by R J Theodore
Tisker reached to scratch between his shoulder blades. “Positive for who, though?”
Talis frowned. Dug needed a doctor, but they could keep him off his feet for a day, even if it took a captain’s command, while they took a look at what mess the aliens might have left for them at Ytima. “Guess we’ll find out. Tisker, set a course for Ytima, and pull the wind with us, would you?”
Tisker held up the detonator, its wires trailing to the deck and over the transom railing. “How about a warm updraft to take us back to Horizon?”
Talis grinned. “Absolutely. I need a bit less of that Yu’Nyun crap in the skies.”
Chapter 29
Talis had never been to Ytima before, but she knew of it. Picturesque little shoreside community whose dialect was not that far off from Dug’s own Aherat. Their primary exports were fish and textiles woven from the flocks of xercoles that grazed the hills at whose feet the village was built, dyed with the berries of the forest underbrush and the ink of the nautilus that lived beneath their cliff drops.
It wouldn’t have been as crowded as Subrosa, or even as crowded as Heddard Bay had been lately. But it shouldn’t have been this quiet.
There were no ships at the docks. No movement along the main open streets where the shops did their business. Just gulls and carrion birds circling above the hills behind the village and a lonely breeze ruffling loose newspaper pages against open door frames.
“Weapons,” Talis said, lowering the scope. “Grab lots of weapons.”
Tisker and Sophie hurried off to prepare their ship for docking, and Dug stepped up to her side. He walked with a slight limp. “What do you see?”
Talis shook her head. “Not much. Very possible that we missed the excitement, but I want to be prepared, in case. You’re staying here to watch the ship. No excitement, you hear?”
Whatever those alien ampules contained, it had changed Ytima for the worse. Destroyed, from the looks of things, a peaceful village. And if the alien wreck had been the ship in charge of overseeing things, it had been two years, and Ytima had not recovered.
Blackbirds cried in outrage when Talis led her crew from Im Ufite Rantor up the docks, and their boots crunched against the gravel path that led up the slope toward the village streets. They had changed into what Bone armor fit them without being too ungainly to move in. They left Dug wearing a full get up of neck, shoulder, back, chest, and arm guards, since he was tall enough and broad enough to wear it.
They each carried a Yu’Nyun rifle from their recent haul, unslung from their shoulders and held ready to fire. Talis also had several knives strapped to her thighs, taken from Chel’s personal equipment, and her revolvers, taken from Wind Sabre, though she would use them sparingly. She’d not thought to retrieve more ammunition for them and had only the six bullets in their chamber and another twelve bullets fastened along her holster.
Sophie had dug up an adze from the ship’s repair supplies, similar enough to her favored axes that it was more comfortable to her than the small thrusting blades that the Bone crew had kept. Tisker had no objections to stabby things, though, and had strapped a half dozen or so across his chest.
And, so armed, they walked up the hill toward a peaceful little village that was entirely too peaceful. Talis’s nerves were strung tight, and her heart leapt at the smallest flutter of litter in the street or a carrion eater taking wing at their approach.
It was a wonder the birds thought Ytima was worth hanging around. The bones of the dead had long been stripped, and even in the pale sun, they’d had enough time to bleach.
The bodies were everywhere. Children, adults, everyone who should have been going about their lives in the village. All reduced to bones. Their skeletons leaned in doorways, across fences, piled over rocks in groups of two or more.
Dust blew through the open doors of abandoned buildings. In the homes, some hearth fires had consumed them and the buildings nearest to them, leaving only the bones of foundations and chimneys to mirror the skeletons of their owners.
At least the fire had cleansed those homes of their ghosts. In other buildings, dark streaks and puddles marked the bloodshed. Led to where the last survivors had dragged themselves off to die.
“What were they doing?” Sophie looked around, as obviously confused as Talis felt. Farms were abandoned, overgrown. Market stalls crumbled, waving shredded, faded awnings like banners on a battlefield.
Tisker nudged a pile of carrion-cleaned skeletons with a boot toe. “Looks like maybe chaos. A fight? A riot?”
