Next to her, Leech nodded. “Same here. I feel bad enough about Primo. It’d be too much if I lost Koko.”
Stretched out on a blanket, Koko pillowed the back of his head on his hands. “Don’t worry, buddy. I don’t intend to let any monster slice and dice either of us.”
“When we get to Honolulu, I need to find out about Mother,” Scirye said.
“It would be better if fewer people knew what we were doing.” Bayang sighed. “But I understand. Do what you have to do.”
Scirye watched as they floated over the newly built Golden Gate Bridge and away from land, gliding through wisps of cloud that looked like a torn quilt, its cotton stuffing scattered across the sky.
Would she ever see the city and her mother again?
Bayang
“Hey, it was my idea. Don’t hog the view,” Leech said.
“There’s not a lot to see now.” Scirye shrugged as she slid away.
The boy, though, settled in at the window and stared at the sky as if his eyes were devouring every bit of it. “I’m finally flying,” he murmured to no one in particular. “I dream about this all the time, and now here I am.”
“Yeah, yeah, you must’ve been a bird in another life.” Koko sounded bored, as if he had heard this fantasy before.
Or you were simply meant to fly, Bayang thought sympathetically.
This was a terrible development because it meant he was one step closer to discovering his true powers. And yet his eagerness reminded her of her own people’s hatchlings, so she felt as sorry for him as she would have for one of them if they were denied their birthright to the sky.
And he’d called her a friend. She turned the word over in her mind wonderingly, like a child with a new toy. It was something to be understood and enjoyed.
Scirye
Scirye wondered what Bayang was brooding about. The woman had looked somber enough before this, but she had been a bubbling fountain of happiness compared to her face now.
The girl felt her legs cramping, but as she changed position, her foot touched the bundle of axes. When her mind had been clouded by grief and rage, punishing the dragon had seemed like the right thing to do. However, now, aloft over the Pacific Ocean with her enemy perhaps only a few feet away, she was beginning to have her doubts. Her anger was cooling and reason was taking its place, and with its return her task was appearing to be more and more impossible.
Perhaps she should undo the bundle and lead the attack before she completely lost her nerve.
She was glad to postpone the decision when Koko held up a piece of wire that he had found. “Hey, guys and gals, why don’t we check the luggage? Roland might have hidden the ring in his suitcase rather than carry it on him. After all, he couldn’t be sure that he wouldn’t be searched. If it was in a bag, he could always claim it was planted there.”
Reluctantly, Leech looked away from the window. “Good thinking, but we just hunt for the ring. Don’t take anything else.”
Koko gave him an irritated frown. “What’s wrong with a guy taking a few souvenirs?”
“It’s called theft,” Kles said. “We’re already in enough trouble for stowing away, not to mention violating a stack of traffic laws back in San Francisco.”
“Okay, okay, look but don’t touch.” Koko cracked his fingers. “Just let me limber up the old digits then.”
Bayang took the wire, twisting it back and forth until it broke. “I’ll help you.”
“Ha!” Koko said skeptically. “Just don’t get in my way.”
They took down the empty crate and one by one climbed over into the rest of the hold. However, every bag they opened only contained clothes and toiletries. What surprised all of them was how adept Bayang was at picking locks, as well. It turned into a kind of competition with Bayang clearly in the lead, much to Koko’s annoyance.
Kles’s left hindpaw squeezed Scirye’s shoulder and then his right did the same. It was their signal that they needed to talk, so Scirye made a point of searching the hold as far away as she could from the others.
As she started to untie a rope, she whispered to her griffin. “What is it, Kles?”
He leaned his beak close to her ear. “I knew there was something familiar about her smell, but I couldn’t put a claw on it until we caught up with the thief back at that seaplane terminal. Her scent’s real close to his.”
Scirye’s eyes widened. “You mean—?”
Kles nodded. “She’s a dragon.” He clicked a claw against his beak. “I’d trust this anytime over your eyes.”
Scirye felt a thrill. She had never expected to meet a dragon in the flesh. Dragons were notorious for avoiding humans, disdaining them in the same manner that humans ignored mayflies who might live just a few days. It certainly explained some of Bayang’s arrogance.
So it was odd to have a dragon disguising herself as a human, let alone taking a job that brought her into contact with so many of them—though it was true that the dragon thief worked for Roland and also took human shape.
Scirye studied the elderly woman bent over the steamer trunk, wishing with all her heart that she could see Bayang in her true form at least once.
Bayang
Bayang was pondering problems of her own as she rifled through the luggage.
In the short time that she had spent with Leech, she’d come to like him, but even so, that would not have kept her from carrying out her mission if she thought he was a threat to her people. She would regret it later, but their safety came first.
However, Leech was not the heartless monster of the legends. Given his rough life so far, it was amazing that he had grown into a friendly, kind hatchling. There was no point in killing him.
She couldn’t help wondering if some of her previous assignments had been just as useless. Perhaps all of them had all been. Suddenly she felt a terrible weariness. Had she wasted her entire life?
