The Dragon Men

by Steven Harper

  “Exactly! When the emperor is sealed off, he stagnates like bad water in a pond. You yourself saw the proof. We need someone to sit on the throne who is willing to listen to new ideas.”

  “But not you,” Cixi said.

  “By the heavens, no.” Kung drank tea in obvious distress. “I have more than enough difficulty with Peking, let alone an entire empire.”

  “You would make a wonderful adviser to an emperor,” Cixi said. She hesitated a moment. Bluntness was never a part of politics. No one at the Court was ever able to speak in private, and everyone’s words were quickly spread by spies and servants throughout the Forbidden City, which meant all comments had to have multiple meanings—one for the spies and one for the actual recipient. It made for twisted, difficult negotiations that lasted days or weeks. But here there were no listeners, and the longer they delayed, the longer Su Shun had to consolidate his hold on the throne. She decided to plunge ahead. “You could also be an adviser to a regent. Even if that regent were, say, a mere woman.”

  Kung looked at her for a long time. Cixi looked back. “Yes,” he said at last. “That’s true. I think that would be a fine idea. A woman who ruled from behind a silk curtain, as the saying goes.”

  “But not alone,” Cixi added quickly. “As I said, this woman would need advisers, generals, trustworthy eyes and ears. No one can run an empire alone.”

  “And this woman would want peace with the West, not war as Su Shun does.”

  “I imagine she would.” Cixi found she couldn’t quite bring herself to be completely blunt after all. “Especially if working for peace meant she enjoyed the support of important people.”

  “It would.” Kung drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “If we want to put the proper heir on the throne, we need proof that Xianfeng intended this heir to sit there.”

  “Unfortunately,” Cixi said, “he made no such declaration. Many, many witnesses know this. And the Ebony Chamber”—she gestured at the sack on the floor beside her—“was empty.”

  “Hm. And I am even farther from the throne than we knew. Did you know I was in charge of the army that defended Peking from the British?”

  “I thought it was Prince Cheng.”

  “It was. Su Shun wrested that honor away from me and gave it to that toad Cheng—”

  “In order to take credit for it because Cheng always does as he is told and never speaks for himself,” Cixi finished for him. “Yes. I wondered at that.”

  “For once Cheng will be rewarded.” Kung sighed. “Su Shun intends to give my position as governor of Peking over to Cheng. He is handing out many civil positions to military friends of his without regard to their skill at administration. I have been deliberately excluded. My influence at this new Imperial Court is nonexistent.”

  “If we have no heir and no paper, we will need the Jade Hand,” Cixi mused. “Though acquiring the hand will be much the same thing as assassinating Su Shun.”

  Kung nodded. “There is another factor. You know of the cure for the blessing of dragons.”

  “The one carried by that Western woman, Lady Michaels. Yes. She is the main reason Su Shun has continued to seal the borders—he does not want the cure to enter and wreck the Dragon Men. She is the most dangerous person in the world right now after Su Shun himself. Su Shun has put out an enormous reward for her capture so he can personally ascertain her identity and see to her death.”

  Kung toyed with his teacup. “It may interest you to know that Alice, Lady Michaels, was captured not long ago in Tehran. In a fascinating turn of events, she turned herself in and claimed the reward for herself.”

  “What?”

  “My sources are impeccable. Imperial troops are escorting her to Peking even now.”

  Cixi realized her thumb was in her mouth and she was gnawing on the nail, a habit her mother had long ago broken in her. She put her hand down. “I think,” she said slowly, “that if Su Shun wants her so badly, we cannot afford to let him have her. I also think that whoever controls Michaels Alice controls the empire.”

  “Oh?”

  “Think of it. Releasing her cure would abruptly put our empire on equal footing with the West. It would destroy Su Shun’s chances of going to war. The cure destroyed the British Empire’s ability to fight us, after all. Since he is using this war on the West as a distraction from his weak hold on the throne, no war would mean we would have a better chance to unseat him.”

  “I concur. And, my lady, I must say I like the way your mind runs. You think on a grand scale, and that is what we need for an empire.”

