Dragon Coast (20 page)

Reverence shined in Nathaniel Cormorant's eyes. Allaster moved closer, to get a better look. Cynara was right by his side, as if magic radiated from the bone and she wanted to make sure to get her share.

Creighton drew his own gaze away from the scepter. He cleared his throat. “Tomorrow, Her Highness the Hierarch will declare her choice for High Grand Osteomancer. And one of you will enjoy the privilege of being touched by the
axis mundi
.”

 

SIXTEEN

Cassandra didn't want to have a conversation with Gabriel about leaving Max behind. But despite the hydra and eocorn treatment, Max remained laid up in the Emmas' cabin. His gunshot wound was bad, and the magic from the Emmas' stash had turned out to be heavily diluted.

Gabriel hadn't left his side in eight hours. Cassandra watched him doze in a chair beside Max's bed, even after it started to feel like she was intruding on an intimate moment.

Gabriel was not a monster.

She hadn't thought he looked like one, or acted like one. But deep down, she'd still believed he was. She'd met monsters. Anyone who'd climbed to the heights of influence Gabriel had achieved must be a monster.

But here he was, slumped in a chair beside a person he clearly cared a great deal about, dirty and beaten and tired and scared. A powerful man, but also a guy who'd gotten in over his head.

He mumbled something, lifted his chin, and looked anxiously over at Max. Then, wincing, he stretched and sniffed.

“What's that I smell?”

“I threw a soup together,” Cassandra said. “Your water gun destroyed the kitchen, but I found a camp stove out back.”

A bit of spark reignited in his eyes. He looked hopeful. “Soup. Soup is great. What's in it?”

“Turnips, some chicken, stuff from the herb garden. It's basically Frankensoup. Go have some. I can watch Max for a bit.”

Gabriel still hesitated.

“Listen, if he gets well enough to walk, he won't be able to carry you to San Francisco. Get some nutrition in you, find somewhere to lie down for a couple of hours, preserve your strength. For the good of the job.”

Gabriel creaked to his feet. “Get me in an hour.”

Cassandra promised she would, and she listened to his receding footsteps.

She turned to his bag, lying on the floor next to the chair, and unzipped it.

“I hear you offed Otis Roth.”

Max's eyes were open.

“Yeah, I did.”

“How does that sit with you?”

“It sits fine. I feel lighter.”

“You liked killing him?”

“No. But I like not having Otis Roth in my world anymore. If you knew him as well as I did, you'd feel the same way.”

“Maybe I already do,” Max said.

She began rooting around Gabriel's bag.

Max tried to rise on one elbow, but then winced and eased himself back down.

“What are you doing?”

“I'm searching Gabriel's bag,” Cassandra said. “Back on the trail when I nicked his nozzle gadget, my hand ran into a lot of things that got me curious. There's all the plumbing he's using to get us through the aqueducts. There's the water bomb. But this…” She removed a stainless-steel flask. Whatever was inside sloshed with an odd gravity, like a spinning gyroscope. “What's in here? It seems … complicated.”

“You shouldn't be tampering with his things.”

“So stop me. Call for Gabriel.”

Max just gave her a baleful stare.

“You have some concerns of your own about your boss, don't you?”

Max still said nothing.

Cassandra took a seat in the chair by the bed. “Okay, I'll go first. I don't think Gabriel's on this job to help Daniel get Sam back. I don't think he's even going to destroy the dragon.”

“No? What, then?”

“I think he wants the dragon for himself.”

Max sank deeper into his pillows. “You don't know Gabriel like I do. He's not power-hungry.”

“Maybe not. But he is a control freak.”

Max made a noise that might have been a tiny crumb of laughter. “I'll give you that. But he has to be. He's accountable for a lot.”

“I know. He's accountable for an entire kingdom. He controls a lot of magic. Does he think he can control a Pacific firedrake?

“Does Daniel?”

“Hell, no. And he doesn't want to. He really just wants his kid back. That's the truth. Daniel's got the magic to be a great power, but he's seen close-up what that costs people. But Gabriel … Gabriel already is a great power. You know there's a price for that. And it's a price paid by more than the person with the power. You know that, Max.”

