Thieves of Weirdwood

by Christian McKay Heidicker

  “Got it,” Breeth said, trying to smile through her sadness. “First save the living guy, then help the dead girl.”

  * * *

  By the time they returned to Arthur, he’d found the keys and was releasing his dad.

  “Attaboy!” the man said, ruffling his son’s hat, whose daffodil was in full bloom again. “Glad to see the Rook’s claws ain’t sunk too deep.”

  “Go hide somewhere in the city,” Arthur said. “And don’t drink. I’ll find you once I have enough money to pay off your debt.”

  The man raised his right hand. “Black Feathers’ honor.”

  Breeth doubted a gang of thieves possessed much honor.

  Arthur’s dad trucked down the hallway and vanished.

  “You weren’t lying,” Wally said to Arthur. “About Graham.”

  “I never lie!” Arthur said.

  Wally looked like he wanted to argue but thought better of it. “I need to get back to Mirror Kingsport and find him.”

  “How?” Arthur said. “Those weird people took their door knocker back. Hazelrigg will be nothing but a burnt-out shell.”

  “I got in once by yelling Lady Weirdwood’s name,” Wally said. “Maybe it’ll work a second time.”

  They exited the hospital into the evening. The port was eerily quiet. The tentacles writhed like beached fish. It was dinnertime, when people would usually be flooding the docks, but now the only sounds were ocean waves. Even the seagulls had been frightened away by the Corvidians.

  A robed figure waited for them on the cliffs. Arthur and Wally froze, ready to fight or run. But then the figure drew back its hood.

  “You saved my life, thief.”

  Huamei was still looking a little stiff around the shoulders, but his porcelain skin had softened for the most part.

  “Oh,” Wally said. “That. It … just seemed like the right thing to do.”

  Huamei bowed. “I owe you a boon.”

  He didn’t seem too pleased about it, Breeth noticed.

  “Is this some kind of honor-bound dragon thing?” Arthur said.

  Huamei flashed his ocean-deep eyes at Arthur.

  Arthur gulped. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  “Can you take us to Mirror Kingsport?” Wally said.

  Huamei considered this a moment, clearly weighing the risks. “You have proven you can keep yourself safe, thief.” He looked at Arthur. “You, on the other hand…”

  A sound from the docks caught their attention. Sekhmet and Pyra were making splints for Ludwig so they could get him back to the Manor.

  “This way,” Huamei said. “If Sekhmet sees you, she’ll detain you.”

  He led them along the collapsed fence and they ducked behind the hedges.

  Huamei studied Greyridge and wondered aloud to himself. “Why would the Fae-born break into a hospital?”

  “Oh! Oh!” Breeth said, stretching one of her hedge branches. “I know! Wally, raise your hand for me!”

  “Um,” Wally said, raising his hand.

  Breeth described everything she’d seen and heard: the ghost lady, her body pulled apart by tentacles, the fact that she was the real author behind Garnett Lacroix and that Alfred Moore was just her pen name, and finally, that he had received a magical Quill that helped him kill her with a story. Wally repeated it all.

  Arthur removed his ridiculous hat. “Alfred Moore is … dead?”

  “He never existed,” Wally said. “But yeah, it sounds like the woman who used that name to write Garnett Lacroix was killed. Sorry, Arthur.”

  Arthur’s head hung heavy. “So Moore was never a recluse. He was just invented by a woman…” He sniffed, tearing up a little. “No wonder those books handled emotions so well.”

  “Describe that Quill again,” Huamei said, eyes narrowing.

  Breeth quivered her branches, and Wally relayed the information. “Black as night. Red veined. Gnarled like an old knuckle.”

  Huamei stroked his braid in thought. “I believe, thief, you may have just solved the mystery of how the Fae-born made it into the Real without a Rift.”

  “Actually, I solved it!” Breeth said.

  “What do you mean?” Wally asked Huamei.

  “By inventing a pen name and placing it on the cover of a book, a book that was embraced in the imaginations of people all across Kingsport, Valerie Lucas breathed life into an author located in the Mirror.”

  “Alfred Moore,” Arthur whispered.

