“That’s the deal I put out, yes.”
“When’s the test?”
“After a day of laundry duty, you’re ready to take off?”
“Oh, more than ready.” Sardelle rubbed her hands together. “Do you have a copy of the list? I’m ready now. I’ll even constrain myself to the ones you’ve read.”
“How do you know you’ve read the ones I’ve read? There are more than a hundred books on that list.” All the classics they had in the meager prison library had gone onto the list. Some of them were as dusty and old as the mountain itself. “I don’t believe you’ve read them all.”
“I’ve read enough for a day off. Or five.”
“Fine.” Ridge pulled his master copy of the sheet out of a file in the bottom desk drawer. “How about Denhoft’s Theories on Aerodynamic and Aerostatic Flight?”
Sardelle clasped her hands behind her back. “Written approximately four hundred years ago, the text dealt largely with theory rather than proven scientific experiment. Denhoft theorized that there were two types of flying machines that could allow for lift to overcome gravity… ”
Ridge had to consciously keep his mouth from falling open in surprise as she continued on, offering a precise and accurate summary of the book. He asked a few questions in the end, and she answered them satisfactorily, though with a few hesitations.
“History is more my specialty,” she said before he could compliment her. “I read a lot of the ones in that left row in school.”
Ridge had only read two of them. He started with the ones he knew. She was more animated and confident in her summaries of those books, adding opinions and gesturing with her hands as she described the rise and fall of the imperial dynasties that had claimed this continent before the original tribes had rebelled, declaring themselves an independent sovereign nation and fighting off any aggressors who sought to impose upon them again.
After summarizing the books he knew—and five others he didn’t—she leaned forward again. “Oh, Dusmovan. Have you read his book? It’s a fictional tale, but it’s incredibly detailed, showing the archaeologist’s journey to discover what came of the dragons. He hunted all over the world for fossils that would help explain their sudden passing from our world.”
Ridge lifted a hand. It did sound interesting, and he would put it on his own reading list—on the off chance this job gave him any free time—but… “You’ve already earned eight days off, and I believe you came here this morning on another matter?”
“Oh.” Sardelle flushed, the red of her cheeks bringing out her blue eyes.
Ridge wouldn’t have minded letting her continue on, but he had that meeting to get to. It had been a surprisingly enlightening interlude though. His earlier theory, that she might be some rogue professor here to hunt for crystals, or even other artifacts, returned to the front of his mind. Would a military spy be that versed in the classics? The classics of his continent? Not only that, but she was clearly passionate about history.
“By the way,” Ridge said, “this school where you read these books… was it before or after you left your family’s shepherd ways to become a pirate?”
Her cheeks dimpled when she smiled, a shy caught-me smile. “Before.”
“I never knew a rural education to be so thorough. Your teacher should be commended.”
The smile drooped, and something flashed in her eyes. Pain?
“Yes,” Sardelle said more somberly. “She was inspiring.”
Ridge debated whether to apologize for chancing across some painful past memory, but she spoke again first.
“The murder. It doesn’t seem to have had anything to do with magic.” Sardelle glanced at his eyes. “Or I should say, the woman, Bretta, had nothing to do with magic. I investigated the so-called magical tools that were, I believe, planted under the blanket in her bunk. According to Braytok’s Compendium of Sorcerers and Sorcerous Artifacts, a book that isn’t on your list but should be, since it could clear up confusion due to ignorance, tools for holding energy, souls, or for performing tasks or enhancing powers must be made from a sturdy enough material to contain energy, generally a metal alloy or diamond or other such gem. Hard rocks occasionally, but not wood. The book says it would combust at the first pouring of energy into it.”
Ridge listened attentively, though it made him uncomfortable to hear her speak so openly of magic. That book she had mentioned… nobody outside of an academic setting would ever dare be caught with such a thing. Even then, it made people twitchy. It made him twitchy. He had never cared much until the Cofah had started importing those witches or wizards or whatever they called them, and putting them into the sky where he and his squadron started encountering them. Since then, he had lost… too much.
