“Airships that have a long history of dropping bombs on our people.”
“Our?”
It was a simple question, but she didn’t respond right away. “Do I not look Iskandian?”
“It’s not what you look like that’s the issue. You feel...” Tolemek stopped himself before he could reveal information he should keep to himself. She would be warier if she knew he knew what she was. Better to have her think he was just a big dumb pirate.
“Interesting,” she said and studied him from head to toe.
Too late. He had hinted at too much. Was she even now reading his thoughts? The sorcerers of old had been able to do that, but would some modern version be as strong? The histories said all of the major lines had been wiped out and that there were none left with substantial power, or even the faculty to teach. Unless one could find a soulblade.
But if she wasn’t that strong, how had she defeated a jungle shaman? Those people, on their isolated and distant continent, had survived the purge of three centuries past, and were rumored to have power that nearly matched that of the old Iskandian sorcerers.
“Ridge was your original reason for coming, you say,” Sardelle said. “What is your current reason for being here?”
Tolemek faced a wood stove in the corner of the room, as if he were deep in thought, though he only wanted his back to hide the fact that he was reaching into his bag. “Mostly... Cas. Lieutenant Ahn.” He bypassed one of his leather spheres—that would affect him as well as her, not to mention starting a fight if it didn’t work—and grasped a vial of his truth serum. He had no idea how he might convince her to drink it—did Iskandian sorceresses enjoy inviting Cofah pirates for wine?—but it seemed a far more viable way to get the answers he wanted than holding a knife to her throat. “We escaped from a Cofah prison together. I’ve come to care about her. I wanted to make sure she made it home safely.”
“A feat that could have been accomplished by leaving her at the dock,” Sardelle said. “You risked a lot to walk her to her door. And not even her door, at that. I believe she lives in the barracks.”
Tolemek distracted himself by wondering if her room was still there or if her people, believing her dead, would have sent her things back to her family. It would be a shame if she had to keep wearing that canvas smock around.
Focus.
“I did risk a lot,” he agreed, facing the woman again. She hadn’t moved from the wall. “I heard an interesting story on the way back here, and I wished to check on the details.” He gestured toward the little kitchen. “Perhaps we could discuss it over a glass of wine.”
“And poison?” Sardelle arched a single brow.
Tolemek froze. Apparently he hadn’t been as subtle as he had thought. This whole situation had him flustered. He had planned to stalk her down and speak with her. Why hadn’t he prepared himself better?
Because it was Zirkander he had expected to run into here, not his sorceress.
“Poison?” he said, mouth dry. “No. If I meant to kill you, I would shoot you.”
“You could try.” Those pale blue eyes had taken on the temperature of ice.
Yes, he had found his sorceress. And what was he going to do about it? He supposed he could try to force the truth serum down her throat. But she looked confident about responding to a physical threat. Maybe she would simply answer his questions. No, she probably wouldn’t, not when magic was so feared on this continent. It was hard to believe she was here, on an Iskandian military base.
Oh.
“They don’t know you’re here, do they?” Tolemek asked. “Or maybe they’ve seen you, but they don’t know what you are.”
Some of the confidence faded from the woman’s face. Bull’s-eye. She lifted her chin. “Somehow I doubt you, pirate, are going to be the one to tell them anything. Your word can’t be any more trusted here than mine.”
“How about I just tell him?” Tolemek waved toward the inside of the cottage to suggest Zirkander. “Or have Cas do it. He has no reason to trust me, but he’ll trust her.”
Sardelle’s eyebrow twitched upward. “Ridge knows.”
Tolemek rocked back on his heels. He knew some sorceress was controlling him? And he wasn’t moving the world to try and stop that? He was just accepting the fact and letting her stay in his house too?
She’s not controlling him, genius. She’s sleeping with him.
Already on his heels, Tolemek stumbled backward, grabbing the wall for support when the voice sounded in his head. Yes, that had been in his head. And, dearest gods and demons, it hadn’t even been her, had it?
