The Dragon Men

Interlude

A pall of oily smoke and steam hung over the Outer Court of the Forbidden City. In the great space between the orderly clusters of red-tiled buildings gathered the machines. Dragons of iron and brass coiled around themselves, hissing and muttering. Copper tigers raked the cobblestones. Mechanical elephants stomped heavy feet and trumpeted to shake the air. Flocks of small birds with sharp, shiny claws, wheeled overhead. Black-clad Dragon Men moved among them with tools, making adjustments, adding weapons, improving engines. At the behest of one Dragon Man, a tiger opened its mouth and a pistol cracked three quick bullets at a wooden target, which vanished in a pile of splinters. Another Dragon Man gestured at a live cow standing to one side of the court, and a hundred brass birds descended on the animal. The cow had time to make a surprised grunt before it was reduced to a pile of wet meat and yellow bones.

General-no, Emperor-Su Shun stood on the snowy steps of the Hall of Supreme Harmony. Creamy clouds covered the summer sun and filtered the light drifting down on the hundreds of buildings, large and small, that made up the Forbidden City, safe behind scarlet walls and an azure moat. The city bustled with activity as it always did, but now a new intensity wove itself into the eunuchs and the maids. They kept their heads down and hurried more quickly about their tasks, trying not to draw attention to themselves. The concubines were especially worried-Su Shun might decide he didn’t want “used” concubines and demand fresh ones, which would put all of them out on the street. Most of them would end their days in brothels, since no one wanted to marry a cast-off concubine.

Su Shun stood above them all in his new suit of yellow armor, yellow for the Celestial Throne, yellow for the emperor, and made a grim smile that covered only half his face. The other half of his face, the brass half, remained immobile. Behind him rose the Hall, with its magnificent scarlet pillars and its gold carvings and its two tiers of swooping tiled roofs, though eunuchs were even now taking away the jade treasures stored within and prying gold from the walls. Su Shun had no use for jade or gold, but both would fetch a high price, and war was costly, especially a war involving Dragon Men.

When Su Shun had given the order to begin the sale, two of the eunuchs had dared to voice mild protest. Su Shun had raised the Jade Hand and spoken to Lung Chao, Emperor Xianfeng’s favorite Dragon Man. The Hand had glowed, and Lung Chao, with his enhanced strength and reflexes, had broken one man’s neck and crushed the other’s windpipe before anyone could move. Now the eunuchs obeyed with alacrity.

Su Shun allowed himself a small smile. The Hall of Supreme Harmony belonged to him, as did the entire Forbidden City and the empire beyond it. A true ruler now ruled the one true empire. It was time to bring China back to the old ways, when emperors were heroic warlords who fought on the field, not opium addicts who simpered behind silk curtains.

He was well aware how tenuous his rule was. Although he came from a noble family, his rebuilt face precluded him from any hope of touching the throne. Only a physically perfect man was considered worthy to receive the Jade Hand; its power would overwhelm a lesser one. That word lesser had irked him for dozens of years. Xianfeng’s father, Emperor Daoguong, had been physically perfect, but he had also been a complete fool. Su Shun had gritted his teeth while the emperor bungled attempt after attempt to keep control of the opium that continued to seep into China thanks to British merchants. But at the height of the old man’s power, more than thirty thousand chests of the sticky black balls glided across the borders every year. Su Shun watched his own father succumb to the darkness, withdrawing from his sons and turning weak as a hollow reed, until one day he simply shuddered and died, the pipe he loved more than his family still in his mouth. Su Shun hated the smell of the smoke, hated the crackle of the little flame, hated the ffffff sound of the smoking going in, deadly as poisoned feathers. He swore he would rid China of the filth, both the opium and those who sold it.

It was clear Daoguong and his family weren’t fit to rule. Daoguong had trouble thinking past China’s borders and had no desire to expand China or put down the British once and for all. Su Shun knew better. And Su Shun had patience.

The Jade Hand twitched, and a twinge of pain threaded up Su Shun’s arm. He kept his expression neutral. He would not show pain here, in the Outer Court. People might mistake pain as an admission that he wasn’t fit to rule, and he hadn’t coddled that spoiled brat Xianfeng for eleven years-eleven years! — to watch it all drift away like so much opium smoke. When the boy had shown an interest in common whorehouses and even the opium dens, Su Shun had encouraged him, helped him disguise himself and move among the lice-ridden prostitutes and smoky drug dens, hoping the little idiot would catch something and die. But the ancestors had smiled on Xianfeng, or perhaps they had frowned on Su Shun. Either way, the limp little prince had minced up to the throne after Daoguong’s death and, after inhaling copious amounts of opium, accepted the Jade Hand while Su Shun gave his false half smile. But still Su Shun waited.

