The Clockwork Dragon

by James R. Hannibal

  Without a word, Liu Fai set off down a corridor lined with pewter statues. Jack held Gwen back a few paces. “What happened to Will?”

  “Your little maneuver with the portal slowed the dragos down,” whispered Gwen, keeping one eye on their escort. “Will and I escaped, and we found Liu Fai in the kitchen. Lovely place. Twelve-foot stoves with copper pots everywhere. Biscuits and strawberry jam you would die for. The tea was—”

  “What about Will?”

  “He left before I made contact with Liu Fai—said he’d find his own way to the surface.”

  Jack pursed his lips. “So he abandoned you.”

  “Noooo.” She slapped his arm, managing to find the bruise as always. “He made sure I’d be okay, then ducked out of sight for the sake of our mission. He was being gallant, Jack.”

  “Sure he was.”

  Liu Fai stopped at the edge of the grand hall. “From now on, stay close. And stop whispering. You are not exactly welcome here.”

  They crossed the hall beneath the silver knight and his dragon, and climbed a broad stair to a bronze portcullis guarded by a pair of large dragos. Panels of semiprecious stones formed a mural between its bars. A red garnet dragon wrestled a white opal dragon on an aventurine hill. The flickering light from the giant cauldrons gave life to the battle.

  The guards zeroed in on Jack, and it occurred to him that their glares did not match the warm, come-in-from-the-cold looks Lady Ravenswick had described. Jack lifted his chin at the one on the left, doing his best not to notice the jagged scar bisecting the man’s face. “Sup?”

  The drago frowned, but after a nod from Liu Fai, he spun a crank to raise the gate.

  The three stepped out onto the red tiles of Temple Station, on the secret Ministry Express side, and Liu Fai led them to a small empty platform.

  Gwen had questions—lots of them, Jack could tell. She looked like a balloon about to burst, but she obeyed the rule of silence until they were safely inside their carriage. The moment the clamshell door hissed closed, she flopped down onto the thick green cushion next to Liu Fai, pulled her legs up beneath her, and managed to ask all her questions with a single statement. “So”—she folded her hands beneath her chin—“your mom seems nice.”

  Liu Fai sighed, staring out the portal at the purple light of the maglev rings. “My mother is the British Minister of Dragons and the only child of the late Earl of Ravenswick. My father, Liu Hei, is Long Buzhang, the Chinese Minister of Dragons.” He turned to face them both. “Their courtship was a negotiation, their marriage a merger, and I am the disappointing product.” With a note of somewhat severe finality, he returned his gaze to the portal.

  Jack and Gwen shared a wide-eyed glance.

  After several minutes of silence, the carriage screeched to a stop. Sparks flew past the window, and Newton’s laws threw Jack into Gwen’s lap. As Jack untangled himself, apologizing profusely, Liu Fai calmly stood. “Did I fail to mention that this line is . . . incomplete?”

  Jack caught a hint of a smile.

  The door hissed open, but only partway, jiggling a little. Jack ducked beneath it, jumping the four-foot space between the car and the platform while more sparks rained down from above. A burly man straddling a half-completed maglev ring peeled back a welding mask and shouted, “Oi! Mind the gap!” He laughed and slapped the mask down again.

  “Trust between the two dragon ministries has been slow to come,” said Liu Fai, steering them toward a questionable-looking elevator with all its guts exposed. “But this line will soon join Temple Station directly to our consulate. For the time being, we must walk part of the way.”

  The elevator let them out in a parking garage, not far from a brick pedestrian walkway and a Chinese arch with a tiered roof. Strings of paper lanterns hung above the shops and restaurants.

  “We call this a paifang,” said Liu Fai as he led them beneath the arch. “Gateways such as this have long provided a sense of coming home to our people.”

  A block later, in a square filled with a cacophony of scents, sights, song, and chatter, Jack heard a noise that part of him had been expecting all day.

  Zzap.

  He saw the yellow-orange bolt at the back of his mind.

  Where is it, Jack?

  Zzap.

  He might have imagined the sounds, even the bolts, but not the thump of the miniature blast wave that came with them.

