Reign of Stars

by Tim Pratt

  A wizard emerged from one of the carts—he was wearing a cape and a big hat and carrying a knobby walking stick, and might as well have had a sign that read "WIZARD" hanging around his neck—and walked with a few "carters" into the shop. They emerged a bit later, the men staggering inexplicably from the weight of carrying a crate spilling over with bunches of spinach. The wizard might have at least glamoured the strongboxes full of coin to look like something dense and heavy, like onions or beets, so the guard's efforts would look more plausible. The men struggled to load the month's take into the cart, then returned for two more loads.

  "No last-minute snags," Redfang said. "It all went just like your informants said it would." Redfang had been disappointed to hear that Alaeron's plan to blow up the Technic League had failed due to technical difficulties, but had been happy to join with their Plan B, striking at the League and the Sovereign's financial concerns. If his friend Shadowstalker had told any stories about waking up concussed and confused in the woods with muddled memories, Redfang hadn't mentioned it, and Skiver wasn't about to ask.

  Skiver tossed back the last of the sweet brown liquor that passed for the local delicacy. "In a perfect world, I'd come back next month, and the month after that, and the month after, and observe every little thing, and make sure I knew the route and the routine up one side and down the other. Safer that way. But I feel better, seeing everything go exactly the way our League turncoat said it would, at least so far."

  "I don't know much about crime," Redfang said. "I can see your point, though, about being careful—you do the same thing when you hunt. Know your prey, and know its territory. Still, this isn't about the money—it's a political act. It's about breaking the power of the League."

  When they'd recruited Redfang, they hadn't told him they were working to overthrow one Technic League leader so they could install another. Just the first part. Skiver had assured Alaeron that it wasn't a lie, just a failure to provide the full details. Besides, they'd gotten Zernebeth to promise to leave Iadenveigh alone once she was back in power, so it would all work out for the best for Redfang's people anyway. "You don't want your share of the money, then? You'll take your pay in politics?"

  "I'm an idealist, but I'm not a zealot," Redfang said. "Coins and gems will do just fine. I can find a noble use for them, fear not."

  The whole transfer of wealth to the carts took just a few minutes, and the wagons began the laborious process of turning around and heading back the way they'd come.

  Idiots, Skiver thought. Who loaded a cart full of vegetables and took it out of a place like Lackthroat, which probably needed all the food it could get? Where the hell were they supposedly planning to sell it instead? He thought of the Sovereign's horrible parody of a feast, and this was the same sort of thing, a terrible impersonation of a slick criminal enterprise. The Sovereign chose his counselors and generals based on whim and nepotism, and it showed. The League, by contrast, was smart, you had to give it that, and despite its viciousness it was at least a pure meritocracy—you got power in its ranks by proving you deserved it.

  Zernebeth wasn't really the best person to run the League by its current standards—after all, she'd been ousted, hadn't she? Her interest in knowledge for its own sake made her a poor fit, in a way—gangster-philosophers were good in stories, but in practice, they lacked the ruthless focus that more pragmatic criminals possessed. Bothvald was probably more effective. Shame he'd sent Skiver to the subbasement, then. He'd made it personal, so Skiver was happy to engineer his downfall.

  Their hirelings had already drifted away to prepare themselves for their parts in the plan, so Redfang and Skiver rose and strolled down an alleyway. Zernebeth had provided them with suggestions for shortcuts—from memory, in a town she'd only been to a couple of times; there was no denying the woman's intellect—and by squeezing down passageways far too small for vehicle traffic, they managed to get well ahead of the slow-moving carts.

  The ambush point was carefully chosen, on a block where a fire had ravaged the buildings and they hadn't been repaired or replaced. There were rumors of ghosts in the vicinity, so no one spent much time here, providing a useful level of abandonment. The vegetable carts came this way because it was the fastest route to the side gate they used in their laughable excuse for discretion. Perfectly ordinary carts going out of their way to use an awkwardly placed minor exit—nothing suspicious about that at all.

