Arturo Serrano - To Climates Unknown - An Alternate History of a World Without America

With a gesture, she led him into the alleyway, letting him walk in front of her because she knew what was coming. They were just out of the line of sight from the street when she positioned her feet for a quick turn. Then she felt a hand on her shoulder.

“What’s the hurry?” said a man’s voice.

Bending her torso to free her shoulder, she turned on her heel, faced her follower and grabbed the base of his forearm, extending a finger to press a sensitive spot between the bones of the elbow joint. “Leave,” she warned.

Two more men ran to join the first, who closed his free hand and aimed a jab at Xiaobo’s jaw. With a shove from her grasping hand, she forced him to turn, sending his fist over her shoulder and scraping it on the wall.

As he retreated in pain and the other two struggled to move past him, she took a step back and assessed her chances. The next hit missed her head entirely as she threw herself to the ground, rolling into a crouch. The second assailant, surprised at the move, approached her with the intent to land a kick, believing he had thrown her down.

He was wrong. That was her fighting stance.

She proceeded to confuse her attackers, shifting her low position with impossible flexibility in the narrow space of the alleyway, pivoting on her arms or rolling on her back so she ended up always beyond or between or behind or below their attempts to strike. She rolled on the floor and around their legs with expert precision, keeping her torso down and extending her arms to block their fists and throw them at one another, twisting their limbs or pushing their joints so they wasted momentum, inserting her feet between theirs to lock their motion and sweep them off balance, constantly repositioning herself to stay vexingly out of their range of motion. It should not be possible to fight while lying down, but with that style she comfortably threw each of them headfirst at the walls until they all lay unconscious and bleeding.

She rose to her feet and checked on the man from Japan. She was about to ask him how he was, but the way he was staring at her cut off that line of conversation. That look was known to her. Even if he hadn’t recognized her official robes, he’d heard her voice, and now showed the typical embarrassment of a man who knew he owed his life to a eunuch.

“Just be glad it ended,” she muttered as she led the way toward the safehouse. A moment later, upon hearing no footsteps from him, she turned back and grabbed his shoulders. “A man bred like you was probably trained to fight, but you don’t have your sword and you haven’t eaten. So stop sulking and come.” The suspicion that he might be an agent from the Shōgun sent to launch an attack against the Emperor of China now seemed unfounded to her, but she still felt curious for his story. With a resigned sigh, Xiaobo added, “My name is Ma Liang. I work for the Great Ming. If you are not an enemy of China, you have nothing to fear from me.” He kept looking at the ground in silence, and her patience was nearing its limit. “Can you at least tell me why you were brought here?”

With his gaze still pointed downward, he said, “You didn’t kick them.” Then she realized he was looking at her padded shoes.

She stepped back, feeling unmasked. “Why would that matter?”

“You’re right that I’m in no condition to defend myself. But in Japan we, too, know something of fighting styles.” He pointed at the three men slowly bleeding to death in the alleyway. “They gave you plenty of openings where the most efficient move for you would have been a kick. And every time, you refused that option.”

She resorted to outrage to try to deflect his chain of thought. “It’s bold of you to presume to give lessons to the one who fended off your muggers.”

He looked up. “I apologize for my thoughtless words. You have done a great good to me, and the rest of my years will be lived in debt to you. But I know what the Chinese do to women’s feet.” He paused, wishing he could avoid the sentence that followed. “I think you aren’t really a eunuch.”

She replied with automatic coldness, “What I am is of no consequence to you.”

“I’m not Chinese, and I was able to figure it out. I’m sure anyone in this country who sees how you fight can make the same conclusion I did.”

She pointed at the bodies behind them. “Anyone unlucky enough to find out how I fight can’t reveal anything.” Then she drew her eyes closer to his. “And anyone unwise enough to say a word will find out how I fight.”

“I wasn’t planning to betray you.”

“Are you coming with me, then? Out here, your elegant clothes won’t take long to engender more greed.”

“I don’t know where you want to take me. Where I need to go is back to Japan.”

“Not happening,” she said as she resumed walking. “Whoever you crossed in Liuqiu doesn’t want to see you.”

“It makes no sense! I saved the king!”

That made her stop. Very slowly she turned back to him, not sure how to take that news. “What do you mean exactly?”

“The king of the Ryūkyūs was near death, but I arrived just in time to save him.”

“How?” Her voice had acquired an urgency that he, in his indignation, didn’t perceive. “How did you save the king? How did you know what to do? How sick was he?”

“It was the will of the Heavenly Lord.”

That turn of phrase knocked at a door in her memory. “The Portuguese speak like that. Are you saying you can beseech their god?”

As soon as he nodded, she searched within her clothes until she drew out a wooden badge with words carved in black ink. “You’re coming with me. Your arrival in this town has become a matter of state.” She resumed walking, holding him by the arm in a practiced manner he recognized as difficult to wiggle out of.

“Why? What do you want with me? Who are you?”

She showed him her badge again. “I work for the Eastern Bureau, and that means you’ll do as I say.”

“What’s an Eastern Bureau?”

“The Emperor’s secret police. I’ll have to send a letter to the capital, advising they stop whatever they’re doing, which should buy us some time while we get there.”

“Won’t you tell me what’s happening?”

Without stopping, she replied, “I received a message today. The Emperor of China lies on his deathbed, and you seem to have a talent for saving sovereigns. You and I are making a visit to the Forbidden City.”

Night, September 29 (Gregorian), 1620

Beijing

Secret police agent Ma Xiaobo, operating under the guise of Ma Liang, was summoned to the office of her superior after her botched attempt to smuggle an unallowed foreigner into the Palace of Heavenly Purity by using her authority as a member of the secret police to sneak by the closed gates of the city. At every level, the Eastern Bureau was managed by government eunuchs, but here the officer in charge of the institution—Wei Zhongxian, Chief Eunuch of the Great Ming—was the superior of all her superiors, responsible for thousands of spies across the empire and, in every way that mattered, the most powerful man in China.

She bowed and sat before him, waiting for him to speak first. As far as she recalled, they had only rarely spoken directly to each other, when she’d had to deliver a message of a sensitive nature in the capital. Most of the time, he was busy enough chasing traitors in the complex of administrative buildings that formed the Forbidden City. The way he stared at her across the desk was unmistakable: he had more serious matters to think of, and she should be prepared to offer an acceptable excuse to merit his attention.

“Agent Ma Liang, I have just wasted hours of work reviewing your assignment history. The picture that this office has of you is that of an efficient, resourceful, and loyal member. Did we miss a side of you that you were hiding until now?”