Hilemore went to the window, finding scant surprise at the sight of another two armed guards standing amidst the flower-beds outside. “Why is possessing a berth on a ship of such import?” he enquired, turning back.
Zenida sat and rested her elbows on the desk, lowering her head to massage her forehead. She said nothing for some time but then, apparently deciding there might be some value in sharing knowledge, said, “A Varestian without a ship is homeless. A homeless parent cannot care for a child.”
“This is your law?”
“Yes. We do have them, you know.”
“So, if you cannot provide a home for your daughter . . . ?”
“Law dictates she be placed with her closest relative, who will undertake the duties of guardian, along with certain responsibilities regarding the administration of her property.”
Hilemore frowned in puzzlement. “Akina has property?”
“Akina is one of the wealthiest individuals in the southern seas, thanks to my father.” She sighed, leaning back in the chair, hands gripping the edge of the desk. “Towards the end of his life our bond . . . diminished. He didn’t approve of my accommodation with your Syndicate. ‘Privateer is just another word for whore,’ he said, an observation that did little to improve matters between us. So, when he managed to get himself killed during some mad treasure-hunting jaunt to the Interior, his will made for interesting reading. My beloved half-brother and I each received one twentieth of his estate, a tenth going to my stepmother whilst the entire remainder was left to Akina. He remained very fond of her despite our estrangement.”
“So, if your brother claims her, he claims her wealth.”
“Yes. And I have grave doubts he will administer it with her best interests in mind.”
Hilemore paused, fumbling over the best way to phrase the next question, but she pre-empted him. “Akina’s father died three years ago.” She paused to glance around the room. “Two years to the day after completing his last great architectural work.” She looked up at Hilemore, grinning a little at his expression. “He wasn’t always such a complete drunk, and I was more easily impressed when younger.”
He nodded and looked away, thinking to spare her blushes but she merely seemed amused by his discomfort. “You Mandinorians and your rigid customs,” she said with a faint laugh that soon faded. All mirth had vanished when she spoke again. “Arshav will demand we hand over Akina in return for product. I need to know, will you allow this?”
“Certainly not,” he replied, more curtly than he intended as the suggestion had chafed his honour. What does she imagine I am? “Tell me,” he said, leaning against the desk. “How seriously does your brother take Varestian customs?”
She angled her head, eyes narrowing. “Do I sense a stratagem brewing, Captain?”
“It seems to me the solution to this dilemma is obvious, providing your brother responds as custom requires.”
“This is not a prospect to be entertained lightly. He’s a very dangerous man.” She looked away for a moment, brow furrowed in contemplation. “But not one I’ll miss. Ethilda will take it badly, though I can’t say that troubles me much either.”
“The rest of the town?”
“If it’s a properly conducted affair I doubt they’ll be overly troublesome. Arshav is a man surrounded by employees, not friends.” She paused, face entirely serious now. “You appear strangely certain the outcome will go in our favour.”
Hilemore shrugged, recalling something his grandfather had said, “A captain is always certain.”
—
Lockbar came to fetch them an hour later. The three Directors sat in the same chairs, though now Captain Kordwine’s posture was more slumped, his face the sullen grimace of a defeated man. The Chief Director’s greed outweighs sensible commerce, Hilemore decided as Arshav Okanas got to his feet, ignoring Hilemore to address his half-sister.
“We’ll not be bought by this corporate hireling,” he said. “But he can have his product, and you to fire it. My niece, however, requires a secure home . . .”
Hilemore moved in a blur, darting forward too fast for Lockbar to react, covering the distance to Arshav in a heart-beat and delivering a hard back-hand cuff across his face. The pirate reeled back, blood on his face as his mother scrambled to her feet with a shout of outrage.
Hilemore stood back, hearing a tulwar scrape from its scabbard an instant before the sharp point began to press into his back. He fixed his gaze on Arshav, kneeling and wiping the blood from his nose as he glared up at Hilemore, face quivering with rage. Hilemore smiled and spoke a single word in Varestian, “Challenge.”
