Pacific Fire (28 page)

“But you aren't driven by need for vengeance. You do awful things, but only those you feel you must.”

It was simultaneously unsettling and pleasing to be so succinctly understood. It was something Daniel sometimes experienced with Moth and Cassandra, a release of personal gravity he felt when someone knew him well enough to articulate things about him he wasn't even fully aware of. But at the same time, it was like having his skin peeled back.

He changed the subject again. “Have you met the Northern Hierarch?”

“Met her? I'm one of her court osteomancers. Like Father was to the Southern Hierarch.”

“You better hope you're not like my father was. You know how that ended for him. What's she like? Is she nice?”

Paul smiled. “I would love to introduce you to her.”

Daniel set down his beer.

He still hoped Sam was out there with Moth and Em, getting closer to the dragon. He wanted Otis to be disappointed, and Sister Tooth, and now Paul, and the whole bloody lot of them.

“A Pacific firedrake, capable of destroying entire cities,” Daniel said. “That's quite a toy you're building. And who's the osteomancer you're sacrificing to give it life?”

Paul looked pleased. Daniel had impressed him. “How did you know I'm sacrificing an osteomancer?”

“Paul, you let me read your notes.”

“Ah, yes, I did.”

“Are you surprised I understood them?” Daniel said, lifting the sheet of calculations. It confirmed that the firedrake required the vivifying force of a living osteomancer to activate it.

“Not at all. I'm just surprised you could decipher my lousy penmanship.”

“It's the same as mine.”

Paul inclined his head, conceding.

“I'm not sacrificing anyone,” Paul said. “Not the Hierarch's golem. Nor you. Like I said, it's my dragon.”

Daniel let that sink in. He broke into laughter. “Oh, my god, you're really not … You're going to invest your
own
essence into the dragon? You are going to jump into a seething vat of magic and pump your molten, osteomantic goo into a quiltwork firedrake?” Paul just looked at him, straight-faced. Daniel banged his fists on the table. “Oh, my brother. Oh, my poor, lost brother. They didn't fix your brain damage. They just used it.”

Daniel's laughter abruptly died away. He could find no more bitter humor in any of this. “Who sold you on this idea? It was Otis, wasn't it? He's conned me so many times.”

“It wasn't Otis. Like I said, he serves me. This is my project. I've been working on it for a very long time. While you were growing up, robbing warehouses, I was studying. While you were road-tripping, I was preparing. I know what I'm doing.”

“Melting yourself into a dragon. You can't possibly know what you're doing.”

“I think, Daniel, that we view the world and our function in it differently.”

“You can say that again.” He picked up the beer bottle and tilted it back, draining the rest in a single swallow. He wiped his sleeve across his mouth and belched. “So, when do you go swimming? Can I watch?”

“I'd be honored to have you there. But of course I can't let you anywhere close to my dragon. You came here to slay it.”

Daniel folded his empty bag with angry, jerky movements, using the motions as a diversion while he slipped his hand inside. “So how are you spending your last hours as something resembling a human being?” While he spoke, he retrieved the sint holo–fogged bone jar and transferred it into his pocket.

Paul brightened. “I thought we'd have dinner with Mother. I know it's been a long time for you.”

*   *   *

Daniel remembered times when he observed himself from the outside. His earliest such memory was from a morning on a cold beach, the first time his father fed him magic, when Daniel glowed like a sun with kraken storm. Another time was when he came upon the scene of his father's magic being harvested by the Hierarch's agents. He remembered silently cataloging his father's bones and muscles as they were revealed to him with knives and saws. And he remembered watching himself cowering, insubstantial as tissue.

But not all these times were horrific. There was the day he lost his virginity to Cassandra, and he saw himself as the thin, awkward kid he was, looking ridiculous as Cassandra helped him along.

Daniel theorized that when his brain couldn't quite process what was happening to him, it tried to bail out of his body like a pilot from a crashing plane.

Now, he watched himself be led by Paul to his mother's quarters. Paul looked self-possessed and confident. Daniel looked lost.

