No, even firearms would be useless underwater. The woman told you all this? Basilard asked.
Yes. Sicarius’s cool gaze told him to drop it.
Basilard swallowed, imagining Sicarius letting that woman think they had some connection, and then turning around, interrogating her, and killing her. True, Basilard himself had killed, but only in combat and only men. Not women. His eyes narrowed in remembrance. Or children.
Sicarius unfastened the bindings about Basilard’s ankles, then continued with those tying his torso and thighs to the table.
Basilard tilted his head. Why come for me?
Sicarius flicked him a glance that could have meant anything and continued to unlock the bindings.
When the drugs were overtaking Basilard, he had not expected Sicarius’s help, indeed had thought Sicarius might have set him up to die. Was it possible he had imagined everything?
Sicarius released the final straps and stepped back.
Do you know I know... Basilard stopped himself. If Sicarius had not figured it out, it would be foolish to alert him.
I know, Sicarius signed.
Basilard waited for him to continue, to offer some ultimatum or say something like, “If you make a move against me, I’ll kill you.” He still held all the knives. Sicarius did not add anything to his comment though. Maybe he figured it was all assumed.
You could get rid of me down here with no one on the team wise to it. And maybe Basilard should not be pointing things out. What if Sicarius was only releasing him because he needed help escaping? And what if he planned to kill Basilard on the way out? Or maybe... Do you not see me as a threat?
You are capable.
As scant an admission as that was, Basilard found it heartening. Then why free me? Basilard asked again.
Because Amaranthe would wish it. Sicarius flipped Basilard’s knife and extended it, hilt first.
The answer, or perhaps the honesty of the answer, surprised Basilard. So, I’m safe around you as long as she’s alive? He smiled, though he knew Sicarius would not return the gesture.
If you force me to defend myself, I will. Sicarius shook the knife, emphasizing Basilard should take it. Right, they had to escape before anyone noticed Sicarius missing and the woman dead.
Basilard took the knife and stepped into the aisle. He paused as one more thought occurred to him. Is Amaranthe the reason you were captured?
He thought of the way she had talked him into the Clank Race. Her intentions had been good—maybe that was what made her requests appealing—but he would not be at the bottom of a lake, stripped naked, and the latest specimen in some scientist’s research experiment if not for her.
I got closer than I should have, Sicarius signed. I sensed the Science being used, but... I did not want to return without answers to her questions.
Huh, he had been right. Basilard was going to sign one of his grandfather’s sayings, that many a male duck had been lured to its demise by the call of a female, but Sicarius turned away, as if to say, “Enough chit chat. Time for work.”
He strode to the next table and cut the tubing leading to a young man’s veins. He unlocked the bindings there as well, though he did not wait for the person to wake before moving to the next table.
Why free them? Basilard asked, not because he objected, but because Sicarius would not do it for altruistic purposes.
Distraction, Sicarius signed.
While we do what?
Take this—Sicarius twitched a hand to encompass the structure—to the surface so we can get off.
Take over the...tiller? Basilard had no idea if something like this had a tiller—probably not—but Sicarius would know he meant the navigation system.
Yes.
You know where that is?
But Sicarius had already turned back to the captives. Basilard helped with his own knife. Most of the other prisoners were young, in their teens and twenties. He hoped they would be able to escape themselves without being harmed. More harmed, he corrected himself, when he noticed freshly stitched scars gouging the abdomen and groin areas of more than one. Basilard glanced down at himself and was relieved to see no incisions. Sicarius must have found him before they got started with...whatever it was they were doing exactly. He shuddered.
Sicarius bumped him on the shoulder and jerked his head toward the exit.
The first captive was stirring.
Wouldn’t it be better to work with them? Basilard asked. A combined force to confront our adversaries?
Athletes would be useless against practitioners.
Basilard was not certain what value he might have against a shaman or wizard either. He recalled the humiliation of his old owner, Arbitan Losk, plucking him from hiding and flattening him to the floor with a force he had been unable to elude.
