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  Its stream into the barrel was as thick as a well-muscled arm. Only once the barrel began to overflow did Mitsuo remember to move the sledge. The quicksilver hesitated for a moment before diving into the second barrel.

  Sploosh! Both their heads turned to see the golem dumping a barrel of water over a workbench. It extinguished three of them and then turned to glare at Yaki and Mitsuo. It looked at the barrels and the flowing quicksilver. It dropped the barrel it held, and with a flick, its fingers extended into dagger-sized claws. It charged.

  Mitsuo swore as he dove off the sledge, the golem’s claws whistling through where he had been standing.

  Yaki pulled her shortened sword from her belt pouch and extended it.

  Mitsuo dodged behind the pile of silver ingots. “Don’t bother with a rapier; you have bludgeon it or burn it!”

  The golem stood in front of the pallet of silver, leaning this way and that, its arms spread in a much more lethal version of tag. “I can do fire!” Yaki answered, and stopped breathing.

  Stepping around the vat, Yaki sent her blade’s tip out at the golem’s forehead. It slid off harmlessly but served as a nonverbal HEY, UGLY! well enough. The golem swiveled toward her and stopped its pursuit of Mitsuo to lope toward her.

  It batted aside her sword and Yaki ducked under its second swipe, springing through its legs. Yaki saw Mitsuo running for the workshop floor, toward one of the larger forges, so she bounded for the pallet of gold. The gas in her burbled but far too slowly for her taste. Vaulting over an emperor’s ransom of gold, Yaki seized a bar with two hands, spun, and launched it at the golem. The heavy bar impacted the golem’s torso off center and made a sharp crinkling sound. The thing staggered back from the blow a half-step and recovered, gold bar embedded in its chest. It roared as it wound up for a haymaker, looking as if would dive over the pallet at her.

  It didn’t see Mitsuo come in behind with a smith’s hammer in both hands. He swung it like an axe through the golem’s knee. It ripped through its substance as if it were tissue paper. The knee bent sideways.

  On a human, or anything that bleeds, breaking your opponent’s knee generally stops a fight. Yaki could see it in Mitsuo’s victorious grin as the golem fell, utterly failing to see the golem’s claws scything down toward him. The golem’s back hand smashed down on Mitsuo’s shoulder, and it send him spinning with more force than anything made of paper should possess.

  Yaki grabbed up another gold bar in both hands and hurled it into the golem. Then another. It tried to push itself up, and Yaki smashed one into its elbow. A fourth into its shoulder. Her chest bubbled and swelled as the fire inside her finally stoked itself back to full. Even so, the golem still managed to get its good leg beneath itself, standing up out of Yaki’s reach. The golem looked like a statue that had gotten into a fight with a bank. Yaki heaved up the sixth bar but found that she had no strength left. Her arms burned for lack of oxygen that her chest no longer felt. The golem’s head came up and it looked at her with one good glowstone eye. The other had been replaced by a huge hole Yaki could see clear through, the cream of the original paper visible inside like exposed brain matter.

  Yaki let loose a torrent of fire directly into its face. The stream wasn’t nearly as hot or as long as the one she’d used to light the benches on fire. Yet it caught. The golem made no sound as the flames crackled through its paper bones. The metal that coated it flowed out from it like a widening pool of shiny blood.

  Yaki fell against the stack of gold, panting, a smile on her face. A smile that disappeared as her eyes found Mitsuo on the other side of the burning golem, sword in hand and eyes of flint.

  In his other hand he held a clay sculpture of Ryouta’s face. “You truly are a monster, Yaki,” he said as he pointed his sword at her.

  “You killed them both, didn’t you?” He took a step to the side, starting around the burning golem.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Yaki lied as she struggled to suck in more air. Willing her tired arms to move.

  “I think you do. You can control your fire perfectly well, I see,” Mitsuo said. “Too bad clay doesn’t burn.”

  “He was going to betray us,” Yaki grunted as she pushed herself to her feet. She glanced at the sledge. They had two barrels full. Would that be enough for Yaz’noth? Or would he use that as an excuse to hang on to Ishe?

