Heart of Iron

Chapter 18

There were no messages, but General Feng informed us that Hong — the new ruler of China, if the treaty the Qing signed abdicating the throne could be believed — had decided to send an emissary to St. Petersburg, to bring the offer of an alliance and treaties to sign. We were invited to join the emissary, and Feng promised we would be sent by air, and reach St. Petersburg in no time.

Another surprise awaited me on the morning of our departure. The airship was positioned in the Sea of Flagstones, the open square before the building called the Hall of Supreme Harmony. The canal running in a semicircle around the square was frozen solid, and the footpath and the tiny bridges paved with multicolored blocks shone with frost. The roof of the Hall blazed in the sunlight. A small solemn army of Taipings had gathered to watch our departure; I was relieved to see Kuan Yu and Liu Zhi among them. I regretted I had too little time to explore this wonderful place — there were so many palaces and halls and pagodas, small hidden gardens, and the wells with poetic names Lee Bo told me and I immediately forgot. One, I thought, had something to do with concubines.

I also regretted not seeing Chiang Tse — I regretted it probably more than anything else, but I had difficulty admitting it to myself, not to mention talking to Aunt Genia or Lee Bo about it. And now it was too late. I tried to focus on getting home, on saving Jack, on seeing my mother, on going to the university again — anything but the sucking regret in the pit of my stomach. I stood by one of the tiny bridges, erect and straight-faced, my uniform clean and mended and my pelisse trimmed with new fur. All my belongings had been transferred into one of Eugenia’s leather valises as my old satchel had been falling apart from all the abuse I subjected it to. I watched with dry eyes as an airship, of a design similar to the one that had brought me to Beijing, descended into the square and landed on its sturdy wheels with engines chugging.

The machine was much bigger than Lee Bo’s, but I suspected it was born in the same Siberian factory. The seating was allocated to the belly of the ship instead of the flimsy freezing tiny gondola under it. The entire ship was more streamlined, with wider wings and narrower hull. Its front end was shaped as a snarling dragon snout, and the hull was painted with red and gold scales, as if reflecting the roofs of the palaces around us. I was by then thoroughly charmed by the architectural excesses of little towers and pagoda roofs all stacked on top of one another, and painted such bright red and gold and copper and green. Not even winter could dull these colors.

We waited for the emissary. When he appeared I could not, at first, see him as he was preceded by a sizeable entourage. Some of the Taipings waiting in the square joined it as well, including Kuan Yu. I was glad he was coming with us. “Is it one of the generals?” I whispered to Eugenia. “I hope they don’t send a military man to negotiate such matters.”

“No, Feng is pretty smart,” Eugenia whispered back. “It is one of Hong’s newly appointed governors.”

“Which province, do you know?”

“Gansu,” she whispered back, and this simple word made me see a black sun and white sky.

Chiang Tse had changed little — his queue was of course gone, but he had kept his gentle and dignified demeanor, and his dark eyes remained downcast even as he approached us. I agonized at first over whether he would recognize me; but surely Lee Bo must have told him.

He bowed to Aunt Eugenia. “It is a pleasure and an honor to travel with you,” he said softly, and the sound of his voice tugged at my heart gently, like one of the large red-and-white carps that lived in the ponds in the imperial palace nibbling on my fingers. “It is my humble hope that as persons gifted with the trust of our rulers we can discuss the common interests of our countries, and come to a mutually beneficial set of agreements.”

Eugenia seemed pleased. “We will indeed do so,” she assured him. “Shall we?”

Chiang Tse smiled and nodded, and offered her his arm in a European fashion. His clothes, however, were that of an official, and his robes bore a patch with two embroidered cranes on them. Lee Bo explained its meaning, and even though I was hazy on the details, I gathered cranes were indicative of high rank.

Eugenia took his arm and they walked to the airship side-by-side with me following them and ten or so men of Chiang Tse’s retinue bringing up the rear. I turned and saw Kuan Yu over my shoulder; I smiled and he grinned back. So much for a humble fur trader, and I was glad to have him travel with us again.

