Blightcross: A Novel (13 page)

Neither had forgotten about Alim, and with wordless understanding they kept to side streets wherever possible. It meant the trip would take an extra half-hour, but by now Alim must have recruited Sevari to his task, and every soldier they met was essentially Alim's agent.

“I wonder what they have hiding in there.” Dannac gazed over the roof of a pyramid church. This block of the city brooded in the shadow of an immense white wall. Above it stood what Capra had assumed was another of the city's towers, but now, closer to it, she saw otherwise.

It was a tower, but made of metal tubing, and canvas stretched between the trusses, billowing and drumming with the wind. A guard stood on the wall—she had assumed he was a statue at first.

“It must be the armoury,” she said.

“Maybe your friend is wrong and the painting really is in there. Helverliss is an extremely intelligent man. I would bet on his advice before some Ehzeri stranger's.”

“Could be, but the palace looks pretty beaten up. I think their security might be shit, so we might as well give it a try. If not, I'm sure there will be something else in there to make it worth our while. Palaces are full of good stuff.”

“Sure. But something about this place bothers me.”

She tried to laugh, but it came out more like a cough. “It's this whole city.”

“No, there is something about this... armoury. When I look towards it, I am nearly blinded.”

She glanced at the strange structure. It looked normal, in that all she saw was a strange structure of canvas and metal tubes. Like a tent... “Maybe it's temporary.”

“But why?”

“I have no idea. Maybe it's just a giant statue of Sevari and they're still working on it. It's probably nothing.”

They made it to the arranged street without garnering any attention, and Capra began to search the crowd for Vasi. Numerous times they were accosted by salesmen in frock coats that looked as though they had at one time been expensive, but now were blackened and bristling with frayed threads. One asked if she wanted to buy a barely-used starting ember, and she wanted to ask the man what in the hell a starting ember would do for her. Before she could find out, Dannac swatted him away. Another approached them with an offer to read her fortune, solve her marital or sexual dysfunction, cure her of her monthlies, or any combination of the above for fifty pistres per half-hour. The little man received the same treatment as his predecessor.

“Can we walk a damned block without being told to buy something?” Dannac said, as he stared down another potential salesman. “Maybe if they bathed and learned how to overcome their nervousness, they might sell something.”

“They're thieves. They're like us, Dannac.”

“Bah. There is a difference.”

“They are also addicts. They're sick.”

He gave her a dismissive sneer. “Your friend is not coming. We should beat one of these thieves into telling us where to find the painting.”

“Give her time, Dannac. I bet—” She caught a face in the crowd near the centre of the square, instantly recognized the woman's slender face. “Vasi!” She raised her arm and began to wave.

She fixed her eyes on Vasi, and was relieved when her new friend joined them. They quickly left the busy square, with Vasi leading them through narrow alleys they had overlooked. There was barely room enough to accommodate Dannac's shoulders. Their denim clothes scraped against the walls, emitted a strange chirping-rubbing.

“Vasi, please walk faster. I get uneasy in places like this...”

Vasi picked up her pace, but soon slowed again.

“There is where the leaders live,” Vasi told them, after they emerged from the main streets into a less dense area. There was another wall here, but this time it was precise masonry and wrought iron, with sculpted lamps at each post. Farther down the road stood their destination, its dome dingy and pitted. “And there is the palace.”

She would have expected the two Ehzeri to spark a conversation, but neither so much as looked at the other. Later, after this was over with, she would pry him for the story. Was she an old friend? Jilted lover? Had she done something offensive to his slightly old fashioned sensibilities?

“The palace is not really a palace any longer. Since the Leader took power after the war, it has become the district's administrative hall.”

“The great Leader drove out the tyrant monarch, eh?” This was the first thing Dannac had said directly to Vasi.

