by E. C. Jarvis
Sandy lifted her coffee cup as a sign of agreement, a curious smile on her face.
“That settles it, then.”
“You folks staying another night? I’ll need payment up front again, I’m afraid,” the barman asked.
“No. Thank you. I don’t think we’ll be back tonight,” Larissa said as the others made their way towards the door.
“Going home after you’ve voted, are you?”
“Something like that. Will you be able to deliver a message to our friends if they show up?”
“Sure. What sort of friends and what sort of message?”
Larissa thought for a moment. Her mind raced with cryptic thoughts and hidden meanings. Did she want Kerrigan to attempt to follow? Would he even do so if asked? She still wasn’t sure of his loyalty. It might be all too tempting for him to slip right back into his old role if offered the opportunity for full reinstatement.
“A Colonel and a Lieutenant,” she said. “Tell them we couldn’t wait.”
With that, the group headed out toward the citadel.
. . .
The promised briefing with General Gott never came. After cleaning up and finding new uniforms, Kerrigan and Saunders discovered the General had left the fort, leaving Kerrigan in charge of the remaining soldiers by proxy as the highest-ranking officer left behind.
The two men had spent most of the night questioning soldiers regarding the General and his visitor to no avail. It seemed the secretive nature of the chain of command held true, and their efforts were entirely wasted.
Kerrigan stood in his commanding officer’s office, staring out the window into the courtyard, feeling utterly dejected and abandoned. A knock at the door barely snapped him out of his depressed musings.
“Come.”
Saunders entered, saluted, then pushed the door closed. “Sir, I’ve spoken with the last of the men. I haven’t learned anything we didn’t already know.”
“Damnit.”
“Do we attempt to go back to Miss Markus and the others?” Saunders asked.
“Gott left me in charge. I can’t abandon the fort now. If something were to happen…”
“What? What do you think will happen? The Eptorans aren’t going to attack, not when their Empress believes Larissa is over here trying to put a stop to the war. Even if they did launch an attack, they’d have to get through the coastal defenses. It would be a long time before they made it this far inland, and then—quite frankly, sir, if they got that far, we’d be screwed anyway.” Saunders slumped down into one of the high-backed chairs.
Kerrigan remained by the window, staring out at the dull grey walls of the fort. “I’m not expecting an attack by the Eptorans,” he said.
“The pirates? Covelle’s pirates?”
“Yes. I believe they mean to take the city, and with it, secure control of the country. We cannot let that happen.”
“Agreed. So what do you intend to do?”
“Without knowing exactly what their plan is, there isn’t much action I can take. I do know they have airships… I’m sorry, Lieutenant, I know you want to see your cousin is safe, but I’m afraid I need you with me here. Larissa and the others are on their own for now.”
“Understood, sir.”
CHAPTER THIRTY SIX
The morning air held an unpleasant dampness. The cloying atmosphere tasted of smoke and oil. Larissa took a deep breath, tightness in her lungs making the job of breathing difficult. The streets were already bustling with people going about their business. Men in smart suits pushed past grubby workmen on the streets and women in fine dresses heading to the shopping district. Some of them carried their voting cards in hand, heading towards the polling stations. None of them paid Larissa and her strange collective any attention. Who would have guessed their plans, their intentions? It all seemed too surreal, like a bizarre dream that made little sense.
She glanced up at the cloudy grey sky, expecting to see the balloonless airship pop into her vision above, but the skies were clear—save for the smog. She considered that perhaps Covelle had already beaten them there and completed the mission for them. Were they heading out to murder the President, or her father? She wasn’t sure which was more terrifying.
The citadel had yet more soldiers stationed at the entrance, and only a couple of elite people passed by the guards, being allowed access to go and say their prayers upon the presentation of some form of card. An identity card, Larissa presumed.
“Shall I go in first?” Cid asked.
“No, we’ll all go in together.”
Larissa turned to Holt, who held up a syringe filled with silvery liquid “You melted it already?”
“Yes, while we were waiting for you to come down to breakfast.”
“I hadn’t decided we were going to go straight away at that point. Are you telling me you would have gone without me?”
“No. I’m telling you I knew what you would want to do, and I made sure to be ready to enact your orders.”
Larissa scrunched her nose up at him, not entirely convinced at his reasoning. “That’s a lot of presumptions, Mister Holt. Here I was thinking I’m in charge, and there you go pre-emptively guessing my plans.
“I was using my initiative,” he said as he rolled up his sleeve, revealing the bulging muscle beneath, though there was no tone of teasing in his voice. He glanced directly at Larissa, the needle hovering above a thick blue vein in his forearm, one eyebrow raised, awaiting her final instruction.
Larissa pulled the stone from her pocket and rubbed her thumb across the smooth surface. A slight tingle trickled across her hand to her wrist. “How long did you say this will last?” she asked Sandy.
“I didn’t. A few minutes, perhaps. I never got a chance to test it.”
“Oh.”
“Now or never,” Holt said.
“All right, let’s go.”
Holt nodded and slowly pushed the sharp silver tip of the needle into his skin. He pressed on the syringe, plunging the last of the silvery liquid directly into his vein.
