Lapis peeked around the shallow curve of the wall enclosing the landing platform, gasping as her heart pounded a merry tune against her ribs. She did not recall moving, but she must have raced away, putting as much distance between her and the loud, steady beep from the khentauree.
Witless her, she ran with the mercs rather than with her group. Yes, the mechanical thing lay between her and the building’s door, but she should have skirted it and joined them inside. Now she crouched down opposite the mercs, not certain whether to keep her eye on them or the more terrifying, but unmoving, enemy.
Gredy gulped with anger as he jerry-rigged a knot in his pants to keep them at his waist. She needed to act with greater care when brandishing her weapons around hard-headed shanks who did not take her seriously.
He surged up, above the cover of the wall, and the man who laughed about her gauntlets pulled him back down. He turned red as the larger man spat at him; he shoved him away and rubbed at his face, disgust and rage mingling. Ew.
He rose again, his attention on her as he yanked something from his vest.
Her day needed a piece of luck.
She slid a throwing knife into her palm and threw; it dug into the back of his hand, not enough for true harm, but drew a thick line of crimson before clattering to the ground. He dropped whatever he held and reared back, shrieking, as blood raced down his wrist and wet his sleeve. She had no illusions about her survival once the men recovered from their shock.
The beeping became louder, faster.
Shit. It was going to explode.
She sprinted for the Swift, blood pounding behind her eyes as the drooling merc recovered and chased her. The khentauree sputtered and made a high, whirring sound.
Sane thought disappeared as she leapt through the door.
It closed with a quiet shing; Gredy impacted it with a meaty thunk. The front panel crackled before her uncle’s seething voice rang from it; it issued from a metal ring with a thin mesh covering it.
“Lanth! Are you alright?” A pause. “There’s a red button below the speaker. Press it. When it turns green, go ahead and speak.”
She did as instructed. “I’m fine,” she said, still gasping for air because of a lightning-fast heartbeat.
She did not understand the demanding shriek from outside; the Swift muffled the sound. A soft sizzle, sounding like someone cooking bacon in the next room, flared and died. And did so again.
“He’s shooting at the door,” Rodas said in a dark tone. “You’ll be fine. The Pretty Bit’s modded to withstand a strike from a skyshroud. Gredy has nothing with enough power to scratch it.”
“Well, if that machine explodes, he’s going to get shrapnel in the back,” Caitria said, her words faint, annoyed.
“I don’t think it is,” Kathandra said, even fainter. “Once Honjora gets back, we’ll be able to scan it and tell.”
“Sit tight, Lanth,” her uncle said. “And if you need to contact us, just press the button. After the scan, we’ll do something about Gredy.”
Trapped.
Wonderful.
Lapis sank back in the seat Faelan had used, then, thinking better of it, returned to the bench and plastered herself against the side she had smooshed against to view the sky. What a terrible way to mar those wondrous memories. At least she sat outside of Gredy’s immediate sight, so hopefully, without her visual as a motivator, he stopped his assault.
Metal moving against a casing came from the roof; all sound at the door stopped. She assumed her uncle had deployed a weapon or two, as he had against the Black Hats, and Gredy, without the backing he needed to defeat it, retreated. Good. She did not want to listen to someone bang against the door, intent on reaching and killing her.
Settling her chin in her palm, she struggled to squelch the trepidation racing through her. She would need to watch her back when she left the Swift because she doubted the merc would ever calm down enough to accept an apology and not murder her.
She glared moodily out the window and across the expanse of solid buildings and trees quivering in the breeze, to the gold-touched grey clouds that glowed beneath the sun’s gentle touch. They did not look dark enough to produce rain, and simply provided a pleasant contrast to the brilliant morning blue above them. She wished Patch shared that view with her but laughed sarcastically at the thought; her partner would never have allowed her to race in the direction the mercs had taken, but yanked her back and pointed her to the door. She could have mindlessly raced inside and remained among friends.
A few people walked along the roads between the smaller buildings, all headed towards the larger white one she sat atop. No other activity marred the nice, quiet End Year day for the community below. Who knew, maybe Gredy would explode and try to take the entire place out, giving them a taste of excitement before the Minq and Lord Adrastos’s people showed up and the mercs discovered vassal states had their powerful protectors.
And there she sat, a convenient scapegoat.
While time had sped up as she raced away from the khentauree and to the Swift, it now plodded along like a turtle who still wished to sunbathe, but the steady increase of chillier wind drove it from its comfy rock. Even the wondrous beauty of colorful tree leaves capped by grey and blue did not entice her away from her growing sense of doom.
Perhaps the landscape played a part in that. Upon closer inspection, the pines and bright-leaved deciduous trees half-concealed tall structures missing walls, floors, windows, the remaining grungy stone and concrete awkwardly leaning in all directions. The sight reminded her too much of the Grey and Stone Streets, where certain places had no residents or care, and fell to a jumble of dirt-smeared ruin, their purpose, their history, forgotten.
The blighted buildings spanned in all directions; the breadth of the once-city astonished her. She had assumed Ambercaast a smaller town formed around a mine, and while it started that way, it had grown far beyond that meager birth. The road she and Rin had walked, while wide, would not have carried the amount of traffic a large urban center produced. Had they used trains more than she realized? How far did the tunnels reach? To Jiy?
Could the khentauree travel along them and enter the city, undetected? Was that how Vali left without the guard any wiser?
She blinked. There, again, a cyan glint between trees on a far hillside. It reminded her of the glancing light she beheld before racing from the tunnel and to Lord Adrastos’s camp. She waited, nose pressed to glass; a couple more, a distance behind the first.
She leapt to the speaker.
“Uncle?”
A moment, before it crackled. “Lanth?”
