The Prophecy Con (Rogues of the Republic)

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The Prophecy Con (Rogues of the Republic) Page 21

by Weekes, Patrick


  “I wasn’t trying to.” Loch was half-seated, half lying on her back. She kept scooting backward as the daemon stepped forward. The dizziness was significantly worse now.

  But she smiled at the daemon, damned the pain from her eyes and let the little bit of Jyelle inside the monster see her confidence.

  It paused, just for a moment.

  But that was as long as Loch had needed.

  “I was trying to stall you,” Loch said as the train reached the tunnel.

  She rolled to her side and shut her eyes as the daemon slammed into the tunnel wall, and she felt a wave of heat as fire washed over her, along with a spray of stone and gravel. Even with her eyes closed, she could sense the close darkness of the tunnel, and the dizzying echo of the hum of the crystals bouncing off the walls and the ceiling just over her head.

  She opened her eyes when things stopped falling on her, and for a moment just lay there in darkness lit only by the railway below her, the red light shading the stone walls.

  Dimly, she saw that the daemon’s feet and ankles still lay on the rooftop. The rest of it was either smashed apart or lying on the tracks back at the tunnel’s entrance. Either way worked for Loch.

  She didn’t move—the ceiling was whizzing by closely enough for her to feel it passing like a near-miss from a crossbow, and she wasn’t sure how much she could move at this point. Eventually, the train came out of the tunnel and back into the moonlit night.

  And then from behind her, she heard Princess Veiled Lightning’s voice cut through the wind. “You’re a difficult woman to find, Isafesira de Lochenville.”

  Gart Utt’Krenner heard the Urujar woman bait the daemon out of the hallway into the elf’s car. A moment later, he heard the daemon tearing stone and crystal apart as it clambered out onto the roof.

  Gart pushed himself up to his knees, shaking his head. The daemon had been stronger than he had expected. It was sloppy on his part. He had never faced a daemon in combat. Had it been a troll, he would have been far more comfortable.

  “Book,” someone mumbled, and Gart looked up to see the elf, Irrethelathlialann, getting to his knees as well, groping on the ground blindly. “Where’s the book?”

  “Ye and the Urujar woman have caused a great deal of damage,” Gart said severely, grabbing his truncheon and getting back to his feet. “I intend to see that charges be brought against ye for both theft and damage to th’railway.”

  “That’s wonderful.” The elf showed no sign of the strange speech pattern he had demonstrated back in the museum. “We didn’t summon the daemon, though.”

  On the roof overhead, the stomping of footsteps marked the daemon heading back down toward the damaged and depowered car behind it.

  “Does Loch have the book?” the elf asked.

  “I not be knowing,” Gart said.

  The elf looked around. “She probably has the book.” He sighed, then picked up his rapier, wincing a little as he moved.

  Gart considered arresting the elf. Then he considered the daemon.

  Holding his truncheon ready, he gestured to the elf’s car. “Let us be going, then, Mister Irrethelathlialann.”

  The elf shot him an amused look. “Possessed of an indomitable need to fight daemons, are you?”

  Gart didn’t smile. “Ye both be under arrest, so I’m not letting ye out of my sight. And that daemon be needin’ banishin’.”

  He stalked into the elf’s room, which was little more than a platform with more than half the roof ripped away by this point. He gripped the crumbling rock to climb out and up onto the roof, then flinched back as the walls of the Stonebridge Tunnel whooshed past him. Out on the train, Gart believed he heard the crack of stone shattering, but he couldn’t be certain where.

  The elf chuckled. “Little close, there.”

  Gart waited in silence until they left the tunnel. Then he started climbing once more.

  And once more he froze, this time when he heard the Imperial woman speak.

  They were at the end of the car he was climbing out of, and as he watched, they leaped nimbly across the gap onto the car with the bar. There were three of them, just like at the museum—the figure in the green ringmail, the bodyguard with the ax, and the unarmed woman who had blasted Gart across the room.

  “We have crossed the Republic to find you,” the Imperial woman said.

