Wren rolled her eyes. “No, really?”
“Listen,” I said. “I get that you may never want to look at me again after tonight, but if we’re going to leave here hating each other, then we may as well also leave being really, really rich. Agreed?”
“I mean…” Wren sniffed and crossed her arms. And then I knew I had her. “I like money…”
“Well, what if I told you there might be a way to take down the warden, take down my family, and ensure that we end up with the treasure and our freedom?”
Anders’s aura flared. “I’m listening…”
“First, we need to break into Verena’s chambers.”
Wren started laughing. “That is the worst idea I’ve ever heard.”
“So you’re opposed?”
“No, I’m just saying it’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard.” She pulled my blaster away from Anders, presenting it to me with a mocking bow. “When do we start?”
26
“Wren, find Verena’s chambers and figure out how heavily they’re guarded. Anders, I’m going to need copper wire, as many glass fragments as you can find, and some of those meatball kebabs they were serving in the ballroom.” I held up my broken VED. “I’m going to attempt to fix this.”
“Why the kebabs?” he asked. “Are we using the skewers as weapons? Oh! Don’t tell me! You’re going to isolate the protein in the meat and use its energy to power the—”
“Oh, no, no!” I shrugged. “I just wanted them because I’m hungry. Creative idea though.”
He blinked at me.
I waved them both toward the end of the corridor. “I’m serious about the kebabs. Go! We need to work fast!”
“But—”
“Go! And if either of you see Elio, tackle him and drag him back with you. Do not let my family touch him.”
“Let’s go, team!” Wren clapped her hands. “Andy, bring me back a few of those kebabs too. I’m famished.”
“So am I.” He scowled. “Unfortunately for you, I know of an Earthan who looks particularly delicious—”
“Team!” I yelled. “Move!”
Anders lumbered off, grumbling obscenities the whole way down the hall. Wren nudged my arm. “I was going to suggest we come up with a cheer for some team spirit, but I think if I did, he really would eat me.”
“Nah. His soul is too gentle, remember?”
“Of course.” She sighed. “You know, this doesn’t mean that I forgive you.”
“I can live with that.”
She fingered the barrel of her blaster, jaw working like she wanted to say something else. After a moment, she gave me a tiny smile. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Once the echo of her footsteps faded away, I slumped against the wall and let out the universe’s shakiest sigh. “Here goes nothing.”
* * *
I was still struggling with the last few pieces of my visual enhancer while the three of us raced down a lavishly decorated hallway on the fourth floor west wing. “Are you certain this is the right room?” I asked Wren.
“Of course,” she replied. “I know how to do recon. A guard comes and leaves this hall at the top of every hour, always heavily armed. You want to know why they switch shifts so often? I’ll tell you why. It’s so they can always stay alert, because they’re protecting something or someone—”
“Who’s very important,” I finished. “Good job.”
She visibly deflated. “You ruined my big finish. I was even thinking about doing jazz hands. Anyway, how do we want to do this? Shoot down the door? Crawl through an air duct?”
“We’re going to walk right in like we belong.” I pushed Anders in front of me. He was disguised as a Condorian, and while he walked he brushed dirt from the shoulders of his guard uniform. The real guard that he’d stolen it from was lying naked and unconscious in a closet somewhere on the ground floor.
As we neared the bend in the hall right before Verena’s chambers, I took a second to read the woman standing statuesque outside the door.
“Okay, she’s starving and bored out of her mind. She’s also strangely distraught about something. Use that to your advantage.” Nudging Anders around the corner, I grabbed Wren and the two of us ducked behind a velvet curtain covering a bay window.
The guard at Verena’s door groaned when Anders approached. “You’re late.”
“Sorry. I brought you some snacks.” I heard a rustle, and could only assume he’d pulled out a bag of extra kebabs.
“You’re still late,” the guard snapped.
