by Ada Harper
There was a pause. “Affirmative.”
He could have just said “yes.” Lady save us from military brats. This was why Lyre never liked working with the knightsguard. And never recruited scouts from the army. “Good. Here’s what I’m thinking: we hang around for the explosion.”
“The. What?” Alais asked.
Lyre ignored the tone of quiet horror and resignation in that. She was used to hearing it. “Or whatever tipping point reaction happens when the creepers do their thing.”
“Sir...” Kitra started. Lyre’s toes were going fully numb now. She’d have to worry about frostbite soon. It made her ill inclined to humor those who couldn’t keep up.
“They track heat, kid, and if we sabotage the moss—”
“A rapid outburst of heat would blind them. Momentarily.” Cian almost sounded intrigued. Lyre felt a charity for him simply by virtue that she didn’t have to explain.
“Exactly. That’s when we run. Vault typically harnesses these critters with a targeted search range. Won’t take long to outrun them.”
“Won’t take long for the explosion to outrun us, either,” Alais noted.
“Do it.”
Lyre turned to look at Sabine. Her voice had that brutal edge every ruler had to cultivate at one point or another. Her fingers wound carefully through Goji’s flowers, just this side of bruising the petals. The wolf didn’t seem to mind.
“Sabs, we do this, not everyone may—”
“I gave you an order, Lyre.”
Her voice had the effect of a flat blade raked, cold and controlled, over skin. Gooseflesh rose on Lyre’s neck and she wasn’t quite sure if her first impulse was to salute or kneel at her feet. Anything, anything, a quiet voice at the back of Lyre’s mind whined. But that was never going to happen, and never was even farther away than it had been before.
Gods. Lyre was fucked.
So instead she licked her lips and nodded. “Here’s how we’re timing this, kiddos.”
* * *
Dropping the creepers into the moss was like a spark of wildfire.
A natural invasive species would have acted like a plague. So slow moving as to be unnoticeable at first, then devastating an ecosystem from the inside. But the creeper vines were not designed to act like a mere invasive species. The creepers were a sentient recycling system. Weaponized predators. The moment it landed amid the moss, its roots writhed, stabbing tendrils through moss beds like stakes, securing purchase. That was when the real violence began. New buds sprouted on the vines, faster than one would have thought biologically possible. Vines bulged and webbed out, driven by the nanotech in their cells to break down viable organic matter and digest it for the good of the flotilla. It didn’t take long to notice how the moss was left alone but began to slowly deflate as the vines infested and nibbled on the lichen supporting the moss from beneath. Given the chance, the vines would reconnect with the larger network twined across the underworks, delivering its finds back to a central processor.
These wouldn’t get that chance. The air had already begun to warm as the moss deflated, struggling to find balance with its support gone. It had plenty of food in the rising heat, but no way to keep its own cool barrier up. The air shifted, and a low vibration began that rumbled the joints where the shell met engine pipes.
“It’s going to shake the nautilus loose,” Sabine murmured. At some point her hand had found Lyre’s, and she clung to it with a surprising strength. Lyre tapped her knuckles until she loosened up.
“No. The shell’s Vault-made too. Considering how important the engines are, it probably doubles as a shield. It’s probably one of the most unbreakable materials on the flotilla.”
“So when the air expands...” Alais prompted on the comms.
The air was tightening, pressing on Lyre’s skin. The moss had begun to shrivel closest to the pipes. “Yup. Probably a good time to start running, kids. Right about...”
The engine began to shriek. A patch of black fuzz sparked and caught fire.
“...now.”
Chapter Nineteen
This time it was Lyre who clamped down on Sabine’s hand, painfully tight. Sabine didn’t have time to protest. She was yanked into motion as Lyre hurtled out of the nautilus, a death grip on her hand. The outside was shockingly cool compared to the sudden heat that swelled from the engine core. Cool, and dark. Something large rumbled to their right. A flare of heat and a scream like sheared metal started behind them, as the engine gave way but the shell core, miraculously, held. Then light and pressure—oh gods the pressure, as if a giant had had chased them out of the nautilus shell and slapped their spines.
