05 Dragon Blood: The Blade's Memory (25 page)

Cas had stirred at the name of the company. Recognition? From the name, Sardelle was imagining some kind of sexual services business, but she supposed the queen wouldn’t need to hire prostitutes to service her sisters.

Those types of perks were not mentioned in the organization’s encyclopedia entry,
Jaxi shared.

Good to know.

However, I haven’t yet had an opportunity to look over that pamphlet you took from the queen’s desk.

“How much does she need this time?” the bookkeeper asked.

“Five thousand nucros.” As Sardelle plucked the number out of the ether, she scanned the hallway outside. It was empty. She did not know whether to assume that meant it was safe to leave. They probably weren’t going to find
safe
tonight.

“The job was completed to the queen’s satisfaction,” Cas added.

“Glad to hear it. That’s been very expensive landscaping.” The bookkeeper waved them toward the door. “I’ll get to work on it.”

Sardelle nodded toward Cas, then strode out the door. They jogged down the hallway, Sardelle slowing down only enough to see if anyone was on the stairs and make sure the guards hadn’t escaped their prison yet. They were still there, wriggling their way across the floor toward the door.

Worrying they had already been reported as missing, Sardelle took the stairs three at a time. Jaxi guided her toward the audience hall and the hallway behind it. Twice, she and Cas had to duck into rooms or closets to avoid guards patrolling the building. If not for her senses, they would have stumbled right into them. At least none of these rooms contained bookkeepers or anyone else.

Jaxi’s directions proved accurate, and they found their way into a very tidy and dust-free basement dungeon. Sardelle headed straight for the back, searching the gloom for the iron ring.

“Are those brochures?” Cas asked as she walked past the entrance. As Jaxi had promised, a holder supported a stack of papers, and there was a chalkboard, as well as illustrations and photographs next to neat handwriting that described how the dungeon had once been used to house enemies of the nation.

Once. Right. “I believe they’re educational pamphlets,” Sardelle said. “To be handed to schoolchildren.”

“Must have missed that field trip when I was a student.”

Sardelle tugged on the heavy iron ring, the kind that might have once secured chains to the wall. It did not move.
You’re sure this is the spot, Jaxi?

Yes, apply more muscle. Or get Cas to do it. Her little arms are surprisingly strong.

Sardelle glanced at Cas, but another question popped into her mind first. “You don’t know anything about the Trim and Tight Landscaping Service, do you?”

Cas nodded curtly. “One of several fictitious business entities that my father uses to send invoices and collect payments.”

“Invoices?” Sardelle couldn’t wrap her mind around the notion of receiving an invoice in the mail from an assassin.

“He’s an organized man. The fictitious names allow people to hire him without their household knowing about it. Sometimes someone within the family is a target.”

Sardelle was starting to wish she hadn’t asked. She tried twisting the ring instead of pulling it, and it gave slightly.

“That’s it,” she whispered, remembering the guards that would be in the real dungeon on the other side of the wall. “Ready for another fight?”

A sickly green glow spilled onto the stones. “Ready.” Cas had drawn the sword.

Sardelle hesitated. “We’re not eviscerating, beheading, or castrating anyone, remember?”

“If Kasandral can cut through dragon scales, I’m guessing it can handle iron bars.”

A logical argument, though Sardelle did not like the way the green glow reflected in Cas’s eyes.

I can handle iron bars too.

I have no doubt of that, Jaxi.

“Here we go.” Sardelle checked on the placement of the guards before tugging on the ring. She doubted the dark green cloaks would explain their presence down here.

She expected them to be in the same spot as they had been a moment before, but was surprised that they had moved away from the door entirely and drifted down one of three rows of cells. To check on Kaika? Sardelle tugged on the ring. They might not get a better chance to sneak in.

The stone slab swung open more quickly than she expected. Sardelle charged through, a barrier in place in front of her in case she was wrong, and someone with a gun was waiting. But she was assaulted by smoke, not bullets. The hazy air slipped around her shield, stinging her nose and making her eyes water.

“What’s—” Cas started to ask, but a muted
bang
came from down one of the rows of cells.

