Conspiracy

  Wondering if the others were right and she was crazy, Amaranthe picked her way toward Sicarius. Every time she leaped from snow-slick roof to snow-slick roof she risked a fall. Sicarius had to hear her coming, but he didn’t look back. The train started up a slope and slowed down, so the wind wasn’t battering her so fiercely by the time she sat down beside him, though the cold snow chilled her backside.

  “Fair evening,” she said, the first thing that entered her head. Maybe she should have rehearsed.

  Sicarius acknowledged her with an impassive look, nothing more. He wasn’t wearing anything thicker than his usual trousers and long-sleeved shirt, and she recalled that he hadn’t been carrying any gear beyond his weapons when he leaped into the train. Killing up to the last minute, she supposed.

  “Aren’t you cold?” Amaranthe asked.

  “No.”

  She touched the back of his bare hand, concerned he might be neglecting his health and risking frostbite, but his skin was warm beneath her own already-chilled fingers. “How is that possible?”

  “In their natural habitat, mammals become cold-adapted in the winter, burning summer’s fat stores to efficiently heat the body. When humans clothe themselves in parkas and sleep in artificially warm environments, they fail to achieve this adaptation and do not thrive in the cold.”

  “So... what you’re saying is that you have no physiological need to cuddle.”

  That comment earned her another impassive look. Maybe someday she’d learn to stop joking with him. He didn’t seem to appreciate it, and trying to make him smile seemed destined to remain a fruitless endeavor anyway. Besides, his cool look reminded her that, murdered men not withstanding, he had a reason to be irked with her too.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Sespian’s... bump,” Amaranthe said. “I didn’t think your knowing could change anything, and I figured you’d worry for no reason.” Though he didn’t pin her with one of those soul-piercing stares, she felt compelled to add, “And I was worried you’d do something... rash if you found out. Which, as it turns out, you did.” She tried to keep her tone light, but a hint of censure crept into it anyway.

  “Those who are dead will not trouble us further. Those who I could not reach will be afraid to leave the security of their homes. Men who live in fear rush when patience is called for, and they question their decisions at every turn. They falter and make mistakes.”

  Nothing in his tone suggested he would apologize for his action or admit he might have made a mistake himself. Amaranthe wondered if they would ever see eye-to-eye on questions of humanity.

  “Now that you’ve taken the action you meant to take, can I have Books’s journal back?” she asked. “He’s not happy that you... Well, he wasn’t done with his research, and I want to give it back to him.”

  Though he continued to face forward, a hardness came to Sicarius’s eyes, and she half-expected him to refuse or say he wasn’t done with it, but he reached into a pocket and handed it to her.

  “Thank you.”

  Amaranthe flipped through the pages, and a chill that had nothing to do with the snow crept through her when she saw the neat, precise check marks penciled next to many of the names. Pencil. Something so sinister and cold ought to be drawn in blood.

  She tucked the notebook into an inside pocket on her parka. “Do you still intend to join us in the train infiltration?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  Business concluded, his silence seemed to say. Amaranthe ought to leave him be, but she found herself reluctant to do so. Even if he’d been forged into a blade from his earliest years, he’d been born a human being. Deep down, he must have the same emotions and needs that everyone else was born with. Knowing someone cared and wanted to offer him comfort would have to matter. Wouldn’t it?

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to bring you a blanket? I’ve been sleeping in a pile with the boys to stay warm, so I don’t need mine.”

  “No.”

  “I’m sorry about the implant,” Amaranthe repeated. “Sespian must know about it and have some plan to deal with it. Maybe this request of his is part of that plan. I’ve only ever talked to him when he was under the influence of that drug, but he seemed bright even then.”

  Silence.

  “He’d have to be smart, right?” Amaranthe said, thinking he might feel the situation was less hopeless if she could remind him that Sespian had the wherewithal to help himself. “You’re no dull blade, and I never heard anything to suggest Princess Marathi was either.”

  Sicarius continued to stare straight ahead.

