The Dragon Men

by Steven Harper

  “So it found you. That’s . . . fantastic.”

  The voice was the same one that had come from the nightingale. Gavin’s body went weak, and for a moment he couldn’t find his voice. The Impossible Cube dropped to the ground.

  “Dad?” he said.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The ghost parade floated through the empty city streets. Men and even a few women dressed in white robes and wide white hats beat solemn drums and carried white lanterns to light the way. A white-clad little boy with a candle led the way. A pretty woman walked a few paces behind him, giving quiet directions. She held a box wrapped in white cloth. Everyone else in the parade howled and cried and pulled at their faces. They groaned the dead emperor’s name and begged the spirits of the ancestors to welcome him and keep him safe. Their moans twisted down the streets and sent shivers down Alice’s back, even though she was among mourners. Her white robe swirled around her arms and legs, and she kept her head down so her hat would hide her face. The unfamiliar presence of the wire sword bumped at her side, and the battery pack pulled at her back and shoulders. The muddy streets had already stained the hem of her robe and splattered the cloth. Thank heavens she was wearing sturdy shoes. She desperately wanted to scan the skies for signs of Gavin, but she dared not look up and expose her foreign features.

  “I don’t like doing this without Gavin,” she muttered to Phipps, who was walking beside her.

  “So you’ve said a number of times,” Phipps replied from the depths of her own white robe. They were both walking in the middle of the group to hide themselves better. “But we can’t wait for him. If we’re going after the Jade Hand, we have to do it tonight.”

  A crash, a small explosion, and a scream from a side street overpowered the groaning for a moment. Alice automatically turned, wanting to run and help, but Phipps put a firm brass hand on her arm. “Don’t.”

  “But—”

  “I said don’t. We can’t afford—”

  A brass tiger pulling a two-wheeled cart with a black-clad Dragon Man in the driver’s seat galloped out of the side street. The tiger was carrying a doll in its mouth, and the Dragon Man—a woman, actually—was laughing uproariously. Alice shrank back, ready to run. The cart rocketed toward the ghost parade until the Dragon Man caught sight of the white-clad people. With a shout, she—he?—turned the tiger aside and rushed off down another street.

  “Don’t,” Phipps said one more time. “The Dragon Men are still looking for us, but if they think we’re a mourning parade for the—”

  “I know, I know,” Alice said. “But what kind of monster lets loose a bunch of lunatics on his own people?”

  “The kind of monster we’re going to stop,” Phipps replied shortly.

  Alice gave the little boy—Lady Orchid’s son, Cricket—an unhappy look. “Even if it means cutting off a child’s hand?”

  “You’re doing your best to topple your second empire in a year, yet you balk at cutting off a child’s hand so he can become emperor.” Phipps gave a short bark of a laugh that meshed strangely with the cries of the men that surrounded her. “How do you live with all your contradictions, Lady Michaels?”

  The parade continued. The mourners, Lieutenant Li and his troops in disguise, made a good job of it. The crying hid the occasional clank of sword or pistol or metal limb. Phipps herself kept her head down to keep both her Western features and her monocle out of sight. Occasionally people looked out of windows over courtyard walls or threw small packages of food and tiny coins wrapped in white or yellow cloth. The soldiers picked these up and ate the food and pocketed the coins. Alice worked out that in religious terms the packets were meant to be an offering to the spirit world, though in practical terms they fed and paid the mourners, much like offerings at church on Sunday were supposed to be for God but ended up buying food for the minister.

  It was a long and nerve-wracking walk to Jingshan Park, which bordered the Forbidden City on the north and where one end of the Passage of Silken Footsteps was hidden. It seemed a strange way to hide, wearing white in plain sight and making as much noise as they could, but they moved unmolested. Three other times they encountered Dragon Men with animal-shaped automatons, and each time Alice’s heart stopped. But each time, the Dragon Man caught sight of the white robes and turned aside. Lady Orchid, with her white-wrapped box, remained a paragon of calm, while Alice was sweating inside her increasingly filthy white robe, and her mouth was dry as an iron pan on a hot stove from the constant tension. She wished for Click and her other automatons, but the little ones had their own part to play in this, and Click, who was obviously of Western design, had no way to remain inconspicuous in a Chinese mourning parade. So she had left him behind on the Lady.

