Not that he was complaining. Fresh air is nice, but not being slaughtered by the Covenant of St. George is nicer, and as long as he stayed underground, he was safe from most forms of detection. Most, not alclass="underline" if the Covenant had Verity, and if they were able to break her . . . the dragons wouldn’t be able to move William. We weren’t ready for this. We never thought we’d need to be.
Istas looked around as we moved into the final branch of the sewer. This one looked absolutely filthy, and smelled filthy, too, until we were about ten feet from the entrance. Then the smell of sewer was replaced by the smell of bleach and cheap air freshener. “The dragons have a good working relationship with the hidebehinds,” I said. “It’s a camouflage measure.”
“Clever,” allowed Istas. “I have not been here since the snake cult attempted to sacrifice me to wake their sleeping dragon. I have never met William while awake.”
That explained the little hat: she was trying to make a good impression. “He’s nice,” I said. “He even beats me at chess sometimes.” We kept walking, and the darkness around us abruptly went away, replaced by a pleasant level of soft illumination. Istas jumped, whirling so that her back was pressed against my shoulder. I kept walking. “More hidebehind tricks. They use darks for that part of the passage, so that curious sanitation employees don’t wander down here.” I personally doubt that anyone would be curious enough about a dark, smelly tunnel that isn’t part of the currently in-use sewer system to wander down it, but Verity swears I should never underestimate human curiosity. Humans are weird.
“I do not like this,” proclaimed Istas.
“That’s part of the point.” The tunnel ended at a bare wall eight feet, five inches across. I knocked lightly at a point exactly four feet, two and a half inches from either wall, stepped back, and motioned for Istas to wait.
A few minutes passed. Then a door—a simple, normal, wooden door—swung open in what had appeared to be solid stone, and a blonde woman in a baggy New York Giants sweatshirt peered out through the opening. I smiled pleasantly, reaching out with my mind just far enough to tap the surface of her thoughts and confirm her identity.
“Hi, Priscilla,” I said. “Is Candy here? I need to talk to her.”
Priscilla’s ever-present frown deepened as she looked past me to Istas, who was doing her best to look through the open door into the Nest beyond. “Why did you bring the waheela?” she demanded.
“Because Verity was unavailable, and it’s not safe for anyone to go out alone right now.” Most of the female dragons picked up shifts at the Freakshow every now and then, and several of them worked there full time. There was no way Priscilla didn’t recognize Istas. She was just being prickly, which was something the dragons specialized in. “Now please, can we come in before we attract attention standing here?”
Frowning even more, Priscilla said, “Fine,” and opened the door the rest of the way, beckoning us inside.
“Thank you,” I said, and led Istas into the Nest.
Some clichés exist for a reason. Dragons and gold, for example. They love it. It’s biologically and psychologically vital to their well-being, and consequentially, they collect the stuff the way Artie collects comic books. Since male dragons are larger than Greyhound buses when fully grown, they serve as guardians of the hoard, while the females find ways to go out and get more gold. That used to involve highway robbery, infiltrating kingdoms, and occasionally mining. There are a lot of female dragons living in California, thanks to the Gold Rush. These days, about half the “cash for gold” franchises out there are operated by dragons, while the rest work tirelessly at whatever jobs they can get, immediately turning around and converting their paychecks into more gold for the Nest. As for what they didwith all that gold . . .
We walked through the door into Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory as reinterpreted by King Midas and Salvador Dali. Cardboard structures scavenged from closing Halloween specialty stores were studded around the room, all covered in a thick layer of genuine, structurally-reinforcing, 24-karat gold. It made a weird maze of haunted houses without backs, abandoned tunnels, and crooked graveyard fences. William enjoyed metalworking, and he was his own forge, so he just let the girls bring home whatever they thought would go well in the Nest. If it didn’t work out, he could always re-melt the gold and try again.
More normal furniture from thrift shops and Ikea was scattered around the gold sculptural pieces, along with the better part of a playground. There was a slide, a jungle gym, even a swing set—and all of it was plated with still more gold. Gold bars, coins, chains, even gold leaf littered the floor of the cavern, making our footing a little unsteady. We were standing in the midst of several hundred years of concentrated penny-pinching, and oh, how it glittered.
Istas looked around without shame, lazily twirling her parasol. Finally, she said, “It is very sparkly.”
“It is at that,” I said, just before a swarm of young dragon girls—none of them older than eight—came running from the direction of the jungle gym, waving their arms in the air and shouting my name. I didn’t recognize any of them, and when they came at me in a pack like that, I couldn’t pick out individual minds. That didn’t particularly matter. I stooped and swept up the first one to reach me, swinging her up into the air and draping her over my shoulder like a potato sack. This put her nose-to-nose with Istas, who surveyed our sudden ocean of giggling preteens with bemusement.
“Hi!” said the dragon on my shoulder. “I’m Eva. I’m a dragon. Who’re you?”
“I am Istas,” Istas replied gravely. “I am not a dragon.”
“I knew that,” said Eva. “But you’re not a cuckoo either, ’cause you have the wrong eyes, and you’re not a human, because Aunt Priscilla wouldn’t have let you in without calling for Aunt Candy. What are you?”
“Istas is a waheela,” I said, and put Eva down. “Go find your Aunt Candy for me, okay?”
“Okay!” said Eva, and the swarm moved on, running easily over the uneven floor. A few of them ran backward so that they could wave. I waved back, and tried not to look relieved. Sometimes the little girls would spend an hour or more making me do parlor tricks before they got bored, and when you’ve read one preteen dragon’s mind, you’ve read them all.
I resumed walking. Istas did the same, looking at me while confusion wafted off her thoughts like smoke. “If you have sent them to retrieve Candy, why are we not waiting?”
“Because I have a landmark to say hello to.” I gestured toward the far wall of the cavern, where one of the only things that was neither blonde nor covered in gold was waiting for us.
William raised his head as we approached, opening enormous eyes the color of electric jack-o’-lanterns. His lips turned upward in an eerily human smile, considering that he was a giant fire-breathing semi-saurian cryptid. “Sarah!” he said, his crisp British accent somehow making things all the more incongruous.
Even dragons have to come from somewhere. William came from England, back when the United States of America were still the thirteen original Colonies. In a very real way, this country was built on top of him.
“Hey, Billy,” I said, waving. “You remember Istas? She was here when you woke up.”
“But she was unconscious at the time, as I recall.” William lowered his head, putting Istas at eye level. That wasn’t necessarily a comfortable place to be; his head, after all, was the size of a VW bus. “A pleasure to properly make your acquaintance, Miss Istas. I truly do appreciate your efforts on my behalf.”
Undaunted, Istas looked him in the eye. Then, solemnly, she curtsied. “It is very nice to meet you.”
I will never understand people, no matter how long I live. And that could be a very long time, if the Covenant of St. George doesn’t kill me—cuckoos have an extremely high life expectancy. “We’re here to talk to you, and to Candy,” I said. “It’s about Verity.”