The Anzu's Egg 2 Read online

  Biyu flicked the pages to the second bookmark and a map of two islands. I checked the map’s scale. At their closest, five miles of water separated them.

  The legend of Anjaneya’s staff becoming a bridge is only common to the southern islanders of Anganera, Biyu continued. No one interviewed could name the islands from the legend. One academic used the descriptions of the two islands at war, the lengths the daughter staff grew to and searched an array of maps, old and new. She suggested these two are the closest match.

  I read their names.

  Rasa and Savan.

  I rubbed my chin. Dragons made good swimmers. Biyu had discovered this within a year of the accident, while she continued to develop her dragon abilities.

  That’s five miles of water, I said to her. And we don’t know how deep it is.

  She reminded me of how, during a long weekend, she’d gone for a swim a mile off the island’s west coast. Biyu had swum so far down, a pod of sperm whales had surprised her by emerging from the darkness beneath.

  If the staff’s down there, she said, it’ll take me a day to find it.

  She sounded so certain, confident the daughter staff was there. I was about to tell her we should return to the practice and start packing, when the synchronised clomps of several pairs of boots made me turn.

  A line of four men, a fifth following close behind, advanced on our table from the reading room’s entrance. They all wore raincoats of varying styles and hues. There was nothing unusual about them until, as one, they reached into their coats. One pulled his hand out to reveal the grip of a lightening pistol.

  Leyakians, Biyu said.

  The Leyakian holding the gun said, ‘You come with us. Quiet.’

  My tattoos glowed. Biyu and I stood.

  The Leyakian’s brow wrinkled at the light shining from under my shirt cuffs. He shook his head. Two Leyakians passed just beyond our table and stopped, cutting off an escape route through the stacks.

  ‘Don’t give trouble,’ Mr Gun-toter said.

  Rapid slaps followed the squeak of the panel’s swing doors.

  A faun blur beat a path towards the two Leyakians in front of us. They had also heard the sound, because they turned and pulled out their lightening pistols.

  A reader screamed.

  The blur circled the Leyakians and a whirr of red and silver flashed before them, knocking the pistols from their hands.

  ‘Sanjay,’ Biyu cried.

  Mr Gun-toter and the pair of Leyakians beside him closed in on us.

  Biyu’s hand swept out. She drove her talons into the neck of the Leyakian closest to her. Desperate to put myself between the Leyakians and Biyu, I skipped forward and drew my leg into a right angle. The Leyakian opposite me aimed his lightening pistol at Biyu. My blood chilled, but then my tattoos flared. I straightened my leg and rammed the heel of my shoe into his chest. I landed on both feet in time to shove the Leyakian who’d dodged the man I’d kicked. His gun went off.

  A loud crack echoed above the screams of panicked readers. A window shattered. I jumped the Leyakian before he could take a second shot. We dropped to the floor, my arms tight around him. More qi flooded my tattoos and strengthened my hold. One of the Leyakian’s ribs snapped. He dropped his lightening pistol and cried out. I pushed myself up to grab the gun, but a hard blow to my left shoulder flung be backwards. My vision spun before it righted itself. I gazed at the dark-pink veins of a marble tile.

  I’d been shot.

  I rolled onto my right shoulder and heaved myself up. The Leyakian I’d kicked in the chest stood two feet from me and raised his pistol.

  A silver and red flash felled the Leyakian with a strike to his temple.

  The governor of Anganera’s daughter, Damini, stepped into view. She held a staff in her right hand. She frowned when she spotted my hand pressed to my shoulder.

  I glanced past her. Biyu rushed over to me, my name on her lips.

  When Biyu reached me, she pulled away my hand to examine the wound. To one side of us, a woman in a mauve tee shirt, 100% Pacifist printed in white across its front, pointed a gun at a Leyakian coughing and writhing on the floor. Another man, also in casual clothes, pointed his lightening pistol at Mr Gun-toter who clutched his bloody neck.

  Like the Leyakians, the Shani had been watching us.

  The Shani had cleared the reading room of students, staff and the Leyakians. Biyu, Damini and I waited for Susilo Tarigan to arrive.

