Chapter 2

A week later, Ying stood before her parents' graves, at the edge of a soaring cliff that overlooked the rise and fall of the tides. Her long dark hair drifted with the wind, and the turquoise beads of her headdress rustled like the sound of rain.

She stared at the miniature ger that carefully marked out their final resting spot. An Antaran tradition, to ensure the dead would have a comfortable dwelling in the afterlife. Her father had crafted it himself when her mother passed on. Ying had been only eight then. Now the tiny tent had become his home too.

Sighing, Ying walked over to the cliff's edge. The ocean seemed to go on forever. She couldn't even see the tip of the nearest isle, Kamar.

"You still owe me so many stories," she whispered to the wind, hoping it would carry her words to her father.

In his youth, her father had journeyed across the seas to the fabled capital city of Fei, with its skyscraping pagodas and shimmering tiled roofs, and been granted a place among its greatest engineers. But he never said anything about it. Instead, there was always a flash of sorrow that appeared in his eyes whenever anyone mentioned the capital, and Ying knew that there were shadows in her father's memory that pained him to touch.

Now she had her own shadow to bear.

"These seas can never trap those who are meant to fly," her father used to tell her. And so she did take to the skies, but he would no longer have the chance to see it.

Ying clambered onto a large boulder and took her folding fan from beneath her sleeve, running her fingers along the edge that had been accidentally stained with her father's blood. It had already faded from red to rust brown.

The day she'd invented it, she'd run into her father's workshop, excitedly waving her sketch for the fan in his face. It was her very first design, entirely out of her own imagination. She had showed it to her older brother, Wen, but he had only scoffed, treating it like a child's drawing. She showed it to her younger sister, Nian, but she'd merely smiled and carried on twirling around the bonfire, too enchanted by the rhythm of the drums. But not her a-ma. When she showed it to him, he ruffled her hair affectionately and praised her for a job well done, then they hunkered down to create it together, heads bowed as they carefully whittled tunnels into the fan's bamboo ribs so that the darts could fit within.

The villagers often criticized her father for indulging her eccentricity, but Ying would be eternally grateful for it. She didn't expect them to understand her. Now the only people who did were no longer around.

Tucking away the fan, Ying pulled out two items from her leather pouch—the black jade pendant and the leather-bound book, the last thing her father had given her. She had meant to speak to Wen and Nian about these, but they had been so busy with funeral proceedings that she didn't have the chance.

"Burn it," her father had said. But why? What could it possibly contain that would be so damning to their clan? And what of those mysterious forces that he had warned her about?

Her fingertips traced the worn and frayed edges of the leather, telltale signs of the days and nights that her father had kept this book in close company. A smile tugged at her lips. All the books in her father's workshop were in the same state—overly thumbed pages, faded ink, and the occasional drool stains from when he had fallen asleep while reading. "Knowledge is what keeps our people alive," he had once said, "and it is what makes a person truly feel alive."

Ying's hand hovered hesitantly over the cover. Her father's parting words echoed in her mind, warning her against what she was about to do.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. If he had wanted to destroy it, then perhaps he should have done it himself. It was too much to ask of her, not to even try investigating what exactly it was that had cost her father his life.

What harm could there be in reading a book?

She flipped open the cover gingerly, holding her breath. Her father's neat handwriting appeared on the page. It looked like one of his regular record books, those that he conscientiously kept for every single idea, experiment, and wild flight of fancy that had ever crossed his mind.

Ying quickly skimmed through the pages, frowning as she read. Much of it was too complex for her to comprehend. And then she found something odd, sandwiched between pages—a carefully folded piece of parchment. It looked innocuous enough, but when she held it out in front of her eyes, digesting the neat, angular lines of her father's elaborate sketches and the tiny labels and equations that explained each part, she finally realized the true weight of his last words.

This, she recognized.

Cannons and gunpowder.

Weapons.

Harbingers of death and destruction.

"?‘Charcoal mixed with powder ground from shar rocks and a combination of the following dried herbs—'?" she read. The ingredients for gunpowder. Yet it didn't look like the standard formula she was familiar with. Her father had made modifications and added new elements, some of which she had never even heard of before.

