Century #4: Dragon of Seas Read online

  THE CENTURY QUARTET

  Ring of Fire

  Star of Stone

  City of Wind

  Dragon of Seas

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Translation copyright © 2012 by Leah D. Janeczko

  Jacket art copyright © 2012 by Jeff Nentrup

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House

  Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  Originally published as La prima sorgente by Edizioni Piemme S.p.A.,

  Casale Monferrato, Italy, in 2008. Copyright © 2008 by Edizioni Piemme S.p.A.

  All other international rights © Atlantyca S.p.A., [email protected].

  Random House and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Visit us on the Web! randomhouse.com/kids

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at randomhouse.com/teachers

  CenturyQuartet.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Baccalario, Pierdomenico.

  [Prima sorgente. English.]

  Dragon of seas / by Pierdomenico Baccalario; translated by Leah D. Janeczko.

  —1st American ed.

  p. cm. — (Century quartet; bk. 4)

  Summary: Sheng, Elettra, Harvey, and Mistral meet in Shanghai to find the Pearl of the Sea Dragon and complete the pact before Heremit Devil can stop them.

  eISBN: 978-0-375-89229-5

  [1. Good and evil—Fiction. 2. Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. 3. Shanghai (China)—Fiction. 4. China—Fiction. 5. Mystery and detective stories.] I. Janeczko,

  Leah. II. Title.

  PZ7.B131358Dr 2012 [Fic]—dc23 2011031018

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v3.1

  This book is for my grandmother,

  who sees the stars from very close up.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  THE FOUNDATION

  1. The Boy

  2. The Traveler

  3. The Impression

  4. The Elevator

  5. The Doubt

  6. The Voice

  7. The Well

  8. The Passenger

  9. The Shadow

  10. The Room

  11. The Café

  12. The Minibus

  FIRST STASIMON

  13. The Train

  14. The Arrival

  15. Miller

  16. The Grand Hyatt

  17. The Devil

  18. The Ascent

  19. The Bat

  20. The Call

  21. The Code

  22. The Friend

  23. Outside

  24. The Plan

  25. The Adults

  26. The Escape

  SECOND STASIMON

  27. The Awakening

  28. The Library

  29. The Office

  30. The Jesuit

  31. The Car

  32. The Park

  33. The Hostage

  34. The Water

  35. The Seer

  36. The Dragon

  37. Hi-Nau

  38. The Prisoners

  39. Below

  40. The Secret

  41. The Ship

  42. The Kiss

  43. The Party

  EPILOGUE

  Photo Insert

  Credits

  About the Author

  And a dark sun, in space, will swallow up the sun, the moon, and all the planets that revolve around the sun. Remember that when the end is near, man will journey through the cosmos and from the cosmos will learn of the day of the end.

  —Giordano Bruno, On the Infinite Universe and Worlds, De l’infinito universo e mondi, 1584

  Thou did as one who walks in the night bearing a lamp, and by doing so benefits not himself but illuminates others, when thou said: “A new age dawns, justice returns, and the primeval time of man, and a new progeny descends from heaven.”

  —Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy: Purgatory, canto XXII, lines 64–72

  INSIDE THE ELEVATOR ON THAT AFTERNOON FIVE YEARS AGO, ZOE sees only her reflection. Everything is so confused that she’s not even sure what time it is. The instant she walked into that man’s office on the second-to-top floor of his skyscraper, she lost all track of time. It’s as if the world dissolved and was replaced by a parallel world of shiny, polished surfaces. Of metal and glass.

  How long did their meeting last? Minutes? Hours? She doesn’t know. The only clue is the scorching sensation in the back of her throat, a reminder that she spoke for too long. Or that she answered too many burning questions.

  The truth is she said too much. And that’s that.

  I made a mistake, she thinks, staring at her reflection in the elevator’s icy surface. But I had to talk to him. It was like a snake biting its own tail.

  Yes, a snake biting its own tail.

  Zoe doesn’t know it yet, but a snake is going to kill her five years from now. It’s going to happen in Paris. Her city.

  It’s a coincidence, if anyone still believes there’s any such thing as a coincidence.

  The elevator descends, as do Zoe and the silent man beside her. Zoe shudders. It’s like sinking down into ice.

  “It’s cold,” she says when she feels her breath condensing.

  The silent man raises an eyebrow. His name is Mahler, Jacob Mahler. He’s an accomplished violinist and a ruthless killer. The two things don’t clash as one might expect. “You should be used to it,” he says.

  The man is alluding to Zoe’s recent scientific expedition along the Siberian coast. Or to the place they first met: an Icelandic thermal spa surrounded by snow. Whatever the case, Zoe shrugs and wraps her arms around herself like a little girl.

  She looks up. The lights on the elevator panel have stopped blinking on and off. For a handful of seconds they stay on, indicating the ground floor, but the elevator continues to descend.

  “Where are we going?” Zoe asks, suspicious.

  “Below,” Jacob Mahler replies.

  Before she can ask anything else, the elevator comes to a halt with a whoosh, its shiny aluminum doors open and Mahler leads her down a narrow corridor. “This way,” he says.

  Zoe follows him, still hugging herself.

