Ideas percolated in her mind. But first, escape.
Staying low, she crawled toward the crate. Though men and women crouched all around her, their focus was outward. Why worry about the tied, half-blind philologist?
A couple more feet brought her to the quiver. Gali glanced at her and frowned, a what-are-you-doing expression stamping her face.
Tikaya attempted what she hoped appeared a guileless smile. “Can you help me find my spectacles?”
The woman scowled.
“ Incoming!” someone barked.
All eyes turned toward the closest tunnel. Tikaya rose, turned, and slipped an arrow out of the quiver.
No noticed. She dropped to her knees, putting her back to the crate. She found the sharp metal head and maneuvered it until the edge slipped between her wrists. Careful not to cut skin, she eased it up and down against the rope. The awkward position made it impossible to apply much pressure. She held back a scowl, knowing this would take a while.
It was not marines but two black bipedal creatures that burst into the cavern. Even without her spectacles, she recognized the towering muscular beings. The illusion spell did not fool them; they barreled straight for the camp.
Muskets fired and bows twanged.
Tikaya rubbed the arrowhead against her ropes.
The practitioners threw up an invisible barrier, and the creatures bounced back while men and women fired through it. The scent of black powder permeated the camp. Smoke stung Tikaya’s eyes, but, in the rising haze, she spotted more beams in the air. They crisscrossed irregularly, nothing symmetrical or predictable like a spider web. None had more than a foot or two of open-safe-space between them. Even if they were visible, climbing past them might not be possible.
The rope snapped, and her wrists came apart.
She eyed the back of the cavern, trying to guess the distance to the cleaning cubes and the tunnel next to them, but, even if she had her spectacles, darkness would have thwarted her estimates. On the other side of the camp, Lancecrest stood, reloading a rifle. The creature battle had him distracted, but she did not see how she could retrieve her spectacles without him noticing.
In front of the camp, blood streamed from the beasts’ dark flesh. Their muscles flexed and strained as they hammered the invisible barrier. Roars of pain and anger echoed through the cavern. Sweat gleamed on the practitioners’ faces. One flexed his fingers. A pulse of power hammered the beasts. They flew backward, and landed hard, but they came up roaring with anger. Another volley was fired at them.
Everyone appeared busy.
Tikaya grabbed a lantern and slid bow and quiver off the crate. She turned the flame down so it would not make her a target as she ran, then slipped toward the back edge of camp.
Someone shot one of the creatures in the eye, and it toppled to the floor. A ragged cheer went up.
Tikaya eased around sacks of corn meal and rice. A couple steps and she would be out of the camp. She resisted the urge to hop the few couple obstacles and sprint for the wall. That would likely draw someone’s eyes. Stealth would serve her better.
“ The linguist is escaping!” someone yelled.
So much for stealth.
She bolted. Her boot caught on the uneven ground, and she slammed to her knees even as a shot fired over her head. They would rather shoot her than let her escape back to the others?
Gulping, she leaped to her feet and sprinted to the wall, lantern and bow banging against her legs with every step. That was the first time her clumsiness had saved her life-she could not count on it happening again.
Tikaya plunged into the darkness, using the blurry crimson runes as a guide. She reached the wall and stood to the side, not wanting to be silhouetted against them for the shooters.
Footsteps hammered the floor behind her.
She jabbed the symbol that opened the cabinet, but nothing happened. Growling, she slowed her movements and added a rotation. The cabinet popped open.
The footsteps neared. Lancecrest. She didn’t have enough time.
Then a black shape blurred in from the side, crashing into him. The remaining beast.
Lancecrest yelled and flung his arms up.
As soon as it finished him, it would be on her. Tikaya pulled out a cube, praying it would not activate while she held it. Arms laden, she started toward the tunnel.
“ Over here, you ugly pisser!” someone cried and a psi wave pulsed through the air.
It struck the creature full on, hurling it twenty feet. The edge of the wave caught Tikaya and smashed her against the wall.
Lancecrest patted the floor for his rifle. His men poured out of the camp and moved to surround the creature. And her.
She sprinted for the tunnel.
