Cyrus saw the first blow, he saw his sister drop to her knees, and the last vapor of sleep steamed out of him.
“Porca spurca!” the monk screamed, and he raised his rod again, but Cyrus was already above his sister. He took the next blow across his raised forearm, feeling nothing but the heat of his own anger. The monk struck again, this time at his ribs.
The bamboo bounced off his side, and Cyrus kicked hard for the monk’s groin, sinking his foot deep into a low-hanging belly instead.
The monk gasped, doubling over, breathless.
Cyrus jumped for the bamboo, wrenching it free with both hands. As shocked monks peered through the doors and hundreds of breakfasters watched in openmouthed silence, Cyrus raised the bamboo rod like a baseball bat. The wheezing monk’s head bobbed in front of him like a piñata. Cyrus hesitated. Then, sliding his hands apart, he brought the rod down over his own knee.
It snapped easily. Two feet of green bamboo jumped free, spinning across the room, clattering onto a platter of sausage.
The monk dropped to the floor.
Cyrus, seething, teeth clenched, stepped over the whimpering monk with what remained of his bamboo club raised.
“You don’t ever touch my sister,” he said. “Ever.”
He looked at the rest of the monks and then threw the broken rod at their feet.
“Cy, c’mon.” Antigone was on her feet, one hand on her neck, tugging her brother from behind.
Cyrus turned. Hundreds of eyes were on him. Some had jumped from their seats, but the fight had been over too quickly for them to intervene. Now they sat slowly.
Standing by the kitchen door in a white suit, Cecil Rhodes grinned and mock-applauded.
Antigone steered Cyrus toward the buffet line. A chubby man in front, wearing a too-small leather flight jacket, stepped away to let them in, staring at the ceiling the whole time, refusing eye contact.
Flustered, Antigone handed Cyrus a plate and grabbed one for herself. A long red welt stood out on her neck. Cyrus eyed the crowd, beginning to eat again.
“We came to eat, Cy, and we’re going to eat. I don’t care what they think.” She knocked the bamboo out of the sausage and shoveled a pile onto Cyrus’s plate. “Thanks, though.” She smiled and lowered her voice to a whisper. “You just beat down on a monk.”
Cyrus set down his plate and rubbed his forearm. The anger was fading, replaced with pain. He grinned at his sister. “That wasn’t me. I’m not a morning person. There’s another person inside me that does all the morning things.”
“No,” said Antigone. “The scary part is, I think the morning you is the real you. The older you get, the more that will be you all the time.”
“Oh, gosh,” said Cyrus. “I hope not. The morning me is always either angry or tired.”
With loaded plates, they turned to find a table. The nearest one, surrounded by girls in white workout wear, immediately emptied.
Antigone and Cyrus sat down.
Working on his first sausage, Cyrus looked around the room. The monks were back, and they’d brought Rupert. They were pointing at him.
Rupert Greeves moved toward them with long strides. He didn’t look happy.
“And … darn it,” said Cyrus. “Tigs.”
Antigone looked up as Greeves reached them. With two big hands, he pulled them up to their feet and leaned his head down between theirs. His whisper was thick and smelled of breakfast.
“That, Cyrus, is not exactly how I want these things dealt with in future. And, Antigone, please do not race the monks unless you intend to lose. You have both made my job more difficult. Leave your plates. Go into the kitchen and eat something there. I’ll feel better when you’re out of this room.”
He straightened and slapped their backs. “Kitchen duty,” he said loudly. While smiles spread and whispers were passed from table to table, he turned and hurried back out of the dining hall.
Cyrus looked at Antigone. She shrugged, and together, they made their way to the swinging door and walked into the sounds of a kitchen waging war on a thousand eggs.
Big Ben Sterling whistled at them, wiping floured hands on his apron. Behind him, on the other side of the wall of windows, clouds were building towers while wind frothed the lake. Sterling waved them toward two empty stools near their spot from the night before, and he lumbered to meet them.
Before they’d reached the stools, his heavy hands gripped their shoulders and his netted beard slid down between their heads. A gold bell grazed Cyrus’s cheek, jingling in his ear. Springs creaked in metal legs.
“Good to see you’re still alive,” he said. His breath was sweet. “But you’ll need food if you’re to survive a second day in Ashtown.”
The big cook forced them onto stools while young men and women in white rushed by with trays. Sterling stopped a girl, robbed her of two plates, and slapped them down on the table in front of Cyrus and Antigone. Fried eggs. Ham. Toast.
Cyrus dug in happily. Antigone buttered a piece of toast.
“Strange times for you two,” Sterling said. “And for the rest of us. Keep your strength up, and no more fiddling about with monks. Choose your battles while you still can. Soon enough, they’ll be choosing you.”
Sterling leaned onto the table beside them. He lowered his voice. “Big Ben Sterling isn’t having a laugh now. Last night, the vice-cook was killed by an intruder. Greeves found him drowndead in the harbor. He’s spent the morning storming about like the world’s largest wet wasp.” He nodded back at the dining hall. “There are plenty in there that think you’re not worth the trouble.”
He eyed them both. Cyrus stopped chewing. Antigone dropped her toast. “But you are worth it, aren’t you? The kitchen knows you are.” His voice sank even lower. “Hear this, Smithlings: People say old Bones carried a pair of keys on a ring. People are wondering where those keys might be. And they’re thinking, well, Skelton was killed in your motel — God rest his dirty soul. John Horace Lawney caught himself a bullet getting the pair of you here. You two are candles lit for trouble’s moths, and the kitchen knows why.”
He smiled and raised his thick eyebrows above friendly eyes. “Phoenix hasn’t got the keys, nor has that bone-chewing stooge, Maxi. If he did, he wouldn’t care one wormed apple for you two. But you see, I know it’s more than just keys that’s lighting this fire. Before his death, whisper was that Bones was holding a set of triplets — relics rarer than a butcher’s fresh cut.” Reaching up, he tapped the bell on his right ear. “A tidal pearl, I heard.” He tapped his left ear. “Bark of a truth tree.” He leaned all the way forward and his eyes bounced between them. “A Resurrection Stone.”
“What?” Antigone asked. “Are we supposed to know what that is?”
Big Ben Sterling curled back his lips and clicked his jaw. “The Soul Knife. The Reaper’s Blade. Old Draco’s Crown — the Dragon’s Tooth. In the chapel, you’ll find brass plates scratched with the names of the O of B’s dead from each of the World Wars. You’ll find newer plates listing the thousands lost at sea, lost on land, and fallen from the sky just in my own lifetime. Those lists run long and sorrowful, but another plate could hang just as long, etched with the names of those who died questing and feuding for that Dragon’s Tooth.
“Keepers and Explorers have died for it, murdered for it, betrayed for it, sold their souls and been damned to the Burials for it.” He paused. “Billy Bones found it. Or so the little birds began whispering two years back. This world has a nest of secrets, but there can’t be many that Phoenix wants his claw hands on more than that little chip of death. If I were a betting man, and I am, I’d put my vice-cook’s name right on that brass list of dead, just beneath William Skelton’s. And those keys, well, I might have just heard some Keepers whispering about doors being opened in the night that should have been closed.”