Republic

by Lindsay Buroker

  A marine scurried forward and grabbed it, hauling it and the long cable behind it to a sturdy eyelet in the bow. After securing it, he waved up to the navigation cabin. Two other such hooks were attached now, each with cables stretching back to the tug, which was barely visible through the towering stalks, but floated at the edge of the forest, still forty meters away.

  “How did they...” Mahliki leaned to the side and squinted. “Is that a harpoon launcher?”

  “Most likely,” Sespian said, hanging over the railing, hacking at a vine.

  “Only on a Turgonian tugboat,” she said.

  Before Mahliki could return her attention to her bag, a dark figure running toward them made her pause and gape. It—he—was running along one of the cables, cables that were less than an inch thick.

  “Here comes the backup.” Maldynado grinned and thumped Basilard on the shoulder, nodding toward the running man.

  A fast-moving vine stretched into his path, as if to intercept him. He leaped over it and landed on the cable again without slowing down. Without so much as a wobble or flailing of arms along the way, he hopped over the railing and jogged toward Maldynado and Basilard. No, not them, Mahliki realized when he cruised past with nothing but a curt nod. Sespian.

  “Father,” Sespian said, standing back from the railing and flicking a severed vine off his sleeve.

  Sicarius studied his son from head to toe, then nodded. “Sespian. You are uninjured?”

  With some amusement, Mahliki realized that dead sprint across the cable had been borne of parental concern. Somewhere behind that stoic mask, he must have been agonizing over Sespian’s fate.

  “I am,” Sespian said.

  “Good.” Such a fount of relief and emotion he was... Sicarius’s expression never changed.

  Sespian pointed at her. “Mahliki is the one who almost ended up as plant food.”

  She grimaced, not needing another reminder that the ship was in trouble because of her. And she wasn’t sure she appreciated Sicarius’s scrutiny, however brief. He gave her a much quicker head-to-toe perusal than Sespian had received, though he did deign to say, “It is good you, too, are well.” Before she could decide if this warranted a thank-you, he held up a black dagger and continued on. “My blade cuts through the plant easily. I will assist with freeing the ship.”

  “Good,” Sespian said, “because—” Another boom from the rear drowned out the rest of his words.

  From her spot, Mahliki couldn’t see where the explosives had detonated, but bits of plants rained down around them. Only the vines, she noticed, not the thicker stalks. It would take more than black powder to bring those down.

  “Understood,” Sicarius said. “It will be most important to free the screw for propulsion.” He jogged off toward the stern without another word.

  “You must have great in-depth chats on politics, religion, and the arts,” Mahliki glanced toward Sespian.

  His smile was dry. “I’m not sure he’s figured out what chatting is yet. I know he opens up more with Amaranthe, but I don’t think she would call him garrulous, either. I admit... I’d probably be horrified if he tried to chat with me.”

  “Horrified?” Mahliki asked.

  “Well, not horrified, but... it’s just awkward. I don’t know what to say to him, and he doesn’t know what to say to me.”

  Maldynado ambled over and propped an elbow on Sespian’s shoulder. “You just described the father-son relationships of half of the men in Turgonia. You should be tickled that he cares. Not all parents do.” Maldynado lifted his fingers, grimaced at a broken nail, and sighed. “This work is hard on the physique. Not at all what I had in mind when I asked the president for a job.”

  Mahliki watched him thoughtfully. For all his feigned indifference to... just about anything significant, she had caught a quick wince when he mentioned parents that didn’t care.

  Basilard tapped him on the shoulder and pointed toward the stern. Sicarius just dove overboard.

  Mahliki blinked. “On purpose?”

  “You should have told him to lubricate himself first,” Maldynado said. “If nothing else, it would be amusing to imagine him explaining his slimy armpits to Amaranthe.”

  Sespian merely shook his head. “I’ll go tell the captain that the engine is about to work a lot better.” He waved and headed for the stairs.