“Forgive my rambling,” Sardelle said. Ridge wondered if she had noticed a reaction in him. He hadn’t meant to let anything show. “My point is that dolls made from twigs are hokum. Someone planted those in her bunk to arouse suspicion—or validate what he was going to do—and then sneaked into the barracks when few were around and killed her.”
“Any ideas on who?”
Ridge didn’t expect her to have learned who in the scant hours since they had last spoken, but when she swallowed and gazed out the window, he realized she did know. So, why the hesitation? He tried to read her face. It was a study of concentration. She seemed to be wrestling with herself.
“Are you afraid he’ll come after you for revenge if you tell me?” Ridge asked.
“I’m afraid he might have genuinely thought she was a witch, and in your—our culture, well, that would have made killing Bretta justifiable, wouldn’t it?”
Ridge leaned back, feeling the hardness of his chair against his shoulder blades. He had noticed her slip-up, and it put doubt into his assumptions all over again. More than that, he sensed she was lying.
“Who is it?” Ridge asked. “We’ll hear from him and decide the rest.” We? It was he, wasn’t it? He would have to be judge and juror here. A fact that hadn’t been mentioned on his orders.
“I don’t know for sure,” Sardelle said slowly. “Gossip and hearsay and who saw what, when, you understand.”
“Yes… ”
“But if you can find out if a man named Tace was missing from his shift yesterday afternoon when this happened, you might have your answer. He might have had help from a second man. I didn’t hear the other name.”
“Thank you.” Ridge wrote the name down. For once a number would have been easier, but Captain Heriton ought to be intimately acquainted with the archives by now. Maybe he would recognize the man. “I’ll find him and have him questioned.”
Sardelle nodded curtly. Her gaze was still out the window. Ridge waited for her to inquire about the map—she must have seen it rolled up next to his desk, but something was bothering her. All the animation she had shown when reciting the book summaries had drained from her. He felt an urge to comfort her, the same urge that had taken him to the laundry room the night before. This time, he made himself remain where he was.
“Is there something else I should know?” he asked.
Sardelle shook her head and pulled her focus back to him. “No, it’s just… a lamentable situation.”
“Yes.”
Ridge pointed his pen toward the map. “We made a deal. There’s the map. There aren’t many up-to-date copies around, so I trust you’ll understand if I don’t let it leave my office.” Not to mention how many vomit stains and dust bunnies he’d had to clean up to find it wedged against the baseboard behind the couch.
“I understand.” Sardelle still seemed subdued as she came forward and unrolled the map.
Ridge picked up his papers so she could lay it out on his desk.
She did so, using a couple of paperweights to pin down the corners and gazed at it for no more than thirty seconds before issuing an eloquent, “Huh.”
Ridge wasn’t sure what he had expected from her, but that wasn’t it.
“Is that where the ore is?”
Sardelle waved toward the section of the mountain where the levels and levels of tunnels snaked around.
Ridge didn’t answer. He would let her look, but he wouldn’t provide intelligence. He was already worried his generosity—or perhaps it was foolishness—would turn into a regret. He had allowed the map deal in the hope that he, in observing her, would learn more about her than she did about the facility.
“All the miners mumble about crystals,” she added, looking up at him.
She seemed curious and faintly puzzled. An act? Wasn’t she here for the crystals? Whether she was a spy or some kind of archaeological bandit, Ridge had assumed she had come for them. What else was of value in this mountain? Silver was worth something, but it wasn’t that rare an ore. Even if she hadn’t come for the crystals, he found it odd that she could discover a murderer’s name overnight, but didn’t know about something all of the miners knew about. Granted, the women remained up top and handled the domestic duties, but Ridge would be surprised if most of them didn’t know what was in the mountain under them.
“The placement of the tunnels surprises you?” Maybe he could extract some information from her, though what he was fishing for he didn’t truly know.