We settled on the benches that were refreshingly padded and rounded. They felt more like cradles than the hard wooden benches of the train or other airship. This trip was promising to be altogether more comfortable, and I sighed and stretched.

Chiang Tse and Eugenia spoke softly. I sat behind them, and could only make out the animated bobbing of Chiang Tse’s head, agreeing with something Eugenia proposed.

Finally he turned around to face me. There was no recognition in his dark eyes, and I smiled.

He offered me his hand. “Chiang Tse,” he said. “I am the Governor-General of Gansu.”

I shook his hand. “Poruchik Menshov,” I said.

He smiled then. “My friend Lee Bo told me you were the one who brought the evidence of the treacheries planned by the English.”

I couldn’t contain myself any longer. “But I see he failed to remind you of our previous acquaintance.”

Chiang Tse smiled politely, and his eyes showed no recognition, which to me seemed the very height of hilarity. He squinted at me as I kept laughing, too overcome to say anything. Finally, I managed to pull my fake mustache off my lip, and his eyes lit with recognition — he forgot his dignified bearing and official position as he vaulted over the back of his bench to sit next to me and grasp my hands with a gesture so sincere that my reverse corset felt like a slab of rock, pressing on my chest and not letting me breathe.

“Sasha,” he said.

I do not know what his retinue thought after that — but I am sure they had been selected in part for an ability to not talk about things they witnessed. Whatever the case, I did not care whether anyone was watching as I embraced Chiang Tse with an ardor that was perhaps a mite excessive for mere camaraderie. He gasped and held me too, and his quick breaths told me that he was as overcome as I. A moment later a hot wet drop on my neck told me he was crying.

If Eugenia noticed anything, she was of course too well brought up and too mindful of my happiness to turn around, and instead busied herself with her knitting. She rarely knitted, and I suspected the shapeless, dingy brown thing she worked on was the same one she had started when I was a child.

“I thought I would never see you again,” Chiang Tse whispered and let go. His face was slightly reddened and more emotional than I had ever seen. “I worked so hard on letting go of the very thought of you, and yet I begged Hong to send me to St. Petersburg.”

“I missed you too,” I mumbled, the words a pale shadow of my protracted longing and the upsurge of happiness I experienced when I saw him again.

We traded further inarticulate expressions of our delight for a while, and Chiang Tse would not let go of my hands.

“I guess you’re not taking this separation of genders tenet too seriously then,” I said.

He laughed. “I think it is acceptable as long as you’re dressed as a man.”

I wasn’t sure but I thought I saw Eugenia’s shoulders shaking with laughter.

With Chiang Tse, it was easy to talk about Jack and what we should do about him. Chiang Tse remembered Jack as the one who — along with my own modest efforts — allowed for his and Lee Bo’s escape that night at the Crane Club. He was eager to return the favor.

I had favors to return as well. I felt overwhelming gratitude to Jack for all his help and self-sacrifice; yet, I felt burdened by my debt to him. I did not know if the same feeling motivated Chiang Tse, but for me helping Jack carried a two-fold purpose. I hoped that didn’t make me a bad person.

Chiang Tse mused. “They will have to change trains at St. Petersburg and Moscow. I think we can intercept them in either of those cities.”

“But what can we do to make them let Jack go? He is under English law, and I don’t think we have legal grounds to interfere.”

Chiang Tse pursed his lips. “Nothing the emperor could do?”

I shook my head. “I doubt he would intervene, especially now. We might have to rescue him ourselves — by force if necessary.”

“Or perhaps we could negotiate.”

Aunt Eugenia turned then. “With what are you planning to negotiate, Chiang Tse?”

“With whatever I can,” he said very earnestly. “The man saved my life, and he made sure that Sasha arrived in Beijing safely. There is nothing I wouldn’t do to see him to freedom and safety.”

I nodded that I agreed — and yet, every time I thought of Jack’s devotion, of the consideration and fondness he showed me, I became more and more concerned. It did not make sense, but I was starting to fear him — after all, he was superhumanly strong and agile, and he was not the man one would want to upset. I hoped that Chiang Tse’s diplomacy would be enough not only to save Jack, but to protect us from his displeasure if he ever were to be upset with us.