"Why would you add this into gunpowder?" she murmured, her fingers resting upon the characters that spelled "ming-roen ore."

The infamous ming-roen ore, or devil's ore, was the stuff of legend across the nine isles, first discovered almost fifty years back by a group of prisoners serving their sentence at the Juwan mines. They had been digging for a source of kaen gas, the extremely valuable lift gas that helped keep the airships of the Cobra's Order afloat. Instead, one poor soul hit upon a mysterious silver fluid oozing from the cracks in the underground caverns. He reached out to touch it, mesmerized by its otherworldly shimmer. Then his companions heard him scream—a tortured, anguished cry that echoed through the tunnels—and when they found him, grotesque, bleeding pustules completely covered his arm. If the foreman hadn't had the good sense to chop off the man's arm right there and then, death would have claimed his soul.

The highly corrosive liquid that was ming-roen ore had the potential to become a lethal weapon, but the problem was that it was rare, and its destructive nature made it difficult for any vessel to contain it for extended periods of time. The masters at the Engineers Guild had been trying to find a solution for years, to no avail.

Ying couldn't understand. Devil's ore could destroy anything within a matter of minutes, so it had no obvious uses. Why would her father mix it with gunpowder? Perhaps the other puzzling sketches and equations in this book held the key to this mystery.

Even though she could decipher little of what her father had drawn, Ying knew the implications of this work. The little novelties and gadgets that sat in his workshop paled in comparison to what this book contained. This was a book of weaponry—and even in their unfinished form, she could see the devastating potential that they had.

Weapons of war were keys to power.

Is this why you had to die? Because of someone else's hunger for power?

A single teardrop slid down her cheek and landed on her father's sketch, smudging the lines.

"No!"

She quickly rubbed at the spot, not wanting to leave the slightest blemish on what could have been her father's final work. Then she noticed something strange peering through the small wet patch that had left the parchment translucent.

Ying flipped the sheet around. There was a message written on the other side, but it wasn't in her father's handwriting. Four lines in some unintelligible code and a few equations in small, even print with elegant curves.

Someone else had seen this. Someone else had been working with her father on all of this—but who? No one else on Huarin did any engineering except her.

Ying carefully folded the parchment once again and slipped it back between the journal pages. She then held up the jade pendant to study the intricate pattern that was carved into the smooth obsidian surface.

This was no ordinary jade. Hetian jade—comfortingly warm to the touch, unlike the cool nature of other jade types. There were no characters whittled into the stone, unlike the family pendants of the Antaran noble clans. Just an image of a dragon baring its razor-sharp fangs, talons raised to strike. A symbol of aggression and superiority—but it was a long way from home. The mythical dragon was a symbol of the Qirin royal family, the emblem representing the sovereign of the Great Jade Empire, the greatest enemy of the Antaran isles.

A fraught relationship had always existed between the nine isles and their far wealthier neighbor. Blessed with fertile grasslands and mild weather, the Qirins of the Great Jade Empire were able to live far more comfortably than the Antarans, who often struggled with poor harvests and scant resources. In exchange for the import of various necessities, the Antarans found themselves at the mercy of Qirin hands. Were it not for the vast stretch of treacherous ocean lying between the isles and the closest Qirin border city of Fu-li, perhaps they would have been conquered by the Empire a long time ago.

But it was preposterous!

Even if her father's work was immensely valuable, how could the Empire have learned about it when they were so far away? The only outsiders who traveled to Huarin were trade merchants from the other isles, and even then, it was mostly limited to their closest neighbors, Kamar and Noyanju.

If Fei was a distant dream, then the Empire was a place that she couldn't even begin to fathom. She had read hazy passages in books that alluded to its riches and decadence, but that was all it was—a fantasy as surreal as the heavens.

Ying continued staring at the pendant, as if the dragon would speak and answer all her doubts if she persevered for long enough. The creature remained silent. Her shoulders sagged in despair. She knew too little to be able to unravel this mystery. Would she have to leave everything here with her final goodbye and never be able to avenge her father's death?

Then she remembered the dying embers in his eyes, the dagger mercilessly stabbed into his chest. Her father's life had been snuffed out so callously, all for the sake of an incomplete manual and a glimpse of its potential.

