“Good evening, Basilard. How did you get volunteered for the role of assistant?”
Basilard’s expression turned wry. Amaranthe. I believe I was signed up under the role of advisor, not assistant.
“Ah, good. So you don’t have to fetch her tea as well as reading her gauges?”
No, she hasn’t had anything to eat or drink in the hours I’ve been in here.
“Perhaps she’s gaining sustenance from the tip of that pencil.” Sespian watched Mahliki to see if his teasing would draw a reaction, but she was so intent on her notes that he might as well have not been in the room.
It has gotten shorter since I arrived this morning.
“As an advisor, what advice might you offer, if she were to accept your input?” Perhaps Sespian could act as his translator. Though Mahliki could read Basilard’s signs, if she was so intent on her own ideas, she might not see them. But a voice could cut through her focus more easily, surely. Sespian didn’t see the Mangdorian translator around, perhaps because the president had been unwilling to give access to this room to someone who wasn’t already familiar with the history of the plant.
I have already offered it. I do not know if anything would come of it, but I believe we should search for a natural predator. In the wilderness, plants rarely grow out of control because of predation and competition from other species.
“Any hungry herbivores we can bring in to nosh on that thing, Mahliki?” Sespian asked, this time prodding her in the shoulder at the same time to make sure she was paying attention.
She put down her pencil, propped her elbow on the glass, and faced them. “Basilard has already given me his theory, and I’ve invited him to find me such a herbivore, one with teeth like your father’s dagger and the appetite of a tiger. Actually a blue whale. If memory serves, they eat four tons of krill a day.”
“Would one fit in the lake?” Sespian joked.
Mahliki snorted. “Even if it would, this plant doesn’t look like a krill to me.”
“Maybe it tastes like one.”
Mahliki gave him a flat look, the sort Sicarius was so good at.
Sespian found himself disappointed that she didn’t appreciate his attempts at humor. Another time perhaps. She had probably been up all day and maybe the night before working on this. He lifted a hand. “I apologize. I can leave if I’m bothering you. I simply came to make sure you were well and had everything under control.” He eyed the vine. The tip that had been waving back and forth earlier had either straightened or grown another inch in the short minutes he had been there. It was pressed against the glass now.
“I’m sorry for being a grouch,” Mahliki said. “To both of you. I’m just...” She swallowed and faced the vivarium. “My father is counting on me. He believes I can solve this problem. If I can’t...”
“Mahliki, I know you’re very intelligent and have studied biology, but I’m sure he doesn’t expect you to do this alone. Won’t he let any experts in? He has to be willing to grant some people access and blast security concerns. This is more important than worrying about what the general public knows.”
“Oh, several people have been by. The problem is they weren’t helpful. At all.”
She knows more than the biologists and botanists in the city, Basilard signed. Your people are behind when it comes to the natural sciences.
“Tell me about it.” Sespian sighed. “I was the one to arrange the import of microscopes to the university when I was a boy, mostly because I wanted one for myself. We’re making progress now, though. I’ve heard that one of our manufacturing companies is making some of the finest microscopes out there.”
“Yes, and exporting them to real scientists in Kyatt and Alsorshia,” Mahliki said dryly. “The last so-called professor who came in to help didn’t know what a cell is. A cell, Sespian. That’s kind of a basic thing.”
“Perhaps we can arrange to have one of those microscopes sent to him,” he said, though he wasn’t sure why he kept trying humor on her. It wasn’t working well today.
She dropped her face into the palm of her hand and exhaled abruptly. He didn’t think it was a laugh. A cry of frustration? He stepped forward, thinking to comfort her with a pat on the back, but she rubbed her face and stood up, composing herself.
“I’m sorry,” she said again. “I don’t mean to insult your people. I know that neither the natural or mental sciences have been fostered here. I’m just frustrated.”
“No, no, I understand. I find my people frustrating from time to time too.” Sespian almost mentioned the idiot foreman in charge of his construction project. The work had barely started, and already there had been more accidents and injuries on the job site than most projects suffered in a month. Putting up a building was hardly a priority though, not compared to this.
