, holding out her arms. Tianfei, the Celestial Consort, come to welcome her home.
But not like this.
Not like this.
I
A coral reef, the west coast of Madagascar
Sixty-three metres underwater, even brilliant sunlight becomes feeble, and the glorious pageantry of the reef and its fish is reduced to bureaucratic greys and blacks. Effort put into bright liveries down here was effort wasted, and nature abhorred such waste almost as fiercely as she abhorred vacuums. The only real brightness, therefore, came from the white sand that covered so much of the sea-bed; but even that was diminished by the litter of dead sea-grass and coral, by the scattering of darker stones, shells and gnarled black rock, and fogged by the clouds of sediment that Daniel Knox and his fellow divers had kicked up during the two hours they’d already spent at the bottom.
A tap upon his arm. He turned to see Miles, his boss and dive-buddy, stopping his filming for a moment, pointing up and to his left. It took Knox a moment to see what had caught his eye: a big fish, perhaps twenty metres away, though it was hard to gauge distances underwater. A shark of some kind, to judge from its distinctive silhouette and the easy menace of its movement, though too far away for him to be sure which. Bulls, tigers, makos, white-tips, black-tips and even the occasional great white were common enough along Madagascar’s west coast, particularly on the exterior of these reefs, where food was plentiful and the water was hyper-oxygenated from constantly being crashed against the coral. But they were none of them as dangerous as their reputations, so long as you kept your nerve and did nothing stupid. That was why they alerted each other whenever they saw one, so that they wouldn’t be panicked into a rushed ascent or some other mistake should it suddenly come close.
He nodded to let Miles know he’d seen it, checked his equipment. He touched his dive-knife first: it was reassuring just to have, even if it wasn’t there to defend against a shark attack so much as for cutting through the mesh of discarded nets that so often plagued reefs like these. He checked his gauges next. His oxygen partial pressure looked a fraction high, and his spare gave the same reading, so he adjusted his feed accordingly. Hyperoxia was an easy trap to fall