  “Where is he?”

  “He’s coming down.”

  “Couldn’t he have come down with us?”

  “Too dangerous.”

  “What do you mean, dangerous?”

  Jacob Mahler slows his pace, brushes against her shoulder and stops. “I mean there would’ve been too many chances … of contact.”

  Zoe shakes her head. “I see.”

  “No, I don’t think you could.”

  A shaft of light slices through the darkness of the corridor ahead of them. It widens to reveal a second elevator car, out of which comes a tall, smartly dressed man with glossy, perfectly combed black hair, eyebrows that look like they’re painted on and black Bakelite glasses that frame his ice-cold eyes. He calls himself Heremit Devil. The hermit devil.

  “Pardon me for making you wait,” he says.

  He gestures at the corridor in front of them. All three of them walk down it. They reach a railing. He switches on the lights and shows her the open space and the ruins they’ve just finished un
earthing as they were redoing the foundation of his skyscraper.

  Zoe clutches the railing. She grips it tight. It’s cold. Very cold.

  Redoing the skyscraper’s foundation, of course, Zoe thinks. And he discovered it. Coincidence. Pure coincidence, if there’s any such thing as a coincidence.

  “So now … what … are you going to do?” Zoe asks as her archeologist heart begins to race.

  Heremit Devil stares at her, imperturbable. “You tell me.”

  THE CLOUDS CAST A GRAY VEIL OVER THE SKIES OF SHANGHAI, BUT they’re so fragile it seems the least trace of wind could drive them away at any moment.

  Sheng runs at breakneck speed to Renmin Park without looking back. It’s a frantic, frightened race as he leaves behind the large, round Shanghai Art Museum and looks for a place to hide among the age-old trees in the park. He reaches the white trunk of a plane tree and darts behind it, panting. Then he peers out at the other trees, the path lined with benches, the museum, the square where people are practicing tai chi and wushu.

  The boy’s gone. Disappeared.

  Vanished among the city’s twenty million inhabitants.

  Good, Sheng thinks, trying to calm down.

  The boy is haunting him. Sheng’s been seeing him for days now, always just yards away. Inside a shop. Across the street. At the second-story window of a building. He’s a young boy with a pale, sickly complexion and he wears a basketball jersey with the number 89 on it. His black eyes have deep bags under them, and his teeth are spaced far apart.

  But today, while Sheng was on the museum steps, thumbing through a comic book, the boy walked up to him. “Sheng, is that you?” he said, his voice so low it was blood-chilling.

  All it took was one look at him and Sheng was gripped by uncontrollable fear, the mind-numbing kind.

  Whoever it was, he’s gone now, Sheng tells himself, a little reassured. His eyes are burning, so he covers them with his hand.

  Who is he? he wonders again. And how does he know me?

  Maybe he’s a classmate. Someone Sheng has completely forgotten about. One of those students whose names you can’t remember. Or who change schools after a few months.

  Could be.

  It’s just that the boy couldn’t be one of his classmates. He’s at least five or six years younger than Sheng.

  A cousin? The son of one of his parents’ friends?

  Could be, he thinks again, leaning back against the plane tree. Maybe it’s someone who stopped by his dad’s agency to sign up for a study abroad program.

  That’s normal enough. Sheng must have forgotten about him, that’s all. But then why did he feel the sudden fear? Even more importantly, why does he still feel it? He cradles his head in his hands. It’s throbbing. He hasn’t been getting much sleep lately. Because of the dreams. Bad dreams, recurring dreams that leave him exhausted in the morning, as if he never even went to bed.

  “My eyes ache,” he moans aloud.

  “You can see me, can’t you?” someone nearby whispers.

  Sheng springs to his feet.

  The boy in the number 89 jersey followed him. He’s right there, ten paces away, staring at him.

  I’m dreaming, Sheng thinks. I’m dreaming.

  But he isn’t. This really is Renmin Park. It’s mid-September. In a few days he’ll be meeting up with the others. And over the last two months no one’s been following him.

  “What do you want?” he asks the boy, his back pressed up against the tree trunk. “My name’s not Sheng!”

  The boy stares at him with his long, dark eyes. “You aren’t Sheng?”

  “No,” he snaps. “Besides, I gotta go.”

  Without giving the boy a chance to add anything else, Sheng runs off, heading out of the park. His backpack thumps against his shoulder blades.

  Trees, benches, people practicing martial arts. Cement buildings. Airplanes disappearing into the clouds. Multitudes of TV antennas. Neon signs. Cars and loud city noises. The sirens from the barges sailing up the Huangpu River.

  Without looking back, Sheng keeps running until he reaches the Renmin Square metro stop.

  He takes the steps two at a time, slides his magnetic pass through the steel turnstile and pushes on the metal bar before the green arrow even appears. Only then does he turn around, afraid he’ll see the boy behind him. But he’s not there. He’s gone.

  He reaches the platform and waits, in a daze. He feels like a fish in a sea of people and finds the loud chatter in the station unbearable. He waits with his eyes closed until he hears the train emerging from the tunnel. At the sound of the doors, he opens his eyes, steps on board and looks for a secluded place to sit, even though he’s only a few stops away from home.

