Her right hand hurt. A glance downward told her she was unconsciously gripping Gavin’s hand so tightly, her knuckles were white, and Gavin had set his jaw to avoid crying out. She forced herself to let go.
“Well,” she said again. “Yes. Best of all possible worlds.”
“Can we use the Cube to go back?” Phipps asked. “Just a thought.”
Gavin shook his head. “I wouldn’t even know how to begin. Besides, you saw what happened when I tried to charge it again just now.”
“You tried what?” Alice asked, bewildered. “When? What happened?”
“I connected the Cube to the generator while you were sleeping, but it won’t accept a charge,” Gavin explained. “No matter what I do, it stays dark.”
“Can you repair it?”
Gavin shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. If I study it long enough.”
“Just because something can be done,” Phipps said, her voice still tight, “doesn’t mean it should be done. I tried to put this . . . thing into the Doomsday Vault, you may remember. I’d be for dropping it into the ocean if I weren’t afraid it would wash up on shore one day.”
“Hm,” was all Gavin said.
“What’s next, then?” Alice asked briskly. “Is it too much to hope that China has reopened the border?”
“It is.” Gavin sighed. “That’s one of the reasons this place is so busy. It’s one of the last stopping points for Western merchants.”
“And for smugglers?” Alice asked with a smile.
But Gavin shook his head. “No. No smugglers. The Chinese have invented automatons to patrol their borders. They don’t eat or sleep or rest. You can’t bribe them or distract them, and when they notice anyone crossing the border—in or out—they run him down with intent to kill. Smugglers from both sides are too frightened to try anything.”
“Good heavens,” Alice breathed.
“The border can’t be completely closed,” Phipps said. “What about ambassadors and delegations? And trade? China can’t get along without some outside trading.”
“I don’t know,” Gavin admitted. “The people I spoke to had limited English, and my Persian is nonexistent. Besides, I couldn’t appear too interested, you know?”
Alice leafed idly through the newspaper in her lap while they talked, more for something to take her mind off the sudden bad news than anything else, since the writing still made no sense to her. Partway through, she stopped and stared down at the page. There was a head-and-torso drawing of a young woman in a high-necked dress and her hair pulled up in a French twist. She was holding up her left hand, which was encased in an ugly metal gauntlet tipped with razor-sharp knife blades. The woman looked cruel and evil, but she was obviously meant to be Alice.
“What on earth?” she said, turning the page so Gavin and Phipps could see it. “Is that a notice about me?”
Phipps looked it over. “My Persian is poor,” she said, “but yes. Here it gives your name and a description, and it names the reward—four hundred pounds of silver, alive only.”
“Four hundred pounds?” Alice said, affronted despite herself. “Is that all?”
“Not pounds, the unit of currency. Pounds, the measure of weight. You could bribe the pope and a pair of kings with that much silver. It appears the emperor is still eager to acquire a concubine who can cure the plague.”
“It’s nice to be wanted,” Alice said tartly. “Though I doubt this is what my father had in mind for me.”
“It does mean,” Gavin put in, “that there’s some contact between East and West. Without it, how would the reward notice get into the newspaper and how would anyone collect on it?”
“Good point,” Phipps said.
“Er, just out of intellectual curiosity,” Alice asked carefully, “how does one collect this reward?”
“It says here to contact a man named Bu Yeh at the Red Moon Hotel.”
“Hm,” Alice said.
* * *
“I still think this a terrible idea,” Gavin hissed.
“Do you?” Alice said. “I seem to remember hearing those very words directed at someone else recently, someone who ignored them just as I’m about to do.”
Gavin straightened the glass cutlass at his belt. “Lieutenant, how about some support?”
“Far be it from me to get in her way,” Phipps said, holding up a metal hand. “According to the great lady here, my sole job is to watch for—”
“Plague zombie!” Gavin interrupted.
