Laura Anne Gilman - Tales of the Cosa Nostradamus

by Laura Anne Gilman

  I stepped and squelched. Cold, and muddy. “Nice,” I said in disgust, and Steve, still behind the steering wheel, laughed. “A little wet dirt won’t hurt you,” he said.

  No. Mud wouldn’t hurt. Not like screwing this up might.

  “Stay here. I’ll be back.”

  oOo

  There was a path, if you could call anything that narrow a path. In drier weather the stones would have been a footing hazard, but the mud kept them in place, and all I had to worry about was not stepping off the trail and falling off the side of the cliff.

  “Zaki actually dragged himself up here?” My dad was a lazy SOB, and his love of woods was restricted to dead and polished ones, not things with bark and leaves. I made sure my footing was secure and tested the current in the air.

  “Oh yeah.” The swirls and swoops in the air ahead matched the signature I’d gotten off the blood on the chisel. The dragon that had bled lived there.

  Probably, from that letter, the same dragon who had given him the loan he needed to get out of the trouble that he was in, whatever that was.

  Which meant that, not knowing who he had been in trouble with, the dragon was probably the last to see Zaki before he disappeared. And, therefore, was the most likely suspect for causing that disappearance. Especially considering the blood.

  “The things I do for you, Zaki, you don’t know…”

  Some part of me still hoped that he was alive. That I’d track down the pieces and rush in just in time to save him. But dragon’s blood didn’t suggest anything good.

  “Were you moron enough to attack a dragon?”

  I’d know, soon enough.

  The cave was nice, as caves went. Maybe ten feet wide, and six feet high, dry and well cleared. The inside was smooth, like someone had sanded it for a long time… or hit it consistently with really hot breath.

  “You’re psyching yourself out. Stop it. Cave dragons don’t eat people.”

  Usually.

  “Think of something else. Like, who’s been pinging you with suggestions, and where are they now when you could use the helpfulness?”

  There. That was a nicely unanswerable question to annoy myself with while I walked.

  I adjusted the bag over my shoulder, turned on the flashlight, and walked into the cave.

  Ten paces in, and it made a sharp left turn. Wind baffle. Smart. The ground underneath had been smoothed the same way the walls were, and was slightly rounded, like something had dragged itself back and forth across it for a very long time.

  The bean from the flashlight reflected off the walls, catching bits of stuff in the stone.

  “Pretty.”

  “I’m so glad you approve.”

  I am not ashamed to admit that I yelp like a girl. There’s a biologic reason for that.

  Fucking dragon was behind me!

  “What did you do, hold your breath?” There hadn’t been any warning, not even the faintest whiff of heat or brimstone.

  The voice was deep, sweet, and not at all what I had expected.

  “Yep.”

  It was also almost sinfully proud of itself. I was in love.

  I turned, trying hard not to move in any way that might be considered even remotely aggressive. Or disrespectful. Or sniveling.

  Cave dragons weren’t big. But ‘not big’ when you’re talking about dragons? Trust me, that’s not like saying ‘not big’ when talking about cats.

  The body blocked out the entire cave behind us, his belly low to the ground like a cat skulking through the grass. The wings were furled close to the body. Thick legs tapered into clawed pads the size of hubcaps. But the body was totally secondary to the head, which looked barely a foot away from my face.

  It looked like the head of a snake, with wide nostrils at the pointed end rising to two wide red eyes that stared without blinking. If you could imagine an arrowhead two feet across and three feet long. And the neck…only a few feet, and not sinewy like I’d expected, but thick and muscular, like a python’s body. Wasn’t that a lovely thought, being crushed to death by a dragon’s neck. It might, I suppose, be better than being eaten. Or town apart by those claws. Or burning to death in its breath…

  “And I really need to stop thinking about those things,” I said out loud, somewhat desperately.

  “What do you want, cosa-cousin?”

  “An exchange.”

