Encrypted (23 page)

If Agarik’s frown grew any deeper, he would
pop the stitches out on that gash. Still, he followed with the
lantern when she eased down the stairs.

She anticipated a pitted rusty iron door
streaked with blood at the bottom, but the bland wood was no
different from any other door they had passed. Beyond it, gray
stone lined a narrow hallway. At the end, light seeped through the
cracks of a partially open door. The voices had dropped to
murmurs.

On the way down the hall, Tikaya checked a
door to the side, expecting racks filled with torture implements.
Instead, it was a supply closet loaded with brooms, lye soap,
lanterns, kerosene tins, and painting supplies. So far, this
dungeon was not living up to expectations.

Chains rattled in the room ahead.

“
Where’s the slagging
key?” a familiar voice growled.

Tikaya froze. Ottotark.

She started to turn, not wanting anything to
do with him, interesting prisoners or not, but someone thrust the
door open. Two marines tramped out, a body between them, but if it
was Nurian she could not tell. It was as melted and featureless as
the rest in the fort.

The marines halted.

“
What’s she doing down
here, Corporal?” one asked.

Agarik shrugged. “Looking for language
clues.”

Ottotark leaned through the doorway, his
eyes narrowing to slits when he spotted her. For a long speculative
moment, he stared, and she fought the urge to race up the steps in
retreat. He would not do anything with so many witnesses, and
surely this was not the time regardless.

“
Go on,” Ottotark told the
marines, “take the body out. Agarik, come help me get the other
one. I expect the captain will want to see the Nurian, so we’ll
leave him here for now.”

Tikaya stood aside for the men to pass.
Agarik headed for the chamber, and she almost bumped into his back
when he stopped in the doorway.

“
What is it?” she
asked.

But Agarik had already moved to the side so
she could see. She wished he had not. The amount of human carnage
from the last couple days should have numbed her to it, but this
dead man was different. The naked Nurian hung from shackles on the
wall. His fingernails and toenails were ripped out, flesh mutilated
with blades and brands. Someone had gut his genitals off and dug
both eyeballs out. The removed organs lay in a tidy pile next to
the dangling body, and Tikaya had to gulp several deep breaths to
keep from vomiting. Thank Akahe the temperature kept everything
frozen, and no odor accompanied the visual horror.

“
By the book,” Agarik
commented.

Ottotark nodded.
“Professional job. I’ll bet two weeks pay one of our people ran the
torture session, but who? This is recent work, done by
somebody—
to
somebody—who showed up after everyone else got their faces
slagged like ore in a smelter.”

“
Unless...” Tikaya took
one more deep breath to steady her gorge. “Unless the basement
protected people here from the poison.”

“
Look around, idiot
woman.” Ottotark pointed past racks containing wicked metal
instruments whose purpose she could only guess.

Steel bars in the shadows formed a pair of
cells. A corpse in one had suffered from the same affliction as all
those in the fort above. And, of course, she had seen the body
those two marines had taken out.

“
Sorry, yes, I’m not
thinking.” Odd that this deliberate cruelty affected her more than
the mysterious otherworldly deaths. The marines, even Agarik,
seemed to find this torture commonplace. Just when she was thinking
some Turgonians might be normal people. “You must be right. So, one
or more of your people got here ahead of us. And this fellow, I
wonder if he’s the one who launched the rocket. Or...” She looked
past the damage to what remained of the man’s features, and her
stomach did a little flip. “I recognize him.”

Ottotark stared at her. “What?”

“
He’s the bodyguard of the
practitioner who attacked me on the ship.”

“
You sure?” Ottotark’s
forehead scrunched. “He’s not looking too recognizable at the
moment.” He threw back his head and laughed.

Agarik rolled his eyes.

“
Come, Corporal,” Ottotark
said. “Help me drag that other body up to the pyre. We’ll leave the
librarian to clue hunt, though I don’t reckon this bloke was
worrying overmuch about languages in the end.”