  “I’ve got the book.” Loch, who was lying on the depowered car, held up the elven manuscript in the hand not holding the Imperial sword. She had not yet risen to her feet, and while the moonlit night made it difficult to tell, Gart believed that she was bleeding heavily.

  “The book is nothing,” the bodyguard said. “We came for you, Urujar scum.”

  “The book can stop this war!” Loch called back.

  The bodyguard laughed. “Then we will pry it from your—”

  “Wait.” The Imperial woman raised a hand. “You will hand the book over voluntarily?”

  “Will you turn yourselves in for the murder of the justicar, the clerk, and the sailors in Ros-Oanki?” Loch asked. “He died right after pointing my team at Ajeveth.”

  “Irrelevant,” the bodyguard said.

  “What?” The Imperial woman said at the same time. “We killed no one. Thunder—”

  “All that matters right now is taking her down, Veil,” the bodyguard cut in.

  “What matters is the book,” she replied with anger in her voice.

  “I don’t know why it’s so damn important,” Loch said, and her voice was shaky. “Everyone seems to want it—you, the elves, the golems of the ancients up on Heaven’s Spire—”

  “Kutesosh gajair’is!” the bodyguard’s ax called out, and the bodyguard lunged forward, vaulting across the gap and coming down ax-first.

  Loch had not been as helpless as she had seemed. She rolled to the side, and the ax clove through the stone roof as though it were cheap pine.

  Gart had decided to move, but to his surprise, Irrethelathlialann was even faster. The elf darted past Gart onto the rooftop, his wood-bladed rapier out and ready. “Stop them!”

  The Imperial woman and the figure in the ringmail turned at his hissed order, and the figure in the ringmail raised a spear that crackled with energy, but Irrethelathlialann never stopped moving. He stabbed at the armored figure, forcing a parry, then leaped up, kicking off the raised spear and flipping over the figure to come down yards away on the other side.

  Gart lumbered forward as well. “All of ye, weapons down!” he yelled. Even the most unruly of dwarves would have at least acknowledged the order, if not followed it. He did not wish to sound racist, but non-dwarves were often very uncivilized.

  The Imperial woman turned, surprised, and her hands crackled with lightning as she turned to him.

  “Nae this time,” Gart said, twisting a lever on his truncheon. As the woman moved his way, water sprayed out from the base of the truncheon, a short blast that soaked the Imperial woman.

  She stumbled back, cursing in pain as lightning crackled back across her body, then fell from the roof out into the night.

  Gart ignored her and kept moving. The figure in the ringmail was chasing Irrethelathlialann, who was somehow managing to fence with the armored figure while still running back toward the depowered car where Loch and the bodyguard fought.

  That fight was going to be short, though. Loch swung her blade, and the ax swept up to knock it aside with contemptuous ease. Loch herself was barely on her feet, the arm holding the book tucked in at her side to press against her wound.

  The depowered car banged freely on the rails now. It had taken too much damage, and each jolt rattled through the entire train. The car half torn apart by the daemon wasn’t much better.

  The elf took a shuffle-step to ready himself for the jump across the gap to Loch’s car, then sidestepped, blindly dodging the spear that would
have punched through his back. “Stop,” the ringmailed figure said in a woman’s voice, and the elf stumbled back, blinking.

  “Ye help Loch,” Gart muttered, slamming into the ringmailed woman from behind and sending her stumbling. “I’ll deal wi’ this.”

  Irrethelathlialann clutched both hands to his blade, and seemed to come back to himself. “Momentary distraction is sufficient,” he said, apparently to himself, and leaped across the gap between the cars.

  Gart had no time to see how the elf fared. He flicked a switch on his truncheon, and waded in against the armored woman. “Yer magic be no good to ye here,” he growled, and swung. The head of his weapon glowed, and it struck sparks from the woman’s spear when she blocked it. She was stronger than she looked, though, and her counterattack had him parrying and giving ground.

  “Fine weapon,” he muttered, trying to place it. He had seen it in the museums, or one like it. Magical spears carried by the golems that served the ancients. “Did ye steal that, too?”

