Warner had attributed the decapitated stick-figure rune to a sect of eternal-life seekers. A supposedly extinct sect of sorcerers whose members — through some sort of human sacrifice — might now be living their afterlife as shadow leeches. They’d manifested in that form in the fortress, at least. I hadn’t laid eyes on one since, so they might have been vanquished when the fortress collapsed. I dug around the papers and books strewn across the desk. I had one of the rune pendants here somewhere to compare …
“And this?” Drake asked, holding up a Buzz in a Cup.
I went into caffeine overload every time I baked that mocha fudge cupcake with mocha buttercream icing, probably from inhaling the Illy espresso powder I preferred to use. “You’ve had that one before.”
“I know, but you like describing them to me. Rituals are important.”
“Just eat it,” I said. I wasn’t fed up with the fledgling, though I’m sure it sounded like it. I was just utterly fed up with trying to figure out how to trigger the second map that Pulou insisted was to be found within the dragonskin tattoo spread on the table before me.
All I saw were blotches of green and blue, and triangles that I was fairly certain were ocean, land, and mountain ranges. A motif of flowers and leaves adorned one side of the map, while a series of interconnected mechanical-looking blocks were tattooed on the other.
The intersected rainbow from which I’d pulled a key — literally — three months ago, which I’d then used to unlock the first map, had disappeared sometime between us collecting the five-colored braids and the next time I’d unrolled the map. The five-colored braids that were also referred to as an ‘instrument of assassination.’ One of only three ways to kill a guardian dragon. A completely benign-looking weapon that could kill my father, the warrior.
Yeah, I was freaking frustrated to have wasted this much time between collecting the first and second instruments.
“Is that the map?” Drake asked. He paused his cupcake worship to peer over the stack of atlases I’d spent endless days collecting and poring over, carefully comparing each and every hand-drawn page to the tattoo.
A librarian would have been a welcome sight.
“Here.” Drake held a crumpled piece of paper toward me.
I took it. It was already sticky from frosting and I hadn’t laid a hand on it yet. “What is it?” I asked as I smoothed the paper open on the table.
“From Chi Wen,” Drake answered around the last mouthful of his final cupcake, a simple buttercream-frosted lemon cake I’d dubbed Joy in a Cup.
Ah, damn.
I might not have opened the note had I known it was from the far seer. Of all the guardian dragons, I feared the ancient Chinese gentleman the most. Even more than Suanmi the fire breather, who thought of me as an abomination that shouldn’t be allowed a continued existence.
The far seer had shown me my future — which he often referred to as destiny — twice now. Neither time had been a particularly pleasant experience. It wasn’t just the terrible sensation of displacement and disorientation that came with the far seer sharing his visions, or the feeling of having a tiny bit of your soul ripped away. It was also the terrible belief that what lay before me was ultimately unalterable. The idea that even if I chose to not walk the path before me, the events would still come to pass.
I stared down at the charcoal drawing I’d spread on the table. It depicted what appeared to be a centipede. If centipedes were made of riveted metal plates.
“It’s from the oracle, Rochelle.” Drake picked crumbs out of the now-empty bakery box.
“Double shit,” I muttered.
Drake snickered. “Chi Wen said you’d say that.”
“Of course he did.”
“But it’s not a vision. The oracle is not in a seeing state right now.”
I had no freaking idea what that meant, except I was seriously glad I wasn’t looking at a picture of me dying, or a vision of someone I loved being killed, since that’s what Rochelle usually saw and committed to paper in prophetic charcoal. Up to now, I’d avoided seeing her drawings in person, but the gist had been described to me by Audrey, the beta of the West Coast North American Pack.
“What is it, then?” I asked.
“A tattoo,” Drake answered. “ ‘To match yours,’ Chi Wen said. Got any chocolate?”
What did the far seer mean by ‘Match yours’? I didn’t have a tattoo.