It was with no small amount of apprehension that I realized that some people made excellent allies but terrible enemies.

Travel by air was a lot less interesting than by train, once one got used to the idea of being up in the sky, as high as the birds flew. The windows revealed nothing but patches of sky and clouds. The usual rules of conduct felt irrelevant as well — at least, neither Aunt Eugenia nor Chiang Tse’s retinue offered any criticism of his propensity to hold my hand, and no one even batted an eye when we whispered and laughed like conspiratorial children. On solid ground, Chiang Tse was reserved and often cold; in the sky he seemed younger, as if relieved from the weight of his responsibility.

The engineer guiding the airship had agreed to follow the railroad tracks below. Every now and then we wandered over to the engine room where the furnaces — red-hot, hissing, and spitting — blazed like the pits of hell. The thick round panes of glass in the belly of the engine room allowed a distorted and bleak view of what was below, and we tried to guess the landmarks we were passing over. We named rivers as they shimmered below our feet, and we pointed the dark tracks of the railroad. At night, we pressed our cheeks against the windows and tried to see the stars above.

We saw the train below in the morning. We were mere hours away from Moscow, and I quickly counted on my fingers to make sure that the time worked out. I did it several times, until I had no doubt left the train below was the one likely to contain Jack and the Englishmen who captured him.

“I think Jack is on that train,” I told Chiang Tse.

He squinted through the thick, greenish glass on the floor of the engine room. “Very well,” he said. “We’ll intercept them in Moscow.”

“Can you land the airship there?”

“I don’t know. Let me talk to the engineer.”

I followed him into the metal passageway, a narrow vaulted tube that connected the engine room to the engineer’s cabin, where the brass levers that operated the airship’s wings and rudder bristled from the walls like quills of some metallic porcupine turned inside out by some great misfortune. The engineer, a stocky Taiping with thick hair all the way down to shoulders nodded at us.

“Tang Wei,” Chiang Tse addressed the engineer. “Do you see the train tracks below? Did you notice a train we passed a while back?”

Tang Wei nodded, and adjusted a knob to his left, making the airship tilt slightly right. “I saw it,” he said. “You want me to follow?”

“You do not have to follow,” Chiang Tse said. “But if we could meet the people on that train just as they disembark, and if we could do it discreetly… ”

“We can do that,” Tang Wei said. “I’ll just need a station and a field. And maybe a town — we need more coal anyway. We are running quite low.”

I wondered what the airship looked like from the ground; I wondered if people on the train noticed us, hovering so doggedly above them — or at the very least, saw our shadow on the ground and wondered at its shape. The airship had decreased its speed, and now matched that of the locomotive below us.

The train soon came to a halt at some deserted unnamed station, too inconsequential to stop at unless explicit orders were given or passengers present. Tang Wei made the airship circle above the station as we clung to the windows of the control room, which were both thinner and clearer than the ones in the engine room.

I looked through the windows as a chain of small black figures spilled out onto the snow, and Chiang Tse pointed them to Tang Wei. “Can you get to them?”

“Easy,” Tang Wei said. “Nothing but fields here.”

As the airship tilted toward the ground and descended, swooping lower and lower with every turn, the details of the procession below us resolved and grew clear. I saw Jack first: they had him in stocks, and I am ashamed to admit I felt a small prickling of relief. He was my friend, I reminded myself, there was no reason for me to fear him and certainly no reason to feel happy that his wrists were enclosed in a solid block of wood with his large, knobby fists protruding above it like two ugly growths on a tree trunk. It must have been hard to walk like this in the dead of the winter, when the wind howled and the ice dust in the air stung one’s cheeks and eyes like powdered glass.

His ankles were held together by a similar contraption — he moved very slowly and awkwardly, as the wooden block and the heavy chain winding about his ankles allowed him only a slow shuffle with steps no longer than a couple of inches. I wondered if he could still leap, if he could push the earth away from him with both of his feet, if his strength would be enough to let him soar even with such an awkward start.