She got back onto her feet, her gaze hardening with determination as she regarded the snow-dusted plains of Huarin, the white domes of her tiny village, and the mysterious shimmer of the sea beyond.

These seas can never trap those who are meant to fly.

That was what her father had taught her, and that mantra had long taken root inside her heart.

Ying rode atop her horse, a fierce white mare she had named Ayanga—lightning—and galloped down the winding path that led her back to her village. She didn't stop until she reached her family ger, the biggest in the village, as befitting the status of clan chieftain.

Aihui Wen, her older brother, sat in conversation with a few of their clansmen, issuing instructions about his upcoming chieftain anointment ceremony. He had gathered his braids at the back of his head today, fastened neatly with a bronze circlet, instead of letting them hang loosely like he preferred. Swathed in fleece-lined gray pelt, the somber tones cut a solemn figure, making him look far more mature than his twenty-four years.

Like A-ma, she thought. Her brother had always borne the greatest resemblance to their father, with their squarish jawlines and dense brows, even though their personalities were miles apart.

A flash of displeasure appeared in Wen's deep-set eyes when Ying burst in. He quickly dismissed the men.

"How many times do I need to remind you of the proper decorum expected of a young lady?" Wen reprimanded. "After you become someone's wife, you will need to change that careless and impulsive attitude of yours. Your new family will not indulge you the way we have."

"A-ge, I'm not here to listen to that," she said, marching up to him. She took out the jade pendant, slamming it down on the table. "Look at this carving. The dragon is the symbol of the Empire, isn't that right?"

Wen picked up the pendant and studied the carvings in the stone. "Where did you get this?" he asked.

"I took it from the man who murdered A-ma."

Her brother's dark pupils constricted, his long fingers curling themselves around the pendant until it was obscured completely in his palm.

"Why didn't you show me this earlier?"

"It's the Empire, isn't it? They were the ones who killed him!" Ying cried. "We have to do something."

"Do what?" Wen replied, his tone harsh and curt. The muscles of his jaw tensed visibly beneath his tan skin. "You can't conclude that based on this pendant alone." He tossed the black jade back down onto the table as if it were a worthless piece of rock.

"We can't just let A-ma die without doing anything! Whoever was behind it needs to pay. We deserve justice." Her pitch rose with every word, along with the burgeoning anger inside her. Anger at the culprit. Anger at herself—for not having done enough.

Her brother's expression darkened, and he got up from his chair, towering almost two heads above her. When they were younger, their father used to call Wen his "little ox," much to his chagrin. He had taken offense to both parts of the nickname—he was hardly little, neither did he like being compared to cattle.

"We sent out a search party on the day of the incident. They found no sign of the man. Whoever it was, he's probably already left Huarin, and we don't have the means to search further. Maybe he was only an opportunistic thief, or one of those refugee seafarers seeking shelter from pirates. This pendant means nothing. What's done is done. A-ma and E-niye would want us to move on with our lives as soon as we can."

"No they wouldn't. Not in this way," Ying hissed. If their parents had wanted them to "move on" and live carefree, ordinary lives, then they shouldn't have left the way they did, when they did.

"There's nothing more that I can do," Wen answered, averting his gaze. He picked up the jade pendant again and walked over to one of the wooden cupboards that sat next to the family altar, fresh incense sticks burning before their father's newly installed tablet. He locked the stone inside, then waved his hand to dismiss her, turning his attention back toward the numerous parchments laid out on the table. "Go back to your ger, Ying. The chieftain of the Ula clan is coming to our village for a diplomatic visit next week, and there is much to be done. I don't want to hear any more of this absurdity. Don't make A-ma and E-niye worry about you up in the heavens."

Fists clenched tightly by her sides, Ying took another glance at the cupboard where Wen had locked the jade pendant, then she turned and stormed out of the tent.

Later that night, Ying tossed and turned in her bed. Her fur blanket, usually warm and snug, felt uncomfortably prickly against her skin. She threw it off altogether, and it landed on the floor in a heap.

"Is something bothering you, A-jie?" Her younger sister's gentle voice came drifting from the other side of their shared ger.