I sighed and set the drawing aside to pull a brand new Ritual Chocolate bar out of my new moss-green Peg and Awl satchel. It was a gift from Warner to replace my ruined-by-salt-water one. Unfortunately, two near drownings in the Bahamas were too much for my beloved Matt & Nat satchel. Yeah, the sentinel certainly knew how to woo me … and, apparently, he had my Etsy password. The satchel had been on my ‘things I love’ wish list for over a year.
Drake attempted to snatch the 75 percent Madagascar, made-in-Colorado chocolate bar from me, but I danced away from him with a grin.
He laughed. “Shall we wrestle for it?”
“It belongs to me, fledgling.” My tone was far more severe than my smile.
Drake backed off in acknowledgement of my ownership. I was learning how things worked in the dragon world. If you were the strongest, you could hold any territory you wished, as long as it had been evenly and equally divided. No one dragon had a greater gift or responsibility than another.
I unwrapped the bar, then broke it in half. It snapped with the clear, crisp sound that accompanied only the finest chocolate.
“Oooo, it has a stamped batch number and everything … zero seventeen, so you know it’s going to be great.” I was already salivating for my taste as I handed the other half to Drake.
The fledgling perched on a stack of books that shouldn’t have been capable of bearing his immense dragon weight. The books barely shifted.
Ah, to be a full-blooded dragon full of grace and wisdom …
A silver dragonfly flitted down over the bookshelves behind the fledgling and landed on his shoulder. It appeared to be an exact replica of a living, breathing bug. But it was constructed out of metal and animated by a magic I couldn’t taste within the concentration housed in the library. Its gossamer silver wire wings fluttered, then stilled.
“Err, is that a dragonfly made out of platinum?”
“Silver,” Drake answered, every ounce of his attention on the chocolate in my hand as he waited patiently for me to begin the tasting ritual.
“Silver?” The dragonfly flitted away as quickly as it had appeared. “Magic and silver? Those two things don’t go together.” Silver didn’t hold magic the way gold and gems did, so most alchemists didn’t even bother working with the metal.
Drake shrugged. “It belongs to Pulou. The treasure keeper has many unusual artifacts in his collection. It’s constructed through metallurgy. The chocolate?”
Okay, metallurgy — yet another thing to add to my ever-growing list of all things magical that it would take centuries to research and figure out … if I didn’t actually have a limited brain capacity, which I was beginning to suspect I did, along with a terribly short attention span.
I broke a single square of the chocolate — or a skinny rectangle in this case — off my half. I smelled it until the scent filled my nasal cavities and tickled my taste buds. Then I popped it in my mouth and slowly sucked on it.
Drake copied my movements.
We sat in silence as the smooth chocolate — with just the perfect hint of creaminess — softened on my tongue.
“Rich cacao and strong, almost overwhelming citrus notes …” Drake murmured. “Is this what magic tastes like to you, warrior’s daughter?”
I smiled.
Drake nodded, his expression sage and far too old for his face once again. “What a gift that would be, to taste magic like you do.”
I laughed as I attempted to carefully fold the remaining chocolate up in its gold foil, managed to mangle it as always, then slipped it back into the box.
Life lesson
s from a fourteen-year-old. I never seemed to grow wise enough to not need them. The grass was always greener, indeed.
∞
I settled in with the journal after Drake wandered off, but the chronicle was a difficult read. The English was archaic. I would have to ask Warner to look at it.
Though the sentinel wasn’t exactly the reading type … hmmm …
“What are you smiling about?” Pulou’s voice boomed around the library, jolting me out of reminiscing about Warner’s and my last make-out session.
With two deliberate and heavy steps, the treasure keeper was looming over my study table. Pulou appeared to be somewhere in his mid-fifties, though he was more like six hundred years old. He was bundled in the floor-length fur coat he always wore, but it was actually a manifestation of his guardian power rather than a fashion misstep. Today, however, he also had runes inked across his forehead.
