Page 40 of Shadows of Perl

Thankfully, Francis only blinks, not seeming to notice. “Sal finally picked someone.” He holds on, still shaking my hand, drinking in every inch of me. I can’t help but notice that his frayed long-sleeved shirt and threadbare pants do not conceal his concerningly spare frame. Fading tattoos cover the backs of his hands. There’s a simple kitchen: no mirrors, decorative tile, or painted walls. In true Ambrosian style, it is as gray as the floor and ceiling. The most colorful part of the house is the mantel lined with urns, each with their own style of markings. Beside it is a kneeler for praying.

Francis drags over a stool and an overturned pail. As I sit on the stool, my foot unsettles crushed plants wreathed around a blanket on the floor. After his career, why would he choose to spend his life alone, here, like this? He offers Yani his bed as a seat.

“I’ll stand,” she says.

“To what do I owe the pleasure of a visit from Headquarters?” He smiles, but there is only weariness in his expression. His pallid skin barely holds on to his bones.

“Wait, wait.” Francis rushes to the kitchen to hastily fill a few cups with water, and another with yellow liquid from a separate pitcher. He returns with a tray. “Forgive me. I haven’t seen another person in more years than you would believe.”

“By choice,” I say, perplexed by this legendary Dragun I’ve read, studied, so much about, for years.

“Still so green.” He offers us the tray of drinks. I take the glass to be polite but run a finger along my jawline. Charlie and Yani catch it, lowering their cups. Never can be too careful.

“We’re here about sun tracking,” I say.

Francis’s smile fades. “I thought Headquarters had questions about my work on the Sphere. My tracking days are done.”

I try to not let my surprise show. Francis’s reputation precedes him. I check my notes a third time. Son of a war vet. His family was very poor before the war, and worse after. Magic was his ticket to a new life. They immigrated to the States and rose swiftly in the ranks of Ambrose. He was recruited by the Dragunhead before he finished Third Rite. He discovered House of Duncan’s illicit toushana practices and single-handedly brought the House down, exposing the truth: that Headmistress Duncan was trying to use toushana to mine gold. He is a legend. Sun tracking extraordinaire. There is no note about him ever working on the Sphere.

“What sort of work?”

“My great-great-papa and his men designed the Sphere’s casing. Natural talent for certain types of magic tends to run in a bloodline. So the Dragunhead brought me in once or twice to locate it.” He shakes his head. “Never again.”

I slide to the end of my seat.

“The Sphere has grown dark, Francis.”

Francis furrows his brow. “Dark how?”

“The matter inside is blackened and the casing has cracked.”

He shoots up from his seat. “Impossible.”

“You think we’d be here if we were lying?” Yani scoffs, rubbing the handle of her dagger. Charlie watches.

“Come back with us. You have to help save it.”

“Save it? You don’t want to be anywhere near that thing if it bleeds out.” He straightens an urn on his mantel. “Papa and his whole team died to make that Sphere. Creating a casing to hold the magic of so many took a precise balance of hardness, density, and elasticity. The freshest minerals, the proper number and type of bones, barrels of blood stored at a precise temperature for a set number of days during a certain phase of the moon.” His gaze darts between us, then away. “They had to use strong magic to break these ingredients down.”

“They used toushana.”

He nods.

Yani and Charlie share a glance.

I suspected that from the color the Sphere’s taken. “But how?”

“They drew on the shadows, all at once, and shut their collective proper magic inside the Sphere. But toushana touched the ingredients, you see, infecting them. So dark magic ended up inside the Sphere, too. All is fine when the matter is clear. The proper magic is balanced.”

“But that’s all changed.”

“Think about it. All that magic has been held inside the Sphere, churning, refining its concentrated power, for hundreds of years. It’s blackened now. The toushana is winning. The Sphere cannot break. It will wreak havoc on not just the Headmistresses but the world as we know it.” He grabs my wrist tightly. “Whatever you do, green boy, the matter inside the orb must be contained.”

“Come with us. Let’s track it down. The Dragunhead has plans to fortify it.”

He gets up and paces. “That I can’t do. I’m sorry.”

“I don’t understand,” I say roughly. “The situation is dire and you know how to help, but you’re going to turn your back? What would your papa think of you?”

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