Or maybe his legs were strong enough to displace the entire planet from its orbit, and for a moment I imagined Jack getting angry and hurling Earth into the dark cold recesses of dead space, away from the life-giving sun… I shook my head at such a foolish fantasy, and went to the passenger area, to wake up Eugenia and to notify her that a small-scale conflict with Britain was upon us and likely unavoidable.

They headed down the snow-covered trail leading away from the station — it was almost like Trubetskoye, like so many small anonymous villages that curled up within a mile of the station, all their roads leading to the nearest depot like the spokes on the wheel. A few more years, and my entire country would be like this — circles of hamlets surrounding the beating hearts of the stations, the rectangular wooden platform by the shining rails signifying progress.

The airship touched the ground lightly, like a butterfly landing on a flower; its wings, still flapping, raised clouds of snow, obscuring for a short while the English. They did not try to run — I didn’t suppose they would, with no other nearby cover than snow-covered platform. The locomotive had already departed, whistling its low forlorn note at a distance. And one’s will to escape would surely be somewhat sapped by the sight of a giant metal airship, painted as a dragon, descending from the sky.

I walked next to Chiang Tse and Kuan Yu, their flanking shoulders giving me strength and courage, with the rest of Chiang Tse’s retinue following closely behind, their swords drawn.

I was a little surprised to see Dame Nightingale — she was dressed in a long gray coat of the same cut and fabric as those of the men around her. Only her tall, laced boots with a small but noticeable heel bore any traces of femininity. I almost asked her where she had purchased them, before remembering myself.

“You,” she said in my direction. She did not sneer, exactly, but her voice was icy with contempt. The snow under her feet crunched, betraying her otherwise imperceptible shifting. “You don’t have to wear those boy’s clothes anymore — they don’t hide you that well.”

“Neither do yours.”

She smiled then. “It’s for convenience.”

“You’re just copying me.” I felt a small stirring of satisfaction warming my cheeks when I saw her flinch.

Dame Nightingale shook her head and smiled. “You can flatter yourself with whatever interesting ideas you have, but the truth is that Mr. Bartram here is a British citizen and is subject to the British crown, and your barbarian thugs can not help you.” She clucked her tongue, her long eyelashes casting a blue shadow over her porcelain-white face, spared even by the frost. “Really, Sasha — you should know better than attempt anything so foolish.”

“And yet you got off the train,” I said.

“We decided to choose less predictable mode of transportation,” she said. “Trains are nice, but the very fact that they run on schedule makes it difficult to work in an element of surprise — as you yourself must’ve noticed.”

I nodded. Despite my better judgment, I couldn’t help but feel a deep kinship with this tall woman, straight and strong as a pillar. I could even see her as a friend, should she have chosen a different occupation. “I’ve read your letters,” I said. Half-confession, half-desire to hurt, I wasn’t sure.

Her face turned scarlet — the color spread from her right cheek, as if I had slapped her. “And I’ve read yours,” she said through her teeth. “That fool”—a toss of her head indicated Jack—“had it on him. At least, now he knows that he was leaping and dancing for your amusement to little effect.” She turned away from me, to speak directly to Jack who was surrounded by a tight circle of men wearing gray coats and round hats. “How does it feel, hmm? You make a funny puppet, Jack — so long and gangly and silly looking. Surely, this girl had a good a laugh at your expense.”

It was my turn to flush deep crimson. This was not going in the direction I had hoped, and yet I found strength to meet Jack’s gaze.

He looked gaunter, longer, and his eyes had a haunted look about them, no doubt helped by the deep shadow of the stubble and the hollowed appearance of his temples. He looked back at me, his eyes dull and his face unmoving; then again, his chin was resting on top of a solid and likely frozen block of wood and his bare hands were blue from cold, so he would probably look miserable even if his heart wasn’t broken.

He licked his lips a few times, as if getting ready to speak.

“Careful,” I whispered. “If you wet your lips too much, they’ll chap.”

He smiled then, his lips cracking and blood seeping through the tiny fissures, slow as water under ice. “Too late for that,” he said. “I didn’t read your letter — I found it and I kept it to give back, and she was the one who read it and told me.”

