The Dragon Men

by Steven Harper

  “Yes, Lieutenant.” Alice was absorbed in her work. She pulled the flywheel out of the spider and held it up with a pair of tweezers. “Off-center. No wonder its legs were paralyzed, poor thing.”

  “How do you do it?” Phipps asked again. “You must have some idea.”

  “None.” Alice ran her fingers deliciously over the flywheel, and Gavin felt it as if they were running over his own skin. Grasping the flywheel by the piston, she slid it back slowly into place with a click. The spider twitched and Gavin shuddered. “I look into a machine and just know.”

  “It’s a singular talent.” Phipps crossed her arms, brass over flesh. Her monocle gleamed in the phosphorescent glow of the lanterns. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “It makes me a little nervous, to tell the truth, Lieutenant.” She replaced more gears and screws with slow, deft twists. Gavin was unable to take his eyes off the muscles and tendons in her hands. His chest ached. “When I was defusing Aunt Edwina’s bomb in the basement of the Doomsday Vault, it occurred to me that my little talent is a version of the clockwork plague—not deadly enough to be plague zombie, not powerful enough to be clockworker. My entire family died of the plague—my mother and brother died of it right away, and it killed my father slowly. Aunt Edwina became a clockworker, of course. So it’s rather difficult to believe that I didn’t contract it.”

  “Do you think you contracted some different version?”

  “I sometimes wonder,” Alice said. “Aunt Edwina was the world’s greatest expert on the clockwork plague. Did she try an early version of her cure on me when I was young? One that worked only partway? Is that the reason she chose me to carry her final cure?” She held up her spidery hand with its burbling tubules. The spider gauntlet had a surface temperature of ninety-six point five degrees, weighed three pounds, two ounces, and carried two drams of blood, Gavin noted. “It would explain a great deal, including why my talent won’t let me take this spider off. Edwina might have known how to create something even I can’t dissect.”

  “Do you want to take it off?” Phipps asked, surprised.

  “Well, no,” Alice admitted. “It’s . . . dug in. It moves as I do, and those tubules are like my own arteries and veins by now. I don’t know what would happen if I tried to take it apart. And if I did, I wouldn’t be able to cure anyone.”

  She finished putting the spider back together, gave it a few quick winds with the key on the chain around her neck, and set it back down again. It quivered, then leaped off the table and skittered away. The whirligig chirped in alarm and swooped after it. Gavin watched the air currents in its wake, how the propeller chopped them into tiny streams that twisted one around the other. He could feel their silky smoothness, see how they intertwined, sense the soft temperature differences between them. He looked closer, examining each eddy’s individual particles. They vibrated and buzzed like invisible bees. The particles themselves were made of smaller particles that were both there and not there, puzzle pieces in shells that twisted through tiny pockets of the universe, refusing to exist, refusing to vanish, and those particles were made of even smaller particles that came in pairs or trios.

  “Gavin!”

  He tried to shut out the voice and concentrate on the fascinating parade. Each set of particles was carefully balanced. Even as Gavin watched, one particle sent a bit of energy to its partner. For the tiniest breath of time, a seed of the energy lived in both particles, and then they . . . changed. He couldn’t put his finger on how, but they did. It was as if two red flowers existed side by side until a bit of pollen blew from one to the other and both flowers became green. It happened with breathtaking precision, a trillion times a trillion times every microsecond, with no guiding hand to ensure it went right. It was entrancing. Exquisite!

  But that wasn’t the end of it. Those tiny particles were made of—

  “Gavin!”

  “The tiny bees exchange pollen and make the flowers change color,” he muttered. “Red becomes green, and each has a piece of the other.”

  “No, darling, no. Please come back.”

  There was a sharp jerk. Gavin blinked. He was sitting at the table again. Alice was holding his face in both her hands, and her claws pricked his cheeks. Her brown eyes were both frightened and worried. He felt her breath on his chin.

  “What?” he said. “What’s wrong?”

  “The plague pulled you under again.” Alice let him go and returned to her own seat. “That’s your second fugue today, darling.”