  “I’m sure we’ll get him, and it’ll all work out in the end.” When Amaranthe’s comments elicited nothing but silence, she admitted defeat and placed her hands in the snow, ready to push herself to her feet.

  “I know what you’re trying to do,” Sicarius said.

  Amaranthe froze. She’d only wanted to help, but his words sounded like an accusation.

  “Oh?” she asked carefully.

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  He was still gazing straight ahead, and she almost missed his soft words: “I appreciate it.”

  Amaranthe blinked. Three words shouldn’t mean so much, but a lump swelled in her throat nonetheless. Not trusting her voice, she gave him a hug made awkward by their seated positions and the moving train, then released him and returned to the others.

  * * * * *

  Akstyr ducked behind a stump and flattened his hands over his ears. Books knelt beside him, watching a flame dance up a long fuse attached to a cord of blasting sticks nestled at the base of the rockslide. At the last moment, he, too, ducked his head and covered his ears.

  Even in the open, with nothing but a field of stumps to reflect echoes, the boom was deafening. Boulders bigger than Maldynado flew into the sky, and rock shards slammed down, battering the earth like a hailstorm. More than one chunk hammered Akstyr in the back, and he tried to tuck himself into a tiny ball.

  A long moment passed, and something tapped him on the shoulders. Books.

  Akstyr lifted his head. A dust cloud filled the air, and a moment passed before he could make out the results of the explosion. So many rocks littered the stump-filled hillside that it looked like a quarry had vomited. However, a dark tunnel opening waited in the hillside where only boulders had smothered the slope before. Though rubble half-buried the entrance, Akstyr and Books ought to be able to wriggle inside.

  “Huh,” Akstyr said.

  “You needn’t sound so surprised.” Books dusted off his clothing and headed for the mineshaft.

  “I didn’t know professors knew how to do useful things. Like setting explosives.”

  Books gave him a withering scowl. “You don’t believe some of my ecumenical knowledge might be useful in determining where to place blasting sticks to achieve the desired result?”

  Akstyr climbed over one of the rocks in the entrance. “I guess.”

  Before following him in, Books stopped to light a lantern.

  “I can make light, you know,” Akstyr said.

  “I should not wish to rely on you. If you were hit on the head by a falling rock, where would that leave me?”

  “Carrying me out?” Akstyr grinned.

  Books didn’t. His scowl hadn’t entirely disappeared either. There were too many stodgy oldsters in the group. Akstyr always felt like they were judging him.

  Books looked back toward the stump field where they’d landed the dirigible. “I hope nobody was around to hear that explosion. I shouldn’t like to return to find our borrowed conveyance had been stolen.”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t stand around all day and talk then, eh?” Akstyr had already crawled over several meters of rock, and he willed one of his globes of light into existence.

  “A valid point.” Rubble shifted as Books clambered after him, the lantern banging and clanking as he went.

  The dust continued to harass Akstyr’s nose, and he sneezed repeatedly. I
t disturbed his concentration and his light winked out several times. Some brilliant Science practitioner he was.

  “I hope nothing’s left down here to hear our clamor,” Books said.

  “I’m sure anything down here would have starved by now.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of living beings.”

  “Oh.” Akstyr remembered the battle he and the others had fought against all those mechanical constructs. Yes, there might be booby traps and Made creations yet about. “I’m not sure if any of those things we fought last spring had ears.”

  “Comforting.”

  The dust faded and the debris on the ground dwindled until they could walk on the wooden ties of the old mine cart tracks. An intersection waited up ahead, and Akstyr increased his pace. He hadn’t had a chance to see the shaman’s laboratory, and the idea of exploring it now filled him with anticipation. While Books was looking for those implants, maybe he could find some small artifacts to take with him and study. Or more books. He’d never had a chance to learn anything about Mangdorian magic.

  “The cart’s been moved,” Books said, and Akstyr paused before reaching the intersection.

  “What?”

  “Remember that cart that rolled up to us as we were leaving? It was here.”