  “Thank you, my prince.”

  Zaichun, who hadn’t spoken a word, had finished stuffing himself and was now drooping over his plate. Cixi laid him down on the pillow as she had done many times before with the emperor. He sighed and fell more deeply asleep. Cixi drank more tea.

  “So,” she concluded, “we need to divert Lady Michaels and bring her here. Can this be arranged?”

  “I will see what I can do,” said Prince Kung.

  Chapter Nine

  The border guard was a serpentine mechanical dragon, long and segmented and at least a hundred yards in length. Smoky steam puffed from its nostrils, and a metal beard dripped from its chin. Its jaws could easily bite a man in half. Gavin couldn’t see any human controlling it, though he supposed one might be inside. Like the nightingales, it skimmed with lithe grace when it moved. The birds pulled the Lady down to the sands, and the dragon raised its huge head to peer onto the deck. Steam puffed across the ship like a locomotive’s. The whirligigs and spiders made yipping noises and scampered belowdecks. Gavin automatically backed up a step and put his hand on his cutlass, though the glass blade had as much a chance of harming the beast as did a pin of harming a turtle.

  Yeh stepped fearlessly up to the dragon, bowed, and spoke to it while the birds huddled in the rigging and on the deck. Once again, Gavin caught words, the same ones as before, and this time emperor, permission, and cross.

  “I think I’m learning Chinese,” he murmured to Alice. “Can the plague do that?”

  “Shush,” she said.

  Alice had to present herself to the dragon, which huffed warm steam over her and blew her skirts about. Gavin held his breath and kept his hand on his useless cutlass, but the dragon seemed satisfied. The dragon spoke to Yeh in a thunderous voice.

  “The guardian birds will take you to Kashgar,” it said, and Gavin gasped. The dragon spoke Chinese, but Gavin understood it perfectly well. Definitely a function of the clockwork plague. Yet it hadn’t done this for him in France or Germany or Ukraine. Was it a sign of the disease’s acceleration? If he was learning languages in moments, how much time did he have left?

  “Do not leave the ship,” the dragon continued. “Soldiers who are immune to the blessing of dragons will board in Kashgar and accompany you to Peking. If you leave the ship, you will die. Do you understand?”

  Yeh bowed again. “Yes, my lord.”

  The dragon turned toward Gavin and whuffed out more warm, damp steam. It said in English, “You are . . . special.”

  Surprised, Gavin said, “Am I?”

  “Indeed,” the dragon growled, then dipped its head. “I will alert the proper people.”

  “I don’t understand,” Gavin said.

  But the dragon merely dropped out of sight. The brass birds sprang back to life and hauled the Lady back into the air while Yeh turned to the three Westerners to translate the dragon’s instructions about not leaving the ship. Gavin thought about doing it himself, then decided to keep to himself the fact that he knew Chinese. Who knew what might be said in front of him if the speakers didn’t know he understood?

  Hours later, the city of Kashgar hove into view. Gavin’s nerves hummed with tension. He tried to tell himself that the Chinese wanted Alice alive, that if they wanted her dead, the dragon would have destroyed her in a moment. It didn’t help. Alice appeared cool and unflappable, but he noticed a tightness around her mouth and in her neck.
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  Just outside high brown city walls, the birds halted the ship and flew away in a chattering metal cloud. The ship lurched under the abrupt change, and Gavin steadied the helm just in time. A cloud of dust emerged from one of the city gates and grew closer. It was caused by a contingent of soldiers—twenty-four of them, at Gavin’s count—on horseback galloping toward the Lady. They wore scarlet coats and carried curved swords. All of them sported metal: a brass hand with blades for fingers, iron claws, a fitted monocle like Phipps’s, a pistol mounted on a forearm. At Yeh’s word, Gavin dropped a ladder, and the men swarmed up it while below a groom strung the horses together. The Lady settled lower under the weight again. Alice moved closer to Gavin, and Phipps tensed. One man whose coat was of a different cut came forward. He glanced at Alice, who glanced coolly back. Then he and Yeh bowed to each other, and they spoke at length. Gavin’s understanding grew with every word, like a wireless radio that tuned out more and more static until the signal became clear. It was a strange sensation, and oddly exhilarating.

