Steven Harper - The Dragon Men

“Are you all right, darling?”

“I’ll be fine,” he gasped.

“That went beyond the pale, Lieutenant,” Alice snapped. “He rescued us.”

“By detonating that. . thing ,” she shot back.

“Which you yourself told him to fetch, as I recall.”

“And which you yourself had doubts about.”

“That’s no reason to lay hands on him like a common thug! We’d be dead if not for him.”

Phipps folded her arms. “We still don’t know what it did, either.”

“Just shut it, Phipps.”

“Or what? Your spiders will tickle me to death? Your whirligigs will-oh, never mind.” She rested her forehead in one hand. “It’s been a bloody difficult day. I’m sorry, Ennock. I shouldn’t have done that.”

The abrupt apology caught Gavin off guard. “Uh. . sure. It’s all right.”

Alice didn’t look nearly as forgiving, but the whirligigs and spiders dispersed to different areas of the deck. A moment of awkward silence followed as Gavin took up the helm again.

“Are those wings getting heavy, Gavin?” Alice ventured at last. “I can help you out of them while you fly the ship.”

Gavin had completely forgotten he was wearing them. Now that Alice mentioned it, they were starting to drag, and the harness was chafing. At his grateful nod, Alice gestured, and her little mechanicals zipped about Gavin’s body, unbuckling straps and untying knots while Phipps stared into space from her deck chair. One of the whirligigs slowed, and its movements became listless. Alice plucked the whirligig out of the air, extracted a key on a long silver chain from her bodice, and wound the whirligig with it. The other automatons continued their work as Gavin piloted.

“Exactly what did happen with the Cube?” Alice said.

“I have no idea,” Gavin replied. He shrugged out of the last part of the harness and helped the automatons set the wings on the deck. “And I don’t have any means to find out, unless we want to go back and look for clues in al-Noor’s cave.”

“No, thank you,” Alice said with an exaggerated shudder. “Once was quite enough.”

“I’m also still trying to wrap my head around the fact that you’re my fiancee now.”

“Oh! I’d almost forgotten it myself. The attack quite drove it from my mind.” Alice turned pink, then gave a little laugh. “Where shall we publish the banns?”

“Not many newspapers hereabout read English.” Phipps had conjured up a bottle of sherry from somewhere and was pouring herself a glass. “Though I suppose that means you could say anything you like and no one would know.”

“‘Mr. Gavin Ennock, not of any nearby parish, thoroughly disreputable street musician and airman,’” Gavin said, “‘intends to marry the talented and beautiful Alice, Lady Michaels-’”

“‘Impoverished and social outcast baroness who rescued a handsome man with a golden voice from a tall tower,’” Alice put in, moving closer to him. “‘And quickly, please, because she desperately wishes to take this wildly handsome musician to her-’” She suddenly remembered that they weren’t alone and stopped.

Phipps raised her glass at them. “Don’t stop on my account.”

They were saved from further discussion when from the open hatchway clambered a tomcat made of brass. His green eyes glowed phosphor, and his segmented tail twitched high in the air as he picked his way across the deck, his claws making little sounds on the wood.

“Click!” Alice scurried over to pick the cat up. “I should have looked for you. Are you all right?”

Click remained aloof for a moment, annoyed that he had been ignored during what had clearly been a dreadful afternoon, but finally allowed Alice to rub his head.

“Don’t be upset,” she crooned, still stroking him. “We all had a difficult time of it.”

“You don’t pet my ears like that,” Gavin breezed.

“Fiance or not,” Alice sniffed with mock sternness, “one does not address a lady in such a manner, Mr. Ennock.”

Gavin bowed over the helm. “My deepest apologies, Lady Michaels. My heart rends in twain.”

“Do you even know what twain means?”

“I think he’s a travel writer who wrote a story about a frog.”

Phipps spoke up from her chair. “Pleasant as it is to eavesdrop on a lovers’ spat, we do need to determine where we’re going.” Then she quickly added, “Other than China. Because China has become somewhat problematic.”

Gavin rounded on her, startled. “What? Why?”

“Oh dear.” Alice continued to stroke Click, who made a purring noise like an engine that couldn’t quite get started. “We didn’t have time to explain what al-Noor told us.”

“Is this about the reward?” Gavin’s stomach was tense again. “I heard al-Noor shouting about one.”

“It is.” Alice explained, and every word dragged Gavin’s spirit lower. With China’s borders closed and an incredible reward for Alice’s capture offered, they had no chance of finding out if the Dragon Men could cure a clockworker, and without the cure, he would go mad and die before winter. The fury and fugue he had experienced in al-Noor’s lair was just the beginning. He could almost feel the plague burning inside him, consuming brain and body and leaving behind nothing but empty ashes.

Gavin clutched the helm with white fingers and tried to think, but his normally busy mind only ran in little circles. “What are we going to do?” he asked at last.

“I’ll tell you what we’re not going to do.” Phipps was consulting a large map she had unrolled across her lap. “We’re not going to panic. Got that? For one thing, al-Noor could have his facts wrong, or he could have been lying, or he could have been saying whatever came into his head. He’s a clockworker, after all. We need to find out more before we proceed, and the best place to start is going to be here.” She pointed to the map, though Gavin couldn’t read it from his vantage point. “Tehran. It’s south, so you’ll have to change course, Gavin, but it shouldn’t take more than two or three hours to get there.”

“Why Tehran?” Alice asked.

“It’s the nearest city of any size,” Phipps replied. “And Tehran has large petroleum reserves. China and the Empire have been quietly fighting over control of this region for several years now because of them. At the Third Ward, we called it the Great Game. Russia used to be a player in it, but once Catherine lost control of Ukraine, she didn’t have the resources to keep playing. At any rate, the petroleum reserves mean we can top off the paraffin oil kegs as well as pick up other supplies. Tehran also used to be a stop on the Silk Road back in the caravan days, so there’s likely information to be had about China. It may be al-Noor’s source of news, but we’ll see.”

“And if al-Noor was right?” Gavin said, hands still tight on the wheel. The Lady creaked as if in protest, and he forced himself to loosen his grip.

“No use inviting trouble.” Alice’s tone was light, but Gavin could read the tension in her voice. She put Click down, and he trotted to the gunwale where he reared up and put his paws on the edge so he could look over the side, as was his habit. “We’ll deal with that if it comes up.”

“I still want to know what happened to al-Noor and that squid.” Phipps rolled up the map and picked up her sherry glass. “My father liked to say that a loose end cracks like a whip.”

Gavin said nothing but adjusted the Lady ’s course at Phipps’s direction, then glanced at the Impossible Cube, still lying dark and quiet on the deck as the ship turned south.

A flock of airships hovered over Tehran, hungry as crows for the paraffin oil that poured from the city’s distilleries. The sharp smell of petroleum stung the air, even as high as the Lady was. High towers with golden minarets poked up like gold-tipped fingers all around the city, and the white stone buildings reflected harsh desert sunlight back into Alice’s eyes. The place looked strange. Foreign. When they arrived, she wouldn’t know the language or the customs or any of the rules. That made her anxious and set her on edge.