Again, Max gave her no response, but she could tell he agreed with her.

“I'm going to ask you again: What's in the flask?”

He closed his eyes, in pain and stress. She reached over with a towel and daubed sweat off his forehead.

“I don't know what's in the flask,” he said.

She believed him.

“Max, I'm on this job to keep Gabriel in check. If I don't like what he's doing, I've got a bullet for him. Him, and anyone else who threatens my friends.”

“They go the way of Otis Roth?”

“And I'll lose sleep. But I'll do what's got to be done.”

Max peeled off his blankets. Slowly, he swung his feet over the side of the bed, and after several seconds of concentration, he stood. He kept his face rigid, the muscles in his neck and jaw bulging.

Cassandra stood to face him.

“I've got some bullets, too,” he said.

Cassandra nodded. “Warning noted. I'll go tell Gabriel you're up.”

 

SEVENTEEN

Daniel re-created the Hierarch's treasury on a table in his sitting room. Upturned tumblers and water goblets stood in for the display cases. Toothpicks were the archers, and matchsticks were the guards. It took a little bit of searching through the suite to find enough matches.

He set one of Paul's cuff links in the middle of the diorama and placed a champagne flute over it. This was the score: the
axis mundi
scepter.

Moth leaned over the table, working on a roast beef sandwich the size of a fire hydrant. “I don't see what you're whining about. We've tackled tougher jobs.”

“That is a blatant lie. And you are dripping horseradish on the
axis mundi
scepter.”

Moth wiped the spilled horseradish with his finger and licked it. “Well, we'll do this job and then we'll be better thieves. You don't get better without practicing. It's like piano. Can't play ‘Chopsticks' forever if you want to be good.”

“We played a whole concerto when we broke into the Southern Hierarch's Ossuary. That didn't go so well.” Daniel displayed the stump of his right pinky. “Anyway, this room is tougher.”

“Why?”

Daniel took the remainder of the matches and scattered them around the diorama. He added tongs from the ice bucket, a box of face tissues, a pouch of tobacco, several books.

“Now you're just making art, Daniel.”

“More guards, unknown palace layout, some of the most powerful osteomancers in the two Californias. And this.” He planted a candlestick on the table. “By which I mean her. The Hierarch, in her seat of power.”

Moth waved his sandwich. “Okay, stop it. You're depressing me. We're not going to burglarize the
axis mundi
from the treasury. Then what's plan B?”

“Here's plan B,” Daniel said, with a bit of a flourish. “I'm going to steal the bone at the investiture. Right in the open, in front of everyone. Right under the Hierarch's nose.”

Moth stared at him, holding a big clump of unchewed sandwich in his mouth. He picked up a match and struck it on the back of an antique chair. The flame danced. “Can't we go back to ‘Chopsticks'?”

There was a knock at the door. Moth bit off the head off the burning match and spat it out. “Get down and stand back,” he told Daniel, taking cautious steps toward the door as if he were approaching a vicious dog.

Daniel cut him off. “My turn to get the door.”

“Could be another assassin.”

“Yeah. That's why it's my turn.”

Moth shrugged and scattered the pieces of the diorama. Now it was just a random assortment of stuff. He pulled a white cloth from his pocket like a matador flapping his cape and commenced polishing a glass.

Daniel reached back for sense memories of massive bodies slipping ghostlike through sunless depths, trailing sixty-foot tentacles that crackled with electricity. His fingertips tingled with kraken energy, and he opened the door. A towering woman filled the doorway, her sleeveless blouse revealing muscles clad in glyptodont-armored plates. Small, deep-set black eyes in a broad face stared holes through Daniel, and then over his head, into the room behind him.

“Yes?” Daniel said, somehow making his apprehension sound like impatience. “Who are you and what do you want?”

Her eyes didn't blink. Daniel wondered if she even had eyelids.

She dipped her boulder-sized head in a slight bow.

“I am commanded by Her Majesty the Hierarch to bring His Lord Baron into Her Majesty's presence for the purpose of audience.”