  The summer air was both hot and sticky, and Alice felt like boiled rice in the heavy clothing. Her legs ached, and she wanted nothing more than to lie down with something cool to drink. Then she saw a ragged shadow lurching along a red-painted wall. It was a plague zombie, the first she had seen since arriving in China. Lady Orchid had told her plague zombies were routinely rounded up and hidden away here. This one must have escaped, or perhaps the poor soul was a new victim of the disease. In any case, Alice worked her way to the outer edge of the false parade and made a dash for the zombie as it shambled around a corner. Phipps hissed something at her, but Alice ignored it. She followed the zombie, a dirty snowflake swirling after a bit of coal, and easily caught up with it on the empty street. Not it—him. The creature was a young man. Like every other zombie Alice had encountered, his clothes were rags. A foul smell hung about him. Sores wept pus and blood, and tattered red muscle showed through splits in his skin. Alice had lost count of the number of people she had cured of the plague, but the heartrending sympathy for its victims remained strong as ever. The young man stared at her with fever-yellow as she rolled up her sleeve to expose the iron spider. Its eyes glowed a hungry red. This would be her first cure in China.

  “Spread this,” she told the uncomprehending young man. “Spread it far and w—”

  A loud mechanical hiss interrupted her. Alice spun and found herself face-to-face with a multilegged, serpentine brass dragon the size of a horse. Perched behind its head at a control panel was a lithe, older man dressed all in black. White whiskers trailed from his chin, matching the brass ones on the dragon. The Dragon Man said something in Chinese, and the dragon hissed again. Damp steam issued from its nostrils. Alice squeaked and backed up, nearly bumping into the zombie. Her heart all but jumped from her chest. She fumbled for the wire sword, but it was under her robe and she couldn’t get at it.

  The Dragon Man grinned and worked the controls. The dragon lifted its front leg, and with a delicate claw under Alice’s chin, pushed her face up so the moonlight spilled across it. The Dragon Man began to laugh with glee. He had recognized her—or figured out who she was. It didn’t really matter. Alice jerked the stupid robe up, still trying to get to the sword. The dragon reached for her with another foot, one easily big enough to get around her waist. Alice wanted to scream in both fear and frustration. After coming all this way, it was going to end here.

  A metal wire whipped through the air and wrapped around the Dragon Man’s neck. With a hoik sound, he was yanked backward off the brass dragon. Without someone to guide it, the dragon froze. Alice squirmed free and dashed around it. Behind the automaton was Susan Phipps. The wire snaked from her brass palm, and the Dragon Man lay at her feet, gasping and clawing at his neck. Phipps wrapped the wire around both wrists and braced a foot on the Dragon Man’s chest.

  “Susan!” Alice cried. “Don’t!”

  Phipps yanked hard. There was a wet crack. The Dragon Man twitched once and went still.

  “Oh God,” Alice whispered. “I wish you hadn’t.”

  “You left me little choice.” Phipps coiled the wire back into her hand. “He was under orders from the salamander in his ear, and we couldn’t have done anything else to stop him. The night will be bloodier before long, Alice. You
’d best accept that.”

  Alice nodded once, her jaw set. Phipps was right, but Alice didn’t have to like it. She found the plague zombie still huddled near the wall. Before anything else could happen, Alice swiped his arm with her claws and sprayed the wound with her own blood.

  “Be well,” she said quietly as he limped away, taking the cure with him.

  “Can you drive this thing?” Phipps asked pleasantly from the seat behind the dragon’s head. “I don’t see any point in wasting it.”

  The parade continued on its way, with the addition of the brass dragon. Alice’s talent with automatons let her figure out the controls quickly, and the few people on the street assumed the machine was merely part of the mourning. Riding was easier than walking, at any rate. Alice offered Lady Orchid a seat, and the woman gratefully accepted—clearly she wasn’t used to physical labor. She held Cricket on her lap, making it a tight fit behind the dragon’s head. Phipps and the soldiers continued on, unbothered.

