Conspiracy ee-4

by Lindsay Buroker

  “Maybe you’re getting older and less appealing,” Amaranthe said as she dug through lockers, hoping to find useful equipment that had come with the craft.

  Maldynado sniffed. “We’re about to face death together. Do you really think this is the time to insult me?”

  “Sorry, you’re right. Insults after battles. Come help me with this, will you?” Amaranthe waved to a locker where she’d found long, wide strips of canvas-like fabric and buckets of a black tarry goo. “Repair supplies for the balloon, I’d guess, though maybe we can-” A shudder ran through the floor. “Actually, why don’t you check on navigation?” Amaranthe might tease Maldynado about his proclivity for crashing vehicles, but most of those crashes had been a result of her orders. In truth, she’d always found him competent at working machinery. She knew less about Basilard and Yara’s capabilities. “Send Basilard back to help.”

  “You got it, boss.” Maldynado jogged for the corridor.

  “And keep this boat as steady as you can,” she called after him. “That’s a delicate surgery they’re performing on the emperor in there.”

  Amaranthe eyed the cargo bay door, wondering if they could open it while flying.

  Maldynado paused inside the corridor. “Maybe we should put off the surgery. What if those blokes start attacking us?”

  Amaranthe frowned. She trusted Maldynado, she did, but now that Books had brought up his suspicions, she couldn’t help but think there might be a reason Maldynado didn’t want that device out of Sespian’s neck. If his family was angling for the throne and was in position to seize it if Sespian disappeared…

  She shook her head. “If that’s their plan, Sespian will want that thing out of his neck before we crash and get captured by someone who can make it kill him at any time.”

  “That’s not a very optimistic thought.”

  “Sorry, we haven’t had much sleep, and I’m finding it hard to remain hopeful about the future.” Amaranthe pulled out one of the fabric strips and tugged at it experimentally. No stretchiness, hm. Maybe she could find some rubber.

  Maldynado muttered something in parting, but she was too focused on her new plan to hear the words. By the time Basilard joined her, Amaranthe had buckets, fabric strips, and rubber cords strewn across the deck in front of the cargo door.

  Basilard signed, What are we making?

  “Slingshot,” Amaranthe said. “I could use some help.”

  Basilard’s eyebrows rose. That probably meant she should be worried about her plan, but there wasn’t time for self-doubt. She peeked through the porthole. Its massive size might mean the black ship was farther back than it appeared, but either way it had halved the distance between them. The sun’s light glinted off the snowcaps on the last of the mountains, but its rays failed to reflect off of that craft. It almost looked like a black hole in the sky, coming to swallow them.

  “I’m going to fly lower,” Maldynado called down the corridor. “Maybe we can lose them in the wetlands.”

  That other craft could likely do anything the dirigible could do when it came to navigating, but Amaranthe kept the thought to herself and simply pointed for Basilard to come help her. She hoped her slingshot idea wouldn’t end up being laughable to the enemy. Whatever that craft had fired at the cliff to collapse the railway tunnel could doubtlessly pulverize the dirigible, perhaps from a great distance. It might never need to get within range of Amaranthe’s weapon-and calling the clunky slingshot a weapon was surely delusional. She kept working anyway.

  Akstyr sat next to the bed, his hands clasped in his lap, his eyes half closed. He could see the faint bulge at the side of the emperor’s throat, but he needed to sense it as well. Unfortunately, he was having a hard time concentrating. Sicarius stood on the opposite side of the emperor’s bed, his black dagger in hand. His role might be to cut out the implant, but Akstyr couldn’t help but remember his earlier words and wonder if Sicarius might cut his neck, should he fail here.

  “No pressure,” he murmured.

  “Should I be worried that you look more nervous than I do?” the emperor asked. He was lying on the bed, his hands folded over his belly, as if in relaxed repose, but tension tightened his interlaced fingers.

  “Nah, I’m not nervous,” Akstyr said out of some notion that doctors should be brave for their patients. “Just…”

  “Pensive?”

  “Right.”

  “There may be little time,” Sicarius said, his tone hard, the words clipped.