She sat at a desk with her back turned to him, her hair the color of iron, her spine rigidly straight. Aside from the desk, there was a canvas cot with a thin pillow and blanket, and a table upon which sat a tray with a half-empty carafe of coffee and an uneaten sandwich.

She was on the telephone, her end of the conversation consisting of grunts, some sharp “no”s, and silences that sounded like condemnation.

“Mother, I brought someone,” Paul said.

She waved a hand. “Just a moment. We've had a bit of a prison breakout.”

“Sister Tooth can handle that,” Paul said. “This is more important.”

Exasperated, she snapped a final order: “Just keep them away from the hangar. I'm not changing the schedule for this.” She hung up and spun around on her chair, and Daniel saw his mother's face for the first time in twenty-two years. He felt as if he'd been grabbed by a tide, yanking him free of the mooring to which he'd been desperately clinging.

It was his mother. Daniel loved her, and he was going to murder her son.

*   *   *

She rushed to him, her face registering shock, pain, joy, or some blend of all three. Ultimately, it was unreadable. Daniel held himself stiffly as she embraced him, and if she noticed, it didn't lessen the strength of her hold. Despite his intentions, he loosened and returned her hug. He was surprised by how slight she seemed, how small. Of course, the last time he'd seen her, he was only twelve.

When she finally pulled away, she studied his face in a way that made Daniel wonder if she was going to count his fingers and toes. She'd find his pinky missing, and he thought he might enjoy telling her the whole story of Otis's betrayal.

She sniffed and wiped tears from her cheeks, very much like a person weeping with authentic emotion, and stared at Daniel with frank wonder, as if he were a newly discovered kind of creature.

“Hi, Mom.”

She stepped back and kept her hands on his arms and looked him up and down.

“Daniel…” she began, then paused to gather herself. “Daniel, my Daniel. What are you
doing
here?”

“That's not important,” Paul cut in before Daniel could respond. “This is a busy time. But I wanted to be here to see this. To see my mother reunited with her son. And to have a last dinner with you. It's perfect. The family together, finally, during an amazing time.”

He beamed. He really did seem so happy.

“I'm here to sabotage your Pacific firedrake, Mom. But Paul caught me. Please don't be too mad.”

She opened her mouth but was at a loss for words. Again, she composed herself. “This is all so much. Paul, couldn't we delay?”

Paul took his time answering. “No,” he said softly, as if it pained him. “I'm sorry. The timing's critical. We lost one of the storm generators—”

“My fault,” Daniel said with good cheer.

“—which put us back at least half an hour. Any longer, and the vitalizing mixture could go beyond the conversion point, or the dragon's tissues could necrotize. I don't want to risk it. I'm sorry.”

Daniel liked the way Paul described immensely complicated osteomantic processes without pomp. Then he realized why he liked it: it reminded him of his father. And then he stopped liking it.

“Shouldn't you be supervising this insane endeavor?” Daniel asked him.

“I am,” he said, tapping his head enigmatically. “But there's not much to do at this point. The pot's on the stove and just needs to climb to the right temperature. That's a metaphor.”

“Well, then by all means, let's eat before you have to go get stewed.”

*   *   *

Daniel sat down to dine with his mother and golem: roasted peppers and mushrooms sautéed in garlic, fingerling potatoes, greens, and a cabernet, all set out on a table with a white tablecloth and a single candle. It was a small table and the distances were too intimate.

He thought Paul might abstain from food and drink to keep his system pure for the vitalization, but he took small portions of everything, even the wine. Daniel supposed a little tannin and alcohol wouldn't adversely affect a ten-ton firedrake.

Daniel poured himself a full glass and tossed it back. “You know who I wish were here? I wish Uncle Otis were here. I think I'd eat him. I know he's not osteomantically nutritious, but it'd be such a nice way of honoring what he's meant to me.”

“Daniel's upset,” Paul helpfully explained to their mother.

“Not at all. Let's catch up. When I last saw you, Mom, you were taking off to San Francisco with my brother, and you left me with dear Otis. He trained me as a thief and hired osteomancy tutors, and then he eventually sold me to the Hierarch and nearly got me killed. So that was my life. How've things gone for you, Mom?” He speared a potato.

