The Prophecy Con (Rogues of the Republic) (19 page)

The golem nodded, things in its neck and shoulders clicking faintly like polished stones in a velvet bag. “They were formed from magic that was not theirs to be. The masters required that the magic be kept safe.”

“Why?” Desidora asked. “The ancients fled this world to escape the Glimmering Folk. What did it matter if their old magics gave rise to something new?”

“You have the book,” the golem said, rising to its feet and coming toward her. “You will return it. What it contains is not for you.”

Desidora could not read the golem’s aura, but that had been an abrupt transition, and she filed it away for later. “I do not have it with me,” she said. “If you let me go, I can retrieve it.”

“You will tell me where it is located,” the golem said immediately. “I will retrieve it. Then you will be released.”

Desidora wasn’t entirely certain whether to trust that. It didn’t sound like the golem was capable of lying, but it also might have a more metaphysical definition of
released
than Desidora did.

More than that, though, if Desidora told it the truth, the thing would go after Ululenia, and as a fairy creature formed from the leftover magic of the ancients, she might not rate on the thing’s “capture alive” list.

“I will not tell you until I am certain that you will not kill me,” she said instead. “You may believe I have already read the book. You may think the knowledge must die.”

The golem held perfectly still. If it were a man, she was certain it would have cocked its head as though thinking . . . or listening. “No,” it said after a moment. “Your death is forbidden.” It held up a hand that looked gloved, until Desidora realized she was looking at the slate-gray material of the walls. A crystal set into the golem’s palm suddenly glowed, a painful pale green. “Your memories will be cleansed.”

And with that, Desidora knew as much as she needed to know. “Ghylspwr,” she said, “I need you.” She flexed her hand in her bonds, opening her hand.

Nothing happened.

“Teleportation ward,” the golem said, pointing to a crystal charm worked into the ropes binding Desidora to her chair.

Desidora looked down at it, a little bit of crystal and silver wire. Its magical signature was simple, practically makeshift. She could, now that she was aware of it, even read the aura it projected, a chaotic cloud of energy deflecting any attempt to magically transport her or transport
to
her.

A law priest of Ael-meseth would have been able to project a field of pure, concentrated justice and banish the ward. A blessed trickster of Gedesar would have unknotted the essence that bound it together, rendering it useless.

A death priestess could have taken that magic and forged it into a bolt of lightning that charred the golem where it stood.

Desidora, love priestess of Tasheveth, could do none of that.

“If you will not tell me,” the golem said, holding up its hand again, “I will take the knowledge from your mind.” It stepped forward, the crystal in its palm flaring emerald as it closed upon Desidora’s head. “I apologize for any discomfort.”

“And you’re sure that Loch wanted us to go back this way?” Hessler whispered as he followed Tern back down the length of the car to the door where they’d come in.

Tern bit back a sigh. Hessler was an excellent wizard and a really nice boyfriend as well, but he was a recent arrival to the world of crime. “Yes, that was what that little gesture meant.”

“So she’s going to deal with . . . what’s the elf’s name, again?”

“Irrethel . . . something. Ethel.” Tern popped the lock on the door—she hadn’t had time to clear her crystals, so they were still tuned to open it—and stepped out of Hessler’s cloaking bubble and into the little tunnel between the two cars. “Hey, sorry about this,” she added as the dwarf standing guard in the tunnel turned toward them. Then she shot him with a wrist dart.

“Ethel?” Hessler asked as the dwarf grabbed at his shoulder, then sank to the ground unconscious.

“Damn it, that’s what Kail called him, and now it’s all I can think of.” Tern hauled the dwarf back into their car, then knelt by the ringmail mesh that protected the space between the cars from the cold night air.

“So Loch is going to deal with Ethel herself?”

Tern slid a wrench from her dress pocket and deftly popped off one of the bolts tying down the mesh. Cold wind immediately began whistling in through the hole. “That’s what that gesture meant, yeah. She’ll handle him, while we go around and get the elven manuscript from his car ourselves.”

“Hmm,” Hessler said as Tern popped off another bolt. “And you’re absolutely certain that she wanted us to go
this way
?”

