The Dragon Men (12 page)

The lock popped open. Heart beating fast, Cixi opened the box. A single piece of paper with her son's name and the emperor's seal on it would change everything. She looked inside.

The Chamber was empty.

Despair washed over her. It didn't seem to matter what she did or how hard she tried. The universe was conspiring against her with tiny events. The emperor had failed to sign a small slip of paper. That feather she had slipped on had delayed her a few crucial seconds. Now the empire had chaos instead of a tidy succession. She and Zaichun were as good as dead.

But, no. Sometimes the universe could not be allowed to win. Sometimes one had to strike back at the universe. Resolve filled Cixi. There was no time to stop, no time to give in. The Chamber was still open. Cixi swept the contents of one of her jewelry cases into it, sending jade and gold and silver tumbling inside. Two pieces—a jade leaf and a gold hairpin—fell to the floor, and these she kept separate. Then she scrambled out of her elaborate concubine's clothes with the help of her startled maids and, in her underthings, grabbed the arm of a passing chambermaid, the lowest ranking girl in the room.

“Give me your clothes,” she said. The girl stared, openmouthed, until Cixi slapped her across the face. “Now, girl!”

The move galvanized the girl into action. She stripped and handed her much plainer clothes over to Cixi, who got into them. “Liyang, have your apprentice trade clothes with Zaichun. Quickly!”

“What will you do, my lady?” Liyang asked while this was being accomplished.

“I will not say,” Cixi said, then turned to address the entire room. Everyone froze and fell silent. “Listen to me, all of you. The Celestial Throne has been taken by a usurper, one who has good reason to fear the true emperor and his supporters. If you feel your lives are in danger, take the remaining gold in my storehouse and the jewelry in my cases and flee. Do it now! Su Shun is not a patient man.”

Silence for a moment, and then chaos as several maids and eunuchs bolted for the storerooms and strongboxes. So much for loyalty. Cixi, in her plain clothing, was at the door with the Ebony Chamber in a sack when Liyang stopped her.

“You can't go alone, my lady,” he said. “Who will sweep the road before you? Who will steer the palanquin? Who will—?”

She touched his arm to silence him. “Su Shun will be looking for a concubine traveling with her servants. It will simply not occur to him to look for a maid in plain clothes traveling on foot with a servant boy. You have been a good servant and a good friend. You should run as well. Alone.”

Liyang pursed his lips and nodded.

The salamander in Lung Fan's ear glowed softly. She twitched once, then rose. “I must go. I must go now. Yes, now. Right now.” Cixi's stomach went cold as the Dragon Man walked out the door without a backward glance. Outside, she joined other Dragon Men who streamed from halls, palaces, and pavilions in an eerie stream of black silk, all marching toward the Cool Hall on the Misty Lake. Cixi's mouth was dry. Were they marching in from Peking as well?

“Mother?” Zaichun asked. “Are we truly leaving?”

“We must, Little Cricket. We will play a game as we go. Pretend you are a servant boy and keep your eyes down.”

“What do I win?”

“Your life.” She handed him the sack containing the Ebony Chamber. “Quickly, now.”

Keeping her own head down, Cixi ran with Zaichun through the pavilion and out a servant's door. With the palace in disarray and without their usual clothing, no one recognized them, or even looked at them closely. The jade leaf fell into the hands of the bribe-hungry eunuch who guarded one of the gates, and then they were on the streets of Jehol.

Cixi looked around. Word of the emperor's death hadn't leaked out yet, and people passed by on the street outside the palace walls as if nothing abnormal were happening. She felt naked without her layers of clothing and her maids and her eunuchs. Still, that was an acquired sense. Her father had been a low-ranking army officer, quite poor, and she had chopped vegetables and scrubbed floors and sewn seams like any other girl for the first sixteen years of her life. It was time to become that girl again, at least for a while.

“Did I play the game well, Mother?” Zaichun asked.

“You did, Little Cricket. But we must play a little longer. From now on my name is . . . Orchid, and yours—”

“I want to be Cricket!”

“As you like.”

“Where are we going?”

She thought again. A little voice told her she had enough money in the form of her jewelry to go anywhere in China. There were a number of nice small cities to the south, where she could live a quiet existence as a moderately wealthy widow.

