The Paladin Caper (8 page)

“Noted.” Loch turned away. “Thanks.”

“S’what you pay me for.”

They landed at the salvage yard not long after. It wasn’t so much a place of business as a place where airships got dragged or dropped, and there was a notable absence of official Republic inspectors and licensing agents.

“I know where they are,” Desidora said as they touched down. The deck slid back to its normal color, and the chains turned back into ropes. A moment later, her hair and robes did the same.

“Kail, you and Hessler are on repairs.” Loch looked over. “We’re on the clock. If throwing money gets us in the air faster, make it happen.”

“I’ll have us in the air in ninety-one seconds or less,” Kail said.

“It was an example!”
Hessler said irately.

“Sorry, it’s a thing now, Hessler.”

“Also,
fewer
.”

The two headed down the gangplank toward the men with grimy work clothes and speculative expressions, and Loch turned back to Desidora. “What have you got?”

“By direction and distance and . . . feel,” Desidora said with a little shrug, “they’re at the mining center in Sunrise Canyon.”

“Damn,” Tern said. Loch looked over and shot her an eyebrow.

“We attempted to rob it once,” Icy said without opening his eyes or moving from his twisted-pain shape.

“Really?” Desidora sounded impressed.

“Pure-grade crystals, unprocessed and ready for energy templates? That’s like a skeleton key for half the crystal-based security systems in the Republic.” Tern sighed wistfully.

“Sadly, skeleton keys are very well guarded,” Icy said. “The facility itself, along with interior access to the processing wing, was restricted with an aura-coded key that never left the facility.”

Desidora hmm’d thoughtfully. “Is it coded to a living aura or just a unique random energy signature?”

“The latter, I think,” Tern said. “You think your death-priestess thing would let you dupe the aura?”

“If it isn’t the aura of a living creature, you could get me inside, and I could—”

“Ah, but wait,” Tern cut in, “crystal mine. Ambient magical energy like crazy. You ever walk around carpeted floor in fuzzy socks and then shake hands with someone and
zap
?” She wiggled her fingers. “Imagine that, but you use magic of any kind, and then stuff explodes.”

Desidora gave Tern a hurt look. “That is
nothing
like fuzzy socks.”

“The highest-security area had very little information, even on the maps we procured,” Icy said, “but the main processing center sits above it. It appears to be a mine that was abandoned due to magical buildup in the crystals, listed as deadly to any living creature who went inside.”

“We bought drinks for a few miners who said they saw golems tromping around in that direction once or twice,” Tern added.

“If a golem can survive the magical energy, I can survive it,” Desidora said confidently.

Tern nodded. “Just don’t wear fuzzy socks.”

Kail and Hessler came back up onto the deck, accompanied by a few surly men who shot the women the speculative weasel look every woman learns to take as a warning sign.

“Control console’s over here,” Kail said brightly, as though men who made their living illegally outfitting airships might not know where the control console of a common airship model might be located.

“You’re her? The one in charge?” one of them, a big man with a long wrench in one hand, said to Loch. At Loch’s nod, the man rubbed his neck, squinting. “Expensive, but we’ll have you back in the air soon enough. Boys bringing up the new ward-crystals now.”

Loch nodded as several more men came up the gangplank, carrying large, blanket-wrapped bundles.

“Glad to have you out here,” Loch said. “Surprised you get much business in the middle of nowhere.”

“Given the relative location between port cities—” Hessler started, and then stopped when Kail elbowed him.

“Like the quiet,” the airship leader said as his men filed onto the deck. “Just us and the whisper of the balloons.”

“All those old balloons and nobody else?” Tern said brightly, gesturing with one hand and casually reaching into a concealed side pocket of her utility skirt with the other. “I can’t imagine what it’s like! I mean, after a while, I think I’d start talking with the wind-daemons inside those balloons!”

“In fact, prolonged exposure to unwarded balloons can—” Hessler started, and then stopped when Kail elbowed him again.

“You’re her,” the leader of the salvagers said to Loch. “The one the daemons talk about.”

Loch leaned on her walking stick, hands low, clearly not starting a fight. “And what do the daemons say about me?”

“Say you killed ’em,” said the leader, and he was gripping his wrench tightly now. “Say you’ve got some charm that makes it hard for ’em to find you, but they haven’t forgot.”

Loch didn’t touch, look at, or think about the daemon-ward necklace Hessler and Desidora had made for her. “The daemons ought to get over what happened,” she said.

“Can’t,” said the leader, and as he stepped forward, his men unwrapped the blankets and reached for the weapons concealed inside. “Just whisper and whisper until it’s all a man can hear—”

The hook of Loch’s walking stick wrapped around the leader’s arm and snapped tight. Loch stepped in, locked his arm at the elbow as his wrench fell to the deck, and slammed him into the railing. As he grunted, she kicked the back of his leg, shifted her grip to punch him behind the ear, locked the hook behind his neck, and slammed him face-first to the deck.

The other salvagers paused, partially because Loch had put their leader down. Tern’s crossbow had also come out, aimed toward the nearest salvager at crotch level. The crackling illusionary eldritch fire sprouting from Hessler’s hand was also a factor in their hesitation, along with Desidora’s skin turning bone white as she pointed at one of the men with darkness slithering between her fingers.

“If you want to talk with daemons,” Loch said to the man face-first on the ground, held in place by the stick on the back of his neck and her knee on his spine, “you can pass on a message for me. Remind Jyelle that coming after me has gotten her arrested, killed, turned into a daemon, and smashed into a wall at high speed. She wants to come after me
again
, that’s on her. Now, are we doing business or not?”

“Gonna kill you,” the leader said to the floorboards. “Gonna killllll you, Loch, for what you did. Can’t die, can’t do anything, all I can do is wait and hate and
arrogant apple, babbling brook, creeping cat
,” he finished suddenly, and then went limp.