Sabine lost contact with the ground. Her only anchor was Lyre’s palm, and she seized it tight. The darkness reached out for them. More terrifying was the flicker of movement. It wasn’t light, not precisely. A spot where the dark seemed to wear a bit thin.
Lyre’s hand spasmed and yanked. Sabine felt herself pivoting. When they hit the ground, Lyre’s arms tightened and Sabine folded into her chest instead. Warm and safe and terrifying.
She had no time to process it. Lyre had her up on their feet and they were running headlong into the dark. Sabine had never been fond of the dark, the unknown. It was why Lyre had always been so reassuring—she acted as if she knew everything.
Lyre was running into the dark just like her.
But Sabine had begun to know the dark.
That was what prompted it. A protective urge, searing into Sabine’s chest. To know, to know something. She looked behind her, but not with her eye. With her ears, and the soles of her feet, and the something-extra tremor that nanites left in her veins.
The world lit up, a jumble of not-quite visual inputs. Vibrations everywhere, a barely sensed fine lacework of plants and slime growing along the pipes. Goji was a huffing plume of sweet violets racing beside her. Lyre a well of negative space, dark and warm, not letting go of her hand.
A roar, a crash. Sabine looked past them.
And then wished she hadn’t.
Streams of nanite connections banked in the air, like a wheeling mass of invisible blackbirds. Sabine couldn’t see the leaf and flesh that connected it, but it was fast. And grotesque. She heard the shiver of thick green things, the oily plop of drool hitting the floor, smelled the fetid tang of its breath. And felt the rise of movement when it lunged and leaped.
Sabine acted on instinct. She whirled, shoving both of them off the core catwalk a moment before teeth and muscle hurtled through them. A breathless curse escaped Lyre but Sabine had barely hit the half-flooded ground below before Lyre was yanking her up again. They pelted through ankle-deep water toward a different tunnel. A low growl from Goji said they hadn’t shaken their hunter yet.
“Minister!” Kitra’s voice was sharp and alarmed, even over the static.
Sabine’s reaction was to pause but Lyre didn’t let her stop running. “What’s happening?”
“He’s doubling back. Minister!”
“Dammit,” Lyre growled. “Kitra, don’t lose the idiot.”
Kitra called after him. The comms filled with the scraping noise of flight and chase. It was obvious the Syndicate man wasn’t slowing.
“Cian,” Sabine said. It was a name, when she’d refused to ever use anything but his title, and that seemed enough to do the trick.
“File corruption in archives. Release emergency craft dock.” Cian’s voice was clipped, calm even as the sound of screeching metal ate his words. A thunk, like locks engaging. Then pounding. “This terminal should prove sufficient.”
There was a juncture up ahead. A scraping behind said something large was still in pursuit. Lyre growled and pulled Sabine down a cutaway that felt like it doubled back. “We’re off plan, you bloodless Syn idiot. Get back to Kitra and regroup before—”
“Terminal access includes environmental controls.
Excellent. Raising sector air temperature to approximate body heat.”
Lyre faltered in mid-run, tilting her head as if that would make the words coming through the static make more sense. “That will slow down the hunter.”
“Yes. Shame this terminal only controls this sector. No assistance for you and the empress. Suggest action to find somewhere cold.”
“He’s helping.” The realization was out of Sabine’s mouth before she could contain the surprise.
“He’s being an idiot. You might blind the hunter but Sylvere will take one look at the reading and know someone’s in the terminal, fucking around. He’s going to send something much worse if you don’t get out of there now.”
“That’s the trouble with zero axis systems.” Cian sounded distracted, humming under his breath. “AI response to unauthorized access requires live seeding of code. I should know. I wrote the system.”
“You—you authored zero axis?” Lyre sounded like she’d swallowed a frog, so it must be significant. All Sabine knew was that zero axis was the technical specs listed on easily three-fourths of the systems in the Empire and beyond. Lyre shook her head.
