The Clockwork Dragon Read online

  “Ignored a regulation Bavarian Parks Authority warning sign? Provoked an avalanche? Destroyed a prrriceless historic site and buried all its secrets?”

  Shaw remained standing, arms folded. “Yeah. That’s about the size of it.”

  Mrs. Hudson turned her stern glare on the warden, letting her spectacles drop. “And yet I’m sending you out again.”

  “What?” said Gwen.

  “Really?” asked Jack at the same time.

  Shaw raised a hand. “In that case, I’d like to req’isition some snowshoes.”

  “I fear I will regret it,” said Mrs. Hudson, “but we’ve been given a chance at redemption—a mission of the highest urgency favored by the Crown.” She reached over her shoulder, curling a bony finger to call the drago over. “This is Mr. Liu Fai, an emissary between our own Ministry of Dragons and a sister organization in China. He will explain.”

  Liu Fai gave Mrs. Hudson a curt but respectful nod and addressed the other three. “Artifacts precious to my government have gone missing, all relating to the First Emperor, Qin Shi Huang, who unified China more than two thousand years ago.” He narrowed his eyes at Jack, voice casting a pronounced vote of no confidence. “I am tasked with asking you to help us.”

  Jack met the boy’s steely gaze and snapped his fingers. “The Thieves’ Guild. That’s where I saw you, working on the docks as a magician. You made a rose out of ice.”

  The emissary’s flat expression cracked for the first time. He glanced down at his hand, twisting an emerald ring around his finger. “I am afraid you are mistaken.”

  “Why is the Ministry of Dragons involved?” interjected Gwen. “This sounds like a matter for the Chinese authorities.”

  Liu Fai’s whole torso turned as he shifted his gaze. “We do not feel the police are . . . equipped . . . to handle this case. Unusual sightings have accompanied each theft.”

  “Yeah?” asked Shaw, raising his chin to look down his bulbous nose at the boy. “What sort o’ sightings is that?”

  “A huge metal dragon.”

  Jack shut his eyes, failing to block out the nightmare those words evoked. Fire flowed from steel jaws. He felt heat at his palm and whipped it down to his lap. “We can’t help you.”

  Mrs. Hudson leaned forward and folded her hands over a bronze falcon. “What did you say?”

  Aside from the sudden and all too coincidental revelation of a clockwork dragon, Jack wasn’t ready to give up on the Gall investigation. The jewel was gone, but it had banished all doubt from his mind that the spook had killed his grandfather, or at least given his grandfather no choice but to sacrifice his own life. The evidence was out there, somewhere. “I’m not going. I’m not finished with the Paracelsus mission.”

  Mrs. Hudson’s knuckles whitened. “Yes, you are, Mr. Buckles. And that is an order. Sic biscuitus disintegratum.”

  “Um . . .” Jack had learned some Latin during his time at the ministry. The younger clerks and agents had school and everything when they weren’t on a holiday break, or when Jack wasn’t on trial for being an abomination. But that was a new one. “Sic bisca-what?”

  “A phrase in schoolyard Latin. It has been the ministry’s unofficial motto ever since the dragos began calling us crumbs two hundred years ago.” Mrs. Hudson straightened. “You wanted to be a real tracker with real assignments. The new one trumps the old. Sic biscuitus disintegratum, Mr. Buckles. That’s how the cookie crumbles. Get used to it.”

  As Jack opened his mouth to argue, the door at the end of the conference room opened. Sadie stood in the frame, dwarfed by its height, wearing her favorite green flouncy dress and sparkly shoes. A wave of joy and excruciating sorrow flooded Jack’s mind.

  Dad.

  He was out of the chair and halfway to his sister before he even knew his body was moving. “Sadie? What is it? What’s happening?”

  Her eyes were puffy. A tear rolled down her cheek. “He’s awake.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  I CAN’T SEE HIM. He’s awake, but I can’t see him.

  The thought slammed into Jack’s mind over and over as he and Sadie hurried down the Great Stair. The utter sadness of it gave him vertigo. He had to steady himself against the wooden wall. “Use your voice, Sadie. Your thoughts are too strong.”

  She took his hand. “He’s awake, but I can’t see him.”

  “Yeah. I got that part. Why not? Did someone stop you?”