As he pulled the needle out, and pressed his thumb to the bloody hole, Larissa held her breath.
“If we are separated, where is the entrance to the palace?” Holt asked.
“There is a long staircase leading to the lowest level. Follow it down until you find the boiler room. There is a single brazier burning at the end of the corridor, and that wall is an illusion. You can walk straight through,” Cid said.
“Sounds simple enough,” Holt said. A shimmer ran over his body, a slight smile played on his lips, though he hid a grimace of discomfort in his eyes, then he disappeared.
Larissa wrapped her fingers around the stone, pressing it deep into her palm. An unnatural heat emerged from the rock, and a slight green shimmer covered her wrist.
“Gods,” Cid said.
She had intended to ask whether or not anyone could see her, but from his reaction, the question seemed pointless. “Let’s go,” she said. “We can’t waste any time.”
Cid set off down the street, Narry and Sandy walking on either side of him, their pace determined compared to the lazy calmness of the pedestrians sharing their path. Larissa followed behind, not quite believing she was no longer visible despite how many times she’d seen illusions in action. She could only assume Holt was by her side, as she didn’t dare speak.
“Oh, you’re back,” one of the soldiers barked at Cid the moment he caught sight of him.
“Seems that way. I hear the boiler is still playing up.”
“The damned thing is spewing smoke into the entire lower level. They had to evacuate everyone and shut half the citadel down. The damned priests have been complaining about it all night… Apologies, Father,” the soldier said to Narry.
“No bother, I’ll fix it,” Cid said.
“Make sure you do. If I have to see your face again, I’ll be making a complaint to your employer.”
Cid gave a half-hearted salute, then headed inside. Larissa side-stepped aro
und the soldier, her pulse thumping, but he simply looked straight through her.
“Hold on,” the soldier called as the group was about to head down the staircase.
Cid turned; Larissa could tell from the look on his face that he was fighting off an outright panic attack. Perhaps if anyone could see her face, she would look the same.
“What?” Cid said.
“Who is your employer?”
Larissa bit down on her lip. Something brushed her upper arm—a hand. The sense of fingers looping around her arm felt strange considering she couldn’t see anyone doing it. With a slight tug, Holt pulled her to Cid’s side, edging her away from him towards the staircase leading down. The sensible part of her brain knew what Holt was doing; there was no sense in hanging around to watch if Cid could come up with a reasonable response to the question and thus dig himself out of potential disaster. But the emotional part of her brain wanted to stay, to help, to do something other than leave Cid to his fate.
“Why do you ask?” Cid said as she was torn away, taking the first few steps reluctantly.
“It’s a simple question,” she heard the soldier say.
A slight whimper escaped from her lips. If they couldn’t even manage to enter the citadel, what hope did they have of getting anywhere near the President?
Narry and Sandy remained with Cid, although they weren’t under interrogation. But she supposed if Cid were going to get in trouble, they would too as the people responsible for bringing him in. Still, Holt pulled her further away until she could no longer hear the conversation clearly.
“What are we going to do?” she whispered.
“Continue.”
She did as instructed, all notion of her position as leader of the operation flying from her mind. The air became thick with smoke as they descended further. She covered her mouth with her hand, trying not to choke in case some nearby priest heard the noise and wondered why there was no physical body to match the coughing. When they reached the bottom step, Holt jerked her arm downwards, and they navigated the corridor, half-crawling to escape the billowing smoke from the boiler room.
When they reached the wall at the opposite end, Larissa worried they’d taken a wrong turn. Holt ploughed onwards, dragging her straight through the wall.
No smoke hung in the air on the other side, the illusion acting as a barrier. She wasn’t entirely sure how that worked, but they hardly had the time to go looking for someone who could explain it to them. She glanced behind, hoping beyond reason that the others had managed to slip past the soldiers and were hot on their heels. The grip on her arm refused to loosen, and she stumbled as Holt dragged her directly toward the door at the opposite end.
“I hope you’re good at picking locks, Holt,” she said.
“No need.”
His pace increased, and she was compelled to go with him, assuming perhaps the door was just as much of an illusion as the wall they’d just walked through.
A pair of arms wrapped around her upper body, and the heat of Holt’s chest enveloped her back. As they approached the door, she reached out instinctively toward it, her hand finding solid wood.
“Holt, this isn’t an illusion.”
“I know. This might feel…strange.”
Before she had a chance to ask for an explanation, he lurched forwards, his arms gripping her tight. She flinched, expecting her face to mash into the wood. Instead, the structure of the door seemed to dissolve into a pliable sensation, like walking through water. She stepped forward through the door, emerging in the corridor on the other side.
“You’re right. That did feel strange.”
Larissa turned and put her back to the nearest wall. Her body felt funny, as though it didn’t really belong to her. Ribbons of nervous energy tingled up and down her spine. She couldn’t see Holt, but there was no doubt he was there with her.
“The stone is no longer in effect,” Holt said. His voice was close on her right side; he spoke quietly as if whispering in her ear. It was the oddest sensation to know he was there. She opened her palm, the invisibility stone no longer emitting heat. A slight twinge of annoyance struck her. The Cleric’s stone had lasted far longer in comparison.
