The Prophecy Con (Rogues of the Republic) (18 page)

“And the gods don’t care,” Desidora said. “They shine on the Empire and the Republic together, and the Old Kingdom, and, hell, almost every race except the Glimmering Folk or the daemons. They could give me back my powers, so that I could
do
something instead of just standing there like an idiot as that creature of the ancients bore down on me, but instead, I play matchmaker and sit here while you read a book.”

Ululenia’s horn flared, a sudden flash of prismatic light. She doused it, blushing prettily as everyone looked their way, but her eyes shone with a hunter’s satisfaction as she looked at Desidora.

The ancients, daughter of the gods! That is our key.

“How?” Desidora murmured. The young nobleman who had been working on his poem for the past hour was coming their way.

The path is not yet clear. But the queen of the cold river hides her path most when she speaks of the ancients.

“And that magical attack in the library twisted the magic of the ancients to send those creatures against us.” Desidora nodded slowly. “It’s a start.”

“Excuse me, I am sorry to trouble you both, but I thought I saw something, and . . .” The young nobleman blushed. “I’m acting the fool.”

He
was
technically a virgin, Desidora remembered. She glanced over, and saw Ululenia smiling, eyes wide, lips just barely parted as though waiting to ask a question. Despite the lack of aura, Desidora had an idea of what was going on.

“My friend has had a long journey, and is tired,” Desidora said, “and I fear I have been a poor host, and am about to be even poorer. I must go speak to my friend Pyvic about a personal matter, leaving her to dine alone tonight.”

“You must go,” Ululenia said, smiling sadly and giving Desidora a tiny wink when the nobleman looked away to adjust his jacket, “but perhaps you could tell me where I might find a restaurant where I might also hear poetry performed?” She tucked
Ruminations upon the Unutterable by the Queen of the Cold River
into a pocket in her snowy white dress.

“Well, actually, um, now that you mention it, I know a place,” the nobleman said, “and in fact I even do a little myself from time to time,” and Desidora smiled, said her goodbyes, and left Ululenia to finish playing with her prey on her own.

Tern and Hessler were happy. So was Ululenia, though she had lost Dairy. Thinking back, something in the boy’s aura had told Desidora that it wasn’t going to work, but the aura had also burned too brightly for Desidora to get a good look, and anyway, it had been all she could do to avoid summoning skeletal warriors and turning the carpets black around her at the time.

More important, though, Desidora—now nothing but a love priestess—was walking off alone.

It was late afternoon, but Pyvic would likely still be at his office. Desidora wasn’t sure how knowing that the book had something to do with the ancients would help, but it was more than they had known this morning. The queen of the cold river cared about the ancients, and ancient magic had tried to stop them, and . . .

She sensed nothing until the bag came down over her head.

Idrienesae flitted from one branch to the next on wings made of shimmering rainbows. The woods were dark around her, silent but for the steady fall of footsteps behind her. The bear had finally stopped screaming a few seconds ago, and none of Idrienesae’s other woodland friends would be coming to help after seeing what had happened to it.

Things had been good for Idrienesae. Too good. That was it. She’d gotten used to the milk on the doorstep, the whispered gratitude for a few little chores done during the night from the mother raising her daughter alone, the laughter of a fat toddler as she led him back out of the woods when he’d wandered off. Little things.

Idrienesae reached one of
her
trees and darted into it, letting the bark close over her safely. For a moment, the sound outside was muffled, as it always was until her body adapted and she could listen through the branches.

Then she heard her tree scream as a blade pierced it, and she screamed with her tree, for the pain was hers, too. She felt herself down, down, into the roots, into the earth, through the chain that bound all life and to the next tree that was
hers
, and when she reached it, she flung herself free, shuddering. Her wings were ragged, flickering in and out of existence, and would not hold her weight. The tree behind her, the first one, was still screaming as energy crackled through it, and even without being inside her, Idrienesae felt the connection enough to feel the pain.

She shouldn’t have soured Old Widow Kinnet’s milk. It had been petty, cruel, even, but Kinnet had come back from a trip to the big city with little charms for all of the girls of the village to wear, and the charms had been
silver
, and you couldn’t let these things go, you had to remind people of the rules of simple politeness. Clearly Idrienesae had gone too far with the milk, though, and attracted the attention of something far bigger than she was.

