6.0 - Raptor

by Lindsay Buroker

  “I thought we’d be safe from that out here,” she murmured. A foolish assumption, perhaps. Her father had traveled all the way to Owanu Owanus for a mission.

  Tolemek smiled bleakly at her. The man’s head jerked up, and he flexed his shoulders, trying to lash out. Tolemek had already tied his hands behind his back, and he kept him on his knees, so he couldn’t use his legs.

  “You have the vial, Cas?” he asked.

  “The truth serum?” She dug it out of his pocket and held it out.

  “Open it and wave it under his nose.”

  “It doesn’t need to go in a sandwich?” She couldn’t hold back a dark look as she approached. Even if she and Tolemek had become close since then, she’d confessed things that day that she never would have told another.

  “No.” Tolemek kept his face and his tone neutral. “It actually works more quickly if it’s inhaled.”

  Keeping the pistol in her left hand and aimed at the assassin’s chest, Cas thumbed the cork out of the vial with her other hand.

  “Don’t inhale it yourself,” Tolemek said.

  “Sure, now I get that warning.” She glanced toward the drawer where she had stuffed the grenade.

  The man flexed his shoulders again, trying to twist away from Tolemek.

  “Want me to hold the pistol on him?” Pimples asked.

  Tolemek gave him a flat look.

  “Or I could stand over here and look threatening,” Pimples said.

  Cas snorted. Even in his cockpit with his machine guns firing, Pimples couldn’t manage to look threatening.

  The assassin tried to twist his head away, to avoid the approaching vial. Cas jammed the muzzle of the pistol under his chin and kept her face cold and indifferent, lest he think the threat was not serious.

  “I don’t care that much if we kill you before you can tell us what you know,” she said. Since this man had come to Tolemek’s lab, intending to kill him, she would have no qualms about doing just that.

  “You’ll kill me, anyway.” Surprisingly, he did not have a Cofah accent. That made Cas pause. He sounded Iskandian.

  “Not necessarily.” Tolemek shifted his grip so he could hold the assassin by the back of the neck and keep his head still.

  “We might just throw you over the railing,” Cas added.

  “How far up are we?”

  “I’m not sure, but if you count how many seconds it takes for you to hit the ground, Pimples over there can probably tell you how far you fell.”

  Pimples grinned, probably pleased at being included.

  Cas waved the vial under the man’s nose. He held his breath. Cas settled into a crouch to wait.

  “Did the Cofah emperor hire you?” she asked.

  The man stared mulishly at her. He had not taken a whiff of the vial yet, and his face had turned red.

  “I wonder why he wants me now,” Tolemek said.

  “The emperor?” Cas asked.

  He nodded. “He never seemed to care about me when I was a pirate. I was concerned, back then, that my actions might cause someone to take retribution on my parents or on Tylie. Tylie’s out of their reach now—” he glanced down at his captive, “—or at least I hope she is.” He looked like he might say more, but he glanced down again and kept his mouth closed.

  Cas had never gotten the sense that Tolemek was that close with his parents, especially his father, but that didn’t mean he wanted them killed, or that he wanted to see the home he had grown up in destroyed. She understood all too well.

  A frustrated gasp came from their captive, and he inhaled deeply. His lungs had won the battle over his mind. He tried to twist his head again, but Tolemek had an iron grip on the back of his neck.

  “It’ll take a couple minutes,” Tolemek said. “He’ll lose the will to fight and start answering honestly.”

  “Yes, I recall.”

  Pimples stirred, frowning over at her. She closed her mouth. She didn’t want to explain what had happened back then to anyone else. She needed to stop bringing up the past. Though, as she had been proving to herself of late, she had a hard time letting things go.

  The tenseness disappeared from the assassin’s body. He lifted his head, no longer seeming aware of the vial held under his nose. He gave her a flirty smile.

  “Who sent you?” Cas asked again.

  “Let’s go to your room, and we can chat about it.”