  My shoulder ached like murder. Thankfully, a Shani officer had informed me, all the Leyakians were using baton rounds. They wanted Biyu and me alive, which was why the bullet hadn’t done more than tear my shirt and leave a nasty bruise.

  While the Leyakian’s use of non-lethal bullets made sense, Damini’s sudden—and fortunate—appearance didn’t.

  As if she’d heard the thought, the governor’s daughter sauntered over to us.

  ‘Thank you for helping us,’ I said. ‘Until you arrived, we were outnumbered.’

  Biyu nodded.

  ‘Yeah, thanks.’

  Damini smiled.

  ‘I came looking for some adventure. Didn’t think I’d find it so soon.’ She must have noticed the quizzical look Biyu and I had shared. ‘Being the governor’s daughter, I don’t get out much.’

  Biyu returned to her chair and pulled the binder we’d been studying earlier closer to her.

  ‘And your father let you go—just like that?’

  Damini leaned her thigh against the table and folded her arms.

  ‘Not quite. My father sent you to find a second-generation staff. Those are very rare, Mrs Chopra. He set you a serious undertaking.’ She tilted her chin at the binder. ‘And you have information that could fall into the wrong hands. I’m here so that doesn’t happen.’

  It surprised me Utsmani would send his own daughter. Then I remembered something she’d said.

  ‘You said, not quite. Did your father have someone else in mind to watch over us?’

  Damini smirked, her eyes shining.

  ‘I always get what I want,’ she said.

  Biyu’s mental snort filled my mind.

  I bet she does.

  Sweat slicked my forehead. I wiped it away. I’d been lucky the Leyakians had only used baton rounds today.

  Damini turned her attention to the binder and its map. She unfolded her arms and rested her elbows on the table.

  ‘Have you found something?’

  While Biyu described her findings, I caught a male Shani officer staring at Damini’s legs. I huddled next Biyu and studied the map.

  ‘It sounds exactly what Anjaneya would do,’ Damini said, after Biyu had shared her theory. ‘The Divine Monkey has a talent for premonitions. We still pass down his prophecies through stories. Books are lost and pages skipped, he said. By committing his words to memory, words from a distant past are still fresh and actionable.’

  What Damini had said didn’t make sense.

  ‘If that’s true, why haven’t you searched his words for clues and gone in search of this staff yourselves?’

  Again, the friendly smile.

  ‘Remember what my father said: it’s not Anjaneya’s wish that an Anganeran finds it. You saw how the yakshini reacted to Father when he approached the sceptre?’ She waited for us to nod. ‘Bad things happen to Anganerans who disobey the Divine Monkey’s wishes.’

  I remembered the yakshini and how they bore a striking resemblance to Damini.

  ‘Mr and Mrs Chopra.’ Susilo Tarigan strolled towards us as if we were meeting for coffee. ‘I never expected to see you both so soon.’

  10

  The three of us, Biyu, Damini and I shared a taxi to the practice. Tarigan and the other intelligence officers had debriefed us. We had told them what had happened, Damini had explained why she was in Bagh-e-Khuda and then Tarigan had said he’d be in touch.

  We hardly spoke as the taxi crawled through the rain and the evening sky darkened. The squeak of the taxi’s windscreen wipers filled the tense
silence.

  The taxi drew up outside the practice. I got out first and paid the driver.

  I don’t see why she had to come with us, Biyu said, sliding across the back seat to exit the taxi.

  The light in reception came on. Mr Lee had been watching for us from the living area’s window.

  She’s here to make sure we find and deliver the staff to her father, I said. And remember she said she’s used to getting her own way. Like it or not, she’ll follow us.

  Biyu huffed.

  The sooner we find the daughter staff, she said, marching to the door, the sooner we’re rid of her.

  Damini strolled behind Biyu. The taxi driver leered at her and then winked at me before driving off. I sighed.

  I entered the practice and found Mr Lee shaking Damini’s hand. Unlike his daughter, he looked pleased to meet her and said so.

  ‘Nice tattoos,’ he said. ‘Are you a warrior?’

  The anzu waited for us in the stairway. It dashed down the stairs when it saw Biyu.

