The Girl from Everywhere (The Girl from Everywhere #1)(73)

“Wait,” I said as he dipped the oars. I lifted the lantern higher, inspecting the shadows at the corner of the doorway, and then I flinched.

“What?”

I pointed. Starkly lit and edged in shadow, I could make out a bloated hand, reaching through the doorway toward us, as though in supplication. That was the source of the smell. We were breathing in the dead.

“A grave robber?” Kashmir pushed us off from the bottom step.

“No . . . Qin had the artisans who built the tomb buried with him, along with his chief officials and . . . and his favorite concubines.” I took a shallow breath; the air was heavy, suffoating. “The exits were sealed with tons of earth.”

“But Joss escaped.”

“Yes.” I took another breath, the strap of the leather case tight across my chest.

Kashmir and I continued down the waterway, passing a space made up like a stable, with more horses and foals tended by terra-cotta grooms. Next we saw a room filled with replica officials holding clay tablets and scrolls to tally up the emperor’s riches, then a chamber of clay concubines, every delicate face cast in an everlasting smile . . . a smile that seemed familiar to me. In the lap of one kneeling form lay the head of a dead artisan, as though he’d laid down to rest.

In the dim light, I could just make out two huge bronze doors at the end of the quicksilver canal, cast with reliefs of dragons ascending to heaven. Debris was piled high at the base of the doors, the mercury pooling and seeping through the rubble—no . . . not rubble. As I stared, I recognized the shapes of heads and hands, arms and legs. Bile rose in my throat. The masons and artists, the tile setters and painters, the sculptors and plaster workers and carpenters and gardeners who had used the best of their skills for the glory of their emperor had found their way here, to die before the bronze gates cutting them off forever from the country they had re-created in this necropolis.

My heartbeat was fluttery, irregular. Was Joss really here somewhere, holding on? Should I look for her?

What was she eating?

Then I gasped and pointed.

Immediately, Kash raised the oar like a club. “What is it?”

“Something’s moving!”

“Where?”

“Look, the ripples!”

Both of us stared at the surface of the mercury; the rocking of our own boat had marred the patterns, but after a moment he saw it too—a trembling V, something small swimming toward us.

“Wait . . . is that . . .” Kashmir lowered the oar, and a moment later, Swag’s reptilian head popped over the edge of the boat, quicksilver beading on his gold scales.

“How did you get out here?” I said, my voice hoarse with relief. He didn’t look to have suffered from his swim, and the mercury slid right off. Still, I reached out to him gingerly, and he clambered up my arm to settle on my neck. “Stay,” I said, hoping he would obey.

“I see soldiers,” Kash said then, pointing toward the last doorway on our right. I stroked Swag’s smooth scales, hot against my skin, as we bumped against the steps.

Kashmir lifted his lantern. The light threw crazy shadows, but everything else was still: the taller generals, the kneeling archers, the straight-backed spearmen. My legs shook as I climbed out of the dinghy, careful not to touch the mercury.

“Hello?” I said, my voice swallowed by the closing dark, my breath purling in the air. “Ni hao?” No sound returned but the dripping, far away, of a trickle of water. The silence of the dead was the sound of despair. I reached for Kashmir’s hand and stepped through the door.

Although they all stood in straight rows, no two warriors were alike. Every face was different: fierce determination, boredom, pride. Their uniforms varied as well, painted in greens and blues, pinks and lilacs, bright colors with no single soldier the same as the next. They held real weapons, fine swords, spears with bright bronze tips, graceful wooden bows. All were still, but every stony gaze was almost lifelike. Almost.

I stood face-to-face with an imposing general, his armor washed with Han purple, his hair pulled into a high knot. The lamplight gleamed dully in the painted orbs of his terra-cotta eyes. I moved on to an infantryman and rapped my knuckles on his hollow chest. It sounded just like a flower pot. None of these statues displayed the slightest interest or inclination in waking up and walking about.

“Well,” Kashmir said. “You came very close.”

“Shh.” Joss was slick, but would she go so far as to sell me a worthless map? I racked my memory. The warriors were supposed to have come to life in the tomb; clearly that hadn’t happened. Yet. How could I get a bunch of clay men to come to life?

Clay men that came to life . . . various gods and goddesses often breathed life into clay men and women, including the goddess Nuwa, in Chinese mythology, but she was apparently declining to make an appearance. Golems were made of clay and given life when a person wrote the magic word on their foreheads, but golems were a Jewish myth.

I decided to try it. I believed in golems, didn’t I? I just had to remember the magic word. I shut my eyes to concentrate. “It’s Hebrew for truth,” I said.

“Quoi?”

“I’m thinking. The Hebrew word for truth brings them to life. What’s the word?”

“I don’t speak Hebrew.”

“Quiet!” I pressed the bridge of my nose. “Truth. Truth. But the trick of it is when you erase the first letter, the golem stops because the word spells . . . spells death. Emet! The word is emet.” I squeezed the last bit of water from my hair into my cupped palm. Then I dipped my finger and wrote EMET on the general’s broad forehead.