  “This Lieutenant Hing Li,” Yeh translated when they finished. “He and his men stay on ship until we arrive in Peking. No one leaves ship. You try, you killed. You fly ship in direction Lieutenant Li say. You change course, you die. We stop for supplies when he say, and soldiers bring them. You no leave ship. All soldiers have survived blessing of dragons—you say clockwork plague—so cure from Lady Michaels not affect them.”

  “They’re survivors,” Gavin said. “That’s why all the metal, isn’t it? The plague crippled them.”

  “You Westerners call it a plague,” Yeh spat. “Treat it like a curse instead of honorable blessing. In China, those who survive blessing of dragons bring great honor to families, and as a reward for strength, are allowed to join army or work for empire. Those who become Dragon Men are exalted.”

  “So why doesn’t everyone try to contract the plague?” Alice asked.

  “Not everyone strong enough to face it,” Yeh replied. “Not everyone strong enough to face death.”

  Next, Lieutenant Li handed Yeh a handful of bottle corks, and Yeh turned back to Alice. “You wear these on claws so you not spread cure. You take them off—”

  “I die, yes, yes.” Alice accepted the corks and pushed them onto her clawed fingertips with little squeaking sounds. “Is that the only consequence you hand out in China?”

  “Only one people listen to.”

  The soldiers, meanwhile, spread out all over the ship, over the deck and down below, swarming into every space, every nook, every cranny, calling to one another in coarse Chinese. Gavin could almost feel their greasy fingers running over the Lady’s wood, hear them scraping her decks with their gritty boots, sense their prying eyes. He thought about the reward bonds and the Impossible Cube hidden in their secret compartment and resisted the impulse to check on it. That would only draw attention to the place. His glance met Phipps’s, and he knew she was thinking the same thing.

  One of the men came up from below holding Click. The cat hissed and tried to swipe at the man’s arm, but his claws only raked brass. The soldier held Click up by the neck, laughing. Outrage swept over Gavin. Before he could respond, Alice stepped forward and snatched Click from the surprised man’s grasp.

  “Don’t touch him!” she snapped. “Who do you think you are?”

  There was a whisper of sound as every soldier on deck drew a weapon. All were pointed at Alice. Tension hummed in the air. Gavin’s gaze flicked around the deck, and his mind ran a hundred calculations, none of them successful. He jumped in front of Alice, and a soldier grabbed his arm.

  Gavin rounded on him in a fury. “One of us is going to remove that hand.”

  “Your father was a turtle,” the man snarled, and his sword—metal, not glass—moved toward Gavin’s throat.

  “Gavin!” Alice cried.

  Then Susan Phipps stepped forward.

  “That’s quite enough,” she said, and repeated it in accented but perfectly serviceable Chinese. Gavin blinked at her. “Everyone calm down. You are all honorable men, and your duty is to keep Lady Michaels from harm. If you fail, the emperor will be displeased. If you complete your task, you will be rewarded. In the meantime, we ask you to leave us and our possessions alone. In return, we will not try to escape. Agreed?”

  Lieutenant Li came up on deck in time to hear her speech. He cocked his head. “Where did you learn our language?” he said. “It falls strangely from a Western tongue.”

  “I served in the East for several years,” Phipps replied with a bow. “But my skills are poor.”

  “Not so poor,” Li said. “In any case, it shall be as you say. Soldiers!”

  The soldier holding Gavin’s arm let go. Gavin straightened his jacket as the men put their weapons away. The tension left the air, and Gavin relaxed. A little. Alice stroked Click, who was muttering to himself.

  “Is it going to be like this all the way to China?” she asked.

  “It had better not be,” Gavin muttered back.

  “Oh?”

  “At least one of us will be dead if it is,” he growled. “And it won’t be me.”