Alice halted. They were threading their way through the dim, dusty streets of Tehran. A scattering of torches and lamps in odd windows lit the way. Unfamiliar food and spice smells swirled around them, along with the people clad in loose-fitting desert clothes—men in trousers tucked into high boots and long tunics split for riding; women in loose dresses with round, elaborately embroidered caps covering their hair. Alice and Phipps wore similar outfits to blend in better. The undergarments that came with the dresses were shockingly lightweight and brief, and Alice felt half naked even though her outer garments covered more of her than her previous dress had done. It was a strange feeling, and a little daring. And exciting. She and Phipps had both wrapped scarves loosely around their metal limbs to keep them from view, and Phipps had adjusted her cap to hide her monocle. No one paid the slightest attention to them.
Countless narrow alleys led off the streets, twisting away into noisome darkness. Within one of these stirred the plague zombie. It was—had been—a man, though how old he was, Alice couldn’t guess. His hair had come out in clumps, and open sores leaked pus. His skin had thinned and split, revealing pink and gray muscle. He was gaunt from malnutrition, and his mouth hung open as the plague ate its way through his brain. His clothing hung in filthy rags. Alice would have once recoiled from such a creature, both from the disease and the dreadful sight. Now, however, she saw a person, a patient who had lost everything. She stripped the cloth from her metal-clad hand. The spider’s eyes glowed red to indicate the presence of plague as she reached for the unfortunate man and swiped her clawed fingertips across his chest. Automatically, the tubules that ran up and down the spider’s legs sprayed a fine mist of Alice’s blood across the scratches. The cure, what Aunt Edwina had called a virion, attacked the bacterium that caused the plague and, additionally, turned the patient into a host that would spread the cure with every cough and sneeze, inoculating others he encountered. The virion also worked fairly quickly. When Alice scratched the zombie, he staggered backward. In a few moments, his eyes cleared. He looked at Alice, then held up his pus-speckled hands and stared at them as if seeing them for the first time in years. He made a small sound in the back of his throat. Then he turned and shuffled away, still staring down at his hands.
“What do you think will happen to him?” Phipps asked quietly.
“I’ve no idea.” Alice sighed. “I can only cure them. I can’t give them their old lives back. At least now he has a chance to live. The worst are the children.”
Gavin put an arm around her. “I was hoping that after three years, your cure would have wiped out the plague entirely.”
“Clearly not.” Suddenly she was very tired—tired of travel, tired of strange places, tired of pitiable plague victims and a world that shunned them or used them. It didn’t feel as if she were having any impact whatsoever, and therefore why bother? It all seemed very sad.
“Are you all right?” Gavin asked solicitously.
“I will be,” she said, straightening. She was an English lady. Did the Queen whine to herself? What nonsense! Soldier ahead, girl. Always ahead. “Take me to that hotel now.”
The Red Moon Hotel sat at one corner of a five-way intersection. A pair of towers topped by little minarets flanked the square white building, and strange music mingled with strong tobacco smoke in a courtyard behind it. The place had been fitted with electric lights, and all three stories cast stiff beams of illumination in all directions. The lobby struck Alice as distinctly threadbare, even a little shabb
y. Before she could lose her nerve, she strode to the battered front desk, where a man in a turban was holding forth.
“Do you speak English?” she asked.
“Yes, little,” he said.
She put a coin on the desk. “I am looking for a man named Yeh.”
“Eat. There.” The coin vanished, and the man pointed to a doorway that seemed to lead into a restaurant. “Wears green.”
Alice swept away with Gavin and Phipps in tow, her regal bearing hiding a pounding heart and a stomach tied in knots. This had the potential to explode in her face, and the closer she came to Bu Yeh, the more she wondered at her chances of success.
You are a baroness, blast it. Act like one.
