The Dragon Men

by Steven Harper

  At this, the beautiful woman, who had been waiting with hands clasped, spoke at some length. Phipps translated.

  “My name is Lady Orchid,” she said. “Please accept my apologies for the way in which you were treated. We had no time to explain. You are in the palace compound of Prince Kung, half brother to Emperor Xianfeng, who died recently. When the prince and I heard you were on your way to Peking, we knew we had to intercept you. Prince Kung sent a number of men with a device that releases a special type of tree pollen that, when breathed, sends one into a deep sleep. Absinthe is the antidote.”

  “Why, we have the same thing in England,” Alice said, then shot Phipps a guilty look. The lieutenant had been on the receiving end of the stuff during Alice and Gavin’s raid on the Doomsday Vault last spring. Phipps crossed her arms. Alice coughed and went back to winding Click.

  “The device requires an explosion to disperse the pollen over a wide area, and we apologize deeply for this. I hope no one was injured.”

  Alice kept winding Click. Nothing hurt that she could tell. “I’m fine. Where’s Gavin?”

  “The Dragon Man? He wakes in the room next to yours. You may see him in a moment, if you wish.” Lady Orchid fingered the silver pin that held her tunic shut. “I know you find it difficult to trust us now. Perhaps it will be easier once we have explained.”

  “Who is us?” Alice put in. The maid started to comb Alice’s tangled hair.

  A hard look crossed Lady Orchid’s face, as if she found Alice’s interruption dreadful in some way. “Prince Kung and me. We have saved your lives, you see. General Su Shun, the pretender who ascended the throne, wants you dead, Lady Michaels.”

  Alice gasped and fear tightened her insides. Gavin had been right. Still, she said, “Dead? But the reward—the emperor wanted me alive.”

  “That was Emperor Xianfeng. As I said, he died recently.”

  Here, Phipps stopped translating. “How did he die, Lady Orchid?”

  “The blessing of dragons fell on him, and he did not survive. It was exactly what he was afraid of.”

  “Then I’m too late,” Alice whispered. She felt cold, and tears pricked at the edges of her eyes. “If the current emperor won’t trade my cure for—oh good heavens, what will we do now?”

  “Why did the new emperor continue the reward?” Phipps asked.

  “The new emperor, General Su Shun, wants to personally ensure Lady Michaels’s death. He does not dare invade Europe until he knows his men will not encounter the cure she carries.”

  “We were rather afraid that was what he might want,” Alice said. “Still, we were hoping things might be otherwise.”

  “Wait—invade?” Phipps said. “Why does he want to invade?”

  Orchid sighed. “His hold on the throne is weak. But a war would ensure everyone is looking at battle instead of who occupies the Imperial Seat.”

  The maid finished combing out Alice’s hair and piled it high with Chinese combs. Light dawned in Alice’s head. “And you want to put someone else on the throne. That’s why you brought me here. Because I can help you in some way.”

  “You are very perceptive for a—you are very perceptive.”

  “Perceptive for a what?”

  But Lady Orchid didn’t answer. Instead, she said, “I was once a concubine to the emperor, and—”

  “A concubine?” Shocked, Alice backed away on the bed, bumping the maid aside. Click made a noise of protest. For all her grace and beauty, this woman was nothing more than a common prostitute. Alice looked down at the coverlet. Had this very bed been used for—?

  “Calm down, Alice,” Phipps said. “It isn’t catching.”

  “It’s . . . repulsive,” Alice replied. “I . . . this is . . .”

  “Another culture,” Phipps told her. “Here it’s considered a perfectly honorable profession—”

  “The oldest profession.”

  “And for many women, the only avenue to any kind of wealth or power.”

  “It’s horrible! Selling oneself to a married man for the chance of—”

  “Whereas you,” Phipps interjected, “were only willing to sell yourself to an unmarried man.”

  “That was different,” Alice snapped.

  “Of course it was,” Phipps said mildly. “This woman succeeded.”

  Alice snapped her mouth shut in a fury. Lady Orchid, who had been watching this exchange with polite interest, continued.