  Tolemek’s eyes narrowed. Cas wondered if the assassin was aware of the drug and doing something to keep from answering questions. When she’d been under the influence of a similar serum, she hadn’t been aware of it. Tolemek’s captain had sneaked it into a sandwich that she had been too ravenous to reject. But the assassin had watched her holding the vial. Greater awareness might make him warier.

  “We’ll discuss it here,” Cas said, and changed the question in case that helped. “Who did you come to kill? You’re an assassin, right?”

  “I am. A good one.”

  Not very good. “Who are you here for?”

  The man leaned forward as far as he could with Tolemek gripping him from behind. He whispered conspiratorially. “Deathmaker. They want him dead, you know. Deathmaker dead.” He giggled.

  “Yes, I’ve heard that. Who did you say wanted him dead?”

  “I’ll earn fifty thousand drakkons if I bring his head back.”

  “To whom?”

  “The emperor’s agent. At the docks in the capital.”

  “The Cofah emperor, right? But you’re Iskandian, aren’t you?”

  The assassin nodded. “They want our people to do it. So they won’t get blamed. I’ll gladly do it.” The serum should have left him feeling happy and contented—Cas remembered how silly and open she had been—but he managed a sneer. “Tanglewood. He killed everybody at Tanglewood. What’s the king thinking?”

  “You’re an assassin, and you’re judging Tol—Deathmaker for Tanglewood?” She had judged Tolemek for Tanglewood, too, and she would never be able to take those hundreds of innocent deaths lightly, but she was surprised someone like this would be bothered.

  The man shrugged easily. “I kill people who deserve it. Those people didn’t deserve it. There were women. Children.”

  Cas glanced at Tolemek and caught him looking away, his face hard, but his eyes haunted, as they always were when this subject came up. Years had passed since that incident. She imagined that she, too, would always be haunted by the memory of Apex’s death. Everyone had regrets, mistakes they had made, but not everybody’s mistakes resulted in people’s deaths.

  “Why are the Cofah worried about being blamed?” Pimples wondered. “We already have lots of things to blame them for, and it’s not as if they care. They sure don’t stop trying to invade Iskandia.”

  For the first time, Cas was glad he had inserted himself into the interrogation. Her own dark thoughts had distracted her, and she might not have thought to ask that question.

  “Yes,” she said, making sure the assassin knew the question was for him. “Why do the Cofah care if they’re blamed for Deathmaker’s death?”

  “Deathmaker’s death.” The man giggled again.

  Cas shook her head at Tolemek. “It’s possible your serum could use further refinement.”

  “He’s expressing his honest amusement.”

  “I’m not sure people should be amused when they’re betraying their countries.” Of course, Cas admitted, if he was Iskandian, he might not see this as a betrayal. She tapped his jaw with the pistol to pull his attention back. “Why do the Cofah care?”

  “The emperor cares. That’s what the agent implied. He doesn’t want to be a target.”

  “A target for whom? And doesn’t he have a thousand bodyguards?”

  The man leaned forward again and lowered his voice. “Deathmaker’s witch sister. They say…” He glanced to either side and licked his lips. “They say she has a dragon. A real dragon.”

  “Hm.” Cas could not know if the Cofah emperor truly feared the dragon—th
is fellow might just be guessing, based on rumors he had heard—but she supposed it would make sense. A thousand bodyguards could keep an army of humans back, but would they be enough against a dragon?

  “Guess the emperor doesn’t have a glowy green sword,” Pimples said.

  They couldn’t know that for sure, but Cas did find the idea comforting.

  “If he’s Iskandian,” Tolemek said, “how did he get onto a Cofah airship? And damn it, how did he and the Cofah even know we were—I was—coming out here? Does the king have a leak in his security?”

  “Ahnsung told me,” the man said cheerfully. “I think he’s starting to like me. He gave me the job and set me up with a Cofah contact in the city.”

  Ahnsung. Her father. Cas wanted to crawl under the bed and disappear.

  All she could do was hope that she hadn’t inadvertently given her father information. She hadn’t told him of her departure, of the king’s summons, or of anything. She hadn’t even seen him since sneaking into the house. Still, he could have had her followed, knowing she would lead him to Tolemek. She frowned at the floor. Except that Tolemek’s lab in the city wasn’t a secret. Her father could have gone there on his own if he had wanted to kill him.

