The lock released and Sicarius withdrew his tools. The heavy even breathing continued, so he eased the door open. Some starlight filtered in through the bedroom window, enough to pick out a single form under the blankets on one side of a bed large enough for two. The covers were rumpled on the empty side.
Amaranthe padded over for a look. “Sauda,” she whispered.
Somewhere outside of the house a door banged open. Sicarius and Amaranthe were running out of time to explore without the compound being aware of them.
“I will restrain her,” Sicarius whispered. “Get the vault combination from her.”
“Vault combination?”
“Yes.”
Sicarius pulled the woman out of bed, clasping a hand to her mouth and pressing his dagger to her throat. She struggled for a startled moment, then her mind awakened to the presence of the cold blade.
“Amazing you can sleep so peacefully,” Amaranthe said, “when you believe people are drowning in the next building over.”
Sauda said nothing, though that might have been a growl.
“What’s the combination to your vault?”
Surprise stiffened the woman’s limbs. “My what?”
“The vault at the end of the hall behind the painting,” Sicarius explained.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Sauda twisted around as much as Sicarius’s grip would allow. “Where’s Serp? What did you do with him?”
So, the vice president was here as well. Good.
“Give us the vault combination and we’ll tell you,” Amaranthe said.
“I don’t know anything about a vault. I’m just a guest here.”
Possibly true. Just because she was sleeping with the vice president didn’t mean she knew all his secrets.
Amaranthe walked over to a desk and lit a lamp. “Does he work here?” she asked and rummaged through drawers.
“I don’t know,” Sauda mumbled. “Let me go, and I’ll find him so he can answer your questions.”
“I don’t think so.” Amaranthe opened a book stuck in the bottom drawer and let the pages dangle downward. She fanned them, and a slip of paper fluttered out. “This has three symbols on it. Did the vault have numbers or something like this?” She walked to Sicarius and held up the paper.
“Symbols.” Sicarius hadn’t been able to see out there, but had run his fingers across the etchings around the lock wheel.
Another door banged outside and someone shouted from the direction of the mill.
“What?” came a response from the bunkhouse.
“I said, they’re gone!”
A dog barked in the yard, and the others soon took up the chorus.
“You’re about to be captured,” Sauda said, “but I can help you escape. Keep me alive, and I’ll tell you a secret way out of here.”
“I don’t believe we’re ready to go,” Amaranthe said. “Got any rope left in that pack?”
“Yes,” Sicarius said.
He pushed his prisoner toward Amaranthe. Sauda opened her mouth to scream, but Amaranthe caught her, clamping her mouth shut before a single syllable escaped. Sicarius pulled out twine to tie the woman, then cut a gag from the bedspread. They left her trussed in a corner.
“Let’s see if these symbols do anything.” Amaranthe grabbed the lamp.
The dogs were still barking, and footsteps sounded from other rooms in the house—sleepy people climbing out of bed to check on the commotion. Though aware of the need to hurry, Sicarius studied the slip of paper before rushing for the door. Some of the symbols were similar to Turgonian letters. Others he had never seen, and a couple had a vague familiarness.
He pointed to one. “That’s etched in stone at Pyramid Park. Near the altar.”
“Kriskrusian?”
“Perhaps.”
Sicarius opened the door, but waited before sticking his head out. Yellow lantern light swayed and wobbled farther down the hall—someone leaving a bedroom and heading for the front of the house. He waited until the illumination disappeared before slipping out and opening the secret door again. Amaranthe held up their lantern so he could see the symbols clearly. There were more he recognized from the pyramid.
He turned the wheel in the standard left-right-left manner of opening a safe, though he didn’t know if Turgonian standards would apply.
The front door to the house slammed open. “Lord and Lady Edgecrest?” a man called. “Vice President? Are you here? The prisoners escaped.”
