The Anzu's Egg 3 Read online

  The Anzu’s Egg — Part 3

  A Relic Hunter’s Story

  J F Mehentee

  Contents

  A note from the author

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Another note from the author

  Fancy keeping in touch?

  A note from the author

  The Zadrinesian Archipelago is set in an alternate world filled with much of our world’s Twentieth Century technology. There are, however, two exceptions: the archipelago lacks fossil fuels and semiconductor technology.

  You’ll soon notice the Relic Hunters Series is written in British English and is dotted with British expressions. George Bernard Shaw said, The United States and Great Britain are two countries separated by a common language. It’s my hope that, by the end of this novella and the others in this series, American readers won’t feel compelled to agree with him!

  1

  ‘Wake up, Sanjay. There’s someone upstairs.’

  My eyes were so dry, it felt as if I’d cracked open my eyelids.

  Why was I downstairs in the vault, the orange glow from the wards on the safe the only source of light? And what was Mr Lee doing here, his breath smelling of coconut arak?

  Biyu had been dead two days. Yesterday, we’d burned her clothes at a funeral ghat. Both of us still reeked of smoke. My coated tongue was a reminder we’d been drinking last night. While I’d still been sober, I’d suggested we sleep in the vault, in case the Leyakians paid the practice a visit.

  I levered myself up onto my elbows. The finality of yesterday’s funeral felt like a kick to the gut.

  Biyu was dead, gone. She had moved on to her next incarnation. Somewhere, she’d have started a new life with no recollection of her previous one. Probably for the best. My selfishness had caused the accident that had transformed her into a dragon.

  Footsteps on the floorboards above interrupted my gloominess. They sounded as if they belonged to one person and came from the examination room.

  Mr Lee wiped his eyes with the heels of his hands. The tattoos on his forearms shone.

  I patted his shoulder.

  ‘Let’s go see who it is,’ I said. My gloom became anger, and I hoped the uninvited visitor upstairs was a snooping Leyakian. ‘I’ll go first.’

  ‘Mr Chopra. I know you’re here. I need to speak with you.’

  The voice coming from above and was Susilo Tarigan’s, the Shani intelligence officer.

  ‘It’s all right,’ I told Mr Lee. ‘Stay down here and rest. There’s no need for both of us to go up.’

  A small, tired smile lit his face.

  I pulled on the trousers and shirt I’d worn at the funeral. Tarigan arrived at the practice at all times. The vault lacked natural light, and I had no way to telling how long I’d been asleep. The time of day didn’t matter. I’d hear what he’d come to say and get rid of him. I took the stairs two at a time.

  Marigold-coloured light cut through the practice door’s frosted glass and lit the reception area. The clock by the door told me it was six o’clock. I lowered the trapdoor, activated the ward beneath the edge of the stairwell’s third stair and waited until the trapdoor had blended into the flooring.

  ‘Mr Tarigan,’ I said. ‘How did you get in?’

  The demoness strode into the centre of the reception area and stopped with her hands behind her back. No longer dressed in homespun, she wore a charcoal grey trouser suit.

  ‘Where is my sceptre, Sanjay?’ she said.

  The hollowness gnawing at me reminded me that Biyu was dead because of her. My tattoos flamed white. The last time we’d met, she’d overpowered me with minimum effort. I didn’t care, but I held my ground. My father-in-law was in the vault. If he heard a commotion, he’d be up here in seconds. I waited for my qi to drain from my tattoos.

  ‘I don’t have your cursed sceptre, demoness,’ I said.

  The contours of her cheekbones and chin sharpened in the same instant her skin turned blue-grey.

  ‘My subjects call me Princess Ragni,’ she said. Black smoke leaked from her eyes. ‘Do not blame me for your wife’s death. Yeong-tae Pak wanted the anzu dead. He ordered the Leyakians to kill the creature. Their overzealousness to destroy everything in their path isn’t my fault.’

  I tensed at her mention of Pak being alive. Biyu’s blood was on her former supervisor’s hands.

  ‘So, you understand,’ the demoness said. ‘Now, return to Anganera and bring me my sceptre.’

