Dragon Coast (16 page)

“Very powerful. But safe. You're safe. We're all safe.”

They trudged on in blissful silence. The bliss was brief.

“Is it powerful enough to destroy a Pacific firedrake? Because it'd have to be a really powerful bomb.”

She was still being chirpy. Max walked faster and moved ahead. He didn't like chirpy any more than Gabriel did.

“It's a really, really powerful bomb, Cassandra. Look, see?”

He unzipped his backpack and got out a foam-padded case. He opened it, showing her the little globe of silvery water.

“Huh. It doesn't look like much.”

“Do you want me to strike the tuning fork now and show you?”

She actually seemed to consider it.

“No, that's okay. You can put it back.”

Gabriel did so.

“Are you prepared to use it?” Now, she was not chirpy. Now, her look was as hard as hammers.

“Yes. But that's not the plan, is it? The plan is we find the firedrake, and it's up to Daniel to extract Sam.”

“That's Daniel's plan,” Cassandra agreed.

The distinction was not lost on Gabriel. “But … that's not your plan? The bomb is only supposed to be a last resort.”

“My plan is to do whatever's necessary,” Cassandra said. “I hope that means no more than telling Daniel where the dragon is.”

She quickened her pace, leaving Gabriel behind.

Gabriel truly did intend the bomb to be the last resort. But saving Sam was never part of his plan.

And, if he wasn't mistaken, Cassandra had just told him she was okay with however he used his bomb.

He imagined she'd be less okay if she knew what he was planning to do with the memory water in his flask. The dragon was too dangerous to be left to its own devices. They could agree on that. But the memory water wasn't for destroying the dragon. The memory water was for bending the dragon to Gabriel's will.

Max held his hand up and signaled the team to stop.

Gabriel peered into the darkness ahead. “What is it? You smell something?”

“No, but I heard something,” Max said. “There it is again.”

“Echo of our own footsteps,” Gabriel suggested hopefully.

Cassandra unholstered her gun. “But we're not moving.”

The last access hatch they'd passed was over a mile behind them. The next one was two miles ahead. That left them trapped inside a tube without a handy escape.

“How far away was that noise?” Gabriel asked.

“Close enough that I could hear it, far enough that you couldn't,” Max replied.

“But you still don't smell it?” Cassandra was a little incredulous.

“My nose is keener than yours, but it's trained to detect magic. This could be a repair crew, or maybe a hobo camp.”

“Well, we've got a distant early warning,” Gabriel said. “What do we do with it?”

Cassandra moved forward, the barrel of her gun leading the way. “We keep moving.”

“Wait,” Gabriel said.

Max and Cassandra turned to look at him.

There was no need to risk walking into an ambush or getting attacked from behind. Gabriel could erect a sigil and flush out anyone waiting to do them harm. Whoever got in the way of tons of water thundering down the tunnel like a freight train would be crushed. He'd probably never even have to see the bloated corpses.

But he would always know what he'd done, without ever knowing whom he'd done it to: monsters, mercenaries, or Northern water department workers just trying to fix a leak.

The other option was to continue down the tunnel. He and his team might be killed, and then there'd be nobody to destroy the firedrake, and the dragon might rage free, or the Northern Hierarch might discover how to wield it, and in either case, thousands upon thousands of people would die.

Kill a few by water, or risk many dying by flame. It was at moments like this that Gabriel could let himself hate Daniel Blackland. Gabriel had to look after millions of people who considered him yet another tyrant, while all Daniel ever had to care about were his friends.

“Cassandra,” he said. “I can take care of the threat.”

She flicked a glance at him before returning her attention to the path ahead. “I know you can. I don't want you to.”

“Because…?”

“We don't know if they mean us harm.”

“But what if they do?”

She stopped to face him. “When we signed on for this, we accepted risk. Anyone who tries to kill us accepts risk. Maybe they're guys with guns. But maybe they're guys with wrenches. I don't want to guess wrong and make someone pay for my mistake. You'd think someone with power over a whole kingdom would've worked out some of these ethical equations.”

“I have a feeling, Cassandra, that you and I aren't plugging in the same figures. By the way. How's Otis Roth?”

Max drew his pistol. “Closer now.”