  Sadie pulled him down the steps, increasing her pace. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”

  They raced across the cobblestones to the underground cul-de-sac, to the second house on the right. Mrs. Hudson met them both at the door.

  “How did you—?” asked Jack.

  “Never mind that.” Mrs. Hudson allowed Sadie past, but she took Jack gently by the arm and led him to the family’s leather couch. Jack had never seen her face so gray.

  Ash came down the stairs, holding his newsboy cap in his hands. “I’m sorry, Jack. I’m sorry it’s gone this way.”

  “What way?” Jack tried to stand, but Mrs. Hudson held him. “Let me go!”

  She sat him down again. “Jack, you’ve survived a good many trials in the last year. You’re as tough as they come. But some trials are harder than others.”

  Jack could hear shouting from the floor above, the jostling of furniture. “I don’t understand.”

  Mrs. Hudson took a step back. “Be brave. For your mother. For Sadie. Be ever so brave.” She nodded at the dark wood stairs. “Go on now.”

  None of the terrifying thoughts that rushed through Jack’s mind as he ran up the steps could have prepared him for what he found in his father’s bedroom. A flood of unnerving data hit his senses all at once.

  An overwhelming scent of sick: a wave of yellow-white sludge that made Jack wretch.

  Sadie crying into their mother’s arm: “I can’t see him. He’s awake, but I can’t see him.”

  Black, percussive thumps: the bed jostling around under his father’s thrashing.

  His dad shouting in the raspy voice of a year’s sleep: “The king, the mountain hermit, the figures in the cloud!”

  A warden, so big he could barely fit between the floor and ceiling timbers, held John Buckles down, and still could not stop the thrashing. The doctor barked orders at a pair of nurses. One was fighting to lay a fresh sheet on the bed. Another cleaned up a puddle of sick beside it.

  The doctor saw Jack and came striding over. “He nearly choked to death on the feeding tube when he woke up. Now he won’t settle down. The standard sedatives are useless.”

  Jack hardly heard him. He dodged the doctor and rushed the warden, punching with both fists. “Leave him alone!” He might as well have punched a brick wall. Still, the warden let go, and his dad convulsed until Jack caught his hand.

  John Buckles settled, staring straight ahead, eyes bulging and bloodshot. “The fan. The key. The rivers and stars.”

  “Dad, it’s Jack. You’re not making sense. What are you trying to say?”

  “Jack?” His father turned the bloodshot stare Jack’s way but stopped a few degrees short, the way a blind man might. He squeezed Jack’s hand so hard it hurt. “Child of ice, child of flame. Castle crumbles, forms your grave.”

  “Grave?” Jack tore his hand free and backed into his mother’s arms. His father started convulsing again. Another nurse rushed into the room with a huge syringe on a silver platter. The doctor jabbed it into the IV line.

  Whatever was in that shot did the trick. John Buckles settled back into the pillows, his urgent shouts shriveling to whispers. “The first king knew, and though he tried, you must join to win the maiden’s life.”

  Jack glared at the doctor. “What did you do to him?”

  “Give me a little credit, Jack. He was my friend long before he was your father.” The doctor returned the syringe to the nurse’s platter. “I gave him a sedative, the strongest I dare. I can’t risk sending him back into the coma.”

  “I saw him,” said
Sadie, sniffling. “For a split second, I saw him.”

  “What was that, Sadie?” The question came from Gwen. She stood in the doorway, and by the pallor of her skin, Jack figured she must have been standing there awhile.

  Sadie wiped away a tear and tried to answer.

  Jack’s mom interrupted her. “Out. All of you,” she said, dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief. “You too, Arnold. Everyone but family.”

  The doctor raised a hand in protest. “Mary, I shouldn’t—”

  “I said out!”

  They all obeyed. The doc—Arnold—was the last to go. He nodded at Gwen. “After you.”

  “She stays.”

  The doctor glanced over his shoulder. “Mary, you said you only wanted family.”

  Jack’s mom balled the handkerchief in her fist. “Gwen is family.”

  Jack found the room much quieter once Arnold and his nurses had gone, and much larger without the warden taking up half the space. His dad’s muttering continued. “Through forest green, through planet’s core, the fire inside will light the way.”

