More smoke followed, then the cube clunked to the floor, unmoving.
“Thank you, Corporal Lokdon,” Tikaya said. She, her daughter, and Basilard had slipped past the repair device, which was still working on the corner, and stood at the front of the alcove. “That gave us the seconds we needed.”
Basilard still held four arrows while Mahliki gripped the jar in both hands, the lid having been removed at some point.
“You’re welcome,” Amaranthe said.
Tikaya touched the top of her head, as if to ensure her scalp was indeed still attached. In her other hand, she held the longbow. Somewhere along the way, she’d lost her quiver and rucksack.
Basilard handed her another arrow and signed, Maldynado.
“He went down that tunnel.” Even as Amaranthe pointed, footfalls sounded from that direction.
“Need a little help!” Maldynado called, though they couldn’t see him yet.
Tikaya dipped the tip of the arrow into the jar and nocked it. Maldynado dove out of the tunnel, tumbling more than rolling as he clawed his way to cover. A red beam cut through the air where his head had been. Missing its target, it streaked out into the chamber.
Amaranthe sidled closer to Tikaya and the others. She wouldn’t be above hiding behind that repair device again. The metal tip of Tikaya’s arrow was smoking. That gunk would eat through it as surely as it ate through anything else here.
The cube floated out of the tunnel. It angled toward Maldynado, who had found his feet, but didn’t look like he knew where to run. In turning in his direction the cube also turned its deadly orifice toward Tikaya.
Without hesitation, she loosed the arrow. The chamber was a good twenty-five meters across, but her aim was true. The arrow clinked into the hole. As with the last cube, it burned away the wooden shaft, but its defiance ended a few heartbeats later.
“Good shot,” Amaranthe said, impressed that a scholar from an island of pacifists had such skill.
The cube clunked to the floor.
“Thank you.” Tikaya lowered the bow.
Mahliki put a hand on her mother’s shoulder. “The answer to the question you asked, oh, about fifteen minutes ago, is, yes, it could hurt to stop and try and figure out how to turn on the lights.”
“Thank you, dear,” Tikaya said. “Why don’t you find the lid to that jar? In case we need it again?”
Mahliki disappeared into the alcove.
“Thank you, too, for your help.” Tikaya waved at Basilard, Amaranthe, and Maldynado. “What happened to the rest of our burly soldiers?”
Rest of…? Did the professor lump Amaranthe and her team into that category? Amaranthe supposed they hadn’t done anything to convince her they were brighter than privates fresh out of their initial training. “Outside. We ran into trouble with relic raiders. One of the soldiers was injured and the other had to carry him away. I’m not sure where the other pair went.”
“So, we’re on our own? All right, give me a moment, please. I was close to figuring out how to turn on the lights.” Tikaya returned to the alcove and added, “If they’re working,” under her breath.
Maldynado shambled over to join Amaranthe and Basilard, taking a wide route around the cube on the floor, though it’d been desiccated, eaten from the inside out by the acidic compound.
“I’d like to take this moment,” Amaranthe said, “to point out that you two are as crazy as I am at times.”
“Me?” Maldynado splayed a hand across his chest.
“Running up to those cubes and hacking at them with a sword isn’t any brighter than drawing fire from a cannon.”
Basilard’s eyebrows rose. You tried to get a cannon to shoot at you?
“No,” Amaranthe said, “it just happened that way. I thought those men would use their rifles.”
Oh. So you tried to get rifles to shoot at you. Eyebrows still elevated, Basilard met Maldynado’s eyes and slowly shook his head.
Amaranthe scowled at them.
Over the next few seconds, the light level grew in the room, eliminating the shadows the lanterns had struggled to pierce. If not for the white and red beams flying around during that skirmish, Amaranthe didn’t know how they would have seen anything.
Amaranthe peeked into the alcove. Tikaya’s rucksack sat on the floor at the end, and she stood before the column, fingers dancing over tiny illuminated symbols while she held a black sphere with her free hand. Amaranthe recognized the object from the desk back at the factory, but she hadn’t seen it doing anything. Now, glowing images hovered in the air above it, projected from some tiny hold. It reminded her of the floating interactive pictures in the control room.
“I’m seeing if this station can call up a map as well,” Tikaya said. “We’re in the… I guess you’d call it the bowels of the ship. This area handles the infrastructure-lighting, life support, routing of water and internal power, sewage.”
“Sewage?” Maldynado asked.
“Everybody goes,” Tikaya murmured.
“Fortunately, that’s a part of the craft that nobody showed me on my various tours,” Amaranthe said.
“Oh, no?” Tikaya asked, her back to them as she continued to work. “I would have found it fascinating.”
I’m telling you, Amaranthe signed to her men, there’s no way I’m the craziest person in this room.
Possibly true, Basilard allowed.
“You went on tours?” Mahliki asked Amaranthe. “Does that mean you can find your way to engineering or the control area from here?”
“Sorry, no. This isn’t the way I came when I was here before.”
“Ah.”
Amaranthe didn’t think there was condemnation in that soft syllable, but she wished she could take the lead and walk them straight to the control room nonetheless. Right now, she did feel like little more than the hired grunts.
“This should be it.” Tikaya twisted a final rune and turned around, facing the center of the chamber.
The air shimmered, then a large, three-dimensional image formed two meters above the floor. Retta had created something similar when she’d showed Amaranthe and Books how to reach her assistant’s room, though this was much larger with level upon level on display, along with massive open areas. In a steamer, she would have guessed they represented boiler and engine rooms. Who knew with this craft?
“Hm.” Tikaya turned back to the column, manipulating a few more symbols.
Amaranthe tried to decide if the way she knew exactly what she was doing was comforting or disturbing. Retta had been obsessed with the ship. She hadn’t had any interest in destroying it or burying it at the bottom of the ocean. What if Tikaya grew equally intrigued and didn’t want to let it go? What did Amaranthe truly know about the woman, after all?
“There we go.” Tikaya turned again, extending a hand toward the schematic.
A blue line had formed, weaving down one level, up several others, and into the core of the craft. The spiky medium-sized chamber it started in appeared to be their own.
“Who’s memorizing the route?” Amaranthe asked, daunted by all the intersections the line passed through.
“I’ve got it,” Tikaya and her daughter said at the same time.
They shared smiles, Tikaya’s fond, and Mahliki’s more of a wry smirk.
“I don’t think I could even find my way back to the door where we came in,” Maldynado muttered.
Me either, Basilard signed. This place is… I wish to complete our work here as quickly as possible.
From the eager way mother and daughter gathered their gear and led the way out of the chamber, Amaranthe wasn’t certain they would agree.
Chapter 8
Sicarius did not want to kill Fleet Admiral Starcrest. He wasn’t certain whether he cared one way or another about his own life, but, as he lay on the carpet in the dark tent, like a hound at the foot of Kor Nas’s cot, he was certain of that one fact. If Starcrest was in the city, it was because Sicarius’s letter had brought him. To turn that letter into a trap, as if he’d planned to assassinate the legendary admiral all along, the man he’d dreamed of emulating as a boy, it was unthinkable.