The Dragon Men (9 page)

And then he was lying facedown on the hard deck of the
Lady.
Wood mashed against his cheek. He lay there a moment, unwilling to move. His sleeve blocked his view. A blob of grease marred the white leather. The generator puffed and rumbled nearby, and the soft vibration of the nacelles purred through him. Ropes creaked. His wings and the power pack pressed down on his back. He became aware that he was breathing, pulling air steadily into his lungs and pushing it back out again. His heart beat in his chest. He blinked, then cautiously moved his arms, bracing himself for pain. He got none. Well, that was a relief. After this kind of thing, Gavin had come to expect blinding, tearing pain, and then he wondered when he had become the kind of man who regularly participated in events that caused blinding, tearing pain.

He pushed himself upright and immediately looked around for Alice. She lay curled on her side in a puddle of blue skirts with her mechanicals scattered around her. Phipps was on her hands and knees nearby, shaking her head. Gavin was about to run over to see to them when he remembered the squid. He tensed and glanced at the bow of the ship. Empty cavern, empty air. The squid was gone. Puzzled and relieved, he ran to the gunwale to make sure. The water beneath the ship lapped calmly at the stones. There was no sign of the giant squid, or even any indication that such a monster had ever existed. Behind the ship, the little quay was also empty. Al-Noor had disappeared as well.

Reassured but mystified, he hurried over to Alice and Phipps. Alice was already stirring, and he helped both women to their feet. The mechanicals came to life as well. The whirligigs started their propellers in short spurts and hovered uncertainly in the air while the spiders staggered about the deck like sailors on three-day leave.

“What in God's name was that?” Phipps's hair had come down completely, and she was trying to wind it back into a knot, but her hands, both metal and flesh, were shaking, and she wasn't having much success.

Alice leaned on Gavin for a moment, and he could smell her hair. He allowed himself a moment to hold her, glad she was safe. Then she broke away from him and, as he had, ran to the gunwale to look around. Her mechanicals followed.

“They're gone,” she said. “The squid, al-Noor—gone. I don't see any squid men, either. What happened?”

The Impossible Cube was laying on the deck. Gavin picked it up. It felt heavier than usual. The glow had gone out, and the lattices, while still confusing, didn't twist the eye nearly as much. It appeared to be nothing but an odd piece of machinery.

“Did the Cube destroy them?” Phipps conjectured.

“I've never seen it do anything like that,” Gavin replied, “though I don't know half of what it can do. I can't think of how it could destroy just al-Noor and his squid and leave us and the ship unharmed. And what were those lights about?”

“This isn't the best place to have this discussion,” Alice said briskly. “Let's leave, please.”

Phipps and Gavin agreed this would be a good idea. Under Gavin's hand, the
Lady
glided out of the cavern into the sunlight. The fresh, salty air cleared his head, and he pushed the generator into adding more power to the
Lady
's envelope, increasing their altitude until they were safely out of tentacle range. Below, waves broke against the long blade of the rocky island. Gavin checked the compass, reoriented east, and set the
Lady
skimming away in that direction. The Impossible Cube sat near his foot like a cat in a coma.

“Are we away?” Phipps asked. “Are we safe?”

Alice stared over the gunwale. “I don't think al-Noor or his weapons could reach us at this distance. So I would give a qualified
yes
, myself.”

Phipps crossed the deck in three steps. In a quick motion, her brass hand caught Gavin by the throat and lifted him above the deck. Her harsh grip cut off both air and circulation so fast, even his clockworker reflexes were dulled.

“What the
hell
did you do with that Cube, you fool?” she snarled.

Gavin grabbed her wrist with both his hands, but her brass arm was impervious to anything he could do. He tried to kick, but spots swam before his eyes, and he couldn't move.

“You detonated the world's most powerful weapon at our bloody feet!” Phipps's face was a rictus of fear and fury. “After everything we went through in Kiev, and you
still
used it!”

The only sound Gavin could make was a faint gurgle. The spots spread and grew blacker.

