A Treason of Truths

by Ada Harper

  “No.” Khait’s profile was cut with shadows in the throbbing emergency lights. Flashing light to dark, grim to grieving. “I still need to find Mi—Dr. Sylvere.”

  Part of Lyre wanted to find him, too, if only to have the pleasure of kicking him off the flotilla herself. But being a spy meant so often she didn’t get the satisfaction of confrontation. Being a spy meant patience. And now that she was the key to reversing the nano-infection, she only wanted to get back to Sabine. As quickly as possible. “That’s a mistake.”

  Khait smiled, and it was an unnatural shift, soft and knowing on a stoic face. “I know.”

  Ah. She knew that look. She felt that look.

  “Bonded idiots,” Lyre muttered. As if she had any room to talk. She sighed and prepared to reclaim Cian’s full weight for a run. “If you’re determined to keep your boyfriend from—”

  “He’s not mine.”

  “If you’re determined to keep him from becoming a mass murderer—” Lyre arched a brow “—you need to evacuate this madhouse before it descends too low to get people off.”

  Khait gave an offended huff and swiped the door open. “Already underway.”

  The hallway was transformed from the orderly maze Lyre stealthed through earlier. The noise was tremendous with the door open. Sirens screamed. An AI voice instructed evacuation routes over the ominous rumble of metal. The hall was choked with lab techs, arms full of data sheets and sample containers. A flurry of white lab coats. To the lifeboats. Women, children, and proprietary intellectual research first.

  “Pfft. Scientists,” Lyre said.

  “The members of your staff who didn’t follow you into the sewer were on the first shuttle out. Hurry.” Khait glanced at the data on his slate. “I’ve been running countermeasures on the engines to keep them running, but Micha was always better at this. You’ve got maybe thirty minutes before this whole city loses its fight with gravity.”

  Lyre didn’t need to be told twice. A path opened in the stream of people, and she took it, pulling Cian along with her. She felt the weight of Khait’s eyes on them, regretful and stoic, until they were lost in the crowd.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Cian was a long, lanky bastard. Lyre ended up hefting him into a fireman carry, and his legs still almost caught as she hurtled down the stairs to the west end. There was a little-used shuttle bay attached to the research lab. Little used because, on principle, most of the researchers preferred paying for samples to be brought to them rather than leave the cocoon of the Vault themselves.

  With the entire Vault evacuating, every shuttle would be in demand, but if Khait was right, maybe, just maybe, the disused research shuttle had been overlooked. Good. Lyre did not have the time to commandeer a shuttle full of panicking science nerds.

  Cian was too quiet during their headlong run. He didn’t even protest when Lyre manhandled him through a hatch. Her hands were sticky and her shoulder wet where he was slung. It would have worried her, but bleeding to death didn’t matter if they didn’t make it to the shuttle.

  The hallway spilled out into permacrete. Crates of disused equipment lined the door—the research lab was nothing if not well funded—which obstructed her view. When Lyre finally caught sight of the shuttle, her hopes fell. “Shit.”

  The shuttle had not been commandeered. It was as Khait had said. The locks all were disengaged. The loading door open and waiting for them. It would have been the perfect escape.

  If the front end of the craft hadn’t been missing.

  The destabilizing of the flotilla, which had been merely alarming when rocking and groaning inside, had been amplified on the city surface. Giant crates and cargo containers had snapped free of their stacks and careened into scaffolding. Which had in turn landed, like a brick on bread, neatly across the cockpit of the shuttle. Sparks and small fires sputtered between twisted permasteel. The gods had a nasty sense of humor. Even Lyre couldn’t fly scrap metal.

  “Oh.” Cian was back with her again. His head lolled under her arm from his upside-down position to take in the slag heap. His cheeks were drawn, his voice slurred lazily. “Probability issa bitch.”

  Somehow, he was more likable with blood loss. Lyre gingerly righted him and guided him to collapse in the shelter of one of the crates. “Don’t fold on me. We’re not dead yet.”