“Uncle, I was looking at the mountains to the northwest, and noticed glints of cyan between the trees.”
“What do you mean?” Faelan asked, his voice growing louder as he moved closer to the communication device.
“It doesn’t look like weapons tech, but like light reflecting off something glassy, like that sphere in the center of the khentauree’s chest. It’s similar to what I saw last night in the tunnel.”
“I didn’t bring my farsights,” her uncle said. Lapis remembered those; as a child, awe encompassed every bit of her as she stared at distant hills through the short, linked spyglasses. As she got older, she realized the farsights were not as clear as, nor had the heat-sensing ability of, the Dentherion ones, but she preferred them and their worn leather grips. “But perhaps the Bit can help. Lanth, over on the upper left is a square dark green screen with a dim grid.”
“I see it.”
“OK. I want you to press down on it, like a button.”
She did; it brightened noticeably. “It’s lit.”
“Tap on the top twice, in fast succession.”
She did so; a list of words appeared in a black box, the green letters glowing ominously. “OK.”
“Now put your finger to the side, press, and slide down.”
She did so; the words moved up, one by one. “Now what?”
“Those are general items the Swift can scan for. Find mineral first, select that item, and see if aquatheerdaal’s listed.”
Lapis grimaced and followed his directions.
She felt fumble-fingered after having the entire box disappear as soon as she tried to move down the list of the minerals. After four attempts and a slow slide down the Dentherion words, she finally reached the bottom. “This is much harder than you make it sound,” she groused at her uncle.
“You learn fast.”
“I guess. Aquatheerdaal isn’t listed, though.”
“Hmm.” She heard the buzz of voices, but nothing distinct. “Honjora says to look for theerdaala or mindaala. If you don’t see them, you could do a search using metal, but that’s not specific enough for our purposes.”
“Yeah, doing a metal search will probably just turn up a lot of old stuff in the ruins.” She scrolled through. “I see mindaala.”
“Hopefully aquatheerdaal is similar enough to mindaala to register. So go ahead and click on that. You should get a box that says manual or auto. Chose auto.”
As soon as she pressed the word, the screen moved. A line appeared in the center, pointing up, then a flashy white box with red letters filled the surface. “Uncle, it can’t complete the scan. It lists an error number, ES468920 dash 1.”
He sighed. “Look to your left. There’s a small latched flap. The manual’s there.”
Lapis turned the latch and opened the flap. A book filled the entire stash, and from the slight bulge in the center, did not quite fit. “I have to look through that?” she asked, outraged. Uncle Rodas and his humongous books.
“Sorry,” he said, without sympathy.
At least the manual had an error code appendix. She dreaded the thought of scanning through the pages, trying to find the appropriate information. “Uncle, it says that the scan is encountering outside interference and can’t complete as entered. The manual suggests a workaround, but I don’t know what half the words mean.”
Her brother’s voice filled the Swift. “Lanth, right next to the speaker is a switch. Click it down. That will activate a screen above it. Uncle input the Minq’s frequency, so just drag the list down until you see it.”
She had to move the list up to see the down parts, and she grumbled silently at her brother for the misleading description. “See it.”
“Select it and state your name, and say that we need backup and why. They have the coordinates for this place, so don’t worry about finding those. After you get done, turn the switch off. That should connect you to us again.”
“Seven gods be praised,” she muttered sarcastically. He laughed quietly as she followed the instructions. How much tech did the rebellion employ, that her brother seemed comfortable with this? Maybe Caitria’s ease when working with the stuff was not the outlier she assumed. Either that, or Gall’s negligence in getting rid of enough tech-wielding guttershanks made others bolder.
Or maybe the rebels and the Minq realized Gall could no longer counteract their use. Caitria had mentioned that Dentheria seemed to have cut the king off, causing him to horde what tech he already possessed.
The speaker crackled, and the static seemed different. “This is Lanth,” she said.
“It’s Gera, Lanth,” came the reply, fuzzy, garbled.
How odd, someone she knew manned the communication device. “Hi, Gera. I’m calling for backup. I . . . kinda pissed off the merc captain. He attacked me, we dropped the khentauree, and now it’s beeping like it’s going to explode. After retreating to the Swift, I saw glints of cyan three hillsides over. It’s like what I saw last night reflecting off the khentauree that chased us. If I’m right, there’s more than one, and they’re coming this way.”
“Sounds like you triggered a distress signal.” Lapis recognized Jarosa’s voice. “What did you do to piss off the merc?”
“He grabbed me. I got away and unsheathed my blade to make him stay away. He tried to grab me again anyway, and it cut his pants and belt. He, um, has nice pretty blue underwear.”
A loud crackle sounded, not enough to drown out the bemused, astonished laughter. Another crackle, and a busy hum.
“Lanth?”
“Yes?” She waited. “Hello?” The crackle and hum faded to a dull white noise. “I’m here!” she called.
Nothing.
Well, at least she got the pertinent info to them. She clicked the switch. “Faelan?”
“Here.”
“I got through, told them we needed backup, but there was a lot of crackling and now I can’t hear anything but a hum.”
“Well, that will motivate them to come,” he muttered. “Honjora said the interference began when the mercs arrived, and it’s growing worse. They noticed because their instruments that rely on distant signals to transmit information started to work poorly, or not as expected. They aren’t certain what’s causing it.”
“I’m hearing you just fine.”
“Yes, but not as clearly as you should. There shouldn’t be any static, and there is.”
“What are you going to do about Gredy?” She bowed her head at the lengthy silence. “I’m sorry?”
“I doubt he cares much about that.” Annoyance tinged the anger filling his words.
“All clear!” echoed from the speaker.
“Kathandra is going to talk to Gredy. Just sit tight while we sort things out.”
Like she had anything else to do.
