Chapter 1
Wouldn’t it be nice to spend forever accompanied by the silence of the seas?
The thought floated through Aihui Ying’s mind as she lounged inside her tiny vessel, a bubble-like capsule big enough for one, staring through the yun-mu glass window at the schools of fish swimming by.
Down here, there was no ruckus from playful children or irate market vendors, no whirring of airship propellers or horns from docking ships, not even the cry of a condor or the rushing of waves against the shore. Just peace. Silence.
She found herself yearning for such pockets of quiet these days, which was why she sped up work on her latest creation, affectionately nicknamed the Octopus. It was a submersible craft propelled by the mechanical undulations of bronze tentacles, fitted with a kaen-gas bag that functioned like a fish’s swim bladder. From afar, it looked exactly like its namesake—a giant, golden octopus.
Ever since she helped old Eidu fix a retractable fishing net onto his rickety boat so he would no longer have to cast nets by hand, she had received daily visitors at her front door clamoring for assistance with trivial tasks, believing that engineering would be the solution to all their woes. For the most part Ying was happy to help, but the constant fuss that invaded her life also meant that she barely had space to think. Or to indulge in haw candy.
She took a large bite out of the candied fruit on its bamboo skewer, letting the sweet and sour flavors explode in her mouth.
“Mmm.”
Best haw candy across the nine isles.
Unfortunately, such tranquility was destined to be short-lived.
Moments later, the very important guests that she had been waiting for showed up in a burst of whitish sea-foam, kicking up a cloud of bubbles with their graceful tails. A pod of bearded seals out on the hunt—not expecting that today, they would be the hunted.
Through the glass she saw someone waving at her from another Octopus, trying to catch her attention. He pointed down at the vessel’s control board, signaling that it was time for them to conduct their test.
“I’ve barely made it halfway through my candy,” Ying grumbled. Reluctantly, she tossed her skewer aside, focusing on the myriad buttons and levers in front of her. Maneuvering a wooden control shaft, Ying carefully repositioned her vessel so it was facing the approaching herd, then she pulled down the periscope and peered through the glass. Her index finger readied upon a button the size of a weiqi piece.
One, two—
“Damn.”
A harpoon fired from the concealed hatch on the neighboring Octopus, its glinting silver tip completely missing its mark. The frightened seal herd scattered.
Glaring out through the yun-mu window, she pointed one accusatory finger at her incompetent companion, then reached for the lever that controlled the vessel’s gas bladder, shoving it down to inflate the sack. The Octopus slowly rose, eventually bursting through the water’s surface. She steered the golden orb toward the shore, popping open the exit hatch and hopping out once she hit land. Clutching a coarse rope, she dragged her Octopus over to a makeshift wooden shelter a little farther up the shore, where a neat row of three other orbs sat in wait.
“Ying, I’m sorry!”
A tall young man with a healthy bronze tan and nimble limbs clambered out of his own vessel. Dragging his Octopus along the sand, he jogged to catch up with her, the long braid on his half-shaven head bobbing as he went.
“It was an accident. I know I should have waited for your cue, but my finger slipped! I really didn’t mean to mess things up,” he apologized.
“I already said that you didn’t have to come with me.”
“It’s safer that way. The seas are unpredictable.” The boy wrangled the rope out of her hands, taking over the chore of parking both their vessels. “I promise I won’t make the same mistake the next time.”
“What makes you think there’ll be a next time?” Ying muttered, rolling her eyes.
Jangmu Feng-kai was considerate to the point of being utterly exasperating, so she couldn’t be angry with him even if she wanted to. She had tried to provoke him into losing his temper several times to no avail. Compared to the boys back on her home isle of Huarin, or those she had known in the Engineers Guild, Feng-kai was genuinely the most accommodating, thoughtful, and mild-mannered person she had ever met. She should consider herself lucky to be matched with such a fine specimen of a boy—at least that was what everyone deigned to remind her of on a daily basis.
