Dragon Coast

by Greg Van Eekhout

  “Things do seem a little more chaotic around here than usual,” she said.

  Auntie burped the baby. “I’ve never had so many all at once, and we’re moving house.”

  “Moving? But you’ve been here for almost a century.”

  “That’s the problem. Old house. The walls are solid, and they’re clean of bugs and rats, but the plumbing is shot. The toilets are backed up and the water pressure is but a drizzle. It’s not a fit place for children.”

  “Where will you go?”

  “That’s a very good question, my newt.”

  Gabriel saw an opportunity.

  “I might be able to help you with the plumbing.”

  “I’ve had fixits and plumbers in here enough, and it’s all the same verdict: They have to tear the walls out and replace all the pipes. They say it’ll take months.”

  “Just the same, I’d like to see what you’re dealing with.”

  Auntie gave him a what-have-I-got-to-lose shrug and pointed him to a bathroom. After a quick inspection of the horror show he came back out. He dug into his pack and found a small brass cube. Pipe threads were drilled into two of its faces. On the inside was a precision-cut mandala.

  “What if I fixed your plumbing problems?”

  “With that little doohickey?”

  “It’s a puzzlebox valve. With this, I can get your water running strong and clean. And I can do it right now, in minutes. No ripping out walls. No need to move house. Would you reconsider our request?”

  Gabriel watched hope and skepticism fight a battle on Auntie’s face.

  “Fix my pipes for me, and I’ll put my children to work.”

  Gabriel tossed the cube in the air and caught it. “I’ll need a bucket and some rags.”

  “He’s serious?” Auntie said to Cassandra. “He can really do this?”

  “He can. He’s pretty good with water.”

  * * *

  The graceful winged pyramid of the Transamerica building glowed like an ember in the sunrise. To the west, the Golden Chain and the Marin Headlands remained in shadow. Yet, the Hierarch’s palace blazed in jewel tones, as if whatever the sun and sky did wasn’t relevant.

  While Gabriel marveled at the skyline, Max walked ahead of him, sniffing the air all around. Cassandra had brought the team to the waterfront to give Max a chance to scent the warehouses and piers and docked ships. The marina bristled with the masts of yachts and fishing charters, and out on the harbor, a container ship eased past the sea-battered and guano-splattered rock of Alcatraz Island.

  “Looks like his leg’s improving,” Cassandra said to Gabriel.

  “Does it?”

  “He’s moving better than you are.”

  They’d spent the night sleeping in a vacant apartment on a cold, hardwood floor, and Gabriel’s back hadn’t yet rebounded. Crouching through tunnels and mud had killed his feet and knees and carrying his backpack left his neck and shoulders feeling like sharp rocks.

  He observed Max’s gait. “He’s in pain, actually. He just isn’t showing it. He never does.”

  “Is there something wrong with showing it?”

  “He grew up in the kennels. A hound that can’t hunt gets put down.”

  “You saved him from the kennels, didn’t you?”

  Saved him? Gabriel supposed he did. But he hadn’t meant to. He’d simply needed Max for a job. Now, he needed Max for many things.

  A group of homeless kids clustered in front of a pier warehouse. Most of them huddled on the ground, sleeping, but a few passed around a loaf of bread. A small figure in a hoodie weaved around his friends on a skateboard until deliberately swerving into Cassandra.

  She barely nudged him away and kept on walking. The skater continued in the opposite direction, leaving his friends behind.

  “What was that?” Gabriel asked her. “Pickpocket?”

  “Just the opposite. He was one of Auntie’s orphans. And he gave me something.” She handed him a slip of paper, a fortune cookie fortune.

  Treasures are found inside walls, but truth is found without.

  And on the opposite side, an address.

  “I suppose this means something to someone who knows what things mean,” he said.

  “It’s a puzzle. On one side, a place, on the other side, an admonition that you can’t find truth in places.”

  “That last thing I said about things that mean something to someone: I’m saying it again.”

  “Auntie’s given us a source with information. But not necessarily a source we can trust.”

  “I like toilets better than people,” Gabriel said, following along. Cassandra picked up the pace as if she knew where she was going.

