Encrypted (the emperor's edge)

by Lindsay Buroker

  “ Got her!” he yelled.

  Rias charged past Tikaya and tackled the man. The lantern flew free. In a lucky lunge, she caught it before it hit the floor and went out. Though her shoulder protested, she held it with her left hand and yanked the pistol free with her right.

  Rias needed no help though. He knelt over the marine, arms locked around his neck. The man’s face turned purple, and he passed out.

  A shadow moved behind Rias.

  Tikaya reacted. She fired the pistol without thinking, and the ball hammered into someone’s chest. Rias spun to look.

  Only after the man collapsed did her brain scream that these people were her captors and aiming to kill one might get her into a mess of trouble.

  “ It’s Lieutenant Commander Okars.” Rias checked the officer’s pulse. “It was Lieutenant Commander Okars.”

  “ Oh, no,” Tikaya breathed.

  Rias picked up a knife. “Yes, but he was going for my back, so I must thank you for my life.”

  Tikaya closed her eyes for a moment. “Let’s just get that horrible device cut off.”

  By the lantern’s light, they found the source of the draft. The first explosion had left a ragged hole in the ceiling of the room with the artifact.

  “ Walk softly,” Rias said as they neared it. “The structural integrity has doubtlessly been compromised.”

  “ Thank you for that brilliant engineering assessment. Maybe when I fall through the floor, I can take out my other shoulder.” Her grumbling made her wince and long for the sphere of protection around the artifact. It would be easier to problem solve if she did not feel so cranky. She hoped. It could be worse; she could have become an unthinking aggressive lout who thought it was a good idea to throw blasting sticks at innocent-

  Her boot went through the floor, and she pitched sideways. When her body struck, the footing deteriorating further. Rias grabbed her and tried to pull her free, but the floor had enough of them: it dropped away completely.

  She smashed to the level below and landed on something cloth covered. Not cloth, she realized as she looked under her. Clothing. Clothing on dead bodies.

  She lurched away, igniting pain in her shoulder. Rigid fingers tangled in her braid, and she pulled, trying to free herself without using her injured arm or touching the corpse again. A disheartened cry escaped her lips when the dead man’s hand lifted with her, fingers fully snagged in her hair. Tormenting ancestors, this was too morbid, and too damned much. Why couldn’t the idiotic Turgonians run a decent Polytechnic so they’d have their own philologists to kidnap for secret missions?

  “ Sorry,” Rias murmured, crouching beside her. “As soon as we get this taken care of, we’ll find the sawbones to check your shoulder.”

  “ The problem is less the shoulder-though that is irritating me every three or four seconds too-and more the bodies. And the being attacked. And the part where I’m shooting people to death, and-” She brought her fist to her mouth and squinted her eyes shut, struggling to keep from breaking into sobs. Slow breaths, she told herself. This was not the time for wheezing and gasping and flirting with an emotional breakdown. React later. “I’m all right. I’m just… I’m better in a classroom, I swear.”

  Rias wrapped his arm around her back, and she leaned on him.

  “ I suppose you’ll think I’m odd-odder-if I admit this is the most exciting my days have been in ages,” he said.

  She rubbed her eyes. “I’ll forgive you for being a crazy odd Turgonian who probably has had a horrible life for the last couple of years, if you’ll kindly disentangle that dead man’s fingers from my hair.”

  “ Oh.” Rias released her to undertake the task, then stood. “We’re back in the artifact room, but they’ll figure it out soon. That new window doesn’t hide much.”

  The blasting stick had blackened the floor, turned furniture to shrapnel, and torn holes not only in the ceiling and a side wall but in the building’s exterior as well. In the center of the room, the device remained, unharmed, symbols still glowing.

  Tikaya picked up the book, set her jaw, and strode over to it. There was not much time. Shouts on the other side of the building promised the men were still looking for her.

  She flipped through the chapter on chemicals. “There.”

  “ Find something?” Rias stood nearby, weapons loaded and ready.