  They passed the Forbidden City on their way. Pagoda-style buildings with multiple roofs poked above the high walls, and the moonlight turned the wide moat around it to mercury. It looked as remote and untouchable as a celestial temple, which, Alice supposed, was the entire idea.

  Jingshan Park pushed down against the Forbidden City’s northern border. It was a pleasant sprawl of hills and trees, meadows and ponds, shrines and pagodas. According to Lieutenant Li, who walked beside the brass dragon, the hills were artificial, built up one bucketful at a time to approximate the axis of Peking and to accommodate the principles of something he called feng shui, which neither he nor Phipps could translate.

  “The five hills are placed so energy can flow properly,” Li said. “It is difficult to explain in English.”

  “As long as the secret passage works, the energy may flow as it likes,” Alice replied.

  The soldiers stopped their mournful crying and howling the moment they entered the park, which was deserted after sunset. Everyone stripped off their white robes, revealing armor and brass limbs and swords and pistols, and Lady Orchid unwrapped the Ebony Chamber. The robes they left in a cobweb pile near a fishpond.

  “Some gardener will think himself rich in the morning,” Li observed.

  Lady Orchid climbed down from the brass dragon, taking Cricket with her. “This way,” she said.

  She took them to an enormous tree, easily as wide as four men, and did something to it. A section of bark swung outward, and Alice realized the tree was artificial, cunningly constructed from plaster or resin or stone to look real. The artistry was perfect. Even the leaves looked real.

  Behind the section of bark, a stone staircase spiraled downward. At the top stood a pair of surprised-looking men in the round, peaked hats Alice had learned were the uniform of imperial eunuchs. The men smelled faintly of urine, even from the back of the dragon, and Alice wondered whether Lady Orchid and the soldiers had startled them badly. Neither spoke, and Alice remembered their tongues had been cut out.

  One of the men reached for a bellpull, but Lieutenant Li’s sword sliced the rope above his head. For a dreadful moment, Alice thought Li intended to kill the eunuch as well, but Lady Orchid stepped forward and spoke to them both at length.

  “She’s telling them what’s happening,” Li murmured to Phipps and Alice, even though Phipps understood Chinese. Even from the dragon’s back, Alice noticed that Li stood quite close to Phipps. “She says we’re trying to put the true emperor on the throne and they can help. Most of the eunuchs are unhappy with Su Shun and the way he is spending money on the army—far less silver for them—and will be pleased with the idea of a change. And these eunuchs have a wretched appointment, guarding a door no one uses. So they probably won’t . . . Ah, there we are.”

  From the Ebony Chamber, Lady Orchid took two pieces of jewelry, a jade fish and a gold bracelet set with sapphires. The eunuchs accepted these with newly solemn faces and stepped aside.

  “I’m glad you didn’t kill those men,” Alice said, “but I have to admit that I’m rather surprised you didn’t.”

  “Someone might find the bodies if we left them in the park,” Li said. “And I cannot send them tumbling down the staircase. It contains several traps, as Lady Orchid is explaining. On the way down, you must step on the stones with the characters for Long life and eternal health to the celestial son of heaven, may he live forever under—”

  “Wait, wait.” Alice held up her hands. “I couldn’t remember all that, even if I could read Chinese.”

  “Just step where everyone else steps,” Phipps said, “and don’t make a mistake.”

  “What happens to those who make a mistake?”

  “I’m not completely sure.” Phipps cocked an ear toward Lady Orchid, who was still speaking. “But it seems to involve a great number of spikes and slow-acting poisons.”

  “You go first,” Alice said.

  “What are you going to do about that dragon?” Phipps asked.

  Alice got down from the dragon and stared at the steps for a long moment. She spotted the dozens of clever little holes for the spikes Phipps had mentioned, and her mind traced pathways, running automatic calculations. “I think there’s a way to bring it with. I hate to let it go to waste.”

  Meanwhile, the eunuchs, who didn’t seem so sure of their lives now that they had given up the secret of the staircase, fled into the night. Cricket peered at the spiral stairs with interest. Alice had had limited interactions with the boy, but he had so far seemed bright and intelligent, and he hadn’t once complained about the long walk to the park. She wondered if he understood that they were planning to make him a straw emperor, or if he knew that by evening’s end he would have lost either his hand or his life. Doubt dragged at her like a wet cloak. Were they doing the right thing? But if they turned back, how many thousands of others would die in a war between Britain and China? How many young men were even now asleep in their beds, awaiting a death sentence they didn’t even know was coming? How many children would be orphaned?

