“We don’t want to try to turn the population against the army though,” Ridgecrest said. “That would set a horrible precedent. Whoever takes the throne next would inherit a mess.” He glanced at Sespian. “Though we haven’t decided on an heir yet, I suppose.”
“You make the job sound so appealing, General,” Sespian murmured, then raised his voice, facing Starcrest. “It sounds like you think we need someone with the ability to charm people to his or her side.”
He didn’t look at Amaranthe, but her belly did a queasy flip, for she had an inkling of what was coming. The last thing she was qualified to do was to try and sweet talk an entire city, especially now.
“You think you’re that person?” Ridgecrest asked Sespian.
“No, but I have a skilled diplomat on my team.” He spread a hand toward Amaranthe.
Every head in the room swiveled toward her. She felt more like a deer caught on the railway with a locomotive barreling at her than some sort of smooth-talking diplomat.
“Diplomat?” Colonel Fencrest asked. “We tied her up on the train. She’s an outlaw, Si-Sespian.”
Amaranthe caught the slip. Out of habit, these men were still apt to think of Sespian as their leader. She hoped he could take advantage of that.
“Did she stay tied up?” Sespian asked.
“Yes,” Fencrest said at the same time as Starcrest said, “No.”
The colonel frowned at him.
“By the time I went back to question her, she’d freed herself.”
Question her? That wasn’t exactly what he’d been doing. Why did she have a feeling Ridgecrest, Fencrest, and the others weren’t on the list of people who knew about Starcrest’s mission to those tunnels? Or the tunnels’ existence at all, for that matter.
“What are you- She’d only been back there five minutes, my lord,” Fencrest said. “And they were all tied.”
“Indeed. When I entered, the guards were smashed face-first into the floor, and her team… was not.”
Sespian smiled at Amaranthe. “Had a chat with those guards, did you?”
Not sure what to say-after all, it’d been Akstyr’s gift that had allowed them to get the best of those men-she only offered a weak return smile. Or a bleak return smile, perhaps. She didn’t want this mission. She wanted… she didn’t even know what. To find Sicarius and fade into the background. Let the experts finish this. “Given my outlaw status, Sire, I don’t think I’d be the best person to give speeches.” Oh, and the fact that she’d killed thousands of people the night before. Emperor’s teeth, she wanted to throw up again.
“We have some work to do before we’re ready for that regardless.” Starcrest headed for the door. No, he was heading for her. “May I speak with you for a moment, Corporal Lokdon?”
Had she given him her rank? Her history as an enforcer? No, someone had filled him in.
“Yes, sir. I mean, my lord. Admiral.” Erg, why was she fumbling her words in front of him? She was no military history fanatic with a zealous love for naval strategists. Maybe it was the fact that he was the one man Sicarius openly respected.
Before her tongue could trip her up again, she ducked her head, and led the way onto the catwalk. She’d planned to take him to her office, but he walked the other way, to the one other private room up there. The last time she’d been in it, Akstyr and Books had been using it as a study.
Only one small desk remained, the others having been purloined for the conference table. Starcrest’s wife sat at it, the contents of an upturned valise sprawled across the top: journals, pens, pencils, crinkled pages of hastily scrawled notes, and a fist-sized black sphere. Chin in hand, she was frowning down at a small notebook held open in the other hand. She obviously hadn’t come to the empire with the intent to take up winter sports and get massages from the spas on Mokath Ridge.
Amaranthe’s fingers twitched at the unorganized mess, wanting to bring order to the desk. She did allow herself to pick up a few slips of papers that had fallen to the floor. Indecipherable runes had been copied onto the pages. She recognized the style from the Behemoth.
Starcrest shut the door and touched Amaranthe’s shoulder. “If we stand here and talk, she’ll notice us in a few minutes.”
Amaranthe glanced at him, certain he was joking. One corner of his mouth twitched upward in a wry half smile, but Professor Komitopis hadn’t looked up yet. Maybe he wasn’t joking.
“What shall we talk about?” she asked.
“I understand you’ve been in that ship.”
Ship, was that how he thought of it? None of the words in her vocabulary seemed sufficient, though she supposed she couldn’t think of it as simply an aircraft now, since it could go beneath lakes too. Or maybe it wasn’t going anywhere else. Ever. It’d end up being a tourist attraction, like the pyramid in the middle of the city.
Starcrest was waiting for an answer, she reminded herself.
“Yes. Twice now, though the first time was as a prisoner rather than as a…” She thought about saying guest, but that wasn’t apt. Besides, she didn’t want anyone thinking she was aligned with Forge. “Spy.”
“Hm. And you had something to do with it being placed in its current locale?”
In other words, had she crashed it? What a tactful way to put it. Maybe he should be the diplomat giving speeches. “It was on the bottom of the lake. In hindsight, that was a better spot for it. I had thought to have it flown to the South Pole where we could bury it in a glacier or at the bottom of some distant ocean trench. I wanted to get it out of Forge’s hands. I’ve seen some of what that technology can do. No organization should control it. Forge is already close enough to owning the world as it is. If nobody stops them… Well, I’ve been trying to stop them. My team and I have, that is. For the last year.” She was, she noted, doing a good job of not answering the question he’d asked. “As for its current locale, Retta, one of the Forge scholars of that technology, was trying to fly it for us. I talked her into helping us.”
Starcrest’s eyebrows rose. She needed to be careful how she phrased things or they would think she had a magic tongue. She’d end up in front of a podium, making a fool of herself as she stammered through an inept speech. That hadn’t been one of her best classes in school.
“But there was opposition,” Amaranthe said, “and the other woman on board who knew how to operate the Behemoth-that’s my name for the thing, not theirs-tinkered with those black cubes and-er, are you familiar with them?”
“Yes,” Starcrest said.
“She tinkered with them so they started attacking us, attacking everything.”
“Isn’t that their normal function?”
“I thought so, but Retta had apparently changed the ones on the craft to recognize humans as… something not to be incinerated.”
“Did they?” Starcrest glanced at Komitopis, who was still puzzling over her notes. He walked around the table and nudged her.
The book twitched, and she blinked in surprise when she saw him and Amaranthe. “Hello. Meeting over?”
“No, but we’re discussing that ship.”
“Oh, yes. Good.” Komitopis closed her journal and gazed attentively at them.
Amaranthe couldn’t believe she truly hadn’t noticed them walk in and start talking.
Starcrest nodded to her. “Go on, please.”
“So the cubes had been modified to be less deadly, but they’ve been unmodified now. I don’t know if it’s possible that some of them have left the craft and escaped into the city, but… I’ve seen them outside of the Behemoth before.”
“I’ll instruct the soldiers on how to make a concoction that destroys them.”
“There is such a thing?” Amaranthe asked.
“Through trial and error, I found something that works. A variation on royal water.”