by Rachel Aaron
I was about to suggest that we fan out to better search the burned buildings when Nik said, “Is that it?”
I whirled around to see Nik pointing down at my feet. When I looked down, I saw that I was standing on a manhole cover. Like everything else here, the round iron cap had been blackened by the fire, but on top of the ashy black was the deeper ink black of a marker, the marks forming a chicken-scratch spellwork I now recognized almost as well as my own name.
“This is it!” I cried, dropping to my knees on the pavement. When I tried to pull the manhole cover up, though, the spellwork sizzled, freezing it in place.
“Ugh,” I groaned. “It’s locked.”
Nik arched an eyebrow. “Can you ask the wind to unlock it?”
I wasn’t sure if he was making fun of me or not, and I didn’t have the time or patience to find out. I was too busy glaring at the spellwork, attempting to work out the logic in my mind. Attempting and failing. This was why I’d taken the notes to Heidi. I’d never been good at wrapping my brain around Thaumaturgical logic, much less Dr. Lyle’s crazy custom stuff. That was fine, though. The circumstances were wildly different, but when you boiled it down, this was just another lock, and cracking locks was what I did every day.
“Stand back,” I said, placing my hands on either side of the circle.
“Are you sure this is smart?” Sibyl whispered as Nik got clear. “You nearly cooked yourself earlier. Should you really be using more magic now?”
“No,” I said. “But I didn’t come all this way just to look at it.”
“Can you wait a little, at least?” my AI pleaded. “Your dad will delete me if I let you burn your magic out.”
I couldn’t care less what my dad thought of this, but she did raise a good point. “How much time do I have left before midnight?”
“Three hours,” Sibyl said. “But that’s still plenty of—”
I grabbed the magic and yanked it into my hands, ignoring the burning pain that came with it. When Sibyl started to lecture me about the dire ramifications of what I was doing, I shook my goggles off my head onto the ground behind me. I knew she was right, I just didn’t want to hear it. What I wanted, what I needed was under this lid. It wasn’t that I didn’t care if I broke my magic—I cared enormously, so much so that I nearly dropped the power because my hands were shaking so badly—I just cared about my freedom more. I’d fought too hard and given too much already to lose at the last inch, so I gritted my teeth and pushed through, trying not to think about the very scary numbness that was starting to spread through my mind as I clumsily shaped the magic into the form I needed.
Thankfully, it didn’t take much. The spellwork on the entrance seemed to be more of a seal than a lock, because it popped the moment I applied pressure, making the iron manhole cover jolt against its collar. As it moved, a rush of rich magic welled up from the dark, tingling across my skin like a thousand little feathers. Another time, it probably would have felt nice. In my current overextended state, though, it burned like hot needles, making me gasp as I jumped away.
“What?” Nik demanded.
“Nothing,” I lied. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”
It took both of us to lift the heavy iron cover. When it was off, I put my goggles back on my head and flicked on my lights, ignoring Sibyl’s grumbling as I scanned the metal rungs of the ladder down. They looked normal enough, so I put on my protective gloves and started making my way down. I wasn’t entirely sure how manholes worked down here given that we were inside a floating hunk of unused city, but other than a slight swaying feeling, I noticed nothing out of the ordinary. After about ten feet, my feet hit solid ground. When I swept my lights around to see where we had come out, though, I realized the platform I was standing on was the only one.
“Wow,” I breathed.
The manhole had led down into a storm cistern, one of those huge, circular wells designed to catch excess runoff before it became a flash flood. Now, though, the bottom of the tank was gone, leaving only the void beneath a golden mesh of pure magic that had been strung across the emptiness like a cargo net. And sitting in that net, cradled gently against each other like delicate fruits, were gold-and-crimson speckled eggs. Dozens of them.
“Are those what I think they are?” Nik asked, dropping Kauffman on the ground at the bottom of the ladder as he rushed in to get a better look.
“I think so,” I said, eyes going round as I tried to count all the basketball-sized orbs. Tried and failed.