  Reluctant to speak too soon, Tikaya pressed the appropriate runes. The regular image blanked out to be replaced by the new symbols. They hovered until she finished. Then, by some alien consciousness, the artifact understood what she wanted, and it arranged them in a way eerily similar to the layout in the book. Even though it was what she hoped for, it sent a shiver down her spine.

  A soft click sounded in the core of the device.

  Tikaya arched her eyebrows at Rias who gave her an encouraging hand gesture. She gripped the edge of the device and waited. Nobody stirred nearby. She tried to decide if the distant shouts were diminishing. Minutes passed, and a deathly quiet fell over the town.

  Rias walked to the door. He cocked his head, listening.

  “ What is it?” she asked.

  Rias lifted a finger, cracked the door, and peered into the hallway. He leaned back in with a smile, and Tikaya heard the noise now too.

  “ Snoring?” she asked.

  “ The two men out there are sleeping, and the air has that sweet smell of chloroform.”

  Tikaya exhaled slowly. “Good. That should mean we’re safe from being shot or knife-stabbed for the moment. Of course, now we have a lesser problem.”

  “ How to wake everyone up, leave town, or even leave this room without succumbing to unconsciousness ourselves?”

  “ That’s the one.”

  She dropped to her back on the floor to gaze up at the writing beneath the machine. Before, she had been trying to translate it. Now, she just thought about cutting the artifact off. Only one of the groupings did not have alchemical elements in it. The first one. Nothing so obvious as a switch stood out anywhere on the machine, so she poked and prodded that grouping. They sat flush and she did not expect them to move, so she nearly cracked her head on the bottom of the box when they did. By pushing and twisting, she could rotate them.

  “ What’d you do?” Rias asked. “The symbols are flashing.”

  She could rotate them further, but she paused and peered up at him. “You sure you want those people awake again?”

  He smiled gently. “I’ll possibly regret it later, but yes. We’ll need help to tackle the tunnels.”

  “ Or you and I could devise some kind of masks, gather as many supplies as we need, take a couple of those dog sleds down the coast until we reach a port, and then sail somewhere far away, leaving the empire to deal with its own problems.”

  Rias sighed and gazed into the night. “I cannot.”

  “ Even though these people left you to die? Even though they probably got themselves into this situation?”

  “ Even though,” he said. “But…” He took a breath and, with palpable reluctance, said, “If you want to go, I’ll keep them busy long enough for you to do so. It’s about three hundred miles south to Tangukmoo. If you grabbed a dog team and supplies, I’m sure you could make it in a couple of weeks. It’s technically an imperial town, but it’s eighty percent natives, and I suspect they’d hide you just to irk us. After the thaw, trade vessels come in to barter for whale oil and bone. With your skills, I’m sure you could bargain for passage and find a way home.”

  “ Sounds like a lonely journey without any company,” Tikaya said.

  “ Probably.”

  “ Last week, you told me your people really needed my help. What’s changed?”

  He looked back and forth from her to the dead bodies. “This is only the beginning, Tikaya. It’s going to get worse. I suspect this is also the only opportunity you’ll have to leave.”

  That Rias offered meant a lot, but the journey he described would not be a speedy one. It was likely Bocrest would make
it back to civilization first and send the order to have her family assassinated long before she reached home.

  She rotated the grouping of runes as far as they would go. The crimson symbols in the air winked out. “When I’m complaining later about how horrible it is out here with your marines, remind me I had my chance and was an idiot who gave it up.”

  The glum expression on his face waned, and one side of his mouth curved up. He pulled her to her feet and wrapped her in a hug, mindful of her injured shoulder. His stubbled jaw brushed her cheek, and a pleasant shiver ran through her.

  “ Only if you remind me I was an idiot first,” he murmured.

  “ Deal.” Tikaya wondered if that talk of marriage had been inspired only by the moment, by the uncertainty that they would live to see dawn, or if it meant something more. She lifted her good hand to brush strands of hair away from the cut on his temple.

  Rias drew back slightly, eyes flickering, watching her face. Soft breaths frosted the air between them, and some distant part of her mind announced that this was a ridiculous place and situation for a first kiss, but what if they didn’t survive the coming weeks? What if there were no other opportunities to be alone together? What if…

  Rias bent his head and kissed her gently, warm lips as welcome as the sun in this frozen wasteland. Forgetting about her injury, she started to wrap her arms around him, to pull him closer. Pain blasted her shoulder, and she gasped at the cruel reminder.

