Kath was probably very worried.
But that would be all right. Once she’d taken care of Maxim, a lot of things would be all right.
Kira checked her pistol, making sure the magazine was full. “It’s almost time.”
“What are you going to do with Maxim?”
“Kill him.”
Jason stared at her. “You want to kill him?”
“Of course I do.”
“Kira, you don’t want to kill anyone. You never have.”
“I… ” Why did Jason have to keep confusing things that seemed simple? “Maybe you don’t know me that well.”
“Maybe you’re not yourself.”
She glared at him. “Maybe I’d be better off doing this alone. Isn’t there somewhere else you’d rather be?”
He refused to meet her eyes as he shook his head. “No.”
“Don’t think you can stop me.”
He shook his head again. “I know I can’t stop you. My goal is to somehow keep you from being killed while you do this.”
She could see that he was telling the truth. “Fine. As long you don’t get in my way.”
It finally got dark enough for her purposes. Kira had earlier singled out a small rowboat tied up on a short pier attached to a warehouse. Breaking into the warehouse took little time or effort. “Will you row?” she asked Jason as she untied the boat. “I’ll keep watch.”
He didn’t say anything, but Jason put the oars in their locks and began rowing the boat, moving the blades carefully to avoid making splashing sounds.
Kira knelt in the bow, looking ahead where the lights of the passenger ship gleamed, reflecting on the water. “A little to port. No! My port!” Jason adjusted course, the boat gliding smoothly across the placid waters of the harbor. Faint noises came to Kira. The boom of surf on the breakwater. The rattle of music and loud, raucous crowds at the waterfront bars. A nearby voice above them as someone on a ship they were passing close to spoke to someone else aboard.
It felt unreal. And unreal felt right, though she couldn’t say why.
They were getting close. “Over by the stern,” Kira whispered to Jason. “About one point to port.”
He still didn’t say anything, but did as she asked, raising the oars as the rowboat drifted slowly under the back end of the passenger ship. The stern loomed above them, a wide bank of windows across it where the captain’s cabin and the adjacent grand suite for wealthy passengers occupied the best spot on the ship. Kira could see light reflected on those windows from the inside, where a few lanterns provided illumination.
Not a modern ship, with electricity. Which meant no fans. Which meant open windows to let air through.
Kira grinned in triumph as she spotted an open window. “Just a little closer. Right under there.”
“Kira, please don’t do this.”
“Right under there, or I’ll jump off and swim the rest of the way.”
She waited for the right moment, then leaped upward, grabbing at the very narrow shelf offered by a protruding wooden fixture running horizontally across the stern. She felt a brief moment of panic that penetrated the confidence filling her, then her fingertips came to rest, suspending her above the water. Jason was dividing his attention between staring upward at her in dismay and trying to keep the rowboat from bumping against the hull of the ship and giving them away while still keeping it positioned beneath her.
She poised herself, breathing deeply, then pulled herself high enough for one hand to reach up and grasp the bottom of the frame of the open window.
Another pause then, to listen for any sign that she had been heard. But the only nearby sounds were from farther overhead, where a few sailors walked and conversed quietly, complaining about having to be aboard while the rest of the crew enjoyed the waterfront bars.
Kira glanced down once more, momentarily rattled by the look of naked fear on Jason’s face.
She shook her head at him and pulled herself higher, feeling a wild exhilaration.
With both hands firmly gripping the window frame, Kira looked cautiously inside the stern cabin.
Two oil lanterns provided flickering light. The furnishings—a table and four chairs, a wide bed/bunk against one wall, a desk with another chair before it—were nice, fairly fancy and luxurious, but surely not as grand as Maxim had been used to as an Imperial prince. Three bottles, brandy by the shape of them, and one of the lanterns sat on the table. One bottle had been opened.
Someone sat at the desk, his back to the windows.