“That was an appalling thing to do,” I told Nightingale. I’d have to explain the nonsense about letters to Chiang Tse at some point, but now was not the time for it.

She sneered in earnest then. “And what you did was right?”

“I read your letters for my country’s good and for the sake of peace, not some petty revenge,” I said. “Really, Dame Nightingale. I am disappointed in you.”

She jerked her shoulder in an exaggerated shrug. “Well then. Do you want to scold me some more, or can we continue? We are on a diplomatic mission.”

“Until Constantine expels you all as spies.”

“Until then. In any case, Mr. Bartram is one of us, and he will have to travel abroad with his countrymen. I’m afraid there simply isn’t much you can do about it, little girl.”

This was too much, the last insult was the nudge I needed to suddenly feel all the fatigue and fear and anger I had been denying myself during this journey; the dam that had been holding my feelings at bay — constructed from pure stubbornness and desperation — finally burst in a starry flash of red. I felt my hands closing into fists and my legs propelling me toward Nightingale even as my shoulder drew back and my arm swung in a wide arc, like that of a drunk and a lowlife. The anger felt delicious.

A sensation of metallic cold on my forehead jolted me back to my senses and I held back my fist, which was only inches away from Nightingale’s face. I saw the mother-of-pearl handle of Nightingale’s tiny pistol in great detail, down to tiny cracks cobwebbing one of the larger panels, and felt acutely its barrel pressing against my brow, cutting a cruel red circle into my skin. My anger could not find release and pounded inside me, like a wave on some oceanic shore, my impotent rage that could not even find a simple relief accessible to any tavern brawler. How I wished then to break that beautiful, haughty face, and the impossibility of doing so boiled in my eyes and spilled as tears.

“Well,” Nightingale said then. “Will you behave now?”

Out of the corner of my tearing eye I could see her left hand rise and motion to her entourage to stand by. “Yes,” I whispered. I had to struggle to meet Jack’s gaze, and shook my head ever so slightly. I saw his fists tensing too, and had no doubt that he could shatter his stocks if I gave a signal; surely he was strong enough. Only he would never endanger us — at least, that was what I was hoping for.

Jack gave a slightest nod that he understood, and I took a very slow step back, eager to end the contact between my flesh and Nightingale’s pistol. My forehead burned where the steel had touched it.

“There is nothing you can do,” Dame Nightingale said simply, and let her pistol arm hang limply along her side. “You are outnumbered, and your friend Bartram here knows as well as I do that if he tries any of his tricks, I will not hesitate to shoot you and your barbarians.”

“Unless we can bargain.” My mind, still clouded with anger, was starting to clear and to cast about for possible solutions.

Chiang Tse, quiet until then, stepped closer to me and whispered, “What do you mean?”

“The ship,” I whispered back. “Surely, you have more.”

“But… ” he started.

Nightingale looked at him, bored. “Dear boy,” she said. “Don’t worry. She doesn’t know what she speaks of. You have nothing we want. Rather, nothing we do not have.”

“That is not true,” Chiang Tse said. “I heard about the robbery in the Crane Club. You want our inventions.”

“We have some models,” Nightingale said, smiling. “Remember — we don’t really need anything from you; Britain won that war.” And yet, I noticed her eyes stray toward the dragon airship resting behind us, twin streams of steam coming from the symmetrical holes in the side of its hull and making the wings undulate up and down.

Chiang Tse noticed too: he hooked his thumb over his shoulder, pointing at the ship. “Not even that?”

“We do not want blueprints; we already have them.”

“Then it won’t make any difference,” I told Chiang Tse. “It’s only the matter of time before the British can build their own.”

Chiang Tse frowned. “But Sasha, we cannot give them such weapons. Our very survival—”

“—is a matter completely separate from the one at hand,” I interrupted. “Don’t you remember? You owe your life to this man, you owe him the very alliance between our countries.”

He shook his head, but then smiled, as if remembering something. “If you put it that way… What are matters of military security when you can save the man who risked so much for you?”

“Exactly!” I gave a quick sideways look to Nightingale. “If we have Jack on our side, the loss of one ship won’t matter.”