“Look, I said I was sorry. And really, I am.” His voice softened and his aura rippled, like comforting autumn leaves floating around the hall. “I heard what happened. If there’s anything I can do…”
He couldn’t have been any vaguer about the guard’s situation, but she ate it up. Wren and I edged around the curtain. In front of golden double doors, a girl about our age dropped her head into her hands. Anders stood beside her, awkwardly patting her on the back while she sniffled.
“You’re the first one who’s said anything.” She shoved two kebabs in her mouth before wiping her eyes. “Thank you. No one else has bothered.”
Anders tipped his head toward her. “Anytime. It’s important we stick together, right?”
“Right.” Heaving a sigh, she quickly checked the lock on the doors behind her, then switched spots with him. My heart leaped. It was working! She was leaving!
Then the sadness around her blossomed into suspicion, and then to anger.
My knees went weak at the sound of her blaster powering up. “I never told anyone what Verena said to me yesterday.” She studied him for a moment. “There’s no way you could have known. What’s going on? Why are there two more people hiding down the hall? I can feel them.”
Crap. I thought Wren and I were far enough away that she couldn’t read our auras, but her skills must have been better than I’d assumed.
Wren looked at me, eyes wide. Down the hall, it seemed like Anders had forgotten how to speak. He was clutching the empty bag of kebabs, mouth agape, but then he did the only thing that made sense in his warrior’s mind.
He raised his blaster and started shooting.
The guard ducked behind a pillar, firing back. Anders blew half her shield to dust with two quick shots. A chunk of marble broke off from the pillar and torpedoed down the hall toward me and Wren.
We hit the floor, crawling out from behind the curtain. “We wanted discreet!” I yelled, shooting my own blaster once the girl spotted us. “This is not discreet!”
Shots peppered the hallway, exploding vases of flowers on accent tables, leaving charred holes in portraits hung along the walls. Shouts filled the corridors not too far from us. More guards. Right now it was three against one, but I knew I wouldn’t like the odds so much once the girl’s friends showed up.
Wren shoved me down when a stream of light from the guard’s blaster flew dangerously close to my head. I smelled the tips of my hair burning as it whizzed by and smashed into the wall. The floor shook, the chandelier hanging above us quaking as Wren fired back, each of her shots missing the girl, who hid behind the pillar again.
Anders caught my gaze from the other side of the hall and nodded at the ceiling. I signaled to Wren, and this time when the girl ducked out from her hiding spot to attack, all three of us shot at the chandelier. It detached with a ferocious groan, tumbling down as wires sparked and glass bulbs popped. The girl covered her head just before it hit the floor. She didn’t notice Anders creeping up on her, his aura nonexistent. He struck a pressure point in her neck, and she crumpled instantly.
“She’s not dead,” he assured us when Wren and I hopped over the wreckage and joined him at Verena’s double doors. As if he thought he still needed to convince us that he wasn’t the monster his father had made him be.
“I know she’s not,” I said. I studied the doors. I hadn’t counted on them being locked, and without a working comm, I had no way to hack into the interface and open them elect
ronically. The voices down the corridor were growing closer, so I raised my blaster and blew the lock to smithereens. Being discreet was pointless now.
We ducked inside. Anders reached for the first thing he saw—a velvet chaise—and dragged it in front of the doors to block them.
Spinning around, we took in the room before us.
Whoa.
Billowing teal draperies hung over the windows of a massive sitting room. Everything was covered in gold—the light fixtures, the furniture, the fireplace. A diamond as big as my fist gleamed from a shelf against the wall, just sitting there, out in the open for anyone to touch. And Wren did touch it. She stuffed the gemstone in her pocket with zero remorse.
To the left of the sitting room, a door hung open, revealing a two-story library, dusty books spilling onto the floor. To the right, a net screen blared from a bedroom dominated by a four-poster bed. Wren looked at me right as a laugh track rang out from some kind of comedy program, her eyebrows raised so high that they almost got lost in her hairline. Secretive Empress Verena didn’t seem the giggly type.
We peeked around the doorframe as more laughter echoed through the chambers. The drapes were drawn, shadowing the room, but I could make out the shape of someone in the middle of the bed.