CHAPTER 28
Lizanne
“Squeeze the trigger, don’t jerk it.”
Tekela tried again, keeping a solid, two-handed grip on the revolver and placing the shot dead in the centre of the target’s chest. Lizanne had been pleased to discover Shiny Man had been resurrected in her absence, remolded now into an advancing Corvantine infantryman complete with lowered, bayonet-tipped rifle and peaked cap. “Raise your aim,” she told the girl. “Your weapon is low-calibre and one bullet is unlikely to stop a charging man when his dander’s up.”
Tekela aimed again and fired, the bullet leaving a hole in Shiny Man’s copper cheek. Her hands had proven too small for the Cadre pistol she had carried since Morsvale, the recoil nearly snatching it out from her grasp the first time she fired it. Lizanne had obtained a smaller-calibre piece from Jermayah’s armoury, a seven-shot .22 revolver with a six-inch barrel. What it lacked in power would hopefully be compensated for by its accuracy, and Tekela was proving an adept student.
“Reload and do it again,” Lizanne told her. “Faster this time.”
“Can’t we have some lunch?” Tekela grumbled, slipping into Eutherian as she tended to do when tired.
“Speak in Mandinorian,” Lizanne reminded her, gesturing impatiently at the girl’s revolver. “Lunch later.”
She glanced over at Jermayah as Tekela reloaded. In the three hours since she handed him the solargraph he had barely issued more than a grunt, sitting hunched at his work-bench with a dizzying array of intricate tools placed within reach. He only stirred once, raising his head to bark a warning when Major Arberus began a close inspection of one of his new inventions, a multi-barrelled gun of some kind mounted on a wheeled carriage.
“Keep practising,” Lizanne told Tekela. “Fifty rounds then you can take a rest.”
The girl gave a faint groan but nevertheless dutifully raised her revolver and loosed off another salvo at Shiny Man. Lizanne left her to it and moved into the darker recesses of the workshop, finding the alcove where Jermayah made his home. It featured a small bed and side-table, piled high with various technical manuals, the only reading he ever seemed to indulge in. Lizanne sank onto the bed and lay back, taking a vial of Blue from her skirt pocket. She went through the usual pre-trance ritual of controlled breathing, visualising her mindscape before checking her wrist-watch and raising the vial to her lips.
—
“Not there?” Madame Bondersil’s scowl put Lizanne in mind of one of Tekela’s tantrums, as did the waspishly impatient tone. “What do you mean, not there?”
“Mr. Torcreek failed to make the connection at the allotted time,” Lizanne replied, her tone possessing more placidity than she felt. “There could be any number of reasons for his absence.”
“Death by far being the most likely.” Madame sighed, turning back to view the trench-works below. Lizanne had found her on the city walls accompanied by a gaggle of Protectorate officers, all now retired to a respectful distance. Lizanne was struck by their uniformly haggard faces, all drawn in fatigue and anxiety as they cast repeated glances at the country beyond the trenches, as if Morradin’s horde might appear at any moment. Carvenport had never been a choice posting for the Syndicate’s soldiers. The garrison tended to be officered by those either
too lacking in courage or competence to merit a more active command, or those in search of a quiet billet in which to await retirement and pension. It didn’t augur well for their prospects of holding the city. She was, however, heartened by the extensiveness of the trenches, the web of emplacements and dug-outs seeming to have doubled in size since yesterday. A few of Jermayah’s newfangled guns were positioned to cover the more obvious approaches and she was gratified to see a large number of Contractors occupying the outermost trenches. At least they can shoot straight.
“Any fragments?” Madame enquired, dragging her attention away from the defences. Fragments was a catch-all term for the vestiges of deceased trance-mates that sometimes appeared in a Blood-blessed’s mindscape, but only when they had died in mid-trance. Lizanne counted herself fortunate she had never experienced one.
“No, Madame.”
“You schooled him in the emergency procedure, I trust?”
“Contact to be attempted the following day at exactly the same time, and repeated until established.”
