The Bands of Mourning (45 page)

The masked fellow, though, he was muttering something in funny-talk. He seemed to be following something with his eyes. A metal pattern on the wall? He stepped to the side, and dug the little grenade from his pocket. He did something, opening its side, then used tweezers to extract what looked like a small nugget of metal. He shoved it into a cavity in the wall, then pulled down a lever.

Wayne heard what he thought was distant humming, then a series of small blue lights started glowing on the walls. As was appropriate to match the atmosphere of this rusting place, they were creepier than Steris in the morning. There were no bulbs or anything rational like that, just sections of the walls that seemed to be made of translucent glass that glowed in a downright gloomy way.

It
was
enough to light up the lumps on the floor. Bodies. A right disturbing number of them, lying in awkward positions. And those pools around them … frozen blood.

Wayne whistled softly. “They
really
went far to give this place a creepy look.”

“Those bodies weren’t here originally,” Wax said dryly. “I think they must be— Wayne, what the hell is that?”

“It fell right off,” Wayne said, clutching the spearhead, which was cold to the touch, even through the handkerchief. The tip was peeking out on one side. “I didn’t even look at it, Wax. Musta been loosened by the wind. See, it has a hole on the bottom for screwing off and—”

“Don’t touch anything,” Wax said, pointing at him. “Else.”

MeLaan gave him a look.

“You shut up,” Wayne said to her.

“Didn’t say a word, Wayne.”

“You
implied
one. That’s worse.”

Wax sighed, looking at the pilot fellow, who was inspecting some carvings on the wall. “Allik?” Wax said, then tapped the medallion he’d tied to his wrist.

The masked man sighed, but swapped out one of his medallions for the other. He immediately shivered. “I have now been to hell,” he said. “These mountains will rise all the way there for certain.”

“You think hell is in the
sky
?” Steris asked, standing close to Wax, practically clinging to him.

“Of course it is,” Allik said. “Dig down deep enough in the ground, and things get warm. Hell must be the other way. What did you want of me, Great Metallic Destroyer?”

Wax sighed. “Bodies,” he said, nodding down the hallway. “Traps?”

“Yes,” Allik said. “The ones who built this place were charged with protecting the Sovereign’s weapon. They knew others would eventually follow, and so the builders were bound to make it difficult, knowing that they could not remain to guard in person. Not in this place of ice and death. But…”

“What?” Wax said.

“Those masks,” Allik said.

“The masks of Hunters?” Wax asked.

Allik looked at him, shocked. “How did you recognize them?”

“I didn’t,” Wax said, walking forward carefully. Wayne joined him, as did MeLaan. Wax waved for Marasi, Steris, and Telsin to remain back, though he gestured for Allik to join them.

Together, the four of them walked to the first set of corpses. Wax knelt down beside the pool of frozen blood. The closest fellow had died miserably, with a spike through his chest. Wayne could see the trap now, the tip of it still jutting from the wall. The poor fellow’s mates must have tried to pull him free of the spike, but then had gotten caught in traps themselves.

The masks were different from Allik’s, that was for sure. Made of wood with bits of glass stuck to them, each in a different, odd pattern. And these ones showed the mouth, covering the top half the face, then running down the sides. The skin there, at the sides of the mask, seemed to have
melded
with the wood—though that might be because everything in here was as cold as a spinster’s bedroom.

Wax nudged the mask. “You said the Hunters came to destroy this place.”

“Yes,” Allik said.

“Well, I think they either lied to you, or changed their minds.” Wax nodded toward the busted doors, then down the hallway, littered with bodies. “The lure of the Bands was too powerful for these fellows. I’d guess the dead ones we found near the ship were the ones determined to go through with blowing up the whole place. Got betrayed, but then these betrayers in turn fell to the traps. The ones who returned home; what happened to them? Vanished?”

“Yes,” Allik said, cocking his head. He raised his mask, revealing a wonderfully silly mustache and beard, then regarded Wax with awed eyes. “They went back to the Hunters. Then … gone. Returned to their families, it was said.”

“Executed,” Wax said, rising. “It was discovered they helped murder the rest of their crew, then tried to steal the Bands. They turned back because of the traps killing too many of their fellows, took a skimmer because it was all they could man, and returned with a made-up story of a blizzard. They were going to gather another crew and try again. Their superiors caught them first.”

Allik seemed befuddled. “How … how did you figure that—”

“He does this all the time,” Wayne said. “Best not to encourage him.”

“Just a theory,” Wax said. “One supported by the evidence though. Steris, Telsin. I want you to stay behind while—”

“I’m going with you,” Telsin snapped. She walked forward, cold as the dead blokes on the floor. “I won’t be shoved aside, Waxillium. I won’t be left for our uncle to catch up to us and take me again.”

Wax sighed, looking toward Steris and Marasi.

“I’ll stay,” Steris said. “Someone needs to watch the entrance for Suit and his people.”

Wax nodded, glancing at Wayne. “You keep an eye on her.” Then he looked to Marasi. “You keep an eye on
him
. We’ll come get you if we find anything.”

Marasi nodded. Wayne sighed.

“You intend to go forward?” Allik said, standing up, eyes bulging. “O Great Impetuous One, far be it from me—a lowly pilot—to question your ridiculous intentions, but … seriously? Didn’t you see the
corpses
?”

“I saw them,” Wax said. “MeLaan?”

“On it,” she said, striding forward.

“Great One,” Allik said, “I cannot but think they have traps designed to kill your kind. If they thought of all this, they will have prepared for one such as you.”

“Yes,” Wax said. “That spike was all wood.”

Allik grew more frantic. “Then why would you—”

MeLaan stepped on a pressure plate, causing a spear to launch out of one of the many small holes in the wall. It moved jarringly fast, piercing right through MeLaan’s torso, coming out the other side.