“Hardly enough folk in a village this size for a riot.”
“This one’s got a pitchfork.”
“They’re farmers and trades folk. You’re not going to find many guns on them.”
“So what do you think happened, Cap?”
Talis stopped walking and looked through a broken window into the town’s meeting hall. And finally found what she was looking for. “There. Had to be at least one.”
Inside, being harassed by overly optimistic crows, was the body of an alien. Dressed a little bit fancier than Scrimshaw once had. Its eyes and flesh were missing, leaving the empty husk of exoskeleton to crumple and crack.
“At least we can tell how this one died.” There was a lantern hook lodged in the center of the alien’s forehead, and xist head was twisted around, the plating of the neck cracked.
“Look, Captain.” Sophie righted an overturned table and dug through the leaves that had blown into the building to nudge a small case of metal vials into view. Talis stepped toward it, and glass crunched under her feet. Empty ampules caught the light from beneath the litter on the ground.
Talis felt the truth settle in the bottom of her gut. “Guess I can’t say I expected to find anything else. But what happened?”
“Chaos, like I said. Figure the people didn’t take kindly to whatever the stuff in those needles did?”
Sophie shook her head. “The Yu were using this stuff on people before the attack on Nexus.”
“Don’t forget, the first thing they did when they arrived was kill Silus Cutter. They never came here to make friends.”
The pain in their expressions was still fresh, but Talis had long ago settled herself against the aliens as a whole. Scrimshaw had been the exception because xe had broken from xist society. A society based on inscrutable motivations, slick-tongued with deception and double-speak, reinforced from within by a class structure that forbade change.
The natives of Peridot owed the Yu’Nyun invaders for the death of their god, for the loss of Wind Sabre, and now, apparently for taking the lives of the entire island of Ytima.
“Over here!” Tisker waved them to an overturned chair. “What do you suppose that is?”
Talis reached his side first. On the ground was a gelatinous puddle of something that glowed opaque green. “We’ve seen this before. Scrimshaw, when the zalika attacked.”
“The Nexuslight liquid?” Sophie picked her way carefully to their side.
As she got closer, the green matter began to twitch, then flowed across the floor, rolling like quicksilver, straight for Sophie’s feet. She yelped and stepped back. “What’s it doing?”
Before Talis or Tisker could swipe at it, kicking detritus from the floor into its path, it climbed her leg, rolling up the fabric of her pants and disappearing into her pocket.
“Sophie what the hell have you got in there?”
“Nothing!” She opened the pocket’s flap with just the tips of her fingers and peered in. “Oh.”
“Oh?” Tisker’s skin had gone pale. To be fair, so had Sophie’s.
“Flakes of the crystals from the Yu’Nyun ship. I was going to see if I could get them to power my electrocancellation barrel. I must have missed these because they’re so small.”
Talis peered into the pocket. The crystals, once pale pink shards, glowed as fiercely
as she remembered the enormous crystal aboard the Yu’Nyun scout ship, and just as brilliant.
Tisker didn’t try to take a look for himself. “So that answers that. We know the Yu’Nyun wanted Nexus energy for their ships before Meran whacked them out of the skies.”
Sophie looked like she didn’t want to let her pant leg touch her skin anymore. “Yeah, but what will they do with it if they have no ships, and why is there Nexus energy just laying around on the ground in Ytima?”
“Whatever the aliens were up to here, it means trouble for Peridot. Again. Let’s keep going. I guess Sophie will act as our living Nexuslight detector.”
No one laughed. Talis didn’t want them to. It wasn’t funny.
They marched through the rest of the city, but there were no more clues to be had. Just the evidence of violence, both within locked homes and in the streets. Adults and children. The xercoles in the fields, lean from hunger, flew away at their approach, landing on enormous golden paws in the trees to watch them, tails twitching in fear.
At last Talis sighed and turned to the other two. “There’s no one alive here that can tell us any more about what happened. My best guess is that the village reacted against the aliens, and the aliens killed them all to keep their secrets for them.”
