Steven Harper - The Dragon Men

“Very well,” was all she could think to say.

“And if the great lady does not mind,” he continued, oozing politeness, “I have other duties to attend to. If she will allow me to withdraw?”

Cixi ground her teeth, feeling the secret eyes of the eunuchs and slaves and the spies through their spy holes on her. Su Shun had scored yet more points with too-precise manners. If she dismissed him, she was giving in to his sarcasm. If she refused, she would look peevish, and she wouldn’t have the chance to approach Xianfeng.

“Very well,” she murmured.

“What was that?” he said. “If the lady could speak more clearly?”

He was truly in his element now. Cixi’s face flamed. He had embarrassed her, here in the imperial bedchamber, a place where she was supposed to have the most power, and he was flaunting the fact that he knew it. Before sunrise, the whole Mountain Palace would know Su Shun had bested Cixi in the imperial chambers. Cixi wanted to crawl under the bedcovers and hide from all the eyes in the room, those she could see and especially those she couldn’t. But she kept her back straight and her head high. “Face what you cannot avoid” was another piece of advice from her mother, and it had never failed her.

“Very well,” she repeated, briskly this time. “Thank you, Su Shun. Your service in the imperial bedchamber is appreciated.”

But Su Shun was already leaving with his own eunuchs, and her final remark was delivered to his back.

“Paper cuts,” said the Dragon Man.

Refusing to feel defeat, Cixi approached the bed. The eunuchs shuffled out of the way, and she ignored them. The nightingale in the corner stopped singing, and Xianfeng stirred. He had remained asleep during an argument between his general and his Imperial Concubine, but this woke him up. The coverlets fell away from his right hand, which wasn’t flesh and blood, but jade inlaid with wires of gold and brass. The wires were twisted into impossible shapes, and the hand seemed to quiver with quiet power, even when the owner was partially asleep.

“I want a different song for my bird, Lung Chao,” Emperor Xianfeng murmured. “Make it sing a different song.”

The complicated wiring on the Jade Hand glowed faintly at his words, and the salamander in the Dragon Man’s ear made an answering glow. The Dragon Man twitched once, then set his drawings down and scuttled over to the nightingale. He plucked it from its cage, flipped it open, and did something to the insides that Cixi didn’t see. The emperor, meanwhile, drifted back to sleep, the Jade Hand lying still on his chest.

Cixi looked down at Xianfeng’s sleeping form. His cheeks were hollow, his skin sallow, his build thin and only filled out by the voluminous silks that enshrouded him. He looked like a man of fifty, not a man who had just celebrated his thirtieth birthday. Cixi’s eyes, however, were mostly drawn to the Celestial Scepter, the Jade Hand. The top of the hand pierced Xianfeng’s flesh and connected with the tissue inside, allowing the hand limited motion. The Scepter was the creation of Lung Fei and had become the symbol of office for every emperor since Lung Fei’s time more than a hundred years ago. It would fall off when the emperor died, and it would graft itself onto the stump of the new emperor. Lung Fei had written that willingness to give up a hand for the empire indicated proper character for a ruler and set him apart from lesser nobility, but the thought that she would eventually watch her own son’s hand be chopped off turned Cixi’s stomach, no matter how much he-and she-stood to gain by the gesture.

The Dragon Man rewound the nightingale and replaced it in the cage. It started to sing a different song, just as the emperor had ordered. More of Lung Fei’s work. He had written that Dragon Men were too dangerous to be allowed free rein, and the Celestial Scepter, paired with the salamanders, allowed the emperor to keep them under control.

Cixi leaned over Xianfeng but didn’t touch him-she had no desire to. She didn’t love him, or even like him very much. It was a concubine’s job to be beautiful and entertaining and give advice when asked, and she did this job spectacularly well. It was not a concubine’s job to fall in love. She did feel a certain fondness for Xianfeng, and a definite sense of possessiveness. He was her emperor. Hers. Thanks to him, she had risen from a childhood of poverty and become the second-most-powerful woman in China, just behind the empress herself. In some ways, Cixi was even more powerful than the empress because Cixi had borne the emperor a son, and it didn’t look as if he would have any others. Usually emperors had too many sons, but Xianfeng had spent his youth in brothels and opium dens, and she could see close up the impact such activities had on a man and his fertility. It was possible he had a few dozen bastard children out there, sons of prostitutes, but they were of no consequence. Only a son born of the empress or an Imperial Concubine could inherit the Celestial Throne.

Greatly daring, Cixi put out a hand and touched the lapel of his pajamas. The trouble was, Xianfeng wasn’t ruling China in any real sense. The eunuchs and generals handled everything while Xianfeng sucked his opium pipe and drained his wine cup and spent himself uselessly on concubines and prostitutes. It was no wonder the English had managed to invade China and force opium down Chinese windpipes, not when the emperor himself partook of the stuff at every opportunity. Meanwhile, the generals wanted only to fight, and the eunuchs wanted only to line their pockets with silver. No one truly wanted to lead China.

Thoughts of Xianfeng’s death made Cixi’s eyes go to the corner of the bedchamber. An ebony box carved and inlaid with golden imperial dragons and sealed with a latch shaped like a phoenix perched on a jade table. The flickering lantern light made it appear as if the sinuous dragons were chasing one another around the box, either in play or battle. The box was another invention of Lung Fei, and inside, Cixi knew, lay a piece of paper, and on the paper was written the name of the man-or boy-the emperor had designated as his heir. The box would be opened at the moment of the emperor’s death. The heir was supposed to be Zaichun, but Cixi had never seen the paper, and given Xianfeng’s state of mind, nothing was certain.

Cixi leaned over Xianfeng and sniffed again. A soft scent of rose petals floated over the bedcovers to mingle with the perfume from the lanterns. She set her face. There was no hint of rice wine or opium about him; there hadn’t been since she walked into the room. Her suspicions must be correct-he hadn’t taken any opium at all. Yet he had somehow remained asleep throughout Cixi’s argument with Su Shun, and he didn’t stir now. A tray of jade dishes sat on a small table next to his bed. Bits of food were left on them, and the tiny serving spider lay motionless and unwound nearby. Things were truly out of order if dirty dishes were left in the emperor’s presence. She straightened and passed by the tray. As she did, she slipped the little spider into her sleeve. No doubt someone had noticed, but it didn’t matter quite yet.

Cixi lingered a while longer in the imperial bedchamber, establishing and reinforcing her right to be there, and then finally left, backing away from the bed and knocking her forehead on the floor as she did so. Liyang, the eunuchs, and her maids followed.

“Liyang,” she murmured as they strolled slowly through the corridors.

“My lady?”

“In the morning, everyone will be discussing that conversation, and the emperor will certainly hear of it. One wonders if I will come across as. . less than I am.”

“I will personally see to it that some of the correct eunuchs are on hand when the emperor wakes in the morning,” Liyang said instantly. “They will feed the emperor a flattering version of the story along with his breakfast.”