  Lyre approached the wreckage warily and gauged her options. The rest of the shuttles would be on the main docks, loading with evacuees. That was on the other side of the flotilla. Alone, she might have raced through the chaos and barely—maybe—made it in time. Doing just that was a tempting thought, made more tempting by the prospect of seeing Sabine again. But that would mean leaving Cian behind. If the Syndicate Prime Minister died in a mysterious crash—a terrorist attack, Khait had said—while the Quillian Empress mysteriously escaped, it would only increase suspicion. Hostility. Grease the wheels that seemed so determined to turn over a war.

  Sabine was barely keeping a rein on her senate as it was.

  So instead of running, Lyre squeezed into the wreckage of the shuttle. Stamped out stray wires sparking fire. And hoped the gods weren’t total bastards.

  The wreckage had bisected the shuttle, and the door to the supply locker was hanging off its hinge. Lyre kicked it open, knowing better than to touch heat-glazed metal with her bare hands. Inside sat a shred of burst bundles and torn bags. And buried at the bottom was one untouched silver backpack.

  Just one. That was a damn shame.

  Lyre grabbed it and returned to where she’d left Cian. He fumbled into the straps with her help. The air was getting warmer. Worrisome, because that meant the Vault was obviously descending. Lyre had no sure way of gauging the altitude. It might be too low for a chute to deploy at this point.

  Only one way to see.

  “You’ve got some kinda beacon to summon help when you hit the ground.” Lyre clicked her tongue when Cian made a protesting sound. “I know you do. Just wait until this thing goes boom to turn it on. By then, there will be too many aid craft swarming the place for anyone but your own people to come after you.”

  “Unsubstantiated conclusion based on incomplete data.” Cian had a bit of color back in his cheeks. The blood on his chin had dried. Good, that was good. Perhaps he’d survive a controlled collision with the ground after all. He didn’t precisely look at her but frowned somewhere in the vicinity of her shoulder. “Your methods lack logic.”

  “If that’s your weird robot way of saying thank-you, cut it out.” The ground jolted again, sending a vibration of nerves up her spine that Lyre quickly clamped down. She pulled Cian to his feet. The sheer drop of the floating platform was a step away. The wind had picked up with their descent, tugging at their clothes with icy fingers. “I’m only doing this so you owe me a favor.”

  “A favor?”

  “Visit Sabine. A diplomatic event. A state visit. A chance happening. I don’t care how you explain it. Get close enough to disable the nano-agent with yours. Either of us could do it.” Lyre pursed her lips with an afterthought. “Khait said it only took proximity, so no getting handsy.”

  “Noted.” Cian didn’t ask, didn’t pry, didn’t try to convince her otherwise. She almost was grateful to him for that.

  “Say you’ll do it.” Lyre didn’t ask for a promise. She knew the Syndicate view of promises was of the flexible kind. “One hundred percent probability.”

  Cian must have been on the mend, because he made a clicking noise. “No occurrence is one hundred percent—”

  “This one is.”

  Cian’s lips fluttered and flattened into something approaching his normal level of confoundment. “I can presume ninety-nine percent probability. Assuming optimal conditions in the favor.”

  Lyre sighed. She’d have to take it. The air was getting thicker, warmer. The flotilla jolted, sending both of them reeling. Lyre caught Cian by his jacke
t to keep him from slipping over the edge. “One more thing. Tell Sabine—Tell Sabs. I tried. I didn’t give up on her. Tell her I’m sorry and—I tried.”

  Cian’s lips parted around a word. A wide-eyed response. And Lyre let go of his jacket.

  Cian’s arms wheeled, and he was so lanky and storklike that for a moment Lyre thought it might right him. But a sheer of wind caught his jacket, and he folded over the side of the flotilla.

  Lyre leaned out as far as she dared. The chutes were self-initializing. As soon as it sensed he was at correct altitude and clear of obstacles, it deployed. A mushroom of silver gray—a mottled camouflage that worked well against the clouds—bloomed and slowed his fall. The wind caught it and the chute began to drift away from the Vault to the coastal grasses below.

  The coastal grasses which were getting closer by the minute. Lady’s tits. Khait’s countermeasures were failing rapidly.

