The Language of the Dragon Read online

Hank cut him off with an aggrieved sigh. “I thought I could count on you not to mess up the job by falling in love. Just because the person hiding the notes happens to be a pretty girl…”

  “She’s not! I mean, I’m not! It’s, it’s just…”

  “Not pretty?”

  “No,” Michael said. She wasn’t. Big mouth, firm chin, straight dark brows; not exactly a recipe for beauty. Except when she was scribbling that defiant note to Osborne, and then she’d been – not pretty, no, but something: brown eyes snapping with amber fire, and all that reddish-brown hair bursting loose to frame her face, and… And that had nothing to do with the problem.

  “If I could just explain to her why you want the information so badly…” he tried again.

  “You can’t, because she wouldn’t believe it.”

  “No – I can’t because you haven’t told me!”

  “Well, you wouldn’t believe it either.”

  “I need to know more,” Michael said firmly. “What you’ve told me so far doesn’t account for what’s been happening.”

  “You’d be amazed,” Hank said, “what lengths people in academia will go to just to get one step ahead of their competition. You know what they say about conflicts in that world: they’re so bitter because the stakes are so small.”

  “You are not in that world,” Michael pointed out. “Or are you thinking that being the discoverer of a hitherto undocumented language will turn you into a respected scholar? I don’t think so. Not when you won’t be able to explain where you got the notes on that language. You can’t publish.”

  Hank sighed. “No. Believe you me, I do not want to publish those notes. That would be the worst possible outcome. Michael… you can’t quit, okay? Not yet. Give me a few days to work something out. But for now, you’re the only person in a position to keep Ed Osborne out of the loop. Trust me, it would be a calamity for him to get his mitts on them.”

  “Although you won’t tell me why.”

  “Just stay there. Watch what happens. And protect…”

  “Protect the girl from him?”

  “Oh, yes, yes, of course. And protect the data.”

  It was an unsatisfactory note on which to end the conversation, but the women indoors were getting up. The lights in Laura’s front room went off and Sienna came out and sank into the glider on the porch.

  ***

  Laura hadn’t been any more help straightening out my feelings than she had been the last time we talked. To begin with, she was still adamant that I was imagining the strange events around the language in the notebook.

  “It’s happened two times now,” I insisted. “That first time, I used a sentence meaning that my clients were happy; they made an offer on the property they were looking at; and I got a migraine.”

  “Both of which,” Laura scoffed, “are such highly unusual events. Sienna, you’re a realtor; if you don’t expect your clients ever to make an offer, then aren’t you in the wrong business?”

  “You’d be surprised,” I said darkly. “Far too often that expectation is the triumph of hope over experience. This was a very good offer, and one that five minutes earlier Bruce Sutherland had been resisting.”

  Laura shrugged. “Haven’t we been over that? His wife wanted the place, and you probably overcame his resistance with one of your charm offensives. You can be charming, Sienna, you know that.”

  “Not,” I said, reflecting on other recent events, “with men I’m interested in.”

  “No,” Laura agreed, “you tend to freeze them out. I’ve been wondering when that would change. So you’re reciprocating this guy Michael’s interest? Is that what’s spooked you?”

  “No! I mean, I’m not – and anyway, he’s not – and – oh, I need to tell you about the other thing. We went to Red’s this afternoon, and the same thing happened.”

  “What, he made an offer on one of your listings?”

  “Don’t give me a hard time, you know that’s not what I meant. I used that language again – I wasn’t doing so well at the range, I’m out of practice and he was teasing me about it. I used a sentence that meant something like, ‘The projectile is thrown accurately,’ and I got a perfect grouping at the center of the target, and my head started hurting.”

  Laura giggled. “So you lost your temper, forgot to be nervous, and your aim improved. And you got a headache while you were hanging out at a place full of loud noises and smelling like gunpowder. Oh, yes – clear evidence of witchcraft! You’re lucky nobody tried to duck you in a stock tank! Sienna, it’s perfectly clear what’s really going on with you, and it’s nothing supernatural.”

