by Alex White
A quiet tune, swishing reeds and hums, came wafting in from the room’s speakers. Wooden flutes and dulcimers joined it. She recognized it as one of the Legends of the Landers, the first people to settle her planet.
She’d been about to close her eyes when the door slid open and Didier entered, brushing the snow from his shoulders, a pair of bags in each hand.
He cocked his head. “Not going to sleep without me, are you?”
“Took too long to get back,” she said, pretending to snore.
“Oh, man. That’s too bad, because I found a little Carrétan bakery with the best chocolate bread you can imagine. I also managed to find some fresh fruits and a little wine.”
She turned to face him, sizing up the bags with renewed interest.
He opened his mouth to speak. A strange flash bloomed from him, momentarily wilting the colors to gray. Boots squinted, trying to understand exactly what was happening, and he disappeared.
It was like his very presence had been torn from the hotel room.
The bags he was carrying shot to the ground, not thrown, but vanished and reappeared, inert. They looked as though they’d been there for minutes, instead of freshly falling from his hands. Thick blood coated the bags, and Boots sat up to see it running along the carpet. A hot mist settled over her face, and she blinked dumbly.
Her eyes ran along the trail, yet they did not want to see what lay at its end. Gore dripped from the furniture and bedclothes, leading to what remained of Didier.
Terrible, weeping slashes covered his windbreaker, and his arms hung limply at his sides. He was like a wounded animal, his fur coat torn open to the meat underneath, bone and cartilage. Boots couldn’t understand how he was even standing. At last she was able to wrap her mind around the woman in the exosuit poised behind him, a long blade passing all the way through his skull to pin him in place like an insect. Boots had seen enough deaths to know his fate was sealed, and yet she screamed, fury and agony crushing together in her throat.
The woman’s appearance was exactly what Nilah had described: a tattered black cloak, brassy exosuit, high-powered actuators peppered with magic sigils and an ovoid mask covered in lenses, each pointing in a different direction. This woman had to be Mother.
The crone shot her palm out, and Boots flinched as fingers formed a glyph, lightning fast. This was it—whatever she’d done to Didier, she’d do to Boots, and that would be the end. The world began to distort, gray seeping into the corners of her vision like the frost outside. Boots made to grab her slinger from the nightstand, but it was like trying to snatch away part of a stone statue. The weapon was locked in place by the spell, cold and immobile.
Mother dumped Didier’s corpse off to one side with a sickening slosh, both she and Didier still possessed of brilliant color, still able to move and be moved. She calmly flicked her sword free of blood. It flashed in a wide arc, the sort of speed that could’ve cut someone in half. She took a step toward Boots, who backed away against the headboard.
Everything in Boots’s sight had become completely inert, and there would be no escape. Mother had locked the three of them outside of time, and she could easily dice Boots with that sword at her leisure. She took another step closer, and Boots yanked desperately at the slinger, knowing it would be to no avail.
Mother paused. There was something wrong with the spell; Boots could sense it, too.
Air wrapped in distorted strands around Boots’s arms, like clear plastic, before snapping violently. All colors returned. Her slinger came loose from the nightstand without any resistance, and she brought it to bear on Mother.
The crone frowned. Boots loosed a discus round into her would-be assassin’s torso.
The glowing, spinning halo erupted into hot shrapnel as it crashed against Mother. Unstable sparks of the spell bounced around the room, slicing into the furniture as well as Boots’s own exposed arms and legs. Mother was thrown clear over Didier’s body and into the window. The tough glass spiderwebbed under her heavy suit; a regular body would’ve just bounced off.
But the discus had been broken. The spell round designed to shred armor off vehicles, slice through doors, and tear soldiers asunder had shattered like cheap dishware. A shot like that should’ve cut Mother in half, but the assassin straightened up as though it had never happened.
The crone slashed out her glyph again, and Boots leapt from the bed as its magic entangled her. This time the spell snapped free even faster, and Mother snarled, charging in with her wicked blade.
