“Down, buddy,” she whispered, and signed the symbol for descend on the thaumium plate by her right hand. The dragon folded its wings and dived. The stone spires of the university and surrounding shops melted into a salty, grayish blur as the wind tugged tears from her eyes and gravity lost meaning and for one perfect instant she was free and all was right with the world.
Then the world remembered itself and gravity caught up and it was all she could do to sign the landing sequence before the dragon joyously sent them both crashing onto the roof tiles below. Its wings snapped out, billowing like swollen kites, and Melee heard the scrape of metal on stone. Her finger left glowing lines on the thaumium as she traced out the symbol for perch, and with the hiss of steam and cooling steel, the dragon settled on the edge of a roof overlooking Pawn Row. She unhooked her harness and swung out of the driver’s cockpit.
“You know, there are fines for scratching the façade,” a voice from the cornice said.
Melee yelped. She managed one stuttering step toward the roof’s edge before catching herself on the dragon’s outstretched wingtip, as an image of tomorrow’s headline flashed through her mind’s eye in all its ironic glory: young magitechnician’s scholarship winner perishes in tragic accident two days before term starts.
“Careful now,” the gargoyle said dryly. “Forget the fine—you don’t want to take a tumble.”
Yeah. I’m not that lucky, she mused, glancing over the tiled parapet. It was only two stories to the cobbles of Pawn Row below. A fall from that height might merely result in a mess of broken bones and bloody gashes, especially if she hit the roof of the stoop first. Not that that would improve her situation. Spilling blood on Pawn Row was as good as a death sentence anyway.
“You could try a sign,” she muttered.
The gargoyle crouched on the corner of the building, tilted its head, and peered at her with one obsidian eye. “You could try not parking on the roof, love.”
“And miss the view? Nah. He likes it.” She pulled off her flying goggles and patted the dragon’s chassis. “Dontcha?”
The gargoyle gave a pointed look at the guano-streaked crenellations of the row of shops opposite them. Beyond, just visible through the smog of wood smoke and industrial alchemicals, the spires of the University of Uncommon Arts and Sciences rose to dizzying heights above the city to which it had given birth. He sniffed. “Ah, well, can’t fault him for that.”
She smiled slightly. She didn’t make a habit of smiling, but then, who was the gargoyle going to tell? If she had to guess, he was up here for the same reason she was. It would take a dedicated vandal to paint obscenities on anything parked on the roof, dragon or gargoyle.
“You’re not going for, er, dinner, are you?” the gargoyle asked as she stuffed her goggles into the satchel at her side.
“No,” she said firmly. “Just a bit of shopping.”
There was a grinding sound as the gargoyle turned to face her. Expressions on gargoyle-kind rarely branched out into anything that couldn’t be described as “stony,” but even so, she could see he was surprised. “Starting at the university on Monday?” he asked.
It would have been so easy to lie. Just a nod and the conversation could be over, but then again, why should she lie? It wasn’t as if she wouldn’t be attending the university. The two were on the same grounds. “Institute,” she said. “Technical branch. Keep an eye on him for me, will you?”
The gargoyle’s eyes twinkled. “Good on you, love. The world could always use more magitechs. Sure I’ll watch your ride. Just don’t be long, and, please, if at all possible, be human when you get back. It’s awful disorienting when they’re not.”
“Don’t worry, I will be.”
“I assume you know who you’re dealing with down there?”
“Carl’s an old friend,” she said.
The gargoyle gave a gravelly chuckle. “Well, well, if you say so. You take care of yourself, all right? We’ll both be here when you get back.”
She thanked him again and turned to the dragon. It sat motionless on its haunches, surveying the street below with what she liked to imagine was a protective gaze. “I’ll be right back, buddy,” she whispered, and whistled the locking sequence her father had taught her: a few notes, carefully arranged, changed every month or so, and nonsensical to the casual listener. To a keener ear, or to anyone who’d been close to Melee for longer than six months, the random sequences might begin to form a pattern, just discernible as the beginning of a song. A more patient listener would find the entire tune laid out within a year, and they might wonder why such a pretty lullaby had earned this practical vivisection. Fortunately, no one ever managed to stick around for more than a few months. Melee made sure of it.
The golden light faded from the dragon’s eyes as it settled into standby.
“Back in a bit,” she told the gargoyle, and headed for the rusty fire escape on the side of the building.
The bell chimed softly as she opened the door. It was dim inside and crowded in a way that made Melee feel right at home. The dark wood of the floor and ceiling glowed in the light of the false electric candles on the walls, the sight of which very nearly made her smile again. Carl had renovated since her last visit. Shelves filled the shop from floor to ceiling, stuffed with the leftovers and hand-me-downs of centuries of university students. She passed piles of mended rucksacks, a bin of shoes made for non-human feet, old microwaves, taxidermy homunculi, heaps of mismatched dishes, and brass alchemical sets on her way to the back where the true treasures lived.
Melee slowed as she approached the last row of shelves. Just beyond shone the long glass counter, sparkling clean. There was the magnificent mahogany cabinet behind it, locking away the tools of Carl’s true trade. And there, laying around it in piles as tall as she was, were the textbooks.
Carl, however, was nowhere in sight. She picked her way over a liger-skin rug and began searching the nearest stack, eyes keyed for the distinctive orange cover of Dragons, Dynamos, and Dirty Jobs: A Primer in Magitech. It was only after combing through three stacks and nine copies of Necromancy for the Absolute Beginner that she thought to glance at the counter itself.
There, spread out on the glittering glass surface, was the primer.
Please, please, be readable, she thought, and eased a finger beneath the battered cover. Gingerly, she lifted it a few inches, waiting for the telltale movement. When no words scurried across the page and out of sight, she breathed a sigh of relief. The magical silverfish she’d found graffitied in the last pawnshop’s primer had herded the words into the spine each time it was opened. Probably the parting gift of a senior lexomancer to all those undergraduates who had to stoop to buying their books on Pawn Row. Imagining all sorts of miserable postgraduate fates on the fictional lexomancer, Melee hadn’t been able to resist adding a few lines of her own in the margins of that one before shoving it back on the shelf.
The text on the pages of this primer, however, stayed firmly in place, obscured here and there by patterns of oily thumbprints in various degrees of translucence. They testified to at least one previous owner with a love of pizza, and no hope of resale profit. She thumbed through the first chapter, wrinkling her nose at the faint smell of mildew and ensorcelled embalming fluid that wafted out. The pizza-loving owner must’ve been a necromancy major exploring their backup career options. Wonderful. She’d heard of senior students binding unpleasant little creatures within the textbooks they didn’t like as practice for their finals, and the last thing she wanted was a pseudo-djinn bursting from the pages and interrupting her studies.