Basilard tapped the vivarium. The vine is applying pressure to the glass.
Sespian eyed that tip again. More of it touched the glass now
Mahliki sighed. “I know. It keeps growing, even without oxygen.” She waved to a suction apparatus at the far end, apparently the device that had removed the air. “That slowed it down, but—this plant is utterly odd.”
“Excuse my ignorance,” Sespian said, “but I thought plants created oxygen from carbon dioxide. Do they actually need it themselves?”
“Yes,” Mahliki said. “They produce more oxygen than they require, but plant cells perform cellular respiration, the same as animal cells do. Granted many wetlands plants have developed a tolerance for low-oxygen conditions, but they shouldn’t be able to survive without any.” She glowered at the vine. “Unless our gauge is lying to us, and we weren’t effective at removing all the air, but Father designed that pump, so I’m inclined to trust it.”
“Did he also design the case?” Sespian asked.
“Yes, though it was cobbled together from what could be scrounged on short notice.”
That extra tidbit did not comfort Sespian. “Can you kill this particular piece before it breaks the glass and escapes?”
“I can’t kill any of them, Sespian. That’s the problem. We can hack them into pieces, but each piece has the potential to grow into a full plant.”
When it grows too large for the experimentation case, we call the guards in, Basilard signed. They lubricate themselves and run the plant down and toss it into the lake. It’s the best we can do.
Ah, so they had dealt with one outgrowing the case before. That might explain why those guards had been so leery at the thought of having a leg grabbed from below. If they had already dealt with the vines, they knew how difficult it was to remove them from human flesh. Still, if they had successfully extricated all of the plant starts from the basement, perhaps Sespian’s notions of one taking over the hotel had been premature. “You’re able to keep it from taking root then?”
“Yes, it does seem to need a soil medium for that. Held suspended in air, the vines only grow longer vines.” Mahliki walked to a different table and lifted a cover from a cloche. The root bulb she had cut into lay within. “This has remained dormant, though I don’t believe it’s dead necessarily.”
“Like a seed lying fallow for years, waiting for the perfect circumstances for unfurling?” Sespian asked.
“Yes, but I don’t think it’ll wait for years.”
I would like to fetch animals and experiment, Basilard signed. If we find something that likes to eat it, our problem may be solved.
“You’re welcome to look for something,” Mahliki said, “but I’m still skeptical that a terrestrial animal is going to be able to chew on that thing and digest it. Even if some rabbit with steel molars got it down, if stomach acid won’t break it down—and we’ve experimented with acid already, remember?—then it might start growing in the animal’s stomach. That would be a horrible death.”
Beneath the soot, Basilard’s face grew pale. I hadn’t thought of that.
“Nor I,” Sespian said, “but how disturbing.”
I wouldn’t wish to inflict th
at fate on any animal.
“If it has a natural predator, I doubt it lives on our world,” Mahliki said.
“Your mother has a library on that ancient people, doesn’t she?” Sespian asked. “Is there any mention of this in there?”
“Nothing, save one that says the Orenki—that’s the name of the ancient people—were skilled horticulturists.” Her mouth twisted. “Good to know you’re going up against the best, isn’t it? If I thought the fellow who didn’t know what a cell is had primitive knowledge, I can only imagine what these people would have thought of me.”
Basilard tapped the glass again. This must be removed before the cage is damaged. I will fetch the guards.
“Don’t forget to tell them to grease up,” Mahliki said. “We—”
A crack sounded, and Sespian jumped. His first thought was that the vivarium had shattered, but the sound had come from the other side of the laboratory, and the noise had been deeper than that of breaking glass. And muffled.
“What was that?” Sespian jogged toward the wall. Shelves filled with jars of bases and acids rose from the cement floor to the wood ceiling, but nothing appeared damaged.
“I’m not sure,” Mahliki said.