“Who are—who was that?” he rasped, half to Sardelle and half to the empty room.
Sardelle didn’t respond as he had expected. She dropped her face into her hand, shook her head, and groaned something that sounded like, “Jaxi.”
Sardelle is too polite to root around in your thoughts. I’m not. Get to the point here and leave her alone. Trouble’s coming, thanks to you. A lot of it.
Tolemek sensed the impatience of the other... voice, but he couldn’t help but blurt, “Who are you?”
A sigh whispered through his thoughts. If you must respond to me—and let me stress how optional that is—you can think the words. No need to look like an idiot for talking to yourself.
By now Sardelle had lifted her head, but she was gazing out the window at something. At least that was the impression she gave; the shutters were still closed.
Tolemek silently repeated, Who are you?
Jaxi.
Jaxi?
I’m not giving you any more of my name. Not that you’d know what to do with it.
“We need to leave,” Sardelle said, a hint of agitation—or maybe irritation—in her voice for the first time. “When you knocked out the guards, you left the way open for other unsavory persons to sneak onto the base.”
She gave him a cool stare, but not a long one. She was busy striding into the little bedroom and, judging by the slamming of drawers and cabinets, packing. Tolemek turned out the lamp near the window and peeked through the gap between the shutters. The now-heavy snow made it tough to see farther than the street. If there were people out there, they weren’t within sight yet. His heart clenched at the thought of Cas taking her flier up in this weather.
Huh. You do care about the girl.
Tolemek jumped, blurting, “Blind hedgehogs and bat spit.”
“Does that pass for a curse in Cofahre?” Sardelle strode out of the bedroom carrying a wooden box tucked under her arm. She had also donned a thick cloak, fur-lined boots, and a weapons belt with a sword hanging in a decorative scabbard.
“In the presence of a lady, yes.” Tolemek, realizing he had been clutching at his heart, lowered his hand.
Ladies, corrected the voice in his head.
It was only then, when he saw the sword on Sardelle’s hip, that he realized who must be talking to him. He wasn’t sure whether to be honored or terrified.
Both.
“Back door,” Sardelle said. “Nobody’s watching it yet.”
“You’re inviting me to come with you?” Tolemek asked.
She gave him a long look over her shoulder. “I’m inviting you to let me keep an eye on you. Regardless, you’re not staying here to paw over Ridge’s belongings. Or mine.”
Also, she booby-trapped the house. There was a smile in the voice, as if the sword wanted him to stay here and trigger them.
Tolemek eased around the dining table and picked his way toward the back door, walking gingerly as he wondered what magical booby traps might look like.
A tea kettle sitting on the cast-iron stove blatted a puff of steam. He kept himself from jumping again, though he was fairly certain there wasn’t a fire stoked under the burners.
“I think your sword is teasing me,” he whispered, stepping past Sardelle, who had paused to hold open the door for him. A half inch of fresh powder coated the neatly manicured lawn behind the cottage.
“Consider yourself luc
ky.” Sardelle shut the door and locked it—without using a key. She simply waved her hand. “For a moment, I thought she was going to stop your heart, leaving me with the problem of explaining a mysteriously dead pirate on the living room rug.”
Tolemek opened his mouth, but nothing came out. What was one supposed to say to that?
“I’m not quite caught up on who you are yet,” Sardelle said, walking through the snow behind the cottage and slipping over to the backyard of the next house instead of using the pathway, “but she assured me Ridge would be pleased to have your head stuffed and mounted on his wall.” She glanced at his face, or maybe his long ropes of hair. “I’d find that disturbing decor myself.”
“You don’t know who I am, but... your sword does?” Tolemek reminded himself that he had wanted this meeting. It just wasn’t going at all how he had imagined.
“She doesn’t need to sleep, so she has a lot more time on her hands to read the tabloids.”
Please, I only deign to read scholarly periodicals and peer-reviewed journals.
They reached the last house on the block, and Sardelle angled toward an oak that had probably been there since the city was founded. Its thick, bare branches offered some protection from the snow, though the wind was picking up, swirling the flakes sideways as well as down.