  Gwen felt it too. “Ow.” She rubbed the top of her back. “Did you just pop me between the shoulder blades?”

  “No. I didn’t.” Jack scanned the square.

  Paper lanterns: jostled by a winter breeze.

  Black granite lions: one guarding an ornate ball, the other tickling a cub. Jack would have to ask Liu Fai about that.

  Scent of ginger: red and grainy.

  Scent of roast duck: a deep, earthy green, filling his nostrils with warm smoothness.

  Zzap.

  This time Jack was ready for it. The orange bolt drew his eye to a stairwell beside a storefront marked PANDA’S DELIGHTS. He broke into a run.

  “Where are you going?” Liu Fai called out behind him.

  A shadow moved in the stairwell door—a woman, short, wearing a hooded cloak. When she saw him coming, she pulled the hood back.

  Jack skidded to a stop. “Mom?”

  “Hi, Jack.” Sadie appeared from behind her, smiling as if they’d run into each other on the way to school or a Saturday lunch.

  Jack’s mom did not smile. She pulled her daughter back against her body, concern creasing her brow. “Were you expecting someone else?”

  “Yeah, Mom.” Jack searched the streets leading away from the square. “I was.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  JACK EASED HIS MOM and sister back into the stairwell, out of view from the rest of the street. Neither of them held the Einstein-Rosen Bridge, the device he had heard and felt. “How did you get here?”

  “Jack.” His mom pressed her lips into a flat frown. “I know more ways out of the Keep than you and Gwen put together.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “We took the Tube,” offered Sadie. She never lied to Jack, and if they had used a teleportation device, she would not have looked so calm.

  He sighed. “Okay, Mom. You dressed up in a cloak, broke out of the Keep, violating your Section Eight confinement, and took the Tube out to Chinatown. Why?”

  Sadie bounced on her toes. “So I could come with you!”

  Jack looked from his mom to his bouncing sister and back. “Uh. No.”

  His mom held his gaze. “Yes.”

  “Mrs. Buckles?” Gwen strode up behind Jack with Liu Fai in tow.

  Sadie gave her a finger-wiggling wave. “Hi, Gwen. I’m coming with you to China.”

  “Fantastic,” said Gwen.

  “I don’t think so,” said Liu Fai at the same time.

  “What he said.” Jack thrust a thumb over his shoulder at the drago emissary.

  Jack’s mom pulled him a few paces away from the others. “I don’t have Sadie’s Merlinian gifts, not to the level of pushing thoughts and”—she glanced at her daughter—“the other things. But I’ve had . . . hunches . . . my whole life. And right now, one of those hunches is telling me that you need your sister on this trip.”

  The tightness of her grip told him she wasn’t taking no for an answer. He shot her his this-is-torture-you-must-be-the-worst-parent-ever look as if it gave him some tiny win. “Fine.”

  Jack’s mom pulled him into a hug. He could feel the wetness of tears against his cheek. “Find the answer, Jack. Find the last piece of your father’s puzzle. And come home safe.”

  “I will.”

  She didn’t let go. And after a long time, Jack cleared his throat. “Mom.”

  His mom sniffled. “Yes?”

  “You’re kind of embarrassing me in front of the Earl of Ravenswick.”

  She backed away and wiped her eyes. Then she pulled her hood into place and disappeared into the crowd
.

  “Why are we bringing a nine-year-old girl along?” asked Liu Fai as they left the square.

  “I’m almost ten,” countered Sadie.

  “Oh, good. That is so much better.”

  They arrived at a shop with porcelain cups and jars of spice in the windows. Liu Fai opened the door, unleashing a flood of deep-colored scents. “So the consulate of the Chinese Ministry of Dragons is underneath a tea shop,” said Jack.

  “Right next to the Fire Brigade,” added Gwen, eyeing a big red truck across the street.

  Liu Fai closed the door behind them. “As I said, trust has come slowly.”

  The proprietor snapped into action the moment she saw Liu Fai. She spoke rapid Chinese, gesturing wildly at the customers already in the store. Most looked English, but they caught her meaning. Get Out.

