The Dragon Men (32 page)

A
FTERWORD

E
mp
ress Dowager Cixi is one of the most enigmatic people in recent history. Strangely little is known about the woman who ruled China from behind a silk curtain in her son's throne room. Historical accounts tend to portray her as either a scheming, murderous vixen out to rule an empire or as an intelligent, capable woman who rose to a difficult occasion. I rather think she was a little of both.

Most of the characters in my fictional China did exist, and they play fictional roles quite similar to the ones they played in history. General Su Shun did trot the young Emperor Xianfeng out to brothels and opium dens as part of a long-term scheme to take the throne for himself, and Cixi did have him beheaded for his trouble. Prince Kung advocated for a more open relationship with the West, though historically he completely failed. Bu Yeh was a dreadfully overweight man who was supposed to be a gatekeeper between China and the West but who actually hated foreigners. The Qilin is a powerful force in Chinese mythology. However, Lieutenant Li lives only in these pages, and the Passage of Silken Footsteps is, as far as I know, completely my own invention.

—Steven Harper

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Steven Harper Piziks was born in Saginaw, Michigan, but he moved around a lot and has lived in Wisconsin, in Germany, and briefly in the Ukraine. Currently he lives with his three sons in southeast Michigan.

His novels include
In the Company of Mind
and
Corporate Mentality
, both science fiction published by Baen Books. He has produced the Silent Empire series for Roc and
Writing the Paranormal Novel
for Writer's Digest. He's also written novels based on
Star Trek
,
Battlestar Galactica
, and
The Ghost Whisperer
.

Mr. Piziks currently teaches high school English in southeast Michigan. His students think he's hysterical, which isn't the same as thinking he's hilarious. When not writing, he plays the folk harp, dabbles in oral storytelling, and spends more time online than is probably good for him. Visit his Web page at www.theclockworkempire.com, and his Twitter feed at www.twitter.com/stevenpiziks.

Read on for an exciting excerpt from

Steven Harper's next Clockwork Empire novel,

THE HAVOC MACHINE

Coming in May 2013 from Roc

Thaddeus Sharpe loosened his brown leather jacket and shoved his way into the low-beamed tavern. A fire glowed like a captured demon in the long ceramic stove, and the smoky air wrapped itself around him in a stifling blanket. At long tables, men in long shirts and blousy trousers clanked glasses of vodka and thumped mugs of
gira
, the fermented drink made from rye bread and favored by Lithuanian peasants. A heavy smell of sweat mixed with the sharp tint of vodka and the earthy slop of
gira.
The autumn evening was already well under way, and the red-faced men shouted more than they talked. Candles in cracked saucers stood upright on the tables to provide light. Dante cocked his good eye at the room and clacked his brass beak from his perch on Thad's shoulder. Several of the men turned to stare at Thad when he blew in. He tensed and automatically felt for the long knife in his sleeve.

“Shut the damn door!”
one of them barked in what Thad assumed was Lithuanian. Thanks to his mother, Thad spoke a number of Eastern European languages, and his father had liked to joke that once you learned three of them, the fourth came free. Thad slammed the door, and most of the men went back to their drinking. Two, however, continued to stare at him.

“Dummy, dummy, dummy,” Dante muttered in Thad's ear. “Stare and stare, here and there.” He squawked.

“Shut it.” Thad's jaw was set in a line. His dark hair curled beneath a workman's cap and his face was free of facial hair, but there his resemblance to the men in the tavern ended. His lean build, long leather jacket, and stout boots made him stand out among the plain Lithuanian homespun. The ratty brass parrot on his shoulder didn't help. Maybe he should duck out and look for a way in through the back.

The two men, both large and callused, got up from their long benches and strode across the sticky tavern floor before Thad could retreat. One of them loomed over Thad, his breath heavy with vodka.

“I have heard of your parrot,”
he said in thick Lithuanian.
“You are the man who kills clockworkers. Many, many clockworkers.”

The knife was already in Thad's hand.
“What of it?”
he replied, his own accent heavy with British vowels. The blade gleamed silver in the candlelight, though neither man seemed to notice. Thad was already calculating—one slash at the throat to incapacitate the first man, shove him backward into the second man, flee into the street. Dante's forged feathers creaked in his ear as the parrot tensed.

The man clapped Thad on the shoulder.
“I will buy your first drink,”
he boomed.
“And my brother will buy your second. Bartender! Vodka and
gira
for our new friend!”

