The Dragon Men

Chapter Nine

The border guard was a serpentine mechanical dragon, long and segmented and at least a hundred yards in length. Smoky steam puffed from its nostrils, and a metal beard dripped from its chin. Its jaws could easily bite a man in half. Gavin couldn’t see any human controlling it, though he supposed one might be inside. Like the nightingales, it skimmed with lithe grace when it moved. The birds pulled the Lady down to the sands, and the dragon raised its huge head to peer onto the deck. Steam puffed across the ship like a locomotive’s. The whirligigs and spiders made yipping noises and scampered belowdecks. Gavin automatically backed up a step and put his hand on his cutlass, though the glass blade had as much a chance of harming the beast as did a pin of harming a turtle.

Yeh stepped fearlessly up to the dragon, bowed, and spoke to it while the birds huddled in the rigging and on the deck. Once again, Gavin caught words, the same ones as before, and this time emperor, permission, and cross.

“I think I’m learning Chinese,” he murmured to Alice. “Can the plague do that?”

“Shush,” she said.

Alice had to present herself to the dragon, which huffed warm steam over her and blew her skirts about. Gavin held his breath and kept his hand on his useless cutlass, but the dragon seemed satisfied. The dragon spoke to Yeh in a thunderous voice.

“The guardian birds will take you to Kashgar,” it said, and Gavin gasped. The dragon spoke Chinese, but Gavin understood it perfectly well. Definitely a function of the clockwork plague. Yet it hadn’t done this for him in France or Germany or Ukraine. Was it a sign of the disease’s acceleration? If he was learning languages in moments, how much time did he have left?

“Do not leave the ship,” the dragon continued. “Soldiers who are immune to the blessing of dragons will board in Kashgar and accompany you to Peking. If you leave the ship, you will die. Do you understand?”

Yeh bowed again. “Yes, my lord.”

The dragon turned toward Gavin and whuffed out more warm, damp steam. It said in English, “You are. . special.”

Surprised, Gavin said, “Am I?”

“Indeed,” the dragon growled, then dipped its head. “I will alert the proper people.”

“I don’t understand,” Gavin said.

But the dragon merely dropped out of sight. The brass birds sprang back to life and hauled the Lady back into the air while Yeh turned to the three Westerners to translate the dragon’s instructions about not leaving the ship. Gavin thought about doing it himself, then decided to keep to himself the fact that he knew Chinese. Who knew what might be said in front of him if the speakers didn’t know he understood?

Hours later, the city of Kashgar hove into view. Gavin’s nerves hummed with tension. He tried to tell himself that the Chinese wanted Alice alive, that if they wanted her dead, the dragon would have destroyed her in a moment. It didn’t help. Alice appeared cool and unflappable, but he noticed a tightness around her mouth and in her neck.

Just outside high brown city walls, the birds halted the ship and flew away in a chattering metal cloud. The ship lurched under the abrupt change, and Gavin steadied the helm just in time. A cloud of dust emerged from one of the city gates and grew closer. It was caused by a contingent of soldiers-twenty-four of them, at Gavin’s count-on horseback galloping toward the Lady. They wore scarlet coats and carried curved swords. All of them sported metal: a brass hand with blades for fingers, iron claws, a fitted monocle like Phipps’s, a pistol mounted on a forearm. At Yeh’s word, Gavin dropped a ladder, and the men swarmed up it while below a groom strung the horses together. The Lady settled lower under the weight again. Alice moved closer to Gavin, and Phipps tensed. One man whose coat was of a different cut came forward. He glanced at Alice, who glanced coolly back. Then he and Yeh bowed to each other, and they spoke at length. Gavin’s understanding grew with every word, like a wireless radio that tuned out more and more static until the signal became clear. It was a strange sensation, and oddly exhilarating.

“This Lieutenant Hing Li,” Yeh translated when they finished. “He and his men stay on ship until we arrive in Peking. No one leaves ship. You try, you killed. You fly ship in direction Lieutenant Li say. You change course, you die. We stop for supplies when he say, and soldiers bring them. You no leave ship. All soldiers have survived blessing of dragons-you say clockwork plague-so cure from Lady Michaels not affect them.”

