The Dragon Men

mourning.”

His hinting couldn’t have been broader. Cixi felt on firmer ground here. She knew what was expected, and she knew what to do.

“Of course.” Cixi slid the box to her. “I took many, many valuable jewels with me when I fled. I am sure even a handful will make up for your losses.”

She spun the phoenix latch wheels to 018 and opened the Chamber.

It was empty.

Ice water ran down Cixi’s back. “This is impossible,” she whispered.

She felt around the box’s interior, then tipped it upside down and shook it, a nonsensical move, but one she couldn’t help. The dragons twisted under her fingertips. Nothing. A fortune in jewels, vanished, and all her hopes gone with them.

“What happened?” Kung asked.

“I do not understand,” she said in horror. “The Chamber never left my sight except when I talked to the foreigners, and then it was locked away in my room. No one can open the phoenix latch. They would have to steal the entire box, and they clearly did not.” Panic swept over her, and only a lifetime of training kept her from bursting into tears. “What will I do? What will we do?”

Kung puffed out his cheeks. His worried eyes looked even more worried now. “We will think.” He paused to do just that. Cixi found her mind couldn’t work at all, and she merely sat. Su Shun would now keep the throne, and eventually he would hunt her down and kill her and Zaichun.

“I will take a moment to be as blunt as a foreigner, since we are in extremis,” Kung said at last. “I have enough money to keep my household running for another two weeks. That is not taking into account spies and bribes and everything else associated with trying to wrest the throne away from Su Shun. Without your jewels, I will have to sell property to remain solvent, and that is a dragon eating its own tail.”

Cixi sat upright, her fingers gripping the table. Now was not the time to panic. Now was the time to act. “Very well, then. We need to do two things. We need to find out what happened to the jewels, and we need to talk to the foreigners. We need to make a plan.”

“A plan,” Kung said, “that does not involve money.”

Gavin poked at the strange food with the two sticks he’d been given to eat with. Clockwork reflexes or no, he couldn’t seem to get the trick of eating with them. Some of the food seemed to be little dumplings folded in half, and he had solved the problem of eating by simply stabbing them with one stick like a single-pronged fork, but anything with rice or bits of chopped vegetables in it were beyond him. Phipps, who was sitting at the table on deck across from him, used the chopsticks with ease, and Alice, though a bit clumsy, was already at least competent. Gloomily he stabbed another damp dumpling and wondered why Lady Orchid hadn’t provided them with the eating spiders he’d seen Yeh and the Chinese ambassador use back in London.

“This is quite good,” Alice said. “I could rapidly get used to this cuisine. What’s in it, do you suppose?”

“I’ve learned the hard way,” Phipps replied, “that it’s best not to ask. Rather like sausage.”

They were sitting on the Lady’s deck, but not outdoors. The ship currently lay hidden within an enormous storage building within Prince Kung’s compound, and they had been given strict instructions not to show themselves outside for fear they’d be discovered. The large storage building around them was warm and stuffy in the August heat, and Gavin was glad for the light silk pajama-style outfit he’d been given, though he refused to wear the round cap indoors. Phosphorescent lanterns gave them light without additional heat.

Since Lieutenant Li’s men already knew what was going on, Prince Kung had posted a handful of them at each of the exits, though whether to keep the foreigners safe or ensure they didn’t escape, Gavin wasn’t quite sure. They showed him a great deal of deference, however, and the salamander made strange weight around his ear. He tried not to think about the bit of machinery it had inserted into his brain or Cixi’s revelation about the clockwork plague, but it was difficult. He found the chopsticks becoming heavy in his hand, and his appetite faded.

The Lady of Liberty herself was partly dismantled. Gavin had arrived in the building to find Kung’s men had deflated her envelope and folded it neatly. The endoskeleton had been collapsed in on itself and rolled up, as it had been designed to do, and both endoskeleton and envelope lined the gunwale. The paraffin oil generator purred to itself and puffed steam. Gavin’s wing harness was attached to it. Now that they weren’t flying anywhere, he could use the generator to charge the battery. Not that he was going to fly anywhere in the near future. He saw a long line of devastating failures stretch out before him: Alice hadn’t been able to spread her cure as they had hoped; he had finished a pair of wings but barely used them; and, not least, he was dying of the clockwork plague.

Damn it, he hated this. He hated feeling unhappy (though who enjoyed it?), and he hated feeling so out of balance. It wasn’t normal. It wasn’t him. It must be the clockwork plague. Or was it? Could he blame all his problems on the disease? It would certainly be convenient, a nice way of avoiding a depressing truth. He poked morosely at his food bowl, the chopsticks clumsy in his hands.

“Having trouble, darling? Here.” Alice plucked a bit of something from her bowl and held it out to Gavin, who wryly accepted it. Click, who was sitting on a stool of his own, watched with vague interest, then licked a paw with his steel wool tongue.

“Delicious,” Gavin pronounced.

“Feeding tidbits to your fiance.” Phipps set her own bowl aside. “I believe the term for that is twee.”

“What’s the point of having a fiance if one cannot indulge in his tweeness?” Alice said.

Gavin choked on the bit of food and coughed wildly. Phipps thumped his back with her brass arm. Alice sipped some tea with a perfectly straight face.

“What?” she said. “You know I’ve always admired your tweeness, Gavin. It’s so noticeable.”

Now even Phipps’s face was turning red. Gavin slapped the table, making the lantern jump and dishes rattle, his face contorted with suppressed laughter.

“You. . didn’t just. . say. .,” he gasped.

“Of course. Why, every woman knows she can judge a man’s worth by his tweeness.”

Gavin lost it. The laughter burst from him in small explosions. His fists pounded the table. Phipps joined in, and at last Alice smiled, then giggled, then laughed. The sound rose on wings to the rafters and disturbed the pigeons roosting above. Gavin felt lighter for it, and he touched Alice’s hand.

“This is quite the reversal,” she said. “Usually you’re the one who keeps my spirits up.”

“The world is upside-down,” he admitted. “Everything is backward.”

One of Alice’s little automatons, a whirligig, sputtered up from one of the hatchways carrying a brass spider. It flitted over to Alice and deposited the spider on the table in front of her. It twitched and tried to walk, but all four of its left legs weren’t working. The whirligig backed away and chittered.

“Now what happened to you?” Alice asked, turning the spider over. “Click, would you bring my tools, please?”

Click regarded her for a moment, then jumped down and trotted away. A moment later, he came back with a black bag in his mouth. Alice accepted it from him with thanks and extracted from it a roll of black velvet, which she unrolled across the table, revealing a set of small, intricate tools. The velvet was embroidered with Love, Aunt Edwina. Alice tried to select a tool with her left hand, but the corks on her fingertips got in the way.

“Bugger this,” she muttered, and pulled the corks off with little squeaking sounds. “No one will see in here.”

Gavin glanced around and lowered his voice. “You could start spreading the cure here, you know. It wouldn’t be difficult to pull one cork away and scratch a servant or two. The cure would spread fairly quickly through Peking after that.”

“That’s my intent.” Alice set the corks aside. “Though I can’t do it here. I’m sure any servant I scratch will let Prince Kung know immediately, and they’ll cut off his head or something equally horrible. I will wait until I can get into the city.”

“Doesn’t Lady Orchid want you to spread the cure?” Gavin said.

“Lady Orchid wants the throne,” Phipps corrected. “I don’t know that she wants Alice to destroy the future of