  Mitsuo continued his walk, a slight limp on the side the golem had hit him. Too bad it hadn’t been his sword arm. “They were my cousins, my family, Yaki.”

  Yaki pushed herself to her feet and pulled out her sword. “Yoshiaki went directly to Ryouta after we signed the passes. They were going to catch us red-handed, Mitsuo. I didn’t have a choice.”

  The coldness in his eyes reflected the flames. “And why should I believe that after every other lie you’ve been feeding me?”

  “I haven’t—”

  “Bullshit, Yaki!” Mitsuo snarled. “Who the hell would want ten tons of quicksilver? Yes, it’s rare; yes, it’s valuable. But ten tons? It will take even Lyndon decades to use that much. A dragon, I bet, one that happens to be somehow, some way your father.”

  “He’s not my father! He has my sister hostage.” The truth exploded out of her. “This is the ransom.”

  “Oh, and is your legendary mother not coming to her rescue?” He twirled his sword. Another step and he’d be within lunging range, but he’d have to step into the shiny puddle.

  “Mother’s dead. It's just me and my sister. Don’t make me kill you too, Mitsuo. I kinda like you.” Her voice caught a little, and she could feel tears threatening as she pointed her sword in his direction.

  “You used me and would have left me to ruin.” He stopped advancing.

  “Would you have helped if I had told you the truth?” Yaki asked.

  “Pssh, No.” Scorn etched into the word.

  “Then I’m not sorry.” Yaki thumbed the crystal trigger and the blade shot toward his leg.

  To be turned aside with his own blade. He whirled and leapt across the mirrored puddle. Yaki threw herself out the way of his thrust and barely got her sword between her and the second blow. The blades slid together and locked at the basket guards, her strength straining against his.

  “Seen that trick before!” He grinned.

  Yaki brought her knee up but he pulled back. She struck with her still-leaden arms, and he easily parried the blow. He stayed close, batting her slashes aside, denying her the opportunity to thrust at him. He had her pinned against the gold. Yaki started to vary the length of her sword, making it shorter to parry and stouter against his strikes. He kept on the offensive. “Nobody will ever fall for your pretty face ever again,” he hissed.

  No no no no, her inner voice screamed as she misjudged a feint and his sword bit her arm. Jerking back, Yaki stabbed out with her own blade, intending to slice at his neck. He slapped it away with his arm. It cost him a cut but left her entirely open.

  He did not slow. The blade came up and Yaki’s eye only had time to widen minutely as the tip of Mitsuo’s rapier plunged into it.

  Yaki felt the cold steel slide through the flesh of her eyeball. The point scratched the back of her skull, but not until Mitsuo twisted the blade did her lights finally go out.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  During the Great Wyrm’s Empire, possession of quicksilver was forbidden on pain of death. This is one of the rare cases where humans and dragons were treated equally.

  Rictus Hana, Author of The Great Wyrm, the Known History

  Thrum-thrum-thrum-thrum. Yaki’s heart beat against the dark. In that dark, two eyes the color of a long-extinct moon watched her.

  A bloated corpse rose in the dark. The long hair and white dress marked it as her. It floated toward Death Panther.

  No, child. You do not need my help anymore. A paw gently submerged the corpse back in the darkness. The tempo of her heart increased and something in her chest opened. Heat reached, wet and slick, around her lungs and squeezed. Aware
ness of her body blossomed; the sour taste of a metal flooded her mouth.

  Need. Not her own thought, but her body obeyed it. Lips pursing, sucking down the sour metal. In it lay notes of electric sweetness; with each swallow, a pressure pulsed through her limbs. Quicksilver. Diluted with mercury, but it was there.

  The beat of that strange heart grew to a thunderous drumming. Yaki watched the Death Panther watch her. Questions formed, bubbling up from the surface of the darkness, but the cat gave them no mind. Pain burst like white light spearing through blackness. Awareness crawling back up her face and as the pain found hope it switched to agony.

  Pain means you’re alive. Yaki lips twitched upward as the blackness gave way to two mirrored images of the still burning golem, as if the two golems hugged themselves in death. At one side of her vision, her arm reached out toward the golem, her fingers inches away from one of the gold bars she had felled the golem with.