And then the English came, with their ships and their cannons and their clanking clockwork monstrosities, nothing like the elegant masterpieces created by fine Dragon Men. They came with their treaty that allowed them to thrust even more opium down the throats of good Chinese, along with their cheaply made factory goods that put Chinese merchants out of business. The supercilious sneer they gave Su Shun over the treaty table was nearly enough to make him draw sword and pistol to attack right then. But he held himself in check, and that had been for the good. What little will Xianfeng had left seemed to drain out of him after that treaty, and he spent more and more time with his opium pipe and that concubine cow of his, the one who mooed so prettily in his ear and who actually managed to drop a son. How she coaxed a boy child out his opium-laced loins, Su Shun still didn’t understand. He clenched his teeth and spent hours ensuring the emperor had all the opium silver could buy. He encouraged him to smoke more and more of it because opium was of the feminine yin, and it drained away the male yang. He also talked him into using the Passage of Silken Footsteps out of the Forbidden City to spend himself on Peking prostitutes, both male and female, so that none of his seed would reach the concubines or his breathless empress. Both schemes had worked for a while-none of the other concubines had become pregnant, and Su Shun had seen to it that any whore who had thrown babies nine months after a celestial visit had quietly disappeared with their litters. Su Shun would have liked to accuse Cixi of infidelity; he had even dropped a few hints into the Xianfeng’s ear, but the emperor waved them aside as ridiculous. The only thing Su Shun had managed to do was delay Xianfeng in writing the name of his heir for the Ebony Chamber to swallow.

And then fate had played straight into Su Shun’s hands. The English had attacked again, making it all the way to Peking. An idea had come to Su Shun, and he arranged for a decently pretty woman to be infected with the dragon’s blessing and put into a concubine’s guise. The woman was willing enough to die, for the amount of money Su Shun paid her would take care of her entire family for the rest of their lives, and it was easy enough for her to join the evacuation train during the confusion. Su Shun couldn’t even remember her name, but she had done the job admirably. The emperor was dead, and after a bit of scuffling, Su Shun had the Jade Hand.

He held it out before him, as he had done many times before in the last few days. His right arm still hurt, and sometimes the pain flared as if it had been dipped in molten brass. But the spikes at the top of the Hand had snapped into his flesh, and the brass-bound green fingers twitched. Most of the time he felt nothing in it, but occasionally it seemed he could feel an ache in his missing palm. He could no longer hold a sword or fire a pistol, but perhaps he would learn to do so with his left. The pain flared again. Su Shun gestured, and one of the eunuchs kneeling around him held out a bowl. Xianfeng had used opium to dull the affliction, but Su Shun was not so foolish. Su Shun tapped the bowl, and the eunuch drank half of it. Su Shun waited a moment, and when the eunuch didn’t topple over dead, he accepted the bowl and drained it dry.

Another eunuch hurried up to the bottom of the stairs, dropped to his knees, and knocked his forehead on the stones. Su Shun snapped his fingers, and the eunuch rose again. His head was fuzzy from lack of proper shaving, and his robe was still white. The hundred days of mourning for Xianfeng were still in effect, and Su Shun didn’t dare shorten that time period, though it grated-he would have preferred to stuff Xianfeng into his tomb and pretend the idiot had never existed. People had short memories, and the faster he could shove Xianfeng aside, the more entrenched Su Shun’s rule would become. Even now he could feel the Jade Hand sinking deeper into his flesh, becoming one with him. Soon nothing would release it.

“What is it?” he asked the eunuch. “Tell me you’ve found Cixi and that whelp of hers.”

The eunuch hesitated, which told Su Shun the answer. “I bring news of a different kind, Imperial Majesty,” he said in his high, fluting voice. “Rumors are circulating around the city about Lady Michaels and Lord Ennock.”

A bit of excitement flicked through Su Shun, tinged with a bit of fear, though he kept both away from his face. Alice Michaels-the woman with the cure. He glanced at the war machines in the Outer Court. The only reason they and the army and the rest of the machines waiting outside the Forbidden City weren’t marching west was that Su Shun was afraid of the men encountering her and her infamous cure. It had all but died out on its own since she had vanished three years ago. Lung Hun, who specialized in the blessing of dragons, said it was a strange paradox-the cure destroyed the disease, but the cure eventually died out without the disease to play host to it. If he could destroy Alice Michaels, he could destroy the cure and keep the Dragon Men safe for his invasion.

“Proceed,” he said tightly.

“Your Imperial Majesty knows that Michaels and Ennock were captured at the border and were on their way here, as your Imperial Majesty ordered, and Ennock was fitted with a salamander to make him a Dragon Man, but both of them vanished before they reached the city, with no sign of where they-or our troops-went.”