Capra wrapped her cravat and tied it tighter than usual to keep it out of the way. She caught Vasi eyeing her with the steely gaze of the mountain lions that used to stalk Valoii herds—

At once she stopped herself. That was her people's conditioning; turn the enemy into an animal. The girl was probably just nervous or hungry.

Or she had caught a flash of Capra's tattoo.

Never mind—it was too late to worry about first impressions.

They walked right in the palace door, much to Capra's surprise. They passed through unchallenged, the standard guard postings deserted. On the floor were spots of discoloured marble, as though furniture that had decorated the palace for centuries had only recently been moved. Their footsteps reverberated as if they walked in an empty colosseum.

Signs dangled at each juncture, pointing them either to the District Court, Corporate Headquarters (all branches, including Mercantile Union), Complaints Commission, Office of the Governor General, and—

“Sevari Family Memorial?” Capra asked out loud, though she had not meant to.

Vasi knitted her brows at her and nothing further was said about the subject.

They passed offices littered with parchment stacks. Deeper into the halls, they wove around stray carts loaded with envelopes and boxes. They did pass the occasional office person, but nobody said anything to them.

“So, Vasi... have you done much of this kind of thing before?”

“No. But I am desperate.”

“Sorry...” A thunderclap crashed outside. Another strange desert storm.“I thought Blightcross was a desert.”

“Often there is dry lightning, and sometimes storms. It is not a lack of rain that is totally responsible for the desert here.” Ahead lay a junction that either led to a rear exit, or a storage wing. “To the storage area. Here is where you must pick the locks. These doors are automatic, so they will lock behind us.”

Capra gulped and opened the case on her belt. “Look, I know you must have seen my tattoo. I want you to know that I ran away because I couldn't live with what we were doing. You have to know that I have nothing against your kind. I like your music and—”

“There are regular patrols by the lone guard here. We must move.”

Just like that? Not even an acknowledgement of the awkward fact?

She looked at Vasi for a moment, thought of ways to press the issue, to make this Ehzeri acknowledge that Capra had done the right thing. But what else could she say? Besides, there would be a better time to explain herself than now.

Capra began to work the lock. She slipped one of her tools inside, felt a familiar layout specific to a certain foundry in Tamarck. The reason for its familiarity being that the last time she had probed this particular arrangement of tumblers, she hadn't been able to do it.

She took a deep breath, forced herself to concentrate on the tactile sensations coming through her implement. A few seconds into it, the room tilted and spun, and her stomach wrenched.

“What now?” Dannac asked.

“Damn.” She stopped and her hand shook enough to cause a faint rattling inside the lock. “It's just a weird feeling.” She inhaled deeply and went back to work, despite her unsteadiness. The thunder rumbled in the outer walls again, and this only seemed to make the feeling worse.

She tried to picture the inside of the lock based on what she felt. Concentration could usually override minor discomfort.

Except this time.

“Can't you work any faster?” Vasi asked, an edge to her intonation.

If it weren't for the damned dizziness, she might be better able to visualize the lock's mechanism. But each time she built a semblance of understanding, a tide of vertigo buried the fragile picture. A bead of sweat crept down her forehead to the tip of her nose, and she breathed heavily.

“Capra?” Dannac sounded concerned, for once. “Maybe we should just blow it up.”

She didn't answer. A sharp pain cut from her jaw into her forehead, but she kept her teeth clenched because it helped to ground her. The other two began to mutter and complain, their voices lost in the faraway world from which Capra's strange sensations had removed her.

One click. Good.

Sweat stung her eyes. But who needs eyes for lock picking? She pressed on, and it clicked again.

After she figured out the next piece and moved it with her picks, there was a clicking sound in the wall and the door swung open on its own, under some unseen power. “Looks like I still have it, even though I could visit the privy...”

Vasi returned at the head of the group, and they traversed through a hall lined with numbered rooms.

“You look pale,” Dannac said.

“Probably nothing. I felt like this on the airship too, and look how that ended up.”