They came to an inclined heap of twisted metal and vine. Goji vaulted up easily and crouched at the top. There was just enough room at the ceiling to squeeze through—and not enough for the hunter to follow. Hopefully.
Lyre started shoving Sabine up it. “If you don’t get out of—”
“Ambient temperature reached,” Cian cut in. “I’ve detected a port opening and new security signs approaching the sector. Suggest you order Ser Knightguard to be running now.”
“The emergency craft, you can make it—”
“Live seeding,” Cian reminded. A rueful note slipped into his robotic calm, and morphed into something almost pleased. “A bit like playing a game of hist with myself, actually. A most worthy opponent. Should be enthralling.”
He wasn’t just covering Kitra’s escape—he was purposefully drawing Sylvere’s attention. Lyre cursed and began muttering orders to Kitra. Sabine’s breath caught and she stopped midway up. “Cian—”
“Sabine.” Cian paused. “You have also been a worthy opponent.”
A worthy opponent. At the end of their very awkward first meeting, Cian had looked her in the eyes as if she’d earned his attention. She had marked the moment. Sabine was the empress of the Quillian Empire, even in a room of leaders she wasn’t accustomed to having equals. Let alone allies. That’s what Cian, in his own odd way, had offered. They could have forged a peace, perhaps even a friendship. Her throat constricted. It was a tender feeling, like a bud finally opening just to be ripped out by the roots.
“I would much like the opportunity to play again.” Sabine took a deep breath. Not really wanting to venture what she had to say next. “If Sylvere succeeds in causing military conflict between our countries—”
“Sylvere...” There was a distant alarm. The bestial noises coming over the comm were replaced by large mechanical thumps. Something had zeroed in on Cian’s location. Something new. Cian hummed to himself. “...is not a worthy opponent. The Syndicate will not be going to war because of me.”
A blast, then a screech deafened the comm. It was easy to miss the sigh, just a slip of air. “Consider this line compromised. Cian out.”
Sabine’s breath sounded loud in the ensuing pause. The comm went dead, and in her mind’s eye Sabine could see it. The tear of metal, the capture, the knowledge of future suffering. She was direly familiar with that kind of dread, the helplessness. Only she had hope to hold on to, hope of rescue, hope that someone was coming. That Lyre would come. Cian, assuming he even survived capture, would have none of it. He knew he would die when he gave himself up to provide cover for the rest of them. She half fell to her knees in the rubble, all the adrenaline left her.
It was happening. It was happening all over again. Sabine commanded armies, wielded dynasties. But she still couldn’t do something as simple as keep people from slipping out of her hands. From sliding between her and a blade. Now even her gods damned enemies were doing it. It wasn’t fair. She couldn’t hold a grudge against the dead. Instead she felt gratitude. And the unworthiness. The guilt. That was the part of being a monarch that Sabine never could tolerate. A cauldron of emotions flooded and froze in her veins.
Lyre nudged her foot. Sabine didn’t move. Finally, a quick kind of shuffling came as Lyre squeezed up the climb beside her.
“Sabine. Up. Get up. Keep moving.” Lyre’s breath was on her cheek. Sabine felt herself sway, lean into the warmth. Lyre’s hand touched her hip. She wished it could stay. She knew it couldn’t. All the power in the world and Sabine could never make good things stay.
“Yes,” Sabine whispered and resumed climbing until she squeezed through the space at the top. The sound of pursuit was distant, but ever present. The hunter wasn’t giving up. Lyre steadied her as they climbed, hunted by the heat between their pressed hands.
Chapter Twenty
It was a plan composed between breathless dashes and close calls. Alais was the closest and would retrieve Kitra, who was only responding with haunted one-word answers after losing Cian. No one could know what Sylvere would do with him, but none of it would be pretty. The Syndicate Prime Minister would die on the Vault, and the rest of them would join him if they didn’t keep moving.