A noise started up, a throbbing whine that vibrated from the walls loudly enough to wake any slumbering guards.
“Alarm.” Sicarius jogged toward the exit.
Basilard remembered the invisible barrier and wondered if Sicarius had disabled it. He must have if he had come in from the woman’s quarters or somewhere that direction, but it was up now, evinced by a strange sheen with yellow tendrils shimmering in the air.
Sicarius plucked a thin knife off a console near the hatchway. A bloody ball was skewered on the tip.
Though Basilard noted the gory thing, he did not realize what it was until Sicarius held it up to the eyeball reader. The recognition did not quite make Basilard flinch, but he did curl a disgusted lip. Given his background, he ought not be squeamish about such things, but he could not help but find it discomfiting. Maybe because his putative ally was the one who had removed it, and it might very well have belonged to that woman.
The shield wavered and disappeared.
Sicarius and Basilard passed into the long corridor outside, ducking their heads to dodge intermittent pipes along the ceiling. The glow of the orbs on the wall waxed and waned with each pulse of the alarm. The corridor curved in angled segments like some mechanical snake stretched along the lake floor. They passed closed hatches, but Sicarius did not pause to check any of them.
Rhythmic thumps sounded above them. Footfalls? Was there a second floor? Basilard had not noticed ladders on his previous trip, but that had been a short journey. They had already passed the cabin he had started out in.
Sicarius ran through a four-way intersection, then rounded a bend. A few feet before a dead end, a ladder rose to a closed hatch in the ceiling.
Instead of starting up, Sicarius smashed his black dagger into an orb on the wall. Shadows thickened in the corridor. He darted behind the ladder and crouched, his back to the wall. Basilard joined him.
Above, the footfalls started and stopped a couple of times, and Basilard had the impression of guards pausing to collect reinforcements.
Plan? Basilard asked.
If a manageable number of men come down, we jump them. Sicarius retained the eyeball-on-a-knife, and it made a grisly accent to his hand signs.
Would you have done that if Amaranthe were here? Basilard caught himself asking.
He thought Sicarius might give him a frosty look or tell him to pay attention to what they were doing. Instead a faint ruefulness softened his stony expression.
Doubt I would have needed to. She would have subverted one of the guards.
You can’t subvert one? Basilard joked, not expecting a reaction beyond a glare.
Apparently, I lack charisma.
Basilard gaped at him, not certain if that had been a joke or not. Overhead, the footfalls clomped to a stop at the hatch, and he focused on the matter at hand. Sicarius, too, turned his attention upward.
The hatch creaked open. A pistol descended first, then a guard eased his head through. Basilard held his breath. Attacking the guards on the ladder would be the best spot for catching them by surprise.
Wariness stamped the man’s face, though, and he checked both ways, aiming the pistol without stepping onto the rungs. His e
yes turned in Basilard’s direction and paused. Maybe the shadows weren’t deep enough.
“Hobarth.” The guard squinted and shifted the pistol toward the shadows.
The only warning Basilard had of movement was Sicarius’s arm brushing his. A throwing knife zipped between the ladder rungs and thudded into the guard’s eye.
In less than a heartbeat, Sicarius darted out of the shadows and up the ladder. He grabbed the dying man by the shirt, hurling him to the floor below, then disappeared through the hatchway.
Basilard leaped out and grabbed the fallen guard’s pistol. He clenched it between his teeth, tugged the throwing knife from the eye socket, and climbed the ladder with Sicarius’s blade and his own balanced in his hands.
He pulled himself onto the next floor, landing in a fighting stance, ready to help.
Two guards were sprawled on the deck, their throats cut. Sicarius was patting one down for keys or weapons or, for all Basilard knew, something to eat.
Feeling useless, he took the pistol out of his mouth and checked the charge. With his hands full, he had to juggle the weapons to sign a question, Should we take their clothes?
The guards were all bigger than Basilard, but he felt vulnerable running around nude.
To what end? Sicarius took his throwing knife from Basilard and sheathed it.
