Isabel began to put more leaves into the cup.
“Isabel, there’s no time.”
“I need another reading. It’s too vague. And the darkness is too strong. Where does it all come from?”
“The dragon, probably,” I muttered. “Torment and misery sounds like what will happen to us once he catches us here.”
The runes above the door flashed with a bright light, and then dimmed.
“Done,” Kane said.
Isabel sipped her tea patiently, as we both stared at her.
“Can you… gulp faster?” Kane asked.
“It’s very hot,” Isabel said. “And if you rush the drink, you get a rushed future.”
Kane looked at the door. “Maybe we can try six, three, one, seven?” he suggested. “She might’ve gotten the digits right, and the order wrong.”
I folded my arms. “We have only two tries left.”
Isabel stared into the three piles of tea slush with concentration. “Try six, three, seven, five.”
I keyed in the combination, and the red LED blinked again.
“The dragon is leaving the dining hall,” Harutaka warned. “I think you should pull out.”
“Not yet,” I answered, feeling as if my heart was about to burst. “Isabel? Please?”
“Six three five five,” she said, uncertainty in her voice.
“Are you sure?”
“Try it.”
I keyed in the combination.
A green LED blinked. I let out a shaky sigh and swiped the magnetic card. The door clicked open.
I gaped at Kane and Isabel in disbelief. “We did it. We’re in the vault.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“Isabel.”
She gazed at the tea leaves’ slush piles, her forehead creased.
“Isabel!”
She glanced up. “What?”
“You need to go,” I said. “Join Sinead and go to the car. We’ll meet you in the offices of HHT.”
“Yes… yes, of course.”
She took one last look at the leaves, and rose to her feet.
“The patrol is back in the security room,” Harutaka said. “Your way up is clear, Isabel.”
“Do you have eyes on the dragon?” I asked.
“He’s watching his guests leaving from the balcony upstairs. Hurry, Lou.”
I pushed open the door. It was heavy and thick, hard to move, a metal door built to withstand crowbars and even explosives. When the crack was wide enough, I slid through it. Kane followed in my wake.
I stopped two steps into the vault, my jaw going slack.
All the valuables upstairs had been only a fraction of the dragon’s possessions. And the rest were here. Piles of glittering coins, jewels, works of art, ancient weapons—all were scattered in the vast hall. It looked like one of Scrooge McDuck’s vaults—enough treasures to swim in. Here, the dragon gave up on the pretense of order altogether. The treasures were littered around as if someone had taken fistfuls of them and just tossed them inside the vault, letting them land where they would.
But as my eyes ran across the room, I began seeing a strange pattern. The piles of treasure were lower in the center, their tops flat. In the corners they grew high, toppling on each other. This created a sort of crater in the center of the vault. And as my perception adjusted, I saw what this really was. It was a bed. The treasure was the bedsheets, crumpled and tossed to the corner, like I would do on a summer night. This was where the dragon slept. And once I understood that, another fact sunk in.
The dragon was huge.
I had been thinking of Ddraig Goch as the man I had seen in the banquet. Scary-looking, powerful, dangerous—sure. But a man. The thing that slept here was not a man. It was an enormous beast, its body spanning ten yards, maybe even more.
“How much treasure does one dragon need?” Kane asked in a hushed voice, and his words echoed in the vast vault.
“All the treasure,” I said.
I tore my eyes from the glittering piles, and stared across the vault. There was a steel door, about two feet high, set into the wall. It was the dragon’s safe. I touched Kane’s arm, pointing. “There it is. Let’s open it before the dragon returns.”
As I crossed the room, I retrieved a small vial from the hidden pocket in my sleeve. I uncorked it and drank the contents, grimacing. It tasted like I imagined dirty socks would taste, if anyone was inclined to try.
I then reduced the volume of my earphone to the bare minimum. The concoction I’d just consumed would make my hearing sharp and sensitive. Harutaka’s voice in my ear would sound like a roar once it kicked in.
Kane was already by the safe, muttering arcane whispers. The safe door was covered in runes. I wouldn’t be able to touch it until he countered them. He rummaged in his pocket and retrieved a yellow parchment, placing it against the safe door. The parchment’s surface had a strange, swirly pattern on it, and as Kane spoke it began to shift and move in a mesmerizing spiral. After a while, the pattern began crawling off the page, intertwining itself between the runes on the safe, like an inky snake. Each rune it coiled around seemed to dim somehow, as if broken.
Kane’s voice rose, almost to a shout. But no—I was just hearing it louder. My ears were a stethoscope now, the sound of the world enhanced. My earphone constantly emitted a faint annoying static crackle that I hadn’t noticed before. From far beyond the room, I heard people speaking—the guests, bidding goodbye to each other. In the vault, there were thumping noises. Our hearts, beating almost in unison.
The chanting had stopped. The ink pattern had crawled through each and every one of the runes now, rendering them inert. Kane moved aside.
“You’re up,” he said, and the words pierced my skull like blades. I winced, and placed a finger on my lips, my eyes pleading for silence. He nodded in understanding.
I crouched by the safe, and gave the dial a few quick turns to reset it. Then I put my right ear to the safe door and began to turn the wheel slowly. The sounds of the rest of the world were distracting—Kane’s breathing, the rustle of his coat as he moved, a lady with a sharp voice summoning her driver somewhere above me. I put my left hand on my left ear, blocking everything as much as I could, and kept turning the dial.
To crack a safe, one must find the contact area—a point between two numbers where there’s a small click. I turned the dial slowly, one number at a time, and suddenly there it was, as loud as someone kicking a metal bucket. Clank. The contact area was between thirty-four and thirty-five. I turned the dial again, just to be sure. There it was. I was right.
Kane cleared his throat, a rumble, like a volcano. I glanced back at him, furious. He raised his palms apologetically.
Now I had to count the wheels. I parked the wheel opposite to the contact area and began turning the dial. Every time it went past the contact area I heard it again. Clank—clank—clank. I counted the clicks, praying for a small number. Three would be a dream come true. Four would be great. Five would mean we’d be here for at least half an hour. Six or more would be… terrible.