The Dragon Men (25 page)

“Holy one,” Cixi said, her heart knocking at the back of her throat, “we are not the sinners you seek. I am Lady Yehenara, Imperial Concubine to Emperor Xianfeng. Behind me stands Zaichun, his son, who was deposed by the evil Su Shun. We only wish passage into the Forbidden City so we may right a great wrong and put the rightful emperor on the Celestial Throne. I beseech you, holy one, forgive us our deeds here and grant the blameless young emperor permission to pass.”

The dreadful stench continued. Cixi kept her face down and tried not to tremble. She was risking not only her life, but her son's. Suddenly she wanted to hold him, embrace him as she hadn't done since he was a baby. The Imperial Concubine did not show such affection to her son. Affection was a weakness that her enemies might exploit, and the only solution was to enforce a strict distance. But she felt it nonetheless, and right then she prayed hard to all her ancestors and any spirits that might be listening that the Qilin—or whatever brain that
believed
itself to be a Qilin—would see Zaichun as an innocent, someone who could not be harmed. Or, if they would not answer her prayer, at least take her life instead of his.

The Qilin exhaled more gas. The stones rocked beneath Cixi's head. She gave a soft moan and waited for the inevitable end. Then there was a creak of moving metal, followed by silence. Cixi peeked again. The Qilin had backed away and was now sitting to one side on its haunches.

Cixi slowly got to her feet. The Qilin didn't move. She ran to Zaichun, who was still standing paralyzed by the tunnel wall. For a moment she hesitated. Then she embraced him as a mother.

“My Cricket,” she whispered.

“Mother?” he said into her robe.

She drew back. And how would she cut off his hand now? “We must see to the others.”

The soldiers were all unharmed, of course, though somewhat embarrassed by their superstitious response. Alice struggled to free herself from the wreckage of the brass dragon. Two of the soldiers hurried to help. She was limping slightly and favored one arm, but her sword seemed undamaged. The dragon was a total loss. Other soldiers were rushing over to Lieutenant Li and Lieutenant Phipps. Li was completely unharmed, but Phipps staggered about, and Li insisted she lean on him. Her brass arm trailed the broken wire. Once she recovered herself, she held it out to Alice, who cut the wire off with the sword. Throughout it all, the Qilin didn't move. It may as well have been a statue in the imperial gardens.

“How did you convince it to do that?” Phipps asked.

Cixi threw the Qilin a glance. “Go farther down the hall.”

Everyone quickly marched past the creature. Its pink brain seemed to stare at them from within the little dome, and Cixi wondered to whom it had belonged. Once the creature was out of hearing range, Cixi said, “It seemed to me that any human brain put into a creature like that would either go mad or survive by making itself believe it truly was a Qilin. And the true Qilin punishes only sinners or doers of evil. I convinced it that we were neither one.”

“That was quite a risk,”
Alice said, flexing her wounded arm.
“I have to say I am impressed, Lady Orchid.”

“No more than I am impressed by the way you attacked it,” Cixi replied. “Tell me, do all Western women act like you and Lieutenant Phipps?”

Alice gave a laugh at that, the first Cixi had heard from her—or any other foreigner, for that matter. How strange to hear, and to realize that foreigners could laugh, too.
“Hardly. Though I wish more of us would.”

From overhead came a thudding noise, as if a giant were stomping about. The vibrations traveled through the tunnel stones up through Cixi's feet. She exchanged looks with Lieutenant Li and knew he was thinking the same thing—Su Shun was making the Dragon Men work long and hard into the night on the machines of war.

They encountered two more sets of eunuchs, but all of them were amenable to the bribes Cixi offered them. In the end, they arrived at a pair of wide lacquered doors guarded by eight robed eunuchs. The doors, Cixi knew, opened into a false storage building not far from the Hall of Mental Cultivation, where the emperor lived. At this time of night, the streets of the Forbidden City would be largely deserted, but anyone who saw them would assume they had a right to be there.

Before the eunuchs could raise the alarm, Cixi identified herself one more time, and each one accepted a priceless piece of jewelry.

“I thought you said no one knew about this secret passage,”
Alice said as Cixi closed the Chamber again.
“At my count, at least twenty-two eunuchs know of it, not to mention whoever designed it, and the people who built it. Even people who can't speak can communicate.”