Tern pulled back the mesh. The night outside was dark, the wind whipping past them as the dwarven train hummed along the tracks.

On the side of the car just beyond where the mesh had covered, handrails led to the top of the car.

“Oh, yeah,” Tern said, grinning. “This is absolutely what she meant.”

“See,” Hessler said as Tern started climbing, “the way you say that, you’re doing the same thing you do when you say that you remembered our plans to meet Desidora for dinner, even though you’re wearing grubby, oil-stained clothes which you then immediately change out of.”

“Hey, sweetie, tip in case you wanted to get me out of those oil-stained clothes ever again?” Tern pulled herself up, the cold metal sharp on the palms of her hands, and peeked over the top. The wind stung her face and slid around her spectacles to half-blind her, but the moonlight shining silver on the back of the train was beautiful even with tears in her eyes. “No girl likes to hear her tells.” With her free hand, she popped a pair of protective goggles out of another dress pocket and slid them over her spectacles.

She pulled herself up onto the roof of the car. The stone was polished to limit wind resistance and felt slick beneath her boots, though handholds dotted the top of the car every few feet. Hessler pulled himself up behind her, grumbling.

“Besides,” she added, turning back to him so that her words weren’t lost in the constant wind, “you have to admit, this is pretty cool.”

“Yes, dear.” Hessler pulled himself onto the rooftop as well and stayed huddled in a low crouch.

“Haven’t you ever wanted to be on the top of one of these things?”

“I grew up on the far side of the Republic,” Hessler said, scuttling over a bit to glance down the side of the car. “I barely even knew this railway existed. Do you, um . . .?” Tern passed him another pair of protective goggles, and he slid them on. “Thank you. You are an excellent girlfriend with no tells.”

Tern grinned. “Come on. Ethel’s suite is in the car after this one.”

“Do we have a plan?” Hessler asked as Tern started walking. He came behind her, crouching and staying directly in the middle of the roof, despite the fact that the wind wasn’t
that
bad and the car wasn’t even rocking that much.

Tern smelled the cold night air. She had wanted to ride on the roof of one of these trains ever since she’d watched them hum by from the window of her study while she practiced her scales. Tonight, she was doing exactly that, with her wizard boyfriend—who admittedly wasn’t as into it as she was, and the chances that they were going to have sex
on
the rooftop were pretty low now that Tern realized how dangerous that might actually be—but
still
.

“Ethel’s suite is the third one on the right,” she said back over her shoulder. “I’ll pop the window if I can. If not, we break it open and climb in. We grab the book and climb back out onto the roof.”

“And go back to our car?” Hessler asked from close enough behind her that he was clearly still worried about slipping. “That plan made sense when no guards had seen us, but since we’ve been spotted, it seems like we should probably figure out some other option.”

Tern sighed. “Yes, that option probably won’t work.” She suspected he was not going to like this. “Remember Kail and Icy?”

“They’re flying in . . . what did Kail call the airship?”

“I have no idea,” Tern said flatly.

“They’re in the airship, anyway, and they’re going to fly past us and lower a rope with a basket, at which point we’ll put the elven manuscript in the basket, so that there’s no way the crime can be tied to . . .” Hessler trailed off. “Oh.”

“You’ll be fine, baby.”

“You know my feelings about—”

“I do, and I totally respect those feelings,” Tern said, “and if we hadn’t been seen by that guard, we would absolutely just head back to our car so that when the guards did a sweep, we could sit there innocently saying, ‘What book?’ But since we’ve been seen, we really need to be off this train as soon as possible, which means being pulled up into the airship whose name I am not going to even try to say.”

Hessler sighed heavily behind her. “He really only saw
you
,” he muttered.

Tern chose not to hear that. She reached the end of the car, took a few running steps, and leaped over the ringmail mesh that covered the gap between the cars. She slid a bit on the landing and nearly fell, catching herself in a little stumble, and turned back to Hessler with a giddy smile. “Coming, baby?”

Hessler squinted. “I can’t just walk across the mesh, can I?”

“The guard in the tunnel would see your footsteps,” Tern said.

