The Clockwork Dragon

by James R. Hannibal

  “Dragons,” said Gwen with a little laugh. “Not dragos. The old man said the door would open when one dragon’s gaze met another’s.” She frowned at the sculptures. “But these dragons are both looking down.”

  “Maybe we can turn the heads.” Jack started toward one of the dragons.

  Will caught his arm, glancing at a vicar in the main cathedral. “Wait. Let me.” He made a curving pass with three fingers of each hand, and the heads of the dragons noiselessly turned. Dark red beams like rays of shadow shot from their eyes and crossed to form an X in the doorway. The air shimmered, and with a low whump, the intersection of shadows grew into a burgundy portal filled with stars.

  Gwen laughed. “Excellent, Will.” And the two of them walked through.

  “Hey, turning the heads was my idea.” Jack flopped his hands against his sides. Why had he bothered? There was no one left to hear him. He held out a hand, wincing, and pushed through.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  WHUMP.

  Jack had teleported before, using the phase-jumping device the jewel thief had carried—something called the Einstein-Rosen Bridge. This felt far more natural. Pushing through the red shadow felt like pushing through gelatin, without the wet and sticky bits.

  He emerged in a mirror image of the Round with its pillars and dome carved from a dark metallic stone. In place of the grotesque faces at the periphery, there were suits of armor. He glanced back at the portal. “How did we—?”

  “Looks like the spooks aren’t the only ones with secret tech,” said Gwen, pushing a finger into the gelatinous shadow and watching it wiggle.

  Will snorted. “Telekinesis, telepath, teleport. All in the same family, yeah?”

  As the clerk turned away from the portal, Jack stepped in front of him, blocking his path. “You’ve done your part. Now go back through and let us do ours.”

  “What? Not a chance.”

  “Gwen and I are real agents of one of the four secret societies.” Jack shrugged in a mock so-sorry motion. “You’re not. If we’re caught, we have protection from Mrs. Hudson, but who knows what the dragos might do to you?” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “They keep dragons here.”

  “Thanks.” Will pushed past him. “But I can take care o’ myself.”

  Beyond the circle of knights, they found a long bridge over an open chasm, running straight into sheer black ramparts. The high walls disappeared into the dark to the left and right.

  “A castle,” said Jack as they crossed the bridge. “Why would you need defenses like this down here?” He peered down over the edge into a fathomless mist. “What sort of monster were the dragos worried about?”

  At the far end, they passed between a pair of statues as tall as the giant wardens back at the Keep—a man and a woman, both in armor. “Look.” Gwen slowed, nodding at a reptilian creature poised at the woman’s heel like a hunting dog. “She has a dragon.”

  A long passage led past wooden doors and spiraling stairwells. Sconces flickered with smokeless yellow flame, casting their light across tapestries of knights in battle. Sometimes the knights fought dragons, but not always. In a few scenes, the dragons fought alongside them.

  The passage ended at a switchback staircase that descended into a grand hall. Giant cauldrons burned at the four corners. The dark floor was polished to a high shine. The three ducked behind the railing. There were many dragos—all wearing their gray coats, trilby hats, and red scarves—but there was no sign of Liu Fai.

  “Well, that’s a new ’un,” whispered Will, staring straight out into the open air instead.

  Jack could not disagree with his assessment. A silver knight on horseback floated high above the floor, battling a winged dragon. By what art the two-piece monument remained suspended, Jack could not say.

  “Come on,” said Gwen, starting down. They kept low, hiding behind the solid stone railing, but Jack peeked over once in a while to keep an eye on the opposite wall, where the stone facades of ancient houses took up every inch. Columned doorways and paneless windows opened into empty space. A few of the houses pushed out far enough to have a gabled porch. Others were recessed deeper in.

  As the three reached the last switchback, a spout of flame lit up a window. A creature roared. Someone cried out in pain. Another someone grumbled impatiently.

  Jack caught up to Gwen. “That’s not good.”

  She waved him off, whispering in her Encyclopedia Kincaidia voice. “Article twelve, directive fourteen of the Dragon Code: ‘All agents above the level of squire will train with live dragons.’ I’m guessing those sounds are routine for this place.”

