Breath of Earth (32 page)
Authors: Beth Cato
San Francisco had wanted to be rid of Chinatown for years; wish granted. Ingrid blinked rapidly to hold back tears. It was likely that any remaining Chinese enclaves in America would be attacked in retribution.
“Lee,” she whispered. “Where was your uncle going?”
“I was supposed to go with them, so I don't know exactly. They . . . don't like to tell me much. I worked with a Japanese warden, after all. North is my guess. Portland, Seattle, Vancouver.”
All places that were seismically active, where Ingrid could siphon more energy and cause more damage, too. It was a risk they had to take.
Cy nodded to Ingrid. “Same way we'd head if we want to find Mr. Roosevelt.”
“Wait. Mr. Roosevelt? Butâhe's an Ambassador, even if he was Mr. Sakaguchi's friend. Can we trust him?”
“Does he know who you are?” Ingrid asked.
“It's . . . been implied. He's seen me. Asked about me. But it's never been stated outright.”
“Plausible deniability,” muttered Cy.
Ingrid pressed a hand to her cheek. “Mr. Sakaguchi said to go to Mr. Roosevelt, but now . . . I don't know. I don't know anything anymore. If I was just risking myself, that'd be bad enough. Cy, Roosevelt thinks soldiering is the highest calling besides being an angel for God Almighty. If he knew you were a deserterâ”
“All of us have chips down.” His expression was resolute. “Our one certainty is we need to skedaddle from here. If you don't mind, Lee, kindly close up the hatch. We'll fly right to this machinist and get this craft undercover.” Cy adjusted some toggles. Engine noise rumbled through the floor. Lee closed the door with a loud clang.
“After that?” Ingrid asked, softening her voice so she barely heard herself above the noise. She rested a hand on Cy's knuckles. He stared down at it, suddenly reluctant to meet her eyes. For a moment, she wasn't sure if he had heard her.
“Fenris'll fix up the
Bug
right as rain and we'll fly out. We need to stop in a sizable port, very soon, and get Miss Rossi to a doctor. After that . . .” Cy's brown eyes met hers. There was heat in his gaze, the sort of heat she wanted more of.
She nodded and stroked the soft skin of his hand. “We'll see what we find in the north?”
He nodded. “We'll see.”
The airship lifted off with a lurch and a roar. The view panned over a valley still tinted in faint blue. Beyond that, horrible black smoke smothered the southern sky.
The craft rotated until it faced north, and away. Verdant hills rolled down to the pristine flatness of Tomales Bay. It looked so beautiful and perfect, and so wrong after everything else she'd seen that day. Ingrid breathed in the lingering stench of smoke and blood and closed her eyes.
For the first time in her life, she didn't crave a connection with the earth below.
The world of
Breath of Earth,
grim as it is, has basis in historical truth.
Japan's actions in World War II are well documented, and their motivations for those atrocities stretch back well over a century. Sato Nobuhiro, who died in 1850, called for Japan to form a “world empire.” “The ignorant masses of this corrupt age, having been informed of the vastness of China and India on the one hand, while seeing on the other the smallness of their heavenly land [Japan] and the weakness of its power, have been convulsed with laughter when they heard my arguments for unification of the world, telling me that I lack a sense of proportion. They have no awareness that heaven has ordained our country to command all nations.”
As a native Californian, I knew that Chinese immigrants were treated poorly, but it was a subject largely ignored in school textbooks and in local histories. My research for this
series has forced me to confront the racist history of my stateâeven my hometown of Hanfordâin a direct way.
Chinese laborers, who first ventured to California as part of the Gold Rush, came to be regarded as heathen pests who stole Americans jobs. In the 1890s, Chinese really were forced to carry photo identification cards as part of the Geary Act. The Chinese fought against it in the courts, calling it the “Dog Tag Law.” Throughout the western United States, they were subject to harassment, abuse, and outright murder. Justice was not served. The epithets used in
Breath of Earth
are genuine and horrid.
I incorporated many details of the actual San Francisco earthquake on April 18, 1906. Enrico Caruso famously sang in the opera
Carmen
the night before the disaster. Cattle really did rampage through the streets in the aftermath of the quake. Mussel Rock is near the epicenter and Olema is where an incredible chasm opened in the earth. The true number of dead from the earthquake and fire will never be known, as the authorities who released the figures after the fact severely downplayed the scope of the disaster.
Other historical elements are altered significantly. Emperor Qixiang may be better known as the Tongzhi Emperor, the name given to him after his death in 1875. There was no declaration of equality between the Manchu and Han peoples. The Qing Dynasty is remembered as ruthless, corrupt, and extravagant. During the nineteenth century alone,
tens of millions
of people were estimated to have died as a result of rebellions within China.
One of the signature elements of Manchu rule is the queue
style of haircut, also called the bing, which is presented in
Breath of Earth
as a sign of rebellion. In reality, it was a mandatory sign of loyalty to the Manchu Dynasty, and a man's failure to wear a bing was cause for execution.
Some historical and cultural changes in
Breath of Earth
are deliberate. Others are the result of ignorance; I humbly beg your apology for any inaccuracies and omissions.
Research for this series is an ongoing process. I have used many online resources, as well as these books:
San Francisco Around 1906
Disaster! The Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906
by Dan Kurzman
1906: A Novel
by James Dalessandro
McTeague: A Story of San Francisco
by Frank Norris
The Barbary Plague: The Black Death in Victorian San Francisco
by Marilyn Chase
Early Twentieth-Century America (General)
Sears Roebuck and Co. Fall 1900 Catalog (reproduction)
How to Shoot a Revolver: A Simple and Easy Method for Becoming an Expert Revolver Shot
by Colonel William Preble Hall (with thanks to Walter P. and Donna for the gift!)