  The vegetable carts turned the corner, and once they'd progressed well along the street of ravaged buildings, two of Skiver's hirelings stopped their own cart across the path, blocking the way. Two others knocked over a pile of crates behind the last cart to block escape in that direction, though it wasn't really necessary, since horses weren't famed for their ability to push carts in reverse.

  The guards knew something was wrong immediately, to their credit, and emerged armed with the silvery, curving, weird weapons presumably procured from the League. They should have looked like they were carrying rakes and shovels, but if they noticed their illusions had stopped working, they showed no sign.

  Really, such amateurs.

  Their fancy weapons didn't do them any good when they didn't have anyone to point them at, though. The hirelings had scurried for the shadows as soon as they blocked the path, and Skiver was watching from behind an overturned, half-burnt wagon.

  While the guards looked around for someone to kill, Redfang shot two with arrows from his perch in one of the burned-out buildings, and their sniper on the other side took care of two more. The wizard stumbled out and lifted his staff...and nothing at all happened.

  Alaeron had provided time-delayed magic-dispelling bombs, which Skiver had hidden in the area where the carts were stopped, and they'd worked their anti-magic right on schedule. The wizard was out of luck. Another arrow took him out, and the rest of the guards decided to run for it, which worked about as well as one might have expected.

  Skiver mostly avoided murder in the course of larceny when he could, simply because it brought less heat than simple theft, but Redfang wanted dead League members as part of his pay package, and Skiver had obliged.

  The hunter came down from his perch, and Skiver emerged from his cover, summoning the hirelings with a whistle. They stripped the bodies of valuables—taking everything but the weapons, which Skiver needed—and then hauled the corpses away, tossing them in the burned buildings where they wouldn't be noticed for a while. Skiver thanked them for their good work and paid them off, and the hirelings waved cheerfully as they moved their cart out of the way.

  Skiver climbed onto one cart, and Redfang another, with Genthia's mate Bugbear taking charge of the third. The illusions of vegetables were gone, but they found some old horse blankets and threw them over the strongboxes, and that worked just fine to disguise the contents. Sometimes the simplest ways were the best.

  They got out through the barely-even-guarded side gate without incident, and split up a mile or so outside of town. Redfang took one strongbox for his personal enrichment and to contribute to the Banner of the Stag, the pirate took another to pay Genthia and her people for their ongoing assistance, and Skiver took the rest. He waited at the prearranged place farther south, and Alaeron arrived not much later, with tales of his successful raid on Skumble. They added the strongbox containing the Sovereign's gold to the lovely hoard they were growing inside the black box.

  Not a bad day's work at all. "Should we start making our way back to Hajoth Hakados?" Alaeron said.

  "It's a long trip, and the sooner we get started, the sooner we finish."

  "I wish I knew how the other attacks went."

  "Don't fret. Genthia's a professional, and so's Ja—so's the other one. We'll meet up and get a report when we're back home, but I'm hopeful. Try not to worry—just consider the next week a camping trip, eh?"

  "Just like the old days, when we went to Kho," Alaeron said. "Sleeping rough in a strange country."

  "Not all that rough. It's my turn to sleep in the nice bed i
n the black box tonight, by the way. We've got more money this trip, too. And, I hope, fewer monsters. I'll take

  Numeria over Kho any time."

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Two days later, while they hid beneath the cart in the vain hope that the monster in the sky wouldn't come back for another pass, Alaeron said, "Do you still prefer Numeria to Kho?"

  "Just now I hold them in about equal esteem," Skiver said, listening hard for the sound of death from above. Their horse, at least, had finally succumbed to its injuries and stopped screaming, lying still in its traces at the front of the cart.

  Alaeron fumbled in his pack and brought out the black box, setting it down beside them and pressing the button to activate it. The box did its unfolding trick...which had the unfortunate side-effect of raising up one end of the cart as the box grew taller. As soon as it was fully opened, Alaeron slammed the button to open it, and they rushed inside as the roar of the monster's approach grew louder.