She ran now, her soft feet scraping on the ground from the unaccustomed exertion, and tears fell freely as the footsteps closed in behind her. She would be good from now on, she promised whatever gods cared to listen to the fairy folk. She would help even the people who didn’t leave out the milk, and she would just avoid Old Widow Kinnet, and that would be fine, if she could just get away right now—

She burst through a wall of bushes, scraping her arms, and came out at the pond with the pretty hill, where most of the young villagers who didn’t have barns with haylofts came when they lay with another for the first time. With her wings, she could have flitted up easily, but her wings were gone now, stolen by the pain, and the hill was so steep.

Idrienesae turned, and with a little keening hum in her throat, she spun a dagger out of bits of nothing. It was small, since she was small, but she turned to the figure in the green ringmail anyway, the helmeted figure with the spear and
the net.

“You are a Hunter, a thing of the ancients, come to kill me for my magic,” she said, and raised her dagger. “I did not steal it. I do not steal. It was left behind when nobody wanted it anymore, and it became me, and that is who I am, and you will kill me now, but I am alive, and you are not, Hunter.”

The Hunter put a hand to its helmet and lifted the visor.
Underneath, Idrienesae expected to see blank metal, or
crystals humming with magic, for that was what the stories had said. That was what her friend had told her was inside the Hunters, and her friend had survived an attack by one
of them.

Instead, she saw a human woman’s face, with Imperial features and glittering golden makeup curling around her eyes.

“Wrong,” said the woman. “But you know more about the Hunters than most, little pixie. Tell me, how did you hear such stories?”

Idrienesae considered running. She considered the dagger.
She considered many things, because she was fast, but then she saw that the woman was watching her, and so she told the truth instead. “I heard from a friend who met one.”

“Was this friend a unicorn, perchance?” asked the woman, and lifted a net of silver links that crackled with golden magic. “Was her name Ululenia, and does she travel with a human named Loch?” At Idrienesae’s silence, the woman smiled gently. “The villagers leave out a saucer of milk for you, do they not, and wake up to find that you have helped with their work? Perhaps if you leave out a saucer of your friend’s location, you might wake up to find that I have left you alive.”

Idrienesae talked very quickly.

Ten

T
HROUGH THE MOONLIT
Republic countryside, a train of an even dozen cars—one for each pair of gods, which the dwarves characterized as good politics more than superstition—blazed along the dwarven railway.

The railway was a bright line of silver in the darkness. It caught the light of the moon, glittering brilliantly and curving to match the rise and fall of the hillside. Near the train, the tracks glowed a flickering blue tinged with red as the silver repelled the rainbow-flickering crystals set into the underside of each of the cars.

Lapitects claimed that the glittering rainbow crystals were imperfect forms of the
lapiscaela
that held Heaven’s Spire aloft, and as such, pushed only against silver and a few other metals, rather than pushing against the ground itself. Fairy creatures pointed to the color and the repulsion of silver and claimed that the crystals contained the energy from which the fairies themselves had been born.

Dwarves claimed that the crystals could pull a dozen cars across the countryside faster than a galloping horse for a full day or more, and prices for freight or commercial travel were quite reasonable if booked in advance.

Inside the economy car, Loch sat in one of several comfortable benches and looked out the window. The glowing panels in the ceiling had been dimmed for the evening, and Loch could see the scrubby grass, pale gray against the black of the sky.

The car itself was metal, with walls that angled in a little near the top, like the dwarven buildings. The walls and ceiling were tiled with intricate stone patterns, and the paving stones on the floor felt more real than whatever they used for the streets up on Heaven’s Spire. The whole car thrummed steadily as the crystals beneath the floor kept it aloft and moving.

“Time?” she asked.

“Fourteen after,” Tern said, fiddling with a small dart-thrower she’d worked into her sleeve and cufflink. “One minute ‘til the guards shift.”

“Hessler?”

“I’m prepared to render all three of us invisible, although the sheer amount of metal involved will cause reflections that limit the efficiency, and should the guards look directly at us while we move—”

“It was good enough to get you and Tern inside in the first place. Time?”

“Now,” Tern said.

The three of them went to the front door of the car, and Tern looked through a little window. “He’s out.” She slid the door open.