“Perhaps it is the storm. My sister often became ill during storms. We have a word for it. Cloud sickness.”

“That's silly, Dannac. I bet it's the air here. All this black smoke...”

“Smoke does not cause sickness.”

Now he brandished his hand cannon, and Capra wondered if he wouldn't be disappointed if they made it out of the palace without him needing to blow apart a man's head.

“The vaults are down here,” Vasi said, pointing to a trap door. On the wall behind it was a panel of studs. “A mechanical lock that uses numbers.”

Capra let out a silent belch of sour air and approached the mechanism. “Bloody sheepfuckers, what do I do with this?”

She ran her hands along the panel and studs. Ten metal studs, numbered zero to nine.

Think, think...

“The famed Valoii army training fails you? Unthinkable.” Dannac snorted and raised his weapon.

“Shut up, Dannac. This is different. Some kind of complex mechanical... what power does all of this use anyway? Some tamed form of
vihs
?”

Nobody answered. She turned back to the panel and pressed a few buttons. Each stayed depressed, until she pressed a fifth one, which seemed to slam each one back out again with a sharp clang.

She kneeled and put her ear to the panel. When she touched her head to it, she heard whirring, the metallic grinding. “It's all gears. Clockwork, driven by engines.” She brought out her tools and began to pry off the panel.

It was ridiculous—the entire complex veined with little shafts and cams, and all just to operate elevators and doors. Yet with the panel off, that is what showed in the wall cavity. The brass buttons remained, fastened to levers and cams whose connections became lost in the web of gears and sprockets.

With her small tools, she began to probe inside the cavity. “You have family here, Vasi?”

“Pardon?”

Dannac sighed. “She does this when she works sometimes. Inane chatter. At least, until things go wrong and she goes dead silent and one has to scream at her to get an answer.”

“I... brought my brother here last year.”

“Sounds like you regret it.” Capra bit her tongue—perhaps it was too soon in their professional relationship to make such assumptions. “I mean, well... Hey, I think this thing is actually pretty simple in the end...”

“I wish there were other options, but this seemed to be the best idea at the time. I am sure you know what trouble a young man can get into back home.”

“Hey, I know what it's like to leave home and wonder if you'll ever go back. But I guess both of us probably would do best to stay away from home for good.” She glanced to Vasi, who was staring at her again. Or, rather, at her chest, where the amulet had fallen out of her shirt and dangled. “My dad gave it to me.”
And where did he get it from?

“Really?”

She smashed one of the thin brass shafts with her pliers, and it snapped. “Is it familiar to you?”

Vasi broke eye contact, and Capra shrugged away the odd conversation to return to the panel.

“We move farther back into the vaults. Ambushes near the entrance are something she will be watching for.” Alim forced himself to concentrate on his men, rather than marvel at the sheer immensity of the underground fortress. It had taken them nearly an hour to reach this point, even at their martial jaunt. But they had come too far—just ahead lay the palace entrance, and he knew that by now Capra should be just beyond the ceiling, tinkering with the security mechanisms.

They took position near an intersection—two groups behind each wall. “Turn off your glow torches,” he said, and twisted the band on his own to separate the two reactive elements inside.

“She will not hesitate to engage you hand-to-hand. We are taught to kill with any means, even if our shins have been blown off. She is agile. She has above average lower-body strength.” This last point he knew from experience, from them all taking part in school sporting events. Staring at those thighs, wobbly with a teenaged drunkenness over girls' legs...

What was he thinking? He no longer knew her. Mizkov no longer loved her; she had thrown away her citizenship. She was something else—not the girl he had sat in detention with, not the girl who had introduced him to Jasaf.

“Do what you will to the Ehzeri, but I want Capra for myself.”

A grave thought overcame Capra, after having failed to decipher the mechanism: what if one of the incidental (
she thought
) cams she had snapped (
because it seemed like it would make things easier
) was an essential part of the wretched thing?

“Is there no other way in?” she asked.