The Prophecy Con (Rogues of the Republic) (32 page)

“No, I think I understand,” Dairy said. “You’re afraid that caring will make you weaker. That seems very sad.”

“It’s war, kid. It’s pretty much built on sad.”

“Miss Loch,” Dairy asked, looking at the crowd, “are we going to join the people going on board now?”

“Not just yet,” Loch said.

“All right.” Dairy waited a moment, and when Loch remained silent, he added, “Can I ask why not?”

Then Tern was pressing through the crowd. “Excuse me, pardon me,
hey, chivalry, jerk!
Yeah, I see that look,” she added, “try me, these things are steel-toed!” She reached Loch and produced a diamond-shaped leaf covered in gold-inked writing. “Edges,” she said, passing it to Loch.

“Still wet?” Loch asked, taking it very carefully.

“Little bit.”

“Should I—”

“Do
not
blow on it,” Tern said, “unless you want to smear the elven goddess lady in the upper corner.”

“Noted.” Loch continued to hold the ticket very carefully by the edges.

“Also don’t fold it, shake it, or . . . look at it too hard.”

“You blew on it,” Dairy said, and Tern glared at him. “I’m sorry!”

“You all would just pant all over it and mess up the ink,” Tern growled. “I have an expert degree of precision when blowing.”

“Please give Hessler my congratulations,” Loch said, and had the satisfaction of watching Tern go red. “Now go get to the ship, and tell Desidora and Ululenia to be ready.”

Tern stalked back off into the crowd boots-first, glaring at everyone. Loch smiled and held up the ticket to see it in the light. It was, as far as Loch could tell, very official looking.

“Shall we join the crowd now?” Dairy asked.

“Gradually,” Loch said. “We don’t want to be the last in line, but we need to give our guys time to get into position for the plan.”

“Yes,” said Dairy, after a moment’s hesitation. “I don’t think I actually heard what the plan was.”

“I’ve got it written down,” Loch said as they started to make their way through the crowd. “I’ll show you once we’re aboard.”

“Oh. All right.” Dairy fell in beside her. “You . . . you do miss him, though, right?”

“Wouldn’t be human if I didn’t, Dairy.”

“So you’re saying yes?”

“That would be bad luck.”

Kail had the airship now semi-definitively known as
Iofegemet
ready for departure by the time the others arrived.

Desidora came alone—well, with her hammer, but that didn’t exactly count. Pyvic showed up a few minutes after the alarm sounded, nodding to both of them and taking a spot at the railing while Kail tied down the lines and brought the control console online.

Icy, Tern, and Hessler came along soon after. Icy looked calm, while Tern was wiping bits of gold ink off her fingers. “How’d it go?” Kail asked.

“Pretty sure I messed up the kerning,” Tern said.

“I believe Tern did an admirable job, given her injury and the limited time available.”

“How’s your arm?” Hessler asked. “Do you need a chair?”

“I’m good,” Tern said, swaying in place a little. “Maybe I won’t throw up this time!”

“Works for me.” Kail thumbed the master control crystal, and the panel hummed. “
Iofegemet
’s ready to go as soon as Ululenia gets here.”

“Is she not here?” Icy asked, frowning. “I have not seen her since this morning.”

With a flutter of white wings, a dove landed on the railing.
My apologies,
Ululenia said into everyone’s mind.
I was delayed.

“I hope you gave the matter the attention it needed,” Hessler said, and then, as everyone on the deck except Desidora turned to look at him, he coughed. “I’m just saying, if you’re going to . . . you should really ask her.”

“We really shouldn’t,” Pyvic said.

“Although the fact that you care marks you as good boyfriend material,” Tern said. Kail noticed that she was losing color again. “Okay, yes, chair, thank you.”

“Everyone hold on.” Kail lifted
Iofegemet
up, flashing the signals to people on the ground for a normal departure.

The deck swayed slightly. Tern clomped in her boots and determinedly refused to sit down.

Ahead, the afternoon sky was clear but cool, a perfect day for flying. Off to starboard, the treeship’s alarm was still going strong. According to information Ululenia had scrounged up, it should keep going for a few more minutes like that, even if they destroyed or removed the crystals Kail had planted in the elf’s pocket.

“Tern, seriously, sit down,” Kail called over. “Turbulence in five, four, three . . .”

“Hessler
said
he was going to get me a chair!”

“I thought I was going to
take you to
a chair! Aren’t most of them bolted to the deck?”

“And, oh no, turbulence,” Kail said, and swung
Iofegemet
hard to starboard.

The deck pitched. Alarms went up on the ground below. Tern fell over with a thud and a curse.

Iofegemet
swung out of its flight lane and veered dangerously close to the treeship.

“Oh, dear, what a terrible mistake on my part,” Kail
deadpanned.

“You
ass!
”

“Timed operation, Tern. You know how it goes.” Kail looked over at Ululenia and Desidora “Ladies? Icy?”

Desidora spun Ghylspwr and nodded. Ululenia bobbed her head. Icy stepped into a kind of low, wide-legged crouch with his hands linked together at about knee-level. “We are ready.”

He hauled back on the rudder, and
Iofegemet
jerked
to a stop.

As she did, Desidora ran directly at Icy, swinging Ghylspwr in an arc off to one side as she did. The love priestess kicked into Icy’s linked hands just as the deck jolted, flung her hammer up over her head, and flew across the space between the two ships.

