The Clockwork Dragon

by James R. Hannibal

  As they closed in on the king, the crystalline formations retreated, leaving Jack’s consciousness safe for the time being. And then the rider crested the hill. “Whoa,” said Jack.

  He wasn’t talking to the horse.

  Thousands of men, a second army, labored in a giant trough—a canal, ending at an earthen dam on the bank of a river that led down to the city. The riders slowed and Jack slid down, walking a little way along the hilltop to see around the king’s pavilion. The mist obscured the beginning of the canal. It had to be miles away.

  The king issued another command through his flag-waving subordinate, and the men dropped their tools and clambered out of the trough. An archer launched a flaming arrow into the sky. Moments later, a second arrow answered from the distance, the fire tinted green by the jade.

  Jack heard a murmur. Not the brownish murmur he had heard from the army, but a gray sound—gray and growing. The murmur became a rumble and then a roar. Churning, mint-green water rolled into view, surging through the canal. It obliterated the earthen dam, and the combined waters of the two rivers rushed down the valley to smash the city. The wall collapsed. Cheers turned to screams. The army surrounding the king chanted his name.

  “Zhao Zheng! Zhao Zheng! Zhao Zheng!”

  The king pointed at the ruined city, and every man raced down the hill to take it.

  Jack did not want to see what happened next. Cities were not filled with armies. They were filled with families, women and children. The next few minutes would hold the trauma that had brought him to this point in the jade’s memory. He looked for an exit. The flap of the king’s pavilion snapped in the breeze. He raced through.

  “Zhao Zheng!” Jack was back at his father’s bedside. He stared at Gwen, his normal vision still coming into focus. “A man named Zhao Zheng owned the fan.”

  “Yes, I know. You were kind of chanting it.”

  Jack blushed. “Sorry. His men were celebrating. The king diverted a river to destroy an enemy city. It was tactical genius, but thousands must have died.”

  Gwen did not seem to hear that last part. “The king,” she muttered, chewing her lip. “Zhao Zheng the king. Oh, we’ve botched it, Jack. Totally botched it. We should have gone with him.”

  “Gone with who?”

  Gwen frowned at him, as if Jack should have understood. “Remember the names I gave you in the spook library.”

  Jack connected the dots, despite the speed at which Gwen kept moving them. “Zhao Zheng was one of the alchemists you mentioned.”

  “Yes.” She took the fan and slipped it into her coat pocket. “More importantly, he was a king—the first king, Jack, like your father said. Zhao Zheng became the first emperor of China, taking the name Qin Shi Huang.”

  A whirlwind of remembered phrases spun through Jack’s brain. Qin Shi Huang The First Emperor Artifacts going missing. He saw a placid face, the boy with the blue eyes. “The clockwork dragon. The Mind of Paracelsus. It’s all related. Everything leads back to—”

  “Gall,” said Gwen. “If we’re going to stop him and save your family, we have to find Liu Fai.” She took his hand, helping him to his feet. “Jack, we have to go to China.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “WHERE IS IT, JACK?”

  Zzap.

  Jack tossed and turned in a half-sleeping state, unable to wake from the delirium. Fire swirled. Gwen screamed. A shadow moved between Jack and the scene—fleeting and dangerous.

  Zzap.

  The shadow was beside him again, hissing in his ear. “Where is it?”

  Jack bolted upright. “Raven?”

  Only silence and darkness answered. Jack rubbed his eyes, trying to recover his memory of the evening. His mom had made up the guest room, but Gwen wouldn’t leave his father’s side. Jack had drifted off in the high-backed chair while she scribbled away, writing down every rant and mumble. Now she was gone.

  He left the house, grabbing a handful of stale tea biscuits for breakfast, and found Mrs. Hudson in the Keep’s Botanical Artifact Conservatory—what Gwen called the Dodgy Plant Vault. She had often warned Jack to keep clear.

  He passed through an ironwood door into four open stories of trees, vines, and shrubs. Fountains trickled down from walkway to walkway. Clouds of steam poured from copper pipes.

  The place didn’t look dangerous, until the great oak at the center tried to eat a passing QED. The big tree curled its leaves into fangs and snapped at the drone. The QED ducked low and flew on, as if that sort of thing happened all the time.