More gleaming brass whirled into view. Alice was there, surrounded by a dozen angry-looking whirligigs and spiders, and they were all staring at Susan Phipps. Sunshine gleamed off blades and spikes.

“Put. Him. Down.” Alice's voice was perfectly steady. “Now.”

Phipps glared at Alice for a long moment. Then she released Gavin. He dropped to his knees, sucking in lungfuls of air. Phipps stalked away and dropped into a deck chair. The whirligigs stayed in place but oriented on her. Alice helped Gavin to his feet, and he braced himself on the helm.

“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 fiancée 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.

“Fiancé 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.

C
hapter Five

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.

Knowing the rules made life possible for Alice. When you knew the rules, you knew what you were about, what to do, what to say. Everything was regular and straightforward as a clockwork automaton. True, not all situations were
likeable.
Regular wasn't the same as pleasant. Regular trains got their passengers to their destinations on time, but they didn't care if they ran over a cat on the tracks. Still, you knew the train was coming and had time to get yourself out of the way.

And then a year ago Gavin had blasted into Alice's life, like a fox into a covey of quail. He broke every rule Alice knew. At the time, Gavin owned a bare eighteen years to Alice's stately twenty-two. He was a fallen airman turned ragged street musician to her titled ladyship. He declared his love for her when she was already engaged to someone else. He should have disgusted her, horrified her, sent her fleeing to the safety of her then-fiancé's arms. Instead, she found Gavin excited her, exhilarated her.

Freed her.

Her wretched, treacherous heart hadn't cared one bit who he was or where he had come from. Her heart didn't mind being turned into an outlaw and flung from pillar to post. In fact, and rather surprisingly, she liked it. Good heavens, she
loved
it. Without him, she would this moment be living in London with a dreary, lifeless husband in a dreary, lifeless mansion, enduring a dreary, lifeless marriage. Instead, she was gadding about the world in an airship with a collection of mechanicals and a disreputable former lieutenant, wanted by both the British and Chinese empires. Chaos personified! She wouldn't change a single, glorious thing.

Except . . .

One glance at Gavin, stalwart at the helm, told her that the glory was a sham. On the surface, with the wind teasing his white-blond hair and his keen blue eyes scanning the horizon for obstacles and airships, he looked every inch the capable airship captain. But underneath, the red worm that was clockwork plague ate steadily away at him. She saw it nearly every day now, and so did Phipps. The wings he had built in his spare time in Germany and Ukraine were a symptom. He was brilliant, perhaps more brilliant than Dr. Clef, but he was steadily losing touch with reality.

With her.

She had to admit to a certain amount of fear. Clockworkers always turned into lunatics who lashed out at the people around them. Always. She had already encountered him once during a fugue, and he hadn't even recognized her; he had snarled at her and nearly struck her. The plague made him strong and fast. Would he eventually . . . ?

No. He wouldn't. Quite impossible. He loved her deeply, just as she loved him. They had fought long and hard to be together. Not even the plague could destroy something so fundamental.

She shook her head. The conflicts were always there—law against chaos, love against fear. She didn't know how to resolve them. Instead, she kept moving forward. It was a lesson she had learned from Gavin: If you kept moving, you didn't have to stop and think about why you were moving.

Alice put a hand on Click's metal head at the gunwale, wanting to feel the familiar pattern of rivets on his skin, as the
Lady
glided closer to the group of airships hanging over the city of Tehran. The place looked nothing like London, and as she had done in so many other places before it, she would have to find a way to work around her ignorance of the local rules. So far she had learned to live with the nervousness created by that particular problem. A larger issue loomed. Tehran was supposed to be the first step on the road to China.

That road was now closed.

The
Lady
reached the edge of the city and slid over the top of the ancient walls, gentle as a cloud. Several of her whirligig automatons dashed into the open air as if scouting ahead, then zipped back to the safety of the deck while her spiders clung to the netting and watched with glittering eyes. They were perhaps half a mile from the ground, and a steady updraft from the heated earth tried to push the ship higher. Gavin was compensating by edging the power levels down and making the
Lady
heavier. The deck rocked, but Alice had long ago earned her air legs and she scarcely noticed. So much was happening so fast, she barely had time to consider any of it.

