The Prophecy Con (Rogues of the Republic) (21 page)

Security Enforcer Gart Utt’Krenner had boarded the train leaving Ironroad after finding three unusual instances.

On a human or elven transport, unusual instances might be more common. Humans often thought of themselves as having special needs that justified special treatment, and the elves tended to be flighty and odd at the best of times. In Gart’s opinion, human airships ought to include extra cargo room to store all the exceptions the humans carried with them.

But the Silver Line was dwarven, and dwarves did not, as a general rule, make problems that required exceptional solutions. Dwarves with special needs booked passage on cars that were fitted specifically to those needs—ramp cars for elderly or ill dwarves traveling alone, sunlit cars with clear-paned ceilings for dwarves who had gone too long underground and become uncomfortable in confined dark spaces, and even insulated stone cars for dwarves who had contracted the jeweled shakes and could not risk exposure to the magical auras of the crystals that ran the engines and kept the cars aloft.

These were not unusual instances. These were expected conditions, and any reputable transportation system was prepared to accommodate the realities of travel in modern dwarven life.

Since many of the passengers on the line were humans, the cars accommodated their needs as well. There was more legroom, of course, along with human-tailored meal services and more space in the aisles, since humans did not like being close to each other unless they were intimate. These were not unusual instances either.

The train leaving Ironroad that day, however, had been different.

First, it had included a private suite for an elven
passenger. Elves almost
never
traveled on the railway. Gart was not sure why that was so, but he himself had never traveled on one of the living elven treeships, so it was not for him to judge. On its own, that would have been odd, but not worth investigating.

Second, a human guildsman had berated one of the ticket sellers until she had given him an entire economy car to himself, along with a baggage exemption. It was clear that his reservation had not truly been lost—the railway lost fewer than ten reservations every year—and while it had been decades since Gart had served in that remote keep up in the mountains, he still remembered how humans tried to smuggle goods on the railway. The ticket seller, to her credit, had filed a report suggesting that the guildsman’s activity be tracked so that if he attempted it again, charges could be brought against him.

And third, Gart had seen that same guildsman yelling about having misplaced the selfsame ticket just minutes before departure. It had been that last item that had convinced Gart to show the guards his badge and board the train.

The stolen item from the museum was elven. An elf was on the train. An entire car was exempt from normal baggage procedures. The human who had paid for that car had lost his ticket.

Gart waited, riding patiently in a dwarven car near the back of the train. The dwarves—mostly miners, though a few had the longer brow and almond eyes of the crafters—watched him curiously, but did not comment. He sat in a spare seat on the benches and made polite conversation with a pair of miners who had become intimate while on their last assignment.

When the night was deep and most of the dwarves had nodded off to sleep in their benches, leaning against a neighbor or, failing that, a wall, Gart felt it appropriate to act.

He left the car and passed through two dwarven cars, moving freely and checking for trouble as he went. In the sealed platform between the last of the dwarven cars and the first of the economy-class human cars, a guard was waiting.

Gart approached with clear movements and produced his badge as the guard eyed him curiously. “Security Enforcer Gart Utt’Krenner, special assignment,” he said.

The guard checked the veracity of the badge while Gart waited politely. “Anything we should be concerned about, Chief?” he asked.

“I must ascertain that before I worry ye needlessly,” Gart said. “If there be trouble, I would appreciate assistance in dealin’ with it, but I would not wish t’ interrupt yer duties.”

“It would be our honor to assist, Chief,” the guard said, as expected, though it was not polite to make assumptions. “Please accept this paging crystal for the duration of your travel.” He passed Gart a standard crystal that would, if broken, raise an alarm on sympathetic crystals carried by the other guards.

“Thank ye.” Gart nodded his appreciation, and the guard unlocked the door and let him through.

The next few cars went quickly. Gart showed his badge and his paging crystal to the guards he encountered, and nothing seemed out of place in the cars themselves. Like the dwarves, the humans slept, played cards, read books, or stared out the window as the train sped along.

Finally, he reached the last of the human economy cars, the one booked privately for the guildsman. Since the guildsman had misplaced his ticket, it should by all rights be empty. Stepping into the sealed area before the car, Gart readied his truncheon in one hand and his paging crystal in the other.

Technically, his right to apprehend Justicar Loch relied upon the delinquent payment of docking fees, which would ordinarily involve a polite but firm conversation and an explanation about loss of transport rights or seizure of goods in the future. After what had happened at his museum, however, Gart believed it likely the encounter would turn to violence.

He shouldered open the door and stepped in, quickly enough to surprise anyone inside but not so quickly that it was obviously an attack. “Yer pardon!” he called, truncheon held by his side. “I need to be checkin’ a few security matters! Yer understandin’ is apprecia . . . hm.”

The car was empty. It was also conspicuously devoid of any kind of luggage.

Perhaps Gart had gotten on the wrong train.

A loud bang shattered the steady hum of the train, and a massive jolt sent Gart stumbling into an empty bench.

No, he decided, this was the correct train after all.

Gart had been on trains when trolls or scorpion-folk had attacked. That bang and jolt came from something big getting under the car and doing some damage to the railway crystals. Broken crystals could cause a train to rattle unevenly or drag on the track, but that was fortunately as bad as it got—unless whatever got under the wheels had enough latent magical energy to cause an energy backlash.

The lights in the car flickered and went out. A moment later, an enormous roar split the air on the roof overhead, indicating that the fire-daemon used to power the car had gotten loose.

Backlash.