He laughed again, and the inappropriateness
ground on Tikaya’s nerves.

“
I’m supposed to stay with
her,” Agarik said.

Ottotark’s humor
evaporated. “That wasn’t a request,
Corporal
. I’m sure the captain
didn’t mean for you to get out of all the physical labor with your
special assignment. You can come back when we’re done hauling
bodies.”

Agarik looked at Tikaya, and she gave him a
quick nod. He had risked enough trouble for her, and she would give
him up for a while if it would get Ottotark out of the room as
well.

Though a troubled expression wrinkled his
brow, Agarik helped Ottotark heft the other corpse, and they left.
Tikaya did not wish to spend a lot of time alone down here,
especially since the presence of the dead bodyguard implied the
practitioner was around somewhere, probably alive, but she wanted a
moment to think things through.

“
So,” she said in Nurian,
as if the man’s spirit might hear and help, “you’ve been following
us all along, biding your time, is that it?” She thought of the
hour or two she had spent alone in Wolfhump and shivered, for that
could well have been an opportunity for the assassins, but perhaps
they, too, had been affected by the gas. “You ran ahead here to lay
an ambush for me? Or someone transported you here?” That was a hard
skill to master, but not an impossible one. Someone familiar with
the arrival area could have done it. “Either way, it seems you got
here after the weapon struck, or you’d have been killed the same
way as the others. Unless you launched the weapon yourself and came
to check the effectiveness of your work. But, no, your people
wanted nothing to do with these artifacts.” She took off her
spectacles and rubbed her face. “But when you got here, someone was
waiting. Was it a Turgonian, or the person or persons who figured
this rocket out? Or both?”

Not surprisingly, the dead man was not
talking. Likely he had given up all his secrets to his
interrogator. Tikaya glanced around, noting that the pliers,
knives, and other implements she could not name had been
meticulously cleaned after use and returned to the storage rack.
Little else caught her eye, though, and she decided it would be
wise to finish up and find a spot with people around.

She headed back to the stairs. Someone had
shut the door at the bottom. She tried the knob, but it did not
turn.

A kernel of dread formed in her gut.

She tried the door again. It could just be a
flaky knob, but no. It was locked. She pounded on the door. Maybe
someone working upstairs would hear her and let her out.

“
Is anybody out there?
Hello?”

No one came.

Tikaya leaned her forehead against the cold
wood. Ottotark must have locked the door on the way out without
Agarik noticing. Maybe he had even ordered the men clearing bodies
to work in a different building. She swallowed. Odds were Ottotark
could make sure Agarik stayed busy for a while too.

The rack of torture implements flashed into
her mind. “Dolt,” she cursed herself. Of all the places she could
be trapped with that man, this had to be the worst.

She slipped the razor Agarik had given her
out of her boot and unfolded the blade from the wooden handle. It
seemed a puny tool compared to those in the other room. If Ottotark
worried about her having weapons, he would not have chosen this
spot. He obviously did not see her as a threat in close combat, and
rightly so. This was no archery competition where she could stand
back and plunk arrows into a target.

She needed to catch him by surprise. She
hoped she had time to set one up.

Tikaya checked the supply closet. An idea
came as soon as she saw the kerosene tins. Unlike the whale oil her
people used, the vapors ought to be flammable. She grabbed a paint
pan, a full tin of kerosene, and a box of friction matches. She
would only have one chance. It had better work.

In the torture chamber, she closed the door
part way. Footsteps thudded in the corridor on the floor above. She
swallowed. If that was Ottotark, she did not have much time.

The safety lid of the unopened kerosene tin
thwarted her fingernails, and her shoulder sent stabs of pain
through her when she tried to brace the can with that hand. She
huffed in frustration. Then she remembered the razor. Agarik’s tool
would help after all.

