Kingmakers, The (Vampire Empire Book 3) (33 page)

“And save Gareth.”

Sanah hesitated. “He may be long dead before that is an issue.”

Adele stood, her hand holding the pistol resolutely. “That will not happen either.”

“I understand. However, Mamoru has sent his assassin to Edinburgh, hoping the prince will come home to roost. Then she will strike. Nzingu is a most capable geomancer. Even I fear her.”

“I don't.”

Sanah's gaze softened. “Then you must go swiftly. She is most likely already waiting at the lair of your lover.”

N
EVER A MAN
of protocol, Captain Hariri offered Empress Adele a jaunty salute as she came up onto the quarterdeck of the airship
Edinburgh
. She returned it in a similar fashion, despite the anxiety she had felt inside since they left Alexandria three days ago.

“Your Majesty,” he shouted to her over the wind. “We're across the Mediterranean and are over the French coast. Heading is north, as you commanded.”

“Take her up as high as she'll go, Captain.”

Hariri raised surprised eyebrows. “Very well, but bid farewell to fair skies and forgiving winds. The gales up there could shake us apart or blow us to Russia. The cold will freeze my men to the lines and turn the sails into sheets of ice. The air is so thin we'll be gasping for breath.”

“So you're afraid?”

“Afraid?” Without hesitation, Hariri barked the command to his first mate before returning his attention to her. “I just want you to know that it's going to be a bit uncomfortable for the next few days.”

“I appreciate the rigors your men will be facing on this voyage, Captain. But we have to fly high to avoid vampires and for speed. I haven't time to take the long route out into the Atlantic and up. Senator Clark made this same run to London last year.”

“Then so shall we,” the pirate said seriously. “I won't have that American doing something I can't.”

“Good. I've laid in plenty of extra clothing for the crew to ward off the extreme cold. See to it that it's distributed.”

“I assume this isn't a social call. There's a regiment's arsenal below as well. Are we off to save General Anhalt again?” He winked with a grin.

“Not this time.”

She tightened the soft folds of Greyfriar's scarf around her frigid cheeks and neck, relishing in the warmth and the trace of his scent. In return for this token, the night he left Alexandria, she had slipped a cheap penny dreadful of fairy tales in his pack for him to read and discard as needed. Hopefully it would distract him during his journey. She thought about him reading in the dark at the base of a tree in the wilds, and it satisfied her.

White clouds drifted lazily below them. It always seemed so peaceful when they were in the sky. The brig seemed to be moving so slowly even though every inch of sail was unfurled. Mamoru's assassin was weeks ahead of her, and the passage of time ate a hole in Adele's belly.

Edinburgh
lifted in a marked surge, and Adele's hand gripped the rail as she bent her knees with the upward motion. The sharp hiss of gas could be heard above as the vessel's massive dirigible filled. The rush of clouds streamed past her while thick vapors left her face wet. Ice crystals formed on her cheeks as she stared into the sodium sky. Someone handed her a heavy coat and she took it gratefully. She glanced over.

“Captain Shirazi.”

The tall soldier bowed and then resumed his attentive position. His silence was deafening. Each frosty breath blatantly demonstrated his concern. She expected a rebuke, a snide comment, something. Instead, the captain's mouth was merely a stern line, and then finally came a polite request.

“Would Your Majesty care to relate her intentions for this mission?”

Adele swallowed. “I doubt you'd like the answer.”

“Yes, I'm sure I wouldn't.” He stared hard at her. “But regardless, I need to hear it.”

“Greyfriar is in danger.”

“Is that not a mission more logical to be in the hands of the Harmattan? We would defend Greyfriar with our lives, as we defend you.”

“Yes, I know,” Adele responded. She was taking a major gamble, and she had to tread carefully. General Anhalt had always been her confidant; she trusted him implicitly. However, she didn't truly know this man beside her, and she had too many secrets to share them openly. “When we have reached maximum safe altitude and are sailing north, come to me in my cabin. I will explain our mission then. It involves more than just a simple rescue. Bring Captain Hariri.”

