by K. Eason
“Wha—yes, sorry.” Luki pulled a very worn, scarred, familiar axe-shaft out of its ignominious place, thrust under her belt. “Wasn’t sure if you’d want this, you know, in here.”
Custom said templars always went armed in uniform: symbolism, mostly, of constant readiness to defend Aedis and Confederation. Truth was, most templars on compound duty short-handed that part of the uniform to a monofil or some small and conventional melee weapon. A plain leather sheath hung off Luki’s belt with what looked like a bone handle poking out of it, on the end of what was likely a plain metal blade. Looked more like a blade ready for trimming an errant shrub than defending anyone.
Truth: most templars here in B-town hadn’t seen the last surge, either. The ones who had carried whitefire weapons all the time, on and off the compound.
“Thanks,” said Iari, and took her axe. She ran her hands over the haft, cursory check to make sure the safeties were on (no one wanted an unexpected deployment), familiar grooves and ridges of hexwork, and the place where a slicer had tried to disarm her (in all senses) and scored grooves in the polysteel.
She slid it through the ring on her belt. Adjusted the belt and winced a little at the knobby ends of her hips jutting up. Void and dust, no wonder Gaer’s face had gone pyrotechnic when he’d seen her. She’d offended vakari aesthetics with an excess of visible endoskeleton. She realized belatedly there was no mirror in this room. She weighed the embarrassment of misaligned insignia with the awkwardness of asking to use the Five Tribes ambassador’s personal mirror in his private chamber in front of her subordinates—ungentle Ptah, there were at least three bizarre things in that thought. Tobin would forgive crooked crests, and if Knight-Marshal Keawe didn’t, well, voidspit to her.
But then Gaer—who must’ve been watching Iari’s aura, or maybe just her expression—swooped in and, with just the tips of his talons, tugged her chestplate down and over to the left. She felt the heat coming off his skin (hide? what did vakari call it?) through the layers of her skinsuit, crossing the short span of aether between them. Smelled the burnt-sugar of him, the hint of hot metal under that.
“There.” Gaer met her eyes briefly. “Now you’re presentable.” And, as his pigments shifted into a violet so dark it made her eyes ache, “You had trouble with getting the insignia straight before, too.”
Iari felt Luki’s stare on the side of her head. Damn near heard the thoughts grinding through: When did the ambassador adjust the lieutenant’s insignia? Is this sort of thing normal?
Iari gritted a smile at Gaer, every tooth she could show. “Thanks.”
“Give the Knight-Marshal my regards, Lieutenant.”
She wasn’t going to answer that. Swallowed a mouthful of air that tasted like Gaer and turned toward Luki. “Corporal, let’s go.”
Luki was looking at Gaer with a mixture of apology and chagrin. “The Knight-Marshal wants you to come, too, Ambassador. He wants to see you both.” She jerked her chin at his tablet. “And he says—bring the research with you.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
So it was the four of them arriving together outside Tobin’s office some short time later, Gaer having had no armor, no necessary changes of clothing; but he had insisted, nonetheless, on shutting them all out of his chambers while he “prepared” himself and then emerged, looking exactly the same, ten minutes later. Probably setting hexes all over the place, in case someone tried to come in. Hiding the chip. Hopefully those things, and not comming SPERE with a report.
Three of the Windscar templars were waiting in the corridor, standing casual sentry, hipshot and sloppy and bored (and, merciful Mishka, unrigged). They saw Iari and jerked straight, shoulders back. The highest rank was corporal. The other two were young privates, barely initiated. Probably their first assignment. Escort to the Knight-Marshal, which would make them potentially competent, people Keawe wanted with her, to see whatever she saw. Except there were another four templars Iari didn’t see down in the barracks. Unless this corporal was the leadership—and that was as likely as Gaer growing feathers—that meant Keawe had left her unit commander to oversee the equipment.
Which suggested to Iari, who might’ve done that same thing, that the really dangerous templars were down in the barracks, prepping battle-rigs for whatever reason Keawe was here.
The corporal and her two privates saluted, all snap and precision, gauntleted fists clacking into chestplates so shiny Iari could see herself in the steel.