Al-Noor had claimed China had closed its borders to all foreign traffic, presumably to keep the cure out. Alice flexed her ironclad hand. The spider's eyes glowed green, indicating no one with the plague was within close range, though her blood continued to burble through the tubes running up and down the spider's legs. The cure created by her blood could spread from person to person like a cold or influenza, leaping from one body to the next with every cough or sneeze. If no one went in or out of China, her cure couldn't get anywhere. Still, China couldn't keep the cure out forever, could it? China did have a reputation for keeping strict order. On the other hand, its border was long, and it took only one person to penetrate the embargo and spread the cure. On yet another hand, that probably didn't matter. China needed only to delay the cure's arrival, the longer the better. Every day that China kept the clockwork plague meant one more day that another Dragon Man might arise from the pool of victims and invent fantastic devices for the Chinese Empire. England, meanwhile, had lost the plague—and her clockworkers—entirely. China had the upper hand, and China didn't much care for England.

All this meant that the three of them weren't in a position to travel to Peking and beg, borrow, or steal the Chinese clockwork cure, if one even existed. And that meant Gavin would soon—

Unbidden, an image slid into Alice's mind: the
Lady
gliding through the sky with an empty space at the helm. Gavin's mechanical wings lying in a wiry pile on the deck, their owner long since vanished. Alice swallowed the lump that came to her throat and tried to dash at sudden tears with her hand, but the cold spider bumped her face, which only made things worse. She turned her back on Gavin and fumbled for a handkerchief with her good hand, only to discover she had none. With a small choking sound, she leaned over the gunwale as if she were looking at the buildings below and let the tears drop into the city. Click pressed his cool nose against her side.

After a full half minute, she forced herself upright.
That's enough now,
she thought.
Whimpering like a helpless maiden never gets anything done. Perhaps you can't get into China, and perhaps the Chinese Empire has put a price on your head. If that's true, your choices are either to alter your goal or find a new way to attain your current one. Get the information you need and make a plan. Meanwhile, straighten up, girl!

This was supposed to be a happy day, a thrilling day. Gavin had, at long last and after many delays, asked for her hand in marriage. And he had built a successful pair of wings, for heaven's sake! At the end of such a day, they should be drinking champagne while he slid a ring onto her finger, and then there should be music and dancing, or at least a good meal.

Gavin was still guiding the ship across the city while Phipps watched from her deck chair. The majority of the ships were clumped on the southern side of Tehran, which presumably meant there was a mooring yard over there. Alice could also make out large, round buildings that her experience in Kiev told her were petroleum distilleries. It made sense—dirigibles were a major market for paraffin oil, and there was no sense in paying to haul the stuff any farther than necessary. The ship dipped lower, and the smell of petroleum grew stronger. It was hardly the romantic place she had imagined spending the first night of her engagement.

Well, really!
she told herself.
Have you learned nothing in the last few weeks? If no one gives you what you want, you must take it.

With that, she strode across the deck, trailing little automatons and snatched the sherry bottle from Phipps's brass hand with her ironclad one.

“Oi!” Phipps protested. “That's mine!”

“What the heck?” Gavin said.

“Go away,” Alice snapped at Phipps. “Belowdecks.”

Phipps rose slowly to her feet and stared at Alice for a long moment, the red lens of her monocle glistening bloodred in the late light. Then she nodded once and picked up the dark Impossible Cube from the deck. “I think I'll stash this and perhaps take a nap. Wake me when we've moored.” With that, she went below.

“All of you, too,” Alice said to the automatons, who were chasing one another about the deck. “Now!”

Startled, the flock of automatons froze for a moment, then skittered into an open hatchway. The only one left up top was Click, who pointedly continued staring over the side as if Alice hadn't spoken.

“Bloody cat,” Alice muttered.