She gouged a hole in the top of the tin and,
careful not to spill any on herself, poured kerosene into the paint
pan. The fumes stung her eyes, but she dared not slow down.
Footsteps thudded on the stairs. For once, she had reason to thank
her height. Though the doors had been made to accommodate the tall
Turgonians, she reached the top without trouble and balanced the
pan. The footsteps reached the bottom of the stairs, and the lock
clicked. The door creaked open.

Tikaya hopped into the shadows beside the
door.

“
I know you’re down here,
bitch,” Ottotark said. “No point in hiding.”

Tikaya’s breathing sounded loud in her ears,
and she tried to quiet it. She yanked her left arm out of the
sling, ignoring the pain, and dug out a fistful of matches. In her
right hand, she held a single one. The tremble to her fingers
annoyed her. She eyed the pan atop the door, and doubts flooded
her. It was too stupid, too obvious. Children did this as a prank;
it was not a way to attack an enemy, a bigger stronger enemy who
would probably only be angered by the attempt.

“
I’m going to wipe that
arrogant defiance off your face,” Ottotark growled. A door creaked.
He was checking the closet.

She swallowed. Would he notice the missing
kerosene? Or would he smell it before he entered her room?

“
You don’t act like a
prisoner, not like you should, and the captain’s too lenient. You
screwed us during the war. You gave our secret orders to the
Nurians. They knew just how to ambush the
Crusher
. All those men—my
brother
—didn’t have a
chance.” The heavy footsteps thudded closer. “I’ve been waiting to
avenge him since you came on board.”

Ottotark shoved the door so hard it cracked
against the stone wall. Tikaya jumped back and almost didn’t see
the trap spring. Kerosene drenched him, and the pan clattered to
the floor.

“
What the—” He stumbled
into the room.

She slammed a boot into his backside with
all her strength. He pitched forward, though he turned the fall
into a graceful roll and came up facing her. She kicked the door
shut and scraped a match against the stone wall. The scent of
sulfur stung the air.

Ottotark snarled and started to lunge. She
almost threw the flame then and there, but she kept herself to
holding it out and shouting.

“
That’s kerosene you’re
covered in!”

Ottotark paused, just short of
springing.

“
Ever wanted to be a human
torch?” Tikaya asked. “You could look just like all the dead
soldiers here in about three seconds.”

He snorted. “You’ve not steel enough to kill
anyone.” But his gaze stayed on that match, and he did not
advance.

“
I’ve killed more people
than I can count since this nightmare started. First on the Nurian
ship and then in Wolfhump.”

Ottotark’s eyes widened.
“The captain was right.
You
killed Commander Okars!”

Admitting that might be stupid, but it might
convince him she was a threat. She needed to resolve this before
Ottotark realized she would run out of matches eventually. She had
to gamble. “Yes, and I liked him a lot more than I like you.” She
tried to put a manic expression on her face as she looked him up
and down. “I can’t imagine anyone would even miss you. Maybe I
should just—”

“
Wait!” He licked his
lips. “What do you want?”

“
Your word that you won’t
touch me ever again.” It was another gamble. Just because Rias’s
word meant a lot to him did not mean every Turgonian shared that
viewpoint. Still, there were several words for honor and promises
in their language. Maybe it was not that big of a
gamble.

And Ottotark winced. If his word meant
nothing, he would have agreed quickly. He would not be thinking it
over.

The first match was burning low. She lit a
second from it, then tossed the discard into a puddle of kerosene
at Ottotark’s feet. The vapors ignited and flames roared, hurling
shadows from every corner of the chamber.

Ottotark leapt away, slamming his back
against the dangling corpse. “Shit, woman!”

“
Your word or you’re
next.” The confident steely tone of her voice surprised
her.

“
Fine, fine. I won’t even
touch you if you’re dangling on the edge of a cliff, begging me to
pull you to safety.”

“
Excellent.” Tikaya
stepped to the side of the door. “You first. We’re going up to the
others before I let you out of match range.”

Teeth bared, he edged past her and sprinted
up the steps. Tikaya would not have kept up, but he crashed into
someone in the hall upstairs.