Dragon Coast (10 page)

“I suggest a change of plan,” Moth said. “You burn them all, and we dump the bodies and go have a vacation.”

“Rejected. Get in character.”

“Scowl,” Moth said. “Scowl, glower, frown.” Moth proceeded to do so beneath the nylon hood of his windbreaker.

A nervous minute passed while Daniel and Moth waited passively for the guards to reach them.

The carts came to a stop and the guards spilled out.

“This is private property,” said one of them, leveling a rifle at Daniel's chest. She had two white stripes on her sleeve, one more than the others. They all wore black body armor and combat helmets, and their guns looked like the kind that fired big bullets rapidly. There were a lot of fingers curled around triggers. People took property rights seriously around here.

Daniel pulled his hood back. “I'm Paul Sigilo,” he said.

He stared into the guard captain's eyes through the clear lens of her helmet's visor.

She redirected the muzzle of her gun away from him. “Stand down,” she ordered, and the others did the same.

“My apologies, Baron Sigilo,” she said. “Welcome home.”

*   *   *

Home was a white Mediterranean castle surrounded by fountains and plazas and splashes of colorful flowers. Every surface was carved with some filigree or naked Greek, and Daniel saw money in every chisel mark. The newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst had built it, and its opulence was famous even in the Southern realm. When Hearst died, the Northern Hierarch took possession of it, and the fact that it had been let out to Paul gave Daniel a real sense of how high in the regime his damaged golem-twin had climbed.

Gardeners stopped clipping hedges at the sight of Daniel and Moth and the procession of guards escorting them across the plaza. Daniel tried to read their expressions. How did Paul's people feel about his return? No radiant smiles broke out. Nobody wiped tears of joy. So it wasn't love. But he didn't see fear, either. More a sort of curiosity, as if he were some kind of zoo animal. Maybe a little caution. So, they viewed him as a possibly dangerous exotic creature. Daniel could work with that.

A pace behind Daniel, Moth was in his full, towering gloom, the embodiment of potential violence, muscles in his forearms like steel cables, his shoulders like boulders, his chest like stone slabs. Daniel would work with that as well.

They went through a pair of massive wooden doors that must have been taken off an ancient European church and were met in an entry hall. Daniel nearly staggered. The scents of a hundred or more osteomantic creatures filled the air. Daniel scanned the assemblage for their source. Butlers and maids and cooks and tradesworkers and dozens of other members of Paul's household staff waited with stiff postures.

Of them all, one woman stood out, with striking cheekbones, eyes like pools of black ink, and black hair falling like a curtain to her knees. It wasn't only her appearance that attracted Daniel's attention. She didn't regard Daniel with nervous uncertainty, nor with the curiosity of the others. Locking eyes with him, she gave him a look he couldn't read.

A man in a neat suit with neat silver hair and a precise mustache stepped up. His eyes watered, and he regarded Daniel with the surprise and delight of someone who'd just found a live baby unicorn in his sock drawer. Some nicely dressed functionaries flanked him, throwing him glances for behavioral cues. Chief of staff? Majordomo? Something like that.

“My lord,” Weepy Mustache said with a bow. “I can scarcely believe my eyes. We thought you dead.”

Daniel responded with one of Paul's enigmatic blank looks. Weepy Mustache took it like a cattle prod.

“Not that I ever lost hope,” he added hastily, putting the emphasis on
I
to make sure there was no possibility he could be confused with one of those disloyal, benighted idiots who presumed Paul dead, even though he'd identified himself as such fewer than three seconds ago. “It's just … I don't … How is this even possible, my lord?”

“Magic?” Daniel said.

No, that wasn't quite Paul's tone. Less sarcasm, next time. More flat-line.

“Of course, my lord, of course.” Weepy fell just short of hitting himself. “Forgive my question. I did not mean to trespass. This is such a happy occasion, an overwhelmingly happy occasion, to have you back. The realm shall be flooded with tears of joy. I dare say, the Hierarch herself shall weep. To say nothing of your mother—”

Daniel twitched a nod, and Moth's bass cut Weepy off and filled the space.

“His lord is fatigued from his travels. News of his return will be withheld pending his lord's order.”