  He shook his head. The particles were important; he could feel it. If only he could look at them more closely, watch their patterns and come to an understanding. But when he looked at the path the whirligig had taken, all he saw was empty air.

  “Gavin!”

  “My second?” he said.

  “The painting was your first.”

  “I don’t remember,” he said, still staring after the whirligig.

  “The Chinese woman by the stream. She held a fan. There was Chinese writing.”

  Alice’s voice sounded desperate, but Gavin, still hoping to catch the parade of particles again, couldn’t bring himself to look in her direction. Still, her tone called for some response. “Oh. Right. Yes, now I remember,” he said vaguely, lying. “She held a fan.”

  “It’s getting worse,” Phipps said. “You told me a month ago that Dr. Clef said he had two months, perhaps three. But that was an optimistic estimation. It looks like we need to be pessimistic.”

  “I refuse to believe we came all this way for nothing, Lieutenant.” Alice pulled a handkerchief from her pocket, and when she did, the little silver nightingale encrusted with gems fell out. Alice picked it up and pressed one of the eyes. The little bird said in Gavin’s voice, “I love you always.”

  This cleared Gavin’s head of the half trance he was in. “I . . . Hello.”

  “Welcome back, darling,” Alice said. “Where were you?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t think I can explain it in words. But I can see why Dr. Clef and the others went there. It’s beautiful.”

  “Don’t speak that way!” She grabbed his hand. “It frightens me when you do. I’m losing more and more of you every day.”

  He looked at her concerned, beautiful face, trying to etch every feature into his mind so he wouldn’t forget her, no matter how much of his mind the plague burned away—her honey brown hair and her small nose and her pointed chin and her warm eyes. He couldn’t possibly forget any of it. Could he? He fingered the salamander that circled his ear and felt a sorrow that threatened to crush him. He had learned of his status as a clockworker only a few months ago, but it felt as if a lifetime had passed, as if he couldn’t remember a time before it. His back ached where the pirate’s whip had left deep, ropy scars after the attack on the Juniper.

  “I’m trying to stop,” he said. “I am. It’s very hard to stay aloft.”

  “Would you play, then?” She pointed at his fiddle case, which was lying on the deck near his wing harness. “Perhaps it’ll keep you focused. Certainly it gives me pleasure.”

  “I wouldn’t mind, either,” Phipps said, “and I’m not in love with you.”

  Gavin flashed a smile at that. He set bow to strings and played “The Wild Hunt,” letting the music slide and soar. The song rushed and roared about the deck, pushing at the ropes and rebounding from the envelope. Alice closed her eyes and Phipps tapped her feet. Gavin’s smile widened. He loved getting a listener lost in the music, towing someone along and sharing the beauty. Provided he didn’t make a mistake and spoil the loveliness. A faint hot draft wafted over him, whispering over black silk, and for a moment he was in another place. Cobblestones, clopping horses, and the smell of open sewers. A man with pale hair played flawless fiddle, his fingers flying over the neck. He grinned down at Gavin and started to say something. Then the memory was gone. The song ended, and Gavin lowered the fiddle.

  “You were thinking of your father again,” Alice said, not quite ac
cusingly.

  “More and more often,” Gavin admitted. His back still ached. For a moment, the spot where the mechanical nightingale had pecked him itched, and he scratched it idly. “When I’m not thinking of you.”

  “You know, I think that’s the first time I’ve heard you use flattery, Gavin Ennock,” Phipps said, and Alice laughed.

  “All women like flattery,” Alice said, “even when they’re waiting to hear from—”

  “Lady Orchid!” Phipps interrupted.

  They all turned. Lady Orchid and a worried-looking man in a white cap were coming up the gangplank. Lieutenant Li preceded them, holding a phosphorescent lantern in one hand. In the other, he held a black box with dragons on it.

  “We would like to speak,” Lady Orchid said.

  Chapter Twelve

  Dragons embossed in gold twisted across the surface of the box, and they engaged Alice’s eye. Hypnotic, really. Rather like the Impossible Cube, but pleasant, without inducing a headache.