“Heddard Bay?”
Talis nodded. No one could pick apart a secret like an alchemist.
Talis sat at the foot of Dug’s bed at the hospital facility at Heddard Bay. The doctors didn’t know what was wrong. Vennika’s stitches had held, the flesh was almost completely mended, and he should be back to normal. But he wasn’t.
Dug lay with his head sagging to one side, watching her as best he could beneath drooping eyelids. She opened her mouth to reassure him, then realized he’d know how forced that was. How worried she was. How frustrated to return to Heddard Bay. They’d only just escaped, and already the world had driven them back.
A commotion of footsteps sounded from down the corridor. She gripped his hand before turning from his labored gaze.
Through the open door, she could see a young Rakkar woman dressed in a cornflower blue dress accessorized with a leather apron and dark brown work boots, marching down the hall toward Dug’s recovery room at a speed that seemed to defy the short legs. Sophie’s head bobbed behind as she jogged in a futile attempt to keep up. This would be Kirna, then.
Sophie was petite, but Kirna was downright diminutive. She had the cherry red chitin spines of a Rakkar boy across her nose and cheeks and a round protrusion on her larynx but was otherwise a charming blend of femininity and reckless science. Her strawberry blonde hair was gathered away from her face, held at bay with a headband and mismatched assortment of clips. Her stiff leather apron was stained with the evidence of spills, splatters, and burns. A pair of long leather gloves, also showing signs of abuse, flapped from the apron’s hip pocket as she bustled to Dug’s bedside.
The hospital staff moving about their circuitous rounds paused to glare as they passed. Talis’s group had scandalized the hospital staff since Dug’s admittance earlier that afternoon, as the crew had no lodgings in the city and remained underfoot while they watched over him. Despite that, Kirna’s appearance seemed to draw more disapproval than usual.
Quick introductions were made when Sophie followed in, though Kirna didn’t wait for a handshake before checking Dug’s wound. She clucked her tongue as she observed his feverish forehead and the swollen, red skin of his stomach.
“You have the weapon?”
Talis held it out. Kirna fingered the thin filaments of wire on the inside curve of the notches, examined the hilt closely, then handed it back to Talis with a muttered curse.
And then she stole the patient.
She disconnected him from the intravenous tubes and monitors, then wheeled his hospital bed straight through the ward and out the main exit, steering the cart like a grocery trolley, with Talis, Tisker, and Sophie following in a bewildered chase as the staff at the nurses’ station yelled after in protest. Kirna careened through the streets of Lippen, disturbed the local traffic with her speed and lack of propriety, and rushed across many blocks to a part of the city where Talis had never been—the library district. Whenever Talis caught sight of Dug’s face, as Kirna rounded a corner and slowed so as not to topple his cart, she was certain he looked pleased, if a bit bewildered. Whether he had more faith than her in this new plan, Talis couldn’t say, but he was definitely glad to be free of the hospital even if he could not saunter out on his own two feet.
Following the curve of a stone arch, a chiseled sign identified the cave system beyond as the “Molten River Memorial Library.” As they passed beneath it, a Breaker librarian dressed in a linen tunic and silk waistcoat stepped out from behind a desk to greet them.
Taken out of context of the lapidary office, Talis needed a moment to recover their name from her memory. “Catkin?”
From their pocket, the sparkle of a polished golden watch chain competed with the glow of ruby and emerald cabochons set in their ostentatious tusk caps. They were dressed a few steps up from the stranger Talis had met outside the mines.
Ahead of Kirna’s obvious haste, they parted the enormous double doors towering along the inner wall. Great cast iron hinges turned with the audible groan of giants to admit the tiny Rakkar and her unusual cargo.
Catkin nodded politely to Talis as the rest of crew chased after, as though such a procession were commonplace. Talis looked back over her shoulder. She wanted to linger and speak with them, but it was obvious Kirna was not going to wait for her.