  “Correct.” Huamei sat on a lifeless tentacle, thinking. “That Quill had to have been fashioned from one of my ancestor’s bones. Dragon-bone quills don’t abide by the rules of the Balance. Fae-born usually require Rifts to find their way into the Real. Dragon-bone quills, on the other hand, allow anyone to bring creatures to life, in the Real or the Fae, by simply writing words on a page. Those with strong imaginations can use the Quill to powerful effect.”

  “Especially if they have a bone to pick,” Breeth said. “Eh, Wally?”

  He ignored her, and her branches drooped. She always felt better after making someone laugh, and she still hadn’t shaken the chill of seeing the ghost lady’s dead body.

  Huamei studied Greyridge, considering. “It sounds as if Valerie Lucas’s Mirror pen name got his hands on this Quill and has been writing monsters into Kingsport.”

  “Why didn’t Moore just write, Valerie Lucas drops dead and be done with it?” Wally asked.

  “Dragon bones have their limitations,” Huamei said. “They cannot be used to directly take life or revive the dead in the Real. The wielder must come up with more creative, indirect ways to kill. For example, sending a tentacle monster to do his bidding.”

  “Or do his squidding,” Breeth said.

  Wally didn’t so much as crack a smile.

  “Wait, wait, wait.” Arthur held his head as if it was about to explode. “Let me get this straight. My favorite author doesn’t exist because he was actually a pen name for a writer named Valerie Lucas. Except he kind of does exist, but he lives in the Mirror City. And now he’s used a dragon-bone Quill to write monsters into the streets of Kingsport in order to kill the woman who created him?”

  Huamei nodded. “He has become a sort of backward author. A work of fiction that can create things in the Real.”

  “This sure is a novel situation,” Breeth said. “Get it, Wally? Say that joke for me. You can have it. It’s yours.”

  Wally pursed his lips.

  She rustled her branches. “Well, you’re no fun.”

  Arthur shook his head in disbelief. “This is way more complicated than Moore’s books. Sorry—Lucas’s. No wonder I didn’t solve it.”

  “This explains why I couldn’t send the doll back to the Mirror by adding to its story,” Huamei said. “By using the dragon-bone Quill, Moore disturbed the Veil, making it weak in your city.” He was lost in thought a moment. “The only place he could’ve gotten that Quill is from the Fallen Warden.”

  Breeth’s branches tensed at the name.

  “Who?” Arthur asked.

  “The Wardens don’t speak his name,” Huamei said. “But he’s one of Lady Weirdwood’s ex-employees. He stole that bone from my people’s Cloud Cemetery in order to bring the Veil crashing down and locate his wife’s spirit in the hopes of bringing her back to life. Lady Weirdwood was too foolish to stop him before he desecrated my ancestor’s grave.”

  Wally cleared his throat. “Didn’t she banish and bind him so he could no longer perform magic or handle magical implements?”

  “It’s possible that he has an accomplice,” Huamei said. “But she should have had better control over him in the first place. My kingdom has been at odds with Weirdwood ever since. One dragon bone is priceless—worth more magic than exists in that entire Manor.”

  “Wait,” Arthur asked Huamei. “If you’re royalty, why aren’t you living it up in a dragon castle right now?”

  Huamei’s cheeks flushed and he looked at the ground. “I am a descendant of the Tian Empire. My fa�
�stepfather is a duke in the Court of Sky. I was meant to inherit his position when I came of age. But last week, Mother had a moment of weakness and was overcome by guilt. She told the duke, the man I believed was my father, the truth about my origins. It seems she met my real father in a traveling market and was wooed by him. That’s how I came to be. My stepfather wasted no time in banishing me from the Court of Sky and enrolling me as a Warden Novitiate to avoid political embarrassment.”

  “So you’re a bastard?” Arthur asked.

  “What I am,” Huamei said with sudden heat, “is the first dragon to serve the Wardens in over a century. It’s a humiliation. Of course, Lady Weirdwood had no choice but to accept me. She owed my kingdom a debt ever since the Fallen Warden desecrated my ancestor’s grave.” He stood and stared at the hospital. “If I find that Quill and the Fallen Warden, I could restore honor to my family and return to the Cloud Kingdom.”

