Su Shun allowed himself a small smile. The Hall of Supreme Harmony belonged to him, as did the entire Forbidden City and the empire beyond it. A true ruler now ruled the one true empire. It was time to bring China back to the old ways, when emperors were heroic warlords who fought on the field, not opium addicts who simpered behind silk curtains.
He was well aware how tenuous his rule was. Although he came from a noble family, his rebuilt face precluded him from any hope of touching the throne. Only a physically perfect man was considered worthy to receive the Jade Hand; its power would overwhelm a lesser one. That word lesser had irked him for dozens of years. Xianfeng’s father, Emperor Daoguong, had been physically perfect, but he had also been a complete fool. Su Shun had gritted his teeth while the emperor bungled attempt after attempt to keep control of the opium that continued to seep into China thanks to British merchants. But at the height of the old man’s power, more than thirty thousand chests of the sticky black balls glided across the borders every year. Su Shun watched his own father succumb to the darkness, withdrawing from his sons and turning weak as a hollow reed, until one day he simply shuddered and died, the pipe he loved more than his family still in his mouth. Su Shun hated the smell of the smoke, hated the crackle of the little flame, hated the ffffff sound of the smoking going in, deadly as poisoned feathers. He swore he would rid China of the filth, both the opium and those who sold it.
It was clear Daoguong and his family weren’t fit to rule. Daoguong had trouble thinking past China’s borders and had no desire to expand China or put down the British once and for all. Su Shun knew better. And Su Shun had patience.
The Jade Hand twitched, and a twinge of pain threaded up Su Shun’s arm. He kept his expression neutral. He would not show pain here, in the Outer Court. People might mistake pain as an admission that he wasn’t fit to rule, and he hadn’t coddled that spoiled brat Xianfeng for eleven years-eleven years! — to watch it all drift away like so much opium smoke. When the boy had shown an interest in common whorehouses and even the opium dens, Su Shun had encouraged him, helped him disguise himself and move among the lice-ridden prostitutes and smoky drug dens, hoping the little idiot would catch something and die. But the ancestors had smiled on Xianfeng, or perhaps they had frowned on Su Shun. Either way, the limp little prince had minced up to the throne after Daoguong’s death and, after inhaling copious amounts of opium, accepted the Jade Hand while Su Shun gave his false half smile. But still Su Shun waited.
And then the English came, with their ships and their cannons and their clanking clockwork monstrosities, nothing like the elegant masterpieces created by fine Dragon Men. They came with their treaty that allowed them to thrust even more opium down the throats of good Chinese, along with their cheaply made factory goods that put Chinese merchants out of business. The supercilious sneer they gave Su Shun over the treaty table was nearly enough to make him draw sword and pistol to attack right then. But he held himself in check, and that had been for the good. What little will Xianfeng had left seemed to drain out of him after that treaty, and he spent more and more time with his opium pipe and that concubine cow of his, the one who mooed so prettily in his ear and who actually managed to drop a son. How she coaxed a boy child out his opium-laced loins, Su Shun still didn’t understand. He clenched his teeth and spent hours ensuring the emperor had all the opium silver could buy. He encouraged him to smoke more and more of it because opium was of the feminine yin, and it drained away the male yang. He also talked him into using the Passage of Silken Footsteps out of the Forbidden City to spend himself on Peking prostitutes, both male and female, so that none of his seed would reach the concubines or his breathless empress. Both schemes had worked for a while-none of the other concubines had become pregnant, and Su Shun had seen to it that any whore who had thrown babies nine months after a celestial visit had quietly disappeared with their litters. Su Shun would have liked to accuse Cixi of infidelity; he had even dropped a few hints into the Xianfeng’s ear, but the emperor waved them aside as ridiculous. The only thing Su Shun had managed to do was delay Xianfeng in writing the name of his heir for the Ebony Chamber to swallow.
And then fate had played straight into Su Shun’s hands. The English had attacked again, making it all the way to Peking. An idea had come to Su Shun, and he arranged for a decently pretty woman to be infected with the dragon’s blessing and put into a concubine’s guise. The woman was willing enough to die, for the amount of money Su Shun paid her would take care of her entire family for the rest of their lives, and it was easy enough for her to join the evacuation train during the confusion. Su Shun couldn’t even remember her name, but she had done the job admirably. The emperor was dead, and after a bit of scuffling, Su Shun had the Jade Hand.
