Deathmaker (Dragon Blood)

by Buroker, Lindsay

  He patted the leather ball. He would have to use it on the guards and try to sneak over to the tram without anyone noticing him. And then he had to hope he could remove the canister and disarm it, also with nobody noticing. Unfortunately, he hadn’t brought tools for fine work.

  I don’t suppose you can disarm it from here, Jaxi? That would certainly save some trouble.

  I can sense that it’s fastened to the bottom of the cabin. Disarming it… I would rather leave that task for you. It looks complex, inside and outside. Better to have its creator handle that. He doubtlessly has a steady hand and a familiarity with the contraption.

  I see, you’re all compliments now. Tolemek imagined himself hanging out of the cabin, trying to disarm the device while fumbling in the dark under the floor.

  I don’t want to be the one to slay half the people in the city, Jaxi thought.

  I don’t, either.

  Good, because I was going to threaten to kill you if you weren’t enthusiastic enough in disarming your contraption.

  I’m glad you’re not interested in being stolen, because you would make an abysmal teacher for my sister. Tolemek crept closer to the soldiers guarding the gate, until they spotted him, at which pointed he lifted a hand, as if to greet them, then feigned a slip on the ice. He rolled the leather ball along the street toward them, and dropped to his hands and knees, hoping they would be too fascinated by his fall to notice the ball.

  “That’s the same man who knocked out the gate guards at Fort Marsh.” The speaker flung a hand in the direction of the other installation. Ah, the word had gotten around quickly.

  “Watch out for that ball.” The second man kicked it before the sides peeled back to emit the smoke. It bounced up the street and didn’t start emitting the gas until it was out of their range.

  The first man leveled a rifle at Tolemek. He rolled to the side, expecting a barrage of bullets. He wasn’t disappointed. They skipped off the cobblestones, near his head. He gave up on rolling and jumped to his feet, sprinting toward the closest building. He was still armed and could have shot at the guards, but he didn’t want to leave a trail of blood behind him. How could he attempt to save the city on one hand, but kill everyone in his path on the other? He raced toward a brick two-story building, fearing he would take a bullet between the shoulder blades before he reached cover.

  But the guards had fallen silent, neither yelling again nor shooting.

  You’re welcome.

  Tolemek slowed and turned. The guards lay on the ground, unmoving. Impossibly, his leather ball had rolled back to them, and vapors drifted up to kiss the soldiers’ nostrils.

  Thank you. Tolemek ran for the gate, hoping nobody on the walls was paying too much attention. Most of the men, little more than shadows visible through the snow, appeared to be clustered around the artillery weapons mounted at the corners of the installation, focused on the sky. Every now and then, one fired, though the airships were still hugging the north side of the harbor and staying over the water. Tolemek was surprised none of the ships were trying to bomb the city.

  He nearly tripped as a realization struck him like a bullet. Standing in the middle of the street in front of a military installation full of enemy soldiers wasn’t the place for realizations, but his feet wouldn’t move until the gears in his mind finished spinning. The pirates knew. They knew that his canister had been placed and that it wouldn’t be safe to come in and attack—and loot—until the toxin had been disseminated into the city. There was no way Goroth could have communicated with the incoming airships and accomplished all this after Tolemek had betrayed him. No, he had put this in motion from the beginning. At least as far back as the day before, when Tolemek and Cas had been hiding in those ducts, and Goroth had been wandering around, plotting and planning with the other captains. With Stone Heart.

  Those men who had sneaked onto the freighter and attacked them? What if they had been trying to stop this madness? What if Tolemek had helped kill the only men on the outpost with consciences?

  “Goroth planned to use my weapon on the city from the beginning,” Tolemek whispered. The whole story about the fog machine being what would help the pirates take the city, it had been a lie, a ruse that Tolemek had believed. Fool.

  Jaxi gave him a mental prod. It doesn’t matter now. Go.

  She was right. Tolemek shelved the thoughts for later consideration. He wiped snow out of his eyes and bent before the unconscious men, thinking he would have to pat them down and hope one had keys. The iron gate creaked open of its own accord. He slipped through without hesitating.

  Thanks. He trusted Jaxi had handled that as well. You’re handy.

  An incalculable treasure.

  And modest.

  Yes. Now, take a right, then go up the street to the base of the tram. You’ll have to figure out how to get that cabin down here to visit. I could do it, but the soldiers standing up there might notice and find it odd.

  Tolemek ran past machine shops and warehouses built in the shadow of the butte. There weren’t offices, barracks, or houses like at the fort—this installation seemed to be dedicated to supporting the fliers. When he reached the shack squatting beside the landing pad at the bottom of the tram, Tolemek peeked inside, thinking an operator might be waiting. It was empty and dark. Whoever’s job it was to move the cabin up and down had taken a break—or was, more likely, on the wall with the other soldiers, ready to defend his homeland.

  Inside the shack, there was a simple control mechanism: two levers. He couldn’t read the labels in the dark room and dared not light a lantern, but took a guess, pulling the one on the left toward him. He leaned through a window—there wasn’t any glass, and he had to stick his head out and crane his neck to see to the top of the cliff. In calmer weather, and with less gunfire in the distance, he might have caught the creaking and clanking of the cabin if it were descending. He didn’t hear or see anything. He tried the other lever.