Boots fired again and Mother crossed her arms over her exposed chin, withered lips sneering all the while. The spell exploded against her, and hot shrapnel tore through the wall and ignited the curtains. It speckled the window, presenting a host of new holes. Boots fired twice more, and on the last shot, the window shattered, and Mother tumbled backward into the snowstorm.
Boots rushed forward to catch sight of the assassin’s fate, and found Mother flat on her back. To Boots’s horror, the crone slowly clambered to her feet to stare back, a snarl on her thin lips.
Smoke curled upward from the freshly lit curtains, and the hotel fire alarm pierced the night. The snowstorm took on a queer glow as the village’s first response unit mobilized in the distance.
Mother looked between the oncoming lights and the hotel. With a scowl, she sheathed her sword and took off into the night.
She’d fallen six stories without so much as a sprained ankle. The coward wouldn’t be back that day. Not while she’d lost the advantage of surprise. Boots wondered if she’d ever see Mother’s face again, or if death would come swooping from the shadows with no warning.
She turned back to where Didier lay in a pool of crimson. She didn’t know how to drag him out of there, he was so mangled. She looked into his unfocused eyes—eyes that had been locked onto hers during the passionate embrace only hours before. She needed to get him to the transport before the authorities arrived. The police would be there to help at first, but they’d be bought off in time.
In a daze, she made her way to the bathroom, washed her face, and pulled on her clothes, which had been spared the splashing of his blood. She couldn’t leave him here. As she crept out into the hall, and then the lobby, she learned that her task would be considerably easier than expected—everyone in the hotel was dead.
Boots wrapped Didier’s body in layers of sheets and hoisted him over her shoulder, just as she had with so many others during the war. The pair of decades had taken their toll on her muscles, but her memories of the bad times were as youthful as ever. Her back ached and her knees creaked, but she still had the strength to haul him back to the transport. Boots had to get back to the Capricious, to safety.
She had to warn Cordell that Mother had made planetfall.
Duke Thiollier had been less than convinced when Nilah told him what she saw. He’d given her the sort of understanding nod one gives out of concern for the speaker, as if to say, “Tell me more, so I know what to say to the doctors.” And why wouldn’t he? She was accusing the most powerful body in motorsport of a vast, methodical conspiracy that would have taken years of planning and billions of argents to pull off. Of course it was laughable.
When she pointed out the “roughly glyph-shaped” nature of the track, he rightly countered that there were thousands of glyphs in existence, and almost everything complex enough could be described as “roughly glyph-shaped.” Furthermore, it was a known fact that humans liked to build glyph-like objects; it was ingrained in the nature of their psyches like a perfect ratio.
At the heart of their disconnect, however, was the fact that he was a scribe and she was a mechanist. He could trace a single, solitary glyph, and she could build intricate machines to replicate and supplement all kinds of spells. There was always tension between scribes, who saw spellcraft as a natural art, and mechanists, who saw magic’s boundless potential.
After her outburst post-bathhouse, he’d partitioned himself from her, suddenly indisposed for all manner of reason
s. Nilah had two theories about what that meant. One annoyed her, and the other terrified her. Maybe he’d imagined himself the white knight, rescuing her so he could court her favor. If that was the case, he was distancing himself because he now understood how much trouble she’d be. Sleeping with a racer would be a good story, but a crazy racer would be too much trouble to pursue.
The more frightening theory was simple. Maybe he was part of the conspiracy. Maybe behind every gilded column, every immaculate statue, there was a knife, waiting to strike. But if that was true, it would have made more sense to leave her in the prison, where criminals and police could both do unto her as they would. From what she’d seen of the massive borehole prisons of Carré, no one would ever find her again.
When Orna arrived—unharmed but pissed off—Nilah knew Duke Thiollier wasn’t part of the conspiracy. The quartermaster had been given all her weapons, and Ranger strode patiently behind her with enough firepower to level half the building. If Vayle had been planning to murder Nilah or hand her over to the masterminds behind Clowe’s death, Orna needed to be out of the picture.