  “Kite-eater,” said Mrs. Hudson, appearing from a path overgrown with ivy. She wore bright orange gardening gloves that clashed horribly with her gray dress, and she carried a set of pruning shears in a holster at her hip. “Chloromehlnes czarus in the Latin. Nasty breed. Usually feeds on paper and string, but this one acquired a taste for drone.” She raised her spectacles to her eyes and glanced around. “Where is Miss Kincaid? Doesn’t she normally accompany you on these unscheduled and unannounced visits?” She pronounced unscheduled as unshheduled.

  Jack had the urge to correct her. He suppressed it. “Gwen was up late . . . taking notes.”

  As the two rode a wooden elevator to the next level, a hanging vine snaked over the rail. A steel sign behind it read STRANGLERVINE (HEDERA GAROTTUS). The plant whipped out, going for Jack’s arm.

  “Oh no you don’t.” In one quick motion, Mrs. Hudson drew her shears and snipped. A wiggling appendage fell to the floor and shriveled.

  Jack kicked it over the side. He cleared his throat. “About that China mission, I’ve—”

  “Had a change of heart? Reconsidered? Flip-flopped?” The lift bounced to a stop at the third level and Mrs. Hudson stepped off onto a stone path.

  “Sort of.” Jack strode after her, awed by the depth of color around him. Plants and flowers in a hundred shades grew beneath showers of mist. Each had a small steel sign such as INKWEED (PRINTEX LIBELUS) or WHISPERING IVY (RUMEX VULGARIUM). A red root stood apart on a marble pedestal marked BLOODDRAKE (MANGRADORA SANGUINOUS). The head turned to follow them, cute and puppetlike. Jack reached out to pet it. “Actually, Gwen and I—”

  “Realized you had left a whole country in the lurch? Finally felt the weight of your rrresponsibilities?” Mrs. Hudson smacked his hand away as she trilled her r. The blooddrake gurgled in disappointment, toothy spikes fading back into its hide.

  Jack held his hand to his chest, eyes wide. “Yeah. Sure.”

  “I see.” Mrs. Hudson made an about-face. With a sharp nod, she sent a QED humming off toward the exit, and it dodged the rustling branches of the Kite-eater on the way. “So the two of you want to help Liu Fai now. Is that it?”

  Jack nodded.

  “And what about your father?”

  “We believe catching Liu Fai’s dragon may be the best way to help him.”

  Mrs. Hudson stared down at him through her spectacles. “Intriguing.” She said nothing else.

  Jack blinked. “So . . . can you tell Liu Fai we’re ready to go with him?”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Buckles. He’s gone.” She walked on, snipping the occasional leaf.

  Jack stutter-stepped to catch up. “Gone?”

  “You turned down the China assignment, didn’t you? And after your father woke up, I assumed you’d want to stay with him.” She stopped, throwing out an arm to stop Jack as well, and looked up at a scraggly tuft of green hanging from a stone bridge. Little clusters of conical flowers grew among leaves. She lowered her voice. “Beware the viscum projecticalus.”

  “The what?”

  “The missile-toe.” Mrs. Hudson shoved his head down. With a series of light pops, the conical flowers shot out in all directions, trailing smoke. Miniature explosions lit up the path. When it was over, Mrs. Hudson sniffed and continued under the bridge. “Mr. Liu was your escort, your transportation, and your visa. To visit China without him, you’ll need paperwork.”

  Jack should have guessed. Paperwork was Mrs. Hudson’s favorite
pastime. “Sure. Whatever it takes.”

  “I thought you’d say that.” As they emerged from under the bridge, the QED reappeared, weighed down with a stack of paper as thick as a Victorian novel. Mrs. Hudson made a flourish with a bony hand. “Visa application, customs declaration, statement of intent, medical history, shot record . . . and a postcard for the Foreign Minister’s private collection—”

  The QED dropped the stack into Jack’s arms.

  “—in triplicate. The copier is on Sublevel Two.”

  Jack glanced down at the multicolored pile in his arms. “This will take us all day.”

  “A trifle in the grand scheme. Processing alone will take three to six weeks.” The stranglervine crept out of the bushes, snaking across the path toward Mrs. Hudson’s ankles. She stomped it into the pavers. “Give it up, Nigel. It’s not your day.”

  The vine slithered away.