He held it out before him, as he had done many times before in the last few days. His right arm still hurt, and sometimes the pain flared as if it had been dipped in molten brass. But the spikes at the top of the Hand had snapped into his flesh, and the brass-bound green fingers twitched. Most of the time he felt nothing in it, but occasionally it seemed he could feel an ache in his missing palm. He could no longer hold a sword or fire a pistol, but perhaps he would learn to do so with his left. The pain flared again. Su Shun gestured, and one of the eunuchs kneeling around him held out a bowl. Xianfeng had used opium to dull the affliction, but Su Shun was not so foolish. Su Shun tapped the bowl, and the eunuch drank half of it. Su Shun waited a moment, and when the eunuch didn’t topple over dead, he accepted the bowl and drained it dry.
Another eunuch hurried up to the bottom of the stairs, dropped to his knees, and knocked his forehead on the stones. Su Shun snapped his fingers, and the eunuch rose again. His head was fuzzy from lack of proper shaving, and his robe was still white. The hundred days of mourning for Xianfeng were still in effect, and Su Shun didn’t dare shorten that time period, though it grated-he would have preferred to stuff Xianfeng into his tomb and pretend the idiot had never existed. People had short memories, and the faster he could shove Xianfeng aside, the more entrenched Su Shun’s rule would become. Even now he could feel the Jade Hand sinking deeper into his flesh, becoming one with him. Soon nothing would release it.
“What is it?” he asked the eunuch. “Tell me you’ve found Cixi and that whelp of hers.”
The eunuch hesitated, which told Su Shun the answer. “I bring news of a different kind, Imperial Majesty,” he said in his high, fluting voice. “Rumors are circulating around the city about Lady Michaels and Lord Ennock.”
A bit of excitement flicked through Su Shun, tinged with a bit of fear, though he kept both away from his face. Alice Michaels-the woman with the cure. He glanced at the war machines in the Outer Court. The only reason they and the army and the rest of the machines waiting outside the Forbidden City weren’t marching west was that Su Shun was afraid of the men encountering her and her infamous cure. It had all but died out on its own since she had vanished three years ago. Lung Hun, who specialized in the blessing of dragons, said it was a strange paradox-the cure destroyed the disease, but the cure eventually died out without the disease to play host to it. If he could destroy Alice Michaels, he could destroy the cure and keep the Dragon Men safe for his invasion.
“Proceed,” he said tightly.
“Your Imperial Majesty knows that Michaels and Ennock were captured at the border and were on their way here, as your Imperial Majesty ordered, and Ennock was fitted with a salamander to make him a Dragon Man, but both of them vanished before they reached the city, with no sign of where they-or our troops-went.”
“Yes, yes, get on with it.”
The eunuch prostrated himself again. “As your Imperial Majesty demands,” he quavered. “I am only a messenger, and I pray you will not have this humble servant whipped or burned or-”
“I will not have you beaten,” Su Shun growled, “if you just tell me what you learned.”
“They hide somewhere in Peking,” the eunuch said to the ground. “We do not yet know where.�
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Su Shun’s eyes went wide. He strode down the steps and hauled the shaking eunuch to his feet by the collar of his white mourning robe. The eunuch squealed. “What about the cure?” he snarled. The other eunuchs tried to shuffle farther away without seeming to. Far below, the Dragon Men paused in their work. A copper tiger roared.
“M-m-m-majesty. .”
“Speak!” Su Shun bellowed. “Or I will tie your entrails to a rock and throw them down a well!”
The eunuch’s eyes were wild with fear, and a smell of fresh urine permeated the air. “Th-there is no sign of the cure in Peking, M-majesty.”
“Do not lie to save your skin,” Su Shun hissed into the man’s face, “for I will nail it above my bed if you are.”
“It is the truth, Celestial One.”
Su Shun released the eunuch so abruptly, he fell and tumbled partway down the stone steps. Facedown, he lay there, still quivering.
