The Dragon Men ce-3

by Steven Harper

  “Ancient history,” Phipps said. “The Chinese lost. They signed the treaty.”

  “And now they have decided to fight again.” Al-Noor popped something blue and rubbery into his mouth. “Perhaps they have heard that the British are losing their clockworkers and they have decided to flex their muscles. It will be interesting to see how the British fare now that no new clockworker has been spotted in Europe for nearly two months and the ones they already have are dying out. Who will create and repair their engines of war?”

  “So they’ve closed the borders to keep the cure out.” Alice sank to a pillow despite herself.

  “It is what I would do were I ruling China.”

  “But it doesn’t explain why you captured us,” Phipps pointed out.

  “Ah, but it does. In a way.” Al-Noor checked the contents of a serving bowl, discovered it was empty, and made a face. A squid man snatched it up and hurried away with it. “I myself know quite a lot about the clockwork plague. I suffer from it.”

  “Do you?” Phipps said without a trace of sarcasm.

  “It was why my countrymen sent me here. This island is a men’s leper colony, you know. Up top, that is. They also send people who suffer from the clockwork plague here, but we, poor souls, are lepers among lepers and are forced to scuttle about down here. After nearly a year of hard work, I discovered how to alter the plague a bit, combine it with proteins from sea animals.”

  “Squid,” Alice whispered in horror.

  Al-Noor nodded with enthusiasm. “My process changes them. It slows the plague considerably but does not halt it. The two you cured, Lady Michaels”-he gestured at Phipps, and Alice remembered she had scratched the squid men before al-Noor boarded-“have died. Only my altered plague was keeping them alive, and you took that away from them.”

  Guilt engulfed Alice, and she folded her arms across her stomach. The iron spider made a cold, dreadful weight.

  “I still don’t understand why you captured me,” Phipps growled. “And I’m growing impatient.”

  “My research is expensive,” al-Noor replied simply. “Do you have any idea how much I pay in bribes just to get a ship’s captain to land here, let alone bring me what I need? It is ungodly. Fortunately for me, a source of revenue skimmed across my little sea directly at me.”

  “We don’t have much money,” Alice said, not quite lying. “We can pay a little-”

  “Not you,” al-Noor interrupted. “The Chinese.”

  That stopped Alice. “The Chinese?” she repeated.

  “The emperor, to be specific. His Imperial Majesty Xianfeng is offering four hundred pounds of silver for the capture of Alice, Lady Michaels. Alive.” His eyes glittered. “I can breed a lot of squid with that much money.”

  “Four hundred pounds of silver,” Phipps breathed.

  “Good heavens,” Alice whispered.

  “Wait-he wants me alive?” Phipps said. “So when you were threatening to drown me aboard our ship-”

  “An excellent bluff,” al-Noor agreed. “I’m very good at them.”

  Phipps closed her uncovered eye for a moment. “Why does the emperor want us? Me?”

  “Rumor has it Xianfeng fears the clockwork plague. Perhaps he wants to ensure he avoids it forever. He’s also known for keeping pretty concubines, especially unusual ones. You can keep him occupied in any number of ways, I am sure.”

  A chill slid over Alice, and her fingers automatically went to her spider gauntlet. Phipps caught her eye and gave a tiny shake of her head, which stiffened Alice’s spine.

  “In any case,” al-Noor finished, “once I turn you in, I will have enough silver to buy everything I need for the next stage of my research.”

  “And what is that?” Alice couldn’t help asking.

  “A female squid.”

  “Oh good Lord,” Phipps muttered. “Look, al-Noor, my maid is worthless to you. There’s no need to hold her hostage. Let her go as a sign of good faith, and I’ll do whatever you like.”

  “No.” Al-Noor slurped more tea and held out his cup for a refill, which one of the squid men instantly gave. “I already regret letting that stunning young man go. This maid of yours will guarantee your good behavior. If you try anything strange, she will suffer for it.”

  “I give you my word as a. . as a lady that I won’t-”

  Al-Noor cut her off with a sharp gesture. “Your pardon if I do not accept your word. I will alert the Chinese border authorities by wireless transmission in a moment, but first I want a demonstration of this cure.”

  A sour worm crawled through Alice’s stomach. Phipps glanced at her again, then said, “I don’t understand.”