They hugged the sides of the tunnel. Max and Cassandra took up firing positions; Gabriel hadn't even brought a gun. He barely knew how to use one and figured he was more likely to shoot himself in the crotch than hit an intended target. Instead, he reached into his pack to retrieve the components of a flash-flood-generating sigil.

Out from the flickering light emerged three women, all with black guns outfitted with lots of textured grips and add-ons and built-in flashlights and things that emitted red beams. Gabriel noticed red dots on Cassandra's and Max's chest. He looked down to see one on his own.

The women ranged in age from late-thirties to late teens. They resembled one another, their faces hauntingly familiar.

The oldest of them stepped forward. She was the one whose gun was trained on Gabriel. “Have we caught you in a bad moment?”

“Everyone holster,” Cassandra said, pointing her gun at the ceiling. “You're Emmas.”

Now Gabriel knew why they seemed familiar. They were golems of Emmaline Walker, the osteomancer who developed the technique of growing duplicates of living humans. Walker had worked for the Hierarch, and her progeny were scattered across the Southern realm. Daniel had left one of them—Em—guarding Sam's gestating golem body.

The Emmas redirected the muzzles of their rifles to less-threatening trajectories.

“Who's the one with the pipes?” the older Emma asked.

“He's a plumber,” Cassandra said. “How are you getting through the system without one?”

The Emma didn't answer, only smiled, and Cassandra smiled back. They trusted each other enough to stop waving their guns around, but not to share operational information. Gabriel was just happy the gun-pointing situation had improved.

He let Cassandra handle the conversation, and she got from the Emmas that they were in the aqueducts to “do some recon.” Cassandra told them that she and Gabriel and Max were here “on business.”

“Break bread?” Cassandra suggested. She passed around her ration of chocolate bars, and in exchange, the Emmas shared foil-wrapped lumpia.

Max sniffed his lumpia thoroughly before taking a bite, and only then did Gabriel dig in. The lumpia was hot, even though it was cold here in the tunnels. The Emmas' base must be close.

“So how do you know us?” asked another of the Emmas. Her face was pink except for a mask of lighter flesh around her eyes, giving her the look of a reverse raccoon.

“I know some of your sisters,” Cassandra said.

The third of the Emmas, the youngest, had a pale, thin face and long, delicate fingers that made Gabriel think of harp strings, not guns. She spent most of the time looking down at her shoes and her food, taking only furtive glances at Gabriel and his companions.

Cassandra asked what they could expect farther down the tunnel.

“Way's clear all the way to San Francisco,” the oldest Emma said. “Not counting running water and turbines and various other bits of engineering. But no human obstacles. Or anything odd. How about in the direction you came from?”

“Clear sailing all the way to Hetch Hetchy.”

The oldest Emma stood and offered Cassandra her hand. “Well, we should be off. Wherever you're headed, good luck.”

She and Cassandra shook. “Same to you.”

Gabriel accepted an offered handshake with Reverse-Raccoon Emma. And the youngest Emma, the meek, reedy one, took out her gun and shot Max in the leg.

The muzzle flash and thunder stunned Gabriel. But he heard Max cry out, and maybe he heard the tree-branch snap of his femur breaking, and he heard himself scream out Max's name.

Or maybe he inferred all these sounds. He felt as if he'd been clubbed in the ears by the gunfire, and everything was dim and far away.

The only thing he knew for sure was that Max was writhing on the ground, his face and neck coated with sweat, with blood pouring out of him.

*   *   *

Gabriel begged the Emmas to save Max's life. Their answer was no.

The rain had finally stopped, but water still dripped and streamed from the silhouetted pine boughs, and the way was sloppy with mud. Moonlight came down between patchy clouds. Gabriel struggled along, carrying Max by his armpits while Cassandra carried his legs like the handles of a wheelbarrow. The Emmas made them haul their backpacks, as well, after determining that the weapons, gear, and provisions they contained were too valuable to leave behind. With their guns pointed at him, Gabriel couldn't go into his pack to assemble a sigil. He couldn't reach bottles of water, nor his tuning forks.