Muttering a very polite oath to himself, Gart Utt’Krenner ran the length of the darkened economy car by memory, crashed into the door, and wrenched it open.

A guard lay unconscious in the platform between this car and the next one, which would have been the first of the luxury cars. The ringmail tubing that sealed the platform had been undone, and Gart saw flames on the other side.

He grabbed the unconscious guard by the ankles and hauled him back into the darkened economy car. It was rattling already. Without power, the car was being held up by the cars on either side of it, which would eventually damage the couplers. Gart nevertheless believed it to be safer for the unconscious guard than underneath an uncontrolled fire-daemon.

He heard another roar as he turned, and then watched as liquid fire poured down through the hole in the ringmail tubing and melt its way through the door. The fire-daemon was red-hot, though touching the stone of the railway car had already caused it to manifest jagged stone claws and bone spurs at what were slowly becoming defined as elbows
and knees.

Gart dropped the paging crystal to the ground and crushed it beneath his boot. Then he set his shoulders, raised his truncheon, and followed the fire-daemon into the dining car.

The airship carrying the Knights of Gedesar was raining down fire upon the train. Tern and Kail were yelling at each other. By most standards, this would be considered a fairly problematic operation.

Hessler squinted as a ball of fire raced past their heads, splashing flames across the passing countryside.

“All right, then,” he said, “this is what we’re going to do.”

Tern and Kail stopped and looked at him.

“Icy is currently piloting the airship?” he asked, yelling to be heard over the wind whipping in his ears and yet another blast of fire splashing across the roof of the car.

“He’s keeping
Iofegemet
in the air,” Kail shouted back, “but that’s about the best he can do!”

“Is this
really
the time to be pushing the name?” Tern yelled.

“Is this really the time to question the name?” Kail yelled back.

“I believe we can defeat them,” Hessler shouted, ignoring both of them.

“Look, baby, it’s great that you’re doing spells beyond just illusions now,” Tern said, “but unless you know a lot more about airships than you’ve ever let on—”

Another ball of flame splashed the roof of the car, this time close enough that they all dived back. The train rattled beneath Hessler’s feet, and he made the mistake of glancing over the edge at the ground.

“Four seconds between shots, and no green tint to the flames!” he yelled, pointing desperately at the airship. “They’re firing an Iff’hurnin Blazer, which you only see on airships owned by wealthy nobles who want to look impressive and have servants to handle the maintenance! It uses an unshielded aural sink that shares a lattice with the firing system! Tern,
baby,
what does that mean?”

Tern had already grabbed her crossbow, and was winching it desperately. “Silver dust in the lattice will jam the whole array!” She jammed a bolt into place. “Light!”

“Light is for first-year students!” Hessler pointed at the airship, clenched his fist, and released the spell he’d been preparing. The side of the distant airship illuminated as brilliantly as if it were flying in the noonday sun, and a straight beam of light trailed back from the airship’s flamecannon to where Tern stood. “Tracer line!”

“Does it account for windspeed and gravity?”

“Um . . .”

“Close enough!” Tern fired.

The airship, lit perfectly by Hessler’s light-illusion, jolted with a spray of sparks as Tern’s bolt hit home. A pair of black-armored figures by the flamecannon gestured frantically, and then sprang back as it caught fire.

“Hah! How does that work for you, you authoritarian oafs!” Hessler yelled. “Think of that next time you trifle with someone who makes his living understanding the fundamental forces of the universe!”

Tern grinned. “Nicely done. And I’m sorry for calling you ba . . .”

She trailed off, and Hessler looked over.

His spell was still in place. The enemy airship shone like a gaudy pageant float in the night sky.

And a line of light, the aiming assistant he’d been so proud of, still traced a perfect trail back from the airship to Tern.

Specifically, to the crossbow bolt sticking out of her in the center of a growing pool of red.

Kail caught her as she fell, which was good, because Hessler could only stand there dumbly, feeling the train rock beneath his heels, and then Kail was hitting him on the shoulder and shouting. But the winds stole the words, even though he’d been able to make them out before, and finally Hessler realized that he wanted Hessler to drop the spell, and Hessler waved his hand and took away the light that had aimed the enemy’s bolts at Tern.

“We need to get the bolt out!” Kail said as Hessler blinked in the sudden darkness. “I can do it on our ship! Can you get into the car down there and get the book?”

Hessler looked at Tern, or tried to. He’d ruined his own night vision with the illusion. He thought her eyes were closed. She wasn’t talking. He couldn’t tell which spots were afterimages of light and which were spreading blood. “Who the hell cares about the book?”

Kail was still holding Tern, but he reached out with his free hand and grabbed Hessler’s shoulder hard. In the darkness, the man’s face was a shadow, except for the whites of his eyes and his teeth, which caught the moonlight.

“You scared, wizard? Wracks you a little, watching somebody you like with a bolt sticking out of them, doesn’t it?” Kail’s hand tightened and yanked Hessler in close. “Imagine the whole damn Republic like this, because that’s what a war looks like when you’re not off hiding in a university! If we don’t get that book,
this is what happens
!” He shoved Hessler back, then, and pointed with his now-free hand down at the car below them. “Now, do you want to carry your girlfriend up a grappling line and then do field-surgery on an airship to get this bolt out of her chest, or do you want to go down there and get the book? Because I’ll do
either
!”

Hessler swallowed. “I don’t know how to treat a wound like that!”

“Well, then, this decision just got real easy for you.” Kail waved with his free hand, and Hessler turned to see the silhouette of their own airship pulling in closer. “Go!”