The Dragon Men

by Steven Harper

  Moments later, she was entering Xianfeng’s bedchamber, with its wide, curtained bed, treasure boxes, windup machines, and red wall hangings drilled with spy holes. Eight perfumed lanterns threw down a glow that held back the darkness. A silver nightingale trilled soothing music from a bejeweled cage, and a small crowd of eunuchs knelt around the bed, awaiting the emperor’s slightest desire. Above the bed hung a painting of a seated man dressed in black. His bare head was shaved, and his piercing eyes stared through the viewer. He held a human hand made of brass and jade and a box of blackest ebony inlaid with gold dragons. The man was Lung Fei, China’s first Dragon Man, and his image was prominent everywhere in every imperial palace.

  Against one wall, another man dressed all in black occupied a black pillow. A brass salamander curled around his ear with its tail inserted into his ear canal. The man was sitting down in the presence of the emperor, a capital offense for most people, but the disease known as the blessing of dragons made Dragon Men forget many social protocols, and if they were punished or executed every time they forgot one, soon there would be no Dragon Men left, and China needed Dragon Men. They wore unadorned black silk to show they had no time to worry about clothing and to quickly identify their position even to the uneducated.

  This Dragon Man held a board and paper in his lap, and he was scribbling madly. “Cixi,” he said without looking up or stopping. “A paper cut. One bleeds without knowing.”

  Cixi ignored this nonsense, knelt, and tapped her forehead on the floor at the bedchamber’s threshold, as did her maids and eunuchs. Then she waited, facedown.

  “The Son of Heaven won’t give his permission to rise, great lady,” said a voice from a corner. “He is resting very comfortably, and it is a surprise that you were allowed to enter.”

  Since the owner of the voice clearly wasn’t on the floor, Cixi remained in her daring mood and took it as a sign that she could rise anyway. She did so, though her entourage remained on the floor.

  The speaker, a tall, muscled man in his midforties, moved into the lantern light. He had the swarthy complexion that bespoke hours spent outdoors, and his hair was streaked with gray under his high red cap. His straight nose and long jaw gave him a regal air, and he wore pieces of red-lacquered armor over his Manchu robe and trousers. The armor pieces were purely decorative, indicating his rank. Half the man’s face was covered in intricately etched brass, and riveted brass ringed his neck. The man’s name was Su Shun. Cixi narrowed her eyes. Last she had heard, he was commanding troops in the city.

  “One has to wonder,” she said, “what the emperor’s most trusted general is doing in Jehol when he is likely needed in Peking.”

  “I like the ducks on the canal,” said the Dragon Man. “They don’t wind down.”

  Su Shun ran a finger down the side of his metallic face, almost as if he were scratching. Members of the nobility did not modify themselves with metal—such modifications were reserved for the lower classes. Su Shun was an exception. The blessing of dragons had ruined his face, forcing him to have the disease’s damage repaired by a Dragon Man. Cixi knew Su Shun felt a deep disdain for anyone who had not served in the military, including the emperor. That he looked down on mere women was a given.

  “The emperor needs an experienced general to coordinate military movements at his side,” Su Shun replied. “I am, of course, here at his request. Prince Cheng is easily able to command Peking.”

  “I believe Prince Kung runs Peking.”

  “Prince Kung was not available, and I was forced to turn command of the troops over to Cheng. I am confident he will do a good job.”

  “Cheng does admirable work,” Cixi said smoothly. “A hard worker who never speaks for himself. Somehow, his superiors always take credit for what goes right, and Cheng takes the blame for what goes wrong.” She paused. “Who is Cheng’s superior in this conflict, Su Shun? Would he be in this room?”

  “The emperor,” Su Shun replied, equally smoothly, “is everyone’s superior.”

  “Hm.” Cixi sniffed. The oily perfume of the lanterns was the only scent on the air. On the bed lay Xianfeng, hidden beneath a pile of embroidered scarlet coverlets. “I am happy to see that you are here to comfort the emperor in his hour of need, Su Shun, but perhaps the Son of Heaven will require comfort from his Imperial Concubine as well as his general.”

  Su Shun stepped forward, between Cixi and Xianfeng’s bed. His partially brass face distorted his expression, giving him a half-dead look. “As the lady can see, he has already been well comforted.”