The cars were connected by great hooks that let the overall train flex a little, along with a kind of tube to protect travelers who wanted to move from one train to another. The tube was made out of a thin mesh of what Loch was pretty sure had started off as ringmail, glittering against the sharp glare of the lamps on the doorframe of each car. The ramp between the two cars was thin metal, with the tube connecting to either side. Loch could hear the rush of air and the steady hum of the crystals on the other side of that ramp.

She stepped across without hesitation and looked through the window on the far side. “Dining car’s clear. Tern, go.”

The problem was that the elf and his manuscript were in a privacy suite two cars up. In front of them was the first of the luxury cars, which featured private suites with amenities instead of just reclining chairs, along with a bar that served overpriced food and watered-down drinks. It was locked to prevent people like Loch and her team from doing exactly what Loch and her team were doing.

Tern pulled a listening tube from one pocket, set it to her ear, and leaned against the door. “Last year’s model,” she murmured, gently tapping a quartz wand with a tuning fork and holding it near the lock. “Three crystals, each with shielded resonance buffers and overcharge locks.”

Hessler nodded, apparently impressed. “In the older models, if you had a multi-crystal lock, a lack of shielding meant that the frequencies were all eventually overridden by the strongest crystal, and a lapitect with a sufficiently powerful crystal pick could simply sync the pick to that crystal, and the others would snap to the unlocked position along with it.”

“Fascinating as always, Hessler,” Loch said. “No guard yet, Tern.”

“So pleased to hear it,” Tern said, “because I am in no danger of having this thing open.” She produced a second small crystal wand and, holding it between her teeth, brought it near the first one. “Mmkay, dass firss crssdull.”

“Trying to sync multiple crystals is exponentially harder than trying to sync one,” Hessler said. “She’s got to re-trigger the emitter every few seconds on the appropriate frequency, along with dead-man-pulses on the crystals she isn’t working with yet, to avoid an alarm. It’s a bit like trying to keep an increasingly long string of numbers straight in your head.”

Loch kept looking through the window. The guard for the new shift had just come in through the far door, and was looking around the bar and dining area. “Company, Tern.”

“Doo down.”

The guard started down the hallway, pausing to check an unsecured door.

“The Republic could learn a lot from the ways in which the dwarves incorporate crystal artifacts into their utilities—”

Loch grabbed Hessler and pushed him to the window. “Distraction, back behind the guard,
right now
.”

“What, I—oh.” Hessler squinted, held up a finger, and then curled it into a hook shape. “It’s harder to do through the glass of the window, but fortunately, they didn’t use anything that would absolutely block—”

“Did he stop?”

“Um.” Hessler looked again. “Yes, yes, he’s turned around and is checking back in the dining car.” He smiled at Loch. “I used an illusion of a door opening and closing and someone asking for help, which should—”

“Great. Tern?”

“Oooo, god idd!” Tern murmured as the lock snapped open. She dropped an absurd number of crystal picks from her mouth into her palm, then stood up straight and kissed Hessler. “You’re the best, baby.”

“Mm-hmm.” Loch slid the door open and stepped through. “Let’s move.”

There was a small standing area near the door, likely for waiters to stash carts, and it stretched across the entire width of the car, as opposed to the narrow hallway, which had to make room for private suites on either side and was thus barely wide enough to walk down without having to turn sideways.

Loch, Tern, and Hessler had just gotten into the standing area when the dwarven guard came back out from the dining room.

Loch ducked behind the wall, pulling Tern and Hessler with her. “Cloak.”

Tern winced. “So . . .”

“What?” Loch demanded.

“Well . . . I didn’t actually get the door locked again behind us, and he’s going to notice that.”

Loch rolled her eyes. “Wait,” she said to Tern, and then to Hessler, “Cloak, please.”

Hessler reached out and put his hand on their shoulders. “Hold still,” he murmured, for once not explaining the detailed arcane history of what he was doing. The air around Loch shimmered, and then everything went faintly gray and muddy at the edges.

Tern, still visible inside the little bubble that the three of them stood in, looked at Loch questioningly, pointing at the door, which was slightly ajar. Loch held up a hand.

“It’s really more effective if you hold still,” Hessler whispered, and now Loch and Tern
both
rolled their eyes.