  “Who’s the Cofah contact?” Pimples grabbed a pencil and a small pad of paper. “The general will want to know that,” he added to Cas.

  Cas nodded. Though she felt numbed by her father’s involvement, Pimples was right. The names and locations of spies in the city were important information.

  Since she seemed to be the official interrogator, she repeated the question.

  “Martus Finch at the Petals and Pearls Florist.”

  A florist? Well, why not? Her father used a landscaping company as a cover for some of his business.

  “Anyone have any other questions?” Cas asked as Pimples wrote down the spy’s information.

  “I’ve heard enough,” Tolemek said. “Lieutenant… Pimples—do you actually go by that?”

  “You can call me Farris,” Pimples said brightly. Almost eagerly. “Or Lieutenant Averstash. There’s no rule that people have to use that horrible nickname.” He glanced at Cas. “There isn’t, right?”

  “No.”

  “Lieutenant Averstash, help me take this man up to see your boss, will you?”

  “Absolutely.” Pimples stepped forward, then paused and looked at the pile of weapons and vials that Tolemek had removed from the assassin’s pockets. “Do we need to take all that?”

  “Leave the vials. I’ll take a look at them. See what young assassins these days are bringing on missions to kill me.”

  Cas handed the pistol to Pimples and sat on the bed. She could have offered to help them drag the man off to the brig, but she doubted they needed it. Also, she felt drained and tired. More tired than she had been after the battle. She couldn’t believe she had gone to her father and asked for a job. What had she been thinking? An act of desperation. She ought to be relieved that he hadn’t accepted her offer, but all she could feel toward him now was frustration. Why couldn’t he leave the affairs in the capital alone? Why couldn’t he leave Tolemek alone?

  She was still brooding when Tolemek returned. He sat on the bed and draped an arm around her shoulder.

  “You look like the one with assassins after you,” he said dryly.

  “I’m tired of running into my father. And I’m tired of him meddling.” Cas leaned into his embrace, afraid for him all over again. She’d thought he would be safe out here, away from the city, at least from assassins.

  “Did he?” Tolemek asked after a thoughtful silence. “It sounds like he gave that man the job instead of accepting it himself.”

  Cas tapped her fist on her knee. Had he? “I thought he might have delegated it and that he would simply do it himself once he finds out that this man failed.”

  “You think your father would delegate anything he cared about to that toadstool?”

  “Hm. He wasn’t very good, was he?”

  “I probably could have stood there in the dark and waited until he bumbled into something potent and knocked himself out.”

  Cas snorted.

  “It crossed my mind that Ahnsung might have sent him to get rid of him. Or because he just didn’t care. I’ll wager he was positive the man wouldn’t get past you and to me.”

  Cas snorted again, this time at the silly notion that she was some kind of guard dog. “Assuming you’re right, what does that mean? That my father doesn’t want you dead? That can’t be right.”

  “You’re so certain he loathes me? We’ve never sat down and chatted.”

  As if her father “chatted” with anyone. “Apparently, he’s chatted with Zirkander about you. He never comes to see me, but he has no trouble visiting my commanding officers to check in on me.” Visiting and threatening her commanding officers. Well, perhaps just Zirkander, since he had been the one who had gotten her into the flight academy and then invited her into Wolf Squadron. Her father had always made it clear that he thought pilots were suicidal fools. “I gathered that he didn’t approve of you as a suitable match for me.”

  Tolemek tilted his head. “Does he actually care about you enough to care with whom you match yourself?”

  “I don’t know. He never gives the impression that he does.” She lifted a shoulder.

  “Maybe he does, and maybe he decided you’d had enough strife in your life and that losing me would distress you terribly.”

  Cas snorted. She really needed to stop doing that. It wasn’t very feminine.

  “Are you making those noises because you wouldn’t be distressed at my loss or because you can’t believe your father cares that much?”