If by some miracle she survived the hunt, she would return to the dragon kingdom and try to pull off an even bigger miracle by convincing the elders that Leech was no longer a threat to dragonkind, and that he had paid the blood price in full after having suffered for his crime many times. And if, as was more likely, she paid the ultimate penalty for disobeying an order—well, so be it.
The decision seemed right to her, and for the first time in a long and troubled life, she felt at peace with herself.
Leech would not die by her paw—or by Badik’s, if she could help it. None of the hatchlings would. She would convince them to quit the hunt in Honolulu.
At least if they could find the ring in the luggage, Bayang could argue that it was more important for Scirye to return it to her people than to continue on and battle Badik. That might save the girl’s life anyway.
More determined than ever, she went on searching. When they found nothing, she still did not give up hope but suggested trying the other hold. So they restacked the luggage and tied everything down again. Then they opened the door of the port hold and peeked into the corridor. At one end light fell from an observation dome on top of the airplane where, Mugwort had said, the navigator could check the stars for night navigation.
When they were sure no one was around, they crossed the corridor and entered the starboard hold, where they had no more luck; they could only conclude that Roland or the dragon thief had kept the ring after all.
Back in their hiding spot, they held a council of war.
“There has to be a stair or ladder leading from this deck down to the passenger deck,” Leech said. “I bet it’s up front with the crew. I say we rush down it and grab Roland and his buddy.”
Taking a breath, Bayang tried once more to get them to abandon the chase. “It would be crazy to attack in midair.” She couldn’t help smiling at Scirye. “Unless you have another flying carpet up your sleeve.”
“Mind your manners before nobility,” Kles said, snapping his beak at her indignantly. The griffin was sitting on his mistress’s gauntleted hand which, in turn, rested on her lap.
>
With an amused smile, Bayang dipped her head in an apology. “No disrespect meant. I was merely suggesting that you’ve tried your best to avenge your loved ones,” she added kindly to the children. “There would be no shame attached if you left me in Honolulu. Why don’t you leave this to a professional from now on?”
“That makes sense to me.” Koko nudged his buddy. “After all, she’s a cop. Let her earn her pay.”
Leech shook his head. “If it had been you and not Primo who got hurt, what would you expect me to do?”
Koko scratched his head and then stared at his shoes. “I’d want you to get even.”
Bayang had to admire the hatchling’s courage if not his stubbornness. She turned to Scirye, hoping that she could at least spare her any more danger. “I hope you’ll have more sense than these hoodlums. Do you really want your mother to worry about you?”
Scirye stroked her griffin but, in her agitation, her hand moved in a quick, choppy rhythm. “I want to punish that dragon.”
For a moment, Bayang felt as if she were talking to her younger self. After what Badik had done to her people, revenge was all she had wanted, too. She’d shed any emotions that she regarded as weak just as steel is plunged into fire to burn away the impurities. She’d forged herself into a weapon strong enough to battle Badik only to find the dragons wielded her against other targets.
“You’re choosing a difficult road to travel,” she warned. “You’ll have to harden your heart and make many sacrifices. And in the end, you may be sorry you did that. Surely the goddess won’t hold you to an oath that you took in the heat of battle.”
“So you’re going to quit?” Leech asked Scirye, sounding sad.
“Because she’s smart,” Koko snapped, “like we ought to be.”
“And because she’s got something to lose.” Leech shrugged. “Not like us trash.”
“Don’t let him influence your judgment,” Bayang urged the girl. She was aware that perhaps she was pushing too much, and that would be a bad mistake if the hatchling was anything like her. When people insisted she do something, the dragon usually chose the opposite action. The greater the pressure, the greater the contrariness.
And yet she felt an immense need to convince the hatchling to quit the path that Bayang had taken. It only led to a lonely weariness.
“You’re too young for this,” Bayang argued.
It was the wrong thing to say. Scirye stiffened indignantly. “I’ve proved I’m tough enough.”
“Yes, of course you are,” Bayang said, trying to recover. “It’s just that I’ve seen too many lives thrown away for some outmoded code.”
Scirye was too annoyed to listen to reason now. “So what code do you live by?” she demanded. “You’re going to tackle a dragon and one of the most powerful men in the world all by yourself.”
But that is different, Bayang thought. I have no future. You do. Out loud she said, “It’s all in a day’s work for a special operative.”
“Especially when that operative is a dragon,” Kles sniffed.
Koko and Leech’s jaws dropped open, and Bayang sat back, annoyed. The little griffin looked insufferably smug.
Kles was going to say more but his mistress put her free hand over his hindpaws. His beak clacked shut obediently.
Leech stared at Bayang as if he was trying to penetrate her human disguise. “Are you really a dragon?”
“I’m not going to transform myself just to prove your suspicions. But”—Bayang rubbed at a dirt stain on her coveralls—”yes, I am.”
“If you were assigned to protect the treasure, then why didn’t you change into your true shape back at the museum?” Scirye asked shrewdly. “It would have been dragon against dragon, and you wouldn’t have had to bother with the carpet for flying.”
Bayang did not want the hatchlings to learn about her original mission, but Scirye was too blasted sharp. Bayang began improvising frantically, knowing that half-truths deceived better than outright lies. “Because the dragon’s no ordinary thief. He’s called Badik and he once tried to exterminate my people.”
