The Dragon's Tooth (30 page)

Diana Boone came striding down the path wearing a hooded raincoat. The wind whipped it around her. She carried her own box.

“Tigs!” she yelled, and Antigone flinched. She was soaking wet for the second time in one day, her feet were blistered, her legs were chafed, her soaked leather jacket was lead-heavy. Cyrus was missing, and a psycho had her mother and brother. She didn’t want anyone calling her by the name Cyrus had given her.

Diana slowed down and stopped beside her. The wind and the trees were fighting. Somewhere close, a big branch popped free and tumbled to the ground. Trunks groaned.

“I brought you a better coat.” Diana held out a large parka shell.

“Too late,” Antigone said. “I drowned an hour ago.”

“Put it on.”

Antigone did. It didn’t matter one way or another.

“Gunner’s got nothing. And he did a pretty full sweep. He just stopped into the kitchen to grab a bite. You should, too. It would help. As for me, I went to all the entrances and down to the harbor. The hunters haven’t turned up anything, no one’s seen anything, and believe me, they’re looking.”

Antigone looked down at her box. Trees warped and flashed. And then she saw two shapes—girls, standing in the rain. A flash was all she needed to recognize herself. She looked up. A shape sliced through the air and the rain above them. Slowing, an enormous dragonfly circled around and paused, staring at Antigone from two compound eyes the size of tennis balls. Two more shapes shot by above it, wings clattering like machine guns. Her dragonfly turned and shot away through the trees. It was the first time she’d managed to see it.

Antigone’s mouth was open, but she didn’t even taste the rain.

“Rupe raised them, and he has all of them out,” Diana said. “One patrolling for every guard, and a couple extra hunting for your brother. But they won’t be able to fly much longer in this storm.”

Antigone looked back down at her box. “And I see what they see.”

Diana leaned over Antigone’s shoulder. “It takes a lot of getting used to, especially when you’re trying to fly behind them. They have three-sixty vision and they’re crazy fast. The translator does what it can, but you’re still left guessing a lot.”

Diana grabbed Antigone’s arm and began pulling her up the path. “It’s time to find Rupe. He might have learned something.”

Stepping out of the trees, they met the full force of the wind. The main building of Ashtown loomed on top of the hill, guarded by an unshaken stone regiment of rooftop statues, lit windows eyeing the storm.

Antigone’s rain hood snapped up in the wind. It actually did help. She looked at the overly confident, overly nice, overly competent girl beside her.

“What am I going to do?” she asked. “My mom, my brothers …”

Diana threw her arm around Antigone’s shoulders as they marched up the hill. “You’re going to hang in there,” she said. “That’s what you’re going to do. You’re a Smith. I’m a Boone. We don’t roll over.”

A bundled and hooded shape was moving down the hill, carrying a pack on its back. Beneath the swirling raincoat, two rod-thin legs were visible.

Antigone stepped down the hill to follow him.

“Hold on,” Diana said. “We’ll tell Rupe where he is. He’s heading to the harbor.” She looked down at the screen in her hand, and then over at Antigone’s. “Check your water ball again.”

Antigone dug into her pocket. The Quick Water glowed in her hand, but the wind and the rain made it impossible to see anything clearly.

“It’s lighter than it was,” Antigone said. She tucked her hand under the bottom of her coat and ducked her face down inside the neck.

A moment later, she popped her head back out. “It’s Cyrus. He’s tied up. And those might be Dennis’s feet!”

She held out the neck of her oversize coat. “Quick! Where are they?”

Diana Boone only needed a second.

“That’s Sterling’s subpantry,” she said, popping her head back out and squinting down the hill at Sterling. “It’s under the kitchen floor.”

Sterling was slipping on the wet grass, sliding down to the airstrip.

“The guards will stop him,” Diana said. “Come on.”

With the wind pounding their backs, Antigone and Diana turned up the hill and began to climb.

Benjamin Sterling braced himself and slid, staggered, braced himself, and slid again. The storm was more than just another thunder banger, blowing in off the lake. This was one to remember, and he would remember it.

The boats were bobbing and rocking in the harbor. Spray was washing over the jetty. The two little guard shacks were glowing, but he couldn’t see any motion inside. He hadn’t expected to.

His bag was heavy, but he hadn’t taken as much as he was owed. Just a few trifles from the collections—things stolen by the Order and then tucked away and forgotten. Some spices. His books of recipes.

How much were two legs worth?

