The Emperor's Riddle Read online

  “It was lovely. It was like old times. And you? What did you three get up to?”

  There was a brief silence. Then Mia’s uncle shrugged. “I read my newspaper. Watched a little television.” He grinned at Mia and Jake, his eyes twinkling. “And those two—they were so quiet, it was like they weren’t even here.”

  11

  WITH AUNT LIN GONE, MIA no longer needed to sleep on the floor. But she would’ve gladly traded her spot on the bed for Aunt Lin’s safe return. The bedroom felt strange without her, especially once the sun went down. Unfamiliar noises drifted in from the open window: lilting Chinese folk music from a neighbor’s balcony stereo, shouting from a nearby basketball court, cars swishing through streets still wet from the after-dinner rain.

  Mia was accustomed to hearing nothing but cicadas when she slept. She thought about closing the window, but that would make the room too hot. There wasn’t central air-conditioning, and her mom wouldn’t let her sleep with the fan on, claiming it would give her a cold.

  She distracted herself by reading the remaining treasure-­map riddles instead:

  Two brothers stand, eye to eye

  The fairer steady on the turtle’s back

  Search for me low, on the heads of the darker brother’s feet,

  Carved into a cheek like a scar

  That made about zero sense to her. She moved on to another unsolved riddle:

  They came from the seas, murdering and pillaging

  Twenty thousand strong, like a battering wave

  But like a wave, they retreated again

  Driven by the sword of war’s minister.

  Find me in the—

  “Mia?”

  Mia stuffed the translated riddles beneath her blanket. “Yeah?”

  Her mom smiled as she crossed the room. “You getting ready for bed?”

  Mia shrugged, hoping her mom wouldn’t come too close and notice the riddles. She’d hidden her copy of the map—with the newly added piece from the ­Pottery Pagoda—deep at the bottom of her messenger bag, folded up beneath her compass. The original map, of course, lived on the flip side of the crane painting. Mia had slipped it into the desk drawer.

  She still didn’t have enough proof to tell her mom what she was doing. And right now, seeing the content smile on her face, Mia wouldn’t have told her even if she thought she’d be believed.

  Your mother is a little stressed right now, darling, Aunt Lin had told her once, when she was younger and suffering from some now long-forgotten slight at school. How about you and I figure this out ourselves?

  She’d said similar things when Jake and Mia fought, or when Mia got upset because she was the only one parentless at a school function, or during those rare times when her mom lost her temper.

  Your mother carries a lot on her shoulders, Aunt Lin would say. And even if Mia didn’t always understand the specifics, she knew when her mom was tired or frazzled, even though her mom was good at hiding it.

  Mia knew, despite all her complaining and feet-­dragging, that this trip to China was really important to her mom. That she wouldn’t want it ruined by anything.

  So it was better that her mother didn’t know.

  Still, as her mother sat on the edge of Mia’s bed and ran her fingers through Mia’s hair, gently pulling ­tangles from the shower-damp strands, Mia wished that she could tell her everything. She leaned into her mother’s touch, her heart filled with all the secrets she knew and couldn’t say. They pressed so large inside her that it seemed impossible her mom couldn’t tell.

  “I’m going to take you and Jake someplace special tomorrow,” her mom said. “It’s called Sanfang Qixiang. Do you know what that means?”

  “Three Something, Seven Something?” Mia guessed in English, translating the two words she recognized.

  Since arriving in China, she’d more or less stuck to speaking Chinese all the time with everyone but Jake. It had seemed like the thing to do. But she was more accustomed to speaking like this with her mother back home, the two of them switching rapid-fire between English and Chinese, cobbling conversations—even sentences—together from a mishmash of words from each language.

  Her mom laughed and answered in English too. “Yes, pretty much. I guess you could call it ‘Three Lanes and Seven Alleys.’”

  “Why’s it special?”

  “It’s a historic part of the city. There are buildings there that were first built in the Ming or Qing dynasties. You like that kind of stuff, right? I saw you and Aunt Lin brought Grandma’s painting out of storage.”