Pockets?
Sicarius flicked an indifferent finger, picked up the eyeball knife, and headed down the corridor. Basilard stripped the fatigue jacket off the smallest guard and put it on, grimacing at the sensation of cloth sticky with blood pressed against his skin. He hustled to catch up.
Sicarius stopped at a barrier before an intersection to fiddle with the reader. He glanced at Basilard’s new attire but said nothing. Clothes or not, he probably never felt vulnerable. Between the eyeball in his hand and the streaks of someone else’s blood smeared across his forearm and chest, he looked like nobody one would want to tangle with.
You better stick with Amaranthe, Basilard signed. She humanizes you.
The barrier dropped. Sicarius looked himself over and considered the gory eyeball before stepping through.
Agreed, he signed.
There was no time to mull over the response. More footfalls and numerous voices rang throughout the structure. The alarm continued pulsing. If all they met were soldiers, Basilard and Sicarius might be able to handle them, but Basilard expected practitioners at some point, and who knew what otherworldly obstacles.
The corridor sloped upward. Closed hatches marked the walls to either side, each with a reader set nearby at eye level. Sicarius did not slow to try any of these. He obviously had a destination in mind. Or maybe their eyeball only opened communal doors, not private laboratories.
They passed another ladder leading down, and Basilard tried to imagine a map of the place in his mind. They could no longer be above the tunnel they had run through on the first floor, because there had been no ladders leading up before the one they had taken. How much of a maze might this place be? He hoped Sicarius knew where he was going.
After the ladder, the corridor continued on in a straight line. Its riveted, gray walls offered no alcoves or niches for hiding in, should someone come out shooting at them.
The narrow passage ended at another barrier. In a chamber on the other side, the back of a large black chair was visible before a control panel and a horizontal, oblong porthole. Dark water pressed against the glass. It could be night or day at the lake surface and no one would ever know down here. Around the chamber, lever- and gauge-filled panels ran from floor to ceiling. Many held multi-hued glowing protuberances, all amorphous, more like fungi that had grown there naturally than mechanical devices. Was this the navigation area? Basilard struggled to imagine this unwieldy ship—if one could call it that—floating up a river, but it had to have arrived somehow. Perhaps it could become compact for travel.
Sicarius waved the eyeball before the reader on the wall, but this shimmering field did not fade away. He plucked a piece of lint from the floor and tossed it at the barrier. It burst into flame and disappeared.
Basilard stepped back, far back.
The owner of the eyeball didn’t have access to that room? he asked.
Apparently not. Sicarius wiggled the eyeball about in front of the reader again. He must have expected it to win him entry.
The chair rotated, and Basilard jumped. He had not realized anyone was sitting in it. A tall, gray-haired man in a white coat scowled at them. The navigator, perhaps, and maybe a practitioner as well. Though he bore no weapons openly, he showed no fear at the prospect of intruders on his threshold.
Back? Basilard signed, aware of the alarm still throbbing, of shouts in the distance. It sounded like someone had discovered the dead guards.
Sicarius decided it was the time to engage in a staring contest. Maybe he thought the practitioner would wither under an unrelenting gaze—or at least come over and open the door.
The gray-haired man lifted a hand. A crackling yellow ball formed in the air before his fingertips.
Basilard backed further. That could only be a weapon, and if it could go through the barrier...
Sicarius crouched, ready to spring. He must believe the barrier had to drop for the man to launch the weapon.
Boots pounded in the corridor behind them. Basilard gripped his knife and nodded to let Sicarius know he would provide time for him—if he could. He did not know how he would dodge pistols in the tight corridor.
He ran down the passage anyway.
Before he reached the ladder, two guards stomped into view, one behind the other. In the narrow space, Basilard almost missed spotting a gray-haired woman in a blood-spattered white coat striding after them. She toted a two-foot-long cone, and, judging by the way she held it over the guards’ shoulders, trying to target Basilard, it was a weapon. He had to focus on the first problem: the two guards and the pistols in their hands.