Two years ago, after the debacle of her running off to Fei and enrolling in the prestigious Engineers Guild, her older brother, Wen, had been furious. He hadn’t spoken to her for a full three months after she returned to Huarin, and he locked her in her ger to reflect on her mistakes. Then the Jangmu clan of Larut came knocking with an unexpected request—for Ying’s hand in marriage.
If she had continued to stay on Huarin, she knew that Wen would force her to marry eventually, and she was certainly not entering into any political marriage like her brother wanted. If she had to leave, then she would leave on her own terms. So here she was on the isle of Larut, engaged to Feng-kai, her childhood acquaintance and the son of one of her father’s closest friends.
Perhaps it was A-ma watching over her from above, helping her to spread her wings and fly once more. Or to run away. The memory of her father’s loss still brought an ache to her heart. Time had slowly mended those wounds, but the scars would always remain.
Ying sat herself down on the soft sand and turned her gaze toward the open sea, glistening a brilliant azure blue under the sun’s illumination. She had once stood beside another boy upon the city walls of Fei and admired these same seas, and he had promised her the world. Funny how she could still remember that moment as if it were yesterday.
Ye-yang used to write to her every now and then, but she had burned every letter without reading them. It hurt to see his familiar brushstrokes on each envelope, reminding her of his betrayal. The letters stopped after the announcement of her engagement to Feng-kai nine months back, as she thought they might.
Was he angry? she sometimes wondered.
In the initial days, she had feared that he would show up on Huarin and take her back to Fei, but her worries were unfounded. Even up till the day she set sail for Larut, Ye-yang didn’t appear. Why would he? He was the High Commander of the Antaran isles now, and there were far more pressing issues that needed his attention.
“A-ma’s getting impatient. He’s been asking after the progress of the Octopus,” Feng--kai said, walking over to join her. His sunny expression turned somber. “More and more fishermen are refusing to go out to sea because of the pirates.
”The recent surge in pirate attacks on fishing vessels was causing great anxiety to Feng-kai’s father—the clan chief. Piracy had always been a problem in the Dunzhu Straits, the strip of sea that lay between the nine isles and the Qirin empire, but the situation had worsened ever since the former High Commander, Aogiya Lianzhe, passed away two years back. The Jangmu clan relied largely on the trade of seafood to survive, so the livelihood of the people on Larut would become a serious problem if things continued to spiral in this trajectory.
“I’ve already told him many times that the Octopus isn’t going to solve his problems,” Ying replied, wrinkling her nose in disdain. “It can’t even catch a seal, much less pirates.”
“Could we not fit some sort of defensive weaponry onto them? Something that could help us buy time for our boats to escape if there’s an attack?”
She could hear the hopefulness in Feng-kai’s voice, optimistic as ever. He sat down beside her and began tossing stray seashells into the water.
“You think too highly of me,” she said with a sigh. “We don’t have the materials to build anything beyond a fishing harpoon. And even if I did have all the resources of the Engineers Guild at my disposal, I still wouldn’t be able to build something that could make a dent on a Demon’s Blade.
”The Demon’s Blades were rumored to belong to one of the most notorious pirate fleets that sailed the straits, known only as the Blood Phoenix. Ying had never actually seen a Blade before, but she had heard enough about those horrifying deep-sea monstrosities from the mouths of frightened sailors to be able to paint a decent picture in her mind. These were gargantuan vessels with streamlined bodies supposedly resembling a sharpened cleaver, and propellers large enough to rival the Cobra’s Order’s biggest airships. Unlike regular ships, the Blades were hidden beneath the water’s surface, slicing through the depths of the ocean.
No one knew how the pirates came to control the Blades, but they were the reason the Cobra’s Order was struggling to eradicate the pirate threat from the straits. It was difficult to fight an enemy you could not find.
It was also why the Jangmu chieftain had been so enamored with her idea of building a submersible when she had first pitched it to him. If the Antarans had eyes under the sea, then the pirates and their Blades would no longer be invisible—nor invincible. Unfortunately, the Octopus was only designed to catch seafood, not pirates.
Feng-kai shrugged. “If anyone can figure out a way to defeat the Blades, my bet’s on you, Ying,” he said, flashing her a bright smile.
