She was on the verge of explaining how the plant could wrap its vines around anything—or anyone—quite quickly in its bid to grow up into the sunlight, but Sespian lifted his head first, his face fixed in an expression between repugnance and horror. A tendril from under the dock had fastened to his arm, wrapping twice about his wrist. The tip wavered toward his sleeve, as if it meant to slither into his shirt and take over his body.
“I see what you mean,” Sespian said. “I don’t suppose I could use your knife? Now that nobody has any good reason to assassinate me, I’ve been wandering the city armed with little more than pencils and sketch pads.”
“Of course.” Mahliki slid a hand into her collection kit and pulled out a scalpel with a sharper blade than her utility knife. “I have all manner of tools and weapons. My father wouldn’t let me out of the hotel if I didn’t carry something sharp and pointy. He’s not particularly trusting of young men, at least when it comes to his daughters.”
Sespian tried to wedge the tip of the scalpel under the tendril, but it tightened before their eyes. His hand grew a few shades darker than the rest of his arm.
“Not that pencils can’t be turned into weapons,” Mahliki said, edging closer and thinking of taking a pencil to the vine herself. “Stab a boy in the eye a few times, and he’ll stop trying to touch your backside. Or, uhm, other parts.” She knelt beside Sespian—the tip of that vine had grown an inch as she had been watching; she was sure of it.
“I’ll keep that advice in mind, should groping boys ever accost my nether regions.” Sespian gave up on delicately removing the vine from his wrist and hacked at a lower section instead. The scalpel cut through the finger-thick tendril, but it did take several tries. Sespian’s face remained calm, though he did tear the vine free and fling it to the deck with feeling. “I ought to forgo steel in my design for the president’s residence and have the walls constructed from that stuff.”
“That would be a unique look. In the meantime...” Mahliki nudged the severed vine toward him. “Would you mind drawing that?”
Sespian’s lip curled. “It’s still twitching.”
“Yes, from my prior observations, I believe that’ll eventually start growing a new plant.”
“How... practical.” He looked up and down the waterfront, at the number of docks and boats being violated by the vines. Then his gaze drifted inland. “Is it strictly a water plant? Or can it grow out of plain dirt? Or... cobblestones?”
“I’m not sure yet. Thus far, it’s keeping its roots under the water.” Mahliki pulled out a ball of thick twine and made a lasso. “I should have a bud to dissect in a moment. That’ll give you more interesting material to draw. Assuming those are buds and not pods or some such. I haven’t seen a flower yet. Or cone. Or spore.”
“I look forward to it.” Sespian started to sit on the deck, but peered through the boards, at more tendrils wavering below, and decided to stand and draw with his pad laid in the crook of his arm. The snipped piece of vine kept wriggling about, so he used a sturdy pen to stab it, pinning it to the nearest piling. “If you still need those roots, I do recall Amaranthe and her men finding diving suits somewhere in the city. One of the naval vessels might even have some with... tools built in.”
Mahliki had a feeling “weapons” was the first word that came to his mind, not tools. Maybe he had changed it out of concern that she would think Turgonians all warmongers. If so, that meant what she thought mattered to him. Oh, that was progress. She smiled cheerfully, refusing to believe she might have read too much into his slight pause. “These suits would allow us to go down there, properly insulated against the cold and armed against groping plants, so we could collect root samples?”
Sespian looked up from his drawing. “We?”
“You did volunteer to dive into the frigid water for me. This should be an improvement, no?”
“I, ah... Hm. If Amaranthe hadn’t been out of town for the last couple of months, I’d suspect you’d been spending time with her.”
Mahliki didn’t know whether that was a compliment or not. Did he prefer timid girls to those who... took the initiative? Or maybe he felt she was wheedling to persuade him into doing something unappealing? No man liked a wheedling woman, she supposed.