The restaurant was crowded with customers sitting on cushions at low tables. They ate and drank and pulled fragrant smoke from enormous bulbous water pipes that Alice had never seen outside a storybook illustration. Loud conversation swirled around the room and bounced off the walls. The crowd was largely swarthy Easterners with a sprinkling of white Westerners, and they all gesticulated wildly when they spoke. Alice and Phipps were the only women present. Waiters rushed about with trays of food and silver coffee services. At a corner table by himself sat an enormously fat Chinese man wearing a green embroidered tunic that tied shut over his left shoulder. A large, puffy green hat covered his head, and a black braid ran down his back. His face was clean-shaven but for a sparse mustache and a pointed bit of beard in the center of his chin. On his shoulder sat a brass spider. The man stared about the room with a look of contempt on his round face. Every so often, the spider skittered down his shoulder, hooked a bit of food from one of the plates on the table, and skittered back up the man’s shoulder to pop it into his open mouth. Alice remembered the meal she and Gavin had shared with the Chinese ambassador back in London—had it only been a few months ago?—and the way spiders had fed every morsel to her instead of allowing her to touch anything with fork or fingers.
Before she could lose her nerve, Alice strode across the restaurant and plumped herself down across from him at his table with Gavin and Phipps standing guard on either side of her. Startled, the man reared back, and two large Persian men appeared from the shadows to flank him. One had a pistol, the other a sword. Gavin put a hand on the glass cutlass at his belt.
“No need,” Alice said in a calm voice completely at odds with her churning insides. “Mr. Yeh, I presume?”
“Mr. Yeh does not speak to filthy Westerners,” one of the guards said. His accent was faint.
“He will speak with me.” Alice took out the newspaper page with the dreadful drawing on it and laid it on the table, then unwrapped her spidery hand and laid that on the table as well. “Do you recognize this?”
Yeh’s eyes widened. His mouth fell open. For a moment, no one around the table moved. Then the spider on his shoulder scampered down to the table and flipped a chickpea into Yeh’s mouth. Yeh sputtered and coughed and slurped down some tea.
“You Alice Michaels lady,” he said, recovering. “Angel of death.”
“I wouldn’t put it that way, but yes.”
Yeh’s eyes glittered. “Why come here? Why see me?”
“Isn’t it obvious, Mr. Yeh? I wish to claim the reward.”
Chapter Six
The emperor was dying. Everyone knew it, but no one would say it. Everyone also knew Su Shun had arranged for the emperor to sleep with a false concubine who carried the blessing of dragons. No one would say that, either. Su Shun was powerful, and there was no real proof. The official prognosis was smallpox, and the imperial physicians could only ensure that Xianfeng rested very comfortably until the end came. The only people allowed to see the emperor were eunuchs who had survived the blessing and were therefore unable to transmit it. They, and Su Shun.
“It’s a disaster,” Liyang said, wringing his soft hands. “A disaster! Cheng defeated the British in Peking, but Su Shun has already taken credit for it, just as you predicted, and now Su Shun intends to use this bit of popularity as an excuse to take the Celestial Throne.”
Cixi tried not to grimace. “We are definitely in trouble. Su Shun is indeed popular at the moment, and the emperor has not publicly declared Zaichun as his heir. So unless Xianfeng put Zaichun’s name in that box, my son’s claim on the throne will be tenuous at best. At least Xianfeng has not publicly declared Su Shun his heir, either. That’s something, at least.”
“It pains me to say it, my lady,” Liyang said, “but the emperor isn’t . . . he hasn’t been at his strongest. . . .”
“I know. No need.” Cixi sipped from her teacup. It was now a month after the evacuation to the palace at Jehol. Life was comfortable in the Pavilion of a Thousand Silver Stars, and no one would have known that just to the south, sections of Peking lay in shambles and thousands were dead. The British were slaughtered or had fled, and Su Shun, speaking for the emperor, had ordered all borders sealed again. Still, people were working hard in Peking, and, in a few months, life would be normal once more. The streets would be clean, the buildings rebuilt, the parks green and quiet. Except that the emperor was dying. Except that Su Shun intended to steal the throne the moment he was dead. Except that Su Shun intended to go to war as soon as he had the throne.
“The only thing that keeps Su Shun from attacking England right now,” Cixi mused, “is this cure I’ve heard about. What is that woman’s name?”
