Conspiracy (25 page)

Buckingcrest’s smile thinned. “I assure you,
my crafts are sturdy and quite safe.”

“
Hm,” was all Books
said.

“
Come, you’re in a hurry,”
Buckingcrest said. “Let me introduce you to your pilot.”

“
We’re getting a pilot?”
Akstyr asked. “Did Maldynado say something about that?”

Books didn’t look surprised. He didn’t look
pleased either.

“
Yes, I told Maldynado,”
Buckingcrest said. “If he thought I’d let a pair of sword-swinging
mercenaries handle one of my darlings, he was being more delusional
than usual.”

As the woman turned her
back to lead them to the craft, Books used Basilard’s hand code to
sign,
I’ll find the technical manual, and
then we’ll stuff the pilot in a closet for the remainder of the
trip.

Akstyr wasn’t sure the idea of having Books
drive the thing was reassuring, but he smirked at the idea of their
stuffy, proper professor manhandling someone into a closet.

Buckingcrest led them up a loading ramp and
into the rearmost section of the craft, a cargo area. A tattooed
man with a beard on a quest to swallow his face leaned against the
wall, a cigar dangling from his lips.

“
Is smoking wise when
you’re standing beneath all that hydrogen?” Books pointed to the
ceiling.

The man curled his lip at him. He had arms
as thick as Akstyr’s legs. If he was the pilot, he wouldn’t be easy
to stuff into a closet.

“
The living quarters are in
the middle here and include two private suites,” Buckingcrest
called from a central corridor leading out of the storage area.
“There’s even a conference room. Do you want to see the navigation
area up front?”

“
Yes, please,” Books
said.

Akstyr started to follow, but he halted
before he’d gone more than two steps into the corridor. The hairs
on the back of his neck lifted, and a familiar tingle ran through
him. They were in the presence of something Made, an artifact or
construct crafted with the mental sciences. He hadn’t had that
feeling since the team invaded that underwater laboratory in the
lake a couple of months earlier. That place had been a beehive of
Made activity. What he felt now... It was just one item, he
decided, but that it was there at all was strange. Or maybe not. He
wasn’t sure how hydrogen worked exactly, but if all it did was poof
up the balloon, then this vessel would need some source of energy
for propulsion. He hadn’t noticed a smokestack outside for
steam-engine exhaust.

Akstyr stepped into the
corridor. The pink floral wallpaper and wooden doors engraved with
roses gave him no hints as to where the Made item might be—though
the decor
did
make him feel distinctly unmanly as he stood in the passage.
He opened one of the doors, but only found a pale blue room with a
bed drowning in pillows and furs. Faint reverberations emanated
from the textured metal floor. An engine had to be around
somewhere.

After a few more steps down the corridor,
Akstyr spotted a trapdoor, its edges camouflaged by the bumpy
texture. He knelt and patted about until he found a handle set
flush into the floor. It, too, was well disguised.

Before he could pry the handle up, a shadow
fell over his shoulder.

“
Lost?” the tattooed man
asked from behind him.

“
Just exploring,” Akstyr
said.

“
Don’t.”

Akstyr thought about turning and tackling
the man—emperor’s spit, he’d been trained by Sicarius after all—but
when he peered over his shoulder, his eyes were precisely at the
level of a pistol holstered at the man’s belt. A hand rested on the
grip, fingers tapping a rhythm on the ivory. Maybe it wasn’t the
best moment to start a fight.

“
Problem?” Lady
Buckingcrest asked from a cabin that opened up at the far end of
the corridor. Books stood behind her, inspecting a control panel
filled with levers and gauges.

Akstyr stood. “I was wondering about the
engines. Are they down there? We’ll have to be familiarized with
them, won’t we? The pilot will need to fly, right, so we’ll have to
stoke the fires for the furnaces?”

Now Books leaned out, his eyebrows drawn
together. “You’re volunteering to do work?”

Akstyr subtly twitched his
fingers to sign,
Magic here
even as he said, “I was going to volunteer you to
do it, actually.”

“
I see,” Books
said.