  “It isn’t?” At that point I would have been happy with any alternative explanation.

  “Not in the least. You, my girl, have a bad case of Michael Ryan.”

  Make that almost any alternative.

  “What? I do not! He’s the most annoying man I’ve ever met!”

  “I guess that’s one way of describing his effect on you,” Laura said with a sly grin. “What’s so terrible about admitting it? He’s cute, personable—”

  “He’s a man of mystery. I don’t know why he finagled his way into renting my spare room or what he’s really doing here.”

  “Uh-huh. That adds to his charm, doesn’t it? Handsome mystery man who’s obviously crazy about you. Maybe just once, Sienna, you could allow yourself to go for it without dotting all the i’s and crossing all the t’s?”

  “I did that once. It was the worst mistake of my life.”

  “No, you let somebody else push you into doubting your own judgment. Very different.”

  I didn’t want to go over the squalid details of that long-past episode. “Well, he’s pushy too. Michael is.” I told her about his comments when we’d been watching Gaslight the day before.

  “It sounds to me,” said the provoking woman, “as though he’s been a perfect gentleman and you’re letting yourself be spooked by your own feelings.”

  “You,” I told her, “are a hopeless romantic.”

  “I’m a sleepy romantic,” Laura said with a yawn. “Paco’s band closed down the White Horse last night, I spent half the day working up some new material because they want us back next weekend, and now I’ve had to deal with a home invasion, a car chase, a wannabe gangbanger and the course of true love.”

  I was sympathetic right up to that last crack. “Fine, I’ll let you sleep in peace.” And I stomped off to sit on the front porch glider and rock myself into a semblance of calm before trying to go to sleep. I didn’t realize until I had started pushing myself back and forth with one foot that Michael was sitting on the floor in the shadowy far corner of the porch, knees drawn up, back propped against the massive corner pillar. It would be entirely too much trouble to jump up and flounce off for the second time in just ninety seconds, so I kept pushing the glider and hoped he’d have the tact to ignore the regular creaking noise.

  I should have known better, of course. “Tact” was a word that didn’t belong in the same sentence as “Michael Ryan.”

  “How’s the headache?” he asked just as I was beginning to think we could quietly ignore one another.

  “Huh? Oh. Better. Fine, actually.” It had come and gone so quickly that it wasn’t quite real to me. Strange. My migraines used to be rare, but they hung around for hours. Flash migraines, switching on and off like an electric light, were a new and unsettling development. The possibility of some kind of brain tumor did cross my mind, but it wasn’t worth the trouble of worrying about, was it? Besides, my brain was working perfectly fine. I thought. Okay, there’d been a few minutes earlier, at the sports bar, when I’d had some trouble concentrating enough to follow the conversation, but that was just the usual brain fuzz that accompanied a bad headache. I thought.

  “I suppose, though, crazy people think they’re sane and it’s the ones around them who have the problem.” I didn’t realize until it was too late that I’d voiced the thought.

  “Hey,” Michael said, sounding
pained, “I haven’t actually called you crazy since the night we met.”

  “Does that mean you’ve been thinking it, and want credit for your verbal self-restraint?”

  He sighed. “How about it means just what I said? Sienna, do you always take what people say apart and analyze it syllable by syllable?”

  “It’s what linguists do. And don’t you have anything to think about but my life?”

  “At the moment,” he said, “I am slightly underemployed.”

  I rocked back and forth in the glider, considering that statement. Given how much free time he seemed to have to hang around the house, drag me to shooting ranges, and so forth… “‘Slightly’ might be an understatement. Do you have any kind of a job?”

  “Worried about whether I’m good for the rent?”

  “We landladies do tend to focus on those unimportant details.” Given the amount of cash he’d forked over to Aunt Georgia for the privilege of moving in immediately, his income or lack of one hadn’t even crossed my mind. “But no, I was just wondering why you don’t come and go at regular hours like a normal person.”

