Dragon Coast

by Greg Van Eekhout

  No, that wasn’t quite Paul’s tone. Less sarcasm, next time. More flat-line.

  “Of course, my lord, of course.” Weepy fell just short of hitting himself. “Forgive my question. I did not mean to trespass. This is such a happy occasion, an overwhelmingly happy occasion, to have you back. The realm shall be flooded with tears of joy. I dare say, the Hierarch herself shall weep. To say nothing of your mother—”

  Daniel twitched a nod, and Moth’s bass cut Weepy off and filled the space.

  “His lord is fatigued from his travels. News of his return will be withheld pending his lord’s order.”

  Daniel winced. The Northerners’ manner of speech would take some time to master. Passing themselves off as high-class wasn’t something Moth or Daniel had much practice in. Still, Moth’s presence alone conveyed authority, and as he trained his menacing glare on Weepy and the guards and the rest of the assemblage, he got the message across: If someone leaked Baron Paul Sigilo’s presence, there would be broken bones.

  Daniel waved his hand vaguely in Moth’s direction. “This is Mr. Matthew, my steward.”

  Weepy went ashen. Daniel had probably just introduced him to his replacement.

  The old steward gave Moth a jittery little bow. “I am your … I am the previous … I am Abram Gorov. If I may—”

  “I’d like to go to my apartments now,” Daniel announced.

  Weepy’s body threatened to divide in two as he struggled over whether to rush into action or step back and let Moth take charge.

  “Lead the way, Gorov,” Moth told him.

  Good move, since neither Daniel nor Moth had any idea where Paul’s private quarters were.

  With maximum solicitation, Gorov took them up a staircase. Daniel gave a last glimpse at the crowd. The woman with the black hair turned and left the room, and with her went the scent of a hundred kinds of magic.

  * * *

  “You are so unbelievably rich,” Moth said, once Gorov left them alone in Paul’s chambers. The wall behind Paul’s canopied bed was lined with wooden panels painted with saints and martyrs. The carpet was posh enough to have been hung on a museum wall, and there wasn’t a single surface in Daniel’s eyeshot that wasn’t adorned by something expensive.

  Moth walked around the room, inspecting all the gold candlesticks and the lamp shades with gold tassels. “You think Gorov is going to be a problem?”

  “He might be,” Daniel said. “Don’t be fooled by him. He acts like an abused waiter, but he stinks of griffin.”

  “And you very publicly gave me his job.”

  “Sorry, buddy. There was no way I could pass you off as my special friend with special access to me without making enemies in Paul’s staff. At least this way, it’s out in the open.”

  Moth picked up a pearl-and-gold box and pulled out a tissue. “Yeah, don’t worry, I can manage him. But what about the spooky chick?”

  “You noticed her, too? She stinks of all the magic.”

  “You want me to ask about her?”

  “That’s basically what I need you to do. Make a peace offering with Gorov, tell him he still runs the house, and you’re just here to help me with my convalescence and get me back on my feet. Nose around, get into the dirt, talk to the housekeepers, bring back intel on who’s who.”

  “You want me to be charming or terrifying?”

  “Your usual combination of both will probably be good.”

  “And what are you doing while I’m making friends and victims?”

  Daniel approached a bookcase and sniffed. He ran his fingers along the spines of leather-bound volumes and smelled his finger. It smelled of Paul. The scent was faint, because Paul hadn’t been here in over a year, and the more efficient an osteomancer, the less magic he wasted on aroma. Paul was a very efficient osteomancer, and Daniel doubted many other noses could pick up his residue. But Paul was made of Daniel’s own magic, and that gave him an advantage.

  He pulled a bloodred book from the shelf, and the bookcase slid aside, revealing a black door. There was no knob, no visible lock or hardware of any kind, just smooth, matte-black wood.

  Daniel rapped his knuckles against it. “Me? I’m going to work on this.”

  “I’ll start with the kitchen staff, then,” Moth said.

  “Bring back milk and cookies,” Daniel called after him.

  He went back to sniffing, moving his nose around the edges of the door. He detected no sphinx or nhang lock, no familiar magic barriers, but Daniel was certain Paul’s workshops were on the other side of the door: his stores of osteomantic bones, his equipment. And, most important, the axis mundi bone.

