Deathmaker

  Goroth plucked a notepad off the control panel and scribbled down the information. He had come in prepared, it seemed. Beyond the window, the sun was coming up, and the sea below gleamed beneath its warm rays. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, though a red hue to the horizon made Tolemek suspect a storm might be coming. Too bad it wasn’t there now. Goroth wouldn’t have dared question his only pilot if she had been busy keeping them from being struck by lightning or blown off course.

  “He also has a cabin on a lake,” Cas volunteered. “That’s his, not military quarters. I haven’t been there, though, so I’m not sure exactly how to find it. I think it’s a couple of hours out of the city by horse.”

  “Guess that answers one of my questions,” Goroth told Tolemek.

  Tolemek lifted his brows—he hadn’t gotten anything out of that addendum, except that Cas wasn’t holding back information anymore.

  “Whether or not she’d slept with him,” Goroth explained. “I can’t imagine how someone so young would get onto Wolf Squadron otherwise.”

  He couldn’t imagine another explanation? Hadn’t he seen her shoot? Tolemek glowered.

  “I was actually hoping that would be the case,” Goroth went on. “Then Zirkander would be more attached to her, and she would work even better as bait for a trap. You know how stupid men get when they come to care about women.”

  Tolemek would have had to have been stupid and deaf to miss Goroth’s censure for him in that comment. He folded his arms across his chest and said nothing.

  “No,” Cas sighed. “He never asked. I used to wish he would. A lot.”

  The admission struck Tolemek like a dagger to the heart, and he forgot all about Goroth. For whatever reason—the age difference, maybe, or the fact that she never got dreamy-eyed mentioning the man—Tolemek hadn’t suspected she might have romantic feelings for Zirkander. His head thunked back against the wall. Apparently, instead of asking her if she would pick Iskandian lads with nice hair over him, he should have been asking about infamous pilots.

  “After I got out of flight school and joined the squadron, it didn’t take long to see he thinks of us all like little brothers and sisters.” Her disappointed face... erg, she was twisting the knife and didn’t even know it.

  Goroth was stroking his chin. Doubtlessly mulling over whether a “little sister” would be effective bait for a trap.

  “How did you get selected for the squadron?” Goroth asked.

  “Me? Zirkander picked me. It wasn’t... an obvious choice.” She waved to Tolemek, her face gone wry. “Nobody else wanted me. I thought I’d be lucky to get a job swabbing the hangar deck. I never even would have gotten accepted to flight school, if the colonel hadn’t stepped in on my behalf.”

  “Why?” Tolemek found himself asking, despite his resolution to leave the questioning to Goroth.

  Cas shrugged. “Because of my father. On the official city records, he’s just a bodyguard who specializes in security services—” she rolled her eyes, “—but everyone knows he’s killed some important people, some criminals, yes, but some who weren’t. Anyone in the government who had a problem with his career, or with him... well, they had a tendency to disappear. Apparently people decided it was best to leave him alone and pretend he didn’t exist.” Another shrug. “It wasn’t any secret that he was raising me to follow in his footsteps—good money, he always said, job security. Someone always wants someone else dead. I’m not sure that was always his plan, but after the fire—after my mother was killed by a vengeful relative of someone he’d killed—he wanted to make sure I could take care of myself. It suited me fine as a kid—he spent time with me, in the city and out in the woods, and we practiced hitting any and every kind of target. It was fun. It wasn’t until I was older that I learned it was a little strange to teach a little daughter to use guns instead of to play with dolls. But I didn’t care, not until the targets shifted from bales of hay to living, breathing things.” For the first time in the interview—for the first time since she had consumed the truth serum—her expression grew pained. She looked away from Tolemek and out the window. “I didn’t want to be a sniper after that. Growing up, he’d taught me to distance myself from emotion somewhat, to not dwell that much on the pain and feelings of others, thinking that was a wonderful thing. I suppose it is if you want to kill people for a living. And I have to admit, he did a good enough job that it wasn’t empathy that made the job unacceptable to me. I just didn’t want to do it for money. And I didn’t want to kill people who were targets just because someone had money. If I was going to do it, I wanted it to matter. When the Cofah started coming more often, and our reprieve from the war seemed to be over, I realized I wanted to use my skills to protect people. I wanted to protect our country. What was the point of money if the world was in ruins?” She turned her eyes back on Tolemek, her expression beseeching. Her voice dropped, and she whispered, “I tried to explain my feelings to him, but he said I was being foolish. That if things got too bad, we could leave the country and find another place for our business. He didn’t understand. I ran away from home. I was sixteen at the time. He didn’t come after me; guess he figured I’d be back, or that I would figure out that I didn’t have many other skills to rely upon, so I wouldn’t be able to make it without him and his money and his job contacts.”