Ying sat up, turning to look at Nian in the darkness. She could only see a hazy silhouette. "Nian, have you wondered about A-ma's death?" she asked.

"What about it?" Nian replied, a tinge of melancholy lacing her words.

"Don't you want to find out who was behind it? To take revenge for what he did to A-ma, to our family?" The agitation inside her burst forth once again as she recalled her futile conversation with Wen. Talking to him was like ramming against the side of a cliff.

There was a brief pause, then the shadow moved, accompanied by the creaking of the wooden bed frame. The hearth that sat in the middle of their ger was lit, casting a warm glow across the interior. Nian poured some goat's milk into a small bronze pot and hung it from the trestle above the fire, then she sat and drew her knees up against her chest.

"Of course I do," the younger girl answered quietly. "But A-ge already tried his best, didn't he? They couldn't find the culprit anywhere. He's long escaped." Her brows knitted tightly together, tiny creases appearing in the space between them, and in that moment Ying could see her father's shadow in her sister's face.

Even though they were sisters by blood, there was little resemblance between them. While Ying had inherited the delicate beauty of their mother, Nian had the harsher, more angular features of their father—like Wen. Personality-wise, they were also as different as the sun and the moon. The colorful tapestries hanging from the walls of their ger? That was all Nian, whose deft fingers wove the most beautiful embroideries and produced melodies on the sihu that even the heavens would weep for.

Sometimes Ying wished she shared her sister's calm and docile nature so she could fit in better, but mostly she preferred being the "reckless mare" that the villagers labeled her. Just because she was a girl didn't mean that she had to accept the limits and restraints that everyone insisted on shackling upon her.

"And you believe him?" Ying scoffed.

She knew what was going through their brother's mind. What mattered most to him was not seeking justice for their father's wrongful death—what mattered was his impending ascension to the position of clan chieftain. She despised him for that.

"Why shouldn't I? A-ge is as saddened by A-ma's death as we are."

"I don't doubt his sadness, what I doubt is his resolve. He will mourn, but he will not go out of his way to demand justice, especially not if it compromises his anointment as clan chief." Ying swung herself out of bed and sat down on the floor beside her sister. Her gaze hardened as she stared at the flickering flames, as if she could see the assassin reflected in the embers.

"What would you have him do? The trail has gone cold."

"No it hasn't. I have a clue, one that could potentially lead us to the culprit. Shouldn't we pursue it?" Ying's fingers balled up into fists, the regret and guilt from allowing the assassin to slip between her fingers once again invading her mind. "Shouldn't we try to unearth this bastard and see to it that he gets his retribution? We can't just let A-ma die for nothing!"

"What clue?" Nian asked.

Ying quickly explained about the pendant.

"A…dragon?"

Ying nodded. "A symbol of the Qirin empire," she added. "The trail hasn't gone cold, Nian. Wen just refuses to acknowledge it. He doesn't want any unnecessary trouble. He's a coward!"

"Shh!" Nian whispered, pressing a finger over her lips. "You know that A-ge won't like to hear things like that."

Ying honestly couldn't care less if he heard her. Her father's journal was pressed against her skin, hidden beneath her sleeping robes. She was grateful that she hadn't revealed it to Wen earlier in the day. The last thing she wanted was for him to confiscate this as well.

Nian poured the warmed milk into two earthenware cups, handing one to Ying. "Even if we know that the person came from the Great Jade Empire, what could we do?" she asked with a soft sigh. "This is Huarin, A-jie. We haven't even seen the shores of Fei."

"I know, I know," Ying replied irritably. As usual, Nian was the voice of reason, but Ying's mind automatically rejected the path most reasonable. "But I can't sit here and continue living my life knowing that I did nothing. If not the Empire, then what about Fei? A-ma was at the Engineers Guild for years. I might be able to find something there."

Her thoughts drifted to the cryptic message and equations that had been left by someone else's hand—someone who could very well be hiding within the guild. If only she could locate that person, she might get a step closer to the truth.

"You're thinking of going to Fei? Alone?" Nian stared at her older sister, aghast. "That's impossible! A-ge would never let you."

"He can't stop me if he doesn't know."