“You don’t have to come.” She tossed her lasso, trying to land the loop around the vine holding the bud. It stretched up higher than their heads. She bumped it, but the twine fell into the water. “I just thought you might be as fascinated by this plant as I am, now that you’ve bonded with it.” As she reeled her lasso back in, she nodded at the cut vine hanging from the piling.
“Bonded, huh?” Sespian rubbed a patch of hives that had arisen around his wrist. An allergic reaction? Drat. He would be even less interested in studying it further.
“It seemed to like you anyway.” Mahliki tossed the lasso again, this time succeeding in looping it around the top of the vine. “I’ll find a diving suit on my own and go down. This is my project.”
Sespian’s attention had turned to the fire brigade approach the waterfront in a couple of steam lorries, both towing cylindrical tanks behind them. The sides read KEROSENE in large letters alongside stamps of danger, some textual and some pictorial. Only in Turgonia would an image of a man with flames spouting from his clothes be considered an appropriate way to warn someone away from a flammable liquid. The firemen started unloading blowlamps. If she had been keeping track as well as she thought, this represented Serious Attempt Number Three at destroying the invasive plant.
“No,” Sespian sighed. “I think this is going to be everyone’s project. I’ll go with you to collect the samples, if you can wait until after tomorrow when I turn in my contest entry. It’s doubtful that someone with so little experience and no formal training in architecture will have a chance, but... what a way to be remembered, by leaving a building that can stand for centuries hence. If nothing else, it could help my career.”
Mahliki had reeled in her bud and was concentrating on sawing it from its vine, but she spared an amused thought for a man who’d been emperor worrying about being remembered. True, it had been a short reign, but he had been the last emperor, so surely he wouldn’t be forgotten.
The vine drooped down and touched her shoulder. She flinched and flung it away. It was like some creature’s live tentacle rather than a plant’s appendage. “I’m sure you have a good chance at the contest, though my understanding is that Mother will be judging the entries without looking at the names of the architects. She’s fond of fairness.”
“Good. That’s how it should be.”
“Ugh, it’s like these things are made from rubber.” Mahliki finally sawed the bud free, but not without cutting her own hand in the process. It was as if the vine had known what she intended and kept getting in the way on purpose.
“Yes,” Sespian said. “I can’t help but think it was sent here to trouble our fledging republic.”
“I’ve had that thought too.”
“In the old days, people just tried to assassinate the fellow in charge. Or drug him.” Sespian grimaced.
“That happened to you?” Mahliki knelt on the dock and prodded at the bud with her scalpel, trying to find a seam or weak spot.
“Drugging, manipulation, attempted assassinations. I’m relieved to be nobody special anymore.”
“Truly?” Mahliki looked into his eyes. Though the Kyattese didn’t have a government that ran on bloodlines, she was fortunate enough to have been born into a family with land and money, so that she never had to worry about feeding herself or having clothing to wear—or books to read. It would be difficult to give up even that much privilege, much less power over an entire nation.
“Truly,” Sespian said, meeting her eyes.
His were brown with golden flecks, warm and friendly. Nothing in their conversation should have made her blush, but Mahliki suddenly felt the need to return her attention to her work. “Even though being nobody special means that you don’t have the power to deleg
ate underwater specimen collection to someone else?”
He smiled. “Even so.”
“The day after tomorrow will be fine. I’ll have to figure out how to get some of those suits.”
Sespian tilted his head. “Can’t you ask your father for a favor? He can delegate things to other people now.”
“He’s so busy, it’s hard to find him. You’d be shocked if you heard about half of the uprisings he’s put down, squabbles he’s had to mediate, and—I’m not supposed to know about this, so don’t say anything—assassination attempts he’s dodged. Well, I guess you’re perhaps the one person who wouldn’t be shocked, but it’s been difficult for the family to digest. Favors. I’m not sure Mother is even getting favors, right now.”
“Ah.” Sespian tapped his sketchpad. “I’m ready for the next subject.”
