Dragon Pearl(47)

I made a beeline to his quarters. The lock on the door—a number pad combined with a fingerprint reader—glowed intimidatingly red. I studied it with narrowed eyes.

First, the easy part. I fished the litmus film out of my pocket. Fortunately, it hadn’t gotten too crumpled. I pressed the central dot on the purple film for three long seconds until it turned transparent to indicate that it was ready. Careful to handle it only by the edges, where it changed to pale red in response to the acidity of my skin, I placed it over the fingerprint reader and pressed it there for just a second.

The reader beeped forbiddingly, and I snatched the film away. I listened for alarms. None went off. I let out my breath in relief.

I’d been counting on this. The locks weren’t so sensitive that they responded to every chance touch. If they did, false alarms would go off every time someone tripped and fell against a door, or tried the wrong door by mistake. I didn’t intend to push my luck, though. The next time I touched the reader, it would have to be for real.

The film had done its job. Several overlapping fingerprints showed up on it in sharp lines of red. I squinted at the whorls and ridges and concentrated on changing the tip of my index finger to match. Then I stopped and cursed my stupidity. If I copied this view, the print would be reversed.

I flipped the transparent film over so I wasn’t looking at the mirror image anymore. Then I gathered Charm again. The good thing was that this wasn’t my real body to begin with, so making small adjustments to it wasn’t hard. I would just have to remember to use this process again to change my fingerprint back to Jang’s.

Now for the hard part, which was figuring out the passcode. I scowled at the keypad. I knew that people often got lazy and used the dates of anniversaries or graduations. Even if Captain Hwan was the lazy type, though, I didn’t know enough about his past history to guess what he might have picked.

Or did I? Come to think of it, he had mentioned that time when his comrade died. In the early 1480s, he had said. It had sounded like he’d respected her greatly. Did I want to gamble on that, though?

Another idea occurred to me. There was a way to check first. . . . I pulled out a second strip of litmus film. The buttons that the captain pressed would have a residue of skin oils. If the film had reacted to the fingerprints on the reader, it would react to the fingerprints on the buttons, too. And I doubted the captain was in the habit of randomly fiddling with any buttons he didn’t need to press. That would help me narrow things down.

The red marks showed me that the captain had pressed four different buttons: 1, 3, 4, and 8. If the number was indeed a year, only one of those combinations would make sense.

I took a deep breath, then pressed my index finger to the reader. It lit up blue, which was a good sign. It had accepted my fingerprint. I exhaled in relief, and then carefully entered the numbers one by one, my hand trembling: 1-4-8-3.

Nothing happened for a beat. I held my breath, hoping an alarm wouldn’t sound. Then the lock snicked open. I’d done it! I darted inside and then nearly whimpered when my body reminded me it wasn’t in the best of shape.

The door closed behind me as the lights flicked on. I looked around, blinking. Captain Hwan’s outer office featured an impressively white carpet—I knew how hard it was to clean stains—and an immense desk bolted to the deck. I hated to think of how much it would hurt if it came loose during maneuvers and slammed into me.

An old-fashioned sword in its sheath hung on the wall, fixed in place by several ornamented brackets. I sniffed the air, then drifted closer to the sword, eyes narrowing. Was that—? I knew that smell. Just as I recognized it, I sneezed, only barely covering my mouth in time. Someone had used fox magic in here, so much that it lingered. My brother.

“Jun?” I whispered in spite of myself, glancing quickly around the room for any sign of him. Nothing. Yet the trace of fox magic was undeniable.

I tracked the smell. It wasn’t strong by any means, given the weeks that had elapsed, and the general cleanliness of the room—just the faintest trace. I doubted anyone else would have been able to detect it.

Jun had touched the sword’s hilt. Despite the oils sunken into the leather, and the captain’s own intimidating musk, which had undertones of fire and metal, I could still pick up Jun’s scent on it.

My alarm grew. What had Jun been doing with the sword? Had he just been fooling around? Or had he threatened the captain with it for some reason? My mouth felt dry. Could Jun have been trying to defend himself . . . ?

Another possibility came to me—something I’d seen in holodramas, during ceremonial moments. Had Jun sworn an oath on the sword? An oath to the captain? But if that were the case, why had Jun deserted? And why would the captain take a cadet into his confidence in the first place?

The captain’s predator smell was everywhere, and it made my skin prickle with nerves. I needed to get a move on. Jun’s scent trail didn’t extend beyond the office, so I guessed that any other clues would be in here. They had to be.

I started with the desk drawers. At first I thought they’d be locked, too, but no. All I had to do was hit the buttons on the latches to make them slide open. Like the bolts holding all the furniture in place, the buttons must have been another precaution, in case everything got tossed around during combat.

I was surprised to discover that the captain kept some old-fashioned paper logbooks. They were nestled in the top drawer, along with some pens. The other drawers contained various personal effects. A faded, fraying handkerchief embroidered with a magpie for good luck. A stained calligraphy brush with splayed bristles, although there were no inkstones. And the most technologically advanced item—a photo frame that was either broken or out of power. I wondered what these things meant to the captain, but I doubted I would be asking him anytime soon.