“Do you hear what she says when she’s talking in my head?” Tolemek asked.
Sardelle stopped behind the trunk and looked back toward Zirkander’s house. “I make it a point to stay out of other people’s conversations.”
That hadn’t been a no, he noted.
“They just broke the lock on the front door,” Sardelle said. “Eight of them. Most went inside to search for whatever it is you people are searching for.” She looked at him. An invitation to share?
“You’re sure they’re my people?”
“They share your suspect dress code.”
Tolemek put a hand on the trunk of the tree and squinted into the snow, wishing he could see what she saw. Eight people. That was more than they’d had on the freighter. So, whoever was out there, it wasn’t Goroth. But weren’t all the other pirates supposed to be in the air, waiting to attack? Someone wasn’t going along with the script.
A yelp of pain drifted across the yards, someone crying out from the house.
“Booby trap?” Tolemek asked.
“Yes. I’m not letting pirates, or anyone else, poke through my laboratory.”
“Laboratory?” He eyed the wooden box under her arm, intrigued.
Sardelle didn’t respond. She was staring intently at the house—or through the walls maybe.
A glint of orange appeared through the snow, and something sailed out of the night to land on the roof.
“Burning fuse,” Tolemek said.
“I see it.”
He thought she might snuff it out with her mind, or whatever sorcerers did, but the burning fuse turned to a blast of white and yellow light, with an accompanying boom. The snow muffled the noise somewhat, but dogs started barking somewhere down the street. Smoke shrouded the building.
Tolemek looked to the fort’s big stone wall, the gray mass rising two blocks away. He had seen soldiers marching up there. It wouldn’t be a secret that the base had been breached for much longer. Shouts rose in the distance, not from the nearby wall but from the direction of the front gate. The soldiers he had left sleeping must have awakened. He grimaced. When he had been coming up with a way to get in, he hadn’t been worrying much about getting out. Of course, he hadn’t been planning on setting off explosives either.
He checked on the house, expecting the smoke to clear to reveal little more than rubble, but it remained intact, not so much as a roof shingle torn free.
“It seems your ordnance team is ineffective,” Sardelle said, her eyes gleaming.
“It’s not my team.”
“They’ve decided not to try again. They’re heading toward the wall in the corner of the fort. I think they’re planning to blow themselves a new exit gate.” She glanced toward the top of the wall, much as Tolemek had done. “I intend to stop them.”
“I’ll help.” Tolemek strode through the snow beside her. He doubted she needed his help, but if he could turn her into an ally, maybe she would help him with his quest, or at least point him in the right direction.
The flat look Sardelle gave him didn’t suggest his help or company was appreciated, but he matched her pace anyway. She had invited him along, after all.
As they crossed the street near the wall, he spotted fewer soldiers than he would have expected running in step toward Zirkander’s house. The bong-bong-bong of that alarm was still going off, so maybe men were being siphoned toward the harbor. Oddly, none of them noticed Tolemek and Sardelle crossing the street.
Tolemek spotted dark figures ahead, angling toward the corner she had mentioned. Hand delving into his sack, he jogged into the lead. He could deal with the men the same way he had with the guards, then tie them up afterward. Besides, he wanted to see who these people were, preferably before a sorceress obliterated them.
The bongs halted as he jogged toward them, trying to soften his steps so they wouldn’t hear him coming. They were doing a lot of nervous pointing and gesturing. Already he had them pegged for lackeys. Goroth wouldn’t have been stupid enough to hurl explosives and let everyone know he was in the compound. But whose lackeys?
When he was within fifteen meters, Tolemek thumbed the activator on his leather ball and chucked it into their midst. They had reached the wall, and two were crouching in the snow, setting something against its base. One noticed the ball hit the ground and jumped back, yanking a pistol free.
“Go ahead,” Tolemek whispered. “Shoot it.”
That would simply free the air-borne sedative more quickly.
