The Black Dragon by Julian Sedgwick

Author:Julian Sedgwick
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lerner Publishing Group

From where the laundry bin sits in the service basement of the Pearl, Danny can see five other large baskets, filled to the brim, standing ready to be collected.

“Let’s make ourselves comfortable,” he says. “Maybe we can get a lift out of here.”

Every now and then a soft whisper in the chute grows to a hiss, and another sheet or towel comes tumbling down onto them. It would be comical—if Laura wasn’t in the hands of the gangsters, and threatened with the loss of digits or worse. If he and Zamora hadn’t just run for their lives, dodging bullets on a seedy rooftop. If Mum and Dad were still alive . . .

His head still aches a bit from the bump in the chute and his thoughts are jumping from one to the next. He thinks of Laura and her predicament, which makes him think of Detective Tan and Ricard’s dark assessment of the detective’s fate. And that makes him think of the harbor and fish, which leads to the aquarium exploding in the Golden Bat, and that—the fish tank—brings him back again to the Water Torture Escape. And his parents and the Mysterium. Always now his thoughts are coming back to the Mysterium.

It’s pulling me back, he thinks. Like gravity.

The deck of cards is in his hands, and he’s working them like worry beads. Zamora looks at them snapping through his long fingers.

“Hey, Mister Danny. You were going to show me the jumping man.”

“Now?”

“We’ve got time, no?”

Danny smiles in spite of everything. He shuffles the cards, working the king to where he wants it, preparing the force, the actions relaxing him. Feels easier than it did at school. He remembers Dad doing the very same trick, sitting on the trailer’s steps, one summer’s evening long ago on the outskirts of Rome. First time he saw it. Some of the Aerialisques were watching and the evening breeze was ruffling the black ostrich feathers on their costumes. Someone playing flamenco guitar in the distance—and Dad’s hands looked so calm, so easy as he joked with everyone. That was the life . . .

“Pick a card, Major.”

The trick goes like clockwork, the king taking a decent jump, tumbling like a “flyer” on the trapeze, and Zamora applauds silently.

“Good stuff, Mister Danny.”

There are footsteps approaching. Voices in the corridor.

Quickly Zamora pulls the lid shut and they burrow down into the sheets.

They hear some of the other bins being wheeled across the concrete floor, and then suddenly their own basket lurches, and they’re on the move themselves—spun around, shoved out through flapping plastic doors, back into the humidity and heat of the afternoon, bumped up a ramp. Sunlight chinks through the basket onto their faces.

“OK. Vamos!” Zamora mutters as the laundry men heave the basket onto the lift at the back of their waiting truck.

“But where to?” Danny says, tucking the cards away.

Zamora smiles, his face mysterious in the striated light, expression hard to read. “No straight roads in this world, Danny. Just labyrinths.”

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