Daniel winced. The Northerners' manner of speech would take some time to master. Passing themselves off as high-class wasn't something Moth or Daniel had much practice in. Still, Moth's presence alone conveyed authority, and as he trained his menacing glare on Weepy and the guards and the rest of the assemblage, he got the message across: If someone leaked Baron Paul Sigilo's presence, there would be broken bones.

Daniel waved his hand vaguely in Moth's direction. “This is Mr. Matthew, my steward.”

Weepy went ashen. Daniel had probably just introduced him to his replacement.

The old steward gave Moth a jittery little bow. “I am your … I am the previous … I am Abram Gorov. If I may—”

“I'd like to go to my apartments now,” Daniel announced.

Weepy's body threatened to divide in two as he struggled over whether to rush into action or step back and let Moth take charge.

“Lead the way, Gorov,” Moth told him.

Good move, since neither Daniel nor Moth had any idea where Paul's private quarters were.

With maximum solicitation, Gorov took them up a staircase. Daniel gave a last glimpse at the crowd. The woman with the black hair turned and left the room, and with her went the scent of a hundred kinds of magic.

*   *   *

“You are so unbelievably rich,” Moth said, once Gorov left them alone in Paul's chambers. The wall behind Paul's canopied bed was lined with wooden panels painted with saints and martyrs. The carpet was posh enough to have been hung on a museum wall, and there wasn't a single surface in Daniel's eyeshot that wasn't adorned by something expensive.

Moth walked around the room, inspecting all the gold candlesticks and the lamp shades with gold tassels. “You think Gorov is going to be a problem?”

“He might be,” Daniel said. “Don't be fooled by him. He acts like an abused waiter, but he stinks of griffin.”

“And you very publicly gave me his job.”

“Sorry, buddy. There was no way I could pass you off as my special friend with special access to me without making enemies in Paul's staff. At least this way, it's out in the open.”

Moth picked up a pearl-and-gold box and pulled out a tissue. “Yeah, don't worry, I can manage him. But what about the spooky chick?”

“You noticed her, too? She stinks of all the magic.”

“You want me to ask about her?”

“That's basically what I need you to do. Make a peace offering with Gorov, tell him he still runs the house, and you're just here to help me with my convalescence and get me back on my feet. Nose around, get into the dirt, talk to the housekeepers, bring back intel on who's who.”

“You want me to be charming or terrifying?”

“Your usual combination of both will probably be good.”

“And what are you doing while I'm making friends and victims?”

Daniel approached a bookcase and sniffed. He ran his fingers along the spines of leather-bound volumes and smelled his finger. It smelled of Paul. The scent was faint, because Paul hadn't been here in over a year, and the more efficient an osteomancer, the less magic he wasted on aroma. Paul was a very efficient osteomancer, and Daniel doubted many other noses could pick up his residue. But Paul was made of Daniel's own magic, and that gave him an advantage.

He pulled a bloodred book from the shelf, and the bookcase slid aside, revealing a black door. There was no knob, no visible lock or hardware of any kind, just smooth, matte-black wood.

Daniel rapped his knuckles against it. “Me? I'm going to work on this.”

“I'll start with the kitchen staff, then,” Moth said.

“Bring back milk and cookies,” Daniel called after him.

He went back to sniffing, moving his nose around the edges of the door. He detected no sphinx or nhang lock, no familiar magic barriers, but Daniel was certain Paul's workshops were on the other side of the door: his stores of osteomantic bones, his equipment. And, most important, the
axis mundi
bone.

He began work on a key.

He'd performed magic in alleys, behind dumpsters, crammed into air vents, sitting on toilets in bus station rest rooms. But Paul had a lovely writing desk of wood so rich Daniel was tempted to lick it. Might as well work in comfort, he thought.

He got out his osteomancy kit and rummaged inside for the powdered bone of three different breath-stealing creatures. He sprinkled the powder into a glass vial and held the vial to the flame of his torch. Drawing in air from the room—air that Paul had inhaled and exhaled—the powder turned from fog-gray to chalk-white, eventually crumbling into finer grains and dissolving. A small quantity of clear fluid rested at the bottom of the vial.

