Daniel reached up high to pluck lint off Moth’s shoulder. “In case I haven’t said it, thanks. Not just for this job. Or even for the last year of chasing after Sam. But for all of it. You know? From day one. I couldn’t ask for a better friend.”
“That’s it? A friend? What about brother? Am I not more like a brother? I would have said brother, if I were the one getting all goopy.”
“I killed my brother.”
“Friend is okay, then. Friend is fine. Now stop being morbid and let’s go get you your promotion.”
“Wish we could delay this.” Daniel hadn’t gotten word yet from Cassandra or Gabriel. Either they still hadn’t located the dragon, or else they had but couldn’t get word to him for some reason. Which meant that Daniel would have to snatch the axis mundi and escape the palace, and then lay low for an undetermined period of time.
More risk.
“Nothing we can do about the schedule,” Moth said, dour. He was just as worried about Cassandra as Daniel was.
Daniel checked his pockets for the last time. The counterfeit axis mundi. His old and reliable thief’s tools. Altogether, fewer than five ounces of metal and bone, upon which Sam’s life depended.
* * *
Not until he entered the main throne room did Daniel appreciate the Hierarch’s genius. Walls of glass could be cold, but here, lit by fires in braziers, the grand hall was a symphony of color. The oranges and reds were primordial fire. The greens and golds, forests of spring and autumn. The blues were all the colors of water, from tropics to arctic seas, and the ceiling seemed to change with every flicker, from pristine blue sky to the blackness between the stars. The Hierarch’s throne room had become the universe.
Atop her throne, the Hierarch presided over her world like a god. She sat perched on a pillar of skulls, with claws and vertebrae and armored plates hanging on the walls in her orbit, as if she were the sun. She was dressed in an emerald gown and a crown of black griffin teeth, elegant and simple, but undeniably rich. Across her lap lay her sword, and in her right hand, she gripped the slender golden axis mundi scepter. The bone set in its crest gleamed darkly in the flames.
“Thought she’d come in last to make an entrance,” Daniel said to Moth.
“The throne room is her world. Here, she’s eternal. You’re supposed to believe she was present long before you arrived and will be here long after you’re gone. Kitchen assistant told me that.”
Daniel tried to make eye contact with her, to show that he had nothing to hide, but she seemed to look through and beyond him.
Lord General Creighton stood at attention at the foot of the Hierarch’s throne, and despite all the medals festooning his coat, he looked more like her receptionist than her consort. To be fair, Daniel supposed anyone in proximity to her would suffer by comparison.
The competing candidates for the High Grand Osteomancer’s office took to different corners of the chamber.
Allaster, in the red and black colors of the Doring family, was there with his retinue of courtiers, happily chatting, a confident star quarterback before the big game. He gave Daniel a quick smile and pointed at him in greeting, then turned his attention back to his pals.
“He’s so cool,” Moth muttered.
Daniel didn’t fault Allaster for it. He could only envy his ability to stay relaxed at a time like this. Or his ability to fake it.
Even Professor Cormorant was dressed smart, in purple and gold academic garb. He mingled with his flock of gray-haired companions, fluttering in their voluminous sleeves. Daniel couldn’t hear them from across the room, but it seemed like they were pestering him with free advice and getting rebuffed.
Cormorant winced a smile at Daniel across the room. Daniel gave him a wave.
Cynara was the last to enter, in a long coat of brilliant scarlet that rivaled the Hierarch’s flame-and-magma glass effects. She had paired it with a simple black button-down shirt and narrow-cut pants tucked into boots. Daniel admired her outfit. She looked smashing in it, and the coat could be easily shed for freedom of movement. He suddenly felt encumbered.
Ethelinda’s governess led a procession in red plate armor, followed by twelve of Cynara’s household. None carried weapons—the only blade in sight belonged to the Hierarch—but Cynara’s private guard didn’t need weapons. Daniel smelled lethal magic on them. Coming to a precision halt behind Cynara, they separated just enough to give Daniel a view of Ethelinda. His heart sank. If Cynara challenged him, he would have to fight her. At least when he’d killed Ethelinda’s father, she wasn’t there to witness it.
