Emperor's Edge Republic (70 page)

“How does one fit an oval knife pommel into a square hole?” he mused.

“There’s some twine in the cabin if you want.” Mahliki waved a sarcastic hand toward the sleeping quarters that had been turned into a storage room.

“How about a screwdriver and some pliers?” Sespian sounded serious, not sarcastic.

“You have an idea?”

“Maybe. Let me show you on a piece of paper.” He patted himself down and produced a pencil stub from a shirt pocket, then dug a little notepad out of a trouser pocket.

“You came prepared.”

“I know you’re not teasing me, not when you carry glass vials in your vest.” Sespian frowned at the broken lead on the tip of his pencil and applied the knife to trimming and sharpening it.

“I wasn’t teasing. It was an observation.” All right, she
had
been teasing, but she wouldn’t admit to it.

“Oh.” Tongue peeking out of one side of his mouth, Sespian started drawing at a speed usually reserved for the reckless scribbling of toddlers.

Mahliki had the new bit out, but she waited before sticking it in the drill. Sespian’s design came out in seconds, and she found herself reaching for it as soon as his pencil left the page. “That’s interesting. I... maybe.”

He smiled and handed her the dagger.

Boots clomped on the deck—Father jogging out of engineering. He paused to look at the problem and the sketch, tapped it with a finger, and said, “That’s a good idea,” then continued his jog. In navigation, he leaned over Maldynado’s shoulder. The sound of switches being flicked drifted back.

Mahliki dug out a toolkit and set to work, the creaks and groans of the hull spurring her to alter the tool as quickly as possible. She envied Sespian’s hand speed and precision.

Father jogged back in the opposite direction, issuing a grunt of approval, then disappearing into the engine room again.

“That figures,” Mahliki muttered.

“What?” Sespian asked.

“You got articulate praise. I got a grunt.” She grabbed the dagger and fastened it with the improvised locking mechanism.

“I’m not sure how articulate ‘good idea’ is.”

Mahliki twisted and torqued their new “drill bit” as much as she could with her hand, but there wasn’t a real way to test it without putting it back out there. At least the station had a grabbing tool as well. She ought to be able to get the dagger back if it snapped away. So long as one of those vines didn’t dart in and snatch it first. She bared her teeth at the notion.

“If it’s any consolation, I rarely get more than grunts from my own father,” Sespian added.

“It’s fine,” Mahliki said, realizing he must think her bared teeth applied to their silly conversation. “I was joking. Let’s try this.”

They waited an eternity for the airlock to cycle again. A soft click sounded.

“Ready.” Mahliki aimed the drill, choosing to go in at an angle instead of straight down this time, and flipped on the power.

Clacks and clunks pelted the hull beneath them. Mahliki didn’t know whether to consider that promising or alarming. The gauge showed the drill digging deeper though. It hit the three-inch mark... then continued to descend.

“Good...” Five inches. “Good...” Six inches. “I wonder how far down the roots are. The one I dug up earlier was only—”

An ear-cracking snap came from below. Mahliki started to groan, certain the dagger had broken or snapped off, but the light level flowing in from the portholes increased. She looked up in confusion.

“The plant is letting go,” Maldynado shouted. “No, no, it’s
disintegrating
! What did you do? It’s totally—that’s brilliant. All of those vines are turning black and falling apart.”

Mahliki slumped back into the chair, every vertebrae in her back going slack with relief. She might have oozed all the way out of it and onto the floor, but Sespian leaned forward and hugged her. Delighted, she hugged him back, then surprised him—and herself—by kissing him. She might have lingered there, her lips pressed to his, but she was aware of his eyes bulging open... and her father jogging out of the engine room again.

She pulled back and thumped Sespian on the shoulder. “That sketch was perfect, just what I needed.”

“Uh.” He touched his lips. “Good.”

Father didn’t grunt this time when he passed them. Mahliki hoped that meant he was too busy checking on something to be aware of them or any... touching that had occurred. Her cheeks were wickedly hot, as if she had been zapped by electricity herself. Sespian had been too surprised to kiss her back—unfortunately—so she attributed her flushed cheeks to embarrassment. Or mortification. Something like that.