Hessler shook his head. “And you’re
sure
that this is what Loch meant with that one hand gesture she threw back when the elf talked to her?”

“Well, we’re
here
, and I don’t see any other way for us to have gotten here, so . . . yeah.” Tern waited for Hessler to work himself up to it and took a moment to look at the moon-bleached countryside.

A dark form was coming their way, a cloud-shaped silhouette of shadow against the stars. It was a ways ahead of them, traveling so as to cross their path. Tern pointed. “Great! Kail and Icy are already here. Come on, it’ll be fine!”

“That ship looks bigger in the dark than Iofe . . . whatever Kail called it,” Hessler muttered, and then squinted at the ringmail mesh he was going to have to jump across. “So does this, for that matter.”

“Running start,” Tern said.

“Are we that far behind schedule?” Hessler asked. “This seems early for Kail and Icy.”

“Remember to flex your knees when you land!” Tern said with a cheerful smile.

Hessler glared, took a few steps back, and rolled out his shoulders.

Tern watched, mentally counting down to when she would move from encouragement to nagging. A moment later, she heard a hiss followed by the thunk of metal on stone behind her. When she turned, she saw a blackened rope trailing from the airship to the train up near the middle of the car Tern was on, with a dark steel grappling hook at the end sliding across the rooftop before it caught on one of the handholds.

“I thought they were going to just going to lower a basket!” Hessler called over.

“Stop stalling!” Tern called back. “They probably saw how fast the train was going and realized that they couldn’t keep up for long. They’ll use the tow-line to catch a ride until we’re ready to pass them the . . .”

She trailed off at the sound of oiled metal sliding on rope, unmistakable to anyone who spent as much time customizing her crossbow as she did, and turned back around to the grappling hook.

“Also, it’s
possible
that this isn’t Kail and Icy,” Tern said as a trio of black-armored men landed on the roof of the car, unhooked their zip lines from the grappling cable, and whipped out crystal-tipped black war maces.

Eleven

L
OCH FLASHED
T
ERN
and Hessler—mostly Tern—a quick sign and smiled at the elf.

“Irrethelathlialann. What an odd coincidence to meet you here.”

“You remembered my name!” he cried with delight. In the dim light of the overhead glowlamps, the elf’s pale green skin seemed sallow, and the crystals made his cheekbones stand out sharply. His golden eyes, half-lidded with amusement, tracked her every move.

Loch shrugged, turned to the bar, and poured herself a shot of fine dwarven whiskey. She sat down opposite Irrethelathlialann at the little table where he had been waiting. A candle was set in a red glass between them, giving the car a bit of natural light. “Kail just calls you Ethel.”

The elf chuckled, clapping his hands gently. “Diminutive appellation to diminish and demean. Desperate, jealous reaction to being outmaneuvered. The information is appreciated.” He seemed to come back to himself, and locked his eyes on her. “Did you like the poem?”

“It didn’t really scan.” Loch sipped her drink, paused to savor the taste, and didn’t wince as it burned its way down her throat. “I need the manuscript.”

“You
want
the manuscript,” the elf corrected.

“The Republic and the Empire are going to go to war if I don’t give them that book,” Loch said, “so yes, I
want
it.”

He sniffed and took a sip from his wineglass. His drink was the same pale green as his skin. “No.”

Loch took another sip. “No?”

“The Republic and the Empire are
always
going to war,” Irrethelathlialann said, “and they wouldn’t know how to read it anyway, so
no
, you’re not getting it.”

Loch downed the last of her drink in one large gulp, flipped the cup over, and slapped it down hard enough to make the candle on the table dance in its little red glass. “It wasn’t a request.”

She stood and turned to the door that led to the elf’s car.

Behind her, she heard the sound of a weapon leaving its sheath.

“No,” Irrethelathlialann said, “it wasn’t. It was a
mistake
.”

She turned, her own blade sliding free from her belt. The rings rattled, and the red silk scarf on the end flapped as she spun the blade, pointing it at the elf.

