Simple. Right?
“I know that look.”
The one called Grith stood behind her. Although his helmet was sealed, she recognized the etching in the left shoulder of his battered armor, marking him as an Imperator’s honor guard. Tove trusted very few personnel. Only an elite number of guards had traveled with them to the Shallows. The title “honor guard” took on an all-new meaning, as she recalled Corsair’s observation that Grith was Tove’s mate.
Sela cursed her distraction. The growl of the ocean and the wind had drowned out the sounds of his approach, even in the powered armor, but she should have felt the vibration of his heavy tread in the landing platform. One easy push and he could have sent her down to her death. Grith did not seem to pose a threat but had not offered anything to suggest he wasn’t.
Grith made a small movement with his neck. The helmet folded back in a series of articulated movements to tuck away into the collar of the suit. Impressive tech for people so far isolated from the resources of Origin. In armor, the man stood a good head taller than she. He stared past her at the ocean, his gray eyes flinty. Like many of the other armor users she’d glimpsed in Maxim’s hall, his hair was shaved at the sides of his head, the rest cresting along the top of his skull in mussed spikes. Sela guessed it made for better contact with the armor’s biosensors. It was the only thing that explained such an openly ridiculous appearance. If given a choice, she’d just as soon shave her entire head, vanity be damned.
“What look is that?” She shifted her weight.
“Caught. Like you want to fight, but there’s nothing there to fight.” His voice sounded different without the speakers of the suit. His accent was thick, rolling. The odd cadence made each statement sound more like a question. “If you’re gonna fight, make it a stand-up one. None of this waitin’ around or stealin’ about. Give me blood an’ war an’ smoke. Stuff to make the gods proud. So when they stand over your dead body, they don’t piss themselves laughin’ at you.”
She felt a smirk build, suppressed it. Despite her wariness, there was something about the sentiment that she understood. “And what gods are those?”
He flashed her a perplexed look. His tone was defensive. “The gods of war, of course. Ragnoth. The Mother of Blood. Vargned. Bringer of Fire.” His grin was framed by a beard, the ends tinted blue to match the shade of his armor and the ink ringing his eyes.
Those sound like gods I could get behind. None of the soft forgiveness and dispassionate judgment of Jon’s Fates, nor the vicious back-biting of Nyxa or Metauri from the stories she’d heard.
“Way I see this, we got two choices.” He drew out a vine stick and lit it. A well-practiced feat despite the war of wind and the gloves of his battle armor.
We? She lifted an eyebrow. Another gust of wind charged her.
He exhaled smoke to mingle with the frost of his breath. “They go ahead with this insane plan, and we just roll over, pretend to take it like cheap whores.”
“Or?” She scowled. Grith was ignorant he’d committed any insult. It was just how he talked, apparently.
He chuckled. It was a thick guttural sound. “Who am I kiddin’? There’s no other choice really. I made that part up.”
Sela scoffed, surprising herself. The wind whipped it away.
“Come on.” He leaned back, sizing her up. “Let’s get you what you need.”
“What do I need?” she asked.
“A suit.” One more long drag and he threw the vine stick aside. “You don’t bloody well think you can take out Maxim with your looks and a winning attitude, do ya?”
Fourteen
“The key to it is not to bloody overthink it,” Grith announced. He made an adjustment at his interface. The target drone’s path became random.
Sela thought about activating the targeting system. In the HUD of the borrowed power armor, the crosshairs flashed red once, then green. Now! She envisioned pulling a trigger that did not actually exist. The synced firearm attached to her armor’s gauntlet fired. The synth metal-and-clay target disappeared in a burst of vaporized dust and debris.
She choked back a laugh, trying to keep some appearance of decorum in Grith’s presence.
On the surface, the display resembled a that of a Series Four console mapping system, something that Sela had trained on since she was an adolescent. Her instinct had been to fight it: many such systems tended to drift; their calibrations had a tendency to be temperamental. You learned to second-guess the target sighting.