“I know there will be a war sooner or later,” Chiang Tse said, and looked at Jack with new appreciation. “I suppose he would be valuable.” He then turned to Nightingale. “Will you trade with us? That man for the airship. We’ll even provide an engineer to fly it.”

The English muttered among themselves.

“You won’t be in trouble?” I whispered to Chiang Tse.

He shrugged. “These things have a way of sorting themselves out.” He winked at me, amused at something I was missing.

Nightingale turned away from me for the first time since we got there, and consulted in lowered voice with her contingent. Her mind must have already been made up, for she didn’t pay attention to Jack, and he hobbled toward me.

“Jack,” I started.

He shook his head — rather wobbled it side to side, which was as much movement as his stocks allowed. “We’ll talk later,” he said. “I’m just glad to see that you are alive and well.”

“You too,” I said. “I wish they had not kept you in these wooden blocks.”

“Well, they bloody well had to, didn’t they?”

“You probably do not remember me,” Chiang Tse cut in.

“I do,” Jack said. “You are welcome.”

I could not believe that I had persuaded Chiang Tse to give up the airship — a beautiful, powerful machine — to his enemies. And yet, I couldn’t see another way; I only wished I would have the same clarity of vision every day of my life, the same ability to see through the conjecture and the imagined complications we tended to pile on top of everything, to see right to the heart of the matter: there was a man we both owed our lives to, and something we could trade for his salvation. It wasn’t even a difficult choice once you looked at it that way — and I was glad that Chiang Tse was able to see it my way.

I brushed an unbidden tear from my eyelashes. “I guess I better go to the airship and get my aunt and her things. Does anyone know when the next train arrives?”

“You’re close enough to Moscow,” Dame Nightingale said. “There is a train every hour or so. And do send your people to fetch the rest of your belongings from the ship — we are not thieves, we just want the airship.”

“You’re accepting our offer then?” Chiang Tse said.

“Of course. You didn’t think that he—” she gave another head toss in Jack’s direction—“is important, did you?”

“Of course he is,” I said. “He’s important to you, enough to chase him all the way to Siberia.”

Chiang Tse pulled on my sleeve. “Sasha,” he said mildly. “Let’s not prolong the pointless argument.”

“I am sorry,” I said to her. “We appreciate your willingness to negotiate.”

“I hope your engineer doesn’t mind taking us to St. Petersburg and then London,” she said. “It seems like the emperor has had quite a change of heart, and I fear that soon we won’t be welcome at his court.”

“Of course,” said Chiang Tse. “Wherever you have to go.”

I bit my tongue, said nothing, only nodded. “Do you have the key for those stocks?”

Nightingale tossed the jangling knot of keys to me. I fumbled the catch, and they sunk into the snow by my feet. I dropped to my knees, my reddened, clawed hands digging in the snow. Who knew how deep the snow was, how far those keys had fallen? I had my arms up to my shoulder in snow, when I heard Nightingale’s abrupt laugh. My fingers touched the steel and I drew a gigantic breath of relief.

“Don’t let him out until we’re gone,” she said. “And forgive us for not waiting.”

By the time I pulled the keys out of the snow, the steam of the airship had grown to two forceful streams. Aunt Eugenia and the rest of our companions had disembarked with speed that precluded dignity — I saw a man tumble in the snow, and recognized the engineer, Tang Wei.

I turned to Chiang Tse. “But he… ”

“We sent a different engineer,” Chiang Tse said as the English turned their backs on us in their hurry to get aboard.

I scanned the faces of the small crowd — my aunt, the diplomats, the crew… Kuan Yu was conspicuously missing, and I finally understood.

Jack waited patiently as I unlocked his chains and the locks. The wooden stocks split in half and tumbled to the ground, with a dull and splintering sound and the ship’s wings were beating violently, like those of a panicked butterfly.

Aunt Eugenia joined us. “What did I miss?” she asked. “The Englishmen and that terrible Nightingale woman have the ship — did you mean to do that?”

“Yes,” I said. “Don’t worry. Aunt Genia, you remember Jack? Jack Bartram? We saw him at the opera house.”