Earthquakes and Things That Go Boom
Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883
by Simon Winchester
A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906
by Simon Winchester
Legends of the Earth: Their Geologic Origins
by Dorothy B. Vitaliano
China, Its Mythology, and Chinese in America
Driven Out: The Forgotten War Against Chinese Americans
by Jean Pfaelzer
Swallowing Clouds: Two Millennia of Chinese Tradition, Folklore, and History Hidden in the Language of Food
by A. Zee
Boxers & Saints
by Gene Luen Yang
Samfow: The San Joaquin Chinese Legacy
by Sylvia Sun Minnick
Hatchet Men: The Story of the Tong Wars in San Francisco's Chinatown
by Richard H. Dillon
Handbook of Chinese Mythology
by Lihui Yang and Deming An with Jessica Anderson Turner
Sweet Cakes, Long Journey: The Chinatowns of Portland, Oregon
by Marie Rose Wong
In Manchuria: A Village Called Wasteland and the Transformation of Rural China
by Michael Meyer
The Devil Soldier: The American Soldier of Fortune Who Became a God in China
by Caleb Carr
The Art of War
by Sun Tzu
Japan and Its Mythology
The Fox and the Jewel: Shared and Private Meanings in Contemporary Japanese Inari Worship
by Karen A. Smyers
Sources of Japanese Tradition, Volume II,
compiled by Ryusaku Tsunoda, William Theodore de Bary, and Donald Keene
India
Children of Kali: Through India in Search of Bandits, the Thug Cult, and the British Raj
by Kevin Rushby
Theodore Roosevelt
Mornings on Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life, and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt
by David McCullough
Mark Twain and the Colonel: Samuel L. Clemens, Theodore Roosevelt, and the Arrival of a New Century
by Philip McFarland
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt
by Edmund Morris
Fun with Poison
The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York
by Deborah Blum
A is for Arsenic: The Poisons of Agatha Christie
by Kathryn Harkup
For a current reference bibliography, please visit www.BethCato.com.
Breath of Earth
required intense research into early-twentieth-century California and the hardships suffered by Chinese immigrants. I am grateful for the assistance of folks on Codex Writers who provided information, conversation, and book recommendations that resulted in a novel more grounded in historical accuracy. Any remaining errors are my responsibility, and I beg forgiveness for my ignorance.
After I completed my initial draft of
Breath of Earth,
I was delighted that the Phoenix Art Museum had an exhibit and lecture on namazu-e. This artwork is very rare since the propaganda prints were actively sought out and destroyed in the 1850s. Phoenix Art Museum, thank you for such impeccable timing for this exhibition.
Many thanks to my first readers and initial cheerleaders for the book, Anaea Lay and Rebecca Roland. This project was daunting from the very start and they provided me with a positive boost to keep on going.
This book is dedicated to my literary agent, Rebecca Strauss, but she deserves a bonus mention here, too. She's awesome like that. Much gratitude to the whole crew at DeFiore & Co.
Hugs and cookies to the wonderful folks at Harper Voyager. You made my dreams come true by releasing
The Clockwork Dagger
and
The Clockwork Crown,
and I'm thrilled that we're together for my new series. Huge thanks to my editor, Kelly O'Connor; my magical publicist, Caroline Perny; and so many others there. Sloth power!
Of course, there is my family to thank. My parents, who encouraged me to delve deeper into California history on my own after I kept pestering them with questions that couldn't be answered by my elementary school textbooks. My husband, Jason, who copes with my madness during drafts and revisions. Then there is my son, Nicholas, who has been fascinated by the laminated-and-scribbled-on 1896 San Francisco map on my office wall these past few years. See, dude? I told you it would help me write a book.
BETH CATO
is the author of the Clockwork Dagger fantasy duology, which includes
The Clockwork Dagger,
nominated for the Locus Award for Best First Novel, and
The Clockwork Crown,
as well as two short stories and a novella in the Clockwork realm. Her novella
Wings of Sorrow and Bone
has been nominated for a Nebula Award. She writes and bakes cookies in a lair outside of Phoenix, Arizona, which she shares with a hockey-loving husband, a numbers-obsessed son, and a cat the size of a canned ham.
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at
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.
“Beth Cato's
Breath of Earth
takes the reader to a San Francisco filled with magic, danger, and tragedy. A rare woman with a geomancer's gift, Ingrid Carmichael must fight to retain control of her powers within the city's shifting landscape of political intrigue. And she desperately needs to find a way out of the city if she's going to get to the bottom of a murderous plot, but has no way to know who's friend or foe in a situation where allegiance isn't as straightforward as she's always been taught. All in all, a suspenseful and rousing start to a new series. I look forward to reading the next one.”
âJ. Kathleen Cheney, author of the Tales of the Golden City
“Beth Cato gives steampunk a magical, global twist in an action-packed adventure that keeps the pages turning in anticipation. And if you don't fall in love with Ingrid Carmichael after reading this, you have no soul.”
âMichael J. Martinez, author of
MJ-12: Inception
and
The Daedalus Incident
“
Breath of Earth
is that rare gem, a thought-provoking, imaginative adventure of the highest order, chock-full of wonder as well as heart-wrenching what-ifs. It's reminiscent of Jules Verne at his best, with brilliant characters who linger in the mind and heart. Bravo!”
âJulie E. Czerneda, author of the Clan Chronicles
“Cato cleverly brings her colorful Barbary Coastâera San Francisco to life, highlighting the neglected perspectives of the outsiders and the dispossessed who made up the majority of its populace.”
â
Publishers Weekly
THE CLOCKWORK DAGGER SERIES
The Deepest Poison: A Short Story