An arrow clipped Tikaya’s sleeve and shattered against the wall. Fear surged through her, and she ran faster.
Someone conjured a yellow orb of light, and it spun her direction, illuminating her, making her an easier target.
“ Stop!” A man pointed a pistol as he ran at her, his face a rictus of determination.
She had to keep going, hope his aim was poor.
A shot fired, and Tikaya dove, knowing it would not be fast enough. But no blast of pain came. The man’s musket hit the floor with a clatter, and he collapsed a heartbeat later. Tikaya scrambled into a crouch and squinted into the gloom behind him. A tall blurry figure in Turgonian black stood in a tunnel entrance on the far side of the cavern. Rias?
She stepped that direction, but he waved her toward her closer tunnel.
“ Starcrest!” Lancecrest fired his rifle.
Rias flew back with a grunt. Tikaya gaped. It looked like he had been hit, but, curse her eyes, she could not tell. He ducked back into the tunnel. Lancecrest raced after him.
Tikaya took a step that direction, but an explosion roared, and the ground heaved. She was thrown onto her side, and the lantern flew from her grip. The cavern filled with confused yells and cries of pain.
A stalactite plunged to the floor where it shattered and hurled shards everywhere. A second explosion ripped through the earth. A sinkhole opened up in the floor, and rock poured in like water over a fall.
Tikaya scrambled for the nearby tunnel, hoping the alien walls would hold up better than the cavern. She had no idea where the lantern had gone. Even as the floor pitched, she clutched the cube and the bow, determined not to lose anything else.
Blackness smothered the tunnel. Three steps in, another concussion boomed, hurling her against a wall. Her breath whooshed out with a pained grunt. The bow and cube flew from her hands. She crumpled to the floor and barely had the presence of mind to curl into a ball with her hands protecting her head as further booms rocked the tunnel.
Nearby, rock shattered and cracked like gunfire. Tikaya cringed, expecting the ceiling to collapse at any second. Finally, the explosions ended, but rubble continued to pelt the floor. She kept waiting for rocks to hit her, but her tunnel seemed secure. Secure, but dark. Lifting her head to peer about was worthless since blackness pressed in from all sides. Worse, dust clogged the air and invaded her throat. She coughed and wheezed as fine particles smothered her tongue.
Distant, muffled yells made it to her ears, but she could not pick out words. She shifted to get to her feet. Her fingers bumped a hard edge. She jerked back. The cube. If ever there was a mess, surely an earthquake-or whatever that had been-qualified. She held her breath, expecting the cleaning device to flare to life, for the orifice to glow red, the beam to lance out.
But the cube remained inert.
Whatever the reason, she thanked her luck and hunted for the bow. She found it wedged under a pile of rubble. Rubble that blocked the mouth of the tunnel from floor to ceiling. Cave-in.
She hoped there was another way back to the cavern. And that she could find it in the dark.
Tikaya stood and started to brush herself off, but a new concern made her freeze. How far did the cave-in extend? What if it covered part, or all, of the cavern? And the
tunnels beyond? Her heart lurched. What if Rias or Parkonis had been caught? She still didn’t know if Rias had been shot. Damn, damn.
She clawed at the rubble, trying to dig a hole. She had to get back in and check.
A minute later, her fingers were bleeding and she had made no progress. Breath rasping in her ears, she backed away. She would not get in that way. She needed to find another way around. She needed to-
No. Tikaya wiped sweat from her face and forced herself to calm down, to think. Rias would want her to continue with the mission, not tear off, hunting for him. For all she knew, he might have set this all up. She remembered the clinking. Had the marines been crawling around in passages beneath the floor, placing blasting sticks?
She turned around and felt her way along the wall, trying not to feel guilty for walking away from Parkonis and Rias. She had to ensure those weapons were destroyed, and she could not assume the cave-in had done that. In fact, she would be shocked if it had.
The darkness made the trek feel longer, but she doubted she had walked far before she came to a four-way intersection labeled with glowing runes. Three possible directions, three labs. Biology, alchemy, and… She touched the last one, a new combination of symbols. Mechanical? That sounded promising, but she ought to let Rias know which way she had gone. She dropped her hand and snorted because her bloody fingers had already smeared a sign on the runes.