  He began work on a key.

  He’d performed magic in alleys, behind dumpsters, crammed into air vents, sitting on toilets in bus station rest rooms. But Paul had a lovely writing desk of wood so rich Daniel was tempted to lick it. Might as well work in comfort, he thought.

  He got out his osteomancy kit and rummaged inside for the powdered bone of three different breath-stealing creatures. He sprinkled the powder into a glass vial and held the vial to the flame of his torch. Drawing in air from the room—air that Paul had inhaled and exhaled—the powder turned from fog-gray to chalk-white, eventually crumbling into finer grains and dissolving. A small quantity of clear fluid rested at the bottom of the vial.

  With a Q-tip, he swabbed his dead brother’s condensed breath on the door and it swung open, letting him into Paul’s world.

  TEN

  The plane rocked and dipped in the air like a barrel in the rapids. Rain shot out of the darkness and splattered against the windshield. Gabriel sat next to the pilot, a man with a lumberjack build and a blond beard cascading down his chest. The pilot peered at his gauges through gold-rimmed aviators, rarely bothering to look up from his instrument panel. Granite mountain crags and javelin points of fur trees allegedly lurked below, but Gabriel couldn’t see anything.

  “So you’re comfortable with everything that’s going on?” he asked over the headset.

  The pilot’s eyes crinkled, but Gabriel couldn’t tell if he was smiling or grimacing below his bushy mustache. “This is the most dreadful weather I’ve ever pushed a plane through, sir. To tell you the truth, I’m pretty scared.”

  The plane shuddered and jumped like the EKG of a troubled heart.

  “I thought pilots were supposed to be stoic and reassuring. I was led to believe this. I was promised this.”

  “Is this your first time flying, sir?”

  “Yes.”

  “I hope it doesn’t leave you with a bad impression.”

  The plane jolted, and Gabriel bit his lip to suppress a gasp.

  “Sorry, sir. It’ll all be over soon.”

  “What do you mean, ‘over’?”

  “I mean, we’re almost there.”

  “I thought you meant we were going to crash.”

  The pilot’s lack of response was not encouraging.

  Gabriel twisted around in his seat. In the rear compartment, Max shifted as if readying to kick out a window and jump, choosing the time and manner of his own death. Cassandra tightened her boot laces. She made a twirly finger gesture at Gabriel and mouthed, “Turn around.”

  The plane hit. Gabriel’s teeth clacked together, and he felt the impact in the small of his back. Not until water splashed across the windshield and the pilot nodded contentedly did he realize they hadn’t crashed. They’d merely made the water landing. The pontoons kicked up rooster tails as the plane skidded to a stop.

  “Well, I got you here,” the pilot said. “Hope that was the most dangerous part of whatever it is you folks are doing.”

  “Wouldn’t that be great?” Gabriel said, unbuckling. “Have a good flight back.”

  A howl of wind brought fresh salvos of driving rain.

  Securing his backpack, he followed Max and Cassandra, leaping from the rear compartment hatch to a tiny wooden fishing pier. The pilot gave them a two-fingered wave through the cockpit window, and a few minutes later, he
was back in the air, leaving them in enemy territory.

  The way from the shore to the tree line was a muddy slog, but it would have been worse without the magic Daniel had cooked into the treads of their hiking boots. There’d be miles to go before reaching the Hetch Hetchy dam, and they needed to get there before daylight.

  They hunkered among the trees on a sodden carpet of leaves and pine needles. Rain streamed from the upper limbs.

  “Smell anything, Max?” Cassandra whispered.

  Max sniffed the air. “I smell millions of things.”

  “Okay,” Cassandra said, wiping water from her face with both hands. “When I ask you a question, you need to answer it.”

  “Do what she says, Max,” Gabriel said.

  Max sniffed in Cassandra’s direction and averted his face, his version of giving her the middle finger. “If I picked up something scary I would have brought it to your attention without you having to ask. Just because we’re on a suicide mission doesn’t mean I want to die.”

  Cassandra stepped briskly off into the rain. “Let’s move out. Gabriel, keep up with me.”