  At that, Cixi noticed for the first time a young woman kneeling among the eunuchs. Her robes indicated her position as a concubine of the fifth rank, the lowest rank. “Who is that?” Cixi demanded, and the girl flinched, though she didn’t rise from the floor or even look up.

  “A new nothing,” Su Shun said dismissively. “The emperor wanted company, and I brought her here myself.”

  “Into his bedchamber?” Cixi’s voice had nearly become a squawk. The emperor saw only select concubines in his own bedchamber. Lesser concubines he visited in their rooms. A sound came from one of the eunuchs, and Cixi regained control of herself. “That is surprising, Su Shun.”

  “Unusual circumstances, one supposes,” he said, his tone still mild. “The journey was difficult, and he wanted comfort.”

  “Comfort from an untutored girl rather than his Imperial Concubine or a concubine of the second rank?” Her voice shook at the outrage, though she didn’t know whom she was outraged at. The emperor could do as he wished, of course, and it wasn’t her place to be angry, or even to be mildly unhappy.

  “It would seem so.”

  Cixi was steadily losing ground. The more she lost her temper, the more she looked the fool, and the more face she lost. She had to get control of herself and of the situation. But the awful evacuation and the death of her dogs and the long journey were taking their toll, and the words snarled free before she could stop them. “Get out, you piece of pig filth,” she snapped at the girl. “And do not return.”

  The concubine scurried backward to the door, hurriedly knocked her head on the floor the prescribed number of times, and fled. Cixi hoped she would have a bruise in the morning.

  “You’ll disturb the emperor’s rest, Lady Yehenara.” Su Shun was suppressing a smile, or as much of one as his brass cheek allowed.

  Cixi closed her eyes and forced her anger back like a dragon forcing a tiger into a cage. “An Imperial Concubine is better able to ensure the emperor has a proper rest, General.”

  “This is not true,” Su Shun said mildly. “Her proper position is to disturb him in his bed as often as possible. Nothing more.”

  “An Imperial Concubine’s proper place is indeed in the emperor’s bedchamber.” Cixi felt more in control now that the girl had gone. “On the other hand, some may wonder why a general is spending so much time there.”

  The left side of Su Shun’s face flushed. The eunuchs and maids, still on the floor, were watching from the corners of their eyes and listening hard, even as they pretended they weren’t there. Within moments, this conversation would be repeated all over the Mountain Palace. Everything was. Su Shun drew himself up.

  “Now that the other concubine has left, you may approach the emperor if you wish,” he said, taking the upper hand by giving permission, even though he had no right to grant it. His magnanimity, false or not, pushed Cixi down another level. She cast about, but she was still tired, and she couldn’t find a counter response.

  “Very well,” was all she could think to say.

  “And if the great lady does not mind,” he continued, oozing politeness, “I have other duties to attend to. If she will allow me to withdraw?”

  Cixi ground her teeth, feeling the secret eyes of the eunuchs and slaves and the spies through their spy holes on her. Su Shun had scored yet more points with too-precise manners. If she dismissed him, she was giving in to his sarcasm. If she refused, she would look peevish, and she wouldn’t h
ave the chance to approach Xianfeng.

  “Very well,” she murmured.

  “What was that?” he said. “If the lady could speak more clearly?”

  He was truly in his element now. Cixi’s face flamed. He had embarrassed her, here in the imperial bedchamber, a place where she was supposed to have the most power, and he was flaunting the fact that he knew it. Before sunrise, the whole Mountain Palace would know Su Shun had bested Cixi in the imperial chambers. Cixi wanted to crawl under the bedcovers and hide from all the eyes in the room, those she could see and especially those she couldn’t. But she kept her back straight and her head high. “Face what you cannot avoid” was another piece of advice from her mother, and it had never failed her.

  “Very well,” she repeated, briskly this time. “Thank you, Su Shun. Your service in the imperial bedchamber is appreciated.”

  But Su Shun was already leaving with his own eunuchs, and her final remark was delivered to his back.

  “Paper cuts,” said the Dragon Man.