  “He’s been talking like that for over an hour, ever since he woke up.” Mary Buckles collapsed into the chair beside the bed. She paid no notice to the burn marks. “Stars and kings, forests and maidens—Arnold thinks he’s recalling old missions, reciting old clues.” She held out a hand to Sadie, giving a subtle nod for Gwen and Jack to join them. “Sweetie, tell me what you meant when you said that you saw your dad.”

  Sadie shrugged one shoulder, poking the floor with her toe. “I just . . . saw him.”

  Gwen gave it a try, kneeling beside her. “Do you mean that you saw him the way you sometimes see Jack when he’s far away, the way you saw Jack in the Thieves’ Guild when Ash was looking for him?”

  Sadie leaned to one side, looking past Gwen to her father. “When he held Jack’s hand, I could see him. I could feel his heart. And then he was gone again.”

  None of them had yet grasped the rhythm of Sadie’s Merlinian inclinations, least of all Sadie, but Jack had learned to take them seriously. Gwen pulled him aside. “I think your dad is in there, flirting with the edge of consciousness.” Her hand moved toward her pocket. “Tanner said the Mind could save him. Perhaps if we—”

  Jack caught her wrist. “Not until we know more about it. The doc was right about one thing. I don’t want to risk sending him back into the coma.” Cautiously, afraid to hear more about castles crumbling on his grave, he returned to the bed and took his father’s hand.

  Nothing happened.

  The four pale fingers remained limp in Jack’s palm. “Eight figures on a fan will save you from the ghostly thief.”

  Jack sighed. The Mind of Paracelsus might be his only chance to help his dad, but he wasn’t ready to use it. “We need to talk to the one person besides Gall who knows something about all this.” Jack looked up at Gwen. “We need to see Sir Drake again.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  JACK WAITED FOR GWEN in a shadowed alley near 221B, having made his own way out of the Keep. She had left him at House Buckles hours before, with the promise that she would arrange the meeting.

  Spec arrived first, coasting down in a sliver of moonlight, camera twitching as if scoping out the scene. He settled at eye level, paused a moment, and switched on his high-powered LED.

  “It’s me, Spec,” said Jack, shielding his eyes. “Who else would it be?”

  Spec seemed to consider this, then switched off the light and zipped away.

  A few seconds later, Gwen peeked around the corner. “Sorry. He gets a little overzealous at times.”

  Jack blinked away the spots still swirling in his vision. “Did you arrange the meeting?”

  “I told you I could get Will’s number if I wanted to.”

  “You talked to Will?”

  “Naturally. He’s the adjudicator’s clerk and a member of Fulcrum.” Gwen pulled out her phone. “He’ll call any moment now with the location.”

  “Which means you gave him your number too.” Jack rubbed the back of his neck. “I really didn’t think this through.”

  Gwen giggled far too much for a clandestine call received in a dark alley. Near the end of it, she twirled a lock of hair around her finger. “Of course I’ll be there.” Another giggle. She pulled down on the curl and let it bounce back up like a spring. “He can’t go anywhere without me.”

  As she put the phone away, Jack folded his arms, not liking her wistful smile one bit. “So where is this meeting?”

  Gwen didn’t answer. She walked past him, checked the street, and turned south onto the sidewalk. “This way.”

  He followed. “You know, the only reason I can’t go anywhere without you is you never tell me where we’re going.”

  They took the Tube from Baker Street Station, surfacing at Westminster, and found Will waiting beneath a lamppost across the Thames. He gave Gwen a hug.

  “What? None for me?” asked Jack.

  “Sorry. Didn’t take ya for the ’uggin’ type.” Will spread his arms, calling the bluff.

  Jack backed away. “You’re right. I’m not.”

  “Ahem.” Gwen clutched her lapels against the evening chill. “Could we . . . gentlemen?”

  “Yes, miss.” Will inclined his head toward the Eye. “Up there, and be quick about it, yeah? Sir Drake’s car’ll reach the platform soon.”

  Gwen cocked her head. “You’re not coming with us?”

  “Someone’s gotta play lookout.” Will took on an I’m-so-good-looking-it-hurts smirk and winked at her. “But you’ll miss me. Right, miss?”