“Eunuchs hardly count,” Cixi said dismissively. “And the workers who built the passage are long dead. No one of importance knows of its existence.”

The eunuchs grabbed the handles, and the doors creaked open. Standing in the opening was a platoon of soldiers with a variety of weapons drawn. At the head, his half-brass face gleaming in the light, stood Su Shun.

C
hapter Fifteen

T
he man carried a small book and wore a long blue tunic over loose white trousers. He laid the book on a small table set with Oriental tea things next to the door and picked up a cup. The brass nightingale fluttered down to perch on his shoulder. “I was reading when you arrived, but now I think it's time for tea. It's a nice night to sit outside.”

Gavin took a step forward, then another. He couldn't stop staring. He stared so hard, his vision seemed to double, creating two men, one surrounded by water, the other reading by candlelight. The man was taller, but he and Gavin had the same white-blond hair, the same sky blue eyes. The nose and chin were different, and the man was broader in the chest and shoulders. His face was unlined, and he didn't look more than thirty. Still, Gavin knew without a doubt this was his father.

The soft rush of the streams flowed all around them. Gavin abruptly thought of the tarot card at the circus in Kiev. The card had shown a pale-haired man surrounded by water. The man on the card wore blue robes, and in one hand he held a chalice.

“The King of Cups,” Gavin said. “You're the King of Cups. From the card. Linda flipped you over like a paired particle, and now the pathways cross.”

The man nodded, understanding. “I can see the clockwork plague got you. So yeah, we're connected like pairs of particles. What slaps you slaps me, yep, yep. Nice to see you, kid. I guess I should say all the father things—how you've grown, how much a man you've become, how—”

Gavin hit him. Or he tried to. His fist flicked out of its own accord, and the man moved aside just enough for the blow to miss. The little bird clung tightly to his shoulder. Fully angry now, Gavin punched again, a hammer blow to the chest, but the man blocked it with his forearm, again with just enough speed and movement. His cup shattered on the stones. Gavin followed with more blows—left, right, hook, chop. The man dodged or blocked each one. His face remained expressionless. The balanced fight went on for some time, until Gavin backed away, panting. The cloak that was his wings dragged at his back.

“Sorry,” the man said. His voice was low and serene.

“Damn you,” Gavin said, and his voice was equal parts rage and anger.

“You're pissed at me. You should be, kid. But maybe when you understand—”

“You're a
fuck.
” Gavin was spewing venom he hadn't known he was carrying. “You abandoned me and everyone else, and why? So you could be a monk in China? I grew up missing you and hating and wondering what I did to make you leave. I don't even know your name because Mom wouldn't even say it. Understand? I understand. You're lower than shit on a sewer snail.”

He nodded. “Maybe we can grab a seat. The edge of the porch here is real nice for sittin' and drinkin' a little tea at night.”

“What for?” He turned his back and looked out across the dark valley. Stars hard as jewels shone in a black ocean that threatened to swallow them. “Maybe I should just leave. I don't think anything you say could make me happy.”

“I'm sorry. Really.” The man came up behind Gavin and put a hand on his shoulder. At his touch, liquid gold flowed through Gavin. Warmth bathed him in a delicate river, carrying away fear and anger like so much flotsam and leaving his soul clear as glass. The man dropped his hand, and the feeling receded. The stones came back under his feet and the darkness pressed in, carrying the breath of trees and water. Gavin faced the man again. His wings flared.

“What was that?” he asked, his voice low.

“Qin Lung,” said the man.

“I don't understand.”

“My name here is Qin Lung. Means—”

“Azure dragon.”
Here Gavin did sit down, though it was because his legs went weak. The wings clinked, hanging over the edge of the porch. “All the Dragon Men are named Lung.”

“Yep, yep. They—we—ain't members of our own families anymore and get the family name Lung. Dragon. The people here don't see a lot o' blue eyes, and I came from across the water before I found my balance, so they called me Azure Dragon. My name in America”—he said the word as if he hadn't spoken it in a long time—“was Henry Uriel Ennock. But I don't go by Henry. Call me Uri. Or Dad. Whatever floats your airship.”

