“It is beautiful,” I told Lee Bo, and really meant it. “I’ve never seen anything quite so… ” I paused, searching for an appropriate epithet. It seemed so strange and otherworldly, especially considering that we just fought the people who were supposed to be on our side. “It’s very beautiful,” I concluded in a rather uninspired manner. “I am sorry for getting us into that fight — Wong Jun’s letter… ”
Lee Bo shrugged. “If we ran into Qing forces, that letter would’ve had an opposite effect. In any case, you’re a barbarian, and it would be foolish to expect people to trust you.”
“Kuan Yu does.”
Lee Bo shook his head, smiling. “This is very naive of you. Do you think he is helping you because you’re serving the purpose he finds agreeable, or because you’re so precious that everyone who runs into you just has to help you?”
“The former.” I tried not to sulk.
“Right. So don’t take it personally, but do remember that people… people will do what suits themselves first. Don’t expect them to stop everything because you happened to wander by and need help.”
“I don’t,” I said. “Is it another one of those arguments you mentioned before?”
He nodded. We ascended the white staircase to the Palace itself, and I thought of how unlike the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg it was. Irrelevant and minor thoughts always plagued me at such important times, and I shook my head to clear it.
There were more guards here, but they wore Qing queues, and I wished I still had Wong Jun’s letter.
My stomach growled and acted as if it was about to do a flip and exit my body through my mouth and disappear forever. I swallowed hard. “I am bringing important information about the British.”
Lee Bo translated.
The guards did not seem especially spirited — they barely acknowledged our presence and let us through the double doors leading to the palace. I stepped through, simultaneously hopeful and apprehensive.
To my disappointment, we did not see the emperor. I supposed that he must have been rather discouraged by the woefully underdressed Taipings tracking muddy footprints across his beautifully paved floors and fine carpets. There were quite a few of them about; they gave us suspicious looks, but Lee Bo’s banter seemed to put them at enough ease to let us through. The walls were decorated by friezes and hangings made of richly embroidered shimmering silk that moved in the breeze, and the people in the battle scenes, artfully depicted, waved their banners and raised sails of their war junks.
We found General Feng in one of the smaller halls of the palace — it was almost intimate, decorated with soft rugs and low, embroidered couches, almost European in their design. On one of these couches, Feng, a small man who looked to be in his early thirties, stretched luxuriously, oblivious to the fact that his leather slippers left a round wet stain on the upholstery. His long hair was pulled into a horsetail on top of his head, and his wide, curved sword rested across his lap. Otherwise, he looked like any of his men.
He sat up when he saw me, and spoke sharply in Chinese.
I smiled and shook my head, and opened my satchel. I always suspected there was a huge relief in stopping the struggle and simply giving up the thing that had motivated one for weeks and months and years on end. I suspected that Sisyphus himself heaved a sigh of relief when the boulder rolled down the hill and he stood on the slope, empty-handed and free for a moment, truly happy because in that brief instant he had lost everything again, and had not yet regained hope and motivation for the next impossible task.
This is how I felt when I extracted the blueprints and the letters detailing the English treachery, when I gave general Feng the signed copies of treaties between the British and Ottoman empires, as I piled proof after proof after proof that China and the Taiping Tianguo, if they were to survive, would have to form an alliance with someone, and Russia seemed a logical choice, a neighbor driven by the same necessity and less foreign than any other.
Lee Bo translated, pointed things out, answered the general’s questions.
Feng’s voice rose as he gestured at one of the papers. Lee Bo frowned and spoke faster and in a higher pitch. I looked from one foreign face to the other, suddenly aware of how much I did not belong here. My suspicions intensified when Lee Bo bowed his head, pressed his hands together before his chest, and spoke softer, but with the unmistakable strain of pleading that was always the same, no matter whether the language spoken was Russian, English, or Cantonese.
Feng listened and sat up straighter, his back growing rigid with resolution. When he spoke, he was not addressing either Lee Bo or myself, but rather talking over our heads to someone in the hallway just outside.
My heart sunk as Feng tossed the papers I had given him carelessly on the couch cushions, and waited for the two Taipings to enter and flank me, in a way much less reassuring than the manner in which Kuan Yu and Lee Bo had so shortly before. When their hands clasped my wrists, freed my saber from my sheath, and took my shoulders — gently, gently, like a mother cradling a helpless child — my spirit gave out. I did not sob but I did not struggle; I let my head droop and my thoughts swim, as I could almost see myself — like another person would; detached, floating — being led down a corridor, all golden lights and filigreed panels on the walls, flowers and fantastic beasts, my heels hitting the tiles too loudly.
Then we were outside. Deep snow in hidden courtyards littered with splintered bamboo shafts and shredded red paper muted my footsteps, and I thought of it as a relief. We arrived at a small pavilion, and I thought it was a jail. But instead it turned out to be a small shrine. There were several statues placed on a dais; one corner of the cold stone floor was covered by a threadbare straw mat. The stone rang hollow and frozen with my bootsteps, went silent as my legs gave way and I crumpled to the floor, just as the key on the other side of the door turned, leaving me more cold and alone than I ever thought possible.
I had time to think now. The rushing about of the past weeks came to such an abrupt and disreputable stop that the very cessation of motion felt more crushing than the imprisonment. And I was in prison, even though instead of a jailer I had jade statues of some unfamiliar gods and a goddess, and there were no bars, just a room with dais with rounded corners and a wooden door.
It was too cold to sleep, and I curled into a comma, pulling my worn pelisse over my shoulders, like a too-short blanket. The carved goddess looked at me from the corner of one eye, not to notice me, but looking nonetheless.
My only blessing was the realization of how lucky I had been until that day, and how an abrupt end of my good fortune cast the incredible run of luck that preceded it in stark relief. Of course my luck had to run out some day, and it seemed more than coincidence that it did so just a few days after Jack’s capture.
I searched under the dais, not really hoping to find anything but to keep moving. To my surprise, in the dusty, cold darkness under the smooth wood my fingers felt a jagged piece of rock. I pulled it out and discovered it was a flint stone, and my heart squeezed tight in my already constricted chest, then let go again.
The empty sheath of my saber was not a very good weapon, but its steel-encased tip would serve as a perfect counterpart to the flint stone, if only I could find something to set fire to. Encouraged and newly energized by hope, I crawled on my hands and knees, looking into every crevice between the floor tiles, and under every side of the dais.