  Jack peeked over the rail. Gwen was right. Not one of the dragos showed any concern over the roar or the cry. “The Dragon Code?”

  “The Code of the Order of Dragons. The coodos, if you like.”

  Jack raised a skeptical eyebrow.

  Gwen stopped at the bottom step and shrugged. “Most just call it the Dragon Code.”

  The implication that Gwen had memorized the drago regulations did not surprise Jack in the least. She had a thing for rules. She also had a thing for breaking them.

  “Train with live dragons?” Will—rather sensibly—had fixated on the content of the rule instead of the code’s title. “Sounds like they’re begging for grievicious bodily ’arm.”

  The three snuck along a shadowed arcade, and soon Jack felt a tingling in the back of his neck. He looked out across the hall, then up. In the same window where he’d seen the spout of flame, he saw a man staring right at him. A second later, a girl on the polished floor stopped, turned, and stared as well. Then another drago stopped and stared, and another, and another.

  “Um . . . I think the dragos can sense my presence.” Jack tugged at Gwen’s sleeve. “I’m endangering the mission. I shouldn’t have come.”

  “Why does that sound so familiar?” asked Will.

  More dragos appeared in the empty doorways. None looked happy, and Jack’s tingling became a hot, hostile burn. “Time to go,” he said, pulling the other two into a run.

  He took a right into a passage, and then a left, checking over his shoulder for men and women in gray coats. “You’d think one or two of them would make a different fashion choice.”

  “Article seven, directive six,” said Gwen, panting beside him. “All dragos must wear their armor at all times.”

  “Armor?” Jack checked the doors on his side of the passage, looking for a place to hide and rethink the plan. If the wrong crowd caught them first, they might get ejected from the premises, without ever finding Liu Fai. “What armor?”

  Gwen tried an iron door, broader than the rest. It opened. “You don’t think they wear those ridiculous secret-police coats for the looks, do you?” She pushed the door wide and waved the others through.

  Instead of a room, they found a stairwell made entirely of dragonite. Jack could feel the heat of it as his fingers grazed the wall. Outside the Archive well, he had only encountered that much of the rare mineral in one other place—the Drago Collection, where the Ministry of Dragons kept a number of . . . “Live specimens.” Jack breathed out the last two words.

  “What was that?” asked Will

  Jack couldn’t answer. His head buzzed, invaded by a deep voice.

  The flame.

  New blood.

  Doesn’t know.

  Jack stumbled down the last few steps into a chamber lit by bubbling white sconces. A dragon the size of a school bus blocked their path. It had deep yellow scales and horns and talons like uncut amber. Coal-black eyes drilled into Jack’s brain.

  Yes! New blood.

  Show me the flame!

  Jack crumpled, throwing up his arms and turning back toward the stairs.

  Will backed up beside him, pulling Gwen. “Good call, Jackie Boy. Let’s not go this way.”

  Unfortunately, retracing their steps did not help. A small gray army poured into the passage as the three burst out of the stairwell. Gwen and Will, surging ahead, took
the first turn they came to. Jack rounded the corner a few paces behind, waving his arm. “Keep going!”

  Perhaps to answer him, or to check his progress, Gwen glanced back, and the motion spoiled her balance. She bumped into a wall sconce, which tilted ninety degrees without losing its yellow flame. Will steadied her, and together they ran onward between a pair of pewter dragon statues.

  They never saw the dragons move.

  Jack did. And try as he might, he could not stop his momentum.

  The pewter dragons turned on their bases and opened their jaws. Dark beams shot out, slamming together in a roiling ball of red shadow.

  Whump.

  The passage around Jack vanished as he stumbled through gelatin—without the wet and sticky bits. He managed to spin around once he passed through, but the portal evaporated, leaving a set of high silver doors, inches from his nose.

  Jack heard the squeak of a chair far behind him. Sharp heels clicked on stone. A melodious feminine voice said, “Hello, Jack. I was wondering when you’d finally stop by.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  JACK SLOWLY TURNED, MIND reeling. Gwen was out there somewhere. Alone. No. Worse than that. She was out there somewhere. With Will. He blanched at the thought.