  It’s moving. But there’s a soldier in the shack up there. He noticed.

  Is he alarmed?

  No. He probably thinks his counterpart called it down. Though if it doesn’t eventually come back up…

  Understood.

  Tolemek verified that the cabin was descending, battered by the wind and swaying like a puppet on a string. He bared his teeth in horror. If Goroth, or whatever peon he had sent, hadn’t secured that canister well…

  For the first time, it sank in that he could die that night. A victim of his own creation. Was that irony? There had been a time when he might not have cared, but he still had to find a solution to help his sister. And then there was Cas. He wasn’t sure what there might be for them yet, but he didn’t want to die before he could find out.

  “Focus on this,” he muttered and poked around in his bag. He pulled out his one and only tool from the middle of the canisters and vials. The multi-function device came from an Iskandian tinkering family famous for the tools, and he had thought it terribly clever when he had traded for it, but now, as he unfolded and held up the one-inch-long, cross-tip screwdriver, he had to fight down a wave of panic that threatened to wash over him. “I need finer tools for this, Jaxi,” he whispered, envisioning the countdown timer and mechanism that protected the four glass ampoules inside. Their ability to kill thousands depended on detonation in the air, but if any one of them dropped out and broke at his feet, it would not only kill him but everyone downwind. He eyed the soldiers on the walls.

  You might want to stop the tram before the cabin lands, so you can access the device.

  Tolemek, a vision of the canister smashing down onto the landing pad, lunged for the control lever. A second later, he realized that the cabin had probably gone up and down a few times since the detonator had been planted. The canister must be tucked under a beam or something that kept it from being pressed into the ground. Still, Jaxi was right. He needed access to it.

  He leaned out of the shack and found the cabin swaying in the wind, its bottom a few feet off the g
round. Swaying. Great, that would make his task even more fun.

  “I don’t suppose you can make the wind stop for a while?” he muttered.

  Sorry, I never studied weather. The usually sarcastic Jaxi sounded contrite, even regretful. Anyway, controlling nature is beyond the capability of all except the most powerful of sorcerers. There may not be anyone left in this time who can do it.

  With a look of disgust for the multi-function tool, Tolemek strode to the cabin. It would be worth hunting in one of the machine shops for finer tools, if there was time. He needed to check the clock first.

  A good idea. As I said, the inside appears very intricate.

  It is. An engineer friend had designed the vessel for him. He had the nickname of Precision for a reason.

  Tolemek peered under the cabin, though the gloom made it difficult to see anything. He slid his hand along one of two support beams that crossed beneath the floor and found a familiar cylinder nestled against one. Even though he had expected it, his heart rate must have doubled or tripled at the irrefutable evidence.

  “I’m going to have to risk a light,” Tolemek said. And hope none of the soldiers on the wall found it strange that a man in a cloak was bent over under their tram cabin.

  Take me out of my scabbard, and I’ll provide it.

  Somehow I suspect whatever light you emit will be even more suspicious to these soldiers.

  I’ll be incognito.

  More because he was afraid he didn’t have much time than anything else, he removed the sword from the scabbard and, since there was nowhere close by to lean it, thrust it into the packed earth beside the cement landing pad.

  You better volunteer to clean and oil me later.

  If I survive this, I’ll do it in a most loving way.

  Save the love for the girl. I just want to be clean.

  A soft yellow glow that simulated lantern light arose from the blade. It was enough to make out the details of the cylinder, including the clock ticking down on the outside.

  Tolemek closed his eyes and blew out a shaky breath. “There’s not going to be time for tool shopping.”

  Less than eight minutes remained.

  Chapter 16

  Once the pirate outpost was nothing more than a carcass floating on the dark water below, Cas and the rest of Wolf Squadron flew in to help the others. With their giant base destroyed, she assumed the airships would give up and head back out to sea, but they lingered, their gunners pounding rounds toward the fliers swooping in and out of their scattered ranks.

  “Strange that they’re putting up this much of a fight,” Zirkander said over the crystal.

  “And not attacking the city,” Blazer responded. “What do they win by shooting at us?”

  “Besides our deaths?” Pimples asked.

  “They might find our deaths satisfying, but that won’t earn them any money or treasure.”

  “The colonel’s head might,” Pimples said. “I hear the bounty has gotten big in Cofahre.”

  “That true, Ahn?” Zirkander asked. “You see any wanted posters with my mug on them while you were held prisoner over there?”

  “Papered on every tree, table, and tent post,” Cas said, though she wasn’t paying much attention to the banter. She had her next target picked out, a small airship that had moved into the harbor after the crash. She couldn’t know its intent for certain, but there was no way was she letting them drop hooks to pull up the fliers—or their power crystals.

  “Huh,” Zirkander said. “Guess the Cofah are too cheap to pay for real wallpaper.”