  “Like you? Or Laura?”

  “Point taken. Laura’s a singer, she can’t be expected to keep normal hours. I’m self-employed as a realtor and language tutor, same thing. What’s your excuse?”

  “I’m… self-employed… too,” he said. He didn’t sound all that happy about it.

  I waited through half a dozen more swings of the glider. The cicadas that had stopped when I came out onto the porch resumed their regular chirring. The combination could have been a postmodern musical composition: Creaks and Buzzes for Insects and Lawn Furniture. The soft, humid night air brushed my cheek with each movement. It also frizzed up my hair, but thinking about that didn’t help me achieve calmness.

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “And what do you do?” I snapped. “For heaven’s sake, isn’t that what everybody asks everybody else when they first meet socially?”

  “I suppose so,” he said. “Rather a pity, isn’t it? We don’t have families or churches or other associations any more; the workplace becomes our identity.”

  I hadn’t exactly signed on for a sophomoric BS discussion. “Well, it’s better than nothing.”

  “Yeah… It used to be enough for me. In my former job.”

  “Which was?” I was surprised his ability to avoid specifics hadn’t re-started my headache. He was certainly aggravating enough.

  He shifted position, stretching one leg out in front of him. “I was in the military. Special Forces.”

  Wow, two whole sentences out of the Man of Mystery. “You were?”

  “What, that’s so surprising?”

  “You just didn’t seem like a military type.”

  “Too flexible, too creative?”

  “Too irritating. And if you’re so used to the army, how come you turned white when I pointed a gun at you?”

  He chuckled, a low sound blending in with the buzzing of the cicadas. “I knew what a .38 can do to the human body, and I didn’t know whether you were scared enough to pull the trigger without provocation. Since I left the Service I haven’t generally had to worry about crazed civilians randomly shooting me.”

  “That wouldn’t have been random,” I defended myself, “it would have been a perfectly reasonable response to an intruder in my bathroom. Were you this argumentative in the army?”

  “That was mentioned occasionally by my superior officers. I served for eight years, but the consensus of opinion was that my attitude was not consistent with a long-term career in the armed forces.”

  “I can see how the other officers might have felt that way.”

  “Oh, I wasn’t an officer, I worked for a living. NCO.”

  For him, I guessed, that was the equivalent of a detailed resumé. But I felt I could stand to hear a few more details.

  “Where did you serve?”

  “Our AO – area of operations – was officially Africa, but we spent a lot of time in Afghanistan… I learned plenty, but not the sort of skills that automatically transfer to an interesting civilian job.”

  “So what was next? Private security?”

  “I actually wanted to get out of the shooting-people line of work altogether. Unfortunately, there aren’t a lot of nice peaceful civilian jobs just crying out for someone who can field-strip a Barrett M107 blindfolded or take a head shot at 1200 yards.”

  I had no idea what the first qualification even meant, but it sounded impressive. Probably not a big hit in the business world, though. “I know what that’s like… sort of. I mean, not the specifics, but I managed to graduate with a whole lot of skills that it turns out aren’t highly in demand. At least not in America, where people will go to any length to avoid foreign languages. I read German, French, Spanish, Russian and Italian; I know enough Arabic to bargain for a Berber rug in Marrakesh and I can make polite conversation in Farsi.” I had just enough sense to stop there. The man didn’t want to know even that much about my linguistic abilities; he certainly wouldn’t be interested in a list of all the other bits and pieces of languages that had rubbed off on me over the years. There were a lot of them; I’m not good at small talk, so if I’m in the same room with somebody who speaks a language I don’t know I get them to teach me a few words. You wouldn’t believe how many ways I can count to ten.

  “You’re better off than I am,” Michael grumbled, “at least your random skills don’t involve killing people.”

  “Funny, I was just thinking the opposite. I mean, nobody’s invited me to tea in Tehran or flown me to Morocco to go shopping, and I’m not holding my breath waiting for that to happen. Whereas sometimes people want other people killed, and I’m told they’re willing to pay quite a lot for the service.”