  The portal had brought him to the Citadel’s throne room. And yet a simple oak desk and a coat rack sat atop the stepped dais where he’d expected to see a big golden chair. A tall woman in a white blouse and gray skirt walked down the steps. Jack remembered her from the tribunal. He remembered her ice-blue eyes. And now that he saw them again, her eyes reminded him of another set he had recently seen.

  “Come here, Jack. Don’t be shy.”

  Jack walked the thirty meters or so to the dais, passing dusty shafts of sunlight on both sides. He had to wonder how the dragos had managed that so deep underground. “You’re—” Jack’s throat had gone dry. He swallowed to wet it. “You’re the Minister of Dragons.”

  The woman put a finger to her lips. “Outside these walls, I am the Marshall of the Citadel or the Countess Ravenswick. My true station is a secret, but”—her eyes flicked down to Jack’s hands and back up again—“I’m quite certain you can keep a secret, can’t you, Jack?”

  “Sure . . .” Jack realized the woman had casually slipped in the fact that she was nobility and added, “My lady.”

  “No need for such formality here.” A chair flew in from the edge of the room at breakneck speed, halting right behind him. “Have a seat. I have been so looking forward to this meeting.”

  “You knew I was coming?”

  She laughed. “I’m no Merlinian, if that’s what you’re asking. But I knew you’d come to us soon enough. I’m quite familiar with your heritage, Jack. Quite familiar.” The countess walked around the chair. Long fingers traced the line of Jack’s shoulders. “Your father and I were close before the incident with the Clockmaker.”

  The way she said close sent a cold trickle down Jack’s spine. He didn’t think his mother would like it either. But it occurred to him that if his dad had cozied up to the Minister of Dragons, then it had probably been part of his work with Fulcrum, on the orders of Sir Drake.

  Lady Ravenswick took his silence for disbelief and strolled over to the hat stand, where her coat, hat, and scarf hung alongside a sword and scabbard. She peeled back the lapel of her coat, showing him the shimmering green lining beneath. “Recognize this?”

  “Dragon scales.” Jack sat forward in the chair. “My father wore a similar lining when he faced the Clockmaker.”

  “A gift he asked me for”—she lifted the fabric to her eyes, as if looking for a flaw—“one I had hoped would better protect him.”

  “Why?” Jack hardened his features. “Why would a drago countess help a Buckles? After all, we’re nothing but crumbs and commoners.”

  “Oh, but you’re not so common as that, are you?” Lady Ravenswick let the coat fall back into place and returned to the front of her desk. “Your father showed Arthurian tendencies too, Jack. Nothing like yours, of course, but some—a little heat in a handshake, an inclination toward fire. When he married a girl from another tracker bloodline, I knew that you”—she nudged Jack’s heel with the toe of her high-heeled shoe—“would be special.”

  Her gaze was like a tractor beam. Jack bailed out of the chair.

  Lady Ravenswick didn’t let him off that easy. She closed the distance between them. “I can help you, Jack. I can take your abilities further than you ever dreamed.”

  She spread her hands, and a flame sprouted from each palm, one white, one blue. With a thrust of her palms, they merged into a fireball that whipped past Jack’s ear, growing in flight until it crashed into the silver doors. The brassy ring of a gong filled Jack’s senses.

  “Now you,” she said, folding her arms and sitting back against her desk, crossing her ankles. “Show me.”

  “I . . . Uh . . .” He didn’t want to, even if he had known how. “I can’t.”

  “Pyrokinetic stage fright?” She sighed. “Nothing to be ashamed of. Happens a lot to boys your age. But fire is just the beginning.” The chair tipped onto one leg all by itself and began to spin. “Our ability is telekinesis, Jack—all about motion. Fire is instinctual. We create it by exciting air molecules. But the best of us can do much more.”

  Dust streamed to her palm from the shafts of light and coalescing into a perfectly smooth sphere. “In times gone by, the most powerful dragos raised the earth from the battlefield to hem in their foes. They spun the rain into whirlwinds.” She lowered her chin, cocking her head slightly and raising her eyes to meet Jack’s. “They made their enemies burst into flame.”

  Jack knew she wanted a reaction, some confirmation that he had done exactly that to Tanner. He held his poker face, but the questions remained. Had he caused the fire inside Tanner? Had the roof of the tomb fallen on its own, or had Jack brought it down to crush the man?

