“Are you all right?” Phipps asked.
“What happened?” Alice said, pulling her hand free. “Where are we?” To the maid, she said, “Who are you?”
A gleam caught her eye. Click was curled up on the bed. Alice felt a little better at seeing him, though she was still confused. Automatically she picked him up and checked his windup mechanism. He was running down. She took the key from around her neck, inserted it, and started winding. He slitted his eyes in contentment.
“How did we get here?” Alice asked Phipps. “Why won’t this woman speak to us?”
“I don’t know. We-”
The door opened, and in came another woman, also dressed in a white Chinese outfit-wide trousers beneath a full-length tunic split in the front and held together with a silver clasp. Her hair was elaborately twisted around her head, and her every movement was graceful as a measure of music. She was Alice’s age and very beautiful. Alice glanced down at her wrinkled, travel-stained clothes and forced herself to sit erect like the baroness she was.
The woman said something in Chinese, and it annoyed Alice now. The lack of understanding made her feel like a lost child.
“She says there’s no point in asking the maid questions,” Phipps said from her own bed. “Her tongue has been torn out.”
“That’s terrible!”
“She’s a former opium addict who probably lied to obtain money for the drug,” Phipps said. “The punishment for opium addiction is to split the upper lip so as to prevent the. . patient from sucking smoke from a pipe, and the punishment for lying is to cut the tongue out. She was fortunate to be hired here. No doubt she was chosen to wait on us because she can’t tell anyone we’re here.”
Alice shuddered but set that aside as something she could do nothing about for the moment. “Where are we? Is Gavin all right?”
At this, the beautiful woman, who had been waiting with hands clasped, spoke at some length. Phipps translated.
“My name is Lady Orchid,” she said. “Please accept my apologies for the way in which you were treated. We had no time to explain. You are in the palace compound of Prince Kung, half brother to Emperor Xianfeng, who died recently. When the prince and I heard you were on your way to Peking, we knew we had to intercept you. Prince Kung sent a number of men with a device that releases a special type of tree pollen that, when breathed, sends one into a deep sleep. Absinthe is the antidote.”
“Why, we have the same thing in England,” Alice said, then shot Phipps a guilty look. The lieutenant had been on the receiving end of the stuff during Alice and Gavin’s raid on the Doomsday Vault last spring. Phipps crossed her arms. Alice coughed and went back to winding Click.
“The device requires an explosion to disperse the pollen over a wide area, and we apologize deeply for this. I hope no one was injured.”
Alice kept winding Click. Nothing hurt that she could tell. “I’m fine. Where’s Gavin?”
“The Dragon Man? He wakes in the room next to yours. You may see him in a moment, if you wish.” Lady Orchid fingered the silver pin that held her tunic shut. “I know you find it difficult to trust us now. Perhaps it will be easier once we have explained.”
“Who is us?” Alice put in. The maid started to comb Alice’s tangled hair.
A hard look crossed Lady Orchid’s face, as if she found Alice’s interruption dreadful in some way. “Prince Kung and me. We have saved your lives, you see. General Su Shun, the pretender who ascended the throne, wants you dead, Lady Michaels.”
Alice gasped and fear tightened her insides. Gavin had been right. Still, she said, “Dead? But the reward-the emperor wanted me alive.”
“That was Emperor Xianfeng. As I said, he died recently.”
Here, Phipps stopped translating. “How did he die, Lady Orchid?”
“The blessing of dragons fell on him, and he did not survive. It was exactly what he was afraid of.”
“Then I’m too late,” Alice whispered. She felt cold, and tears pricked at the edges of her eyes. “If the current emperor won’t trade my cure for-oh good heavens, what will we do now?”
“Why did the new emperor continue the reward?” Phipps asked.
“The new emperor, General Su Shun, wants to personally ensure Lady Michaels’s death. He does not dare invade Europe until he knows his men will not encounter the cure she carries.”
“We were rather afraid that was what he might want,” Alice said. “Still, we were hoping things might be otherwise.”
“Wait-invade?” Phipps said. “Why does he want to invade?”
Orchid sighed. “His hold on the throne is weak. But a war would ensure everyone is looking at battle instead of who occupies the Imperial Seat.”
The maid finished combing out Alice’s hair and piled it high with Chinese combs. Light dawned in Alice’s head. “And you want to put someone else on the throne. That’s why you brought me here. Because I can help you in some way.”
“You are very perceptive for a-you are very perceptive.”
“Perceptive for a what?”
But Lady Orchid didn’t answer. Instead, she said, “I was once a concubine to the emperor, and-”
“A concubine?” Shocked, Alice backed away on the bed, bumping the maid aside. Click made a noise of protest. For all her grace and beauty, this woman was nothing more than a common prostitute. Alice looked down at the coverlet. Had this very bed been used for-?
“Calm down, Alice,” Phipps said. “It isn’t catching.”
“It’s. . repulsive,” Alice replied. “I. . this is. .”
“Another culture,” Phipps told her. “Here it’s considered a perfectly honorable profession-”
“The oldest profession.”
“And for many women, the only avenue to any kind of wealth or power.”
“It’s horrible! Selling oneself to a married man for the chance of-”
“Whereas you,” Phipps interjected, “were only willing to sell yourself to an unmarried man.”
“That was different,” Alice snapped.
“Of course it was,” Phipps said mildly. “This woman succeeded.”
Alice snapped her mouth shut in a fury. Lady Orchid, who had been watching this exchange with polite interest, continued.
“As a concubine of the emperor, I bore him a son. His only son. The boy-we call him Cricket-is the true heir. We need to put him on the throne. He is only six years old, but Prince Kung and I will rule as regents until he is old enough to rule on his own.”
“And why should we help you?” Alice asked, forcing herself back to the subject at hand.
Lady Orchid seemed taken aback. “We saved your lives, Lady Alice.”
“Out of self-interest, Lady Orchid,” Alice shot back. “If you didn’t need me for something, you would have let this Su Shun have me without a second thought.”
“Ah.” Lady Orchid took a white handkerchief from her white sleeve without denying Alice’s statement. “Why did you come to China, Lady Alice? I can’t imagine it was merely to claim the reward.”
Alice thought a long moment before replying. She didn’t trust this Lady Orchid, and not just because of her. . occupation. Lady Orchid was trying to make herself the power behind the throne of an empire, and such a person was automatically difficult to trust. Oh, she claimed she was trying to stop a war and rule the empire benevolently. And perhaps she would. But in the end, she was still a power-seeker, and in Alice’s experience, such people would say or do anything to achieve their aims. It was only good luck that Lady Orchid’s goals and Alice’s goals seemed to correlate. Alice was quite confident that if this woman had wanted Alice dead, there would be no trace of a body, or even a drop of blood, to be found. The thought made Alice both nervous and more determined. She glanced at the other bed. The mute maid was now combing out Phipps’s hair.