  * * *

  A narrow alley connected a pair of Barbary Coast back streets. Signs and banners in Mandarin blocked the bit of sky between the centuries-old brick buildings. Laundry hung from fire escapes. The alley contained trading companies, the headquarters of a few benevolent societies, and a printer’s shop. Also, tucked between some buildings with no signs, was an attorney’s office matching the address the boy had given Cassandra.

  Cassandra told Max to stay outside in case she and Gabriel required a cavalry. A good idea, but as Gabriel climbed a staircase barely the width of his shoulders, he wished he could have stayed behind with the cavalry as well.

  Stenciled on a frosted-glass door was LI & SAUL, ATTORNEYS-AT-LAW.

  Cassandra tucked a throwing dart against her palm and knocked.

  “Come in,” said a woman’s voice.

  Cassandra entered first and fluttered her hand behind her back to signal Gabriel to follow her into the tiny office. A single window afforded a view of trousers and linens hanging from a line strung across the alley.

  Behind a desk sat a Latina woman in her fifties with iron-streaked black hair. She had a handsome face that didn’t look like it spent much time arranged in a smile.

  Something about the woman was familiar.

  “I didn’t call a fixit,” she said.

  “We got a message to come see you,” Cassandra replied.

  “Is it about a legal matter?”

  Gabriel knew where he’d seen her before. It was long ago, and she was much younger then, and he’d seen her only in a photo. “You’re not an attorney,” he said.

  “And you’re not a fixit.”

  “Cassandra, meet Messalina Sigilo. Daniel’s mother.”

  Cassandra managed not to betray her surprise, and Gabriel wondered if she’d fling a dart into Messalina’s eye. He wouldn’t try to stop her.

  Messalina offered a handshake that Cassandra did not return. “Cassandra Morales. I’ve wanted to meet you for a long time. And Gabriel Argent, the great administrator. Where’s your hound, Mr. Argent?”

  “You’re Messalina Sigilo,” Cassandra repeated. “Mom of the year.”

  “Yes, girl, I am. I hope we’re not going to display any unseemly competition between a man’s mother and his girlfriend. There are so many more interesting things we could talk about. I understand you killed Otis Roth.”

  “Who I did or didn’t kill is none of your business.”

  “It must be very freeing to act with no regard to ethics, morality, or consequence.”

  “I didn’t say I’m free from consequence. I just said it’s none of your business.”

  “Between you and your god, then?”

  “Between me and none of your business.”

  “Well, my dear, I wish you a long life before your consequences catch up to you.”

  Cassandra shrugged. “Objects in the mirror are usually closer than they appear.”

  At first, Gabriel thought Cassandra was just using hostility as a tactic, but he was mistaken. Cassandra’s animosity for Sigilo was palpable. And this was too small an office for kicking and punching and throwing darts and probably gunplay to erupt without him catching a stray fist or bullet.

  “Do you work for Auntie, or does Auntie work for you?” he asked, eager to change the subject. />
  “What would be your guess, Mr. Argent?”

  “I don’t have to guess. You came down from the North to Los Angeles all those years ago as a spy. You insinuated yourself into the Ministry of Osteomancy, met Sebastian Blackland, one of the South’s most powerful and innovative osteomancers, got him to marry you, and used Otis’s smuggling network to send samples of his work back to your masters. Auntie is a black market magic trader with a network of Dickensian orphans all through the city. Of course she works for you.”

  Gabriel stopped himself. He was on the verge of feeling smug. One should never feel smug in the presence of Messalina Sigilo. She hadn’t liked his narrative, and he wondered if he’d suffer because of it. Sniper bullet through his temple, maybe. Anvil falling on his head. Poisoned anvil, probably.

  “Mr. Argent has it in crude outline,” she said, addressing Cassandra. “But the details are important. I didn’t make Sebastian marry me. We fell in love. We got married. As people do. We had Daniel together. We loved him and raised him. And when the marriage stopped working, we separated. And we continued to love and raise Daniel.”

  “And you continued to spy on Sebastian Blackland and report on his work,” Gabriel said. “As spies do.”