  What kind of person did that make him?

  “Oh, Jack.” The chair settled onto all four legs, one at a time. Lady Ravenswick tossed the sphere out into the room, and it burst into dust, filling up the shafts of light once more. “Don’t look so glum. You ought to be thrilled. I’m offering you freedom.”

  “Freedom?”

  “You and your family are prisoners of the Keep and the whole Section-Thirteen-Section-Eight thing. I can put an end to all that, and to this thing with Gall.” She wiggled her fingers as if this thing with Gall were a spat between neighbors over ugly lawn furniture and uncut shrubs. “The crumbs don’t want you. You know that. You’re a black mark on their prim and perfect record. Come to the Citadel, Jack. Join your true family. This is where you belong.”

  The room seemed to tilt on its side. “You want me to be a drago?”

  “You are a drago, Jack. You’ve felt it in Ministry Express stations. It’s the reason you stood no chance of sneaking through the Citadel unnoticed.” She bent forward and touched his arm, pushing a hot, tingling sensation into his muscles. “Dragos with the full measure of the gift unconsciously excite the air. And they can feel that energy from others like them.”

  Jack’s eyes drifted. “That’s why they stare at me.”

  “They recognize one of their own, lost out in the cold. Let us bring you in where it’s warm.”

  Warmth. Belonging. He had to admit it sounded nice. “But I don’t have the pedigree.”

  “That won’t be a problem.” Lady Ravenswick walked to the other side of her desk, thumbing through an old ledger that just happened to be sitting out. “There are extinct titles within my discretion, family names waiting to be reborn.” She paused at a yellowed page and looked up. “The Baron Buckland, I think, in honor of your history. How does that sound?”

  She was offering him knighthood, a noble title. A pit—small but deep and screaming Danger!—opened in Jack’s gut. He ignored it. “What about my parents and Sadie?”

  “They’d be welcome here, free to come and go as they please. The Ministry of Dragons doesn’
t care one whit about tracker regulations. We’re talking a clean slate here.”

  A clean slate. No more Section Thirteen. No impending Section Eight trial hanging over his parents. Jack would lose his family name, but he’d have a new one. And clean slates were all about change, weren’t they? “What about Mrs. Hudson? And Gwen and Ash?”

  “Jack.” The corners of her mouth turned down in an admonishing smile. “To be honest, most of us in the Elder Ministries believe the crumbs are an anomaly that has outlived its time—a three-century fad that suited a royal fancy. I can protect you from Gall, but I can’t protect our whole ministry.”

  Amid the thoughts churning in Jack’s brain, one stood out—something Mrs. Hudson had said. He looked down at his shoes, muttering the phrase. “Sic biscuitus disintegratum.”

  Lady Ravenswick chuckled, nodding. “Just so, I’m afraid. Now, what do you say?”

  Jack was going to say he’d have to think about it, but he didn’t get the chance.

  One of the silver doors swung open with a long, pitiful moan that spilled across Jack’s mental vision like yellow goo. He turned to see Gwen come walking through. She looked utterly surprised to see him, as did the boy with her, who wasn’t Will.

  Liu Fai, the Chinese emissary, scrunched his ice-blue eyes into a suspicious stare. “Mother? What are you up to?”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  LADY RAVENSWICK STRODE PAST Jack, arms wide. “Hel-lo, Stephen. Thank you for bringing Miss Kincaid. You’ve saved me all kinds of trouble.”

  Jack tried to pick his jaw up off the floor. “Mother?”

  Gwen looked equally stunned. “Stephen?”

  Lady Ravenswick clasped Liu Fai’s shoulders, kissing him on each cheek. “That is my son’s English name: Stephen Corvus, Earl of Ravenswick.”

  Jack let out a laugh of disbelief. “Really? Can I call you Steve?”

  “No.”

  Long fingers caressed Jack’s neck. Heat sank into his skin. Lady Ravenswick ushered him out through the open door along with the other two. “I am sorry you have to leave so soon, Stephen. But I understand the urgency of your mission.” There was fondness in her smile and sadness in her voice—a little too much fondness and a little too much sadness. “Give my love to your father.” She strode back into the chamber, heels clicking. The silver door shut on its own.