The Dragon's Tooth (10 page)

The boy turned and squinted at a clock tower on the building behind them. “Well, late enough, anyhow. They’d have to reach one of the gates and be granted clearance. That could take five minutes by itself—the guards won’t exactly be helpful—and they have to present themselves at the Galleria in three.” He looked back at Cyrus and Antigone. “At least if the other porters were telling the truth. They don’t always. At least not to me.”

“Grab his feet!” Cyrus said. “Quick!”

The kid blinked beneath his bowler hat.

Antigone nodded. “Please? Hurry! We can’t be late.”

Cyrus and Antigone turned, swiveling Horace’s toes through the gravel toward the porter. The boy bent tentatively and gripped Horace by the ankles.

“Okay?” Cyrus glanced back over his shoulder. “Great. Is the Gallery in the big building?”

“The Galleria,” the boy said. “And yes. Up the main stairs.”

With Horace bouncing between them, Cyrus and Antigone steered straight across the grass, beelining for the stairs.

“Hey! Whoa! Stop!” the boy yelled. “I can’t reach my whistle. My hat! My hat has fallen! In the grass! My hat is in the grass!”

Cyrus grinned at his sister. Breathing hard, Antigone managed to roll her eyes. Behind them, the boy jogged on tiptoe.

When they reached gravel and began climbing the stairs, the boy stopped yelping. Puffing, keeping his breath even, Cyrus concentrated on the steps. The treads were deep, but each step was short. He would have been able to skip a stair if he’d been running alone. He probably would have skipped two. But not now, trying to keep time with his sister and dragging a body.

“Come on,” Antigone gasped. “We can do this, Cy. We’re doing it. We’ll make it.”

They reached the top and rushed forward between two grooved columns. Huge wooden doors, taller than the Archer, were closed in front of them.

“Are you …,” the kid began, gasping. “Did you come … through the waterway? It’s prohibited. Waterway’s closed. Hazardous.” He began coughing. “Use the wicket.”

“What?” Balancing his part of Horace, Cyrus reached out with one hand and tugged on a dangling iron ring.

Horace’s feet dropped, and the kid porter scrambled forward, pushing Cyrus aside. He grabbed a knob, and a small door swung open inside the large one.

“The wicket gate,” the kid said, stepping out of the way.

A bell pealed loud and long, the sound ricocheting around the stone.

“Go. You have five rings. Follow the people. I have to stay here.”

Antigone ducked through the door with Horace’s arm and shoulder. Cyrus and the other shoulder followed. Inside, both of them froze. The huge corridor was crowded, and every face had turned toward them. High above the mob, the ceiling was vaulted, and each vault was frescoed with maps. An enormous reptilian skin was mounted on one wall, running around a corner and out of sight. In the center of the hallway, a large leather boat perched high on a stone pedestal.

The bell rang again.

“Um, hi,” Antigone said. “Is there a doctor here?”

The crowd parted.

“Go!” someone yelled. “Hurry!”

Cyrus and Antigone Smith, caked with blood and soot, dragged their lawyer through the path in the crowd, his toes squealing on the marble floor. Whispers and murmuring swirled as the crowd closed behind them.

The bell rang again.

“This way!” A man’s voice echoed through the hall. “Over here!”

“He lies!” a woman shouted. “Over here!”

Cyrus and Antigone stopped. The crowd pressed in, grabbing, pulling, pushing.

“Is that Horace?”

“Is he dead?”

The bell rang again.

Cyrus looked into the faces around him. Some were angry. Some were laughing. Some were worried.

“Cy! This way!” Antigone lowered her head and plowed into the crowd. A woman was leading her toward a tall open door. They were through, but still surrounded by the mob. “Don’t ring it!” Antigone shouted. Her voice bounced through the vaults, and silence fell on the crowd. “We’re here! We present ourselves! Or declare ourselves! Whatever! We’re here! And we need a doctor!”

The bell rang again, and the echoes died slowly.

“Hello?” Antigone said, her head on a swivel. “A doctor, please? Our lawyer’s been shot.”

“Initiates, step forth!” The voice was deep—rumbling irritation.

The crowd pressed back to the sides of the enormous room, and Cyrus, regripping Horace, began to move toward the front.

“No!” Antigone pulled back. “Not until we have a doctor.” She looked around the room. “He bled a lot!”

Two middle-aged, pale-faced women in white skirts edged nervously out of the crowd and then hurried forward. They took Horace and laid him gently on his back. One finger-checked his pulse.

