The Dragon Men

a closet.

“Good Lord,” Phipps breathed. She had her cutlass out, but it seemed small and senseless compared to the crowd facing them. Gavin didn’t react. He simply stared at the squid men, either fascinated or mesmerized, Alice couldn’t tell which. Thanks to the clockwork plague, Gavin fell into these fugues more and more often, and it wasn’t just when they came across something as strange as a school of squid men. A simple leaf or air current could capture his fancy with equal ease. This unnerved Alice even more than his recent dive over the side of the ship. Right now, the clockwork fugue was proving dangerous-Gavin had lost track of himself while he held their only weapon.

Alice tried to speak, but no words came out. She coughed and tried again. “Gavin! The Cube!”

Gavin came to himself with a snap. The eye-twisting Impossible Cube glowed in his grip, and he held it out in front of him. Metal wings formed a chain mail cloak that rippled down his back, and the blue light of the Cube lit his white-blond hair with an unearthly glow. The squid men oozed closer in eerie silence, and Alice’s breath came in fearful gasps. She couldn’t stand such horrible creatures, and she felt foolish and helpless hiding behind Gavin, who was four years younger than she. Still, she had rescued him from danger more times than she could count, so what was the harm in letting him and his powerful weapon take the forefront?

The squid men reached for Gavin with their dripping arms. He opened his mouth and sang a single, clear note. Alice had no idea which-Gavin had perfect pitch, not she-but the impact was electric. The Impossible Cube flickered in Gavin’s strong hands, and his voice. . changed. It roared from his throat with the sound of a thousand tigers. A cone of sound thundered across the deck and flung squid men aside like toys, clearing a corridor all the way to the gunwale. The sound continued to boom from Gavin’s throat, and pride fluttered in Alice’s chest. He looked handsome and powerful and, God, he was so young, but Alice loved him with every particle in her body. The squid men crashed into one another and tumbled across the wood without uttering a sound.

Phipps was also busy. She slashed one creature with her cutlass, slicing off its arm at the elbow. Blue blood gushed over the deck and her victim staggered back, but Phipps was still in motion. She gave another squid man a side kick to the midriff. It fell back into the attacker behind it while Phipps back-punched another squid man in the face with her metal hand. Her knuckles sank into the flesh between its eyes, then pulled free with a sucking sound. Undaunted, the squid man grabbed her wrist. Like a cat, she twisted round and bent her attacker’s arm, sending the creature to the deck with its neck tentacles writhing in what Alice assumed was pain.

Meanwhile, the squid men Gavin had scattered began to recover. Their movements changed from slow and shambling to quick and nimble. The ones that had fallen rolled to their feet, and the rest surged forward. Strangely, they seemed to be ignoring Gavin and reaching for Alice.

“What the hell is going on?” Phipps panted. She took a punch to the jaw, staggered, righted herself, and kept on fighting. Her monocle gleamed an angry red, helping her aim.

“Shout at them again!” Alice cried. “Shout at-”

One of the squid men grabbed her from behind with cold hands. Alice screamed as nightmares she didn’t remember having smeared her mind with slippery darkness. She struggled and kicked, and another grabbed her as well. Gavin turned, the Impossible Cube still glowing in his hands. Phipps was raising her cutlass against another group of squid men.

And then Alice noticed the spider on her arm.

Last spring, the iron spider had wrapped itself around her hand and forearm at the behest of her aunt Edwina, a world-class clockworker. Soft, flexible tubules had burrowed into her flesh and gorged themselves on her blood, which now bubbled and flowed up and down the spider’s body and legs. The spider’s head and five of its legs clutched the back of her hand and each of her fingers, creating a strange gauntlet. Alice had tried to get it off, but it refused to budge, and it had quickly become so much a part of her that she was now afraid to try more drastic methods such as cutting it away. These days, she didn’t entirely want to. What currently caught her attention were the spider’s eyes. They glowed red. Her fear vanished despite the rubbery arms that held her.