Leech nodded thoughtfully. “That’s why you scowl when you say his name.”
Bayang was surprised at Leech’s sympathy. “Do I?”
Kles had taught Scirye enough for her to comprehend Bayang’s revelation from a Kushan perspective. “So you’re in a blood feud to the death,” she said. “I don’t think you have anything to do with the Pinkertons. It was the dragons who sent you, didn’t they?”
To her dismay, Bayang saw how the lies kept piling up. The more she told, the more likely they were to trip her up eventually. “Yes. My people have been hunting for him all these many years. I stayed in disguise because I needed to see who his accomplices were before I revealed myself. I had no idea it would be Roland.”
Scirye straightened. “Then it wouldn’t be Tumarg for me to leave when you’re about to fight such a dangerous enemy. Kles and I are going with you.”
Bayang cursed herself for trying to be too clever as she made one last desperate attempt to spare the girl. “Yes. I think the best aid you can give me is contacting the Kushan embassy in Honolulu once we land.”
“I’ll do both,” Scirye insisted. “I think you’re going to need all the help you can get.”
Bayang felt as helpless to change things as one of the dragons in the ancient dramas, impaled like a worm upon Fate’s hook. “All right then.” She sighed. “I suggest that it would be safer to hold off the attack until we’ve landed. We’ll still be able to surprise them.”
And at least on that much, they were willing to listen to her. So she settled back against the crates to rest. She’d tried to protect the hatchlings, but there was no helping young humans.
Scirye
It was impossible to escape Bayang in the narrow hold, but Scirye scooted as far away as she could into a corner where she could hug Kles. She was still a little shaken by her own decision to go on, but she had resented how Bayang was still treating her like a “little girl.” It didn’t matter that Bayang’s doubts were close to hers. Scirye was determined to prove to the dragon that she was no pampered rich girl.
As she stole a glance at Bayang, she noticed that Leech had gone back to the window.
Leaning on one elbow, Scirye thought she had never seen him look happier. His forehead was smooth and unworried and his smile was broad and open. “You really like flying, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” he said, fiddling with his iron rings before he asked shyly, “Is … is flying always like this?”
“This is my first flight, too,” Scirye explained. “Mother and I used trains to travel to her postings in Turkey and Paris, and we took an ocean liner here.”
“Ooh,” Koko said, rubbing his hands together. “All the food you can eat and people waiting on you hand and paw.” He was still nursing a chip on his shoulder. “It must be nice to have someone else taking care of everything.”
Scirye shrugged. “It must be nice to be free.”
“Sure, it’s great never knowing how we’re going to get our next meal,” he said sarcastically. “We’re free to go hungry.”
Scirye decided that it had been a mistake to try to sympathize. “I wouldn’t like that part,” she admitted. “But at least you don’t have everyone telling you what to do.”
Kles fluttered his feathers, annoyed. “I consider it constructive criticism, Lady.”
“Everyone expecting you to live up to your name,” Bayang agreed sympathetically.
“Is it that way among dragons, too?” Scirye asked.
Bayang, though, seemed uncomfortable about revealing that much. “I’ve already said more than I should about my people.”
Wrapping a blanket around himself, Koko looked as if he were in a cocoon. “So you got a castle to go with that title?” he asked Scirye.
Kles looked down his beak contemptuously at the boy. “The Lady’s clan”—he emphasized the second word—”has estates, yes. And they have a castle on
each.”
Leech smirked. “I knew it. Born with a silver spoon.”
His superior attitude annoyed Scirye, but it wouldn’t have been Tumarg to lie. “They don’t belong to me.”
“You are in line of succession to the title,” Kles reminded her.
“Far down the line, very far.” Scirye made a face. “But even if I was next, I don’t know that I’d want any of it.”
Leech sat back in surprise. “You’d give up a cushy setup like that?”
“Lady Scirye, you shouldn’t say any more.” Kles fluttered his wings to emphasize his disapproval.
Scirye might have listened, but Koko twirled his index finger in circles by his temple to indicate she was crazy, and that made the girl lose her temper. “That shows what you know. I left home when I was small to be with my mother when she was assigned to the embassy in Istanbul. After that, we kept moving every few years each time Mother got reassigned. So the Kushan Empire is almost as strange to me as it is to you. My father works in the capital, but he always visits us. We never go back there.”
“Nonsense,” Kles insisted to the others. “The Lady knows an immense amount.”
“I only know what you’ve taught me.” Scirye hunched her shoulders. “Face it, Kles. I don’t belong to the Empire anymore than I do in the consulate. The staff call me ‘The Barbarian’ behind my back.” She added ruefully, “So do my schoolmates. I’m too Kushan to fit in with them, and too American to fit in with the Kushans. No, I’m not even American. I’m a little bit from a bunch of countries so I’m more like patchwork.”
Leech stretched. “Do any of us fit in anywhere?”
“Speak for yourself,” Koko warned in a low voice.
Leech stared at his feet as he waggled them from side to side. “That’s what I’m doing. All I remember at the orphanage was getting bullied a lot.”
Scirye couldn’t help smiling. “I guess we have something in common after all.”
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