Moments later, Thaddeus found himself wedged in at one of the splintery trestle tables with a clay mug by his left hand and a shot glass at his right. A dish of salt and a loaf of dark rye bread sat in front of him. The men at the table raised their own mugs and glasses to Thad, drained them, and wiped their mustaches with their sleeves in one smooth motion.

“So. How many clockworkers have you killed?”
asked the first man. His name was Arturas and his brother was Mykolas.

“I keep no count.”
Thad raised his
gira
mug, tried a gulp, and suppressed a grimace. It was like drinking sour rye bread.

“Liar, liar, liar,” Dante croaked in his ear.

“Shut it,” Thad said, glad none of the men seemed to speak English.

“Who is this man, Arturas?”
asked one of the other drinkers.

“This,”
Arturas boomed in reply,
“is the man who killed Erek the Terror outside Krakow and Vile Basia in the sewers of Prague. This is the man who killed countless monsters and saved a thousand lives. They say he walks the streets with a brass parrot on his shoulder and a cannon in his trousers.”

The men roared at that, and Thad, laughing but uncomfortable at the attention, raised his mug with an ironic grin.

“This man,”
Mykolas added in conclusion,
“is a hero!”

Arturas threw his free arm around Thad and clashed his glass against his brother's. The other men, all half drunk, joined in, slopping
gira
and vodka onto the bread plate. Thad glanced about uneasily and pulled a small card from his coat pocket.

“What brings the mighty clockwork killer into a piss-hole like
Bûsi Treèias?” Arturas demanded.

“Hey!”
the bartender snapped.

Dante cocked his head and Thad glanced down at the card in his hand. In graceful script on one side was engraved:

On the back in black ink was scribbled
7.45 sharp, Bûsi Treèias.
A ragged boy had handed him the card on the streets of Vilnius earlier this afternoon and fled before Thad could even react. Bûsi Treèias was the name of the tavern. It meant “You'll be third,” and it was the name that made Thad uneasy, though not so uneasy that he avoided the meeting.

The name on the card was Sofiya Ivanova Ekk, a Russian woman's name, and Russian women did not frequent taverns in the Polish-Lithuanian Union. Neither did Polish-Lithuanian women, for that matter. He thought about asking the men at the table if they knew Sofiya Ekk, but had the feeling that they might think he was inquiring after a prostitute or, worse, someone's sister.

“I thought I might have business here,”
he said in his heavy Lithuanian.
“But I seem to have made new friends instead.”

That brought on another smashing together of mugs and more knocking back of vodka. Thad tried the latter this time, and it burned a fiery trail down to his stomach. Tears streamed from his eyes. He hastily snatched up some bread, dipped it in salt, and wolfed it down.

A glass of honest-to-god beer landed in front of him. Startled, Thad looked up. The balding bartender withdrew his hand and jerked his head toward a corner of the bar. A figure wrapped in scarlet sat in a shadow far away from the red-hot stove. Thad clapped Arturas on the shoulder and picked up his beer.
“I seem to have business after all.”

Arturas and the other men didn't seem to mind, though they watched him curiously as he picked his way across the crowded room with his beer.

“Pretty, pretty, pretty boy,” Dante said. “Beer and crackers.”

When Thad reached the corner, the scarlet figure resolved itself into a woman in a hooded cloak of rich scarlet velvet, unfashionable but not unheard-of. The hood covered the upper half of her face, and an untouched glass of something red sat on the small table in front of her. She had an actual chair instead of a bench, and a matching chair waited across from her. The noise of the tavern seemed to die away as Thad gingerly sat down. He had talked to his share of women in taverns elsewhere, but these circumstances were definitely odd. They were also intriguing.

“Pretty, pretty, pretty,” Dante said again.

“Miss Ekk?” Thad put out a hand, half ready to snatch it back.

“I am that woman.” She shook hands. Her palm was smooth and soft. Thad wondered if she expected him to kiss the back, but he didn't. Instead, he set his elbow on the table and let Dante walk down his arm. Dante did get heavy after a while. The parrot waddled over to investigate the unlit candle. Gears creaked uneasily through bare spots where brass feathers were missing or broken, and the bottom half of his beak was off-center, as if Dante had flown through a tornado and only barely lived to tell about it.

“I am thrilled you decided to come, Mr. Sharpe,” the woman said. Her English carried a Russian accent, and her voice was low and powerful.

“I'm a little surprised to find someone like you in a place like this, Miss Ekk,” Thad countered. His eyes flickered up and down her form, trying to assess her, but she wasn't moving and the damned cloak hid everything. He couldn't even tell how old she was.

“Someone like me?”

