by Ari Marmell
For the second time in less than a week, Katherine Laddermore sat in a plush, creaking chair within one of the dormitory chambers of Thunderhead Keep. Sparse but comfortable, it contained little more than an old mattress, a wardrobe leaning canted against the wall as though nothing else were holding it upright, a granite-topped table, and the set of mostly matching chairs from which Katherine had selected her current seat. Both the Golden Crucible and the chamber’s occupant could readily have afforded better, very much so, but why? Why bother, for a dormitory intended to be used only sporadically, never to serve as anyone’s permanent home?
And also for the second time in less than a week, the man she’d come to consult had greeted her with haunted eyes, his shoulders bent as though he not only carried the weight of the world, but was running horribly late in delivering it.
Engman Drew was balding, graying, wrinkled, squinting—the absolute archetype of the “old scholar” image, save for the lingering muscle still visible where neck and forearms protruded from his tunic. It was, he’d remarked to the knight last time she’d been here, the result of habits leftover from his military days, not any deliberate effort to stay in shape.
At the moment, the Cygnaran-born alchemist was disappearing into the open wardrobe, hunched and digging through a haphazard stack of clothes.
“Ah! Here we go.”
Shaking away a wrinkled sock, he dumped a thick folder of papers onto the table. “Didn’t want anyone finding it, did I?” he asked in response to his visitor’s raised eyebrow. “Not a lot of places here to hide anything . . .”
“I suppose not, no.” Idly she shuffled the sheaf of papers, but it might as well have been written in code, in another language, upside down, by a blind man, for all the sense she could make of it.
“Lady Ladd—that is, Lieutenant Laddermore . . .” Engman began. His hands twitched across the table, as though he were writing something with an invisible quill. “You know that even I never saw the whole formula, right? Or even most of it? Any remotely competent alchemist will figure out this is a forgery without too much effort, and a good one should tumble to it in a matter of minutes . . .”
Katherine’s smile was a mélange of genuine amusement and frustrated impatience—more the former than the latter, she hoped. “I know, Master Drew. You’ve explained that to us. Nobody expects otherwise.”
“It’s just, I’m not sure—”
“It doesn’t have to fool anyone long,” she reassured him—as she’d done the last time she was here, when she’d first commissioned the fake. “Odds are, we’ll never have a use for it anyway. We just felt . . .” by which she meant Dignity had felt, and Katherine had no reason to gainsay her, “it was the sort of thing that might prove handy. Better to have and not need, and all that, right?”
“Yes, yes, of course.” He seemed determined to study the rough carpet, the tabletop, the room—anything but her face.
Apparently, not all his military habits lingered . . . She shoved the documents in the satchel sitting beside her, slung the trap over her shoulder. “Master Drew? How did di Meryse acquire your portion of the formula?”
She’d meant to draw him out, as well as assuaging her own curiosity, but if anything, his posture sagged further still. “I’d wondered about that at first,” he said miserably, “when I heard things had gone tits up. And then I remembered.
“It was a few weeks before all this started. I’d arrived at my laboratory one morning, and found the lock on my door . . .” He paused. “Many of us augment our security, you see. Mechanical devices in the keyhole to snap tools or sound alarms. False locks, or—”
“Yes, I understand,” she interrupted, not wishing to be rude, but wishing to sit through a lengthy recitation of the safeguards of paranoid alchemists even less.
“Right. Well, that day, my own lock seemed stiff. It ground a bit when I opened up. I suspected tampering, of course—even the best lock can be bypassed—but nothing was missing. Far as I could tell at the time, nothing had even been moved. I figured the mechanism had just started to break down; happens even to the best craftsmanship. But now . . .”
Katherine nodded. “You think di Meryse broke in and copied your work?”
“Not by hand; he wouldn’t have had the time, and he certainly couldn’t have left everything so pristine. But remember, Lieutenant, we’re all alchemists here. Spread the right treatment on thick enough paper stock, lay it over another document, and it recreates the patterns of the ink. Near perfect duplication, wouldn’t have taken more than a couple of minutes per page.