“They’re survivors,” Gavin said. “That’s why all the metal, isn’t it? The plague crippled them.”

“You Westerners call it a plague,” Yeh spat. “Treat it like a curse instead of honorable blessing. In China, those who survive blessing of dragons bring great honor to families, and as a reward for strength, are allowed to join army or work for empire. Those who become Dragon Men are exalted.”

“So why doesn’t everyone try to contract the plague?” Alice asked.

“Not everyone strong enough to face it,” Yeh replied. “Not everyone strong enough to face death.”

Next, Lieutenant Li handed Yeh a handful of bottle corks, and Yeh turned back to Alice. “You wear these on claws so you not spread cure. You take them off-”

“I die, yes, yes.” Alice accepted the corks and pushed them onto her clawed fingertips with little squeaking sounds. “Is that the only consequence you hand out in China?”

“Only one people listen to.”

The soldiers, meanwhile, spread out all over the ship, over the deck and down below, swarming into every space, every nook, every cranny, calling to one another in coarse Chinese. Gavin could almost feel their greasy fingers running over the Lady’s wood, hear them scraping her decks with their gritty boots, sense their prying eyes. He thought about the reward bonds and the Impossible Cube hidden in their secret compartment and resisted the impulse to check on it. That would only draw attention to the place. His glance met Phipps’s, and he knew she was thinking the same thing.

One of the men came up from below holding Click. The cat hissed and tried to swipe at the man’s arm, but his claws only raked brass. The soldier held Click up by the neck, laughing. Outrage swept over Gavin. Before he could respond, Alice stepped forward and snatched Click from the surprised man’s grasp.

“Don’t touch him!” she snapped. “Who do you think you are?”

There was a whisper of sound as every soldier on deck drew a weapon. All were pointed at Alice. Tension hummed in the air. Gavin’s gaze flicked around the deck, and his mind ran a hundred calculations, none of them successful. He jumped in front of Alice, and a soldier grabbed his arm.

Gavin rounded on him in a fury. “One of us is going to remove that hand.”

“Your father was a turtle,” the man snarled, and his sword-metal, not glass-moved toward Gavin’s throat.

“Gavin!” Alice cried.

Then Susan Phipps stepped forward.

“That’s quite enough,” she said, and repeated it in accented but perfectly serviceable Chinese. Gavin blinked at her. “Everyone calm down. You are all honorable men, and your duty is to keep Lady Michaels from harm. If you fail, the emperor will be displeased. If you complete your task, you will be rewarded. In the meantime, we ask you to leave us and our possessions alone. In return, we will not try to escape. Agreed?”

Lieutenant Li came up on deck in time to hear her speech. He cocked his head. “Where did you learn our language?” he said. “It falls strangely from a Western tongue.”

“I served in the East for several years,” Phipps replied with a bow. “But my skills are poor.”

“Not so poor,” Li said. “In any case, it shall be as you say. Soldiers!”

The soldier holding Gavin’s arm let go. Gavin straightened his jacket as the men put their weapons away. The tension left the air, and Gavin relaxed. A little. Alice stroked Click, who was muttering to himself.

“Is it going to be like this all the way to China?” she asked.

“It had better not be,” Gavin muttered back.

“Oh?”

“At least one of us will be dead if it is,” he growled. “And it won’t be me.”

But to Gavin’s surprise, the next several days went smoothly. Phipps and Li, both military, seemed to have forged a wary respect. Alice stayed close to Gavin, and Click stayed close to Alice. The only other incident was when a soldier discovered Alice’s spiders and whirligigs, still hiding in the hold from their encounter with the brass dragon. A great commotion came from one of the hatchways, and the soldier bolted across the deck with several little mechanicals in hot pursuit. He yelped, “Turtle turtle turtle turtle turtle!” as he ran, something Gavin had only recently come to understand was a swear word or insult in Chinese. It was only with great effort that Gavin kept his face neutral. Alice’s skin went pink.

“Tell me,” Phipps said to Li at one point, “why did the emperor close the borders?”

“You do not know?” Li replied.