  Mia stiffened. She peered up at her mom’s face, trying to figure out if she suspected anything. “We were just looking at it.”

  “Your grandma used to say it might have been painted during the Ming dynasty.” She laughed. “But who knows. That wasn’t why she loved it so much. Her own mother—your great-grandmother—gave it to her as a wedding present. It was one of the few things she brought from her childhood home when she married.”

  Her fingers stilled in Mia’s hair. She hesitated, then asked, “Are you sad that you never got to know your grandparents?”

  Once, a very long time ago, she’d asked Mia a similar question about Mia’s father. Mia did the same thing now as she’d done then. She shook her head and said, “I have you, and Jake, and Aunt Lin.”

  She would have said it a hundred times if it meant the crease of worry between her mother’s eyes would go away. If it meant she’d smile.

  * * *

  Walking into Sanfang Qixiang from the rest of Fuzhou was like walking into an alternate dimension in the middle of the city. Skyscrapers rose in the distance, shimmering silver in the morning sunlight. The immediate landscape, however, was nothing but squat one- or two-story buildings.

  Many were wooden, or had bare stone facades. Others bore a simple, clean wash of white paint, decorated by lattices of polished wood. Strings of cheerful red lanterns hung from their eaves, swaying in the breeze.

  There were no cars, only a crush of people thronging the paved streets, and the stray passing of a rickshaw. It was like being pulled into the past, except for the modern clothing of their fellow tourists and—

  “Is that really a Starbucks?” Jake said, laughing.

  It really was.

  Mia couldn’t help giggling too. The coffee shop had at least tried to blend in, with fancy, old-fashioned wooden fretwork and some red lanterns, but there was no mistaking the Starbucks-green umbrellas outside the building. The people sipping from their cups up on the balcony didn’t seem to mind the anachronism.

  If Aunt Lin had been here, she might have tsked under her breath. Or she might have laughed and loved the strangeness of it.

  “Come on,” Mia’s mom said, beckoning them deeper into the network of streets.

  The next few hours were full of new, exciting things. They stumbled into a dim shop where an elderly man sold sheets of beautiful calligraphy that he’d write before your eyes. Farther down the street, a woman played erhu, a traditional Chinese instrument, her eyes closed and her bow singing across the strings as if it were pulling her and not the other way around.

  Mia led the way to explore some old, exciting things too. They wandered through manicured gardens nestled beneath the shade of white walls, and stared at roofs that swooped like black raven’s wings. Many of the ancient homes here were open to the public, each with a little placard on the wall explaining which family had once lived here so very long ago.

  Their mom pointed out the special bricks making up the building’s walls. They were huge, and a pale, sandy color. “See the tiny seashells stuck in them?” she said. “It’s because they’re made out of sand collected from the nearby beaches.”

  It was all enough to almost—almost—make Mia forget about the unfinished map she’d hidden in her suitcase back at the apartment. The treasure she had to find.
The aunt she needed to save.

  “Where to next?” Jake said, after they’d found a dumpling shop to order lunch.

  Their mom raised her eyebrows and fanned herself with a spare brochure. Even after hours tramping about in the muggy heat, she looked neat and put together—if perhaps a little boxed about the edges. Her thick, straight hair had started to slip from its bun. “Next, we eat and you let your old mother sit for a while.”

  But Mia was too full of fidgety energy to sit. Jake must have felt the same, because he only managed a minute or two in his chair before he jumped up again, tilting his head toward an antiques store a few shops down. “I’m going to check that out before the food comes.”

  Mia stayed slumped in her seat, her feet tapping against the asphalt, until Jake turned to look at her over his shoulder.

  “Aren’t you coming?” he said, as if the invitation had been unspoken and obvious. As if he hadn’t spent the last year snapping at Mia when she tried to follow along on things or assumed that he’d want to hang out.

