Of course, one way or another that would eliminate her prey and solve her problem. However, Bayang prided herself that when she carried out a mission, no harm came to bystanders even if they might be as obnoxious as the Kushan hatchling.
She strode over to them, gesturing for them to stand up. “That old antique won’t take the strain of a chase. It’ll fall apart in no time.” She deliberately added, “Little girl.”
The young Kushan’s head jerked up as if Bayang had poked her with a sharp stick. “I fought just as hard as you did.” She paused as irritation and manners warred with one another. In the end, politeness won out. “But thank you for distracting that monster.” The Kushan hatchling’s shrewd eyes studied Bayang. “San Francisco certainly breeds muscular little old ladies.”
Her prey nodded. “You swung that chain like a piece of rope.”
Bayang took a breath and fought down her panic. The important thing was to keep her actual identity from her target.
“My name is Bayang Naga,” Bayang said. “I’m with the Pinkerton Agency, Special Operator for the Magical Division.” Somehow her purse had managed to stay strapped to her shoulder. She snapped it open now and took out her wallet, flipping it open to show the fake badge.
It was a magical object that became whatever she needed. If she had called herself a Canadian Mountie, the badge would have become that. She could also have been an Interpol detective, a chicken inspector, or any one of a dozen other professions and with an equal number of false identities. However, since she didn’t expect to be with the children long, she used her own name since that would reduce possible mistakes.
Together, the hatchlings stared at the shiny gold badge and then her prey’s friend swung his gaze up toward her. “So you’re in disguise.”
“That’s right,” Bayang said, relieved that the fake badge seemed to be holding up.
“The Pinkertons have a magical division?” the Kushan hatchling asked.
“We don’t operate openly, but then usually neither do magical criminals, so we like to operate behind the scenes,” Bayang explained. “I was sent here as backup.”
“How come no one warned the consular staff?” the Kushan hatchling demanded.
“I don’t know. You’ll have to ask whoever hired the agency,” Bayang ad-libbed quickly.
The Kushan upstart gave an amused sniff. “Well, I’ll repay you somehow after we get back.”
Bayang opened her mouth in astonishment, unable to believe any hatchling could be so mad. “I’m trying to save your life again. Only an idiot would try to fly this”—she waved a hand as she tried to find the right term—”this overgrown rag.”
The little twit stuck out her chin defiantly. “They hurt my mother and killed my sister. The carpet only has to hold together long enough to let me get even. So I don’t have any use for advice like yours if it’s just excuses to do nothing.”
“I couldn’t stay here either,” her prey said, sitting down behind her. “They murdered my friend.”
“And me, I’m just a fool,” Koko said, plopping down on the rug.
Bayang made a frustrated sound at the back of her throat. Why did the Kushan and her prey have to remind her about debts?
Until she had repaid her prey for saving her life, she would have to accompany him. Anyway, it suited her own purposes to pursue Badik, as well. If she saved her prey’s life during the hunt, well, she would wait until that happened before she worried about what to do about him.
Motioning the hatchlings to back away from the head of the carpet, Bayang said, “All right then, move back. I owe the boy my life.”
The Kushan hatchling stayed where she was. “Are you of the Old Blood?”
“No,” Bayang said, “and I know only a smattering of the Old Tongue. But that’s enough to provide something that you’ll really need.”
Scirye
“Touch there,” the little elderly woman commanded. Her shoulders were no longer stooped and her back hunched. Instead she was standing as straight as a Pippal with a fierce look in her eyes.
“Why?” Scirye demanded suspiciously.
The woman raised one eyebrow in a superior attitude. “Have you thought about how you’re going to hold on when you’re maneuvering that rag hundreds of feet above the ground?”
Scirye hesitated, reluctant to give this Miss Know-It-All any satisfaction, but Kles tapped her. “Go ahead. It’s better to damage your pride rather than your head.”
