Dragon Coast

by Greg Van Eekhout

  He drank.

  “I was just telling Paul about the … conflict … you had with our governess,” Allaster said. “The thing with the Rodin. What happened to that governess, anyway?”

  “Same thing as happened to the Rodin. I don’t suppose my brother told you the part about him being the one to melt the sculpture and blaming me for it.”

  Allaster gazed off in the distance, as if looking into the past. “Is that what happened? It was a long time ago.”

  Cynara smiled at him, not without some affection. Then she turned to Daniel. “Who’s trying to kill you, Paul?”

  She gave him a significant look. The attempts on Ethelinda’s life weren’t public knowledge, but maybe Cynara wasn’t wrong to suspect a connection with the attempts on Paul’s.

  Daniel made a dismissive gesture. “I have larger concerns.” An absurdly true statement. Or it ought to be. Playing Paul made this the most complicated heist Daniel had ever tried to pull, and though assassination attempts were troubling, every job came with problems: extra guards and alarms you didn’t anticipate, or the getaway vehicle springing an inopportune oil leak. It was just stuff to be dealt with. But the fact that Ethelinda had been targeted as well somehow made it more than just stuff.

  “Is Ethelinda still at San Simeon?”

  “She’s here, with her governess,” Cynara said, as if it were something Paul would have known.

  “Formidable woman,” Allaster said approvingly. “Unmeltable.”

  “Ah, my three musketeers,” came a booming voice. Lord Professor Nathaniel Cormorant shouldered through the crowd, a glass of white wine in each hand. He sipped first from one glass, then the other, and swished the mixture in his mouth before swallowing.

  He didn’t seem to like what he tasted.

  “Problem?” Allaster asked.

  “The butler said these were from the same bottle, but he’s lying.” He held up the glass in his left hand. “This one was stored higher to the ceiling. I hope you youngsters have been exercising your tongues.”

  “I assure you, Professor,” Allaster said, “I give my tongue a regular workout.”

  Cynara sighed, and Cormorant shook his head like an indulgent uncle.

  “I imagine the party’s favorite topic has been the latest attempt on your life, Paul?”

  Daniel took a noncommittal sip of champagne.

  “You know, it’s really not something to take so lightly,” Cormorant said, reproving. “You’re the favored candidate for High Grand Osteomancer. Has it occurred to you that whoever’s got it in for you is less interested in killing you than in showing you’re not able to protect yourself from threats? Nobody wants a weak High Grand Osteomancer.”

  “I suppose you could ask the assassin if he finds me weak.”

  “Paul turned him to dust,” Allaster said, with an air of confidentiality.

  “Little more than a freshman exercise,” Cormorant said, sipping and swishing.

  The string quartet ended their piece on an abrupt note and launched into a march. An elderly man made his way through the room, bent under the weight of his outfit: a military dress uniform of pristine white, pinned with medals and ribbons. A circlet of bone crowned the old man’s head.

  Lord Creighton, the Hierarch’s consort, was known in Southern California as the Butcher of Bakersfield. Daniel did not fail to take notice of the scabbarded sword buckled to his belt. It was almost as long as his leg and was said to have separated thousands of soldiers’ heads from their necks.

  Guests of all ranks bowed deeply as he passed.

  When his slow progress finally brought him near, Cormorant and the Dorings bowed almost to the floor, and Daniel joined them.

  Creighton took Daniel’s forearms and raised him out of his bow, either gently or weakly. “My lord Paul, you look like a wreck.”

  “His Lord General is not the first to notice. But I’m sure some time in the Jewel Palace will restore me to my full vigor.”

  “I shall see to it,” declared Creighton with the force of conviction one might bring to sealing a military alliance. “We are so pleased to have you home. It feels like the realm has been on hold, ever hopeful for your return. And now that you’re back, the wheels of progress spin once more.”

  “No one could be more pleased than I, my lord.”

  Creighton smiled and nodded heartily. “Indeed. And Her Majesty and I would like to express our regret for the … incident … earlier this afternoon. I have been assured that any reminders of the unpleasantness have been scrubbed from your chambers. But if you should like to be lodged elsewhere, it shall be done.”

