The Kingdom, Page 2

  “I didn’t want to frighten you. Worry not. We still have time.”

  Francesco raised a flattened hand to shield his eyes from the sun and studied the approaching cloud. Distances were deceptive here, he had learned. The vastness of the Qing Empire lay far behind the horizon. In the two years they’d spent in this country, Francesco and his brother had seen a wild variety of terrain—from jungles to forests to deserts—but of all of them, this place, this territory that seemed to have a dozen different pronunciations and spellings, was the most godforsaken.

  Comprised mostly of hills, some rolling and some jagged, the land was a vast canvas painted in only two colors: brown and gray. Even the water of rivers that gushed through the valleys was a dull gray. It was as though God had cursed this place with a swipe of his mighty hand. On days when the clouds parted, the startlingly blue sky seemed only to accent the ashen landscape.

  And then there was the wind, Francesco thought with a shudder. The seemingly endless wind that whistled through the rocks and drove eddies of dust along the ground that seemed so animated the locals often treated the phenomena like ghosts come to snatch away their souls. Six months ago, Francesco, a scientist by nature and training, had scoffed at such superstitions. Now he wasn’t so sure. He had heard too many strange sounds in the night.

  Another few days, he consoled himself, and we will have the resources we need. But it wasn’t simply a matter of time, was it? He was making a bargain with the devil. The fact that he was doing it for the larger good was something he hoped God would remember when Judgment Day came.

  He studied the approaching wall of dust a few seconds more before lowering his hand and turning to Giuseppe. “They are still twenty miles away,” he estimated. “We have another hour, at least. Come, let us finish.”

  Francesco turned back around and shouted to one of the men, a squat, powerful figure in a roughly woven black tunic and trousers. Hao, Francesco’s primary liaison and translator, jogged over.

  “Yes, sire!” he said in heavily accented but passable Italian.

  Francesco sighed. Though he’d long ago given up trying to get Hao to call him by his first name, he had hoped that at least by now the man would have ceased with the formality.

  “Tell the men to finish quickly. Our guest will be arriving soon.”

  Hao cast an eye to the horizon and saw what Giuseppe had pointed out a few minutes earlier. His eyes widened. He nodded curtly, said, “It will be done, sire!” then turned around and began barking orders to the dozens of local men milling around the hilltop clearing. He scurried off to join in.

  The clearing, which measured a hundred paces square, was in fact the roof of a gompa’s interior courtyard. On all sides of the clearing, its turreted walls and watchtowers followed the hill’s ridges down to the valley floor like spines on a lizard’s back.

  While Francesco had been told a gompa was primarily a fortified center for education, the residents of this particular stronghold seemed to practice only one profession: soldiering. And for that, he was grateful. As evidenced by the frequent raids and skirmishes that took place on the plains below, it was clear he and his men were living on this realm’s frontier. It was no accident that they had been transported here to complete work on the machine—what their benefactor had dubbed the Great Dragon.

  The clearing now echoed with the overlapping pounding of mallets on wood as Hao’s workers hurried to drive the final stakes into the rocky soil. All across the clearing, plumes of brown dust rose into the air, only to be caught by the wind and whipped into nothingness. After another ten minutes the mallets fell silent. Hao scrambled back to where Francesco and Giuseppe stood.

  “We are done, sire.”

  Francesco backed up a few steps and admired the structure. He was pleased. Designing it on paper was one thing; to see it come to life was something else altogether.

  Standing forty feet tall, occupying three-quarters of the clearing, and constructed of snow-white silk, with curved exterior bamboo braces painted blood red, the tent seemed like a castle built of clouds.

  “Well done,” Francesco told Hao. “Giuseppe?”

  “Magnificent,” the younger Lana de Terzi murmured.

  Francesco nodded, and said softly, “Now, let us hope what is inside is even more impressive.”