“Send the army into the city,” Su Shun ordered. “Begin house-to-house searches. I want her found and brought to me immediately. Alive. The reward of four hundred pounds of silver for her still stands. And I want Cixi and her little bastard brought with her. Go!”
The eunuch scrambled away, barely remembering to knock his head at the bottom of the stairs. Su Shun raised the Jade Hand. A tingle ran down his arm, and power flared across the brass inlays. The salamanders, curled around the ear of every Dragon Man, made an answering glow, and they stopped working.
“Lung Chao!” Su Shun boomed in the voice he used when addressing legions of troops. “Bring your birds!”
Below, Lung Chao turned away from the mess of cow he had been examining and ran lightly toward the steps. He bounded up the white marble without pausing, and Su Shun wanted to kick him back down the stairs, even strike off his head, for not kowtowing properly. But Lung Chao was a Dragon Man, and immune to Imperial protocol. Su Shun needed every Dragon Man he could get, and it would be foolish to execute one for forgetting to bow. He might as well as throw a magic sword into a volcano. At least Lung Chao remembered to kneel when he reached the emperor.
“Majesty,” Lung Chao said. His deadly flock of birds clattered to a noisy landing on the Hall steps, and they peered up at Su Shun with eerie, blank eyes.
“Can your birds search the city from above?”
“They can, Imperial Majesty. They are very much like my border guards.”
“Then take them out to search for Alice Michaels and Gavin Ennock and Lady Cixi.”
Lung Chao paused. “Are you positive you want this?”
The direct address caught Su Shun off guard. “What are you talking about?”
“They will come to you. Like worms. Like serpents. Like rabbits and moles wearing silken slippers, they will come. The balance is wrong, and it will correct itself.”
“The balance?”
“Yin and yang, you and she. You and Cixi, hand in hand.” Lung Chao gestured toward the Jade Hand. “The right is wrong and must be righted.”
If one of his commanders had spoken to him this way, Su Shun would have smashed him across the face and had him beaten with thin rods. But he needed to think less like a general and more like a ruler. And this was a Dragon Man. Instead, Su Shun held up his right hand, the Jade Hand, and said, “Silence.”
The Hand glowed, as did the salamander in Lung Chao’s ear. Lung Chao’s words ended.
“Do as I bid you. And kowtow when you leave.”
Lung Chao obeyed. His little flock of birds followed him, and suddenly this gesture seemed too small, so unworthy of an emperor. Once again he held up the Jade Hand, and the familiar tingle came with the glow. The Dragon Men turned to face him. Su Shun only wished the Jade Hand’s range reached farther than a long bowshot; the Hand could summon any Dragon Man within its range, and it gave Su Shun the power to command any Dragon Man who could hear his voice, but this Ennock boy was beyond the reach of both. For the moment.
“Dragon Men of China,” Su Shun boomed, “take your inventions and go forth into the city. Find Alice Michaels. Find Gavin Ennock. Find Lady Cixi. And bring them to me!”
A hundred salamanders glowed all around the Outer Court, and then, one by one, the Dragon Men turned to their inventions. With yips and yaps and wild shouts, they clambered atop stomping elephants, unleashed tigers, mounted dragons, and swarmed toward the five arches of the Meridian Gate. The eunuchs on duty hurried to open four of them-the center arch was reserved for the emperor alone-and the mass of Dragon Men plunged through to the city beyond.
Chapter Thirteen
Gavin wrenched awake. The scars on his back burned like fiery ropes, and he still felt the cold hands of Madoc Blue, the pirate, tugging at him and tearing at his clothes. He still heard the sound of the knife going into Blue’s neck and smelled the coppery blood washing over his hands. Gavin had killed Blue more than three years ago, and the other pirates had whipped scars into Gavin’s back for laying hands on one of their own, even to defend himself from rape. But in Gavin’s dreams, Blue lurched back to life and pawed at Gavin even as the first mate’s lash descended. Ever since that terrible day, deep sleep eluded Gavin, and he always bolted awake in a thin veneer of night sweat. As a result, he avoided sleep for as long as he could-one of the few advantages of being a clockworker was that he could go for days without a wink. Apparently the lack had finally caught up with him.