The O of B wouldn’t miss any of it. They wouldn’t be missing anything. And Phoenix wouldn’t notice, either. His eyes would be searching for a different prize.

Sterling stopped. He’d reached the first body. Jenkins. Facedown in the grass. An old guard. A good guard. Sterling stepped over him and continued on. He couldn’t walk by the guardhouse. Not without looking in.

He slipped forward. A moment later, he pulled open the door.

Four armed men had fallen into a tangle on the floor. A fifth was facedown on the small table. Guns and flickering dragonfly screens had been useless. All five had been good men. But Phoenix had no use for them, and they had no use for Phoenix.

Guilty meat, guilty bread, a guilty thermos of coffee sat innocently on the table.

Sterling moved on.

Hobbling out on a dock, he stopped at a pretty little teak skiff. It had belonged to Cecil Rhodes. Now it would belong to Benjamin Sterling.

The angry lake and the rushing wind were killers, but the legless cook could only smile at the storm. The wind was an old friend promising freedom. And the seething water was nothing like as dangerous as the North Sea in its winter fits or the Caribbean in a hurricane or the Cape of Storms when the boneyards beneath the cliffs were hungry.

He drew the anchor and unfurled the small sails, tacking starboard, out and around the jetty. Close-hauling the sails, he put his nose as tight to the wind as he could, plowing and bouncing through the heavy freshwater waves.

When his course was steady and his beard was dripping like a loaded sponge, he reached into the deep pocket of his oilskin coat, and he smiled.

A tiny ball of liquid perched on his thick fingertips, glowing—the small ball he’d pinched from Cyrus’s Quick Water. Ben Sterling would see what happened. He’d know the end of the story. The kitchen always knows.

Above him, he heard the sound of muffled engines. Green and red lights blinked in the air.

Phoenix was descending.

Nolan sighed. He hadn’t eaten all day, his sticky new underskin still stung whenever he moved, and he was hungry. Hungrier looking down on a dining hall full of armed people inhaling their dinners between nervous whispers. Only the monks seemed unaffected by the mood of the place, mounding their plates and talking loudly about judgment and divine protection.

At first, he hadn’t fully understood why Rupert had wanted him to leave the hospital and hide. Now, after a day of playing fox and beagle, he knew perfectly well.

Nolan had watched men hunt for him; he’d tucked himself in dead-end ducts while clumsy groundskeepers stumbled sneezing through the dusty tunnels, searching for Nikales the thief and cursing Sterling. Sterling? The legless cook was right at the center of whatever was unfolding.

As soon as the Smiths had arrived in Ashtown, Nolan had known that Phoenix wouldn’t be far behind. He’d had his theories about Phoenix. With the Solomon Keys in hand, creeping through the most sealed of the Sage collections, he’d confirmed them.

He’d found a naked wooden mannequin.

According to an official note pinned to the naked chest, the mannequin should have been wearing the Odyssean Cloak. The cloak, originally a talisman to protect and enhance Odysseus’s mind and vitality against the wrath of various gods, had been collected and abused by Keeper John Smith some five hundred years ago, resulting in his Burial.

Thirty years ago, a nameless Sage had added a scribble to the bottom of the card: “Presumed stolen.”

Nolan had told Rupert. The long-missing cloak might explain the mind and abilities of Phoenix, but even if it did, what made Mr. Ashes, he couldn’t even guess.

Today, he’d crept into the document wing of the Sage library looking for a stack of old handwritten notes he’d seen once before—transcripts of interviews with a troubled young Acolyte, detailing the horrible experiments his father had performed on him and their various effects on his body and mind.

He had rolled the transcripts into a tube. The tube protruded from his pocket.

And now he was wedged high in a vent, wondering what doom would fall on Ashtown, sure that whatever had been planned, no bullets could stop it.

Beneath him in the dining hall, glass crashed and silver clattered to the floor. Men and women yelled in surprise and horror as the first diners slipped out of their chairs, twitching where they fell.

Dragging Antigone, Diana Boone quickstepped up the kitchen stoop, past the trash cans, and banged through the door.

The room was in chaos.

Pots were boiling over. Smoke was pouring out of unattended ovens.

The floor was a tangle of bodies. Cooks and waiters and busboys sprawled motionless on cold stone tiles.

Gunner, tall in his long, wet coat, pale and sick, was holding a large revolver in each hand, pointing at the only two cooks still on their feet, and at four surly groundskeepers. His legs were shaking. Little Hillary Drake, the girl from Accounting, was curled up, quivering on the floor beside him.

