Alice held her breath. Su Shun held the humming sword. A flicker of movement would send Lady Orchid’s head tumbling down the steps. The tendons in Su Shun’s hand stood out like wires. Abruptly he swept the sword away.
“We will. . open the Ebony Chamber,” he said.
Wisely, Lady Orchid said nothing, though Alice could read the exultation in her eyes. Alice herself felt as if she might float away with the sudden release of tension. Su Shun slowly turned to the Chamber on the steps above him. The gold dragons on its glossy surface glimmered and shifted in the bright lantern light, and the phoenix latch seemed to flicker and dance with a life of its own.
“I believe the combination is eighteen,” Lady Orchid supplied helpfully. “It is already set. Naturally, the general would not dream of changing the numbers.”
A thundercloud crossed Su Shun’s face, and for a moment Alice wondered if Lady Orchid had gone too far in addressing him as general and obliquely saying he might try to lie. But Su Shun pressed the Jade Hand to the phoenix latch. A clear click sounded across the courtyard. The Dragon Men and the soldiers gave up all pretense of politeness and craned their necks to see. The lid of the Ebony Chamber popped open. Su Shun’s jaw moved back and forth as he ground his teeth, but he reached inside. Alice felt as if she might fly apart.
There was a long pause. Then Su Shun laughed. He laughed and laughed and laughed some more. He pulled the Jade Hand-empty-from the box and knocked the container sideways so everyone could see inside.
The Ebony Chamber was empty.
A sigh went through the assembled people. All the fear came rushing back. Alice’s stomach churned, and she nearly vomited on the stones.
“Before these witnesses, I proclaim the emperor declared no heir.” Su Shun raised the growling sword to the sky, and his voice was rich with reclaimed luster. “Since I bear the Jade Hand-”
“No!” Lady Orchid rushed at Su Shun, her fingers formed into claws. She swiped at the fleshy side of his face and scored furrows. But he caught her wrist with the Jade Hand and twisted. She dropped to one knee.
“Your filthy hand struck the emperor!” he howled. “Let it pay the price before you die!”
He swung the wire sword around. The snarling blade sliced through Lady Orchid’s right wrist as if it were paper. Lady Orchid screamed. Her hand dropped to the staircase with a horrible plop. Su Shun released her, and she held the stump before her eyes, too shocked to believe what she was seeing. The blade had cauterized the wound as it cut, leaving no blood. Threads of smoke drifted up from the half-cooked meat. This time Alice did throw up. Vomit spattered across the cracked cobblestones and left burning acid in her mouth and nose. Phipps looked green. Cricket was crying openly now, not caring who saw.
Alice thought she heard a faint, familiar clicking sound from overhead, and a bit of whirling brass caught the tail of her eye. She didn’t dare look directly at it.
“Enjoy your perfect beauty now, Imperial Concubine,” Su Shun said. “Captain! Throw this pig filth down the well like her dogs and send her illegitimate brat after her.”
The captain bodily lifted Lady Orchid and carried her toward the well Alice had noticed earlier. The soldier with Cricket followed. Both Orchid and Cricket fought and yelled. Alice cast about for something to do, but she couldn’t think of a thing. A dozen weapons were pointed at her, and if she got up or even protested, she would die in an instant. In cold horror she watched as the captain lifted the screaming Lady Orchid over his head and dropped her into the dark pit. The earth swallowed her screams. Seconds later, the soldier dropped Cricket in after, and his cries likewise vanished. Alice wept. She couldn’t even hear the splash.
“Monster!” she cried at Su Shun, tears streaming down her face. “May you rot in hell!”
“I won’t translate,” Phipps said hoarsely. “Though I think he understood the general idea.”
That seemed to be the case. Su Shun made a sharp gesture, and one of the soldiers grabbed Alice’s arms with a steel grip that left bruises. He dragged her up to the stairs to the new emperor’s feet. The eyes on her spider gauntlet glowed green-no one near her carried the clockwork plague. She looked up at Su Shun and his yellow armor and his half-brass face and his metal neck all ringed in rivets. There was a fury in his eyes, but fear, too. In that moment, she saw that he was little more than a boy surrounding himself with a wall of metal and creating toys that would fight for him. Under other circumstances she might have found him pathetic or even pitiable, but right now a woman and a child were, at his order, drowning in fear and darkness. The snippet of whirling brass tugged at the tail of her eye again, but she kept her eyes on him.
“Do not look the emperor in the eye, pig spawn,” Su Shun snapped.
“You’re nothing but a tin bully,” Alice snapped back, and spat at his feet.
At those particular words, Phipps, Li, and all of Li’s men put their hands over their ears. So did Alice. The imperial soldiers had time to look puzzled. In a rage, Su Shun drew back the vibrating sword, and at that moment, an explosion rocked the Forbidden City. Heat blasted through the courtyard, and a shock wave knocked flat everyone who wasn’t kneeling, including Su Shun. A second blast followed the first. Several of the Dragon Men’s mechanical animals were knocked over. The gunpowder and ammunition stores-the source of the explosion-roiled up to the sky in a choking cloud of black smoke. Alice, who was braced for the event, recovered first. She leaped past Su Shun and snatched up the Ebony Chamber. With shaking fingers, she spun the phoenix latch to 000 and opened the lid. Out of the impossibly small space, Alice drew one of Gavin’s new pistols, trailing its battery pack by a cable, and threw it to Phipps. Alice tossed a second pistol to Li and kept the third for herself. She started to shrug herself into the battery pack, but the well caught her eye. How long had Lady Orchid and Cricket been down there?
Chaos erupted in all directions. Phipps turned and fired at the Dragon Men’s automatons without bothering to put the battery pack on first. Her pistol spat crackling orange bolts that hissed and sparked over the mechanical animals, blowing holes in them or melting them. Li joined her. The black-clad Dragon Men scattered like shadows before the light, howling as they went. Li’s men shot to their feet and leaped for their imperial counterparts, wrestling the stunned guards to get their weapons back. Su Shun was staggering to his feet, shaking his head. Alice tried fumbling with the battery pack, but her fingers were numb. And the well-always the well.
Su Shun raised the Jade Hand and shouted something. The Hand glowed, and all about the courtyard, tiny points of light showed a gleaming salamander where a Dragon Man heard his voice and halted dead in his tracks.
“Alice!” Phipps yelled, still firing at automatons. “He’s telling the Dragon Men to defend him! Shoot him! Shut him up!”
The Dragon Men were running toward their inventions now, the fifteen or twenty that still worked. The Dragon Men whose automatons had been destroyed ran toward Su Shun, apparently ready to fight with their bare hands. It might have been funny but for the heightened strength and reflexes granted them by the plague. Two of the Dragon Men, in fact, leaped forward like baboons, covering half the distance to Su Shun in a single jump. Li caught one in the chest with a pistol shot, and he vanished in a fiery scream.