  ‘I’m a kind of warrior,’ she said, then pointed at Mr Lee’s forearm. He hadn’t unrolled his sleeves after cleaning up the pharmacy. ‘Yours are impressive,’ Damini added.

  Biyu cooed to the anzu and didn’t notice her father’s wide smile. Between Biyu’s misgivings towards her and how well my father-in-law and Damini were getting on, I’d have given anything for a reason to hide in the vault.

  Upstairs in the living area, I sat at the table with Biyu, who continued to coddle the anzu. Cubchick, however, only had eyes for Damini, or rather her rod-sized staff, which she’d pulled from the scabbard strapped to her back and beneath her dress. Now the size as a domestic cat, only Cubchick’s head moved as it watched the staff Damini held.

  ‘It changes length and density,’ Damini explained, while Mr Lee finished pouring the green tea. ‘But it will only work for those Anganerans trained to fight with it.’

  Cubchick became frantic when they joined us and Damini placed the staff on the tabletop. The anzu licked its snout and tried to scramble out of Biyu’s hands.

  ‘Let me take Cubchick,’ I said to Biyu. Then, to Damini, I said, ‘It can smell the staff’s magic.’

  Damini returned her staff to its scabbard.

  ‘Just like the sceptre?’ she said.

  I glanced at Biyu. Back on Anganera, Cubchick had leapt out of the holdall and sprinted for the sceptre. I dreaded to think of what might have happened if the yakshini hadn’t caught it.

  ‘I’ll put Cubchick in the bedroom for now,’ I said, and stood.

  ‘Yes, you should,’ Biyu said, sharply.

  Mr Lee’s eyes narrowed at Biyu’s tone. He rose. For a second, I thought he’d scold his daughter. Instead, he followed me into the bedroom.

  ‘Sanjay,’ he said. He flicked on the light and closed the door. Mr Lee pulled something out of his trouser pocket.

  The anzu gazed up at me and touched my chin with a paw.

  It was the puzzle box my father had made for my mother’s anniversary present. I stiffened at the sight of it and the memory of the cave in Kazera.

  ‘Where did you find that?’

  Mr Lee shook his head.

  ‘I didn’t,’ he said. ‘The anzu did. After finishing in the pharmacy, I came upstairs and found Cubchick under the table. It was lying on its blanket with its chin resting on that box.’

  I set Cubchick down and accepted the puzzle box. I tapped each corner until I heard the ball bearing drop. The box slid open along its diagonal.

  ‘I thought I’d lost it.’

  Mr Lee chuckled softly.

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘You’d only been living in the basement for a week, your parents gone for about the same time. I could tell you’d been crying when I asked you what was wrong.’ He sighed. ‘You’d had to sell most of their possessions to pay for their medicine. That box was one of the few things you’d kept.’

  While Biyu was at school, Mr and Mrs Lee had searched the building top to bottom. We had agreed that, somehow, I’d lost the box before I’d settled into my new home.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘If the anzu found it, does that mean it was here all along?’

  Mr Lee pursed his lips.

  ‘You could have misplaced it, and the Leyakians ransacking this place had made it easy for the little fella to find it. After what happened in the Kazeran cave, if I were you, I’d consider the anzu finding this box a divine message.’

  He had a point.

  To face a giant stone version of my father’s puzzle might have been a coincidence. But the anzu discovering the box at a time like this, it had to be more than that. If prescience was one ability gods such as the Divine Monkey and the god of war, Yahata, possessed, why not use it to influence current events?

  I bent down and stroked Cubchick. It rubbed its forehead against my hand and purred. Perhaps, through this anzu, the gods wanted me to know we were on the right path. I thanked the anzu and then Mr Lee.

  ‘We should be getting back,’ I said, gesturing at the door.

  Mr Lee raised an eyebrow.

  ‘What’s wrong with Biyu?’ he said.

  I left the box on a shelf inside the wardrobe.

  ‘She’s been out of sorts since Damini appeared at the library. She doesn’t trust her.’

  Mr Lee snorted.

  ‘Trust, my arse. I know my daughter. She’s intimidated. Damini is a smart, attractive and very confident woman. I’d wager she’s a little jealous of the Anganeran.’