“Something else I didn’t catch in time.”
“Drew!” He actually snapped upright, almost like a longbow, when Katherine slammed the satchel to the table.
“Master Drew,” she said more gently, “this is not your fault. None of this.”
“I recommended Idran for the project. I trusted him—”
“So did everyone else here. So did Commander Adept Nemo. He’d always been trustworthy.”
“Until now.”
“Right. Until now. Nobody saw it coming. No way you should have.”
The alchemist didn’t appear entirely convinced. “But—”
“Your country is at war, remember? If you fall apart, you’re no use to us—and we are going to need you. So straighten up and get back to it!”
He was not only standing but halfway through a salute before his brain apparently caught up with his body and reminded him that he hadn’t been army in over a decade. For the first time since she’d met him, Engman Drew actually smiled. “Yes, Sir!”
Katherine laughed, clapped him once on the shoulder, and departed.
It only weighed a few pounds, that satchel full of documents, and they weren’t even genuine. Still, the knowledge of what they represented, and what was at stake, added enough weight to the strap to make her stumble. She was certain that only her armor kept it from digging into her skin.
Yes, full armor. Katherine and Dignity knew they were watched, knew there was no way for the knight—or anyone else whom they could trust—to travel to Thunderhead in secret. This way, at least, she was fully protected, and just maybe Section Three would assume her visit to be diplomatic or ceremonial, rather than related to their ongoing competition.
Right. And maybe they’ll mistake me for Queen Ayn, and I can just order them to surrender.
Marching guards, harried servants, and only the occasional alchemist crossed her path on the way to the front gate. Some ignored her, despite the less-than-inconspicuous armor. Some offered neighborly greetings. Others glared in simmering resentment, perhaps worried that her presence put them in danger, perhaps angry at the reminder of the war. Katherine returned the greetings, made no acknowledgment of the others, and continued along the pebble-paved citadel walkways. The past few days had seen little snowfall, which made these paths, and the city roads, somewhat easier to travel. On the other hand, it meant there was no white to cover the polluted, rot-gray sludge that had accumulated earlier and never melted. It was worst near the fortress, but Katherine couldn’t help feel that all of Leryn looked vaguely leprous.
Beyond the front gate waited two of Halcourt’s household soldiers, whose names she honestly couldn’t recall. Both men appeared familiar enough with the blades and pistols they carried, but likely had never actually made use of them in anything deadlier than a formal duel or a drunken scrap. She honestly wasn’t certain that having them at her back was preferable to finding a solid wall—the wall might not warn her of danger, but it also wouldn’t catch her with a wild backswing—but these were the new rules, now that the Reds had made their intentions clear. Nobody went out alone.
Well, nobody but Dignity on her bloody secret forays, of course.
With them, huddled together for warmth—which made them smarter than the two baronial guardsmen, frankly—were a trio of saddled horses. Arius snorted and stomped at her approach, which in turn set the other two mounts to nervous whickering.
�
�Ah, ignore them,” she told the warhorse, running a palm across his neck. “They just don’t understand your enthusiasm.”
“Ready to head back, Lieutenant?” one of the men asked, bored and clearly only half-present.
Apparently they don’t, either. “I am.” Despite the weight of the armor, Katherine hauled herself into the saddle with a dancer’s grace. “Do try to keep at least somewhat alert, would you? This isn’t a game just because none of your people have died yet.”
So casual was her tone, it took the two men a few seconds to truly process what she’d said. Both then snapped to attention—more formally and properly than Drew had done, though perhaps lacking his conviction—shouted a unified “Yes, Lieutenant!” and clambered into their own saddles.
I guess they aren’t entirely useless, then. A flick of the reins, and Arius pranced out into the main thoroughfare, as swift and apparently carefree as the afternoon traffic would permit.