Kira felt her heart racing as she stared into the cabin. The hair, the shape of the shoulders, the fine clothing… it had to be him. Visions of her captivity on Maxim’s ship raced through her memory. Maxim smiling triumphantly. Maxim gloating. Maxim trying to grope her when she had been drugged.
Kira prepared herself, then with a convulsive effort came up and through the window in a single movement, drawing her pistol as her feet landed on the rug covering the deck inside the cabin.
The man at the desk jumped up from his chair at the noise, turning to look.
It was him.
Kira felt a grin on her face. Not a normal grin. Her upper lip was pulled back and up, curling to expose her canines. “I told you I’d kill you,” she whispered.
Maxim stared at her. “What do you want? Name your price.”
“I want you, you worthless piece of garbage. How many people have died at your orders? How many have you killed with a careless word?”
“You could be empress,” Maxim said, his voice shaky. “I’ll give you that. You can sit beside the throne. Just as your mother once did long ago.”
“I don’t want that. I never have.”
“Then name your price! Anything! I’ll call off any more attacks on you!”
“Any more attacks?” Kira asked. “So it was you behind those? Even those Mages that attacked us in Tiae?”
“I don’t know everything my subordinates were doing!” Maxim insisted, oddly indignant. “Yes, I was trying get you killed or captured. But you have my word that in exchange for my life I’ll stop sending killers after you.”
“Your word? What’s that worth?”
“I’m an Imperial prince!”
“Shut up.” Why hadn’t she already shot him? Kira didn’t know. The longer she spent in here the greater the chance that someone else on the ship would hear her, or check on Maxim. She tried to tighten her finger on the trigger, but it wouldn’t. Something was stopping her.
"You don’t want to kill anyone. You never have.” Jason had said that. And she had denied it, but now, standing with her pistol pointed at Maxim, Kira knew that he was right.
Maxim stood there, watching her immobility with growing curiosity. Not attacking her. Not even running.
She couldn’t kill someone in cold blood. Not even when this strange elation filled her. Not even someone like Maxim.
But she couldn’t just let him go. “You’re coming with me I’m turning you over to the Western Alliance.”
Maxim looked momentarily perplexed, then slowly that superior smile appeared. “You can’t do it, can you? All words. Go ahead! Shoot me!” He spread his arms. “The great hero. The dragon slayer. And she can’t even pull a trigger!”
Kira swallowed, wondering how this had all gone wrong.
She heard footsteps outside the door to the stern cabin. “Is anything wrong, my prince?” a voice asked from the other side.
Maxim, still smiling, turned to answer.
She couldn’t let him escape. Kira’s free hand swept up one of the brandy bottles and hurled it to the deck in front of the door, glass fragments flying as the bottle shattered and splashed brandy on the wooden door and the deck.
Maxim jerked back, trying to avoid getting hit by the shards of glass.
Kira threw another brandy bottle, and then the third as the door opened.
She shot at the man trying to come through, her free hand grabbing the oil lantern from the table and throwing it to
Flames shot up, filling the doorway, running up the door and along the frame, racing over the top of the pools of brandy to ignite the rug and the deck.
Kira leveled her pistol at Maxim again as cries of alarm erupted on the ship outside the cabin. “Come on. Out the window.”
“I’ll see you dead first, you creature of the night!” Maxim shouted, his face rendered strange by his own fury and the twisting patterns cast by the flames. He turned to the desk and grabbed a large pen tipped with silvered steel, the fine wood of the pen’s body gleaming in the light of the fire. “Silver and wood through the heart! Even you won’t survive that!”
He leaped at her.
Kira, surprised by Maxim’s sudden action, got her free hand up in time to stiffen her arm and catch his chest as the momentum of his charge shoved her back against a closed window. She felt glass break behind her shoulders as Maxim raised his arm to plunge the pen into her breast.
Her pistol held at waist height, she fired, the sound of the shot muffled by Maxim’s clothing as the barrel of her pistol touched his belly.
He froze in shock, staring at her, mouth agape.
Kira fired again.
Maxim lurched back toward the flames now filling the front part of the cabin, blood on the front of his shirt.