  Dragons, even cave dragons, didn’t have eyebrows. But if they did, this one would have raised them. “Please.” The head moved slightly, as though to invite me to continue. “Let us take this into my office.”

  I swear to God, I don’t know why that invitation made me feel better. But it did.

  oOo

  I walked forward, the dragon directly behind me. Once I knew what to listen for, I could hear his breathing, like the sound of the ocean, or rain. Which was weird, a creature that breathed fire sounding like water, but there it was.

  “What is your name?”

  “Bonita.” I hated my full name, butt Steve’s words came back to me, and I figured formality was better. “Bonita Berg Torres.”

  “And you came here to see me, Bonita Berg Torres. To make an exchange. For what you carry in that sack?”

  “Don’t all the best fairy tales begin that way?”

  A snort of laughter, the sulfur smell hit the back of my neck, and every single atavistic impulse I had rose and screamed at me to Get. The. Hell. Out. Of. There.

  The cave opened in front of us, and we were in his–I couldn’t call it an office. His lair. Because there, in the middle of the space, was a pile of greenbacks. Literally. Old cash, crumpled and dirty, the dark green of old-style bills. The pile was at least four feet high and about ten feet in diameter, and had a depression in the middle that looked exactly like the shape my head left in my pillow every morning.

  “So. What is it you want from me?”

  “Don’t you want to see what I have to offer?”

  “You’re a smart human. You will have done your homework.”

  God, I hoped so. “A man came to see you. A human. A cosa-cousin.”

  “Many do.” The dragon passed me, crawling into the pile and curling up, exactly like a cat. Its eyes stared at me. I had no desire whatsoever to pet it.

  “This one…” What the hell did I say now? I didn’t know what Zaki might have said, or asked, or anything. “You loaned him money. Or something of value. His name is Zaki Torres. My father. You took his marker, and told him he could have a decade to repay.”

  The dragon rose, the wings that had been furled until then spreading like the shadow of doom. I stumbled back, landing hard on my ass.

  The stone might have been smoothed, but it sure as hell wasn’t soft.

  “He stole from me!”

  “What?” That was not Zaki. Clueless and useless, yeah, but never a thief.

  “He stole from me!” the dragon insisted, its full fifteen-foot length rising in the air over me but not–thank God–doing anything more threatening than looming.

  I straightened my spine and stared up into red eyes.

  “Back. Off.” I waited, then repeated myself, really really proud that my voice sounded so uber-bitchy. “Back off, cousin. Or theft will be the least of your worries.”

  I strummed the threads of current, building it up into a crescendo, letting it fill my body. God, I hadn’t thought to recharge before I came out, because I was an idiot, but there hadn’t been much call for it at college, so it was relatively easy to pull current out of my own body without too much stress. I’d feel it the next day, though. Assuming I felt anything.

  “This man?”

  An image, of Zaki the last time I had seen him. His head back, teeth showing as he laughed, his shaggy brown hair a little too long on the back of his neck, his black eyes filled with mischief, his face totally without any remorse, contrivance, or treachery.

  “No.” The dragon backed down, settled down. “Not that human. But that was the name he gave me.” His eyes were red a
nd angry, but somehow less unnerving. “Why did this human lie to me, cosa-cousin?”

  It was a shame that the fatae, as a rule, couldn’t use current, or he could show me what the human who had used my father’s name had looked like. I couldn’t go in and take it out of his head, either. Someone else, maybe, but I didn’t have the juice or the training. Especially not a dragon’s head. He might talk, and react in a way so he could communicate, but he was a dragon. Humans who went into dragon brains didn’t come out the same, if they came out at all.

  “I don’t know,” I told him. “But I will find out.” I remembered my manners then, and held out the sack. “Here.”

  One huge paw took the bag and opened it with a surprisingly delicate claw. Bright, brand-new pennies fell out, a copper waterfall.

  “Lovely. Truly lovely.” He sounded enchanted I was, too, for a moment–they were so bright and pretty, and the sound they made wasn’t.