  “I want to see this cure at work. You used it on two of my squid men before I arrived on the airship, and I had no chance to study the reaction before the two of them died. I wish to see it now.”

  Alice’s earlier guilt returned in a black cloud. Who had those squid men been? Did they have families? Children? Had they understood what was happening to them? It had been an accident-she’d had no intention of killing them, or even hurting them. But she had done it nonetheless, and they were dead because of her.

  Phipps crossed her arms. She was still standing. “What do you mean by see it?”

  “Cure one of my squid men. Now.”

  Uh-oh. Alice licked dry lips. The masquerade was going sour. She cast about for something to say, something to do.

  “I feel I should ask,” she said, trying to stall, “exactly why you sent that enormous creature out to capture us. My. . employer, Lady Michaels, is well-known for curing people with the plague. If you had sent her a message to say you had an entire island of plague victims who needed help, Lady Michaels would have sailed into this cave of her own accord and you could have betrayed her at your leisure, no squid necessary.”

  “Oh,” said al-Noor. A long moment of silence followed. Then he added, “But that would have been dull.”

  “Indeed,” Phipps said.

  “In any case,” al-Noor continued, “I must insist that you show me the cure, Lady Michaels.”

  “I am not a circus act, Mr. al-Noor.” Phipps’s posture stiffened. “And in any case, the cure kills your men. I won’t be responsible for more deaths.”

  “They are all dying anyway,” al-Noor replied reasonably. “Fortunately, the mainland sends me a fresh supply of plague victims every few months. They do not even know what becomes of them-nor do they care.”

  “And you don’t, either?” Alice burst out.

  “As we already observed, they are dying anyway. Please, Lady Michaels.”

  “No,” Phipps said.

  Al-Noor snapped his fingers twice, and one of the squid men whipped the cover off a serving platter. On the platter lay an ugly brass pistol with a glass barrel. Almost languidly, al-Noor plucked the pistol from the table and aimed it at Phipps. A thin whine shrilled through the cavern, and the glass snapped with yellow sparks as the weapon powered up. “Cure one of my men or I will shoot.”

  “No, you won’t,” Phipps sniffed. “The reward is to capture me alive. If I’m dead, you get nothing. And if you shoot my maid, I’ll be too upset to cure anyone, so don’t bother threatening her.”

  “Oh, I will shoot you, all right,” al-Noor said. “And you, Lady Michaels,” he added to Alice, “will watch her die. Slowly.”

  This caught Alice completely off guard. She sprang to her feet, not sure if she was more angry or afraid. “What?”

  “I deduced it some time ago. This woman-is her name actually Susan, perhaps? — speaks and carries herself like a military officer and, oh yes, she wears a uniform. Lady Michaels serving in the military? I hardly think so. And you, madam, do not walk or talk like a maid. So, Lady Michaels, demonstrate the cure on one of these men here, or I will shoot your friend. I have the feeling you will prove rather more compliant.”

  “If you shoot her,” Alice said, trying to imitate Phipps’s bravado and not quite succeeding, “I won’t help you.”

 
Al-Noor fired. A red energy beam slashed through the air and struck one of the squid men in the chest. It fell to the floor with a terrible squeal amid sizzling skin. The smell of cooked fish filled the air. The squid man twisted and screamed in agony, even though it had no mouth, and Alice watched in horror as its chest melted into a blue mass that bubbled like a witch’s cauldron. The squid man screamed and screamed. Alice clapped her hands over her ears in horror. The spider claws cruelly raked her skin, but she left them there through a century of seconds, until the squid man died. The other squid men remained motionless and impassive, their dark eyes reflecting the mess on the floor.

  “That is setting one.” Al-Noor cranked a dial on the stock of the pistol and aimed at Phipps, who blanched despite herself. “This is setting seven.”

  “Wait!” Alice cried.

  “Yes, Lady?”

  Alice looked down at the table and unhappily ran her hands around the rim of the empty plate before her. The spider’s claws scraped over china. Two awful choices, and no one to hide behind, no one to turn to. Just herself. Just as it always was. A wave of homesickness swept over her, and more than anything in that moment she yearned to be back in London, in the little house she had rented, with Gavin sitting across the kitchen table from her while they shared a meal and talked about nothing in particular. No clockworkers, no squid men, no iron spiders. Just she and Gavin, with his kind voice and blue eyes and that way he had of looking at her that made her feel like the only woman in the entire world. Her fingers continued their crawl around the plate.