  She was out of her chair in two seconds, grinning.

  “Don’t be long,” their mom shouted after them.

  12

  UNLIKE MANY OF THE OTHER shops in Sanfang Qixiang, the antiques shop had its air-conditioning on full blast. Mia shivered pleasantly. It was a relief to be out of the heat for a bit, even if the day was growing increasingly overcast. She hadn’t realized how much she’d relied on air-conditioning in the summer until she’d come to China. A lot of places here still relied mostly on fans.

  “Look at that,” Jake whispered.

  The store was a trove of trinkets and heirloom furniture, but he went straight for a collection of antique swords hanging off the back wall. Mia followed just a breath behind.

  The swords were all different shapes, one as straight as a beam of moonlight, another arced like a silver hook. Jake glanced around to make sure no one was watching, then grinned at Mia and lifted the smallest sword from its rack. This one was still in its scabbard, so only the golden hilt showed, but he feinted a stab at her anyway.

  Mia giggled and slapped her hands around an imaginary wound in her gut. She tilted backward onto a conveniently placed couch and was about to perform her best impression of a death spasm when a woman’s voice cut through their antics. “Hey, you can’t play around with that. And get up off that couch, child. It’s older than your grandmother.”

  Mia scrambled onto her feet.

  The storekeeper didn’t lose her scowl. “These things are expensive,” she snapped. “They’re history, not foolish toys.”

  I know that, Mia thought. I wouldn’t ever think they were foolish.

  Jake spoke before she could, apologizing as he placed the sword back onto its rack. His Chinese wasn’t as good as Mia’s, but it didn’t seem to matter. In a second he went from the laughing kid play-fighting with Mia to someone who was all maturity and deference and friendliness—contrite, but still confident. Smiling in a way that invited others to smile.

  Mia tried to study him the way Lizbeth studied professional softball players, looking to perfect her swing. You have to break it down, she’d told Mia once. Then put it all back together again.

  But this wasn’t that easy. She couldn’t put her finger on all the little things Jake did to be Jake. He just was.

  The storekeeper, no matter how prickly, stood no chance. Her glower softened into a grudging smile.

  “That sword you were holding,” she said, “was once used to fight against pirates.”

  “Really?” Jake said, charming and charmed.

  The woman’s shoulders relaxed, just a touch. She gestured out toward the street—or maybe just at the rest of Sanfang Qixiang. “You’ve heard of Zhang Jing?”

  Jake shook his head. Mia hadn’t heard of Zhang Jing either, but it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. The storekeeper was paying attention only to Jake.

  “Was he a pirate?” he said.

  “No, no. Zhang Jing was the minister of war in the . . . what was it? Ming dynasty? Late Ming dynasty. There were pirates attacking the Chinese coast at the time, plundering cities and wreaking havoc. He led a charge against them.”

  “Did he drive them away?” Mia asked.

  There was a strange, tickling feeling in the back of her head. Like a memory trying to surface, or a thought struggling to form. She couldn’t put her finger on what it was, but it had started when the storekeeper first said the word “pirates.”

  “He tried to. He fought some good battles. There was something like twenty thousand pirates at one point. They’d built strongholds along the coast—”

  Mia didn’t hear the rest of her sentence. Her mind had tripped on “twenty thousand”—had tripped and fallen right onto the thing that had been nudging against her thoughts:

  They came from the seas, murdering and pillaging

  Twenty thousand strong, like a battering wave

  But like a wave, they retreated again

  Driven by the sword of war’s minister.

  Find me in the—

  She frowned, struggling to recall the rest. Find me in the what?

  The storekeeper continued on about Zhang Jing, oblivious: “He was very famous for it all—he has a house here. Are you two not from the city?”

  “Oh, uh, no,” Jake said. He met Mia’s eyes, as if he knew exactly what she was trying to remember. “We’re only visiting.”

  They came from the seas, murdering and pillaging

  Twenty thousand strong, like a battering wave

  But like a wave, they retreated again

  Driven by the sword of war’s minister.

