“I’m aware of that. I am not blind.”
“He’s telling you to watch the crude language,” Kaldar said, emerging from the cabin. He stopped between their two chairs, leaning on the backs with his arms. “How does it look?”
“Looks good,” Gaston said. “We’re in the clear.”
“Take him down.”
Gaston leaned forward to a complex, polished set of levers and knobs and pushed several switches.
“So how does the wyvern know what you would like him to do?” Audrey asked.
“He’s wearing a receiver device over his spark glands, just under his chin,” Kaldar told her. “When Gaston adjusts the magic frequency of the console, the receiver sends the new signal through the glands. The wyvern is trained to recognize the specific commands.”
“Just like a dog,” Gaston told her. “He knows ‘sit’ and ‘stay.’ Except in his case, ‘sit’ takes about five minutes.”
“Why?” Audrey asked.
“He’s very large,” Kaldar said. “So for him to land, everything has to align just right: approach, speed, wind, and so on.”
“What if he decides that ‘sit’ means turn upside down in the air?” she asked.
Kaldar leaned closer to her. “Then we all die a horrible death.”
Great. Audrey squeezed the chair’s seat, willing the wyvern not to fall out of the sky.
“Afraid of flying?” Kaldar asked.
“No, I’m afraid of falling to my death.”
“If it will make you feel better, I could hold you.”
“In your dreams . . .”
The wyvern plunged down. Audrey gasped. The ground rushed at her as if she were in the cabin of a train hurtling at full speed.
Audrey dug her nails into the seat cushion.
The trees jumped up. The cabin jerked, and the wyvern’s feet smashed into the ground, skidding. The huge reptile careened and stopped.
Kaldar leaned toward her ear. “You can breathe now, magpie.”
Magpie? “I don’t need your permission, thank you very much.”
“You’re welcome.”
Argh.
“Beautiful landing,” Kaldar told Gaston. “Your best thus far.”
Gaston grinned.
If that was the best, what in the world did the worst feel like?
“Let’s go,” Kaldar called. “We need to make camp. The sky is clear, so we’ll be sleeping outside today. Audrey can have the cabin.”
“That’s all right,” she told him. “I can manage. I can sleep outside just fine.”
Four pairs of eyes looked at her with a distinctly male skepticism.
“It’s only proper that you have the cabin,” George said.
“You’re the only lady,” Jack added.
“What they said,” Gaston said.
“Then it’s settled.” Kaldar pointed at the cabin. “Quilts, pillows, sleeping bags. Once we’re done, Jack, you find us something to eat, and George, you set up some sentries. Let’s go.”
Fifteen minutes later, their sleeping bags were on the ground by the wyvern. Audrey had always pictured dragons as fast and agile. But lying in the grass, the wyvern appeared barely alive, like some monolith carved from blue stone, with a blanket of green moss on his back.
Kaldar extracted a foot-long bronze box from one of the trunks and opened it. Inside, on a bed of green velvet, rested a large mechanical insect. Another gadget. The people from the Weird called them automatics.
Kaldar opened another box, pulled out a small printer with a cord sticking out of it, and plugged a camera into it. The printer whirred and spat out a picture. Audrey peered over Kaldar’s shoulder. The blond blueblood woman stared at her from the cliff. Her haughty face radiated scorn.
“You took a photo? When?”
“When we landed in the cabin. I don’t know her, and she isn’t in any of the Hand’s roster available to me. I would’ve recalled that face, but I need to identify her, and I can’t simply patch myself through the Mirror’s network.” Kaldar waved the photograph around to dry the ink. “Any magic contact will be intercepted, and given that we’re in the field, we’re under strict orders to limit our communications.”
He took the insect out of the box, flipped it on its back, and gently pressed the thorax. A bronze panel slid down, revealing a small, clear crystal. Kaldar held the photograph to it, rattled off a string of numbers, and said, “Activate.”
Tiny gears turned within the insect with a faint whir.
“Scan.”
A ray of light stabbed through the crystal from the inside. The light slid over the photograph, and the crystal went dull.
“Encode,” Kaldar ordered.
The insect’s long legs moved and trembled. The panel over its thorax slid closed, hiding the crystal. Kaldar flipped it back on its feet.
“Home base.”
The insect’s back split. Gossamer wings emerged, shook once, and blurred into movement. The insect rose from the box, hovered above the grass, and streaked into the sky.
“We’ll get an answer in a few days.” Kaldar stood up. “Gaston, you and I have to see to the wyvern.”
A moment later, Kaldar and Gaston went to get some water to mix some sort of special food for the wyvern.
Jack walked up to Audrey, holding Ling. “Could you please put her in the cabin for the next hour?”
“Of course.” She took Ling from him. “Why?”
“Because I need to change, so I can hunt, and I don’t want her to freak out.” Jack went behind the cabin. Audrey took Ling inside and deposited her into a large wicker trunk where the quilts had been stored.
“Now stay here.”
She shut the lid. Thin tendrils of magic extended from her hand, and she clicked the lock shut and went back outside.
A lynx trotted out from behind the wyvern on massive paws. As big as a large dog, his fur thick and luxurious, the big cat glanced at her with green eyes.
Audrey held very still.
The lynx’s large ears with black tufts on the ends twitched. The lynx opened his mouth, showing her his pink tongue, winked, and took off for the trees.
Wow.
She turned to George, who was unrolling the sleeping bags. “Was that Jack?”
“Yes, my lady.”