  A babble of words flowed, but the white agony in her eye was louder than the meaning of the words. Yaki shifted very slightly.

  Yaki swallowed another bit of the metal that flowed in her mouth. Her heartbeat stuttered for a moment, and it felt as if a ball of thorns were growing in the space behind her ruined eye. Need gold, a thought in an unfamiliar voice flowed through her.

  “Help!” Mitsuo shouted into the dome. “Someone help me!” He stood right outside the puddle of silver she lay in.

  Yaki reached, fingers closing on the bar with such strength that the soft metal yielded like putty. With a grunt, she swung out. A crack of bone was followed by an anguished cry of pain. The metallic pings of a sword clattering on stone. Yaki rolled back and pushed herself to her feet. The world bucked and wobbled around her, strangely flat. Mitsuo lay on the floor, clutching at his ankle, his eyes wide with terror.

  “Nine hells, take me now,” he bellowed like a distressed cow.

  Shouts and a chorus of boots were approaching swiftly. She had no time. “I’ve got no time to kill you. So, have a nice life and stay out of my way.”

  He blinked at her, uncomprehending. This is for Ishe, she told herself as she turned her back on him and dragged herself back toward the sledge, still clutching the gold bar she’d broken Mitsuo’s ankle with. Her legs worked, but they seemed awkward, as if they’d been swapped out for someone else’s.

  Only two of the three barrels had been filled. Yaki slammed their tops on and then pulled off a bite-sized chunk of gold. It tasted of pure heaven. There was no time to savor it. Yaki powered up the sledge and drove it toward the gate. The two spirits glared at her back. Had Mitsuo been thinking straight, he might have been able to sic them on her.

  A crowd of men and women was running toward her, armed with hammers, pry bars, and various other tools. So few guards. What had Mitsuo done? Poison the barracks?

  Yaki waved at them all and activated the power crystals they had purloined from the lift. Eager things. The sledge rose swiftly into the air. The wind crystal that propelled it howled like a storm wind. A laugh of relief bubbled up as the mob below her became small and insignificant. The dome’s center, a large hole that had originally been a peephole for the Grand Wyrm, loomed larger in her vision. Now only the Mad Eye gazed down through it.

  As she came closer, chanting could be heard. “Nishamura Nishamura Nishamura! Shadows come, shadows fall on Nishamura most of all!”

  A Night of Howls, months early. Lady Night wasn’t simply turning a blind eye. She’d bidden the Enshadowed to directly challenge the House. The two barrels of quicksilver and the bodies left in Yaki’s wake would be part of that message.

  Green light briefly illuminated the ring of stone around the dome’s opening. Then the hole began to close with a smooth swiftness.

  No time for anything but action. Yaki urged the power crystals to give it their all and shunted their energy toward the wind crystal.

  The sledge shot forward with such sudden force that Yaki’s boots slipped from the platform and her entire body went horizontal, saved only by a death grip on the console. The wind crystal popped like a cheap fuse. Having no other place to go, the power shifted to the liftwood itself, and the sledge shot up like a ball that had been kicked. Yaki barely got her feet back on board and slid her body below the console. The sledge smacked into the ceiling a few feet short of where the hole had been, then scraped along it and popped out the hole right before it closed behind.

  Yaki stomped a flickering flame as the scent of charring wood made her nostrils flare. The sledge had handled that much better than the dumbwaiter. If they had filled that third barrel, she’d never have made it out. Now the sledge hovered a few feet above the closed dome. Looking down, she saw the dome appeared to be in a seething sea of thousands of Enshadowed. She had to allow herself to gawk; how did some many people live in the city virtually unseen?

  Somewhere in that screaming mass were Gama, Simon, and Guro. Thinking of her minder, who had sunken further and further into an alcoholic stupor, made her feel almost sad. Tonight’s bloody business was just beginning.

  The Mad Eye barely provided enough light to see the dim outlines of the buildings that surrounded them; squinting, she found the street that she and Guro had approached the Foundry from. It was closest to the docks; that was where she’d find the exit plan.