  “Right,” Akstyr repeated.

  Sespian sighed, lay his head back, and closed his eyes. The tension didn’t ebb from his fingers.

  “Is there anything I can do?” Books asked softly from behind Akstyr.

  “No,” Akstyr said. “I’ve memorized everything you’ve translated for me. I just need quiet.”

  He took a deep breath and closed his own eyes. He stretched out, trying to sense the artifact without letting it sense him.

  Since Akstyr knew what the devices looked like, he was able to picture the buried one in his mind. He imagined it nestled beneath the skin, a knot burrowed into the muscle, and slowly the made-up picture in his head coalesced into the real one. It had life of a sort. An awareness. It emitted… a question or perhaps a probe, as if it knew something, or someone, was there.

  Akstyr fought for calmness. It wasn’t certain yet, or it would have already moved. He summoned energy in his mind, like coiling one’s body before springing into the air. He was about to unleash the energy, to attempt to stun the device, when the floor tilted. It nearly threw him from his seat, and he only caught himself by grabbing the emperor’s footboard. The dirigible groaned and tilted back the other way.

  “Check on it,” Sicarius said.

  At first, Akstyr thought Sicarius was talking to him, but the door slammed, and he realized Books had left. Akstyr shifted on his seat, not thrilled at being left alone with Sicarius. Well, Sicarius and the emperor, who was sitting up, frowning.

  “Lie down, Sire,” Sicarius said. There was no deference in the way he said sire, and it was clearly an order. “Continue,” he told Akstyr in the same tone.

  “Maybe,” Akstyr said, directing his words to the emperor instead of Sicarius, “we should wait until-”

  The floor titled again, this time toward the nose of the craft. Akstyr’s heart jumped. They weren’t heading toward a crash, were they?

  “-someone besides Maldynado is driving,” he finished. Nobody smiled at his attempt at humor. It didn’t amuse him much either. He wanted to lunge to his feet and run up to the navigation cabin to check on what was happening.

  “Continue,” Sicarius repeated. The way he said it made Akstyr suspect he didn’t have the option to leave. “Before this gets worse,” Sicarius added.

  Sespian nodded grimly. “Do it,” he told Akstyr and lay back down.

  As if it was so easy. Akstyr closed his eyes again and struggled to regain his focus. He probed the area beneath the scar tissue, trying to find the device. He frowned. It wasn’t there.

  Chapter 21

  Amaranthe, using clamps she had scrounged, fastened one end of the slingshot to a vertical strut to the left of the cargo door. Basilard was doing the same on the other side. The already tilted floor angled more steeply toward the nose of the craft, and Amaranthe found herself hanging onto the strut as her feet threatened to skid out from beneath her.

  “I didn’t think a dirigible could tilt that much,” she said.

  Though Basilard was struggling to hold on as well, he managed to one-handedly sign, Maldynado’s driving.

  “Good point.”

  Something scraped behind them. The box of blasting sticks sliding across the floor toward the corridor. Amaranthe’s heart leaped. Those should have been secured when the men first came on board.

  “What’s going on back here?” Books clawed his way out of the emperor’s suite and into the corridor.

  “Grab that box,” Amaranthe shouted.

  Alarm widened Bo
oks’s eyes, and she wished she’d kept her voice calmer. If he fumbled it and didn’t catch it before it smacked into the wall or slid down to the navigation cabin…

  Books managed to catch the box before it struck anything.

  “Thanks,” Amaranthe said. “Secure that, will you? And bring us a few sticks. And that lantern that’s sliding your way too.”

  “I came back here to see what was happening, not get pressed into labor,” Books said, though he headed toward her.

  “What’s happening is we need someone pressed into labor.” Amaranthe nodded toward the porthole in the door. “Maldynado’s swerving about isn’t helping much. They’re getting close.”

  “Dead deranged ancestors,” Books whispered, staring at the hole.

  Amaranthe doubted he could see details from across the cargo hold, but the black ship now filled the view. It blotted out the mountains and the sky with its bulk. Amaranthe couldn’t tell if it was bringing weapons to bear, but, even if it didn’t, the craft could probably destroy the dirigible simply by running into it. Like a steam tramper squishing a fly.