  He scooped his paw through them, creating the waterfall effect again. “But I did not give you the information you came here for.”

  “You gave me information that contradicted what was established. That makes it better than what I came for. But the price remains the same.”

  Did cave dragons laugh? This one did. “You are a wise kit, cousin. And brave.”

  No; just desperate, I thought.

  oOo

  Steve took one look at me and didn’t say a word all the way back to the airport. I don’t remember much of the flight home. I could feel the thoughts running like salmon upstream in my head, but nothing went anywhere.

  Except, if I was going to run with that metaphor, there was a bear waiting to chow down on my thoughts.

  “I really need to stop thinking.”

  The woman sitting next to me looked pointedly out the window, shifting her body so that there was no risk of my actually touching her.

  Hey, great: more space for me.

  The flight was too short to allow them more than drinks service. I grabbed Diet Coke and watched the ice melt. The temptation to reach out with current was almost overwhelming, like the need to hug a teddy bear or stuff your face with chocolate. Tossing current in the middle of a plane held up entirely by electronics and faith, though? Next to the word “suicidal” in the damned dictionary.

  What the hell happened, Zaki? What the hell happened?

  The cab from Logan was where it hit me. He was dead. My father was dead. I knew that, somehow, now. No way to hope; only to discover what happened. I needed to know what happened.

  Traffic was mercifully light, and I had the right amount of cash on hand. I paid the cabbie off and slogged through the lobby, barely falling in through the apartment door when J was in my face. “Steve called. He said you were a disaster. What the hell happened?”

  “I’ve got no idea,” I said, too tired to take offense at his lack of personal space. He was worried. At least he hadn’t pinged me; I might have broken, then. “But I need to look at the tools again.”

  J pulled back and was cool. He nodded, and I went into the study/my old bedroom, and pulled out the knapsack with Zaki’s tools. I took them into the living room where J was seated in his chair, a huge leather monstrosity with a hassock that had seen better decades. His English sheepdog, Rupe, was sprawled by the chair. Rupe lifted his head when I came out, let his tongue loll in his own form of greeting, then went back to contemplating his paws.

  Rupe had known me since I was eight, too. He wasn’t much impressed, although I think he liked me okay.

  There was a bottle of white wine open on the low glass table and two glasses poured. I ignored it for the moment and unrolled the tools out on the table.

  “This.” I put my hand over the chisel with the blood. “Dragon’s blood.”

  J nodded; he knew that already.

  “But Zaki never went to see the dragon.”

  “His letter…”

  “Yeah. I’m getting to that.”

  I wasn’t going to get distracted. Anyway, having been nose to nose with that snout, picking up his echoes in the blood wasn’t quite as overwhelming.

  It was still pretty damn impressive, though.

  “I’ve never seen a cave dragon in person,” J said thoughtfully.

  “I’ll introduce you sometime,” I said. “In about a decade or so. I can read this better now. He’s annoyed but not hurt. Not really.”

  “Annoyed?”

  “Not like someone stabbed him with a chisel. More like…”

  “A scratch?”

  “Stealing enough blood to drip the point of a chisel in. Enough to leave a current residue that would trigger the memory of an angry dragon on it if anyone were to look. A dragon who had been stolen from.” Pieces, coming together.

  “A Talent?”

  “Or someone who knew about Talent. And knew enough to go to a dragon, and what would be a likely reason Zaki would have gone to a dragon.”

  My head hurt.

  Motive and means.

  There was that voice again! Annoying, intrusive bastard. I didn’t even bother chasing it down, because it was right. I knew the how–whoever had done whatever they had done to Zaki set the scene to lead anyone investigating to assume that a dragon had killed him. Case closed.

  “But then how would the tools have gotten back to the locker?” The answer came to me even as I asked the question. “Who would have wondered? Seriously, who would even have gone this far, and once they saw the dragon…” Most people would give up then. Dragons were dragons.

  “Whoever did this was smart, but not clever,” J said.