“I’ll just pull our new drill back in before the plant sends in a new vine to snatch it up,” Mahliki said.

“What happened exactly?” Sespian asked.

For a confused moment, Mahliki thought he was asking for an explanation as to why she had kissed him. “You mean with the plant,” she reasoned.

“Yes...”

“I’m assuming the knife hit the root and acted as a conduit for the electricity coursing along the hull.”

“Ah, nice.”

“Very nice.” Father must have checked what he needed to check, for he walked back to them. He patted Sespian on the shoulder and gave Mahliki a hug.

She hugged him back, asking, “Did you fix whatever popped off back there?”

“It did not
pop
off,” Father said, using that affronted tone that only came out when he perceived some insult to one of his creations. “A recently installed component was damaged due to the excessive external pressure. It’s to be expected, given that we weren’t able to do any testing before launch.”

“I know. I was teasing.” She kissed him on the cheek.

Father harrumphed. “Keep that dagger-drill handy. We cleared the plants for approximately fifteen feet around us, but we still need to reach the harbor.”

“I understand.”

When Father withdrew and headed back to navigation, Mahliki caught a perplexed expression on Sespian’s face. He masked it as soon as she met his eyes and stood up.

“I better go check on... Maldynado.”

He strode off, leaving Mahliki perplexed as well.

She sighed and returned to the controls. She wasn’t sure how far it was to the harbor, but guessed she would have to drill a lot of holes to expose a lot of roots before they got close. She hoped the plant didn’t grow wise and figure out a way to protect itself before they reached their goal.

• • • • •

By the time Amaranthe relit the lantern, Sicarius had disappeared into the shadows ahead. Or rather, the shadows
below
. Beyond a five-foot-long stone landing, a narrow stairway descended, the walls made from worn stones and cracked mortar. Sicarius had identified the scents accurately—the cool passage smelled of must and mildew, and age as well. If not for the dampness in the air, she might have thought they were in one of the university library’s subbasements. It was probably her imagination, but the passage seemed to smell of death too. Nothing fresh, like a battlefield or butcher shop, but old death. Bones.

“I’m guessing this isn’t the family’s root cellar.” Amaranthe kept her voice low, since their missing vice president was supposedly wandering around down here, and she knew Sicarius’s keen hearing would catch her words anyway.

Figuring he might appreciate a little light, Amaranthe walked down the stairs after him. The stone slab steps were as worn as the walls, the centers hollowed out by the passings of countless feet. Whatever this place was, it long predated the farmhouse.

The stairs descended more than one standard level, and the temperature dropped a few degrees before the passage leveled out. Tunnels turned to the left and right as well as continuing straight ahead. Thick cobwebs draped the side passages while the forward route lay clear. Someone had been that way recently, someone besides Sicarius. He could probably walk through a tunnel without stirring a cobweb. Amaranthe was relieved to see him waiting by some large wall niches up ahead. This house had gotten a lot creepier in the last couple of minutes, and she didn’t want to roam these passages alone.

He gazed back at her, waiting. She brought the lamp, though she halted before she reached him. The contents of the niches had come into view.

“Are those bones?” she whispered. “
Human
bones?”

“Old ones, yes.”

Amaranthe leaned past him. More niches lined the walls ahead, continuing for as far as her lamplight reached. “Any idea why they’re here?”

“Presumably this is a crypt or ossuary created for religious purposes.”

“Oh.” Amaranthe relaxed a few iotas. “From a religion that doesn’t do funeral pyres.” She had heard of burials and tombs, of course, but could not imagine why such a practice would be customary. The idea of having her remains rotting beneath the earth with insects and worms and who knew what helping with the decomposing... She looked at the bones and shuddered. “Was this standard practice in the Kriskrusian religion?”

“I have not studied the rites or religion.”

Books would have known. She kept the thought to herself, missing him anew in this place of the dead. Turgonian custom—she couldn’t call it a religion since all religions had been outlawed for so long—said that it was through the burning of one’s remains that one’s soul was released into the spirit realm. She had never been certain she believed those stories, but seeing these skeletons laid out in the stone alcoves made her wonder if their spirits had been released or if they lingered, unhappy without rest, lurking ancient and bitter. Some Turgonians believed that happened to those who committed suicide, and most ghost stories centered around such instances.