Nian sat her cup down. She intertwined her fingers and began chewing on the nails of her thumbs, like she always did when she was nervous. "But it's not safe. The first beile has just been exiled—the High Command is unstable. Who knows what will happen when you're there? What if there's a coup?"

"Nian, you're being paranoid. The High Commander's still in power. Nothing will happen."

Ying sucked in a breath and held it there, then she slowly released it. Even as she tried to brush aside Nian's fears, she could not do it so easily for herself.

But if Wen won't help me seek out the culprit, then I'll have to do it myself.

When she had gathered enough evidence, her brother would have no excuse to not take action.

"Are you sure you're not just doing this because you want an excuse to enroll in the guild?" her sister asked, giving her a pointed stare.

It was an open secret that Ying yearned to join the prestigious Engineers Guild the way her father once had. She harped about trying for the guild's apprenticeship trial every year, and each time their father would stiffly remind her why it was impossible. The guild only accepted male apprentices, and she did not meet that criteria. Wen would then snidely add, "Even if they did, you would never pass the trial."

Ying pursed her lips. The thought had crossed her mind, but she didn't need reminding that she could never enter those halls. Some traditions, no matter how archaic and illogical, were here to stay.

"The trial has probably already begun anyway," she grumbled. "I'll just go to Fei and find some of A-ma's old acquaintances from the guild. Someone must know something, some reason why he might have been killed." Her voice strained as she recalled the memory of the dying light in their father's eyes. The pain of it cut like a knife. "What if he offended a powerful emissary from the Empire during his time in Fei? Or some Qirin mercenary got wind of A-ma's engineering discoveries and wanted to sell them for profit? Do you think that's why he left so suddenly and never wants to talk about his time there?" She knew that she sounded nonsensical, that she made impossible leaps of logic, but it was difficult to rein in her emotions.

"If any of that were true, should you really be wandering into Fei looking for whoever it is?" Worry clouded Nian's eyes, her slender fingers clutching tightly to her cup. "You've never been there before, A-jie, and there won't be anyone to protect you if you get into harm's way."

Ying tried to smile, to comfort her sister and lighten the mood, but she barely managed a twitch of her lips. "I'll be fine. I'll be as discreet as I can, and I'll disguise myself as a boy—a traveling merchant, like how I used to when I accompanied A-ma on trips to Kamar. I know I'm not much good with throwing punches or wielding swords, but I have my fan, don't I? I'm not completely defenseless."

Nian opened her mouth to say something, then she shut it again, a look of resignation appearing in her hazel eyes. "When are you leaving?" she asked.

Ying blinked in surprise. "You're not going to try and stop me?"

Her younger sister shook her head. "We both know that it's already a foregone conclusion, right?" she said. Ying was notorious for being stubborn.

Ying smiled sadly, leaning to rest her head on her sister's shoulder. The warmth was comforting, reminding her that she was not alone in all this. She raised her cup to her lips and drank. The milk tasted exactly like the kind their mother would prepare for them when they couldn't get to sleep at night. If only their mother were still here to pat her back and tell her that this was all a nightmare that would fade away once morning came.

"The Ula clan is coming next week. Wen will be too busy trying to impress the Ula chieftain to care about anything else," Ying said. "I'll leave then, when everyone's distracted. If Wen asks, pretend you know nothing. He'll assume I've gone gallivanting to Kamar because I'm throwing a tantrum."

"Do you need me to help with anything?" Nian offered, her large eyes staring earnestly at her older sister.

Ying was about to say no, but then she caught her tongue. "Wen confiscated the jade pendant that I snatched from the assassin. He locked it in the cupboard beside the altar. Could you help me get the key?"

Nian helped with the washing of their family's clothes, which meant she had regular access to Wen's ger and belongings.

Without hesitation, her sister nodded. "Promise me you won't put yourself in any danger," she warned. "The moment you discover anything, send word home so that we can help, all right? I'll help you convince Wen, I promise."

Ying reached over to ruffle Nian's hair. "Who's the older sibling here?" she quipped.