  “Has it done anything yet?” Books was strapping down the box of explosives.

  “It’s just following us,” Amaranthe said. “Getting closer and closer. Basilard, think we’re ready to open the door and test our blasting-stick slingshot?”

  Our?

  “You helped me construct it.”

  It’s your idea.

  “Basilard says we’re ready to go.” Amaranthe extended a hand toward Books. The dirigible tilted to the side, and her feet slipped. Only her fingers wrapped about the strut kept her from tumbling toward him.

  “I can… read his signs,” Books said, his words broken as he focused on climbing on hands and knees up the slanted floor while he clenched blasting sticks in his fists. “That’s not what he said.”

  The nose of the dirigible rose and the floor tipped the opposite direction so quickly it nearly hurled Books into the cargo door. Amaranthe and Basilard caught him before blasting sticks could fly from his hands. For a moment, the greens and browns of the wetlands were visible through the porthole before the craft leveled.

  “That idiot,” Books growled. “I should be piloting. He’ll kill us before the enemy has a chance.”

  Something flashed outside. Amaranthe and Basilard almost clunked heads as they leaned toward the porthole for a look. Maldynado had brought them within fifty feet of the ground. The tips of trees would claw at the dirigible’s metal hull if they dropped any lower. The other craft wasn’t quite as low, but it was far too close for Amaranthe’s tastes. A white beam shot out of the dome’s black belly. It sliced through the sky and tore into the earth below. Trees burst into flame or were hurled from the ground altogether. Marsh water boiled and erupted into geysers. The beam zigzagged across the ground with clumsy madness, and Amaranthe thought of a kid scribbling on the sidewalk with chalk.

  “Why’s it shooting the ground instead of us?” Books asked.

  Amaranthe thought of Sicarius’s explanation for the strange craft’s existence. If the original expedition had needed Admiral Starcrest and a genius code cracker from an enemy nation, maybe the technology was so foreign that the Forge people were struggling to work everything. Except they were having no trouble flying after her team in that monstrosity…

  “I don’t know,” Amaranthe said, “but we better take advantage of the fact that we’re not a smoldering ball of flame yet.”

  Even as she spoke, the beam zigzagged again, striking a stout cypress. The wood exploded beneath the power, or perhaps the heat, and shards flew everywhere. Flames erupted from the ten-foot-tall stump that remained.

  “Good idea,” Books said.

  “Let’s get this door open,” Amaranthe told Basilard.

  “While we’re flying?” Books asked. “Is that wise?”

  “Wiser than lighting a blasting stick in a room without an open door.”

  Amaranthe unfastened a safety latch and tugged at the unlocking mechanism. It took several tries before she could muscle it loose. A smack sounded, as suction was broken, and the door dropped outward. It happened so abruptly that she might have followed, if not for Basilard. He grabbed her by the back of the shirt and kept her from falling.

  Wind tore at her hair and clothing. The black craft loomed closer than ever, blocking out everything but a sliver of the ground where a swath of flames burned, devouring trees and undergrowth. The stink of smoke filled the cargo hold, and Amaranthe stumbled back, coughing.

  Basilard waved at Books for one of the blasting sticks and pulled the slingshot back until his arms quivered. He nodded for Books to light the stick and place it in the center of the pouch. Books lit the fuse, then fiddled with the placement of the stick for so long that Amaranthe feared it would go off in the cargo hold. Basilard swatted his hand away and released the slingshot in time.

  The blasting stick sailed through the doorway. With the black craft so close, it would have been hard to miss, but Amaranthe held her breath, not knowing what to expect.

  The explosive disappeared in a starburst that filled their view and made her squint. She lifted an arm to protect her eyes from the brilliance.

  “Get another one ready,” Amaranthe said before the smoke cleared. She doubted one would be sufficient.

  The wind shredded the black-powder cloud. Nothing had changed. The great craft was still closing, with no hint of damage marring its inky hull.

  “Did we hit it?” Books asked. “The stick must have exploded too early, before it struck the craft. We’ll try to time it better with this one.”