Her mind numb, Kira leveled her pistol, but once again her finger trembled above the trigger, unable to shoot.
Maxim had fallen against the desk, his face turned to her, disbelief warring with pain.
He used one arm to force himself up and lunged at her again, the sharp-pointed pen still glinting in one fist.
Kira fired a third time, Maxim’s head jerking loosely as the bullet struck.
She stood there, unable to think or move, seeing the fires, Maxim’s body sprawled before her, shouts from everywhere. What was she doing? She felt paralyzed, even while the flames spread close to where her boots were planted on the rug.
One shout somehow separated itself from the other noise. “Kira!”
Jason.
Kira slammed her pistol into her holster, zipped up her jacket and spun about, diving out through the open window.
She caught a glimpse of Jason in a rowboat, staring at her in the staccato light from the muzzle flashes of rifles and pistols firing at him. Sailors were on the quarterdeck of the ship, leaning over the stern rail to aim at Jason. Spurts of water were bursting upwards and splinters flying from the rowboat as the bullets struck around Jason, but his eyes stayed on her.
Kira hit the water hard, sinking down, dazed.
A hand grasped her arm, pulling her back toward the surface, where the lights of muzzle flashes and the growing fire onboard the ship painted kaleidoscopic patterns on the dancing water.
Her head broke the surface. Kira inhaled desperately. Someone was holding her head up, swimming, pulling her away from the ship. The gunfire from the quarterdeck was falling off as the flames leaped up from the cabin below and made the area a sea of fire.
Bells were ringing frantically. Shouts. Water slapped against her head. Flame crawled up a mast behind them and made a giant torch of it. Kira lay passively as she was towed toward the piers, her eyes gazing up at the stars.
* * *
Her body hurt. Kira lay still, trying to think. Her clothes were soaking wet. She was cold. Someone nearby spoke loudly. “Are you from off the ship? How many were onboard?”
“I don’t know,” a familiar voice answered.
“You don’t know?”
“A lot were ashore!”
“Get her over to the side there for the healers to look at!”
Someone put their arms under hers and tugged Kira over bumpy wooden planks. The movement stopped, and a face came into her field of vision.
“Kira? Kira, please answer me.”
“Jason?” She coughed, tasting salt in her mouth. Was that from the harbor water or from blood?
Blood. Maxim’s shirt.
“He’s dead,” she said to Jason.
“Okay.” Jason said the word as if her news didn’t matter, staring at her. “Are you all right? Kira, come back to me!”
The world snapped back into focus.
“Jason?” Kira sat up, staring about her. The once-peaceful harbor was a riot of noise. A towering pillar of fire marked the death-throes of the ship that had carried Maxim. Small boats were bobbing around it, looking for survivors who had leaped into the water. There were not many survivors. Hardly anyone had been aboard. Kira remembered the men and women who had landed from that ship and disappeared into the streets of Cape Astra. “We have to get out of here.”
“No! We have to wait here for the police and the military so we can get you to a hospital!”
She grabbed the front of his jacket, soggy like her own. The tight wrist cuffs and waist had helped trap air inside the jackets, allowing Jason to get her ashore, but the outer fabric was still soaked. “Listen. The Mechanics and Mages and the others with Maxim are still out there, Jason.”
“Which is why we need to contact the police and the army!” Jason insisted, glaring at her. “Haven’t you snapped out of it yet? What is it with you and your mom setting fire to ships and buildings and stuff? Normal people don’t do that!”
“Jason, the job isn’t done!”
“It’s not? Wasn’t killing Maxim enough for you?”
“He attacked me, Jason! I was going to take him prisoner! I… I couldn’t shoot him. Not until he came at me and tried to stab me.”
“You didn’t just shoot him?” Jason said, surprised.
“No. I couldn’t.” Kira shook her head, trying to sort out the memories. “I had to set the fire. To stop him. I couldn’t shoot. I wanted to take him prisoner.”