As soon as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, my heart lurched, relief and confusion swirling into a dizzying mess in my head. How…?
Elio was sitting on Verena’s bed.
Elio. Here. Safe.
I stared at him, dumbstruck. All I could manage in my state of utter disbelief was, “You didn’t think to unlock the door for us?”
Beep!
“We’ve been busy chatting,” another voice croaked from beside the bed. “My apologies.”
Wren’s breath hitched. Anders stepped protectively in front of us, but it was unnecessary. The woman stepping out of the shadows sounded old, maybe even older than Nana Rae. Harmless. Or I hoped.
“Your android tells me the four of you have an interest in a certain key.”
Empress Verena.
Even after seventeen years of living on Condor, I’d only caught glimpses of her—just a few news streams on the net screens, her face always obscured. Even now, as she took languid steps across the bedroom, I could barely see her. She was short, covered in a thick cloak despite the warmth in the mansion, and she pulled on her hood as she looked up into my eyes.
“Well. Out with it. Tell me what you want.”
I knew now was the time to beg for the key, because duh, that’s why we were here, but instead I found myself brushing past the mysterious empress and rushing to Elio’s side. “Are you okay? How did you get here?”
He reached for a comm on the bedside table. Folloed sent a foood, he typed, pointing out a tray next to him, covered in a few scraps of meat and fruit.
“You followed the scent of the food?”
“I thought he couldn’t smell,” said Anders.
“Your android is very … human.” Verena appeared behind me, making me jump. “I understand that he is not well.”
“Not well is an understatement.” Wren shook her head. “Hey, Empress? You aren’t going to sic your guards on us, are you?”
Verena’s head tilted beneath her hood.
“What she intends to say is that we mean you no harm,” Anders assured her. Then he nodded at me. “Cora? Is there something you’d like to ask?”
“Oh, right. Verena—uh, Empress Verena…” I wondered if I should curtsy. “Not to be pushy, but we were hoping you could tell us about Teolia’s key.”
“It exists,” she stated dryly.
“Of course. But where exactly does it exist? We need to find it. For Elio. And for the rest of us. It’s critical—”
“I highly doubt that.” She yanked off her hood, revealing a row of scars crisscrossing puckered cheeks. Just as the rumors claimed. After sitting, she shoved a few meat scraps from the tray beside her bed into her mouth.
“You’re desperate. I can read it all over you.” She turned to Wren. “And you.” Her eyes roved over Anders. “But not you. You’re Andillian, then? Interesting…”
“Verena.” Stars, maybe I should curtsy. “Teolia’s treasure—”
“A treasure of that magnitude brings with it only grief. If you are close to reuniting all the keys, as your Elio claims, then it must be destroyed.”
“No! Verena, it’s not that simple!” I quickly explained what Elio needed, and Evelina and the warden’s plans for the elixir. Elio beeped, shaking his fists when he learned of Evelina’s intentions to betray us. Anders and Wren stood by the door while I spit out the entire story, both their auras thickening with nerves.
“Eternal life is a gift that no one needs,” Verena stated firmly. She turned up the volume on her net screen, attempting to end the conversation. Hoping she wouldn’t have me exiled, I grabbed the remote from her and powered the program off.
“Miss Saros, my drama starts in three minutes. Today’s episode reveals whether or not Carter is cheating on Marci.”
“I don’t care about your net drama! You can help us, Verena!”
She acted like she didn’t even hear me. “How is your grandmother?”
I jerked back. “Nana Rae? She’s … fine. Why?”
“Hmm…”
“Wait, do you know her?” Nana Rae had never said anything, but Nana Rae never said much that made sense anyway.
“Our paths have crossed. Is she here tonight?”
“Yes…”
Joints creaking, breathing heavily, Verena pushed herself out of her chair. “I am reconsidering your request—”
“Excellent!” said Wren.
“However, if I tell you where to locate the elixir, I still demand it be destroyed once you unlock the chest.”
Shaking my head, I begged her to understand. “I need the money from the treasure for Elio.”