  As soon as they were gone, she pulled a blind down the full length of the door and barked an order to her assistant. The girl put her whole body into the effort of swinging a block of teak apothecary drawers away from the wall. Liu Fai motioned to the others. “This way.”

  Two men in suits guarded a small foyer. A third man, seated behind a reception desk, stood and then leaned forward to look over the edge at Sadie. He asked a question in Chinese.

  Liu Fai answered in Chinese, but by his tone, it sounded a lot like Yeah. I know. But these two numbskulls insisted on bringing her along.

  The man behind the desk gave a half-chuckling reply that Jack interpreted as Your funeral.

  “Our transport is this way.” Liu Fai led them to a steel door, where he passed his emerald ring across a gold wall plate. Mist burst from the threshold as it opened.

  A list of possible transports that might be waiting on the other side floated through Jack’s mind—a hyperloop tube, a maglev super train like a Ministry Express on steroids, a hover jet. Jack was still waiting for someone, anyone, to put him on a hover jet.

  The chamber was not unlike the tea shop, with walls and flooring of dark tropical hardwoods. Serpentine dragons writhed on wooden screens. Narrow blue mountains rose into the clouds on silk tapestries. But Jack hardly noticed the artwork.

  He walked slowly to the center of the chamber, where a three-toed dragon claw hung from the ceiling, clutching a bronze sphere. The top third was mostly windows, and Jack could see leather padded seats inside. “This is the transport?”

  “And this is the door,” said Sadie, running a finger along a seam masked by the ornate etchings in the bronze.

  “The word we use is closer to hatch.” Liu Fai joined them, having traded his coat, scarf, and trilby hat for a black canvas jacket with a single blue stripe down each sleeve.

  Gwen gave him an approving nod. “I like that look. It suits you.”

  “Thank you.” Liu Fai eased Sadie back a step as a circular plate dropped into the floor and slid out of sight, leaving a large hole beneath the sphere. He turned a recessed handle and opened the hatch, gesturing at the darkness. “Watch your step. You do not want to fall in.”

  Jack lifted his sister over the gap. “We don’t want to fall down the dark, scary hole, but we’re climbing into the ominous sphere hanging directly over that same dark, scary hole?”

  Liu Fai helped Gwen up next. “Correct.” He did not seem to be big on idle conversation.

  Once they were all on board, the emissary held five fingers against the glass, signaling an attendant. He lowered his pinky, then his ring finger.

  “Just so we’re clear,” asked Jack, cinching a four-point harness as tight as it would go, “why are we suspended over a dark, scary hole?”

  Liu Fai grinned for the first time since Jack had met him. It was not a pleasant grin. “Don’t all Americans know how you get to China?” He lowered his index finger, finishing with a thumbs-up in the window, and the attendant yanked on a great big lever. “You dig!”

  The claw snapped open.

  The sphere dropped into the black.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  JACK GRABBED THE LEATHER bench as gravity gave way.

  Gwen screamed.

  Sadie threw her hands in the air, letting her body rise in her straps. “Woo-hoo!”

  The feeling of his internal organs trying to escape through his mouth and nose surrounded Jack’s tracker brain with a sort of maroon bubbly sensation. That was a new one. He forced his stomach down out of his throat. “You dug a hole? From London? To China?”

  “Oh, Jack.” Gwen slapped his arm. “That is ignorant on so many levels.”

  Jack rubbed his bruise and pointed. “He started it.”

  “This hole,” said Liu Fai, keeping his eyes on a control pedestal, “is purely for acceleration.” He turned a dial, and the sphere rotated upside down.

  Again, Jack had to swallow his stomach. The glass panes above—or maybe below—showed him nothing but darkness. He lost all sense of orientation. The maroon bubbles surrounded him.

  Liu Fai remained nonchalant. He removed a vial of blue liquid from his jacket and plugged it into a port in the roof. “A dragon door can only transport you a few meters.”

  “Dragon door?” asked Sadie, completely unfazed by the situation.

