The Prophecy Con (Rogues of the Republic)

by Weekes, Patrick

  “She knows.”

  “Of course she does,” Desidora said, smiling. “She still likes to hear it.”

  Pyvic smiled, but he was still troubled. “I’ve got a problem. I could use your help.”

  “Is this a matter of love?” Desidora asked, although she doubted it. Loch and Pyvic had a strong and healthy relationship, if somewhat more competitive than she would have preferred personally.

  “It’s a matter of love songs,” Pyvic said. “One in particular. The Love Song of Eillenfiniel.”

  Desidora blinked, then gestured at a small meeting room off to the side. “In here.”

  He followed her into the room lit by rose-colored candles. It had no windows, but the walls were hung with gently curving satin curtains nevertheless. It contained a lovely bed and a small pool whose water was heated and scented with lavender.

  “Did it have to be this room?” Pyvic asked, looking around for someplace to sit.

  “Would you prefer the one themed as a dungeon?” Desidora asked, tossing Ghylspwr onto the bed. “The shackles can be adjusted to fit anyone . . . or anywhere.”

  “Thank you, no, I believe Loch and I are doing fine without exploring any of the sacred mysteries of intimacy,” Pyvic said. “I’d rather just stop the Republic and the Empire from going to war.”

  “Again?” Desidora ran her fingers through her hair. “Because of that book?”

  “Apparently. Loch’s on her way to Ajeveth to try to recover it.”

  “And you aren’t with her.”

  “She needed thieves, not justicars,” he said, and grinned.

  “You don’t have to do that,” Desidora said, settling on the edge of the bed.

  “Do what?”

  “Pretend you aren’t worried for her and sad not to be at her side.”

  “You can stop reading my aura any time you like, Sister.”

  “Sorry. It’s been a long day.” She sighed. “How can I help? You already know where the book is.”

  “We know what, and we know where,” Pyvic said. “I’m looking for why.”

  “I’m thinking the airship needs a name,” Kail said a few days later as he set the team down in the landing field outside Ajeveth.

  “No,” said Icy, who had changed back into his robes now that they were dry, if somewhat wrinkled.

  “You’re remembering that we stole this airship, Kail?” said Loch.

  “Also, we’re all sick to death of this ship and hoping never to see it again,” said Tern, who had proven to have a weak stomach for long flights.

  “How about Iofegemet?” Kail said after a pause just long enough for Loch to hope he was going to drop it. “It means ‘lying helpfully’ in the language of the ancients.”

  “How about something we can say?” said Tern. Loch hopped down from the airship that was ideally not going to be named Iofegemet and stretched her legs and shoulders as she got used to being on land again. Around her, other airships were tied to docking posts, a great field of canvas balloons on either side. Up ahead, the walls of Ajeveth rose imposingly before her, great gray stone arches like the mountains behind them.

  Ajeveth was a border town. Although technically part of the Republic, it was controlled by the dwarves, who understood that the humans who wanted their goods would have a difficult time getting into the mountains where the dwarves lived. The city had been built on the lower slopes of the Titan, and its buildings, rising up behind the walls, were tall and strangely angled.

  “It’s because they live in the mountains,” Tern said, no longer quite so green now that she was on land again. She pointed at the buildings. “Dwarves are all about economy of space, so their houses are narrow and built to accommodate slopes.”

  Icy stared at the great planes of angled stone in surprise. “In the Empire, we heard that most of the dwarves lived underground.”

  “Nah, that’s just a legend,” said Tern. “Also kind of racist.”

  “My apologies.”

  “They do a lot of mining, but they live aboveground, just like the rest of us. Dwarven society has three big groups. See that?” Tern pointed at one building in the distance, a great spire that rose up to a needle-thin point. “That’s the Hall of Masters, for the crafters who build all the expensive stuff we use in the Republic. And that one over there, the dome? That’s the High Cave, for the miners. The dome is shorter, but covers more area. Dwarven society is all about that balance. Not identical, but equal.”

  “What’s the third group?” Kail asked. “I don’t see anything else big enough for whatever that group is.”

  “The walls,” Loch said, and turned to look at Tern.

  “The Guardsmen,” Tern said, nodding. “There are a lot of things out there in those mountains that don’t like people very much. The dwarves don’t often start trouble, but they’re very good at taking care of themselves.”

  “How do you know so much about them?” Kail asked.

  Tern reached into her many-pocketed brown dress and produced a silver-tipped crossbow bolt. “Where did you think I had all these made?”

  Loch smiled as a group of dwarven officials came out from behind a massive cargo airship and approached. They were sturdy men and women a little shorter than Tern and built like they could shrug off a rockslide. One of them wore chainmail fine enough to be ornamental, while the others wore the loose-flowing shirts and breeches of merchants. “Afternoon,” she called. “Justicar Loch. No cargo. Docking fees can be applied to the government account.” She produced her badge and showed it to them.

  The nearest dwarf, the one in the ornamental armor, examined the badge, then frowned. “Welcome, Justicar,” she said, sounding more grudging than anything else. “Do ye wish to share any information wi’ our local security teams?”