“
There’s no need for that.”
Buckingcrest patted the wall. “An internal combustion engine runs
the propellers, not a brutish steam monstrosity, and she uses a
fuel blend that we invented ourselves. It’s a company secret, so
you’ll forgive me if I don’t give you more details, but Harkon will
handle refueling, should it be needed.”

“
Of course,” Books said,
though he signed,
If this is a trap, I’m
going to kill Maldynado.

“
What’re you doing?” the
tattooed man asked from behind Akstyr. He must have seen Books’s
flying fingers.

“
I thought I saw a
mosquito.” Books slapped at the wall. “Got it.”

Akstyr stifled a groan. Sicarius’s training
might be useful in fights, but someone needed to teach this group
how to lie better. “I’ll just go out and get our cargo,” Akstyr
said.

Harkon watched him like a parched alcoholic
watching someone sip brandy. Akstyr had a feeling this flying
adventure wasn’t going to go smoothly at all.

Akstyr leaned against the wall in the
navigation room, watching with some amusement as Books tried to
coax flying instructions out of Harkon. Their tattooed pilot was
making Sicarius seem talkative. Books had a journal out and
scribbled a note every time the man flipped a switch or pushed a
lever. Akstyr wondered if Harkon knew they planned to oust him as
soon as possible. The dirigible was heading east, over the
foothills beneath the mountains that held the dead shaman’s mine,
and it probably didn’t matter if the pilot knew of that
destination, but they needed to figure out something to do with him
before they headed to the Scarlet Pass.

Harkon yawned, and Akstyr thought it might
be a good time to go exploring.

“
Anyone want something to
eat?” he asked.

Both men waved negatives. Akstyr stepped
into the corridor, wishing the navigation cabin had a door he could
shut. He hoped Harkon was too busy to look over his shoulder. Hands
in his pockets, Akstyr strolled to the trapdoor. With a little
fiddling, the handle ring popped up, and he pulled the square slab
open. Lighter than he expected, it almost flew all the way open to
clang against the floor, but he caught it first and eased it down.
A narrow ladder led into a dark compartment. The hum of an engine
had grown louder. Right spot, he thought.

Akstyr crept down the ladder and crouched in
the darkness. The cabin held none of the heat he associated with
furnaces and boilers. In the dimness, he could make out vertical
pipes running up the walls. Soft clanks emanated from the rear of
the compact compartment, and a dark waist-high shape—the
engine?—squatted in the center of the floor.

Before risking a light, Akstyr closed his
eyes and stretched outward with his senses, trying to detect traps
or dangers about the engine. The presence he had felt earlier
remained, but nothing about it changed as he probed with his mind.
The engine, or whatever powered it, didn’t seem to have
intelligence or awareness, not like a soul construct. Maybe it was
no more than a simple artifact, crafted to power the dirigible.

“
Let’s take a look, shall
we?” Akstyr muttered and lifted a hand.

A flame flared to life above his fingers,
and the shadows receded. The light illuminated the engine, a squat
steel shape punctuated with brass rods and shafts. Pipes ran out
the back and disappeared into the wall behind it.

Akstyr took a step toward the engine, but
halted when something stirred in the darkness lingering behind it.
His flame flickered, and four reflections winked back at him from
the shadows. Eyes.

Street rot, he hadn’t thought to check for
people.

A metallic clack sounded. A gun being
loaded? Akstyr’s concentration broke, and his light disappeared. He
spun and raced up the ladder rungs.

Something clicked off the wall beside him. A
crossbow quarrel instead of a bullet. Not that big of an
improvement.

At the top of the ladder, Akstyr yanked his
legs up and rolled into the corridor. “Books!”

He slammed the trapdoor shut and groped
about for a lock. There wasn’t one. Clangs rang out from
below—someone climbing the ladder.

“
Books,” Akstyr hollered
again and pulled out his short sword. He wished he had a pistol.
“Are you—”

Something shattered in the navigation cabin,
and the vessel tilted, dumping Akstyr against a wall.

