City of Fire (City Trilogy (Mass Market)) (13 page)

At the northernmost pier, tractors hauled a seaplane onto a submerged, wheeled trailer so that they could roll it onto dry land and into one of the huge rectangular hangars. The tractors looked like little yellow chicks fussing over a plump mother hen.

Farther south, connected by a road, was the smaller Yerba Buena Island, formerly Goat Island, where commercial ship piers had been added to the Coast Guard Station. The beacon in the lighthouse and the foghorns had all been turned off in the bright, clear sunlight. It was here that the surface ships landed, their passengers traveling over to Treasure Island by means of a narrow causeway. Piers and wharves jutted from the sides of the island as thick as whiskers where dozens of sea taxis and private and public boats and ferries bobbed up and down, but they finally picked out the dragon’s yacht.

“Keep an eye out for incoming boats and planes,” Bayang warned.

There was a shout and a loud, angry squawk. She turned to see Leech lying on his back as feathers fluttered down on his chest and a large, indignant seagull flapped away.

“And seagulls,” Scirye said, trying her best not to laugh.

Koko had no such inhibitions. “He must’ve thought you were a hamburger,” he teased. “Come to think of it, there is a resemblance.”

“Ha, ha. Very funny.” The carpet shook as Leech righted himself.

Through a hole in the fabric, Bayang nervously saw the choppy bay waters slide past. “All of you, don’t move!” she warned. “I don’t know how much longer this carpet is going to hold together.”

Even as she spoke, a foot-long strip ripped off from the left edge and fluttered away across the water. The next moment, Koko gave a frightened whoop as a piece disintegrated underneath him.

Leech was laughing even as he hauled Koko onto a still intact section. “Time for a diet, pal.”

Kles petted the carpet as if it were alive and pleaded as one flying creature to another. “Hold, please, hold. Oado of the Winds, help us,” Scirye muttered hastily. Bayang did some praying to her own deities.

Despite their pleas, patches, some as large as a fist, began to break away and loose threads whizzed past in a haze. The more they lost of the carpet, the harder it became to fly. A rogue wave slapped at them so that they bounced upward, and the now sodden fabric became sluggish. The rug no longer responded quickly to Bayang’s corrections, instead rising and falling like a roller coaster car despite all her attempts to hold it steady.

“Why does it smell like wet dog all of a sudden?” Leech wondered.

“Actually, more like wet griffin,” Scirye teased.

“I beg your pardon,” Kles said stiffly. “Griffins don’t smell like dogs, wet or dry.”

Bayang fought the carpet as it tried to nose into the water. Thirty yards, twenty, ten, and then they were over the surf line where the spray rose, wetting their clothes in a fine drizzle.

Having carried out its last duty, the carpet seemed to disintegrate into a cloud of fragments and thread, and they pitched forward onto the sand of a small beach.

Koko sat up, spitting out sand. “Let’s take the bus back.”

“After we’ve had a chat with that dragon,” Leech said, slipping the unattached loops from his ankles.

“I was afraid you’d say that,” Koko groaned.

Scirye

Kles spat out a leaf of seaweed. “I’ve seen rocks make more graceful impacts,” he said to Bayang. “The clumsiest fledgling from my eyrie—!”

“Now, Kles,” Scirye said as she brushed sand from her clothes, “I couldn’t have handled the carpet as well as she did.” She added in a voice that suddenly dripped with mock sweetness, “After all, she only said she knew how to fly a magical carpet, not land one.”

Momentarily blinded by strands of seaweed that hung down from her head like a damp green wig, Bayang parted the strands and peered at the pair. “Without me, the only thing you could have done with that rug was use it for your naptime,
little girl
.” The last two words had the desired effect as both mistress and griffin bristled. “And let me point out that any landing you walk away from is a good one.”

“Says you.” Koko wrung out his handkerchief. “I got to get me a new one of these if I’m going to travel any further with you.”

“You can be as fussy as an old cat sometimes,” Leech said in exasperation. “Put up with it like the rest of us.” Then he pointed at Scirye, Kles, and Bayang. “And as for the three of you, remember that the dragon is our enemy, not one another.”

Bayang grunted her embarrassed agreement and pivoted, flinging the seaweed from her head, and Scirye turned her back on the woman.

While Kles rose into the air and shook sand from his fur and feathers, Scirye retrieved a piece of the carpet about two feet square. On it, she lay her remaining axe. “We’ll hide our weapons in here,” she said. The boys placed their axes on top of hers but the elderly woman threw her chain away.

Scirye didn’t ask her why. As annoying as Bayang could be, the Pinkerton agent had a confident air that suggested she could handle anything—from flying a carpet to improvising a weapon from whatever was near or simply fighting with her hands. And she found herself envying Bayang, for Scirye knew she lacked the skills that justified Bayang’s arrogance.

When Scirye rolled up the rug into a cylinder, she lifted it effortlessly and then took her hands away. The rolled-up carpet began to drift in the breeze until she stopped it with a palm. “I thought there’d still be some magic left in the fabric.” She put it under her arm, more to keep it from floating away than to support it. “It’s not any heavier than a pillow.”

