Lord Regret's Price: A Jane Austen Space Opera, Book 3 (13 page)

Her jaws ached from holding back a bored yawn, and even though she’d only eaten a bite of each food, her corset was already miserably tight.

It was a relief when Dowager Empress Cixi begged leave to escort their guests to their chambers.

“Not yet.” The Emperor didn’t even look up from the plate of small cakes placed before him. He’d devoured dish after dish of food, so whatever illness he suffered hadn’t affected his appetite. As thin and weak as he appeared to be, she couldn’t imagine where all those calories were going. Perhaps his body was unable to utilize the nutrition. “We’re enjoying Masters’s tales too much to let him retire already.”

Cixi rose anyway. “Then let us leave you gentlemen to your tales, and I’ll give the lady a tour of the gardens.”

Charlotte didn’t wait for the Emperor’s approval; she leapt to her feet. “Oh, that would be delightful.”

Sig stood too, despite the narrowed look the Dowager Empress shot in his direction. She must have wanted a private moment. Charlotte took his arm and followed her to the door. They’d already decided Sig would attempt to slip away as soon as possible for reconnaissance, although neither man had been enthusiastic about the idea of leaving her unattended. Even now she barely restrained the irritated sniff of annoyance.
As if I need a nanny to wipe my nose.

As the Dowager Empress led them deeper into the hall, silent attendants opened and shut doors for them. They exited into a spacious park to rival Hyde Park. Charlotte reached down and ran her hand through the lush blue-green grass reaching nearly to her knees. She’d never seen grass quite like it before. The color was more suited to a deep, secret lagoon deep in the jungles of Kali Kata. They walked across the park without any guiding stones or path, sheltered by sweeping willows dotted with cornflower-blue flowers. She wanted to take a sample of each plant in order to determine its origin, but she feared that might be rude.

Seeing her interest, Dowager Empress Cixi said, “The first Qing Emperor once saw an alien woman with eyes he described as the marriage between the sea and the finest emerald. He brought her to live with him in Xuanyuan, causing much distress among his existing wives. When she was poisoned and died after suffering for days, he commissioned his physicians to develop a plant that he could enjoy in the park that would remind him of her. They worked many years to develop this grass until it was precisely the correct color of her glorious eyes.”

“And what happened to the wife who poisoned the lady?” Sig asked.

Cixi didn’t reply right away, which told Charlie it was going to be an ugly scenario. “There was no way for the Emperor to know which of his wives ordered the poison. They all certainly had motive and opportunity. None of them would betray the other, and not even the eunuchs could be bribed into revealing the guilty party.”

“They were all killed,” Charlie said with dread surety.

Cixi inclined her head. “All of his current wives were ordered to the Palace of Heavenly Purity and hung, one by one, with his Empress Consort the last to meet the noose. I think he hoped that she might give him a name once the guilty woman was dead, but she was silent until the end.”

She paused at the edge of white marble marking the path to the next building. She smiled and Charlotte couldn’t help but compare her to Majel. The Dowager Empress had the same cold, hard light in her eyes, the secret core of steel that had already committed wholly to doing whatever must be done in order to achieve her goals.

No matter the cost.

“Their ashes were kept until the ministers developed the appropriate color of grass, so they could be used to fertilize the new growth. Each day, his new wives were sent here to walk for exercise as a reminder.”

Charlotte turned back to the park, once so beautiful and surreal with its unexpected colors. Now the sight of all that blue-green made her want to bring Britannia’s impressive fleet here to wipe this place from existence. So many fragile lives hung on the will of one person, one man, with the power to destroy not just his own wives and family, but an entire civilization.

So much power centralized in one person was frightening. Queen Majel had certainly committed her own atrocities. Her hands were far from lily-white. Was she any better a ruler than the Emperor? Cixi? The Emperor who’d had all his wives killed because he couldn’t find the guilty one?

Of course Charlotte also had to face the knowledge that her life—and the lives of the two men she valued most in this universe—was now dependent on this powerful Emperor’s largess. At any moment, he could change his mind, have them seized and hung and burned, their ashes merely fertilizer for his next garden.

