Steven Harper - The Dragon Men

“You believe Su Shun was behind it?”

“I have no proof, of course,” Liyang said. “But he was there, and he brought in the concubine, and I assume she served the food to the emperor, perhaps even tasted it herself beforehand to show it was not poisoned. And it was not. Quite.” Liyang paused thoughtfully. “Perhaps Su Shun knows the emperor is ill and is trying to hide it?”

“The food served by this spider was definitely not poisoned,” Lung Fan said. She dropped into a lotus position on the floor and fiddled with the spider. One of the maids made a disgusted noise, but Dragon Men were allowed to sit in the presence of the Imperial Court.

“The food was not poisoned,” Cixi repeated slowly. And then a dreadful thought stole over her, a terrible, world-wrecking thought. She also sank to the floor, and a maid pushed a padded stool under her. One of the seams burst as Cixi sat on it, and little feathers puffed out. The maid rushed about, gathering them up. “The food was not poisoned. Liyang, go now and find that concubine. Bring her to me immediately. If you cannot find her, find out everything you can about her. This is urgent. See to it yourself.”

“My lady.” Liyang bowed and vanished out the door with his apprentices and assistants.

“So, what are you thinking, concubine woman?” Lung Fan asked. “You look as if you swallowed a frog.”

“I do not wish to say.”

Lung Fan grinned, and the expression looked ghoulish in the bright lights. “I actually know what you’re thinking. And I think you’re right. Can I be reassigned to someone else?”

Cixi didn’t answer. For a long time, she waited in tense silence. The only sound was the dripping of the water clock and the clicking of the spider against the serpent in Lung Fan’s lap and the footsteps of the maids who were gathering feathers. Eventually, Liyang rushed back into the room with his apprentices panting behind him.

“Where is the girl?” Cixi asked without waiting for formalities.

“She is dead, my lady. Drowned in a lotus pool. Already the story is going about that she killed herself because she displeased you, or that you yourself are directly responsible.”

Cixi waved this aside. One fewer low-ranking concubine was of no importance. “And where did she come from?”

“That is the startling thing, my lady. No one seems to know. All the records are in disarray, thanks to the evacuation, of course, but no one I talked to seems to remember her, or when she joined the Imperial Court.”

“I thought as much,” Cixi muttered. “Su Shun arranged for her to slip into the evacuation caravan. Where is the body?”

“I anticipated your wishes, my lady, and my assistants are bringing her here. She is on the back lawn.”

A feather drifted across Cixi’s nose as she rose to her feet. “Come, Lung Fan. Bring your device.”

The dead girl was still soaked through. Her hair had come undone and lay tangled about her neck and shoulders. She huddled on her side in her ruined green robe on the grass. Cixi guessed she was no more than sixteen, the same age Cixi had been when she became a concubine. Lung Fan squatted next to her and punctured her skin with the serpent’s teeth. The lights along the serpent’s back glittered, then settled into a steady scarlet glow.

“Well?” Cixi asked. “Was I thinking right?”

“Were we thinking right?” Lung Fan corrected. “And yes. The girl was in the early stages of the blessing of dragons.”

Cixi stepped back, as did all the maids and eunuchs. The girl carried the blessing of dragons, and Su Shun had arranged for the girl to share Xianfeng’s bed. Thanks to Su Shun, the emperor now had the plague.

Gavin slipped down the dark tunnel, the Impossible Cube clutched tight to his chest. The sandy floor ground unpleasantly beneath his boots, and he was uncomfortably aware that he stood out like a torch with his white leathers and blue wings. Fortunately, he hadn’t met any squid men. For once the clockwork plague worked in his favor-clockworkers sometimes became so engrossed in something fascinating that they forgot mundane duties, such as posting guards.

Back in the main cavern behind him, the Lady was moored at a small stone quay, her half-lit envelope glimmering like a tethered star. The giant squid that had towed her there was nowhere to be seen. Gavin had slipped aboard and quietly reconnected the generator so her envelope would lift her again, but he didn’t power the machine up fully to avoid calling attention to the situation. Now he just had to rescue his reason to escape.

Doors faced the tunnel, all of them heavy, all of them shut. He tried one and found it unlocked. On the other side was a laboratory-sharp glassware, smoking burners, gooey things in jars, a rubbery segment of tentacle on a dissecting table. An operating table with blue bloodstains hunkered in the corner amid a nauseating smell of sulfur. The sight oozed over Gavin’s skin and made him shiver. Thank God Alice and Phipps weren’t here. He slipped back into the tunnel.

The Cube shifted in Gavin’s hands, almost as if it resisted being moved. Dr. Clef had once said the Cube always stayed in a fixed point in space and time, that it never actually went anywhere and instead forced the universe to move around itself, like a rock in a river. It rather felt to Gavin that if he lost control of the Cube, it might go spinning away from him, punching holes in space-time like a hot needle, and the possibility unnerved him.

His fingers tightened around the Cube’s springy surface as he slipped down the long cave, trying to listen, but the heavy doors trapped sound and light. The only noise was the soft clink of metal wings on his back and his heart pounding in his ears while he searched. He was always looking for something. It had started when pirates attacked the Juniper , the airship on which he had spent most of his childhood. That attack had stranded him in London, forcing him to search for a way home. Then he had met Alice, and he had found himself constantly searching for a way to have her in his life. Then he had been infected with the clockwork plague, and he searched for a cure. And just lately, he had learned from a woman who could see the future that his father, the man who had abandoned him, was still alive and his destiny was somehow “entwined” with Gavin’s. The thought both thrilled Gavin and angered him beyond measure. He wanted to find his father and grab him in a big bear hug even as he wanted to punch him in the gut.

To his horror, he realized he was singing under his breath:

I picked a rose, the rose picked me,

Underneath the branches of the forest tree.

The moon picked you from all the rest

For I loved you best.

He stopped himself. Gavin used to think his grandfather had taught him that song, but lately he’d begun to wonder if it had come from his father instead, if his father hadn’t sung it to his mother when they were young and in love. If so, it was more than a little unsettling that Gavin had gotten Alice to fall in love with him by singing it to her. Or maybe that was just fitting. He would have to ask his father. If he could find him.

Tension tightened every muscle and joint, and anger burned in his belly. Alice. Al-Noor would pay for touching Alice. The thought of the man laying a hand on her unleashed a red, snarling fury and made his fists clench until they ached. He wanted to storm through the caves, brandishing the Impossible Cube like Zeus with a bucketful of thunderbolts. The Cube bit into his fingers.

Calm, he told himself. Calm. He had a right to be angry about al-Noor taking Alice, but actual murder. . That still lay beyond him. Not even the plague could make him into a murderer. Not yet. Though it was true that he could use the Cube to bring down the entire cave and peel the flesh from al-Noor’s bones with-