Nilah met Orna in the gardens, the twin lights of Carré’s two moons splitting the shadows between a tidal green and rusty orange. Ranger’s head spun in place as he tromped along, snapping in the direction of any movement. From what Nilah could tell, he was tracking the guards, the attendants, and maybe a few distant targets invisible to her.
“Heavens, am I happy to see you,” said Nilah, taking long strides before embracing her companion. Orna smelled horrid and tensed up under her grip, but eventually relented and returned the embrace.
The quartermaster pulled away. “Tell me where I can bathe.”
“I have exactly the place.”
But she didn’t. Nilah and Orna were refused entry to the Prokarthic baths on the grounds that the waters needed to recharge after having so many bathers. When Nilah argued, Orna told all assembled that she didn’t need any of that garbage, and regular water would be more than enough.
And that was how they found themselves in a spacious, well-furnished bath attached to one of the palace rooms, Nilah sitting in the anteroom as Orna cleansed herself. Ranger stayed with Nilah, simultaneously keeping watch while relaying the conversation between the two women. Nilah had found a nice chair and nicer liquor, and despite any impending doom, she’d managed to relax. Someone accustomed to the stress of races always had to know where to find bliss the night before.
“You really should try the oils,” Nilah urged, for what had to be the hundredth time.
“I just want soap. Where is the regular damned soap?” said Ranger in Orna’s voice.
“A good routine doesn’t use anything as harsh as soap. First, you want a sugar scrub to stop your calluses from getting worse.”
“I like my calluses. They keep my fingers from getting cut while I work. And you’re not going to get grease off with a damned sugar scrub.”
“Well, sure, but you could be more careful while you work. I saw the way you’d been storing your tools. You could benefit from some cleanliness.”
Ranger shrugged, which was odd for a death machine. “Why? If I lose them, I can just beat the snot out of you and get some more.”
Nilah sloshed her glass around and watched the rich red legs of the liquor drip down the sides. She’d grown used to Orna’s constant jabs, and the more of them she suffered, the less painful they got. “That was a pretty good trick, shutting off my dermaluxes like that.”
Ranger cocked his head, his lenses traveling up and down Nilah’s arms. “Yeah, well … it was the only way to win, and I don’t think I could do it again. Beat you, I mean … I don’t think I could beat you again.” Ranger looked away, perhaps ashamed. “You must be pretty happy with yourself right now.”
“About getting a compliment?”
“About getting off our ship. It’s all you’ve been able to talk about since you came on board.” Orna’s mocking impression of a Taitutian accent whistled through Ranger’s speakers. “‘I can’t live in these conditions. It’s disgusting. Where are the servants?’”
“You really have no idea how tough I am.”
“Tough enough for ship life?”
Nilah considered the question for the first time. In the whole of the galaxy, there were precious few people she trusted to have her back. Her father and the prime minister were sure to protect her where they could, but those two were far away at the moment. Kristof showed unwavering support for her, even when Claire buckled. And lastly, the crew of the Capricious had treated her as well as one of their own. Better, even, since she wasn’t required to do any chores.
She’d only been able to focus on escape, yet now that she had, Vayle’s palace felt wrong in so many ways. Perhaps it was a disappointment. Perhaps it was a danger. But when she thought of being back on the ship, her heart calmed.
“Actually, yeah. I kind of wish I could stay.”
Ranger’s lenses locked onto her eyes. “I wouldn’t kick you off if you wanted to come with us. Beats hanging around in a place like this.”
Nilah blushed, and her dermaluxes gave off a bright shade of pink.
Orna groaned. “I don’t know how you can stand to wear your emotions on your sleeve like that.”
“I can suppress them.”
“Except when you forget to, which is basically all the time. I always know what’s happening in that tiny head of yours.”
Nilah frowned. “Which is?”
“Oh, you’re hot under the collar for me, little miss racer. The way you fawn is so pathetic with those puppy dog eyes.”