  Gabriel huffed, jogging to catch up. “Things starting off a little tense, aren’t they?”

  “I don’t want you interceding between me and Max. When I give an instruction to either of you, follow it. Do it for the good of the job, and do it to stay alive. You’re not in Los Angeles anymore.”

  “I don’t normally resort to saying this kind of thing, but you are talking to a very powerful person right now.”

  “There’s snot running out of your nose, grand mage.”

  Gabriel opened his mouth to respond but then stumbled over a tree root. He would have gone face-forward into the mud had Cassandra not caught him by the arm. Declarations of one’s power were much less impressive after demonstrating one wasn’t even very good at walking.

  “Max and I have been close for a long time,” he said, recovering. “We bonded when people were trying to kill us. That kind of thing tends to solidify a friendship, and we rely on each other.”

  “He’s still your dog, and you’re his master. He’ll have to take directions from me and not expect a biscuit.”

  Despite the chilling rain, heat rose to Gabriel’s face.

  “He’s not a dog. He’s a man. And he’s my friend.”

  “All right. That was … yeah, I’m sorry.” They trudged on a few more steps in the muck. “Just the same, do whatever you have to do to keep him in line without undermining my authority.”

  Gabriel might have said something else if he hadn’t tripped over another root. This time, Cassandra let him fall, and he tasted wet, frigid earth.

  * * *

  Dawn cast an amber glow over O’Shaughnessy Dam, a four-hundred-foot wall of concrete holding back the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir. Perched on a granite ledge above one end of the span, Gabriel felt the thundering power of the water in his belly. It blasted from the dam’s eleven jet-flows, some into the Tuolumne River, but most of it diverted into an aqueduct that filled toilets and water glasses over 180 miles away in San Francisco.

  In the early light, the water glinted with iridescent blues and pinks. The spire of Kolana Rock and the 2,400-foot Hetch Hetchy Dome stood as monumental grave markers for the valley that had been here millions of years before the construction of the dam. Submerged beneath the reservoir were what John Muir called the “rarest and most precious mountain temples,” a place where eagles had soared, where bobcats and bears hid from the shrieks of wyvern echoing through the valley. Water killed worlds.

  Max inhaled sharply and squinted, his head darting back and forth like a pigeon’s until he fixed on something. “Problem,” he said. “Smells predatory.”

  They huddled behind a fallen pine tree and waited until a large, gray dog came into view, climbing the cliff face toward them. Deep-bellied and lean, the dog passed its gigantic nostrils over the ground, vacuuming up air and scents. It was a garm hound, the kind of dog Max was osteomantically altered to emulate. In the Southern Kingdom, they were used to sniff out contraband magic. Here in the North, for all Gabriel knew, they were trained to kill anyone who possessed it.

  “Max?” Gabriel said, and Max unholstered his gun.

  “No,” Cassandra said. “I got this.”

  She unpacked a pair of tubes and screwed them together, forming a blowgun. Max returned his gun to its holster and seemed relieved.

  With a puff of air, she sent a dart flying into the garm’s neck. It let out one sharp whine and climbed a few more feet, but then its rear legs got wobbly, and it lay down on its belly, its big head resting on its front paws. Gabriel couldn’t tell from this distance if it was still breathing.

  “Dead?” he asked.

  “Sleeping,” Cassandra said. She turned to Max. “I hope that’s okay with you.”

  “I can’t object to sparing the life of a hound.”

  Max never smiled, but he came about as close to it as he ever did, and Cassandra returned his non-smile with half a grin. Something passed between them—an understanding, or an appreciation. Gabriel should have been happy about it, but for some reason it made him feel uneasy.

  “Clear now?” Cassandra asked Max.

  He grunted, and Cassandra took the lead down the cliff face to the valley floor.

  Despite Gabriel’s osteomantically treated boot treads, the terrain was crumbly and treacherous, and after his third slip, it occurred to him that he could simply bring down the dam and create a cataclysmic flood that would rip sequoias from the ground, push over buildings and send them smashing into bridges, deliver a cargo of cars and bloated livestock carcasses and human corpses hundreds of miles below to San Francisco, and Gabriel could arrive behind the flood, like a general walking through the gates of a conquered city.