“Uriel? Your name is Uri?” The revelations were coming thick and fast, which was probably why Gavin couldn't help but focus on small, foolish details.

“Yep.”

“All right.”

Heavy silence dropped over them. There was so much to say, so much to ask, and Gavin didn't know where to start. His entire life was a tangle of threads, and he couldn't find an end to pull. He felt tense and strange. Uri, on the other hand, seemed perfectly at ease. The quiet, serene expression never left his face.

“So,” Uri said, “I've sorta lost track of time. How old are you now?”

“I turned nineteen this last summer.” Gavin held up the Impossible Cube. “Though if you look at it another way, you could say I'm twenty-two.”

Uri let that pass. “How's your ma? And your brothers and sisters?”

This raised some hackles again. “I haven't heard from them in a while. Jenny's married and probably has a kid by now. Harry works as a drover, but he drinks. Ma was able to send Patrick to school some with the money I sent her after I joined the Third Ward, but that was a while ago, so I don't know what he's up to now. Violet's working in a factory, I think. You'd know all this if you were home.”

“But I ain't home, so I don't know. That's the way it is.”

It was on the tip of Gavin's tongue to ask why, but the words wouldn't come. He wasn't sure he wanted to know the answer.

Uri set his hands on his knees. “Your feelings are jumbled up. You wanna talk to me, but you don't know how.”

“How do I talk to a father who was never there?” Gavin shot back.

“I'm here now. Or maybe
you're
here now.” Uri stroked the bird on his shoulder. “It wasn't easy to make that happen, kid.”

“Yeah? How did you make it happen?”

“Those birds. I invented them a long time ago, when I first got to China,” Uri said in his quiet, absent voice. “They grabbed the emperor's attention, and he wanted a whole flock of them for a weapon. The Jade Hand ordered me to make them, so I did.”

Uri pointed to his ear, and for the first time, Gavin noticed the salamander curled around it. A strange hope swirled inside him.

“You've lived a long time as a Dragon Man,” he said in a tight voice. “I don't understand how.”

“Nah. You wouldn't. Not yet.” Uri rose and got two cups of tea from the table. He gave one to Gavin. “But I'm telling this story out of order, aren't I? It's because time means somethin' . . . different in this place.”

Gavin accepted the cup but twisted it in his fingers, too distracted to think of drinking. Everything was so damned strange. He wanted to hate his father, but he also wanted to please him. He was caught on the edge of a square, unable to tell which way he would tip.

“I was an airman, you know,” Uri said.

“Yeah. Me, too.” He paused, still hanging on the edge of the square. “Are you glad?”
Proud?

Uri waved a hand. “Doesn't matter. Your own path has to make you glad or not. Another guy's opinion matters much as wind matters to a mountain. But,” he added thoughtfully, “being an airman is a damned good path.”

It was the right thing to say, and Gavin felt himself relax a bit. “So how did you end up in China?”

“I was on a run to San Francisco, and I pulled down the clockwork plague.”

Gavin breathed out. He knew this was the case, but it was hard to hear it said aloud. “And?”

“I thought I was going to die. I was sick bad, but no one would help me or even let me come close to them. One night I fell asleep in a stinking alley, and my fever broke. I still remember how it felt, like something snapped inside me. It jerked me awake, and the entire universe swallowed me. It was incredible. I was a clockworker, and I wasn't sick anymore.”

“Why didn't you tell us?” Gavin demanded, angry again. “Why didn't you write or telegram? Or come home?”

Uri remained serene. “I was a different man then, Gav. I didn't always think right. That's not an excuse. It just is. Maybe I thought I was sparing you the pain of hearing I was sick. And later, I was sparing you the pain of having a clockworker in the family.”

“Yeah, well, you were wrong.”

“Can't argue with you. There's no way to make up for it. I would if I could. All I can do is say I'm sorry.”

Gavin shifted on the hard stone. Suddenly he realized that he hadn't touched this man, his father, except to hit him. He set the cold cup down and reached out to put a hand on Uri's shoulder. It was heavy and warm. Gavin's throat thickened, and he dropped his hand.

