The Clockwork Dragon Read online

  Jack smacked his own forehead. “Gall.”

  The capsule entered the lower quarter of its rotation, and Sir Drake spread his hands like a therapist. “I’m afraid we’re out of time.”

  “Wait,” said Gwen. “If Gall has the artifacts, how do we get to them? We can’t get caught breaking into the Mobius Tower again.”

  “No. You can’t. But do you really think Gall would keep artifacts like those in his own office?” Outside, the platform drifted up to meet them. Sir Drake stood, picking up the tray and the copper dispenser. “I should start with the Ministry of Secrets Collection—in the Archive.”

  “We’ve seen the spook collection,” said Gwen as the Royal Arbiter collected their mugs. “All the shelves were empty.”

  The doors opened with a pneumatic hiss, and Sir Drake placed his burdens in Will’s waiting hands. “Don’t be so certain. You’re talking about an agency founded by pure-blood Merlinians, Miss Kincaid. And Merlinians are masters of illusion.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  JACK HEARD NO MORE about China from Mrs. Hudson. And he did not ask, for fear she might press him to go. He and Gwen left for the Archive the following afternoon on the pretense that they were searching for a cure to his father’s new mental state.

  A swipe of Jack’s platinum tracker card unlocked the big bronze doors at the rear of the Archive Ministry Express station. They parted, casting a shaft of yellow light into a giant well. Once a drago stronghold cut from the mysterious dark stone known as dragonite, the Archive now held the compendium of the ministries’ joint knowledge. Shelves filled with books, scrolls, and leather-bound parchments were carved into the circular walls, spiraling down into the bottomless black. Unfortunately, those who made them had neglected to carve out any stairs.

  Gwen leaned out to peer down into the well. “The Archivist should have come up by now.”

  A spherical balloon, purple with golden ropes and a broad gondola, floated idle a good distance below. Lanterns hanging from its brass railing cast a warm glow across the books. Gwen cupped her hands to her mouth. “Hello? Archivist?”

  “I don’t think she’s on board,” said Jack.

  “Well, we can’t just leave.”

  “I didn’t say we should.” Jack wasn’t going back to his dad’s bedside empty-handed. He glanced up, checking the wooden door to the Tracker Collection and the gold-plated door to the Ministry of Guilds Private Library. Both remained shut, flush with the shelves. In the shadows far below, the iron door to the dragos’ insane dragon caves looked closed as well. Only the door to the Ministry of Secrets Collection, where the balloon waited, stood open—dematerialized, as was the nature of many spook doors.

  Gwen tried again. “Archivist! Are you there?”

  Her shout earned a Shhh! from the guard at the turnstiles behind them. Elder Ministry regulations demanded utter silence in the Ministry Express stations.

  Jack gave him an apologetic cringe. “The Archivist is always here,” he whispered to Gwen, “waiting for us when we arrive. Always.” He cast a wary glance back at the guard, who had returned to his newspaper. “Something’s wrong. I’m going down.”

  “What? How?”

  “I’ll climb.” Jack crouched down and put a foot over the ledge. “This is nothing but a big set of bookshelves, right? Didn’t you ever climb bookshelves when you were little?”

  Gwen crossed her arms, looking away. “No.”

  “Liar.” Jack slipped his other foot over the ledge and found a foothold. “I’ll climb down to the Ministry of Secrets Collection. If she’s not there, I’ll bring the balloon back to get you.”

  “Have you ever flown a hot-air balloon?”

  “No.” The answer came out as a grunt. Jack tried not to imagine his toes rubbing the bindings off priceless historic texts as he lowered himself to the next shelf. “How hard can it be?”

  The climb went smoothly until Jack made the mistake of looking down. The bottomless dark climbed up the walls to claw at him, and the balloon looked farther away than when he’d begun—a lot farther away. He swallowed hard and focused on the strange titles that passed his eyes as he descended.

  On Sphere Making by Archimedes

  The Book of Fallacies by Euclid

  Inventio Forunata: King Arthur, the North Pole, and the Islands of the Great Whirlpool by Nicholas of Lynn

  That last one sounded interesting.

  Three-quarters of the way down, nowhere near close enough to the balloon to jump, Jack’s forearms were screaming. Sweat slickened his fingertips. He glanced up at Gwen. “Um . . . I’m not actually sure I’m going to make it.”