“Lieutenant.” The corporal’s eyes tried, and failed, to stay locked on Iari’s face. Skittered sideways, taking in Gaer and Char. Hrok’s breath, you could hear her brain breaking from here when she saw the riev’s templar-initiate badge.
“Corporal,” said Iari. Blessed Four, she was the ranking templar in the hallway. Time to act like it. “As you were. Corporal Luki, Templar-Initiate Char,” for the Windscarrans’ benefit, to be clear, “you wait for me out here.”
“Sir,” said Luki.
And from Char, a rumbling, “Yes, Lieutenant.” The riev had been carrying Meditations. Now they offered it back.
Iari took the book. Closest thing to a shield she was going to have for this encounter. She went up to Tobin’s door—Knight-Marshal Tobin, on the brass plate on the wall—and knocked on it.
“Sir. It’s me.”
The door opened fast and hard. Knight-Marshal Keawe stood on the other side, still holding the handle, so that her arm blocked any entrance. She was massive, void and dust, damn near Char’s size. Older than Tobin, lined and scarred, tusks overlarge, visible, and sharp as anything Gaer had in his mouth. She stared down at Iari with eyes that might have been golden, if there’d been any warmth in them. Cold and flat yellow and curious: a hard-eyed sweep. Iari was glad, suddenly, that Gaer had straightened her insignia.
Keawe’s gaze snagged on Meditations. Those cold yellow eyes warmed a degree or two, and when she looked at Iari again, it looked like she’d found at least one thing she approved. “Lieutenant.”
Iari straightened. Snapped a salute. “Knight-Marshal.” What was the voidspit protocol? Probably Tobin should do introductions, but she couldn’t see him past Keawe, and Gaer was right there, so: “May I present Ambassador—”
“Ambassador Gaer i’vakat’i Tarsik,” Gaer said, in a tone as spiky as his elbows.
“Huh.” Keawe’s gaze shifted like tectonic plates. “I know who you are, Ambassador.”
“Lieutenant,” Tobin called from inside. “Ambassador. Come in, please.” And, barely audible, “Keawe, please let them come in.”
Iari expected Keawe to yield up her place and go back to her chair, which was obviously the one canted out of true to the others, so that someone with long legs could stretch them out, and pulled closer to the desk than the others. But instead Keawe stood sentry next to the door, while Iari and Gaer filed past, before she slammed the door shut, creating a gust that unsettled the curtains and circulated two days of Iari’s hospice sponge-bathing and nervous vakar through the room. And then she stayed there, blocking the door.
The syn prickled the length of Iari’s spine, socket to sacrum, implants looking for a needle and an attached battle-rig. Iari sympathized. She wished for two things: eyes in the back of her head, to see Gaer’s expression, and the skill to read auras. And since those two were already impossible, might as well add an impossible third: to ask Tobin right now and out loud, what does Keawe know, what did you tell her?
Instead, she made her fingers relax, where they’d clenched around Meditations. She set the book on the near corner of Tobin’s desk, two-handed and gently.
“Thank you, sir, for the loan.”
Tobin had been watching Keawe, face masked down to spacer stillness. Now he glanced at Meditations. His jaw flexed. “You’re most welcome, Lieutenant.” His gaze dusted across hers for a moment. His eyes creased at the corners, brief as a breath, and Iari’s chest loosened a notch.
Keawe grunted. “Pretty sure the ambassador knew who I was already, if he’s worth spit as a spy. And I bet he is.”
Tobin sighed faintly. His fingers moved, not the spacer-shrug Iari recognized—some other pattern, two fingers in sequence, curl and flex.
“Oh, fine.” Keawe dropped back into her chair with a rattle of armor against wood. Tobin controlled a wince. Keawe controlled a grin, with less success. Her chestplate bore evidence of old damage, dents hammered not-quite-smooth, gouges a little too deep to be polished away.
“Brood breached my rig during the last surge,” Keawe said. “That what you’re looking at, Lieutenant? Wondering why my armor’s marked up?”
“No sir. I’m wondering why you’re wearing a battle-rig inside the Aedis.”
Keawe tilted her chin up, eyes screwed to slits. The lamp on Tobin’s desk, and the glow from his turing, splashed over her features, turned one eye brass-bright and dropped the other into eclipse. “I’m wondering why you aren’t, Lieutenant. Given the company.”