  “Yeah, well, apart from wanting to get out of that line of work, it’s immoral and illegal. I don’t see myself building a career as a hit man, Sienna.”

  I was unwilling to concede in this particular game of Life Failure. “I’m sure there are other skills you developed in the army that could be useful in civilian life.”

  “Oh, sure. I’m just having trouble thinking of any Special Forces experience that applies to my current life issues.” He gave me an intense stare suggesting that I was among those issues. “After all, it’s not like I can hold a gun on you to get a goodnight kiss.”

  I gasped. His stare intensified. “Would anything less work?”

  It wasn’t that much trouble to get up and go inside, after all.

  Getting to sleep was a different story, though.

  11. Real estate agents and danger

  The final program in this year’s Continuing Education requirement was a seminar on “Real Estate Agents and Danger.” After my recent experiences, the title spoke to me. I showed up with a clean yellow pad, two fresh pens, and a positive attitude, prepared to take notes. And it was a good thing, because there were only seven attendees besides Carly, Davis and me. I would have to look attentive; no handy crowd to hide behind this time. Sadly, most of the speakers covered very old, familiar ground, and none of them addressed such hot topics as people breaking into your house to steal an ex-tenant’s possessions, being injured by the backlash from using magic to influence clients, or having once-respected scholars trying to hire someone from a drug cartel to steal your papers.

  The fact that Dr. Osborne had failed ludicrously in that last attempt didn’t make him innocent in my eyes, just incompetent. And I didn’t feel at all sure that I could count on the continued incompetence of someone who’d achieved both tenure and the Hedin Chair in Central Asian Linguistics before he was forty. Dr. Osborne had been swimming in the piranha-infested waters of faculty politics since before I knew the difference between a cognate and a loan-word, and I didn’t kid myself: in that environment, I was a minnow and he was a shark. When he got his bearings, I would be lunch. Okay, the metaphor may not be totally biologically coherent, but you get the idea.

 
He might be searching the house at this very moment. I hadn’t exactly found the most ingenious hiding place for Koshan’s notebook before dashing off to make it to this seminar on time. Well, too late to worry about that now. On the bright side, if he did get into the house and found the notebook, he would presumably stop harassing me.

  To keep my mind from wandering while the speakers went over the tried and true, I promised myself that I would write down any safety tips that I hadn’t already internalized.

  “Ask a lot of questions and listen to the answers.”

  “Ask for ID.”

  “Don’t meet clients at the office if you’re going to be the only one there.”

  Aunt Georgia had paid for us to listen to these nuggets of received wisdom? This wasn’t going to work. Maybe I should scribble down a one-sentence summary of every tip without evaluating it.

  “Call 911 if you feel yourself in danger; don’t be shy.” Shy, ha! The only reason I hadn’t called 911 when I thought Michael Ryan was a burglar was because that darned face-recognition app on my phone hadn’t recognized me. True, Laura had pointed out later that most cell phones let you call 911 even if you weren’t logged in, but who thinks about things like that when you’re terrified?

  After the way we’d parted last night, thinking about Michael and how scared I’d been was like rubbing a sore spot to verify that yes, you did have a nasty bruise there. Concentrate, Sienna!

  “Don’t wear expensive jewelry to work.” Not a problem for me. I slid a covert glance over at Carly, but she was turning her wrist and admiring her designer wristwatch in the light. So, not a problem for her either, in a different sense: she wasn’t likely to give up wearing that status symbol just because somebody might want to steal it from her. Carly might not be my favorite person, but she was tough. I wondered how she would deal with something like Koshan’s explosive notebook.

  “Act confident and strong, don’t give the impression of being a victim.” Carly had that one covered too. As for Davis, all he needed to do was flex a few of his impressive muscles. What about me, did I come across like a potential victim? I shook my head. I might not look like a professional athlete, but I stood 5’9” in flats and I wasn’t exactly fragile.