Alice glanced at the well in which Cricket and Lady Orchid were drowning, then raised the heavy pistol and aimed it at Su Shun. The cable dragged her arm toward the battery pack, which lay at her feet. Her hands were shaking. She had never shot anyone before. Su Shun turned to look at her. The fear had left his eyes. Flames from the fires behind Alice reflected in them, giving him a dragon’s gaze. He had just murdered two people and planned to kill thousands more. Why was she hesitating? Her finger tightened on the trigger.
The wire sword in Su Shun’s other hand lashed out. With a vvvvvip it sliced through the power cable. It dropped to the stairs at Alice’s feet, spitting orange sparks.
“Oh bugger,” Alice said, and wondered if those would be her last words ever.
Su Shun drew back the sword. Alice tensed to dodge away, but knew she wouldn’t make it. Dragon Men were beginning to swarm the steps. She had come so far, only to die.
Another blast rocked the stairs. This time Alice did lose her balance. She fell backward and landed on her posterior. Su Shun was flung down, and even the Dragon Men lost their balance. The sound of the blast had a strangely musical quality to it, and the realization made Alice’s heart sing. She looked up. Gavin, blue wings spread wide, rushed down from the sky with the Impossible Cube in his hands and the silver nightingale on his shoulder. Alice couldn’t have been happier. He landed beside her as she scrambled to her feet. Two of Alice’s whirligig automatons joined him, one of them still trailing the bit of fuse it had used to light the powder stores.
“I’m so glad to see you,” she said. “All three of you.”
The automatons squeaked, and Gavin grinned.
“Sorry I took off like that,” he said in that wonderful voice of his. He aimed the Cube at Su Shun. “I’ll handle him. Where’s Lady Orchid?”
“The well!” Without another word Alice sprinted across the lawn, dodging cinders and burning patches of grass. Her automatons followed. The soldiers had kicked the cover open, though the large freestanding windlass remained in place. Next to the windlass stood a mechanical lizard of some sort. It wasn’t bearded like the dragons Alice had seen. Both its front feet were placed on the windlass. Cricket and Lady Orchid had been down there only a few minutes. They could still be alive. Unless they had hit their heads on the way down or broken something or if they couldn’t swim or. .
Alice called down. “Lady Orchid! Cricket! Can you hear me?”
Nothing. Alice felt sick. Then a faint voice called back, “Alice?”
It was Lady Orchid. Alice breathed relief.
“I’ll help you!” she called, hoping Lady Orchid could understand the idea, if not the words. “Hang on!”
She tried to think. The two whirligigs couldn’t maneuver down in the well, and it took four of them to lift a person anyway. Alice examined the mechanical lizard. It had controls on it, levers and buttons hidden among the scales. Over at the steps, Su Shun had switched off the sword to thrust it into his belt and was now brandishing the Ebony Chamber. Gavin blasted another shot of energy, this time at Su Shun, but Su Shun caught the power in the open Chamber, which swallowed it. Heart pounding, Alice let her talent go to work. In moments she worked out how the controls operated, and she slapped a button. The lizard sprang to life. It cranked the windlass, and a bucket more than three feet across dropped into the well. The Dragon Men on the steps had recovered from Gavin’s first blast and were moving in toward him. Gavin flared his wings, knocking two aside. The other Dragon Men had reached their automatons, but Phipps and Li continued to keep them busy with suppressive fire while the soldiers fought with one another, roaring like tigers and shedding scarlet blood.
A faint splash as well as a shout from Lady Orchid came from below. Alice hoped it meant she was ready. She was reaching for another control on the lizard when a hard hand spun her round. A Dragon Man, salamander glowing around his ear, stared at her. He licked his lips with quick, darting motions and said something Alice didn’t understand, though her skin went cold at his tone. He held up a serrated knife. A strange calm came over Alice. She had hesitated on the steps with Su Shun, and it had cost so much. Now she wouldn’t hesitate. Everything seemed to move slowly, as if wrapped in honey. She smiled at the Dragon Man and put out a slow hand to caress his cheek. He smiled, then shifted his grip on the knife, ready to stab. With a quick twist, Alice wrapped her fingers around the salamander at his ear and yanked.
The little machine came free with a wet, tearing sound. A trail of blood arced through the air. The Dragon Man’s face went blank. He collapsed to the ground in convulsions, leaping and twitching like a landed fish. At last he gave one final spasm and went still. Alice didn’t stop to examine him. She dropped the salamander and slapped the control on the lizard. It reversed itself, drawing the large bucket up with easy strength. In moments Orchid and Cricket appeared at the top of the well, drenched but unharmed. Lady Orchid’s beautiful face was pinched with fear and pain. Cricket clung to her as they both sat in the bucket, and she held the rope with her good hand. Her stump trailed water, cleansed and strangely purified. Unfortunately, Alice could stay only long enough to make sure they were all right before she turned and ran back to the triple stairs. The staircase nearest her climbed toward the side of the big pavilion, which would send her up along Su Shun’s right and, hopefully, out of his range of vision.
“You two,” she said to the whirligigs, “go find Prince Kung and tell him to send reinforcements.”
The whirligigs zipped off into the night sky.
Gavin, meanwhile, had taken to the air again to avoid the advancing Dragon Men, half a dozen of whom had crowded around Su Shun and the Ebony Chamber. The Impossible Cube was barely glowing now, nearly out of power, and Gavin seemed reluctant to use it. Alice thought about the Dragon Man she had just killed and tasted nausea again. She understood Gavin’s disinclination to kill.
But when Alice arrived at the side steps and started to climb, she saw things were changing. Li’s men had turned the tide and had defeated or killed most of the Imperial Guards. Li and Phipps had destroyed nearly all the Chinese automatons, and even now Phipps was turning to focus her pistol on Su Shun and the Dragon Men around them. Phipps had no compunctions about killing.
“Surrender, Su Shun!” Phipps barked, or so Alice assumed-Phipps didn’t translate.
Su Shun looked down at Phipps and her enormous pistol, at Li, who was finishing off the last of the automatons, at his soldiers, who were dead or defeated. His gaze lingered on Gavin, who hovered above them all with the Impossible Cube, and then he laughed again. Alice was truly beginning to hate this man and his grating laugh. Phipps aimed her pistol at him, but before she could do more, Su Shun raised the Jade Hand one more time and shouted. His voice reached Gavin, who still hovered above the carnage, and the salamander glowed in his ear.
For a wild moment, Alice thought there was no way for anything to happen because Su Shun was giving the order in Chinese, but of course Gavin understood that language now. Gavin twitched once. Phipps’s pistol whined, and the tip glowed orange.
“Susan!” Alice screamed. “Look out!”
Gavin sang. As it always did, the Impossible Cube twisted the crystalline note into something terrible, and a dreadful power thundered down. It swept Phipps and Li and the rest of the soldiers aside like rag dolls. Even off to one side as she was, Alice was crushed to the stairs, and a hot wind blasted her hair and skirts. Sand and small stones stung her skin. She tried to push herself upright, but the forces pushing her down were too strong. The noise and pain went on and on, and she huddled against the steps in a hell of Gavin’s devising.