  Skiver leaned against the closed door inside the cube. "Now what?" he said.

  "We wait?" Alaeron suggested.

  "Wait for how long? Do these things ever get tired? What is it, anyway?"

  "A myrmidon," Alaeron said. "An automaton that flies using a device on its back—or rather that's part of its back—a sort of engine that spews fire. They also have those tentacles it used to kill the horse on its first flyby. Sometimes they launch explosives, though this one hasn't, yet, so perhaps it used up all its bombs."

  "Think it works for the League?"

  "The League has made some attempts to, ah, domesticate such things, because they'd obviously be marvelous guards, but they aren't easy to control. I think this one is wild, and this particular stretch of nowhere is the place it considers its territory."

  "Shame we don't have the staff that slows down time. That'd be handy."

  Alaeron sighed. "Agreed. It made sense to leave it with Zernebeth, so she could escape if Bothvald's agents managed to track her down. But, yes, it would give us an edge."

  "How do we fight this thing? I can't imagine knives would be much good."

  "Electricity is our best chance. I do have some lightning bombs."

  Skiver sighed. "So we try to fight it?"

  "Or we can stay here for a week or two, and hope it decides to go away."

  "I will be very annoyed if we die in the course of helping your friend Zernebeth get her old job back. Especially since I'd die without ever knowing if my brilliant plan worked. All right, then. Where are these bombs?"

  Alaeron opened a cabinet and began mixing chemicals into clay vessels, then closing them with stoppers. "All right. If I can hit it in midair, the electricity should disrupt its flight. With luck, falling from a great height might damage it sufficiently to let us escape."

  "Should," Skiver said. "Might. Well, I'm convinced."

  Alaeron put the bombs in a belt lined with pouches, then slung the belt over his shoulder. He stood before the door, took a deep breath, and said, "If I don't make it, tell Zernebeth I—"

  "If you don't make it, neither will I," Skiver said, "so let's concentrate on making it, shall we?"

  Alaeron hit the button that opened the door and stepped outside. Skiver hovered in the doorway, watching as the alchemist moved from underneath the shadow of the cart, looking skyward—

  The myrmidon landed no more than thirty feet away. Skiver hadn't gotten a good look at it before, and he wasn't thrilled about getting a good look now. Shaped a bit like a man, though far larger, it resembled the Gearsmen he'd seen in Starfall: a roughly humanoid metal man. But this one had long flexible metal tentacles dangling from beneath the baleful red eye, and huge pincers instead of hands.

  Alaeron tossed three bombs so quickly it was practically simultaneous, and the thing dodged the first two—but the last was a direct hit, right in its hideous eye. The red glow there faded as lightning crackled all over its body, and it jolted and shuddered for a moment, emitting a high-pitched keening sound, then fell silent and still, transformed into an inert heap of junk.

  The alchemist threw the rest of his bombs at it, just to be on the safe side, and it didn't react. Skiver stepped out of the black box. "Is it dead?"

  "I'm not sure it was ever precisely alive. I'd be a lot happier if I'd hit it when it was thirty feet above the ground, and if it had smashed itself to pieces by tumbling out of the sky. I wish I understood its nature better." The alchemist edged forward—

  And one of the tentacles lashed out, missing Alaeron's face by only a few feet. The myrmidon's eye began to glow again, and though it moved forward jerkily, one of its arms twitching pointlessly, it was still impossibly fast. Alaeron and Skiver both turned toward the safety of the black box, diving through the door...

  But Alaeron couldn't close the door fast enough. They managed to dodge to the side as the myrmidon blundered through, crashing into crates of ore and scattering priceless metals to and fro. The automaton unleashed some sort of energy weapon, and Alaeron's bed exploded into a cloud of burning feathers, obscuring the automaton's form...except for that glowing red eye, so bright it was clearly visible as it turned in their direction.

  Without thinking, Skiver dove back out the door, Alaeron close behind him. The alchemist slammed his hand down on the button that closed the door, and the cube sealed itself tight and began collapsing back into its portable form, letting the raised end of the cart drop with a thump hard enough to crack one of its wheels.