  “Thank you, Lord General, but I am comfortable where I am.”

  “I have looked into the identity of your attacker.”

  Daniel wondered what “looked into” meant. He imagined maids and gardeners and houseboys in dark places with apparatus involving ropes and pincers and hot coals.

  “From what I have gathered,” Creighton went on, “the assassin was not of our household, but rather of yours. I understand this isn’t the first time something of this nature has happened. Will you accept a word of advice from an old hand?”

  “I would be grateful, Lord General.”

  His advice was unsurprising. “Kill your household. The whole bloody lot of them. Every butler and scullery maid and your head chef and the boy who peels the carrots. Kill the gardeners and your groomsmen and falconer. Kill your chamberlain and your new man, the big one. Build a bonfire in front of your castle and a tank of water and boil them all alive.”

  “But if I’m killing them all, who will I get to do the boiling?” Daniel just couldn’t resist.

  Creighton didn’t smile, but there was a gleam in his eye. “I keep experts at this sort of thing on my staff. I’ll lend them to you.”

  “You’re very kind, Lord General. Thank you.”

  Dinner was announced soon thereafter, and the meal was mercifully easy to get through. Lord Creighton wasn’t present, nor the Hierarch herself, and the chairs were placed around an oversized banquet table so far apart that conversation was physically awkward and easy to avoid. Someone must have decided that the elite of the realm didn’t need another opportunity to talk among themselves without their liege present.

  After dessert and coffee, Lord Creighton reappeared to personally lead the tour of the Hierarch’s treasury.

  It was a high, round chamber, paneled in battleship-gray glass. Daniel supposed it was hard as steel, possibly made from the tooth enamel of some monstrous Northern beast. He suppressed the urge to rap his knuckles against the walls.

  Massive columns supported a gallery, where archers stood ready at close intervals. The scent of basilisk venom wafted down. A basilisk-laced arrow in the heart would certainly dissuade a thief.

  The floor was staffed by a cadre of guards tricked out in helmets, body armor, and machine guns. A little rude for such a classy gathering, maybe, but Daniel couldn’t blame the Hierarch. Some thieves needed a lot of dissuasion.

  There were other smells—sphinx riddle and nhang locks and Hyakume eyes, and probably more sophisticated things that kept their aromas to themselves.

  Glass cases rose in the center of the room like monuments, and they contained marvels: broaches, necklaces, bracelets, rings, tiaras of osteomantic bone.

  Creighton dutifully recited the names and histories of these priceless objects, but his interest lay in arms. A breastplate of red and brown dragon scales shimmered on a mannequin at least eight feet tall. There was an entire suit of armor made from serrated megalodon teeth, hippogriff ribs, mammoth tusks, and dragon fangs, rising like horns from the helmet.

  “I captured this one myself when I took Oregon,” Creighton confided to Daniel.

  But nothing made him prouder than a sword of glossy red, yellow, and orange enamel, like sculpted flame. “Of course, you all know this blade. The Hierarch claimed this as her personal prize in the Battle of Yosemite, right from the hand of the Southern Hierarch.”

/>   “El Serpiente,” Daniel whispered, almost in spite of himself. His father had been the Southern Hierarch’s sword smith, and in this beautiful, simple, powerful blade, he saw his father’s hand.

  “It seems rather a shame, doesn’t it?” Lord Creighton said to Daniel. “To keep it locked away in a case. A weapon like this is meant to be wielded.”

  “Perhaps, someday, it will be again, Lord General.”

  “Indeed, my young lord, indeed.”

  Daniel followed along as the tour continued, paying more attention to the treasury itself than the treasure. The flooring alone was worth a king’s ransom, with plates of Colombian dragon fused with basilisk hide and hardened steel, with no seams to wedge them apart. Even Daniel’s favorite recipe of grootslang and seps venom would take hours to burn through it. And the guard presence was too large and well placed for Daniel to take them out with soporific magic or gorgon blood.

  “… but I know none of this is what you were hoping to see,” Creighton was saying. “So, here it is.”