Madame nodded, frowning in contemplation for several minutes, apparently uncaring of the officers fidgeting near by. “Has Mr. Tollermine made any progress?” she asked finally.
“He is entirely focused on the task, but the device is yet to be made functional. Your coterie of scholars?”
Madame shook her head in mild disgust. “Spend most of their time arguing with each other. They do seem impressed with the late Burgrave’s canon of work, however.”
“He was an impressive man, in many ways. I’ll quiz the major again, see if he can share more about their expeditions . . .”
Her words were abruptly drowned out by a loud boom that reverberated over the walls to echo through the streets beyond. Lizanne’s gaze instantly went to the rising plume of earth fifty yards beyond the trench-works. The Contractors ran for cover as another shell descended, this one closer by ten yards, quickly followed by a dozen more. The barrage continued, sweeping over the outer trenches in a spectacle of churned earth, birthing a thick brown fog that soon obscured all from sight. The last shell came down barely a hundred yards from the walls, landing near an artillery position. When the fog faded Lizanne could see the corpses of three gunners lying beside their dismounted piece whilst others writhed and screamed near by.
“Marshal Morradin is clearly no laggard,” Madame observed. The last of the smoke drifted away, revealing the sight of Corvantine soldiers advancing from the tree-line to the south. Lizanne judged them to be skirmishers from the looseness of their formation and the way they scurried from cover to cover. A crackle of rifle fire erupted from the Contractors, proving the barrage had done little to thin their numbers. Lizanne counted a dozen Corvantines felled before they retreated back into the trees. Just a probe, she decided. The marshal gauges our numbers and willingness to fight.
“Return to the workshop,” Madame told her. “Continue to report any progress to me. Regardless of the fate of this city, the device must not fall into Corvantine hands, nor any knowledge that might enable them to reconstruct it.”
She held Lizanne’s gaze until she gave a nod of affirmation, the implacability in her once-cherished mentor’s gaze birthing a thought as she walked away, surprising in the depth of anger that accompanied it. You vicious old bitch.
—
The artillery started up again after midday, a slow, steady bombardment rather than another lightning barrage. The regular crump of exploding shells resounded through the workshop, making Tekela wince and the major pace back and forth in poorly controlled agitation. Jermayah, however, still didn’t raise his gaze from the solargraph.
“Morradin did the same at the siege of Jerravin,” Arberus commented. “Three solid days of pounding before the main assault. Frays the nerves as well as the defences.”
Keen to keep Tekela distracted, and sensing the girl had had enough of target practice for the day, Lizanne began to teach her the basics of unarmed combat, conscripting the major as a reluctant participant.
“Keep low,” she said, moving in a crouch towards his back. “Under his line of sight. When you’re close enough . . .” She lunged, fixing a hand over Arberus’s mouth, forcing his head back and sinking an invisible knife into the base of his skull. “Make sure you wiggle it about to churn up the brains.”
Tekela frowned. “That doesn’t seem fair.”
“You are barely five feet tall and any man you meet, and many women, are likely to possess twice your strength. Fairness is not an option for you, my dear.”
She turned to the major, watching him thumb a spot of blood from his mouth. “Sorry,” she said.
“Strong even without product,” he replied with a small grin that reminded her of their first meeting in the Burgrave’s hallway.
“Seer-dammit to the Travail and back again!”
They turned to see Jermayah on his feet, a hammer raised in his fist as he glared down at the solargraph in wide-eyed rage. “This cursed thing was surely crafted only to vex me!”
“Mr. Tollermine!” Lizanne said, employing her most corporate voice. “You forget your contract, sir.”
His gaze swung to her, the fury fading slowly as he lowered his hammer. The expression that covered his face as he looked again at the solargraph was one of abject defeat. “It’s beyond me,” he said tonelessly, tossing the hammer onto the bench. “I can’t make it work.”
“I simply do not believe that,” Lizanne said, moving to his side. She leaned down to peer at the device on the bench, blinking in surprise as she noted that it remained completely intact, not a single screw or bolt undone. “I had thought your explorations might be more extensive.”
