“Do you need something, Lieutenant?” Gavin asked.
With a lightning movement that caught even Gavin’s clockworker reflexes off guard, Li clapped his hand to Gavin’s left ear. A hot needle pierced his eardrum with white pain. Gavin howled. He snapped out a hand and stiff-armed Li so hard, the man flew backward across the deck. Gavin dropped to his knees, still screaming, his hand on his ear. The hot pain was excruciating. It went on and on. He was vaguely aware that Alice was kneeling next to him with her arm around his shoulder and that most of the soldiers on deck were standing around him with their swords and pistols out. The pain drilled a molten hole through his skull, leaving a trail of coals behind it.
And then it stopped. The pain vanished as if it had never been. The change was so abrupt, he became light-headed.
“Gavin!” Alice was saying. “Darling, what’s wrong? What did he do to you?”
He got to his feet. The hand at his ear was a little warm and sticky, and he felt bumpy metal beneath his fingers. The soldiers kept their weapons at the ready. Outside their circle, Li had already risen. He looked unhappy. Phipps looked furious.
“How dare you attack him!” she said in Chinese. “You bring shame to your-”
Gavin brought his hand down, revealing his ear. There was a group gasp. A tinkle and clank of dropped weapons indicated numb fingers all round. Every soldier, including Li, dropped to his knees and knocked his forehead on the decking.
“What the hell?” Gavin looked at the soldiers, then at the little smear of blood on his palm.
“Oh!” Phipps wove her way among the kneeling soldiers, who kept their facedown position, and put out a finger to touch Gavin’s ear. “I didn’t even consider. Oh, damn it. I’m sorry, Ennock. I should have thought-”
“What’s going on?” Alice demanded.
“Li put a salamander in Gavin’s ear,” Phipps said. “That messenger bird brought it. I’m guessing it also told him Gavin is a clockworker-a Dragon Man.”
“So?” The salamander lay curled around the outside of Gavin’s ear. He followed its contours with his finger. The tail seemed to be lodged in his aural canal. He tugged at it, and a blinding pain came over him again. He staggered and let go. The pain stopped.
“Don’t touch it,” Alice cautioned. “Let me have a look.”
“You can’t take it out,” Phipps said. “Not without killing him.”
“What?” Gavin almost tugged at it again, then thought better of it. “What do you mean? What’s it for? What’s it doing?”
“Dragon Men are revered in China.” Phipps gestured at the kowtowing soldiers. “But they’re also feared, and with good reason. Clockworkers-Dragon Men-always put rulers in a tough spot. They have great power, but they’re deadly lunatic. The British Empire coped by creating the Third Ward and building the Doomsday Vault. China has a different solution.”
“A salamander?” Alice was examining the object as best she could. Gavin remained still, though he felt sick. It seemed as if he could feel the thing’s tail worming into his skull.
“All Dragon Men in China have to wear one,” Phipps said. “It’s the law. Rogue Dragon Men are executed.”
“But what does it do?” Gavin demanded.
“Hold still, darling.”
Phipps hesitated. “It ties each Dragon Man to the emperor. I’ve never seen it in action myself, but I’m told no Dragon Man can disobey a direct order from the emperor, and it’s the salamander that forces obedience.”
Gavin was almost panting. He felt panicky, hemmed in. The idea that some despot could give him an order and he’d have to jump at it like a puppet horrified him deeply. He supposed it wouldn’t bother the Chinese or even the British, people who were used to kings and emperors, but Americans didn’t have kings, and he had only recently found his freedom in the air. Now a fiery salamander was going to drag him back down?
He suddenly remembered Feng Lung again. The Gonta family had captured Feng in Ukraine and experimented on him; into his head they had drilled an enormous spider that forced Feng to obey any orders given to him. He couldn’t even sit down unless someone told him to. In the end, he had let himself die, partly to save Gavin and Alice’s lives, but also to end his own pain. Was this how he had felt? Nausea oozed around Gavin’s stomach, and he took several deep breaths to keep from throwing up.
“Lieutenant Li was put in a terrible spot,” Phipps continued. “The nightingale brought him the salamander and the news that you were a Dragon Man. No doubt this is what the border guard meant when it said you were special. It must have alerted the authorities, who sent the bird and the salamander.”
Gavin remembered. Alice’s hand was gentle but insistent on his ear. She could use only one hand because the other had corks on the fingertips. He braced himself for more pain, though it didn’t come. The soldiers didn’t move.
“It’s illegal for someone of his rank to lay hands on a Dragon Man.” Phipps crossed her arms. “It’s also illegal for a Dragon Man to run about within Chinese borders without a salamander. Clearly, the emperor wants Alice in his hands immediately, so they didn’t want to delay the ship at the border until someone of the correct rank could arrive with a salamander. Someone would have to put this salamander on you now, and that fell to Li.”
“Good for him,” Gavin growled. “I hope he gets a raise.”
“You don’t understand, Ennock,” Phipps said. “You’re flying with dead men.”
Alice dropped her hand, and both she and Gavin looked at Phipps. The soldiers still hadn’t moved. The Lady’s engines purred along, and more farmland coasted beneath them, the fresh green fields below at odds with the conflict in the clouds above.
“Go on,” Alice said tiredly. “Tell us the rest.”
“Li laid hands on a Dragon Man,” Phipps said. “It’s a form of treason, really. And when a commanding officer commits treason, he and his men are put to death. All these men will be executed the moment we reach Peking.”
“But that’s terrible!” Alice protested. “Li only did as he was ordered, and these men did nothing.”
“In China,” Phipps said, “the emperor’s merest word is more important than a thousand human lives, and every command must be obeyed, even if it means death. They see it as an honor to sacrifice themselves to the emperor, and they’ll be buried with great ceremony.”
Gavin belatedly realized no one was guiding the ship. He set the Lady to hover and walked over to Li. It felt odd to stand over a kneeling man. “Is this true?” he asked.
Li said something, but his face was still facing the deck and Gavin couldn’t hear.
“Get up and talk to me,” Gavin said, not sure whether to be uncomfortable or outraged. The salamander made an unfamiliar weight on his ear.
Li came reluctantly to his feet and bowed deeply. The treacherous nightingale was still on his shoulder. “My deepest apologies, my lord. You will, of course, want to strike off my head immediately.”
Phipps translated, and Gavin let her.
“I will, of course, want to do no such thing,” he said. “What were you thinking?”
Li looked stricken. “If I am not properly executed, my lord, my family will live in shame for generations.”
Gavin thought of his friend Feng and his complicated views on what was just and honorable, and how those views had ultimately cost him his life. He understood, though he didn’t sympathize. He fingered the salamander in his ear. Part of him was furious and wanted to wield the executioner’s sword himself. But how many of these men had wives? Children? How many little ones would cry because Daddy’s head had been cut off? His own father had disappeared, dead or as good as such. Could he take the responsibility for putting all those other children through the same thing?