Dragon's Run Page 23

  As the foreman faded from earshot, Mitsuo finally couldn’t hold it in anymore. “Black armbands? Who died?”

  “Don’t know any more than you,” Yaki said, her mind helpfully replayed her blade driving through Ryouta’s throat. They were past the occupied area of the Foundry now, occasional glowstones creating pools of light to guide them. Far above and behind her, the great dome opened to the sky and the Mad Eye cast the space into threatening shadows. The path was now flanked by silent worktables where finer parts were carved and machined. Every few breaths, Yaki’s nose would catch the sweet tang of gold. In the depths of the shadows she could see the criss-cross pattern of a gate.

  The storied vault of the Foundry resembled a huge cashier’s cage in a casino more than a Noguchi bank vault. Its space under the dome was marked not by a wall but by thick iron bars set about two inches apart. The glowstones within shone like stars in the sky, revealing nothing useful beyond the bars. The chill of the grave crept down her spine as she wheeled close to the gate, the gloom resolving itself into two figures on either side of it: one thick and broad, the other slender. Fine robes hung from the broad one, while the thin wore a chest plate and a skirt of mail. Ancient scions of Hana and Nishamura, although Yaki had no idea which was which.

  Mitsuo rolled out from the bottom of the cart. “We made it.” He took a deep breath and looked back at the buzzing of activity not so far away.

  Pulling on the mask of Lady Cat, Yaki pushed her worries away and stepped up into his arms. “Easy so far,” she whispered, and kissed him, standing on tiptoe. He returned it eagerly, too eagerly, his hand traveling up to the back of her neck, the other crushing her body against his. Yaki tasted a desperation in him and pushed him away, both parting lips with a gasp.

  “That was supposed to be a good-luck kiss.” Yaki’s voice shook a little.

  “Might be our last if Yoshiaki decided to screw us after all.” He forced a laugh. “Wanted to make it count.”

  “We’ll make it count after we have the quicksilver.” Yaki’s tone sounded harsher than she had intended, embittered by a vague sense of violation. She took that sensation and filed it away for later. Quicksilver first.

  He didn’t seem to notice as he pushed the counterfeit scroll of permission to enter into her hands. “Here. Approach them with me, keep your head down, and let me do the talking.” He laughed again, and it cracked his voice.

  Unrolling his own, he held the long piece of paper as if it were a ward against evil. In many ways, it was. Yaki copied his pose, and together they shuffled toward the gate, heads down but eyes up.

  Icy points crawled up and down Yaki’s back as cold fire burst into existence within the statues’ eye sockets, revealing that the statues’ heads were not cast bronze but naked skulls.

  “Who comes before us?” a voice boomed out from the statues, loud enough that Yaki felt it in her chest. The air around them seemed to crackle with cold. The thrumming of her alien heart answered with its own heat.

  “I, Mitsuo Nishamura, come before you, Grandfather, to be granted access to our family’s treasures and wealth,” he answered them in a strong declarative voice that seemed to echo so loudly that Yaki had an urge to dash back to the cart and hide beneath it. But she stood her ground with only a slight tremble.

  A different voice spoke, higher, with a tone that seem to shear through Yaki’s very bones. “And your companion? She is not of my blood.”

  “Nor mine,” the first voice said.

  “Yaki of Madria accompanies me. Her assistance has been approved by the head of our family.

  Their cold stares focused on Yaki. She raised the scroll higher, but their gaze pierced the paper, and she felt it linger on the burning surface of her heart.

  A long silence.

  “That is not possible.” A tremble of fear in the second voice.

  “We are bound by our task, brother,” the first voice nearly whispered.

  “She is kin of the Horned Serpent,” the second hissed. “That is not in her signature.”

  Kin of the Horned Serpent. The words struck her deep and jarred loose all the things she had been avoiding thinking about. “No!” Yaki nearly shouted. “I am not his kin. I will never be that.”

  Mitsuo gave her a sharp, horrified look, bringing a finger over his lips, urging quiet.

  A silence followed from the ghosts, and in it, Yaki realized that she hadn’t been supposed to hear their whispering.

  “My apologies,” Yaki said, offering her scroll once more.

