City of Fire (City Trilogy (Mass Market)) (27 page)

Leech knew his friend too well. “Planning a big crime spree?” he asked as he slipped the armband back on.

Koko corrected him indignantly. “More like redistributing the wealth.”

Pele shuffled up beside them and put her arms around their shoulders. “Before you do that, bad-bad boys, we stop Roland, eh? And to do that, we might need your power too,
kupua.”

Koko pulled free in alarm, “What, hey, no?”

Pele let go of Leech so she could put her nose almost against Koko’s. “You don’t want me to get mad, do you?”

“Go on, Koko,” Leech urged. “She knows what she’s doing. Besides, the cat’s out of the bag now.”

“Geez, have a heart,” Koko whined. “Do you know how uncomfortable fur is in this kind of heat? And anyway, I’m stronger as a human.”

“But my transformation magic is stronger in my true form than as a human. Isn’t it the same way for you?” Bayang asked.

Leech glanced at the goddess, whose frown had deepened. “Do like she says, Koko,” he urged, “before she gets mad.”

“I thought you were on my side,” Koko said, but he turned and
with a muttered spell and a quick sign, the pear-shaped human disappeared to be replaced by a furry creature four feet high. Koko’s clothes hung on him except around the hips, which seemed wider than his human form’s. His fuzzy jowls made his small head seem round. Most of the fur about his face and throat was white but there were black patches around his eyes and cheeks. He had a short, sharp nose tipped by a black muzzle.

Taking off his coveralls, Koko began scratching furiously. “I’d forgotten how itchy this shape was.” His chest was thinner than his waist and stumpy legs so that he resembled a hairy striped pear.

Bayang couldn’t help making spluttering noises as she tried to control her laughter.

Kles wasn’t even bothering to be polite. “What are you?” The griffin chuckled.

It was Leech’s turn to defend his friend. “He happens to be a very fine example of a
tanuki
, a Japanese raccoon dog.”

“Otherwise known as a badger.” Bayang smirked. “But raccoon or badger, a
tanuki
is a pest pure and simple.”

“What’s a Japanese badger doing in San Francisco?” Kles asked.

“What’s a griffin doing there?” Koko shot back.

“We were there because of my mother,” Scirye explained as she unrolled the carpet and tucked two axes into her belt.

Leech refused to take any of the axes from the remnant of the carpet as it hovered in the air. He seemed to be trusting to his arm rings.

Koko started to take one of the axes, but then realized there was no place to stow it in his fur so he put it back. “Well, girlie, I wound up in ‘Frisco because of five aces.”

“Ahem, it’s Lady Scirye to you,” Kles was quick to correct him.

“Yeah, well.” Koko shrugged indifferently. “I was in this poker game in this Yokohama dive with these guys that suddenly got all fussy about the rules.”

“Let me guess,” Bayang said, folding her forelegs. “They thought there should only be fifty-two cards in a deck instead of fifty-three.”

“More like fifty-five.” Koko waved a paw airily. “But who’s counting? Anyhow, the next thing I knew I woke up on a tramp freighter bound for the States.”

“Where the Americans wouldn’t have heard about your kind or know how to protect themselves,” Bayang said. “I bet you were licking your chops like a fox in a henhouse.”

Kles still wasn’t about to forgive the
tanuki
for being so familiar with his mistress. “If you ask me, Koko’s had one too many chickens.”

Self-consciously, Koko pressed his forepaws on his ample hips as if he were trying to reduce their size. “My fur does seem a little tight since I last wore it. Do you think I put on weight?”

Lies were forbidden by Tumarg, but Scirye felt sorry enough for Koko to bend the rules a bit. “If I were a
tanuki
, I’d find you, um, very fetching.”

“Hmph, you never had someone try to turn you into a coat.” Koko sniffed, but he turned to inspect himself in a broken mirror on the wall. “But you really think so, girlie?”

Somehow the girl managed to keep a straight face. “Would I lie?”

Koko started to preen. “Well, if you say so, girlie.”

“How many times do I have to tell you?” Kles snapped. “It’s Lady Scirye.”

Koko flung up a paw. “Right, right. I finally get it. From now on, it’s Lady Scirye. After all, only a classy broad could appreciate a chassis as special as mine.”

Scirye

Pele crooked a finger at them. “This way.” She shuffled toward the far end of the cellar though it was so dark that Scirye could not see the actual wall, and they kept walking through the blackness. Scirye was sure they had passed beyond the boundaries of The Salty Bird and must be under some other building, though she could no longer see anything. She stumbled on, following the distinctive sound of Pele’s sandals.

The floor itself began to slant until it was as steep as a hillside, and the air grew warmer. The dirt became gravel that rattled away in small cascades with each footstep, and then gave way to rock that rippled downward like layers of dark cake batter but crunched crisply beneath their feet. When Scirye slipped and put her hand down, she understood why. The rough surface was whiskered with fine, sharp needles that pierced her hand in a dozen places.

As a precaution against further falls, she pulled the gauntlet over her hand, wondering how long the soles of her boots would last as the floor rasped at them. Without any light, it was as if the night itself had swallowed them up, and Scirye lost all sense of up and down. And yet she felt she had to keep up with Pele or be lost in the darkness for forever.

Though she still wasn’t quite sure what to think about Bayang, her eyes searched instinctively for the dragon. Though the girl had felt physically sick when Bayang had revealed her deceit, Scirye still turned to her when she was in trouble.

