At last Uri said, “You need to find your own self, Son, wherever that is.”
“Fine, Dad,” Gavin said tiredly. “You have your life, and I have-”
“But,” Uri interrupted, “I think the universe would smile if your path and mine traveled side by side again.”
Gavin gave a short bark of a laugh at that. “And maybe that’s the best I can hope for. All right, Dad. Maybe I’ll come back. But think about this-maybe you’ll come back.”
They embraced, a gesture made clumsy by Gavin’s wing harness, and for a small moment Gavin let himself be a small boy again. Then he turned and leaped off the edge of the porch. His wings left a blue trail as he followed the silver nightingale back to Alice, the Impossible Cube clutched in his hands.
Chapter Sixteen
“Li and his men will be beheaded in the courtyard,” Phipps muttered to Alice. “Su Shun has other plans for us. They won’t be pleasant.”
“No doubt,” Alice replied tightly. Su Shun’s men had taken her wire sword away, of course, along with the new pistols and the weapons Li’s soldiers carried. They couldn’t take away the metallic hands and arms, at least. Or rather, Alice amended privately, they hadn’t done so yet.
Su Shun’s men herded them out of the false storage building and into the streets of the Forbidden City proper. It truly was a city, with walkways and buildings and parks, and Alice wondered whether she was the first Westerner ever to see it. She also wondered if she would survive to tell about it. The buildings all had the odd peaked roofs that swooped up at the eaves. Lanterns on poles burned everywhere to provide light. The air smelled of gunpowder and hot metal. The thudding and thumping Alice had felt underground were more prominent up here.
Imperial soldiers surrounded them on all sides, weapons drawn and ready. Su Shun himself, dressed in a suit of yellow lacquered armor, walked at the head of the procession with a single soldier between him and Alice. He had taken personal possession of Alice’s wire sword and wore the battery pack, though he had to wield the weapon with his left hand. The Jade Hand glowed softly at his right. Alice stared at it. The thing they had come for was so close she could almost touch it. She tried to keep the fear under control, but every step took them closer to torture and death. The iron spider on her left hand felt chilly despite the heat of the August night.
“I thought there were no men in the Forbidden City after sunset,” she murmured to Lieutenant Li. “Are all these soldiers eunuchs now?”
“No,” Li murmured back. “The emperor would appear to have made some changes.”
A soldier snapped something at them, presumably an order to be quiet, and Alice fell silent. Her mouth was dry, and she desperately wanted a drink. As they marched through the streets, the machinery sounds grew louder and were punctuated with the occasional explosion. They passed an enormous well with a freestanding windlass over it, and Alice noticed a sad look pass over Lady Orchid’s face. Alice wanted to ask about it, but she didn’t dare.
Lady Orchid still held the Ebony Chamber, and Cricket walked next to her. The boy looked frightened and was trying not to show it, a feeling Alice understood. She scanned the skies. Empty.
Not far from the well, they reached what had once been a wide expanse of lawn. The grass was chewed up, and divots of earth lay everywhere. Many of the stone walkways had been shattered into rubble. Dragon Men, their salamanders glowing in their ears, worked like mad among dozens of animal-shaped machines that stomped and roared and clawed and breathed fire and shot rockets into the air. Piles of ammunition stood with enormous kegs of gunpowder near stacks and stacks of raw metal, and forges glowed like scattered demons. Lady Orchid put a hand over her mouth at the sight, and Alice understood that this had once been a place of tranquility and beauty. Heaven had become hell.
At one end of the lawn stood a wide marble three-sided staircase that led up to a tall, multiroofed building-a pavilion of some sort. Large chunks of the pavilion had been carved out, either blasted away or pried loose. Two stone dragon statues guarded the top of the stairs. Their jade eyes and teeth had been pried out. Su Shun led them to the front staircase, which faced the ruined lawn. Su Shun mounted the steps partway to the top, turned to face them, and held out the Jade Hand. Instantly, the soldiers forced everyone down to their knees and pressed their faces to the stones at the bottom of the stairs. The soldier who forced Alice down was none too gentle about it. He rapped her forehead against the ground hard enough to make her dizzy, and she couldn’t help crying out in pain. The soldier pulled her upright, though she was kept on her knees. Her face burned. Su Shun stood on the fifth step, his half-brass face a hard mask. He said something sharp, and two soldiers hauled Lady Orchid up the steps to him, Ebony Chamber in her grip. The gold dragons crawled across it. Cricket shouted something and tried to run after her. Su Shun snarled, and one of the soldiers twisted Cricket’s arm behind him. He howled and struggled. Alice wanted to snatch him up and run, but there was nowhere to flee to. Then Lady Orchid spoke to him, and he stopped. Su Shun flicked out the Jade Hand and cracked her across the face, sending her to her knees. Cricket yelled again, but the soldier easily put him on the ground, too. Alice trembled with outrage but kept her wits about her. Nothing would be gained by protest. Not yet.
Su Shun reached down and plucked the Ebony Chamber from Lady Orchid with the Jade Hand and set it on the stairs above him, then said something to the assembled soldiers and Westerners.
“He’s telling us to translate for anyone who can’t understand a proper language,” Phipps said in a tight voice. “He wants everyone to understand what is happening here.”
“The weak and corrupt dynasty is at an end,” Su Shun boomed, with Phipps translating a moment behind him. “The final remnants of the dogs we called the Qing kneel before a true emperor, not an opium smoker who kowtows to the West, but a warrior who conquers it.”
“You are not the emperor, Su Shun.” Lady Orchid was kneeling on the stairs, but her back was straight and her demeanor was proud. “You can kill me and you can kill the son of Xianfeng, but that will not make you emperor.”
Su Shun flipped the switch on Alice’s sword, and it growled to life. He moved the wire blade within an inch of Lady Orchid’s throat. The Imperial Concubine didn’t turn a hair, and Alice was impressed despite herself.
“Let us find out,” Su Shun said.
But Lady Orchid couldn’t be stopped. Her voice rang throughout the courtyard, and even the Dragon Men paused in their work to listen. “Sitting at the emperor’s table and eating from his dishes does not make a good emperor, Su Shun. It only makes a fat general. We all know that the Ebony Chamber guards the name of the true heir to the throne. It does not guard your name.”
The flesh half of Su Shun’s face flushed a deep red at Lady Orchid’s words. Alice didn’t understand the reason for it-the insult about eating at the table seemed mild to her. Perhaps it was worse in Chinese than it was in English.
“And now your head will bounce to the stones while your son watches.” Su Shun drew back the sword. Cricket continued to struggle in the soldier’s grip.
“And now you will be nothing but an empty suit of lacquer,” Orchid retorted. “Before all these witnesses, all these soldiers, all these Dragon Men, I say you are afraid to open the Ebony Chamber with the Jade Hand.”
The trap snapped shut. Alice could see the understanding on Su Shun’s face. He himself had arranged for many witnesses for the proceedings here, and those witnesses would spread far and wide what Su Shun did next. If he refused to open the Ebony Chamber with the Jade Hand, everyone would whisper behind his back about it, and his shaky hold on the throne would erode and vanish like farmland in a desert. If he did open it, there was every reason to believe the paper inside would bear Cricket’s name. Su Shun had lost. Lady Orchid raised her chin in triumph despite the sword vibrating beneath it.