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C
HAPTER

20

J
ust as the last bubble of air in my lungs was popping, the cage lurched up.

I dragged in a choking breath, then another one, as Nimble and Sootle hauled the cage back into the boat. I coughed, my black sweater heavy with water, my hair dripping down into my eyes. Usually I'd have the magic to draw on for help. This time, I was alone.

I looked up, shivering.

Crowe stared down at me from his seat in the boat. He put his hand into his pocket and pulled something out. The clicker-ticker, his calculating device.
Click
it went as he turned one of the bone disks.
Click-tick-tick.

“You were under the water for forty counts,” Crowe said, in his dead-flat voice. “I don't think you can last for much longer than that, but we can try it and see. Will you come quietly now, Connwaer?”

As an answer, I dragged myself up, my legs shaking, and flung myself against the side of the cage. The boat tipped.

Crowe grasped the edge of the boat to balance himself. His face turned bone white. He narrowed his eyes. “Put him in again,” he ordered.

Nimble grabbed the edge of the cage. The swift Sootle hesitated. “It'll be dawn soon, sir. We need to get off the river.”

Crowe frowned. “Yes. We do,” he said after a moment.

“Right, sir,” Sootle said. “We can have him out of there and give him a quick knock on the head.” He pointed at me. “He'd come along quietly then, wouldn't he?”

“No,” Crowe said. “No knocks on the head. I need him functionable, for now.” He studied me.
Click-tick.
I could almost see the gears turning in his mind. “The dragon,” he said. “Give it to me.”

Nimble handed him the squirming sack with Pip in it. Crowe held it over the side of the boat, over the deep-dark water. His cold eyes watched me. Slowly he lowered the sack until it rested on the top of the water; then, leaning over, he shoved it under the surface.

I gripped the wire mesh of the cage, straining to see. “Pip!” I shouted. Under the water, the bag bumped and bulged, as if Pip was thrashing around, trying to escape. “Stop,” I gasped. “Let it up! I'll come without a fuss, all right?”

Crowe studied me for a moment longer, waited a few heartbeats more, then he heaved the dripping sack from the water. He tossed it on the bottom of the boat; it landed with a soggy thud.

Pip?
In the dim light, I saw the sack twitch. I let out a breath of relief. Pip was still alive in there.

“Interesting,” Crowe said. “Very”—
click-tick
—“interesting.”

 

I did as I'd promised, didn't make a fuss as they wrapped up the cage again and rowed across the river. It was a quick trip. The boat bumped up against a dock, and Nimble and Sootle lifted the cage out and carried it up some steps and then into a house. A different house? They hadn't walked enough steps for it to be the same house in the Sunrise they'd used before. Where were we?

Bump-thump
and up stairs and more stairs, and the cage was set down with a thud and the canvas covering was taken off.

One of the chimney swifts brought a lantern into the room, set it on a table, and went out. Except for me in my cage, the room was empty. Outside the door, I heard voices, people talking.

I got to my feet and looked around. The cage was made of wire mesh that glinted green in the lanternlight. Tourmalifine? Just like the little box they'd put Periwinkle's locus stone into. Under my bare feet, the wires felt cold. I stepped to the side and pressed my fingers against the mesh, and the cold from the wires seeped into them. I shivered in my soggy sweater and clothes and coughed a bit more of the river out of my lungs.

The cage stood in the middle of a big room. An attic, I realized, the top floor of a house. The walls were whitewashed and the floor uncarpeted wood. On one side the ceiling sloped down to meet the wall, which had a row of small windows in it. The sky outside was just turning the gray of early morning. A few paces away from my cage was the table where the swift had set the lantern, and on the table was another cage, just like mine but a lot smaller. Pip had been stuffed into it. The wires pressed up against its scaly sides, and where they touched sparks snapped, making Pip growl and cringe away.

Oh. Tourmalifine wires. Pip's scales were made of slowsilver. According to the treatise I'd read about pyrotechnics, tourmalifine and slowsilver were contrafusives, and that meant—

—the cage was hurting Pip.

“Pip,” I whispered. The dragon snarled and bit at the wires. Sparks flashed.

The door to the attic swung open. Crowe walked in with Nimble, followed by two chimney swifts, Drury and Sootle.

“—and then we'll deal with the duchess's guards,” Crowe was saying to Nimble, who nodded. The swifts waited by the door. Ignoring Pip, Crowe and Nimble came to stand before my cage.

Crowe looked me up and down. He put his hand into his pocket.
Click-tick
, I heard.
Click-tick-tick-tick.
“So,” he said in his cold, blank voice. “You've delivered yourself into my hands. Not very clever of you, was it, allowing yourself to be captured?”

He was right. I was stupid. But not as stupid as he was for returning to Wellmet. “Why'd you come back?” I asked.

Crowe's eyes narrowed. The old me wouldn't have asked that question. He would've stayed quiet, the frightened kid who'd run away from Crowe and his minions to hide in the Twilight. Maybe Crowe still saw a poor street kid when he looked at me, but this Conn was a wizard, not just a gutterboy.

Crowe paused for a moment, calculating his answer. “Why did I come out of exile? Because my associate Nimble wrote me a letter. He told me that Wellmet was being run by children.” His lip curled into a sneer. “A child duchess and a child Underlord. I had to come back and see for myself.”

Oh.

“And I found it was true,” he went on. “Not only that, they'd appointed a boy wizard to be the ducal magister. I realized that after the hard times it has faced, Wellmet needs someone older and steadier to control it. Somebody with more experience.”

“You?” I asked.

“Who better to seize such a moment?” Crowe said. He gave a dry smile. “I sent my men to bring you in. You managed to evade me, and my plans were put into disarray. And yet now you put yourself into my hands. Thanks to you, Nephew, I am almost ready.”