“According to the books, the people who lived here before… before they were destroyed, they had their home in this part of the mountain.” Sardelle waved to a spot that was mostly off the map. “There were a few tunnels over here, I think, but they were more interested in, well, I suppose I don’t know, but the old road leading to the pass exited from the other side of the mountain. That was the road more traveled. There wasn’t much back here, except a few market stalls in the summers, and a private area for practicing… stuff.”
It was all Ridge could do not to blurt out, asking what she was talking about. People who had lived here? Maybe he was the one who needed to go around talking to the miners. But no, he had perused a lot of the operating manual, and it didn’t mention anything about former inhabitants. It specifically said the crystals were an unexplained phenomenon that had only ever been discovered in this mountain.
“In what book did you find this information? Because I’m certain it’s not one of the ones on my list.”
“No. Something I read at one point. I can’t seem to recall the title.”
After the morning’s memory display, Ridge had a hard time believing she forgot much of anything. Did some university out there know more than the military did about its own secret? Or maybe someone in the military knew and had forgotten to mention it to Ridge before foisting the command on him. If so, that seemed rude.
“And who were these people who, according to your forgotten source, lived here?” Ridge asked.
Sardelle opened her mouth as if to spout the quick answer, but paused and searched his face for a moment before shrugging and saying, “The Referatu.”
A chill ran through him. “The sorcerers.” The sorcerers who had tried to take over the continent, to enslave everyone who didn’t have their powers. He knew about the purging, about the war that had been fought against them three hundred years ago, but he had never heard that they had come out of a mountain base. Or that this had been it. True, he wasn’t a huge academic, having never been interested in more than the military and flying as a kid, but he wasn’t completely ignorant either. This was not common knowledge. So how did his little spy/thief know?
Sardelle spread her hands. “I assumed you knew. Or at least whoever started mining here knew.”
Was she being honest, or was this another lie? His head was starting to hurt. It wasn’t even nine in the morning yet; it was too early for headaches.
“These crystals,” she said, “are they—”
Footsteps sounded in the hallway, fast, urgent footsteps.
“Sir!” The captain knocked on the door, but Ridge was already on his way to opening it and caught the man, fist raised in the air. “The airship is back,” he blurted. “And it’s coming closer this time.”
Ridge cursed, grabbed his parka, and ran into the hallway, tugging it on as he went. “It’s still snowing, isn’t it? I thought that would keep them away.”
“It is, sir. And it’s not.”
“Wonderful.”
5
Left alone in the colonel’s office, Sardelle debated whether to race outside after him or to take the moment to study the map further, in private. A glance had told her that the tunnels were several hundred meters from Jaxi’s location—it was only dumb luck that those miners had stumbled upon her. The mage shelters had been located in the deepest part of her people’s complex, farthest into the mountain core. A mistake, it had turned out, because so few had made it down there in time.
Only you.
I know. Sardelle touched the map, tracing the lower level tunnels with her fingers. I think this is about where I was discovered, though this doesn’t look like it’s been updated to include the passage Tace and his cohort were working on.
Thinking of them again made her wince. She had agreed to help Zirkander with his investigation on a whim, because she saw her opportunity to barter for a look at the map. She hadn’t expected to find out Tace was the murderer or that Bretta was someone who had denied him sex in the past—and used her brawn to protect the other women from him as well. She certainly couldn’t have foreseen the chain of events that would lead him to accuse Bretta of giving him his new and persistent rash. Sardelle might not regret defending herself, but she now wished she had found another way. At the least, she should have later sought the man out—from a distance—and healed what she had inflicted.
Unforeseen consequences. The elders had understood them well. That was why the Circle had never acted as judges over others and had insisted the Referatu be held accountable to the same laws as the people in the rest of the country. Until that handful of sorcerers had gone rogue, believing themselves above the law. They were the ones who had established the fear of magic in the population, a fear that had resulted in… Sardelle gazed out the window toward the mountain, her chest tightening with emotion she had been trying hard to distract herself from. But talking to Zirkander and realizing that no one even remembered the Referatu had been here… A few unforeseen consequences, and I’m the last of my people.