The flames in the braziers lowered and the room changed, like theater house lights dimming to signal the show was starting. Only a single beam of red remained, projecting from the Hierarch. Murmuring ceased. Court observers took their places in seats around the room’s perimeter.
“This is my cue,” Moth whispered in Daniel’s ear. “I gotta go stand with the other toadies. I’ll make sure I’m right by the door. When you’re done, get over to me as quick as you can. Don’t get killed.”
This was basically a summation of all their jobs: Do a thing, get out quick, don’t die. Over the course of Daniel’s career this plan had succeeded only to a limited degree.
Once everyone else had taken their places, the Hierarch’s light expanded to bathe Daniel, Cynara, Allaster, and Cormorant in its blood-tinged glow.
“The candidates will approach,” Lord Creighton called out.
Daniel joined the others to stand before the throne. The Hierarch’s gaze felt like extra gravity.
He expected a speech. A lengthy pronouncement. Something more than a single, incontrovertible sentence: “Lord Baron Paul Sigilo shall be our High Grand Osteomancer.”
There was a silence in the chamber, no actual echo, but surely her words bounced inside the heads of the assembly, just as they bounced inside Daniel’s. He refrained from pumping his fist and emitting a hearty, “Yeah!”
Moth had coached him on what might happen next. This was one of the most crucial and dangerous moments of the job. Daniel took a breath to gather himself and stepped forward.
In the early days of the Northern realm, the High Grand Osteomancer was the victor of a battle. It was a contest of blood and magic, and the red light of the throne room was one relic of that tradition. Another relic was the Rite of Challenge. Any of the other candidates could invoke it. They could even take turns, one after the other, and make Daniel survive a contest against them all.
He could feel Cynara’s eyes on his back as he climbed the steps to the Hierarch’s throne. He was almost at the top step, mere feet away from the Hierarch’s thrumming magic, his eyes on the scepter, when a voice thundered:
“I invoke the Rite of Challenge.”
Gasps escaped from every corner of the room. Daniel suppressed a bark of profanity. He turned to face his challenger, Lord Professor Nathaniel Cormorant.
TWENTY-FIVE
There was a scream. It was the sound of the sky tearing in half, of such pain and fury that Gabriel clawed the earth with the instinct of a primitive little mammal trying to hide from a world filled with giant predators. He threw himself over Max, trying to protect him with his own body, just a flimsy strip of flesh. Max was right. They should never have come here.
The pavilion came apart in a tumble of masonry and cracking timbers, and a great, dark shape shifted behind swirling clouds of dust. The firedrake raised its head on the soaring tower of its neck, armored with blue and green iridescent plates. The arrow-shaped head was as long as a bus, fringed with javelin spikes. Its eyes were the color of molten steel, so bright they hurt to look at.
The neck swayed drunkenly, and it shuddered with the clang of massive slabs of metal. Cables embedded in its flesh snapped like thread, and chunks of the ruined building went flying. Spreading its wings, it flung away debris, broken blocks of concrete tumbling through the air and smashing craters when they landed. The broad sails of its wings stretched out, kaleidoscopic blues and greens
and purples, undulating gracefully like a liquid curtain.
Hot air wavered before the dragon’s snout.
Anyone inside the pavilion was surely dead under tons of rubble. Everyone on this island would surely die.
Pointing its head skyward, the dragon unhinged its jaw, and from the gaping, saber-lined cavern, it roared fire into the air.
Hunkering at the base of a fountain with Max and Cassandra, Gabriel dug into his bag for a rack of bell-shaped glass bulbs. Daniel had an identical set and they’d agreed that Gabriel would contact him over the hydromantic organ once his team had found the dragon.
Gabriel never intended to tell him the truth. With tuning forks, he’d inform Daniel they’d found Sam outside the Golden Chain on a garbage scow hidden in the heavy fog. Cassandra and Max would never know he was lying.
“Treasure Island.”
Two words that made Gabriel’s heart sink.
Near her lips, Cassandra held a thin, hollow bone, half the length of a pencil.