The chamber within was smaller than Talis expected from the scale of its entrance. At its center, an eight-sided lobby dominated by a monstrous hand-carved reception desk was lit with flickering lanterns. Against a pillar behind the desk, a tall clock ticked heavy heartbeats, which echoed off the stone walls of the space.
Along each wall, eight alcoves served as foyers for less formidable doors. Each was lined with rich tapestries and offered identical wing-backed leather chairs, reading lamps on side tables, waist-height bookshelves, and simple wooden desks. Several showed evidence of recent occupation. Books lay scattered and open on any available flat surface or stacked on top of the low shelves in disorganized piles. An older Rakkar man, unusually tall and willowy for added effect, moved through the space with a cart, gathering the abandoned books and frowning at their spines before deciding where on his cart to place them. He spared only a glance at Kirna and her companions before returning to his work.
Past the wood-framed corridor behind the librarian’s desk, Kirna led them through a stone arch at the end. There, a wide tunnel lit by wall-mounted sconces stretched off to either side until the darkness consumed all but the pinpricks of distant lighting.
Kirna turned left without hesitation, transferred responsibility for Dug to Sophie, and fished in her apron pocket for something. Jangling, she pulled a ring of keys forth, looking like it could not possibly have fit in there, at least not without evidence of its bulk and weight. She flipped keys while walking to find the one among dozens that she wanted, then pinched it between chitin-plated index finger and thumb and shook the other keys out of the way. The tunnel’s stone walls amplified the metallic clatter, drowning out the sound of the gurney wheels rumbling along the floor.
Their procession stopped before a large door, carved with exquisite detail in patterns Talis recognized as traditional Breaker motifs. Kirna’s hand paused in front of the lock, the pin of her selected key aimed at the keyhole. She turned to fix her guests with a very serious look.
“Now, we’re unannounced,” she said, and then glanced at the gurney. “Don’t be surprised if he’s kinda grumpy.”
Talis glanced at Sophie and noted the girl’s face had gone slack with understanding and awe. “Who?”
Kirna giggled a bit, and the softer skin at the corners of her mouth creased. “Professor Amos Ekinax, of
course. My mentor.”
And before Talis could ask any other questions, Kirna unlocked the door and ushered them through.
After living in a Rakkar city for two years, Talis thought she knew all about Lippen. Cramped, dank, cold in spots, unbearably hot in others. Dripping and dark beneath the shining polish of applied technology.
Everything that Amos’s private laboratory beneath the Molten River Memorial Library was not.
An expansive ceiling swept above and away from them, segmented into domed squares between delicately trimmed wooden arches. Gilded crown molding framed the perimeters of vibrant murals. Pale yellows, delicate blues, soft peaches painted with a skilled hand depicted scenes of Rakkar and Breaker children at play beneath aubergine skies. These cherubs, strategically draped for modesty but otherwise naked, danced across the long ceiling, playing with balloons, kites, and model airships.
In the center of each dome, a forged iron chandelier hung suspended from chains and pulleys. Each enormous fixture held at least fifty candles whose flames danced and bobbed, making the figures in the murals appear to breathe with life.
Lower to the floor, tracks of electric and gas bulbs made certain that every corner of the lab was filled with warm, friendly light. Built-in bookshelves lined the walls, stretching from the floor to the base of the arched ceiling. Access to many of the shelves was blocked by additional free-standing shelves, and those blocked, in turn, by loose stacks of even more books. Great tomes. Slender digests. Thin, warping periodicals and yellowed clippings. These piles formed a maze through which Kirna guided them. She’d taken over navigation of Dug’s bed again and moved them through the space and its obstacles without nicking the corner of a single stack.
The maze of books opened up onto another, perhaps more dangerous gambit. Contraptions large and small consumed every available floor space or table surface, their shapes benign, dangerous, or as-yet indeterminable. Larger devices sidled up to tables on the floor, clustered together in groupings that implied some strange order, of which Talis could not conceive. Bulky kinetic machines spun on their central mechanisms, tumbleweeds of gimbals and spheres and rings, clicking or clanging by their individual designs. Ladders led up the walls to more books, stacked upon books, in precarious piles.