“He's going to bleed out,” Gabriel said, breathing hard. “He needs hydra regenerative, or eocorn horn, or surgery. Please—”

“I bandaged him myself,” said the young, willowy Emma girl who'd shot him. “He'll live. For a while yet.”

Max was still breathing, but he hadn't uttered so much as a grunt in a long time.

“What is it you want with us?” Cassandra asked.

“Not you. Him.” The oldest Emma made eye contact with Gabriel.

“Me? What do you want with me?”

“I used to live in Los Angeles,” she said. “I know what the South's chief hydromancer looks like, Lord Argent.”

Gabriel trudged through mud, his arms and shoulders and back screaming. Max wasn't a large man, but he was dead weight.

“I'm not a lord. And you didn't have to shoot Max to take me captive.”

The Emmas had nothing to say to this. Of course they had to shoot Max. He was unmistakably Gabriel's protector.

“So, what's your plan for me? If you have some drains you need unclogged, you came to the right man.”

“How much are you worth to your Department of Water and Power in Los Angeles? Or to your enemies in San Francisco?”

“You're going to ransom me.”

“An underground network to free enslaved golems doesn't run on hope and miracles,” said the oldest Emma. “We need funds for guns and ammunition, for food and safe houses, for bribing rangers and border guards.”

Gabriel stepped into a knee-deep puddle. He managed not to drop Max, but just barely.

“You're doing this the hard way,” he said. “You're murdering my friend, and it's not necessary. Treat his gunshot wound before he dies, and I'll submit to whatever you want to do with me. Let me talk to my people in L.A. I'll negotiate the best price for myself. Or sell me to whoever you want. Help Max and I'll be the best hostage anyone could want.”

The oldest Emma stopped to check her compass. “You're already the best hostage we could want.”

“Then heal Max because it's the decent thing to do.”

“We can't afford to be decent. I don't know what it's like in the South. Maybe your cupboards are stuffed with things like hydra and eocorn. Maybe you pick your teeth with griffin bones. We're not so lucky. I'm sorry it was necessary to shoot him, but he would have fought to keep us from taking you. We didn't shoot him in the head. We didn't leave him for dead in the tunnel. It might not seem like much to be grateful for.”

A twig snapped in the darkness of the woods. The Emma raised her fist and the group froze. Another snap. She motioned for everyone to get down. The two other Emmas crouched, peering through the narrow gaps in the trees. Cassandra and Gabriel carefully lowered Max to the ground, and Gabriel was ashamed at the relief he felt. Max had borne his weight enough times, and it seemed to Gabriel that he should be able to pay him back without complaint.

The oldest Emma issued directives with finger gestures, and the other two Emmas crept toward the nearest trees with guns drawn.

An antlered creature emerged from the woods to meet them, its fur silvered by the moon.

“I'm not an expert,” Gabriel whispered, “but I think it's a deer.”

The Emma gave Gabriel a warning look, but after a moment of regarding the intruders, the deer moved off peacefully, and there were no more noises from the forest except the constant drip of water.

“Pick him up,” the oldest Emma commanded, and the exhausting slog through the mud continued.

Apparently the Emmas hadn't noticed that when they were huddled on the ground, Cassandra had slipped her hand into his backpack, palmed something, and tucked it into her pocket.

*   *   *

The Emmas' shack lurked among trees at the top of a slippery path. The windows were shuttered. The roof sagged under a pile of pine needles and pinecones. Milk crates and rusty spools of barbwire littered the yard like flotsam and jetsam in a muddy sea.

When the oldest Emma unlocked and pushed open the front door, Gabriel realized the house's slovenly appearance was costuming. The door was a solid slab of wood. The interior walls were concrete block.

“Through here.” Reverse-Raccoon Emma ushered them into a bedroom and let them lay Max down. With the other two Emmas standing guard, she retrieved a pair of shears from a black leather bag on a bureau and split open his pant leg.

The bandage over Max's wound was filthy with blood and water and mud. If Gabriel hadn't seen it applied with his own eyes, he would never have believed it had started out white. The Emma removed the bandage and revealed worse. There was no bullet hole. Instead, it looked as if someone had rammed a fist into a bag of blood, pounded it with a sledgehammer, and set fire to it. The rest of his leg was shades of black and pallid blue.