The Dragon Men

“It certainly distracted me. I thought it was boyishly handsome.”

Without thinking, he said, “Am I that?”

She blinked. “Are you what?”

“A boy. To you?” He hadn’t realized the idea had been bothering him until he said it aloud. Now he held his breath, feeling tense again. Of course she would say he wasn’t. Of course he would pretend to accept what she said at face value. But no matter what she might say, he wasn’t the traditional sort of man, and even though she had left England behind, Alice had brought a great deal of its traditional mind-set with her. She still refused to do more than kiss him until they were married, even though his body ached for her, and he knew she wanted him. Just standing next to her aroused desire in him, even with the soldiers looking on. They hadn’t begun a physical relationship largely because Alice didn’t want to risk getting pregnant, not when Gavin was living under a death sentence. Gavin himself didn’t want to create a child who would grow up without a father as he had done. But he also suspected that Alice was holding back a little. The acceptance of his marriage proposal on the Caspian Sea had been tentative, hesitant. Was her love the same way?

“Listen to me, Gavin Ennock.” Alice placed her hand atop his on the rail. “When I look at you, I don’t see an airman. I don’t see a fiddler or a singer. I don’t see a nineteen-year-old. The one thing I see is the man I love.”

Gavin stared ahead into empty sky, not convinced.

“And not only that, darling.” Alice leaned closer to his ear. “I destroyed one empire for you, and now I’m going to destroy another. How can you doubt anything after you hear that?”

Something broke inside, and he had to laugh. “All right,” he snorted. “You win.”

“That’s not a joke, darling.” Her eyes were smoke. “When your strong arm pushed me behind you, I never wanted you more.”

Desire for her made his skin hot, and he lowered his voice. “Really?”

“Oh yes.”

“Now I really wish those soldiers weren’t aboard.”

She sighed. “As do I, darling. As do I.”

Lieutenant Li, who was at the front of the ship standing lookout, shouted, “Peking!” just as the explosion knocked Gavin to the deck.

Chapter Ten

A hatchet was splitting Alice’s head in two. A dull hatchet. With chips in the blade. She groaned and tried to open her eyes, but they were gummy and stuck shut. Her mouth tasted like dry paper.

A gentle grip closed her hand around a cup and pushed it toward her mouth. Alice resisted at first, but her body was tired and heavy and great clods of pain kept thudding about her skull, and she finally drank. The warm liquid was overly sweet and tasted of licorice. Absinthe. Alice grimaced, but after a few swallows, her headache receded and the heaviness left her. The gentle hands helped her sit up, and a damp cloth washed her eyes open. Alice blinked uncertainly. She was sitting on a bed in a smallish room crammed with furniture, most of it red, all of it Chinese. What looked like plain white sheets had been hung over other wall hangings for reasons she couldn’t fathom. A small barred window let in a bit of breeze. The person helping her up was a maid in Chinese dress, though her clothes were white. Her upper lip had been split all the way up to her nose, giving her something of a canine appearance.

In another bed sat Susan Phipps, her uniform rumpled, her hair down and tangled in her monocle. Alice automatically put her hand up to her own head and found herself in a similar state. The corks on her fingertips caught in her hair. She cast about, befuddled. The last thing she remembered was talking to Gavin aboard the Lady.

“Are you all right?” Phipps asked.

“What happened?” Alice said, pulling her hand free. “Where are we?” To the maid, she said, “Who are you?”

A gleam caught her eye. Click was curled up on the bed. Alice felt a little better at seeing him, though she was still confused. Automatically she picked him up and checked his windup mechanism. He was running down. She took the key from around her neck, inserted it, and started winding. He slitted his eyes in contentment.

“How did we get here?” Alice asked Phipps. “Why won’t this woman speak to us?”

“I don’t know. We-”

The door opened, and in came another woman, also dressed in a white Chinese outfit-wide trousers beneath a full-length tunic split in the front and held together with a silver clasp. Her hair was elaborately twisted around her head, and her every movement was graceful as a measure of music. She was Alice’s age and very beautiful. Alice glanced down at her wrinkled, travel-stained clothes and forced herself to sit erect like the baroness she was.

The woman said something in Chinese, and it annoyed Alice now. The lack of understanding made her feel like a lost child.

“She says there’s no point in asking the maid questions,” Phipps said from her own bed. “Her tongue has been torn out.”

“That’s terrible!”

“She’s a former opium addict who probably lied to obtain money for the drug,” Phipps said. “The punishment for opium addiction is to split the upper lip so as to prevent the. . patient from sucking smoke from a pipe, and the punishment for lying is to cut the tongue out. She was fortunate to be hired here. No doubt she was chosen to wait on us because she can’t tell anyone we’re here.”

Alice shuddered but set that aside as something she could do nothing about for the moment. “Where are we? Is Gavin all right?”

At this, the beautiful woman, who had been waiting with hands clasped, spoke at some length. Phipps translated.

“My name is Lady Orchid,” she said. “Please accept my apologies for the way in which you were treated. We had no time to explain. You are in the palace compound of Prince Kung, half brother to Emperor Xianfeng, who died recently. When the prince and I heard you were on your way to Peking, we knew we had to intercept you. Prince Kung sent a number of men with a device that releases a special type of tree pollen that, when breathed, sends one into a deep sleep. Absinthe is the antidote.”

“Why, we have the same thing in England,” Alice said, then shot Phipps a guilty look. The lieutenant had been on the receiving end of the stuff during Alice and Gavin’s raid on the Doomsday Vault last spring. Phipps crossed her arms. Alice coughed and went back to winding Click.

“The device requires an explosion to disperse the pollen over a wide area, and we apologize deeply for this. I hope no one was injured.”

Alice kept winding Click. Nothing hurt that she could tell. “I’m fine. Where’s Gavin?”

“The Dragon Man? He wakes in the room next to yours. You may see him in a moment, if you wish.” Lady Orchid fingered the silver pin that held her tunic shut. “I know you find it difficult to trust us now. Perhaps it will be easier once we have explained.”

“Who is us?” Alice put in. The maid started to comb Alice’s tangled hair.

A hard look crossed Lady Orchid’s face, as if she found Alice’s interruption dreadful in some way. “Prince Kung and me. We have saved your lives, you see. General Su Shun, the pretender who ascended the throne, wants you dead, Lady Michaels.”

Alice gasped and fear tightened her insides. Gavin had been right. Still, she said, “Dead? But the reward-the emperor wanted me alive.”

“That was Emperor Xianfeng. As I said, he died recently.”

Here, Phipps stopped translating. “How did he die, Lady Orchid?”

“The blessing of dragons fell on him, and he did not survive. It was exactly what he was afraid of.”

“Then I’m too late,” Alice whispered. She felt cold, and tears pricked at the edges of her eyes. “If the current emperor won’t trade my cure for-oh good heavens, what will we do now?”

“Why did the new emperor continue the reward?” Phipps asked.