He gestured at the tavern. More than one person was still staring in their direction. Normally it would have made him more nervous, but right now he found it reassuring to have other eyes on him. “Proper females don't go to bars in the Polish-Lithuanian Union. Or in Russia. They stay behind closed doors and do proper female things.”

“Rules are for people who think little, Mr. Sharpe. People like us, we think large. That is why I wished to meet you.”

“In a tavern with the name
You'll be third
?” Thad brandished the card.

“I believe the name shows that the place is very popular—there are always two people ahead of you waiting to be served. The name fits, no?”

“It's also the Lithuanian way of saying your luck will turn for the worse,” Thad spat. “Did you think I didn't know?”

Sofiya laughed quietly. “You are not superstitious. You use scientific knowledge. You know from experience how the clockwork plague works, for example. These people,” she gestured at the room, “think the plague comes from the devil. They think that when someone catches the disease and it turns him into a shambling mound of flesh that wanders through the streets, feeding on garbage until his brain rots away, that God meant it as a punishment. And they think that when the disease makes someone into a clockworker who creates glorious and impossible inventions—”

“—and goes mad and does horrible things to innocent to people,” Thad put in.

“Doom, destruction, death, despair,” said Dante. “Doom!”

“Shut it,” Thad ordered.

“They think this also is a punishment from God,” Sofiya finished as if no one had spoken. “Their Church tells them so. But we know it is nothing more than a disease that acts as a disease must.”

“The plague is a curse, and the faster we eradicate everything connected with it, the better,” Thad spat. He found his left hand was shaking, and he forced it to still.

“I told you we think large,” Sofiya said with a nod. “And I am glad to see that you can react as a human being, Mr. Sharpe.”

Thad clenched his teeth. “Why are we talking about this? What do you care about the clockwork plague?”

“You have caught my interest, Mr. Sharpe. You are a very interesting person to very many people.
Very
interesting.”

That set off several small alarm bells inside his head.

“I don't want to offend,” Thad said, now with careful control in every syllable, “but I feel I should point out that the parrot, which has moved to a strategic spot on the table less than eight inches in front of you, can deliver more than two thousand pounds of pressure from the business end of that sharp beak, more than enough pressure to slice open your windpipe. I also have a knife on a spring-load that can open up an artery so quick, you won't even know you're dead before the blade is clean and back up my sleeve. Finally, all those men over there, the ones you were scorning as small-thinking peasants a moment ago, seem to like me quite a lot, and I think they would be very upset if anyone tried something foolish.”

“Such a mental condition you have,” Sofiya tutted. “I believe the English word is
paranoia.
”

His muscles were growing tight with tension. The situation was unusual. Thad didn't like unusual. It was too much like hunting clockworkers. But tension made fights difficult. He forced himself to relax. “I deal with clockworkers all the time. One can never be too paranoid.”

“As you like, Mr. Sharpe. But I do not have a wish to harm you.” From the folds of her cloak, she produced a small purse, which she dropped on the table. It clinked. “I wish to hire you.”

That got Thad's attention fast, though he made no move to touch the purse. “Dante.”

The parrot expertly tore the purse open, revealing the glint of silver and gold coins, a generous offering. “Pretty, pretty, pretty,” he said, plucking a coin from the pile with a claw and bending it in half with his beak.

Thad didn't relax his guard. “People don't usually hire me to kill clockworkers. They usually beg me, and I'm usually happy to oblige. Why offer me money?”

“You may do with the clockworker as you wish. It means nothing to me. I want—or rather, my employer wants—something else entirely. That is why we are offering you money.”

Now Thad leaned back in the hard chair. “Your employer?”

“I represent a third party. He does not go out in public and needs people to do for him. He heard you were traveling with the Kalakos Circus these days, and when they came to Vilnius, he asked me to arrange for your employment.”

“I'm not seeking long-term—”

“This is a single piece of work,” Sofiya interrupted. “And it is exactly what you do.”

“Money, money,” Dante said. “Pretty money.” He reached for another coin. Thaddeus absently moved the purse out of his reach and took a pull from his beer.

“You can see my face,” he said. “I would like to see yours. So I know who I'm dealing with.”

Without hesitation, Sofiya cast back her scarlet hood. Golden hair spilled across her shoulders and clear blue eyes looked out over finely molded features and a sharp chin. The small scar that ran along her left jawline was the only flaw to her beauty. Thad didn't outwardly react, though inwardly he caught his breath. Such sweet loveliness ran a sharp contrast to the dull tavern and its sour drinks—and brought up bitter memories.