Emperor's Edge Republic (48 page)

The lieutenant blinked again, then he made a reflexive gesture, two fingers to the heart, to ward against “evil magics” as the backcountry folk said.

“Interesting,” the colonel said. “Avigart didn’t know about that.”

“I didn’t know about it, either,” the lieutenant said.

Amaranthe gazed into the colonel’s eyes. “Did
you
know about it, sir?”

Sicarius watched him as well. Though he suspected an intelligence officer as highly ranked as Starcrest would have practice in masking his features when answering questions, one never knew what might slip out to be revealed on the face.

“Yes,” the colonel said, the twist to his lips wry this time.

He knew he was a suspect.

“I was there when Rias gave the order to have a slip prepared to the north of the plant. The vice president was there too. Also one of Rias’s aides, Devencrow, and my men, Wrencrest and Merkoft.” Colonel Starcrest scowled and stood up. “You could have had a much shorter list of people to investigate if you had simply asked me. Or Rias, for that matter. Ancestors’ sake, is nobody including
him
in the Tiles game?”

“Professor Komitopis showed him the note we found, though she had to decrypt it first,” Amaranthe said. “We’re not the official investigators, either. The professor just asked us—asked Sicarius—” she waved to him, “—to find out if the president had truly been poisoned and to find out who is responsible.”

And to find a cure. If President Starcrest had been poisoned, and there was a cure, Sicarius
would
find it.

“What
other
information has been leaked?” the colonel asked.

“There was a map of the hotel and details on security personnel and shift changes,” Amaranthe said.

The colonel stood up and turned his back to them for a moment. His right hand curled into a tight fist. He took a deep breath, forcing his fingers to relax.

Amaranthe met Sicarius’s eyes and she signed a few quick words.
He’s hotter than molten ore about getting this information from someone who isn’t on the payroll and hasn’t sworn any oaths to anyone.

Sicarius nodded once, understanding that perfectly. If the man had been made chief of intelligence, he must have assumed his uncle trusted him fully.

Should I be telling him all this?

I assumed you were trying to win him to your side.

Amaranthe’s expression grew wry, but the colonel turned back before she could sign anything else. Just as well. His lieutenant had noticed the last flurry of hand signals.

“All right,” Colonel Starcrest said. “That information would have come out of our office so Serpitivich might not have anything to do with this, though I’ll keep an eye on him. The security shifts could have come from anyone on my staff. Maybe Avigart. He was a good man, though. I don’t see him volunteering to betray the president. Maybe his death was designed to divert us from the true snitch. Or maybe he stumbled onto something and got caught, making this a frame. He also could have been blackmailed into doing something he didn’t want to do. He has children...” The colonel winced again. “I’ll have to inform his wife about this. Blast, Avigart. What were you thinking?”

The dead man did not answer.

Colonel Starcrest mumbled to himself, then headed for the door. “Everyone out of here. I’ll have a team go over it. Lieutenant, find Wrencrest and Merkoft and hold them for questioning. Put a man on the vice president too. And his aides as well. Especially that smarmy one. Cursed civilians.”

The two officers walked into the hallway.

Amaranthe signed,
Are you done?
to Sicarius.

Sicarius hesitated. He would have liked to search further and see if he could find evidence that might identify the murderer, but Colonel Starcrest stopped in the hallway, looking back at them. They were not, it seemed, to be allowed to continue investigating independently, not this room anyway.

Sicarius walked out, and Amaranthe followed him. The colonel closed the door and locked it.

“I trust this will remain locked until my investigation team makes it up here,” the colonel said, eyeing them both. “I understand that you’re... friends of the family, but as far as I’m concerned, you’re unknown and uncontrollable elements that don’t seem to answer to anyone. I haven’t that luxury, and I must go forward by the book.”

“We understand, sir,” Amaranthe said.

Looking no happier than when he had walked in on the dead body, the colonel led his man off down the hall.

“It would not take long to pick the lock again,” Sicarius said.

“And get caught snooping again?”

“I heard them coming; I could have avoided being caught.”