Doubtfully, Scirye squeezed her finger until a drop of blood balled on its tip, then traced an ornate curlicue woven into the carpet’s design.
“Now say this word.” The woman spoke a word far more ancient than the Old Tongue. “Dherkik’.’
“Dherkik” Scirye repeated, and gasped as the curlicue rose in a loop. Reaching down, the woman tugged at it. “Good. The threads are still strong. They should hold our weight.”
Scirye reluctantly had to admit that this woman might really know what she was talking about, so she and the stranger paced about the carpet, raising more loops, each of which the woman tested carefully.
“Before we leave the ground, hook your ankles through these straps,” the woman instructed, “and hold onto the others.”
“How do you know that?” Scirye asked.
“Oh, I’ve learned a few things in my travels,” the woman said, bumping into Scirye when they both tried to sit at the head of the carpet.
Scirye didn’t like how the stranger was assuming command of her expedition. “It’s my carpet.” The girl glowered.
The woman put an exasperated fist on her hip. “But I’ve actually flown one. Have you?”
Kles tugged at her ear. “Let her try. She’s proved she’s on our side, and she knew about the loops.”
Reluctantly, Scirye stepped back and plopped down on Leech’s left. The woman supervised them as they set their ankles through a pair of loops and gripped the long steering loops like the reins of a horse.
From the epic poems Scirye had read, she knew it was only proper to introduce herself to her fighting companions. As scared and angry as she was, she also felt a little thrill at having her own adventure.
“My name is Scirye and this is Kles, my lap griffin,” Scirye began, nodding to Kles, who sat on her shoulder.
“Oh,” Koko said, “is that what that thing is.”
Kles bristled. “I am not a thing, you fat toad.”
Scirye pulled at his leg. “You’re the one who’s always reminding me to mind my manners,” she scolded.
“My name’s Leech,” the smaller boy said and jerked a thumb at the bigger, chubbier boy. “And this is Koko.”
“He’s the brawn and I’m the brains,” Koko added.
“We’ll need both before we’re done,” the woman said curtly. “Say the spell.”
Kles haltingly read the long forgotten words. But at first nothing happened.
Relieved, Koko began to slip his ankle from a loop. “See, the sign was right—Hey!”
The front of the carpet jerked into the air and then lowered itself again. Kles read the spell more confidently now. This time the carpet rose, bucking and twisting like a living thing, tossing Scirye and the others against the straps.
“Easy,” Koko yelped, hastily securing his ankle.
“It’s not like I’m flying a dirigible, you know,” Bayang shot back. “Carpets have wills of their own.”
She strained at the steering loops as they almost crashed into a wall, banking sharply to the left.
Scirye had had her doubts about the ankle loops, which she expected to be as weak and frayed as much of the carpet, so she was grateful that they felt as strong they still were.
She watched the opposite wall rushing toward them, but in the last few seconds, the woman managed to level the carpet off and sent it circling the gallery.
“See, there’s nothing to it,” Bayang declared triumphantly.
As if annoyed, the carpet suddenly sagged in the middle so that Scirye bumped ag
ainst Leech.
Angrily, Bayang grabbed the fringe of the rug as if it were hair. “Behave yourself,” she commanded the carpet, “or I’ll hand you over to the moths.”
The carpet flattened out—though it rippled defiantly when they least expected it.
With a tug at the steering loops, Bayang sent the carpet spiraling upward toward the jagged hole in the skylight.
Bayang
As they shot through the jagged hole in the skylight, Bayang’s prey let out a whoop of excitement, as if he were having the time of his life.
“I’ve always wanted to fly! I dream about it almost every night,” her prey exclaimed happily. “This is wonderful.”
What am I doing? she asked herself. I’m not supposed to be teaching him to enjoy flying again. I should’ve killed him and left in the confusion.
Even now, it would be so easy to arrange an accident up here. But she couldn’t. Not after her prey had saved her life.