Optimistic and annoying, as always, Ying thought.
Feng-kai’s perpetual cheeriness often grated against her nerves, through no fault of his. Facing his upbeat and positive outlook to life was like looking in a mirror and seeing everything she was not, emphasizing the gloom and guilt that still haunted her dreams. When she closed her eyes each night, she still saw the blood that stained the curved blades of her flying guillotine, still saw the unblinking eyes of the former High Commander, judging her even in death.
“Well, A-ma only cares about the pirates, but E-niye . . . You told her that we’d postpone the wedding ceremony till after the construction of the Octopus.” Feng-kai pointed toward the row of golden orbs. “Now we already have five.”
Ying buried her face in her hands. “Feng-kai, you know that this entire engagement—”
“Is only an act. Yes, I know that. You never let me forget,” her friend said. His smile faltered. “Are you really planning to leave, though? Where will you go?”
“I don’t know. Explore the world,” she replied, staring out at the horizon. From here, all she could see was the shimmering surface of the Dunzhu Straits. Somewhere across this patch of sea lay the shores of the Empire—-and beyond that, who knew?
The Antaran isles were her home, yet it didn’t feel like she belonged here anymore. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t forget the times she had spent in Fei and at the Engineers Guild. As long as she remained here, there would always be something that would force those memories to resurface. Her friends’ banter, the guild masters’ lectures, his forlorn yet determined silhouette, and her own bloodstained hands—all these voices and images kept invading her mind when she least expected it, triggered by a nut, a bolt, or a lotus lantern set afloat by a hopeful child.
So she was choosing to escape. Like a coward.
She had made it clear to Feng-kai from the start that this engagement was only a temporary arrangement, an act that would allow them both to get what they wanted. For her, an escape from her brother’s control; for him, a dowry large enough to help tide the Jangmu clan over after last year’s crisis, when a freak hailstorm had destroyed more than half the village.
“But how are you even going to make it across the Dunzhu Straits? Hardly any trade ships ply the routes between the nine isles and the Empire anymore, and even if you find a ship willing to make the journey, it’s still too dangerous!”
Ying smiled. “I’ll find a way,” she said.
Feng-kai didn’t know that she had secretly started making adjustments to her Octopus, steadily increasing its speed and durability so that one day it might take her all the way across these straits. There was still quite some way to go before it would achieve what she needed it to do, but she was confident that she would get there soon.
“Is there nothing that might make you want to stay?” Feng-kai asked.
Ying knew that he was looking at her, but she kept her gaze pinned upon the sea. She was well aware that Feng-kai harbored certain hopes about their relationship, hopes that maybe time would change her mind about things, turn their charade into a reality, but she could not give him the answer he wanted.
She had given her heart away once—and she wasn’t sure she ever got it back.
“I’m sorry, Feng-kai,” she said softly.
He clapped her on the back and let out a jovial laugh, but she could detect the slight disappointment threaded within. “Don’t apologize. Like you said, we agreed on this from the start. You delivered your half of the bargain, so I’ll deliver mine,” he said.
“Feng-kai! Come on, it’s time to go!” a loud voice hollered at them from afar.
Some distance down the shore, a group of boys had gathered with fishing harpoons and nets in hand, waving at Feng-kai and Ying.
“You’re still going out to sea? It’ll be dark soon,” Ying said.
Feng-kai picked himself off the sand, dusting the grains off the back of his black cotton trousers. “That’s when the conger eels come out,” he replied. “A large order came in from Muci. We’ll have to work extra hard to make up the numbers, since some of the older fishermen are still unwilling to return to the seas.”
“Pity. There’s roast goose at the tavern tonight.”
“Save me a goose leg. I’ll be back in about two hours.”
Ying scoffed. “What makes you think I’ll do that, after you cost me my harpoon test and a seal? I’m going to eat the entire bird myself.”
Feng-kai grinned, then waved and broke into a jog to catch up with the other boys. Ying watched as the group disappeared in the direction of the fishing wharf. Then she turned her gaze back toward the calming sea and the warm, amber glow of the setting sun.