But that would leave China in the hands of a usurper warlord, a foolish man who intended to wreck the world. Her back straightened. No. Just as she had told Liyang, it was time for man's rule in China to end. And although she herself could not ascend the throne—women were not allowed to rule—she held in her hands the means to govern China properly.

“We're going to Peking,” she said to Zaichun. “I have friends there who will hide us.”
And there I will make this cricket into a dragon,
she added to herself.
A dragon with an orchid in its ear.

Chapter Seven

Y
eh laughed
and laughed. His jowls jiggled, and he slapped the table, nearly upsetting his teacup. For his part, Gavin nearly whipped his sword from his belt to chop the man's hand off for such effrontery. His fingers itched to dig into the fat man's neck and snap his vertebrae one by one. The bastard was—

He ground his teeth and pushed the thoughts back. Not now. Perhaps it was the plague running away with his emotions, or perhaps it was his own reaction to a man mocking his Alice. In any case, he was in control here. He shot a glance at Phipps, who looked perfectly calm, and at the guards, who also remained perfectly calm.

No, wait—that wasn't true. Gavin studied them sidelong. The one with the pistol . . . his left leg was jumping up and down just a little, and tiny movements in his face said he was chewing on the inside of his mouth. He was nervous, very nervous, and trying to hide it. The older man, the one with the sword, was calmer, but he was as coiled as a clockwork spring. They weren't as in control as they thought.

“You want to claim reward for you,” Yeh snickered. “Funny.”

“The notice does not say anything about who may or may not claim the reward,” Alice replied. “It only offers one such. Are you a man of honor or not?”

Yeh blinked at this. “Why I give you reward? Why I not knock you on head, take you back to Peking?”

Gavin locked eyes with the younger guard, who stared back. Phipps folded her arms and looked at the ceiling, seeming to ignore her own opposite number, but Gavin knew she was keeping an eye on the room. Men continued to eat and laugh and smoke with no indication they understood the world-class drama playing out in the corner nearby. Gavin wondered how many of them would die if—when—a fight broke out.

Alice gave Yeh a little smile and reached delicately across to the table to take his plump hand in both of hers. As if soothing a child, she stroked the back of his hand with her spidery fingertips.

“Mr. Yeh,” she said, “you're an expatriate, am I right? You are not allowed to cross the border back into your dear homeland, and you are forced to live among us Western barbarians. You find this horrible, I can see.”

“Yes,” Yeh spat, though he didn't move his hand away.

“Now why is it you have been banished, hm? Is it because you and a few others like you haven't tracked me down yet? Because someone has to stay outside the borders to coordinate the search for me?”

“It is so.” Yeh leaned forward, his hand still in Alice's. “We are sacrifices for empire. But now that I find you, I go home. Emperor will use you as he likes.”

“Now, now.” Quick as a flash, Alice jabbed an iron finger into the flesh of Yeh's hand without quite breaking the skin. He inhaled sharply at the unexpected pain, a sensation he was unaccustomed to. “Do you know what this spider does?”

Yeh trembled, and his eyes rolled until the whites showed. A trickle of sweat ran down the side of his head. The guards tensed, and this time Gavin half drew his cutlass.

“Don't,” Gavin said, knowing that at least one of the guards spoke English.

“I see you do know, Mr. Yeh,” Alice said. “I also see you've worked out what will happen if I break the skin on your hand with this claw. How likely is it the emperor will ever let you reenter your homeland if you carry the cure for the clockwork plague?”

Yeh remained silent, his gaze rooted on Alice's finger.

“Let me tell you what will happen now, Mr. Yeh,” Alice continued. She sounded like a woman entertaining in her drawing room over tea, and admiration for her swelled in Gavin's chest. “You will give us that delightfully enormous reward, and we will put it aboard our airship. Then you yourself will board, and we will all fly to China. You will authorize us to cross the border—I assume you can do that—and once we arrive in Peking, you will be hailed as a hero for single-handedly delivering the notorious Alice, Lady Michaels, to the emperor. You will be able to go home, and we will be in Peking for reasons of our own. This offer is nonnegotiable and expires in one minute. If you refuse, we will walk out that door and vanish forever. An airship covers a lot of ground, Mr. Yeh, and you will never have this chance again. The time begins now.”