Why did he have to complicate what should have been a simple assassination? she complained to herself. In the old days, prey knew their place. They didn’t save their hunters in the middle of a pursuit.
Over the millennia, her people had created an elaborate system of relationships based on mutual obligations. The diagram of that system was so complex it resembled a thorny thicket. As a result, repaying a debt was as instinctive as breathing for Bayang.
As Bayang leveled off, she told herself that she was merely biding her time while her primary mission had changed. Now it was to stop whatever Badik’s scheme was. Once she had taken care of that, she could dispose of her prey afterward.
San Francisco’s civic center spread out below them, the people in the streets like colored knots in an ever-changing tapestry that now filled the plaza. Police cars surrounded the museum, their flashing lights pulsing like fiery rubies. On the rooftop itself, gnome janitors gaped at them with scrub brushes in their hands, having momentarily forgotten their job of cleaning the pigeons’ mementoes from the balustrades—a task that guaranteed eternal employment since the pigeons simply shifted to the areas the gnomes had already cleaned.
“Where are they?” asked her prey. Bayang sighed inwardly to herself. This was awkward, wasn’t it? She supposed she had better adjust her labels and temporarily call him by name—Leech.
In the back of her mind, there was a small worm of doubt now. She could kill prey as long as they were just hateful things. It would be harder to murder someone she knew. When the time came to resume her original mission, would she be able to?
In the last century, humans and magical creatures alike had packed San Francisco’s hills and valleys. Naturally, when they built their homes, they had constructed structures like the ones they had left behind in the old country. Minarets competed with pagodas for the title of the tallest building, stolid emporiums stood across the street from canvas-roofed bazaars. The sheer volume of noise, color, and smells was known to overcome the unprepared tourist and guidebooks advised visitors to acclimate themselves for a couple of days before venturing very far into the city.
Bayang, the griffin, Leech, and—she cursed herself in exasperation, she might as well use the wretched hatchling’s name as well— Scirye scanned the surroundings. From the groans, her prey’s friend, Koko, seemed to be sick.
“There!” Scirye said.
Bayang’s people prided themselves on their keen eyesight but the girl’s was far sharper. Perhaps, Bayang thought, she gets it from generations of desert dwellers.
The girl leaned forward so that her hand was pointing over Bayang’s shoulder toward the northeast. Finally, Bayang picked out the speck that was Badik flapping toward the skyscrapers along Montgomery Street in the heart of the business district.
She felt anger surge through her. She had waited centuries to settle this debt with Badik.
“Hold on,” Bayang said, and banked the carpet so sharply that the Kushan’s pet griffin was thrown from her shoulder.
“Oog.” Koko made gulping noises as if he was trying to hold back his breakfast, but the girl let out an exhilarated whoop that Leech echoed.
“Is this also your first time flying?” Leech asked her as the wind whistled about them.
“No,” the girl said. “My mother’s last post was at the embassy in Istanbul, and the ambassador maintained his own stable of griffins,” she explained. “He took me for a flight on one. I loved it.”
Bayang glanced over her shoulder to see the girl’s hair streaming wildly behind her. She was grinning.
“I’m surprised someone of the Old Blood is in the consular corps,” Bayang said. “I’ve heard Kushan nobility are famous for their pride and don’t like to mix with ‘commoners.’“
“The Old Blood belongs to my father’s side,” the girl explained.
“And his is so diluted that we have only a distant claim to the lion throne.”
Knowing how murderous Kushan politics could be, Bayang reflected that perhaps that was the reason why the girl and her family were still alive.
The hatchlings’ enthusiasm must have pleased the carpet because it seemed more responsive to Bayang’s commands. Having tamed it, Bayang thought they could risk going faster.
“Lean forward,” she ordered. “It will cut down on resistance from the air. And hold on tight.”
She had been eying the flagstaffs on buildings of various heights, trying to judge the best winds. The one she wanted was a bit lower than she would have liked, but she angled into it. It caught the carpet, sweeping it along like a leaf on a stream.