Jack stood in the snow, rubbing his wrists with an absent expression. I was starting to worry that he was damaged somehow, hurt beyond repair.

“Jack,” I whispered.

His eyes snapped open, and he smiled at Eugenia. “It is a pleasure,” he said, and shook the hand she offered.

“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Bartram,” she replied. “I suppose we can get acquainted on the train since Sasha and Chiang Tse gave away the airship.”

“Yes, they gave the airship… ” Jack’s voice drifted off and his eyes turned toward the ship, its wings unfurled, shuddering in anticipation of flight. It seemed alive now, breathing, almost the legendary creature itself come to life… I felt an acute pang of regret for letting Nightingale’s unclean hands touch such magic.

“Well, we’d best all get to the platform so the next train will stop for us.” Eugenia started striding across the desolate field, barely troughed by all the human movement to and fro. She seemed remarkably indifferent to the snow that was undoubtedly starting to melt in her shoes.

“Wait, Countess Menshova,” Chiang Tse called. “There’s still someone joining us.”

“But—” Aunt Eugenia never got a chance to finish her thought as the roaring of the airship grew deafening, and its wings, shrouded in the sparkling veil of snow, flapped faster as it rose higher and higher into the air.

And then Jack leapt.

Eugenia and Chiang Tse, and even the Taipings who had all seen Kuan Yu in action, gasped — even though Kuan Yu’s fighting was impressive, he could never leap so high. We watched Jack float up into the air, as high as the tallest tree in the forest, as high as the beating wings of the airship. He was vengeance personified, and already his gnarled blue fingers stretched, reaching, ready to tear the delicate wings of the ship and to pluck it out of the sky, like a cat leaping for an unsuspecting sparrow.

“Jack!” It was my own voice splitting the air, dry and strained like tearing of raw silk.

Impossibly, Jack stopped in the air — the momentum that carried him toward the airship ceased and he hovered there for a part of a second, a black gangly puppet against the light sky — just inches away from the ship — and then gravity took hold of him and he fell back to the trampled snow where the rest of our small group huddled close together, as the dragon airship glared golden in the sky, and the train whistled from far away.

“Wait,” Chiang Tse repeated, this time looking directly at Jack. “No sense in killing yourself in a pointless task.”

Jack, crouched down with the force of his landing, looked up, and straightened, slow and deliberate. “Pointless?”

“Jack, I think Chiang Tse means that Kuan Yu is flying the ship.”

“He seems to be doing a fine job,” Aunt Eugenia said.

“Kuan Yu? Our friend from the train?” Jack asked, confused. “I knew he was no ordinary fur trader, but surely he is not an engineer?”

“He isn’t.” I knew my satisfied expression befuddled Jack all the more, but I just could not contain my desire to tease him a little — after all, he did sent me on a chase after him.

The ship was now a mere gold coin against the sky, gaining distance. I strained my eyes until I saw a black speck, so small that I was not entirely sure I had seen it, detach from the ship and fall toward the Earth. “Look!” I called to Chaing Tse, pointing at the falling dot.

He smiled. “It is rare to find an ally who knows what you need him to do without ever asking. I would be a liar if I said I was not pleased with his admirable abilities.”

Despite the distance, as the speck approached the ground, I could see it was shaped like a tulip — or a man with a substantial amount of fabric spread above and around him, bracing and slowing his fall. “What of the ship?” I said.

Aunt Eugenia sighed. “Remember Tosno?”

I nodded, mute. The ship was so beautiful — it was beautiful still as it faltered and grew larger as it descended, as its wings hung limp. The steam no longer escaped from it, and I could only imagine the terror of the people trapped inside it — or rather, I tried not to. The golden ship wobbled one last time, and then plummeted somewhere into fields hidden from view by a narrow copse of bare aspens. Only a brief flash against the slowly darkening sky signaled its demise.

I turned to Jack. “I suppose you have your revenge.”

He shrugged. “It’s not proper revenge if you do not complete it yourself.”

“At least this way you survived. I’m glad you have.”

He nodded, looking unconvinced.

We shivered and waited for Kuan Yu to join us.