  Yes, that cart carrying the message had been creepy. “Maybe the soldiers moved it.”

  Books grunted dubiously. “Amaranthe said the workshop is to the left there.”

  Akstyr walked into the intersection and into a puddle. With his mind, he nudged his light ball higher and farther out. The tunnel straight ahead sloped downward and disappeared into water.

  “Nobody around to fix the pump,” Books said.

  “It doesn’t look like the laboratory will be affected.” Akstyr headed left, swinging his glowing sphere back around the corner to light the way, and he almost stepped onto a skeleton. A human skeleton. Startled, he let his concentration slip and the light winked out again.

  Books, holding his lantern aloft, joined him. Tiny teeth marks marred the bones, and only scraps of gray fabric remained. In the shadows ahead, Akstyr could make out the white skull of another skeleton.

  “It seems the soldiers attempted to explore before blowing up the entrance,” Books said.

  “Seems.” Senses stretched outward, Akstyr stepped over the skeletons and headed deeper into the dark passage.

  Books knelt to take a closer look at the skeleton, maybe trying to figure out what had killed them. Or what had eaten them. Akstyr just wanted to get to the workshop, though he was careful to probe every inch of the way, searching for the residual tingle of an area touched by a Maker.

  He reached an open wooden door, and stepped over two more skeletons to enter a long, rectangular chamber with a ceiling and walls chiseled from the rock. Workbench after workbench ran down the length of one long wall, while cabinets and machines occupied the opposite one. Disassembled equipment and tools scattered the surfaces, and more than a few metallic heads, hooks, and articulating arms appeared to be from the sorts of constructs that had attacked Akstyr and the others the spring before. The team had been eager to leave the mines after being mauled so thoroughly, so he had never seen the workshop before, and he couldn’t tell if anything had been touched. He wanted to explore everything, but the skeletons on the floor were disconcerting. But they’d been Science-ignorant soldiers. He ought to be able to detect traps before he triggered them.

  It was hard to focus on the idea of hunting for traps. Residual energy plucked at his senses from all sides, begging him to investigate. He’d love to take back souvenirs to study. In particular, a half-orb set into the body of a knee-height brass spider drew his eye—it pulsed a soft purple, creating an interesting play of light and shadow on the walls and equipment in a far corner.

  “Don’t play with anything,” Books stood in the doorway, the ex-pilot’s pistol loaded and in his hands.

  Akstyr sniffed. “Practitioners do not play. They study, they ponder, they—oh! Is that a mind foci artifact?” He veered toward a fist-sized golden ball with a lustrous shell.

  “Shiny,” Books said dryly. “Can you look for the implants, please? I’m assuming that whatever killed these soldiers could still be a threat.”

  Akstyr pocketed the ball to study at a later date. “We’re not even sure those devices are here, are we?”

  “If they’re not, this trip was a waste of—”

  A clank sounded in the tunnel behind Books. He jumped inside, spinning in the air to land with his pistol up, poised to fire. The wooden door slammed shut in front of him, smacking the pistol and nearly tearing it from his hands. Gears ground behind one of the stone walls, followed by a soft click. An armoire near the door emitted an ominous hissing sound.

  “—life,” Books finished bleakly.

  “Uhm,” Akstyr said. It wasn’t his most brilliant utterance.

  Books tried the door, but it seemed to have locked itself. It was the only exit from the workshop.

  Books strode to the armoire and pointed to pink gas flowing out of a vent near the top. “Can you stop that? I’m guessing it doesn’t promote haleness and longevity.”

  Akstyr joined him, crinkling his nose as a scent like mildew and fungus wafted toward him. Books had already pulled his shirt over his nose. Akstyr doubted that would be effective. Instead, he concentrated on the idea of a filter, something that formed over his nose and mouth, a tight mesh weave that allowed air through but blocked out larger particles. Though it never grew visible to the naked eye, he thought he was successful in creating it. He sniffed experimentally and no longer detected the mushroom odor.

