“Don’t touch him!” she snapped. “Who do you think you are?”
There was a whisper of sound as every soldier on deck drew a weapon. All were pointed at Alice. Tension hummed in the air. Gavin’s gaze flicked around the deck, and his mind ran a hundred calculations, none of them successful. He jumped in front of Alice, and a soldier grabbed his arm.
Gavin rounded on him in a fury. “One of us is going to remove that hand.”
“Your father was a turtle,” the man snarled, and his sword-metal, not glass-moved toward Gavin’s throat.
“Gavin!” Alice cried.
Then Susan Phipps stepped forward.
“That’s quite enough,” she said, and repeated it in accented but perfectly serviceable Chinese. Gavin blinked at her. “Everyone calm down. You are all honorable men, and your duty is to keep Lady Michaels from harm. If you fail, the emperor will be displeased. If you complete your task, you will be rewarded. In the meantime, we ask you to leave us and our possessions alone. In return, we will not try to escape. Agreed?”
Lieutenant Li came up on deck in time to hear her speech. He cocked his head. “Where did you learn our language?” he said. “It falls strangely from a Western tongue.”
“I served in the East for several years,” Phipps replied with a bow. “But my skills are poor.”
“Not so poor,” Li said. “In any case, it shall be as you say. Soldiers!”
The soldier holding Gavin’s arm let go. Gavin straightened his jacket as the men put their weapons away. The tension left the air, and Gavin relaxed. A little. Alice stroked Click, who was muttering to himself.
“Is it going to be like this all the way to China?” she asked.
“It had better not be,” Gavin muttered back.
“Oh?”
“At least one of us will be dead if it is,” he growled. “And it won’t be me.”
But to Gavin’s surprise, the next several days went smoothly. Phipps and Li, both military, seemed to have forged a wary respect. Alice stayed close to Gavin, and Click stayed close to Alice. The only other incident was when a soldier discovered Alice’s spiders and whirligigs, still hiding in the hold from their encounter with the brass dragon. A great commotion came from one of the hatchways, and the soldier bolted across the deck with several little mechanicals in hot pursuit. He yelped, “Turtle turtle turtle turtle turtle!” as he ran, something Gavin had only recently come to understand was a swear word or insult in Chinese. It was only with great effort that Gavin kept his face neutral. Alice’s skin went pink.
“Tell me,” Phipps said to Li at one point, “why did the emperor close the borders?”
“You do not know?” Li replied.
They were standing near the main hatchway, not far from the helm where Gavin was piloting, and Gavin was easily able to overhear them. By now, he had listened to hundreds of conversations among the soldiers and gotten some translations from Phipps, and his mind made leaps and connections, untangling syntax and extrapolating vocabulary. He wondered if this was how Dr. Clef, a native German, had learned English.
“I would like to hear the Chinese perspective,” Phipps replied smoothly. “I am sure it differs from the English one.”
“To be sure,” Li said dryly. “I assume you know of the first battle over opium.”
The soldier dove back below, and there was another crash. A moment later, Click emerged with the soldier’s hat in his mouth. He dropped it on the deck and strolled innocently away. The other soldiers laughed, and for that Gavin was grateful. It would have been all too easy for the mood to run the other way. The Lady had passed the desert some days ago and was now gliding over lush green farms and pine forests blanketed in drowsy mist. The air was cool and damp, a refreshing change from hot, arid winds. They had stopped twice for supplies, and both times the local farmers in their peaked straw hats had given the soldiers everything they demanded with a fawning deference that clearly masked an underlying fear.
“I know the Opium War well,” Phipps said. “We English were flooding China with cheap opium from India-”
“Creating addicts everywhere and taking silver out of China,” Li interrupted. “It was a terrible problem. You Westerners have no idea what your greed for silver was doing to us.”
“Of course I know. Just as I know what your greed for petroleum has done to the Middle East and what your greed for metal has done to the United States.” Phipps stroked her monocle with a brass fingertip. “Perhaps, for the sake of this conversation, we could acknowledge that both empires have done good and evil.”
Li gave a nod. “Perhaps. In any case, all that opium created an entire class of addiction in China, and it meant tael after tael of silver left our country. England also had the right to sell factory-made products in China, and they were cheaper than those we make in small shops or at home, which meant our people bought them and pushed Chinese workers out of their jobs. The last straw came at Taku.”
“What happened at Taku?”
“A fleet of British ships carrying soldiers and diplomats sailed up the Peiho River toward Taku. It’s an important fortress, and the emperor was afraid-”
“You mean his generals were afraid,” Phipps interrupted.
Li waved a hand. “It is the same thing. The emperor was afraid that so many armed soldiers in the same area might lead to fighting, so he asked the fleet to anchor farther north. It was a reasonable request. Unfortunately, your envoy deliberately took it as an insult and decided to attack Taku. It sparked a war, one that we initially won. We threw the British out of China, and the emperor closed the borders.”
“Interesting.” Phipps scratched her nose. “But that’s-”
“It’s not the entire story, if I may,” Li said. “A year later, the British invaded in force. They fought all the way to Peking. There was a sort of desperation to the attack, actually.”
“The cure was pushing them,” Phipps said.
Li nodded. “The British knew they had only limited time with. . what is your word?”
“Clockworkers,” Phipps said.
“A pejorative in your language.”
Phipps glanced at Gavin, who kept his face neutral, as if he had no idea what they were talking about. “Depending on how it’s used.”
“The English Dragon. . clockworkers were dying out, and soon our Dragon Men would have the upper hand worldwide. If the English were going to invade, it had to be right then. But in the end, the British lost at Peking. General Su Shun-or rather, Emperor Xianfeng-ordered the execution of everyone who had any contact with British soldiers to ensure the destruction of the cure within China, and then he sealed the borders again. Our Dragon Men are safe.”
“And so is your ability to invade the rest of the world once British and European builders of clocks have died,” Phipps added with a bitter note. Gavin uneasily concurred. It was the only conclusion.
Li shrugged. “I do as the emperor commands.”
At that moment, a single nightingale flittered across the deck. It was carrying something in its claws. The little metal bird dropped the small object in Lieutenant Li’s hand, then perched on his shoulder. Gavin heard a faint voice, though he didn’t catch the words. He glanced at Alice’s pocket, where his silver nightingale currently resided. Li’s face went pale at the nightingale’s recorded message. The military demeanor left him. Slowly, with deference and fear in every movement, he sidled across the deck toward Gavin, the object clutched to his chest and the nightingale on his shoulder. Gavin exchanged puzzled looks with Alice. What now?