The man didn’t shoot the ball though. He kicked snow over it, tapped a comrade on the shoulder, and peered all around them. There was no camouflage to hide Tolemek except for the falling snow, but he had his next weapon ready. He had withdrawn and unfolded a collapsible blow gun, already loaded with special darts. He fired at the same time as the man—the pirate, yes, he wore the unlikely collection of stolen garments that so many of the Roaming Curse favored—spotted him.
Tolemek dropped, rolling to the side, expecting a shot. It never came. The man had dropped his gun to claw at his face. From his belly, Tolemek shot two more projectiles, glad the cold hadn’t yet frozen his black cobwebs, as he called them. These darts were similar to the one he had fired at the guard back when he and Cas had been escaping that fortress. They expanded upon impact and stuck to the flesh like instant glue. A shot to the eyes or mouth was particularly effective.
After three shots, he was out, but by then, the sedating smoke from the leather ball had permeated the area. Though Tolemek couldn’t see it from his spot on the snow, he saw the effects. Soon all eight men collapsed.
Rising to a crouch, he looked back to check on Sardelle. To see if she might be impressed, or at least pleased that he had dealt with these people so she hadn’t had to incinerate them or turn them into frogs, or whatever her style was. She was only a few feet behind him, her gaze toward the wall, or maybe the harbor beyond it.
Before he could say a word, an ear-splitting wail started up. It seemed to come from the same amplifiers that had brought the bongs. It also seemed to say that whatever had been going on before was nothing compared to what was coming now.
“Attack,” Tolemek whispered. What else could that alarm be meant to signal?
The aerosol from his ball should have dissipated, so he ran forward to the fallen pirates. He turned them over on their backs, checking faces. Two were covered with his black cobwebs, rendering the features indistinguishable, but a couple of the men seemed familiar, pirates he had seen around the outpost on occasion. He stared in surprise at the fourth man, recognizing him instantly. It was the Cofah corporal who had been seeking asylum.
“Guess you weren’t on the Burning Dragon when it blew
up,” Tolemek muttered. “Was your captain, I wonder?” If Stone Heart had survived that attack but lost his ship... he would have a lot of new reasons to loathe Zirkander and the Iskandians.
Do you always interrogate unconscious men?
This time, Tolemek didn’t jump at the voice in his head, but he doubted he would ever find it anything but jarring. No.
Good, because I can’t imagine that with your skills you’d find it particularly effective.
“Your sword has gone from teasing me to insulting me,” Tolemek said when Sardelle approached, carrying lengths of twine that he was fairly certain hadn’t been among the items she took from the house. Unless they had come out of that box. He doubted it.
“That’s how she bonds with a person.” Sardelle tossed him four of the ropes, then knelt to tie the first of the downed men.
“Does she insult you?”
“Hourly.”
Sardelle moved onto her second pirate, and Tolemek hurried to catch up. That siren wailing couldn’t mean anything good. He wondered if Cas had found her squadron yet, and if she was even now preparing to go up into the gusting wind and heavy snow. She had sneered at the snail-like attributes of the dirigibles and airships, but being in one of those little fliers when nature was throwing a fit did not seem like a life-sustaining activity.
“She’s not what I imagined in a soulblade,” Tolemek said to distract himself from worrying. It wasn’t as if he could do anything to help Cas, except maybe find out where Stone Heart was and what he was up to.
Sardelle paused in tying her third man. “You know what a soulblade is? That’s not common anymore. Nor is talking openly about them.” Her lips thinned and she glanced up at the wall. “Nor anything related to magic.”
It occurred to him that she might be as much of an intruder here as he was. Well, no. She must be Zirkander’s guest, but doubtlessly she was down on the books as girlfriend, not sorceress. So what would happen if the army found out?
By this point, he almost expected a threat from Jaxi, but the sword either wasn’t paying attention to his thoughts or was chilled to silence at the idea of Sardelle being caught. Probably the former. From what little he had seen, he doubted much could chill the entity to silence.