You don’t have to fear me, Sicarius wanted to say, for I’ll not raise a hand against an ally, acknowledged or not, of Admiral Starcrest’s. But he couldn’t.
“As you can see, Prince Zirabo,” Kor Nas said, “he is effective.”
The name, used for the first time, didn’t surprise Sicarius. He’d guessed from the conversation that this was one of the Great Chief’s sons, the youngest if he recalled correctly. With several older brothers, Zirabo wouldn’t likely be put in a position to rule Nuria, but he should have some sway. Not enough to daunt Kor Nas, it seemed. Kor Nas must be high up in the power structure over there as well. The Nurians had sent their best to ensure they received the concessions they wanted.
“Enemy Chief Fox won’t have a chance to apply his clever mind,” Kor Nas continued, “because he won’t see my pet coming until the dagger is plunging into his heart.”
“Then you’ll forgive me,” Prince Zirabo said, striding toward the tent flap, “if I hope the seer doesn’t find him.”
Kor Nas’s smile gave Sicarius little reason to share that hope, not when the man had already located so many of the Forge leaders that had eluded Amaranthe, Books, and Sicarius himself over the last six months. He stared down at the sightless eyes of Worgavic and couldn’t help but imagine Starcrest’s head in an identical position.
• • •
“Where’d everybody go?” Maldynado whispered.
“I don’t know.” Amaranthe headed for the dark intersection, holding a lantern aloft. “But if this place was eerie when it was lit, it’s even more disturbing now.” Her meager flame wasn’t much of a beacon against the black, windowless tunnels. It felt as if the oppressive darkness could reach out and snuff the single flame.
“Maybe we should wait here.” Maldynado pointed to the translucent membrane, the snowy field and nighttime sky visible beyond it. “We don’t have any longbows and whatever it was the professor thought could be used against the cubes.”
“Agreed, they might never find us if we wander off, but I want to see if we can see any sign of them from the corner.”
Amaranthe stopped at the seven-way intersection. Those ancient people hadn’t cared much for standard geometric shapes. Too basic for their tastes? She peered down each passageway until she spotted something on the floor. She almost leaped back. It was one of the cubes. But it wasn’t floating. It was…
She dared to shuffle closer for a better look.
Two of the sides had been melted away, the exterior crumpling in on itself, revealing a mess of innards made from the same black as the shell, but with thin boards and fine cables snaking about. An arrow shaft stuck out of the mess, the fletching still attached, though the head had either broken off or perhaps melted as well. A tendril of smoke wafted from the innards.
“That’s heartening,” Maldynado said.
“It’d be more heartening if our comrades were standing here over the broken husk, beaming with pride as they showed off their victory.”
“I don’t think Bas knows how to beam. His face is stuck in that saturnine expression of his.”
Amaranthe would be saturnine, too, if they couldn’t find the others. The tunnel stretched away beyond the cube, and if anything else waited down it, she couldn’t tell. She wondered if there was anyway to return power to the lights. In crashing the ship, had she broken the entire thing? Given what she’d seen of the technology, it seemed incomprehensible. But, then, it was fifty thousand years old. Maybe the furnace had run out of coal.
“There must have been more than one cube,” she said. “They’ll probably take care of it and circle back.”
“I hope there wasn’t a lot more than one cube,” Maldynado said. “The professor didn’t have that many arrows.”
Her quiver had been stuffed, but that didn’t mean much. Twenty arrows perhaps. And how many cleaning cubes existed in the vastness of the Behemoth? “I wonder why she didn’t ask us all to bring some.”
“Maybe they were only able to make so much of… whatever was in that jar.”
“Something applied to the arrowhead,” Amaranthe guessed. “That must be it, or maybe she expected me to be able to guide her right to the control room before we had to face many problems.”
“Can you? From here?”
“I might have been able to if we’d gone in a door I’d been through before, but this is a new one.”
Amaranthe was contemplating sticking her tongue out at the confusing seven-way intersection when she noticed a scratch on one of the walls. More than a scratch-something had gouged a centimeter-deep hole in the impervious metal. No arrow could have done that. She probed the dent with a finger and found it slightly warm.
“Oh, right,” she murmured, remembering the damage in the control rooms.
“Hm?” Maldynado prompted.
“Whatever Retta’s assistant did to change the cubes caused them to do more than incinerate people. Their beams started damaging the walls, punching through the walls to whatever equipment lay behind them. That’s why we crashed.”
“That wasn’t your fault then,” Maldynado said. “I can tell you’re blaming yourself for all of this. You shouldn’t be.”
“Enh.” Amaranthe didn’t feel like explaining the chain of events that had led to Retta’s assistant making those changes, a chain she had started as surely as she was breathing now. Instead, she wandered about the intersection, searching for more signs of damage. The number of shots marring the walls confirmed her suspicion that there’d been more than one cube attacking the team. At least two, but maybe more. Tikaya had used her bow to destroy one, but the other must have overwhelmed them and they ran. “I think they went this way,” Amaranthe said after a few more moments of study.
Maldynado nodded toward the scarred walls. “Follow the holes, and we find them?”
“I’m assuming the cubes were shooting at our people as they fled.”
“You sure you don’t want to wait here for them to come back for us? What if they circle back by some other route and we miss them?”
“You’d think they would come back the same direction to stave off that very possibility. We can meet them in the middle.”
“Unless they’re still fleeing cubes and they can’t come back in the same direction,” Maldynado said. “We could get very lost in there.”
“They have exactly one effective weapon between the three of them. I’m not going to stay here and wait when they could need our help.”
Maldynado sighed and walked down the corridor at her side. He did not, she was glad, point out that they had exactly no effective weapons to help balance the equation. “Just promise me you won’t hurl yourself in front of any cannons. At least not when I’m standing close to you.”
“I’ll try to sublimate any urges to do so.”
They continued down the tunnel, watching the walls for scars. In some spots, there was a clump of them. In others, often around bends where their comrades must have gained ground, there weren’t any. Amaranthe grew nervous in those blank-walled areas, especially when they crossed an intersection and other tunnels branched off. They had to double back twice to find the trail again.
“I hope random cubes aren’t roaming through the corridors, shooting up the walls for their own amusement,” Maldynado said.
“Our people wouldn’t have run off for no reason,” Amaranthe said firmly.
“I’m not so sure. Did you see the way the professor’s eyes lit up when she saw this thing? She couldn’t wait to get inside. Those other two soldiers are probably at the docks right now, wondering where she is.”