Ken Liu - Broken Stars

The sky brightened without fanfare. Sounds of shouting and fighting drifted in; the Song troops were trying to storm the city again. The residents of Jinyang had long since grown accustomed to this, and no one took note.

A guard came to deliver breakfast. Zhu Dagun took the bowl of porridge and looked him over carefully, only to realize he’d only paid attention to the lantern, the torch, and the fire-oil lamp the previous night. He couldn’t remember what the guards looked like at all and was unable to tell which faction this guard hailed from.

Zhu Dagun ate the porridge and sat for a while, doing nothing. The clamor of the morning crowd arose outside. A throng of burly men dressed in East City Institute uniforms flooded into the courtyard.

The guards took Zhu Dagun out into the yard. A man with a yellow beard covering his face walked up and greeted him. “I serve Prince Lu. By his mercy, prisoners here only need to be willing to work for the Institute to obtain pardon for their crime. Your charges aren’t too severe. Just sign here and you’ll be cleared.” The man took out paper and a writing implement. Instead of a brush, the instrument was a goose feather dipped in ink—before Prince Lu, who would have thought that you could pull a feather from a bird, soak it in lye, sharpen the tip, and write with such a thing?

Zhu Dagun automatically reached for the feather, but Yellow-Beard drew it back. “But right now, His Highness needs someone of unusual capabilities and skills. First tell me, are you knowledgeable in alchemy? I’ll be blunt, you look like the genteel, bookish sort, so don’t try to sell yourself for more than you’re worth.”

Zhu Dagun quickly dredged up a speech. “I’ve been studying the Kinship of Three since childhood under the guidance of my father. I am thoroughly versed in the ways of Dayi, Huanglao, and the forging flame. Heaven and Earth are my cauldron, water and fire are my ingredients, and yin and yang are my complements. I know when to stoke the flames and when to bank the embers. In my life I’ve refined one hundred and twenty pills of shining gold and imbibed them daily. Although I have not ascended to the ranks of enlightened immortals, my body has become light, nimble and impervious to disease. The pills have the power to cultivate the spirit and extend life.” To demonstrate the effectiveness of the golden pills, he sprang up and did two backflips in midair, then grabbed an eighty-pound stone drum lying in the yard. After lifting it above his head and tossing it from hand to hand, he threw it to the ground, where it landed with a thud. He dusted off his hands, his breathing unhurried, his face unchanged in color.

Yellow-Beard stared; his men started to clap. The guard standing behind him sneaked a thumbs up, upon which Zhu Dagun knew that this was Ma Feng’s agent.

“Excellent, excellent! We’ve found a real treasure today.” Yellow-Beard laughed and opened the small bamboo case at his waist. He dipped the goose quill in ink and handed it over. “Sign here, and you’ll belong to the East City Institute. We’re going straight to Prince Lu.”

Zhu Dagun signed his name as directed. Yellow-Beard ordered the guards to unfasten the manacles around his ankles, bowed all around to the prison staff, and left the courtyard with his retinue. He and his men escorted Zhu Dagun for half an hour before arriving at a large residence complex, both sprawling in area and dense with buildings. The blue-garbed guards at the gate smiled when they saw Yellow-Beard. “Got the goods? It’s been peaceful lately. We haven’t had any new people join in a while.”

“I know. Prince Lu was frantic about finding an alchemist to help him out,” replied Yellow-Beard. “We’ve finally taken care of that.”

A crowd was gathered in front of the gate: imperial messengers, merchants, government officials in search of glory by association, commoners seeking aid in redressing wrongs done to them, craftsmen bringing their own inventions in the hopes of an audience, idlers trying to return the novelties they purchased after they grew bored, laborers looking for work, prostitutes looking for clients. The guard recorded them one by one in his ledger, gently refusing, reporting, and chasing off with a stick as appropriate. If he saw anyone he was uncertain about, he went ahead and took the bribe, then told them to try their luck again in a few days. He was quite orderly and methodical in this work.

Yellow-Beard led his men into the compound. The courtyard was a different scene: behind a privacy wall was an immense pool of water, in the middle of which a geyser rose more than ten feet tall before majestically splashing down.

“Normally the fountain is powered by the water turbine from Central City, but with the Song army regularly trying to storm the city, we need the turbine to power the gliding carts, catapults, and capstans,” Yellow-Beard explained. “So instead the fountain mechanisms run on manpower. We have several dozen unskilled laborers in the Institute, whose only trade is doing heavy lifting, nothing like a white collar fellow like you.” Zhu Dagun had never heard of the strange words he used, so he simply looked where Yellow-Beard pointed. Indeed, he saw five dull-eyed, muscular fellows to the side, stepping on pedals that went up and down. The pedals drove rotors, the rotors churned a water tank, and the tank valves opened and shut, pumping water high into the air.

They went around the fountain and through an archway to enter the second partition of the courtyard. A dozen or so workshops stood to either side. Yellow-Beard said, “We build the flashlights, sunglasses, clockwork toys, microphones, magnifying glasses, and other things we sell in the city here. Institute staff get a fifty percent discount, and a lot of these gadgets are hard to find in the market. You should come check them out when you get a chance.”

As they spoke, they went through a third partition. Heavy, gleaming fire-oil carriage components lay everywhere under a high awning. A piece of heavy machinery puffed away, spewing white smoke and rapidly turning a carriage wheel. Several oil-stained craftsmen were engaged in an animated discussion full of strange words like “cylinder pressure,” “ignition timing,” and “steam saturation.” Two carpenters were hammering together a carriage framework. Several dozen large barrels of fire-oil stood in a corner of the yard, filling the air with their simultaneously aromatic and noxious smell. Fire-oil came from the island of Hainan and was originally used to douse attackers in flames during a siege, before it found myriad uses in Prince Lu’s hands. Yellow-Beard said, “All the fire-oil carriages running about in Jinyang were built here. They make up more than half the Institute’s income. The newest model will be released soon. It’s called Elong Musk—for the long-lasting fragrance of fire-oil after the vehicle darts out of sight. Even the name sounds fast!”

They continued walking, entering a fourth partition. This place was even stranger. There was constantly some shrill squeaking noise, or the crackle of an explosion, or an odd taste to the air, or colorful flashes of light. “This is the Institute’s research lab,” Yellow-Beard said. “Our prince gets a new idea a minute, and then our craftsmen try to follow up on his ideas and make them a reality. It’s best not to linger here; there are lots of accidents.”

On the walk here, the other members of their group had gradually dispersed, so that Yellow-Beard and Zhu Dagun were alone by the time they entered the fifth partition. Blue-garbed guards stood at the gateway; Yellow-Beard took out a pass, spoke a code phrase, and wrote down several passwords on a piece of paper; only then were they let inside. Hearing that Zhu Dagun was the newly arrived alchemist, the guards patted him down head to toe. Fortunately, he’d hidden the imperial edict in the rafters of his prison cell and tucked the dagger into his topknot. Zhu Dagun had a big head, covered in a black silk cap with jutting fabric ears in the back. A guard snatched off his cap, but only saw a bulging bun of yellowish hair, and didn’t look more carefully. On the other hand, the copy of the Analects they found in his sleeve pouch roused suspicion. They looked him up and down, then flipped through the book. “What’s an alchemist doing with this?”