Alice bought a loaf of bread and a bit of butter, and they shared it for lunch on a corner. Despite the heat, Alice wore bulky gloves to conceal her spider, but no one seemed to take much notice. Most ladies were wearing gloves of their own.
“What is next?” Feng adjusted his scarf and his pack.
“We need to find paraffin oil for the ship, food stores, and a way to get both back to the ship,” Gavin said. “How much money do we have?”
Alice sighed. It was the moment she’d been dreading. She took the little book of figures from her skirt pocket. “Not near enough,” she admitted. “I performed a few calculations based on how much oil the ship used to get this far, how much weight we need to carry, what the winds are like, and the possibility that paraffin oil prices will be stunningly low—unlikely, considering how difficult it is to make, and how rare.”
“Meaning we won’t have enough money to make it to Peking,” Gavin finished.
“No,” Alice murmured.
“Then,” Gavin said brightly, “our plan is both to earn money and figure out a way to get farther on less oil. So. Feng, you buy supplies and find a way to get them back to the Lady without letting anyone know where the ship is hidden. And don’t forget about the jar. Alice, you find a supply of paraffin oil and bargain hard.”
“What are you going to do?” Alice asked.
“Earn money. Back away.” He whipped out his fiddle, sprinkled a few coins into the case on the ground before him, and began to play. The merry music on the crowded corner attracted attention fairly quickly, and even as Alice watched, a few people tossed coins of their own into Gavin’s case. He winked his thanks at them and continued the song. Alice let the golden song wash over her. Though the violin was playing to the crowd, the musician was playing for her. He smiled at her, and her breath caught.
Feng plucked at her elbow. “We have much to do.”
She reluctantly let him lead her away. A few moments later, he dodged down a less crowded side street and opened his rucksack. “We should do this first.”
“Oh!” she said. “A good idea.”
From the rucksack Feng took a largish jar, the sort that might store pickles. It held a bunch of grass and twigs and bits of food. Amid all this swarmed a large number of little fireflies. They winked green in the shady side street and cast odd shadows into the corners.
“They seem to be reproducing,” Alice observed. “That’s good. Let me.”
She took the jar from Feng and carefully opened the lid just enough to allow perhaps a dozen of them to escape and fly off before she clapped the jar shut again. For a moment, she was back in London, in Hyde Park. Aunt Edwina’s shriveled corpse had just collapsed to the ground and the cloud of fireflies was pouring out. Gavin swept the jar through the cloud, capturing a number of them, while the rest descended upon London to sting and bite. Each firefly carried a tiny organism—a virion, Aunt Edwina had called it—that attacked and destroyed the bacillus that caused the clockwork plague. Eventually the hardy little fireflies would spread throughout the world and cure or inoculate the entire human population, but it would happen faster with help.
One of the fireflies landed on Alice’s neck and bit her. Normal fireflies didn’t bite, of course, but these were different. She only just stopped herself from slapping, allowing it to fly off instead while Feng shoved the precious jar back into his pack. “Now, let us see what we can find for food and oil,” he said, sounding more like his old self. “And perhaps female company.”
“Feng,” Alice warned.
“Male, then.”
“Feng!”
He pulled down his scarf and grinned rakishly at her from beneath the goggles. It wasn’t an expression Alice associated with Orientals. “That was a joke. Maybe.”
“Let’s just do our—” Alice cut herself off. In an alley nearby, a shadow shifted with a small groan, and two figures shuffled into view. They were both male, and dressed in rags. Blood and pus oozed from a dozen sores on their hands and faces. In several places, skin had split, revealing red muscle. Their bodies were thin, almost emaciated, and they smelled of rotting meat. One of them reached toward Alice and Feng, but flinched from even the indirect sunlight afforded by the side street.
Feng drew back with a hiss. “Plague zombies.”
But Alice was already moving. She strode forward, stripping off her left glove. One of the zombies had enough brain function left to look a little surprised. Most people shunned or fled plague zombies—anyone who touched one was at risk for coming down with the clockwork plague and joining their ranks, steadily losing brain and body function until they dropped dead. Only one in a hundred thousand victims became clockworkers, and no one wanted that, either. Plague zombies lived as pariahs, turned out and spurned even by family. They usually survived by scavenging garbage in the streets. Most of them starved to death before the plague finished them, and their corpses rotted in alleys and sewers because police and other city workers refused to touch them.
Alice approached the first zombie. Mucus ran from its half-rotted nose, and it babbled something incoherent at her. Alice’s gorge rose, and a lifetime of fear slapped her hard. Her mother and brother had died of this very plague, and it had made her father into a cripple. Still, she forced herself to raise her metal-clad hand. She couldn’t save her family, but she could save the person standing in front of her, and she would.
The iron spider’s eyes glowed red, and its clear tubules, which remained painlessly drilled into Alice’s arm, flowed constantly with Alice’s blood. She swiped at the zombie with the gauntlet and the claws made four light cuts across the zombie’s shoulder. Blood from the hollow claws sprayed over the wound as the zombie recoiled. The other zombie started and slowly moved a hand to his cheek. A firefly zipped away, leaving a green phosphorescent streak in the air. Alice, who had been ready to slash at and bleed on him as well, checked herself and stepped back instead.
“Are you well?” Feng asked.
“They can’t infect me,” Alice said. “Or you, for that matter. I gave you the same treatment. You needn’t be afraid of them.”
“It is hard to remember,” Feng admitted.
“It’s working,” Alice breathed. “Look!”
The zombies shuddered. One looked at his hands, turning them over and over, as if seeing them for the first time. The other licked his half-rotted lips and darted glances up and down the side street. Slowly, he took a step out of the darkened alley into the half-lit byway. The light didn’t seem to bother him, even though extreme photosensitivity was one of the early symptoms of the clockwork plague. As Alice watched, some of his sores stopped weeping. He gave a little moan that Alice could only describe as happy and he lurched toward the entrance of the street, where the market lay. The second zombie had vanished back into the shadows. Before Alice quite realized what was happening, the first zombie entered the square. Full sunlight fell across his face, probably for the first time in months, and he lifted his eyes to the sky in exultation.
A woman screamed, and then another. Shouts and cries erupted all over the market as people scrambled all over themselves to get away. Box stalls tipped under the stampede and wood smashed. Alice only heard—the buildings at the entrance of the side street restricted her view. All she saw was the zombie standing in the sunlight like a misshapen angel, oblivious to the chaos around him.
“Oh dear,” Alice muttered.
“Perhaps we move along now,” Feng said.
Another sound made Alice turn. At the mouth of the alley stood the second zombie. With him was a crowd of others—males, females, children. All of them wore torn, filthy rags that dripped blood and pus. Their skin was as tattered as their clothing. Some were missing fingers or even entire limbs. All of them huddled in the alley, not daring to go into the half-light of the side street. The second zombie, the one Alice had scratched, lifted an arm toward Alice in supplication.