Conspiracy (33 page)

“
I will locate her and let
her know you died well, should it come to that.”

“
Whatever.” Akstyr headed
for the door, but paused with his hand on the jamb. “Books, do you
think... Do people ever really change? Or if someone says they’ve
changed, do you think it’s more likely that they’re angling for
something? Trying to use you somehow.”

Books considered him for a long moment, and
Akstyr had the feeling he was being judged. He was about to growl
a, “Never mind,” and leave when Books spoke.

“
I suppose my answer
depends on what sort of change you have in mind, but if people are
properly motivated, or deeply affected by something they
experience, they can change. That doesn’t mean they’re not still
angling for something. The most charitable people in the world are
choosing altruism, not because it’s a noble endeavor, but because
being noble fulfills a need within them.”

Akstyr struggled to find his answer in
Books’s speech. He should have been more specific. “So if a mother
who abandoned her child ten years ago suddenly wants to reconnect,
it might be because it’d... fulfill some need within her?” He
struggled not to roll his eyes at the mawkish language. “Not
because she wanted something specifically from him?”

“
It’s possible. Maybe she’s
always had regrets about leaving you. Maybe she’s realizing that,
having given up on her child, she’ll have no one to care for her as
she grows older. Maybe she wants to make amends for past grievances
before it’s too late.”

Akstyr scratched at the doorjamb. Yes, some
of that made sense, he thought.

“
You might as well talk to
her and give her a chance. You might regret not doing so later.
When she’s gone...” Books’s focus turned inward, and he no longer
seemed to be seeing Akstyr. “Trust me, it’s better to find peace
with family while they’re still alive. You never know when the
world will take someone from you.”

“
Or when you’ll blow
yourself up,” Akstyr murmured and walked out.

When he’d gathered his supplies and checked
five times to make sure the blasting sticks were secured in his
rucksack, he headed for a hatch in the floor of the engine room.
Snowflakes blew past the opening. Their intensity had increased in
the last few minutes, and Akstyr could barely see the massive cliff
wall a few meters away from the dirigible. Its jagged contours,
carved from the mountain with pickaxes and blasting sticks, had a
dark, ominous quality to them. Night and the blowing snow made the
ground and the tracks hard to see as well. Books better keep the
dirigible in place; Akstyr wanted to land on the ledge, not in the
ravine next to it.

A gust of wind came up from below, hurling
snow into the engine room.

“
Great time for
rappelling,” Akstyr muttered, hooking a lantern over his
arm.

He stuffed the ex-pilot’s pistol into his
belt. He doubted he’d need it, but if he got lost, he might need to
shoot it off so Books could find him.

After checking the knot securing his rope,
Akstyr dropped the coil into the darkness. It bounced and wobbled
in the wind. He tugged gloves on and slipped through the hatchway,
taking the rope in both hands. Wind battered him, rocking him and
spinning him in the air. He inched his way down, squinting against
the sideways snow dashing at his eyes. Though glass protected the
interior of his lantern, the whipping wind found cracks between the
panes, and the tiny flame bobbed and flickered. With his hands
occupied on the rope, Akstyr couldn’t do anything about it.

Relief flowed into him when the ground came
into view. The feeling doubled in intensity when his boots rested
upon it. A scattering of snow brightened the dark rocks, and flakes
were starting to stick to the metal tracks. All that mattered to
Akstyr was that he was in the right place. The ledge supporting him
was only ten feet wide, so it wouldn’t take much to block the
railway.

Coldness numbed his fingers, and shivers
coursed through him, so he hurried to unpack the bundles of
blasting sticks. He lifted the lantern and walked along the cliff,
hunting for a crevice in which he could thrust the explosives.

A light winked at the edge of his
vision.

“
What the—” Akstyr lowered
his lantern and scanned the darkness farther down the railway. He
saw nothing but white snow swirling against a black backdrop. Maybe
he’d been imagining things. Who could possibly be out there in the
middle of the night?

No one, he thought, but he shuttered his
lantern anyway and resumed his search by hand. Trying to hide was
probably pointless—lights burned behind the portholes in the
dirigible above him—but Akstyr felt safer without the lantern
dangling from his arm like a beacon. Or a target.