  Though the gompa’s hawkeyed lookouts had certainly spotted the visitors approaching even before Giuseppe had, the alert horns did not sound until the retinue was but minutes away. This, as well as the riders’ direction of approach and early arrival, was a tactical decision, Francesco guessed. Most of the enemy’s outposts lay to the west. By coming in from the east, the party’s dust cloud would be obscured by the hill on which the gompa sat. This way, roving ambush parties would have no time to intercept the new arrivals. Knowing their benefactor as he did, Francesco suspected they had been covertly watching the gompa from a distance, waiting for the wind direction to change and enemy patrols to move on.

  A cunning man, their patron, Francesco reminded himself. Cunning and dangerous.

  Less than ten minutes later Francesco heard the crunching of leather and armored boots on the spiral gravel path below the clearing. Swirling dust rose above the rock-lined border of the clearing. Then, suddenly, silence. Though Francesco was expecting it, what came next startled him all the same.

  With a single barked command from an unseen mouth, a cadre of two dozen Home Guard soldiers double-timed into the clearing, each syncopated footstep punctuated by a rhythmic grunt. Grim-faced, eyes fixed on the horizon, their pikes held horizontally before them, the guards spread out through the clearing and began herding the awestruck workers to its far side and out of sight behind the tent. Once done, they took up stations along the clearing’s perimeter, spaced at regular intervals, facing outward, pikes held diagonally across their bodies.

  Again from the path below, another guttural command, followed by armored sandals crunching on gravel. A diamond-shaped formation of royal bodyguards in red-and-black bamboo armor marched into the clearing and headed directly toward where Francesco and Giuseppe stood. The phalanx stopped suddenly, and the soldiers foreside stepped to the left and right, opening a human gate, through which a single man strode.

  Standing three hand widths taller than his tallest soldiers, the Kangxi Emperor, the Ruler of the Qing Dynasty, the Regent of the Mandate of Heaven, wore an expression that made the grimness of his soldiers’ faces seem positively exuberant.

  The Kangxi Emperor took three long strides toward Francesco and came to a stop. Through squinted eyes, he studied the Italian’s face for several seconds before speaking. Francesco was about to call for Hao to translate, but the man was already there, standing at his elbow and whispering in his ear: “The Emperor says, ‘Are you surprised to see me?’”

  “Surprised, yes, but pleased nonetheless, Your Majesty.”

  The question was not a casual inquiry, Francesco knew. The Kangxi Emperor was paranoid in the extreme; had Francesco not seemed sufficiently surprised at the Emperor’s early arrival he would have fallen under immediate suspicion of being a spy.

  “What is this structure I see before me?” the Kangxi Emperor asked.

  “It is a tent, Your Majesty, of my own design. It serves not only to protect the Great Dragon but also to shield it from prying eyes.”

  The Kangxi Emperor nodded curtly. “You will provide the plans to my personal secretary.” With a raised fingertip, he commanded the secretary to step forward.

  Francesco said, “Of course, Your Majesty.”

  “The slaves I provided you have performed adequately?”

  Francesco winced inwardly at the Emperor’s question but said nothing. Over the past six months he and Giuseppe had worked and lived with these men under hardship conditions. They were friends now. He did not confess this aloud, however. Such an emotional attachment would be a lever the Emperor would not hesitate to use.

  “They have performed admirably, Your Majesty. Sadly, though, four of them
died last week when—”

  “That is the way of the world, death. If they died in service to their King, their ancestors will greet them with pride.”

  “My foreman and translator, Hao, has been especially invaluable.”

  The Kangxi Emperor flicked his eyes at Hao, then back to Francesco. “The man’s family will be released from prison.” The Emperor raised his finger above his shoulder; the personal secretary made a notation on the parchment he cradled in his arms.

  Francesco took a deep, calming breath and smiled. “Thank you, Your Majesty, for your kindness.”

  “Tell me: When will the Great Dragon be ready?”

  “Another two days will—”

  “You have until dawn tomorrow.”

  With that, the Kangxi Emperor turned on his heel and strode back into the phalanx, which closed in behind him, did a synchronized about-face, and marched from the clearing, followed moments later by the Home Guard soldiers from around the perimeter. Once the clomp of footsteps and the rhythmic grunting faded away, Giuseppe said, “Is he crazy? Tomorrow at dawn. How can we—”

  “We will make it,” Francesco replied. “With time to spare.”

