“Bathing suits, like above does, would work.”
“True. Skin is skin, though.”
He grunted agreement and scooted lower, soaking.
I climbed out. I wouldn’t put it past Jao to show up early and I really didn’t want to talk to the spymaster in the tub. A quick toweling off and inspection of the garments revealed that I had been given pants, and a short wrap-around shirt that reminded me of the kitsune boy. They went on under the ankle-length kimono. Mine, like Bella’s, was heavily embroidered. The depictions of a blue-flamed demon weren’t particularly flattering, though.
Leaving Ash to his decadent bath, I went out to the girls, who had set food out on a low table, and were sitting by it.
“No chairs.” Dorothy pointed out to me, and I nodded. Tatami mats and perhaps a low bench would be all that were provided. Eastern Court was in the grips of nostalgia, and had been for the better part of a century. I wondered if anyone here had heard of anime, and what they made of it. I hadn’t met any young Fae on my last visit.
“Now, we wait.” I lowered myself into the correct position on the mat.
“How long until dusk?” Dorothy asked, picking up chopsticks and looking askance at them. I guessed that she might never have even seen them before.
“A couple of hours, now, but I am expecting a visitor at any moment.”
Bella showed Dorothy how to use the chopsticks, and I’m fairly sure there was a small spell involved, to help the girl maintain her dignity. Ash was definitely using a spell to make the process work. I looked out at the garden, my attention caught by something. I wasn’t sure what it was. Nothing was moving, aside from a small breeze ruffling the leaves of the maple. Something... wasn’t right.
Bella looked up, and followed my gaze outside. “What is it?”
“I don’t know. Stay here...” I got up and walked to the door.
Kyuden Battle
And looked up, to see the source of that light breeze. A dragon hovered just over the roofline of the pagoda. Swimming in the air, the eastern dragon was a vivid crimson shading toward a black belly, his legs drawn up to his body and body sinuously moving. He twisted into a spiraling descent aimed straight at me, his mouth gaping. I threw myself back inside as the fireball splashed onto the veranda. It clung and the tongues of flame licked hungrily at the very dry wood.
“Get out!” I shouted at them. “Dragon! Bella...”
She had drawn a small pistol from her sleeve. Good girl, had it strapped to her forearm most likely. With those layers, best place to keep it. I had mine in a shoulder holster until now, when I drew it. Herding Dorothy, and Ash, who had produced a recurve bow from goodness only knew where, we headed for the rear of the pagoda. The dragon had landed in the garden and was looking in the door through the growing flames. He roared.
“There may be another, or something else.” I held up a hand and slipped to the side of the door before peering out into the long, roofed walkway that connected our building to another perhaps a hundred yards away. The garden on both sides of it seemed to be empty. There was nothing, no Fae running toward the commotion and fire. Just the four of us. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. Where was Yiu Jao?
“Go,” I pointed at the far building. It was no less of a tinder-box than this one was, but we might find reinforcements in it. Ash led the way, with Bella and Dorothy on his heels. The dragon, tired of us not running out into his mouth, I presumed, keened in disappointment and coughed another fireball, gutting the pretty screened room. I ran away.
He was going to figure out that it was a short flight over the pagoda, or a trot around it, to reach us. I wasn’t impressed with his intelligence, so far. Not that I was complaining, there is much to be said for stupid foes. Ash reached the building and held up his hand for a pause while he looked inside. Bella went into a half-crouch, pointing her pistol upward and looking for a flying target. I didn’t look behind me. I realized she had to have been using magic, she couldn’t possibly have run that fast in that dress. Dorothy was wide-eyed, and trying to look everywhere at once.
I was only a few steps away when Ash backpedalled out of the building, nocking an arrow. He loosed it, and I still couldn’t see what was coming out of the shadowed interior toward us.
“Go back! Get back!” he yelled. Bella snatched Dorothy and levitated them both out over the garden. I trained my pistol at the dark doorway. What scuttled out wasn’t very big, but I knew what it was, and so did Ash. You only had to see a salamander in action once to have utter respect for it. This one, an arrow sticking out of its head, was angry.
