“All right,” Carbón said after they’d all messed around with the thermal shields, and Thiego had answered a couple of questions about the underworld bracelets. “Let’s see about this monster.”
“But try not to aggravate it,” Grosst said. “Say your mumbo jumbo about the hot lead fires, and see if it will let us in. But don’t push your luck, yeah?”
Suddenly, Kessie let out a little cry. The girl had wandered away from the group after taking her thermal shield, and was prodding at the ground. She’d already pocketed several things scavenged along the way, and been forced to discard a couple of promising items that the Guardian of Secrets told her were poisonous or hot with lead particles. She’d apparently been on the lookout for more.
Now she stumbled backward from a hole that was opening in the ground. Something that looked like an enormous arm with no bones and too many fingers lurched out and made a grab for the girl, who ducked away and then darted clear. Another grab. The arm flailed, tentacle-like, and only just missed grabbing her by the ankle, as Kessie sidestepped away.
Another arm threw itself out of the hole, and then there were six of them, and a body without a head or trunk that was as white as the belly of a fish and shaped like a blobby, gelatinous mass. The creature heaved clear of the hole, lifted its bulk, and stared at them with a single, baleful eye, red and striped with black veins. The eye, the body, and the arms all seemed to be pulsing.
It was Kessie’s monster with no face.
Chapter Fourteen
Naila’s first act upon using the portal shifter to escape from the hidden vault was to send a courier to the watch. It was time to bring Anderos in. She hadn’t spoken to him since she’d interrogated him in the army recruiting barracks on the far side of the Rift, but had visited the watch on the sly, and verified that he was back in the city.
While she was waiting for Anderos to answer her summons, Naila set about retrieving weapons from the hidden vault. She didn’t want anyone to know her secret, whether they were friend or enemy, and so she ordered the temple emptied. The non-temple cabalists were always coming and going, and it was easy enough to put out word that they stay clear. The geometers, archivists, and others who worked within the Luminoso’s sanctuary, on the other hand, were surprised, and even doubtful when she told them to remove themselves from the temple and wait for her to give the all clear.
Maralisa and Kara proved particularly stubborn, and insisted that they were engaged in critical labor that could not be interrupted. If Naila had a problem with their work, she should talk to the Guardian of Secrets, and then, if Thiego concurred, he could tell them himself.
If Thiego had been present, there might have been trouble, but Naila focused her scorn on the two geometers without his interference, and they eventually backed down. She posted two trusted cabalists outside the temple doors with the instruction to turn away anyone except Anderos from the watch, who was to be kept on the temple steps until she was ready for him.
Naila had learned from her first entry into the hidden vault, and made additional preparations this time. She collected a second leaded tapestry, which she could spread out in the inner chamber instead of fussing with the other one every time, trying to get it placed down in time. No more worries that she’d drop the artifact and have it melt through the floor, leaving her trapped with her air slowly running out.
She’d acquired a boiled leather helmet like the kind they used in the coal mines, together with an oil lamp inside a metal gauze cage to protect against fire-damp. She wasn’t worried about flammable gasses in the vault, but the helmet lamp would free her hands to work, instead of trying to coax light from either the underworld bracelet or the illusion egg.
In spite of her preparations and prior experience, she was still nervous when she pushed the portal shifter through the stone wall. How did it work, anyway? Was there a limit to its powers, like an oil lamp that burned out after too much use? What if it stopped working while she was halfway through? The stone would close around her and crush her to death.
Those worries proved foolish. Naila was soon inside the hidden vault, examining the weapons and other strange devices. All military, she was convinced, even if she didn’t know how any of it worked. Better stick to the guns for now. She took several, slung them over her shoulder by their straps until she couldn’t carry any more, and pushed her way back out again.
She took a closer look at the weapons in the stronger light of the outer chamber, and couldn’t help but wonder if she was wrong in her assumptions. They had the general shape of muskets, all right, but she could see no priming pan or striker, and the ceramic surface looked like it had been molded and baked. Like glass. Who would stuff gunpowder down a glass barrel? Firing such a weapon would be suicide.
She flipped the knob on the stock, and the red light blinked several times before turning first yellow and then blue, followed by the curious whirring sound. It had to be a weapon, she thought as she turned it off again. The ceramic barrel must be stronger than it looked—made of a magical substance known only to the Elders.
Naila wanted to retrieve more weapons, to test some of the other objects in the chamber, but there would be practical ramifications. Risks and dangers. What if she set off an explosion in an enclosed space?
These guns were enough to start with. Offer them to de Armas and then demand . . . what, exactly? She’d better work that out before Anderos arrived.
She hauled the guns out of the room and up to her personal study on the second floor of the temple, where a balcony provided a view of the Great Span and the Rift below it. Then she removed the lead-lined tapestry from the outer vault, used the gold-wrapped gloves to reform the portal shifter into an egg shape that could be more discreetly carried about, and went to the temple doors to see if de Armas’s man had arrived.
Anderos was already waiting when she arrived, standing atop the steps while he looked down at the plaza below. His hands were behind his back, and he stood as stiff as a lieutenant reviewing his troops. He didn’t have a brass clasp on his cloak, only an iron ring to hold it together. That ring indicated a lieutenant of the watch, which was a far less impressive rank than its military equivalent.