  “How?”

  “We have only a few more hours of work left. I told the Emperor two days, knowing he would demand the seemingly impossible. This way, we can give it to him.”

  Giuseppe smiled. “You are a crafty one, brother. Well done.”

  “Come, let us put the finishing touches on this Great Dragon.”

  Under the glow of pole-mounted torches and the watchful gaze of the Emperor’s personal secretary, who stood just inside the tent’s entrance, arms folded inside his tunic, they worked through the night with Hao, their ever-reliable foreman, playing his part perfectly, haranguing the men to hurry, hurry, hurry. Francesco and Giuseppe did their part as well, walking through the tent, asking questions, bending down here and there to inspect this or that . . .

  Ox-sinew guylines were unlashed, reknotted, then checked for tension; bamboo stays and cross braces were sounded with mallets to search for cracks; silk was closely examined for the slightest imperfections; the rattan-woven undercarriage underwent a mock attack with sharpened sticks to gauge its battle-readiness (finding it lacking, Francesco ordered another coat of black lacquer be applied to the walls and bulwarks); and finally the artist Giuseppe had hired finished the bow mural: a dragon’s snout, complete with beaded eyes, bared fangs, and a protruding forked tongue.

  As the sun’s upper rim rose above the hills to the east, Francesco ordered that all work be quickly finished. Once this was done, he slowly circled the machine from bow to stern. Hands on his hips, head tilting this way and that, Francesco studied the ship’s every surface, its every feature, looking for the slightest flaw. He found none. He returned to the bow and gave the Emperor’s personal secretary a firm nod.

  The man ducked under the tent flap and disappeared.

  An hour later came the now familiar clomping and grunting of the Emperor’s retinue. The sound seemed to fill the clearing before suddenly falling silent. Now dressed in a simple gray silk tunic, the Kangxi Emperor stepped though the tent’s entrance, followed by his personal secretary and his chief bodyguard.

  The Emperor stopped in his tracks, eyes wide.

  In the two years he had known the Emperor, this was the first time Francesco had seen the potentate taken aback.

  With the sun’s pinkish orange light streaming through the tent’s white silken walls and roof, the interior was bathed in an otherworldly glow. The normally earthen floor had been covered in jet-black rugs that left the attendees feeling as though they were standing at the edge of an abyss.

  Scientist though he was, Francesco Lana de Terzi had a bit of showman in him.

  The Kangxi Emperor stepped forward—unconsciously hesitating as his foot touched the edge of the black rug—then strode to the bow, where he gazed at the dragon’s face. Now he smiled.

  This was another first for Francesco. He’d never seen the Emperor without his characteristic dour expression.

  The Emperor spun to face Francesco. “It is magnificent!” came Hao’s translation. “Unleash her!”

  “At your command, Majesty.”

  Once outside, Francesco’s men took their stations around the tent. At his command, the tent’s guylines were cut. Weighted along their upper hems, as Francesco had designed them, the silken walls collapsed straight down. Simultaneously, on the rear side of the tent, a dozen men heaved the tent’s roof backward, which rose up and billowed open like a great sail before being hauled down and out of sight.

  All was silent save the wind whipping through the gompa’s turreted walls and windows.

  Standing alone in the center of the clearing was the Kangxi Emperor’s flying machine, the Great Dragon. Francesco cared nothing for this moniker; while he of course humored his benefactor, to Francesco the scientist the machine was merely a prototype for his dream: a true lighter-than-air Vacuum Ship.

  Measuring fifty feet long, twelve feet wide, and thirty feet tall, the ship’s upper structure was comprised of four spheres of thick silk contained inside cages of finger-thin bamboo braces and animal sinew. Running from bow to stern, each sphere measured twelve feet in diameter and was equipped with a valve port in its belly; each of these ports was connected to a vertical copper stovepipe engirdled in its own lattice of bamboo and sinew. From the valve port, the stovepipe descended four feet to a thin bamboo plank to whose bottom was affixed a wind-shielded charcoal brazier. And finally, affixed by sinew to the spheres above, was the black-lacquered rattan gondola, long enough to accommodate ten soldiers in a line, along with supplies, equipment, and weapons, as well as a pilot and navigator.

