“Time?” she asked.
“Fourteen after,” Tern said, fiddling with a small dart-thrower she’d worked into her sleeve and cufflink. “One minute ‘til the guards shift.”
“Hessler?”
“I’m prepared to render all three of us invisible, although the sheer amount of metal involved will cause reflections that limit the efficiency, and should the guards look directly at us while we move—”
“It was good enough to get you and Tern inside in the first place. Time?”
“Now,” Tern said.
The three of them went to the front door of the car, and Tern looked through a little window. “He’s out.” She slid the door open.
The cars were connected by great hooks that let the overall train flex a little, along with a kind of tube to protect travelers who wanted to move from one train to another. The tube was made out of a thin mesh of what Loch was pretty sure had started off as ringmail, glittering against the sharp glare of the lamps on the doorframe of each car. The ramp between the two cars was thin metal, with the tube connecting to either side. Loch could hear the rush of air and the steady hum of the crystals on the other side of that ramp.
She stepped across without hesitation and looked through the window on the far side. “Dining car’s clear. Tern, go.”
The problem was that the elf and his manuscript were in a privacy suite two cars up. In front of them was the first of the luxury cars, which featured private suites with amenities instead of just reclining chairs, along with a bar that served overpriced food and watered-down drinks. It was locked to prevent people like Loch and her team from doing exactly what Loch and her team were doing.
Tern pulled a listening tube from one pocket, set it to her ear, and leaned against the door. “Last year’s model,” she murmured, gently tapping a quartz wand with a tuning fork and holding it near the lock. “Three crystals, each with shielded resonance buffers and overcharge locks.”
Hessler nodded, apparently impressed. “In the older models, if you had a multi-crystal lock, a lack of shielding meant that the frequencies were all eventually overridden by the strongest crystal, and a lapitect with a sufficiently powerful crystal pick could simply sync the pick to that crystal, and the others would snap to the unlocked position along with it.”
“Fascinating as always, Hessler,” Loch said. “No guard yet, Tern.”
“So pleased to hear it,” Tern said, “because I am in no danger of having this thing open.” She produced a second small crystal wand and, holding it between her teeth, brought it near the first one. “Mmkay, dass firss crssdull.”
“Trying to sync multiple crystals is exponentially harder than trying to sync one,” Hessler said. “She’s got to re-trigger the emitter every few seconds on the appropriate frequency, along with dead-man-pulses on the crystals she isn’t working with yet, to avoid an alarm. It’s a bit like trying to keep an increasingly long string of numbers straight in your head.”
Loch kept looking through the window. The guard for the new shift had just come in through the far door, and was looking around the bar and dining area. “Company, Tern.”
“Doo down.”
The guard started down the hallway, pausing to check an unsecured door.
“The Republic could learn a lot from the ways in which the dwarves incorporate crystal artifacts into their utilities—”
Loch grabbed Hessler and pushed him to the window. “Distraction, back behind the guard, right now.”
“What, I—oh.” Hessler squinted, held up a finger, and then curled it into a hook shape. “It’s harder to do through the glass of the window, but fortunately, they didn’t use anything that would absolutely block—”
“Did he stop?”
“Um.” Hessler looked again. “Yes, yes, he’s turned around and is checking back in the dining car.” He smiled at Loch. “I used an illusion of a door opening and closing and someone asking for help, which should—”
“Great. Tern?”
“Oooo, god idd!” Tern murmured as the lock snapped open. She dropped an absurd number of crystal picks from her mouth into her palm, then stood up straight and kissed Hessler. “You’re the best, baby.”
“Mm-hmm.” Loch slid the door open and stepped through. “Let’s move.”
There was a small standing area near the door, likely for waiters to stash carts, and it stretched across the entire width of the car, as opposed to the narrow hallway, which had to make room for private suites on either side and was thus barely wide enough to walk down without having to turn sideways.
Loch, Tern, and Hessler had just gotten into the standing area when the dwarven guard came back out from the dining room.
Loch ducked behind the wall, pulling Tern and Hessler with her. “Cloak.”
Tern winced. “So . . .”
“What?” Loch demanded.
“Well . . . I didn’t actually get the door locked again behind us, and he’s going to notice that.”
Loch rolled her eyes. “Wait,” she said to Tern, and then to Hessler, “Cloak, please.”
Hessler reached out and put his hand on their shoulders. “Hold still,” he murmured, for once not explaining the detailed arcane history of what he was doing. The air around Loch shimmered, and then everything went faintly gray and muddy at the edges.
Tern, still visible inside the little bubble that the three of them stood in, looked at Loch questioningly, pointing at the door, which was slightly ajar. Loch held up a hand.
“It’s really more effective if you hold still,” Hessler whispered, and now Loch and Tern both rolled their eyes.
The guard came down the hallway, checking the doors.
He stepped out into the waiting area, rolled out his shoulders, and then stopped and frowned at the door. Loch noted the ringmail, thin but still effective, and the truncheon at his belt.
As he walked past them and toward the door, Loch stepped out of Hessler’s cloaking bubble. She deliberately scuffed her foot on the floor, leaned toward one of the doors and put her hand on the handle, and said, “Excuse me?” to the guard.