  Amaranthe nodded, waving at them to ready another attack, but a heavy feeling plagued her gut. The blasting sticks might not be enough to damage the other craft.

  Though Akstyr kept his eyes closed, he could feel Sicarius watching him with the intensity of a starving wolf. A bead of sweat dribbled down the side of Akstyr’s face and dripped from his chin. He chastised himself for noticing. Concentrate, he told himself. He had to block out Sicarius, and block out the awareness of his body if he hoped to find the artifact.

  It had left its spot beneath the emperor’s knot of scar tissue to burrow deeper. As Books had said, it was designed to hook to the jugular to deliver its poison if tampered with, so that must be where it had gone.

  Akstyr imagined his senses were blood cells, able to navigate through the body with ease. Slowly, his consciousness drew closer to that main artery. Something alien brushed against his awareness. The device. Yes, it was there, attached to the jugular.

  As he had started to do before, Akstyr coiled his mental energy, preparing to hurl an attack. He dared not loiter, because that thing must have already sensed a threat. One chance. That was all he had.

  “It’s on his jugular,” Akstyr whispered without opening his eyes. “Right here.” He pointed at the emperor’s neck, directly over the artifact, and was careful not to touch the skin. “You’ll have to slice deep to get it out, but not too deep.”

  “Understood,” Sicarius said.

  Sespian heard, and he had to be terrified, but he kept his breathing calm. He continued to lie still, though his knuckles tightened where his hands gripped each other across his belly. A detached part of Akstyr observed that it was interesting that he could sense all of that with his eyes closed, but he forced the thought away, turning his concentration again toward the artifact.

  He summoned all of his mental might into a tiny ball, targeted the artifact, and unleashed the coiled energy in a single blow.

  At that moment, the dirigible shuddered, as if they’d hit something-or something had hit them. The disturbance affected Akstyr’s aim, and his mental blow glanced off the artifact instead of hitting it squarely. He kept his concentration and eased in closer, prepared to hurl another attack, if he had time. The artifact was frozen though. His blow must have been enough to stun it.

  “Now,” Akstyr said, his eyes flying open. “Get it out.”

  Sicarius gave him
a hard, appraising look-it only lasted a half a second-but his hesitation filled Akstyr with alarm.

  “I swear,” he blurted. “It’s stunned, but only for a…”

  Sicarius’s hands blurred into motion.

  Sespian stiffened, and tried to pull away, but Sicarius held him down with one hand while the other…

  Akstyr started. It had happened so quickly, he had missed Sicarius switching tools. He already held the artifact aloft, captured in a pair of tweezers. Sicarius dropped the small sphere to the floor and smashed it beneath his boot.

  The emperor sat up, a hand clasped to his throat, his eyes wider than gold coins. Blood spilled between his fingers, but not a lot. Sicarius hadn’t nicked the artery.

  “He got it.” Akstyr handed the emperor a thick cloth from the table. “You’re not bleeding a lot, but you can use that to stop it.”

  A resounding thud sounded, and another quake coursed through the dirigible. What was Maldynado doing? Mowing down trees?

  Sespian took the cloth with his free hand and pressed it to his throat. Blood dripped from the palm of his other hand, joining spatters on his shirt. “What do you people consider a lot?” he asked, though there was relief in his eyes.

  “Depends on who you ask,” Akstyr said. “Basilard and Sicarius probably wouldn’t blink unless they had a leg fall off. Maldynado’s been known to complain about splinters.”

  “I will suture your wound.” Sicarius picked up the needle and spindle of thread Amaranthe had laid on the table earlier.

  The relief faded from the emperor’s face. He watched Sicarius thread the needle with concern. Akstyr wouldn’t be thrilled about Sicarius being his surgeon either.

  “I can fix him up with the Science,” Akstyr said. “The way I did with Am’ranthe that time. It’ll probably leave less of a scar than the needle and thread.”

  Sicarius looked Akstyr in the eyes, and Akstyr forced himself to hold the stare. He had a feeling there was some measuring going on in there, measuring that went beyond whether or not he was qualified to mend a cut.