In one hand, he held a rapier whose long, slender blade was made from a single piece of ruby-red wood. In the other, he still held his wineglass. “An Imperial broadsword. Impressive.” He frowned. “What are the rings for?”

Loch came in with a clean downward cut, which the elf parried, stepping to put the table between them. He was still smiling—and still holding the drink.

Loch kicked the table, slammed it into the elf, then knocked it aside as he stumbled, slapped his blade aside, and shoulder-checked him into the wall with the full weight of her body. He grunted and slid down to a seated position.

Loch cut the blade from his hand, and it chimed like a bell as it slid across the stone floor. The candle from the table rolled away in its glass, flame guttering wildly. She brought her blade to the elf’s throat. “Are we done?”

Wincing, Irrethelathlialann massaged the hand that had held the sword. “Fascinating.”

In a motion too fast for Loch to track, he smashed the stem of his wineglass against Loch’s blade.

Loch flinched back as glass and alcohol sprayed into her face, then stumbled as a hot pain stabbed into her leg. She swung blindly, and her blade clanged off the wall.

When her vision had cleared, Irrethelathlialann was back on his feet, his rapier once again in his hand. The stem of his wineglass was sticking out of Loch’s calf. She yanked it free, gritting her teeth and glaring at the elf.

“Practical style supplements rigorous formal training,” he went on, his cadence rapid, as though the words were being pulled out of him on a chain. “Attacks highlight strength rather than fine manipulation, intention to batter into submission. Weakened resolve, unwilling to utilize lethal force.”

“Yeah, about that,” Loch said, and spun her blade. As the scarf rippled in the air between them, she threw the stem of the wineglass at him with her off hand.

He sidestepped again, then ducked into a kind of half-split under Loch’s follow-up slash, which seemed pointless and showy until his extended foot snapped into the table leg and flipped the table back onto Loch’s path. She barreled into it, trying to pin him to the wall, but he was already moving again, kicking up, then off the wall and over her head, and though Loch swept her blade up and around, all she got for her trouble was a little line of fire across her back.

“Intelligent, athletic, skilled,” he said, flicking a drop of blood from the tip of his rapier, “but slow.”

“You’ve got a little elven magic going there,” Loch said, rolling out her shoulder. It felt like a shallow cut at most.

“A little,” the elf said, grinning.

She came at him with a low slash that he waved aside. Even as his riposte hissed past her ribs, her sword smashed through the bottles on the bar, and as Loch ducked back from a following slash at her head, she spun her blade around and snapped it back, flinging liquor and broken glass at the
elf’s face.

His blade moved in a blur, even as he rolled, and little chimes rang as he batted glass aside. “You steal my book, you steal my tricks.” He shook his head. “Do you do
anything
on your own?”

Loch smiled and brought her blade down on the candle glass by her foot.

It smashed, and the candle spun end over end, landing in the puddle of liquor between her and the elf.

Irrethelathlialann raised an eyebrow as a wall of blue flame sprang up between the two of them.

“And you’re on the side that gives you access to my car,” he said. “Of course. Impressive.
I
might actually have trouble beating you.”

Behind Loch, the door that led to the elf’s car opened, and she spun to see one of the dwarven guards.

He fell into the room facedown and didn’t move, and a pair of elves clad in leaf-armor stepped in after him.

“
We
should still be fine, however,” Irrethelathlialann added.

The golem stepped forward, and Desidora leaned back as much as she could while tied to the chair.

“Wait,” she said, “listen to me. Touching my mind could be dangerous. It could destroy you.” Since it was a golem, presumably acting on orders, she added, “Or it could kill me. You said that my death was forbidden, correct?”

The golem paused, its green-glowing palm still stretched out toward her face. “How?”

“For a time, I was touched by the will of Byn-kodar,” Desidora said. “The marks of the death god may still lie dormant in my mind—”

“No,” the golem said, not moving. “The god Byn-kodar is a mythical construct built by the gods to distance themselves from the actions the death priests take to enforce the gods’ will. This information was passed to me by the masters. You were a death priestess, but no longer have that power.” It placed its other hand on her shoulder and stepped forward. “You are harmless.”