Ready for what?

He gazed at me for a moment. “Almost,” he said quietly, “ready.” He reached out and tapped the wire mesh. I edged away from him until I was pressed into the corner of the cage. “You are going to work for me.”

No. I wasn't. I shook my head.

Crowe glanced at the table where Pip was squirming inside its cage. Then he looked back at me with his cold eyes.
Click-tick-tick
went the calculating device in his pocket. “I'll ask again later and see what you have to say then.”

“You can ask again if you want,” I said. “I'll never work for you.”
Never.

Crowe fixed me with a cold glare.

Then Nimble leaned over and spoke quietly to him. “We've got to get you hidden away again,” he said.

“My room has been made ready?” Crowe asked, turning toward the door.

“Yes,” Nimble answered, with a side-smirk at me. “Just downstairs.” Crowe and Nimble stepped out the door, taking the swifts with them.

The attic room was dim, lit only by the early morning light peeking in the windows and the flashes of sparks from Pip's cage. I heard the dragon snapping and growling, but after a while its snarls turned to a low keening sound. It sounded hurt.

I had to get Pip out of there. With my fingers, I examined every corner of my cage but couldn't feel a door or a lock, no weak spots. The wires radiated cold. Shivering, I curled up in a corner and tried to think.

Crowe had a room waiting for him, he'd said. But the charkids had said Crowe had been kept in a cage, hadn't they? No, a metal room, they'd said. Why?

My cage was made of tourmalifine wire. Tourmalifine repelled magic.

Right.

I'd escried for Crowe and the anstriker spell had said he wasn't here, but clear as clear, Crowe had been in Wellmet all along. Crowe must have a small room made of tourmalifine wires, and he went inside it to hide himself from any wizard who might be searching for him.

Very clever.

That meant while I was in the cage I was hidden from the magics, too. If Nevery tried the anstriker spell to look for me, as I'd told the mudlarks to tell him to do, he wouldn't see me. He was worried about me already, and he'd get even more worried if I disappeared.

I put my head down on my knees and shivered, and listened to Pip keening in its cage. I felt empty, the separation from the magics and from Pip like a gaping hole inside me. After a while the sky outside the row of windows brightened and the light of day crept into the room.

From the rest of the house came muffled bumpings and thumpings, and low murmurings, as if it was full of people getting ready to do something and trying to be quiet about it. Where was the house? I wondered. And what was Crowe up to? He planned to take over the city, that was clear, but he was being stupid if he thought he'd succeed. Rowan had Captain Kerrn and the palace guards, and Embre had his men, and Nevery was the most powerful wizard in the city and still had his locus stone. What did Crowe have? A set of magisters' locus stones that he couldn't even use, Nimble, and a gang of chimney swifts? Not enough for his plans, I'd bet.

After a long time, hours I guessed, the door to the attic swung open. I got stiffly to my feet. Two swifts came in. Sootle carried a tray with a bowl and a mug on it. The other swift stayed by the door.

Sootle brought the tray up to my cage. “Food,” he said, and set the tray on the floor. “Don't give me any trouble.”

Sure as sure I'd give him trouble, if I could.

“Back off,” he said, and pointed to the other side of the cage.

I backed off.

He pulled a thumbnail-sized gray stone from his pocket. A keystone. It had magic in it, for opening locks, even for people who weren't wizards. He touched the stone to the side of the cage and it opened, like a door. With his foot, he shoved the tray into the cage.

I threw myself across the cage, trying to get out the door, but he was ready for me.

“None of that,” he said sharply, and shoved me back, slamming the cage door closed again.

Curse it.

Crouching, I looked up at Sootle, who stared down at me, scowling. Crowe's man. “What d'you get out of this,” I asked, “helping him?”

“Shut up,” Sootle answered.

“I'm just curious,” I said. “He must've promised you something.”

Sootle folded his arms and nodded. “He'll be the power of this city.”

Well, the real power of Wellmet was the magics, but they weren't like people. They were huge and the city was theirs, in a way, but they didn't want to rule, like Crowe did. I didn't expect Sootle to understand that, though.

“Don't bother saying Crowe's promise don't mean anything,” Sootle said. “We swifts will hold him to it.”

It didn't sound much like they trusted each other. “What promise?” I pushed.

“Crowe takes over, we swifts become his right-hand people. Minions, like those others he brought in, running the city. We'll be living up in the Dawn Palace like fine ladies and gentlemen.”

“It's not as fine up there as you think,” I told him.

“Shut up,” Sootle repeated, and went to stand by the door.

I sat on the cage floor and ate the food he'd brought, cold tea, a couple of pieces of cold toast with jam that I'd stepped on when trying to get out, and a bowl of cold porridge with an egg on it. I gulped it down, wishing I could share the egg with Pip, as I'd done the day before.

I was drinking down the tea when Crowe walked in. The swifts, who'd been lounging against the wall while I ate, straightened and fell in behind him.

The food turned into a heavy stone in my stomach. I swallowed to keep it there, where it belonged. I hadn't changed my mind. I wasn't going to work for Crowe, no matter what he said.

Crowe paused at the table and examined Pip, then came to stand before my cage. “Your dragon doesn't look very well, Connwaer,” he said in his cold voice.

I didn't answer. I could beg him to let Pip out, but he wouldn't. Unless it worked into his plans somehow.

The swift Sootle had put on heavy gloves. He picked up Pip's cage and carried it closer, and put it up against my cage.

“Pip,” I whispered, and reached through the wire mesh and brushed its scales with my fingertips. Pip shivered and cracked its eyes open, then gave a low
krrrr
.

Sootle jerked the cage away.

“Are you going to work for me?” Crowe asked.