  I found myself applying Biyu’s situation to my own. Unlike Biyu, I hadn’t attended university. Was my jealousy towards Pak because I thought him smarter and better looking?

  I swallowed. Mr Lee slapped my shoulder.

  ‘Old farts like me can still appreciate a handsome woman.’ He grabbed the bedroom’s door handle. ‘Wait another forty years and you’ll see what I mean.’

  Back in the living area, both women got up.

  ‘Come on,’ Biyu said to Damini.

  What’s going on? I said, before Biyu disappeared into the bedroom.

  She needs to wear something that doesn’t draw so much attention to her and to us. My clothes should fit her. She brought nothing with her. Not even a toothbrush.

  I cleared my throat. After what Mr Lee had said, I had to tread carefully.

  How unhygienic, I said.

  Biyu rolled her eyes. She entered the bedroom and shut the door.

  ‘You better watch yourself,’ Mr Lee whispered. He returned to his seat at the table. ‘I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes if Biyu catches you staring at her.’ My jaw must have dropped, because Mr Lee sniggered. He raised his hands, palms facing me. ‘You’re a good and honourable man, Sanjay. I was joking.’

  A knock on the practice door saved me from further embarrassment.

  Susilo Tarigan waited on the doorstep, two intelligence officers behind him. All three sheltered under umbrellas. I invited them in. Tarigan handed his umbrella to an officer.

  ‘It’s okay, they can wait outside,’ he said, and then stepped into reception. He reached into his pocket and handed me a piece of paper. ‘I’ve chartered an airship for you. It’s leaving for Rasa in two hours. Time’s running out for the anzu. You have forty hours before I have to report its whereabouts to the Ministry. Best it goes with you.

  ‘You’ll reach Rasa tomorrow morning at six. There’s a deserted airstrip three miles from the island’s eastern shore.’ He tapped the paper he’d given me. ‘I’ve also chartered a boat for you. Its name is Shirin. The boat and its captain are yours for twenty-four hours.’

  I read the typed itinerary.

  ‘You guys don’t waste time, do you?’

  Tarigan’s eyes narrowed a little.

  ‘I don’t waste time when the archipelago could be in danger.’

  His comment sparked a thought.

  ‘The boat’s manifest lists three passengers and a kitten. Is one of them Damini Utsmani?’ Tarigan nodded. ‘We’re helping her to
recover an Anganeran relic. You said it yourself, the entire archipelago could be in danger. Her interests are specific to Anganera. Are you sure she’s trustworthy?’ Without hesitation, Tarigan nodded again. ‘How can you be so sure?’

  Tarigan’s broad smile hid his beady eyes.

  ‘You’ve nothing to worry about, Mr Chopra. Damini Utsmani is a Shani intelligence officer.’

  11

  The captain of the dhow, Shirin, ordered his five-man crew to raise the single lateen sail and drop anchor. He’d sailed us a mile from Rasa’s shores. The choppy azure sea sparkled under the early morning sun. In the distance, a ziggurat poked above a forest, vines smothering its topmost tier. Like Rasa, the island of Savan was no longer inhabited.

  I’d slept during the night-long flight to Rasa and felt refreshed. Biyu seemed agitated, though I couldn’t tell if lack of sleep or Damini’s continued presence was the cause. Damini’s admission she was Shani did nothing to win Biyu’s trust.

  Dressed in Biyu’s jeans and an orange batik tee shirt, the governor’s daughter leaned on the starboard gunwale and stared out to sea. She drew admiring glances from Shirin’s crew. Biyu’s appearance and the anzu raised fewer stares, giving me the impression Tarigan had either used this crew for previous missions, or he’d paid them a lot of money to look away and keep their mouths shut.

  Biyu stood close to the prow and surveyed the five-mile strip of water between the two islands. The anzu lay beside her, chewing on a rope, a brass islet clutched in a back foot. Cubchick had stolen it from an onshore sailor mending a sail.

  I hadn’t found my sea legs and had to grip the gunwale as I made my way to Biyu.

  ‘I’ll swim a narrow grid pattern along the seabed,’ Biyu said, after I’d joined her. ‘So long as the water isn’t deeper than six hundred feet and I’m a full-sized dragon, I’ll see surface details through the murk.’