But not with this beauty. And it was just training armor.
Where has this been my whole life?
In the Regime, powered armor divisions were not part of regular infantry. They were reserved for high-value target protection details. Often they were employed to protect the members of the Council of First. In fact, Sela had turned down such an appointment to stay aboard the Storm King when Atilio had surfaced in her life. Before this, she’d only seen demonstration holovids. Like the others in her unit, her tendency was to scoff at them. Who needed a fancy suit to help them fight?
Now she knew. Powered armor was an art form, its own secret language.
A bare gesture in a suit could bend a bulkhead. Step with too much force and the resulting recoil would send you into an ungainly hopping motion on the powerful legs, an embarrassing lesson she’d learned in her first few moments of stepping into the practice arena. She could only imagine how much more complicated the maneuvers would be in a low-g environment.
The hard part was focusing on the interface. Some of the commands—rudimentary ones like vox access or weapons reloading—were haptic, sensitive to touch within the suit’s gloves; the rest relied on the neural interface. Tiny electrodes were fitted to the interior of the shell suit beneath the armor and more lined the interior of the helmet. It explained their unique sense of hairstyle. It was not a necessity, but over time had become a custom.
Powered armor took years to master. A pity she’d not been exposed to it as a child. But she had mere days to learn if she were going to infiltrate Maxim’s location on her mission.
The HUD indicated it had been nearly four hours since they’d started. She’d almost forgotten that morning’s misery with Jon.
Grith took one quick assessment and decided to advance her training session to a higher level. Somehow, impressing this toughened, foul-mouthed man was gratifying. Between rounds of lining up targets, he’d launch into snippets of bawdy limericks that involved a wager between a prostitute and the wife of an Imperator. Sometimes he would stop mid-lyric to quiz her on the layout of Maxim’s palace or the coordinates of her rally point for pickup after the job was done. He took her admission of possessing an eidetic memory as boast and seemed intent to challenge her at every opportunity. Always she gave the exact answer. Finally, he gave up, bored with it.
“What about those?” She gestured at the string of charges tucked into a bandoleer across his chest. Their tops were marked with yellow and black hashes. High yield ordnance.
“Hull poppers. These little bitches can render carnage.” A hint of pride entered his voice. “Designed them myself.”
Gingerly, he slipped one from its pocket on the bandoleer and held out the thumb-sized cylinder for her to study. The top had a pressure-sensitive trigger with a safety tab above it. It brought to question the sanity of a man that walked around with a dozen of them strapped to his torso. Armor notwithstanding. Perhaps that was the point.
“Let’s say we work up to playing with these.”
“Promise?” she smirked.
With an amused snort, he turned back to the training interface. “Heads.”
Another target popped onto the venue. Her first shot grazed its edge. She released a pent-up breath and remembered not to fight the target painter. Another round and the drone joined its brethren as so much rubble on the practice floor.
“Screw me.” Grith hooted in appreciation. It echoed in the cavernous arena. “It’s almost like you know what you’re doin’.”
Sela rolled her eyes. A triad of drones zipped into the live fire field.
“Should put you to work in the honor guard,” he cajoled in his lilting brogue. “Steal you from that fancy mate of yours. If’n you make it back in one piece.”
Jon.
Her shot went wide. A specialized barricade absorbed the stray shot.
She straightened from the ready stance and pretended to inspect the weapon arm of the suit. “He’s my partner. Not my mate.”
“Shame that.” Grith sucked his teeth. “Man’s a bloody idiot not to see what he’s got.”
She felt suddenly exposed despite the armor. It felt ridiculous, this conversation with this near-stranger of all people. “It’s not like that. He asked. I just…never answered.”
“Ah. I see.” The helm of Grith’s suit retracted into his collar. He swiveled around to face her. “So you’re the idiot, then.”
She scowled behind the visor of the suit. “I’m armed, you know.”
