The Dragon Men

“The new emperor, General Su Shun, wants to personally ensure Lady Michaels’s death. He does not dare invade Europe until he knows his men will not encounter the cure she carries.”

“We were rather afraid that was what he might want,” Alice said. “Still, we were hoping things might be otherwise.”

“Wait-invade?” Phipps said. “Why does he want to invade?”

Orchid sighed. “His hold on the throne is weak. But a war would ensure everyone is looking at battle instead of who occupies the Imperial Seat.”

The maid finished combing out Alice’s hair and piled it high with Chinese combs. Light dawned in Alice’s head. “And you want to put someone else on the throne. That’s why you brought me here. Because I can help you in some way.”

“You are very perceptive for a-you are very perceptive.”

“Perceptive for a what?”

But Lady Orchid didn’t answer. Instead, she said, “I was once a concubine to the emperor, and-”

“A concubine?” Shocked, Alice backed away on the bed, bumping the maid aside. Click made a noise of protest. For all her grace and beauty, this woman was nothing more than a common prostitute. Alice looked down at the coverlet. Had this very bed been used for-?

“Calm down, Alice,” Phipps said. “It isn’t catching.”

“It’s. . repulsive,” Alice replied. “I. . this is. .”

“Another culture,” Phipps told her. “Here it’s considered a perfectly honorable profession-”

“The oldest profession.”

“And for many women, the only avenue to any kind of wealth or power.”

“It’s horrible! Selling oneself to a married man for the chance of-”

“Whereas you,” Phipps interjected, “were only willing to sell yourself to an unmarried man.”

“That was different,” Alice snapped.

“Of course it was,” Phipps said mildly. “This woman succeeded.”

Alice snapped her mouth shut in a fury. Lady Orchid, who had been watching this exchange with polite interest, continued.

“As a concubine of the emperor, I bore him a son. His only son. The boy-we call him Cricket-is the true heir. We need to put him on the throne. He is only six years old, but Prince Kung and I will rule as regents until he is old enough to rule on his own.”

“And why should we help you?” Alice asked, forcing herself back to the subject at hand.

Lady Orchid seemed taken aback. “We saved your lives, Lady Alice.”

“Out of self-interest, Lady Orchid,” Alice shot back. “If you didn’t need me for something, you would have let this Su Shun have me without a second thought.”

“Ah.” Lady Orchid took a white handkerchief from her white sleeve without denying Alice’s statement. “Why did you come to China, Lady Alice? I can’t imagine it was merely to claim the reward.”

Alice thought a long moment before replying. She didn’t trust this Lady Orchid, and not just because of her. . occupation. Lady Orchid was trying to make herself the power behind the throne of an empire, and such a person was automatically difficult to trust. Oh, she claimed she was trying to stop a war and rule the empire benevolently. And perhaps she would. But in the end, she was still a power-seeker, and in Alice’s experience, such people would say or do anything to achieve their aims. It was only good luck that Lady Orchid’s goals and Alice’s goals seemed to correlate. Alice was quite confident that if this woman had wanted Alice dead, there would be no trace of a body, or even a drop of blood, to be found. The thought made Alice both nervous and more determined. She glanced at the other bed. The mute maid was now combing out Phipps’s hair.

“What do you think, Lieutenant?” Alice said, deciding Cixi couldn’t understand her. “Should we say why we’re here?”

“We have to tell someone,” Phipps said. “We can’t just walk into the Forbidden City and look around for a cure. We need aid. And it sounds like this new emperor won’t be very helpful, to say the least.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” Alice admitted. “But I don’t trust her.”

“No,” Phipps said. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t all cooperate for the moment. Remember, we have something she desperately wants-your remaining alive and healthy.”

“Very well. Translate again, if you would.” She took a deep breath. “Lady Orchid, we have come to China to find a cure for clock-er, Dragon Men.”

Phipps translated this. There was a long pause, and then Cixi said, “Why?”

The question took Alice aback. “The Dragon Man in the room next-door is my fiance. He will die soon. I. . want him to live.”

“But being a Dragon Man is the greatest honor a commoner can achieve,” Cixi said, clearly shocked. “Regardless of how Su Shun feels about you, your fiance could walk into the Forbidden City right now and they would treat him with honor and reverence.”

“Until he goes mad and dies,” Alice said bitterly.

“His funeral would be enormous, and he would be buried in the Cemetery of Midnight Dragons. The eunuchs would burn incense on his grave every month, and his name would be added to the list of Dragon Men for recitation every New Year. No one would ever forget him.”

“Look, I don’t wish to debate this.” Alice fumbled in her own sleeve and produced a rather grubby handkerchief, with which she dabbed her eyes. Her other hand still bore the corks. “I can cure the plague, or blessing, or whatever you to call it, among normal patients, but people who become Dragon Men change the organism somehow, and the disease becomes immune to my cure. I later learned that several cures in England have been invented and destroyed over the years, and China’s reputation led me to believe a cure for Dragon Men may exist here. So we have come. That is the end of it.”

“I see.” Cixi sat down, and the maid pushed a stool under her. “Then I regret to inform you that there is no cure for Dragon Men.”

The words struck Alice with all the impact of a physical blow, and the room rocked from side to side. Her vision dimmed. She saw Gavin chained to a wall in a straitjacket, howling and screaming, foaming at the mouth, biting at his lips until they bled. She saw his eyes, wild and terrible and filled with pain. It was the eventual fate of every clockworker.

She came back to herself. She tried to deny the words, tell herself Cixi was lying. But Cixi had no reason to lie about this. Slowly, she brought herself fully upright on the bed, forcing herself to face the awful truth. Phipps’s face was iron. Click watched them both.

“How do you know this?” Alice said hoarsely.

“I was Imperial Concubine. I had my own eunuchs, my own maids, and my own spies. And I had the emperor’s ear. I know-knew-everything that happened in the Forbidden City. If someone had cured a Dragon Man, I would have heard of it before the emperor did. But if you don’t believe me, think of this-why would we want to cure Dragon Men? The very idea is ridiculous! No one would even research such a thing.”

“Clockworkers do as they wish,” Alice replied weakly. “They-”

“Not here. The Jade Hand speaks in their ears, and they build what the emperor desires.”

“The Jade Hand speaks? Is that the salamander Lieutenant Li implanted in Gavin’s ear?”

“Indeed. No Dragon Man has ever researched a cure for the blessing of dragons, no matter what you may have heard. The blessing is a sacred thing. Emperor Xianfeng lived in fear of contracting it, but even he could not bring himself to order any of the Dragon Men to look into a cure of any kind.”

“Oh God,” Alice moaned. The world was falling apart around her. She had put herself and Gavin in mortal danger for a cure that didn’t exist. “What will we do, then?”

“But. .,” Lady Orchid continued.

Alice looked at her. “But?”