Her curiosity had brought them here. The same curiosity had led to her deadly inventions, so innocently conceived and so atrociously used to slaughter entire planets.

As they stepped into the next building, Sig lightly touched the small of her back and then he stepped aside into the shadows.
Time for him to investigate and find his mark.

Cixi met her gaze and held it for long moments, but said nothing about his disappearance.
Now it’s time for me to investigate my own mark.

The Dowager Empress smiled as though she’d had exactly the same thought. “If you’re not in a rush to see your quarters, there’s something else I’d hoped to show you, but I wasn’t sure if we’d have the opportunity.”

“I’d be delighted to see anything you wish to show me, Your Majesty.”

Cixi continued that same regal, sedate pace down another ornately decorated hall. Every surface was paneled, carved or gilded. Attendants preceded and followed, at least twenty women and eunuchs at Charlotte’s last count. She’d heard tales about the brutal shuffling for position, especially among the eunuchs with their endless bribes and backstabbing. Surely at least one of them was Ci’an’s spy.

Charlotte wanted to ask if the Dowager Empress knew Sig had been contracted, and if so, by whom, to kill whom? Did she suspect that Queen Majel might already have spies embedded in the deepest, most secure positions of their government? That a warship had been sighted?

Questions that Charlotte could never ask. She could only bide her time and see where the chips fell. Was Cixi behind the assassination attempt? Why could she want Charlotte dead? If Cixi had contracted Sig’s deadly services, who was the target? Did it even matter in the end whether she wanted her competition eliminated or some other threat to the Dragon Throne?

Charlotte had lived her entire life in the shadow of a woman who’d do absolutely anything to keep her throne secure for herself primarily, but also for her royal line. Cixi was in a rather unique situation. She’d have much more power if her son were out of the way. In many ways, Charlotte sympathized with her, especially after seeing the existing tensions in the household.

Not to mention the ominous power the Emperor held and the thousands of lives he could crush on a whim.

What vile manner of punishment would he devise for his mother—and her supporters—if Cixi tried to take the throne?

One of the attendants paused at a side door. At first, Charlotte thought nothing of it, until, one by one, each of the attendants took up post at every crossing hall and exit, until only one heavyset, balding eunuch walked with them. The Dowager Empress’s steps lengthened, though her manner remained calm and regal. They paused at a dead-end hall. A massive portrait of some long-dead Empress dominated the wall from floor to ceiling. It was so quiet that Charlotte could hear the blood rushing through her head and her quickened heartbeat from the exercise.

A count of ten passed, and the eunuch spoke. “All clear, Your Majesty.”

Cixi laid her hand on the painting, directly on top of the golden phoenix embroidered on the woman’s flowing robes, and the entire wall moved. Stepping inside the darkened area, she whispered, “Quickly, Lady Wyre. No one must know of this or we’ll both be dead before the sun rises.”

Not an encouragement to follow. Charlotte held her ground. She had more than her own life at stake. “Where are we going?”

“To the fifth level. There’s something I must show you.”

If the fourth level was closed to everyone outside of the royal family, then how much more secure and private was the fifth level? In their brief tour with Prince Gong, he’d said nothing about a fifth level.

“Please, Lady Wyre.” Cixi tipped her chin up higher, but desperation made her voice shake. “Only you can help me. It’s why I invited you to Xuanyuan.”

With a slight incline of her head, Charlotte followed the Empress into the secret room. So
she
had Charlotte invited…not the Emperor himself? Or perhaps she’d made the suggestion and her son had had his own reasons for inviting foreigners into his Forbidden City. The hidden door shut behind her with a click and she found herself in another moving wardrobe shooting upward. She shivered slightly, goose bumps dancing on her skin. Once women entered the fourth level, they never left Xuanyuan again. They became the Emperor’s property. If anyone found her so deeply in the Forbidden City’s inner sanctum, she might never see Sig and Gil again.

On the bright side, not even Queen Majel could find her here.