“It’s alright. I was an idiot too,” Grith said. “Tove and I grew up together. My father was captain of her father’s guard. To me she was this annoying little girl, always bossing me about. Her father might have been Imperator, but that didn’t keep her from being a pain in my ass. Took her nearly dying for me to realize what was important and what wasn’t.
“My point is, Tyron, don’t be a swuttin’ idiot.”
Part Four
Fifteen
Kelta’s knees throbbed from the gnaw of the frigate’s artificial gravity. She suspected the vessel’s captain of keeping it at a higher setting than standard. The passengers were less likely to wander about the common areas during the two-day journey to Nirro, the seat of Ironvale’s power. Not that there were many other travelers willing to risk their lives on the rust-coated little vessel. The funds at her disposal were larger than most. She could have easily sought passage on one of the private charters and traveled in true comfort the whole way. But charters were conspicuous. And this was a delicate matter.
An elderly woman on the way to Nirro, a place that was out of the way and not exactly a resort, might raise suspicion she could not risk. She had left a quiet little fishery colony with weather that was comparative paradise and was trading it for a settlement with a climate-controlled dome—an unlikely vacation destination. You didn’t travel to Nirro unless you had business there or worked for someone that ran Ironvale’s Conclave of Houses.
She avoided using her earned name, the one she had known since she was a ten-year-old girl and named as a lady’s maid to Ravinia Corsair. Instead, she used the one of her birth: Kelta Ra-Algerin. It was fitting, somehow. What Asher had asked…no, ordered her to do was tantamount to the ultimate destruction of that house. He was the last of the Corsair. All of his mother’s suffering, his father’s execution, would be for nothing. It would not serve.
When the ship finally docked, she was grateful to feel the pull of the place’s lighter gravity. Her hips and knees did not forgive her with the same expediency. She resisted taking some of the pain pharms, for they often left her feeling tired. She needed to be sharp, alert.
Oh. Who am I trying to fool? I’m a foolish old woman on a quest that’s likely to end in ruin. The very best outcome would mean securing a safe haven for Erelah and a skilled splicer to oversee her healing. At worst, Kelta could be punished as an accessory to aiding a renegade guildsworn. Asher would be captured and killed. And Erelah, her child…what would happen to them?
She felt the anxiety knot in her throat. What will become of my little ones on Narasmina if I do not return? She had little doubt Mr. Thonn would care for them, keep them from harm, but of the children she had taken in, Mim had taken it the hardest. She did not fault the child her reaction. The house had been the only stable place she’d ever known.
Little wonder the girl had run off to hide as Kelta said her goodbyes. They had thought it best to tell the children a small fib: that Kelta had returned to Nirro to attend to the affairs of a relative who’d fallen ill. It mattered little that the children believed it, only that whomever they might tell would believe it. Mim, of course, being what she was, saw through the falsehood.
Clutching the tiny pouch against her chest, Kelta motioned for the listless porter to grab her only other baggage, a battered travel case with her good clothes. She’d not let the device from her sight the entire time and had even slept with it beneath her pillow. Only once, when Asher had first given it to her, had she really studied the thing. It was unremarkable, really. A tiny cage of metal wires, cube-shaped. It could have been a toy. A curious metal sphere of dull silver hovered impossibly in its center. It made no noise, emitted no lights.
She’d touched it once, inserting a finger into the nest of wires that composed the cage. The pulling sensation that came from the sphere was unsettling, disturbing. Kelta resolved never to touch it barehanded again.
Quirksome and vile as the thing was, it represented something else in the face of Asher’s dire instruction—hope. Kelta told herself that what she was contemplating was not disobedience to her house; it was exploring an alternative.
It was a necessary thing. Surely Ironvale would see its merit and grant a pardon to Asher as well. In time, Asher and Erelah would forgive her, see the wisdom of this course.
Steady, girl. The Fates will see you to your Path. They’ve not failed you yet.