“It’s about time,” Kail said. “I’d rather the voices in people’s heads were voices from
our
team.”

Ululenia landed on the deck, shifting from falcon into human shape, her horn blazing. “His mind was rotten, trunk chewed by insects until only the husk remained.” She looked at the other salvagers. “Their minds are not broken yet. We might not have to strip them and peel their skin off while reciting the names of everyone they have ever had sex with and telling them what that person was really thinking about at the time until the death priestess snuffs out their souls like a cheap tallow candle.”

“Hypothetically,” Tern added.

“So,” Loch said, standing up and gesturing at the nearest salvager with her walking stick, “about those ward-crystals . . .”

They were back in the air an hour later.

“So,” Loch said to the team while Kail put them on course, “we need a plan for the mine at Sunrise Canyon.”

“Are we not discussing what just occurred?” Icy asked from where he was helping Kail with the rigging.

“Jyelle holding a grudge isn’t new information.” Loch pulled out the necklace. “Hessler and Desidora have got it handled for now. I can deal with it once we’ve hit the mine.”

“And Ululenia suddenly getting
really good
at scaring people?” Kail added.

“As the wolf bares its fangs so that it need not draw blood, so we convinced the fools to deal with us once Little One defeated their master.” Ululenia shrugged. “I
did
nothing.”

“And as long as it stays that way,” Loch said, “then we concentrate on the mine.”

“I was thinking about that,” Desidora said. “Tern, you said the aura-coded key never leaves the mine. Does the supervisor keep it on him? If he has held it for long enough, its aura would have mingled with his own, and we could find
him
outside the mine and copy
that
.”

“How long is long enough?” Tern asked.

“The current supervisor has had this position for less than a year,” Icy added. “His predecessor had held the job for many years before dying to some sort of fairy creature that lived in the canyon.”

“It was a big scandal in the guild,” Tern said. “Looked like he was smuggling crystals out of the mine to sell, and the deal went sour and he got ripped up.” She coughed. “It was actually what gave us the idea to break in.”

“Less than a year, and there will be no imprint on his soul,” Desidora said, frowning.

“Face time, then,” Kail said, still adjusting the controls. “I’ll get a job at the mine, work my way in. I’m still not loving the idea of getting through however many levels of security they’ve got, though. Any other entrance to the mine?”

“Not that we found,” Icy said, “and we considered the same solution.”

“Icy really didn’t like my idea of a
small, controlled
explosion opening up a mine to the surface and giving us an alternate way in,” Tern added.

“I did not, no.”

“So this is a long job,” Loch said, frowning. “Some of us get hired at the processing center, some of us get hired as miners. We look for gaps and figure out a nonmagical solution that gets us into the high-security area and shuts down whatever the ancients are trying to do . . . ideally before they come back.”

“Or we wait for Ghylspwr to show himself,” Desidora said, “and we take him.” The deck around her went black again.

“None of us can handle Ghylspwr in a fight, Diz,” Kail said from the control console.

“He is a soul in a weapon.” Desidora smiled thinly, her lips a black slash across chalk-white skin. “Perhaps I can pull it out.”

“He betrayed all of us,” Loch said firmly, “and if we need to stop him for our plan to work, we do it. That said, we’re not blowing the plan because anyone is angry about getting played by a magic hammer.”

Desidora glared, then nodded. Her skin regained its healthy blush before she turned away.

“Captain,” Kail said suddenly, “I’ve got a ship incoming. Fast. Right at us.”

Everyone stood up and got their weapons ready again, which turned out to be entirely necessary, as the ship that was just a dot in the sky and then a vague nonairship shape quite rapidly grew into a slim wooden wand from which long narrow leaves grew like great living sailwings. It was a treeship, small and built for speed, and if Loch were any judge, there were only a few people with the wealth and access to a ship like that who would have any business contacting her.

Her guess proved right when the treeship came to a relative stop, matching their speed, and a familiar elven shape climbed up from belowdecks.

“Hey, Ethel,” Kail called over. “Always a pleasure.”

Irrethelathlialann did not smile. “There are messages waiting for you at every major city, but the Dragon believed that the urgency necessitated my coming directly.”

“He found something about the ancients,” Loch said, at the same time that Ululenia said, “Dairy.”

Irrethelathlialann nodded grimly. “You’re both right. It seems the boy, erstwhile Champion of Dawn and my employer’s current lover, is tied to the ancients even more directly than his little prophecy would have suggested. In order to return to this world, the ancients need a very specific sacrifice . . . one which they captured en route to the relative safety of the Empire.”

“No.” Leaves suddenly sprouted from the railings, then went golden and fell dead to the deck. Ululenia didn’t even seem to notice. “No.”

“Yes, little virgin-bane.” Now Irrethelathlialann
did
smile. “It’s not just the world being threatened with destruction and enslavement and my people being reduced to soulless husks. Now you might lose the young man who refused to sleep with you.”

“Do you know where he’s being held?” Loch asked.

Irrethelathlialann nodded. “A large mining facility in the Sunrise Canyon. It seems that’s where the gate from our world to theirs is located.”

Loch gripped her walking stick and turned to the others.

“All right. New plan.”

Four

H
ERLIT WOKE UP
a few hours later with the other salvagers looking down at him anxiously.

The voice was there as well, at the back of his mind, completing his sentences for him but not always with the right words.

He’d been a real shipbuilder once, back before a tight-ass supervisor and a few bad deals with spare parts saw him kicked out of the port cities. He knew the safety rules, and the dangers of being around wind-daemons for too long with shoddy wards. Hell, he’d drilled the men out here on the same damn safety rules.