  “As a concubine of the emperor, I bore him a son. His only son. The boy—we call him Cricket—is the true heir. We need to put him on the throne. He is only six years old, but Prince Kung and I will rule as regents until he is old enough to rule on his own.”

  “And why should we help you?” Alice asked, forcing herself back to the subject at hand.

  Lady Orchid seemed taken aback. “We saved your lives, Lady Alice.”

  “Out of self-interest, Lady Orchid,” Alice shot back. “If you didn’t need me for something, you would have let this Su Shun have me without a second thought.”

  “Ah.” Lady Orchid took a white handkerchief from her white sleeve without denying Alice’s statement. “Why did you come to China, Lady Alice? I can’t imagine it was merely to claim the reward.”

  Alice thought a long moment before replying. She didn’t trust this Lady Orchid, and not just because of her . . . occupation. Lady Orchid was trying to make herself the power behind the throne of an empire, and such a person was automatically difficult to trust. Oh, she claimed she was trying to stop a war and rule the empire benevolently. And perhaps she would. But in the end, she was still a power-seeker, and in Alice’s experience, such people would say or do anything to achieve their aims. It was only good luck that Lady Orchid’s goals and Alice’s goals seemed to correlate. Alice was quite confident that if this woman had wanted Alice dead, there would be no trace of a body, or even a drop of blood, to be found. The thought made Alice both nervous and more determined. She glanced at the other bed. The mute maid was now combing out Phipps’s hair.

  “What do you think, Lieutenant?” Alice said, deciding Cixi couldn’t understand her. “Should we say why we’re here?”

  “We have to tell someone,” Phipps said. “We can’t just walk into the Forbidden City and look around for a cure. We need aid. And it sounds like this new emperor won’t be very helpful, to say the least.”

  “I was thinking the same thing,” Alice admitted. “But I don’t trust her.”

  “No,” Phipps said. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t all cooperate for the moment. Remember, we have something she desperately wants—your remaining alive and healthy.”

  “Very well. Translate again, if you would.” She took a deep breath. “Lady Orchid, we have come to China to find a cure for clock—er, Dragon Men.”

  Phipps translated this. There was a long pause, and then Cixi said, “Why?”

  The question took Alice aback. “The Dragon Man in the room next-door is my fiancé. He will die soon. I . . . want him to live.”

  “But being a Dragon Man is the greatest honor a commoner can achieve,” Cixi said, clearly shocked. “Regardless of how Su Shun feels about you, your fiancé could walk into the Forbidden City right now and they would treat him with honor and reverence.”

  “Until he goes mad and dies,” Alice said bitterly.

  “His funeral would be enormous, and he would be buried in the Cemetery of Midnight Dragons. The eunuchs would burn incense on his grave every month, and his name would be added to the list of Dragon Men for recitation every New Year. No one would ever forget him.”

  “Look, I don’t wish to debate this.” Alice fumbled in her own sleeve and produced a rather grubby handkerchief, with which she dabbed her eyes. Her other hand still bore the corks. “I can cure the plague, or blessing, or whatever you to call it, among normal patients, but people who become Dragon Men change the organism somehow, and the disease becomes immune to my cure. I later learned that several cures in England have been invented and destroy
ed over the years, and China’s reputation led me to believe a cure for Dragon Men may exist here. So we have come. That is the end of it.”

  “I see.” Cixi sat down, and the maid pushed a stool under her. “Then I regret to inform you that there is no cure for Dragon Men.”

  The words struck Alice with all the impact of a physical blow, and the room rocked from side to side. Her vision dimmed. She saw Gavin chained to a wall in a straitjacket, howling and screaming, foaming at the mouth, biting at his lips until they bled. She saw his eyes, wild and terrible and filled with pain. It was the eventual fate of every clockworker.

  She came back to herself. She tried to deny the words, tell herself Cixi was lying. But Cixi had no reason to lie about this. Slowly, she brought herself fully upright on the bed, forcing herself to face the awful truth. Phipps’s face was iron. Click watched them both.

  “How do you know this?” Alice said hoarsely.