Desidora thrashed, but its grip was strong as the stone it was made of, and its other hand, glowing green with the magic that would wrench open her mind, came closer.

Then it paused again.

Desidora, jerking her head back and forth to try to
escape his grasp, saw a tiny white bird flap around the
pipes toward them.

A moment later, it was a much
larger
snowy white bear.

With a great crash of fur on stone, Ululenia slammed into the golem, her great bulk smashing it against the wall.

As the golem fell, the bear shifted again, and now stood on four hooves in her natural form. Her horn blazed in all the colors of the rainbow, and she pawed at the ground and put herself between the golem and Desidora.

The scentless creatures are difficult to track,
she said in Desidora’s mind,
which made it harder to find you.

“I’m sorry I ruined your evening with the . . .” Desidora said, and then cut herself off to as she looked at the walls. “Look out!”

From every support wall and even in the ceiling itself, the crystals set into the stone were flashing wildly. Their many colors blinked, dimmed, and then took on a single blood-red hue. The walls shivered and groaned, and then, with a thousand little cracking pops, the crystals spat from their settings and joined together on the floor in a pile of rich red magic.

The golem got back to its feet. Its shoulder was broken, but it popped the joint back into place.

Beside it, the glowing crystals had formed themselves into the shape of three more golems, their colors bleeding from red into slate-gray stone.

As the hungry bear swats the beehive,
Ululenia thought in what felt to Desidora like a mutter. The unicorn lunged forward, shifting as she did, and once more a great white bear, slammed one of the new golems to the ground before it was fully formed. Crystals shattered and scattered, and Ululenia growled in triumph . . . but then the two other new golems were upon her. Their fists blazed crimson with magic, and Ululenia stumbled and thrashed, trying to shake them loose as their blows bit into her hide.

The first golem stepped forward again. It ignored Ululenia and raised its green-glowing hand toward Desidora. “We will recover the book.”

A blade came down, shearing through the hand with a single hard chop.

“Not with that hand,” Pyvic said. “I
asked
you to wait for me,” he said to Ululenia, kicking the golem in the stomach and knocking it back, “but you just
had
to turn into a bird and fly ahead.”

And you were correct.
The two new golems fell to the ground as the bear disappeared, and a tiny white dove flew up from between them, fluttered in the air, and then turned
back
into a bear and crashed down upon them hard.
You must be as pleased as the wolf with marrow in his jaws.

“Highlight of my day, really,” Pyvic said as the first golem came forward again. It flexed the stump of its arm, and a pale-green crystal blade snapped out. Pyvic slashed at the golem, and steel rang on crystal as the golem blocked his blow.

Through all this, Desidora sat as her friends fought . . . and prayed to her goddess, a perfect example of uselessness she had been wallowing in for a few days. But she was a faithful. She had spoken with Tasheveth in dreams and visions, and she
knew
that prayers carried weight. While Ululenia had no soul by the standard of the gods, Pyvic was a man, and his love for Loch might buy him some benefit with Tasheveth. If he died, that love would die, and that would be a tragedy, Desidora prayed, for they were just beginning to know each other truly, and deserved to live long enough to love more.

Ululenia cried out as the golems’ magic burned into her again. Pyvic blocked a slash, then ran the golem through. It would have killed a man, but the golem leaned forward and grabbed Pyvic by the throat with the hand it still possessed, and Pyvic dropped his blade and clutched desperately at the golem’s arm.

Desidora’s prayer sounded weak. It
was
weak. It was also all she had to work with.

Ululenia shook herself desperately, and flung one of her attackers free. It slammed into Pyvic and the golem that held him, who in turn fell back and crashed into Desidora.

Desidora’s chair tipped over and hit the ground, jarring her shoulder and side.

There was a tiny tinkle of cracking crystal.

She looked down and saw the remains of the warding charm, and smiled. She
could
still help.

“Ghylspwr!” she shouted, and this time, he sprang to her hand, and with a single sweeping blow, she smashed through the chair and tore apart the ropes that bound her. The first golem turned toward her, its blade-arm still raised to finish off Pyvic, and she stepped in, swinging hard and swatting him away.