  And Lyre was out of escape plans. Well. More precisely she’d just kicked her last escape plan over the edge of the city. She could scramble, spend the time she had to try to find another option off the flotilla. There might be a parachute somewhere, a glider, something. But if she failed, she’d be caught out in the crash and her body pulverized beyond recovery.

  Escape wasn’t the plan now. Capturing Sylvere wasn’t the plan now. She couldn’t even say survival was what she’d call a viable plan now, but she had a specific kind of survival in mind.

  Ninety-nine percent, Cian had said. Good odds, but Lyre didn’t trust Sabine’s welfare to anyone’s odds. The love of her life was a sure thing, and a sure thing only. If Cian failed to follow through—or got recaptured, or killed, or eaten by a wraicath—then it was Lyre’s job to have a backup plan to cure Sabine. The nanites in her blood could do it.

  Her blood still continuing to pump was optional.

  Nanites could survive in a corpse for three days before dying off. Lyre knew Sabine. Knew her stubbornness like her own heartbeat. Even if Lyre didn’t make it off the flotilla, Sabine would insist on a proper burial. Lyre could still deliver the disabling nano agent to Sabine. Provided her corpse didn’t get pulverized in the crash. She could try for an uncertain survival, but a certain death was what provided the best odds for Sabine.

  Personally, Lyre preferred the kiss plan. Shame that hadn’t worked out. Missed opportunity there.

  Lyre ran through the research labs. They were practical ghost towns now. Khait had done his job with a proper evacuation. Lyre had the run of the whole topside Cloud Vault. She could have stolen every secret they had, if she’d wanted. If she’d had time.

  Lyre veered left at the lifts and found the access panel she’d come up from. If anything, the crumbling infrastructure had made the underworks smell worse. Not precisely the most pleasant coffin she could have picked, but she had a destination in mind.

  The underworks was a mess. It was easy to swiftly identify what had caused the groaning and shuddering of the topside. The flotilla was twisting, blooming and tearing apart like a paper rose. Ancient tech, modern glue. Neither was surviving the controlled crash.

  Joints were twisting and giving way under the strain. Old iron tore apart and sunlight pierced through, half blinding Lyre. The pipes ruptured and split beneath her feet. She couldn’t stop her forward momentum. Had to keep going, had to make it. So, eyes closed, fate sealed, she leaped. Thousands of feet below, the world spun beneath her toes until she landed, hard and airless, on the solid dark of the other side.

  She kept running. Ancient pipes cluttered the tunnels at angles, weeping the viscous organic sludge that was the lifeblood of the Vault. Lyre waded through it. It couldn’t be worse than the dirt, mold, and contaminated blood already caking her.

  She didn’t mind being dirty. Sometimes she felt like she’d always been dirty.

  * * *

  She found the cold core intact, at least.

  Steel roiled underneath her like a living thing. Moss shivered down, showering onto her shoulders like fluffy clumps of snow. She’d gravitated to the curve of pipes where the moss had been compressed. Where Sabine had sat, hours before, and held her close. Warm me up, she’d said. Gods, the memory burned. The flotilla rocked again, and dislodged black matter began to pile up around her feet in drifts. Soft, but not soft enough to pad this kind of fall.

  Her mind ran through all the helpful math in a moment, like a morbid calculator. Distance + velocity + impact equaled...well, damn. Not that it mattered. If any piece of the flotilla could hold up to impact, it would be the super-hardened shell of the engine cooling core. It was designed to contain a photonic blast, after all. It might survive the crash only slightly crumpled.

  Of course, crumple could do a lot of damage to soft fleshy things inside. But as long as Lyre’s body could be recovered intact, she’d done her job. If anyone ever found her. Bothered to look for her. She’d been relatively certain Sabine would, but sitting here, now, crouched next to an engine shield in the dark, it seemed less likely. Who would bother?

  Lyre had a kinship with neglected spaces, abandoned things, forgotten secrets. Now she’d become one of them. It was an embarrassing kind of irony, really. To go out as she came in, scrambling around the forgotten crevices of machines that time forgot.