  “I was Imperial Concubine. I had my own eunuchs, my own maids, and my own spies. And I had the emperor’s ear. I know—knew—everything that happened in the Forbidden City. If someone had cured a Dragon Man, I would have heard of it before the emperor did. But if you don’t believe me, think of this—why would we want to cure Dragon Men? The very idea is ridiculous! No one would even research such a thing.”

  “Clockworkers do as they wish,” Alice replied weakly. “They—”

  “Not here. The Jade Hand speaks in their ears, and they build what the emperor desires.”

  “The Jade Hand speaks? Is that the salamander Lieutenant Li implanted in Gavin’s ear?”

  “Indeed. No Dragon Man has ever researched a cure for the blessing of dragons, no matter what you may have heard. The blessing is a sacred thing. Emperor Xianfeng lived in fear of contracting it, but even he could not bring himself to order any of the Dragon Men to look into a cure of any kind.”

  “Oh God,” Alice moaned. The world was falling apart around her. She had put herself and Gavin in mortal danger for a cure that didn’t exist. “What will we do, then?”

  “But . . . ,” Lady Orchid continued.

  Alice looked at her. “But?”

  “There is no reason we could not look for a cure.” Lady Orchid spoke slowly, as if the words were difficult to say. “If my son were on the throne, and I were regent, I could order it done.”

  “I don’t understand,” Alice said. “You just said—”

  “The Dragon Men haven’t found a cure in large part because the emperor has never ordered them to look for one. If my son sat on the throne, I could tell him to order all the Dragon Men in the empire to look for a cure. Since China would not be at war, the Dragon Men would be . . . unoccupied. Imagine how much they might accomplish if the Jade Hand forced them all to work together.”

  “Oh. I—I don’t think so,” Alice said. “Frankly, I don’t know that I can trust you, Lady Orchid, rude as that sounds.”

  “I understand fully, but what other options do you have, Lady Michaels?”

  “Gavin is brilliant. He might find a cure on his own.”

  “Perhaps.” Lady Orchid’s tone was languid now. “Does he have a full laboratory on that ship of his? We didn’t see one. Has he shown any expertise at working with the blessing of dragons? I don’t recall hearing of any.”

  “No,” Alice admitted. “But we could go look for someone who does have it. Unless you plan to keep us here.”

  “Of course not. You are not prisoners. You are free to leave at any time.” She paused. “How much time does your fiancé have before the blessing takes him, more or less?”

  “I don’t know. A month, we think. Two at most.”

  “And in that time, you think you can find a Dragon Man, persuade him to begin research, and create this cure you seek.” Lady Orchid examined her nails. “That would be quite an accomplishment.”

  “She’s toying with you,” Phipps added after the translation.

  “I’m aware of that. I don’t like it.”

  “You won’t find any such Dragon Man in China, of course,” Lady Orchid continued as if there had been no interruption. “No Chinese Dragon Man would work on a cure. So you must spend a certain amount of time traveling back the way you came. That may prove difficult. Your ship is rather conspicuous. You yourself do not blend in with Chinese. And you do not speak our language. I wonder how far such a lady could run before Su Shun found her, especially with so many people seeking her.”

  Alice sighed. “Let’s cut through the treacle.”

  “I don’t know how to translate that,” Phipps put in.

  “You are saying that if I don’t help you,” Alice said, “then we have no chance of finding a cure before Gavin . . . succumbs, and I stand a good chance of being captured and killed. But if we do help you, you’ll put all your resources toward creating a cure.”

  “I give you my sworn word as a member of the Imperial Court, Lady Michaels. I swear to you by the spirits of my ancestors and as a lady of the Yehenara clan that if you help me, I will fulfill this obligation to you.”

  And she bowed low before Alice.

  “She is bowing as if before a lord,” Phipps said. “Either she means every word, or she is the most skilled liar in all of China.”

  Alice still didn’t trust Lady Orchid, but neither did she see an alternative. “All right,” she said. “I agree to your terms.”

  A look of palpable relief crossed Lady Orchid’s face. “Thank you, honored lady.”

  “I would like to see Gavin now.”

  Here, Lady Orchid hesitated. “That may not be wise.”