They flew over the rooftops, barely skimming over the huge water tanks that would be used in case of fire. When they startled a flock of pigeons, for a moment they were surrounded by flapping gray and black scruffy bundles.
The small griffin shot over Bayang’s head, aiming for the nearest bird.
“No, Kles!” Scirye commanded. “We don’t have time for that.”
The griffin flapped his wings to stay in place, his eyes fastened on the fleeing birds. His movements were stiff and jerky as if he were fighting his own instincts. “It’s not like I was picking on them, you know. The pigeons here are vicious. They probably mug any lost tourist. Besides, I’m hungry. I would have shared.”
Koko had turned an interesting shade of green. “How can you think about eating?”
As the carpet passed beneath him, the griffin dropped back down to join them. “If you throw up,” Kles said unsympathetically, “remember not to face the wind.”
“Yeah, Koko. You’re the one who’s been complaining about doing the same things lately,” Leech said. “Enjoy it.”
“Oog, and double oog,” was all Koko could say.
The buildings in the business district were so tall that they acted like mountain ranges with the wind howling through the artificial canyons. Spires aimed at the sky like lances, while carvings of flowers, eagles, and grape vines decorated the buildings’ shoulders. Granite, marble, and brass were everywhere.
As the carpet settled into one of the currents, the air seemed to come alive around Leech, whipping at his face and trying to tug him from the carpet, not even caring that bits of fringe and fabric were flaking off the rug’s edges.
The carpet bucked and writhed now in the wind’s grip, as if the rug were a saddle cloth on the back of a wild stallion. People on the upper floors of buildings looked up, startled from their desks as the carpet sped by.
“Hey, the carpet’s getting warm,” Leech said admiringly. “It comes with a heater. Those old-timers thought of everything.”
“No,” Bayang said in a worried voice. “The original spells woven into its threads were never designed for this speed.”
“Keep going,” Scirye urged. “We’re closing the gap.” Badik had grown in size from a speck to a bumblebee.
They streaked past an old building whose owners had used all of their triangular lot by creating a skyscraper with three sides and then filling the ledges and corners with scowling gargoyles.
From the corner of her eye, Bayang thought she saw one of them lean forward. “Did one of those things move?” She had just started to nod her head in that direction when a gargoyle rose on four legs and spread its wings. It was one of Badik’s gray fliers, hidden among the statues. It had crouched down and remained still to set up this ambush. A little farther away on the ledge, another stood up.
They flung themselves downward, plunging with outstretched talons.
“Hold tight,” Bayang warned and sent the carpet into a steep dive.
As the wind tore at them, the griffin lost his grip and was pulled free. With a squawk of protest, he disappeared behind them.
“Kles!” Scirye cried in alarm. She turned to see him flapping his wings frantically to catch up with them.
“Don’t worry,” Bayang said. “Those are Badik’s creatures. It’s not your griffin those things want.”
“That doesn’t help my peace of mind any,” Koko moaned.
Flying on a carpet was not the same as flying in her true form. The carpet would be sluggish when it came to pulling out of a dive. And she had her passengers to think of, so she adjusted her tactics to fit the situation, trying to level off sooner than she would have liked.
The carpet tried to respond, but as Bayang feared, it was difficult. It took several frantic tugs at the steering loops before the rug flew horizontally again. They wound up much lower than Bayang had intended, skimming over the startled patrons in an outdoor cafe. A lizard waitress lashed her tail at them so violently that the tail itself detached and crashed into a buffet table.
“Sorry,” Scirye called as they left the restaurant.
Bayang looked back. Their plunge had opened more distance between them and their pursuers, and Bayang flew over the tops of the cars, buses, and trucks waiting their turn to go as an air sprite hovered above the intersection, directing traffic with a glowing wand. As they zoomed past the sprite, the creature put his large lips together and blew a shrill, piercing whistle.
City of Fire (City Trilogy (Mass Market)) Page 7