“Who did it?” Gunner yelled. “Where’s Sterling?”

“Gone,” said a cook. “He just walked out. Don’t shoot. We had nothing—”

“Shut up!” Gunner yelled, and he staggered backward into the island of simmering pots.

He moved the guns to the groundskeepers. “Phoenix’s lads, aren’t you?” He was slurring. “All of you. Embarrassed you couldn’t hack the Order? Well, me too, but I didn’t turn to murdering for a clown.”

The men didn’t say anything. They only had to wait. The tall Texan wouldn’t last long.

Dripping, Antigone threw off her coat. “Gunner!” she said. “What’s going on?”

Drawing her own revolver, Diana ran across the room and dropped to her knees beside Hillary.

Head lolling, Gunner lowered his shaking arms. Two of the groundskeepers jumped forward, but too soon. Both of Gunner’s pistols rose and cracked. Both men tumbled.

Gunner slipped to his knees, his face twitching. “They poisoned the … everyone,” he said. “Everyone. Greeves warned us. Phoenix …” He dropped his left arm to the floor, exhausted. His right hand wavered. “You!” he yelled at the last two groundskeepers. “Did you know?”

The two men breathed slowly, looking at the bodies of their friends, taking in the room.

“Answer me!” Gunner yelled. He fired into the wall behind them.

“Yes!” one of them blurted. “But it wasn’t serious. Sterling recruited us. We never knew it would be like this. We didn’t know.”

Gunner swallowed. “Is Phoenix coming?”

The man nodded and pointed out the wall of rain-rattled windows. Below the dark clouds, blurry but visible, green and red wing lights were blinking. A seaplane was touching down in the rough water.

“He’s here,” the man said.

“On your faces,” Gunner said, and the groundskeepers dropped to their knees and fell forward. “Antigone … tie … tie … find some rope.”

The kitchen door swung open and two laughing men stepped through. “We need a gun! Little Jax is brawling in here, going crazy with some table knives—”

Gunner shot twice and both men dropped, yelping, clutching at their legs.

“Them too,” Gunner said. He closed his eyes and fell onto his face.

The unwounded groundskeepers both jumped to their feet, but Diana slid to Gunner’s body, raising her own revolver. “Down, ticks. I’m a Boone. From here, I could shoot your rat ears off. Not that I’m aiming for your ears.”

The men dropped back onto their bellies. Diana picked up one of Gunner’s pistols and tossed it to Antigone.

“Point at what you want to hit and keep them down.”

Shaking, the warm gun heavy in her hands, Antigone aimed at the men, and then at the two white-faced cooks. Diana ducked into the dining hall.

“Jax!” Her voice was still loud through the door. Gunfire was louder. She ducked back through. “Keep pointing, Tigs. Jax is fine, and he’s coming this way.”

The grate rattled off of the heat tunnel in the wall behind her, and she spun around.

Nolan stepped into the kitchen and looked up at two gun barrels pointed right at him.

The dining hall door burst open and Jax jumped through, red-faced and bleeding. “Jaculus venom!” he yelled. “My vipers! I don’t know how Sterling got it, but he did. I built an immunity a long time ago. Where is he?”

“Shoot if you like,” Nolan said. “But I was just going to ask the same thing. Where is he?” He squinted out the window. “That’s a plane. Sterling doesn’t matter. Phoenix is here.” He scrunched his face. “And if he’s here, we shouldn’t be. Where’s Greeves? I didn’t see him in the hall.” He looked around. “Where’s Cyrus?”

Antigone’s eyes widened. “Cyrus!” she yelled. “Diana, where do I go?”

Backing up, Diana picked up Gunner’s second gun and handed it to Nolan. “Get these four tied up. I still don’t trust the cooks.” Then she hurried through the room, grabbing Antigone as she went. On the far wall, behind the groundskeepers, Diana slid a bolt and jerked open a little door. Tight stairs twisted down and to the right.

Dennis had managed to worm his way across the floor until his trussed feet were on the pickle jar. But he still hadn’t spit out the pot holder.

“Did you hear it that time?” Cyrus asked. “That’s a gun. I know it is. How many rounds is that? Who do you think is shooting?”

Dennis grunted and wiggled.

“Sorry,” said Cyrus. “I know.” He looked back at the Quick Water in the onions. “Come on!” he yelled. “Tigs, I know you’re somewhere. I know you can see me. I’m surrounded by spices! Where could I be?”