  Rias drew back, wincing, eyes guilty. “Sorry, my fault. I’ll go find the sawbones.”

  “ No, it’s all right. I was just…”

  But he had already grabbed his rifle. He hopped through the broken wall with a quick wave before disappearing into the snow.

  Tikaya wrapped her arms around herself. She already missed his warmth. And his last words sent a thrum of worry through her. The man who would come to deliver her medical attention was the brother of the man she had just killed.

  CHAPTER 10

  Something bumped Tikaya’s foot, jerking her awake. She sat up and cracked her head on the bottom of the device. Her shoulder offered its own jab of pain as her journal and pencil clattered to the floor.

  Bocrest and Bones loomed over her. The captain’s presence surprised her. Surely the ship’s commander usually stayed with his vessel, but then this was no ordinary inland excursion.

  Thuds from the ceiling announced someone walking around in the crawl space. Probably retrieving bodies.

  Beleaguered red eyes haunted the sawbones’s stubbled face, and an invisible weight slumped his shoulders. He must already know his brother was dead, but he could not know she had fired the fatal shot. She hoped. He carried a black leather bag, and she swallowed, wondering if he truly kept a saw in there.

  “ Get up, librarian.” Bocrest eyed the device. “Bones has a lot of men to tend.”

  After the battering she had taken, Tikaya expected more pains as she crawled to her feet, but she had not slept long enough for her body to stiffen. Only the shoulder throbbed. Darkness still smothered the snow outside. Given the icy temperature and the hard tile floor, she was surprised she had slept at all. She had painstakingly copied the two hundred alchemical elements into the journal and had been sketching the runes on the bottom of the device when she nodded off.

  “ Did Agarik make it?” Tikaya asked.

  Bocrest prowled around the device, started to touch an indentation, but decided against it. “He got jumped by-it doesn’t matter who by now-but he was cut up pretty bad and left to bleed in the snow. Bones stitched him up earlier.”

  Relief and regret mingled in her mind. If she had not asked Agarik to fetch Rias, he might not have been hurt at all. Would he resent her for it?

  “ Where’s Rias?” she asked.

  Bocrest scowled. “Prisoner Five is making some concoction in the vehicle house. Said we’ll need it in the tunnels. After that, he’ll be shackled again.”

  “ Let’s see your shoulder,” Bones told Tikaya.

  She eased her parka off under the cool gazes of the two officers. She was surely too old to want someone to hold her hand while a doctor worked on her, but she wished Rias had come back. Strange that he had disappeared so abruptly. Had he felt guilty about more than her shoulder?

  Bones huffed and tossed her parka aside. Apparently impatient with her undressing speed, he unfastened the buttons of the black uniform jacket for her. Uneasy, she wondered how much disrobing she would have to endure for this medical treatment. Fortunately, Bones left her undershirt on. Icy but professional hands probed her shoulder. She tried not to wince.

  Bocrest nodded at the device. “You figure out what this stuff says?”

  “ Some of it,” Tikaya said. “I can only guess at the writing on the bottom, but the context gives me clues. If I get more samples, also in context, I’ll be able to make some good guesses.”

  Bocrest’s grunt did not sound impressed. Curse him, she and Rias had saved the marines- again. Why couldn’t the captain acknowledge her usefulness?

  Footsteps sounded above, and shards of wood rained from the biggest hole in the roof. Sergeant Ottotark slithered over the edge and dropped down behind Bones.

  Tikaya groaned, but he did not look at her.

  “ Sorry, Bones. Your brother and Private Choyka are dead.” Ottotark gripped the man’s shoulder.

  Bones’s jaw clenched, but he did not otherwise react.

  “ I’ll get a team to lower them down for the funeral pyre.” Ottotark nodded to the captain and left.

  Tikaya relaxed a smidgeon. Bones made a sling from a large square of cloth and secured her arm.

