Blightcross: A Novel (12 page)

Ridiculous—if that were the case, she could have chosen another of his people to befriend who wasn't such a bitter old twat. She shook her head and lay down again. She was loyal, people could depend on her, and why did it have to be more than that?

She was loyal and dependable.

Traitor!

Vasi hesitated at Sevari's door and gazed at the carvings. The figures came alive in the deep red grains, symbols became literal in shining varnish. They were the old legends, processed by Sevari's delusions and twisted to convince Blightcross natives that they were something special, a violent establishment of difference. Akhli's descendants, all alive on the man's door, holding spears, slaying fire giants, leading armies, ascending to heaven...

She thought of backing out, but she had already told Sevari the important details. For a moment she imagined the sizzle of Capra's flesh disintegrating under her own devastating working—a
vihs
conjuration of the white fire that had maimed so many of her people. But she was disciplined. Unlike most of her age, she was able to detach, to become an instrument, to withdraw from passion so that all she did was move according to what the divine asked.

One of those requests, Vasi knew, was justice. There was a right way and a wrong way to achieve justice, and part of doing things the right way was denying the archon's seductive promise. The cost was too high.

She held her breath and knocked. A moment later, the doors buzzed and opened. Standing at ease, in the green double-breasted jacket and trousers, black beret, and knee-length boots, was Alim.

“So, you have her, do you?” Sevari poured some liquor into a glass and offered it to her.

She sniffed it and shook her head.

“Very well. I thought that perhaps you might relax a little. You've been one of my best assets, Vasi.”

“You know we do not drink that kind of spirit, Sevari.”

He chuckled. “Yes, yes. I just thought this might be an occasion for exceptions. Now, are you absolutely sure this person you met was the one my friend is after?”

She nodded.

Sevari gestured to Alim, who passed him a dog-eared piece of parchment. “Here is a portrait of the woman.”

Those fierce, dark eyes, military-style tight braid, insolent smirk, slightly bumped nose... “That is the woman I saw.”

“And you planned to take her to the palace?”

“Yes.”

“Why the palace?”

She stammered, then recovered. “It was the first thing that came to my mind. They were looking for confiscated treasures, and I wanted to keep them far away from the clock tower to keep us safe from them. The palace seemed a decent place to corner them. The underground vaults of the armoury connect with the catacombs, if I am not mistaken.”

Sevari clapped, and she flinched. “Yes! Then she will be out of the streets, and the take-down will be seen by nobody. There will be no panic or fear. Wonderful.”

Alim cleared his throat. “Sir, I thought you wanted this to be public knowledge. A publicity maneuverings.”

“Yes, but only in a way we can control. Anything could happen when we take her down, Alim. We get her first without telling anyone, and then we will send the appropriate story to the Publications Commission once we figure out how best to profit from the event.”

Alim bowed his head. “As you wish, Leader.” He then broke his rigid stance and rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. “I had thought we would find out where she was staying and raid the building. Sometimes the simplest approach is best.”

“I respect your opinion, good soldier. But as of yet, she has committed no crime in Blightcross. Do I want my people, who have been living in the shadow of Tamarck since this island's modernization, to believe that I am simply the poor idiot who holds the tail while Mizkov copulates with their livestock? No. It should appear as though I am protecting these people from a deranged, highly dangerous fugitive. And an incursion into the palace to assassinate a freely elected leader is just the kind of thing I need.”

“But Leader, you don't—”

“Let us never speak of my living arrangements, now.” Sevari's face dropped its serious tightness when he turned back to Vasi. “So it is settled then. Good. You all know where to be tomorrow?”

Vasi and Alim muttered their agreements.

“Perfect. Now, Vasi, I trust you will go back to your research until then. I need to know what that painting means, how we can use it. What secrets it might hold for me... I can almost see the message meant for me, but I think I am too close to see. That is why I need you, Vasi.”

“Of course, sir.”

“The worldspirits have chosen you. I can just tell that you are the one to unlock this monumental power. Helverliss was a fool to treat it as mere philosophy, as some kind of finger-wagging at what he dislikes about us.”

She endured ten minutes of this rhetoric before Sevari sent her back to the lab. A while later, one of the peons brought her a meal from the Leader's personal kitchens, as had been the routine since her promotion to the research staff. It was her favourite—well, her new favourite. A Tamarck dish consisting of beans and some kind of meat. At first, the thought of going against The Blacksmith's Edicts made bile rise in her throat, but after she had made the leap to actually eating the unholy combination, she had never looked back.

But, as she worked her triangular implement around the food, she thought of her grandparents back home. Were they still practising? Was she diverting all of the family's power? They would not say in their letters. They just wrote as though
vihs
did not exist.

Maybe because for them, it no longer did.

Because of her. But given the choice between living as a slaughterer of thousands and depleting her family's power, the only reasonable choice was the latter.

I can make it up to you. I will save the image of Capra Jorassian suffering in my memory, and you will witness the justice first hand once I come home.

Alim seated himself across from Sevari. More than once he came close to voicing his scepticism, but by now he knew it was futile. This oligarch didn't much care for clashing opinions.

“How loyal are your employees, Sevari?” He was already weary with the show of decorum. “Really.”

“You worry that this is too easy? That the big bad Ehzeri is going to hurt you? This is Blightcross. They are not Ehzeri anymore. They are my employees, and some of them still have the old powers. I am all they have here. You can trust them.”

Odd how the man who was responsible for the death-knell of magic and thaumaturgy with his campaign of mechanization still concerned himself with the
vihs
. Never mind concern—the man blatantly employed
vihs
in his refinery.

“I admit that I do not understand your mysticism. The whole world is changing as a result of your industrial efforts. Your public stance is very different from what I have seen here.”

