This is your fault!
Matt closed his eyes, trying to dispel the image of his brother and sister unraveling right in his hands, the feel of it. “I didn’t know until a few days ago,” he said. “It was confirmed when we went to Asilah. I guess I was shocked at first, and then I didn’t know how to explain myself. Even though I knew it was true, that I was Marius Quine, I didn’t understand what it meant, and the more I found out the worse it looked. I really don’t understand who I am. I just feel like I’m . . .”
“A riddle,” Jia offered.
“Yes. A riddle.”
“I feel that way sometimes,” Jia said, “like one moment I’m one person, and the next moment I’m someone else entirely, and I’m not sure which one is the truth. There’s Jia, Repair Master of the Vermillion. Jia, friend and ally to the Hudsons. And then there’s Quejing, daughter of Emperor Kangxi.”
“Quejing? Is that your real name?”
“Yes, but I prefer Jia.”
“Where did the name Jia come from?”
“My mother,” Jia said. “That was her pet name for me.”
Matt was sorting through his Chinese vocabulary. He knew Jia could mean “good,” or “family,” or “beautiful.” He thought all those fit Jia, but he was thinking of the latter meaning in particular. Even with the dirt and grime all over her, she was beautiful.
“No one else ever called me Jia besides my mother,” she continued. “I was always Quejing. So when you came to China and called me Jia, that’s how I knew I could trust you.”
Matt was startled by this. “When I came to China?”
“Sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself. You came to China. To speak with my father. Of course, it was years ago for me. You haven’t gone yet. But I know you will, because I know you did. Because if you hadn’t, we never would have met. I never would have boarded the Vermillion.”
“Wait, what? Hold on. Captain Vincent’s the one who brought you on board the Vermillion. He told me he picked you up when he’d come to China in search of the Aeternum.”
“Yes,” Jia said. “But it was you who brought me to him. It was you who got him to take me on board.”
“Okay,” Matt said, trying to still the whirling mass of thoughts in his mind. “Does Captain Vincent know who you really are, then?”
“No, no,” Jia said. “He’s always believed I was an orphan, just as you did, and it’s not really a lie. I am an orphan, practically speaking. My mother died from fever when I was young, maybe four or five, and it’s not as though my father would raise me like your father would. He’s the emperor. He is father to all of China, no time to visit or play with his children, especially not a daughter.” She spoke these words with a bitterness that belied pain. “After my mother died, my life in the Forbidden City was . . . not pleasant. I was clothed and fed and cared for as one of the royal household, but there were some members of my family who were . . . unkind. I spent a lot of time hiding. It was the only time I felt safe, and there were many places to hide in the Forbidden City, lots of secret tunnels and hidden passages to explore. One day, I found myself at a secret passage to the Hall of Supreme Harmony. That’s my father’s throne room. No one was allowed there except the most important of guests. I started to turn back, knowing I’d be punished if I were caught, but then I saw something that almost made me faint.”
“You saw yourself,” Matt said. He knew the feeling, the utter weirdness of being in your own presence.
Jia nodded. “I didn’t know it was me though. I thought I was my mother. I looked very much like her, from what I could remember.”
“She must have been very beautiful, then,” Matt said without thinking, and then felt his face burn with embarrassment.
Jia smiled and blushed a little. “I thought perhaps it was my mother’s ghost, that she was visiting my father as an angel from heaven. Maybe she had come to rescue me, tell him all the injustices I had been suffering and make things right, take me away from the Forbidden City. And then you found me. You seemed to come out of nowhere, so I can only assume you time-traveled to me, though at the time I thought you, too, were an angel from heaven. It was strange. I wasn’t at all afraid. Well, maybe at first, but then you called me Jia, and you were so kind and gentle, and there was something about you that felt familiar. I can’t explain it. I even felt it when we truly met for the first time on the Vermillion. It was sort of like déjà vu, I guess.”
Matt nodded. He had felt the same, a link between them that went beyond the here and now. “You were foremembering,” he said.
“What?”
“It’s a time-travel effect. You were foremembering me. Because we had met at different points in time, your past and my future.”
Jia nodded. “Yes. I guess that makes sense. I foremembered you, and I felt like whatever was going to happen was supposed to happen, like it was my destiny. You took me away. It was like we were flying in a whirlwind, and then you brought me to the Vermillion and put me under the charge of Captain Vincent.”
“And Captain Vincent didn’t seem suspicious at all that I brought you to him?”
“No, on the contrary. He seemed very pleased. You were speaking in English to each other, so I couldn’t understand you then, but Captain Vincent took me on board without hesitation. I wasn’t afraid because I honestly thought I was in a dream, or that I’d died and the ship was going to take me to heaven, to my mother.”
“And then when it didn’t?”
Jia shrugged. “By the time I figured it out,
