The Dragon Men

Alice’s earlier guilt returned in a black cloud. Who had those squid men been? Did they have families? Children? Had they understood what was happening to them? It had been an accident-she’d had no intention of killing them, or even hurting them. But she had done it nonetheless, and they were dead because of her.

Phipps crossed her arms. She was still standing. “What do you mean by see it?”

“Cure one of my squid men. Now.”

Uh-oh. Alice licked dry lips. The masquerade was going sour. She cast about for something to say, something to do.

“I feel I should ask,” she said, trying to stall, “exactly why you sent that enormous creature out to capture us. My. . employer, Lady Michaels, is well-known for curing people with the plague. If you had sent her a message to say you had an entire island of plague victims who needed help, Lady Michaels would have sailed into this cave of her own accord and you could have betrayed her at your leisure, no squid necessary.”

“Oh,” said al-Noor. A long moment of silence followed. Then he added, “But that would have been dull.”

“Indeed,” Phipps said.

“In any case,” al-Noor continued, “I must insist that you show me the cure, Lady Michaels.”

“I am not a circus act, Mr. al-Noor.” Phipps’s posture stiffened. “And in any case, the cure kills your men. I won’t be responsible for more deaths.”

“They are all dying anyway,” al-Noor replied reasonably. “Fortunately, the mainland sends me a fresh supply of plague victims every few months. They do not even know what becomes of them-nor do they care.”

“And you don’t, either?” Alice burst out.

“As we already observed, they are dying anyway. Please, Lady Michaels.”

“No,” Phipps said.

Al-Noor snapped his fingers twice, and one of the squid men whipped the cover off a serving platter. On the platter lay an ugly brass pistol with a glass barrel. Almost languidly, al-Noor plucked the pistol from the table and aimed it at Phipps. A thin whine shrilled through the cavern, and the glass snapped with yellow sparks as the weapon powered up. “Cure one of my men or I will shoot.”

“No, you won’t,” Phipps sniffed. “The reward is to capture me alive. If I’m dead, you get nothing. And if you shoot my maid, I’ll be too upset to cure anyone, so don’t bother threatening her.”

“Oh, I will shoot you, all right,” al-Noor said. “And you, Lady Michaels,” he added to Alice, “will watch her die. Slowly.”

This caught Alice completely off guard. She sprang to her feet, not sure if she was more angry or afraid. “What?”

“I deduced it some time ago. This woman-is her name actually Susan, perhaps? — speaks and carries herself like a military officer and, oh yes, she wears a uniform. Lady Michaels serving in the military? I hardly think so. And you, madam, do not walk or talk like a maid. So, Lady Michaels, demonstrate the cure on one of these men here, or I will shoot your friend. I have the feeling you will prove rather more compliant.”

“If you shoot her,” Alice said, trying to imitate Phipps’s bravado and not quite succeeding, “I won’t help you.”

Al-Noor fired. A red energy beam slashed through the air and struck one of the squid men in the chest. It fell to the floor with a terrible squeal amid sizzling skin. The smell of cooked fish filled the air. The squid man twisted and screamed in agony, even though it had no mouth, and Alice watched in horror as its chest melted into a blue mass that bubbled like a witch’s cauldron. The squid man screamed and screamed. Alice clapped her hands over her ears in horror. The spider claws cruelly raked her skin, but she left them there through a century of seconds, until the squid man died. The other squid men remained motionless and impassive, their dark eyes reflecting the mess on the floor.

“That is setting one.” Al-Noor cranked a dial on the stock of the pistol and aimed at Phipps, who blanched despite herself. “This is setting seven.”

“Wait!” Alice cried.

“Yes, Lady?”

Alice looked down at the table and unhappily ran her hands around the rim of the empty plate before her. The spider’s claws scraped over china. Two awful choices, and no one to hide behind, no one to turn to. Just herself. Just as it always was. A wave of homesickness swept over her, and more than anything in that moment she yearned to be back in London, in the little house she had rented, with Gavin sitting across the kitchen table from her while they shared a meal and talked about nothing in particular. No clockworkers, no squid men, no iron spiders. Just she and Gavin, with his kind voice and blue eyes and that way he had of looking at her that made her feel like the only woman in the entire world. Her fingers continued their crawl around the plate.

“Very well, Mr. al-Noor,” she said. “I will ‘cure’ one of your squid men. Just don’t-”

She flung the plate at al-Noor. It glanced off his pistol and shattered. He yelped. The pistol fired, but the beam went wide. Phipps leaped across the table at him, brass arm outstretched. Dishes scattered and broke as she grabbed his fleshy wrist with her metal fingers. Except with the clockwork plague came enhanced reflexes, and al- Noor was quick to recover. He went down beneath Phipps but managed to keep his weapon hand free. The pair rolled across the stone floor as al-Noor brought the pistol around to press against Phipps’s temple. Phipps knocked it aside. Alice threw another plate at him and missed. It crashed next to his ear, and he ignored it. She dashed around the table, cursing her bulky skirts and looking for an opening.

“Take them, you fools!” al-Noor barked. “Hit this stupid woman!”

The squid men in the room moved. Two grabbed Alice from behind, and their cold hands chilled her skin through her dress. Another pair hoisted Phipps straight off al-Noor while a third cracked her over the ear with a hard fist. Phipps staggered, stunned but still conscious.

Al-Noor hauled himself to his feet. Blood from a split lip spattered his ridiculous swim costume, and Alice loathed him with a black hatred. She struggled within the grip of the squid men, but they held her like iron.

“That was a mistake.” He spat blood and raised the pistol. “The reward for your dead body is lower, but still sufficient.”

Alice forced herself to remain calm, though fear and adrenaline zipped through every artery and vein. Think, girl, she told herself. Al-Noor was a clockworker. Clockworkers were geniuses, but their thinking was far from perfect. Remember what happens to Gavin.

“I like what you’ve done with those droplets of blood,” she said with quiet desperation. “They’re so round, so smooth, so clear. There must be millions, billions, trillions of cells in each drop, spinning, whirling, swirling through liquid. How beautiful, how lovely, how perfect.”

Al-Noor looked down. Scarlet drops fell from his lip, just as Alice described, glistening in the air before they landed on the broken table, and the sight seemed to grab his attention. A drop fell, and his eyes followed it until it hit the wood with a tiny tip noise. Another followed. A third landed in his cup, spreading like a tiny fractal flower, and his attention remained rooted. He had the same expression on his face Gavin did when he became fascinated by something, and the similarity unnerved Alice. She ground her teeth. Gavin had nothing in common with this man, and he never would.

“The blood disperses through the water, expanding, flowing, moving. The blood is beautiful, the blood is entrancing,” she forced herself to chant.

Nothing in common? Truly? An icy finger of doubt slid around her thoughts. Gavin was a clockworker, and clockworkers always went mad. Always. Al-Noor was just further along than Gavin. How would she react if-when-Gavin decided her life was worth less than some new bit of technology?

Her voice faltered. “The blood is. . is. .,” she said, trailing off, tried again, and failed to come up with a single thing to say. All she could see was Gavin’s face superimposed over al-Noor’s. The squid men, bereft of further orders, remained in place, holding the stunned Phipps upright and keeping Alice in their cold grip. She considered scratching the one on her left with her spider, but that would mean the poor creature’s death, and she couldn’t bring herself to do it, even to free herself.

Al-Noor looked up. His attention had only been barely diverted, and when Alice stopped chanting, he lost interest in the blood.

“Very good, Lady,” he said. “You have shown yourself more dangerous than I knew. You will die now.”

He aimed the pistol at Alice. The last thing Alice heard was the pistol’s high-pitched whine.