She retreated to her cabin to figure out how to orchestrate the next few weeks and keep Gareth safe, not only from the assassin, but from her own men as well. The bed creaked as she sat down heavily.

Adele's head whirled with all the things that could go wrong. It would take only one slip to collapse the house of cards her world had become. Her gut twisted when she realized that every move or decision she made could shatter everything. She was balancing love and duty. She was playing with the impossible. The weight of that sunk onto her shoulders again. Her fingers pressed deep into her eyes as she rubbed them. “Just once, I wish something wouldn't be so dire.”

Her leather satchel was at the foot of the bed, and she dragged it over to retrieve her mother's journal. There hadn't been time to work on deciphering her mother's notes before her hurried departure from Alexandria, but she had been working on it since. Even on a fast ship traveling dangerously high, there would be many days of inactivity on a journey this long. Adele opened the book carefully and immediately felt a rush of old memories. Her mother's distinctive cursive writing stared back at her. In the margins were the strange scribbles and doodles that Sanah had said were a form of writing that could be translated into Persian. Adele again took out a sheet that her
aunt
had hastily prepared with a simple key to the code.

The young woman wondered about Sanah. Her
aunt
. The long-lost sister of her mother. Could it be true? Adele felt a kinship with the woman, even back when they met at the play last summer. She had talked too much to her that night. Perhaps that was the natural connection of women in the same family exerting itself. Adele hoped there was a future where she might share some time with this new aunt, but the future was as clear as the grey clouds outside
Edinburgh
.

She was fully aware this voyage could be a trap. Sanah had admitted to being part of Mamoru's cabal. This entire thing—the journal, a fortuitous new aunt, and a mysterious assassin—could be an elaborate ruse to lure her away from Alexandria. Even knowing that, Adele had to go. If there was even the slightest chance the story was true that Gareth was in danger, and that she could protect him, there was no question. If this was indeed a plot by Mamoru, Adele pitied him once she finished with him.

The empress forced her attention to her mother's marks. She compared them to Sanah's key, laboring to make sense of it all. The same symbol could mean words or letters or thoughts, depending on how it was used. And Sanah's notes were not always clear on the differences.

Adele noted one set of symbols that appeared frequently, and on one page were written in deep dark ink, nearly etched into the paper, next to several of Mamoru's critical red comments. Clearly Pareesa was bearing down on those symbols. Adele used Sanah's code and realized with a bolt of excitement that the symbols represented the word
Mamoru
.

It worked. Mamoru was the Rosetta stone.

Adele laughed and began to translate the next set of symbols. It started to make sense, and her mother spoke to her from the past. Fortunately, most of the scribblings were simple observations of the Earth and its relationship with geomancy. Many of them, however, were specific responses to Mamoru's critiques, so Adele was aided in her reading by Pareesa repeating some of her teacher's comments, usually with the scorn of a scolded student. It was logical she wouldn't have wanted Mamoru to read them.

Then, on the pages regarding
pathfinding
, covered with her mother's sketches of spiders and webs, Pareesa's commentary grew even more scathing. She implied that Mamoru was narrow-minded, as much as the technocrats who ruled the Empire. She described her ideas that he had dismissed as pointless flights of fancy.

It wasn't sufficient, Pareesa claimed, for the geomancer to steal upon the web of the Earth and merely rest there, feeling the vibrations, and even taking pieces of the web for their own use. She believed ley lines were not rigid, but shifted over time. The geomancer's ultimate goal had to be to engage the web, maintain it, and even repair it when necessary. She poetically claimed that the geomancer had to weave new webs.

Of course, she mourned that Mamoru refused to entertain such thoughts. In his mind, the geomancer could only understand the web of the Earth to a certain level, and use its power for his own purposes. The web was a creation beyond human comprehension. To engage it on its own terms was disaster. It would crush any human vain enough to believe she could stand up to the titanic vision of the Earth.

