The younger Lana de Terzi whispered nervously, “Is it a storm?”
“Of sorts,” Francesco replied. “But not the kind you mean.” Behind that dust cloud was not another wind-whipped sandstorm, the kind they’d grown so accustomed to over the last six months, but rather hundreds of pounding horses’ hooves. And atop the horses, hundreds of elite and deadly soldiers.
Francesco gave Giuseppe a reassuring clap on the shoulder. “Do not worry, brother, I have been expecting them—though, I admit, not this early.”
“It is him?” Giuseppe croaked. “He is coming? You did not tell me that.”
“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.