  Everyone got to his feet as the new trio boarded the ship. Gavin attempted a bow in the Oriental fashion. A smile quirked at the edges of Lady Orchid’s mouth, though Alice couldn’t tell whether it was a smile of approval or disdain. Since they were trying to be optimistic, she settled on approval.

  Gavin scrambled about for chairs for everyone. Kung hesitated a moment, but Orchid settled into hers as if she had used them all her life, though Alice didn’t remember seeing anything but a low stool in the grand house, and Yeh had sat on pillows back in Tehran. Did the Orientals even use chairs? Li was the only one who remained standing. He set the box on the table in front of Lady Orchid. The dragons looked as though they were dancing. Gavin was avoiding looking directly at the box, and Alice wondered nervously if the dragons might draw him into one of those awful fugues.

  “I am Prince Kung,” the man said. “Emperor Xianfeng was my half brother.”

  “I am sorry to hear of your loss, sir,” Alice said formally.

  “Thank you.” He took a breath. “It is . . . strange to speak with foreigners, but still interesting.”

  “In what way?” Phipps asked.

  “You do not know our manners, just as we do not know yours, though it was good of Lord Ennock to make an attempt.” He nodded at Gavin, who flushed slightly. “You speak too bluntly for us, too forthrightly. On the other hand, we have little time, and our usual ways to discuss will fail. So I will be . . . forthright. I have learned English because I feel our two worlds, East and West, would be better off in cooperation than at war. My half brother did not feel as I do, and General Su Shun definitely does not. He intends to invade the West as soon as he can confirm the death of Lady Michaels.”

  He repeated this in Chinese for Orchid’s benefit.

  “We know this,” Gavin said. “We also know that Lady Orchid wants to put her son on the throne so she can rule as regent.”

  “That is so,” Kung replied with a nod. “Normally, we would work out a careful, subtle plan to discredit Su Shun and push him off the throne, or even assassinate him through a careful campaign of poisons. But we simply do not have time.”

  “He is already partly discredited,” Orchid said in Chinese, with Kung translating. “The emperor cannot be one who is disfigured by the blessing of dragons. He must be unsullied so his body may accept the power of the Jade Hand.”

  Phipps crossed her arms in a familiar gesture. “So the emperor must be physically perfect, but once he ascends the throne, he becomes disfigured. Interesting.”

  “Not disfigured,” Kung replied. “Enhanced. The Jade Hand is a piece of heaven. Therefore, it does not mar. It improves.”

  “But my arm and my eye”—Phipps held out the former and tapped the latter—“are disfigurements?”

  “They are not the Jade Hand.”

  “It makes as much sense as declaring a bit of glassy carbon valuable,” Gavin said. “I think the point Prince Kung wants to make is that the fastest way to change power is to steal the Jade Hand and give it to Lady Orchid’s son.”

  “Wouldn’t that mean . . . cutting off the boy’s hand?” Alice asked in a hesitant voice.

  “Yes,” Orchid said simply.

  A moment of silence followed.

  “Su Shun cut his own off when Xianfeng died,” Kung said at last. “It’s been that way since the time of Lung Fei.”

  “Wait,” Alice said as something occurred to her. “If you are—were—Emperor Xianfeng’s half brother, you must also be half brother to Jun Lung, the Chinese ambassador to England.”

  “Ah, yes.” Kung nodded. “My brother shares my views on East-West cooperation, though he was more or less exiled for his pains.”

  “Was he a Dragon Man?” Gavin asked. “His family name was Lung.”

  Kung shook his head. “Coincidence. Lung was once common as a family name until it became customary for Dragon Men to take that name, but here and there you will still find a Lung who has not received the blessing of dragons. Xianfeng was a Lung before he took his Celestial name. My brother is even more aggressive about cooperation with the West than I, and the ambassador position was granted him to get him out of Peking, I am sorry to say.”

  “Along with his son, Feng,” Alice said leadingly.

  “Feng, yes.” A vague look of distaste crossed Kung’s face. “We do not speak of my nephew.”