A moment later, she went hammer-first through the hull of the treeship, with a little white bird trailing behind her.

“Subtle,” Pyvic said, helping Tern up.

“Right on my bad arm, damn it!”

“You got hit in the chest, not the arm,” Kail said without looking over. Alarm bells were ringing down below, and Kail started pushing crystals on the console. “Oh, yes, my, what a terrible mistake.”

“And nobody is going to notice that Desidora just knocked a hole in the side of that ship?” Pyvic asked.

“Not if I had the sailwing positioned correctly to block their view from the ground.” Kail pointed, then pressed some more buttons to send the right signals down to ground. “Yes, yes, terrible mistake, apologies to everyone, send all fines to the justicars . . .”

“And Ululenia will heal the ship’s hull, so nobody aboard is aware of their arrival,” Icy added.

Pyvic shrugged. “I’m not going to lie. I’m skeptical.”

“This is probably the smoothest one of Loch’s plans has ever gone,” Kail said, right as the grappling hooks latched onto the railing.

Desidora felt the crash in the strange way that she felt things when Ghylspwr was guiding her. It wasn’t that the splinters didn’t touch her, but for just one moment, as they went through the hull, all of her was so much more solid than she usually was that nothing seemed to matter.

He pulled her into a roll and brought her up into an acrobatic pose that she would never have managed on her own, hammer over her head, one knee bent, the other leg flung
out wide.

Desidora could not believe anyone would ever stand like that voluntarily. With a self-conscious adjustment of her skirts, she brought Ghylspwr down close by her side, so as not to scream to everyone who saw her that she was carrying a large warhammer, while still leaving him available to gently concuss anyone who got in her way.

They had been aiming for the passenger cabins, and as she looked around, she saw a bare room whose sloped wall was marked with sprouting beams and what looked like great leather tarps or sacks. It was lit only by yellow-green veins that pulsed along the wall, marking everything with harsh shadows.

“Not the passenger cabins,” she said.

The air shimmered beside her. “No,” Ululenia said, turning back to the impressive hole Ghylspwr had made in the hull. “The bladders.”

“I . . . may need more context than that,” Desidora said, “unless this is where everyone is supposed to go use the privy.”

“Air bladders.” Ululenia extended a slim white hand to the jagged edges of the hole, and Desidora saw the wood begin to glow. “Air is drawn in through the sails, funneled through the bladders, and then released from the roots at the stern to propel the ship forward.”

“Do normal trees have bladders?” Desidora asked, peeking out the doorway. The hallway ahead was deserted, but with the senses of her goddess, she could feel an aura approaching.

“Normal trees do not fly,” Ululenia said, and without looking, Desidora heard the hum of magic and the tiny crackle of wood beginning to grow. “The hare has heard the vixens approaching. Its ears are sharp, and it is ready to thump the ground with its feet.”

“I’ll take care of it.” Desidora felt the guard approaching. He was elven, young, and nervous. His aura felt like excitement and longing, a dawning awareness that life on the treeship was not giving him the happiness he had hoped for, but home felt wrong as well. He had dreamed of sailing on smaller treeships, fighting wild fairy folk on the frontier and finding adventure, and he was not sure
what to do.

Desidora reached around the corner and tapped him very lightly with Ghylspwr.

He went down bonelessly, and Desidora reached out with Ghylspwr’s head and dragged the boy inside. “Ululenia, what’s the most adventurous job a young man in the Elflands can reasonably find that has something to do with sailing treeships?”

Ululenia did not look back from where she worked, both hands now pressed to the wood. “The Blackwood Riggers sail small treeships through forest fires so that water druids can stop them from spreading.”

“Thank you.” Desidora leaned down close to the unconscious elf. “Blackwood Riggers,” she whispered.

She had no idea whether it would take, but it was the most a love priestess could reasonably do in such a situation.

“How much longer?” she asked Ululenia.

“The flower blossoms when the seed is ready.”

Desidora bit her lip. “All right. I’ll get to the central security station and analyze the aura we need to mask our presence. I should have a reasonable picture by the time you’re finished.”

She made her way quietly down the hallway until she found stairs leading up. She sensed no auras upstairs and headed up to a deck that was brighter, lit by glowing stones set into neat little recesses in the wall that made it seem they had grown there. For all she knew, they had.

Doors along the walls were decorated with inlaid patterns of twining gold and green leaves, with numbers marking each door. “One floor off,” Desidora muttered to Ghylspwr. “Kail did a passable job after all.”

She noted the numbers, checked the mental map in her head, and then gave up and picked a direction at random. She was moving carefully down the hallway when the outside alarm finally shut off.

That meant they’d finished checking the horrifically sloppy crystals Hessler had concocted, which had indeed been strong enough to overload the security wards. They would now shut down the wards, wait a few moments, and power them back on.

If that happened without Desidora and Ululenia having the proper aural signature, that would be when everyone on the treeship would find out they were here.

With that in mind, she picked up the pace a bit, jogging down the hallway. A wealthy human woman in rich furs stepped out of one of the passenger rooms and stared at her imperiously. “The towels are completely unacceptable,” she said, and then Desidora knocked her on the head with Ghylspwr, and she went down just like the elven sailor.