She padded down the hall. A door whispered open, and she stepped onto a landing. She expected darkness inside, but low blue lighting pulsed from the walls. Some kind of backup illumination, perhaps.
This lab was larger than others she had visited and had an upper level as well as a lower. She chose the upper, less out of any notion of what she might need, but because it would not be immediately visible to someone walking in.
Upstairs, blurry cabinets lined the walls and high stations dominated the center. She had to wander close for the edges to sharpen. They reminded her more of woodworking benches than alchemy stations. Intricate black tools she could not identify were mounted to the table tops and hung from the ceilings on articulating arms. Rias would probably be fascinated by them.
Her gut twisted with concern at the thought of him, but she forced herself to focus on the one thing she could accomplish here. She dug her notes, the sphere, and a pencil out of her pocket.
Tikaya put more obstacles between herself and the landing before stopping at a countertop that was not too high for her purposes. She thumbed the sphere on and identified the rest of the numbers from the door pad. More primes, but not the first sixteen as she had guessed. The sequence skipped a few: three, five, seven, eleven, thirteen, seventeen, nineteen, twenty-three, twenty-nine, thirty-one, thirty-seven, forty-one, forty-three, sixty-one, sixty-seven, and seventy-three.
“ All right, Rias,” she muttered. “Where are you? I’ve translated them and done my half.” As soon as the words came out, she snorted at herself. Yes, they made a good team, but she had done this sort of thing before she met him.
There had to be some significance in the missing prime numbers. Maybe these were the first sixteen that could be turned into a combination that allowed one particular thing. She drew a bunch of four by four boxes, mimicking the layout on the door pad, and scribbled the numbers in. Four rows, four columns, sixteen numbers. She added and multiplied. She looked for patterns.
The door hissed open.
Rias? Tikaya lifted her head and almost called out, but could not see the landing and caught herself before she could give away her position. She waited for the sound of footfalls, thinking she might be able to identify his tread, but there was no sound at all.
The door hissed shut.
Quietly, oh so quietly, Tikaya picked up her work. It was possible someone had looked in, not seen anything interesting, and left, but she doubted it. That cursed assassin was the only one who walked without making a sound, and she had no idea what his intentions might be for her, especially now that she had, from the Turgonian viewpoint, escaped with the enemy. And if Rias had run off, too, Sicarius would know he had no intention of accepting the emperor’s offer.
Tikaya twisted the symbols to open a couple of cabinets beneath a nearby workstation. One was empty enough she thought she could fit inside.
She stuffed the cube in one cabinet and knelt before the larger one. Careful not to make a sound, she slid boxes and tools out of the way. She could barely breathe, but she fit.
She pulled the door most of the way shut. Since the cabinets had to be opened with a turn of the symbols, she assumed she could not get out if she locked herself in. Terrifying thought that. No one would ever find her, and the cabinet would be her tomb. The assassin might spot the door slightly ajar, but she had to risk it.
Silence reigned in the lab. Tikaya could hear her heart beating in her ears, her shallow breathing. The awkward position cramped her diaphragm. Minutes dragged past.
She closed her eyes and rearranged digits in her head. The four-by-four box reminded her of a Skiltar Square, those puzzles where the goal was to arrange the numbers so that every column, row, and diagonal added up to the same sum. It seemed unlikely an alien race would have the same math games, but she rearranged and totaled the digits in her head anyway, seeing if she could find a combination that worked from all sides. It surprised her when she found an arrangement where each option added up to one hundred twenty. Could that be the way into the weapons cache?
Her fingers tingled with excitement. Or maybe numbness from sitting scrunched up in a cabinet. Her tailbone ached. She longed to crawl out and check her math with pencil and paper. Maybe Sicarius had left, or had never been there to start with.
Tikaya lifted her hand to the door, about to push it open. Then someone glided past the crack.
Black clothing, blond hair.
She held her breath and closed her eyes, as if the assassin might feel her stare through the crack. He had sensed the clairvoyant watching him, after all.