  “Yes, I understand your outrage over that, Mr. Argent, because the Southern Hierarch’s rule was fair and just, and your loyalty to him was so strong that you helped Daniel assassinate him.”

  “I didn’t help much.”

  “Another thing Mr. Argent left out: I had two sons. Paul was my son, every bit as much as Daniel. I loved both my boys.”

  “One of them you loved enough to take with you to the North,” Cassandra said. “Daniel, you abandoned.”

  Messalina glanced down at her desk. Cassandra had touched a raw spot. When Messalina spoke again, she seemed a little less sure of herself.

  “After the Hierarch’s purge, the families of the high-ranking osteomancers were targeted. I was Sebastian’s wife. Daniel was his son. We both would have shared Sebastian’s fate. So what choice did I have? I went North.”

  “You took Paul. You left Daniel. With Otis.” Cassandra said Otis’s name as if it was a foul piece of meat to be spit out.

  “Daniel was hunted by a kingdom, while hardly anyone even knew Paul existed. The golem-creation process wasn’t perfect. Paul was brain-damaged. He wouldn’t be of any use to Otis, so Otis wouldn’t shelter him. But if Paul and I were seen crossing the border, the Hierarch would assume it was Daniel. He would stop looking for him. Daniel would be safer. And as for Paul, I could keep him close by and protected.”

  “Pretty simple math,” Cassandra said.

  “When you have poor options, you choose the least poor.”

  “When your options are that poor,” Cassandra said, “you ask yourself why you made choices that led to such a bad menu of options.

  Gabriel observed the corners of Messalina’s mouth tighten in frustration. It was important to her that she make Cassandra understand, probably because she knew she couldn’t make Daniel understand. But she was trying to convince someone whose own parents had sold her to Otis to settle a debt. Messalina wouldn’t find much sympathy here.

  “She’s still left one thing out,” Gabriel said. “Why did Paul exist at all? Why did she make a golem from her own son?” Messalina didn’t answer, so Gabriel did. “Because they don’t make golems in the North. That’s Southern magic, and it was something the Northern Hierarch wanted. What better intel could she bring her masters than a living golem?”

  Cassandra didn’t have a cutting remark. She just shook her head.

  Messalina claimed back the tiny bit of composure she’d lost. “Well, you seem to have all the answers about my time in Los Angeles. And what are you two doing in San Francisco?”

  “I’m a smuggler,” Cassandra said.

  “And…?”

  “And nothing. I’m a smuggler.”

  Gabriel knew Messalina wouldn’t be satisfied with that.

  “Two days ago, I got word that my son Paul has returned to the realm,” she said. “That he is, right now, at the Jewel Palace. Which should be happy news.” She closed her eyes. “Oh, such happy news if he weren’t dead. But he is. I saw Daniel kill his brother with my own eyes. So it is strange to hear that he’s home. And, now, at the same time, here are Daniel’s friends, looking for large movements of magic, osteomancers, and support personnel. At the very same time Daniel has infiltrated the Hierarch’s palace.” Her eyes grew hard. “You’re looking for Paul’s firedrake. Why?”

  Well, at least there was something she didn’t know.

  “I don’t feel like telling you,” Gabriel said.

  “I could make you.”

  Gabriel pointed at the fire sprinkler above Messalina’s desk. “It would get very wet in here.”

  Messalina placed her hands flat on the desk. Her knuckles were calloused, her fingers marked with old scars.

  “We want different things, Mr. Argent, but that doesn’t mean we can’t all get what we want. You want to secure the firedrake for the safety of your realm. I want to secure Daniel’s safety. And Daniel wants to save the Southern Hierarch’s golem.”

  “Sam,” Cassandra said. “His name is Sam.”

  Gabriel caught movement through the window behind Messalina’s back. Max stood on the fire escape across the alley. He had no rifle, just his pistol, but he was a good shot, and the distance between the bore of his gun and the back of Messalina’s head was less than twenty feet.

  “What are you proposing?” Cassandra asked.

  Messalina clasped her fingers. “I’m not proposing anything. You’ll hear from me.”

  “When?”

  “Not before tomorrow morning. I have a dinner engagement tonight.”

