The sorcerer smiled, white-lipped. “I suppose she also took you to see the bellows.” She had indeed, great pumping machines that fed on the sun and supplied breathable air to the doomed resort. Hydna’s sudden appearance, and the manacle grip of the dragon’s hand around my arm, usually meant an impromptu and non-optional field trip.
“Yes, they were lovely, very . . . large. Say, shouldn’t you leave a few drops inside your body?” I spoke casually, so as not to betray my traitorous intent. Black fluid filled the jar, sloshing crimson along the edges when the occasional tremor rocked the table.
“It’s a renewable resource,” Merulo said. Still, he pulled the needle-end of the tube out from his skin, pressing a finger over the wound. “This one’s done. Be of some use and take it to my sister.”
I had no choice but to receive it, though the jar warmed my hands uncomfortably.
Merulo didn’t notice me leave. Every part of him wassinking into his work, most of all his attention.
By now, I knew where to go. Sections of the underwater resort were familiar enough that I’d devised my own shortcuts and markers. Left at the smiling fish that sported alarmingly human teeth. Right at the desiccated hat stand, its wares crumbling to powder at the slightest touch. Up the flight of steps that, from the frequency of my visits, no longer left me winded, into the arena that Hydna had claimed for her workshop.
Scrape marks led the way from where she’d dragged in a desk. As always, I felt nervous entering the arena, surrounded as it was by empty rows of layered seating. I couldn’t help but imagine a ghostly audience, watching in perfect silence. Hunched in the center beneath all those nonexistent gazes, Hydna looked like a lone gladiator.
I spoke from a distance, so as not to startle her. “Hydna, lovely Hydna, how are you?”
“Oh, heya, Cameron. Did you want me to bully you again?” Both our voices echoed faintly in the space. Hydna didn’t look up as I approached, but I didn’t take it as a slight. Both dragons worked with a frenzied obsession that left me grateful for what little attention they could spare me. She sat at a cluttered desk, in a comically undersized chair. Dipping her brush into a dish, she flicked its tip to remove excess liquid, and painted a pattern over a long section of metal.
“No, no. I mean . . .” I hesitated, then clenched my teeth in regret. Other matters took priority. “No. I have a delivery.” I placed the jar with a muffled thud beside the dish that it would soon be filling. “And I have a delicate question that I’m hoping you’ll keep between us.”
“Yes, Cameron, it happens every month. We’ve been over this.”
“No, not that. It’s something . . . more serious.”
“Oh?” Hydna lowered the metal. Her crimson eyes, better suited to a bird or reptile, were hard to meet, though I felt equally uneasy looking past her at the empty rows of seating.
“What you said before, about not being ‘keen’ on the potential results of . . . what you’re trying to accomplish.”
“Killing God and transforming the world,” Hydna supplied helpfully.
I crossed my arms—then, in a change of heart, replaced them on my hips. “Well, yes, but also the turning into a computer thing. You said yourself you don’t fancy that. So . . . and this might sound terrible, but . . . why help him? Merulo can’t do it on his own, being, you know,drained. So why not keep everything as is? Yourself included.” I smiled heartily, framing it as a casual hypothetical, rather than the searing accusation I wanted to level. Why, when she had so many other options, did she facilitate her brother’s self-destruction?
The dragon woman looked at me with reservation. “Even at full power, Merulo could never have done it on his own.” She emptied the jar of dark, clotting blood into the dish, then poured a clear fluid from a glass, swirling it together with the brush. “Anti-coagulant,” she explained, and I nodded as though I understood the word.
Finished with her stirring, Hydna continued. “You might think that because I got all the looks and strength, Merulo got the brains.” She rolled her shoulders, demonstrating those first two attributes. “In fact, I got all three.”
“Maybe he got the modesty.”
Hydna fixed me with a look. “We both know that he did not.” Apparently satisfied with the blood’s consistency, she dipped her brush and resumed the intricate scrawling, the veined bulk of her hand belying the delicacy of its movements. “My brother struggles with science. He’s a magical genius, even I can admit that, but when it comes to the pre-Descent principles? I know them best. Maybe even better than anyone alive. My brother studies hard from those books, but he’d learn faster down here with me, taking shit apart and wiring it back together.” The red sigils she slashed looked like bloody cuts on the smooth metal. “Electronics, computing, mathematics. He fetishizes the old world, but his skills have always tended toward the new. So he needs me for this master spell he’s cooking, always has. The difference is that now he needs my magic, too.” She paused to re-dip her brush. “I’m also a little offended, Cameron.”
“Uh,” I said, mesmerized by her quick brushstrokes, “I’m sorry. By what?”
“By you, thinking this is all his idea.”
My stomach sank into my pelvis. “But—”
“I don’t want to be a computer. And I don’t care much about God, sorry, Mer. But think!” Her hand shot into the air, blood dripping from the brush as she gestured. “Think about what we couldhave. Space travel! Calculators! Little robot dogs that do a flip when you play music! And best of all, people to talk to about it all. That’s all I want.” She was breathless, bright drops of her brother’s blood trailing down her arm. “Even if I have to be a computer to do it. I just want to talk to someone who knows more than me.”
“I, ah, don’t personally think that I can offer that.”
“No.” Hydna sighed, the energy leaving her. In a slow, tired gesture, she reached to thump me on the back, nearly severing my spine. “If I could offer advice: make your peace with what’s to come, Cameron. Because it’s happening, no matter what.”
CHAPTER 39
In Which I Am Executing a Scheme. In Which the Scheme Is Genius, Enough so that if It Works, I Will Be Commissioning Someone to Stitch It into a Tapestry, but In Which Some Participation Is Required for Its Success. In Which That Participant Is Bemoaning His Participation.
Ican’t waste my time on this,” Merulo groaned—but we’d already gone back and forth, and I’d already won.
It was a significant victory. He worked, and he ate, and he slept, but the last two only barely. At night, I fell asleep to the scratching of his quill on parchment.