  * * *

  But to Gavin’s surprise, the next several days went smoothly. Phipps and Li, both military, seemed to have forged a wary respect. Alice stayed close to Gavin, and Click stayed close to Alice. The only other incident was when a soldier discovered Alice’s spiders and whirligigs, still hiding in the hold from their encounter with the brass dragon. A great commotion came from one of the hatchways, and the soldier bolted across the deck with several little mechanicals in hot pursuit. He yelped, “Turtle turtle turtle turtle turtle!” as he ran, something Gavin had only recently come to understand was a swear word or insult in Chinese. It was only with great effort that Gavin kept his face neutral. Alice’s skin went pink.

  “Tell me,” Phipps said to Li at one point, “why did the emperor close the borders?”

  “You do not know?” Li replied.

  They were standing near the main hatchway, not far from the helm where Gavin was piloting, and Gavin was easily able to overhear them. By now, he had listened to hundreds of conversations among the soldiers and gotten some translations from Phipps, and his mind made leaps and connections, untangling syntax and extrapolating vocabulary. He wondered if this was how Dr. Clef, a native German, had learned English.

  “I would like to hear the Chinese perspective,” Phipps replied smoothly. “I am sure it differs from the English one.”

  “To be sure,” Li said dryly. “I assume you know of the first battle over opium.”

  The soldier dove back below, and there was another crash. A moment later, Click emerged with the soldier’s hat in his mouth. He dropped it on the deck and strolled innocently away. The other soldiers laughed, and for that Gavin was grateful. It would have been all too easy for the mood to run the other way. The Lady had passed the desert some days ago and was now gliding over lush green farms and pine forests blanketed in drowsy mist. The air was cool and damp, a refreshing change from hot, arid winds. They had stopped twice for supplies, and both times the local farmers in their peaked straw hats had given the soldiers everything they demanded with a fawning deference that clearly masked an underlying fear.

  “I know the Opium War well,” Phipps said. “We English were flooding China with cheap opium from India—”

  “Creating addicts everywhere and taking silver out of China,” Li interrupted. “It was a terrible problem. You Westerners have no idea what your greed for silver was doing to us.”

  “Of course I know. Just as I know what your greed for petroleum has done to the Middle East and what your greed for metal has done to the United States.” Phipps stroked her monocle with a brass fingertip. “Perhaps, for the sake of this conversation, we could acknowledge that both empires have done good and evil.”

  Li gave a nod. “Perhaps. In any case, all that opium created an entire class of addiction in China, and it meant tael after tael of silver left our country. England
also had the right to sell factory-made products in China, and they were cheaper than those we make in small shops or at home, which meant our people bought them and pushed Chinese workers out of their jobs. The last straw came at Taku.”

  “What happened at Taku?”

  “A fleet of British ships carrying soldiers and diplomats sailed up the Peiho River toward Taku. It’s an important fortress, and the emperor was afraid—”

  “You mean his generals were afraid,” Phipps interrupted.

  Li waved a hand. “It is the same thing. The emperor was afraid that so many armed soldiers in the same area might lead to fighting, so he asked the fleet to anchor farther north. It was a reasonable request. Unfortunately, your envoy deliberately took it as an insult and decided to attack Taku. It sparked a war, one that we initially won. We threw the British out of China, and the emperor closed the borders.”

  “Interesting.” Phipps scratched her nose. “But that’s—”

  “It’s not the entire story, if I may,” Li said. “A year later, the British invaded in force. They fought all the way to Peking. There was a sort of desperation to the attack, actually.”

  “The cure was pushing them,” Phipps said.

  Li nodded. “The British knew they had only limited time with . . . what is your word?”

  “Clockworkers,” Phipps said.

  “A pejorative in your language.”

  Phipps glanced at Gavin, who kept his face neutral, as if he had no idea what they were talking about. “Depending on how it’s used.”

  “The English Dragon . . . clockworkers were dying out, and soon our Dragon Men would have the upper hand worldwide. If the English were going to invade, it had to be right then. But in the end, the British lost at Peking. General Su Shun—or rather, Emperor Xianfeng—ordered the execution of everyone who had any contact with British soldiers to ensure the destruction of the cure within China, and then he sealed the borders again. Our Dragon Men are safe.”