I started to back up quickly down the walkway, looking in all directions at once. The dragon, making sad little ‘wheeple’ noises, was still sticking his nose into the door of the little pagoda, which was nearing full engulfment in flames. The fire didn’t seem to bother the dragon, and it sure as hell wouldn’t bother the little warty monster who was scrabbling on the wooden floors toward Ash and I, leaving charred footprints in his wake.
I had an idea. It was insane, and required me to run back into a burning building, but it might work, and wouldn’t give away my magic just yet.
“Aim for the eye!” I called to Ash. I took one quick shot, but as there was a flare of magic where the bullet hit, I determined that he was fully shielded. Ash’s enchanted arrows might work, might not.
I didn’t wait to see, but turned and sprinted for the pagoda. I swear, the dragon wagged his tail.
“Aroo!” he crowed triumphantly as he spotted me coming through the back door. I hug a hard left. “Barrooo?” He howled questioningly.
“Try this!” I yelled, wielding a wooden bucket full of water as I came back out into his line of sight, running lightly over scorched floor and avoiding the flaming paper and fabric walls. He opened his mouth to let out another fireball, and I threw the water down his gullet. The big black eyes widened, and his head abruptly vanished, his whole body thrashing on the velvety green lawn. I didn’t know how much damage I had done, couldn’t wait around to see with the building creaking in the fire.
Bucket in hand, I detoured to the tub one last time before back outside, where the salamander was crouched, tail lashing like a cat, in a standoff with Ash. I didn’t think the bucket trick would work on the enchanted monster, but it was worth a try. Bella had landed, and was blocking the weird amphibian’s retreat. I wondered why it hadn’t tried to attack, yet.
“What did you do?” Ash hissed out of the side of his mouth. He was holding the arrow at ready.
“Tried something I read one time. Classic science fiction is educational, you know.” I felt really tired suddenly and wanted it over. “Shoot it.”
He let the arrow fly, and the salamander sparkled with spellwork as it deflected the second arrow. “It’s not working.”
I stepped forward, watching Bella’s hand go into action as I arced the water over the ugly little greenish-brown beast. She cast spell, and the water hit at the same time, with an ugly hiss, and the salamander writhed, shrieking and emitting a blue flame. The wooden walkway under him ignited, in spite of the water I had just thrown.
“Damn, that’s hot. Ash... Can you get us over there?” I pointed.
He nodded and I grabbed his shoulder as he ‘ported us from one end of the walk to where Bella was standing. The salamander was still twitching, but I thought she had just stunned it, and the water hadn’t helped it any.
“Scope out the building.” I ordered him. “Bella, don’t use the same spell on it twice, it’s highly adaptive. Dorothy, can you use Sight?”
The girl was scared speechless, but she nodded quickly and closed her eyes. Ash slipped into the doorway, an arrow half-set and ready to go. Bella threw something at the salamander, I didn’t see what. It howled. Dorothy opened her eyes, and shook her head.
“There are a bunch of people there...” She pointed toward the rear corner of the building. “I think they are trapped.”
I nodded. “Stay with me. Ash...” I walked pa
st him. “Stay with Bella.”
I’d fired one shot from the .45 semi-auto I was carrying, which meant another six rounds before a new magazine. I had one spare strapped to my chest in the holster pocket. Dorothy, still quiet, was right behind me. She was doing good for a kid in her first firefight. I spoke quietly to her, not turning my head to look at her, trusting that she’d hear me.
“Try using the sight with one eye open, it’s disorienting, so if you need to grab my shoulder to keep on your feet, that’s fine. Normally you don’t grab the guy you’re fighting alongside unless you have a damn good reason.”
“Yes,” she told me breathlessly. I felt a little hand latch onto a fold of my kimono. I went on. “You aren’t carrying a weapon, and I presume no one taught you offensive spells, so if you see anything move, hit the floor and hug it hard.”
