Prologue
Their target was a run-down three-story building in an area of the City of London that had not yet been gentrified. The surrounding streets had been emptied of people and traffic, and the filthy pavement perspired in the thick air. Magical barriers overlaid the soot-blackened brick, beautiful as spun glass. It might have been an ice sculpture, or a fairy castle that hid the menace within.
For once the Dragon had stayed online long enough for them to pinpoint his location. Perhaps he'd thought it safe to emerge in the small hours of the morning.
Six wizards came through the front door like wraiths, shields fixed in place, knowing the Dragon would attack when cornered. It took them less than a minute to discover there was no one in the apartment to kill.
D'Orsay followed them in. The flat was shabby and small. The furnishings looked to be castoffs accumulated over several decades. Layers of grime ground into the carpet made it impossible to guess at its original color. He passed through a front room, a kitchen, into the bedroom in the back. The keyboard and monitor were still there, a harness linked into a tangle of cables, but only a faint outline in the dust of the desk surface revealed where the laptop had been.
An inside staircase at the back of the flat led to the roof. The apartment would have been chosen for that reason, and not for the decorating. They stormed up the steps to find the roof occupied only by cats. D'Orsay scanned the grid of streets surrounding the building. There was no movement anywhere.
Something had spooked him. Perhaps the use of magic had given them away. Somehow he'd sensed they were backtracking through the Net to find him, crawling past all the online blind alleys and mail drops he'd set up to mislead them.
Or someone had tipped him off. The Dragon's spy network was legendary, his operatives astonishingly loyal. For months, D'Orsay had been searching for the flaw in it, the loose end that when pulled would unravel the web.
A loose end. Someone he could carry to the dungeon in Raven's Ghyll and torture into spilling the Dragon's secrets.
But nothing. Even worse, it was possible D'Orsay's own organization had been compromised.
The newly minted Wizard Council was struggling to overcome the centuries-old blood feud between the Wizard Houses of the Red and the White Rose so it could deal with the recent rebellion of the servant guilds. Ending the feud would be difficult under the best of circumstances, but it was nearly impossible with the Dragon fanning the flames of old rivalries, spreading rumors, and posting confidential correspondence to the Internet.
It was particularly galling to someone like D'Orsay, who had so much to hide.
Wizards were murdering each other in the backstreets of London, in castles in Scotland, and in the glittering nightspots of Hong Kong. Magical artifacts were disappearing from vaults and safe-deposit boxes and wine cellars. Traditionally submissive, sorcerers, seers, and enchanters were fleeing their wizard masters. And the Dragon's hand was in all of it.
This was the third near miss since the tournament at Raven's Ghyll. Six weeks ago, they were sure they had the Dragon cornered in a ghetto in Sao Paulo. Then they'd blundered into a magical quagmire, a network of diabolical traps that had decimated D'Orsay's team of assassins and left the Council empty-handed. Three wizards dead, and they were no closer to finding him than before.
D'Orsay recognized his handiwork, the elegant simplicity of the charms and devices. The wizard might as well have scrawled his signature all over it.
Most recently, the Dragon had freed a dozen sorcerers from a stronghold in Wales. That had been triply infuriating because it had been D'Orsay's own project. D'Orsay had hoped that, given enough pressure, the sorcerers might rediscover some of the secrets of the magical weapons of the past.
They found no photographs in the flat, no personal items that might have provided a clue to who the tenant had been.
D'Orsay was disappointed, though not surprised. He was confident he knew the Dragon's identity. In any case, he wasn't fussy about being right. But this was no rat to be caught in an ordinary trap. D'Orsay was uncomfortable with this kind of operation anyway. He was a strategist, not an assassin. He was present only because of the power of their adversary and the need for discretion. It was what you might call an unauthorized operation, outside of the purview of the council.
Why would a wizard involve himself in a rebellion of the lesser magical guilds? What could he possibly have to gain?
Twenty minutes later, Whitehead returned to the kitchen carrying a manila folder. “I found this between the filing cabinet and the wall.” She handed it to D'Orsay. “He probably didn't realize it was back there.”
D'Orsay paged through the contents of the folder— letters and copies of e-mails to and from a law firm in London, relating to the guardianship of a minor. There was also correspondence with a private school in Scotland regarding housing, tuition, and financial arrangements for the same. All of it was at least two years old.
The student's name was Joseph McCauley. D'Orsay frowned. The name didn't bring to mind any of the Dragon's known or suspected associates. He couldn't relate it to any of the Weir families, either, though it would be more reliable to check the databases. Through the centuries, genealogy had enabled the Wizard Houses to find warriors when they needed them, to hunt those who carried the gift and didn't know it. Computers only made the process more efficient.
What could be the connection between this boy and the Dragon? Possibly none, but D'Orsay's instincts told him different. What else would explain the presence of material so personal in the midst of the enemy camp? And why was a law firm handling this kind of routine correspondence? Unless the intent was to hide a relationship that might prove to be a vulnerability. D'Orsay smiled. That would be too good to be true.