  The conversation was over.

  “We’ll look for you,” Gabriel said.

  Messalina swiveled in her chair to face Max across the alley. Max kept his aim.

  “I mean to help you,” Messalina said. “I mean to help Daniel.”

  Cassandra shook her head, and Max lowered his gun.

  “Like Gabriel said. We’ll look for you.”

  NINETEEN

  “Do you have a girlfriend?”

  Sam and Annabel had been hiking through the firedrake’s brain in uncomfortable silence for a long time when Annabel posed the question.

  “No. Not really.”

  “What about the girl on the mountaintop. Your friend. Em? It just seemed like you like her a lot.”

  “I do,” Sam said, squeezing carefully past an electrically charged tendril. “Actually, I’m totally in love with her.”

  “But…?”

  “But we were too busy trying not to get killed to do anything else. We’ve never got to date. Not even once. I think that’s what I’m saddest about. We’ve never taken a walk together just for the sake of taking a walk.”

  “That is sad,” Annabel agreed. “But sad is good. It means you can still feel. It means you’re still alive.”

  They maneuvered around a nest of pulsing brain junk.

  “So, who have you eaten?”

  “Me, personally?” Sam said, feeling a bit like he’d been ambushed. “Because if you mean who the Hierarch ate, it’s a long menu.”

  “I mean you, personally.”

  “Oh. I ate the bones of a woman named Dolores. That’s the only one.” When Annabel didn’t respond, Sam added, almost desperately, “She died in a car wreck, so I don’t think that should count too much against me.”

  “Okay, that’s fair,” she said, much to Sam’s relief. “I don’t have anything against eating the dead. Any magic you gain from a dead osteomancer is magic they gained from something that preceded them in death. And good magic is rare enough not to waste.” She stopped and looked at him, her face serious. “You’re telling me the truth?”

  He ducked under a low, pink, meaty branch. Was it a synapse or a neuron or something else? He knew even less about brain anatomy than he did about aeronautics. H
is scalp tingled as a pulse of light sizzled through the branch.

  “I’m telling you the truth, Annabel. I’ve never killed someone to take their magic. Daniel hated that sort of thing. He raised me to hate it, too.”

  “I suppose a selfish person wouldn’t have sacrificed his life to prevent people from being hurt by a weapon like a Pacific firedrake.”

  “That’s right,” Sam said. “I’m pretty much a hero. It should be obvious from my heroic physique.”

  She laughed. It’d been a long time since he’d heard a laugh.

  “What about you? You said you learned your craft by finding an osteomancer’s library. Were his remains part of the collection?”

  “Oh, I wish. Somebody probably got there before me. But I’ve eaten plenty of other things.”

  “Such as?”

  “I gorged myself in that library, Sam. Half-cooked bone, raw magic, I didn’t care. I wanted to taste every kind of osteomancy there was. I couldn’t get enough. And that was before I started working in the Ossuary.”

  “And what did you eat there?” Sam was afraid to ask, but he had to know.

  “I told you, my work in the Ossuary involved hydra. You know how an osteomancer works. To perfect hydra magic, you have to eat a lot of hydra. I figure that’s why the Hierarch ate me. Instead of giving that magic to the troops fighting his war, he gave it to himself.” She stopped to assess him. “Do you see where I’m going with this?”

  “Yes. I think so. Actually, no, probably not.”

  “I’m hydra essence, Sam. Regeneration. The Hierarch ate me. You were generated from the Hierarch. Along with the other osteomancy you inherited from the Hierarch, you got my hydra magic. You got me. When you jumped into the firedrake’s magic soup and dissolved, you must have reached for your hydra magic to save yourself. You reached deeper than you probably thought was possible. Your body was gone, but your magical essence survived, in here.” She tapped one of the brain tendrils with her stick of bone. “And by reaching for me, you brought me here, too.”

  They walked on awhile, Sam trying not to let on that he was watching her face.

  “You seem remarkably okay with this,” he said at last.

  “We’re magical constructs traipsing about the insides of a Pacific firedrake configured like a bomber made of meat. You’ve just got to roll with this stuff, Sam.”