  She shoved him with her shoulder. “Let’s not assume anything. Stay alert for the rest of this trip—and when we’re back in the city too. We should probably share a cabin, so that if there’s another assassin, he’ll be less likely to catch you when you’re sleeping.”

  “I am incredibly amenable to that.” He pulled her closer and kissed the top of her head.

  Cas tilted her face up, hoping he would kiss something more sensitive.

  His eyelids lowered halfway. “You didn’t answer my other question. About whether my passing would distress you terribly.”

  “I—”

  A knock sounded at the door.

  “That better not be your lieutenant friend,” Tolemek said. “I’m quite positive I did nothing to suggest that I wanted to share my cabin with him tonight.”

  General Ort stuck his head in the door.

  Cas jumped to her feet. Even if her relationship with Tolemek wasn’t a secret, seeing the general made her feel guilty, like she should be working somewhere instead of sitting on a bed with Tolemek and getting her head kissed.

  “Fifteen minute recall,” Ort said without commenting on beds or head kissing. “Keep your gear close at hand and be ready. We’re heading to the Magroth Crystal Mines.”

  “Did something happen, sir?” Her stomach, which had finally recovered from the knockout smoke, gave a nervous little flop.

  “We got word from Lieutenant Duck. The dragon attacked there, and it might be returning.”

  Chapter 9

  Sardelle leaned back, her shoulders aching and her eyes gritty, the hard, cold cement floor pressing into her knees. Dozing in the cave earlier hadn’t been that refreshing, and after hours of knitting wounds back together and sealing blistered flesh, she felt like she had been awake for days. She couldn’t see a window from her position amid the rows of injured men laid out on blankets in the half of the machine shop that wasn’t filled with tram cars and battered ore carts. Still, she suspected dawn had come a while ago.

  “Looks like he’s sleeping peacefully,” a man spoke from the wall behind her.

  Sardelle lurched around. Duck had been back there the last time she had been aware of anyone in here except for herself, Tylie, and the injured soldiers and miners. She recognized the man, a broad-shouldered fellow with tattoos covering his
burly forearms. He had helped Ridge fix the flier here last winter.

  “Hello, Captain Bosmont.” Sardelle hadn’t spoken to him often—as she recalled, he was a man of few words—but Ridge had liked him well enough. “Yes, just a burn for this miner. His body will finish the healing process while he rests. Do you need… a healer’s services?” Remembering how much the common man feared magic, she kept her question vague. She hadn’t seen much of Bosmont after it had come out that she was a sorceress. He had a cut on his forehead and blisters on the back of his knuckles, but he also carried a rifle and a sword, so he looked more like an officer on duty than a patient.

  “No, ma’am. Just here to keep an eye out. The general asked me to when your other feller took off.”

  Other feller? Duck? Sardelle realized that he was, indeed, gone. How long had it been just her and Tylie? She had checked on Tylie numerous times over the course of the night, to see if she needed help and if she was effectively assisting the patients Sardelle had given her. Currently, she sat cross-legged three people down, with a rough-looking woman’s hand clasped between her palms. She wasn’t doing the bandaging or minor burn healing that Sardelle had tasked her with, though the pieces of sticky bandages attached to her parka and feet suggested she had been wrestling with that earlier. Instead, she seemed to be doing something telepathically—soothing the woman? It was hard to tell. Her patient was barely awake, and Sardelle would have had to take a few minutes to look closer. She trusted that Tylie wasn’t doing anything harmful, as that seemed against her nature.

  “How long ago was that, Captain?” Sardelle asked.

  “’Bout three hours ago, ma’am.”

  “Ah.” She’d told Ridge she didn’t need a protector, but maybe that wasn’t true if she hadn’t even noticed Duck leaving.

  “You’re doing real good work.” The captain nodded. “Even if not all of ’em appreciate the magic, I reckon they’re happy to get touched by a beautiful woman. That doesn’t happen much up here.”

  “Thank you. Yes, I remember the populace is largely male.”

  A bang came from the doorway, followed by a thump and a stream of cursing.