“There has to be a hundred of them!” Nik said, his eyes gleaming greedily in the glow of the magical net. “How much are they worth?”
“Thirty thousand,” I replied breathlessly. “Each.”
We stared at each other, our faces breaking into matching grins as we did the math. Thirty thousand times a hundred was three million dollars.
“We’re rich!” Nik cried, grabbing me by the shoulders.
“We’re rich!” I agreed, nodding so fast I made myself dizzy. “Sibyl!” I cried, too excited to do fractions. “What’s forty percent of three million?”
“One point two million.”
The rush of joy I felt then was almost too strong to take. One point two million. That was enough to pay back my dad multiple times over! Even if I had to sell a few eggs at rock-bottom prices to get the money before midnight, there was no way I could fail to raise at least ten thousand, which meant I’d done it. I’d won.
“I won!” I cried, grabbing Nik and jumping up and down. “We did it! We—”
A sound cut me off. It was loud and sharp, as though something had snapped. I was worried part of the infrastructure we were standing on was breaking off when it happened again. Then again and again. Within seconds, the air was full of cracking and popping, making my stomach knot as Nik and I slowly turned together to look our prize, our literal nest of golden eggs.
Which were now hatching before our eyes.
Chapter 14
“Oh no,” I moaned, running to the edge of the cistern. “No, no, no, no, no! You can’t hatch!”
But the eggs didn’t listen. They just kept going, the precious golden shells shattering before my eyes as little beaks pecked their way free.
“How bad is this?” Nik demanded, crouching down on the edge beside me.
“Bad,” I said. “Cockatrice eggs are magical components, like chimera horns or dragon scales. That’s what people buy them for, not for babies.”
Nik’s face grew grim. “Well, they’re not going back in. How much are the chicks worth?”
I had no idea. I didn’t even know if people wanted magical chicken lizards. But there was no point in crying over broken eggs. Cockatrice chicks were what we had, so cockatrice chicks were what we’d sell. But when I opened my mouth to ask Sibyl for a price check, a ragged voice spoke up behind us.
“I’ll buy them.”
Nik and I turned in unison to see Kauffman rolling himself over. “I’ll buy them,” he wheezed again. “I’ll buy them all right now. Just name your—” He cut off with a hacking cough, spitting one of his formerly perfect teeth out onto the concrete with a wince. “Name your price,” he finished feebly.
“Since when do you say ‘name your price’?” Nik asked suspiciously.
“Since I’m out of leverage and trying to buy something that’s worth more than money,” Kauffman said, his bloody mouth spreading into a wry grin. “But maybe I shouldn’t have told you that. You don’t even know what you’ve got.”
“Of course we do,” I said, glaring at him. “They’re cockatrices.”
“But do you know why that matters?” Kauffman pressed. “Why they’re worth so much?”
I glanced at Nik, who shrugged, and Kauffman’s grin grew wider.
“Cockatrices are amazing animals. They’re almost human-level intelligent, but even more vicious, and they have memories like steel traps. They’re trainable, magical, and most important of all, baitable. Once you get one into a frenzy, it’s capable of amazing feats
of strength before it goes down. But due to their incredibly stupid breeding habits, they’re highly endangered.” He nodded down at the glowing pit. “Those eggs probably just doubled the world’s cockatrice population. Do you know what that means?”
“They’re rare,” Nik answered. “And rare is expensive.”
“This goes beyond expensive,” Kauffman promised, his voice taking on that salesman’s pitch he’d used on me back at my apartment. “You can’t buy them for love or money, because there simply are none to buy. Even with his wealth and connections, my employer has only been able to secure two in the past year. Two! But that’s about to change.” He pushed himself up so that he was sitting against the ladder, looking us in the eye. “I’m willing to buy every one of them off you, right now.” His eyes flicked to me. “I know you need money tonight. If you take my offer, I’ll wire it straight to your account. No questions asked, no strings attached.”
My mouth went dry. That was a very good deal. Too good.
