The emperor wiped his mouth with a silk cloth and stood. A servant was there right away to assist him. He stepped down from his raised chair and looked as though he would leave them all, but at the doorway he stopped and turned back around. “Quejing, you and your friend will accompany me.”
Jia stood immediately. “Yes, Father.” She looked down at Matt. He suddenly realized that he was the friend. He stood, knocking the table a little.
Gaga, Haha, and Uncle Chuck stood as well.
“The emperor has asked to speak to just Jia and me,” Matt said.
“Over my dead—” Gaga started.
“Please, Gaga,” Matt said in a weary voice. “It will be fine.”
Gaga folded her arms. “What are you going to do? And what are we supposed to do while you’re off doing . . . whatever it is you’re going to do?”
As if in answer to this, the servants that had assisted them in their quarters came and started chattering away about all the things they would do for them back in their quarters.
“I promise no harm will come to Matt,” Jia said. “My father’s servants will be glad to entertain you with music and games, and they can give you a skin treatment that will make you look twenty years younger.”
“Oh,” Gaga said, fluffing her silver hair. “Well, that should be fine. But if you’re not back in one hour . . .”
“Gaga . . . ,” Matt said impatiently.
“Two hours! If you’re not back in two hours, we will personally raid this entire city until we find you. You have been warned.” She glared around at all the servants.
Both Haha and Uncle Chuck looked a little uncertain about this plan, especially as they eyed the armed guards by the emperor.
“Don’t worry,” Jia said. “We will see you very soon.”
“It will be fine,” Matt assured his family as he followed Jia out the door. He glanced back at his mom one last time. She was still staring down at her plate.
But it was Albert who disquieted him most. He gazed at Matt with that cold, calculating look that told him to be on his guard.
20The Summer Triangle
The emperor led Matt and Jia outside of the building and again through the city. The glow of candlelight could be seen through some of the buildings, but mostly it was dark and quiet. A few guards and servants accompanied them as they walked through small alleys and narrow roads, then to the outer edge of the city along the wall. They came to a small door and Matt realized they were going to go outside the city. He looked at Jia, wondering if he should be concerned at all, but she seemed calm and followed her father without question or hesitation.
“Is the forbidden lock truly what you seek?” the emperor asked as they walked.
“No,” Jia said. “We’ve come because it has already been found.”
“And broken,” Matt added.
The emperor nodded. This information did not seem to surprise or rattle him. Somehow he must have known.
The door opened to a tunnel lit by torches. Matt had to hunch down a bit as they entered.
“The woman at dinner, then,” the emperor said, “she is not truly one of your companions.”
“Yes and no,” Matt said. “She’s my mother, but before she’s really my mother. Our timelines got disrupted, and now she doesn’t remember me.” He felt something hitch in his throat.
“It’s a long story,” Jia added.
“Then you had better start telling it,” the emperor said. “It appears time is not on our side. Tell me all that has happened to you and all that you have done.”
And so they did. Together, Matt and Jia told the emperor all they could remember. It was not a smooth story. Seeing as they were dealing with time travel, and their paths diverged and twisted around each other. There was no rational order of events, and they sometimes had to circle back and clarify certain things. Matt thought perhaps he was forgetting some details, and sometimes he and Jia disagreed on what happened and when, but the emperor listened patiently. He didn’t interject or ask questions. He just listened.
When Matt and Jia had finished telling everything, or as much as they could remember, the emperor remained quiet. He seemed to be absorbing all the information. They’d been walking through the tunnel for at least a mile, when at last they came to a set of stairs. They climbed up several flights. The emperor stopped at a door, also guarded, and told them to wait outside. Matt only caught a glimpse of what looked like a library. The emperor was back in less than a minute carrying a large cylindrical tube. He motioned for them to follow him again, and they continued up the stairs a few more flights, until they were once again outside.
They were on a rooftop. There were several large sculptures spaced around the floor, and Matt wondered if this was something of the emperor’s private art collection, but as he looked more closely, he realized they were not there for mere visual appeal. It was an observatory, the emperor’s private astronomy tower. There was a celestial globe, an armillary sphere with the sun represented at the center and the rings forming a sphere around it. There was a sextant as tall as Matt, more spheres and telescopes and instruments that he did not have names for but understood by their design that they were for measuring longitudes and latitudes and celestial navigation.
There were others up on the tower, white men with long beards dressed in black robes and tall hats. The emperor went to one of them and spoke to him.
“Who are they?” Matt asked.
“Jesuit priests,” Jia said. “They have been something like tutors to my father. They have taught him much about astronomy. They also built this observatory.”
“It’s
