“Please, sit, eat,” he said as one of the squid men piled food on his plate.
Alice remained standing. Sitting cross-legged on the floor would put her at a further disadvantage, and she was too tense to sit in any case. Her muscles felt stiff as whalebone, and sweat trickled down her back despite the chill of the cave. She forced herself to relax-or try to. Gavin would come for them. He had the Impossible Cube, the most powerful weapon in the world.
A weapon they only barely understood. A weapon that had nearly destroyed the entire universe by stopping time. It hadn’t even been two weeks since she and Gavin had faced down plump, merry Dr. Clef at the bottom of the dam in Kiev, not fourteen days since she had watched in horror as he charged up the Impossible Cube with half the power of a city and reached for a switch that would freeze everything forever between two ticks of the universe’s clock. He had been her friend, a kind, slightly eccentric old man with strange theories that bent her mind and made her see the world on different terms. And she had taken a hand in his death. Feng Lung, another dear friend, had died as well, messily and horribly. She often saw the image of their mingled blood hanging in the air before she fell asleep in her bunk at night.
“Get to it, al-Noor,” Phipps snapped, also refusing to sit. “What do you want?”
“You are not in a position to shout.” Al-Noor stuffed a wad of flat bread into his mouth. “With a word, my men could kill you. Or perhaps they will pull your brass arm off so I can study it. Have some coconut milk.”
“My name is Lady Michaels, a peer of the British Empire. You will use that title when you address me.”
Alice wished Phipps wouldn’t antagonize the man. Although al-Noor clearly wanted them alive, he
“Even a lady must eat.” Al-Noor waved away Phipps’s comment with a forkful of noodles. “But it is your prerogative to go hungry if you wish. A pity, when so many others in the world are starving.”
“What do you want with us, Mr. al-Noor?” Alice asked carefully. “You said something about China’s borders.”
“I did, I did.” Al-Noor sipped noisily from a porcelain cup, which was instantly refilled by one of the squid men. A bit of slime from its neck tentacles dripped into the cup. Al-Noor drank again, and Alice’s gorge rose. Phipps looked a bit green. “The borders are closed.”
“They can’t do that,” Alice said again. “The Treaty of Nanking opened free trade between China and England after that fight over opium-what? — nine years ago? Ten?”
“Nine, yes.” Al-Noor toyed with an oily bit of fish. “But the treaty was not about free trade. It was about letting British merchants ram Indian opium down Chinese throats. And the Chinese finally had enough. Fellow named Prince Cheng teamed up with a Manchu warlord named Su Shun, and they closed the borders, treaty or no.”
“There’ll be a fight,” Phipps predicted. “A big one.”
“Yes. I think Cheng and Su Shun are counting on that. You British took Peking by sheer luck. Everyone knows that if General Zexu Lin’s war machines hadn’t broken down at Canton and let the English forces through, the Chinese would have thrown the British out quite handily. And even so, the British took huge losses at Peking before the emperor surrendered. If General Lin had not backed down, the British might have still failed.”
“Ancient history,” Phipps said. “The Chinese lost. They signed the treaty.”
“And now they have decided to fight again.” Al-Noor popped something blue and rubbery into his mouth. “Perhaps they have heard that the British are losing their clockworkers and they have decided to flex their muscles. It will be interesting to see how the British fare now that no new clockworker has been spotted in Europe for nearly two months and the ones they already have are dying out. Who will create and repair their engines of war?”
“So they’ve closed the borders to keep the cure out.” Alice sank to a pillow despite herself.
“It is what I would do were I ruling China.”
“But it doesn’t explain why you captured us,” Phipps pointed out.
“Ah, but it does. In a way.” Al-Noor checked the contents of a serving bowl, discovered it was empty, and made a face. A squid man snatched it up and hurried away with it. “I myself know quite a lot about the clockwork plague. I suffer from it.”
“Do you?” Phipps said without a trace of sarcasm.
“It was why my countrymen sent me here. This island is a men’s leper colony, you know. Up top, that is. They also send people who suffer from the clockwork plague here, but we, poor souls, are lepers among lepers and are forced to scuttle about down here. After nearly a year of hard work, I discovered how to alter the plague a bit, combine it with proteins from sea animals.”
“Squid,” Alice whispered in horror.
Al-Noor nodded with enthusiasm. “My process changes them. It slows the plague considerably but does not halt it. The two you cured, Lady Michaels”-he gestured at Phipps, and Alice remembered she had scratched the squid men before al-Noor boarded-“have died. Only my altered plague was keeping them alive, and you took that away from them.”
Guilt engulfed Alice, and she folded her arms across her stomach. The iron spider made a cold, dreadful weight.
“I still don’t understand why you captured me,” Phipps growled. “And I’m growing impatient.”
“My research is expensive,” al-Noor replied simply. “Do you have any idea how much I pay in bribes just to get a ship’s captain to land here, let alone bring me what I need? It is ungodly. Fortunately for me, a source of revenue skimmed across my little sea directly at me.”
“We don’t have much money,” Alice said, not quite lying. “We can pay a little-”
“Not you,” al-Noor interrupted. “The Chinese.”
That stopped Alice. “The Chinese?” she repeated.
“The emperor, to be specific. His Imperial Majesty Xianfeng is offering four hundred pounds of silver for the capture of Alice, Lady Michaels. Alive.” His eyes glittered. “I can breed a lot of squid with that much money.”
“Four hundred pounds of silver,” Phipps breathed.
“Good heavens,” Alice whispered.
“Wait-he wants me alive?” Phipps said. “So when you were threatening to drown me aboard our ship-”
“An excellent bluff,” al-Noor agreed. “I’m very good at them.”
Phipps closed her uncovered eye for a moment. “Why does the emperor want us? Me?”
“Rumor has it Xianfeng fears the clockwork plague. Perhaps he wants to ensure he avoids it forever. He’s also known for keeping pretty concubines, especially unusual ones. You can keep him occupied in any number of ways, I am sure.”
A chill slid over Alice, and her fingers automatically went to her spider gauntlet. Phipps caught her eye and gave a tiny shake of her head, which stiffened Alice’s spine.
“In any case,” al-Noor finished, “once I turn you in, I will have enough silver to buy everything I need for the next stage of my research.”
“And what is that?” Alice couldn’t help asking.
“A female squid.”
“Oh good Lord,” Phipps muttered. “Look, al-Noor, my maid is worthless to you. There’s no need to hold her hostage. Let her go as a sign of good faith, and I’ll do whatever you like.”
“No.” Al-Noor slurped more tea and held out his cup for a refill, which one of the squid men instantly gave. “I already regret letting that stunning young man go. This maid of yours will guarantee your good behavior. If you try anything strange, she will suffer for it.”
“I give you my word as a. . as a lady that I won’t-”
Al-Noor cut her off with a sharp gesture. “Your pardon if I do not accept your word. I will alert the Chinese border authorities by wireless transmission in a moment, but first I want a demonstration of this cure.”
A sour worm crawled through Alice’s stomach. Phipps glanced at her again, then said, “I don’t understand.”
“I want to see this cure at work. You used it on two of my squid men before I arrived on the airship, and I had no chance to study the reaction before the two of them died. I wish to see it now.”