  “Then come back up.”

  “Right, because that’s so much easier than going down.”

  One hand slipped under the strain. Jack grappled for a hold and caught a thick volume with two fingers. The book fell away, fluttering down into the well, and his whole body swung out.

  “Careful!” Gwen covered her mouth with both hands.

  The memory of the rope snapping on the obstacle course flashed in Jack’s mind. He swung back and clung to the wall. “Don’t start a fire. Don’t start a fire. Please, don’t start a fire.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Do I look okay?”

  Scritch. As if prompted by its leaping literary companion, another book inched out from the shelf. Scritch. It moved another inch.

  Jack furrowed his brow. “What the—?”

  Scriiiitch. The book slid all the way out, bounced off his shoulder, and dropped.

  Gwen’s hands went to her hips. “All right. Now you’re tossing them on purpose.”

  “That wasn’t me.”

  Scritch. The book directly in front of Jack’s face inched out.

  He crossed his eyes, trying to read the title. The Stories of Charles Perrault. Not particularly suicidal.

  Scriiitch. The book scooted out another two inches.

  To keep from getting blamed for another lost text, Jack head-butted it back into place.

  Scritch Scritch. The book pushed out with new fervor, squishing Jack’s nose sideways until it passed him by and dropped into oblivion. He watched it fall.

  Brrrowwl.

  His eyes snapped back to the gap. A pair of yellow eyes glowed in the dark. “Oh. It’s you.”

  Brrr-brrrowwl. An orange-and-white paw reached out and playfully batted his nose.

  “Please . . . don’t . . . do that.”

  “Don’t do what?” called Gwen.

  “Not you. The Archivist’s cat. He’s in a passage behind the shelves.”

  Gwen let out a gurgling Ugh. She and the cat had never gotten along. “Can you get in there with him?”

  “The gap’s too small.”

  “Hang on. I’m sending Spec down.”

  Hang on. Jack could not have laughed if he tried. “Good one.”

  “Good what?”

  Brrrowwl? The calico poked its head out through the gap, whiskers tickling Jack’s nose.

  He grimaced, puffing to drive it back. “No. Bad kitty. Stay.”

  Cats don’t stay. It crawled out onto the shelf, fluffy tail running under Jack’s nose until his eyes watered. And then, as if the situation wasn’t bad enough, Spec arrived.

  The calico and the nano-drone became the best of instant frenemies. Spec shined a red light in the cat’s face, the cat countered with a swipe, and Spec dodged, shooting into the gap between the books. The cat gave chase, grinding a hairy flank over Jack’s nose.

  Staring through the gap while holding back a potentially fatal sneeze, Jack saw Spec descend into view, then cat paws come up, then Spec again, then whiskers, then Spec, then the cat, and so on, as if the nano-drone had a calico yo-yo.

  “If you’re not too busy . . . ,” he shouted up to Gwen.

  “The video is a little jumpy, but I think the opening is big enough. You’ll have to move a few books.” She paused, then added, “Push them into the gap if you don’t mind.”

  Jack would have liked
to argue that he wasn’t dumb enough to pull the books out, or that his life was more important than books, but he had a new problem. His muscles had gone rigid. He could barely cling to the wall, let alone lift a hand to move the books.

  Aching and burning faded to terrifying numbness, leaving one remaining sensation—heat. Jack could feel it seeping up his arms.

  Dragonite, charcoal gray and streaked with opalescent rivers of red and blue, had always transferred heat through Jack’s senses. He had never learned why. It was commonly noted in the ministry that no tracker could spark off dragonite, making it unique among stones, but no one ever mentioned the heat thing. Did it have something to do with Jack’s drago tendencies?

  The warmth countered the fatigue. Jack closed his eyes, sinking his nerve endings into the stone the way he sank them into a spark. Within seconds, he had the strength to lift one hand and ease a book inward, back into the calico’s secret passage. He rested a moment, and tried another.

  Book after book dropped until Jack had made a gap big enough for his shoulders. He pulled himself up and scrambled through, collapsing onto a set of steps on the other side.

  The calico’s whiskery face appeared, upside down above his eyes. Brrrowl?