  “The seals are in order,” the first boomed. “Although we question the wisdom of granting a dragon access to the riches of our Houses.”

  Mitsuo stared at her, open-mouthed. He closed it, seeming to be searching for words. He began to shape them, but the clatter of the opening gates knocked them from his lips.

  “I’m not a dragon,” Yaki said, although she didn’t sound particularly certain. “We have work to do.” She walked forward, praying that he’d follow.

  “You ate my gold chain,” he said. “I figured I had imagined it. It was crazy; I told myself it couldn’t have happened like I remembered it. Then you did it again the night I gave you the quicksilver. What are you, Yaki?”

  Yaki swallowed a retort. Lessons came back to her. “I already told you my family replaced my heart. I lied about it being entirely mechanical.” She turned, giving him a shy smile.

  His eyes boggled, the whites shining in the dim light. “They replaced your heart with a dragon’s?!”

  “Yeah. A hatchling’s.” Give him a victory, she thought. “My sister made a deal. It hurt a lot at first. That’s why I disappeared at the Bottoms’ Ball. I was in so much pain, I couldn’t see straight. Gold soothes it, though; I found that out that night. Gave me an energy burst, too.” She turned her smile impish.

  He shook his head. “You drank the quicksilver, too?”

  She felt like a kid nicking candies from a street stall. “Yeah. Can we not do this now? Please. I’ll tell it all to you, but not here. We’d be standing here till morning.”

  “All right, but I want the entire story. No more lies, Yaki.” He stepped forward, relenting as he stepped beneath the iron gates. As he did so, the light of the glowstones inside bloomed.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Humans have so much potential. Particularly when they become something entirely different.

  From Thoughts of a God, Yaz’noth

  The Foundry’s vault was an engineer’s dream come to life. The front area stood as a workshop with every tool imaginable: lathes, cutters, drill presses, and forges in multiple sizes and configurations. Off to the side sat a lift sledge, a smaller version of a street barge: a thick platform of liftwood, a power crystal, and little else. Yaki strode past the equipment as if it didn’t exist. Beyond the workshop sat piles of wealth. Bars of gold, silver, and bronze, two pallets of each stacked nearly to her chest. The scent of the gold was so thick in the air that she could taste its sweetness on her tongue.

  Beside them sat a huge glass vat where a silver liquid reflected everything around it, including the legs of the huge golem that stood along side. Paper golems were all personal creations of the Steward, and this one had the origami patterning of the current one’s handiwork. They patrolled with the city watch and were useful for apprehending the violent, but certainly weren’t very durable. Yet this creation had the mirror gleam of quicksilver. It stood motionless, eyes glowing with the soft light of glowstones.

  “Pretty, ain’t it?” Mitsuo stepped in front of Yaki. “Slice us to ribbons if we weren’t supposed to be here. But it won’t budge unless we poke it. All the normal guards who could sic it on us have mysteriously taken ill tonight.”

  “Good job. Why’s it so close to the quicksilver vat?” Yaki asked.

  “It’s out of the way. You only need a small bit for an alchemical switch. Even that torchship only needed a ton for the entire thing,” Mitsuo said, pointing toward a small stack of tiny barrels by the vat, e
ach no bigger than Yaki’s two fists stacked together.

  “We’re going to need bigger barrels than that.”

  “I’ll get them. You get that sledge wired up. Try not to overdo it like the dumbwaiter.” He handed over the power crystals from the lift with a grin before heading back toward the entrance of the vault.

  Yaki waited for a breath before pulling the vial Lady Night had given her from her bag. The blackness within it waited patiently until Yaki had removed the stopper before leaping out of the glass. It skittered like a frantic beetle deeper into the vault, passing beyond the stacks of precious metal, toward what appeared to be a cabinet against the back wall. The tiny Grief disappeared beneath it. Yaki let out her breath after a moment of nothing leaping out at her. One deal done at least, she thought before turning her attention back to the sledge.

  Yaki frowned at the liftwood contraption. To get the amount of quicksilver required, they needed three full barrels, each large enough stuff two of her in. There wouldn’t be much standing room on the sledge with three barrels. Yaki snatched up a pair of pliers from a bench and stopped dead when she saw what lay on top of it.