Basilard tapped the glass for their attention. It did not come from inside this room.
“You’re right,” Sespian said, reconsidering the direction and type of sound he had heard. “But we’re on the end of the building, aren’t we? Is anything over there?”
“There’s a side yard and the street, eventually. But we’re ten feet below ground here.”
Sewer? Basilard asked. Could someone be trying to burrow a way into the hotel?
“Through my lab?” Mahliki sounded more offended at this than at the notion of a security breach.
“Maybe,” Sespian said. “I’ll go see if there’s a manhole cover or other access from the yard.”
“Do you want us to go with you?”
“You’d better focus on your friends in here.” Sespian waved at the vivarium. “I’ll let you know if anyone is about to break down your wall and kidnap you.”
“I’d be more alarmed at the idea of having my samples kidnapped.”
Sespian smiled at her as he jogged for the door. “Yes, I imagine you would.”
She returned his smile, and he decided it was quite a pleasant smile, even if it soon disappeared as she bent over her notes again. Sespian passed the guards in the hallway, nearly stumbling because they had their shirts off and were slathering themselves with grimbal grease. They glowered at him, glowers that clearly said, former emperor or not, they would have no trouble punching him if he commented on their state of undress and... slickness.
Sespian kept his comments to himself and ran up the stairs, through the corridors to the foyer, and past a yawning receptionist. Outside, numerous gas lamps kept the yard free of deep shadows. A spy or assassin would have been hard-pressed to hop the fence and approach a door or window without being spotted by the perimeter guards. Assuming that spy or assassin approached from above the ground...
Someone else must have heard the crack, for Colonel Starcrest and two young soldiers were already in the side yard. As a security precaution, the area had been cleared of shrubbery, so only clipped grass ran from the hotel walls to the fence at the street. There was a manhole, one Sespian might have had trouble finding, except that the two soldiers were standing on either side of it. One had a crowbar in hand.
“I don’t care how rusty it is,” Colonel Starcrest said. “Get it open. I want to know what’s down there.”
“Yes, Colonel.”
Starcrest nodded to Sespian when he ran up. “You heard the noise?”
“Yes. I was in the basement lab. We thought someone might be trying to tunnel in.”
“Hm.” Colonel Starcrest didn’t offer his own hypothesis, merely motioned for the men to try again to open it. Given the dirt scraped away from it and the pile of nearby sod, the grass had been growing over it for a long time.
After much heaving of muscles, the iron lid finally popped free. The first soldier held out a lantern and leaned over the hole to peer inside. He froze.
Colonel Starcrest strode over to join him. When he looked inside, he froze too. Then he swore. For a long time. In multiple languages.
Another time, Sespian might have been impressed by the colonel’s ecumenical vocabulary, but now... he let his shoulders slump in defeat. Before he walked over, he had a notion of what he would see. He wasn’t wrong.
The three-inch-thick greenish brown rhizome wasn’t quite the same as the aerial vines that the plant sprouted, but there was no mistaking its identity. The long growth stretched across the sludge of the old sewer channel, its length disappearing into darkness in both directions.
• • • • •
Sicarius was crouching in the shadows on the rooftop, his back to one of the chimneys, when the steam carriage drove up. He thought of slipping inside to warn Amaranthe but trusted she would have heard the vehicle’s approach. Besides, there was too much going on outside; he would be better served staying and watching. The person who had been following them since they left the president’s hotel remained—Sicarius had tried twice to catch up with their stalker, only to find him gone when he arrived. He had no sense of the Science being used, and believed this might be their mage hunter. What had brought the person to Turgonia, he did not know, but he was well trained. Sicarius had yet to find so much as a footprint or hear a snapped twig. It was more instinct than evidence that kept telling him their follower was out there.
