“So can you track holes?”
“No. I can follow dead spots, maybe, if I see people with my eyes who don’t appear to my mind, but . . .” I shrugged helplessly. “There are two Madhura in the building. I only know that because I’ve seen them both. If the one I can’t read decides to leave, I won’t know about it. He’ll just be gone, and I’ll have no idea.”
“Your ability to observe the minds of others seems exceedingly limited in scope,” commented Istas. She switched the rope to her other hand. “Of what use are you?”
“I’m really, really good at calculating how much I need to leave for a tip when I eat out, even if I never pay for my actual meals,” I said flatly.
“So what you’re saying is that you won’t know you’ve found someone you can’t read until you see them with your eyes,” said Uncle Mike. “Okay. That’s not as convenient as it could be, but it’s something. You saw Margaret, right?”
“She forced her way into my hotel room.”
“Could you describe her well enough for the mice to draw her?”
I bit the inside of my cheek to keep myself from saying something I’d regret later. Then, carefully, I said, “My eyes don’t work that way. Or, well. I guess they do, since I see on a human wavelength, but that’s not how I process visual information. There’s no way I could describe her.”
Cuckoos can see—we’re not blind, and I’m glad, since that would make answering my email really hard—but our brains aren’t wired to register the same things that human brains are. We don’t need to recognize individuals by their faces when we can recognize them by their thoughts, the unique mixture of ideas and emotions that make them who they are. All those shows about mistaken identity and identical twins or cousins are lost on me, because to my eyes, pretty much everyone looks cosmetically alike, and it’s totally impossible to mistake anyone for anyone else. Oh, hair and eye and skin colors differ, but faces? They’re just faces. It’s what’s behind them that’s unique.
Uncle Mike nodded again. “If that won’t work, we’ll have to think of something else. What did Kitty have to say?”
“She’s afraid the people who have Verity will torture her and get her to reveal secrets regarding our plans and whereabouts,” said Istas, sounding bored. Mike and I both turned to face her. She shrugged. “It is a logical concern. The current situation presents great potential for mayhem, and very little for a peaceful resolution.” This said, she yawned broadly, displaying teeth that were twice the size of the human norm. The laconic waves of thought drifting off her were almost entirely focused on the idea of destroying things.
“I’m not going to just sit around waiting for Verity to die,” I said hotly. “I don’t care if she’s being tortured. If she’s alive, we have to find her.”
“We have a duty to the cryptids of this city,” said Mike.
I scowled at him. “I am a cryptid of this city, remember? And I have a duty to my family. We can’t call them and tell them that she’s been—” I paused. Duty. Family. “Wait a second. I think I have an idea.”
“What?”
“The dragons. Females are basically indistinguishable from human women. We know Dominic didn’t tell the Covenant about the dragons—if he had, they’d have come long before this, and they’d definitely have sent more than three operatives—so that means the Covenant won’t be treating every blonde woman they see as a potential threat.”
“So you want to what, use the dragons as spies? Sarah, they’re not going to go for that. Dragons are only interested in personal gain.”
“That was before they had a male, and before they owed Verity for making sure they were there when he woke up.” I smiled thinly. “They’re going to pay what they owe, and they’re going to pay it now.”
“Oh, good,” said Istas, letting go of the rope. “This will almost certainly afford opportunity for carnage.”
The deadfall made a horrible crunching noise when it hit the floor.
Seventeen
“There were advantages to growing up with a cold-blooded telepath for a mother. The ability to lie about why I was out past curfew was not among them.”
The sewers below Manhattan, heading for the lair of the only known male dragon left in the world
AFTER SOME PERFUNCTORY ARGUING—Uncle Mike knew I wouldn’t listen, I knew he wasn’t really trying to convince me to stay, we both knew he had to make the effort if he was going to live with himself—I was allowed to grab a city spelunking kit from Verity’s supplies and head for the nearest concealed manhole. I left the weapons behind, taking only a flashlight, some rope, and a backpack full of assorted individually wrapped snacks. There’s almost nothing that lives in a sewer that will attack a cuckoo who looks like she’s just passing through. There’s defense of your territory, and then there’s being suicidal.
Besides, who needed weapons when I had Istas? She was shorter than me in her human form, and she’d never met a pair of practical shoes in her life, but she could take on just about anything that I couldn’t mentally shield us from. We were an unstoppable team, or would have been, if I’d had the first clue how to talk to her. Verity always made it look so easy, while I found communication with most other cryptids really, really hard. Even when I could read their minds, I couldn’t always understand what I found there.
With Istas’ help, I was able to get the manhole levered out of the way—by which I mean “Istas picked up the manhole and tossed it off to one side, because she is not the most subtle brick in the wall”—and descended the ladder to sewer level. Istas skipped the ladder in favor of simply stepping off the edge, landing next to me without even bending her knees. Even Verity would have crouched to absorb the impact. Istas just dropped.
“Come on,” I said, and pulled the flashlight from my belt. She followed amiably after me as we started walking into the dark.
The waheela minced through the sludge covering the sewer floor like she was strolling down Broadway on a summer afternoon. She had added a parasol and a miniature top hat to her ensemble before we left the Nest; the hat was perched jauntily just above her side-swept ponytail. From the feelings of contentment emanating from her mind, she was convinced she looked absolutely fabulous, and also anticipating the opportunity to show her fabulousness to anything that might decide to take a shot at eating us.
“I don’t think there are any alligators down here, you know,” I said, playing the beam from the flashlight over the sewer wall. A rat ran by on urgent rat business.
Istas watched it go, emotional weather briefly shifting to “hungry” before swinging back to her usual calm contentment. “No, there are not,” she agreed. “There used to be, before the bugbears, servitors, and other carnivores removed them. There is, however, always the potential for a pleasant surprise. There have been rumors which indicate that a sewer kraken may be making its home downtown. I would enjoy the opportunity to battle something with that many limbs.”
Given the way Istas was dressed, the idea of her fighting a sewer kraken was disturbingly like something from the kind of anime Artie liked to pretend he never watched, and I liked to pretend I didn’t know about. I gave her a sidelong glance. “Um, Istas, it was nice of you to insist on coming with me and everything, but you do know what we’re doing down here, right?”
“I am not stupid, Sarah Zellaby,” she said, in a voice that was much quieter than the one she’d been using only a moment before. “I realize I wear frilly clothing and impractical shoes, and that by many people’s standards, I am odd, but I am not stupid. You are here because you want to ask the dragons to assist in recovering your cousin. I am here because Verity is my friend, and would look on me with sadness if I were to allow you to come to harm. Friendship is a rare thing among my people. We do not practice it often, and most of us do not practice it very well. I am hoping to be a better friend to Verity than my brothers and sisters were to me.”