A figure strode toward them, smoke swirling. Sardelle lifted a hand, prepared to defend herself again. The person who marched out of the smoke
was
armed, with a pistol in each hand, but she lowered them.

“Sardelle?” Captain Kaika asked. Soot smeared her face, and a dark bloodstain marked her wrinkled shirt, the same one she had been in the day before, but she looked ready to chew up some rocks and spit them out rather than tumble onto a fainting couch. “Is that you?”

Sardelle pushed back her hood. “How did you know?”

“There’s a ball of clean air hovering around you.”

Sardelle wrinkled her nose. “Not that clean.”

Behind her, Cas coughed. “We came to rescue you, Captain.”

“Good, because until you showed up, I didn’t know where the door was.” Kaika peered back over her shoulder. “I was going to ask one of them, but, uhm, they’re going to be too busy digging themselves out of that rubble to chat.”

“How in all the realms did you get ahold of explosives down here?” Sardelle asked.

“Made them. If you’re ever running a dungeon, make sure you do a
thorough
search of the prisoners, and don’t dismiss any powders or liquids they’ve tucked away in dark places.”

“I shall keep that in mind.”

Kaika coughed a few times and wiped tears from her eyes—they were leaving clear tracks down her sooty cheeks. She grasped her shoulder where she had been shot, but all she asked was, “Did you bring a cloak for me?”

“Sorry, that would have been a smart idea, but we didn’t think of it. Also, we’ve been harried and rushed for most of our infiltration.” Sardelle stepped back into the show dungeon, waving for Kaika to follow. “Speaking of that, we should go. I’m afraid that noise will have been heard, and there have been other… disturbances as a result of our entrance too.”

Cas snorted noisily.

Kaika had walked out of the smoke-filled dungeon, pushing the door shut behind her, but she halted before taking another step. “I’m not leaving until I talk to the queen.”

“Talk? Or interrogate her?” Sardelle asked. “I don’t think either is a good idea. We’re seconds away from being discovered as it is, and she’s up there in the middle of one of her sisterhood meetings.” In truth, Sardelle hadn’t searched the auras in that room, so she could not say for certain that the queen was in there, but it seemed logical. If nothing else, she needed to hand out all of the pamphlets she had made.

“You know where she is? Perfect.” Kaika strode toward the stairs, her pistols still gripped in her hands.

Sardelle rushed to catch up with her, grabbing one forearm. “There are soldiers everywhere. You’ll be seen before you get to her.”

“Define everywhere.”

“All of the halls. We barely made it down here without being noticed. We had to hide multiple times. We’re fairly certain they let the news leak out that you were being hanged tonight, in order to ensure we—your allies—tried to break you out. They’re setting a trap, if they haven’t already.”

“I was to be hanged tonight?” Kaika lifted her sooty brows.

“Or at dawn. Apex was fuzzy on the details.”

“You find out where the king is being held yet?”

“We have a lead. Therrik thought he had been taken to a lighthouse.”

“Oh.” Kaika used the muzzle of one of the pistols to scratch her chin. “There are a lot of lighthouses in Iskandia.”

“Yes, it’s not a perfect lead.”

Cas jogged to the bottom of the stairs and tilted her head toward the door at the top. What had she heard?

Jaxi?

The guards upstairs haven’t been noticed yet, though they have thumped at the door a few times. The meeting is underway in the other room. They’re probably sacrificing some chickens or something noisy.

Is anything else going on?

There are a lot of soldiers on the ground floor, both inside and out. They might be setting that trap you were thinking about.

So,
Sardelle thought,
it would be hard to get out?

Remember that notion you had of shielding yourself and charging past legions of soldiers shooting at you?

Yes…

That could still happen.

Wonderful.

“
She’ll
know where he is,” Kaika said. “Without a doubt.”

Sardelle did not know if Kaika was trying to convince herself, or if she had heard something that verified their suspicions. Either way, there wasn’t time to ask.

Kaika spun toward her. “If we have to fight our way out of here, can you keep us alive? I heard you can stop bullets.”

“I would prefer not to fight, but I can shield us from fire, yes. Not indefinitely, mind you.”

Kaika nodded. “Good enough.”