With a Q-tip, he swabbed his dead brother's condensed breath on the door and it swung open, letting him into Paul's world.

 

TEN

The plane rocked and dipped in the air like a barrel in the rapids. Rain shot out of the darkness and splattered against the windshield. Gabriel sat next to the pilot, a man with a lumberjack build and a blond beard cascading down his chest. The pilot peered at his gauges through gold-rimmed aviators, rarely bothering to look up from his instrument panel. Granite mountain crags and javelin points of fur trees allegedly lurked below, but Gabriel couldn't see anything.

“So you're comfortable with everything that's going on?” he asked over the headset.

The pilot's eyes crinkled, but Gabriel couldn't tell if he was smiling or grimacing below his bushy mustache. “This is the most dreadful weather I've ever pushed a plane through, sir. To tell you the truth, I'm pretty scared.”

The plane shuddered and jumped like the EKG of a troubled heart.

“I thought pilots were supposed to be stoic and reassuring. I was led to believe this. I was
promised
this.”

“Is this your first time flying, sir?”

“Yes.”

“I hope it doesn't leave you with a bad impression.”

The plane jolted, and Gabriel bit his lip to suppress a gasp.

“Sorry, sir. It'll all be over soon.”

“What do you mean, ‘over'?”

“I mean, we're almost there.”

“I thought you meant we were going to crash.”

The pilot's lack of response was not encouraging.

Gabriel twisted around in his seat. In the rear compartment, Max shifted as if readying to kick out a window and jump, choosing the time and manner of his own death. Cassandra tightened her boot laces. She made a twirly finger gesture at Gabriel and mouthed, “Turn around.”

The plane hit. Gabriel's teeth clacked together, and he felt the impact in the small of his back. Not until water splashed across the windshield and the pilot nodded contentedly did he realize they hadn't crashed. They'd merely made the water landing. The pontoons kicked up rooster tails as the plane skidded to a stop.

“Well, I got you here,” the pilot said. “Hope that was the most dangerous part of whatever it is you folks are doing.”

“Wouldn't that be great?” Gabriel said, unbuckling. “Have a good flight back.”

A howl of wind brought fresh salvos of driving rain.

Securing his backpack, he followed Max and Cassandra, leaping from the rear compartment hatch to a tiny wooden fishing pier. The pilot gave them a two-fingered wave through the cockpit window, and a few minutes later, he was back in the air, leaving them in enemy territory.

The way from the shore to the tree line was a muddy slog, but it would have been worse without the magic Daniel had cooked into the treads of their hiking boots. There'd be miles to go before reaching the Hetch Hetchy dam, and they needed to get there before daylight.

They hunkered among the trees on a sodden carpet of leaves and pine needles. Rain streamed from the upper limbs.

“Smell anything, Max?” Cassandra whispered.

Max sniffed the air. “I smell millions of things.”

“Okay,” Cassandra said, wiping water from her face with both hands. “When I ask you a question, you need to answer it.”

“Do what she says, Max,” Gabriel said.

Max sniffed in Cassandra's direction and averted his face, his version of giving her the middle finger. “If I picked up something scary I would have brought it to your attention without you having to ask. Just because we're on a suicide mission doesn't mean I want to die.”

Cassandra stepped briskly off into the rain. “Let's move out. Gabriel, keep up with me.”

Gabriel huffed, jogging to catch up. “Things starting off a little tense, aren't they?”

“I don't want you interceding between me and Max. When I give an instruction to either of you, follow it. Do it for the good of the job, and do it to stay alive. You're not in Los Angeles anymore.”

“I don't normally resort to saying this kind of thing, but you are talking to a very powerful person right now.”

“There's snot running out of your nose, grand mage.”

Gabriel opened his mouth to respond but then stumbled over a tree root. He would have gone face-forward into the mud had Cassandra not caught him by the arm. Declarations of one's power were much less impressive after demonstrating one wasn't even very good at walking.

“Max and I have been close for a long time,” he said, recovering. “We bonded when people were trying to kill us. That kind of thing tends to solidify a friendship, and we rely on each other.”