It was impossible to ignore the gritty texture beneath her boots as she worked her way down the corridors, as though she walked through the wreckage of a sandglass. It felt as though she was making loud crunching sounds, although her sensors assured her she was being reasonably quiet. The ashhawk paintings to either side of her were damaged beyond all hope: gold leaf peeling free in agonizing spirals, bird necks crumpled into uncomfortable knots, brush-strokes transfixed by splinters. Holes stabbed across the Kel watchwords: from every spark a fire.
Jedao had passed out of the command center. Unfortunately, the fastest way to intercept him was by going through it; she’d have to risk it. You didn’t have to be a fox to think of setting traps. The only thing that would keep him from doing so, she imagined, was lack of opportunity. Given that he’d been bombed, he’d assume that someone would come for him sooner or later.
As it turned out, he’d had the opportunity, although the first concrete sign she had that her quarry knew that she had boarded wasn’t the trap. The first sign was the emblem that Jedao had scratched into the floor, aligned so that she would see it right-side up as she entered. The doors were warped open. Vahenz fired scorch bursts ahead of her as she sprinted through and to one side – it was a long time since she had made the amateur’s mistake of freezing in the doorway to make a target of herself – but there was no return fire. If Jedao was still in the area, he was well-hidden. Which didn’t mean she was safe. His heat signatures hadn’t faded entirely, and tellingly, she picked up a muffled thump, as though he’d stumbled. He couldn’t be too far.
She hadn’t paused as she passed the emblem, which looked like it had been carved with a Kel combat knife. However, she triggered several snapshots in passing so that she could review them more closely later, preferably when she wasn’t pinned in a vulnerable location.
It was an appallingly clumsy trap, and Vahenz didn’t so much as sweat as she flung herself away from the scatter of small explosions and behind a crystal pillar. He’d probably run out of time and decided that a half-assed effort was better than getting nothing for his trouble. Jedao had stripped weapons from the dead to set up that little display of fireworks, but the standard-issue Kel pistols had not reacted well to standard-issue Kel betrayal. After scanning the area again, she ventured out and knelt to inspect a bullet. It didn’t even resemble a bullet anymore, but one of those quasicrystal dodecahedrons that used to be popular as earrings back home.
Jedao hadn’t been able to hide other traces of his work. There were footprints and long, unsteady furrows where he had tried to lever himself up after taking a spill. Either the gravity had still been sorting itself out while he had been doing his work here, or he’d already been in the command center when the bomb hit.
That reminded her: the Deuce of Gears swarm had made a botched attempt at evasion when it was far too late. Why hadn’t Jedao seen the knife coming for his back?
Just how badly injured was the fox, anyway? Assuming he wasn’t feigning, which was a big assumption. Vahenz quickly checked the rest of the command center, but most of the terminals were pretty thoroughly wrecked.
The needlemoth called in with an update: the life sign had taken a turn and was headed deeper into the moth’s guts. She narrowed her eyes at the pale-dark glass, the gravelly sounds it made underfoot. Charming exhibit, but she did have an opponent to destroy.
Vahenz wasn’t superstitious about moths the way some of the Nirai got – one of many reasons she avoided getting stuck at bars with amorous technicians – but the unceasing slivered reflections, the eyeless spaces, the syncopated lights made her tense. Well, shooting people could be relaxing, if you shot the right people. She’d settle for that, and promise herself extra luxury when she made it somewhere safe with civilized amenities.
She brought up the photos of the Deuce of Gears. The image came up in front of her left eye, and she saw what hadn’t been evident at first, the jagged column cutting through the lightning-crack in the larger gear on the left. Jedao had written a number: 1,082,771.
Vahenz dismissed the image, mouth peeling back in a sneer. What, all those other fools he’d killed weren’t worthy of being added to the tally, just Hellspin Fortress and this latest tragicomedy? Granted, the man wasn’t known for his sanity. Let him savor his kills however he liked.
Funny but true: at one point she had dreamed about the things she could accomplish if the Kel ever let her walk around a cindermoth unmolested. Now that she was here, the Kel themselves had done most of the work for her, or scotched it in a supreme display of incompetence, take your pick.
The life sign had paused. It was close by now. She slowed and reflexively dropped behind a terminal’s slanted remnants when a red-and-yellow light came on in the center of the room. It blinked in the rapid one-two-three-four of the Kel drum code for distress. A shape flickered in the shadows. Vahenz fired. The wall sizzled, and sparks flew up, aggressively red-orange. Part of a tapestry disappeared: streaks of soot, ghosts stitched into smoke.
“Honestly,” a woman’s voice came out of the shadows, crackling with static, “if that was the best Kel Command could do for a kill count, they should have kept me on. Anyway, I’m sorry, I don’t believe we’re formally acquainted?”
“Shuos Jedao, I presume,” Vahenz said. Same female voice as that last conspiratorial “message” to Liozh Zai, same accent, same fucking cocksure attitude.
The voice was coming over the broadcast system, as though that was supposed to fool her. Still, she couldn’t discount the possibility of some elaborate trick. “You’ll forgive me if I’m not eager to introduce myself,” Vahenz said. She queried the needlemoth’s systems anyway, but it wasn’t having any better luck without her to hold its hand.
“And yet here you are, when you could be long gone on your way to wherever secret agents go when they have to compose apologetic reports to their superiors.” Jedao’s voice was annoyingly rueful. “You think I didn’t write my share of same when I was working for the Shuos?”
Jedao was moving again, very slowly. Vahenz was having none of that. She crouched low and set after him, cat-footed. “Cut to the point,” she said. But she was smiling. She made her way around the remnants of the trap.
The red-and-yellow lights paced her, sometimes appearing to the left, sometimes to the right. Sometimes they were near the ceiling, and sometimes near the floor. Still blinking in that one-two-three-four pattern, as if she was supposed to be impressed by Kel superstition. At least she could assume that he knew exactly where she was. The fact that he hadn’t shot her yet, plus his talkativeness, suggested desperation for information.
“I have to ask,” Jedao said conversationally, “if you’re here to see me dead, aren’t there less risky ways of doing the job? I mean, we don’t have inconvenient bystanders fouling up the arena now. It’s just the two of us. There’s no more need for lies and ploys. If I had some way of blowing you up for real, I’d have hit the button by now. That pathetic light show in the command center would have gotten me flunked out of Shuos Academy.”
So she was right after all. But she didn’t have any problem letting him continue to talk. Just in case he let something drop. As a bonus, he was moving more and more slowly. Too obvious. She stopped, refusing to be lured in further.