They were standing near the main hatchway, not far from the helm where Gavin was piloting, and Gavin was easily able to overhear them. By now, he had listened to hundreds of conversations among the soldiers and gotten some translations from Phipps, and his mind made leaps and connections, untangling syntax and extrapolating vocabulary. He wondered if this was how Dr. Clef, a native German, had learned English.

“I would like to hear the Chinese perspective,” Phipps replied smoothly. “I am sure it differs from the English one.”

“To be sure,” Li said dryly. “I assume you know of the first battle over opium.”

The soldier dove back below, and there was another crash. A moment later, Click emerged with the soldier’s hat in his mouth. He dropped it on the deck and strolled innocently away. The other soldiers laughed, and for that Gavin was grateful. It would have been all too easy for the mood to run the other way. The Lady had passed the desert some days ago and was now gliding over lush green farms and pine forests blanketed in drowsy mist. The air was cool and damp, a refreshing change from hot, arid winds. They had stopped twice for supplies, and both times the local farmers in their peaked straw hats had given the soldiers everything they demanded with a fawning deference that clearly masked an underlying fear.

“I know the Opium War well,” Phipps said. “We English were flooding China with cheap opium from India-”

“Creating addicts everywhere and taking silver out of China,” Li interrupted. “It was a terrible problem. You Westerners have no idea what your greed for silver was doing to us.”

“Of course I know. Just as I know what your greed for petroleum has done to the Middle East and what your greed for metal has done to the United States.” Phipps stroked her monocle with a brass fingertip. “Perhaps, for the sake of this conversation, we could acknowledge that both empires have done good and evil.”

Li gave a nod. “Perhaps. In any case, all that opium created an entire class of addiction in China, and it meant tael after tael of silver left our country. England also had the right to sell factory-made products in China, and they were cheaper than those we make in small shops or at home, which meant our people bought them and pushed Chinese workers out of their jobs. The last straw came at Taku.”

“What happened at Taku?”

“A fleet of British ships carrying soldiers and diplomats sailed up the Peiho River toward Taku. It’s an important fortress, and the emperor was afraid-”

“You mean his generals were afraid,” Phipps interrupted.

Li waved a hand. “It is the same thing. The emperor was afraid that so many armed soldiers in the same area might lead to fighting, so he asked the fleet to anchor farther north. It was a reasonable request. Unfortunately, your envoy deliberately took it as an insult and decided to attack Taku. It sparked a war, one that we initially won. We threw the British out of China, and the emperor closed the borders.”

“Interesting.” Phipps scratched her nose. “But that’s-”

“It’s not the entire story, if I may,” Li said. “A year later, the British invaded in force. They fought all the way to Peking. There was a sort of desperation to the attack, actually.”

“The cure was pushing them,” Phipps said.

Li nodded. “The British knew they had only limited time with. . what is your word?”

“Clockworkers,” Phipps said.

“A pejorative in your language.”

Phipps glanced at Gavin, who kept his face neutral, as if he had no idea what they were talking about. “Depending on how it’s used.”

“The English Dragon. . clockworkers were dying out, and soon our Dragon Men would have the upper hand worldwide. If the English were going to invade, it had to be right then. But in the end, the British lost at Peking. General Su Shun-or rather, Emperor Xianfeng-ordered the execution of everyone who had any contact with British soldiers to ensure the destruction of the cure within China, and then he sealed the borders again. Our Dragon Men are safe.”

“And so is your ability to invade the rest of the world once British and European builders of clocks have died,” Phipps added with a bitter note. Gavin uneasily concurred. It was the only conclusion.

Li shrugged. “I do as the emperor commands.”

At that moment, a single nightingale flittered across the deck. It was carrying something in its claws. The little metal bird dropped the small object in Lieutenant Li’s hand, then perched on his shoulder. Gavin heard a faint voice, though he didn’t catch the words. He glanced at Alice’s pocket, where his silver nightingale currently resided. Li’s face went pale at the nightingale’s recorded message. The military demeanor left him. Slowly, with deference and fear in every movement, he sidled across the deck toward Gavin, the object clutched to his chest and the nightingale on his shoulder. Gavin exchanged puzzled looks with Alice. What now?

