The corridors of the Pale Lightning seemed to stretch out forever on either side. On the few occasions I passed people, I relied on nudges of Charm to keep them from looking at me too closely, even though wielding magic caused my head to swim. I was used to the ship being busier, but everyone was at battle stations.
The elevator ride to the officers’ deck felt like it took longer than usual. My skin was clammy with sweat, even though I hadn’t walked any great distance. I leaned heavily against the side of the elevator, clinging to the rail. I wondered if the engineers had had any difficulty with the ship when I fainted. I shuddered at the thought. Nothing I could do about that now, and I hoped that Captain Hwan, as much as I distrusted him, had matters under control.
I made a beeline to his quarters. The lock on the door—a number pad combined with a fingerprint reader—glowed intimidatingly red. I studied it with narrowed eyes.
First, the easy part. I fished the litmus film out of my pocket. Fortunately, it hadn’t gotten too crumpled. I pressed the central dot on the purple film for three long seconds until it turned transparent to indicate that it was ready. Careful to handle it only by the edges, where it changed to pale red in response to the acidity of my skin, I placed it over the fingerprint reader and pressed it there for just a second.
The reader beeped forbiddingly, and I snatched the film away. I listened for alarms. None went off. I let out my breath in relief.
I’d been counting on this. The locks weren’t so sensitive that they responded to every chance touch. If they did, false alarms would go off every time someone tripped and fell against a door, or tried the wrong door by mistake. I didn’t intend to push my luck, though. The next time I touched the reader, it would have to be for real.
The film had done its job. Several overlapping fingerprints showed up on it in sharp lines of red. I squinted at the whorls and ridges and concentrated on changing the tip of my index finger to match. Then I stopped and cursed my stupidity. If I copied this view, the print would be reversed.
I flipped the transparent film over so I wasn’t looking at the mirror image anymore. Then I gathered Charm again. The good thing was that this wasn’t my real body to begin with, so making small adjustments to it wasn’t hard. I would just have to remember to use this process again to change my fingerprint back to Jang’s.
Now for the hard part, which was figuring out the passcode. I scowled at the keypad. I knew that people often got lazy and used the dates of anniversaries or graduations. Even if Captain Hwan was the lazy type, though, I didn’t know enough about his past history to guess what he might have picked.
Or did I? Come to think of it, he had mentioned that time when his comrade died. In the early 1480s, he had said. It had sounded like he’d respected her greatly. Did I want to gamble on that, though?
Another idea occurred to me. There was a way to check first. . . . I pulled out a second strip of litmus film. The buttons that the captain pressed would have a residue of skin oils. If the film had reacted to the fingerprints on the reader, it would react to the fingerprints on the buttons, too. And I doubted the captain was in the habit of randomly fiddling with any buttons he didn’t need to press. That would help me narrow things down.
The red marks showed me that the captain had pressed four different buttons: 1, 3, 4, and 8. If the number was indeed a year, only one of those combinations would make sense.
I took a deep breath, then pressed my index finger to the reader. It lit up blue, which was a good sign. It had accepted my fingerprint. I exhaled in relief, and then carefully entered the numbers one by one, my hand trembling: 1-4-8-3.
Nothing happened for a beat. I held my breath, hoping an alarm wouldn’t sound. Then the lock snicked open. I’d done it! I darted inside and then nearly whimpered when my body reminded me it wasn’t in the best of shape.
The door closed behind me as the lights flicked on. I looked around, blinking. Captain Hwan’s outer office featured an impressively white carpet—I knew how hard it was to clean stains—and an immense desk bolted to the deck. I hated to think of how much it would hurt if it came loose during maneuvers and slammed into me.
An old-fashioned sword in its sheath hung on the wall, fixed in place by several ornamented brackets. I sniffed the air, then drifted closer to the sword, eyes narrowing. Was that—? I knew that smell. Just as I recognized it, I sneezed, only barely covering my mouth in time. Someone had used fox magic in here, so much that it lingered. My brother.
“Jun?” I whispered in spite of myself, glancing quickly around the room for any sign of him. Nothing. Yet the trace of fox magic was undeniable.
I tracked the smell. It wasn’t strong by any means, given the weeks that had elapsed, and the general cleanliness of the room—just the faintest trace. I doubted anyone else would have been able to detect it.
Jun had touched the sword’s hilt. Despite the oils sunken into the leather, and the captain’s own intimidating musk, which had undertones of fire and metal, I could still pick up Jun’s scent on it.
My alarm grew. What had Jun been doing with the sword? Had he just been fooling around? Or had he threatened the captain with it for some reason? My mouth felt dry. Could Jun have been trying to defend himself . . . ?
Another possibility came to me—something I’d seen in holodramas, during ceremonial moments. Had Jun sworn an oath on the sword? An oath to the captain? But if that were the case, why had Jun deserted? And why would the captain take a cadet into his confidence in the first place?
The captain’s predator smell was everywhere, and it made my skin prickle with nerves. I needed to get a move on. Jun’s scent trail didn’t extend beyond the office, so I guessed that any other clues would be in here. They had to be.
I started with the desk drawers. At first I thought they’d be locked, too, but no. All I had to do was hit the buttons on the latches to make them slide open. Like the bolts holding all the furniture in place, the buttons must have been another precaution, in case everything got tossed around during combat.
I was surprised to discover that the captain kept some old-fashioned paper logbooks. They were nestled in the top drawer, along with some pens. The other drawers contained various personal effects. A faded, fraying handkerchief embroidered with a magpie for good luck. A stained calligraphy brush with splayed bristles, although there were no inkstones. And the most technologically advanced item—a photo frame that was either broken or out of power. I wondered what these things meant to the captain, but I doubted I would be asking him anytime soon.
I dug out the notebooks and sniffed again, giving thanks to my ancestors for my fox heritage. I tried to detect traces of Jun’s scent, and also something more—emotion.
The captain’s scent was all over the notebooks, of course. But I could tell that some had been handled more recently than others. One in particular reeked of desperation. I snatched it up and leafed through it, skimming the passages of vertical text. I hadn’t seen this kind of writing since the aunties had taught me old-fashioned calligraphy, as part of our “cultural heritage.” Back then I’d thought it a waste of time. Most humans didn’t learn it anymore, because everyone used digital slates. Now I was glad I could decipher the writing.
The captain had legible handwriting, but it looked like he wrote quickly, with heavy strokes. A passage caught my attention because of the texture. He’d crumpled the page at some point.
The Dragon Pearl is vital, Captain Hwan had written, but not in the way those fools in the Pearled Halls think. The scholars would lock it away and study its religious significance, while the Dragon Society would use it to make the wealthiest worlds even wealthier. I doubt they would allow it out of their hands to benefit others.
My hand spasmed, and I carefully unclenched it to avoid wrinkling the page. The thought of the Pearl being used to make the wealthy core more fertile, more vital, made me scowl.
The Pearl could win wars for us, he went on. As a weapon, it would be the ultimate threat, able to devastate an entire world as easily as it could make it blossom.
I didn’t like where this was going. I’d always thought of dragon magic as benevolent. But deep down I knew it wasn’t that simple, as Haneul could have told me. True, you could use dragon magic to terraform worlds so life could flourish on them, or make the weather pleasant, or encourage crops to grow. That same magic could, as the captain suggested, destroy worlds and turn them into wastelands. It made sense that Hwan would think of the Pearl’s benefits in military terms.
The next several pages contained terse notes about disciplinary matters on the ship. Under other circumstances I would have lingered over them, but I had more important things to worry about than gossip.
Then I found another passage about the Dragon Pearl. And this one revealed an interesting detail.