"Haven't we already established that Abka Han made a mistake when blessing our family's birth order?" Nian joked. "When you're away, don't worry about things over here. I'll look after the younger ones—although I'm sure Min will be asking for you nonstop. You know how much he adores you. Wen keeps trying to teach him martial arts, but all he wants to do is leap off cliffs like his reckless big sister. I'm not sure this clan can survive a second Aihui Ying, to be honest."

The sisters laughed, just like they had done on many a cold, wintry night growing up, neither of them knowing when they would be able to do so again.

The Ula contingent arrived at the Huarin harbor on a cloudless day with great pomp, sailing in on a sizable vessel with four majestic battened sails and steam-powered propellers that kicked up huge waves of sea-foam, hulking above the smaller merchant ships like a proud peacock. At dusk, wood fires were lit, and the musicians began to drum, signaling the start of the banquet to welcome their honored guests. The plains bordering the village quickly transformed into a scene of revelry as dancers circled the fires with their swirling skirts and tinkling bells, while raucous voices echoed in the air as the villagers feasted on food and drink.

As everyone in the village had abandoned their gers for the plains, no one saw the lithe figure darting through the darkness toward the chieftain's tent.

Ying had traded her usual robes for a set of boy's clothes that she used to wear on trips out of Huarin with her father, so that she would appear less conspicuous among a crowd of men. Her hair was tied back in numerous plain braids, the way Wen liked to do his, without the colorful beaded headdresses that girls typically wore, and she had done away with any rouge on her cheeks and lips.

There was a cargo ship leaving Huarin tonight, and these ships usually accepted a few passengers for a fee. The disguise would hopefully allow her to make the journey from Huarin to Fei with as little unwanted attention as possible, since lone female travelers were significantly rarer across the Antaran isles.

A bundle was tied securely around her back, packed with a few sets of clothes and silver taels that she had been stashing away for a moment like this. Her fan was slipped comfortably up one sleeve and her father's book wrapped tightly beneath her clothes, pressed against her pounding heart. In her hand was a set of bronze keys, stolen by Nian from their brother earlier this morning.

When she was certain that there was no one in the vicinity, Ying slipped into Wen's ger, quickly making her way to the cupboard. She tried a few keys in the heavy padlock before the fourth one made a click. The black jade pendant was just where she had seen him leave it. Ying scoffed. As expected, Wen had not spared a further thought about it after their conversation.

But there was something else besides it that caught her eye. The pendant sat upon an ivory envelope, like a dense paperweight suppressing the secrets beneath.

Ying slipped the pendant between the cross-folds of her robes and then picked up the envelope. There was no recipient named, only a blank box.

Curious.

Ying's eyes darted around. When she was convinced that the surroundings were still, she opened the envelope and gingerly withdrew the letter. Confident yet nonchalant brushstrokes flew across the rice paper.

Do not probe further into the circumstances surrounding Aihui Shan-jin's death, else the Aihui clan will not be able to sail out of this storm intact. You do not want the blood of your fellow clansmen on your hands.

Just a few simple characters, yet they were worth their weight in lead.

So this is why Wen refuses to investigate. He's afraid.

Ying's fingers trembled, clutching tightly on to one corner of the flimsy sheet. She read the lines over and over, before her gaze finally settled upon the seal stamped at the bottom-left corner. There was no indication of the sender beyond that squarish, blood-red imprint, reminiscent of a family seal belonging to one of the noble clans. She lifted it up, squinting at the venation crawling within the seal's boundaries. It looked like a stylized depiction of some sort of animal, with a singular character, "sha," fitted within its gaping jaw. Beneath was a tiny, almost illegible line of text: These seas can never trap those who are meant to fly.

Her throat went dry. There was no way she would have failed to recognize it, because she used this exact same phrase to practice her own calligraphy.

It was the motto of the Engineers Guild. The motto that her own father had lived by.

Someone with links to the guild, warning—threatening—her brother against seeking justice for their father's murder, and then signing off with the mantra that her father had treasured so dearly. The irony.

Anger and resentment ran cold in Ying's veins, solidifying her determination. She would find the one responsible for her family's tragedy. She shoved the letter back into the envelope and slipped it beneath her robes, together with the jade pendant. There was a ship waiting for her, a ship that was bound for the capital of Fei—and the Engineers Guild.