“Yes, one moment.” Mahliki gave up on finding a tidy way to slice the bud open and hacked it in half. She peeled back the exterior and frowned at the dark green rounded cube inside. “That doesn’t look like any pistil I’ve ever seen. How odd.” She was debating whether to try and slice it open to see if it housed reproductive organs, but the cube opened of its own accord, the top peeling back, and something black bulging from within. She froze, torn between wanting to see what happened and wanting to back away in case it was something unpleasant. “That’s...”
The bulging thing—it vaguely reminded her of someone’s tonsil—pulsed twice, and—
Sespian grabbed her shoulder, and yanked her away as a fine black mist sprang into the air. Her butt bounced across several planks before he hefted her to her feet, pulling her back against him. From several feet away, Mahliki watched the mist spread, then dissipate.
“I apologize,” Sespian said, though he didn’t yet release her. “I thought that looked... ominous.”
Mahliki thought about joking that she didn’t mind a handsome man wrapping her in his arms, but couldn’t bring herself to flirt so brazenly with him. She had a feeling he would give her a shocked look if she tried. Besides, they had more important matters to deal with.
“Perfectly fine,” she said. “I thought it looked ominous, too, but I had to see what happened. Scientific curiosity, you understand.”
“Hm, do your people have any phrases about curiosity and cats?”
Your people? She almost told him that she was half Turgonian, but supposed she couldn’t lay much claim to the nationality when she’d never set foot on the continent until this past winter. “Yes, but it’s about monkeys and shiny objects in logs. We... uh. What is happening to that wood?”
Before their eyes, the dock faded, cracked, and splintered. The boards sagged and warped.
“I don’t know,” Sespian said, “but it’s only happening to the five feet around that bud.”
“Where the spores landed,” Mahliki agreed. “Or whatever they were.”
One of the boards snapped in half and fell through to the water below. Others grew thinner and frailer, as if they were aging a hundred years in a matter of seconds.
Mahliki wriggled free from Sespian’s grip and darted back to the bud.
“What are you doing?” he blurted.
She stabbed her specimen with her dagger and turned, intending to sprint back before the weakened boards gave way. One collapsed beneath her heel, and her foot plunged through. She yanked it free, but another one groaned beneath her other leg. She flung herself to the dock to spread out her weight and crawled back to Sespian. He had dropped his sketchpad and had been about to lunge out after her. She was glad he hadn’t; their combined weight would have sent them both plunging into the icy water.
“Getting my specimen,” Mahliki answered his question. She opened her jacket to peek at the vials, bottles, and fine tools she kept strapped to the lining, but none of the collection cases was big enough. She dug into her satchel and pulled out a glass box. She stuffed her half dissected bud into it, grabbed a sturdy lid, and fastened it as if speed counted for everything. Maybe it did. “You don’t mind drawing it through the glass, do you?”
“No,” Sespian said. “Not at all.”
In the handful of seconds since she had been back with him, the dock had continued to deteriorate. Disintegrate, almost. By the time it finally collapsed, only splinters remained to float on the water below. Mahliki shuddered, thinking about what might have happened to her if she had been caught by those spores.
“I think this may be important enough to warrant a favor from Father after all,” she said lightly, though she would have preferred to stand in Sespian’s arms again. She would have to find a way to thank him for using his quick reflexes to pull her to safety.
“I’d say so. We’d better warn the enforcers and the fire brigade too. If they blasted one of those buds with a gout of flame...”
“It could be ugly, yes.” Mahliki peered down at her specimen. The tonsil had stopped pulsing, but it was still the strangest thing she had seen in her years studying biology. “What are you?” she whispered to it.
She didn’t receive a response.
