The Girl from Everywhere (The Girl from Everywhere #1)(75)

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.

Slate helped us raise the dinghy, but he gasped when he helped me over the rail. “What happened?” He reached toward my face.

I pulled away from his hands, not wanting to be touched. “Just . . . fate.” I wiped my sleeve across my cheek—blood, thick and tacky. “It’s not mine.” I clenched my fists, suddenly angry. “What’s the use?” I shouted into the dark, my voice echoing in the cold stars. “Why do we bother if all we do is what was written a thousand years ago? What’s the point if we can’t try to change things?”

“Oh, Nixie.” My father reached out again and I let him; my rage had burned too hot and flamed out quickly. He stroked my cheek with the back of one finger. “I always knew one day you’d understand.”



Before we left the tomb, I emptied out a wine bottle and dipped the mouth carefully into the quicksilver. I knew mercury as a poison, but Qin had believed it was a cure-all, so I tucked the bottle away in my room, just in case I was ever brave enough—or desperate enough—to test it. I left Swag in his dry bucket and sent Kash back to the bilge to wait with the bottomless bag.

Then I took the helm.

The return passage was as gentle as a blessing. The foul air of the city of the dead was pushed aside by the fresh trade winds of the tropics. The still silver sea melted into moonlit waves, and the unchanging diamond ceiling lifted away to reveal the deep black velvet of the starry night. Here we were, back in paradise; Blake’s map had worked after all.

I sighed. Then I licked my teeth and spat. The miasma of rot had left a film all over my skin. Et in Arcadia, ego.

Slate stood beside me on the quarterdeck as we sailed, his face to the wind, his expression inscrutable. He had said nothing for hours: no instruction, no conversation . . . no praise. Finally I spoke. “Trouble, Captain?”