  It was damned stupid to think you ever could escape yourself. Not here, not in the Vault. She’d never left the Vault, not really. Sabine and the sunlight had just been on loan for a while. The least Lyre could do was give it back.

  She was a spy, after all. She never was a thief. Or a Liar.

  On the other side of the hull, something shuddered and groaned. Some metal joint that had held together longer than the Empire had begun to fail under the strain. The last monster of their ancestors was dying.

  It’s okay, friend, Lyre thought blearily as she wedged herself under a pipe to keep from being tossed about. You made out all right. You put in a good fight. You were never made to last.

  The ground gave a bone-shuddering lurch, then began to list. The screech of metal farther below said at least one of the engines had good and failed. Khait must have lost his battle with Sylvere, and there wasn’t even an attempt to keep her airborne now. To a mind with a heart to save, the loss of a few souls here and there didn’t matter.

  But you do matter, a rebellious, selfish little voice insisted in Lyre’s head, sounding Imperial and furious and red-gold. You were the matter that made everything else matter.

  The loss of reliable gravity made her stomach climb up to knot her throat. Lyre squeezed her eyes shut and for one weightless moment in the free fall, she let herself believe. She’d flown away, shaped the world, felt the soft crush of unbraided hair in her fingers. A kiss that saved and promised the future. The salt-wet taste of victory and warm skin.

  When the crash came, Lyre almost had a smile on her lips.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “An asset of the crown,” Sabine announced. The senate gallery displayed varying levels of stone-faced and confused expressions. “We do not require your approval to recover a member of the royal House.”

  Sabine resisted the urge to shift in her seat in the silence. Fidgeting had long been beaten out of her, but she’d been defending her case—Lyre’s case—to the senate for hours. She’d barely wasted time changing out of her filthy sewer-soaked clothes. Her neck was beginning to get a crick from keeping a challenging gaze on the uppermost tiers. Whoever had designed this throne room had intended the empress to sit with her back to the senate, an impressive united front. Not engage in a stare-down with every noble House set against her.

  Sabine couldn’t blink. Lyre’s life depended on it.

  “Forgive me, Your Majesty, but the Liar claimed no noble House. And...” The young senator looked uneasy. He was freckle faced, with red hair that burned. She knew his name, of course, she knew all their names. If they didn’t get in her way, she might even deign to use them. “In lig
ht of recent revelations, she was not technically a citizen of the Empire.”

  “She was a Vault spy. Acting counter to the Imperial will for years. That’s treason.” The older senator had slate-gray hair and no problem speaking his mind. “We all know it, so call a spade a spade. Don’t tell me the Empire should provide sanctuary for traitors.”

  Sabine had prepared the smile she used here. A base of arrogance, a pinch of disgust, amusement, marinated in knowing. Always knowing. Everything hinged on it. It had to be just right, to sell what she said next. “You know, do you? Then you would know, of course, who she was a traitor for.”

  The senate council chamber was never quiet—there was always back-channel murmuring, House pages skittering in and out, the quiet tap of slate devices. The burble of politics. But for a moment the sea of plotting became a trickle.

  “A double-spy?” Senator Gray Hair looked dubious.

  Sabine tilted her head. “Really, Senator. She’s my own spymaster. What kind of fool do you take me for? I and my advisors were well aware of Lyre’s background before coronation.” She’d guaranteed her advisors would swear to such, personally. Galen’s support, of course, had been easy to win. The royal doctor, Maris, had taken more work.

  But it was easy to sound believable—Sabine wanted it to be true, could see it. Lyre confiding in her, tearful with regret. On her knees as she swore a true heart to her. Sabine absolving her with a featherlight touch on her jaw. Taking hold of her chin, drawing her up to her mouth and... Sabine cleared her throat. “I turned her, of course. She has fed to the Cloud Vault only the information I desire the Vault to know.” She could envision that too. Years of working together, heads bowed, the only secrets between them the ones they wielded against others. So much lost time. Time when they could have been together, time when... Sabine’s heart ached. “It’s an asset I don’t intend to give up. The Liar has always been mine.”

  Mine. Mine. Try to keep her from me and the Lady will not save you.