“No need to call Daniel,” she said. “I just did.”
TWENTY-SIX
The Northern realm was such an absurd place, thought Daniel. Back home in the South, you got ahead by killing whoever was in your spot. There were no rites, no gilding of tradition and ritual to obscure the bloodstains. Naked aggression was easier to figure out. What the hell was Cormorant doing, challenging him?
There was a sharp stab in Daniel’s ear, and then a voice: “Treasure Island.”
That’s all it said, but the two words were significant. The voice was Cassandra’s, spoken into a small fenghuang bone, and picked up by Daniel through an even smaller bone he’d shoved deeply and painfully in his ear canal.
The official plan had been for Gabriel to contact him, but Cassandra hadn’t liked the official plan and insisted on this backup.
Hearing her message meant a few things:
She was still alive.
And she’d found Sam.
He wanted to murder Cormorant for throwing a complication into his plan when he was so close to stealing the axis mundi bone.
Daniel spared a glance over to Moth in the back of the grand chamber. Moth maintained his glower, which helped Daniel affect his own.
He descended a single step down the Hierarch’s dais.
“Is this a jest, Professor?”
“No, Paul. Not everything is.”
Allaster looked back from Cormorant to Daniel, his mouth hanging open.
Cynara squinted at both of them as if trying to solve a puzzle.
“Her Majesty has made her choice clear,” Daniel said, loud enough for all to hear. “Do you believe your judgment superior to hers?”
That sounded sufficiently starchy. What he really wanted to say was, “Damn it, I’ve almost got my hands on the axis mundi; why do you have to reveal yourself as an asshole now?”
Cormorant bowed toward the throne. “I ask Her Majesty’s forgiveness. I hope she trusts my profound devotion to her crown, and all the tradition it protects.”
The Hierarch acknowledged his words with a regal nod, and Allaster and Cynara moved away to one side of the room.
Daniel never expected a challenge from Paul’s mentor, but he was actually relieved it came from him instead of Cynara. This would just be a brawl with no emotional complications. No need to drag around additional anguish over Ethelinda.
He thought there might be some ceremony, some ritual, at least a recitation of the rules, but mysterious smells of osteomancy already crackled in Cormorant’s bones. There was no jolliness in him, just the dark nerves of someone prepared to do ugly things. He exuded threads of oily, indigo smoke, like squid ink. It came from his mouth and nostrils and pores, accumulating into an opaque cloud around him.
Before he lost sight of Cormorant in the miasma, Daniel reached for sense memories of monoceros. The beast weighed three tons. It ran at speeds topping seventy miles an hour. He brought it to the surface, letting it flow into his muscles, and launched himself at Cormorant. His fist made contact with Cormorant’s jaw. It was like striking mud. He found himself wrist-deep in icy flesh. He lost feeling in his hand, a numbness traveling up his arm, past his elbow, all the way to his shoulder.
Cormorant shook his head like a horse. He snorted and lashed out with his own fist, smashing Daniel’s cheek. Daniel saw spots. Pain thundered in his face, sharp spikes digging into his neck and between his shoulders. Blood filled his mouth.
He staggered away, trying to get distance before the next blow came, and wrapped himself in odors of reflection and refraction and confusion, the essences of the sint holo serpent. He treaded a wide circle around Cormorant’s ink cloud. There was no movement in response. Either Daniel’s sint holo cloak succeeded in making him invisible, or Cormorant was just waiting for Daniel to commit to an offensive move.
Daniel drew griffin essence from the small bones in his hands. His fingers curled into claws, sharp enough to rip open the hides of the crocodilian monsters that griffins preyed upon. He lunged at Cormorant, and the ink cloud shifted, like a swatting arm. Daniel’s stealth magic was torn away, newspaper in the wind. He was exposed.
Cormorant turned his bulk, and the tail of some creature slammed into Daniel like a steel beam. His torso seized up, as if gripped in a giant hand, and he struggled for air.
A panicked thought took him: He might lose. He would die here in a foreign land, in pain and fear. And Moth would be alone in the enemy’s palace, without resources and Daniel’s protection. And Sam would remain lost.