“Do you need something, Lieutenant?” Gavin asked.

With a lightning movement that caught even Gavin’s clockworker reflexes off guard, Li clapped his hand to Gavin’s left ear. A hot needle pierced his eardrum with white pain. Gavin howled. He snapped out a hand and stiff-armed Li so hard, the man flew backward across the deck. Gavin dropped to his knees, still screaming, his hand on his ear. The hot pain was excruciating. It went on and on. He was vaguely aware that Alice was kneeling next to him with her arm around his shoulder and that most of the soldiers on deck were standing around him with their swords and pistols out. The pain drilled a molten hole through his skull, leaving a trail of coals behind it.

And then it stopped. The pain vanished as if it had never been. The change was so abrupt, he became light-headed.

“Gavin!” Alice was saying. “Darling, what’s wrong? What did he do to you?”

He got to his feet. The hand at his ear was a little warm and sticky, and he felt bumpy metal beneath his fingers. The soldiers kept their weapons at the ready. Outside their circle, Li had already risen. He looked unhappy. Phipps looked furious.

“How dare you attack him!” she said in Chinese. “You bring shame to your-”

Gavin brought his hand down, revealing his ear. There was a group gasp. A tinkle and clank of dropped weapons indicated numb fingers all round. Every soldier, including Li, dropped to his knees and knocked his forehead on the decking.

“What the hell?” Gavin looked at the soldiers, then at the little smear of blood on his palm.

“Oh!” Phipps wove her way among the kneeling soldiers, who kept their facedown position, and put out a finger to touch Gavin’s ear. “I didn’t even consider. Oh, damn it. I’m sorry, Ennock. I should have thought-”

“What’s going on?” Alice demanded.

“Li put a salamander in Gavin’s ear,” Phipps said. “That messenger bird brought it. I’m guessing it also told him Gavin is a clockworker-a Dragon Man.”

“So?” The salamander lay curled around the outside of Gavin’s ear. He followed its contours with his finger. The tail seemed to be lodged in his aural canal. He tugged at it, and a blinding pain came over him again. He staggered and let go. The pain stopped.

“Don’t touch it,” Alice cautioned. “Let me have a look.”

“You can’t take it out,” Phipps said. “Not without killing him.”

“What?” Gavin almost tugged at it again, then thought better of it. “What do you mean? What’s it for? What’s it doing?”

“Dragon Men are revered in China.” Phipps gestured at the kowtowing soldiers. “But they’re also feared, and with good reason. Clockworkers-Dragon Men-always put rulers in a tough spot. They have great power, but they’re deadly lunatic. The British Empire coped by creating the Third Ward and building the Doomsday Vault. China has a different solution.”

“A salamander?” Alice was examining the object as best she could. Gavin remained still, though he felt sick. It seemed as if he could feel the thing’s tail worming into his skull.

“All Dragon Men in China have to wear one,” Phipps said. “It’s the law. Rogue Dragon Men are executed.”

“But what does it do?” Gavin demanded.

“Hold still, darling.”

Phipps hesitated. “It ties each Dragon Man to the emperor. I’ve never seen it in action myself, but I’m told no Dragon Man can disobey a direct order from the emperor, and it’s the salamander that forces obedience.”

Gavin was almost panting. He felt panicky, hemmed in. The idea that some despot could give him an order and he’d have to jump at it like a puppet horrified him deeply. He supposed it wouldn’t bother the Chinese or even the British, people who were used to kings and emperors, but Americans didn’t have kings, and he had only recently found his freedom in the air. Now a fiery salamander was going to drag him back down?

He suddenly remembered Feng Lung again. The Gonta family had captured Feng in Ukraine and experimented on him; into his head they had drilled an enormous spider that forced Feng to obey any orders given to him. He couldn’t even sit down unless someone told him to. In the end, he had let himself die, partly to save Gavin and Alice’s lives, but also to end his own pain. Was this how he had felt? Nausea oozed around Gavin’s stomach, and he took several deep breaths to keep from throwing up.