I heard her gulp. “Yes.”
“Don’t throw up on me,” I warned. “And the lessons will start as soon as we’re out of this, got it?”
“Teach me to fight?” She wavered a little, but I figured this was as good a way as any to keep her mind off what was happening.
“Yeah. How close are we?”
“There,” she tugged me a little to one side. It was damn dark in here, no windows in this part of the building, and we walked into a hall lined with doors. This had to be storage. From the echoes, we’d just left one very large room, no doubt with screens over the windows to block out light.
“Which door?”
“The last one on the right, I think.” She told me.
“Anything behind us, or above us?” I paused for a second to let her take a look.
“N-no...”
“Don’t doubt yourself, kid, you’re doing fine.” I reassured her. She had steel.
The last door was closed, with a heavy beam dropped over it. I could feel the cold as I reached for it. Damn. They had been imprisoned in the cold room. If this was a banqueting hall, as I thought, it was the equivalent of a walk-in freezer.
“Dorothy, kid, close both your eyes. Stand here.” I steered her against the wall, off to one side, and lifted the beam off the stanchions. The door swung open, and I caught it, as the fae who had been pushing on it fell out at my feet.
“Please! Help us!” he gasped.
“Come on out.” I called into the room. “Anyone who can’t walk, carry them out. There’s not enough of us to help you.”
The young man who had fallen out got up and went back in. He re-emerged with an elderly woman on his arm, clutching tightly. Another pair staggered out, and then more. I counted eight people.
“Dorothy, how many did you see?”
“Seven or eight, I think, they were pretty tightly grouped.”
I looked into the dimly lit room. There was a blue elf globe at the ceiling, and in the weird light I could see a still body in the corner. The young man came back.
“She is gone,” he said simply. I swung the door shut. That was business for later, then.
“Dorothy, you can open your eyes.” I told her. She’d see it soon enough, and I’d spare her for now.
“I need to check on Bella and Ash. Dorothy, stay here with these people, and you...”
The young man straightened wearily as I pointed at him. “Jao Chong, sir.”
I grunted. “I think I know your father. Call for help.”
“Uncle, and yes, sir.”
I trotted back toward the entry I’d come in, to see if they needed my help.
Bella had killed it. Or maybe Ash, as the twisted body sported an arrow through the eye. The other eye looked like a bullet had gone through it to the brain.
“I kept throwing things at it, and it dropped shields after a while.” She was sagging against a pillar. Ash was sitting on the ground, poking thoughtfully at the dead monster.
“Wore it out. And you look tired. Can you manage to come check on some people? They were locked in a freezer.”
“Oh, dear.” She tottered toward me, and then made a face. “The shoes have to go.”
Bella kicked them off, which seemed to help a little, and Ash looked up at me. “This is interesting.”
“Oh?” I bent over him and looked at the end of the stick. There was a faint sparkle of a spell, and then the corpse burst into flame. I jumped back.
“Well, that was unexpected.” Ash held up the stick, looking at the smoldering tip, and I lost it.
Trail of Destruction
Yiu Jao bubbled in to find me doubled up in laughter, the salamander blazing merrily behind me.
“What. The. Everliving. Hell. Did you do?” He growled at me. I looked around. The pagoda behind me took that moment to collapse into a shower of sparks.
“Well, I’d say it wasn’t me, but...”
He blinked and relaxed slightly. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t expecting trouble. Not like this. I know it’s not your fault, Lom. You do, however, tend to leave a certain trail in your wake.”
“This was a well-coordinated attack with a lot of power behind it.” I told him. “For one thing, until recently I was sure dragons were extinct.”
He got a funny look on his face, but whatever he was about to say was interrupted by the arrival of his young nephew. Seeing him in the light I revised my original estimate of his age downward.
“Uncle!”
Bella and Dorothy were following him, along with a couple of others I didn’t recognize, but whose clothing and posture indicated policemen of some sort.
Yiu Jao held out a hand and they clasped forearms briefly, but I saw the relief on my friend’s face.