Gaer moved into Iari’s periphery. Almost, almost on his toes, and the pigments in his cheeks burned like hot coals.
“You want to provoke the lieutenant, Knight-Marshal Keawe, you’ll have to try harder. She is very patient. I’m an easier target.”
“Ambassador.” Keawe made it sound like veek, lip curled, voice deep in the back of her throat. “Don’t give a dead neefa about you, except that you’re evidently up to your jaw-plates in whatever’s going on in B-town. I don’t want you at this meeting, but Tobin says you should be, so here you are.” She gestured at the second chair. “Sit down. You’re too tall to stare at.”
“I believe it’s Knight-Marshal Tobin’s command here, and not yours, and I don’t give a dead neefa if your neck aches.”
Iari inserted herself between Keawe and Gaer, just a notch. She touched Gaer’s arm, a pair of fingertips above his wrist, in that patch of reasonably flat terrain before the spurs and spikes started. Vakari skinsuits were thicker than everyone else’s, reinforced panels to cover the general roughness of vakari hide. She pressed hard enough to get past the oilslick surface, to the heat and the pebbly texture underneath.
Gaer let his breath out in a hiss. But he didn’t move for that chair.
“Enough,” Tobin said, even-voiced, quiet, with enough force to make even Keawe look at him. “Ambassador, please, sit down.”
Iari pressed Gaer’s arm again. Added her thumb this time, to the underside of his wrist.
“Knight-Marshal,” Gaer said, in tones of respect, and there was no doubting which one he meant. He squeezed a hiss through his nostrils, jaw-plates being too clamped and furious. And then, with Iari maintaining herself as a barrier, he angled into the remaining chair. Iari stationed herself between them. She might, maybe, have a prayer of holding Gaer down, hand on his shoulder, if he decided to get up in a hurry. She hoped he wouldn’t. She really hoped Knight-Marshal Keawe would remain where she was, and make no threatening moves. The syn twined down her limbs, tingling, while her heart tried to beat its way out of her chest.
Keawe was watching them both, now, with equal measures of cold-eyed appraisal. “Vakari arithmancers,” she said, “are the reason we have a Weep.”
Iari took a bite of air, spat it out. “The Protectorate arithmancers are the reason we have a Weep. Sir. Gaer’s Five Tribes.”
“I’m aware of his political affiliation.” Keawe’s lip curled and unleashed a web of wrinkles that reached all the way to her eyes. She side-eyed Tobin. “Your lieutenant’s got guts.”
“Yes, Kea,” Tobin said, with great patience. “I did tell you.”
“You did.” Then Keawe lurched forward, planting her elbows onto her knees. Gaer didn’t move; but his plates flared until Iari, from her angle, could see the faint outline of teeth clamped tight in his jaw.
Keawe either didn’t notice or didn’t care. Bet the latter. “I know why you’re here, Ambassador, and I know why the Synod allows it. Fine. That’s politics. I don’t like that you’re in the middle of templar business. But I trust Tobin’s judgment, and”—her eyes flicked to Iari—“I’m going to choose to trust yours, Lieutenant.”
“Sir,” Iari said. Damned if she’d thank Keawe for that endorsement. Out of the corner of her eye, Gaer—not quite relaxed, but at least gave that impression—settled a little more deeply into the chair, and spread his fingers wide on the arms. His chin came up. His plates stayed stiff and flared—that was anger—but his pigments turned grey again, ferociously controlled neutral.
“I’m not your enemy, Knight-Marshal Keawe.”
“Don’t know that yet, Ambassador. But I know you’re not the lieutenant’s, or Tobin’s, and that’ll do for now.”
Tobin, too, seemed to relax, unless you knew him. He leaned forward on his elbows, folded his hands. His gaze caught briefly on Meditations, for the length of a measured breath.
“Ambassador,” he said, “Lieutenant. In the interests of brevity and what’s left of diplomacy, let me tell you why Knight-Marshal Keawe is here, and why you are. I asked Keawe if she had an artificer on staff whose services we might be able to borrow. As happens, she did. And as happens,” Tobin locked eyes with Keawe, briefly, “that artificer, Su’seri, was also the victim of an attack very much like the one that killed Pinjat, albeit entirely unsuccessful. One of the riev in an arriving caravan required repairs. The caravan,” Tobin said, and looked at Iari, “came from B-town.”