  “I’m losing my mind …,” he murmurs, worried.

  His eyes have turned completely yellow.

  Mistral shuts the door behind her, takes a few steps down the hall of the Paris conservatory of music and dance and leans against the wall, sighing. Her legs are wobbly and her head is heavy. A thousand thoughts are buzzing around in her mind like crazed bees. She adjusts the boiled wool flower on her dress and tries to think straight.

  On the door she just came out of is a brass nameplate: PROFESSOR FRANÇOIS GANGLOF. One of the conservatory’s most renowned and most feared faculty members.

  In front of her, the sound of a newspaper being lowered. Heels clicking across the floor in small steps. And finally, Madame Cocot, her music tutor, appears.

  “Well? How did it go?” Madame Cocot’s eyes are bright. She was the one who convinced Mistral to have the audition at the conservatory. That was before Mistral, Elettra, Sheng and Harvey hid out at Madame Cocot’s music school to escape Cybel’s men. When Sheng fell from the top-floor terrace. And Mistral saved him by summoning the bees to break his fall. Memories so close they seem unreal, almost as if her Parisian summer was just a bad dream.

  “It went well,” she says, smiling.

  The teacher rubs her hands together, making her rings sparkle. “Meaning what, Mademoiselle Blanchard? Would you care to be more specific? Did they accept you?”

  “Well …” Mistral searches the pockets of her gray dress. “I guess they did.”

  She hands Madame Cocot a sheet of the conservatory’s letterhead, on which Professor François Ganglof has written in elegant handwriting:

  Training in music, piano, Italian lyric diction, vocal ensembles type “A,” vocal ensembles type “B,” stage technique, bodywork for singers. Level two.

  “Level two?” Madame Cocot gasps. “Meaning you’ll skip the first year of courses? Why, that’s wonderful! Come here and tell me everything. What did he have you do?”

  Mistral lets the woman usher her into a small waiting room and sits down on a modern, quite uncomfortable chair. “He just asked me what I wanted to sing,” she says. “He was sitting at the piano. And I told him I wanted to sing … Barbra Streisand.”

  “Oh, no! I don’t believe it!” Madame Cocot laughs. “You had Ganglof play a Barbra Streisand piece?”

  “ ‘Woman in Love,’ of course. He played it and … and I sang. That’s it.”

  The music teacher scrunches the sheet of letterhead in her hand. “You mean he didn’t ask you any questions, like how long you’ve been singing, who—who brought you here or—or what you’d like to do?”

  Mistral shakes her head. “No. It seemed like … I don’t know … like he already knew.”

  “And he didn’t make one of his snide remarks, about your dress or your hair, for example, or about your specifically requesting that he give you the audition?”

  “No. He made me sing and then he wrote his evaluation. Then he told me to show up for lessons next Monday.”

  Madame Cocot sinks back into the uncomfortable chair, satisfied, as if it was a cushy mattress. “Incredible. Truly incredible.”

  “Is something the matter, Madame Cocot? Aren’t you pleased?”

  Her teacher looks her up and down. “What on earth do you mean? I’m very
pleased. I’ve always told you you’re my best pupil. But you must understand: Ganglof is a legend in our field. I mean, he—he’s never accepted one of my girls just like that before. That’s why I was always under the impression he had something against me. But maybe I was wrong.”

  Suddenly, Madame Cocot claps her hands. “You need to tell your mother! She’ll be thrilled.”

  Mistral isn’t so sure of that: she doesn’t want such a big change herself, and she doesn’t think her mother wants it, either. Not now, at least.

  “What is it, Mademoiselle Blanchard? Go on, call her!”

  There’s a trace of uneasiness in Madame Cocot. A lavish display of happiness that seems to be hiding something else. The glimmer of a teardrop?

  “I’m sorry, though,” Mistral says, getting up to leave.

  “Sorry? But why?”

  Passing by Ganglof’s door, they hear piano notes and a female voice trying to follow them.

  They reach the stairs.

  “I’ll still come visit you. After all, it’s thanks to you that the conservatory accepted me.”

  “Nonsense, Mademoiselle Blanchard. Don’t say such a thing. You’re talented, simply too talented to spend any more of your Thursdays—”

  “Wednesdays.”

  “Your Wednesdays, right, with an old piano teacher like me, a teacher who never managed to get into the Conservatoire de Paris.” With this, she cocks her head and casts Mistral an amused glance. “In any case, the world is full of pupils who surpass their teachers, don’t you think? And now … go prepare yourself. Lessons at the conservatory are far more difficult than mine. I wish you the best of luck, Mademoiselle Blanchard!”

  Squeezing Mistral’s hands, the teacher gives her a little pouch. “I hope you like it. It isn’t new, naturally, but …”

  Inside the pouch is a small silver MP3 player.

  “They told me it can hold all the songs you like. The last owner’s music must still be on it, but I couldn’t find a way to delete it.”

  “But … why? You shouldn’t have!”

  “At least now it has an owner who’ll know how to use it,” Madame Cocot insists.

  Without waiting for a reply or a goodbye, the music teacher whirls around and walks off between the boxwoods.