  Tolemek found himself listening to the story in fascination as the words flew out of her, in part because he cared—whether she ever would reciprocate that feeling or not—but also because his own father had been such a problematic figure in his life. He thought Goroth might be scoffing or cleaning his fingernails throughout this tale, but he was hard to read at the moment. He was listening and watching her though.

  “In a way, he was right,” Cas said. “I didn’t have a lot of friends—our house was on the outskirts of the city, and I don’t think it ever occurred to him that a child should have peers to play with when growing up—so I really had no one to turn to. Not many friends of the family either, oddly.” Her lip quirked. “I ended up living on the street down near the harbor—it’s not the best area for a girl—and stealing to eat. I saw an army officer walking after dark, wearing a leather cap with goggles up on his forehead and looking lost in his thoughts. I wasn’t dumb enough to try and steal from someone with military training, but some ten-year-old boy was—and got caught. I figured the officer would either knock the wings off the kid’s flier or turn him over to the law. Instead, they ended up in this in-depth conversation about some air battle or another, and the officer and boy were soon using dented cans and other street litter to represent airships and fliers. All this in the middle of one of the worst neighborhoods in the city. I later learned that the man had grown up there and didn’t see it the way others did. At the time, I crept closer, curious about him, and I got caught up in the story of this air battle too. He was a good storyteller. Near the end of it, this pack of street toughs walked up, brothers or cousins or some relation to the boy, and one of them told the officer to give him those fancy goggles and how they would take them if he didn’t. They all had pitted knives and homemade clubs. They figured they were what passed for fierce in that area.”

  Cas glanced at Tolemek’s bracers and Goroth’s breastplate before quirking her lips again and continuing on. “The officer said he’d prefer to keep his goggles, so they’d have to take them if they wanted them. I’m not sure what I was thinking, but I grabbed a fistful of rocks and started pelting those thugs. My aim’s decent.”

  Tolemek grunted, imagining these kids taking rocks in the eyes.

  “They decided they didn’t want to deal with me and the officer, so they ran off. The boy ran off too. The officer—I later learned this was Zirkander, of course—turned around, at which point I caught a glimpse of a gun holstered under his jacket. I felt silly, but he tipped his cap, gave me his name, and thanked me for my help. He also suggested that I ought to sign up for the military. I lied about my age and did so the next day. Under an abbreviated version of my fa
ther’s name. I served two years, and nobody figured out who I was—and my father never bothered me, though he must have known where I was—until someone recommended I take the officer candidacy exams and apply to flight school so I could take my marksmanship skills into the air. At that point, there were background checks. I arranged to cross Zirkander’s path again, explained my situation and that I didn’t want anything to do with the family business, and that I’d be a good officer. He remembered me—I wasn’t sure if he would—and vouched for me. Four years later, when I graduated, I heard that my father had made a threat or two, and that nobody wanted me assigned to his unit. I guess he hadn’t minded when I was soldiering and studying—he probably still thought I’d end up working with him and that the military training couldn’t hurt—but he thought only fools volunteered to throw themselves into the sky. And it’s true that there aren’t a lot of pilots who live long enough to retire, not when we’ve been a target for the Cofah for as long as anyone can remember.” She gave Tolemek a dirty look. He wondered why Goroth didn’t receive a similar look, but she had been telling most of this story to Tolemek with only a few glances to the side. “Anyway, in the end, the colonel was the one who took me. I have no idea what kind of conversations he may or may not have had with my father over the last year and a half, but he’s definitely not someone to back down to bullies. Or superior officers he doesn’t respect, either.” She grinned. “I don’t think my father would go after him, anyway. That’s one assassination the government wouldn’t look the other way for. There are a lot of people who would avenge his death.” Her grin disappeared, and she glared at Tolemek and Goroth again.