“We’re going to have to go out a window if that doesn’t open,” Amaranthe whispered. “We might want to go out a window anyway. Getting locked in a vault... Judging by Ms. Sarevic’s story, that doesn’t make for an enjoyable day. Or week.”
The vault lock clicked. Sicarius pulled on the wheel. The thick door was heavy, but it swung open.
“Wake up Sauda and Serp,” someone called.
Boots hammered the stairs.
Amaranthe snuffed the lantern. “Sicarius...”
He stepped through the vault door and tugged her in after him. He pulled the vault door shut from within—a rope attached to the inside allowed for this, but the hinges groaned and the ponderous door wouldn’t be snapped shut quickly.
Gunshots fired. Metal rang out as a bullet clanged against the outside. Finally the door thudded shut, the lock engaging. A couple more pistols fired, but the thick metal muffled the bangs. The bullets made faint pings striking the door, hardly anything to be concerned about. Of course, there were other concerns to ponder. Sicarius slid his fingers across the cool metal of the door. Aside from the rope handle, it was smooth. If there was a way to open the door from this side, it wasn’t apparent.
“Sicarius,” Amaranthe said slowly, “did you just lock us into a room with no way out?”
“Given the temperature, moisture in the air, and musty smell, I believe it’s an underground complex.”
“Fine. Did you just lock us into an underground complex with no way out?”
“Unknown.”
“It’s not that I’m judging you,” Amaranthe said, “it’s just that I’m usually the one who does such rash and impulsive things, not you.”
“Serpitivich went this way.”
“Meaning, he’ll know a way out?”
“Meaning, he’s the one behind the attacks on Starcrest. I will kill him.”
Sicarius thought Amaranthe might object to his bluntness—or rather his intent to kill the man—but all she said was, “After he tells us how to get out, I hope.”
• • • • •
The submarine tilted, scraped on the warehouse floor, then swung in the air like a pendulum. Maldynado decided it would be unheroic to get seasick before the craft touched the water. Another soft scrape sounded as it bumped down on the rails. Someone must have already shoved open the back doors of the warehouse—they weren’t quite as charred and as the front, but the plant had smashed many holes into them—for the craft immediately started moving. A series of muffled booms penetrated the hull—soldiers hurling blasting sticks into the lake around the warehouse, trying to clear an entry path.
Maldynado sat on the cold metal floor, his back against the bulkhead, his fingers tapping a nervous rhythm on his thigh as he wondered what in all the lands in all the world he had been thinking. Even before Starcrest and Tikaya had gotten all teary and clingy, he’d known the odds were in favor of this being a one-way trip. Some genius scientist from a race a billion times more advanced than humans had made that plant. To think they could defeat it with a submarine and a couple of diving suits was hubris. Madness. Insanity.
Sespian settled down beside him, his legs scrunched in. This was the only spot to stay out of the way as Starcrest and the engineer jogged back and forth from navigation to the bulging miasma of machinery that comprised the new engine room.
“I know why I’m here,” Sespian said. “Why are you here?”
“The president and his daughter have the seats up front, and the sleeping cabin is full of
metal thingies... weapons, I guess. And crates. And fuel cans.”
Sespian snorted softly. “I mean why did you volunteer for this? Amaranthe usually talks you into risking your life, doesn’t she? It’s not something you typically sign up for of your own accord.”
Maldynado twitched a shoulder. “I don’t know. It was an impulse.”
Sespian studied him, not believing a word of that, Maldynado could tell.
“Fine, it was Evrial.”
“You want to prove something to her?”
“No, I already did that in staking out your building site and fighting the saboteurs. At least that’s what I was trying to do. She wasn’t... I don’t know. I’m pretty sure she’s leaving me to go back to her town and her family, and some stupid career opportunity. I mean, it’s not stupid. It’s just... I think she was using it as an excuse. She didn’t really want...” Me, Maldynado thought, but couldn’t say it out loud. He had already admitted more than he intended to.
“Ah.”