“What happened?” Jao asked, and Chong answered with a deep sigh.
“They struck while we were sleeping. All of us were ported into the cold room, and there was a spell preventing us from using magic at all in there. Nothing...” He shivered, and I realized with a sinking heart that they had been trapped the whole time we had been in the little pagoda. Bella, from the stricken look on her face, was thinking the same thing.
“I don’t know what happened outside, until the door opened and they were there,” he gestured at me.
“I should have gone looking when no-one greeted us.” I offered as an apology, but Jao shook his head.
“There was no way for you to know, we wanted to give you privacy to rest before the reception. Which,” he looked around, “will be cancelled, now, I’m afraid.”
“I think you may need to re-evaluate security measures.”
He growled low in his throat. “Will you accept our hospitality elsewhere?”
“We will stay here, I don’t think they will return without the element of surprise.” I told him. “Don’t take this as a blow to your honor.”
He nodded, abruptly, after locking gazes with me for a long moment. “Then... Let us talk. What happened?”
“We were sitting and relaxing,” I pointed at the small pagoda. “When I got that feeling, you know...”
“Your gut said something was wrong.” He looked at the smoldering remains of the salamander. “Show me?”
I led him through the garden around the front lawn where we had first arrived. The lawn was torn up, furrowed where the dragon had been flailing around in pain. Jao flinched at the destruction. “What happened here?”
“After the first fireball, the dragon landed. He was maybe fifty-sixty feet long, middle as big as a tanker car, head the size of a BMW....”
Surprised at my metaphor, Jao let out a bark of laughter. “You said dragon, and I did not believe you. They are gone, none have been seen in an age.”
“Well, don’t know about that, but I have seen two inside the last month.”
He stared at me, brows furrowed. I think it was the most emotion I had ever seen him display. He was a very worried man. “The dragons are returning.”
He turned away, and I kept silent, letting him think. He was visibly shaken by what I had just told him. Bella, still flanked by the two cop-types, caught up with us.
“Lom? Is everthing ok? Dorothy is r
ather upset, although she is trying to keep a stiff upper lip.”
I hugged Bella, feeling some of the combat adrenaline drain away. “I think so.”
Jao turned around and spoke to one of the underlings. “Is the Kyuden clear?”
The man nodded. “There is no sign of any hiding enemy and the personnel have been evacuated, except for your nephew, who refused care. Temporary staff will arrive,” He paused briefly, as though he were listening to something, “in an hour, perhaps two.”
“And a forensic team?”
“They have arrived.” The man pointed back toward the area we had come from.
I was impressed. Jao had modernized his Court investigators far more than mine had. I made a mental note to find out if Corwin would allow the Eastern man to come train some people.
“Then let us return to the Kyuden and find refreshments, allow your young woman to find a place to rest.” Jao offered to me.
We collected Ash and Dorothy, and Chong took the girls to a room where Dorothy could lie down. Jao looked at me. “We need to talk.”
“Ya think?” I knew it sounded rude, but I was getting rather out of sorts, and it was time to get some information before anyone else got hurt.
“Food, tea, then a bath,” he announced. “Come.”
Someone, most likely Chong, I decided, had put out a spread of food, both Western and Asian. The low table and mats were the same, but it was reassuring to have a sandwich to hold onto rather than the unfamiliar chopsticks. I changed my mind about Chong when Jao looked at the table in irritation and then clapped his hands. Three frosty bottles of beer appeared on it. Some sort of magic system, then. Amused, I accepted the beer and sipped at it.
We were finishing when one of the minions appeared, looking suspiciously at me. He leaned over and spoke softly to Jao, who listened, and then laughed.
“He seems to think that as the dragon is no longer here, and the salamander burnt up, perhaps you and your people are solely responsible for the damage.”
“Thought you had a forensic team? They should be able to find foot prints. Hell, when Ash first put an arrow into the salamander and ticked it off, it burned prints right into the wood.”
Trickster Noir (Pixie for Hire Book 2) Page 22