It seemed like they rose for an eternity. Charlotte kept a slow count in her head to compare with how high and apart the lower levels were, but she couldn’t guarantee this elevator rose at the same speed. For all she knew, it was twice as fast and they were miles above the lower level. She’d nearly counted to fifty in silence before a slight jerk told of the impending stop. Yet the door didn’t open until the Empress pressed her hand against a softly lit panel. Green flashed and the door opened.

Interesting. Who else had access to this level? As if reading her mind, Cixi replied, “Only my most trusted attendants know about this level, and only because they must guard the way for me. No one else has been inside this room since my son was born.”

The elevator opened into what looked to be a cave. Stone had been hollowed out to form a hallway, but it wasn’t paved in stones or marble like the rest of the palace she’d seen. The stonework was rougher, either older craftsmanship or deliberately crafted to look older with rough chiseling. The stone walls weren’t even and smooth under her hand. The only light was a slim stick in the Empress’s hand that cast a sickly green glow as she led the way deeper into the stone passage. In the eerie light, it seemed like they were truly walking in a natural cave.

It made Charlotte’s mind reel, her balance knocked off-kilter. Granted Xuanyuan was massive, but it was still just a space station. Unless the whole structure had been built around a small planet or asteroid. Walking through the tunnel, she had the sense of heavy weight of stone pressing down on her. Could something of such scope truly be man-made?

The tunnel opened up into a soaring cavern. With the small light, she couldn’t see the roof, but the sense of space hung above, cloaked in shadows and chill air. Her goose bumps worsened and she couldn’t hide a shiver this time. It was definitely colder and the air felt damp. A strange odor made her breathe shallowly. An old musk, some kind of animal. Maybe a snake? It was a hair-prickling, sharp scent that made her breathing quicken with unease.

“The dragon has always been the symbol of the ruling family of Zijin,” the Empress said in a low, reverent voice. “Of course I’d heard countless tales as a girl about the royal dragons, but I thought that’s all they were. Tales. Legends. Until the old Dowager Empress brought me up here and swore me to silence.”

She set the slim stick into a slot on the rough-hewn wall and a series of lamps kicked on to illuminate the main chamber. In the center of the cavern, a massive beast lay curled into a scaled, mountainous shape. Its sides rose slightly, warning Charlotte that it was still alive. She recoiled a step, prepared to run. The monster was huge, its paw easily big enough to wrap around her entire body. She could create unheard-of marvels with technology, but she and the beasts of the field didn’t get along. Not at all. And a dragon certainly didn’t qualify as any sort of domesticated animal.

The Empress laid a soothing hand on her arm, drawing her closer. “Don’t be afraid, it’s asleep. The poor thing’s been asleep ever since I’ve known of its existence.”

“Do you mean it never wakes up?”

Cixi spread her hands before her helplessly. “This is all I’ve ever seen. I’ve spent nights here, days, and it’s never moved from this spot. Its breathing changes slightly sometimes. I can hear it breathe slightly quicker, like it might wake up, but it never does. I think it knows when I’m here and sometimes it’ll twitch slightly, but that’s all that ever happens.”

She sounded like she wanted the beast to wake up. So that it would eat her? The thing was definitely thin. Its hide was tight, showing the bones beneath the scaled leather. It was gray from head to tail, implying age, but for all she knew that was its original color. “How old is it?”

Cixi shrugged and spread her hands again. “You won’t believe me.” At Charlotte’s arched look, the Empress smiled. “It’s over one thousand years old, hatched sometime during the rise of the Ten Kingdoms. Each Empress has kept a handwritten account of her care of the royal dragon. According to the Imperial records, he was once as golden as the sun and shone as brightly. Now…” her words trailed off as she gazed at the dragon, “…as he fails, so do we.”

Charlotte had little patience for godly messages of a monarch’s supposed “right” to rule, which was usually shorthand for said monarch doing whatever he or she wanted to a helpless people. Legends said that House Krowe would only rule Britannia as long as crows roosted in the Tower of Londonium. Queen Majel approved of that tale so much that she deliberately brought new hatchlings to join the rowdy brood her mother and her mother’s mother had installed on the roof. “This dragon’s life has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not your family rules Zijin.”