  With the wind crystal shattered, the sledge would only move up and down. Yaki lowered the sledge two inches above the dome and started pushing. The incredible strength that had allowed her to twist off a piece of gold as if it were taffy had left her. Her legs strained against the inertia until she could feel the slope of the dome beneath her feet.

  “I wish you could see this, Ishe,” Yaki said as she hopped back up onto the sledge and silenced the hum of the power crystals with a wave of her hand. The sledge dropped with a bang and began to slide along the stone, slow at first, but too soon, the wind was whipping at Yaki’s hair as the curve of the dome grew steep. Yaki hung on to the console, trying to use her body like a rudder as it skipped over the stone bricks. An involuntary high-pitched scream tore its way out of her as the sledge went faster and faster. Just as Yaki felt the sledge threaten to tip forward, she activated the power crystals. The entire sledge started to vibrate as the wood struggled against its downward momentum. It lifted free of the stone as if she’d hit an invisible ramp, careening out over the street. Yaki cut the crystals back to a fraction of their power and began a rapid descent.

  She passed far over the heads of the crowds below. She thanked Death Panther and every kami she could name that her aim for the street had been true. The mass of the black-cloaked Enshadowed thinned as Yaki dropped low enough that she heard shouts of alarm. She laid her hand across the smaller of the two power crystals they had liberated and extended her will. She descended the last few feet, scraping the skids of the sledge on the road, then the sledge popped up as if bounced.

  “WHAT THE— NINE HELLS!” A shout in front of her. Yaki looked to see glowstone torches illuminating a huge company of watchmen, bearing shields and batons.

  Watchmen out at night?! “Gangway!” Yaki cried out at them. Cries and curses were flung into the night as the watchmen dove or ducked to get out of the way. Ramping up the power crystal, the sledge sailed through the space right above their heads before slamming back into the gravel road. She skidded to a stop with a few feet to spare before the angle of her travel would have taken her off the road and into the buildings that lined it.

  Yaki slumped against the sledge, heart hammering so hard that it almost sounded human. As the adrenaline ebbed, the entire left side of her head started to throb. The smoke that billowed from her mouth with every breath spoke to a different reality. The watchmen in their blue coats were picking themselves up, and heads were turning in her direction. Closing her mouth, Yaki desperately sought out a mental mask to use. A bewildered innocent or a thrill-seeking kid? Gama and the others were on the other side of this mob, and she couldn’t be sure if they had seen her flight.

  The rhythmic s
triking of hooves told her otherwise. A pair of horses galloped up at full tilt. The already-broken company of watchmen scattered before them, and in the light of their torches, Yaki saw the riders: Gama riding confidently astride one and Raiju clinging to the saddle of the other as if for dear life.

  “Yaki!” Get that thing lifted.” Gama slowed his mount and tossed her a rope. “And tie this to the front.”

  “Where’s the Nishamura bastard?” Raiju asked through gritted teeth.

  “He didn’t make it out,” Yaki said as she hurried to tie the rope to the sledge. It had railings on either side but nothing directly on the front of it.

  “What you say?” Gama asked.

  Yaki wound up tying it around one of barrels of quicksilver. “He figured it out a bit too soon. Nearly ruined everything,” Yaki said bitterly.

  “Yaki! Speak Golden.” Gama leaned over his saddle and peered at her. When Yaki looked up at him, he recoiled in horror. “Oh, All-Father in the heavens! Yaki, your eye!”

  Yaki could only imagine what it looked like. “Doesn’t matter. I’m fine.” I’ll make sure no one ever falls for your pretty face again. Mitsuo’s words came back to her. She pushed the thought away to be worried about later. Now they had more important things to do.

  “Can you understand me?” Gama asked; even in the dim light she could see that his face had gone pale.

  Yaki nodded.

  “Halt! Halt, all three of you!” called a slightly wavering voice from the recovering watchmen.

  “No time. You remember the plan?”

  Yaki nodded as she took another rope from Raiju and tied it around the other barrel.

  “As the spirits will.” Gama kicked his horse as Yaki bade the sledge to lift from the ground. Then they were off, leaving the watchmen to shout uselessly from behind.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Draconic is a language that appears to be inherent in all dragons that reach a certain age. Low Draconic is that language adapted for human mouths.