Iari closed her eyes for a double-long blink. Chaama’s bones, what was that other riev’s name, the one who’d gone off on a caravan right around Pinjat’s murder—
“Neru,” Gaer said softly. “Was that the riev’s name?”
“I don’t know.” Keawe sat back in her chair. Her fingers flexed in their gauntlets, made the leather squeak against the wood. “I do know that it put three of my templars in medical before we put it down. And by down, I mean Sister Maraleh had to open the fucking ground up underneath it to make it stop. Riev don’t burn, but they bury.”
“So you, what”—Gaer wiggled his fingers—“just hexed the dirt back on top, buried it alive?”
“Not alive.” Keawe grimaced. “And not dirt. Bedrock’s close to the surface up there. Maraleh sealed that riev in stone. Crushed it to powder and slime.”
“So much for examining the corpse, then. Pity.”
Tobin cleared his throat. “I thought, in light of what Keawe said, that she should know about our recent encounters.” He gazed steadily at Iari. “That was my judgment.”
“Sir.” Tobin didn’t owe her any explanations, or any apologies. That he offered both, in those four words, made her chest hurt. She looked instead at Keawe. “Did Neru—the riev that attacked Su’seri—give off Brood-sign, sir?”
“Like the voidspit fissure itself. My templars who ended up in hospice weren’t rigged up. They were the first responders. The riev knocked them around hard. The second group who responded was rigged, and that thing lit up our HUDs like a whole pack of boneless. Which I understand you’ve also had here in recent days.”
Hrok’s breath, Ptah’s heart, what she wouldn’t give to know what Tobin had already said. Iari tried looking for clues in his face. Got only a steady stare back, dark-eyed and level, serene as if he were hearing what the kitchen had planned for dinner.
And so, same tone she would’ve used to give him that dinner report, same dead-even quiet: “Yes, sir. We’ve also had a tunneler, a boneless, and a small swarm, some of which fled into the sewers. The tunneler is dead. The boneless—which we believe is a single entity, not a pack, but we’re not sure—is still at large, having killed a family of alwar. We suspect the Brood is using the sewers under B-town to move around.”
“A
nd Tobin says you had two riev go bad, too.”
“Yes sir.”
“They put you in the hospice.”
“No sir. The tunneler did that. Or rather, the phlogiston leak that exploded while we were subduing the tunneler did. The corrupted riev came from the earlier encounter, and they would have killed me if Char and Gaer hadn’t been there.”
Keawe grimaced. “This would be Templar-Initiate Char?”
As if there were two riev named Char in B-town. “Yes sir. At the time, they were just Char.”
“Right. And now they’re out in the corridor wearing insignia.” Credit to Keawe for using the pronoun without missing a beat. No credit for saying, “That seems unwise, with riev going bad.”
“Char shows no sign of contamination,” Tobin said, with the weary force of something already repeated. “They had no contact with Pinjat. Neru, evidently, did.”
“Or with whoever, or whatever, contaminated Sawtooth and Swift Runner. I’m not convinced it was Pinjat.” Gaer held out his tablet. The equations seemed to writhe on the screen, probably an effect of that dark red text color Gaer seemed to like, that strained Iari’s vision. “These hexes look nothing like typical artificing. They look like the bastard offspring of a tesser-hex and Aedian alchemi—”
“And how does a vakari arithmancer know about Aedian hexes? Void and dust, Tobin, what’re you letting this vee—this person—into?”
“The library,” Tobin said dryly. “The ambassador’s been extremely helpful in these investigations so far.”
“Oh, yes. I’m sure. Vakar arithmancer. Fucking SPERE operative, too, or I’m an alw matron.” Keawe made a gesture at Gaer’s tablet, halfway between dismissive and threatening. “This, your research, isn’t all going straight back to your commanders? I’m supposed to believe that?”
Gaer bristled: plates flattening, nostrils squeezing to slits. “Knight-Marshal Tobin is satisfied that I haven’t sent any reports. And if you don’t trust my word, which clearly you do not: anything I send has to go through the Aedis router. My communications are logged, even if the contents are encrypted. You can check those.”