  Breeth’s leaves fluttered with hope. “I could take revenge on my killer and get back to my parents.”

  Wally finally looked at her and smiled.

  “Um, Wally?” Arthur said. “Could I, uh, speak to you privately for a moment?”

  Before Wally could protest, Arthur dragged him into the hedges. Breeth flickered through the leaves behind them, ready to poke Arthur in the forehead if he started being obnoxious.

  “I think Graham is involved in this,” Arthur said.

  Wally remained expressionless, listening intently.

  “When I met him,” Arthur said, “he told me this riddle. I couldn’t solve it at the time because I didn’t know how all of this worked. I thought the solution was a theater curtain. But I just realized he was talking about the fall of the Veil.”

  Wally’s head grew heavy. “Yeah. That sounds like Graham.”

  Arthur swallowed. “He also gave me that Golden Scarab that disappeared in the Manor … I didn’t want to tell Huamei about any of this because I don’t want the Wardens going after your brother.”

  Wally was quiet a moment. “Thank you, Arthur.”

  Arthur put his hand on Wally’s shoulder. “I want to help you find Graham. I know you have every reason not to trust me, but I want to change that. Life’s hard enough without being able to rely on your friends.”

  As Arthur spoke, Breeth watched the daffodil on his hat bloom. Again, he didn’t notice.

  “I think you should trust him, Wally,” Breeth said.

  Wally took a deep breath. Then he extended a hand. Arthur shook it.

  “Aw,” Breeth said, embracing them with her branches. “Reunion!”

  Arthur quirked an eyebrow toward the sky. “And so it was that Arthur Benton started on his track to becoming a real Gentleman Thief.”

  Wally rolled his eyes and exited the hedge.

  “I was kidding!” Arthur said, following after.

  “What was that about?” Huamei asked.

  Arthur stood tall. “Cooper and I have decided to help you track down that Quill and restore your dukedom. And we won’t even charge you! You might be wondering what kind of selfless thieves would make such an offer. But we’re doing it for the sake of Kingsport!”

  Huamei was unmoved by this speech. “There are still many things we don’t know. Like where the Fallen Warden and Alfred Moore are hiding. We’ll need to track down Valerie Lucas’s house to search for that story that wrote itself on her desk. It may contain clues.”

  Arthur shook his head. “That’s gonna be tricky. I’ve spent years trying to figure out where Moore—er, Lucas—lives.”

  “Wait!” Breeth said. “The ghost lady asked if I would check on her cat! She told me she lives at the corner of River and Will-something. She didn’t say what her cat likes to eat though.”

  “River and Willow,” Wally said. “I robbed a house there once.”

  “How do you know all this stuff?” Arthur said.

  He hadn’t heard Breeth. He’d only heard Wally spit out an address he’d been trying to find for years.

  Wally avoided his eyes. “A true thief never reveals his secrets.”

  Arthur sighed and then smiled. “River and Willow it is!”

  They set off down the cliffs, and Arthur breathed deep. “This feels like something straight out of Garnett Lacroix!”

  “I can’t believe I’m saying this,” Wally said. “But this is literally something out of Garnett Lacroix.”

  16

  THE MURDEROUS TALE

  “This is it,” Wally said, gazing up at the brownstone house, which glistened in a light drizzle.

  The house had clearly been abandoned. Trash and leaves piled around the steps. The windows that weren’t shattered were speckled with dust. The front door had been kicked open by looters.

  Arthur swept off his garish hat. “I can’t believe I’m actually here.”

  “Didn’t you meet the real Garnett Lacroix?” Wally said.

  “Yeah, but he was kind of disappointing.” Arthur’s eyes shined on the house. “Miss Lucas’s stories made me who I am.”

  He reverently scaled the steps and disappeared through the front door. Wally and Huamei followed. All was quiet inside. The house had gone untended for weeks. Everything was covered in dust. Most of the valuables had been stolen, and rats and spiders had taken over the kitchen.

  Wally and Huamei walked down a side hallway, while Breeth creaked through the floorboards. “Here, kitty kitty kitty!”