  “Oh, please.” Jack took Gwen’s elbow and led her past.

  London’s giant Ferris wheel slowly turned, letting out deep metallic creaks in the quiet of the night. Jack spied a solitary figure in one of the glass capsules. Will hadn’t been joking. The car would soon pass the platform, and he got the feeling that if they missed it, the meeting would not take place. He took Gwen’s hand, and the two ran up the ramp and hopped on board.

  “Good evening.” Sir Drake sat on a bench, raising a silver claw-foot mug to his panting guests. “I brought some hot chocolate. Want some?”

  The golden spires of Parliament came into alignment as the capsule climbed out over the Thames. Jack took Sir Drake up on the offer of refreshment, turning a key on a copper dispenser until chocolate fell gloopy and steaming into a silver mug. He raised it to his lips. “No brambleberry juice in this stuff, right?”

  “No, but it is made with moose milk. That’s what makes it so creamy.”

  Jack coughed, forcing himself to swallow. “Of course . . . it is.”

  Across the river, a few late-night tourists still milled about at the base of Big Ben. Overzealous runners jogged along Victoria Embankment. “To be honest,” said Jack, “I’m not sure a glass bubble is the best choice for a secret meeting.” He took another sip. Moose milk or not, the chocolate was incredibly creamy, with just the right amount of sweetness.

  “On the contrary. I often find the best place to hide is in plain sight, where people rarely look. Now, suppose you tell me why we’re—” Sir Drake stopped, lowering his mug. “Oh. You’ve found the Mind.”

  The thought had formed at the forefront of Jack’s brain, so close to speech that it had betrayed him. He didn’t bother denying it.

  “Turns out we had it all along,” said Gwen, helping herself to the last silver mug.

  “And now you want to use it to help Jack’s father.”

  Jack nodded, turning to face the glass. Beyond his reflection stretched all of London, rooftops brushed gray by the moon.

  “Hmm.” Sir Drake lowered his mug to his knee. “That may be a slippery slope. Many believe Paracelsus found a way to sink his knowledge into the stone—to draw from it as he pleased. But your grandfather feared the Mind was something more.”

  “It is,” said Jack. The Mind had sliced away at him for a year, and when he had finally sparked into its memory, he had found a sliver of his father trapped
inside. “I think Paracelsus wanted to push his consciousness into the stone. That’s why he called for it at the White Horse. He was dying.”

  “A path to immortality.” Sir Drake gazed out at the night. “Witchcraft in the alchemist’s time. Yet today, many scientists are pouring their lives into the same pursuit. They call it the singularity, transferring a complete mind onto a hard drive.” He returned his eyes to Jack. “This is a cold and terrifying path. The transfer of a mind reaches beyond questions of life into questions of control. If you can transfer the data out, you can transfer other data in.”

  “And become a prime minister,” said Gwen, sitting down beside him.

  “Or the head of a corporation,” added Jack.

  “Thankfully, Paracelsus left us no answers on how this might be achieved.”

  Jack choked on his chocolate again. “Um . . . Maybe he did.” He told Sir Drake about the jewel and the spark. “Grandpa meant for that message to reach my dad. And Dad was supposed to give it to you. He was supposed to say that Paracelsus left us more than just the Mind.”

  Sir Drake considered this for several seconds. “Did you find any evidence to corroborate that assertion?”

  “There were artifacts, stuff from all over the globe.”

  It was Gwen’s turn to cough. She lowered the mug and wiped her chin. “What artifacts? You didn’t tell me about any artifacts.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe I don’t tell you everything, like when you don’t tell me where we’re going or what you and Will are giggling about.”

  “I . . .” Gwen turned away, muttering into her chocolate. “I wasn’t giggling that much.”

  Sir Drake’s mug landed on the tray with a pronounced clank. “A little focus, please. Paracelsus traveled the world in his search for immortality—as far south as Alexandria, and as far east as China. The artifacts Jack saw might hold the answers you’re looking for.”

  “But they’re gone,” said Gwen. “There was nothing left but cracked beakers and broken instruments.”

  “Which means . . .” The arbiter looked expectantly from one to the other. When neither of them offered an answer, he sighed and rephrased. “Who, besides you two and Jack’s grandfather, has been in that lab in the last five centuries?”