  Ah, yes, the black knives. Her father had one, too, though she didn’t know if he had brought it with him to Turgonia. It made sense that the blades could damage the plant, a fact that did not bode well for the city, not when they had blown up the alien ship and the only source of that technology within thousands of miles.

  Maldynado nudged her. “Why so glum? Things are looking up.”

  “Only for the moment,” Mahliki warned him. “Only for the moment.”

  Chapter 9

  Amaranthe tried not to feel out of place sitting in the plushy conference chair. Given the number of generals also sitting in the room, that was difficult. Colonel Dak Starcrest, the only officer present not ranked general, sat to her left. She folded her hands on the table and tried to appear undaunted. When Mahliki and Professor Komitopis came in, she relaxed an iota, though the president’s wife and daughter weren’t exactly low ranking when it came to social hierarchies. Basilard and Maldynado ambled in next, though with Basilard dressed in his country’s clothing and wearing that chain of office, he had a new status—and a reason to be here. The Mangdorian woman who followed him in, her leather and cotton dress elegantly stitched and her red hair in an attractive coif, gave even more authority to him, especially when she took a spot on the opposite side of the table, where she could see and translate his signs. Maldynado, who plopped down and immediately flung one leg over the armrest of his cushy chair, had no obvious reason for being there, much like Amaranthe, though that didn’t faze him.

  Lots of friends here, no reason to feel out of place, she told herself. Why had she so easily spoken to people of all stations when she had been an outlaw? Because it didn’t matter, she supposed. When she had already broken so many rules, who cared what people thought? But now, she wasn’t sure where she stood anymore. After being gone for months, she certainly didn’t feel a part of the president’s inner circle. Indeed, she scarcely knew the man outside of his reputation. Sicarius had a closer relationship and link to him than Amaranthe did.

  He was in the room, too, remaining by the door, his back to the wall, something that made at least a few of those generals cast nervous glances over their shoulders. Amaranthe had a hard time imagining a situation in which Sicarius would feel daunted. Supervising a room full of toddlers, perhaps. Not that he would likely be in that situation soon. Despite the morning’s chaos, the tug had delivered her to shore in time for her to wash up and make her doctor’s appointment. The news... hadn’t been encouraging, aside from the fact that she wouldn’t need to worry about stocking tea in the future.

  The president came in last, trailed by a couple of security men. They attempted to take up positions to either side of the door, though Sicarius did not accommodate the flustered fellow on the left by moving. The guard had to stand by a potted tree in the corner.

  As President Starcrest sat down at the head of the table, a couple of hotel staff came in, one to light candles and turn up the wall lamps—this interior room lacked windows, which was probably why it had been chosen, given recent bombings—and the other to take drink orders. Starcrest and several of the officers watched with some bemusement as the young man went around, explaining beverage options. Not a luxury they had typically experienced in their tents out in the field, Amaranthe supposed. Something to be said for having staff meetings in a hotel.

  “Thank you all for coming this evening,” Starcrest said when the wait staff had departed. “You’re all here because you already have knowledge about the ancient alien ship that exploded in the sky a few months ago.”

  Several men exchanged nervous glances. Amaranthe almost groaned. That was why she had been in
vited? She wanted nothing to do with that ship or whatever legacy it had—

  She froze. Legacy. If there had been a window she could have looked out, she would have stared at the harbor.

  “The plant?” she whispered.

  “Hm?” Starcrest, at the other end of the table, asked.

  “I, ah, well, we just got here, but I had assumed that plant was the work of a practitioner. Is that... not the case?”

  “It’s not. And that is why it must now become our number one priority, rather than an inconvenience to be delegated to the municipal workers.” He frowned slightly at the bespectacled man next to him, one of the few people in the room not wearing a uniform. Amaranthe had never been introduced to Vice President Serpitivich but remembered him from the elections.

  The slight man adjusted his spectacles and closed a book that he had been perusing. “I merely suggested the assassins at your door were more of a priority, Lord President.”

  Colonel Dak Starcrest made a noise somewhere between a growl and a grumble.

  “Let’s put the focus on the plant now,” the president said and extended a hand toward his daughter. “Mahliki?”