“You couldn’t shoot him?”
“No. Not in cold blood. No. Not even him.”
He exhaled heavily, sagging with relief. “You’re still Kira. Oh, man. You’re still Kira. I thought I’d lost you.”
“You got me to the pier, Jason.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
She tugged at him, getting to her feet. “Come on.” Maybe it was because he was still smiling with relief, but Jason didn’t resist, walking with her away from the noise of the waterfront. Crowds were heading toward the harbor, drawn by the spectacle, forcing Kira to fight her way inland. “We need to get to the train station.”
“Why?”
“That’s where they’ll be looking for me.”
“Kira!”
She spun to face him, pausing briefly, once more knowing exactly what needed to be done and how to do it. “This head of the snake is dead, but there are other heads. I guarantee you the Mechanics working with Maxim will go ahead with their plans. So will the Mages. They know I’m after them, that I destroyed that ship. Even if they don’t have orders from Maxim to kill me, they’re going to try to stop me so that I can’t take out any more of them or rally the authorities against them. That means we have to get them out of the woodwork, have to get them out in the open, so we can stop this batch of them.”
“This batch?”
“The ones who attacked our train in the Confederation weren’t on that ship, Jason. They’re probably still aiming to hit Pacta Servanda. We have to make sure this group doesn’t join up with them. Didn’t you tell me that?”
She started walking toward the train station again, and Jason followed. “Kira, I don’t think it’s a good thing that I’m having more and more trouble distinguishing between you when you’re all right and you when you’re crazy.”
“Why do you think it’s all right to call me crazy?” she snapped at him.
“Maybe your Aunt Kath—”
“No! If their Mages can track me, I’d be leading all of them straight to Kath!”
He took a moment to reply. “Yeah. More and more trouble. Because that’s absolutely right.”
Kira walked down the street, not trying to hide her face, knowing that among the crowds passing by were men and women who were watching for her, who would see her and report to their fellows where she was going.
They’d come to her. And she would end this.
* * *
The guard spoke quickly. “Your pardon for disturbing you so late in the evening, Sir Master of Mages Alain, but Queen Sien wishes to inform you that a large group of people have been discovered trying to tunnel down in a southern part of the city. At least one dragon has already appeared. A battle has erupted and the queen is sending reinforcements.”
Alain took the news calmly, actually glad that the axe had finally fallen.
But Mari came out her room, tugging on her jacket, which was impossible to close over the bulge of her pregnancy. “Come on, Alain.”
“We are not going to the place where they are fighting,” Alain protested.
“No, we’re not. I’m worried about a diversion. We’re going to the building that has the excavation to that triple cipher thing under it.”
“I can do this alone—”
“No, you can’t.” Mari paused on her way to the door. “Kira had it right. We don’t let our men face danger alone.”
Knowing that further argument would be useless, and that Mari’s worry was a legitimate one, Alain followed, pausing only to speak to the commander of the guards. “Inform Queen Sien that Lady Mari fears the site of the door may be attacked while our attention is diverted to the current fighting.”
“The site of the door?” the guard commander repeated.
“Yes, Queen Sien knows what that means. She should send reinforcements there as well.”
He caught up with Mari as she waited impatiently for a carriage. A nearby street light cast a pool of radiance along the sidewalk, but out of long habit Mari stood away from it, in the shadows where she could not be so easily targeted by a sniper. “This is one time even I’d prefer to be able to ride a horse,” she grumbled.
“How are you feeling?” Alain asked.
“I’m all right. The kid is kicking like nobody’s business, though.”
“Perhaps you should stay—”
“Alain, don’t bother finishing that. You know the answer.”
The carriage arrived. Mari hauled herself into it, Alain following. “I’m going to be so happy not to feel like a pregnant mare anymore once this kid is safely born,” she complained to Alain as the carriage rattled along darkened streets where late-night crowds still lingered “What, no comment? Are you giving me the silent treatment because I’m insisting on checking this out myself?”
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