  Ryouta’s face starred up from an oval mold that sat in the center of the bench. It took a moment for Yaki to realize that the gray pallor wasn’t his skin in death but merely clay. A mold for a funeral mask. Yaki glanced over her shoulder to see Mitsuo’s back disappearing out the gate. Reaching out, she flipped Ryouta onto his nose and scanned the other tables to see various images of Yoshiaki and Ryouta staring back accusingly from small gold and silver pendants, all referenced by a charcoal reproduction of a portrait that featured Ryouta, Yoshiaki, and Mitsuo with dour expressions.

  Yaki’s heart stumbled for a beat as hot bile rose into the back of her throat. All the workbenches had a foot-high backing on them that had shielded precisely what the smiths there were working on as they walked in. But as soon as Mitsuo carried the barrels to the midpoint, he’d see this. She looked at the sledge and dismissed the idea of crushing the workbenches; that would just scatter the portraits.

  One idea came to her. She breathed out and didn’t breathe in. Immediately, she felt something bubbling up in with her chest. She waited a few seconds and breathed in a tiny amount of air. Something within her exploded, and she belched forth a foot-long column of flame. It did nothing except burn a few of her own hairs that had escaped her braid. It didn’t even scorch the workbench in front of her. No. Longer, harder, she thought, recalling the column of flame she had bathed Shuri in.

  She held her breath, and again her chest began to bubble as she lurched toward the sledge. Had to make this look good. Couldn’t let Mitsuo see her burning the workbenches on purpose.

  Once again, as with Shuri, the lack of oxygen didn’t slow her body or dim her mind. It did not impair her as she wired the lift crystals into the sledge’s power network. The fizzing sensation grew to rival what had happened when she drank purified water on the day she arrived. She felt herself fill up. An ache for release grew on the inside of her ribs, pressure that quickly edged into pain.

  Finally, she heard the sound of the food cart clattering as it approached. Closing her eyes, she visualized how’d she’d do this, mapping a panicked expression onto the mask of her face. The stream she’d breathed onto Shuri had lasted perhaps five seconds. This was more than that. Much more.

  Putting her hand to her chest, still gripping the pair of pliers, she began to heave her shoulder convulsively, like a girl about to throw up.

  “Yaki?”

  She whirled with wide, helpless eyes and squeaked his name with that triggering inhalation, “Mit—”

  The world in front of her exploded into flame as an involuntary scream of fire poured out of her mouth. Yaki didn’t have to fake the panic as the fire poured over the worktables and equipment, nearly reaching Mitsuo where he stood with the cart, two barrels stacked precariously on top of it and one beneath, nearly forty feet away. He threw up his hand against the heat. Yaki could do nothing to stanch the flow of flame. Her hands went to her throat and jerked away from the heat of her own skin. Mitsuo watched her with open horror, backing up first a step, and then two.

  The flame died. And it took all of Yaki’s strength with it. She toppled to her hands and knees as a howling hunger punched her in gut, the likes of which she had not experienced since she swallowed the quicksilver. Yaki remembered the nip of gold she’d instinctively eaten before confronting Shuri.

  “Yaki?” Mitsuo called from the other side of the six workbenches, each burning like a pyre.

  “Here.” Yaki managed to hoist herself back onto her knees. Her gaze locked on the pile of gold bars, the light of the fires dancing over each morsel.

  Mitsuo circled around the blazes but stayed well back from her, sword unsheathed in his hand. “What happened?”

  “Hungry,” Yaki moaned as she grabbed the edge of the sledge. Internally, she screamed as the hunger burned like an elemental lance through her very being. Just a bite, just a smallest nibble, and she could sort this all out.

  Mitsuo sank into a fighting stance as Yaki took her first stumbling step toward the gold. “Not another step, Yaki,” he warned, face a rictus grin of fear; leveling his sword at her heart.

  “Out of way.” Yaki took a few staggering steps forward. He skittered to the side, realization dawning in his eyes. Breaking into an uneven run, Yaki moved past him and flung herself at a pallet of gold.

  “Yaki, no! Not that one!”