Perhaps noticing Sardelle wasn’t thinking of anything constructive, Jaxi directed her back to their current consideration. If you were to convince the miners to extend that shaft and angle downward approximately fourteen degrees, you would eventually reach my location.
And how do I convince them of that?
Keep working on the colonel.
The colonel is busy with—
A boom sounded in the distance.
“I thought he wasn’t going to use the cannons.” But even as she spoke, Sardelle swept her senses out, along the walls and confirmed what her ears should have told her. The explosion had come from farther away. The airship, what else?
Leaving the map on the desk, Sardelle ran through the building and outside. Daylight had come to the mountains, but the heavy clouds and the continuing snow made it feel like perpetual twilight. She struggled to spot the airship and wouldn’t have found it at all had she not seen a harpoon—no, Zirkander had called it a rocket—streak away from the rampart. It disappeared into the white sky, but by following its trajectory, she located the intruders. The enemy airship was up near the top of a snow-covered ridge, dropping explosives into the cornice she had noted the day before. Yesterday’s fear returned in a surge.
The rocket exploded in the sky below the craft’s wooden hull. Whatever force or shrapnel it hurled made the ship rock, tilting on its side for a moment, but the massive oblong balloon stabilized it. The captain must have had a good idea as to the rockets’ range and was staying out of it.
Well, he didn’t know her range.
Sardelle stepped into the shadows of a building and checked around to make sure nobody was watching her. The miners were down in the mountain, and all of the soldiers in the fort were busy grabbing weapons fro
m the armory and running up to the wall to fight. This battle wouldn’t be won with firearms though.
Hating that she had to think of herself first, that she dared not be discovered, Sardelle waited long painful seconds so she could time her attack with the soldiers’ next one. While a second rocket was loaded and aimed, the airship dropped another bomb.
“Hurry,” she whispered.
Finally, the rocket flew away. Sardelle forced herself to wait until it exploded, to see if it might be near enough that shrapnel would account for…
There. Orange light burst against the gray sky, the weapon exploding even closer to the airship than the first. Shrapnel reached the hull, though not enough to give it more than a few dents and dings.
“Good enough,” she muttered. Sardelle drew energy from within and cut a long slash in that balloon.
The envelope was thicker than she realized—it might have held up to shrapnel even if the rockets had struck closer—but it wasn’t a match for her power. She wasn’t sure how long it would take to deflate, so she cut more holes, little snips and pricks that would appear as shrapnel damage later. With more time, she could have made sure the craft went down, but an ominous rumbling started up. It wasn’t coming from the airship but from the mountain behind it. From the snow.
A buzzing wail erupted from a horn at the corner of the fort.
“Avalanche!” someone cried.
I was afraid of that.
Don’t get caught, Jaxi warned. Snow is just as impossible to dig out from under as rock.
I know. I grew up around here, remember?
Sardelle ignored Jaxi’s snarky retort. She took several deep breaths and flexed her hands, like an athlete getting ready for a race. Cutting a hole in a balloon was easy, but this?
With a soulblade in her hand, her power combined with Jaxi’s, she might have handled it, but even then, she would have needed time to plan an attack. The snow was already falling, gathering speed, gathering more material as it tumbled down the steep slope. That high up, there were no trees to slow its momentum. Sardelle tried to create invisible barriers to slow it down, but it was like sticking her fingers into a dam to plug up holes as more and more burst open. Then that shelf of snow collapsed completely, rushing down too fast, too powerfully. All she could do was partially divert it away from the fortress, to angle it off to the side, but the installation was at the lowest point in the valley, and even a sorcerer couldn’t defy gravity for long.
Beginnings: Five Heroic Fantasy Adventure Novels Page 91