  She had to be joking.

  My disdain must have been obvious. The demoness raised a hand. An invisible force rammed into me. I struck the wall and felt the air knocked out of my lungs. The demoness’s incisors elongated into fangs, and her pupils became glowing red pinpricks. More black smoke swirled from the corners of her eyes.

  ‘Are you sure you won’t help me?’ she said. Her voice had dropped two octaves.

  The rush of blood filled my ears.

  ‘I’d rather die, Ragni,’ I croaked.

  A demon had to submit their power to whoever used their name. My using it and its lack of effect on her confirmed my suspicion: Ragni wasn’t a word of energy. It wasn’t a name with which I could summon her and control her. No matter. I wanted the demoness to kill me and leave. That way I’d keep my father-in-law out of danger.

  The slap of bare feet against floorboards made me look left.

  Mr Lee?

  A familiar voice, a woman’s, called out my name, filling my head with its sound.

  I tried to push myself off the wall with both hands. I didn’t budge. The demoness drew one side of her lips into a snarl. I rose towards the ceiling, my shoulders scraping the wall.

  The footsteps stopped. I glanced left again.

  My brain had to be starved of oxygen, because a naked Biyu stood with her hand held out, her fingers curled and her talons exposed. Biyu’s mouth opened, revealing dozens of needle-sharp teeth.

  Hallucination or not, I gurgled her name.

  A growl shook reception, and I slid partway down the wall. The anzu stood to one side of the demoness. It buried its teeth into her calf.

  The demoness’s scream would have shamed a banshee. The force of the sound and my closeness to it smashed the back of my skull against the wall. My vision turned hazy as black smoke smothered Princess Ragni.

  Whatever hold she had over me disappeared.

  My legs collapsed from under me. Hands caught me and gently lowered me to the floor.

  Cubchick was bigger now, the size of a street dog. Its thick fur and fully formed feathers were the colour of clean sand. The anzu pressed a paw against my chest and licked my face. I passed out.

  2

  I woke and found myself upstairs and lying on the bed. Sunlight painted the bedroom ceiling in the same marigold orange as the reception below. Next to me, someone breathed loudly through their nose.

  ‘Hello there, Jaybird.’

  The soothing voice was Biyu’s.

  Either I was still unconscious and dreaming, or oxygen-starvation had damaged my brain.

  I turned to face the noisy breather and saw a sleeping anzu. With the beginnings of a mane, this anzu was male.

  Dressed in a bathrobe, Biyu knelt beside me, a flannel in her hand. She dabbed the cool, damp flannel over my face. My neck ached and the back of my head throbbed.

  ‘I couldn’t find you on either island,’ Biyu said. ‘I called out to you with my mind. Even thoug
h I got no reply, I knew you were alive.’

  My neck ached too much for me to shake it. Oxygen starvation caused people to hallucinate. My skin tingled. She was close enough for me to touch her. I didn’t move. If I reached out and she wasn’t there…

  ‘I thought you were dead,’ I said. ‘It’s been two days. The funeral was yesterday. Your father and I burned your favourite clothes on a pyre.’

  Biyu lifted the flannel from my forehead. She frowned.

  ‘You burned my favourite clothes?’ she said.

  I pushed myself up onto an elbow. Our voices or my moving had woken the anzu. He shot me a dopey look and yawned.

  Okay, things had got surreal: I had upset my dead wife, and a mythical creature slept next to me.

  ‘We needed something to burn for the funeral rites,’ I said. ‘There was no body to burn. You’d have complained if I’d burned that flowery dress of yours.’

  She’d bought the dress, brought it home and hated it when she’d taken it out of the bag.

  Biyu glanced at the wardrobe and then returned her attention to me. Her mouth opened in a dragon smile, her third eyelids flicking across her eyes. They didn’t prevent tears from spilling down her cheeks. She wiped them away with the flannel.

  ‘Poor sweet, Sanjay,’ she said, then kissed my forehead. ‘I flew as fast as I could.’