  She didn’t answer, but thrust at him again, and he blocked it, stepped in, and struck a blow that sent her reeling. “Weapon or no, ye still be no match for dwarven strength!” His next blow caught her on the side, and his next one after that brought her to her knees.

  Gart raised his truncheon, and the woman looked up at him, and somehow, even through the helmet, he could feel the weight of her gaze.

  “No weapon,” she said, and the words reached into Gart’s head and twisted something loose, and his truncheon slipped from his grasp and clattered to the roof. Magic, he realized, even as he lunged forward, slammed a knee into the woman’s helmet, and then followed with a punch.

  She fell back, and he moved in, trying to keep blows raining on that helmet, and the face beneath it.

  “Be still,” she said, and Gart froze as the words twisted around his spirit.

  It was as though his muscles were locked in place, and he yanked on his own bones, trying to move.

  “Yer dwarven strength be no good,” she said, and he slithered to the ground bonelessly as his muscles went limp.

  She got back to her feet, adjusted her helmet, and raised her spear.

  Gart stared up at her. He couldn’t speak.

  “You’re fortunate I don’t have time to make this interesting,” the woman said.

  As her spear stabbed down, Gart’s last thought was for his wife and children.

  Loch watched Gentle Thunder raise Arikayurichi, his magical ax, yet again, knowing that there wasn’t much she could do to stop it this time.

  She was on her feet, and that was something, but it wasn’t enough, not against an ax enchanted by the ancients or, like Desidora’s Ghylspwr, actually containing the soul of an ancient.

  “Could you at least tell me what these rings are for?” she asked, spinning the blade of her stolen sword.

  Gentle Thunder didn’t take the bait, and as he swung, Loch dove to the side. The rattling car jolted as she moved, and she fell instead of landing on her feet, but Gentle Thunder’s blow went wide as well, crashing through the roof again.

  This time, the whole roof collapsed, and when Loch tried to stand, she slid instead, and then held her side tight and tried to roll with it . . . and it still ended up hurting like hell anyway.

  She lay in the rubble, coughing. Dust from the shattered stone choking her lungs and gumming up her eyes.

  When she forced them open, Gentle Thunder stood over her, Arikayurichi coming up again.

  As she met his stare, a ruby-red wooden blade glanced off his dragon-faced helmet, causing the warrior to stumble to the side, crashing into an already-collapsing wall.

  “Intelligent artifact significantly too powerful to overcome,” Irrethelathlialann said as he landed beside Loch, “hence targeting wielder as point of vulnerability.” He rubbed his hands together and shook his head. “Don’t mind me. Just here for my book.”

  “Your book?” She blocked his grab and slammed the pommel of her blade into his wrist.

  He snatched his hand back and glared at her. “Yes, it’s hardly called the Urujar manuscript, now, is it?”

  “Kutesosh gajair’is!” Gentle Thunder’s ax yelled as he roared back toward them.

  “Probably too much to hope he was out,” she muttered. “Come on.”

  Loch swung high, the elf went low, and both of them moved out of the way of Gentle Thunder, sidestepping his charge.

  Arikayurichi caught Loch’s blow, while the elf’s blow glanced off armor. Irrethelathlialann spun away from a counterattack, nearly running into Loch as he slipped in the rubble.

  Yet he grinned as he danced away, and Loch saw that he was holding the damn book again.

  Gentle Thunder turned back toward Loch. “You cannot stand against me. I wield the Bringer of Order, the weapon whose strength has defended the Empire for dynasties.”

  The other wall of the car crumbled and fell away as he spoke, leaving them standing in the ruins of the economy car with a clear night sky overhead. With a few swings of his ax, Gentle Thunder had destroyed the entire structure.

  Loch thought about that for a moment. Then she glanced over at Irrethelathlialann.

  “Oh, my, yes,” the elf murmured. Then he glanced down at the book, looking puzzled for some reason, and then back at Loch.