  Find me in the—

  She almost had it. Teachers often got exasperated with Mia’s memory—with all the spelling words she couldn’t spell, with the directions she didn’t follow, with the assignments she started and then forgot halfway through. Once, one had said, only half jokingly, Mia, you could forget about your left shoe while pulling on your right.

  It wasn’t entirely untrue. But only because Mia had very little interest in her shoes. The things she did care about, she focused on with great intensity. Right now, she tried to clear everything from her mind except for the words of the riddle.

  But like a wave, they retreated again

  Driven by the sword of war’s minister.

  Find me in the—

  Find me in the southern heart of this lionheart’s hearth.

  “You said Zhang Jing had a house here?” Mia said, interrupting the storekeeper in the middle of a spiel about the city’s landmarks. “In Sanfang Qixiang?”

  The woman frowned at her. “I did.”

  Mia gave Jake a speaking look. “We need to go see it.”

  “Right,” he said. He was already moving toward the door, his best, most polite smile pinned to his face. “Thanks so much for everything. I’m sorry about the trouble.”

  Mia didn’t wait around to see how the storekeeper responded, just darted back into the streets. Her head buzzed with excitement.

  First things first.

  They needed to find a map.

  13

  FARTHER OUT FROM THE CENTER of Sanfang Qixiang, the buildings lost a little of their buffed shine, but none of their character.

  “Are you sure we’re going in the right direction?” Jake asked as they wended ever farther from the restaurant where they’d left their mother. He’d already asked her twice.

  Mia just nodded as she led the way down a narrow alley. The walls here were white too—but a dirtier, moss-overgrown white. The lower portions were stained with dirt and the passage of time. Unlike ­Sanfang ­Qixiang’s main streets, which seemed frozen in a strange, half-modern, half-ancient alternate universe, time had worn its way into the architecture here at the edges of the streets.

  A soft rain began to fall, drizzling from
the gray clouds.

  “I’m serious, Mia,” Jake said. “Mom’s going to kill us if we—”

  “Here,” Mia said triumphantly. She blinked the rain from her eyelashes. “It’s right here.”

  Jake sidled up next to her, trying to block the rain with his raised arm. Around them, the once-regular path had devolved into little more than the odd stone in the ground. Greenery grew in wild patches, encroaching on a crumbling building.

  Parts of the wall bore traces of white paint. Other bits had worn clean through to the mortar—and others still were barely more than loose, clay brick. Pieces of the roof had fallen in, shattering on the ground into piles of rubble.

  “This?” Jake said. “This is Zhang Jing’s house?”

  Mia picked her way closer to the building. The ground was uneven, the tall grass damp from the rain. It clung to her bare legs, wetting her socks.

  “That’s what it says,” she said, pointing. Someone had scrawled four Chinese characters on the bare wall, the red words stark against the gray bricks. “ ‘Zhang Jing’s house.’ ”

  The characters were right next to a doorway—a doorway with a pair of cracked and faded doors. Two dusty lanterns hung above the threshold. The city, Mia’s mom had explained, had taken a lot of care recently to renovate this area—to preserve a little of the past. But barely any care, it seemed, had been taken here.

  Would Zhu Yunwen’s clue still exist? Or would it, too, have crumbled during the intervening years?

  A stick snapped behind Mia. She turned to look at Jake—then realized that Jake was on her other side, poking around a thatch of grass. So who had been behind her?

  “Well, this is the southern side of the house,” Jake said. “What was the last line again? ‘Find me in the southern heart of this lionheart’s hearth.’ So the clue has to be around here somewhere.”

  Mia looked back to the house. Despite its state, it still bore the grandiosity of age and size. She tilted her head, imagining away the gaps in the wall, filling in the roof and restoring the doors to the deep, polished red they must have been once upon a time. This had been a minister’s house. It would have had parlors and silk screens, and perhaps a peaceful garden of manicured greenery.