  I raised my head at her touch, and her tears triggered my own. I shivered with fear. Her scaly lips felt too real for an anoxic delusion. After all that had happened, I couldn’t take the leap and believe she’d returned and she was alive.

  ‘I tried to save you. I saw you sinking. You sank too far for me to reach you.’

  Biyu put down the flannel and straddled me. She cupped her hands against my cheeks. ‘It’s taken me two days. No wonder you thought I was dead.’

  Her weight and her thighs felt familiar. I squeezed my eyes shut. I reminded myself that some of my patients complained of hearing voices and talking to people their friends and families said weren’t there.

  ‘I couldn’t save you,’ I repeated, then opened my eyes. ‘I saw you disappear.’

  Biyu bent forward and fixed me with a stare. She tilted her head at the anzu.

  ‘He saved me,’ she said. ‘I was dazed—I couldn’t swim. He caused an underwater pressure wave. I lost consciousness before I surfaced.

  ‘I woke up on Rasa, Cubchick nuzzling me. We lay on a beach, the sun overhead. Whenever I moved, a stabbing pain tore down my spine. I had no choice, Sanjay, I had to lie there and soak up more sunlight.

  ‘The next time I woke, it was dawn. Cubchick was eating the biggest fritting fish I’ve ever seen. He also found two Leyakian water bottles.’ Biyu leaned over and stroked Cubchick’s mane. ‘He’s no longer a baby. He can swim and hunt, and he rescued me. The wave that carried me to the surface, it was him—I know it.’

  In the bare white room beneath Savan, Grishda had mentioned a tremor and how the Savanans were worried the Leyakian’s bombardment would cause another. Was Cubchick the cause of the tremor?

  ‘By dusk I could move,’ Biyu continued. ‘Most of the pain had gone. I flew to Savan. But there was no sign of you, the Leyakians or the airship Tarigan had chartered. I called out your name with my mind. I told myself that no reply didn’t mean you were dead. I wouldn’t believe that until I returned to the practice and found it empty.

  ‘So, I flew back to Bagh-e-Khuda. I almost made it. I was so close, just twenty miles from home when I ran out of qi. I had to settle on a hill on deserted Shova. There was no way of getting a message to you. I was so eager reach you, I kept poor Cubchick up for most of the night. We hardly slept.’

  I ran shaking fingers down her cheek. My fingertips moved over the smooth grain of her scales. I recognised the softness of her hair.

  I pinched myself, causing Biyu to squint.

  ‘If this is a spell,’ I said, ‘I can’t think of any other way to break it.’

  Biyu hugged me.

  ‘This isn’t a spell. I’m alive.’

  ‘You’re not—’

  My throat constricted, and I started to shake again. The enormity of life without Biyu, the woman I’d loved for eleven years, the chasm she’d left behind began to close.

  I swallowed and then said, ‘You’re not dead.’ My shaking turned to shuddering as I cried into Biyu’s bathrobe.

  ‘I’m not dead, Jaybird,’ she cooed.

  I held Biyu until I’d convinced myself I wouldn’t wake up in reception having dreamt the whole thing.

  My eyes dried and the shuddering subsided. Biyu’s heart beat against my chest, and yet we continued to cling to each other.

  ‘I’m sorry it took so long to get here,’ she said.

  I wiped away the tears beneath Biyu’s eyes.

  ‘I’m sorry about the misunderstanding on the boat.’ I waved my hand before she could interrupt. ‘What I said had nothing to do with your looks. You and Damini Utsmani are smart, confident women, and you both go out of your way to help others. That’s why she reminded me of you. And on the subject of looks,’ I touched her face, ‘I still see the same Biyu I fell in love with when I was sixteen.’

  Biyu kissed the tip of my nose.

  ‘It’ll take more than misunderstandings and torpedoes to keep us apart,’ she said.

  ‘Sanjay, are you upstairs? I fell asleep again. What did that Shani fella want?’

  Father, Biyu said. The poor man doesn’t know.

  She sprang off me and adjusted her bathrobe. Cubchick jumped off the bed and bounded out of the bedroom.