Actually, rather more swift and carefree than the traffic permitted, narrowly missing a pocket of civilians and one slowly trundling wagon, until Katherine leaned over beside his left ear and whispered, “You stop that!”
She tried not to smile at the confounded expression the two armsmen shared, and obviously thought they were hiding from her.
Katherine’s passing provoked the same array of reactions from pedestrians on the street as it had from the personnel of Thunderhead, and she reacted—or chose not to react—in precisely the same way. The navy blue steel grew cold, even through her arming clothes beneath, but she allowed no trace of discomfort to mar either her face or her bearing. Here, more so even than at home, she would show the world only a true Storm Knight.
Later, Katherine would wonder if she’d gotten too wrapped up in the showmanship; if she’d gotten too lax, made the same mistake against which she’d warned her escort. Odds were, probably not. Odds were, she’d honestly missed it, and nothing she might have done differently would have changed anything.
But she’d never know for certain.
“Sniper! Left flank high!”
The first shot followed the guard’s cry as though deliberately punctuating the warning. Katherine swung her shield high, but had the bullet been aimed her way it would already have struck, and she knew it. Instead, she could only curse as the baronial guard who’d spotted the danger that she’d missed, who’d tried to warn them, died in a spray of blood and skull fragments.
It made sense, in a way. Storm Knight plate, stronger than any other armor of the same weight, could often turn even a high-powered bullet. Better to eliminate a softer objective with the first shots.
But it should have been me, damn it!
While her mind reeled, her body acted. Already she had raised her galvanic lance, triggered the charging cycle, and blasted a line of lightning back through the window whence the shot had come. It was a small, low-powered bolt—in part because the weapon was still powering up, in part because she wasn’t looking to obliterate the entire room or any innocents potentially nearby—but still it was enough to blow out the entire window frame and several chunks of brick to either side. The street grew thick with screams and sizzles, smoke and ozone, and citizens scattering in so many different directions that Katherine felt they might actually have discovered some new ones.
Lance tucked tight under her arm, she dropped from Arius’s saddle. A quick click of the tongue, and he trotted away, seeking his own cover until he heard her call. Katherine continued laying down flickers of lightning, less in hopes of actually searing the enemy than to ensure the sniper kept his head down until the field was clear of noncombatants. At this point, she couldn’t even see the target window any longer, so obscured was the wall by brick powder and swirling smoke.
Eventually, however, after a minute or two that felt like a month or two, the road was clear of anyone save the knight and the remaining guard, both of whom had taken shelter behind a half-height garden wall. Katherine allowed her sizzling barrage to end, the obscuring smoke to clear.
The window was completely gone. A jagged maw gaped in the bricks, more than twice the size the sash itself had been, surrounded by a corona of searing and soot. Crouched as they were, the sharp angle made examination of the room beyond all but impossible, but Katherine couldn’t imagine it remained anything but a blackened hollow.
“You ever use one of these?” she demanded of the surviving armsman.
“I, uh . . .”
“Quit gawping and answer the question, soldier!”
“No, Lieutenant, I have not!”
She passed the lance over despite his answer, grabbing the man’s pistol in exchange. “Trigger is this stud here, inside the guard. Treat it like a rifle; at this range, the difference in time to target shouldn’t matter. Don’t fire unless you have a clear shot; I don’t have time to give you a primer on recharging right now.”
With that she was up, vaulting the wall and sprinting for the building. Somewhere within, assuming he wasn’t dead, lurked at least one ambusher, and Katherine was looking forward to a long conversation. She ducked into the alcove beside the doorway, double-checked that the pistol was loaded and its powder dry—and that her sword was loose enough in its scabbard for a quick draw, despite the cold. That wasn’t a mistake she intended ever to make again.
Two deep breaths to steady herself, and Katherine kicked the door open, instantly rolling out of sight to the other side of the frame.
Sure enough, a shot cracked through the open space, one that would’ve taken her clean in the chest had she remained in the doorway. She refrained from returning fire—no sense in wasting her one shot—and risked the most abbreviated glance around the doorframe.
