to get to the sword. The dragon reached for her with another foot, one easily big enough to get around her waist. Alice wanted to scream in both fear and frustration. After coming all this way, it was going to end here.
A metal wire whipped through the air and wrapped around the Dragon Man’s neck. With a
“Susan!” Alice cried. “Don’t!”
Phipps yanked hard. There was a wet
“Oh God,” Alice whispered. “I wish you hadn’t.”
“You left me little choice.” Phipps coiled the wire back into her hand. “He was under orders from the salamander in his ear, and we couldn’t have done anything else to stop him. The night will be bloodier before long, Alice. You’d best accept that.”
Alice nodded once, her jaw set. Phipps was right, but Alice didn’t have to like it. She found the plague zombie still huddled near the wall. Before anything else could happen, Alice swiped his arm with her claws and sprayed the wound with her own blood.
“Be well,” she said quietly as he limped away, taking the cure with him.
“Can you drive this thing?” Phipps asked pleasantly from the seat behind the dragon’s head. “I don’t see any point in wasting it.”
The parade continued on its way, with the addition of the brass dragon. Alice’s talent with automatons let her figure out the controls quickly, and the few people on the street assumed the machine was merely part of the mourning. Riding was easier than walking, at any rate. Alice offered Lady Orchid a seat, and the woman gratefully accepted-clearly she wasn’t used to physical labor. She held Cricket on her lap, making it a tight fit behind the dragon’s head. Phipps and the soldiers continued on, unbothered.
They passed the Forbidden City on their way. Pagoda-style buildings with multiple roofs poked above the high walls, and the moonlight turned the wide moat around it to mercury. It looked as remote and untouchable as a celestial temple, which, Alice supposed, was the entire idea.
Jingshan Park pushed down against the Forbidden City’s northern border. It was a pleasant sprawl of hills and trees, meadows and ponds, shrines and pagodas. According to Lieutenant Li, who walked beside the brass dragon, the hills were artificial, built up one bucketful at a time to approximate the axis of Peking and to accommodate the principles of something he called
“The five hills are placed so energy can flow properly,” Li said. “It is difficult to explain in English.”
“As long as the secret passage works, the energy may flow as it likes,” Alice replied.
The soldiers stopped their mournful crying and howling the moment they entered the park, which was deserted after sunset. Everyone stripped off their white robes, revealing armor and brass limbs and swords and pistols, and Lady Orchid unwrapped the Ebony Chamber. The robes they left in a cobweb pile near a fishpond.
“Some gardener will think himself rich in the morning,” Li observed.
Lady Orchid climbed down from the brass dragon, taking Cricket with her.
She took them to an enormous tree, easily as wide as four men, and did something to it. A section of bark swung outward, and Alice realized the tree was artificial, cunningly constructed from plaster or resin or stone to look real. The artistry was perfect. Even the leaves looked real.
Behind the section of bark, a stone staircase spiraled downward. At the top stood a pair of surprised-looking men in the round, peaked hats Alice had learned were the uniform of imperial eunuchs. The men smelled faintly of urine, even from the back of the dragon, and Alice wondered whether Lady Orchid and the soldiers had startled them badly. Neither spoke, and Alice remembered their tongues had been cut out.
One of the men reached for a bellpull, but Lieutenant Li’s sword sliced the rope above his head. For a dreadful moment, Alice thought Li intended to kill the eunuch as well, but Lady Orchid stepped forward and spoke to them both at length.
“She’s telling them what’s happening,” Li murmured to Phipps and Alice, even though Phipps understood Chinese. Even from the dragon’s back, Alice noticed that Li stood quite close to Phipps. “She says we’re trying to put the true emperor on the throne and they can help. Most of the eunuchs are unhappy with Su Shun and the way he is spending money on the army-far less silver for them-and will be pleased with the idea of a change. And these eunuchs have a wretched appointment, guarding a door no one uses. So they probably won’t. . Ah, there we are.”
From the Ebony Chamber, Lady Orchid took two pieces of jewelry, a jade fish and a gold bracelet set with sapphires. The eunuchs accepted these with newly solemn faces and stepped aside.
“I’m glad you didn’t kill those men,” Alice said, “but I have to admit that I’m rather surprised you didn’t.”
“Someone might find the bodies if we left them in the park,” Li said. “And I cannot send them tumbling down the staircase. It contains several traps, as Lady Orchid is explaining. On the way down, you must step on the stones with the characters for
“Wait, wait.” Alice held up her hands. “I couldn’t remember all that, even if I could read Chinese.”
“Just step where everyone else steps,” Phipps said, “and don’t make a mistake.”
“What happens to those who make a mistake?”
“I’m not completely sure.” Phipps cocked an ear toward Lady Orchid, who was still speaking. “But it seems to involve a great number of spikes and slow-acting poisons.”
“You go first,” Alice said.
“What are you going to do about that dragon?” Phipps asked.
Alice got down from the dragon and stared at the steps for a long moment. She spotted the dozens of clever little holes for the spikes Phipps had mentioned, and her mind traced pathways, running automatic calculations. “I think there’s a way to bring it with. I hate to let it go to waste.”
Meanwhile, the eunuchs, who didn’t seem so sure of their lives now that they had given up the secret of the staircase, fled into the night. Cricket peered at the spiral stairs with interest. Alice had had limited interactions with the boy, but he had so far seemed bright and intelligent, and he hadn’t once complained about the long walk to the park. She wondered if he understood that they were planning to make him a straw emperor, or if he knew that by evening’s end he would have lost either his hand or his life. Doubt dragged at her like a wet cloak. Were they doing the right thing? But if they turned back, how many thousands of others would die in a war between Britain and China? How many young men were even now asleep in their beds, awaiting a death sentence they didn’t even know was coming? How many children would be orphaned?
She remembered the final moments of her aunt’s life, how Edwina had been forced to die in order to unleash the plague cure on the world. Alice had demanded to know why the world seemed to work on all or nothing, why there was no way to win without so much sacrifice. Aunt Edwina had promised to ask God. Alice herself intended to have a few choice words with the Almighty about the rightness of a world that endangered the lives of children in order to save everyone else.
Lady Orchid studied the stairs. They were marble inlaid with Chinese characters in jade, and they meant nothing to Alice, though the workmanship was absolutely stunning. It seemed a terrible shame to hide such lovely art in the dark on the chance that a single man might tread on it. Gavin would have thoroughly appreciated it.
Gavin. Alice climbed back onto the dragon and glanced upward. Where on earth was Gavin? She had been concentrating on the current plan so she wouldn’t have to think about him haring off-flying off-and leaving her. A strange mixture of anger and worry mingled inside her. She had no idea why he had left after that brass nightingale had sung that song-their song-to him. The voice had been eerily similar to Gavin’s, but it wasn’t his. Perhaps it was a trap, designed to send him into a clockwork fugue and lure him away. But a trap set by whom? And if it were, why hadn’t the person come after Alice as well? She carried the cure. She was the enemy to China. Who here was looking for him?
It couldn’t be his