“Wait!” she cried. “These. . people have the clockwork plague!”

Before Gavin could respond to this news, Alice swiped at the arm that held her with the claws that tipped her left hand. The hollow claws sprayed her own blood over the wounds she created, mixing scarlet and azure. The squid man released her and reeled away. Two more stepped up to grab at her, but Alice swiped both of them with quick, darting motions. More blood mixed in the scratches, and they staggered away, too. The first squid man was now writhing on the deck. Soft clicking sounds emerged from either its neck or chest; Alice couldn’t tell which. The other two soon joined it. Their skin tone was changing, shifting from dark blue to a mottled pink.

All this happened in just a few seconds. Phipps had dispatched or driven back half a dozen squid men of her own. Her cutlass and metal arm dripped with blue blood, and she had lost her hat. A wild look had come over her eyes as more squid men crowded toward her. Gavin opened his mouth to roar again.

“That’s enough!”

The new voice echoed through the cave. The squid men all froze, except for those writhing and clicking on the deck because Alice had scratched them or Phipps had lopped pieces off. Alice turned. What now?

Skimming across the channel that cut through the cave floor came a man. He was barefoot and wore a black bathing costume with short sleeves and leggings. Around his waist he had an elaborate, heavy-looking belt with a number of clunky pieces of machinery attached to it. Over everything, rather strangely, he wore a long gray cloak. He was standing sideways and seemed to be riding a low wave until he came closer and Alice realized he was standing on the back of another creature. How he kept his balance she couldn’t imagine until it came to her that, like Gavin, he was a clockworker and had the requisite enhanced reflexes that he would enjoy until plague burned out his brain. No doubt this was the man who had created both the giant squid and the squid men. Alice pursed her lips.

Gavin traded a look with Phipps while the scratched and wounded squid men squirmed on the deck. The ones Alice had slashed continued their metamorphosis, with their skin growing paler and their neck tentacles going still. Alice wanted to examine them, see if they were in pain, but she didn’t have the chance. The clockworker skimmed closer to the ship, and in moments he vaulted from his creature’s back and scrambled onto the deck, his gray cloak fluttering behind him. He had a Persian’s dark hair and complexion, and the wrinkles around his eyes and mouth put him somewhere in his forties, or perhaps near fifty.

“That’s enough,” he repeated in accented English. “Leave my poor men alone!”

Phipps, Gavin, and Alice stared. The crowd of squid men remained motionless. Alice recovered herself first.

“And you are?” she asked.

“You may call me Prince Mehrad al-Noor,” he said. “I already know who you are-or one of you, at any rate.”

“And that would be?” Phipps said.

“Alice, Lady Michaels, late of London,” al-Noor said. “You are the one with the cure to the clockwork plague, and you have demonstrated it on my poor men.”

“What are you talking about?” Alice said, still trying to get a full grip on herself. “Why did you bring us here? I assume that this creature”-she gestured at one of the tentacles still encircling the ship-“attacked us at your behest.”

“Yes, yes.” Al-Noor waved his hands in a series of complicated gestures, and several of the squid men dragged the ones Alice had scratched and those Phipps had wounded to the side and leaped overboard with them. Splashes followed. They left trails of blue blood on the deck. “Why else would a giant squid attack a passing airship?”

“How do you know the name Lady Michaels?” Gavin demanded.

“Everyone knows this name,” al-Noor replied with a white grin. “She is the angel with a sharp metal hand who spreads the cure to the clockwork plague. She coasts through the heavens in a glowing blue airship piloted by her lover, dropping to Earth to bestow her blessings wherever people are good and kind and deserving of her notice.”

Alice felt her face turn hot. “Gavin’s not-”

Phipps trod on her foot, cutting her off. “So you’ve heard of me,” she interrupted, holding up her metal arm. “I’m flattered. That doesn’t explain why you intercepted us and tried to destroy my ship.”

For a split second, Alice found herself wanting to correct Phipps. Then she shut herself up. Any advantage