Phipps pulled out a pocket watch and flipped it open with her metal hand.

“You dictate nothing,” Yeh said. “Filthy white woman.”

“You are quite correct, Mr. Yeh,” Alice said with a nod. “I dictate nothing. I am merely giving you the conditions under which I will surrender myself to you, making it easy for you to return to China a hero. Whether you accept these conditions or not is purely your choice.”

“Forty seconds,” said Phipps.

“Women set no conditions,” Yeh said. “They obey them.”

“As you like, Mr. Yeh. But please note whose claw is digging into your hand.”

“Thirty seconds,” said Phipps.

“How I know you no try to kill me and run with reward?”

“Because I need you, Mr. Yeh. We can't get to Peking without you.”

“Why you go to Peking?”

“That will have to remain a mystery.”

“I say we leave,” Gavin put in. “This mongrel has no idea what honor is. His country means nothing to him. He
wants
to live in exile. I think he enjoys living among foreigners, eating our food, and enjoying our women.”

Yeh's jowls quivered. “You pay for that, boy.”

“I hope so,” Alice said. “In silver, if you please.”

“Ten seconds,” said Phipps.

Alice shifted on her pillow. “Well, it was nice meeting you, Mr. Yeh. A pity we couldn't come to—”

“Wait,” Yeh said.

“Three seconds.”

“Yes?”

Yeh ground his teeth. “I accept.”

“You are a wise man,” Alice said, and Gavin held back a smile.

*  *  *

The arrangements went quickly and smoothly, mostly because Alice refused to leave Yeh's side. “One strange move, Mr. Yeh,” she said, “and I'll poke you in a tender place.” In his rooms at the hotel, he dismissed his guards, packed a trunk, and produced a number of bearer bonds printed in several languages, including Persian, Chinese, and English. Together, they granted the bearer the right to four hundred pounds of silver. With the new telegraph system that allowed bankers and merchants to talk to each other over long distances, that meant the silver could be withdrawn from any participating bank in the world, with appropriate notice.

Gavin read through the bonds with Phipps peering over his shoulder. Each was printed on smooth, creamy paper, and the stack of them felt weighty and important. They represented more wealth than he had ever dreamed existed. Odd. This pile of paper could support his entire neighborhood back in Boston for a hundred years. He thought of his grandfather and his mother and his siblings. Gavin's father had disappeared when Gavin was young, leaving his family to fend for themselves in a two-room flat that didn't even have running water. Most of Gavin's childhood memories involved cold, hungr-filled winters.

When he had shown an ability to coax tunes from his grandfather's battered fiddle at age nine, Gavin took to playing street corners, trying to scratch up a few coins to help out. At first he'd come home every day with sore fingers and little money. Then Patrick, a year his junior, told Gavin to wear the best shirt he could find, and to wash his hands and face at the corner pump, and to smile at every person who passed his corner.
“People only give money to the ones who don't seem to need it,”
he said.
“Look like a beggar, and they'll hate you. Look like a musician, and they'll pay you.”

He was right. When Gavin washed up and smiled, his take for the day tripled. Patrick was so smart, and it broke Ma's heart that there was no way to send him to school. Gavin missed him terribly. And he missed Jenny, who got a job as a hotel maid and fell in with a window washer who made less money than she did but treated her nicely. And Harry, who tried to be dad and big brother and breadwinner to everyone, but who drank his drover's paycheck away and stayed too late at dice games. And Violet, who just wanted to help and was frustrated because she was the littlest.

When Gavin was twelve, Gramps had taken him down to the shipyards where sailors moored the floating mountains that were their airships and introduced him to Captain Felix Naismith. As a newly minted cabin boy, Gavin hadn't earned much, but he was able to send some money home. Later, when pirates had stranded him in London, he had joined the underground police force known as the Third Ward, at a much better salary. That money had allowed his family to install a better stove and buy better food, at least. With a pang, he realized that thanks to the Impossible Cube, they hadn't heard from him in three years. He had effectively vanished and left them in the lurch, just as his father had. They all probably thought he was dead. Now he was sitting atop a pile of treasure with no way to send any of it to them. Although the silver itself could be transferred from bank to bank with relative ease, the bonds that indicated the silver's ownership were tied to the physical piece of paper. And thanks to the interference of the Chinese Empire, there was no American embassy in Tehran, no good post office, no trustworthy way to deliver even one of the bonds to his family in Boston. Suddenly the thick paper seemed flat and worthless.