“Wouldn’t you rather escape, let me heal your wound, and try to contact the queen another time?” Sardelle asked.

“No.” She strode up the stairs.

Sardelle followed while wishing she had a better feeling about all of this.

• • • • •

“We were outnumbered, at least twenty to one,” Ridge said, sharing his second or third tale with Private Gormen, who was now off-duty. After finishing his shift, the young soldier had returned with the promised atlas, and Ridge had double-checked his map and his memory. The atlas did not mention lighthouses, but seeing the contours of the coast helped him remember two more spots that could serve as out-of-the-way prisons. Now, he just had to figure out how to get out of this cell and up to the hangar, so he could grab that two-person flier and hope he wasn’t shot down by the city’s artillery weapons as he took off.

“Their airship was armored, with some shaman protecting the balloon too,” Ridge continued. “It was my first encounter with magic. Before that, I’d been like my mom, believing it didn’t exist. It’s hard to maintain that belief when an airship starts flinging bolts of lightning at your flier.”

“What’d you do, sir?”

“Started flying on top of their balloon, so they couldn’t target me. Crash and the Milkman—he’s retired now—flew under it, tried to find a way through that armoring and to their engines. When the shaman was distracted with them, I swooped down, did a strafing run on their deck. Flew right between the ship and the balloon. Managed to cut through some of the supports, too, so the back of the deck was dangling down, and the shaman was too busy trying not to fall into the ocean thousands of feet below to bother with me. About a hundred other Cofah wanted to shoot at me, but I snugged right up to the balloon, so they realized they were cutting holes into it with each shot. Finally, I took a nice handmade explosive, a gift from the artillery fellows, and tossed it at the tank delivering hydrogen to the balloon. Got out of there about half a second before the biggest explosion you’ve ever seen.”

The on-duty guard, who was stationed up the hall and out of Ridge’s sight, let out a low whistle. Ridge didn’t know if his storytelling was doing anything useful—wouldn’t it be easier to escape if the guards weren’t paying any attention to him?—but had some vague notion of establishing a rapport with the men. The bars on the cell door and the window were quite sturdy, so he could never escape without human intervention. He couldn’t bring himself to ask either of them for a key, both because it would be deleterious for their careers and because he was skeptical as to whether they would let him go, but with time, maybe he might find an opportunity to slip a key off one of their belts. Especially if he could get the on-duty fellow to come join him and Private Gormen for a drink—Gormen had brought a second bottle of beer when he had returned with the atlas.

“That was in the early days of Cofah airships,” Ridge said. “Back when we were all using hydrogen, before we realized it was too easy to blow up. There were even non-combat-related accidents where the gas simply caught fire through some crew error and took the ship down. We’ve all switched to helium now. As I saw on my last mission, the Cofah have fliers, too—they stole our design, the bastards. And some other weapons. Any future battles are going to be tough. They always had superior numbers, but we had our fliers, which are of course far more maneuverable than their plodding airships. Things won’t be easy going forward.”

Ridge resisted the urge to rail about the lack of fliers defending the city at the moment.

“Sir,” came a terse greeting from the out-of-sight guard.

The off-duty one’s eyes widened as he looked up the hallway, and he shifted the bottle of beer behind his back.

Had Colonel Porthlok come back to start his interrogation? It was late for that—it had to be nearing midnight. Ridge hadn’t expected more company until at least dawn. Maybe he had run out of time and should have been trying harder to find a key.

“This how you guard a prisoner, Private?” a gruff male voice asked.

Ridge slumped against the wall. He recognized Colonel Therrik’s voice before the man walked into view, glowering at Gormen.

“No-no, sir,” Gormen stammered. “I’m off-duty, sir. I was just…” He waved vaguely at Ridge.

“I asked him to keep me company,” Ridge said, hoping to keep Therrik from contemplating some punishment for the young soldier, not that he particularly wanted to draw Therrik’s ire toward himself. Whatever had brought the man here at this hour, it couldn’t be anything good. Maybe he wanted revenge for the beating he believed he had received at Ridge’s hands. “You know how needy I am,” he added. “I get terribly lonely if I don’t have anyone to tell my stories to.”