  It was a warmer welcome than Loch had been expecting. “Not at this time,” she said with a sad shake of her head. “This is a background investigation. I’m not currently pursuing anything that would threaten your city.”

  At that, the dwarven official looked relieved. “Understood, Justicar. Please enjoy yer visit to the city. If ye need any assistance, our security teams will be pleased to offer information. Your docking registration, to be billed to the Republic government offices.” She passed Loch a slip of paper.

  “If ye have leisure time,” another official added, “this pamphlet lists entertainment activities suitable for human visitors, including casinos, fine dining, sports and recreation, and Irke’desar, the Bounty of the Past, our new publicly accessible museum offering historical artifacts legally purchased from a variety of different cultures.”

  “Thank ye again for coming,” said the third official as the second pressed a folded pamphlet into Loch’s hands. “Please enjoy yer stay.”

  Loch nodded politely as the dwarves trooped off. When they were gone, she looked over at Tern.

  “Yeah, pretty much always like that,” Tern said. “They’re very polite, though.”

  Kail shook his head. “I’ve been on the Spire for too long. That much directness just cuts right through you.” He glanced at Loch. “Also, did you notice how they didn’t ask to double-check your badge or insist on searching Iofegemet or anything?”

  “I do not concede that this is the airship’s name,” said Icy.

  “Yeah, dwarves don’t really get the big deal about the Urujar or the Imperials,” Tern said, ignoring Icy. “If they ever said anything that wasn’t thoughtfully premeditated, I might actually want to live here.”

  A small flicker of motion caught Loch’s eye, and she looked up to see a white shape flitting down their way. The snowy dove landed before them, then shimmered and became Ululenia.

  “The dwarves work like ants, industrious and pure of purpose,” she said, “and like the ants, they care little for the unspoiled beauty of nature.”

  Tern shrugged. “Nature
spends most of its time trying to kill them.”

  “The hare sings few songs in praise of the wolf,” Ululenia said in what was probably agreement. “Their minds are also ordered and calm, but many have plans to see a new item being displayed in a place that tells the story of the past, like the thin rings of an ancient tree remembering the dry years.”

  Loch opened the brochure the official had given her. “You think they’re excited about going to see a new elven manuscript?”

  “The riverbeds through which their thoughts flow are not shaped in such ways, Little One.” Ululenia thought, her horn pulsing with a little flare of light. “It is not the spoil of a hunt or the rush of coupling madly in the grass while a summer storm pounds skin lit only by flashes of lightning.”

  “Still haven’t found another virgin, huh?” Tern asked.

  “I am still unclear as to what happened to young Dairy,” Icy said.

  Ululenia pulled herself upright, and her horn flared again, then went still. “Dairy is fine.” She turned back to Loch. “As I was saying, they think only that the museum would be a good place to gain knowledge of the strange other races, and they have heard that there are new displays.”

  It wasn’t the strongest lead Loch had ever heard, but it was a starting place.

  “All right, everyone. Let’s go visit the museum.”

  Five

  IRKE’DESAR, THE BOUNTY of the Past, was a multi-story building constructed, like many of the larger buildings in Ajeveth, so that it ran up the gentle slope at the base of the mountain. It gave the city an odd look, like a giant had gone stomping through it and knocked over most of the major structures.

  Loch had spent the last few months on Heaven’s Spire, floating high over the rest of the Republic. She’d gotten used to the artificial cleanliness of the Spire, and to the fake stone that sounded wrong beneath a good pair of boots. Ajeveth wasn’t false like Heaven’s Spire, but it wasn’t quite human, either.

  “Still a bit strange, huh, Captain?” Kail asked, noticing as she kicked the ground while waiting for a wagon filled with cabbages to pass.

  “The air smells better than Heaven’s Spire,” she said, “and at least it’s real stone.”

  “Still no garbage in the street, though.” Kail gestured at a market square up ahead. “And no beggars. How are you supposed to figure out what part of the city is what, if you can’t smell the garbage? And how are you supposed to get information if you can’t just pass a few coins to buy some kid a meal?”

  Tern cleared her throat. “The dwarves have a strong sanitation system, and they’re good about helping other dwarves find a way to make a living.”

  “Well, that’s great for the ones who want to.” Kail shot her a grin. “What about the ones who come back from a war, or a battle with things in the mountains, or . . . what do they have instead of wars?”

  “Trolls and cave-ins,” Tern said, nodding and smiling to a group of passing dwarves who looked at them curiously.

  “Okay, trolls and cave-ins,” said Kail. “You can’t just say that there’s work for those who want it. There have to be some dwarves that come back from trolls and cave-ins not quite right. Where are those people? Do the dwarves kill them, or drive them out of the city or . . .”

  “They help them,” Tern said, looking a little sad. “Why is this so important to you, Kail?”

  “Because it means it doesn’t have to be the way it is in the Republic,” Loch murmured.

  “And thank the gods for that,” Tern said. “Come on. If we just hang out here, someone will come try to give us directions, and then we’ll have a half-hour of listening to civic details and answering questions about what attractions we might want to see, and trust me, you really need to work up to that level of politely directed socialization.”

  They started walking again, boots clopping on clean, evenly cut city streets.

