Ivan Xav’s hand grabbed her arm and yanked her back. “No,” he gasped. “Don’t you dare!”
She gulped, and tossed her cold light out as far as it would go. It bobbed a moment and sank slowly; but its glow was quickly occluded in the opaque brown murk of the bubbling water. She could see nothing through it. Scum rings twisted on the moving surface.
As they stared, aghast, Grandmama jogged up—Tej had never seen her move faster than a dignified stride, before, and finding her breathless was weirdly jarring. She stared with them, then, hesitantly, stepped back and put a hand to her belt. The pale oval force-field sprang out around her, buzzing and sputtering.
“No, Lady ghem Estif!” said Ivan Xav. “That bloody thing is shorting out already. It won’t hold, and once the water gets in, it’ll kill you outright.”
Reluctantly, her hand fell once more, and the field died away. Her lips moved numbly in her carved face. “I’m afraid your evaluation is correct, Captain Vorpatril.” She looked . . . old.
“What can we do?” Tej’s whisper was not, now, for secrecy.
Ivan Xav glanced down where the waves nibbled at his toes. “Back up. Water’s still rising.” They all did so, peering uneasily downward.
“We must return to the lab, and stay inside,” said Grandmama, with a glance around. “The freshest areas of the Mycoborer tunnel have a certain amount of flex and rebound, but that concussion may have cracked the more cured sections. Very unstable, very unsafe.”
“It was pretty hardened around the, the bomb,” said Tej. “What if it collapsed on Rish and Jet? What if they’re buried?”
“Or drowning,” muttered Ivan Xav. “Or buried and drowning, oh God.”
Grandmama hesitated. “If they were close to the explosion, I don’t expect they’ll have survived to experience either. If they weren’t.” The last sentence fragment stopped rather than trailed. She didn’t finish the thought aloud.
Ivan Xav was swearing under his breath, or praying—it was hard to tell which. But, his hand still gripping Tej’s arm too hard, he turned her around, and they all started back.
“It was a squib,” he said after a minute.
“What?” said Tej.
“Sergeant Abelard’s bomb. If it was originally intended for ImpSec, it should have turned this whole city block into a crater. The explosives were deteriorated. Just . . . not quite enough.”
“But I saw those eye-pins on his collar,” said Tej. Because otherwise she would start talking about Rish and Jet, and saying stupid, hopeful, unlikely things, and the spinning words would hurt like razors. “Would an ImpSec man have been trying to blow up ImpSec?” Maybe he’d been a bomb-disposal man, instead . . . ?
“I looked him up,” said Ivan Xav. “Yesterday. Maybe it’s day before yesterday, by now.” His stricken gaze darted around the tunnel, permanently night but for the jerking cold-light beams poking between his and Grandmama’s tight grips. “He was one of Negri’s boys, but all his records say is that he disappeared during the Pretendership. He could have been on the Lord Regent’s side, trying to take out the building when Vordarian’s troops held it. Or he could have been one of Vordarian’s—they had men inside all the corps, the whole military was divided—either before or after. Once . . .” He swallowed. “Once Simon might have known. Which. Offhand.”
They stepped back inside the lab, where, apparently, some argument between Dada and Ser Imola had just ended; at any rate, Imola was sitting on the floor clutching his jaw and moaning, and Dada was rubbing his knuckles and being very narrow-eyed. He looked up at them, gaze widening. “Did you find—” he began, then, seeing their faces, cut himself off. “What did you find?”
“We can’t tell how much of the tunnel is collapsed, if any, because evidently the blast cracked that storm sewer,” said Grandmama. “Water was pouring in. It had filled the portion of the tunnel nearest the pipe already.”
“We can’t get past,” said Tej.
“It’s rising,” said Ivan Xav.
“Can it get this high?” asked the Baronne, coming up behind Dada in time to hear this. Her hand clutched his shoulder; his hand rose and pressed hers.
“It might,” said Ivan Xav. “I suppose it depends on how many of those damned random Mycoborer branches lie below our level. And how hard it’s been raining out there tonight.”