The guard came down the hallway, checking the doors.

He stepped out into the waiting area, rolled out his shoulders, and then stopped and frowned at the door. Loch noted the ringmail, thin but still effective, and the truncheon at his belt.

As he walked past them and toward the door, Loch stepped out of Hessler’s cloaking bubble. She deliberately scuffed her foot on the floor, leaned toward one of the doors and put her hand on the handle, and said, “Excuse me?” to the guard.

The guard turned, saw a guest who hadn’t been there a moment ago stepping away from a privacy suite, and smiled politely. “May I help ye with something, ma’am?”

“I thought I heard something down that way,” Loch said, looking down the hall toward the dining area. “Someone asking for help? I wasn’t sure if there was a problem, or . . . ?”

“I heard it meself,” the guard said. “Nothing to worry yerself about, ma’am.” Behind him, a fuzzy, shifting silhouette of Tern reached out and closed the door to the economy car.

Loch coughed loudly to cover the sound of the door sliding shut. “Is the bar still open? I could use something for my throat.”

“There’s no one on duty there, ma’am,” said the guard apologetically, “but there be drinks and some simple foods available for ye to serve yerself, and if need be, I can fetch ye anything ye need.”

The shifting silhouette of Tern gave Loch a thumbs up and then slid fully back into Hessler’s bubble.

“Thank you so much,” Loch said. “Have a good evening.”

“And ye as well,” the guard said, and turned back to the door. He blinked, then shook his head and unlocked it. Loch fiddled with the door to what she’d pretended was her private suite while he stepped through and closed it behind him.

Tern and Hessler popped back into visibility a moment later. “Nice pull,” Tern said quietly.

“Come on.” Loch headed down the hallway with the others in tow.

“I’m still not entirely certain why Tern didn’t just disable the guard with one of her sleeping darts,” Hessler said, “although the fact that I’m the one advocating the more violent approach in this scenario raises a level of irony that is in no way lost on me.”

“Subtlety, baby,” said Tern.

“The longer we have them confused and wondering how anyone got by them, the longer we have to get away,” Loch said, keeping her voice down as they walked single-file down the hallway. The dining area—with its bar and tables—was up ahead, and just past it, the door to the next luxury car, where the elf’s private suite was located. “In a professional operation, you leave the smallest possible footprint to make it as hard as possible for anything to get back to you.”

She stepped out into the dining area.

“Good evening, Miss de Lochenville,” said Irrethelathlialann the elf, sitting at a chair in the corner with his legs propped up on the table. “Fancy a drink?”

Desidora woke up with a groggy, black-spotted headache that suggested she’d been subdued by a knockout-choke rather than a sharp blow.

As a love priestess, these things came up now and then.

She spent a few moments wondering dizzily if she were going to throw up, decided that she probably wasn’t, and opened her eyes in hopes that it would tell her which way was up, at least.

The room she was in was pretty dark, but lit by blurry multicolored lights that gradually resolved themselves into various crystals set into the walls, floor, and even ceiling of a room made of slate-gray stone. As her vision cleared, Desidora realized that the walls weren’t exactly walls, but very large support pillars, through which snaked grids of pipes lit by the glow of the crystals.

“You may yell if you wish,” said a voice, and Desidora nearly did yell, because with her gifts as a love priestess, she should have been aware of someone crouching just a few yards away. “They will not hear you up above.”

She looked over at him a little too quickly, and her head swam for a minute. When her vision cleared, she saw a man in a black cloak that covered dark armor lined with crystals.

When it cleared some more, she realized what she was looking at.

“You’re another golem,” she said, “like the creature that attacked us in the library. Or Hunter Mirrkir.”

The golem’s face was human at a brief inspection, as though designed by someone with a detailed description of human anatomy, but who had only angled pieces of stone to work with. Its nose was an angled pyramid with no nostrils to speak of, its eyes were perfect diamonds that glowed faintly blue, and its cheekbones could
literally
cut glass.

“The Hunters were formed for duty,” the golem said. “They gathered the stray magic that escaped the works of the masters after the masters departed.”

“Stray magic.” Desidora’s mind was coming back into the confines of her skull, which was good, because she appeared to be tied to a chair. “You mean the fairy creatures.”