  “Very well, Mr. al-Noor,” she said. “I will ‘cure’ one of your squid men. Just don’t-”

  She flung the plate at al-Noor. It glanced off his pistol and shattered. He yelped. The pistol fired, but the beam went wide. Phipps leaped across the table at him, brass arm outstretched. Dishes scattered and broke as she grabbed his fleshy wrist with her metal fingers. Except with the clockwork plague came enhanced reflexes, and al-Noor was quick to recover. He went down beneath Phipps but managed to keep his weapon hand free. The pair rolled across the stone floor as al-Noor brought the pistol around to press against Phipps’s temple. Phipps knocked it aside. Alice threw another plate at him and missed. It crashed next to his ear, and he ignored it. She dashed around the table, cursing her bulky skirts and looking for an opening.

  “Take them, you fools!” al-Noor barked. “Hit this stupid woman!”

  The squid men in the room moved. Two grabbed Alice from behind, and their cold hands chilled her skin through her dress. Another pair hoisted Phipps straight off al-Noor while a third cracked her over the ear with a hard fist. Phipps staggered, stunned but still conscious.

  Al-Noor hauled himself to his feet. Blood from a split lip spattered his ridiculous swim costume, and Alice loathed him with a black hatred. She struggled within the grip of the squid men, but they held her like iron.

  “That was a mistake.” He spat blood and raised the pistol. “The reward for your dead body is lower, but still sufficient.”

  Alice forced herself to remain calm, though fear and adrenaline zipped through every artery and vein. Think, girl, she told herself. Al-Noor was a clockworker. Clockworkers were geniuses, but their thinking was far from perfect. Remember what happens to Gavin.

  “I like what you’ve done with those droplets of blood,” she said with quiet desperation. “They’re so round, so smooth, so clear. There must be millions, billions, trillions of cells in each drop, spinning, whirling, swirling through liquid. How beautiful, how lovely, how perfect.”

  Al-Noor looked down. Scarlet drops fell from his lip, just as Alice described, glistening in the air before they landed on the broken table, and the sight seemed to grab his attention. A drop fell, and his eyes followed it until it hit the wood with a tiny tip noise. Another followed. A third landed in his cup, spreading like a tiny fractal flower, and his attention remained rooted. He had the same expression on his face Gavin did when he became fascinated by something, and the similarity unnerved Alice. She ground her teeth. Gavin had nothing in common with this man, and he never would.

  “The blood disperses through the water, expanding, flowing, moving. The blood is beautiful, the blood is entrancing,” she forced herself to chant.

  Nothing in common? Truly? An icy finger of doubt slid around her thoughts. Gavin was a clockworker, and clockworkers always went mad. Always. Al-Noor was just further along than Gavin. How would she react if-when-Gavin decided her life was worth less than some new bit of technology?

  Her voice faltered. “The blood is. . is. .,” she said, trailing off, tried again, and failed to come up with a single thing to say. All she could see was Gavin’s face superimposed over al-Noor’s. The squid men, bereft of further orders, remained in place, holding the stunned Phipps upright and keeping Alice in their cold grip. She considered scratching the one on her left with her spider, but that would mean the poor creature’s death, and she couldn’t bring herself to do it, even to free herself.

  Al-Noor looked up. His attention had only been barely diverted, and when Alice stopped chanting, he lost interest in the blood.

  “Very good, Lady,” he said. “You have shown yourself more dangerous than I knew. You will die now.”

  He aimed the pistol at Alice. The last thing Alice heard was the pistol’s high-pitched whine.