  “Thanks for the assist.” Jack lifted a hand for a feline fist bump, but the cat rubbed its face across his knuckles instead, leaving a gooey line of kitty-cat goobers. He wiped it off on his jeans. “Thanks for that, too.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  JACK REPLACED THE FALLEN books, knowing he would not hear the end of it from Gwen if he didn’t. He had fallen onto narrow steps, lit only by the glow of Spec’s LEDs. “Where’s the Archivist, kitty? We could really use her help.”

  The calico answered with a mournful Mew, but no real explanation.

  The stairs led up along the outer rim of the well, with more than one side passage leading away. At the top, Jack pushed open an iron door and found he had come out in a nook at the edge of the Ministry Express station. A wall of chocolate-brown tiles painted with gold script hid him from the guard’s view. Gwen waited at the ledge where he had left her.

  She ran to him, having seen herself on Spec’s video feed. “Oh, thank goodness.”

  In the stairwell behind Jack, the nano-drone lowered itself to within range of the calico’s paws, then shot up again, drawing the cat into a futile leap—what Jack now called the yo-yo game. He thrust a thumb over his shoulder. “Is ‘Spec’ short for anything?”

  “It’s an acronym. Surveillance and Protection Electrodynamic Companion. Uncle Percy made it up.”

  “That would be SAPEC, wouldn’t it?”

  “Don’t overthink it, Jack.”

  The calico let out a sharp browl and abandoned the yo-yo game. It padded away down the steps, leading them past levers and peepholes, and finally down a low side passage. It stopped before an arched door of blue marble, sat down, and looked up at Jack, waiting.

  Gwen eased the door open a crack and peeked inside. “This is the spook collection.” She bent down to pat the calico’s head. “Well done, you.”

  The cat let out a threatening moan at her touch.

  “Oh, learn to take a compliment.”

  The three crept out from behind a swiveling fireplace burning with cold green flame and entered a black marble antechamber with velvet furnishings. A columned archway bounded by Egyptian statues led out into the main library.

  The Ministry of Secrets Collection looked exactly as Jack remembered it from his last visit—walls and ceiling cut from the darkest blue marble, a hissing gas chandelier above. At the center stood a table made of copper shapes fit together like puzzle pieces. The model of London on top was copper as well, oiled and gleaming. Jack gave it a wide berth. The last time he had touched that model, know as the Map, it had shown him seventeenth-century London drowning in flame.

  The calico ran off, disappearing around a corner.

  “Where’s he going?”

  “Litter box, I imagine.” Gwen inclined her head toward the balloon, hovering driverless at the door. “Where’s the Archivist? Do you think Gall took her?”

  “Or she’s working with him.” Jack gave her a hard look. “Remember what Mrs. Hudson said about our incident in the Drago Collection? The spooks chasing us couldn’t have unlocked the dragon cages. The Archivist controls the key, and only a drago can compel her to use it. Those doors should never have opened, unless—”

  “Unless the Archivist chose to use the key on her own.”

  “Exactly.” Jack pressed his lips together. “Sir Drake said battle lines were being drawn. Maybe she picked her side.”

  “We can’t worry about that now. We have bigger issues.” Gwen gestured at the marble shelves. “Empty, just as I said. What sort of library has no books?”

  Jack stepped closer, brow furrowed, nose mere inches from the marble. The shelves looked as normal as dusty-cobwebby-shelves-in-a-mysterious-chamber-with-a-hissing-gas-chandelier-and-a-dangerous-copper-map could look. “Sir Drake said Merlinians are masters of illusion. What if the books are . . . hidden?” He blew out a breath. The cobwebs quivered.

  “Talk to me, tracker,” said Gwen. “What are you onto?”

  Jack cocked his head. “Say that again.”

  “You mean ‘What are you onto?’ I don’t see how—”

  Jack raised a finger, cutting her off, which earned him a dour look. The echo of Gwen’s voice—ghostly greenish-white waves in Jack’s senses—hadn’t looked right for empty marble shelves. The waves had come back muted and broken. He knew of only one thing that caused such an effect. Jack let out a mystified chuckle. “Books. They’re in there somewhere.”

  Gwen pressed a hand into the empty shelf, and her eyes widened. She drew it back, clutching a leather-bound text titled On Non-Existence. She wiggled it at Jack and grinned. “Abracadabra.”