  “The trans-spatial portals your brother and Miss Kincaid experienced when they snuck into the Citadel”—he scrunched his brow at the other two—“uninvited.” Liu Fai flipped a toggle. Lights flickered on outside, illuminating rock walls racing past. “As I was saying, walking through a dragon door can only transport you a few meters. To cross the globe, we must reach terminal velocity.”

  “I don’t think terminal is the best word right now,” said Jack.

  “Then perhaps escape is a better one.” The emissary flipped up a guard covering a red button, and mashed down. The liquid from the vial shot out ahead, becoming a fine mist that ignited a millisecond later. Flames with the deep blue glow of a midnight sky swallowed the sphere.

  “Whoa,” said Gwen and Sadie at the same time.

  Jack couldn’t speak at all. Passing through the fire, he had the sense of going up, not down, into a black ceiling rippling with tiny waves. The sphere hit. Black liquid splashed down over the windows. And an instant later, they were through, slowing to a perfect stop as another dragon claw closed to receive them. Liu Fai popped the hatch.

  “How—?” Gwen poked her head out, staring down at the black pool as a steel grate walkway swung into place beneath the sphere. The pool split down the middle, retracting into its metal shore.

  “A deceleration trap. A sheet of ferro-carbon nano-particles so fine they behave like liquid. Their magnetic properties allow us to suspend them in midair and steer them as we please.”

  “ ‘Ferro.’ As in iron?” said Gwen. “You dropped us into a sheet of iron?”

  “That behaves like liquid.” Liu Fai rolled his eyes and helped her down, followed by Sadie. He let Jack fend for himself.

  “You’re late.” A man in a high-collared suit crossed the floor to meet them at the end of the steel grate bridge. Titanium panels, pipes, and gauges merged with the natural stone in the chamber behind him. “And why are you wearing that absurd jacket? It only highlights your shame.”

  It occurred to Jack that he was speaking English to maximize Liu Fai’s embarrassment.

  They switched to Chinese, and after a few sharp exchanges, Liu Fai lowered his eyes and muttered something under his breath. The relationship between the two seemed obvious.

  “So,” whispered Gwen as the man led them to an elevator, “your dad seems nice too.”

  A deep charcoal-colored hum inside the elevator pressed in on Jack like a vise—that and the palpable strain between Liu Fai and his dad.

  “My father is disappointed,” said the emissary, speaking far too loud for the small space. “He was expecting the great tracker John Buckles that my mother so often described. He thinks I have returned with a collection of school pals instead.”

  “That is an exaggeration, Shuang. Mr. Buckles—this Mr. Buckles—came highly recommended by a far more
reliable source than your mother.”

  “And that source was . . .” Gwen glanced up at the minister, fishing.

  He wasn’t biting. “You shall see.” The elevator doors opened, revealing a hallway cut from brown stone, and he gestured for his guests to disembark. “She is waiting in my office.”

  The minister’s office was not so grand as his wife’s, though the double doors were still intimidating—red-painted iron, reinforced with spikes. Bladed weapons hung on the walls. The furniture was sparse, a modest desk and a few chairs. A blond woman seated in one of these turned halfway around, holding a long green skirt in place with a delicate hand. She wore round glasses so dark they were almost black. “Wonderful. I am so glad you all could make it.”

  “Archivist!” Gwen clasped her hand, but Jack held back. This was, after all, a woman who may have unleashed a horde of dragons upon them two months before. “What happened to you?”

  “Yes,” asked Jack. “What did happen to you?”

  “An urgent journey, that is all.” She held Gwen’s fingers. “When I heard about the stolen artifacts and the dragon sightings, I offered my help.”

  “It was the Archivist who recommended I bring Mr. Buckles into the investigation,” added the minister. “She mentioned that both he and his team were young.” He sighed and sank into his desk chair, casting a glance Sadie’s way. “She failed to mention how young.”

  Sadie looked right back at him, crossing her arms. “I’m. Almost. Ten.”

  “We saw the calico,” said Gwen, taking the chair beside the Archivist. “He misses you.”

  The Archivist snorted. “That cat misses me the way a prince misses his kitchen maid.”

  “It is late.” Liu Fai’s dad rested his hands on a pile of files. “And I still have much to do. Shuang will find you food and show you to your rooms.”