Amaranthe snorted but didn’t argue with the statement. “You could have told
me
they were coming. At least I was just looking at the uniforms and wasn’t caught rummaging in his underwear drawer.”

“I can more thoroughly examine the room, then station myself somewhere to overhear the comments made during the soldiers’ investigation,” Sicarius said.

“It sounds like you’d like to continue snooping around without me.”

“I can also search the hotel for the murderer. He or she may still be on the premises.”

“It
definitely
sounds like you wish to snoop without me.” Amaranthe sighed at him. “I suppose this is what I get for taking up with an unknown and uncontrollable element.”

Sicarius recognized her teasing for what it was and didn’t respond.

“Well, then, I’ll just go off and question someone I’ve been meaning to talk to since we returned. If past encounters are anything to go by, he’ll be more open with me without you looming over his shoulder.”

“Who will you see?” Sicarius asked, though he suspected he already knew.

“If anyone knows something about these priests that the intelligence office doesn’t, it would be the journalists running the newspaper.”

“Mancrest,” Sicarius said, his tone going flat of its own accord.

“Yes, do you have any messages you’d like me to convey for you?” Amaranthe smiled brightly.

Sicarius glared.

“Yes, that’s the one I expected. I’ll let him know.”

As she waved and walked away, Sicarius reminded himself that searching the room and finding the assassin were priorities. He trusted Amaranthe and trusted that she could handle Deret Mancrest if he tried anything untoward—which, he admitted, was unlikely these days—so there was absolutely no reason to follow Amaranthe and spy on her conversation with the newspaper man. To even contemplate it was illogical.

While removing his lock-picking kit again, Sicarius wondered why it irked him that he couldn’t justify that spying.

Chapter 18

S
espian tried to ignore the hacking and sawing—and the occasional blasting—that came from beyond the grimy windows of the old warehouse. It was hard with the green stalks wavering in the breeze outside those windows. Further, the floorboards creaked constantly, and tendrils sometimes burst up through seams or knotholes. It wasn’t a great place to design a generator. It wasn’t even a great place to ensure the continuation of one’s life. Judging from the strained shouts of the soldiers outside, they would be pleased to leave at any moment.

But the sleek black form of President Starcrest’s submarine lay in the center of the warehouse where the tugboat had delivered it. An engineering team under the command of a Major Rydoth was swarming inside and out, cleaning and repairing the damage from the blasting stick as well as the underwater immersion. The craft was too large to put on the back of a lorry for transport, so they had to work on it where it rested. At the time of delivery, the plant hadn’t stretched this far south, but it was expanding its reach with every hour. Sespian couldn’t help but think of Starcrest’s comments on exponential growth.

A few clangs from a corner of the warehouse reminded everyone of the presence of the president. Starcrest walked over to the submarine to make comments to his engineers now and then, but his main focus was the table full of copper wires, magnets, batteries, and other bits of metal Sespian couldn’t identify. Some of the things he
could
identify mystified him, such as the tub of tallow and the distilling equipment. And he had
no
idea why Mahliki was over there pulping severed bits of the plant in that grinder. Father and daughter had been working non-stop since setting up in the warehouse, each going about their tasks with nothing more than the occasional grunt to the other, and each ignoring the rest of the world. Sespian was glad his only job was to make the finished generator fit into the submarine, though even that seemed daunting, given the size of furnaces and boilers, not to mention that room would be required for carrying sufficient fuel. Sespian hated to bother the president, but he would need dimensions before he could plan further.

Leaving the drafting table someone had brought for him, he headed toward the cluttered table with a pen and pad of paper. One of his aides jogged through the door, passed Sespian, and veered for Starcrest first.

“Lord President?” the man said. “The vice president sent me to inform you that there’s been a report of an incursion along the Kendorian border. It seems someone has heard of our distraction here in the capital and is attacking outposts.”

Starcrest didn’t put down his tools or do more than glance at the aide. “Give me the details.”

“Can I help you, Sespian?” Mahliki asked, her voice strained.

