The Jade Empire
The British Concession, Shanghai City, China, Spring, 1858
The brick and stone Georgian townhouse, elegant in design, seemed an odd place to arrange a murder. But, in the dim library, a pervasive sense of corruption hung in the air, like evil ghosts.
“So,” the rich merchant asked, “you have no qualms about dispatching a man of peace?”
Rennie Macpherson hesitated briefly, but the coin he’d earn would keep him for a month. He didn’t like to kill more than he had to, but killing was better than carpentry. Besides, God knew, no such thing as a true man of peace existed. They hadn’t existed in Scotland, where he’d been a boy. They hadn’t existed in England, where he’d become a man. And they sure as hell didn’t darken Shanghai.
“Canna ye just have him removed?” Rennie asked.
“We need to send a message.”
“Bold message.”
“These are bold times.”
A missionary had seduced the merchant’s wife, and then had the temerity to preach against acquisition. “Nae qualms t’all,” Rennie replied.
***
Dressed head-to-toe in leathers, including his wide-brimmed hat, Rennie strode the bustling riverfront promenade, called the Bund, heading for the chapel where he would find his mark. He made a striking figure, tall and manly. Daisy, his loyal companion, was slung over his shoulder. An aether-pressured repeater rifle nearly four feet long, a marvel of brass and iron craftsmanship with an engraved mahogany stock, Daisy had never let Rennie down.
He peered up at the Union Jack flag billowing on the British steamship SS Hesperus, anchored in the Haungpu River among other naval and merchant vessels. He’d fought under that flag, as an enlisted gunner in the First Opium War. Rennie almost felt like laughing at where life had brought him since then, but there was no place for laughter in his life.
A commotion caught his eye. Two sailors tightly held between them what appeared to be a boy, dressed in loose-fitting robe and trousers. The swabs tugged their resisting prisoner, feet practically dragging, up the gangway. None of my business, Rennie thought.
Abruptly, he stopped in his tracks. Pursing his lips, he dropped his eyes and tried to extricate himself from any obligation, telling himself that everyone got caught, eventually, in one way or the other. But his eyelid twitched.
Some sailors liked both boys and girls. Whether it was his own stolen innocence, or all of the injustices he had witnessed, or something rotten inside himself looking for trouble—he did not stop to wonder why. He got his boot-clad feet in motion and leapt up the gangway and arrived up top just in time to see the two sailors drag their squirming prey into a tiny room, with a tarp door, beside the wheelhouse.
The ship’s deck was deserted. Rennie got Daisy off his shoulder. A chill wind blew in, and carried the smell of fouled water with it. Tamping down his breathing, he approached their hiding place. The high-pitched squeals of the captive reached Rennie’s ears, and he bristled at the gutlessness. He got to the tarp, and used Daisy’s stock to pull it aside.
The body under one of the sailors was flaying arms like a girl. “What goes on here?” Rennie demanded.
With a fierce scowl, he rolled off. “We’re the Queen’s own men!” he screeched.
Rennie levelled his rifle. “An’ the Queen would be mighty ashamed o’ such lecherous behavior.”
“Piss off, you. It’s a heathen!”
It would have been so easy to blast them to perdition. But Rennie surely wasn’t going to kill for free. “Be gone,” he commanded.
At the point of a gun, they grumbled, and then scrambled past him. The seized one, now saved, got up, and brought her—it was a she!—earnest face up before his. The beauty of the Chinese woman, dressed like a boy, caught Rennie off guard. The desperate emotion in her big, brown eyes made his mouth go dry. “Thank you,” she said, then ran away.
Rennie took a moment to compose himself. Then, an anger of no name rose. Without seeing, he searched the corners of the small compartment, turned about, and stared hard at the deck boards. What the hell was he doing here?
He needed to go and kill.
***
The Walled Chinese City of Shanghai, Nanshi
Daiyu Chen sighed with relief once she had entered Nanshi through the Xiaonan gate. She would never tell her parents, Mei and Hao, about the terrible incident on a British steamship. They would dote and worry, and might even lay restrictions on her.
In her estimation, the Foreigners were stupid and brutal, and did not live in harmony with the Dao. But that man, the man who had saved her, settled in her mind like rain on dry earth, seeping in deep. But no single act of kindness could ever blot the cold calculations of the invaders, in mass.
Daiyu hesitated to go home. She took the narrow streets to the City God Temple, in the heart of the walled city, and entered the wide hall decorated in red and gold. The steam-powered qi-flow engines hummed softly, circulating the air. A few pilgrims made offerings at the incense burners, and others meditated. Daiyu strolled towards the main altar, lacquered in red and black, on a raised wooden dais. The altar held a statue of the stern-faced City God—Chenghuang—and a bowl of mandarin oranges, a symbol of good luck.
Standing before the altar, Daiyu tried to steer herself onto the path of the Dao. But how could she be natural when so much unnaturalness surrounded her?
A robed priest silently came up beside her. They stood side by side. Daiyu balled her fists, then asked, “How can I be in balance with such unfamiliar creatures?”
“The colonizers?”
“Yes.”
“Focus on self-cultivation—”
“Foreign devils—”
“Ah, well, yes,” the priest sighed, “—their hair is strange colors.”
Daiyu peered sideways at the priest. “They would make good dragon food.”
“It is easy to mock,” he replied. “Less easy to understand, and return compassion.”
Daiyu understood well enough. She said no more on the subject. One quick glance at the priest, and then she excused herself and strode to a meditation chamber along the north wall. Large enough to sit inside, the pod was made of wood, brass, and stained glass, and resembled a lotus flower. Gears driven by steam power rotated the pod during the day, to align with the natural light, and the flow of qi.
Daiyu’s breathing quieted. She leaned back in the plush chair and closed her eyes. The rugged face of the man who had rescued her sprang full force to her mind. A corner of her mouth curled up. He might have been a foreign devil, but he was a handsome devil, too.
Aghast at her own thought, Daiyu lurched forward in her chair and dropped her head in her hands. A poem, yes, she must try to write a poem.
When the lion and the dragon meet—
The leather-clad man’s expression of surprise commandeered her mind’s eye. She grinned. For some strange reason, her effect on him felt like a victory.