  The tour gathered around a case containing a six-foot-long scepter. The rod was crowned by a blue emerald braced in gold and jewels. From the top of the orb thrust a silver dagger, and set in the dagger’s base was a black stone, about the size and shape of a guitar pick.

  Reverence shined in Nathaniel Cormorant’s eyes. Allaster moved closer, to get a better look. Cynara was right by his side, as if magic radiated from the bone and she wanted to make sure to get her share.

  Creighton drew his own gaze away from the scepter. He cleared his throat. “Tomorrow, Her Highness the Hierarch will declare her choice for High Grand Osteomancer. And one of you will enjoy the privilege of being touched by the axis mundi.”

  SIXTEEN

  Cassandra didn’t want to have a conversation with Gabriel about leaving Max behind. But despite the hydra and eocorn treatment, Max remained laid up in the Emmas’ cabin. His gunshot wound was bad, and the magic from the Emmas’ stash had turned out to be heavily diluted.

  Gabriel hadn’t left his side in eight hours. Cassandra watched him doze in a chair beside Max’s bed, even after it started to feel like she was intruding on an intimate moment.

  Gabriel was not a monster.

  She hadn’t thought he looked like one, or acted like one. But deep down, she’d still believed he was. She’d met monsters. Anyone who’d climbed to the heights of influence Gabriel had achieved must be a monster.

  But here he was, slumped in a chair beside a person he clearly cared a great deal about, dirty and beaten and tired and scared. A powerful man, but also a guy who’d gotten in over his head.

  He mumbled something, lifted his chin, and looked anxiously over at Max. Then, wincing, he stretched and sniffed.

  “What’s that I smell?”

  “I threw a soup together,” Cassandra said. “Your water gun destroyed the kitchen, but I found a camp stove out back.”

  A bit of spark reignited in his eyes. He looked hopeful. “Soup. Soup is great. What’s in it?”

  “Turnips, some chicken, stuff from the herb garden. It’s basically Frankensoup. Go have some. I can watch Max for a bit.”

  Gabriel still hesitated.

  “Listen, if he gets well enough to walk, he won’t be able to carry you to San Francisco. Get some nutrition in you, find somewhere to lie down for a couple of hours, preserve your strength. For the good of the job.”

  Gabriel creaked to his feet. “Get me in an hour.”

  Cassandra promised she would, and she listened to his receding footsteps.

  She turned to his bag, lying on the floor next to the chair, and unzipped it.

  “I hear you offed Otis Roth.”

  Max’s eyes were open.

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “How does that sit with you?”

  “It sits fine. I feel lighter.”

  “You liked killing him?”

  “No. But I like not having Otis Roth in my world anymore. If you knew him as well as I did, you’d feel the same way.”

  “Maybe I already do,” Max said.

  She began rooting around Gabriel’s bag.

  Max tried to rise on one elbow, but then winced and eased himself back down.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m searching Gabriel’s bag,” Cassandra said. “Back on the trail when I nicked his nozzle gadget, my hand ran into a lot of things that got me curious. There’s all the plumbing he’s using to get us through the aqueducts. There’s the water bomb. But this…” She removed a stainless-steel flask. Whatever was inside sloshed with an odd gravity, like a spinning gyroscope. “What’s in here? It seems … complicated.”

  “You shouldn’t be tampering with his things.”

  “So stop me. Call for Gabriel.”

  Max just gave her a baleful stare.

  “You have some concerns of your own about your boss, don’t you?”

  Max still said nothing.

  Cassandra took a seat in the chair by the bed. “Okay, I’ll go first. I don’t think Gabriel’s on this job to help Daniel get Sam back. I don’t think he’s even going to destroy the dragon.”

  “No? What, then?”

  “I think he wants the dragon for himself.”

  Max sank deeper into his pillows. “You don’t know Gabriel like I do. He’s not power-hungry.”

  “Maybe not. But he is a control freak.”

  Max made a noise that might have been a tiny crumb of laughter. “I’ll give you that. But he has to be. He’s accountable for a lot.”

  “I know. He’s accountable for an entire kingdom. He controls a lot of magic. Does he think he can control a Pacific firedrake?

  “Does Daniel?”