“Lieutenant Li was put in a terrible spot,” Phipps continued. “The nightingale brought him the salamander and the news that you were a Dragon Man. No doubt this is what the border guard meant when it said you were special. It must have alerted the authorities, who sent the bird and the salamander.”

Gavin remembered. Alice’s hand was gentle but insistent on his ear. She could use only one hand because the other had corks on the fingertips. He braced himself for more pain, though it didn’t come. The soldiers didn’t move.

“It’s illegal for someone of his rank to lay hands on a Dragon Man.” Phipps crossed her arms. “It’s also illegal for a Dragon Man to run about within Chinese borders without a salamander. Clearly, the emperor wants Alice in his hands immediately, so they didn’t want to delay the ship at the border until someone of the correct rank could arrive with a salamander. Someone would have to put this salamander on you now, and that fell to Li.”

“Good for him,” Gavin growled. “I hope he gets a raise.”

“You don’t understand, Ennock,” Phipps said. “You’re flying with dead men.”

Alice dropped her hand, and both she and Gavin looked at Phipps. The soldiers still hadn’t moved. The Lady’s engines purred along, and more farmland coasted beneath them, the fresh green fields below at odds with the conflict in the clouds above.

“Go on,” Alice said tiredly. “Tell us the rest.”

“Li laid hands on a Dragon Man,” Phipps said. “It’s a form of treason, really. And when a commanding officer commits treason, he and his men are put to death. All these men will be executed the moment we reach Peking.”

“But that’s terrible!” Alice protested. “Li only did as he was ordered, and these men did nothing.”

“In China,” Phipps said, “the emperor’s merest word is more important than a thousand human lives, and every command must be obeyed, even if it means death. They see it as an honor to sacrifice themselves to the emperor, and they’ll be buried with great ceremony.”

Gavin belatedly realized no one was guiding the ship. He set the Lady to hover and walked over to Li. It felt odd to stand over a kneeling man. “Is this true?” he asked.

Li said something, but his face was still facing the deck and Gavin couldn’t hear.

“Get up and talk to me,” Gavin said, not sure whether to be uncomfortable or outraged. The salamander made an unfamiliar weight on his ear.

Li came reluctantly to his feet and bowed deeply. The treacherous nightingale was still on his shoulder. “My deepest apologies, my lord. You will, of course, want to strike off my head immediately.”

Phipps translated, and Gavin let her.

“I will, of course, want to do no such thing,” he said. “What were you thinking?”

Li looked stricken. “If I am not properly executed, my lord, my family will live in shame for generations.”

Gavin thought of his friend Feng and his complicated views on what was just and honorable, and how those views had ultimately cost him his life. He understood, though he didn’t sympathize. He fingered the salamander in his ear. Part of him was furious and wanted to wield the executioner’s sword himself. But how many of these men had wives? Children? How many little ones would cry because Daddy’s head had been cut off? His own father had disappeared, dead or as good as such. Could he take the responsibility for putting all those other children through the same thing?

No. The person responsible for the salamander was not on board this ship, and it wasn’t right for Gavin to take his anger out on any of them. He thought a long moment with the ship hovering high over foreign farmland. Despite his decision, it was hard to make the words come-the anger was still there.

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” he said at last, with Phipps translating. The words were clipped and forced.

“Thank you?” said Li.

“For delivering the salamander. To me.” The men. The innocent families. He had to think of the families. Abruptly, and to Li’s surprise, Gavin switched to Chinese.

“I am glad you were able to properly give me my salamander. As I requested. Because I know you would never touch a Dragon Man without his express request. And I clearly requested it.” Gavin ground his teeth. “Because, as we all saw, I wanted the salamander, and I needed your expertise for its insertion. I. . thank you, Lieutenant.”

Li dropped to the deck and kowtowed again. “My gratitude, great lord.”

Gavin couldn’t bring himself to respond. Instead, he strode to the gunwale and stared at nothing for a long time. Eventually, Li and the soldiers rose and silently stole away, as if they were afraid Gavin was a bomb that might go off at any second.

Alice slipped up beside him without speaking for some time. Then she said, “That was a good thing you did. Phipps tells me that as long as you keep the salamander in, the men’s lives may be spared.”