  “ You’ll be fine in a few days,” he said. “Sir, I’ll attend the others if you don’t need anything else here. I’d prefer to keep busy.”

  “ Yes, go,” Bocrest said.

  Bones left, head down, shoulders slumped further.

  “ What’s the purpose of this device?” Bocrest asked.

  Tikaya rubbed her shoulder. “My best guess? Scientific experiments. They probably wanted to observe the somatic and neurological effects certain gases had on their specimens outside of a controlled environment.”

  “ What kind of specimens?” Bocrest asked.

  “ Look in a mirror.”

  “ Turgonians?”

  Tikaya hesitated, almost tempted to play upon his paranoia. She had not yet figured out how she could ensure her family’s safety while escaping with her life, but she would probably have more opportunities later if she convinced Bocrest her words were trustworthy now.

  “ Humans, animals.” A cold gust blew snow through the broken wall, and Tikaya grabbed her parka. “I suppose Turgonian enemies could have brought it here and turned it on.” She thought of the Nurian captain’s orders; the Nurians were smart enough to not want anything to do with the artifacts. “Or your own people might have done it out of stupidity.”

  Bocrest’s gaze grew frosty.

  “ Stupidity isn’t a trait unique to Turgonians,” Tikaya said by way of apology.

  “ Apparently not.” Bocrest continued to glare. “Prisoner Five says Lieutenant Commander Okars attacked him, and he was forced to kill my officer in self-defense.”

  Unease trickled down her spine. Uh oh. Why had Rias said anything? Maybe the marines never would have thought to look for bodies in the attic, and, even if they did, in the craziness anyone could have fired at anyone. Rias could have feigned ignorance and no one would have known. But, no, he had felt guilty-or honor-bound-to explain the dead officer. She could not fault him for being an honest man, but his loyalty to these marines, to the empire, might prove disastrous for her. Or maybe not. He had covered for her, though she was not sure whether to be relieved or not. Surely his position here was as precarious as hers.

  “ I know who he is,” Bocrest said, “who he was, and now that he’s…himself again, I doubt he’d intentionally kill an imperial marine, nor do I believe he’s inept enough to accidentally dispatch someone in self-defense.”
r />   “ We were all under the influence of that device,” Tikaya said. “Rias-”

  Bocrest drew his arm back, and she turned her cheek, expecting a blow. He curled his fingers into a fist, but jerked it to his side. A vein at his temple pulsed. “I don’t know what he’s told you, but you will not refer to him as anything other than Prisoner Five. He lost his right to a name, and I don’t want my men conflicted on who to follow out here.”

  “ What did he do?” Tikaya whispered. And who is he, she almost added. But for the ill timing of that blasting stick, she might know by now. Someone who was Bocrest’s equal, or maybe even a superior? Was Rias old enough to be an admiral?

  Bocrest stepped back, and his eyes widened. “You don’t know?”

  She shook her head.

  “ Cruel ancestors, what a waste. He gave up everything, and your people don’t even know.”

  “ What?” She reached for his arm. “Please, tell me.”

  Bocrest scoffed and turned away. He grabbed the rifle and knife, making sure not to leave her any weapons. “Self-absorbed scientists,” he muttered on his way out.

  Tikaya dropped her arm. She thought back to the first conversation she had with Rias, when he asked if her president was still alive. Was that what Bocrest referred to? Had Rias done something for her people during the war, something that had turned the Turgonians against him? If that was the case, why hadn’t he told her right away? If he had done a good deed for Kyatt, he might be allowed to come live on her island, and maybe he’d be someone her family could like, and…

  She groaned and rubbed her face. When had he stopped being the enemy soldier and turned into someone she wanted to bring home to meet her parents?

  Weariness plagued Tikaya’s limbs as she marched after the squad of marines, her arm in the sling, her crampons replaced with snowshoes. The new footwear was almost as awkward to walk in as swim fins, and she struggled to keep up-and upright. There had been no rest after the funeral pyre. They traveled east, in the shadows of jagged white mountains that dominated the southern horizon. To the north, the flat icy tundra stretched until it blended into the pale blue sky.