Thankfully, Sespian didn’t probe further or point out how funny it was that Maldynado, the man who had no trouble getting women to sleep with him, couldn’t convince one to stay with him for more than three months.
“Why are you here?” Maldynado asked, not wanting to linger on his own mess.
“Hm?”
“You said you knew why you were here.”
Mahliki jogged past carrying a clipboard and a plant specimen in a jar. She jangled as she moved, glass vials clinking inside her vest. Sespian’s gaze followed her, and Maldynado had the answer to his question before Sespian responded.
“Never mind,” he said.
Sespian blushed. “I wasn’t planning to, but then when she joined the team... it seemed cowardly not to volunteer when a girl had.”
Hah, liar. That wasn’t the real reason. But maybe Sespian hadn’t figured out his feelings yet. Maldynado wondered if they would survive so he could throw his dinner party. While he had been waiting in the shadows at that construction site, he had decided on a caterer and a drum group, the latter to ensure some lively dancing at the end. Dancing that would inspire all those shy couples to thump some body parts together. Something he would gladly do, too, if Yara would come. Would she even be in the city by then?
“So the building is continuing on schedule?” Sespian asked. “I haven’t been by since... I don’t even know what day it is. Or when I slept last.”
Maldynado yawned. “I know the feeling. This has been the longest night ever. I still don’t know who the lead saboteur is, but at least that crotchety foreman won’t have any fresh trouble in the morning.”
“Good. Thank you. I feel as if I should have been out there with you. Starcrest asked for my help, but I don’t know how imperative a part of the team I was. Though—” Sespian brightened, “—I do believe I kept Mahliki from having her eyebrows torched off.”
“A noble act.”
“Of course, if she hadn’t been following me to that lorry, they might not have been in danger of being sizzled...” Sespian prodded thoughtfully at the light brown stubble fuzzing his jaw.
“Nah, I’m sure that girl would have thrown herself into danger one way or another tonight. It was good you were there to look out for her.”
Mahliki jogged back past them again, this time heading to navigation. She glanced at Maldynado, and he wondered if she had heard his comment. If so, she didn’t attempt to deny the statement. Maybe she was too busy to bother.
The hull lurched under them, and a faint splash sounded. Maldynado planted his palms on the deck, bracing himself—or maybe his stomach.
“We’re in.” Sespian pointed toward the oval viewing window above the navigation controls.
Maldynado couldn’t see much from the deck, but he wasn’t sure how much he wanted to see. A line of water stretched across the display with the night air visible above and black water below. The horizon was blocked by dark sinewy shapes rising in the distance. The blasting sticks might have cleared an area, but he had no idea how they would get out into the lake and to open water. Maybe they didn’t need to. Nobody had yet briefed him on the plan, beyond the possible need for diving suits. And bodies to go into them.
Sespian pulled out the black dagger and a rag for cleaning it.
“You better do that after we finish fighting,” Maldynado said. “And before Sicarius sees all those crusty plant bits plastered to the blade.”
“This is the president’s knife.”
“There are two?”
“Apparently they got them at the same time.”
“Huh.” Maldynado scratched his chin. “I didn’t know they had a connection from the past.”
“Twenty years in the past, when a young Sicarius was sent to make sure Admiral Starcrest obeyed the emperor’s orders in some ancient and very deadly tunnels.”
“Huh,” Maldynado repeated, his mind boggling at the idea of a young Sicarius still working for the emperor. He’d had the warmth and personality of a block of ice when Maldynado first met him; it was hard to imagine an even more humorless version. “Well, I doubt Starcrest would want his knife returned with plant crusties sticking to it, either.”
“That is likely.”
“We’re lucky he even chose us to come along.” On second thought, Maldynado didn’t know if lucky was the right word, but he went on, nonetheless. “Sure, we’ve been in the suits before, but I’m surprised he didn’t think his soldiers would be more... reliable.”
“You mean more likely to obey him without arguing?”