Back at the airfield, Phipps ordered paraffin oil from the nearby petroleum yards, which operated twenty-four hours a day, while Gavin stowed Yeh's trunk in the
Lady
's hold. The bonds he put into a secret compartment in his own cabin. As an afterthought, he put the Impossible Cube in with them. Whether the Cube was working or not, he didn't want it falling into Chinese hands. As Phipps had already pointed out, he didn't dare drop it into the sea or bury it somewhere—it would inevitably come to light—and he had no idea how to destroy it safely. He grimaced. It was like traveling with a bomb strapped to the hull.

Yeh puffed up the ladder with Alice boarding behind him. Gavin decided the man must be desperate indeed to return home, since he had only Alice's word that she wanted to go to China and that the three of them wouldn't kill him and make off with an empire's ransom in Chinese silver. Even now, Gavin wondered if that wouldn't be wiser.

Alice whistled to her automatons, and they scampered over to her. “Guard this man at all times,” she said. “Don't hurt him, but don't let him touch anything, either.”

Moments later, the
Lady
was flying again with Gavin at her helm. Clockworkers slept very little, so it wouldn't be a problem for him to stay up all night, or even for the next several nights. The moon scattered silver across papery forest leaves, and the cold air smelled spicy. Yeh estimated it would take them two days to pass through Bactria, then another day or two over Samarkand to reach the Chinese border just west of the city of Kashgar, assuming everything went well. After pointing out the route on Gavin's charts, he waddled below to the cabin Phipps had assigned him, accompanied by his new brass entourage. Phipps went below as well.

“I hope you know what you're doing,” Gavin said uneasily as the
Lady
glided through the night.

“For the most part I'm confident,” Alice said. “The emperor is offering an enormous amount of money for me, and he wants me alive. That means it's safe to hand myself over to him. For now. It's the only way into Peking with the border sealed.”

“Have you seen the hole in this? The emperor wants you because he wants to ensure you don't spread the clockwork plague. That means the Chinese don't have a cure themselves. If they can't cure the clockwork plague among regular people, how can they cure a clockworker?”

“We've been over this before, darling. The British Empire had a cure, but they tried to suppress it for the same reason China is. I think the Chinese have a cure of their own.”

“But if they want to suppress the cure, you're just handing it to them. I have the feeling the emperor just wants to see you dead personally. That's why he's bringing you in alive.”

“That possibility did cross my mind, and I've accounted for that.” Alice held out her spidery hand. “I can cure ordinary clockwork plague, but I can't cure clockworkers. I think the Chinese can do the reverse. It would be yet another reason they want this cure so badly. A total monopoly over the clockwork cure would grant them a great deal of power on the world level. Imagine if a great leader took ill with the plague, and only China could cure it. But I am thinking we can arrange a trade. If they will administer their cure to you, I will give them this one. I am sure their Dragon Men can find a way to take the gauntlet off without injuring me.”

He worked his jaw back and forth. Everything Alice had just said he had pretty much worked out for himself. But there was one question that bothered him quite a lot, and it was difficult to ask aloud. It was like holding a box that contained a paper with the date of his death written on it. In many ways it was better just to leave the box shut and walk away, but in the end, he knew he would have to open it to learn the truth.

“You're willing to hand your cure over to the Chinese if they can cure me,” Gavin said slowly. “But if you stop scratching people, thousands—maybe millions—of other people would die. Should we be trading their lives for mine?”

Alice didn't move. Gavin held his breath. The box was open, and the paper lay folded at the bottom. Gavin didn't want to die, and he definitely didn't want to go frothing mad, but the thought that he might live only at the expense of all those other lives brought a leaden lump of guilt to his stomach. Did Alice feel the same way? If she did, how could they go through with this? And if she didn't feel the same way . . .

If she didn't, that would be a cold thing indeed. Could he continue to love someone so cold? And how long before her love for him turned into something icy and dead?