With Kles upon Scirye’s soggy shoulder, they slogged above the surf line through the sea wrack heaped upon the narrow, sandy beach and climbed the wooden stairs to a boardwalk that linked the piers. The planks shook as a bus rumbled past.

As they walked along the boardwalk, Leech spotted a shirt that some worker had left on a bench.

“Koko?” he asked quietly.

Koko glanced around. “It’s clear.”

Keeping his eyes ahead of him, Leech smoothly swept the garment from the bench. Then, folding up the clothing, he rolled it up and held it against his stomach.

Scirye was scandalized. “Put that back,” she ordered.

“Shut up,” Leech said. “I took it for you. You can’t walk around in that get-up.”

Though Scirye herself had objected to the costume, she wasn’t about to allow this arrogant boy to tell her what to do. “I’ll wear what I like.”

He grinned in that superior manner of his. “We want to be able to sneak up on the dragon before we attack. Don’t you think he’s bound to notice someone in an ancient Kushan costume?”

Scirye bit her lip, annoyed that she had missed the obvious— and worse that it had been this boy who had pointed it out to her. That made her reluctant to give in. “But it wouldn’t be Tumarg.”

“You got guts, or you couldn’t have killed that monster,” Leech conceded, and shook the sweatshirt at her, “but it’s going to take more than guts to beat that dragon. We’ve got to be smart, too.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Are you saying I’m stupid?”

“Look, girlie,” Koko chimed in, “this isn’t like passing exams in your hoity-toity classroom. You’re in the School of Hard Knocks now. Flunk a test here and…” He drew the edge of his hand across his neck like a knife.

Leech dangled the sweatshirt at her again. “Listen to us. It’s our turf.”

Kles crooked a foreleg around Scirye’s head and pulled her head close to his beak. “We can always try to pay the owner later,” he advised her in a soft voice.

“All right.” She finally stretched out a hand.

As she took it from him, Koko shook his head. “With that prissy
attitude of yours, you wouldn’t survive more than a day on the street, girlie.”

“Lady Scirye usually doesn’t have to worry about things like this,” Kles countered. Fluttering into the air, he grabbed a sleeve in each hindpaw and helped his mistress tug it on over her head. When he had settled back there, he carefully brushed her hair back into place. “You look a frightful mess. Whatever will your mother say?”

Scirye bit her lip guiltily. “I just hope she’s all right. I should call the Consulate and find out how she’s doing.”

“I’m sure she’s getting the best of care,” Kles assured her.

“She’ll just feel awful if she can’t be at my sister’s funeral,” Scirye said. The corners of her eyes stung as she realized she was going to miss it herself. It would be horrible if there were no family to say good-bye to Nishke.

As the first tears appeared, Kles brushed them tenderly away from her cheeks. “Nishke would want you to get back the ring.”

“I know,” Scirye mumbled, and then squared her shoulders. “So that’s what I’m going to do.”

As they walked along, Leech looked at her sympathetically. “Everything was so crazy at the museum, I didn’t realize your mother had gotten hurt. Sorry to hear about that. It must be rough.”

Scirye glanced at him suspiciously, wondering if he was being sarcastic since he seemed to dislike her so much. But his concern seemed genuine. “Thanks. I know you’d feel the same way if it was your mother.”

He jammed his hands into his pockets. “Not a chance. I don’t remember her at all because I was just a baby when she left me at the orphanage.”

“Oh,” Scirye said in a small voice.

“Don’t feel sorry for me!” he shot back defensively. “Me and Koko do fine on our own.”

“You don’t need to jump on me,” Scirye said, annoyed. “What
do you expect someone to say when they hear what you just told me?”

Koko sidled in between Scirye and Leech. “Sorry about my buddy.” Koko smiled apologetically. “He’s got a stiff neck, all right. But sometimes pride’s all we got.”

Embarrassed, Leech scratched the back of his head. “Yeah. I guess I get carried away, but in the bunch we hang out with, you can’t seem weak or they’ll jump all over you.”

Scirye said nothing. She’d been wrong about Leech. He wasn’t like the other students in her various schools. It wasn’t privilege that had made him arrogant but necessity. However, it didn’t make him any less obnoxious.

After a quarter of a kilometer, they came to where the yachts were berthed, some big enough to be cruisers. They found the boat behind a locked wooden gate with a guard posted there.

Bayang strode up to him officiously. “We have an urgent message for the yacht.”

The guard squinted suspiciously. “That must be some important message if it takes four—?”

“Five,” Kles corrected him.

“It takes all four of you and a funny parrot to deliver it?” the guard said.

“Parrot?” Kles asked, outraged, but he could say no more because Scirye had clamped her hand tightly around his beak, holding it shut.

“Not now, Polly,” Scirye improvised. “You’ll get your cracker later.”

“My mother couldn’t take care of my children.” Bayang shrugged.

The guard regarded the slightly soggy boys and girl and then folded his arms across his chest. “I don’t blame her. I bet she’s escaped to Canada by now. Well, you wasted a trip. There’s nobody on board this ship. Mr. Roland and his party already caught the shuttle bus to the Honolulu airport terminal.”

Bayang