So that was what they did. In theory Lyre and Sabine were going to lose the hunter and recon the nearest core to the emergency shuttles. The cold would give them camouflage from any new predators until they regrouped.
In practicality, it was less recon and more fleeing for their lives, but shit, that was the way of it. Those kind of details were always left out of the history books.
The hunter hadn’t let up until they crossed into this new section. Lyre thought it was gone for good by the way Goji’s ears had relaxed, but she wasn’t willing to bet Sabine’s safety on a plant’s instincts. She rushed them into the temporary safety of the cold core nautilus.
This core was tidier. Less overgrown than the one they’d just left. The one they’d just destroyed. If the engine was working harder to compensate for its lost siblings, it didn’t show it aside from the low emergency lights. Pale cornflower light dribbled from along its heat vents, drowning the black moss and ancient pipes in a strange kind of twilight. It would have almost been relaxing if the dual layer of air wasn’t still there. Lyre’s head sweated while her feet froze.
Which was probably for the best. The Cloud Vault underworks was not a place to pick through barefoot. Lyre was certain if she bothered to wipe away the caked mud on her right foot she’d find where a nib of rusted metal had taken residence in her heel, but that would only worry Sabine. It could wait. For later.
For the first time in her life, Lyre’s clockwork, strategic mind was coming up empty on what “later” looked like.
Lyre wasn’t like many in her line of work, feeling exhilarated by the risk. You needed a touch of that, doing spy craft, but you also needed a mechanical mind, able to emotionlessly turn very human things like fear and love and jealousy into ever-evolving cogs and see how they’d turn the works down the line. That was what Lyre had always been good at. Fear and thrills were for other people. And if she felt a tug in her chest, a thread of something that stung hot and seared soft and felt like a door to home, well... She left that bit out of her clockwork.
But nothing was connected now. All the cogs were ajar, jumbled and lifeless on the floor like discarded toys. Nothing she could build a plan with. Not when they were here, where she’d never wanted to come again. Not when Sabine looked at her with those bleeding eyes. Eyes that knew, that knew and knew and knew. That didn’t see her as the supernaturally all-knowing spymaster, as the clever loyal friend, the one-time lover, the what-if.
When Sabine looked at her now, it felt as though she could see the dirt under her nails. The dust-smeared kid climbing out
of an air duct, drawn too much by her own curiosity to not get tangled in the intelligence games of the Vault and all it had to offer. The girl she made herself, of lies and diversions and found skills and other pretty things.
What Sabine saw screamed at Lyre now, and the echo brought all her plans to a jarring halt: The Liar, not the Lyre.
Yeah, maybe that’s what she’d always been, but Lyre had liked letting her lie and say she wasn’t. No one thought about the lies Liars needed to hear.
“Stop that shivering.” Sabine’s frown stirred Lyre from her thoughts. She’d taken a quick account of the engine core and identified a cluster of pipes that promised the most warmth. She’d ripped up some of the moss. It wouldn’t do much to increase the heat in the core, but it did provide a soft seat one could sit on without risk of frostbite. Sabine’s impeccable hands were stained faintly with inky black-green, and Lyre found her gaze stuck on them.
Sabine’s fingertip rubbed thoughtfully against her thumb. “I know better than to offer your coat back,” she said ruefully. She had Lyre’s jacket clutched around her shoulders. She was taller, long and lithe, but Lyre was broader, thicker in the chest and arms. It made her coat fit Sabine a bit like a soggy wrapper, but it added a layer of warmth to her stained silks. “So get over here and sit.”
“Yes, Your Highness,” Lyre muttered. Her voice was a little hollower than it should be, but Sabine didn’t appear to notice as Lyre dropped to her knees beside her. Goji flopped like a great leafy ottoman on Sabine’s other side. Between them and the door. The stupid dog was acting noble now. That was definitely Sabine’s fault.
The pipes at their backs provided warmth, even if it didn’t seep past their shoulders. Lyre’s bare toes rasped against the metal. She hadn’t felt her little toe for a while now. She should probably do something about that at some point.