He groaned and sat up. His back protested, and his head thumped with pain. The salamander circling his ear felt heavy. It came to him that he was slumped in one corner of his little laboratory aboard the Lady of Liberty. He staggered stiffly to his feet. The room was hot and stuffy. The little glow forge, the one that heated without an open flame, ticked softly as it cooled down. Tools lay scattered everywhere, along with scraps of metal and bits of wire. Click was sitting on a fold-down shelf amid the detritus, watching with interested eyes.
“What do you want, cat?” Gavin muttered.
Click cocked his head, the mechanical equivalent of a shrug. Gavin managed a stretch and felt his back pop. He winced, then leaned against the worktable with a sigh. Four fugues in twenty-four hours. The plague was catching up with him.
His hand touched warm metal, and he drew back. Laying on the table were four large pistols, fat and gleaming. Both were made of brass and copper, with glass coiling around the barrels like transparent snakes. Next to them lay a sword hilt. Gavin could just make out a stiff wire sticking out of it. Cables snaked under the table to a set of heavy-looking rucksacks-batteries for all five weapons. Gavin picked up the sword hilt and pressed a switch on the bottom. The wire glowed blue-it was made of the same alloy as the ship’s endoskeleton-and it made an eerie hum that wasn’t quite any note Gavin could name. It set Gavin’s teeth on edge. He whipped it around, and with a vvvvvip noise it sliced through a piece of scrap metal as if it was wet silk. With a nod, he switched it off. The pistols crackled when Gavin tried them, though he didn’t fire. All the weapons were simple improvements on ones he had already seen-the pistols were like al-Noor’s, and the sword was a thinner version of the one wielded by Ivana Gonta, the clockworker, back in Ukraine. He remembered working on them, but only halfway, as if he were recalling a dream from several nights ago, or a story he had once heard.
Click jumped down from the table and strolled over to a corner, where a sheet was covering something that stood upright. He batted at the dirty white cloth. Gavin whipped it aside. It was a metallic body for a mechanical. Spindly arms, jointed fingers. No head. Wires, pistons, and a few springs stuck out of the neck opening.
Gavin recognized the body immediately. It was a duplicate of Kemp. He went to one of the cupboards, took out the broken, powered-down mechanical head stored there, and inserted a screwdriver into one of the holes in back. The single unbroken eye lit back up.
“Madam. Madam. Madam,” the head said. “Madam. Madam. Madam.”
The voice brought back memories of the fight with the Gontas and the Zalizniaks back in Kiev, when Kemp’s body h
ad been destroyed and his head damaged. Gavin, ready to die for Alice in that fight, had already given himself up, but Alice had refused to let him go. In the end, she had saved him, and a little girl had perished in his place.
“Madam. Madam. Madam.”
Gavin switched Kemp’s head back off and tried it on the body. It fit, though it would take a little work, and the head still needed repairs. Still, Alice would be glad to have him back again.
A knock came at the door. Gavin whipped the sheet back over Kemp before calling, “Come in.”
Alice entered with a basket. Food smells emerged from it, and suddenly Gavin was ravenous. For a moment, he didn’t know which he was happier to see-his fiancee or the food. But his better nature overcame him, and he kissed her before taking the basket. He noticed she hadn’t replaced the corks on her iron fingertips.
“Goodness, you’re all rumpled,” she said, smoothing his hair. She didn’t touch the salamander. “You need a bath. And a shave.”
“How long have I been. . away?” he asked. The basket contained a number of small bamboo containers, each containing a number of dumplings or buns, each filled with tiny bits of sweet bean paste or chopped vegetables. Pieces within pieces within pieces. Fascinated, he started to spiral down into the plague again, but Alice’s voice snapped him back.
“Last night and today,” she said. “The sun is setting. I came in to check on you once, but. .” She trailed off.
“I didn’t hurt you, did I?” he asked, horrified.
“Certainly not!” she shot back. “But you were dreadfully. . rude. I know it isn’t your fault,” she added hastily. “The plague takes over, and you aren’t yourself.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
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