“Daniel,” his mother said, not with disapproval, or with hurt, but with the old edge he remembered. Daniel had never feared her. She was his protector. Right up to the moment she left. Hearing that warning tone in her voice reminded him of her steel. In Los Angeles, she was Messalina Sigilo, from Northern California, not just wife of a brilliant and well-placed osteomancer, but a mystery unto herself. No one ever quite knew what to make of her, but they sensed it was smart to fear her. To others, that tone of voice was a threat. To him, it was strangely comforting. It made him even sadder about everything.

“I guess we can catch up later, after Paul's dived into the soup. But first, I should probably expand on that comment about me being a saboteur.” He refilled his glass. “What I meant by that is I came here to kill the dragon.”

His mother neatly excised a potato with her fork and knife and chewed it thoroughly, her eyes searching Daniel's.

“We can't be angry with Daniel for wanting to destroy our project,” Paul said, being a good brother. “He had no way of knowing we're involved with this. As far as he was aware, this entire thing was conceived and managed by Otis and the Los Angeles osteomancers. If that were the case, I can't say I'd blame him. In fact, once the project's complete, you'd be doing us all a favor if you burned Otis alive.”

“I'm starting to like you, Paul.” He checked his watch. “How are we doing for time? Can I ask a few questions before you have to … you know, do stuff?”

“I have some time.”

“This one's for you, Mom. I just want to make sure I've got this straight: You're trading Paul's life in exchange for a living dragon?”

She took a small sip of wine. “I'm not trading anything. This is Paul's project. He's been working on it for his entire adult life.”

“But you're still letting him jump off a cliff in an act of lunatic self-immolation.” He turned to Paul. “That's a metaphor.”

Paul raised his glass.

“Daniel,” his mother asked patiently, “what did your dad teach you was the highest form of osteomancy?”

It'd been a long time since lessons with Sebastian Blackland. He recited the answer: “The purest expression of osteomancy isn't using magic, it's
being
magic. Not consuming the remains of an osteomantic creature, but becoming an osteomantic creature. I'd like to ask the rest of the questions. I don't feel like being quizzed.”

“Paul isn't sacrificing himself. He's
becoming
himself. He'll still be with us, on this earth. I'll be able to see him, to talk to him, to love him. But he'll be different. He'll be elevated.”

“That's a pretty twisted version of the lessons my father taught me.”

“Sweetheart, no. It's really not. It's what he wanted for you. It's what we both did.”

“You wanted me to self-immolate?”

“We wanted you to achieve the greatest osteomancy you were capable of.”

“What if I wanted to be a professional baseball player?”

“Then we would have found you the best coaches and bought you a really good mitt. Did you ever want to be a professional baseball player?”

“Naw. I got hit in the eye with a ball once and set it on fire.”

“That's an osteomancer's approach to things,” she said, as if capping a well-constructed argument.

His mother and father had been united in their desire to make Daniel strong, to give him gifts of magic, to fulfill his father's ambitions, to serve his mother's mysterious agenda. This had the ring of truth, and Daniel felt the tug of the lure. He had her here, now, talking. Finally, all his questions would be answered. He'd understand why she fled to San Francisco. Why they'd never been reunited. Why she abandoned him to Otis. He'd learn the purpose of his pain.

He drained his glass again and refilled it.

There was something he'd been taught a long time ago. If you had to do a thing, a thing you didn't have the nerve for, a thing that could result in disaster, but something you had to do, then you didn't hesitate. If you loved someone, you told them. You didn't worry about their response. If you were at war and you had a weapon that could defeat the enemy in a single attack, you didn't fret about the aftermath. You just dropped your bomb.

He'd learned this from Otis.

Daniel reached for the saltshaker and knocked over his wineglass.

“Oh, shit.” He stood and reached across the table with his napkin to stop the flood of red from reaching his mother and golem. Hidden in the napkin was his jar of poison. “Sorry, sorry, sorry.” As he clumsily mopped up and made drunken apologies, he used the napkin for cover and poured three drops of the poison into Paul's wineglass.