Yet there was something commanding about his presence as he turned around at the sound of the opening temple doors. Suddenly, the hard look smoothed over, and his entire posture relaxed into a slouch, as if he’d only just remembered his assumed role.
“Drop the acting,” she told him. “You don’t have to fool me, remember?” She nodded to the cabalist who’d brought Anderos up from the watch. “Take this man’s sword—I’m bringing him into the temple, and he can’t be armed.”
“But he’s uninitiated,” the cabalist said.
She wheeled on him with a glare. “Are you questioning me?”
The cabalist gave a quick shake of the head, and Naila returned a satisfied nod. Nothing the Master of Whispers said or did could be blasphemy, by its very definition, even bringing one of the uninitiated into the temple. Let this fool remember that or suffer the consequences.
“Can’t give up the sword, you know,” Anderos said. “Sworn to wear it at all times.”
“You won’t bring it into the temple. So either surrender it or go back and tell your master that you refused to meet with me and take what I was offering.”
Anderos glanced over Naila’s shoulder into the gloomy interior, curiosity evident, then held up his hands for the cabalist to unstrap his sheath and take the weapon. Naila stepped aside and gestured for him to enter. Anderos obeyed, casting a backward glance at the frowning cabalist as Naila pulled the doors shut with the other man on the outside.
She didn’t expect trouble from Anderos—if her early rough treatment hadn’t left an impression, her reputation alone should keep him in line—but just in case, she pulled on the glove that she’d used to choke Lord Torres to death. When they’d crossed about thirty feet of the front room and stood beneath the highest part of the vaulted ceiling, she stopp
ed him.
“What is all this about?” he asked. “You promised a way for de Armas to fight the Scoti.”
“Exactly.”
“So why are we skulking around your temple?”
“Because this is where I’ve collected the weapons that will help you win your war.”
#
It didn’t take long for Anderos to see the promise of the guns removed from the hidden vault. She deflected questions about their origins, and waited for him to voice the obvious question.
He opened with a grunt. “So. You’re not giving me this out of the goodness of your heart. What are your terms?”
“Simple. Trivial, really. I want Lord de Armas to resume the agreement we had last fall. Nothing more or less.”
“I don’t know what that was.”
She fought down her impatience. “I’m sure your puny imagination is sufficient to figure it out. You and I both know that he took the prudent way out. Once the first gambit failed, he disavowed all knowledge. This should settle matters in our favor.”
“And if he disagrees?”
“Then I will take the weapons back.” She clenched a gloved fist. “And punish those who betray me.”
Anderos paled. He managed a nod. “I think you’ll find my master agrees to your terms.”
“Good. Now help me load these weapons into crates and nail them shut. There are too many prying eyes about.”
Once they were done, Anderos ran off to fetch two other men to help haul the crates across the Great Span, where they’d be carried on horseback to Dalph.
After he was gone, Naila weighed his loyalty and found it suspect. Anderos was afraid of her, of course. Any thoughts he might have of turning on her would surely be weighed against the knowledge that she could have crushed his skull like a rotten apple. But what would happen when he’d reached the safety of the barracks beyond the Basdeenian work camp? What would de Armas do once he had his hands on the magical weapons?
She’d better be prepared for betrayal, just in case. That meant a thorough investigation of the other objects in the vault with an idea of arming herself against potential treachery.
It was taking forever for Anderos to return with his two companions, and Naila paced the empty halls of the temple, growing impatient. She went down to the rooms where the geometers and archivists slept, then crossed into the Hall of Honors, where frescoes of flying machines and carts without horses moved across one side, while the other side contained writing of the ancients in several different scripts, all chiseled into the stone. Finally, she moved through the Sacred Vaults, before returning to the temple foyer.
A pair of cabalists were meddling with her crates when she arrived. One stood with hands on her hips, while the other bent and pried with a crowbar at the lid that Naila and Anderos had nailed shut. Naila drew up short, afraid that the second cabalist was Thiego, returned early from the Rift. If he tore open the box and saw what she was up to, there would be trouble.
“Stand back from there!” she said.
The other cabalist stood abruptly, and Naila breathed in relief when she got a closer look at the pair. They were the two geometers who’d argued with her earlier: Maralisa and Kara. Maralisa started to take a step back, but Kara held up a hand to retain her companion.
“I told you to stand back,” Naila snarled.
Kara stood straight and tall, her expression defiant. “You brought an uninitiated into the temple.”
“That is my prerogative.”
“And who authorized you to remove artifacts from the vaults?”
“Who authorized me? Who told you to come back inside? I gave specific orders that all were to remain outside the temple until I gave word.” Naila gave a dismissive wave. “Anyway, I’m not removing anything of any concern to you. It’s nothing from the Sacred Vaults.”
“Oh?” Kara’s eyebrows rose. “Since you’ve stolen at least one object from the vaults, plus its gold and lead shielding, you can imagine why I’m disinclined to believe you.”