Dada moved quickly through the doorway, and bent down to examine the oval slab of wall that had been removed. “Hm.” He called back over his shoulder, “Amiri made most of his cuts angled inward, good boy. If we can find something for sealant, we should be able to boost this back up in place; the pressure of the water on the outside will hold it. If it comes to that.”
“I guarantee,” said Ivan Xav, “that we have ImpSec’s full attention right now. I expect they’ll find that access well in the garage pretty quick. If anyone can get through from that side . . . well, they’ll get to us somehow. Sooner or later.”
“Does—I hate to bring this up—but does anyone out there actually know we’re in here?” said Pidge, joining the circle collecting around the aperture.
“Star,” said Tej after a minute. “Ser Imola’s men.”
“If they didn’t just toss her in the back of their van and all take off, when the job went up,” said Emerald. “If they had half a brain among them, that’s what they should have done.”
“They likely just about did have that,” sighed Dada. “Damned cheap rental meat.”
“Ivan Xav,” said Amiri, looking around at him in fresh hope. “Surely they’ll miss you.”
“When I don’t show up at work in a couple of days, sure,” said Ivan Xav. Then stopped. And said, “Ah. No, they won’t. I’m on leave. Nobody’s expecting me.” He walked over to the still-unconscious man he’d stunned, bent, and stripped him of his wristcom. Stepping out through the aperture, he looked up, then began trying to punch through a call. Nobody tried to impede him.
Unfortunately, no one had to. Nothing went through. He came back and parted the protesting Imola from his fancier one, and tried again.
“We’re pretty far underground . . .” said Tej, watching over his shoulder.
“Cheap civilian models,” he growled, shaking it and trying again. “Mine would have worked here.” Still no signal. “Damn.”
“Simon will figure it out,” said Tej, trying to inject a note of confidence as she followed him back inside. “Wouldn’t he?”
“Simon,” said Ivan Xav, rather through his teeth, “for some reason—you might know why, Shiv—is under the impression that you all haven’t even started to tunnel yet. Let alone arrived at your goal. All the Arquas suddenly disappearing off the face of Barrayar . . . might have more than one hypothesis to account for it. In Simon’s twisty mind.”
“And you, too? Without a word?” said Amiri.
“I’ve been kidnapped before,” said Ivan Xav. “You would be amazed how many memories tonight is bringing back to me. All of them unpleasant.”
Tej would have held his hand, but she wasn’t sure it would be taken in good part, just now. He was looking a bit wild.
They all were. And maybe she was, too, because Ivan Xav reached out and gripped hers, and gave her a tight grimace that might have been intended for a smile.
“No sign of Rish and Jet?” said Em, in a constricted voice.
Tej shook her head, throat too thick to speak.
“They might . . . maybe they were on the other side of it, when that explosion went off,” Em tried. “Maybe they got out. Maybe . . . ImpSec will find them over there. Or—Imola said he didn’t see them, and they can’t have got past him, so maybe they went to hide up one of the other branches.”
Or down one. Tej had an instant and unwanted flash of it, freezing water pouring into some Mycoborer side-channel, knocking the two off their feet, making the slope too slippery to scramble up . . .
“Or maybe . . .” Em ran down, which relieved Tej of the urge to slap her silent. But for a snap decision on Dada’s part, it wo
uld have been Em out there with their youngest brother, Tej reminded herself.
Ivan Xav hesitated, then said, “Couldn’t you use the Mycoborer to tunnel out?”
Tej was briefly thrilled with her Barrayaran husband’s simple genius, but Grandmama frowned; she said, “It consumes oxygen as well . . . at a rate of . . . hm.”
“Don’t bother trying to calculate it,” sighed Amiri. “The box is back at the entryway with the rest of our supplies.”
A sickly silence. All around.
“How many cold lights do we have?” asked Pearl, patting her pockets. She came up with a single spare.
This triggered a general inventory. Most of the Arquas were carrying one or two extras; Ivan Xav harbored a double-dozen, plus a couple he quietly palmed to an inside pocket when almost no one else was looking.
“Rather a lot,” the Baronne concluded. “But space them out. Don’t start any others till the ones we have run down.”