  She ignored him, keeping her eyes on the Imperial bodyguard. “You keep saying I can’t stand against you, Gentle Thunder,” Loch said, “but I’ve gone up against you a few times now, and each time, I’ve accomplished what I intended to do, and you have not.” Deliberately, she pulled her hand away from her wounded side and held her sword in a two-handed grip. “Now, are you going to test Arikayurichi against the blade I took off your little princess or not?”

  Gentle Thunder came at her fast, and she spun her blade. The red silk scarf flared out at eye level, and Gentle Thunder chopped down.

  There was no way Loch could have blocked that blow, even with a two-handed grip.

  Fortunately for her, she had stepped past Gentle Thunder as he swung, hiding the move behind a flair of red silk.

  She dove for the front of the car as Gentle Thunder’s blow crashed into the floor, and then through it. She heard the crack of stone, the shriek of metal, and the keen of crystal all breaking beneath the blow, and then the impact flung her to the stone floor. She scrambled forward, the elf landing beside her. Stone crumbled behind her, glowlamps popping like glass bubbles and magical energy flaring wildly, and both of them lunged to the little platform separating what had once been her car from the car in front of it.

  Behind them, the remains of the economy car came apart in a jagged spray of stone and metal and crystal, and Gentle Thunder fell away into the night as the back half of the train shrieked slowly to a halt on the railway.

  Loch lay there for a moment, just clinging to the platform. Apparently that was all her body was going to let her do, because she tried to move and found that whatever surge of strength had gotten her back on her feet was gone. She bounced freely on the platform with each jostling movement of the little bit of the car that was still connected.

  “You are insane,” Irrethelathlialann gasped, crawling past her to back of the next car. “And clearly done for the evening. Well, then. Pleasant to see you again.” He got back to his feet, climbed nimbly back onto the roof, and was lost from view.

  Loch rolled over.

  The book she’d lifted from Irrethelathlialann—for what seemed the twentieth time—during their mad scramble lay on the floor beneath her.

  She lay there, unmoving, ignoring the cold and the pain for the simple pleasure of not moving.

  A few moments later, a grappling line clanked off the platform, then caught on a handgrip. Loch hadn’t realized that her eyes had been shut. She opened them and saw her airship hovering beside the car. Distant figures waved to her in the night.

 
She hooked herself in, grabbed the book, belted her sword, and signaled.

  As they lifted her from the platform, she saw Irrethelathlialann fighting the Imperial Hunter atop the car. The elf wasn’t dead yet, but he was parrying desperately, his blade no match for the glowing spear.

  Loch fumbled at her waist and drew out the nice dagger she’d gotten from the elf’s room earlier. She squinted, adjusting her aim as she swayed, and then threw.

  She was good, but not that good, which was a shame, because throwing a knife accurately while dangling from a line with some blood loss thrown in for good measure would have been good for bragging rights. The knife spun through the air, sailed past the Hunter, and clattered on the rooftop near Irrethelathlialann’s feet.

  The Hunter looked back over her shoulder, as was only natural given that a knife had just sailed past her, and that at least gave the elf the moment he needed. He rolled away, coming up with the knife in his free hand, and then spun past the Hunter, tossing Loch a lazy salute as he sprinted away.

  “It was pretty close,” Loch mumbled, and then the grappling line turned, and she lost sight of the elf fleeing into the night.

  She focused on just holding on as the grappling line winched her up, staring at the passing countryside. Behind her on the track, the back half of the train had finally come to a halt, train cars all askew along the tracks like a child’s scattered blocks.

  Sometime later—time blurred along with her vision—they hauled her up to the ship. The glowlamps hurt her eyes after so long in the dark, but they were welcome nevertheless.

  Tern lay on the deck, unmoving, her shoulder wrapped in a red-soaked bandage. Hessler, his head bandaged as well, sat beside her, barely looking in Loch’s direction. Icy and Kail’s hands were warm and gentle as they lowered her to the deck.

  “Captain?” Kail’s voice was strained. “Captain, you don’t look so good.”

  “S’okay,” Loch said, and her voice sounded distant even to her. “I got the book.” She held it up, and Kail took it away and tossed it aside.

 

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