Steven Harper - The Dragon Men

She held out her hand and said, “Tea.” A porcelain cup was placed in it, and she let the warm drink wash the road dust from her throat as she strolled across the threshold. Inside the pavilion, a maid carrying a heavy feather bed froze as she realized whose presence she was in. She tried to bow and keep the precious feather bed from touching the floor all at once, though she didn’t dare flee without permission. Cixi dropped the cup-a spider caught it before it hit the ground-and was about to enter the pavilion fully when she changed her mind and paused in the doorway again. The bowing maid holding the heavy feather bed bit her lip, and sweat was making her makeup run. A bit of down worked its way out of the feather bed and, caught on a draft, drifted out the open door and away to the east, toward the place known as the Cool Hall on the Misty Lake, the emperor’s residence. Cixi watched it go. The fear she had been keeping firmly at bay gave way to a new nervousness she couldn’t name. The feather vanished into the darkness.

“Liyang!” she said.

Liyang came to her side. “My lady?”

“What is the latest news of Peking?”

“The Army of a Thousand Tigers continues to fight the English north of Peking, my lady, while Su Shun and the Dragon Men use the Machines of Wind and Thunder in the south.”

“But who is winning?”

Liyang hesitated. “The Tiger Army is. . rather. . it is encountering quite a challenge, one worthy of its fighting prowess. The Machines of Wind and Thunder fight bravely under Prince Kung and will do so until nothing is left but a pile of melted brass.”

“I see.” They were losing, but Liyang couldn’t say such a dreadful thing to the Imperial Consort. She kept her face calm with effort. “How is the emperor?”

The arms of the bowed maid were now trembling with the effort of holding up the bulky feather bed. Letting the silk cover touch the floor would mean her death. Liyang shot her a glance and said quickly, “I am told he is resting very comfortably.”

Resting comfortably was Liyang’s way of saying Xianfeng had taken a great deal of rice wine. Very comfortably meant he had used his opium pipe as well. Cixi knew she shouldn’t be surprised. The man had turned thirty only last month, and already he had smoked more opium and drunk more wine than any four emperors before him. Small wonder he had produced only one child, and how lucky for Cixi it had been her son. The maid was panting now, and one corner of the bed drooped toward the floor. Another feather floated away to the east, drawing Cixi’s eye with it. The nervousness wouldn’t leave her alone. Two feathers in a row. A sign?

“I heard him talking to General Su Shun about how well-mannered I was when we entered the palace.”

Two drifting feathers. Rice wine and opium. Strange. If Xianfeng had been drinking and smoking long enough to be “resting very comfortably,” how could he have been coherent enough to comment on his son’s manners?

“I believe I will call on the emperor,” Cixi said, then remembered herself and coughed to cover her lapse. “Rather, please let the emperor know the Imperial Concubine would be pleased and honored to find herself summoned to his heavenly presence.”

“But the emperor is resting- Yes, my lady,” Liyang said. He snapped his fingers, and one of his apprentices, a eunuch of perhaps six or seven, rushed up, clutching at the jar at his own belt. “Run to the Cool Hall on the Misty Lake and deliver the lady’s message.”

The boy dashed away. Cixi turned to follow more sedately, and her maids slid the doors shut on the relieved face of the maid with the feather bed.

The palanquin delivered Cixi, her maids, and her eunuchs to the Cool Hall on the Misty Lake, the emperor’s residence at the palace. The palanquin skittered faster than the little apprentice eunuch could run, and he would actually not have been able to deliver the message yet, something Cixi was counting on. Cixi swept toward the main doors of the Hall, and the startled eunuchs on duty hurried to slide it open. Again, she halted in the doorway. Why was she here, ahead of the messenger she herself had sent? Foolishness. This was a strange day, and she was on a strange errand. But her instincts told her to continue, and she had learned to trust her instincts.

“The back of the mind is wiser than the front,” her mother liked to say.

“I wish to proceed completely alone,” she announced, and continued inside.

For the Imperial Concubine, completely alone meant her, four maids (one for each sacred direction), Liyang, his three assistants, and a spider to run ahead with a lantern. At one time, the Hall had been fitted for electric lights, with each lightbulb personally designed and blown by one of the Dragon Men at great effort and expense. The lights were an artistic triumph, each one a delicate work of art that captured the sun itself. But the moment Xianfeng entered his new apartments, he fell victim to a headache that lasted three days. The chief eunuch declared electricity was the cause, and he ordered all the wiring pulled out and every bulb smashed. The Dragon Man had drowned himself in a fishpond, and no electric light had been allowed in the Hall since.

Cixi strode through the dark corridors, following the spider. She could tell the place was bustling with activity as frightened servants rushed about, finding places to store the clothing and treasures brought out of the Forbidden City, but this was merely a sense she had, a change in the night and feeling of tensions. She actually saw nothing-everyone cleared the way for Cixi, and she walked through empty hallways, alone but for her spider, maids, and eunuchs, and eventually she came to Xianfeng’s chambers. Outside the sliding door stood twelve muscled guards with swords, armor, and pistols. All of them sported metal limbs or partially armored skin, as was proper for a soldier and taboo for nobility.

Cixi hesitated. Something was wrong here. The soldiers’ builds weren’t soft and flabby like those of eunuchs. Only a few highly trusted male advisers were allowed to enter the Forbidden City back in Peking, and not one of them was allowed to remain inside after nightfall, not even in the most dire emergencies, because the integrity of the emperor’s wife and concubines had to be protected. Even one man left on the grounds overnight meant the origin of any baby born to a wife or concubine later might not be the emperor’s. Yet here stood a dozen powerful, virile men. True, some rules were bent at the Mountain Palace, but never this one. Cixi’s own integrity could be called into question by just standing in their presence. Why would-

Then Cixi noticed the corner of a bandage sticking out from the waist joint of the armor of one of the guards, and she understood with great relief. These men had only recently been castrated, probably in the last day or two, when it became clear the emperor would have to evacuate the Forbidden City and would need strong guards. She wondered where their jars were.

“I wish for the emperor to know I am here,” she said to one of the guards. “You know who I am?”

“Yes, great lady.” The guards bowed and looked at one another uncertainly. It occurred to Cixi that these guards were unschooled in proper etiquette. A flabby eunuch would have politely enquired about her business, or more likely have long been aware she was coming and admitted her immediately or turned her aside in such a way as to make it seem that leaving were her idea.

“You are honorable men who are guarding the emperor’s heavenly presence during these trying times,” she said. “I am sure he appreciates your service.” And boldly she stepped forward to reach for the door. Horrified, two of her maids leaped forward to whip it open, their fear of the guards overcome by the idea that the Imperial Concubine might touch a door for herself. Cixi sailed through as if she had done nothing at all unusual, and before the guards could decide what to do, her maids and eunuchs also boiled through and the doors snapped shut. The chaos of the evacuation worked in her favor.