  By then, Wolf Squadron had closed the distance to the remaining pirates, and everyone fell silent, concentrating on their work. Those manning defenses on the black airship saw Cas coming. It had a row of cannons bristling from the hull on either side, like in the nautical warships from generations past. She kept her eye on them as she swept upward to attack from above.

  Wreckage floated in the harbor down below, some of it still aflame. Cas spotted a figure on a personal yacht, struggling to pull something—someone?—out of the water. One of the downed pilots? She couldn’t imagine anyone surviving that crash, but then again, she had survived her crash. Granted, she had pulled up the nose and skidded across the water instead of dropping straight into it, but she hoped whoever it was had made it.

  Cas popped a few rounds into the balloon, being careful with her ammunition. She had already fired a lot of rounds, and there were numerous targets left floating in the sky. She got the incendiary bullet she wanted, and it pierced the dirigible, hydrogen going up in flame.

  “Those new bullets are effective,” she observed. Usually they just had to punch as many holes into the envelopes as possible, target the engines, or drop explosives.

  “Yes,” Zirkander said. “Enjoy it now. We just got some intel that the Cofah are coming up with countermeasures.”

  “They can’t reinforce their balloons any further, or they’ll be too heavy to achieve lift,” Apex said.

  “No more balloons. They’ve already launched a number of experimental craft akin to dragon fliers. Short-range, since they still don’t have a fuel source equivalent to our power crystals, but they’re building special ships to carry them to their destinations.”

  “That’ll make things interesting,” Blazer said.

  “Something to worry about another day,” said the Tiger Squadron leader. He and his men hadn’t been vocal on the communication crystals much since their two fliers went down.

  “Agreed,” Zirkander said.

  A few cannonballs whistled past Cas before the airship drifted downward, narrowly missing the yacht, but they weren’t close enough to worry about. She climbed back up to join the others, only to realize that most of the airships had disappeared from the aerial battlefield. More had gone down in the harbor and the rest were finally retreating. Limping back out to sea.

  “Let them go or give chase?” someone asked.

  Zirkander hesitated a moment—he might be renowned for all of the aircraft he had taken down, but he wasn’t a bloodthirsty man at heart. Still, pirates were pirates, most of them cutthroats as well as bandits, and Cas wasn’t surprised when he said, “Take them down. We don’t need them making repairs and harassing Iskandian ships another day.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Fulfilling the orders didn’t take long, though the storm made the flying a challenge regardless, as the snow was gusting sideways again, the clouds thicker than ever overhead. When they turned for home, she could barely see the city or the airbase. Landing was going to be tricky. Her shoulders had been bunched into knots for the last half hour, and the thought did nothing to relax them. She wondered if Tolemek was the kind of friend—or more than friend—who could be convinced to give a girl a massage. Or would she even find him again when she landed? Maybe he had already gotten what he sought from Sardelle and was on his way out of the city, using the chaos to disappear before anyone noticed a criminal in their midst.

  Cas found that thought depressing.

  *

  The snow had turned to hail. It was pelting the landing pad all around Tolemek’s feet, and bouncing off his bare arms. The wind whipped his cloak about him like a flag on a pole. He kept waiting for someone to notice him—and the glowing sword. He had no idea what he would do when that happened. Seven minutes remained on the timer.

  It wouldn’t be easier to work on it inside the shack? On a table? Then I could glow in the shack, and it would be less obvious to onlookers.

  “I’m trying to get it off,” Tolemek said, his back twisted and bent awkwardly, so he could look up at the cylinder. “The morons nailed it—” he couldn’t help but make a strangling noise at the idiocy, “—to the floor. They may have damaged some of the wiring inside. In fact, I’d be shocked if they hadn’t. I have to be very, very careful.” Thus far, between the screwdriver and the file pieces of his tool, he had managed little more than to pry the end open. “If I can get to the wiring that connects the clock, I should
be able to stop the countdown. That’s the most important thing.”

  You may want to stop talking aloud. Most of the pirate threat has been dealt with and the fliers are returning to the base. Some soldiers are coming down off the wall as well.

  In other words, his odds of being caught had gone up. And Cas was on her way back to the base. To land right in time for his fatal invention to go off? He groaned. How could this night get worse?

  “Watch out on base,” someone shouted from the wall. “The gate guards were knocked out. Intruders inside.”

  “Sound the alarm!”

  “That’s how,” Tolemek muttered. He tried to make his fingers work faster, but they were numb and clumsy from the cold. He had already dropped his tool twice.

  Jaxi dimmed her light, probably trying to avoid notice, but that only made it harder for him to see. And he very much needed to see right now. The wire he needed to disconnect threaded through a nest of other wires and between two of the ampoules.

  Nails or not, he was going to have to risk removing the canister. He needed better conditions for working on it—better conditions located in a place where the soldiers wouldn’t spot him. Where he could find such a place in the next seven—no, damn it, six—minutes, he couldn’t guess.

  Holding his breath, he slid the first of the two nails free. The end of the canister drooped down, but nothing happened to the innards. And now for the second nail…

  The tram cabin lurched.

  Tolemek dropped his tool. “What are you—”

  The operator up top is calling for the cabin.

  “No, he can’t. Not now. That’ll be even worse. The pilots—”