The Dragon Men

But Gavin seemed caught in a trance. He lowered the Cube closer to the box. The whine grew louder and more shrill, a dragon screaming its own death. Power twisted and writhed around Gavin’s hands and spilled onto the table. The cups and dishes shattered. Jewelry flew in all directions. Everyone, including Phipps, seemed stunned. Alice moved. She shoved the table hard. The Ebony Chamber went flying, and one of the table legs caught Gavin’s thigh. His hands jerked, and the Impossible Cube bounced across the deck in the opposite direction. The whine faded and the electricity stopped. The Chamber remained dark except for the limned dragons dancing across it, and the Impossible Cube carried a soft blue glow except for a few dark places where the lattices crossed one another. A blanket of silence dropped over the deck.

“Goddamn it!” Phipps pounded the table with her brass fist. “And damn it again! Ennock, if you ever do that again, I shall rip your bollocks off and stuff them up your arse!”

Alice flushed at the dreadful vulgarity, the worst she’d heard in her life. “Lieutenant! There’s no call for-”

“Not the time, Michaels.” Phipps had lost her hat yet again and cast about for it. “Is everyone all right?”

Everyone reported that they were, including Gavin. Kung and Orchid gathered up the jewelry and piled it on the table again. Li scooped Phipps’s hat from the deck where it had fallen and returned it to her with something in Chinese that no one bothered to translate for Alice. Phipps responded from her chair, and Li bowed to her. He stayed bowed for a little longer than strictly necessary, or so it seemed to Alice, and Phipps gave him a long look with an expression Alice had never seen before as she put her hat back into place. Then she caught Alice looking at her, and her expression went wooden again.

“I’m sorry,” Gavin said. “The plague was. . I’m sorry. I won’t do that again.”

He wouldn’t meet Alice’s eyes, and she knew they were both thinking the same thing-three fugues in one day now. Her stomach felt cold and sick, and more than anything she wanted his arms around her for just a moment, but not in front of all these people.

“What happened, then?” Alice asked.

“I don’t fully know.” Gavin gave the Impossible Cube an uneasy glance. “The two of them seem to share a connection.”

“Two infinite sets,” Alice agreed.

“Two sets of infinite.” Gavin’s voice was dreamlike. “One gives power; the other takes it. I can see it down to the matching particles. What one does, the other matches. When these two are one, they can split the particles in pieces, change gravity, tilt the world and slosh the oceans. It calls to water. Always water. Tilt the glass and slop it over, flood the land, flatten mountains, and we’ll all be underwater.”

“Flood and plague will destroy us if you don’t cure the world.” The words of Monsignor Adames echoed from the Church of Our Lady in Belgium and slammed through Alice with the force of twelve hammer blows.

“Gavin, you’re frightening me.” Her voice was shaking. “Snap out of it.”

“Together they can flood the continents with their infinite. Tilt the world, slosh the glass. Tilt the axis, flood the-”

Phipps slapped him on the face with a crack. Gavin started, then blinked at them all with wide blue eyes.

“What’s the matter?” He put a hand to his cheek. “What did-?”

“We shall keep the Cube and the Chamber separated until we can study the phenomenon further,” Alice said briskly over the thickness in her throat. “Right now, we need to plan our way into the Forbidden City.”

This remark was met with general assent, though everyone found it difficult to keep their eyes off the Cube and Chamber, squatting like hungry lizards only a few paces away. Even the impressive pile of jewelry on the table couldn’t compete.

“Flood and plague will destroy us if you don’t cure the world,” Alice thought. But we’ll never put them together, so that so-called prophecy won’t come true, Monsignor Adames. Of that, you may be sure.

“The secret passage goes under the moat and both walls,” Lady Orchid said. “One end is found in Jingshan Park, which is outside the northern wall of the Forbidden City. The other end emerges just behind the Hall of Mental Cultivation, the emperor’s residence. Eunuchs guard several points along the entire passageway, and we will need to kill or bribe each one.”

“Can they all be bribed?” Alice asked doubtfully.

“I doubt it very much. Some will raise an alarm no matter what we do.”

“I thought you said you were one of only a few people who even knew the passage existed.” Gavin drew up a chair again. “What about all these eunuchs?”

Lady Orchid waved this aside with her fan. “Their tongues have been cut out so they cannot reveal its existence, and neither can they read or write. This is why they are easy to bribe-many are unhappy with their situations.”

“I can imagine,” Gavin growled.

“Once you have emerged from the passage, you will find more guards and servants,” Kung said. “They are everywhere. And then you will have to enter the palace, find Su Shun, and take the Hand from him.”

“I can build us some weapons,” Gavin said doubtfully, “but I don’t think we can do this alone.”

“The young lord is correct.” Li had taken up a position behind Phipps’s chair now. “You will need men to fight when you are in the passage, and men to fight when you are in the Forbidden City. The fighting will serve as a distraction for the guards so you can find Su Shun and take the Hand. Once you have given the Hand to Prince Zaichun, he can end the battle.”

“Where would we find someone suicidal enough to-oh.” Alice stopped herself. “Are you. . volunteering, Lieutenant Li?”

He bowed to her. “My men and I stand ready, Lady Michaels.”

She shook her head. “We can’t ask you to do that.”

“You saved our lives, Lady Michaels. I only ask that you do not disappoint us with refusal. My men and I only wish to serve you and, if necessary, die with honor.”

“We accept, Lieutenant,” Gavin said before Alice could object again. “And thank you. You and your men honor us with your service.”

Yet another bow from the lieutenant. Alice abruptly found the air too close. She got up and stalked toward the front of the ship, picking her way around the rolled-up endoskeleton and the piles of silk. One of the whirligigs flitted up from below to land on her shoulder, and she touched it with an absent gesture. Thoughts swirled through her head. So much was happening so fast, and she couldn’t take it all in.

And then Gavin was there. He put his arm around her waist. She started to pull away at first, then sighed and leaned against him. It was good to stand with someone strong.

“Penny?” His eyes were very blue, and the salamander made a brass circle around his ear. “Or maybe I should offer a nickel. Inflation, and all.”

She managed a weak smile. “It just came over me all at once that our plan involves bringing a number of men into the Forbidden City so they can fight and die, and then we intend to kill a man, cut off the hand of a small boy, and graft one of the dead man’s hands onto him. I don’t know how we came to this point, and I don’t know if it’s right.”

He nodded. “I think the fact that we’re questioning what we’re doing means we’re on the right path. The only people who don’t question themselves are tyrants and despots.”

“And. . clockworkers,” Alice whispered.

His arm tightened around her waist. “And them. Look, we’re risking our lives, too. Tyrants don’t do that-they make other people risk their lives. Besides, thousands will die in Su Shun’s war with the West if we don’t stop him.”

“I know.” She sighed heavily. “I do know. I just don’t like carrying this kind of responsibility. I never asked for it. I certainly don’t want it.”

“Another good sign, I think. Su Shun does want it, and look where it’s taking him.” He paused. “But that’s not the worst of what’s bothering you.”

“No.” She stared into space. “They’re asking you-we are asking you-to build weapons. That means you’d probably go into a fugue. It frightens me, Gavin.” He started to protest, and she held