  Alice tensed. “What’s wrong?” She bolted out of the bed and realized for the first time she wore no shoes or stockings. The maid bustled forward to slip her feet into a pair of soft white slippers. “You said—”

  “It is possible to see him,” Lady Orchid said quickly. “I am just uncertain that you truly wish it.”

  “Lady—”

  “Very well.” She said something to the mute maid, who scurried out. Moments later, the door opened again and a strange chair entered. Alice had seen wheelchairs before, but this one walked on delicate spider legs. White curtains shrouded the occupant. Alice strode forward and thrust them aside. Gavin sat within. In stark contrast to all the white clothing Alice had seen so far, Gavin wore plain black silk from neck to ankle. A round cap that flared out on all sides covered his hair. A day’s worth of pale stubble covered his chin, and the ugly salamander still curled around his left ear. He didn’t look up when Alice yanked the curtains away. His attention was rooted on a small painting in his lap. On the canvas, a woman with a white face and tiny ruby lips in a trailing red robe fanned herself near a shimmering brook. Chinese characters flowed down one side of the painting. Gavin stared at the painting as if he might fall into it.

  “Gavin?” Alice touched his arm. “Gavin!”

  He didn’t respond. Alice’s heart twisted and sank. It was his first fugue state in quite some time, and she had been hoping that the plague might have somehow left him. A foolish hope.

  “The painting hung on the wall of his room,” Lady Orchid supplied. “If he is like other Dragon Men, he will eventually come out of this state and work on something fantastic.”

  “And burn out his mind all the faster,” Alice retorted. “Gavin! Darling, speak to me!”

  But Gavin continued staring at the painting. Alice licked her lips. Clockworkers experienced two kinds of fugue states. The first, often triggered by an odd idea or a piece of machinery that needed repair or even a stray word, sent them into a frenzy of experimentation, designing, and building. The second, often triggered by something beautiful, usually something with a pattern to it, drew them into a trance. Music was a favorite trigger, but artwork or the spreading pattern in a droplet of blood could do the trick as well. Both fugues disturbed Alice greatly. During a building fugue, clockworkers turned into snarling monsters that treated even their closest loved ones like filth, and during a trance fugue, clockworkers stared
and drooled. Alice always feared Gavin might not come back from whatever place he was visiting.

  “Gavin,” she repeated.

  “He is speaking with dragons,” Lady Orchid said through Phipps. “It is very bad luck to disturb him.”

  Alice ignored this. She shook Gavin’s shoulder. “Gavin! Darling, listen to my voice. Come back to me. Please, Gavin. Follow my voice and come back to me.”

  Still no response. Disregarding the presence of Phipps and Lady Orchid, Alice leaned into the chair and kissed him. The kiss went delicate and deep. She felt like a single leaf landing on a pool to create tiny ripples that flowed out in all directions. Gavin jerked and gasped for breath. He blinked and looked around.

  “What—?” he said. “Alice?”

  Alice sighed with relief. “I’ll explain in a moment. Can you stand up?”

  “Yes.” He started to glance down at the painting in his lap. “What is—?” Alice took the artwork away from him.

  Lady Orchid’s face was hard with disapproval, but she only said, “It is not good to discuss powerful ideas with the door open.”

  Gavin scrambled out of the chair, looking like his old self. He snatched the cap off his head and stared at it. “What happened? What’s going on? Why am I wearing black pajamas and a hat indoors?”

  Alice quickly explained the situation to him. When she finished, Gavin nodded. “We need to work with her, then. Where’s my ship?”

  “Prince Kung’s men deflated your ship and brought it here under cover of darkness last night. It and all the automatons aboard it are safely hidden on the palace grounds.”

  “What about Lieutenant Li and his men?”

  Alice had completely forgotten about them, and she felt a little guilty that she hadn’t asked after them.

  “They are safe.”

  “Safe? What does that mean?” Gavin asked.

  Lady Orchid cocked her head. “Is he important to you, Lord Ennock?”

  “I’m not a lord—”

  “The blessing of dragons makes you a lord.”

  “Oh. Uh, Li is important to me, yes. I want to know what happened to him and his men. Did you turn them over to Su Shun for execution?”