“Oh,” said Daniel. “Of course. And … when?”

Her eyes seemed to grow smaller without the assistance of a squint. “At once, my lord.”

“Very good. I'll just need to change, then.” He lifted the tails of his untucked shirt and wiggled the toes of his stocking feet to emphasize his slovenly and unfit-for-royal-audience appearance.

Her eyes shrank to pencil dots.

“I am commanded to bring His Lordship to Her Majesty
now,
my lord.”

Moth came over with a dressing gown of gold silk and a pair of black loafers polished to an obsidian gloss. He helped Daniel step into his new costume, picked a speck of lint from Daniel's shoulder, appraised him, and graced him with an approving nod.

“Lead the way,” Moth commanded the woman, stepping into the hall to follow.

The woman put a massive paw on Moth's chest.

“You're touching me,” Moth said.

“I am not commanded to bring anyone save His Lord Baron.”

“You're still touching me.”

“I can assure His Lord Baron's manservant that His Lord Baron shall be delivered to Her Majesty the Hierarch's presence safely.”

“I notice you didn't say delivered and returned. And you're still touching me.”

Her eyes grew yet smaller and her voice dipped deeper. “His Lord Baron's manservant should know that His Lord Baron is in the care of Her Majesty the Hierarch's captain of the guard. To insult Her Majesty the Hierarch's captain of the guard is tantamount to insulting Her Majesty the Hierarch.”

Daniel buried his hands in his face. “I'm losing track of all these possessives. I am perfectly confident in my ability to keep myself safe.” That was an assertion so patently untrue Daniel almost choked on his own words.

“My lord,” Moth began.

“You are commanded to remain here and await my return.” Even as Paul, Daniel couldn't subject Moth to such high snottiness. More gently, he said, “Take some time off. Enjoy your sandwich.”

He could tell Moth was exerting extraordinary muscle control to keep from reaching out and smacking Daniel.

“Yes, my lord.”

The guard captain took Daniel up a staircase that spiraled around the outer perimeter of the palace. Glowing braziers lit the way, the light changing color with the hues of the glass walls. It struck Daniel that, despite being made of glass, the palace provided no views to the outer world.

He wondered if he was imagining scrutiny or increased interest from the guards posted at various stations. He was a candidate for the office reserved for the second most powerful osteomancer in the realm, and he was being escorted to a private audience with the first most powerful. On such occasions, word must spread through the palace. There were probably bets placed on whether or not Paul would return from the audience with all his bones still inside his skin. Daniel would have hedged and wagered both ways.

Higher and higher they climbed, and when his hamstrings burned and he was certain they must have reached the top of the tower, the staircase continued. Finally, they reached a door. Not a grand thing, just another pane of blue glass, hiding whatever it hid. The guard captain stood away and clear of it.

“You are to enter, my lord.”

“What, you're not coming with me, stalwart captain?”

“Your presence is commanded, my lord, not mine.”

Daniel put his hand on the door handle. It was all of one piece with the door, either crafted by an expert glass master or formed through some esoteric geological process, and touching it, Daniel found he did not wish to go any farther.

He had faced a Hierarch before. On the last occasion, he'd walked away with his opponent's still-beating heart clutched in his hands. If he desired a throne, he could be the Southern realm's Hierarch now, and this would be a meeting of two kings.

He did not fear her power. He feared making a mistake.

He couldn't remember if he was supposed to bow to her on the left knee or the right knee. What had Moth told him? The left knee. Yes, that was it. He was pretty sure.

He pushed open the door.

The chamber was high and claustrophobically narrow. Not a place for large assemblies. More for private audiences. The walls leaned inward, soaring to a point some fifty feet above. A single horn anchored to the floor rose with graceful undulations. Daniel had never seen such a thing, had no idea what gigantic creature it might come from, and under ordinary circumstances, it might have drawn all his fascination. But at its pinnacle, more felt than seen, sat the Hierarch on a throne. There were familiar magics in her smell, dragons and griffins and mammoths and monsters of sea and mountain and underground, but even stronger smells of osteomantic creatures unknown.