The Dragon Men

what seemed to Alice a very strange story about a box and a missing declaration for the heir to the throne and an equally missing lot of priceless jewelry.

“May I?” Alice said, and at Lady Orchid’s nod, she pulled the box to herself and picked it up to examine it from all sides. Her brow furrowed as her hands wandered over it. Click put out a paw and batted at it.

“You’re a dear,” Alice told him, “but don’t touch, please.”

“What is she doing?” Li asked.

“Alice is talented with clockwor-Dragon Man inventions,” Gavin supplied. “She’s the only person we know of who can reassemble or repair them.”

Kung looked impressed. “We must keep this fact from Su Shun, or he will add her as a concubine.”

Alice decided she was too busy with the Chamber to react to this outrageous idea. She opened it and looked inside, then closed it again. There was much more to this box than a simple lock. Without knowing quite why, she brought the box up and lowered it over her own head. Instantly she became dizzy. Darkness swirled around her, but it was darkness with texture, like silk and sandpaper together. Layers of it slid over her, stealing her breath away. She felt hundreds of places all at once, and for a second she understood what a clockwork fugue was like for Gavin.

She jerked the box away, and the world abruptly returned to normal.

“Are you all right?” Gavin asked.

“Perfectly,” Alice replied, trying not to pant. “Though I am not in a hurry to try that again.” The dragons shimmered and twisted, laughing in their golden silence, and the phoenix latch glimmered enticingly. She ran her fingers over it. “Did you say the combination number was oh-one-eight?”

“Yes.”

“Because the latch is not set to oh-one-eight. The last number is set between seven and eight.”

“Why would that matter? The lock opened.”

“It matters quite a bit,” Gavin murmured. “Oh, how it matters.”

As if in a dream, he moved his finger toward the phoenix latch and flicked the number fully to 018. Sudden weight pulled the Ebony Chamber down, and it dropped from Alice’s hands to land with a thud on the table.

“Thank you, darling,” Alice said with satisfaction. “And now. .”

With a magician’s flourish she opened the box. Everyone crowded around to look. The phosphorescent light gleamed off a pile of jewels.

Lady Orchid gasped and pulled the box to her. “My jewels! Where did they come from?”

“That may be difficult to explain.” Gavin cleared his throat. “For a while, the Third Ward housed a clockworker named Viktor von Rasmussen. He discovered that there are different universes that exist side by side with this one. We can’t see or hear them, but they still exist. Dr. Rasmussen even found a way to bring different versions of himself from those universes into this one.”

Phipps shuddered at this. “Took forever to persuade him to send them back.” she said. “Caused no end of trouble, and a long line at the privy,”

“This box was created somehow like the Impossible Cube,” Gavin said. “It bends time and space around itself and creates. . a gate into other universes. Though I don’t understand how it works without a power source.”

“Anything you put into the box doesn’t actually exist in our universe anymore,” Alice put in. “When you set it to oh-one-eight, anything you put inside goes into a. . a piece of universe number eighteen, for want of a better way to put it. Change the lock to another number, and you’re looking into a different universe. You have a thousand universes to choose from-more than that, if you count the half spins and quarter spins that seem to affect the box as well.”

Gavin rose and said vaguely, “I’ll be right back.” And he went below.

“I am not worthy to understand,” Li said with a shake of his head. “This is very confusing.”

“Let me demonstrate.” Alice picked up Click and dropped him into the box. He yowled with surprise and disappeared inside, even though he was a bit larger than the box and the box was already filled with jewelry. Alice shut the lid on him before he could jump back out, noted the latch-it was still set to 018-and spun it at random. The numbers landed on 365. The yowling ended. Alice opened the box again. It was empty of both cat and jewels. Lady Orchid made a sound of protest.

“It’s all right,” Alice told her. “Click is still here, but he’s also gone elsewhere. You could say that he exists and does not exist at the same time.”

“How much material will fit in there?” Kung asked.

“I’m not sure, though it looks to me like this box is the embodiment of an infinite set. You can add an infinite set to an infinite set any number of times and still have room for more infinite sets, so I think you could add an infinite amount of material to this box and still have room.”

“Fascinating,” said Lady Orchid tightly. “Please bring back my jewelry.”

“Of course.” Alice reached for the latch.

“When you do,” Phipps put in, “point that thing away from me. I have a feeling your cat won’t be very happy.”

Alice reset the phoenix latch to 018. It belatedly came to her that she might be wrong and that she might have condemned Click to a terrible destruction. Her rash actions were almost like a clockworker’s, and she didn’t enjoy that thought in the slightest.

She opened the box. Click sprang out and rushed away with another yowl. He fled belowdecks past Gavin, who was coming up with the Impossible Cube, its lattices still dark. He set the Cube on the table opposite the Ebony Chamber. The Chamber was still filled with jewels. The Cube was filled with empty space.

“What are we to do with this?” Li said.

“I’m not sure,” Gavin said. “I just. . wanted it nearby.” He paused a moment. “Who created the Ebony Chamber?”

“Lung Fei,” answered Kung. “The same Dragon Man who created the Jade Hand and the salamanders. They are all connected.”

Lady Orchid, meanwhile, carefully tipped the jewels out of the Ebony Chamber. They made a gleaming hoard of stiff beauty on the tabletop. She was setting the box down again when she froze. “Connected. No.”

“What is wrong?” Kung asked, looking worried again.

“They are all connected. Kung, I know why the Chamber was empty, why there was no paper proclaiming the heir’s name.” She put her hand inside the box to feel around, then withdrew it with a sharp gasp. “What-?”

“It feels odd, yes.” Alice leaned toward her. “What did you mean just now?”

“I have seen Xianfeng open the Ebony Chamber more than once. But whenever he did so, he placed the Jade Hand over the phoenix latch. Like so.” She put her palm over the latch, covering it completely. “I thought it was to hide the numbers from the eunuchs. But now. . if the Chamber is connected to the Hand. . I wonder.”

“The Hand creates another infinite set,” Gavin said with a nod. “There’s oh-one-eight and oh-one-eight- A.”

Lady Orchid shut the box and tried other numbers-009, 005, 000. Every time she opened the Chamber, it was empty. This only seemed to confirm what she was thinking. “I believe he did declare an heir-my son- but we need the Jade Hand to open the Ebony Chamber to the correct. . place.”

“All of which only reinforces our-your-need to lay hands on the Hand, so to speak,” said Alice. “We became rather sidetracked.”

“Yeah. An infinite set in an infinite set.” Gavin slowly turned the Ebony Chamber open again and held the Impossible Cube over it. “So, what would happen. .”

Electricity arced blue from the Chamber to the Cube. It snapped and hissed like a nest of snakes. Alice’s hair rose, and she felt it prickle across her neck. A low rumble built swiftly into a high whine, and air moved through the stable.

“Gavin!” Alice cried. “Stop!”