The eight cold lights presently providing their bright chemical glow made the lab seem a well-lit workspace. Tej imagined it with only one or two, and the word that rose in her mind was haunted. And not just with all the history.
“Water?” said Pidge, and gestured inarticulately when Tej gave her a look. “I mean water that’s safe to drink.”
“I might find something to filter some,” said Grandmama. “Boil . . . no, likely not.”
“We brought plenty of food to keep everyone going all night,” said Pearl glumly. “Too bad it’s all back at the entrance with everything else.”
Em swallowed, and said, “Air . . . ? These walls are pretty tightly sealed.”
Perfectly sealed, as Tej understood it, except for their new door and maybe the old one, filled with rubble.
“The rooms are rather large,” said Amiri, his voice thin with a worry that undercut the actual sense of his words. “And there are two of them.”
“And the tunnel,” said Tej. “And . . . there might be some oxygen exchange through the surface of the water out there?”
“Works till we have to seal the door on it,” said Pidge. “But there are twelve of us in here breathing.”
Quite a few Arqua gazes swiveled to Imola, still sitting on the floor beside his unconscious hirelings and listening in growing horror.
“Nine would last longer,” said Pearl, tentatively.
“Premature,” growled Dada, “though tempting. Very tempting.”
“Yes, but if we were going to do it at all, sooner is better than later,” argued Pidge, in a tone that attempted to simulate lawyerly reason. Tej was almost glad that she quavered a little.
“Nevertheless,” said the Baronne. Her tone was cool; her gaze calculating; her word mollifying; yet Imola shrank from her more than he had Pidge. No quaver there.
“Those two,” choked Imola, with an abrupt gesture at his snoring followers. “You could have those two.” He contemplated the inert forms, then offered, as if by way of a selling point, “They’d never know . . .”
“I’ll be sure to mention you said so,” purred Dada, “when they wake up.” He strolled away to look over the contents of the chamber some more; scouting for ideas, Tej suspected, rather than treasure. Dada had never run short of ideas that she knew of; he merely made more.
Ivan Xav looked at Imola and just shook his head. He leaned over and murmured to the man, “Look on the bright side. With all these other constraints, it’s unlikely we’ll have time to work around to the cannibalism.” He bared his teeth in an unfriendly smile.
Imola flinched.
“Still, probably better not to indulge in, um, too much heavy exercise,” Amiri offered. “Just . . . sit or move quietly.”
“Mm,” said Pearl. She and Pidge moved off to poke, quietly, though a few more boxes. Opening presents seemed a lot less riveting now than it had been at first.
Tej was watching Ivan Xav running his fingers along the side of a bin, lips moving as he estimated the number of papers packed inside, when a sharp scrape, a loud pop, a dull yellow flash of light, and a yelp rising to a screech whipped her head around.
Pearl had pried open the top of some ornately enameled bottle that she’d unearthed, which had exploded. Whatever liquid it contained had splashed upon her black jacket, dancing with blue and yellow flames. She recoiled, flung the bottle away, and leaped aside.
“Pearl, don’t run, don’t run!” Ivan Xav bellowed. Pearl, mouth open and astonished, only had three steps to do just that before Ivan Xav brought her down. “Drop and roll, roll!”
His cry pierced Pearl’s shock; she overcame her flight reflex as he shoved her to the floor and pressed her flat, smothering the acrid conflagration before it could do more than lick her face. Tej jerked toward them, her world gone slow-motion and fast-forward all at once.
Momentarily unwatched, Imola shot to his feet, ripped off the lid from another bin of papers, flung them toward the spreading oil-or-chemical fire, and pelted out the door.
Ivan Xav lurched to his knees and took in this new hazard with eyes sprung wide as Grandmama hastened toward Pearl, sweeping off her coat. The narrow-necked bottle had not broken, but it had spun, trailing the lethal liquid it contained in a flammable spiral. He lunged, grabbed the emptied bin, and upended it hastily over the wobbling bottle, the scribble of oil, and a few fluttering papers that had just reached it. With an ugly flicker, the flames trapped underneath sank, smoked, and died.
Tej took her second breath. By the time the flush of adrenaline racing through her blood threatened to blow off the top of her head, it was all over.