They had emerged into a small alcove leading directly to a narrow spiral staircase enclosed in old stone blocks. Larissa blinked in the dim light emitted from further above, giving her eyes a moment to adjust.
“Do you know your way around the palace?” she whispered.
“The upper rooms, yes. I never spent much time in the lower areas. They were off-bounds to all but the highest-ranking officers and most trusted men, and I wasn’t in the elite guard long enough to be trusted that much.”
“They trusted you enough to protect the President but not enough to roam the palace freely?”
“There are different levels of trust within such an organisation. I didn’t last long after my brother’s death. Come.”
Although she couldn’t see him to follow, she climbed the stairs, presuming he had taken the lead. The spiral steps were barely wide enough to fit one person—an uncomfortably tight space and certainly no place within which one would want to fight. Her hand instinctively found the handle of one of the daggers hidden in her skirts. There was no sense keeping weapons hidden any longer. If they were seen now, the intent was clear enough; they were trespassing with intent to assassinate. If the list of charges against her name weren’t already enough to condemn her to death, that final indictment would seal her fate for sure.
The stairway came to an abrupt end with yet another closed door. She opened her mouth to speak, not really wanting to be shoved through another solid object. Her stomach still felt unsettled from the last experience. Something clamped down around her mouth—his hand? Whatever it was did the trick; a nervous flutter in her stomach awoke at his touch. She closed her lips tightly and nodded a show of understanding at thin air.
Time passed slowly. She stared at the door, listening carefully for any signs of someone standing on the other side, or perhaps people walking down a corridor. A brass keyhole beneath the handle afforded no view to the other side. Her shoulders itched with impatience when nothing of note happened. Her mouth popped open as she considered speaking, and then she faltered and simply chewed on her lip.
The door opened slightly inwards, the wood far thicker than it had seemed when closed, and a layer of steel covered the other side of the door. She tightened her grip on the dagger and shifted her feet, ready to attack—or defend—if need be. Holt came into view through the gap in the door. He beckoned her to follow with a single wave of a finger. She blew out a shaky breath and tiptoed up the last few steps, squeezing through the gap in the door, and Holt pulled it shut behind them.
They emerged into an enormous room, at least one hundred feet wide and more than double in length. Larissa was torn between marvelling at the impossibly large expanse and trying to not to trip over the body laying prone on the other side of the door. It took her a moment to notice the dark burn marks across the man’s neck.
“A guard?” she whispered to Holt. He nodded once in response and crouched down to scan their surroundings.
“Is he dead?”
“He is.”
“Did you kill him?”
“I did not.”
“Then who did?”
“Unknown.”
Larissa switched her gaze to the rest of the room, wondering if they faced a single assassin or a whole group of people who had broken in before them. They stood on a metal walkway halfway between the floor and ceiling of the room. The mesh walkway stretched all the way around, with steps at regular intervals leading to lower and upper levels. The middle of the room was utterly empty save for a strange square block in the center. Long lines of gas lamps hung from the ceiling, lighting the area, strange shadows marked along the wooden floor—shadows which seemed to have no cause.
“Is this some form of hangar?” she asked as she crouched down beside Holt, balancing on the tips of her toes.
“We are beneath the palace. The ceiling is fixed. It wouldn’t make any sense to build or store airships down here.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a spyglass. He stared down at it for a moment, then passed it to Larissa. She took it from him, noticing the droplets of sweat on his brow. She scooted a little closer toward him, hoping whatever healing ability she still retained might help to lessen his suffering from the hit of Anthonium.
She pulled the spyglass open, noting the odd filter which had been applied to the lens, and brought it to her eye.
Larissa’s heart stopped as the spyglass revealed the truth within the expanse. She wobbled from the tips of her toes and collapsed onto her backside. “Dear Gods,” she whispered, tears stinging her eyes. “Professor…”
Holt snatched the spyglass from her and systematically scanned up and down the room. “Interesting,” he said. “Do you know what this is?”
“I do. It’s a Machine.”
CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN
“We should get out of here,” Holt said, returning the spyglass to her.
Larissa barely registered what he’d said. She turned and headed towards the nearest set of steps leading to the ground, racing down, taking two steps at a time, her heart pounding in her ears. Two more dead bodies lay spread out on the ground floor, curious burn marks on their necks, but the room appeared unoccupied by anyone living. She barely registered their presence as she raced to the square block, using the spyglass to avoid smacking into any part of the enormous apparatus. The block emitted a light green glow; the sight of it took her thoughts straight back to the Cleric. She could only hope this was one of his devices and they weren’t about to come across yet another robed priest skilled in the art of illusions. It had been hard enough to kill the last one. She unsheathed her dagger and plunged it deep into the block. The green light wavered then failed, and the illusion died.
She took a few steps backwards and stared up at the structure.
It was incredible in both stature and design, filling the cavernous room from end to end with an array of pipes and domes. To her uneducated eye, it looked almost identical to the Professor’s Machine, only ten times bigger. She stared up at it, dumbstruck. If the President had his own version, then what did he need to capture the Professor for? Had this entire horrific turn of events since the first night at the Hub been a complete waste of time and effort?