She sighed, looking down. “This is going to absolutely ruin my wardrobe.”

Allik gawked, then lifted his hand as if to raise his mask, only it was already up. He fumbled, unable to take his eyes off MeLaan, who yanked the spear out with a casual gesture.

“Traps,” Wax said, “are somewhat less threatening when you have an immortal along.”

“Unless they have explosives,” MeLaan said. “If I lose a spike, you’d better be ready to stick it right back in. And I was serious—this is going to be
awful
for my clothing.”

“You could do it without,” Wayne said hopefully.

She thought for a moment, then shrugged, reaching to grab her top.

“I’ll buy you new clothing, MeLaan,” Wax said, interrupting her. “We don’t want to make poor Allik fall over dead.”

“Actually,” Allik said, “I don’t think I’d mind.”

“Good man,” Wayne said. “Knew I liked you.”

“Ignore them,” Wax said. “Wayne, help guard the door. Allik, I need you with me, in case something is written in your language.”

The man nodded, then put back down his mask. Made sense why he wore one now. Wayne couldn’t grow a proper beard either, but at least he had the sense to shave.

MeLaan strolled down the hallway. “Telsin, stay behind me,” Wax said, “and step exactly where I step. Same for you, Allik.”

They left Wayne and the two ladies behind. Ahead, a large spiked log swung out of a hidden compartment and
crushed
MeLaan against the wall. She shook it off like a champ, stumbling on down the hallway while her leg re-formed.

“You know,” Wayne said, looking toward Steris and Marasi, “she might be even better at the Blackwatch Doublestomp than I am.”

24

Marasi settled in beside Wayne and Steris, watching the approach to the temple. Distant lanternlight showed Suit’s group. But they were getting closer.

What would they do if the man got here? Fight? For how long? Eventually their medallions would run out of heat, and they had almost nothing in the way of supplies.

They’d simply have to count on Waxillium finding the Bands quickly; then they could escape on the skimmer and be away before Suit could do anything. The idea of that infuriating man stuck up here in the snows—having slogged miles and miles to find an empty temple—appealed to her.

At the very least, imagining his reaction distracted her from her own annoyance.

Sit here, Marasi. Stay out of trouble. Babysit Wayne.
She knew that wasn’t what he meant, but it was still galling.

Rather than sit and simmer in her own petulance, Marasi dug in her purse, pulling out the little spike that belonged to ReLuur. Such a small thing, and so clean—a shining sliver of … pewter, was it? Staring at it in the light of Steris’s lantern, she wished she didn’t know its history. A person had been killed to make this, their soul ripped apart so a piece could be used to make a kandra.

Even though it had been done long ago, to someone who would have been centuries dead by now anyway, she felt as if there should be blood beneath her fingers, making the spike slippery. It should not be so clean.

Yet,
she thought,
where would mankind be without the kandra, acting as Harmony’s hands—guiding and protecting us? Such good to come of something so awful.
Indeed, according to the Historica, without the work the kandra had done through the ages collecting atium, mankind would likely have been destroyed.

The Lord Ruler is the same,
Marasi thought.
He was a monster. He created this spike by killing someone. And yet he somehow managed to get to Allik’s people and save their entire civilization.

Waxillium sought justice. He had an open heart—he’d spared Wayne’s life all those years ago, after all—but in the end, he sought to uphold the law. That was shortsighted. Marasi wanted to create a world where law enforcement wouldn’t be
needed
. Was that why she was so annoyed with him lately?

“You bein’ careful with that?” Wayne asked, nodding toward the spike. “You don’t want to prick yourself and turn into a kandra.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works,” Marasi said, tucking it back into her purse.

“Never can tell,” Wayne said. “I think I should carry it. Just in case.”

“You’d swap it for the first trinket we passed, Wayne.”

“No I wouldn’t.” He paused. “Why? You see somethin’ good back there?”

Marasi rose and walked to Steris, who had settled primly on a stone shelf along the wall of the temple’s vestibule. She sat in a ladylike posture, knees forward, back straight, writing carefully on a notebook by lanternlight.

“Steris?” Marasi asked.

The woman looked up and blinked. “Ah. Marasi. Perhaps you can help me with a topic. How useless am I?”

“Excuse me?”

“Useless,” Steris said, holding her notebook. Not her little pocket one; her larger one, full-sized, which she’d brought in her pack. She used it for brainstorming lists.

Today, she’d been writing on the back of it. “I’ve been trying to quantify it, for reference purposes,” Steris said. “I am under no illusions as to my position in this group. I am the baggage, the accident. The person who needs to be left with the horses, or sent to stay away from traps. If Lord Waxillium could have sequestered me somewhere safe along the way and left me, he certainly would have.”

Marasi sighed, slumping down on the shelf beside her sister. Was this actually something the two of them could
relate
on? “I know how you feel,” she said. “I spent the first year around him feeling unwelcome, as if Waxillium considered me some little puppy nipping at his heels. And now, when he finally does seem to have accepted me, he treats me as merely a tool to be used or put back on the shelf as required.”

Steris cocked her head at Marasi. “I think you mistake me.”

Of course I do,
Marasi thought with resignation. “How?”

“I did not mean to say I
minded
being treated this way,” Steris said. “I was merely stating facts. I am quite useless on this expedition, and I think that is only fair, considering my personal life experience. However, if I wish to improve, I need to know how far I have to go. Here.”

She turned her notebook to show Marasi the back, where she’d been writing. Why use the back? Either way, she’d drawn a small graph with points plotted on it. Usefulness was listed on one axis, and it had names up the other. Rusts—she’d assigned a
number
to everyone’s level of worth on the mission. Waxillium was a hundred, as was MeLaan. Wayne was a seventy-five.