  Goroth didn’t appear fazed by this threat. In fact, he leaned back in his chair and smiled at Tolemek. “You know what this means, don’t you?”

  “What?”

  Goroth jerked a thumb at Cas. “She’s better than some lay. The little sister whose career Zirkander has shaped. He’ll risk his life to protect her. I’ll bet my left arm on it.”

  Little sister. Tolemek had never spoken of his own little sister to anyone in the Roaming Curse; Goroth couldn’t know what such words—such a relationship—meant to him.

  “Then that is good for your plans,” Tolemek said softly.

  “For our plans. Don’t worry, I’ll let you question him about the sword and the witch before I kill him.”

  “Good.”

  If the bluntness of Goroth’s words bothered Cas, she didn’t show it. Still under the serum’s influence, she would still be feeling mellow and amenable—what glares and glowers she had given them hadn’t been heartfelt, not like her usual expressions of scathing loathing. No, she was busy gazing out the window. And dreaming about unrequited love?

  Tolemek left the navigation room. He had much to think about.

  * * *

  Cas woke from a nap, still sitting in the pilot’s chair. The dirigible moved with the elegance and swiftness of a turtle, so she doubted she had missed anything, but she checked all the gauges and took a reading nonetheless. A stolid guard leaned against the wall by the door. For some reason, she had expected Tolemek there, and she paused in her check, trying to reconcile fuzzy thoughts. She had dreamed that she was telling the story of her life—and of meeting Zirkander—to him and his captain. But it had only been a dream, hadn’t it? She wouldn’t share her past with those two, especially not Captain Slaughter.

  Then her gaze swept across the empty chair beside her... and the plate full of crumbs sitting in it.

  “It wasn’t a dream,” she whispered, something between horror and terror snarling into a knot in her stomach. What had she told them? About meeting Zirkander, yes. More? Anything about the unit, their strategies? Her thoughts were so fuzzy. Tolemek’s truth drug, that’s what it had been. Had he been the one to put it in her food? She hadn’t thought bread and meat could be tainted so, and the captain had eaten from that plate, too, letting her select a sandwich first. Had he doused all of the food, not caring if he ended up telling some truth? Probably. That bastard. Seven gods, she’d given them the colonel’s address, hadn’t she? She scraped through her thoughts, trying to remember what else she had given Slaughter. And Tolemek. He had stood right there and watched the captain interrogate her. Even though she knew they had been captor and prisoner from the beginning, and their goals were at odds with each other, she couldn’t help but feel betrayed. Why had he treated her decently, with respect, all along when he was just going to step aside and allow something like this to happen?

  “You’re to keep on course for the Iskandian capital,” her guard said.

  “Yeah, yeah.” Cas glanced down her form. As suspected, no pistols graced her waist, nor was she carrying so much as a knife on her belt. She slid her hand across the control panel, mulling over what sabotage she might manage from here, sabotage that she might walk away from and which they wouldn’t.

  Or...