Sevari touched a stud on his desk, and panels in the wall rotated to reveal several abstract paintings. “I would advise against staring directly at them until you have some time to deal with potentially disturbing concepts. But these paintings are infused with magic, and have amazing properties. Properties no machine will ever approximate. Yes, I move to replace what little magic practice is left with machines, because I control how much fuel these machines receive. Magic still exists, though. It does not go away because we become afraid or suspicious of its use. There will be new applications for it, and I believe the worldspirits move through me in sorting out how humans should best use this tool.”

Alim squirmed and fidgeted. What could anyone make of such a theory? As if powered by some spring of eternal vigour, the Leader continued, and after a few more minutes of this, the words took on a watery quality. Alim feigned interest with a mechanical nod every few sentences.

Let Sevari believe in his spirits. Let the whole damned world be run by these grotesque engines, or let it be ruled by disciplined practitioners of the classical arts. The facts were startlingly simple: Capra Jorassian was a deserter. She deserved to die.

He glanced at one of the paintings—at first just a glance, but then his eyes were pulled to it once again, and soon he was mesmerized by the red and black pattern of the one directly behind Sevari.

He thought he saw forms—people—writhing in agony among horrible paint splatters. A woman with shorter hair, and a military tunic. Pleading and pain chiseled her face into a pale masque, and Alim wanted desperately to give this woman whatever it was she needed to end her suffering.

Jasaf...

Then an explosion of red paint, and she was gone.

“Alim? I say, friend, I told you not to look at them for very long.”

The vision disappeared, and Alim's heart rattled as though he'd sprinted across the desert. “What?”

“Your face is covered in nervous sweat, good soldier. Here.” Sevari tossed a handkerchief to him. “Who did you see?”

Alim hesitated.

“Come now, it is best to talk about it. This is why I had to confiscate these paintings, you see. They are awfully powerful and upsetting to many.”

Jasaf...

Alim's shred of solace had come from knowing that Jasaf had died quickly, and that she was not suffering in the great beyond. But that painting had shown the complete opposite—his wife twisting and squirming and her face strangely set in a kind of stone—

“My wife died during a particularly brutal raid on an Ehzeri base.”

“Ah. Yes, that is the kind of thing most people are reminded of with that particular work. I myself become haunted by the assassination of my friend when I look into that picture. And there are always the war memories...”

There was a long silence—Alim wanted to leave and be alone but found himself without the will to move.

“There, there, friend. Let us get you a drink—”

“Jasaf was a surgeon. All she wanted was to keep her comrades alive when we were sent into the madness for no good reason. She never harmed anyone, not even one of those Ehzeri maggots...”

“Well, it is a shame, what goes on there. It is a good thing more and more of them are coming here to work—”

Alim slammed his fist on the desk. “Jas was the surgeon assigned to Capra Jorassian's squad. If Capra had not deserted at the time she did, Jas would still be alive. She was supposed to protect Jas... she didn't do that... she used the confusion as an opportunity to run away...”

Another eerie silence passed.

“And this is why you are after her now? Do your superiors know about this?”

“Of course they do. They set up a special unit to track down these deserters. As soon as I saw Jorassian's name on the list of targets, I volunteered. I did not sleep for months just so I could get through the list fast enough to be assigned to her file.”

He stood, straightened his damp wrinkled uniform. “And now it's time.”

CHAPTER SIX

“So the terrorist and the collaborator are ready to go. Wonderful.” Helverliss looked both from head to toe and showed no expression.

Dannac ignored the slur, and Capra assumed this was because she had caught him reading some of Helverliss' letters and essays, most of which sympathized with his people.

Capra tightened her boot lace, took a quick inventory of her standard kit. Small hand tools rested in a pouch on her belt, and in her satchel she carried rope and a few charges of small explosives. “Remind me to find a dealer after all this,” she said. “This is the last of the stuff I lifted from the army.”

No weapons hung at her side, which satisfied the latent pacifist within her soldier's mind. Since Dannac now carried a hand-cannon, and she'd learned a certain amount of finesse over the last few years, it seemed pointless to add the unnecessary weight.

She paused at the rumbling in her gut—either it was from the way Helverliss brewed his shalep, or she was nervous.

No, not nervous. Excited.

“I imagine this contact of yours aims to lead you into the underground vaults,” Helverliss said.

At once Capra stiffened and shuddered. “Vaults?”

“Blightcross District sits over several ancient ruins. Part of this includes a network of solid metal vaults, and the palace joins with them.”

“Underground? Like how deep?”

“Deep enough.”

“How large are they?”

Helverliss smirked as if he could look directly into Capra's heart and stare at the growing knot of worry. “The passages are large enough for the average man to stand. Barely.”

“Ah. Great.”

“I would have guessed Sevari would keep his booty locked in the armoury, but I am clearly wrong.”

With a small thumbnail of what the painting looked like— basically a black square, so the framing was more notable than the dark smudge it contained—the two left Orvis Dunes. For the first time since arriving here, Capra revelled in the breaths of cool air. A shard of sun burned on the horizon, and she saw carriages slow to the side of the road at residential buildings, where men with soot-blackened faces hopped out and switched spots with fresh workers just now emerging from the buildings. On the side of the horseless carriage was the rose emblem. It seemed that she could go not a block without glimpsing the crest.

And gradually, as they walked and the sun rose, the noise marched back into the air. Of course it had never really disappeared—Capra's poor sleep the night before proved the tired joke about Blightcross being the first city to ban the use of beds and soporifics—but now the drone of machines reached towards its peak.

“About Vasi,” Dannac said. “Watch yourself when we are with her.”

“You don't trust one of your own?”

He was silent for half a city block. “Let's just say I know her type. I would rather just leave it at that.”

Dannac, always so cautious. It seemed a miracle that he had grown to trust her. Maybe he didn't?