  Chapter Three

  Peking was burning. The flames lit the night sky with phoenix wings, and smells of smoke and gunpowder stung Cixi’s nose, even here at the Mountain Palace for Avoiding Heat, far from the Forbidden City in Peking. Behind her in the spidery palanquin, her maids hid their painted faces in their sleeves and wept. Cixi, the Lady Yehenara, kept a carefully mild expression, as if she were out enjoying an evening ride, though inside she was weeping just like the maids. For a second time the British barbarians had invaded Peking, and now they were doing what they did best-destroy. Automatically she reached down to her lap to stroke one of her dogs for comfort, forgetting that her lap was empty. During the hasty evacuation of the Forbidden City, the eunuchs had thrown all her dear little lion-faced dogs down the well so the barbarians wouldn’t be able to touch them. She wondered if any of them were still alive, struggling to stay afloat in the cold water and begging for someone to take them out.

  The spider palanquin came to a halt. Its legs lowered it to the ground, stirring the silk curtains that preserved the privacy of the riders. Li Liyang, her chief eunuch, personally helped her out and guided her toward the steps of the Pavilion of a Thousand Silver Stars, her own residence within the palace. The palace wasn’t a single building but was actually a compound that took up most of the little town of Chengde. Dozens of pavilions and temples and bridges and palaces lay scattered artfully about the lush lawns and gardens of perfumed flowers chosen for their complementary scents. Cixi, who pronounced her imperial name kee-shee in the Manchu fashion, paused at the top of the steps to look at the too-bright sky again. The city was dying as slowly and steadily as her dogs.

  “My lady, we should not remain outdoors,” said Liyang in his high-pitched lilt. “It is too upsetting for a delicate constitution.”

  “Where is my son?” she asked as she mounted the steps.

  “He is safe,” Liyang replied. His head was shaved, and he wore a conical hat of gold silk that matched the elaborate geometric designs on his gold robe. Like most eunuchs, he smelled vaguely of urine-the knife that stripped away a boy’s three preciouses took with it the ability to control the bladder, a problem that remained through adulthood and led to the saying “smelly as a eunuch.” At his belt, Liyang carried a pouch with a small jar in it. The jar held his preciouses preserved in oil, and when he died, they would be buried with him so he could join the ancestors as a full man. Cixi thought of her dogs again and wondered how long it would be before such a thing happened to Liyang.

  “Safe does not tell me where he is, Liyang,” she said. “Bring him to me immediately.”

  “My lady-”

  “You have di
sobeyed me, Liyang. Fortunately, you are my favorite eunuch, and these are trying times. Therefore I will not have you beaten for disobedience-if my son Zaichun is at my side by the time I reach the front door.”

  Liyang scurried away. To be nice to him, Cixi took her time with the steps, pausing to allow her maids to smooth the wrinkles from her silken split-front robe and straighten the wide trousers beneath. Cixi was beautiful and knew it, but in the Imperial Court, beauty was common and cheap. Cixi’s lustrous hair, fine features, and smooth skin had gotten her chosen as a concubine of the fifth rank when she was sixteen, but poise, wit, and her skill in the bedroom had caught the emperor’s fancy, and by age twenty-two, Cixi had spun that fancy into a pregnancy and finally her current rank as Imperial Concubine. Beauty had its uses, and it had to be maintained, but it was nothing without a mind behind it.

  Liyang was lucky that beauty requirements for Manchu women such as Cixi did not extend to binding their feet as some of the concubines did. Otherwise someone would have carried her up the steps in an instant and she would have been forced to have Liyang beaten with bamboo rods regardless of how she felt about him. She supposed she could order it done with the thicker ones that broke bones and left bruises instead of the thinner ones that split skin and laid flesh open. But that might show too much favoritism, even for Liyang, and when things were chaotic, people craved order. It wouldn’t do to go back on the rules for any reason. No, if Liyang didn’t produce her son within the allotted time, she would have to have the Imperial Master of a Hundred Cries mete out a severe beating with no intervention from Cixi. It would make everyone feel better.

  She reached the top of the steps. The Pavilion of a Thousand Silver Stars was three stories tall, bright and airy even in the night. Lacquered pillars held up the portico, which looked out over the serene waters of a lotus pond. She had ordered the pavilion painted a soft pink, the exact shade of an orchid, because her girlhood name had been Little Orchid. Cixi was the name given her on the day she had been chosen as an Imperial Concubine. A year after the birth of her son-so far the emperor’s only son-Cixi had been promoted to the position of Noble Consort, which put her second only to the empress. This meant she had the emperor’s ear and could do things such as build pink pavilions in the Mountain Palace for Avoiding Heat.