“May be?”

“Nothing’s certain. Phipps says this is a strange area for Chinese law. But you’ve helped, and I know it hurt you a lot.” She stroked his arm. “You’re the bravest man I know, Gavin Ennock.”

“There’s other difficult news, I think,” he said to change the subject, and he repeated the conversation between Li and Phipps to her, the one about the emperor’s planned invasion of Europe to take place once he was sure the clockworkers were gone and Alice’s cure was neutralized.

“You’re right,” she said. “That is bad news. The question is, how do we stop it?”

“I don’t know.” He glanced at the spider on her arm. “You can start the cure spreading through China, if you get the chance.”

Alice’s face was tight. “If they don’t kill me.”

“You only have to scratch one person to spread it.”

“It’s not that simple, and you know it. Any number of factors could slow or even halt the cure entirely. The person I give it to might die or stay home or simply not transmit it to anyone who can carry it. A mountain range can block its passage for years, as could a desert. Or it could simply fade away like some illnesses do. That’s what seems to have happened in Europe, anyway. No one truly understands how diseases spread, and my cure spreads like a disease. I need to ‘infect’ as many people as possible, and even then, there’s no guarantee it’ll reach the entire world.” She sighed sadly. “Sometimes I think the plague will be with us forever.”

He didn’t know what to say just then, so he kept silent, though he tightened his grip on her hand. Phipps had taken the helm and was piloting.

“And now it occurs to me to ask,” she continued, “how you learned Chinese so quickly.”

“The plague is accelerating. A bad sign.”

“But you haven’t had a fugue in days, darling,” she said. “That must be a good sign. I think it’s those clockworker fugues that are bad for you. They burn out your mind faster, like a candle or even a firework. The more you give in to the plague, the more it takes from you. Perhaps,” she continued hopefully, “you’re going into remission or even getting better.”

“Don’t do that.” Gavin rapped the wooden helm with his knuckles, then stamped his foot and whistled two notes. “It’s bad luck on an airship to say what you think will happen. It means the opposite will come true.”

“Is that what that little dance was about?”

He looked sheepish. “You have to distract the sprites so they don’t remember what you just said.”

“It certainly distracted me. I thought it was boyishly handsome.”

Without thinking, he said, “Am I that?”

She blinked. “Are you what?”

“A boy. To you?” He hadn’t realized the idea had been bothering him until he said it aloud. Now he held his breath, feeling tense again. Of course she would say he wasn’t. Of course he would pretend to accept what she said at face value. But no matter what she might say, he wasn’t the traditional sort of man, and even though she had left England behind, Alice had brought a great deal of its traditional mind-set with her. She still refused to do more than kiss him until they were married, even though his body ached for her, and he knew she wanted him. Just standing next to her aroused desire in him, even with the soldiers looking on. They hadn’t begun a physical relationship largely because Alice didn’t want to risk getting pregnant, not when Gavin was living under a death sentence. Gavin himself didn’t want to create a child who would grow up without a father as he had done. But he also suspected that Alice was holding back a little. The acceptance of his marriage proposal on the Caspian Sea had been tentative, hesitant. Was her love the same way?

“Listen to me, Gavin Ennock.” Alice placed her hand atop his on the rail. “When I look at you, I don’t see an airman. I don’t see a fiddler or a singer. I don’t see a nineteen-year-old. The one thing I see is the man I love.”

Gavin stared ahead into empty sky, not convinced.

“And not only that, darling.” Alice leaned closer to his ear. “I destroyed one empire for you, and now I’m going to destroy another. How can you doubt anything after you hear that?”

Something broke inside, and he had to laugh. “All right,” he snorted. “You win.”

“That’s not a joke, darling.” Her eyes were smoke. “When your strong arm pushed me behind you, I never wanted you more.”

Desire for her made his skin hot, and he lowered his voice. “Really?”

“Oh yes.”

“Now I really wish those soldiers weren’t aboard.”

She sighed. “As do I, darling. As do I.”

Lieutenant Li, who was at the front of the ship standing lookout, shouted, “Peking!” just as the explosion knocked Gavin to the deck.