“Anyway,” Uri said, “I woke up in Peking after a fugue. Looked like I'd stolen a boat, fitted it with a new engine I built, and zipped all the way across the Pacific just for the hell of it. The Chinese realized I was a clockworker—Dragon Man—and they brought me to the Forbidden City. In there, the eunuchs stuck me with a salamander like yours, and for months I invented for the emperor. I built birds. Wings. I was always good at wings.”

Gavin flexed his own. “It runs in the family.”

“Those,” Uri said, “are fucking genius, and I want to look at them. I was never able to fly myself.”

“Not enough lift, right?”

“Yep, yep. Even Chinese kites don't give enough.”

“It's the alloy. The wings push against—” He stopped. “No. I want to hear about you. What happened then?”

“I invented birds that recorded messages and flew to the last person they touched. The emperor loved them, and he gave them to his family. Later, they became the big thing for running messages between lovers.”

Dad had built the silver nightingale that recorded voices? Gavin felt in his pocket, but it was empty. Alice still had theirs.

“Then the emperor told me to make my birds into weapons because he wanted something that would patrol the borders. I didn't want to, but when the Jade Hand talks, you listen. I made two, just enough to shut the Hand up. But what the emperor didn't know was that I also had added somethin' to the design. Somethin' the Hand didn't ask for. It didn't say I couldn't, you know? See, I added a bit that put the birds on the lookout for my kids. They all look for you kids, just in case you might come to China.”

“How the hell would they do that?”

“We're all made up of tiny bits that copy themselves over and over, and half of those bits come from our moms and half from our dads. Maybe one day we'll be able to tell exactly who is born to who, and the emperor won't need to hide his concubines behind red walls. But my birds look for people who are half like me. My kids. My son.”

“Why?”

His gaze went far away again. “Time is all one piece, Gavin. It's a river with a beginning and an end, but it's still all one piece, and everything happens all at once. You can be sucked into it, or you can stand outside it, but it all stays one piece.”

“So you're saying you saw that I was going to come, and you arranged for the bird to tell you when I crossed the border.”

“Kind of. I knew about you because it was also happening when I first arrived. And it's still happening now. I couldn't avoid creating the bird to find you, and you can't avoid singing the moon song. It had already happened, and it was happening, and it will happen again. That's why you came, you know. You couldn't avoid it any more than I could avoid sending the bird. Yep, yep.”

“So we have no choice?” Gavin interrupted. “We're little automatons that follow the rules?”

“Not what I said. You've already made all the choices, the ones that make the river's course. Us guys who step outside the river can see them; that's all. It's better to accept what has happened and what will happen.”

Gavin's head was beginning to swim. “How does it all end, then? Can you see that?”

Uri ignored the question. “Once I finished the emperor's command, I was . . . unhappy. I didn't want to create more weapons, no sir. But I heard rumors about a place where Dragon Men could go, a place where they could invent and study in peace until their time came. A place called the Blessed Monastery of the Azure Water. When I finished the two birds, the Jade Hand stopped commanding me, so I created a spinning device that mesmerized the eunuchs. That let me sneak out of the Forbidden City. Took me a few weeks of searching, but I found this place. It looks like an ordinary monastery, and the emperor leaves it alone, but there's a lot more to it than he knows.”

“That must have been years ago. How are you still alive?” Gavin leaned forward. A hope he had been hiding, not daring to show, slipped out into the moonlight. His voice was small. “Dad, do you have a cure?”

“Ah. That's the problem, isn't it?” Uri touched his salamander again. “There's a cure, but it's not the one you're thinking of.”

Gavin's breath caught with excitement. “Can you cure me?”

“No.”

The hope died, and he felt the wings dragging at his back again, pulling at the scar tissue under his black shirt. He looked away, not wanting Uri to see him upset.

“But,” Uri continued, “you can damned well cure yourself.”

“I don't understand.”

“Yeah. That's why you still carry the plague.” Uri set his cup on the stones with a soft click. “See, the reason we clockworkers die so fast is that the plague makes us look the universe straight in the eye. Trouble is, we have a strong sense of self, so we try to stay separate from the universe even when the plague makes us look at the whole damn thing. We're
part
of the universe, not separate from it. Means we can't hold ourselves apart while we're looking at the whole. The paradox burns your mind out, like a candle dropped into a bonfire.”