Well, that was … unusual.
He glared at me as he continued to dwarf my table.
“Umm …” I really wasn’t going to confess to lusting after Warner to a guardian who was also sort of my boss.
Pulou placed an ordinary but expensive-looking pen on the table. It appeared to be a slim, gold Cartier. It wasn’t.
Uh oh.
I watched the inked runes disappear from Pulou’s forehead.
I tried out a chagrined smile.
Pulou’s frown deepened.
The pen twitched, and I grabbed it before it started writing runes all over the map and Rochelle’s charcoal drawing.
“It was a prank,” I said, lamely attempting to explain why I’d given the treasure keeper a pen that wrote — magically and continuously — on any surface. A pen he’d had me collect from its beleaguered owners. “I wasn’t even sure it would act up in your … hands …”
Pulou really wasn’t pleased with me.
“Honestly,” I babbled, “maybe I couldn’t even fix it.”
“The pen is now under your guardianship, alchemist.” Despite the English accent, Pulou currently sounded a lot like the grizzly bear he resembled. “May it help you on your quest.”
That sounded more like a curse than a blessing. But I suddenly remembered my manners and slowly rose to offer the treasure keeper a shallow bow. I was usually forgiven my informal behavior — what with being raised in the human world by witches — but even I could hear the reprimand in Pulou’s normally jovial tone.
And it wasn’t the pen’s naughty behavior that had upset him.
He was pissed that I still hadn’t unlocked the map and collected the next instrument of assassination.
Well, I’d been trying, damn it.
Pulou’s gaze dropped to the journal currently resting on top of the map, pages spread open. He raised an eyebrow at it, then held out his hand toward me.
Obligingly, I picked up the book and dropped it in his hand. As I did so, the charmed pen leaped from my grip and landed on the desk. I slapped my hand down on it before it managed to start writing.
Pulou looked at me pointedly.
“Won’t happen again,” I muttered, avoiding his gaze.
“I doubt that,” he said. Then he began to flip through the journal.
Normally, things weren’t so tense in the nexus and among the guardians. True, they were usually saving the world somehow — vanquishing demon incursions or foiling evil plans I wanted to know nothing about. But ever since I’d retrieved the braids, the atmosphere had changed.
I didn’t understand what exactly was going on, but three months ago, I was certain that Pulou would have found the pen’s antics hilarious.
“I’ve never seen this,” Pulou said as he peered at the book. “Where did you find it?”
“It found me.”
“Interesting.”
“Sure.” Dragons like to read things into every action and call it fate. But I would place money on the journal simply not liking the taste of my half-blood magic.
“May I borrow it for the evening?”
I didn’t know what time zone the treasure keeper was referring to, but I really hoped it wasn’t evening in Vancouver yet. I had a date. For which I had purposefully worn the sweater dress just in case I was running late.
“It belongs to you more than me, treasure keeper,” I said. “Though it might refer to the map, and that would be seriously helpful.”
Pulou nodded. “The items in the library are for all dragons, warrior’s daughter.” His voice was now gentle. “Do not let anyone convince you otherwise.”
Yeah, I was working on not being quite so transparent. But ever since I’d collected the braids — and had been capable of touching them with no ill effect — a few guardians who’d previously been friendly now seemed to avoid me.
Namely, Qiuniu and Haoxin, who were the two youngest guardians. Though it wasn’t like we’d all gone for coffee and a chat before either. And guardians had crazy schedules, so I might just be reading too much into their extended absence from the nexus.
Conversely, Suanmi seemed a little less frosty toward me. Which, honestly, I didn’t know how to take. We usually only crossed paths during training sessions. Maybe the fire breather just enjoyed watching Drake acquaint me with the hard floor … over and over again.
I nodded and Pulou patted me on the shoulder. I attempted to not stumble under this assault of kindness.
“I see you have discovered the centipede,” Pulou said.