Scirye desperately wanted to believe that someone so beautiful and noble looking wouldn’t lie when she said she was going to disobey her orders. Was Scirye just fooling herself? Did she have a choice anymore? Like Leech, Scirye was going to try to trust Bayang.

The girl felt a little twinge of panic when she could not find Bayang in the darkness. That didn’t last for long, though, for at the core of Scirye’s soul was the same stubbornness that had kept her ancestors journeying through hostile lands and across mountains and deserts until they found a home. And that determination was stronger than any fear.

She forced her legs to keep moving forward, taking a little comfort from Kles’s reassuring weight upon her shoulder.

She felt rather than saw the steam that began to puff from crevices. The vapor carried a faint whiff of sulfur and curled itself about her arms and legs like warm tentacles, as if trying to hold her, but she always managed to pull free.

By now, she had lost all sense of time and distance. It might have been fifteen minutes or hours, and it might have been a few hundred yards or miles.

Leech’s voice came panicked from the dark. “I… I don’t like being cooped up like this.”

“It’s okay, buddy. I’m here,” Koko said. “You’re not alone.”

“So are we.” Scirye groped around blindly until she could find a hand. “Is that you, Leech?”

“Y-yeah,” came his shaky voice. He gripped hers as tight as a vise.

“I got your other hand, buddy,” Koko assured him.

Hand in hand, the three children continued on. The air had become so hot that Scirye was sweating all over as if she were inside a furnace. Finally, though, ahead of her she heard a puffing noise like a steam locomotive.

The noise grew louder until it was a steady rumbling and the air was so sulfurous that she almost gagged. Scirye was grateful to see a red glow ahead of her, and she and the others staggered toward the light—and then almost immediately retreated as a rope of liquid fire lashed at them.

It took a moment for the girl’s eyes to adjust, but she saw a huge cavern of black stone in front of them. In the center was a huge pool of lava as bright as the sun. It churned like a pot of boiling water so that the yellows, whites, and reds swirled and changed into interesting shapes like creatures in a witch’s cauldron.

Every now and then a huge bubble of gas broke the surface, flinging strands of burning, sticky mush about the cavern. Where it hit the walls or the pool’s ledge, it formed lumps like broken pots with many sharp points. As soon as it began to cool, it changed from white to yellow to scarlet. Other lumps, thrown out earlier, had already cooled to stone. They looked like pillows bristling with black needles.

Pele shuffled out onto the uneven surface, oblivious to the flames and the heat, and knelt by the pool’s edge. When she dipped her hand into the molten rock, Scirye held her breath. How could even a goddess survive that fiery pit?

However, Pele acted as if the lava were cold clay, splashing it for a moment with a playful smile, before she gathered some up in a cupped palm. Her lips moved as she alternated between
murmuring a spell and blowing on the mud to cool it, her other hand nimbly shaped the viscous material into petals until the lump had become a lovely little jet-black flower. She did not stop until she had fashioned five of them, one smaller than the rest.

Then she gathered them into her lap and, holding up her long dress slightly to make a basket, she brought them over to the companions. “Each of you, take one of my charms. They’ll protect you from the heat and the fire and let you breathe. But whatever you do, don’t lose them. Or you’ll be in big trouble.”

When Scirye took one, she was no longer able to smell the sulfur. Or perhaps it was just that it seemed natural to take in the mineral. Nor did it feel hot.

On her shoulder, Kles was panting uncomfortably, a wing shielding his beak against the stench and heat.

Hastily, Scirye tore off a sleeve from her coveralls and used a strip from that to fashion a collar so she could hang the tiniest stone blossom about Kles’s neck.

The griffin took a deep breath and spread his wings slightly in delight. “Ah, that’s better.”

The others seemed more comfortable, as well, but the moment that Scirye had stopped touching the original flower, the stench and the heat returned so she was glad to take the last one from Pele’s outstretched palm. Quickly she made a necklace for herself.

Next to her, Leech was doing the same with one of his sleeves, using part of it to make a collar for Koko and the rest for Bayang.

“Now we’ll go to Roland’s,” Pele declared.

Leech looked around the cave. “Where? This is a dead end.”

“Volcanoes rise from an undersea ridge of mountains,” Pele explained, “so they’re all connected like the tunnels in an ant colony.”

Bayang nodded in comprehension. “You’re going to use the lava tubes like they were streets in a city.”

“Go into that?” Scirye asked. Tumarg spoke of how fire purified
the soul—but only in a figurative sense. She’d never expected to have to do it literally.

Returning to the pool’s edge, Pele slipped two fingers into her mouth and let out a piercing whistle that the cavern amplified until it seemed as loud as a siren.

Immediately, the pool began to seethe until a column started to rise. At first, Scirye thought it must be a giant bubble of gas, but the column continued to grow taller instead of bursting. When the column was about twenty feet high, Pele chopped at its base with the edge of her palm, toppling the column like a tree.

When it splashed against the surface, it sent more ropes of lava lashing at the cavern. The column did not sink but floated.

Pele calmly stepped out onto the molten surface as she shaped the column, trimming here and flattening there until it had become a long, oval board with fins. It bobbed up and down on the whirling lava pool. Putting a fist on her hip, Pele surveyed her handiwork critically and then made minor adjustments.

Finally, though, she seemed satisfied. “Hop on,” she said.

Though the board was still in contact with the pool’s lava, it had already cooled until it was almost black.

“There’s nothing to hold onto,” Koko said skeptically.