“If I take it apart, I might never be able to reconstruct it.”
“How do you know you can’t repair it if you don’t?”
“This is not some child’s toy in need of a new spring.” He extended a hand to the device, fingers splayed and hesitant, as if he were reaching to touch a candle-flame. “There is more here . . . More than is known by us.”
“It was crafted by a man’s hand two hundred years ago, and he was mad. If such a man could make it, surely you can fix it.”
He shook his head, features drawn in mingled frustration and bafflement as he pointed to a bolt in the centre of the device. “This is the fulcrum of the entire mechanism, and it’s locked.”
“Then pick the lock.”
“I don’t even know what manner of lock this is.” He turned the solargraph, taking up a small steel probe and tapping it against a row of eight cylinders set into its side. “See these,” Jermayah said, touching the probe to the thin strips of metal fixed to the top of each cylinder. “They are all connected to the fulcrum. I suspect they must be triggered to release it, but I see no method as to how.”
“Can’t you remove them?”
“Not without breaking the connection and that will seize the entire mechanism.” He huffed out a low, rumbling sigh, tossing down the probe where it clattered against the cylinders, producing a series of sharp, almost musical pings. “There’s nothing else for it.” Jermayah turned away, running a hand through the shaggy mass of his hair. “It’ll have to be taken apart, each component recorded, itemised and copied. Then I’ll attempt a reconstruction.”
“How long?” Lizanne asked him.
“It took me six months to reconstruct the blueprints from the shadows in the box.”
“We do not have six months, Jermayah.”
“And I do not possess miraculous powers . . .”
He fell silent at the sound of several more pings from the device. They turned to find Tekela tapping the probe to the cylinders, producing a simple but recognisable tune in the process. “Chimes,” Tekela said, slipping into Eutherian once more. “My mother left me a music box that sounded much the same. It would play the ‘Emperor’s March.’”
Lizanne expected some
irritated outburst from Jermayah but instead his face took on a frown of deep concentration as he moved back to the bench. “Continue,” he told Tekela when she began to step back.
“Eight . . . chimes,” she said in her halting Mandinorian, playing the same tune at a faster clip. “Different notes. Eight notes make an . . .” She fumbled for the right term, turning to Lizanne and speaking a word in Eutherian.
“An octave,” Lizanne translated. “The foundation of all music.”
“Music,” Jermayah repeated, extending a finger to the chimes. “Of course. Play the right tune, and it unlocks the fulcrum.”
“But which one?” Lizanne wondered. “There are many tunes in the world.”
“‘The Leaves of Autumn,’” Major Arberus said, now standing beside Tekela and regarding the device with much the same fascination as the rest of them. “I always thought this thing a waste of time, if not money. But Leonis had such faith in it. ‘The Key to the Interior’s treasures,’ he said.”
“‘The Leaves of Autumn’?” Lizanne enquired.
“It’s the only reference to music in the Artisan’s surviving correspondence,” he said. “Whilst we don’t know much about him, it seems he was engaged to be married at one point, a union never fulfilled thanks to his endless obsession with the Interior’s mysteries. However, a fragment of a letter to his sweetheart does survive, and in it he makes reference to the tune to be played at their wedding, her favourite.” He turned to Tekela, speaking in Eutherian. “‘The Leaves of Autumn.’ You know it? It’s very old.”
“My music tutor liked the old ones,” Tekela said, frowning in concentration as she held the probe poised over the chimes. “Tedious old trout, that she was.” After a few seconds she tapped the probe against the chimes in a precisely executed sequence that made Lizanne wonder if the girl might have an innate talent for something after all. Tekela played the first eight notes, then paused when nothing happened. Jermayah waved an impatient hand at her and she tried again. The tune she produced was slow in tempo and conveyed a definite sense of melancholy despite the high pitch of the chimes. The melody was so sombre in fact, Lizanne couldn’t help but think it a decidedly strange choice for a wedding.