  She had been fiddling with one of her braids, but she pushed it over her shoulder and opened a large satchel. A damp satchel that smelled of seaweed. She plucked out a jar with a bulbous brownish red object suspended in a pale fluid. It had been sliced open before being tucked into its glass home.

  “This is one of the root samples I got today.” Mahliki ticked the glass. “I cut it open, and—well, here. Pass it around, and you can see for yourself.”

  Amaranthe noted that the lid had been screwed on, glued, and then taped to the glass. “Is it... likely to try and escape?”

  “I hope not.” Mahliki handed the jar to the general beside her, whose face grew pale as he took a closer look. “I don’t want anybody accidentally taking it out though. Who knows what it can do? Those pods... Sespian can tell you. Trying to dissect one almost got me... prematurely aged.”

  Professor Komitopis flinched.

  “I was lucky I had him there to pull me out of the way.” Mahliki probably would have beamed a smile at Sespian if he were in the room, but he had gone to the construction site to oversee the laying of the foundation for his building—the future residence for the president. She settled for throwing a quick smile at Sicarius. Sicarius, of course, gazed back with uniform blandness.

  The jar passed through a few sets of hands before landing on the table in front of Amaranthe. She peered into the part that had been slashed open, expecting more of the same brownish-red, but a black disk lay embedded inside the root ball. It looked more like metal, rather than something natural. She slumped in her chair. Not metal, the same black material Sicarius’s dagger was made from, that the entire ship had been made from. The lighting wasn’t good, but she made out a single rune etched in the disk.

  “What’s it say?” Amaranthe looked to Tikaya, assuming she had already examined it.

  The professor’s lips thinned. “Roughly... Experimental Plant Number Three.”

  Amaranthe passed the jar on to Colonel Starcrest. “Meaning it’s even more potent than numbers one and two?”

  Tikaya spread an open palm. “I couldn’t say. I’m not certain this plant is meant as a weapon. Though... given what I have learned about that... species over the last twenty years, it does seem likely.”

  “We’re guessing some seeds or pods or something otherwise encapsulated in those disks—or produced by those disks—survived the explosion,” Mahliki said, “and fell to earth. To the lake more specifically. While the water was cold and eventually frozen over, it would have laid dormant, but once the thaw came...”

  “It spread faster than gossip about a C.O.,” the colonel said.

  “Essentially, yes,” Tikaya said.

  “Are your troops gossiping about you, Dak?” the president asked gently, a faint humor in his brown eyes.

  “Always,” the colonel grumbled. “I’m scintillating material.”

  He didn’t seem to share his uncle’s humor. There was a glumness to him that reminded Amaranthe of Basilard, although Basilard seemed less glum since he had returned to Turgonia. Even now, he kept smiling over at his translator, who was watching him attentively to see if he would contribute. Amaranthe needed to find time to talk to him and see how his meeting with the family had gone. When the jar got to him, he scrutinized it. Like the others, he passed it on without comment other than a displeased lip curl. It must not have the culinary merit that so much of the bizarre foliage he picked did.

  “Mother and I are going to keep studying it.” Mahliki set another jar on the table, this one with a snippet of a vine lying on the bottom with water around it. It twitched a few times. “Although keeping a live specimen is perhaps not that wise—”

  “No,” Tikaya said, “it’s not.” Her tone and the look she slanted her daughter suggested they had argued over this earlier.

  Mahliki lifted a shoulder and continued with, “—it’s the only way to see what affects it and what doesn’t. We’re going to have to find something to eradicate it, or your capital city won’t be habitable for long.”

  “The way that thing’s growing, all of Turgonia won’t be habitable for long,” Colonel Starcrest grumbled.

  “It doesn’t grow that fast,” one of the generals said.

  Most of the other heads around the room nodded in agreement with snorts for the idea.

  President Starcrest wasn’t nodding. “I’ve been down to the waterfront the last couple of days,” he said. “Based on its current growth rate, if there are no other limiting factors, it would take less than a year to spread across the entire continent.”