  ‘San—’

  What followed sounded like choking. Mr Lee must have seen Cubchick.

  Biyu dashed through the bedroom’s doorway.

  With one hand supporting my neck, I rolled off the bed. I stopped by the doorway and leaned against its frame.

  Biyu and her father hugged, or rather Biyu held up Mr Lee whose face had turned white.

  The anzu, fed up with being ignored, padded over to me.

  Two days ago, Cubchick had found the puzzle box my father had made for my mother. I’d thought I’d lost it. Now I understood the meaning of its return.

  I rubbed Cubchick under the chin. He purred.

  The events of the past six days were all connected: we were meant to find the egg and for Damini to retrieve the daughter staff. Now, I understood the message behind Cubchick finding the puzzle box: don’t lose faith, and don’t give up.

  Cubchick ran a paw over my wrist. I’d stopped rubbing his chin.

  ‘You’re helping us, aren’t you?’ I whispered. Cubchick purred and pawed my wrist a second time. ‘We aren’t finished yet—are we? We have to return to Anganera and collect the sceptre.’ Cubchick continued his purring.

  I gazed up at father and daughter, both holding each other. Mr Lee looked at me with a dazed and confused expression.

  I nodded and smiled.

  ‘It’s really her,’ I said.

  3

  Biyu sat between me and her father at the dining table. The anzu sat in her lap, his paws on the edge of the table while he lapped green tea from Biyu’s cup. Cubchick was the only one drinking. Mr Lee looked to be experiencing the same shock and disbelief I’d undergone. I kept wanting to touch her to confirm to myself I wasn’t facing a bereavement-based breakdown. I didn’t want to freak Biyu out, so I trained my attention on Cubchick.

  From head to tail feathers, he’d grown to twenty-four inches. Longer and darker brown hair covered the top of his neck. It also sprouted from under his chest, his throat and behind his jaw, giving him sideburns. From the self-assured look in his eyes, he was neither a cub nor a chick any longer. He could afford to look confident. He’d frightened the demoness and hurt her, neither of which I’d been able to do.

  Cubchick finding my father’s puzzle box, and similar boxes appearing in Kazera and Savan, suggested we were on the right trail, a trail left centuries ago by gods. But where did the trail end? Did it end with the sceptre?

 
‘We have to return to Anganera,’ I said, breaking the silence. ‘We have to collect the sceptre from Governor Utsmani and destroy it.’

  Mr Lee slammed his palm on the table. Cubchick stopped slurping and yowled.

  ‘Leyakians torpedoed your boat, goddammit! I thought my daughter was dead. I’ve seen her for five minutes, and now you want to leave! Torpedoes, Sanjay. The bastards blew up the boat you were on. This is too big for the two of you. Leave it to the government and the Shani to sort out.’

  I nodded. I couldn’t disagree with him.

  ‘I don’t want to lose Biyu,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t take two of us to go and get the sceptre.’

  I heard a growl. I recognised the sound and knew Cubchick—who hid his head beneath the tabletop—hadn’t made it.

  ‘Excuse me, boys. I’m right here—at the same fritting table.’

  Since a teenager, I’d learned that the best defence against Biyu was attack.

  ‘But you weren’t there when I had to steady your father’s hand so he could light your funeral pyre. No father should have to go through that. As for me, I’ve never felt so empty, Biyu. After my parents died, you two filled the space they’d left behind. This morning, before you appeared, I thought I’d never fill that space again.’

  Biyu dropped her gaze and stroked Cubchick. I looked across at Mr Lee. He curled one side of his mouth in a smile and then raised and dropped his eyebrows.

  Biyu sounded as if she gargled pebbles.

  ‘I get it,’ she said. She faced her father and then me. ‘I’m really sorry about the funeral and what you both went through. But I’m alive because of Cubchick. An hour ago, he saved you from the demoness, Sanjay. Remember the yakshini, the test. Both of us will go. Dad’s right about the Leyakians. It’s not our job to deal with them, but it’s our job to destroy the sceptre. The three of us should stay together. That way, we’ll have each other’s backs.’