  She remembered the final moments of her aunt’s life, how Edwina had been forced to die in order to unleash the plague cure on the world. Alice had demanded to know why the world seemed to work on all or nothing, why there was no way to win without so much sacrifice. Aunt Edwina had promised to ask God. Alice herself intended to have a few choice words with the Almighty about the rightness of a world that endangered the lives of children in order to save everyone else.

  Lady Orchid studied the stairs. They were marble inlaid with Chinese characters in jade, and they meant nothing to Alice, though the workmanship was absolutely stunning. It seemed a terrible shame to hide such lovely art in the dark on the chance that a single man might tread on it. Gavin would have thoroughly appreciated it.

  Gavin. Alice climbed back onto the dragon and glanced upward. Where on earth was Gavin? She had been concentrating on the current plan so she wouldn’t have to think about him haring off—flying off—and leaving her. A strange mixture of anger and worry mingled inside her. She had no idea why he had left after that brass nightingale had sung that song—their song—to him. The voice had been eerily similar to Gavin’s, but it wasn’t his. Perhaps it was a trap, designed to send him into a clockwork fugue and lure him away. But a trap set by whom? And if it were, why hadn’t the person come after Alice as well? She carried the cure. She was the enemy to China. Who here was looking for him?

  It couldn’t be his father. Could it?

  She turned the idea over in her mind. It made a certain amount of sense. Gavin’s voice was similar to the one recorded in the bird, the way a son’s voice might be like his father’s. Gavin’s father had been an airman, and airmen traveled far and wide, so there was no reason the man shouldn’t be somewhere near a large city. If he were alive, he had to be somewhere, and why not Peking? More than one person had prophesied that Gavin would meet his father again, and although Alice had dismissed such things as superstition, some of them had mentioned a science that she had
n’t been able to follow. Perhaps they had been right after all.

  Still, all the explanations in the world didn’t diminish their need for his help.

  From her pocket she took the silver nightingale, the one she had thought unique in the world and only recently come to understand was only one of many. She pressed the left eye and murmured to it, “Gavin, where did you go? We need you.” That was stupid. Why was she holding back? She added, “I need you.”

  She tossed the nightingale into the air. It sprang to life in the moonlight and fluttered away as Lady Orchid began a careful descent down the deadly stairs.

  * * *

  Still clutching the Ebony Chamber, Cixi finished the phrase to herself: “Under the blessing of dragons.” She reached the bottom, paused, and allowed herself a small sigh of relief. She hadn’t been sure of herself. She had teased the code for the staircase out of Xianfeng more than two years ago after some pillow time together, but she hadn’t been able to write it down and she hadn’t been completely certain of her memory.

  She checked behind her. Zaichun was coming down. She wasn’t worried about him—his memory was excellent and he understood the consequences of making an error. The foreigners, on the other hand, were another matter entirely. Lieutenant Li and his soldiers, whom Cixi desperately needed on her side, were loyal only to the foreigners, so she couldn’t afford for any of them to die. It grated on her to work with barbarians; yet it was also fitting, using foreigners to further the ends of the Chinese Empire. And she did have to admit they had figured out the secret of the Ebony Chamber whereas she had not. Clearly Western thought had some merit to it. Kung was right—when Zaichun controlled the Jade Hand, she would have to open wider relations with the West. It wouldn’t mean abandoning everything Chinese for everything English—the very idea nauseated her—but there would be no harm in picking and choosing a few good concepts. This idea of encouraging girls to read, for example, had merit. Cixi’s mother had fought long and hard to teach her the characters, and if she had not known them, she would never have reached her current position. Reading opened doors. Perhaps Lady Michaels would be willing to stay on as an adviser. No, it would have to be Lieutenant Phipps—she spoke a proper language. And there was another intriguing idea: women with military titles. Reading might open doors, but the army smashed them down.