  But the warning didn’t penetrate the haze of her hunger as she snatched up a delicious bar of golden mana and tried bite it. Her teeth failed against the soft metal, and she swiftly changed tactics, sucking on the corner like a teething infant. The sweet taste flowed down into her and the knot of hunger eased its grip on her mind.

  “Put it back, Yaki! That’s the Hana’s side!

  Yaki noticed that she had been shadowed by the golem looming over her. With an eep, she placed the gold bar, its surface visibly marred on the corner, back in its place. The golem backed off a pace but still watched her with its glowstone eyes.

  It relaxed only after Yaki retreated from the gold. She smirked at Mitsuo, who had an expression of utter disbelief on his face, eyes nearly bulging from his head.

  She gave him what she hoped was a placating smile. “Guess your ancestor might have been more right than I knew. Come on, we still need to get the quicksilver and get out of here.” A high titter escaped her.

  Mitsuo echoed the laugh, although his had the desperate edge of mania to it. “Right. Right,” he muttered, as if he couldn’t believe what he was doing. He went back to the cart and pushed it toward the sledge. Once full, it would take at least five men to roll the barrels.

  Still the benches burned like six torches, each emitting a plume of oily black smoke that drifted up into the darkness of the dome. Mitsuo pointed at the golem after getting the cart out of the doorway. “Golem, there is a fire; fetch water.”

  The golem gave Yaki an accusatory glance before loping off into the darkness.

  “There, that should keep it out of the way,” Mitsuo said as Yaki piloted the sledge up to the glass vat. The surface of the mirror liquid began to bubble and ripple as she approached, its level rising on the far side of the vat, its spirit reacting with pure fear. The vat had a tiny glass tube that arced out of the bottom and curved up to waist height, where it ended in a delicate spigot.

  Mitsuo took one of the tiny barrels from the shelf next to the vat and began to fill it. They waited as the liquid metal streamed into the receptacle. Both of them peered down into the cup; several heartbeats later, the quicksilver had just coated the bottom of the mug-sized receptacle. Their eyes held an identical thought: Too slow.

  Both of them turned to scan the vault’s workshop. Off to the side of the vault sat a contraption the likes of which Yaki had never seen before. Pipes jutted out at odd angles from what appeared to be a block of solid steel. With a surge of hope, Yaki ran to it, laying her hands on the
cold metal. A thrill went through her as fingers found that some of the pipes, the straight ones, had threads and that they were screwed in, not welded. The pipe had been coated in oil; her fingers slipped at first, but a nearby rag provided a grip, and the two-foot-long pipe came away in her hands.

  “What are you doing with that?” Mitsuo asked as Yaki ran back over and lifted the top of the vat cover. She jammed one end of the pipe into the gap.

  “Get a barrel under the pipe and stand back,” Yaki said.

  Mitsuo backpedaled from the pipe.

  Circling around to the back of the vat, Yaki urged him to move the sledge closer. Very reluctantly, Mitsuo did so, looking at both the pipe and her as if they were snakes about to strike. Internally, Yaki cursed, but there was no time to dwell or calculate now. Once a barrel was under a pipe, Yaki reached out and placed the palm of her hand against the glass. Immediately, the quicksilver hurled itself away from her, climbing up the wall closest to the pipe. Don’t think, just do, girl. Murray’s words as she first clambered among the chains in Fox Fire’s engine room.

  Taking in a deep breath, Yaki smelled the heady mix of metals in the room, the sweet gold, the savory silver, and the sour notes of steel. On top of it all stood the intoxicating scent of the quicksilver; she remembered the flash of pleasure it had sent careening through her body. Her mouth flooded as she imagined tearing open the vat before her and diving into the mass, jaw agape. Her stomach began to howl. That little taste of the gold bar hadn’t been enough; it was never enough. Yaki opened her mouth and roared her hunger at the quicksilver.

  The quicksilver leapt up and grabbed hold of the pipe. It didn’t bother flowing through the pipe, instead flowing around it, coating it in a moving mirror and gathering in a huge droplet at the end over the barrel. A silver tendril shot down into the barrel; after deeming it suitable, the rest of it poured in with a wet smack.