  For a moment Alaeron and Skiver sat in the dirt, staring at the black box.

  Alaeron sighed. "I loved that box. And that bed. That was my second-best bed."

  "Now your third-best bed is your second-best bed," Skiver said. "You know there are vast riches in there. Gold stolen from the Sovereign. All that skymetal."

  "The myrmidon is quite valuable, too," Alaeron said. "If you could sell it before it killed you. Which you couldn't."

  "At least we're alive," Skiver said at length. "And I've got a decent bit of coin on my person and in my pack and in my boots. I never like to keep all my money in one place, especially a magic black box that I can't personally even open."

  "Good, good," Alaeron said vaguely. "That's good, especially since most of our food was in the black box, too. I...I suppose we should start walking?" He picked up the cube, examined it—keeping his finger well away from the red button, Skiver noted with approval—and then stowed it in his pack.

  "This long trip just got a lot longer," Skiver said. "If anyone bothers us, I suppose we can just open up the box and let the myrmidon come flying out. That would be a pretty fair distraction."

  "I'm not sure our own fiery death counts as a distraction, exactly," Alaeron said. "At least, not primarily."

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Triumphant Returns

  How did Genthia's attack go?" Alaeron asked some days later, when Skiver returned from his meeting with the others at the Gentleman Bastard. He was soaking his feet in a tub of hot water—they'd bought horses eventually, but it had still been a physically grueling trip back to Hajoth Hakados. "And the, ah, other team?"

  Skiver sprawled on one of the run-down house's couches and blew a smoke ring toward the ceiling. "Like a dream. Genthia hit the gambling house in Chesed, and it was just like Zernebeth said it would be. They didn't leave a copper in the place. Jaya's strike on the League outpost near the northern border wasn't as lucrative in terms of coin, but she got away with some impressive weapons, which sends a message, too. The miscellaneous fires, raids, and bombings we arranged mostly went off without any trouble."

  "And what's the opinion in the capital?" Alaeron turned to Char, who was sitting cross-legged and floating about five feet off the ground. His job had mostly involved flitting to and fro around the country, carrying messages, spying on their enemies, and coordinating things. Numeria was a damnably large place, and a man who could fly was a great help when it came to logistics.

  "Bothvald is in seclusion in the League compound, reportedly consulting with
the other captains, and the Black Sovereign is by all accounts enraged. Not so much because of the wealth he's lost, though that stings, but because people dare to steal from him at all—especially since everyone believes turncoats among the League's ranks helped the thieves. A few of the lieutenants are muttering that Bothvald is good at talking, but bad at running things."

  "And what are they saying about me?" Zernebeth's tone was cool, almost offhand, but Alaeron knew what she was hoping to hear: that the people were clamoring for her return, that only she could save the day, that they were embroidering banners with pictures of her face.

  Char cleared his throat. "Your escape is...seen as another black mark against Bothvald."

  Zernebeth scowled. "Does anyone suspect I had anything to do with the crimes?"

  "I have not gotten that sense, mistress."

  "I was afraid of this," Skiver said. "Your escape was bound to be read one of two ways: either you're too powerful to be contained...or Bothvald is so incompetent he couldn't even keep a one-armed has-been like you locked up. Our efforts have only reinforced the latter impression."

  Alaeron winced, Char hissed, and Zernebeth looked at Skiver as if he were a previously unknown form of slime mold. He held up his hands. "I'm sorry, I know you don't want to hear it—but am I wrong, Char?"

  "I have...heard that approximate sentiment expressed." The apprentice spoke like the words cut his throat as they emerged.

  Skiver nodded. "Luckily, the fact that no one thinks you're a threat means no one believes you organized the raids—everyone accepts our story about Bothvald's obvious weakness emboldening the criminal element and inspiring treachery among the League's underlings and such. He's likely to be run out of town by the other captains or by the Sovereign any time now, yeah?"