The first man dropped to one knee, pointing his firearm at Basilard, while the second remained standing and aimed over the first’s head. The distance between Basilard and them was too far to charge before they could fire.
He focused on their fingers, trying to watch and anticipate when they would pull the triggers. One tensed. Basilard hurled his knife and threw himself into a forward roll.
Pistols fired.
One shot clanged off the metal floor, but another hammered into the back of Basilard’s shoulder. Pain seared through him, as if someone had thrust a hot iron into his flesh. He gasped, eyes clenched shut, but managed to finish the roll and come up running. He had to, or they would have him.
The closest guard was on his knees, hunched against the wall, trying to work Basilard’s knife free of his upper arm. The man in back dropped his pistol and drew a serrated dagger with a ten-inch blade.
“Move, Fiks,” the woman barked in accented Turgonian. “Let me—”
Basilard charged. The second guard had one foot in the air to step past his comrade, and one ear toward the woman. It was Basilard’s best chance, to attack before the men had time to plan something.
The guard wasn’t as distracted as he appeared. He slashed at Basilard to keep him at bay, then yanked a smaller pistol out of his belt behind his back.
Caught off guard, Basilard was the one who had no time to do anything but react. He lunged in and grabbed the downed man, yanking him to his feet. The injured guard roared in surprise and pain. Basilard punched him in the face, hoping to stun him and keep him as an obstacle. The movements stirred fresh agony in his shoulder, and he nearly dropped from the pain. He forced it aside and yanked his knife free from the man’s arm, eliciting another howl.
The rearmost guard thrust his pistol over his comrade’s shoulder. Basilard ducked and hurled his knife around the injured man’s ribs. The awkward position gave the throw little power, but it was enough to slice into his target’s thigh. The man bellowed and dropped the pistol.
Further up the corridor, Sicarius shouted, “Down!”
in Mangdorian.
Basilard hesitated. To drop to the floor would be to put himself at a disadvantage.
Light flared down the corridor, as brilliant as a sunburst. Basilard dropped to the floor, dragging the closest guard with him for cover. Heat roiled down the passage, and brightness burned his eyes, even through the lids. The man above him screamed. The scent of burning hair and singed flesh flooded Basilard’s nostrils.
He expected screams from the woman and the other guard but heard nothing. Had they been quick enough to hurl themselves to the floor?
The light blazing against his lids lessened, and he pried an eye open, hoping to find his opponents vanquished. The woman had not moved, except to fiddle with something at her belt. A transparent barrier, the same streaky yellow as those used in the corridors, hovered around her and the guard. Heat shimmering in the air parted around the defensive shield like water flowing past a boulder in a stream.
Safe behind the barrier, the guard clenched his knife and glowered at Basilard. Blood dripped from his thigh and splashed onto the floor.
Further up the corridor, Sicarius dropped from the ceiling where he had hung like a spider to avoid the blast.
Basilard scrambled out from beneath the singed—and now quite dead—man. Every movement brought fire from the pistol wound; he could feel that ball in his flesh, grinding against the bone of his shoulder blade, but he gritted his teeth and told himself he could deal with it later.
The remaining guard charged out of the protective barrier and slashed at Basilard’s neck with the serrated knife.
Basilard had lost his own blade when he threw it, but he skittered back from the attack without trouble. He had faced many knife wielders without the benefit of a weapon. He watched the man’s collarbone—not the eyes; the eyes could lie—and kept the blade and free hand in his peripheral vision.
The man stabbed at Basilard’s chest. He saw the feint for what it was. The man’s body wasn’t behind it; he wasn’t committed. Three more feints came, and Basilard began to wonder if the man would attack in earnest. Then he committed, legs crouched to spring and dart in close behind a swipe.
Basilard crouched low and blocked the striking arm, knocking it upward. He grabbed the man’s wrist, pulling it toward him as he stepped closer. His other elbow swung up, pounding the underside of the guard’s jaw. The man’s head whipped backward with a crunch.