A minute later, the door hissed again, and she spilled out of the cabinet. Sitting on the floor beneath the pulsing blue light, she checked her math with pencil and paper. Every row, every column, and even the diagonals added up to one hundred and twenty. Maybe it meant nothing. Or maybe it was the solution to the puzzle.
She hopped to her feet, longing to go check it, but thanks to the cave-in she was not sure how to get back to the cavern.
The door hissed again. Tikaya cursed to herself. Now what?
Footsteps sounded on the landing. She reached for the cabinet door, ready to hide again.
“ Tikaya?” Rias.
Relief swarmed her. “Up here!”
She skirted the workstations and almost crashed into him at the top of the stairs. He wore his rucksack and carried a rifle, but he managed to envelop her in a fierce hug. She clamped onto him just as fiercely, burying her face in his neck. He smelled of black powder and blood, but it didn’t matter.
“ You came for me,” she whispered.
“ Of course.”
“ The explosions… I was afraid you were…”
“ Me too,” he said, voice hoarse. “I feared you’d been caught in that cave-in. Bocrest was too quick to light the charges. He was supposed to wait until-it doesn’t matter now. If I’ve succeeded, they think the weapons are buried and I’m dead.”
She lifted her arms, intending to hook them over his shoulders, but her fingers encountered dampness. A torn section of uniform wrapped his biceps like a bandage. She drew back, staring at blood on her hand.
“ You’re wounded!”
“ Lancecrest got lucky.” Rias twitched a shoulder. “It’s just a scrape. It’ll be fine. Besides, it was worth it. He was carrying something you might find useful.” He unbuttoned a pocket, withdrew her spectacles, and draped them over her ears.
Tikaya slumped against his chest. She should have been elated to have her vision back, but a lump of guilt lodged in her throat. “You got shot trying to help me. I’m sorry.”
Rias took her face in his hands. “I’d risk a lot more than a trifling arm to help you.”
Comforted by his words, she tilted her head back.
He seemed on the verge of kissing her, but he cleared his throat and glanced around. “Are you…alone?”
“ Yes, though Sicarius was here a few minutes ago.” She realized he had probably been wondering about Parkonis, but his eyes widened at the mention of the assassin.
“ He was? Rust, he’s not supposed to be on this side of the cave-in. He must have found a way through.” He scrubbed his face. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and be able to avoid him.”
“ I haven’t seen Parkonis since before the explosions,” Tikaya said. “Do you know if he… Did any of the raiders make it?”
“ I didn’t see him amongst the dead.” Rias took a deep breath. “Tikaya, I’ll help you find him, but I need you to know… When he appeared and absconded with you I… My first thought was to hurl myself into that chasm. But there’s a stigma against suicide in my culture, and regardless it’s always seemed like giving up, which isn’t something I’ve ever strived to master. I fully intend to fight for you.”
“ Rias-”
“ I know he represents your dream, the life you always wanted, and I know its selfish of me to want you when it could alienate you from your family, but… How is it he’s been alive a year and never found a way to let you know? I would have toppled an empire to get back to you.”
“ Rias-”
“ I can’t walk away and let him have you, Tikaya. Not if there’s a chance…”
“ Rias.”
He opened his mouth again, but she flattened her palm over his lips. His shoulders slumped, and wariness hooded his eyes.
“ I appreciate hearing those things very much.” She grinned at the idea of him toppling an empire-for most people, that was just an expression, but she wouldn’t put it beyond his means. “But there’s no need for you to go on.” She lowered her hand, brushing his lips with her thumb. “You have me.”
He gaped at her in stunned silence.
“ You have me for a lot of reasons,” she said quietly, “but especially because you’re willing to give up everything to be here at my side, plotting against your people to destroy those weapons. The definition of a good man is someone who makes the moral choice when temptation invites him to do otherwise. The definition of a hero is someone who makes that moral choice even when temptation, threat of reprisal, and the mores of his culture invite him to do otherwise.” She considered her words and issued a self-deprecating smirk. “That was preachy, wasn’t it?”
Encrypted (the emperor's edge) Page 30
