Deadly Games (36 page)

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 eyes 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.

Basilard could have finished him on his own,
but Sicarius slashed the man’s throat and shoved him to the floor
so he could leap over him and spring toward the woman.

Before he reached her, an invisible blast
slammed him in the chest. The edge of it caught Basilard as well, a
stiff blast of air so rigid it had the force of a battering ram,
and it sent him stumbling against the wall. It hurled Sicarius a
dozen feet. Despite the power of the blow, he twisted and landed on
his feet, light as a cat.

Basilard crept close to the woman and tapped
the shield with the tip of his dagger. It buzzed and hissed at him.
Hadn’t Akstyr once said a practitioner could not attack and defend
at the same time? The dual task certainly wasn’t bothering this
woman. Maybe because she was using a tool to attack instead of her
own mind?

Sicarius sprinted back toward Basilard and
the woman. “Go by her,” he barked in Mangdorian. “Down the next
ladder.”

The woman flipped a lever on her cone.
Sicarius saw the attack coming and dove to his belly this time.
That had to hurt without clothes on, but it worked. He skidded
under the cone’s field of influence, and the wave did no more than
ruffle his hair.

He jumped up, inches from the shield and
jerked his arms up as if to attack, but he exaggerated the
movements. Trying to startle her? To break her concentration so the
shield would drop?

She watched him without flinching, then
ominously reached for the lever on her weapon again. He tapped the
barrier with his knife. It buzzed at him. He stalked about the
shield, like a prowling tiger checking his cage for a weakness.

Basilard picked up his knife and tried to
pass the woman in the corridor. The edges of the barrier extended
to the walls, so he had to slither on his belly to find an
unblocked spot.