“Yes, yes, get on with it.”

The eunuch prostrated himself again. “As your Imperial Majesty demands,” he quavered. “I am only a messenger, and I pray you will not have this humble servant whipped or burned or-”

“I will not have you beaten,” Su Shun growled, “if you just tell me what you learned.”

“They hide somewhere in Peking,” the eunuch said to the ground. “We do not yet know where.”

Su Shun’s eyes went wide. He strode down the steps and hauled the shaking eunuch to his feet by the collar of his white mourning robe. The eunuch squealed. “What about the cure?” he snarled. The other eunuchs tried to shuffle farther away without seeming to. Far below, the Dragon Men paused in their work. A copper tiger roared.

“M-m-m-majesty. .”

“Speak!” Su Shun bellowed. “Or I will tie your entrails to a rock and throw them down a well!”

The eunuch’s eyes were wild with fear, and a smell of fresh urine permeated the air. “Th-there is no sign of the cure in Peking, M-majesty.”

“Do not lie to save your skin,” Su Shun hissed into the man’s face, “for I will nail it above my bed if you are.”

“It is the truth, Celestial One.”

Su Shun released the eunuch so abruptly, he fell and tumbled partway down the stone steps. Facedown, he lay there, still quivering.

“Send the army into the city,” Su Shun ordered. “Begin house-to-house searches. I want her found and brought to me immediately. Alive. The reward of four hundred pounds of silver for her still stands. And I want Cixi and her little bastard brought with her. Go!”

The eunuch scrambled away, barely remembering to knock his head at the bottom of the stairs. Su Shun raised the Jade Hand. A tingle ran down his arm, and power flared across the brass inlays. The salamanders, curled around the ear of every Dragon Man, made an answering glow, and they stopped working.

“Lung Chao!” Su Shun boomed in the voice he used when addressing legions of troops. “Bring your birds!”

Below, Lung Chao turned away from the mess of cow he had been examining and ran lightly toward the steps. He bounded up the white marble without pausing, and Su Shun wanted to kick him back down the stairs, even strike off his head, for not kowtowing properly. But Lung Chao was a Dragon Man, and immune to Imperial protocol. Su Shun needed every Dragon Man he could get, and it would be foolish to execute one for forgetting to bow. He might as well as throw a magic sword into a volcano. At least Lung Chao remembered to kneel when he reached the emperor.

“Majesty,” Lung Chao said. His deadly flock of birds clattered to a noisy landing on the Hall steps, and they peered up at Su Shun with eerie, blank eyes.

“Can your birds search the city from above?”

“They can, Imperial Majesty. They are very much like my border guards.”

“Then take them out to search for Alice Michaels and Gavin Ennock and Lady Cixi.”

Lung Chao paused. “Are you positive you want this?”

The direct address caught Su Shun off guard. “What are you talking about?”

“They will come to you. Like worms. Like serpents. Like rabbits and moles wearing silken slippers, they will come. The balance is wrong, and it will correct itself.”

“The balance?”

“Yin and yang, you and she. You and Cixi, hand in hand.” Lung Chao gestured toward the Jade Hand. “The right is wrong and must be righted.”

If one of his commanders had spoken to him this way, Su Shun would have smashed him across the face and had him beaten with thin rods. But he needed to think less like a general and more like a ruler. And this was a Dragon Man. Instead, Su Shun held up his right hand, the Jade Hand, and said, “Silence.”

The Hand glowed, as did the salamander in Lung Chao’s ear. Lung Chao’s words ended.

“Do as I bid you. And kowtow when you leave.”

Lung Chao obeyed. His little flock of birds followed him, and suddenly this gesture seemed too small, so unworthy of an emperor. Once again he held up the Jade Hand, and the familiar tingle came with the glow. The Dragon Men turned to face him. Su Shun only wished the Jade Hand’s range reached farther than a long bowshot; the Hand could summon any Dragon Man within its range, and it gave Su Shun the power to command any Dragon Man who could hear his voice, but this Ennock boy was beyond the reach of both. For the moment.

“Dragon Men of China,” Su Shun boomed, “take your inventions and go forth into the city. Find Alice Michaels. Find Gavin Ennock. Find Lady Cixi. And bring them to me!”

A hundred salamanders glowed all around the Outer Court, and then, one by one, the Dragon Men turned to their inventions. With yips and yaps and wild shouts, they clambered atop stomping elephants, unleashed tigers, mounted dragons, and swarmed toward the five arches of the Meridian Gate. The eunuchs on duty hurried to open four of them-the center arch was reserved for the emperor alone-and the mass of Dragon Men plunged through to the city beyond.