“Alice, Lady Michaels,” Liyang supplied. He fingered the jar at his belt. “Minor nobility in England, and of no consequence. That is, until she and her courtier, Ennock Gavin, began spreading this cure. Then she became consequential indeed. The irony is, Xianfeng worried that the blessing of dragons might fall on him one day, and he ordered Su Shun to put out a reward for her capture so he—the emperor—could bring her here for himself.”
“I hadn’t heard,” Cixi lied, not wanting to give away the fact that her own spies kept her better informed than Liyang did.
“Oh yes. He offered four hundred pounds of silver. That should have flushed anyone into the open. Michaels and Ennock were spotted three years ago in a leper colony near Tehran, but no one’s heard from them since. Su Shun has left the reward in place, but with one small change.”
This was news to Cixi. “And what is that?”
“He wants Lady Michaels brought to him alive so he can kill her himself.”
“Ah.” Cixi thought about that. “He wants personally to see her dead. Su Shun does not trust someone else for something this important.”
“But why? This I do not understand.”
“He needs to stop her from spreading the cure. The only reason Su Shun hasn’t started a march across Mongolia to Europe in the emperor’s name is that he is worried our troops will be infected with that filthy cure and bring it home. He wants to make absolutely sure this Alice woman is dead before he invades.”
Liyang bowed. “My lady is brilliant. Of course she is correct. Unfortunately for Su Shun, even four hundred pounds of silver have not brought her to him. She is most likely dead. Still, Su Shun isn’t sure, because he has not begun the invasion.”
A fly buzzed about the room, and one of the maids chased it away with her fan. Cixi said only, “Hm.”
“All reports say the cure stalled in Europe,” Liyang said. “It has not touched India or the United States of America. We are not sure about Africa.”
“We certainly don’t need it in China,” Cixi said firmly. “No more Dragon Men? The empire would collapse.”
“Collapse,” said Liyang. “Yes.”
Cixi gazed out a latticed window at a tranquil pool covered with white lotus flowers. Neither of them was talking about the other problem, the main problem, the problem that once Su Shun took the throne, he would ensure no one who could challenge his rule would be left alive. The death of Zaichun, her little boy, was inevitable. Su Shun would trump up charges of treason and have the boy’s mouth and nose stopped up with wet silk. Cixi would be forced to watch while he struggled and kicked and slo
wly suffocated.
A golden fish leaped out of the lotus pool and vanished with a tiny splash, no doubt fleeing a predator. Once Zaichun was dead, Su Shun would almost certainly order Cixi’s execution as well, followed by the deaths of Liyang and all the eunuchs who served under him, including his boy apprentices. No one with strong allegiances to the rightful emperor could be allowed to live. Cixi had tried to see the emperor on several occasions despite the order that only immune eunuchs were allowed in, but the soldiers on duty outside Xianfeng’s chambers now knew not to let her in, and her polite and kind requests were always met with equally polite and kind refusals. Cixi had tried every trick she knew, and none of them worked. Time was working against them.
“There is one way to save China and the Celestial Throne,” Cixi said quietly.
“My lady?” said Liyang.
“Everyone knows Su Shun’s rule would destroy China,” she said, vocalizing thoughts that had been going through her head for a long time. “Everyone also knows my—the emperor’s—son is the proper heir.”
“My Lord Zaichun is a bright and intelligent boy,” said Liyang with proper deference. “The most intelligent boy the world has ever seen. But even the most intelligent boy cannot truly rule an empire.”
“No. Someone would have to be regent. Make decisions in his name. Someone who knows the empire. Someone who knows what is best for China. Someone who can make good decisions. Someone who isn’t hot-blooded like so many men.”
“Not I, my lady,” said Liyang quickly.
“No. You are a eunuch, but you still think like a man. Your advice would, of course, be instrumental in all decisions, Liyang.” Cixi smoothed the front of her silk tunic and its elaborate embroidery. “No, the time for men to rule China has come to an end, I think.”
“Ah,” said Liyang. “I see, my lady. Yes. I agree. But how will this happen?”
Lung Fang, seated in her corner, ran a finger over the salamander in her ear. “I have calculated that the emperor has twelve minutes left to live.”
The Dragon Men Page 10