“Hold up,” I said, putting a hand on Nik’s arm before he could accept. “Why are you doing this?”
“Because you’ve got what I want,” Kauffman said, glancing down at the ropes Nik had tied around him so tightly, his hands were starting to turn purple. “And I’m not exactly in a position to bargain.”
“I get that part,” I said, frustrated. “But why do you want them? You don’t seem like an environmentalist buying them to save the species. What are you going to do with a hundred cockatrices?”
Kauffman looked at me like I was a silly, naive little girl. “Fight them, of course.”
I didn’t need the icy wind that rose back up around me then to feel the chill in my gut. “Fight them?” I repeated. “You mean like dog fighting?”
“They’re so much better than dogs,” Kauffman said eagerly. “They’re smarter, and they’re armored. Once they go through their first molt, their feathers are like iron. They’re highly social, brave, fierce. They love, they remember, they sacrifice. You couldn’t ask for a better animal for the arena! The whole world went mad for them last spring when a pair took down a combat robot at an exhibition match in China. Naturally, we tried to get a stable going, but there were no cockatrices to buy. Everyone was trying, but it didn’t matter how much money you put on the table; there are simply none to be had.”
My scowl deepened. “So you hired Dr. Lyle to make them.”
“We hired Dr. Lyle to create a resource,” Kauffman said smugly, giving me a superior look. “This is about so much more than a handful of cockatrices. This is about creating a monopoly. The whole world wants cockatrices, but other than a few highly protected reserves, there are no cockatrices. It’s the perfect storm of insane demand and no supply. Whoever can solve that problem will have the entire industry at their feet. That’s power, Miss Yong-ae, and my employer is far more interested in power than in money.” He turned to Nik. “I’ll give you five million for the eggs, the ritual site, and the notes.”
Nik set his jaw stubbornly. “Ten million.”
“No!” I cried at the same time. The grave-cold wind was pushing at me now, but I batted it away impatiently. I didn’t need supernatural help to know this was wrong. Down below, one of the chicks had made it out of its egg and was hopping around on the net. Like all newly hatched creatures, it was slimy and alien looking. It wasn’t cute at all with its sharp, pointy beak and a lizard’s tail, but its golden-rimmed eyes were clear when they met mine, gleaming with innocent curiosity as it started hopping toward me.
“No,” I said again, looking at Nik. “We can’t sell these animals to him.”
“Of course you can,” Kauffman said.
“No, we can’t,” I snapped, putting my hand down for the little chick, which turned out to be not so little after all. It had looked small down in the pit, but when it hopped up to me, the creature that landed in my arms was the size of a large cat. A cat with scaly chicken feet, a beak as sharp as a razor, and pin feathers that pricked like actual pins when it butted its wobbling, oversized head under my hand for a scratch.
“Now I see why Dr. Lyle ran,” I said, turning my glare back on Kauffman. “He was trying to save them, wasn’t he?”
“Theodore Lyle was a disgraced professor who developed an expensive obsession with creating alchemical life,” Kauffman said coldly. “He didn’t even ask why we wanted the eggs. All he cared about was funding for his experiments. It was only later, when he realized his theories actually worked, that he started asking questions, calling them his babies and other nonsense. I tried to make him see reason, showed him the projected profits and such, but once he realized we were going to be selling the cockatrices to arenas, he would hear none of it. He stole the eggs from the site I’d helped him prepare and hid them out here with a spell on the door to make sure they wouldn’t hatch until he came to get them.”
I was happy he had. I understood now what Dr. Lyle had meant when he’d said that without my help, he’d have committed great evil. He’d known what kind of man Kauffman was, but he’d still agreed to work for him because he’d needed the funding. He hadn’t truly realized what he was attempting, what it meant to create life. By the time he did understand what Kauffman intended to do with his work, it was too late. The eggs were already made. All he could do was run away and try to protect the creatures he’d created from the man he’d so foolishly sold them to. But then he’d died. He’d died alone, with no one even knowing where his babies were.