  Refusing to feel defeat, Cixi approached the bed. The eunuchs shuffled out of the way, and she ignored them. The nightingale in the corner stopped singing, and Xianfeng stirred. He had remained asleep during an argument between his general and his Imperial Concubine, but this woke him up. The coverlets fell away from his right hand, which wasn’t flesh and blood, but jade inlaid with wires of gold and brass. The wires were twisted into impossible shapes, and the hand seemed to quiver with quiet power, even when the owner was partially asleep.

  “I want a different song for my bird, Lung Chao,” Emperor Xianfeng murmured. “Make it sing a different song.”

  The complicated wiring on the Jade Hand glowed faintly at his words, and the salamander in the Dragon Man’s ear made an answering glow. The Dragon Man twitched once, then set his drawings down and scuttled over to the nightingale. He plucked it from its cage, flipped it open, and did something to the insides that Cixi didn’t see. The emperor, meanwhile, drifted back to sleep, the Jade Hand lying still on his chest.

  Cixi looked down at Xianfeng’s sleeping form. His cheeks were hollow, his skin sallow, his build thin and only filled out by the voluminous silks that enshrouded him. He looked like a man of fifty, not a man who had just celebrated his thirtieth birthday. Cixi’s eyes, however, were mostly drawn to the Celestial Scepter, the Jade Hand. The top of the hand pierced Xianfeng’s flesh and connected with the tissue inside, allowing the hand limited motion. The Scepter was the creation of Lung Fei and had become the symbol of office for every emperor since Lung Fei’s time more than a hundred years ago. It would fall off when the emperor died, and it would graft itself onto the stump of the new emperor. Lung Fei had written that willingness to give up a hand for the empire indicated proper character for a ruler and set him apart from lesser nobility, but the thought that she would eventually watch her own son’s hand be chopped off turned Cixi’s stomach, no matter how much he—and she—stood to gain by the gesture.

  The Dragon Man rewound the nightingale and replaced it in the cage. It started to sing a different song, just as the emperor had ordered. More of Lung Fei’s work. He had written that Dragon Men were too dangerous to be allowed free rein, and the Celestial Scepter, paired with the salamanders, allowed the emperor to keep them under control.

  Cixi leaned over Xianfeng but didn’t touch him—she had no desire to. She didn’t love him, or even like him very much. It was a concubine’s job to be beautiful and entertaining and give advice when asked, and she did this job spectacularly well. It was not a concubine’s job to fall in love. She did feel a certain fondness for Xianfeng, and a definite sense of possessiveness. He was her emperor. Hers. Thanks to him, she had risen from a childhood of poverty and become the second-most-powerful woman in China, just behind the empress herself. In some ways, Cixi was even more powerful than the empress because Cixi had borne the emperor a son, and it didn’t look as if he would have any others. Usually emperors had too many sons, but Xianfeng had spent his youth in brothels and opium dens, and she could see close up the impact such activities had on a man and his fertility. It was possible he had a few dozen bastard children out there, sons of prostitutes, but they were of no consequence. Only a son born of the empress or an Imperial Concubine could inherit the Celestial Throne.

  Greatly daring, Cixi put out a hand and touched the lapel of his pajamas. The trouble was, Xianfeng wasn’t ruling China in any real sense. The eunuchs and generals handled everything while Xianfeng sucked his opium pipe and drained his wine cup and spent himself uselessly on concubines and prostitutes. It was no wonder the English had managed to invade China and force opium down Chinese windpipes, not when the emperor himself partook of the stuff at every opportunity. Meanwhile, the generals wanted only to fight, and the eunuchs wanted only to line their pockets with silver. No one truly wanted to lead China.

  Thoughts of Xianfeng’s death made Cixi’s eyes go to the corner of the bedchamber. An ebony box carved and inlaid with golden imperial dragons and sealed with a latch shaped like a phoenix perched on a jade table. The flickering lantern light made it appear as if the sinuous dragons were chasing one another around the box, either in play or battle. The box was another invention of Lung Fei, and inside, Cixi knew, lay a piece of paper, and on the paper was written the name of the man—or boy—the emperor had designated as his heir. The box would be opened at the moment of the emperor’s death. The heir was supposed to be Zaichun, but Cixi had never seen the paper, and given Xianfeng’s state of mind, nothing was certain.