  Three to six weeks. Jack shook his head and held the stack up for the QED to take. “Thanks, but I can’t wait that long.”

  The drone looked taken aback. It swiveled, pointing its camera at Mrs. Hudson. She nodded and it sagged slowly down to recover the papers. On the way out, the frustrated QED forgot to dodge the Kite-eater. The mutant oak snatched it out of the air, repeatedly crunching its bronze frame with spiky leaves. Frantic, the drone managed to escape, but left the forms behind. A shower of confetti rained down on the topsoil.

  Mrs. Hudson watched the whole affair with a flat frown. “We’ll call that recycling, shall we?”

  Another lift returned them to the first level, and on the way out, Jack spied a crop of purple-and-white blooms on four-foot stems. They waved in a nonexistent breeze, demanding his attention. Their sign read LOOK-AT-ME (LOOKATUS LOOKATUS). Jack hugged the other side of the path, remembering the blooddrake. “What’s the deal with these? Do they spray poison or something?”

  “Not at all.”

  “They why are they here?”

  “Why does anyone keep flowers, Mr. Buckles? They’re pretty.”

  Jack left Mrs. Hudson to tend her pretty flowers and headed for the vault door, held open by a warden.

  “There is one chance,” she called after him.

  He turned, surprised by the helpful tone in her voice. “What chance?”

  “Mr. Liu had other business before returning to China. I’ll offer no guarantees, but”—she snipped a pepper from a nearby vine and it splatted on the pavers, melting a hole right through the stone—“you might still find him at the Ministry of Dragons.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  JACK AND GWEN HAD permission to leave the Keep, but they had no access to the headquarters of the Ministry of Dragons, known as the Citadel. For that, they needed a drago, such as Liu Fai, who was already in the Citadel—making for a sort of which-came-first-the-drago-or-the-egg dilemma.

  “Why are we taking the regular Tube?” asked Jack, perched on the edge of a plastic seat upholstered in an obnoxious triangle-confetti motif. “Can’t we get into the Citadel from the Temple Ministry Express station?”

  Gwen gave him her you’re-such-a-tremendous-wally look from across the aisle. “One does not simply walk into the Ministry of Dragons, Jack, not through the front door. Besides”—she pulled the collar of her sweater away from her neck, scrunched up her nose, and let it snap back again—“I need to stop by the flat for a change of clothes.”

  They left the Tube at King’s Cross and walked to a drab brick apartment building. A bearded man sat huddled under a blanket in the open stairwell. Gwen dropped a coin into his cup.

  “Wow,” said Jack. “The ministry posted an undercover guard at your flat.”

  “Nope.” Gwen yanked open a sticky door on the second level. “That’s just Albert.”

  Jack walked through the door straight into a giant hug from Gwen’s mom. While Gwen ran off to change, her mom plopped him down on a faded denim couch and shoved a bowl of crisps—her word for potato chips—into his hands, along with a purple juice drink that desperately needed whatever sugar the makers had removed.

  The place was small and clean, though it was cluttered with books and the smell of books—the bluish-gray glow of ink and old paper. Jack suspected that was Gwen’s touch.

  Mrs. Kincaid retreated to the kitchen, all of three paces, and sat down on a stool, smoothing out her skirt. “So,” she said in a Welsh accent far thicker than Gwen’s. “Gwenny tells me the two of you are headin’ off on ministry business. Where to this time?”

  “Uh . . .” Jack forced down a half-chewed crisp. Gwen hadn’t prepared him for an interrogation, however congenial. “China?”

  “Ooh. How lovely. Nice dark teas in China.” Gwen had the most easygoing mom on the planet.

  Gwen reappeared before Jack had finished the crisps. She looked much the same, although he noticed a stronger scent of strawberries. With another hug from her mom, and another tasteless purple drink for the road, they were off again, taking the Piccadilly Line to Holborn.

  “If we can’t go through the front door of the Citadel,” asked Jack once they had surfaced again, “then how do you propose we get in?”

  Gwen waited for a light to change, then started south. “Trust me. I have a plan.”

  A few blocks later, Jack saw the plan, seated at the base of a bronze statue on the Strand. He did not like the plan one bit. “Please, Gwen. Not him.”

  “Play nice. Will knows a back way into the Citadel.”