  “What?” the general blurted. “That’s impossible. We’re talking about thousands of miles to cover.”

  Starcrest’s smile was bleak. “For all the marvels that humanity can grasp, it fails again and again to comprehend the significance of the exponential function.”

  The general leaned back in his chair, his expression somewhere between thoughtful and befuddled.

  “It’s like the compounding copper coin, right?” Amaranthe asked. “If you’re offered a million ranmyas or the sum of a copper coin that doubles every day for a month, you’re supposed to take the coin.”

  “Yes,” Starcrest said.

  Amaranthe recalled from that particular math problem that the one million ranmyas looked pretty good right up until the last couple of days of the month, where the doubling copper turned into millions of ranmyas on its own. “So if we delay now, most people won’t realize exactly how much trouble we’re in until it’s far too late to do anything about it?”

  “Put her on the list,” the colonel said. He was studying the jar with the live specimen in it and didn’t meet Amaranthe’s gaze when she gave him a confused look.

  “The list?” she asked.

  “I’m being pressured to add more civilians to government positions,” Starcrest said. “The warrior caste is already grouching about being stripped of power, or so it perceives, but there are many scholars, entrepreneurs, and common citizens who now aspire to political careers.”

  “They can have our jobs when we die,” one of the generals said. “None of the up-and-coming officers are worth their weight in spit anyway.”

  “Weak generation,” another grumbled.

  Amaranthe resisted the urge to roll her eyes at these geriatric opinions of youth—where had they been when Emperor Sespian was being poisoned and plotted against?—though she caught Mahliki doing just that. She waved for the return of her sample jars and stood. “Father, if your people are finished setting up that lab in the basement, I’ll start on my experiments right away. Mother’s already translated the runes and given me what information she has on the ancient race’s horticulture methods, but if there are any experienced botanists or even limnologists in the city who could be talked into helping, I wouldn’t mind some company.”

  Or expert opinions, Amaranth
e wagered. The young woman appeared daunted at the task she had taken on—or, by default, been given. Amaranthe knew all about taking on impossible tasks and wished she could offer help. Well, maybe...

  “Basilard may be able to offer some valuable insight,” Amaranthe suggested. “His people are quite knowledgeable when it comes to plant life.”

  Basilard glanced between Amaranthe, Mahliki, and the president. I am not knowledgeable about alien plant life, he signed. The woman standing across from him translated it for the room.

  “Who is?” Starcrest murmured. “Basilard, why don’t you come see me in the morning, and we’ll discuss the Mangdorian concerns you’re here about? And with the rest of your time, if you’re willing...” He extended a hand toward Mahliki. “Unlike any botanists we may scrape up off the streets, you already have the clearance necessary to hear about the sensitive origins of the plant.”

  Amaranthe wondered exactly how top secret any knowledge of the ancient aliens could be at this point. After all, the ship had crashed five miles from the city and been there for everyone to see for more than twenty-four hours last winter. But perhaps, in her absence, some sort of logical cover-up story had been concocted. She would have to visit Deret Mancrest at some point and get caught up with the news. Or she could stroll up and ask the president. The notion struck her as too familiar. She wasn’t even sure why she had been invited to this meeting. How could she or Sicarius help with this situation? Other than by hewing at individual plant stalks with a certain black knife.

  “That’s it for now, gentlemen,” Starcrest said, and Amaranthe blushed, realizing she hadn’t been paying attention to the last minutes of the meeting. “Tikaya, Amaranthe, and Sicarius. Stay a moment, please.”

  The officers filed out, along with Mahliki, Basilard, and his translator. They were already signing and talking over the clinking of Mahliki’s bag full of samples. At a hand-shooing from the president, the door guards also filtered out. The one who had ceded his position to Sicarius gave him a faintly peeved expression in passing. Not someone else who would hold a grudge against him, Amaranthe hoped. She wondered if that private would be found and questioned. Had he been some lone operator, seeing a chance to avenge some past wrong Sicarius had done him or his family? Or had he been suborned by the assassins already lurking in the city?