Ivan Xav, holding the bin down as if it would fight him, shoved himself up, wheezing. He climbed to the top of this new pedestal and stood glaring around the room at the various Arquas, frozen with surprise or hurrying. Grandmama wrapped her coat around Pearl, finishing the job of containment, and a frightened Amiri knelt at her side, checking for damages.
Ivan Xav drew a long breath, and—goodness, he could yell. “Could you people stop trying to come up with novel ways to kill me for just one hour? Or maybe the rest of the night? I would so like that. Just the rest of the night. Just sit down. Just stop doing anything. Sit down and wait sensibly. Earth, water, air, fire—you’re running out of elements, here!”
Amiri looked very impressed by this ringing baritone rant. Grandmama . . . looked less impressed, if perhaps sympathetic. Rising from Pearl’s side and helping her up, she observed, “In some Old Earth mythologies there was imagined to be a fifth element—metal, as I recall.”
Ivan Xav said through his teeth, “That was a rhetorical remark, not a bloody suggestion.” But he stepped down off his podium and his ire into Tej’s frantic clutch, nonetheless. None of the horrific stuff seemed to have splashed onto him, her shaking fingers found. His hand covered hers, closing it to his chest and stilling the shakes. His jaw unclenched, and he buried his face in her hair.
Dada and the Baronne had clambered through the obstacle course of boxes and crates from the other end of the room. The Baronne’s face was gray; Dada’s, more greenish. The Baronne went to Pearl, and Dada to the aperture to stare out angrily into the utter darkness where his enemy had vanished. Ivan Xav and Tej came over to his side.
Dada ground his teeth, muscles jumping in his jaw. “You were down there. Dead end, you said. Should we chase him?” he inquired of Ivan Xav.
“I wouldn’t bother,” said Ivan Xav, mouth almost equally stiff. “Either he’ll come back on his own, in which case we may as well save our breaths, or he’ll drown himself trying to get out. Thus saving the exertion of cutting his throat, or whatever. I’m for damn sure not willing to sacrifice any more oxygen for his sake.”
“Well, if he doesn’t come back before we have to put the door up, I vote we don’t go look for him,” growled Amiri. Tej could only nod in dark agreement.
Dada gave Ivan Xav a sideways look. “You were very quick, there. And . . . correct.”
“Training,” said Ivan Xav shortly. He added after a reluctan
t moment, “And training accidents. You learn these things. One way or another.”
“I see you do.” Dada gave him a short, approving nod.
“What was that stuff?” Tej asked Grandmama, who had run her gloved fingers across a stray splash on the floor and was now sniffing them in chemical inquiry.
“Scent, at one time, I believe. Now merely stink. I don’t think it was supposed to do that.” She glanced around the room. “Kindly do not open anything more that you cannot identify before I’ve had a chance to check it,” she instructed her descendents.
“Or at all,” grumbled Ivan Xav. “Humor me.”
Pidge, eyeing him in a subdued and wary way, sank down on a crate and sat with her hands folded tightly. Pearl, eyeing him more favorably, joined her. She seemed to have suffered only a light sunburn and singed white eyebrows. Pidge put an arm around her, calming her lingering shivers. Tej assisted Ivan Xav in picking up the scattered antique papers, very dry and crackling, and carefully repacking them in their bin. A little inconsistently, he scanned them in covert curiosity as he reordered them.
The chamber grew really quiet when everyone stopped talking. Tej was half-tempted to start another argument just to drive back the heavy silence. Instead, she and Ivan Xav followed Grandmama back downstairs, Tej because she hadn’t seen that level yet, Ivan Xav evidently with some notion of sharing his light to improve the general visibility down there, or thinking that one wasn’t enough. Or just to keep an eye out for the next emergency.
“As long as we don’t run short of lights before we run out of air,” he muttered.
“I suppose the ideal would be to have them both run out together,” Tej mused.
“I’d rather have the light last longer.”
Tej decided not to try to argue with the illogic of this. It wasn’t as if they had a choice anyway.
The room below was similar to the one above, except for a few separated office cubicles on one end. Grandmama commenced trying cabinets and former freezers once more.
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