“Not exactly. He doesn’t seem to think highly of me. At least that’s the impression I get. But maybe he’s changing his mind. I have been helpful of late.” Though Maldynado didn’t know if anyone had briefed the president on that helpfulness yet. Had he heard about the saved building? Admittedly, it was a low priority, but surely the president would appreciate having a new residence to move his family and offices into once the rest of this mess was cleared up...
“Hm,” Sespian said.
Maldynado squinted at him. “You have something else on your mind?”
“It may be my imagination, but he seemed to be studying everyone who volunteered, eying them from head to toe. I’m wondering if we were just the two people who looked like we would fit in the diving suits his men had loaded into the submarine.”
Maldynado snorted. “You’re a pessimist, aren’t you?”
“Maybe so. I have my reasons to be one.”
Maldynado supposed having Sicarius for a papa would sour his outlook on life too.
Sespian put away the dagger and pushed to his feet. “They’ve stopped running back and forth so much. I’m going to take a look at where we’re going.”
Maldynado didn’t know if he wanted to know where they were going, but he had never enjoyed having only his own company for entertainment. He trudged into the navigation chamber after Sespian, though he wondered if they would be kicked out. There wasn’t much room up there. Starcrest and Mahliki sat in the two seats, their hands resting on the controls. Maldynado had only been in the submarine once, for a very brief ride across the lake, so he wasn’t sure how anything worked, but Starcrest had the more complicated control panel. A number of gauges on the side held his attention for the moment. Maybe he was worried about whether his modifications would work. Nothing had been tested.
“Light,” Starcrest said.
Mahliki flipped a switch. Some exterior lamp brightened, shining a cone of yellow ahead of the nose of the craft. Green foliage and vines stretched all along the lake bottom below them, leaving only a few spots where the sand and pebbles were visible. Stubble poked a few inches out of the earth, but many of the small vines had been shorn off. Courtesy of the blasting sticks, Maldynado guessed. The vines would probably grow back within the hour.
“We’re still at the surface?” Sespian asked. Occasionally a wave came, and the water line dropped below the top of the viewing port.
“Yes,” Starcrest said. “We can’t be
frivolous with our oxygen with this new system. We’ll stay on the surface until we reach the original spot in the harbor.”
“Why the harbor? Aren’t there roots we can attack anywhere?”
“That’s where it started,” Mahliki said, “and that’s where all the rhizomes branch out from. Based on my experiments earlier today, they conduct electricity. Not the plant itself, mind you, but the rhizomes. Father’s weapons are predicated on that.” Her voice dropped to a mutter when she added, “So I sure hope my experiments were right.”
“So if we apply electricity to the core roots, it might carry to more distant plants?” Sespian asked.
“That’s the hope.”
“What’s a rhizome?” Maldynado whispered to Sespian.
Mahliki answered in a distracted tone, as something outside had caught her attention. “A continuously growing diageotropic subterranean stem that sends out adventitious roots and lateral shoots from its nodes. Though I’m not sure I’d consider anything this plant does adventitious. We’re reaching the end of the area the soldiers cleared with blasting sticks, Father.”
“I see it.”
“As I always used to tell Books, the definition of a word shouldn’t require the definitions of three other words,” Maldynado said, making his whisper lower this time so Mahliki wouldn’t hear it.
“Three other words?” Sespian asked. “I was only stumped by one of them.”
“Books would have liked you.”
“I barely got a chance to know him. I wish...” Sespian shrugged.
“Me too. I just hope they don’t expect me to do more than shoot at a target out there. Or cut at it. Or whatever we’ll be doing in those suits.”
“If we’re lucky, we’ll be able to cut through to the roots without leaving the Explorer,” Starcrest said.
“Are you going to test the weapons?” Mahliki pointed out the viewing port. They had run out of stubble, and thick vines stretched from the shallows, more than one shifting toward them.
“The electrification of the hull,” Starcrest said. “We have to cut a path at some point.”
“You don’t think we should test the weapon too?”