Heart of Iron - Ekaterina Sedia [62]
“Dear Mother,” I wrote, “I miss you every day, and I cannot wait for the summer when we will be able to spend our days together in the happy embrace of our home. I hope your cats and servants are well, and your days are filled with serenity and contentment. Is the river frozen yet? I hope it is, and that the village children skate and amuse you with their merriment.
“I have to confess I write to you not only because I am feeling deprived of your company or because it is my duty as you daughter, but I also hope to receive advice from you on matters of the heart. Even though Eugenia visited with me before my departure, you know well she is not the one to advise on courtship matters.
“I confess also that despite my great interest in my studies and my hopes to continue them until I accumulate enough courses to be called a Baccalaureate, two young men came recently to my attention. Both are of foreign origin and both possess pleasant qualities; although neither had proposed, I feel reasonably confident that at least one of them might be compelled in that direction with a most subtle demonstration of my benevolent interest.”
“Sasha,” Jack called from his bed, where he sprawled, reading. Apparently, the change of costume on my part allowed him to dispense with any semblance of courtly behavior—which was an asset, I supposed, since traveling together and being elaborately polite seemed unnecessarily taxing.
“What?” I answered, also unceremoniously.
“Did you know that the Masked Temerain could peel his face off?”
“He was burned to the crisp, as I recall, and disfigured. What of it?”
Jack smiled at me fondly. “I just wondered if you knew. He is quite an extraordinary creature, that Temerain.”
“So are you,” I said, still a bit uneasy about Jack’s leaping prowess. “Maybe I should write a penny dreadful about you.”
His grin grew wider and he folded his long arms behind his head, staring dreamily into the ceiling. “Someone ought to. As long as I don’t die in it.”
“You can’t die in a serial,” I told him. “Maybe if someone wrote about you they would explain how you were able to do the things that you do.” It started to snow outside, and I felt grateful to be inside, where it was warm and cozy. I pulled the woolen blanket around my shoulders, making a nest of sorts for myself, my ink bottle, and my unfinished letter. “Well? Are you going to tell me?”
“You’re busy,” Jack said.
“I’m not. I can finish this letter later.”
He sighed then. “No, I wasn’t always capable of leaping over buildings. I was born poor, and quite undistinguished in any way. My parents managed to make ends meet, and I helped as I could—sometimes I worked in a textile factory, sweeping the floors and cleaning up; sometimes I stole. When I was fifteen, I left home and got hired as a sailor on a ship named The Oxford, and we left for China. I had a propensity for languages, and I learned a smattering of Cantonese from a Chinaman traveling with us by the time we landed in Canton. This was in 1839, when things were deteriorating so badly. My ship stayed anchored at Canton, unable to take cargo or unload, because no one was not even thinking about anything that wasn’t opium.”
“I get the picture,” I said. “Chiang Tse told me about it.”
“There were Chinese merchants who helped with the smuggling. The streets adjacent to the English factories were choked with opium dens and supply shops. I was a boy, with nothing to do. It was in these shops that I found something unusual.”
“A wise Chinese mystic,” I suggested, being familiar with the conventions of the penny dreadfuls.
“No,” he said. “A Portuguese man, from Macao—he had come to Canton to patronize the opium dens there, and he . . . I don’t really know much of his story, but he said he would teach me to do things that no one else could do.”
“And the fact that he spent his days in the opium den did not seem suspicious?”
He laughed. “As I said, I was bored. But he did keep his word.”
Jack smoothed his hair,