  Good for him, but that probably didn’t help Books. If he passed out, Akstyr would have to fly the dirigible himself. He paused, intrigued by the off-hand thought. If he could figure out how to fly it, maybe it’d be his chance to leave the empire forever.

  Though the idea tickled his mind for a few seconds, he told himself that Books would die, not pass out, if the skeletons were any indication, and, anyway, leaving the team in a lurch would be pretty despicable. It was surprising to realize that mattered to him, because there had been a time when it wouldn’t have. None of the people he’d grown up with would have thought twice about ditching him for a chance to steal a dirigible.

  “Well?” Books asked.

  “I made a filter for myself, but let me see if I can make the gas stop,” Akstyr said.

  Concentrating on two things at once was an intense challenge, one Akstyr hadn’t mastered yet, but by keeping the picture of the filter in his mind, and imagining his thoughts probing outward through it, he managed to sense of the armoire’s otherworldly properties. Or he would have if it had any. Surprisingly, he didn’t feel anything. What he did sense was a complex mechanical miasma behind the doors, a maze of levers, gears, and pipes that he couldn’t guess how to work.

  “I think it’s just a machine,” Akstyr said.

  “Meaning there aren’t any booby traps?” Books reached toward one of the cabinet knobs.

  “Meaning the booby traps aren’t magical.”

  Books’s hand froze. “Ah.”

  “Maybe your great knowledge of science and history would be useful here.”

  “Perhaps so. Why don’t you find those implants?”

  Books started coughing, and Akstyr hustled away. He poked through boxes and cabinets, alarmed by how many were locked. It’d stink donkey butts if what the emperor needed to save his life was in the room, but they couldn’t get at it.

  Akstyr pulled a small wooden box out from beneath a bench. Intricately carved with a pattern of vines and leaves, it looked like something that would hold jewelry or other tiny, precious items.

  Books coughed again, phlegmy coughs this time, like those of someone suffering from consumption. He was standing in the corner by the door, head bent, hands in front of him. Akstyr couldn’t tell if he was doing something or not.

  “You need some picklocks to open that door?” he asked.

&nbs
p; “I don’t believe... that’ll be necessary... no.”

  “You have another way out?” Akstyr opened the box and found himself staring at dozens of tiny brass and silver spheres, each one less than a centimeter in diameter. The different colored metals created a patchwork pattern on the surfaces that reminded him of tiger stripes.

  “Yes. Did you find something?” Books had joined him. His shoulders drooped, his eyes were red and bleary, and he looked like he was about to drop to the floor.

  “Maybe. What do you think about these?”

  Books bent over the box. “They’re the right size,” he said between coughs. “I don’t suppose... there are... directions or a... schematic... so we can... ascertain their function.”

  “Maybe you should use shorter sentences when you’re coughing like that.”

  Books poked a finger into box, touching a couple of the balls. Several of the “tiger stripes” sprang away from the surfaces, unfurling tiny needle-sharp hooks. At the same time as Books yanked his finger back, Akstyr slammed the lid shut. A patter of thunks sounded beneath the wood.

  “I’m thinking their function is something eerie scary,” Akstyr said.

  Books gaped at his finger, though it didn’t appear to be bleeding.

  Akstyr fastened the clasp on the lid and turned over the box to examine it more closely. Free of etchings or paint, the wooden bottom was unremarkable, except for...

  He nudged it sideways. A panel slid open, revealing a shallow cubby holding a folded piece of paper. Not paper, parchment. Like people used in the old days. “This might be your schematic.” Akstyr unfolded it to find two hand-drawn depictions of the sphere, one showing the innards and one the outside. Foreign words scrawled all about the margins. “You’ll have to translate this for me.”

  Books was leaning against the workbench, bracing himself with both hands. “We better get out of here,” he rasped, then scrutinized Akstyr. “Aren’t you... feeling the effects?”

  “No, my filter is working.”

  Books grumbled something uncomplimentary under his breath, then handed Akstyr the lantern. “You pick the locks, then.”