“What was that all about?” Gavin enquired. “We're almost to the mooring field, you know.”

In answer, Alice grabbed the front of his jacket with her free hand and pulled him in for a long kiss. He smelled of mist and leather, and he tasted of salt. Gavin stiffened, startled. Then his hands left the helm, and his arms went strong around her. She pressed against him, feeling both safe and hungry. Her hand ran through his hair, silky as feathers, and his callused palm caressed her face and neck, then stole over her breast. Her breath quickened, and a warmth spread through her. Then she pulled back.

“Wow,” he said. “What was that for?”

“I call for a toast, Mr. Ennock”—she raised the sherry bottle—“to celebrate our engagement and those brilliant, beautiful wings you invented. If I can't have you for long, I intend to enjoy your company for every moment we have left.” Her voice quavered for a moment, and she covered by taking a pull directly from the bottle. The sherry, too sweet and too warm, burned all the way down. “To the best damned clockworker in the whole damned world!”

“Why, Lady Michaels,” Gavin laughed, taking the bottle from her, “you foul-mouthed hussy! I never thought I'd see the day!”

“You've seen nothing, Mr. Ennock,” she replied, and kissed him again. This time her hands wandered greedily over his chest and back, wanting to touch him, drink him in as she had the sherry. She moved her body against his and felt him harden, which caused her own deep self to pulse.

When they separated, he took a swig from the bottle. “To the best and most talented woman in the goddamned universe!”

“And don't you forget it, sir,” Alice said. She slid her hands around his strong, solid body again, not wanting to let go for a moment. Never, ever letting go. “I have many talents, some of which I haven't yet developed.”

He buried his face in her hair. “I look forward to charting unexplored territory.”

They stayed like that for several moments while air and sky played over them. Then Alice reluctantly stepped away. What she intended to say next was difficult, but it needed to be discussed. The words stuck in her throat at first, but she decided she wasn't having any of that nonsense anymore, and she would speak. The words came in a rush.

“So, what are we going to do about getting you into China, darling? I refuse to let something as petty as an empire stand in the way of finding your cure.”

She gave a short, sharp sigh. A burden she hadn't realized she was carrying lifted and floated away. What a strange thing—once the words were said aloud, they lost their power.

“I've actually been thinking about that,” Gavin replied.

“Have you?” she said with a smile.

“It's an occupational hazard with clockworkers. We never stop.”

“Truly? This strikes me as more of a social problem,” Alice said. “And with the sole exception of my aunt Edwina, I've yet to meet a clockworker who excelled in the social arena.”

“I'm also an airman,” Gavin pointed out, “and you might remember how the
Juniper
did her share of . . . untaxed shipping.”

“Smuggling,” said the newly forthright Alice.

“If you like,” Gavin sniffed. “Anyway, you can't possibly make a border that big airtight, and I happen to know that for the right price, an untaxed shipper—”

“Smuggler.”

“Smuggler will move anything you like. That includes people. We just need to find such a person.”

“Iffy,” Alice mused. “We'd be putting our trust in a criminal.”

“Not all smugglers are bad people,” Gavin said in a pained voice. “Some of them are just trying to avoid stupidly high tariffs.”

Alice narrowed her eyes. “You're smuggling right now, aren't you? What have you hidden on this ship?”

“Well, technically . . .”

“Gavin! What are you—?”

They were interrupted by a mechanical yowl. Click was arching his back on the gunwale at a looming airship ten times the size of the
Lady.
Gavin had taken his hands off the helm during the . . . discussion with Alice, and neither of them had noticed the ship veering into danger. Gavin spun the helm with a yelp and Alice slapped switches on the generator. The
Lady
's glow dimmed, and the little ship swooped starboard even as it dropped, missing the other ship by a mere few yards. Alice's stomach lurched, and she caught faint shouts of outrage from the deck of the other ship. The
Lady
sped away like a minnow fleeing a whale. Gavin caught Alice's eye. And they both started to laugh. Click pulled his claws out of the decking and turned his back on them in disgust.