The guard turned, saw a guest who hadn’t been there a moment ago stepping away from a privacy suite, and smiled politely. “May I help ye with something, ma’am?”
“I thought I heard something down that way,” Loch said, looking down the hall toward the dining area. “Someone asking for help? I wasn’t sure if there was a problem, or . . . ?”
“I heard it meself,” the guard said. “Nothing to worry yerself about, ma’am.” Behind him, a fuzzy, shifting silhouette of Tern reached out and closed the door to the economy car.
Loch coughed loudly to cover the sound of the door sliding shut. “Is the bar still open? I could use something for my throat.”
“There’s no one on duty there, ma’am,” said the guard apologetically, “but there be drinks and some simple foods available for ye to serve yerself, and if need be, I can fetch ye anything ye need.”
The shifting silhouette of Tern gave Loch a thumbs up and then slid fully back into Hessler’s bubble.
“Thank you so much,” Loch said. “Have a good evening.”
“And ye as well,” the guard said, and turned back to the door. He blinked, then shook his head and unlocked it. Loch fiddled with the door to what she’d pretended was her private suite while he stepped through and closed it behind him.
Tern and Hessler popped back into visibility a moment later. “Nice pull,” Tern said quietly.
“Come on.” Loch headed down the hallway with the others in tow.
“I’m still not entirely certain why Tern didn’t just disable the guard with one of her sleeping darts,” Hessler said, “although the fact that I’m the one advocating the more violent approach in this scenario raises a level of irony that is in no way lost on me.”
“Subtlety, baby,�
�� said Tern.
“The longer we have them confused and wondering how anyone got by them, the longer we have to get away,” Loch said, keeping her voice down as they walked single-file down the hallway. The dining area—with its bar and tables—was up ahead, and just past it, the door to the next luxury car, where the elf’s private suite was located. “In a professional operation, you leave the smallest possible footprint to make it as hard as possible for anything to get back to you.”
She stepped out into the dining area.
“Good evening, Miss de Lochenville,” said Irrethelathlialann the elf, sitting at a chair in the corner with his legs propped up on the table. “Fancy a drink?”
Desidora woke up with a groggy, black-spotted headache that suggested she’d been subdued by a knockout-choke rather than a sharp blow.
As a love priestess, these things came up now and then.
She spent a few moments wondering dizzily if she were going to throw up, decided that she probably wasn’t, and opened her eyes in hopes that it would tell her which way was up, at least.
The room she was in was pretty dark, but lit by blurry multicolored lights that gradually resolved themselves into various crystals set into the walls, floor, and even ceiling of a room made of slate-gray stone. As her vision cleared, Desidora realized that the walls weren’t exactly walls, but very large support pillars, through which snaked grids of pipes lit by the glow of the crystals.
“You may yell if you wish,” said a voice, and Desidora nearly did yell, because with her gifts as a love priestess, she should have been aware of someone crouching just a few yards away. “They will not hear you up above.”
She looked over at him a little too quickly, and her head swam for a minute. When her vision cleared, she saw a man in a black cloak that covered dark armor lined with crystals.
When it cleared some more, she realized what she was looking at.
“You’re another golem,” she said, “like the creature that attacked us in the library. Or Hunter Mirrkir.”
The golem’s face was human at a brief inspection, as though designed by someone with a detailed description of human anatomy, but who had only angled pieces of stone to work with. Its nose was an angled pyramid with no nostrils to speak of, its eyes were perfect diamonds that glowed faintly blue, and its cheekbones could literally cut glass.
“The Hunters were formed for duty,” the golem said. “They gathered the stray magic that escaped the works of the masters after the masters departed.”
“Stray magic.” Desidora’s mind was coming back into the confines of her skull, which was good, because she appeared to be tied to a chair. “You mean the fairy creatures.”
The golem nodded, things in its neck and shoulders clicking faintly like polished stones in a velvet bag. “They were formed from magic that was not theirs to be. The masters required that the magic be kept safe.”
“Why?” Desidora asked. “The ancients fled this world to escape the Glimmering Folk. What did it matter if their old magics gave rise to something new?”
“You have the book,” the golem said, rising to its feet and coming toward her. “You will return it. What it contains is not for you.”
Desidora could not read the golem’s aura, but that had been an abrupt transition, and she filed it away for later. “I do not have it with me,” she said. “If you let me go, I can retrieve it.”
“You will tell me where it is located,” the golem said immediately. “I will retrieve it. Then you will be released.”
Desidora wasn’t entirely certain whether to trust that. It didn’t sound like the golem was capable of lying, but it also might have a more metaphysical definition of released than Desidora did.
More than that, though, if Desidora told it the truth, the thing would go after Ululenia, and as a fairy creature formed from the leftover magic of the ancients, she might not rate on the thing’s “capture alive” list.
“I will not tell you until I am certain that you will not kill me,” she said instead. “You may believe I have already read the book. You may think the knowledge must die.”