  Alice leaned forward. “Because he was disgraced for not being able to follow into Jun Lung’s profession.”

  “You know of this?” Kung looked startled.

  “Feng was my friend,” Gavin said. “I saved his life, and he saved mine. More than once.”

  “Where he is now?” Kung demanded.

  Alice and Gavin exchanged glances. There was an uncomfortable pause, and then Gavin finally said, “Sir, I regret to inform you that Feng has died.”

  “Has he?” Kung didn’t look distressed. Rather, he calmly steepled his fingers. “How?”

  “It is a long and complicated story,” Alice said. “And we will gladly give you every detail at a more opportune time. However, suffice it to say that Feng sacrificed his own life to save mine and Gavin’s.”

  “Actually,” Phipps said, “his sacrifice saved the entire world.”

  At this, Kung raised both eyebrows. “The world?”

  “Perhaps even more,” Phipps said. “Far from being ashamed of your nephew, sir, you should be proud of him.”

  “I see. Then I am most eager to hear this entire story.” Kung resettled himself. “But as Lady Michaels has pointed out, first we must finish our current business.”

  “We have a number of problems to overcome if we wish to steal the Jade Hand,” Lady Orchid said. “Su Shun has barricaded himself in the Forbidden City, and I don’t think we can lure him out.”

  “What exactly is the Forbidden City?” Gavin asked. “I’ve heard of it but don’t know anything about it.”

  “The Forbidden City is the official palace compound of the emperor in Peking,” Kung explained. “It is located in the northeastern part of Peking and is surrounded by a moat and a high wall pierced by four gates. It covers many acres, including a river, and contains many buildings. A second wall surrounds the Palace of Heavenly Purity, where the emperor once lived, but after the great Emperor Yongzheng died, the emperor’s residence moved just outside the second wall to the Hall of Mental Cultivation, which is fortunate for us. The difficulty is that only a handful of people are allowed to go in or out of the city itself. Concubines are not allowed to leave the Forbidden City without special permission, and only recognized concubines are allowed to go in. The same applies to general maidservants—everyone is scrutinized upon entering and leaving.”

  “What about men?” Gavin asked.

  Lady Orchid looked shocked. “The only men allowed into the Forbidden City are close friends or advisers to the emperor, and even they must leave after sundown. No man but the emperor passes the night in the Forbidden City.”

  “Why is that?” said Alice.

 
“To ensure proper succession, of course,” Kung replied. “No one can doubt that Lady Orchid’s son is anyone but the emperor’s issue because no man has ever been allowed to spend time in Lady Orchid’s presence. Until she fled, at any rate.”

  “But you mentioned eunuchs,” Phipps put in.

  “Of course there are eunuchs.” Lady Orchid pulled a fan from her belt and waved it. “The Forbidden City couldn’t function without them. They run everything. They guard the gates, they collect the taxes, they keep inventory, they cook, they clean, they entertain, they transcribe messages—everything.”

  Gavin shifted. “When you say eunuch, you mean a man who’s been—”

  “Yes.” Li spoke for the first time, and when Kung looked reluctant to translate for a mere lieutenant, Phipps stepped in to translate, though Alice was the only one at the table who couldn’t understand him. It was growing frustrating, and she wished she understood the strange, singsong language. “A male whose three preciouses have been removed. Usually in boyhood, at age seven or eight, though a few have the procedure done in adulthood. The eunuchs maintain a special chair with a hole in the bottom for—”

  “Thank you,” Gavin interrupted shortly. He looked ill.

  “Good heavens!” Alice felt sickened herself. “Why on earth would parents do such a thing to their own child?”

  Lady Orchid cocked her head. “The Forbidden City needs thousands of eunuchs, and they hire more than a hundred every year. Any such boy—or man—who presents himself to the city gates is guaranteed a position. At the beginning, that includes plenty of food, clothing, a small amount of money, and a chance to attain real power. It does not matter what family one is born into or what one’s father has done—all eunuchs have an equal chance. What chance do you offer the poor in your country?”