The shot had come, not from the stairs leading up, as she’d anticipated, but from the end of a long hall. Carpeted in once-but-no-longer-lush shag, lit by a staggered sequence of gas lanterns, the passageway led straight through the building to a . . .
Backdoor. Bloody . . .
It hung slightly open, she could see even from here, and vibrated on its hinges.
It was to be a chase, then, was it? Fine. Katherine was a lot faster in her armor than most folk suspected, and with the guard watching over the horses and the avenue, no chance the assassin would double back and—
The Storm Knight had dashed to within a pace or two of that rear entrance when she jerked to such an abrupt halt that she actually pulled up several carpet tacks.
A single sniper for a party of three, one of whom, at least, was no easy target? An attack in broad daylight, in front of scores of civilians? What the hell were Vorona and Section Three playing at?
And why here? The route between Surros Manor and Thunderhead wasn’t especially long, but it provided plenty of opportunities for ambush. Why here, then, so near the fortress—and, if they chose to involve themselves, the Crucible’s soldiers therein?
Because, you sorry excuse for a Cygnaran soldier, they’ve either laid a trap, which they’re just waiting for you to stampede into headlong . . .
Or they’re trying to keep you away from the manor.
She burst back through the front door like a cannonball, splitting the heavy wood where her armored shoulder slammed it aside. Already Arius was bounding her way, summoned by her ear-piercing whistle. Bewildered as a first-time drunk, the other man rose from cover and ran for his own mount, spurred on by the obvious urgency in Katherine’s reappearance.
“Back to the baron!” she called as she passed him, yanking her lance from his startled grip. From yards ahead she tossed back his pistol, which he successfully caught only through a maddened display of frantic grabbing and juggling. “Now!”
Arius galloped through the streets of Leryn, head down, emulating the lightning that so often danced at his rider’s fingertips. Civilians jumped aside, shouting and screaming; a time or two, the doughty steed actually leapt over an obstacle, inanimate or otherwise, that didn’t clear his path quickly enough.
And still, as a rooster-tail of mucky snow sp
read across her wake, Katherine wondered if she’d already delayed too long, if even Arius could bring her home in time to do any good.
***
Dignity slipped along the hallway in a low crouch, spring-pistol and fighting knife all but quivering in anticipation within their hidden sheaths. The staccato beat of an ongoing firefight stomped, an uncouth and unwanted guest, throughout the many corners of the manor. The terrified screams, hollered commands, and despairing sobs carried less well, creating a mechanical background hum.
Was Halcourt dead? Surros? Sadler? How big was the siege? Why was the siege?
Well, that last wasn’t hard to figure out; it was why Dignity hadn’t gone running to protect the baron as soon as she heard the opening salvo.
It was almost assuredly what the enemy wanted her to do.
Instead, she’d forced herself to remain patient, to wait . . .
Until, finally, she’d heard enough to take a pretty good stab (so to speak) at where the closest of the intruders might lurk.
At the end of the passageway, near where it intersected the manor’s main hall, one last door provided ingress to one last bedchamber. The simple lock slowed her not at all, and Dignity was quickly inside and across the room. There, a pair of casement windows, latticed in diamond patterns of wrought iron, overlooked a narrow slope of roof—and, of more immediate import, a potentially crippling twenty-five foot plunge to the manicured lawn below.
Kicking off her shoes, she pulled a pair of floppy, soft-soled boots from her belt sash, where she’d jammed them moments earlier. No sooner had she slipped them on than she carefully pushed open the window, wincing at the faint creak she was powerless to prevent, and scrambled out onto the thin and heart-stoppingly precarious ribbon of slanted wood.
The cold swarmed her, an army of invisible ants prickling at her skin. For all the ways it could be worse—the wind might be stronger, the attack might have come at night, the roof might be covered in frost—it was still enough of a distraction that Dignity found herself clinging to the iron window frame, briefly unwilling to relinquish her grip.