  “I always felt good when I passed the little kids a coin,” Kail muttered.

  “You’ll live,” Tern said.

  The museum had a small fee for admission. It was far less than what a human noble would have charged peasants to look at his private collection. They all paid and went inside.

  The museum’s rooms had six walls instead of four. The interior walls were stone instead of plaster, and rather than paint, the overlapping stones were laid out with their grains alternating directions, forming a natural tile pattern. Doorways were set with silver runes and crystals that glowed with steady blue light, and small, regularly spaced crystals in the ceiling lit the room with a gentle ambience.

  “Shall we find the manuscript?” Ululenia asked, looking at the walls with faint distaste.

  “Not yet,” said Tern.

  “It would seem suspicious to ignore the other displays and head directly to the elven area,” added Icy.

  “Plus, we want to check the overall security, which means seeing what it’s like throughout the place,” said Kail.

  “I see.” Ululenia plucked a brochure from a box on the wall and opened it with mild disdain. “Then let us explore this rocky honeycomb.”

  The dwarves had collected items from every race Loch had heard of, and some that she hadn’t. It was all meticulously organized, as Loch was now starting to suspect would be the norm everywhere in the dwarven city. Each race or culture branched off in their own direction, and smaller rooms branched off from that main hexagonal chamber.

  In the dwarven chamber, Loch saw axes whose heads were carved from magnetic ores. Although impractical against armored opponents, read a plaque near the display, these weapons—given to the dwarves by the ancients themselves—enabled dwarven warriors to fight invading abominations who were formed from magic itself.

  “Glimmering Folk, you think?” Tern asked, looking at the axes. They were set behind protective glass.

  Loch frowned. “Could have been.”

  “Magnetism. Good note if we ever run into Bi’ul again. Always seemed like yvkefer should have worked on the bastard.” Tern leaned in and squinted through the glass. “Not glass. Crystal, cut thin. You can tell by how the light goes through it. It’s been planed so that just trying to cut through will make the whole thing shatter and set off weight-specific alarms.”

  “Wonderful.”

  In a side room, Loch found Kail looking at a statue of what was almost a dwarf, but not quite. It was massive, taller than Loch, dressed in fur and leather, and its face was set with a kind of snarling smile. In a display beside it sat a huge pair of boots and a great sword with a hilt of leather-wrapped wood.

  “Says they used to be taller,” Kail said, “going by what they’ve found from the time they, uh . . .” He looked at a plaque. “Journeyed to this land to help the ancients find crystals in the mountains. The wood from surviving tools suggests we came from across the sea.”

  “Suggests? They’re organized about everything else, but for their history, they only have suggestions?”

  Kail squinted. “It says the ancients gave them culture and helped them learn the ways of the mountains. Might not have been very dwarfy before that,” he added with a look at the savage statue.

  “I suppose not.”

  “Weight-sensitive plates near base, by the way,” he said in a quieter voice. “I’d need Tern to take a look at the doors, but my gut tells me that during off hours, those crystals set in the frame sound an alarm if they detect motion.”

  “I’ll pass it on.”

  She left the dwarves and headed up a wide set of stairs that climbed to the next floor. It turned out to be dedicated to humans.

  Icy stood before a golden dragon that rested on a podium draped with rich green silk. “According to the dwarves, my people came to what is now the Empire thousands of years ago, likely moving to find better cropland after changes to the world’s weather patterns.” He nodded politely to a dwarf in a craftsman’s leathers who m
ay have thought that Icy was part of the display. When the dwarf moved on, Icy added, softly, “Most of the stands appear to have traces of yvkefer in their construction. It would make it difficult to steal anything and leave an illusion behind.”

  “Moot point, since we don’t have Hessler at the moment.” Loch turned to one of the side rooms.

  “Did Justicar Pyvic send any further word?” Icy asked, his voice odd.

  “Not since giving us Ajeveth.” Loch headed for the side room.

  “Loch . . .” Icy’s voice was still off, somehow, and then Loch remembered that he couldn’t lie worth a damn. “That room contains the history of your people.”

  Loch paused, then looked back and gave him a nod and a small smile. “Well, we paid for admission.” Then she turned back to the doorway and stepped through.

  There were paintings and small dioramas carved from stone and meticulously painted.

  . . . Likely came from some other part of the world to help the ancients cultivate an untamed land, as their different skin color suggests they were not native to the area . . .

  There were paper sketches and woodcuts.

  . . . When the ancients left, the Urujar society was peaceful and agrarian until the arrival of colonists from the Old Kingdom . . .

  There were shackles and whips, and metal collars fitted with crystals.

  . . . Barbaric conditions for centuries, until persistent revolts forced the Republic to grant the Urujar freedom in order to avoid fighting a civil war as well as the first of many conflicts with the Empire . . .

  Loch walked back out. She kept her shoulders straight and nodded at Icy. “The windows are too large for me to get through, but I bet you could do it.” She unclenched her fists. “Didn’t see anything else helpful.”

  Icy nodded. “I can take more time in the rest of the human displays, if you like.”

  “Thanks.” Loch headed up the next set of stairs and didn’t look back.