“You need money. You have no need for the treasure. No one does. If you do as I ask and destroy Teolia’s elixir, then I assure you, you will be compensated. It’s up to you, Cora Saros, what exactly that reward will be.”
My mind reached out, reading her. She was calm, telling the truth. Furthermore, she had gone from not caring about us at all to being eager to help. I glanced at Elio, who had turned the net screen back on and was watching the drama with rapt attention. A reward. That’s what we needed. That, and to bring Evelina to her knees.
“How easy is the treasure to retrieve?” I asked.
Verena chuckled. “How easy do you think? It’s in a pit underneath the mansion.”
“Not the pit of spiders?” Anders shivered.
“No, nothing that fun. Does this mean you accept my offer?”
I looked at Wren and Anders. A silent conversation passed between us, but I knew how I would answer Verena. I’d known even before I stepped foot in her bedroom.
“We accept.”
* * *
Verena loaned us fresh comms. As we left her to her net drama and hurried back through the staff corridors, I couldn’t resist mulling over what she’d said about Nana Rae. Or what she hadn’t said. Whatever had happened between them, it was enough to force her to help us, and that was more than I could have asked for. After tonight, Elio would have a new body. The warden would be gone. Evelina would never call me a distraction again.
The four of us split up on the ground floor. Wren and Elio returned to the labyrinth, while Anders and I made a few more tweaks to my new VED. Just before they headed back into the tunnel to hell, I reached for Wren’s arm.
I nodded to Elio. “Take care of him.”
Elio beeped, as if to say he could take care of himself just fine.
“Take care of each other,” I amended.
“Don’t worry, Cora,” Wren said. “We’ll be back in no time.”
Once they left, Anders and I crept through the floors of the mansion, avoiding Verena’s guards, even though she assured us they wouldn’t touch us. We ducked into shadowed alcoves and empty rooms whe
never we heard the sound of approaching footsteps, our bodies pressed too tightly for comfort. Not even two hours ago, we had been in the same position and he kissed me. But we had both been lying then.
… Right?
After about thirty minutes, once we passed through three floors and successfully avoided half a dozen groups of guests who were determined to collect the bounty on our heads, we found our mark.
The warden was pacing a gallery on the fourth floor, surrounded by party guests, a drink in his hand and a scowl on his lips. Miraculously, only one guard accompanied him, and he was so busy guzzling his own drink that I doubted he could even fire a blaster straight.
Anders’s aura blazed like an inferno. “Can’t I just kill him instead?”
“Sure,” I replied. “If you think that will satisfy you.”
He reined in his aura, grabbed the VED from me, and his skin started to bubble as he transformed into one of the Condorian banquet servers. “It won’t.”
After taking a tray of hors d’oeuvres, he milled around the gallery until he was close enough to reach the warden.
I ducked behind a pillar, held my comm up to block my face, and peeked around the glass. Anders was serving a group of elderly women whose dresses were molting bright yellow feathers. Once they were finished, he took a step back, spun on his heel … and crashed right into the warden’s back.
“YOU IMBECILE!” the warden bellowed as the tray of hors d’oeuvres went flying. He’d spilled his drink all over his pants and shoes. Anders frantically tried to help him clean it.
“So sorry, sir. So very sorry.” Anders blew out a flustered breath, steadying himself against the warden’s arm while he juggled his tray, the ruined food, and pieces of broken glass.
“Don’t touch me!” The warden pushed him off. “I’ll have you fired!”
“You can certainly try. But somehow I think I might be one of the empress’s new favorite employees.” Even from across the gallery, I could see Anders’s eyes narrow. He shifted the bundle in his arms, and then it just so happened to slip … crashing down on the warden’s feet.
The warden howled. The room was bathed in a black cloud of his fury, but Anders only shrugged. “Sorry, sir. Looks like you have a little something on your shoes.” He patted the warden on the back, right between his shoulder blades. As Anders dashed from the room, he turned in my direction, giving me an almost imperceptible nod.
The Good for Nothings Page 29