She was still grinding away at the severed pieces of plants, turning them into a mushy green liquid inside a glass container. Judging by the way she had to throw her body weight into turning the crank, it wasn’t an easy task.

“I came to get some dimensions,” Sespian said quietly, not wanting to interrupt the president’s conversation. He pointed his pen toward her straining arms—her sleeves were rolled up to her elbows and green splatters smudged her tan skin. “Can I help
you
? Do you want a break?”

Mahliki paused, shook out her arms, and eyed the contents of the jar. “Maybe for a bit. Not surprisingly, this is a lot harder than it would be for any other plant. Those blades came from a store that makes saws. The proprietor promised me I could stick a tree in this thing and grind it down.” She shoved a few more cut vines into the feeder channel.

“Why are you grinding down the plant?” Sespian grasped the lever with both hands and promptly saw what she meant. It moved, but not without significant effort. “And is it... safe to do so?” He nodded at her spattered arms. “Those little bits won’t grow into new plants, will they?”

Mahliki frowned at her skin. “I certainly hope not. I’ll wash off if I feel anything trying to take root.”

Sespian shuddered at the image of plants growing out of human flesh.

“As for the rest, we’re making vegetable oil. Or alien plant oil. I haven’t come up with a fancy name yet. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to grind down enough to be useful, but Father grinned at the idea of using the plant against itself, and preliminary studies were extremely promising, so I’m trying. There’s tallow for whatever else we need. We’re not planning any long voyages here—oxygen would be a problem for anything other than a short trip underwater—so we shouldn’t need much.”

Sespian kept nodding as she was talking, because he didn’t want her to think him dull, but he felt more mystified than before she had begun. “The vegetable oil is going to... fuel the submarine?”

“The methyl esters are. We have to separate the glycerin out, though I won’t be in a hurry to get rid of that, not after I saw how effective slime can be for escaping a graspy plant—” Mahliki wriggled her eyebrows. “Father said this would be a lot easier with petroleum, but nobody’s locating and refining it in any serious manner yet, and given our time situation, we had to use what was easily available. Finding a Maker in the city would have made this all
much
easier, but even then, it would have taken someone days to create a power source like the one we had. Besides, my studies suggest this plant is going to create a fuel with a higher energy potential than wood or even coal.”

Sespian had a vague notion that glycerin could be used to make soap, but the rest went over his head. He ought to take some science courses at the university, assuming the university was still around once this plant was done mauling the city.

“Good,” he said, reluctant to ask more questions and make his ignorance obvious. He would ask Starcrest later. Odd, but it seemed more acceptable to appear young and ignorant in front of the president than in front of his daughter. Maybe because she was younger than Sespian. Shouldn’t he know more, not less? “Do you know how big the finished generator will be? And, uhm, will steam still be involved in powering it or is this—” he tilted his head toward the green goop, “—going to eliminate that step?”

“Steam will still power the generator. Everything will simply be more compact because we won’t need—”

A crack came from the floor, and boards beneath Sespian’s feet bulged. He scrambled back. He had seen the plant grow up in other spots, only to be driven back by swords and small explosives, but it hadn’t thrust up with such force, not since he had been there.

Nails shrieked and burst from their wooden homes as the first green tendril shot up through a seam, spilling dirt around it. While his instinct was to back away from the bulge, Mahliki ran forward. She knelt, a dagger in hand, and cut at the intruding vine.

“That’s not going to do—” Sespian stopped himself. That was a very
familiar
dagger.

The black blade sliced through the emerging tendril, cutting it off at the base. The plant continued to grow though, shoving upward as if its life depended on it.

“Stay down, you stupid thing,” Mahliki growled, cutting it off at the base again. The two severed tendrils bucked and writhed like living beasts.

Sespian grabbed them and stuffed them into the top of the grinding machine. Even in the short seconds he was in contact with them, one tried to curl around his wrist. He tore it free before it could firm up that grip and grabbed a crowbar—the closest thing on the table. Using it, he jammed the tendrils down into the chute, then dropped the tool and leaned into the grinding lever.