The golem held perfectly still. If it were a man, she was certain it would have cocked its head as though thinking . . . or listening. “No,” it said after a moment. “Your death is forbidden.” It held up a hand that looked gloved, until Desidora realized she was looking at the slate-gray material of the walls. A crystal set into the golem’s palm suddenly glowed, a painful pale green. “Your memories will be cleansed.”
And with that, Desidora knew as much as she needed to know. “Ghylspwr,” she said, “I need you.” She flexed her hand in her bonds, opening her hand.
Nothing happened.
“Teleportation ward,” the golem said, pointing to a crystal charm worked into the ropes binding Desidora to her chair.
Desidora looked down at it, a little bit of crystal and silver wire. Its magical signature was simple, practically makeshift. She could, now that she was aware of it, even read the aura it projected, a chaotic cloud of energy deflecting any attempt to magically transport her or transport to her.
A law priest of Ael-meseth would have been able to project a field of pure, concentrated justice and banish the ward. A blessed trickster of Gedesar would have unknotted the essence that bound it together, rendering it useless.
A death priestess could have taken that magic and forged it into a bolt of lightning that charred the golem where it stood.
Desidora, love priestess of Tasheveth, could do none of that.
“If you will not tell me,” the golem said, holding up its hand again, “I will take the knowledge from your mind.” It stepped forward, the crystal in its palm flaring emerald as it closed upon Desidora’s head. “I apologize for any discomfort.”
“And you’re sure that Loch wanted us to go back this way?” Hessler whispered as he followed Tern back down the length of the car to the door where they’d come in.
Tern bit back a sigh. Hessler was an excellent wizard and a really nice boyfriend as well, but he was a recent arrival to the world of crime. “Yes, that was what that little gesture meant.”
“So she’s going to deal with . . . what’s the elf’s name, again?”
“Irrethel . . . something. Ethel.” Tern popped the lock on the door—she hadn’t had time to clear her crystals, so they were still tuned to open it—and stepped out of Hessler’s cloaking bubble and into the little tunnel between the two cars. “Hey, sorry about this,” she added as the dwarf standing guard in the tunnel turned toward them. Then she shot him with a wrist dart.
“Ethel?” Hessler asked as the dwarf grabbed at his shoulder, then sank to the ground unconscious.
“Damn it, that’s what Kail called him, and now it’s all I can think of.” Tern hauled the dwarf back into their car, then knelt by the ringmail mesh that protected the space between the cars from the cold night air.
“So Loch is going to deal with Ethel herself?”
Tern slid a wrench from her dress pocket and deftly popped off one of the bolts tying down the mesh. Cold wind immediately began whistling in through the hole. “That’s what that gesture meant, yeah. She’ll handle him, while we go around and get the elven manuscript from his car ourselves.”
“Hmm,” Hessler said as Tern popped off another bolt. “And you’re absolutely certain that she wanted us to go this way?”
Tern pulled back the mesh. The night outside was dark, the wind whipping past them as the dwarven train hummed along the tracks.
On the side of the car just beyond where the mesh had covered, handrails led to the top of the car.
“Oh, yeah,” Tern said, grinning. “This is absolutely what she meant.”
“See,” Hessler said as Tern started climbing, “the way you say that, you’re doing the same thing you do when you say that you remembered our plans to meet Desidora for dinner, even
though you’re wearing grubby, oil-stained clothes which you then immediately change out of.”
“Hey, sweetie, tip in case you wanted to get me out of those oil-stained clothes ever again?” Tern pulled herself up, the cold metal sharp on the palms of her hands, and peeked over the top. The wind stung her face and slid around her spectacles to half-blind her, but the moonlight shining silver on the back of the train was beautiful even with tears in her eyes. “No girl likes to hear her tells.” With her free hand, she popped a pair of protective goggles out of another dress pocket and slid them over her spectacles.
She pulled herself up onto the roof of the car. The stone was polished to limit wind resistance and felt slick beneath her boots, though handholds dotted the top of the car every few feet. Hessler pulled himself up behind her, grumbling.
“Besides,” she added, turning back to him so that her words weren’t lost in the constant wind, “you have to admit, this is pretty cool.”
“Yes, dear.” Hessler pulled himself onto the rooftop as well and stayed huddled in a low crouch.
“Haven’t you ever wanted to be on the top of one of these things?”
“I grew up on the far side of the Republic,” Hessler said, scuttling over a bit to glance down the side of the car. “I barely even knew this railway existed. Do you, um . . .?” Tern passed him another pair of protective goggles, and he slid them on. “Thank you. You are an excellent girlfriend with no tells.”
Tern grinned. “Come on. Ethel’s suite is in the car after this one.”
“Do we have a plan?” Hessler asked as Tern started walking. He came behind her, crouching and staying directly in the middle of the roof, despite the fact that the wind wasn’t that bad and the car wasn’t even rocking that much.
Tern smelled the cold night air. She had wanted to ride on the roof of one of these trains ever since she’d watched them hum by from the window of her study while she practiced her scales. Tonight, she was doing exactly that, with her wizard boyfriend—who admittedly wasn’t as into it as she was, and the chances that they were going to have sex on the rooftop were pretty low now that Tern realized how dangerous that might actually be—but still.
The Prophecy Con (Rogues of the Republic) Page 16