For a moment, I had no idea what he was talking about. Then I turned to look at Rochelle’s charcoal sketch lying next to the dragonskin map. “Centipede. Right.”
Actually, from this vantage point, the mechanical-looking blocks that decorated the edge of the map looked similar to the body of Rochelle’s centipede. Except they were jumbled around and not connected.
“The centipede appears in many myths and tales in both human and Adept cultures …” But as he spoke, Pulou lifted his head as if sensing something only he could hear. “I must go. Your father calls. I will return the journal tomorrow and answer any questions you have. The library will yield any book you desire. You just have to … ask nicely.”
I snorted. “Yeah, according to you and the sword master.” I’d tried ‘asking nicely’ already. The library was deaf to my requests.
Pulou chuckled, as if the library might be a cute kid I could win over with a couple of oatmeal cookies. Then he turned away.
“Wait,” I said, my mind and gaze still mostly on the map and the charcoal sketch. “Who is Shailaja?”
The treasure keeper stopped with his back to me. He slowly turned his head without turning his body, as if he was thinking about not answering — which would be out of character.
“That name’s in the journal,” I said. “At the very end. Am I pronouncing it correctly?”
Pulou nodded curtly. “My predecessor’s daughter.”
“It says she broke with the guardians. What does that mean?”
“She is gone. It’s terrible to lose a child that way.” Pulou gazed down at the leather-bound journal in his hand but didn’t continue.
“Okay,” I said. And because I really didn’t like the tension that was building up between us, I let the subject drop. “I’ll focus on centipede myths now. And leave questions about the journal for tomorrow.”
Pulou shook off whatever memory was playing in his head. “Yes.”
Then he left.
Okay. Obviously this Shailaja chick was bad news … or a bad memory.
I sat back down at the table and pulled Rochelle’s sketch closer. The edge of the thick paper was ragged, as if it had been torn from the oracle’s sketchbook. Rochelle had many different tattoos, including a sleeve of barbed wire with a bunch of items snagged in the barbs and a sleeve of ivy winding up her arms. I wondered if she’d drawn the centipede with the intention of adding it to the barbed wire or if she had planned to have it tattooed elsewhere, only to have Chi Wen tell her to tear it out of her sketchbook so Drake could deliver it to me.
‘To mat
ch yours,’ Drake had said. But the only tattoo I had was the one on dragonskin … oh, okay.
I folded the blank edge of the slightly nubby paper and tried to line it up alongside the blocks on the map.
Except they didn’t line up.
Or did they?
I touched the square at the bottom right corner of the map. The combination of dragon and alchemist magic danced underneath my fingertips, as if trying to be helpful. The square looked similar to — though not exactly like — the one near the middle of Rochelle’s charcoal sketch.
Now that I practically had my nose pressed to the tattooed map, the square in the middle didn’t look so square. It looked a little like the head of Rochelle’s centipede without the antenna.
I removed my fingers from the tattoo. The taste of its magic abated to its normal ever-present levels. I knew the map was capable of changing — morphing into other views, as it had done the closer we were to the fortress in the Bahamas. But I’d had a key then. A key we’d lost in the Atlantic Ocean when the fortress collapsed.
I’d panicked over that loss. But then when the map changed after we’d collected the braids, I assumed I needed to source a second key to unlock it further.
So what if the key was already embedded in the tattoo? Just waiting to be aligned?
I traced my finger around the edges of the square closest to me. Once again, the magic tingled against my skin. If the square was three dimensional — say like a checker piece, except not round — then I could just apply a tiny bit of pressure and slide it …
The square shifted underneath my fingertips.
I held my breath, glanced at Rochelle’s sketch, and pushed the square until it was as aligned to the same-sized one on her drawing as possible. The other squares along the map shifted to accommodate it.
I removed my fingers from the tattoo.
Maps, Artifacts, and Other Arcane Magic (Dowser Series Book 5) Page 2