Adele's eyes were burning and her head pounded. She prepared to put the journal aside. There would be more days ahead to work on the complex notes from her mother. She flipped to the last page and noted a single line of symbols on the inside of the back cover. It was scratched into the leather with a pen's point, not written in ink. She touched the rough symbols and read over them, slowly moving her lips.

She sat up with a jolt. Her fingers tingled. She stared at the strange symbols and repeated the translation in a low whisper, hearing the sound of her mother's voice as she did so:

Adele is the spider.

Something brushed Adele's leg and she jerked, nearly screaming. Her heart was already pounding as she caught a glance of a small furry form darting under the desk.

“Great, a rat.”

Adele took a deep breath, glanced at the symbols again, and then set the journal aside. She welcomed a more pedestrian activity at the moment. Vermin were not unusual on board a ship, but of course it had to be scuttling in her cabin. Good thing she hadn't screamed, otherwise Shirazi would have come barreling in. Only now it was left to her to kill the thing. Calling for someone else to do it seemed petty, especially for someone who killed vampires so effectively. Being squeamish over a rat didn't cry empress at all.

Adele noticed that the airship was shaking much more violently than normal. Hariri hadn't been joking about the stress of flying high. The deck jarred under her feet as
Edinburgh
slipped from side to side and dipped wildly.

Adele drew her Fahrenheit khukri dagger, consoling herself that at least a little activity would ward off the bitter cold seeping into her limbs and take her mind off the shuddering airship. Bracing herself, she sunk to her knees and peered under the desk.

“Please don't be a big one.”

The glow from her blade illuminated the deep shadows and showed her two glowing eyes in the cramped space beneath her desk. Then she saw the size of the beast, poised to strike, tail swishing.

“Pet!” Adele yanked back the blade and immediately the cat came prancing forward. “You rat!”

Pet stretched, yawning lazily before brushing up against her. Adele scooped him up. “How did you get here, you little stowaway? Did you know we were heading back to Edinburgh?” He went limp in her arms and purred contentedly, staring at her with half-closed emerald eyes. They settled into a chair, and immediately the cat snuggled into her thick fur-lined coat. She wrapped it around both of them.

“What am I going to do with you? Don't you know how dangerous it is where we are going? There's a war on. This is no time to visit with your extended family.”

As was her habit, Adele's fingers brushed along the inside of the cat's collar. She felt something tiny protruding and she stopped, her heart quickening. She fumbled with the leather band and pulled it from the sleepy cat. There, tucked into the seam of the collar, was a small slip of paper.

Adele knew instantly what it was. She kissed the cat's head. “You're a messenger again, little one.”

The thin paper was delicate, and she labored not to tear it as she unraveled it. Gareth's handwriting stared back at her, more practiced and precise than it had been the year before when he wrote his first note to her.

Never doubt my love for you. I miss you even now. The warmth of your hand. The taste of your lips. I will see you soon.

G

Her eyes closed and she drew the paper to her lips. Memories spilled over her. The way he had so carefully made love to her, with all the focus of turning the page of a book. The thought of him holding her, flesh against flesh, made her shiver with wondrous memory. Her hand went to her chest, already feeling the wild flutter of her heart. She had never experienced anything like it. For someone who struggled to maintain control, she had been satisfyingly out of control.

She missed Gareth more so now. She missed the way his blue eyes stared at her when she woke up, the way his breathing seemed to match hers. She missed being able to talk to him. He was always so calm.

In a way, she hated that she always felt stronger with trusted friends at her side, because now she had to stand by her own decisions, good or bad. How many times had Anhalt or Gareth stared aghast at her when she announced an idea? Adele smiled at the memories of their stunned faces. Then she sighed.

Pet paid no mind, content to settle down for an overdue nap. Adele conceded that maybe he had the right idea about the future. Each bridge had to be crossed, and what would happen would happen regardless of her worrying.

There was a knock on the door. “Enter.”