Massaging her shoulder, Antigone nodded at her brother, and the two of them walked slowly toward the front of the huge room. Cyrus’s eyes skidded through the crowd. White-haired men in safari jackets stared at him. A group of older girls in tall riding boots sneered. Behind them, deeper in the crowd, Cyrus spotted a small flock of starched nuns’ hats. He moved on, past a cluster of fit, sweating boys in tall socks and the same short white shorts and shirts as the runners outside. They all stood with their arms crossed, each with a simple black medieval ship printed high on his cotton chest. Farther on, a young group of flushed, ponytailed girls in similar uniform whispered and giggled. Instead of a ship, each girl’s shirt had a small snake curled in a ring, swallowing its own tail. Cyrus’s hand went to his neck as women and men in pocketed shorts and trousers and jodhpurs scowled and stepped aside. A group of monks in brown robes with rope belts and sandals stepped backward, crossing themselves as Cyrus and his sister passed. Cyrus tore his eyes from theirs, from the crowd, and focused on the room.

Columns of different colors, scaled like fish, held crowded mezzanines on both sides, and light streamed down through large windows. In the front, a forest of enormous portraits collaged the wall with color. Men and women stood on ships, beside strange creatures, on mountains and beaches and walls. The paintings at the top, arranged beneath the high, black-beamed ceiling, were crude and simple. Below them, the canvases became more ornate, crowded and medieval, cluttered with red robes and dragons and sea creatures. Even farther down, the styles changed again and again, until, at the very bottom, a single abstract portrait hung—a boy’s face, intense in its wide strokes, colored only with red and black. In front of the portrait, the same boy sat behind an ebony table. His face was freckled and sharp. His hair was brown and strawberry, and his loose linen shirt was open at the neck, revealing a heavy silver chain. A red cloth dangled over his shoulders, and a book the size of a small hay bale was open beside him.

At one end of the table, a tall black man stood behind a paper-covered lectern with his arms behind his back. His head was shaved almost to the skin, his strong jaw ended in a tight, pointed beard, and his eyes were as sharp as they were dark. At the other end of the table, sitting open on a low pedestal, there was a long wooden box. Inside, with tattooed hands crossed and eyes closed, lay the pale and charred corpse of William Skelton.

“Cyrus,” Antigone whispered. “Cyrus …”

“Shhh,” Cyrus whispered back. “I see it.”

“Name yourselves,” the bearded man commanded. His voice was accented, British.

Antigone coughed and cleared her throat. “I’m Antigone Elizabeth Smith, and this is my brother, Cyrus Lawrence Smith.”

“Hi,” said Cyrus.

“Do you present yourselves as the heirs of William Cyrus Skelton?

Cyrus blinked. William Cyrus? “What?” he asked.

Antigone hit him with an elbow. “Yes, we do,” she said. “And we’re his apprentices or acolytes or whatever.”

A thin man with a pencil mustache, wearing a cream suit and a skinny blue tie, stepped out of the crowd. He smiled at Cyrus and Antigone and then turned to the bearded man. “The Order challenges. With my colleague John Horace Lawney unfortunately injured, there is no longer a Keeper to confirm the children’s identities. Without confirmation of identity, their presentation as Acolytes and claims to inheritance cannot be acknowledged.”

The bearded man turned to the boy behind the table. The boy’s eyes were down, but he nodded slightly.

“Will any Keeper stand up as witness?” The bearded man scanned the crowd.

The thin man winked at Cyrus.

“Hold on,” Cyrus said. “Can’t we wait till our lawyer wakes up?”

“You could have requested an emergency deferral.” The thin man smiled. “But you didn’t. You presented and declared yourselves.”

“Seeing no witness …,” the bearded man yelled.

“Wait a bit there, Rupert Greeves!” An old woman in a belted safari jacket forced herself forward. “Eleanor Elizabeth Eldridge will stand up. I watched them born, and I watched them grow.”

Cyrus gaped.

“Mrs. Eldridge?” Antigone asked. “What are you doing here?”

“Identity has been confirmed,” said the man called Rupert Greeves. Mrs. Eldridge nodded, and retreated to the rim of the crowd.

Stunned and confused, Cyrus watched her go. Then an old and very bald monk hustled forward, bowing to the boy as he came. “Perhaps,” he said, bobbing, “I could remind the dais that William Skelton was duly excommunicated from the Order of Brendan on charges of theft, murder, and other gross misconducts. He was an outlaw with no standing to bring Acolytes into our Order.”