Nilah took a long swig of her liquor. After the first bottle, she was starting to feel its effects, and her tongue had loosened. “Please. It’s not like you’re any better! You act so tough, like you’re some kind of loner, but I’ve seen the way you look at me, too. Even without dermaluxes telling me your every bloody thought, your eyes linger just a bit overlong, don’t you think?”
No response came, and Nilah squinted into her glass. Had she offended? Was Orna thinking it over? A little drunken flame inside her egged her onward.
“You know, if you were really tough, you’d do something about it, instead of hiding behind some little act. You’d come in here and—”
Orna’s bare feet squelched against the tile as she appeared in the doorway, steam rising off her wet body. Her balled fists shook, and it seemed like the quartermaster had nerves. Then Nilah looked past her scarred belly and breasts to Orna’s quivering white lips and clenching jaw. Her eyes were narrowed, her nose wrinkled with rage.
Nilah’s breath caught. She’d made a critical mistake.
Then Orna said, “Ranger received a message from the ship. Boots just got back—flew an all-nighter to get there …”
“O-okay …”
“Didier is dead. The Capricious is coming to get us.”
Chapter Thirteen
Double Apex
Once dressed, Orna made her way through the palace like a cyclone, blowing past statues and colonnades, through galleries and salons. Ranger strode a few paces ahead of her, shoving attendants, staffers, and guests away, clearing the way for his master. Nilah followed in their wake, silently towed along behind the pair as though she were riding in their slipstream.
Orna’s eyes remained red, but the quartermaster wouldn’t cry. Quite the opposite: she possessed a violence in her countenance that Nilah hadn’t seen before. She feared what her companion might do once they arrived at Vayle’s chambers. And all the while, the words kept cycling through her mind: Didier is dead.
When they got closer to the duke’s offices, things got a little more dicey. Two armed guards stepped between them and progress, blocking Ranger’s path. Both men kept their hands on their rifles, but didn’t level them. Ranger clacked his metal claws, and his servos let out a low, electronic growl.
Nilah swallowed. “We, uh, have some news for Vayle.”
“We need to see Duke Thiollier, immediately,” said Orn
a, her voice a flat contrast to her simmering expression.
“I’m afraid he’s indisposed,” said one of the guardsmen.
“It’s important.” A hot edge entered Orna’s voice.
The guardsman cocked his head, then whispered something to the other man beside him, who jogged away. “If he’s willing to see you, I’ll need to see that you’re disarmed.”
Orna sneered. “Yeah. If he’s willing to see us. I’ll just hang on to my crap until then.”
“As you wish.”
They waited a few minutes, and when the other guard returned, he did so with a small cadre. Ranger went and stood against a wall, and Orna shoved her guns into the battle armor’s hands. The guards searched Nilah with scanners, and Orna was subjected to a more thorough pat down. Satisfied that the pair posed no threat, the guards allowed the women to pass.
They found the duke in his office, a sprawling room of white marble and gold adorned with his pervasive family tapestries. Gargantuan statues flanked the room: the Thiollier matriarch and patriarch atop solid bronze bases that rose almost as high as Nilah. Vayle sat behind a desk formed of glass blocks, inlaid with refractive pathways to channel magical systems to its surface. He wore his royal uniform, medals adorning the breast of his doublet. When he stood, Nilah spotted his family saber at his side, the one he always wore to the races.
“We’re leaving,” said Nilah.
Vayle sighed. “And why are you—”
“One of our friends is dead,” said Orna. “So our ship is coming to get us. We don’t want to have a problem with the palace anti-air defenses.”
“I see. I’m sorry. I’ll let the guard towers know,” said Vayle.
Nilah couldn’t help but eye his outfit. Why was he wearing ceremonial garb? “You’re dressed up.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Yes, well, I’ve been on a call with His Majesty’s legal counsel. I’ve been strongly advised to extradite you to the Gantry Station authorities.”
“I’ll end up dead if you do that.”