  Cixi leaned over Xianfeng and sniffed again. A soft scent of rose petals floated over the bedcovers to mingle with the perfume from the lanterns. She set her face. There was no hint of rice wine or opium about him; there hadn’t been since she walked into the room. Her suspicions must be correct—he hadn’t taken any opium at all. Yet he had somehow remained asleep throughout Cixi’s argument with Su Shun, and he didn’t stir now. A tray of jade dishes sat on a small table next to his bed. Bits of food were left on them, and the tiny serving spider lay motionless and unwound nearby. Things were truly out of order if dirty dishes were left in the emperor’s presence. She straightened and passed by the tray. As she did, she slipped the little spider into her sleeve. No doubt someone had noticed, but it didn’t matter quite yet.

  Cixi lingered a while longer in the imperial bedchamber, establishing and reinforcing her right to be there, and then finally left, backing away from the bed and knocking her forehead on the floor as she did so. Liyang, the eunuchs, and her maids followed.

  “Liyang,” she murmured as they strolled slowly through the corridors.

  “My lady?”

  “In the morning, everyone will be discussing that conversation, and the emperor will certainly hear of it. One wonders if I will come across as . . . less than I am.”

  “I will personally see to it that some of the correct eunuchs are on hand when the emperor wakes in the morning,” Liyang said instantly. “They will feed the emperor a flattering version of the story along with his breakfast.”

  “Thank you, Liyang. You are most skilled.”

  “My lady. Will there be anything else?”

  With that, she knew he had seen her take the spider. “Tell Lung Fan I wish to see him tonight.”

  “Yes, my lady.”

  Fingering the cup in her sleeve, Cixi passed by the imperial dining hall, with its low tables, sumptuous pillows, and careful wall hangings. One of the sliding doors, covered in frosted glass, was partly open, and Cixi saw light and a hint of movement inside. Curious as to who could have business in the dining hall at this time of night, on this night in particular, she stopped and motioned for Liyang to remain silent, knowing the others would follow suit. She leaned forward to peer through the crack. What she saw made her knees go weak, and she stifled a gasp of horror.

  Su Shun was sitting at the head of the table. A small banquet was spread out before him, sweetmeats and delicacies on jade plates and bowls rimmed with gold. As Cixi w
atched, a spider ran down his arm to the table, speared a dumpling from a bowl, and ran back up Su Shun’s arm to drop the morsel into his open mouth. Cixi staggered, and one of her maids hurried to help her upright. Horrifying. Unthinkable! Su Shun was sitting in the emperor’s place at the emperor’s table eating from the emperor’s dishes. Anyone who dared such a thing would be instantly put to death.

  Anyone but the emperor.

  Su Shun’s intent couldn’t be more clear. He saw himself in the emperor’s place and was indulging himself in a bit of predictive fantasy. The eunuchs who were with him wouldn’t say a word, since they were in a position to be chief eunuchs once Su Shun took the throne.

  Su Shun ate another dumpling. Cixi hung in the hallway, wracked with indecision. Should she burst into the dining hall and confront him? That would be satisfying and even fun, and the little girl in her longed to see the look on his brassy face when she did so. But the Imperial Concubine in her paused. Su Shun was a highly trusted general. He had just had an argument with Cixi in the emperor’s chambers, an argument that Cixi had clearly lost, and Cixi had definitely not been summoned to the imperial bedchambers while Su Shun just as definitely had been. All of this meant that if Su Shun claimed Cixi—and her servants—were lying out of spite, and if Su Shun’s eunuchs backed him up, the emperor would have no choice but to believe Su Shun, and Cixi would lose considerable status. The emperor might refuse to see her entirely, putting her position in court into great jeopardy. Although her son was the emperor’s only male offspring, the emperor needed only Zaichun. Cixi had finished her part in this and could still be dismissed at any time.

  Therefore it was time to go. Cixi and her servants fled as silently as they could in their silken slippers down the corridors to the main doors, where her spider palanquin awaited her. No one would have known of this if Cixi hadn’t come to the Hall at this late hour, or if that door hadn’t been left open. Or if that maid hadn’t walked by with that feather bed, or if that errant feather hadn’t drawn Cixi’s attention to the Cool Hall on the Misty Lake. She shook her head. It was impossible to track down the first event that led to anything. One might as well argue that all this was coming about because Cixi herself had been born, though that had happened only because her father had met her mother and they had copulated at a particular time in a particular place. How differently history might go if one tiny event changed along the way.