“Oh, that? I had need of the portal . . . the artifact. I will return it when I’m finished. What is it to you? I’m the Master of Whispers—I have the power to burn this city to the ground should I choose, and the authority to do so, granted to me by an unbroken line of masters all the way to the Elders of the Third Plenty. I suggest giving that some thought before you question me.”
Kara gestured at the crates. “What is this, anyway?”
“None of your business. It has nothing to do with you or your work.”
“You’re a liar.”
Naila’s face flushed with heat. “And you’re a dead woman if you don’t shut your mouth.”
“You mean the glove of power?” Kara said. “I’m not afraid of that.”
Now Naila was furious, and determined to punish her. Let Kara smirk through a broken jaw. She reached for the woman’s face with her gloved hand. The geometer was not so smug as it appeared; she flinched, and fear moved across her face.
But as Naila stretched her arm, all the strength melted away, and her hand turned numb. Sharp pain radiated down her forearm, as if she’d struck her elbow against a hard object. She drew back with a hiss.
Kara’s confident demeanor returned. She touched a moon-shaped amulet hanging at her throat that glinted silver in the flickering gaslight of the temple foyer. Maralisa was wearing one, too, and touched it with her eyes widening.
“By the Elders,” Maralisa said. “It worked.”
“Return what you’ve stolen and leave the temple until the master returns,” Kara said.
“I am the master, you blasphemous fools. Thiego is nothing. He’s a worm—I lifted him up, and I can crush him under my boot.”
The two were only looking at her insolently, as if waiting for her temper to burn itself out so they could send her off like a miscreant child. Her face burning with fury, Naila turned to a crate at her feet and gripped one end of the lid with her gloved hand while holding the box in place with the other. She pried open the lid with a groan of releasing nails, then snatched up the top gun.
The weapon was in her hand before she remembered it had to be activated. She flipped the switch, and lights blinked red and then yellow. The geometers stared in alarm, but didn’t move back. The gun whirred, and the lights turned blue.
Naila pointed the weapon at Kara, but at the last moment realized what she was about to do, and lowered the weapon from the woman’s chest to her legs instead. She pulled the trigger, too hasty to put the stock at her shoulder, and belatedly remembered what her husband had said about shooting a gun. The kickback of a powerful weapon would slam into her shoulder and throw her to the ground if it didn’t knock out her teeth instead.
But there was there was no kick, only a buzzing sound like a fistful of wasps thrown into a jar and given a good shake. Something shimmered in the air between Naila and the two women, and the gaslight seemed to bend away from them and crawl up the wall. Kara flinched, but as she realized that nothing had exploded from the gun barrel, she released a surprised and relieved-sounding snort.
“Whatever that is...” Kara started to say.
The words died as Kara swayed drunkenly. Something echoed off the wall behind her and hit Naila with a sensation like a thousand pinpricks. Naila staggered backward with nausea clawing at her belly. Maralisa grabbed for her stomach and looked like she would be sick.
But it was Kara who’d taken the direct fire. She wobbled as she stumbled away from Naila toward the wall, unable to reach it in time to grab hold. Her legs twisted with some bizarre effect that made it look like they were shimmering on the other side of a sheet of water. They bent forward and backward in impossible ways, as if her legs had suddenly lost their bones. An instant later, the legs crumpled, and Kara went down with a cry.
Naila was still gaping, and didn’t see Maralisa make a run for it until the woman had thrown open the temple doors and light came streaming in from outside. Naila turned toward her, gun raised fully to her shoulder thi
s time, but the door blocked a clear shot. By the time she got around the door after the woman, the geometer was sprinting down the stone staircase that led from the temple to the plaza.
At the same moment, Anderos was coming up from below, together with two other men, and they stared openmouthed at Naila as she burst through the doors with the weapon of the Elders at her shoulder.
Naila waved the gun barrel at them. “Move. Now.”
The men threw themselves clear. But by now, Maralisa had gained the plaza at the base of the stone staircase leading down from the platform. A handful of cabalists milled about, still waiting for Naila to allow them back inside—this must be the group that had helped Kara and Maralisa plan their insurrection—but there were also at least twenty artisans, shopkeepers, street vendors, and the like on this side of the temple plaza alone. Not only would Naila risk flattening several bystanders—a thought which bothered her more for practical reasons than for any concern for their well-being—but there would be plenty of witnesses unless she meant to kill them all.
A scream from Kara inside the temple turned Naila back around. She went back inside and tried to pull the doors shut, but Anderos and his fellows, apparently more curious than afraid, pushed them open before she could, and came in after her.
Naila could only gape at what she saw. Kara was writhing in pain, her fingernails digging into the flagstones as she tried to drag herself across the ground. The weapon hadn’t precisely dissolved the woman’s legs, as they were still filling her trousers, but from mid-thigh down they seemed to be made of clay that had been hammered and twisted by some cruel hand. Her boots bent at odd angles, as if her ankles had been turned completely around, and where a bit of flesh showed between boot and trouser hem, her shins had no form.
“Rotting bones of the Elders,” Anderos cursed. One of his fellows made a hard swallowing sound in his throat. He looked gray.
Kara lifted a hand with bloody fingernails that had been clawing at the flagstones. “Please, help me.”
Chasm of Fire Page 14