  They searched the bedroom, washroom, and kitchen. In every room, something was out of place. Sheets were missing. Candlesticks contorted in unsettling ways. Poisons spilled out from under the sink. Wally shuddered when he remembered that Valerie Lucas’s own household items had tried to kill her.

  Breeth screamed as a calico cat chased her across the floorboards.

  “I forgot I was a mouse for a while!” Breeth cried. “I hate cats now!”

  Huamei watched the cat chase nothing, likely thinking this was normal feline behavior. “How did you really come to know all this information about Valerie Lucas?” he asked Wally. “I would hate to have to tell Lady Weirdwood that you’re a spy for the Order of Eldar.”

  “Oh, um,” Wally said, feeling suddenly vulnerable. “I found her file when I was looking for my brother and just … put it together.”

  Huamei gave him a skeptical look but didn’t press the issue.

  Down the hall, Breeth scared the cat away by tipping over a stack of pots and then creaked back. “Miss Lucas’s cat is a jerk and a demon and an all-around terrible person, and his breath smells like death.”

  They scaled the staircase to the second floor and entered Valerie Lucas’s office. The walls were stacked to the ceiling with books and papers, all scrawled and disorganized. The desk was spattered with ink and held quills in different states of distress. Arthur sat in the middle of the floor, holding a single page.

  “Chapter one,” he read. “The night was as purple as ink, and the owls were hooting their enchantments, waking the bats and wolves, and giving them a taste for blood.” He traced the handwritten letters. “This is the first page of the first Garnett Lacroix story. This book was my safe haven after Mom died. Whenever the world felt cold and unfamiliar, I could always escape into this world.” His eyes shined with tears. “Now that Valerie Lucas is dead, those adventures are finished forever.”

  Huamei stepped past him. “We need to start searching.”

  Arthur carefully folded the page and stuck it in his vest pocket. Then he, Huamei, and Wally flipped through the stacks of paper in silence, searching for the story that had tried to murder Valerie Lucas. Wally noticed a flutter in one of the stacks, riffling from the bottom upward, like an invisible finger running along their edges.

  Breeth squealed. “Wally! If I possess a page, I can read the letters on me! I never realized I could do this!” She ruffled more. “It isn’t exactly easy, though. The letters feel upside down or backward, like trying to figure out what the freckles on your back say.”

  Wally snorted.

 
; “What’s funny?” Arthur asked.

  “Nothing,” Wally said, wiping his nose. “Just the dust.”

  Something wet slapped against the window, making them all jump. A giant tentacle plunged and slurped against the pane. Huamei looked from the window to a piece of paper on the desk, which was quickly filling with cursive text, as if written by an invisible pen.

  “Moore knows we’re here,” Huamei said.

  “I got this!” Arthur said, grabbing the page and tearing it into small pieces.

  But the writing simply leapt to another blank page. Then another. And another.

  Wally gulped as the window strained against the tentacle’s efforts.

  “You two find the manuscript,” Huamei said, drawing out his paintbrush. “I’ll handle the tentacles.” He started to paint a symbol in the air. “It’s a good thing the humans are hiding in their homes, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to do this.”

  With each brushstroke, Huamei’s skin grew blue and scaly, his eyes large and cold as ice. Fangs extended from his lips as his shadow grew long across the wall. Wally looked away, heart pounding. Lady Weirdwood had said that Huamei’s skin would be fragile as he recovered from the porcelain. But Wally wasn’t about to argue with a dragon.

  Huamei snarled, and Wally felt a spray on the back of his neck, as chilling as ocean waves. He slipped through the door and slithered down the stairs. Something large shrieked outside, and the giant tentacle was ripped from the window with a great squelch.

  “Gah!” Arthur slapped his forehead. “I’m missing out on all the action!” He grabbed a letter opener off the desk and brandished it like a sword. “You keep searching, Cooper. I’ll guard the front door!”

  Before Wally could argue, Arthur thundered downstairs.

  “Breeth?” Wally said to the empty room.

  “I got this stack!” she said, ruffling pages.

  Wally examined papers at random. “This stack seems to be all about Garnett Lacroix.”