“Someone has walked this way recently.” Sicarius pointed to stirrings in the dust on the floor.

Always the practical one, it surely wouldn’t occur to him to worry about ghosts or hauntings.

“Lead the way.” Amaranthe extended a palm. “And if you see a possible exit at any point, that might be worth noting too.” She did
not
want to be locked down in this place indefinitely.

“Serpitivich will know the way out.”

“What makes you so certain he came down here? Granted, he was missing from his bed, but did you see him come this way?”

“A lantern had been burned near the vault.”

Amaranthe stared at the back of his head. “That’s it? We’re down here in a creepy, eerie dark crypt because you caught a whiff of kerosene in the air?”

Sicarius looked back over his shoulder, giving her one of his cool stares. “Yes.”

Those stares no longer intimidated her the way they once had, but she didn’t question him further. What could be done at this point anyway? If nothing else, they could dig their way out before they died of thirst. She eyed the stone walls and the masonry arches overhead. She
hoped
they could dig out anyway.

As they walked farther, more tunnels opened up to the left and right, some with broken cobwebs, others still shrouded in dust and age. Bone-filled niches lined the walls of each passage. Sicarius stuck to the main corridor. Now and then he paused to listen or smell or whatever he did while gazing into the darkness. She bit her tongue to keep from asking if he caught the scent of a lamp being burned recently. Their own lamp would probably cover any such odors, regardless.

The passage ended, and Amaranthe gulped, for more than stone comprised the back wall. Rows and rows of skulls stared at her with hollow black eyes. Stacked from floor to ceiling, there were hundreds of them. Maybe thousands. A stone altar stood in front of the bone wall with more skulls stacked beneath it. They were dusty and yellow with age, but that didn’t make them any less disturbing. A copper basin rested on the altar along with four more skulls that had been sawn in half, the rounded tops turned upside-down and used for candle holders. At the back of the altar, two squat figures with far too many limbs gazed out over the basin. Dagu and Magu, presumably.

“There’s no dust on that bowl,” Amaranthe whispered, pointing at the basin.

“No,” Sicarius said. “There’s blood in it.”

Amaranthe crept forward, thinking he meant dried blood, but her stomach sank when she drew even with him. Several ounces of dark liquid pooled in the bottom of the basin. Sicarius picked up a couple of vials and small ceramic jars from behind it.

“Some sort of... spell components?” Amaranthe asked. As far as she knew, there were no such things as magical spells, at least not in the way superstitious Turgonians perceived of the notion, but Makers did
use
physical components to craft constructs. She recalled her first experience with one of the supernatural creatures and investigating the kiln that had been used to Make it.

The vials were empty with dried blood smeared on the inside. Sicarius examined the contents of the jars, which each contained a different color of powder. Then he stuck a finger in the basin and held it to his nose.

“If you lick that, it’s going to be a long time before we resume bed-friend activities,” Amaranthe said with a grimace.

“That would be unwise.” Sicarius pulled out the rag he used for cleaning his knives and wiped his finger. “Someone has been mixing poisons.”

“Like the one on the fence points?”

“Yes.” Sicarius returned the lid to a jar filled with yellowish powder and set it down. “Others as well. Daikus root is often used in food-based poisons because it has the ability to deceive the palate, taking on the flavors of the components around it.”

“Dear ancestors, the note Tikaya deciphered.... Does this mean Starcrest truly was poisoned?”

“Termite Paste can be made from these components,” Sicarius said.

“That... doesn’t sound like that inimical of a name.”

“Used as a sticky paste, it was originally employed as a pesticide. Termites would walk through it and carry it back to their colony where it would be spread around, so the queen would track through it as well. Because it needed to be taken back to the queen, it was designed to have a delayed effect. A couple of days after contact, the entire colony would be killed.”

“And then someone figured out it could harm humans as well?” Amaranthe guessed.