  Was it her duty to make sure they didn’t reach the harbor and threaten Zirkander, even if it meant her own life? By crashing the dirigible into the ocean? The captain was up to something that went beyond whatever he planned for the colonel. Would it end with the loss of his life? Those people who had stowed away and jumped them, she didn’t think they had been there for her. Slaughter had suggested as much himself. She needed to find out what they had been trying to stop, then find a way to escape her captors and get to the colonel first. Or she had to crash the dirigible and make sure none of these pirates ever made it to her homeland. And she only had... she glanced at the chronometer and her location calculators. She had lost the entire morning to that truth serum idiocy. It was an hour past noon, and she had less than six hours until they reached Iskandia. This time of year, it should be dark by then. She eyed controls for landing lights. She might be able to flash out a message, using the Korason Alphabet. Assuming someone was paying attention. If she landed at the military air base, they would be, but freighters came in farther up the harbor, over the civilian docking area.

  Flashing a message in the sky wouldn’t be enough to guarantee the captain’s plan failed. A crash. That could be enough. Even if she didn’t walk away from it. Wasn’t she on borrowed time anyway? Hadn’t she almost died three weeks ago? Maybe it was meant to be.

  The door opened, and Tolemek walked inside.

  Cas gave him a single icy glare, then avoided looking at him. His face was unreadable, regardless. He probably didn’t care about her feelings toward him.

  “Take a break, Orfictus,” Tolemek told the guard. “Grab some lunch. I’ll keep an eye on her.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The guard walked out, and Tolemek kicked the door shut. He moved the plate, sat in the other seat, and faced Cas. She continued to study the controls, though they weren’t all that engaging. Piloting a dirigible took considerably less skill and concentration than handling a flier.

  “I doubt you’re of a mind to accept it,” Tolemek said, “but I would like to offer an apology.”

  He was right. She wasn’t of a mind to accept it. And she wasn’t of a mind to acknowledge his presence, either.

  “Goroth doctored your food without my knowledge. When I realized what had happened... I shouldn’t have stayed and had anything to do with the questioning, but I wanted to stay to make sure he didn’t go too far.”

  Cas gave him a scathing look. Making her betray her commander, that wasn’t going too far? Or having her make a fool of herself by talking about silly infatuations? What was? She didn’t ask. She didn’t want to hear anything he had to say right now. She refocused on the instrument panel.

  “Listen, Cas, please.” Tolemek leaned his elbows on his thighs, interlaced his fingers, and gazed intently at her. “I need your help.”

  She glanced at him, despite her determination not to. That wasn’t what she had expected him to say. “After you let your captain drug me and question me, you want my help?”

  “I believe you might want a chance to get him back, and I can use that.”

&
nbsp; “How?”

  Tolemek held up a small vial, his tidy writing on the label: Truth Serum. It was empty.

  “That’s what was used on me?” Cas asked.

  “It’s another vial. The contents are in the wine he’s drinking right now.”

  Cas kept her face neutral, kept herself from smiling or doing anything that would reveal the hope in her breast. Maybe this was just some new trick. Either way, it didn’t mean he was thinking of coming over to her side. It just meant... what? That he wanted some information.

  “I expect he’ll be back up here after he has his lunch. I want you to question him about something for me. You’ll have about a one-hour window while he’s under the influence of the serum.”

  “Question him about what?” Cas asked. “And why can’t you do it?”

  “I’ve questioned him about this before. He’ll be wary of talking about this subject with me, to the point where he might be able to guard the truth, even under the influence of the serum.”

  “You think he’ll tell the truth to me? Why?”

  “Your opinion doesn’t matter to him. And because,” — Tolemek looked hard into her eyes, as if he could read her thoughts through them, “—according to you, he already told you he betrayed me once.”

  “Oh.” Cas hadn’t been sure he had heard those words or, in hearing them, hadn’t dismissed them immediately. She couldn’t read him at all at the moment. Was this to be some test? To see if she had been lying? Trying to turn him against the captain? She licked her lips, nervous even though she hadn’t been lying. But she had been hoping he might choose her over his commanding officer of countless years. “So you want me to ask what that betrayal was?”

  “Yes.”

  He kept staring into her eyes. It made her feel like squirming, but she didn’t look away. She was the honorable person here, not his conniving captain.

  “Anything else?” she asked when several seconds had whispered past.