  The moment he saw the book, the air grew thick in Jack’s vision—wavy, like a mirage above hot sand. This was a hologram, but more—an illusion of the mind. Gwen’s simple act of reaching through had cracked its power. Jack scrunched his eyebrows together and glared at the empty shelves. “I. Don’t. Believe in you.”

  The shelves lost their depth. The cobwebs lost their quiver. The whole scene became as flat and two-dimensional as a photograph. Jack puffed out another breath and the empty shelves dissolved in a black cloud. What remained were real shelves full of real books. He cast a smile Gwen’s way, waiting for a similar reaction. She made none. “Don’t you see it?” he asked.

  “See what?”

  Set near the center of the shelves like a friendless bookend was a stone pyramid with sides so black they absorbed the flickering light from the chandelier. On a hunch, Jack tried to pick it up. He couldn’t lift it, but the pyramid did turn on its base. He turned it farther, all the way around, until he heard Gwen’s gasp.

  Now she saw it. Jack pumped his eyebrows. “Alakazam.”

  He showed her the pyramid. “It’s some kind of mental projector—way more high-tech than a hologram.”

  “And yet a little older, I think.” Gwen examined the device through her magnifying glass. “Thought projection. Incredibly dangerous.” She lifted one eye to look at Jack. “I think Gall wants to take this sort of tech to the next level.”

  “And if that same tech extends his life indefinitely, he’ll have plenty of time to use it for no good.” Jack took a step back, folding his arms and surveying the books. “Now what?”

  “Think like Gall. If you were a power-hungry psychopath- slash-alchemist searching for immortality, where would you stash your darkest secrets?”

  A hodgepodge of script and symbols from the book bindings floated across Jack’s brain. Most were in Latin or Spook Script, the special hieroglyphs of the Ministry of Secrets. One name in Latin letters stood out. Paracelsus. He found the book and beckoned to Gwen. “I’d stash my secrets with the alchemists I admire.”

  Jack slid the book out and heard a click. He stopped, leaving it half-out, and glanced
around. Nothing else happened. “Um . . . Tell me the name of another alchemist.”

  “Nicholas Flamel, Zhao Zheng. Oh, and Gilgamesh.”

  More floating text. Hieroglyphic eyes and one-legged birds. Another name. Jack walked three steps over and crouched down. “I’ve got The Epic of Gilgamesh.” He pulled the book out halfway. Another click. Nothing else. “Give me one more.”

  “Saint Germaine?”

  He looked up at her. “How do you say that in Latin?”

  “Sancti Germani.” Gwen pressed her lips together. “So, pretty much the same.”

  Sancti Germani had tumbled across his vision earlier, but from where? Jack stood and sidestepped to the center of the shelves. “Right here, below the pyramid.” He tried sliding the book out. Nothing. He tried pressing it inward instead.

  Squeak.

  A secret panel opened above the top shelf. An old leather journal dropped into Gwen’s open palm. “Hello, mysterious little book,” she said, winking at Jack. “What secrets might you be hiding?”

  Unfortunately, she chose to open it on the copper map table. Jack hung back several paces. “Maybe we could look at it somewhere else. That black velvet furniture in the room with the creepy Egyptian statues and the impossible green fire looked kind of comfy.”

  “Oh, don’t be a baby.” Gwen tugged at his sleeve. “The Map won’t hurt you.”

  “Last time it showed me dead people.”

  “It did no such thing.”

  “You’re right. It showed me live people from three hundred fifty years ago in the process of becoming dead people.”

  “Jack.”

  “Fine.” He gave in, careful not to let any part of his body graze the copper.

  Most of the journal was written in Spook Script, but they did find a few recognizable sketches—the Mind of Paracelsus, for instance, and the same triangular emblem that had led them to the tomb of Genghis Khan two months before.

  Gwen paged slowly through until she came to an odd map. Hand-drawn fragments of locations around the globe were squeezed together like a nearly finished jigsaw puzzle. Symbols and sketches filled the spaces between. She ran a finger over the drawing. “These are all key astronomical sites. Jaipur, in India. Arcetri, the home of Galileo.” She stopped on a fragment that bridged the divide between the two pages. A single dot, almost lost in the crease, marked the location. “And this is London, specifically the Royal Observatory at Greenwich.”