  The Kangxi Emperor strode forward alone until he was standing beneath the fore sphere, facing the dragon’s mouth. He raised his hands above his head as though he were beholding, Francesco thought, his own creation.

  It was at this moment that the gravity of what he’d done hit him. A wave of sadness and shame washed over him. Truly, he had made a pact with the devil. This man, this cruel monarch, was going to use his Great Dragon to murder other human beings, soldiers and civilians alike.

  Armed with huŏ yào, or gunpowder, a substance that Europe was only now using with moderate success and which China had long ago mastered, the Kangxi Emperor would be able to rain fire down upon his enemies using matchlock muskets, bombs, and fire-spitting devices. He could do all of this while out of reach in the sky and moving faster than the swiftest horse.

  The truth had come too late, Francesco realized. The death machine was in the Kangxi Emperor’s hands now. There was no changing that. Perhaps if he were able to make a success of his true Vacuum Ship, Francesco could balance out the evil to come. Of course, he would know that only on Judgment Day.

  Francesco was shaken from his reverie as he realized the Kangxi Emperor was standing before him. “I am pleased,” the Emperor informed him. “Once you have shown my generals how to build more of these, you will have all you require to pursue your own venture.”

  “Majesty.”

  “Is it ready to fly?”

  “Give the command and it will be done.”

  “It is given. But first, a change. As planned, Master Lana de Terzi, you will pilot the Great Dragon on her test flight. Your brother will remain here with us.”

  “Pardon me, Majesty. Why?”

  “Why, to ensure you return, of course. And to save you when you are tempted to hand over the Great Dragon to my enemies.”

  “Majesty, I would not—”

  “And now we will be certain you will not.”

  “Majesty, Giuseppe is my copilot and navigator. I need him—”

  “I have eyes and ears everywhere, Master Lana de Terzi. Your vaunted foreman, Hao, is as well trained as your brother. Hao will accompany you—along with six of my Home Guard, should you need . . . assistance.”

  “I must protest, Majesty—”

  “You must not,
Master Lana de Terzi,” the Kangxi Emperor replied coldly. The warning was clear.

  Francesco took a calming breath. “Where will you have me go on this test flight?”

  “Do you see the mountains to the south, the great ones touching the heavens?”

  “I do.”

  “You will travel there.”

  “Your Majesty, that is enemy territory!”

  “What better test for a weapon of war?” Francesco opened his mouth to protest, but the Kangxi Emperor continued. “In the foothills, along the streams, you will find a golden flower—Hao knows the one I mean. Bring that flower back to me before it wilts and you will be rewarded.”

  “Your Majesty, those mountains are”—Forty miles away, Francesco thought. Perhaps fifty—“too far for a maiden voyage. Perhaps—”

  “You will bring the flower back to me before it wilts or I will mount your brother’s head on a spike. Do you understand?”

  “I understand.”

  Francesco turned to his younger brother. Having heard the entire exchange, Giuseppe’s face had gone ashen. His chin trembled. “Brother, I . . . I’m scared.”

  “No need. I’ll be back before you know it.”

  Giuseppe took a breath, set his jaw, and squared his shoulders. “Yes. I know you are right. The craft is a wonder, and there is no one better at piloting it. With luck, we’ll be sharing dinner together tonight.”

  “Good spirit,” Francesco said.

  They embraced for several seconds before Francesco pulled away. He turned to face Hao, and said, “Order the braziers stoked. We lift off in ten minutes!”

  1

  SUNDA STRAIT, SUMATRA,

  THE PRESENT DAY

  Sam Fargo eased back on the throttle, taking the engine to idle. The speedboat slowed, gliding to a stop in the water. He shut off the engines, and the craft began rocking gently from side to side.

  A quarter mile off the bow their destination rose from the water, a thickly forested island whose interior was dominated by sharp peaks, plummeting valleys, and thick rain forest; below these, a shoreline pockmarked with hundreds of pocket coves and narrow inlets.