No wonder he’d been desperate enough to accept the dubious help of a pair of money-hungry Cleaners, but at least I understood now why he’d been so adamant about not selling to Kauffman. This wasn’t like selling unfertilized eggs to mages. It wasn’t even like selling normal animals to be pets or even to the slaughterhouse. At least there, death was quick. If we gave the chicks to Kauffman, we’d be condemning them to slavery in an arena. It wasn’t a question of if they would suffer. Their suffering was the point. It was the entertainment. They would be playthings, toys for cruel masters who put their backs against the wall for sport, and while there was a world of difference between our situations, I had some mighty strong opinions about that.
“We’re not selling them to you.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Kauffman said. “Of course you are. I’m your only buyer.”
“We can get another,” I said.
“No, you can’t.” He leaned forward. “I don’t think you appreciate just how rare these animals are. They’re so endangered and so magical that they’ve been given special protection under the Peacemaker’s Edict. If you try to sell one out in the open, you’ll bring the wrath of the Dragon of Detroit and all his allies down on your head. With that kind of heat, legality doesn’t matter. No auction house in the world will touch those chicks. My employer is the only one audacious enough to defy the dragons in the name of profit and power. He is your only option, which is why I’m only going to give you six million.”
“Eight,” Nik said.
“Seven,” Kauffman snapped back.
“No!” I yelled, glaring at Nik. “We can’t do this.”
Nik’s jaw tightened. “They’re just animals,” he said stubbornly. “And seven million dollars is a lot of money.”
“I’m not saying it isn’t,” I replied, putting my back to Kauffman so I wouldn’t have to look at his hateful face. “You know how bad I need this cash, but this is wrong, Nik.”
“So’s everything else we do,” Nik said. “You didn’t complain when I shot those men. Or when we stole a hand from the morgue.”
“I actually complained a lot about that last one,” I reminded him. “But this is different. Everyone does bad things. Some of us do a lot of them, but there has to be a line.” I held up the baby cockatrice, which was currently chewing a hole through my supposedly indestructible gloves. “You heard what he said. These things are near-human-level intelligent. They love, they fear, they grieve.” I pointed into the glowing pit behind him. “There are a hundred innocent babies
down there. It doesn’t matter if they were made by magic or hatched by a toad. They don’t deserve to be slaves who suffer for ticket sales. Yeah, seven million is a lot, but it’s nothing compared to what he’s asking you to give up in return. What’s the point of money if you have to sell your soul to get it?”
“Spoken like a rich girl,” Nik snarled, staring down at me with a fury I’d never seen from him before. At least, not directed at me. “What do you know about money? You’ve never been really poor. You’re scraping by right now, but you could go back to your dad any time you want. Just walk right back into that life of private cars and jets. But while seven million might not be a big deal to you, it could change the world for me. Do you know how hard I’ve worked, the things I’ve done to get even a fraction of that? You think I like taking eviction jobs?”
I flinched at the reminder, and he bared his teeth. “That’s right,” he said. “You think I didn’t see your face every time I raised my hand? You thought I was scum. But someone was going to get paid to evict those poor bastards. Might as well be me. Judge me all you want, but I took that money, and I made my life better.”
“I’m not judging you,” I said. “Maybe I did before, but now I know that I was wrong. You’re not a bad person, Nik, and that’s why we can’t do this. Because if you take that money, you will be.”
“Why do you even care?” he roared. “I thought you were willing to do anything to get free of your dad. Why did we go through all of this if you’re just going to throw in the towel now that we’re finally at the end?”
“Because I was willing to do anything to me!” I yelled. “I’m the one who’s trapped, but just because I’m willing to gnaw my arm off to get free doesn’t mean I’m willing to gnaw off someone else’s! If the cost of my freedom is selling babies into slavery, then it’s not freedom at all. I’m just trading one prison for another. A worse one, because I can hate my dad all day long, but I’m not willing to hate myself.”