Carefully, she picked her way down the gangway, aware of the hissing impatience of the other passengers held up by her slow progress. She could go faster but chose not to. She doubted their errands dealt with the same level of import as hers. Judging from the raw appearance of the men and women as they stepped around her, their missions would likely lead them to the foreman’s office or the nearest tavern.
“I see the little rat! Get her!”
Heavy boots rattled the deck. Kelta watched as two burly men in crew uniforms gave chase through the crowd of the other disembarking passengers down the gangplank. Calls of anger and surprise rose from the crowd jostled by their pursuit.
Kelta glimpsed a blonde spray of hair and a small body weaving through the legs of the crowd.
“Stowaway! Stop her!”
The listless porter, moved with sudden interest, dropping Kelta’s trunk, and jumped into the path of the oncoming figure.
“Gotcha.” The porter caught the fugitive in a tackle. His victorious grin split with a painful bellow. “Bit me!”
He dumped his quarry unceremoniously, where she landed with a winded “oof.”
He drew back a fist, ready to retaliate. Kelta grabbed his arm. The young man stared at her with a mix of confusion and annoyance.
“Leave her be.”
The two other crewmen caught up, winded from the brief chase. “Good man, Tibby. Caught us a stowaway.”
Kelta recognized the dress and the spindly frame immediately. Mim. She released a disappointed sigh. The girl climbed to her feet, refusing to look at more than her own feet.
“Ain’t none of your business, old mother,” the crewman on her right seethed. The bands at the throat of his dirty overalls had once been a different color. She suspected it symbolized some sort of authority here. She held her chin up. Although she might have been dressed in the dowdiest of her gowns and traveling cloak, she intended to make it clear she could not be addressed in such a manner.
“Respectfully, sir, I ask you to leave her alone.” Kelta stretched a small smile at him that conveyed her annoyance.
“She’s a stowaway. Need to get the enforcers.”
“Shame on you!” She used what Asher would teasingly call “the voice,” commanding and disappointed in the same instant. The one he’d accused her of using when she expected to be obeyed. It seemed to work. The three grown men drew up. The porter took a step back as she glowered. “Grown men attacking a little girl. Shame!”
“Ain’t no child, old mother. That little she-beast bit me.”
The girl hid behind her skirts, head bowed in what Kelta k
new from experience was feigned remorse.
“I can assure you she’s not rabid, sir,” Kelta added. “Or possessed.”
“Oh?” The foreman looked between them. “You trying to sneak her through, ya?”
“This child is with me, Mr….” She made a big show of squinting to read the filthy nametape on his breast. She wrung her hands, knowing what image it presented, the frazzled old maid out of her depth and harried by the hubbub of travel. “Haas. I must have forgotten to pay for her passage. Silly old mother that I am.”
Haas twitched uncomfortably. He rubbed the back of his head. “She’s done damages. Et food out of stores. Gonna have to be paid for that. Plus. She’s one of them Binait. Law man’s got to register her.”
“Honestly, how much damage can one child do?” she chided. Hopefully, Mim would not take that as a challenge.
Not much later, their money paid at a cost that was triple the price Kelta had paid for her own passage, Haas and his crew sauntered back through the crowd. Kelta shooed the porter away as well, ignoring his extended hand that waited for a tip that would never come. There were more funds than she could use in a lifetime, but nothing for the likes of him.
She stooped over, tilting the girl’s chin up. The bright maroon eyes stared back at her from a streaked face. Tears had carved grooves through the grime to disclose the dewy pink skin beneath. “You should not have done this, little one.”
“You lied about coming back. I know you’re scared,” Mim said. Her eyes were wide, serious. “You need me with you.”
“This is a dangerous thing that I do. Very delicate.” Kelta straightened. She found her anger with the girl shrink under the gladness of seeing something from home, a familiar face. Perhaps it was a portent from the Fates, a sign that she would succeed.
“I can help.” Mim drew herself up, narrow chest pushed out. “I have…skills.”
Allies and Enemies: Exiles, Book 3 Page 6
