her maids and her eunuchs. Still, that was an acquired sense. Her father had been a low-ranking army officer, quite poor, and she had chopped vegetables and scrubbed floors and sewn seams like any other girl for the first sixteen years of her life. It was time to become that girl again, at least for a while.
“Did I play the game well, Mother?” Zaichun asked.
“You did, Little Cricket. But we must play a little longer. From now on my name is. . Orchid, and yours-”
“I want to be Cricket!”
“As you like.”
“Where are we going?”
She thought again. A little voice told her she had enough money in the form of her jewelry to go anywhere in China. There were a number of nice small cities to the south, where she could live a quiet existence as a moderately wealthy widow.
But that would leave China in the hands of a usurper warlord, a foolish man who intended to wreck the world. Her back straightened. No. Just as she had told Liyang, it was time for man’s rule in China to end. And although she herself could not ascend the throne-women were not allowed to rule-she held in her hands the means to govern China properly.
“We’re going to Peking,” she said to Zaichun. “I have friends there who will hide us.”
Chapter Seven
Yeh laughed and laughed. His jowls jiggled, and he slapped the table, nearly upsetting his teacup. For his part, Gavin nearly whipped his sword from his belt to chop the man’s hand off for such effrontery. His fingers itched to dig into the fat man’s neck and snap his vertebrae one by one. The bastard was-
He ground his teeth and pushed the thoughts back. Not now. Perhaps it was the plague running away with his emotions, or perhaps it was his own reaction to a man mocking his Alice. In any case, he was in control here. He shot a glance at Phipps, who looked perfectly calm, and at the guards, who also remained perfectly calm.
No, wait-that wasn’t true. Gavin studied them sidelong. The one with the pistol. . his left leg was jumping up and down just a little, and tiny movements in his face said he was chewing on the inside of his mouth. He was nervous, very nervous, and trying to hide it. The older man, the one with the sword, was calmer, but he was as coiled as a clockwork spring. They weren’t as in control as they thought.
“You want to claim reward for you,” Yeh snickered. “Funny.”
“The notice does not say anything about who may or may not claim the reward,” Alice replied. “It only offers one such. Are you a man of honor or not?”
Yeh blinked at this. “Why I give you reward? Why I not knock you on head, take you back to Peking?”
Gavin locked eyes with the younger guard, who stared back. Phipps folded her arms and looked at the ceiling, seeming to ignore her own opposite number, but Gavin knew she was keeping an eye on the room. Men continued to eat and laugh and smoke with no indication they understood the world-class drama playing out in the corner nearby. Gavin wondered how many of them would die if-when-a fight broke out.
Alice gave Yeh a little smile and reached delicately across to the table to take his plump hand in both of hers. As if soothing a child, she stroked the back of his hand with her spidery fingertips.
“Mr. Yeh,” she said, “you’re an expatriate, am I right? You are not allowed to cross the border back into your dear homeland, and you are forced to live among us Western barbarians. You find this horrible, I can see.”
“Yes,” Yeh spat, though he didn’t move his hand away.
“Now why is it you have been banished, hm? Is it because you and a few others like you haven’t tracked me down yet? Because someone has to stay outside the borders to coordinate the search for me?”
“It is so.” Yeh leaned forward, his hand still in Alice’s. “We are sacrifices for empire. But now that I find you, I go home. Emperor will use you as he likes.”
“Now, now.” Quick as a flash, Alice jabbed an iron finger into the flesh of Yeh’s hand without quite breaking the skin. He inhaled sharply at the unexpected pain, a sensation he was unaccustomed to. “Do you know what this spider does?”
Yeh trembled, and his eyes rolled until the whites showed. A trickle of sweat ran down the side of his head. The guards tensed, and this time Gavin half drew his cutlass.
“Don’t,” Gavin said, knowing that at least one of the guards spoke English.
“I see you do know, Mr. Yeh,” Alice said. “I also see you’ve worked out what will happen if I break the skin on your hand with this claw. How likely is it the emperor will ever let you reenter your homeland if you carry the cure for the clockwork plague?”
Yeh remained silent, his gaze rooted on Alice’s finger.
“Let me tell you what will happen now, Mr. Yeh,” Alice continued. She sounded like a woman entertaining in her drawing room over tea, and admiration for her swelled in Gavin’s chest. “You will give us that delightfully enormous reward, and we will put it aboard our airship. Then you yourself will board, and we will all fly to China. You will authorize us to cross the border-I assume you can do that-and once we arrive in Peking, you will be hailed as a hero for single-handedly delivering the notorious Alice, Lady Michaels, to the emperor. You will be able to go home, and we will be in Peking for reasons of our own. This offer is nonnegotiable and expires in one minute. If you refuse, we will walk out that door and vanish forever. An airship covers a lot of ground, Mr. Yeh, and you will never have this chance again. The time begins now.”
Phipps pulled out a pocket watch and flipped it open with her metal hand.
“You dictate nothing,” Yeh said. “Filthy white woman.”
“You are quite correct, Mr. Yeh,” Alice said with a nod. “I dictate nothing. I am merely giving you the conditions under which I will surrender myself to you, making it easy for you to return to China a hero. Whether you accept these conditions or not is purely your choice.”
“Forty seconds,” said Phipps.
“Women set no conditions,” Yeh said. “They obey them.”
“As you like, Mr. Yeh. But please note whose claw is digging into your hand.”
“Thirty seconds,” said Phipps.
“How I know you no try to kill me and run with reward?”
“Because I need you, Mr. Yeh. We can’t get to Peking without you.”
“Why you go to Peking?”
“That will have to remain a mystery.”
“I say we leave,” Gavin put in. “This mongrel has no idea what honor is. His country means nothing to him. He
Yeh’s jowls quivered. “You pay for that, boy.”
“I hope so,” Alice said. “In silver, if you please.”
“Ten seconds,” said Phipps.
Alice shifted on her pillow. “Well, it was nice meeting you, Mr. Yeh. A pity we couldn’t come to-”
“Wait,” Yeh said.
“Three seconds.”
“Yes?”
Yeh ground his teeth. “I accept.”
“You are a wise man,” Alice said, and Gavin held back a smile.
The arrangements went quickly and smoothly, mostly because Alice refused to leave Yeh’s side. “One strange move, Mr. Yeh,” she said, “and I’ll poke you in a tender place.” In his rooms at the hotel, he dismissed his guards, packed a trunk, and produced a number of bearer bonds printed in several languages, including Persian, Chinese, and English. Together, they granted the bearer the right to four hundred pounds of silver. With the new telegraph system that allowed bankers and merchants to talk to each other over long distances, that meant the