  “Yeah. And even if someone did, who would they call to go to? Not like we have a police force you can call, or anything.” The Cosa tended to settle things one-on-one. You didn’t need proof but you’d damn well better be certain. And you had to be sure you were willing to bear the cost of making enemies who might be more powerful–or have friend who were more powerful–than you.

  Zaki hadn’t had anyone.

  So. Means. Someone who had access to Zaki. To his tools, which meant the job site. And someone who had access to the dragon, and knew that Zaki would have debts, and knew that Zaki had a daughter who would get the letter and be smart enough to connect the dots.

  But they hadn’t counted on my being clever.

  “Motive. Who has means, and motive?”

  J shook his head and reached for the wine glass. “To murder, and to murder someone you know, that is a strong crime. It requires strong emotion. Who would Zaki inspire that sort of strong emotion in?”

  Zaki had been a good guy. Not a great person, but a good guy. Seeing him as a man, not my father, was easy enough for me. And the answer to who he could piss off that much came pretty fast, but I wasn’t sure. Not yet.

  I needed to be sure.

  oOo

  Another long trip down to New York City on the Chinatown bus, me and twenty four of my closest friends and all their worldly belongings. But it was cheap and it was fast and it didn’t take any current-use. The ferry over wasn’t much fun: it was raining, and I stayed inside, huddled in my molded plastic seat, ignoring the masses of commuters all trying to stay dry and just make it home.

  The site was deserted; I snuck through the fence and into the house. Lucky for me none of the alarms had been turned on yet.

  The door called to me. I could feel it, practically singing in the rain-filled dusk. My flashlight skittered cross the floor, allowing me to pick my way around piles of trash and debris. No tools left out; the carpenter’s daughter approved.

  “Hello, beauty,” I said to the door. Or maybe to the woman in the door: in the darkness, in the beam of light, she was nakedly apparent now, a sweet-eyed woman who gazed out into the bare bones of the room with approval and fondness.

  “Who are you, then? That’s the key to all this. Who are you?”

  The door, not too surprisingly, didn’t answer. But I knew how to make it talk.

  Or I thought I did, anyway.

  It was all i
nstinct, but J had always told me that instinct was the way most new things were discovered–instinct and panic.

  I held my hand over the door the way I had with the tools, carefully not touching it, and touched just the lightest levels of current, like alto bells sounding in the distance.

  The woman’s hair stirred in a breeze, and her face seemed softer, rounder, then she disappeared behind the leaves again.

  Zaki really had been an artist, the bastard. I could feel him in the work. But I didn’t know, yet, what he had been feeling.

  ‘Evidence doesn’t lie.’

  Shut up, I told the voice. I’m working.

  I touched a deeper level of current, bringing it out with a firm hand and splaying it gently across the door so that it landed easily, smoothly.

  Oh how I love her, such a bad woman, such a wrong woman, and I cannot have her, but I will show her my love…

  Zaki, melancholy and impassioned, his hand steady on the chisel, his eyes on the wood, sensing even through his distraction how to chip here, cut there, to make the most of the grain. He was concentrating, thinking of his object of affection, the muse who inspired him. So focused, the way all Talent learned to be, that he never saw the man coming up behind him, the man who had already seen the work in progress, and recognized, the way a man might, the face growing out of the wood.

  The blow was sudden and sharp, and the vision faded.

  No, I told my current. More.

  It surged, searched, and found…nothing. No emotions from the killer. No residue of his actions.

  “Damn it.” My flashlight’s beam dropped off the door; I was unwilling to look at the face of the woman who had cost my father his life.

  There is always evidence.

  The voice was back. And probably right. I let the beam play on the floor, unsure what I was looking for. Scan, step, scan. I repeated the process all the way up to the door, then turned around and looked the way I had come.

  “There.”

  On the floor, about two feet away. A spot where the hardwood floor shone differently. That meant that it had been refinished more recently than the rest of the floor, or been treated somehow…. Zaki would have known. All I knew was that it was a clue.