He found a likely crevice and eased the
first bundle of blasting sticks inside of it. A gun fired, and he
almost dropped the second bundle.

Akstyr pressed his back against the cliff,
sucking in his belly. He hadn’t heard the bullet slam into anything
nearby, but that didn’t mean people weren’t shooting at him.

A dog bayed, its deep voice echoing from the
cliffs.

“
Hunters?” Akstyr
wondered.

It seemed like a bizarre thing to do at
night, especially in a snowstorm, but he’d heard that was when
rural bumpkins went out to get raccoons. Maybe the dog’s owner
didn’t care about Akstyr or the dirigible. Maybe the person hadn’t
even seen him. Either way, hurrying seemed like a good idea.

When no second shot came, Akstyr knelt
again, slipping the second bundle of blasting sticks into the
crevice. He removed his gloves, double-checked the placement, then
started unwinding the fuse.

The dog let out another undulating bay.
Akstyr paused. Was it closer this time? The bays echoed from the
cliff and mountain walls across the ravine, making it difficult to
discern the source, but he had a feeling the hound and its master
were on the trail up to the pass.

When the dog stopped to catch its breath or
scratch a flea or whatever dogs did, a man’s voice sounded in the
silence. Someone talking. Distance jumbled the words, and Akstyr
couldn’t understand them, but another man responded.

Backpedaling, Akstyr strung out the fuse as
quickly as he could. Another shot fired. This time it clanged off
the rock face above his head. He dropped to his belly and tossed
his raccoon-hunting theory into the ravine. These people were after
him.

Another rifle cracked, though Akstyr didn’t
hear the bullet hit anything. The men had to be guessing at his
location and hoping to get lucky. Or maybe they were drunk.

The dog bayed again, closer this time. Its
deep booming voice made it sound big. Very big.

Assuming the men had to reload, Akstyr
scrambled to his feet again. He thought about using his own pistol,
but he only had the one shot, and he couldn’t see the men in the
darkness. He returned to reeling out the fuse.

Books had measured out over fifty feet of it
when setting things up for Akstyr. With guns firing in his
direction, it seemed more like five hundred feet. He dared not cut
it short though, not when he had to climb to safety before the
explosives went off.

Finally, he reached the end. He hated to
expose himself by opening the shutter of the lantern, but he had no
choice. He unfastened the clasp and thrust the end of the fuse into
the flame.

A gun fired, and the lantern was ripped from
his hands.

Akstyr stumbled backward onto his butt. He
snarled, prepared to spew out every curse he knew, but the flame
had caught. Orange sparks danced at the end of the fuse.

Akstyr leaped to his feet and sprinted
toward the spot where he’d left the rope. The snow had picked up,
and he couldn’t see it. He tripped over a rock. Cursed ancestors,
he could barely see where he was going.

Another shot fired, the bullet whizzing past
his ear.

“
Quit shooting at me, you
ball-licking street-kissers!” As soon as the words left his mouth,
he felt stupid. He felt even stupider when laughter floated up the
trail. And that cussed dog was getting closer too.

Hands outstretched, Akstyr forced himself to
ease along at a less reckless pace. He swatted only air though.
Where was that ancestors-blighted rope?

The dirigible, you idiot, he told himself,
and looked up. There. A square of light stood out against the dark
hull. The rope dangled down from the hatch, swaying with the wind
and disappearing into the darkness, but he could guess its final
position now.

Akstyr jogged toward it. Something clacked
behind him—dog claws on granite. Snarls and snapping teeth sounded,
mere feet away.

A huge, dark shape barreled out of the
darkness and leaped for Akstyr. There was no time to grab his
pistol and shoot it. He jumped to the side and kicked out. The dog
twisted in the air and would have caught him with those snapping
teeth, but his boot connected. It was enough to unbalance the
animal, but the dog was still snarling when it landed behind
him.

Akstyr sprinted the last ten feet and found
the rope. Ice and snow caked the cold twine, making the grip
slippery and biting into his bare hands. He climbed with mulish
determination and dared not look down to check on the dog.

“
What’d he do?” a man
shouted.