  But he didn’t want to be that kind of water mage, so he continued to slip and struggle down the cliff side.

  Eventually they made it to the canyon power tunnel, a conduit that conducted water ten and a half miles to a power station downriver.

  Kneeling in the crawlway maintenance shaft above the tunnel, Cassandra worked the bolts of an access hatch. Meanwhile, Gabriel assembled a maze of copper pipes, each barely wider than a drinking straw. Using the wrench he’d found among his predecessor’s tools, an object he’d named the Wrench of All Purpose, he tightened fittings: S-curves and U-curves and corkscrews, funnels that concentrated water flow to laser-fine jets inside copper skin. Max crouched beside him, impatient, searching out aromas.

  “Done,” Cassandra announced, dragging the hatch cover off to the side. Down the hole, fewer than three feet below them, the water roared.

  Gabriel threaded a valve wheel into place. A long straight pipe fed into one side of the configuration, and another fed out the other side: an intake and an outtake. He maneuvered the two pipes into the water.

  Cassandra gave him a skeptical frown. “How’s the crazy-straw work?”

  Gabriel fed more pipe into the water. “Water magic comes from patterns. Signs, mandalas, even the letters of the alphabet, they all conduct power. Flow and current and eddies and whorls and hydrokinetic energy. Physics, engineering, and,” he said, turning the valve, “sorcery.”

  He slowly brought his hands away from his sigil of copper knots and watched the contraption, ready to grab it should it begin to tip over. But it remained in place, as if planted in secure ground.

  The quality of sound changed, less a roar of water now than the wet breath of a giant through a deep chasm. The copper tubes vibrated, and a profoundly deep bass note reverberated through the rock, through the water, through every cell of his body. His skin chilled.

  The water blasted off to the sides of the tunnel like the Red Sea parted by Moses, leaving a walkable path in the middle.

  “We can go in now.”

  He went down first, descending a chain-link ladder to the tunnel floor. Only a few inches of water remained on the tunnel floor, flowing over cobblestones that sloped downward toward distant turbin
es.

  Gabriel wasn’t surprised by his success. In his decade as water mage he’d spent many thousands of hours studying hydromantic texts, questioning the older water mages on his staff, experimenting with sigil shapes and mandalas. Of course, magic wasn’t just pipes and valves. Magic demanded sacrifice. And Gabriel had sacrificed himself. He lived alone. He had no children. He hadn’t been on a date in more than ten years. He didn’t take hikes on sunny days, his bike was rusting in his garage, and he hadn’t read a book for pleasure or switched on his stereo in longer than he could remember. He didn’t even have a cat.

  But he could work water.

  Max and Cassandra joined him down the ladder.

  “You sure all this water’s not going to come crashing down on us when we’re halfway through the tunnel?” Cassandra said over the roar.

  “Sure enough that I’m in here. If my magic fails, I’ll be as drowned as the rest of you.”

  “Water mages can drown?”

  “You’d be surprised. It usually starts with a squabble between rival mages, and before you know it, someone’s facedown in a swimming pool.”

  Cassandra surprised him by allowing a little bit of humor in her eyes. “I love it when wizards die ironically. Please lead the way.”

  “I cheerfully obey,” he said.

  * * *

  Laden with their heavy packs and trying not to twist ankles on the slippery cobblestones, they moved through the tunnel at the fastest pace the slowest of them could handle. That was Gabriel. He’d designed his water sigil to stand for five hours before its seals burst and it collapsed like a tower of straw, and then there’d be no spell to keep the water from falling away from the tunnel walls and drowning them. Gabriel checked his watch and began taking longer strides. He didn’t want to die, and he didn’t want to be the reason anyone else died.

  Cassandra walked beside him. He expected her to snarl at him for slowing the group down, but instead, she struck up a conversation: “Daniel tells me you and he have some things in common.”

  Cassandra was a challenge. Her manner was grim, reserved, even cold, with flashes of anger and violence that made him think of land mines under thin, frosted earth. But Gabriel had been in her house. He’d seen her cheerful rooms, decorated with handcrafted chicken figurines and furniture piled with blankets and pillows that invited lingering over mugs of tea and naps. He’d seen her cat.