  “Hell, no. And he doesn’t want to. He really just wants his kid back. That’s the truth. Daniel’s got the magic to be a great power, but he’s seen close-up what that costs people. But Gabriel … Gabriel already is a great power. You know there’s a price for that. And it’s a price paid by more than the person with the power. You know that, Max.”

  Again, Max gave her no response, but she could tell he agreed with her.

  “I’m going to ask you again: What’s in the flask?”

  He closed his eyes, in pain and stress. She reached over with a towel and daubed sweat off his forehead.

  “I don’t know what’s in the flask,” he said.

  She believed him.

  “Max, I’m on this job to keep Gabriel in check. If I don’t like what he’s doing, I’ve got a bullet for him. Him, and anyone else who threatens my friends.”

  “They go the way of Otis Roth?”

  “And I’ll lose sleep. But I’ll do what’s got to be done.”

  Max peeled off his blankets. Slowly, he swung his feet over the side of the bed, and after several seconds of concentration, he stood. He kept his face rigid, the muscles in his neck and jaw bulging.

  Cassandra stood to face him.

  “I’ve got some bullets, too,” he said.

  Cassandra nodded. “Warning noted. I’ll go tell Gabriel you’re up.”

  SEVENTEEN

  Daniel re-created the Hierarch’s treasury on a table in his sitting room. Upturned tumblers and water goblets stood in for the display cases. Toothpicks were the archers, and matchsticks were the guards. It took a little bit of searching through the suite to find enough matches.

  He set one of Paul’s cuff links in the middle of the diorama and placed a champagne flute over it. This was the score: the axis mundi scepter.

  Moth leaned over the table, working on a roast beef sandwich the size of a fire hydrant. “I don’t see what you’re whining about. We’ve tackled tougher jobs.”

  “That is a blatant lie. And you are dripping horseradish on the axis mundi scepter.”

  Moth wiped the spilled horseradish with his finger and licked it. “Well, we’ll do this job and then we’ll be better thieves. You don’t get better without practicing. It’s like piano. Can’t play ‘Chopsticks’ forever if you want
to be good.”

  “We played a whole concerto when we broke into the Southern Hierarch’s Ossuary. That didn’t go so well.” Daniel displayed the stump of his right pinky. “Anyway, this room is tougher.”

  “Why?”

  Daniel took the remainder of the matches and scattered them around the diorama. He added tongs from the ice bucket, a box of face tissues, a pouch of tobacco, several books.

  “Now you’re just making art, Daniel.”

  “More guards, unknown palace layout, some of the most powerful osteomancers in the two Californias. And this.” He planted a candlestick on the table. “By which I mean her. The Hierarch, in her seat of power.”

  Moth waved his sandwich. “Okay, stop it. You’re depressing me. We’re not going to burglarize the axis mundi from the treasury. Then what’s plan B?”

  “Here’s plan B,” Daniel said, with a bit of a flourish. “I’m going to steal the bone at the investiture. Right in the open, in front of everyone. Right under the Hierarch’s nose.”

  Moth stared at him, holding a big clump of unchewed sandwich in his mouth. He picked up a match and struck it on the back of an antique chair. The flame danced. “Can’t we go back to ‘Chopsticks’?”

  There was a knock at the door. Moth bit off the head off the burning match and spat it out. “Get down and stand back,” he told Daniel, taking cautious steps toward the door as if he were approaching a vicious dog.

  Daniel cut him off. “My turn to get the door.”

  “Could be another assassin.”

  “Yeah. That’s why it’s my turn.”

  Moth shrugged and scattered the pieces of the diorama. Now it was just a random assortment of stuff. He pulled a white cloth from his pocket like a matador flapping his cape and commenced polishing a glass.

  Daniel reached back for sense memories of massive bodies slipping ghostlike through sunless depths, trailing sixty-foot tentacles that crackled with electricity. His fingertips tingled with kraken energy, and he opened the door. A towering woman filled the doorway, her sleeveless blouse revealing muscles clad in glyptodont-armored plates. Small, deep-set black eyes in a broad face stared holes through Daniel, and then over his head, into the room behind him.