“Don’t toy with him, Paul. He’s cleverer than you. Burn him.”
Daniel tried to blink his vision clear. The voice was Allaster’s. Allaster was coaching him, in full hearing of the entire court. He was declaring his allegiance to Daniel.
Daniel reached for his oldest magic. It was the first magic his father ever fed him, from the spine of a creature feared by whales. One to rival dragons. A great weight settled on his shoulders, a column of ocean a mile deep. He did not buckle under it. He was at home in the sunless sea, the eye of unseen storms.
He sent bolts of kraken lightning into the ink cloud. A cry of pain and the smell of boiling blood rewarded him.
Cormorant wanted to be High Grand Osteomancer? Over Daniel?
Daniel had held a Hierarch’s beating heart in his hands. His teeth had sunk into a Hierarch’s aorta. He knew what the heart of sorcery tasted like. He wondered about the taste of its brain.
He exhaled a hot gust and dissipated the ink cloud.
Cormorant’s skin blistered and bled. Blood trickled from his nose, from the corner of his mouth, dribbling from his chin.
“Kraken magic,” he croaked. “This is not you.”
Daniel struck again with a blinding white bolt. Then another. And another. He let Cormorant eat lightning.
Cormorant fell.
He was still breathing, still moaning, conscious. Even now, electrocuted and burnt, rich magic wafted from him as he tried to draw upon the osteomantic stores deep inside his bones. His power was old and deep. Sweet, viscous odors wormed through the air to Daniel’s nose. Cormorant’s magic crawled out of dark nests.
Cormorant pushed himself up to one knee but fell back down, and Daniel felt pity. His strongest adversaries suffered the most painful deaths. He would have to skin Cormorant. He would have to rip his bones out through his flesh. This was what you did to an enemy. To someone who had wronged you deeply, to someone who had hurt you. Daniel had done this to the Southern Hierarch, because he’d killed Daniel’s father and was trying to kill him. Daniel would have done this to Otis.
But Cormorant meant nothing to him. He was just some guy, and whatever grievances he was acting out of were not with Daniel, but with Paul. He was suffering for nothing.
Daniel turned to the throne.
“Your Majesty, he is defeated.”
“He still lives.” The Hierarch’s voice was the chilled edge of a knife, tainted with mirth.
“Only because I have
learned to be thankful to those who have served me.”
“He was your teacher. Not your servant.”
“His tutelage served me, Your Majesty. I ask your permission to spare him. Perhaps I will dine on him later.” Those were cold words, and they sounded too natural coming from his lips.
“He is yours to do with as you desire, my High Grand Osteomancer.”
Daniel bowed deeply, displaying gratitude for the Hierarch’s gift of bone and meat.
“Take him away,” he snapped to Cormorant’s attendants. “But he doesn’t leave the palace. His body is no longer his own.”
Uncertainly at first, but then picking up the pace when Daniel showed his displeasure, they came forward.
“Stop,” Cynara said. Her voice was soft, but its sound filled the entire chamber, pushing away any relief Daniel felt at not having to kill Cormorant. The fight had just been a bitter appetizer.
“Cynara, please. I don’t want to do this. Not in front of our daughter.”
How could such dishonest words be the truest thing he’d spoken since arriving to this realm?
Cynara dismissed this with an irritated wave of her hand.
“This is what I’ve been waiting for,” she said. “This aroma. This magic. You’ve revealed yourself. Was it the duress of combat, or your arrogance?”
She knew he wasn’t Paul.
Electricity sparked in Daniel’s finger bones.
“Don’t you recognize it?” she said to him. “He’s redolent with it.”
“Oh,” Daniel said. “Oh.”
She wasn’t talking about Daniel’s unfamiliar scents. She was talking about Cormorant’s.
He sniffed the fumes curling up from Cormorant’s bloody flesh. It was the same spider scent from Ethelinda’s would-be assassins.
Cormorant had tried to kill Ethelinda, and Daniel thought of someone doing that to Sam, and his anger was strong enough to numb his lips.
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