The man spying on the house from behind a shrub in the front yard had been easier to spot. Though also discreet, and clad in featureless gray clothing, Sicarius judged him a soldier. His way of moving stealthily—sweeping steps that were more circular than straightforward, designed to find objects in the dark and test the earth ahead before committing one’s weight—was the method taught to scouts in the Turgonian army. This might be a veteran who had switched to mercenary work, but it seemed more likely that he was one of Colonel Dak Starcrest’s intelligence officers.
Sicarius recognized the woman who stepped out of the sleek black steam carriage as President Starcrest’s first wife. The well-dressed, gray-haired man who followed her out... Interesting. That was Deret Mancrest’s father. Sicarius had not been back in town long enough to learn of the state of the Gazette or who was running it, though he recalled that Amaranthe had rescued Deret from imprisonment by this man the winter before. An unnecessary act on her part, since the journalist had done little to prove his worth to the team.
“Are you sure you should be seen so openly with another man,” Lord Mancrest was saying, “now that you seem to be married again?”
“Now, now.” Sauda patted his cheek. “You’re just here to discuss that business proposition with me. Nobody could possibly think anything of that.” She waved toward the illuminated wing of the house—the raucous laughs of the servants had been silenced with the arrival of the carriage.
“Unless they know I’ve already made my feelings clear on that proposition.” Lord Mancrest caught her hand and kissed it. “And that we’ve moved onto discussing... other matters.”
“Such as the story you’re considering running to highlight the inappropriateness of that Kyattese woman as a president’s consort?”
While Sicarius watched the interplay in the driveway, he habitually scanned the roof, and the front and the back yards, a task made challenging by the park-like setting, with all of its possible hiding places. Movement in the street fifty meters away halted his roving gaze. With the intersections so far apart and the lots so large, streetlights were sparse up on Mokath Ridge, but his dark-adjusted eyes picked out the short, slight figure easily. A boy of ten or twelve approached wrapped in a ragged cloak two sizes too big for his body. Someone’s messenger. Perhaps one sent to deliver or receive a report from the intelligence officer.
But the boy didn’t venture onto the lawn. He crept around the influe
nce of a single gas lamp burning at the head of the driveway and tiptoed to the mailbox, a stonework rectangle perched unobtrusively next to a shrub.
“I believe I got all the details of that story over dinner,” Lord Mancrest went on, linking his arm through Sauda’s.
“Did you?” she said, leaning against him. “Then you must be here to gather more details on me. The beleaguered and abandoned wife, naturally.”
“Naturally.”
Out in the street, the boy slipped a large envelope out of his cloak. He opened the mailbox and eased it inside, his eyes darting about as he did so, watching both ends of the street as well as the cozy couple pressed against each other in the driveway. The intelligence officer had crept around one of the statues so he could more fully watch the couple as well. He had not noticed the boy. The shrub might block his view, or he was simply too focused on other matters.
The boy closed the large brass mailbox door, then tapped something on the back of it. A red flag snapped into place, the cloth shivering in the night air. The boy raced down the street, his oversized cloak flapping.
Sauda and Lord Mancrest had been heading for the large flagstone front porch when the chauffeur cleared his throat. He didn’t say a word, but Sauda gazed toward the street, squinting into the darkness—at the mailbox. Expectantly.
“Get that, will you, Pevat? And leave it in my office.”
“Yes, my lady.”
Sicarius thought about waiting for the servant to collect the item and deliver it to the office, then sneaking inside to take a look, but he should be able to beat the man to the box without being seen. Why not intercept the mail, and find out what midnight messages this woman was receiving? True, this side trip had been Professor Komitopis’s idea, and it had nothing to do with Sicarius and Amaranthe’s plans—or what President Starcrest had asked of them—but this might be a part of some scheme. Something that could threaten Starcrest. The first wife seemed about as trustworthy as black ice on a bridge.
After another quick scan of the grounds, Sicarius darted away from the chimney in a low crouch, using the apex of the roof to hide himself from those in the front yard. An urgent pluck at his senses warned him that, despite his dark clothing and the shadows, he might be visible to someone in the backyard, someone keeping an eye on him as closely as he was keeping an eye on everything else.
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