  “Sure he does.”

  “ ’ello, miss.” Will met Gwen with a hug, as always, giving Jack a sly wink in the process. “Lovely to see you again.”

  Jack took Will’s you to mean Gwen, not him. He nodded. “Consider the feeling mutual. Where are we going?”

  Will turned, allowing Gwen to take his arm, and started across the street. “A place of mystery and wonder, Jackie Boy. Mystery and wonder.”

  He led them to a covered alley, hidden behind the black timber porch of an old pub. And after a confusing jumble of lefts and rights, they emerged in a world set apart. He hadn’t lied about the mystery and wonder.

  Jack looked up and down a cobblestone lane of Victorian buildings. Grand arches at one end were carved with griffins and winged horses. It felt as if the last century hadn’t touched the place. “Where are we?”

  “The Temple.” Gwen let Will escort her through another short passage toward a colonnade that bordered a long courtyard, forcing Jack to walk behind. “Two of England’s four Inns of Court are headquartered here. The lawyers have had it for centuries, but this compound once belonged to the Templar Knights, who were of course—”

  “Dragos,” said Jack.

  All three came to a halt at the edge of the courtyard, and Gwen let go of Will’s arm. “Correct, Jack. High marks for you. The Citadel lies directly beneath our feet.”

  “Great. So how do we get in?”

  They both looked at Will, whose normally confident expression cracked.

  Jack lowered his chin without releasing the boy from his gaze. “You do know how to get in, right? Otherwise, why are you here?”

  “I know where the entrance is.” Will’s gaze shifted to a cathedral that sat lower than the main courtyard, as if resting on far more ancient ground. “Over there, in the Temple Church.”

  “You could have told Gwen that much over the phone.”

  “I wanted to tag along, yeah?” He cast a sideways glance at Gwen.

  She blushed.

  Jack rolled his eyes and headed for the church. “Of course you did.”

  Inside, huge marble pillars supported a many-arched ceiling. The plush box pews all faced the center aisle, rather than the altar, like two armies of worshipers squaring off.

  “The Middle Temple barristers use the pews on the left,” said Gwen. “The set on the right is for the Inner Temple barristers. I shouldn’t sit down in either. Bit of a rivalry between them. You might find a thumbtack in your cushion.” She turned to Will. “If you can’t tell us how to get through the secret door, t
hen what can you tell us?”

  “I ’eard about the back door while on reconnaissance for Fulcrum, watchin’ two dragos in a pub. The older chap says to the younger, ‘There’s an entrance ’idden in Temple Church, brother.’ ”

  “Yes, we know that part,” muttered Jack. “Maybe you should skip a bit, brother.”

  Gwen slapped his arm, right on the bruise. “Go ahead, Will. What else?”

  His expression darkened, as if contemplating a puzzle. “The older chap looks all cryptical and says, ‘The door will only open in the round when one drago’s gaze meets another’s.’ ”

  Jack slumped down into a pew, ignoring Gwen’s warning about thumbtacks. “So we need a pair of dragos to help us sneak into drago headquarters? Why am I not surprised?”

  “You and I are dragos, Jack,” said Will. “By blood, yeah?”

  “Well, I’m not gazing into your eyes, if that’s what you want.”

  “The Round.” Gwen stepped between them, touching their shoulders. “I know what that is. You two muffins can stay here and stare into each other’s eyes, or you can follow me.”

  Six more columns stood beneath a central dome at the far end of the cathedral, forming a small chapel. Life-size effigies of knights lined the floor—medieval Han Solos trapped in carbonite. Jack scooted between them to catch up to Gwen, careful not to let any part of his body touch the slabs. He had a thing about dead people.

  “The Knights Templar called this the Round,” said Gwen, turning in a slow circle. “They built it to mimic the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem.”

  “Okay.” Jack sidestepped another Han Solo. “But what about our romantically gazing dragos?”

  Gwen left the center and walked along a rounded wall sculpted with figures, mostly grotesque tormented faces. She patted the head of a rat-lizard gnawing on a man’s ear, then smiled at a pair of dragons above the chapel’s rear door. “Will, are you certain you heard that old gentleman correctly?”

  Will dropped his eyes to his Italian leather shoes. “They were meetin’ in a pub. It was loud.”