Dying Is My Business

and rimmed with ice. In the distance a range of snow-capped mountains rose out of a shroud of white mist. I walked to the edge of the bridge and looked over, past the enormous icicles that dangled beneath us, but the mist hid the ground below. It was impossible to tell how far down it went. There was no visible light source in this place, and yet light permeated the landscape from all directions. It looked like sunlight, but it couldn’t be. We were still underground. How could there be sunlight beneath the city? How could any of this be here?

“Where are we?” I asked, my breath forming a cloud.

“Tsotha Zin, also known as the Nethercity,” Thornton said. “It’s a safe haven, a place where many of those who believe it’s become too dangerous on the surface choose to live, under Gregor’s protection. They don’t trust anyone who’s still on the surface—topsiders, they call them—but Gregor and I have an understanding.”

I stared out at the mountain peaks in awe, and noticed tiny shapes along the slopes that resembled houses. “You’re telling me someone built a city under New York?”

“No,” he said. “I’m telling you someone built New York over a city.” He cupped his hands by his mouth and shouted, “Gregor!” His voice echoed across the mountaintops. He called it again. I thought, skeptically, that Gregor was an odd name for a dragon.

As the echoes died away, the mist below the bridge roiled and broke. A massive shape reared up before us like a mountain in its own right, only it was alive and moving, an enormous, reptilian head at the end of a long, sinuous neck.

I gasped and took a nervous step back. Gregor bore only a passing resemblance to the dragon on the cover of The Ragana’s Revenge. His hide was shingled with thick, stone-gray scales, not green ones. Where his eyes should have been there burned two cold, white fires. His head was encircled with yellowing ivory horns that swept back like a crown from his serpentine face. There was something that seemed almost prehistoric about him, an air of such immense age that suddenly I had no trouble believing he was as old as Bethany claimed.

The nostrils at the end of his long snout flared as big as windows as he inhaled a deep breath. The massive suction nearly pulled me off my feet. Bethany held onto my arm to keep from falling over. Then the dragon opened his titanic jaws and let loose an angry, deafening roar. The heat of his breath blasted me like a furnace. I couldn’t help noticing that his teeth were bigger than I was. He could swallow me with a single bite.

“It’s okay, Gregor, they’re with me!” Thornton shouted.

The dragon closed his jaws, the echo of his roar bouncing across the mountains and dying away. He lifted his head high, exhaling plumes of steam from his nostrils, then lowered himself to the bridge again. Once more, the dragon inhaled mightily. I braced my legs to keep from being vacuumed into Gregor’s nostrils. Bethany clung to me again until it was over.

“The tiny female is unknown to me. You know strangers are not welcome here,” Gregor said. The long spiky bristles that dangled like a beard from his chin quivered as he spoke. His voice boomed across the mountain range like thunder.

If my jaw could have dropped any farther than it already had, it would have landed at my feet. Not only was the dragon talking, he could speak English. I turned to Bethany, but she put a finger to her lips before I could say anything. I turned back to the dragon. He was studying me with his burning eyes. Somewhere in that white fire I sensed a vast intelligence.

“This one, the male,” Gregor continued. “The stench of death clings to him. He is not what he seems.”

I stiffened. Just how much could Gregor tell about me with a sniff?

“Yeah, he’s all kinds of wrong,” Thornton agreed. “But even so, I can vouch for him. I can vouch for them both.”

“Very well.” Gregor swiveled on his long neck to face Thornton. “I see you have returned with the Breath of Itzamna upon your chest, old friend, and the scent of the dead. I regret that your fate has found you so soon. I will miss your companionship.”

Clearly uncomfortable, Thornton changed the subject quickly. “Please tell me you still have the box I left with you.”

“Of course,” the dragon said. A gigantic hand rose from beneath the bridge, its scaly claws balled in a fist. All three of us backed up to give the hand room as it came to rest before us. “I promised you I would keep it safe, and I have done no less. I would give it to none but you.”

Thornton nodded. “I know. Believe me, just this once I wish that weren’t the case.” He looked at the dragon’s massive fist. “Thank you, I’ll take it now.”

“However,” the dragon said, “it is such a pretty box.”

Thornton rolled his eyes. “Gregor…”

“I would hate to lose such a beautiful item from my collection,” the dragon continued. “It brings me such pleasure to look at.”

I glanced at Bethany. Once again she gestured for me not to say or do anything to interfere.

“Gregor, I’m running out of time,” Thornton said. “The Breath of Itzamna won’t last much longer. Please, I need the box.”

“I propose a barter, then. A fair trade,” Gregor said.

Thornton frowned and shook his head. “What do we have that you could possibly want?”

“Something of equal beauty that I may keep,” Gregor said. He swiveled his massive head until he loomed over Bethany, and my blood went cold. The dragon wanted her? For what, a snack? I moved to get between them, but she warned me to stay back with a quick shake of her head. Gregor continued, “The bauble that hangs around the female’s neck has caught my eye. I would have it in exchange for the box.”

I breathed a sigh of relief, but Bethany didn’t. “Now just a minute,” she said, putting her hands on her hips.

The dragon lowered his head to regard her more closely. His burning eyes narrowed with contempt. “Thornton, inform this tiny topsider that she is not to address me unless I require it.”

Thornton put his head in his hands. “Oh God, that’s not going to go over well.”

“I’ll address you as I see fit!” Bethany shouted back at Gregor. The sight of a five-foot-tall woman bellowing indignantly at a titanic, eons-old dragon would have been funny if I weren’t so worried that Gregor would respond by squashing us all with one gigantic hand. “And furthermore,” she continued, lifting the charm on the string around her neck, the blue veins in the little pearl-like sphere sparkling like glitter, “do you have any idea how hard it is to engineer a personal energy-barrier charm? This bauble, as you call it, isn’t for sale!”

“A shame. Its colors please me,” Gregor said. “I am afraid we have no deal, old friend.”

Thornton looked up at the dragon sharply. “Gregor, please.”

“I have given you my terms,” the dragon said.

Thornton looked at Bethany. Bethany looked at me—the real reason she was reluctant to part with it. “I told you, you’re safe now. It’s over,” I said. She looked skeptical. “Bethany, I know I kept something from you, something bad, but sooner or later you’re going to have to start trusting me again.”

She took a deep breath, lifted the charm from around her neck, and held it up by the string. “Don’t make me regret this,” she said to me.

A second enormous hand appeared from below the bridge, one long talon extended. Bethany hooked the charm’s string over the tip of the nail. The hand receded back into the mist with her charm.

Gregor’s other hand opened, and something tumbled out of his enormous, scaled palm to land at Thornton’s feet. My breath caught in my throat.

The box.

It was just as Underwood had described it, a foot wide by two feet long, and fashioned from a dark, weathered wood. The corners were cased in brass. A brass handle was hinged on one side so it could be carried. A trunk lock, also brass, was bolted to the wood and kept it securely closed. On the lid was the crest Underwood had said would be there, an iron-stamped coat of arms featuring two lions standing on their hind legs, their mouths open in pantomime roars. Between them, their forelegs supported a shield topped with a bejeweled crown. Unfurled across the face of the shield was a banner with words written in a language I didn’t know: IN DE EENHEID, STERKTE.