The trapdoor flew open. A man’s head popped
out, a black bandana wrapping his hair. He lifted a crossbow.
Akstyr kicked the weapon out of the man’s hands with enough force
to hurl it to the ceiling. He aimed a second kick at his attacker’s
head, but the stowaway saw it coming and had time to duck. By luck
more than design, Akstyr managed to snatch the falling crossbow
from the air after it bounced off the ceiling.

He aimed it at the opening and eased
backward, finding the door to the cargo bay with his heel. He
risked taking a hand off the crossbow to try the latch. If he could
get inside, he could use the doorjamb and wall for cover. Someone
had locked it.

“
Cursed ancestors,” Akstyr
growled.

A metallic canister spun through the
trapdoor opening and clanked down at Akstyr’s feet. It was one of
the smoke grenades he had brought on board. The conniving bandits
were attacking them with their own weapons.

Green smoke hissed into the air. Akstyr held
his breath and squinted his eyes against the haze, but he didn’t
let go of the crossbow.

Something stirred the smoke near the
trapdoor. Akstyr fired.

The quarrel clanged off metal instead of
thudding into flesh, but someone cursed and ducked out of sight. A
curse on his own lips, Akstyr plucked the grenade from the floor
and darted toward the trapdoor. Acrid smoke stung his eyes and his
nostrils puckered, but he held on long enough to drop the canister
through the hole.

He leaped over the trapdoor and slammed it
shut. For lack of a better way to secure the entrance, he stood on
top it. The smoke would irritate the men below, but probably
wouldn’t hurt them or make them pass out. Too bad. He wished
Amaranthe had given him some of the knockout gas too.

Through bleary eyes, Akstyr checked the
crossbow. It was a twin-loader with one quarrel remaining.

A thump sounded in the navigation cabin.
From his position in the corridor, Akstyr didn’t have a good view,
but he glimpsed Books’s face being smashed against a console.

“
Not good,” he muttered,
but if he went to help, the two thugs below would
escape.

As if to validate his thought, the door rose
an inch beneath Akstyr’s feet. He braced himself against the wall
and bore down.

“
Stay down there, you prick
suckers!” he hollered.

“
Mountain!” That was
Harkon’s voice, not Books.

Furious poundings battered the trapdoor
beneath Akstyr’s feet. A few more acrid green fumes escaped through
the cracks.

After a moment of indecision, Akstyr decided
he ought to be skilled enough by now to handle a couple of
smoke-choked gutter rats.

He slid off the trapdoor. More thumps
sounded before the men realized their doorstop had moved. The
trapdoor flew open, clanging against the metal deck. A cloud of
smoke wafted into the air. Akstyr shot at the first person to come
into view. This time, the quarrel didn’t miss. It sank into the
man’s throat, and he tumbled off the ladder.

The other stowaway hung a couple of rungs
lower and was too busy gaping at his falling comrade to notice
someone creeping up on him. Akstyr dropped the empty crossbow,
reached in, and hauled the man out. That he could do so surprised
him—he hadn’t realized how much strength he’d gained in the last
nine months.

Akstyr shoved his foe against the wall and
pressed his sword into the tender flesh at the base of the throat.
Tears and snot streamed down the man’s face.

“
Listen,” Akstyr said.
“What’re you people—”

The dirigible lurched again, and Akstyr
stumbled back a step.

The man used the distraction to jerk his arm
downward, his hand darting toward a dagger. Akstyr tried to whip
his sword back into place, but the tilting floor unbalanced his
swing, and his blade bit into the man’s jugular.

“
Donkey balls,” he
muttered. How was he supposed to get answers from a dead
man?

Remembering that Books might need help,
Akstyr kicked the trapdoor shut again and ran past it. Sword at the
ready, he sprinted into the navigation cabin.

Books knelt, a knee in Harkon’s back, while
the tattooed man struggled, attempting to escape. The ivory-handled
pistol lay on the floor a few feet away. Blood trickled from
Books’s nose, but he wore an expression of smug triumph. Until the
vessel tilted again.

The floor sloped downward, and Akstyr almost
tumbled into the control panel. He gripped the doorjamb for
support. Enough daylight remained that he had no trouble seeing the
rocky hillside straight ahead of the dirigible. They were close
enough that he could also see a goat lift its head to stare at
them.