The boy ignored him. Rupert Greeves cleared his throat. “Perhaps I could remind you, Gregory, that Brown Robes and Brendanites do not have the authority to expel anyone from this Order with your own declarations. Your charges were thrown out without a hearing.”

“But our evidence,” the monk said. “So much evidence.”

“Visions, spectral testimony, and dreams are inadmissible,” Rupert said. “You know this. Now step back.”

Sniffing, the monk spun and retreated, glaring at Cyrus as he did.

The thin, cream-suited man jumped even farther forward. He was almost to the table. “The Order wishes to establish Passage.”

The big, bearded man grimaced. “On what grounds, Cecil?”

The lawyer turned, smiling to the crowd. “These children stand before you, hoping to be established as Acolytes and heirs to one of the most notorious outlaws this community has ever seen. No, he was never successfully expelled, but his misdeeds have become a matter of record. If the community were to reclaim the entirety of the Skelton estate, it would be no injustice, and only the slightest step toward righting a lifetime of wrongs.”

The crowd murmured its support, and the thin man turned, locking eyes with Cyrus. “In addition,” he said, “twenty-one years ago, their father, Lawrence Smith, was himself expelled from this Order. Children to an outlaw, Acolytes to an outlaw? I have to wonder how committed these two would be to our ways and to the rule of our law. I have to wonder why we would want them at all.” Again, he winked at Cyrus, and then turned to face the bearded man. “Their Acolyteship was filed literally minutes before the death of Mr. William Skelton—suspect already, to say the least—and their family has a questionable history with our Order. In fact, these two would become the only living members of the Order to have a known ancestor contained in the Burials. At a minimum, Passage as established in the case of Earhart, 1932, would seem an extremely reasonable request for the community to make before acknowledging such a substantial inheritance.”

Rupert Greeves scratched his pointed beard and turned his dark eyes to Cyrus and Antigone. “Any response?” he asked.

Cyrus looked at his sister. Her brows were down over eyes that looked as confused as he felt. Turning back to the big man, he shrugged. His shoulders ached, and his head was spinning. “Honestly, I don’t have a clue what’s going on. But that guy is snaky.”

“Our lawyer …” Antigone looked back over her shoulder. Horace was gone.

“If I may,” the thin man continued. “The Order would like to suggest the achievement of Explorer for inheritance, and the …”

The boy behind the table shook his head. Whispers raced through the crowd as they strained to see.

“The Order would like to suggest the achievement of Journeyman, and the successful …”

The boy shook his head.

“The community would like to suggest the achievement of Journeyman?” The thin man’s voice hooked up nervously.

The crowd waited. Rupert Greeves waited. Cyrus and Antigone, unsure of what they were waiting for, waited.

The boy at the table pursed his lips. For the first time, he looked at Cyrus, and then at Antigone. He nodded and dropped his eyes.

Chatter climbed the walls.

“Seal the records!” Rupert bellowed. “The estate of William Skelton, Keeper in the Order of Brendan, is declared dormant!”

Two men moved forward out of the crowd and closed the lid on Skelton’s coffin.

“A final thought!” the thin man shouted, and the noise in the enormous room died. The boy looked up from the hay-bale book, where he had been writing. “According to Mr. Lawney’s Acolyte filings, the oath—declared and assented to—was the Latin variation, last used by mandate on this continent in the year 1914. The Order would like to suggest that the Acolyte requirements correspond to the oath. Let the achievement of Journeyman be established according to the standards of that year.”

Gasps of surprise were swallowed by laughter.

“That’s ridiculous.” Rupert Greeves shook his head. “Even for you, Cecil.”

All eyes turned to the boy at the table. He shrugged, nodded, scribbled something in the enormous book, and rose. Turning his back, he walked toward a small door in the wall behind him.

Cyrus stood, surrounded by a wash of surprised voices while he watched the strange boy leave. He was hungry, he still had Horace’s blood all over him, his throat was still phlegm-full of last night’s smoke, and his feet ached. That much he knew. But he had no idea what had just happened.

“Cy,” Antigone said. “I don’t think that was good.”

Before Cyrus could answer, the thin man stepped in front of them, clutching a folder, smiling, and scratching his mustache with a long finger. “Children,” he said, nodding. “Lovely to meet you both. My name is Cecil T. Rhodes, and no, that wasn’t good. At least not for you.”