• • • • •
After checking the office, the library, the conference room, and all the other places people liked to waylay Rias, Tikaya headed to the basement of the old hotel. The four-story, three-hundred-year-old Emperor’s Bulwark had been converted to presidential use in the aftermath of the election, the mostly destroyed Imperial Barracks being deemed inappropriate housing for a nation’s new leader. Considering all the tents, huts, branches, and bare ground Rias had slept in and on during his life, he probably wouldn’t have been bothered by living in a room with one wall missing and shrapnel and soot adorning the rest. Tikaya appreciated the comforts of the hotel, even if it had been donated by one of the remaining leaders of the disbanded business coalition responsible for so much of the trouble in the capital of late. The donation had been less about charity and more about ingratiating oneself to the new president. That seemed to be everyone’s agenda when interacting with Rias.
In contrast with the crisp evening air outside, the basement had the humidity of a greenhouse. Pipes knocked and hissed, and raucous laughs and cheers came from down a hallway marked Gentlemen’s Gymnasium. Tikaya had been in the smaller Women’s Gymnasium a few times, though she hadn’t found many women in it to exercise—or socialize—with. Even in this reformed Turgonian government, the majority of posts were filled by stodgy military men, with the exception of the treasury and economics branches, where more women had run for office. Rias had rejected her suggestion that he take on a female vice president, choosing instead the man who had been the runner up in the election. Dasal Serpitivich was pleasant enough, and Tikaya understood making choices to appease the populace, but thought Rias had missed an opportunity to initiate real change.
“Incremental changes, love,” he had said. “We’re already bending the blades of brittle old swords.”
Tikaya walked down the dim hallway toward the laughs. Doors to either side had labels such as Steam, Heat, and Structure Manipulation, leaving one to wonder if the rooms were for bath-related activities or for repairing one’s steam carriage.
A door opened, emitting a cloud of vapor and a man with a towel draped over his shoulder and nothing else. He turned toward her, but halted with an ungainly stumble.
“My lady,” he blurted, sweeping the towel down to cover himself. “This is the men’s gymnasium.”
“Yes, I know. I’m looking for a man. My husband, specifically. Have you seen him?” The man—a military intelligence officer she vaguely remembered as a chief of somebody’s affairs... Kendorian, maybe—shrugged. “Yes. No. I mean, you’re not supposed to be in here, my lady.”
“Half of the public baths in the city are mixed gender,” Tikaya pointed out.
“Yes, but not the lodges.”
Ah, she had scrambled up into his girls-not-allowed tree fort. Too bad. “My husband? Is he here, or not?”
The man stepped aside and pointed toward the end of the hall. “I believ
e he’s meeting with the heads of our department in the Rings.”
“Thank you.”
Tikaya strode down the hall, passing a few other nude men, some who appeared scandalized by her presence, some who smirked and bowed, and others who merely gave her the same polite, professional, “Evening, my lady” that they would when fully dressed and passing in the halls upstairs.
The laughs, she soon learned, were coming from the Rings portion of the basement. Here, the space hadn’t been divided into smaller rooms. The entire end of the building lay open, the cement walls bare with exposed pipes running along the ceiling. A handful of circles of various sizes had been painted on the floor, and a bunch of men, some in exercise togs and others in nothing, were gathered around the closest one. The sound of flesh smacking against flesh rang out more than once, and a bevy of jeers and catcalls erupted from the onlookers.
Tikaya had no more than started toward the ring when spectators leaped aside so a familiar bare-chested man could skid out of the boundaries on his back, a wince on his face.
She stopped at the gray-haired head and peered down. “Good evening, love.”
President Sashka Federias Starcrest blinked a few times before focusing on her. “Why, good evening. Do you... need me?” From flat on his back, he gazed about at the manly decor, such as it was, as if he couldn’t believe there might be another reason she would have stepped foot down here.
“Is it my imagination, or do you sound hopeful that I do?” Tikaya asked.
“Yes. This meeting is proving painful. In more ways than one.” Rias propped himself up on his elbows and stared at the person who had sent him flying.
“You told me not to hold back,” the man said. He, too, was bare-chested, though only a few flecks of gray marked his short black hair. His battered nose had been broken at least twice, and a thick, knotted scar occupied the hollow where his left eye should have been. Apparently the compromised vision didn’t affect his boxing prowess overmuch.