Fool that he was, Akstyr stopped. He’d only
climbed a few feet and was far from safe, but if they put out the
fuse, then all this would have been a waste of time.

The two rifle slingers had stopped on the
ledge, and one crouched, staring at the flame zipping along the
fuse. Both men carried lanterns, so Akstyr could make out faces and
clothing; but he didn’t recognize either person, and neither wore
the uniform of a soldier beneath his parka. There was no time to
stop and ask who they were. He tightened his grip on the ice-slick
rope with his left hand and pulled out his pistol with his
right.

A shape blurred out of the darkness toward
him. The dog.

His first instinct was to shoot it, but he
hesitated, thinking he needed to save the bullet for the man
standing over his fuse. His hesitation cost him, and the dog
reached him, jaws snapping. Akstyr tried to dodge aside, but he
couldn’t maneuver while hanging from the rope. Sharp fangs pierced
his calf, slicing through clothing to gouge into flesh and muscle.
He gritted his teeth against the pain, but the weight of the dog,
hanging from his leg, almost tore him from the rope. New pain
erupted in his shoulder as opposing forces pulled at him.
Determination to hang on surged through him, but, even so, his grip
slipped, and he inched down the rope.

With his free hand, Akstyr slammed the butt
of the pistol into the dog’s head. He tucked his free leg up and
kicked at the beast’s belly. The combined effort finally convinced
it to let go. A fresh wave of agony washed over Akstyr, as more of
his flesh was torn away when the dog fell. He forced himself to
focus on the men again.

One was kicking at the fuse, trying to stomp
out the flame before it reached the crevice. Akstyr lifted his
pistol, struggling to aim while the twisting, swinging rope fought
against him. No time for lining up a shot. He fired, and hoped.

The man stumbled backward, clutching his
shoulder. His lantern dropped to the ground and went out. His
comrade reached for him, arms outstretched, and Akstyr caught a
glimpse of the back of the man’s hand. There, highlighted by the
lantern light, was a brand. Akstyr couldn’t make out the details,
but only gang members from Stumps had such marks emblazoned on
their hands.

“
Akstyr,” came Books’s
voice from above. “Get out of there!”

Yes, right. Explosives. Akstyr tried to
holster his pistol, fumbled it, and simply dropped it. He climbed
as fast as he could, trying to ignore the injured leg.

A gun fired, and new pain ripped through
him, searing his shoulder. Then a boom echoed through the
mountains, and an ominous rumble welled up from below. A wave of
force struck Akstyr like a battering ram.

All he could think of was to hang onto the
rope with all of his strength as he flew through the air. Snow
streaked sideways through his vision, and he lost track of whether
he was facing up, down, or somewhere in between. The rope ran out
of room to swing and snapped to a halt with a jerk that nearly tore
his shoulders from their sockets.

One hand slipped from the rope, and he
dangled helplessly by the other. He glimpsed tons and tons of rock
sloughing into the ravine beneath him. Lest he join it, he flailed
to recapture the rope with fingers gone numb from the cold. He
finally got both hands back on it, but it was swinging back the
other way. Akstyr cringed, anticipating another jerky stop, but the
rope started rising. That motion quelled the fierce swaying. Up
above, Books straddled the hatchway as he pulled the rope up. Weary
and hurt, Akstyr simply hung on. The rocks were still shifting and
falling below, throwing a cloud of dust into the air. The men were
gone. If the railway tracks were still there, they were buried
beneath rubble.

Even with Books’s help, Akstyr struggled to
claw his way back into the engine room. As soon as he had the floor
beneath him, he collapsed.

Books reached out a hand. “All you all
right?”

“
I got shot and bit,”
Akstyr snarled, rejecting the help. “What do you think?”

Books pulled up the remaining rope, coiled
it, and shut the hatch. “That if you can complain about it in
complete, albeit grammatically questionable, sentences, you’ll be
fine.”

Akstyr scarcely heard him. His mind was
whirring at the revelation that those had been gang members. They
hadn’t cared about the dirigible or the plan to close the pass;
they’d just wanted him. They must have been trying to collect on
his new bounty, but how could they have known he’d be up there?