Emperor's Edge Republic (21 page)

“I wouldn’t want to answer to my father if
I
lost anyone on my team, either.” Mahliki scooted closer and whispered, “Don’t tell the others, but this is my first command. Unless you count ordering relatives around.”

She grinned, but Sespian sensed a hint of anxiousness beneath her facade. She might not be worried about her own safety, but it seemed she did have some fears.

“That’s tougher than it sounds,” Sespian said. “I’ve never succeeded in ordering a relative around.”

“Where is he today?” Mahliki asked. “Your relative?”

“He and Amaranthe are out with another marine vessel, a tug, to try and salvage the submarine. They volunteered. I gather they both feel responsible—and a little sheepish—at having lost it, especially this close to home.”

“Sheepish?” Mahliki asked. “Sicarius? I have a hard time associating that word with him.”

“His sheep is buried deep down. You have to hunt for it.”

“I’d be afraid to try.”

Maldynado and Basilard shuffled up, their helmets in hand. Both men had more weapons than the standard-issue diving knife attached to their suits. Basilard bore a number of daggers and a long serrated blade. Maldynado wore a cutlass in a scabbard across his back. Sespian would be afraid he would cut his own air supply tube if he tried to draw a sword underwater, but he supposed Maldynado had practice.

“We’ve been discussing this mission,” Maldynado said, “and there’s something we need to know before we get started.”

“Oh?” Mahliki asked.

Basilard set down his helmet and signed a few words.

“Yes, yes, I’m asking,” Maldynado said. “We used to call Amaranthe ‘boss.’ Or I did anyway. What should we call you? I’m suggesting a proper, ‘my lady,’ since your father is warrior caste, but Bas here thinks that since you grew up on the Kyatt Islands, you wouldn’t expect a Turgonian title. You’d be a Miss Starcrest or something, but that doesn’t seem proper to my ear.”

“Uh, can you call me Mahliki?”

Basilard signed,
That sounds presumptuous. Won’t the president think us overly familiar?

Sespian hadn’t seen his hand signs for a few months but found he remembered a number of them.

“What?” Mahliki asked. She would doubtlessly have a quick ear—or in this case eye—for languages, but Sespian didn’t think she had spent much time with Basilard.

“He says that’s a lovely name, and it would be a pleasure to use it,” Maldynado said.

Basilard thumped him on the arm with the back of his hand.

“You should have brought your new interpreter if you wanted strict translations,” Maldynado told him.

“We’re ready to descend, my lady,” a new voice said. It belonged to one of two marines walking up behind Sespian, neither looking much older than he.

“My lady,” Maldynado whispered to Basilard. “I told you.”

“Let’s get down there then.” Mahliki waved toward the harbor. “That plant spreads every day. It’s going to be having dinner at Father’s table before long.”

Indeed, the green vines had smothered the docks and now stretched across Waterfront Street, some curving up the sides of buildings. From this far out, it looked like a green carpet. Soldiers were working with the fire brigade to hack at and try to burn the vines, but the appendages were growing back as quickly as they were destroyed.

Sespian and the five others in diving suits dragged their gear to the back of the vessel.

“Remember,” Mahliki said. “Don’t touch the pods. Don’t touch anything actually. Just let me get close enough to take my samples of the root system. I appreciate you all volunteering to come along, but I hope I won’t need you and that you’ll merely be...”

“Decorative?” Maldynado suggested.

Maldynado is good at being decorative
, Basilard signed.

“Extraneous,” Mahliki said.

“I think I’d rather be decorative,” Maldynado muttered.

Sespian followed Mahliki to the departure dock at the back of the ship. The team secured each other’s helmets, and a marine in uniform came around to double-check everyone’s gear. Sespian eyed all of the hoses coming out of the air tanks sitting on the deck and hoped people wouldn’t get tangled up down there. The self-contained units Mahliki had mentioned sounded much more appealing.

“Everyone ready?” Mahliki asked.

“My lady, you need weights or you won’t be able to sink down to the bottom,” a marine said, stopping her with a raised hand. “The suits are heavy, but they’re buoyant in the water.”

“Oh, I know that.” Mahliki grabbed a bag slouched against the side of the deck, using both hands to lift it. Dozens of zippers provided access to interior pouches that bulged with pokey objects.

“A... purse?” the marine asked. “That won’t be sufficient.”

“How much weight were you going to give me?” Mahliki asked.

“Fifty pounds.”

She hefted her bag a couple of times. “Yes, that’s about right. And it’s a sample collection bag, not a purse. The tools and vials will weigh me down.”

Maldynado leaned close to Basilard and whispered, “I’ll bet she keeps the same weird collection of doodads in her purse.”

Diplomatically, Basilard said nothing. But his blue eyes glinted with good humor.

Sespian saw the joke for what it was, but he felt compelled to defend Mahliki, in case
she
didn’t recognize—or appreciate—the teasing. “I find it admirable that a girl—a woman—would carry useful items along on a mission. If Maldynado had a purse, it would be full of useless toys for wooing the ladies.”

The group fell silent and stared at him.

Dear ancestors, he was as awkward as Sicarius at times. What a trait to inherit.

Basilard was the first to comment, his eyes still gleaming with humor.
Maldynado
does
have a purse.

Maldynado propped a fist on his hip. “I do
not
. That’s a man bag. Full of manly things.”

Last I saw, it had cedar candles and perfumes in it.

“
Cologne
, not perfume. Goodness, Bas, don’t your yurt-dwelling people have any sense of the fineries of civilization? And cedar... is a masculine scent.”

Sespian shrugged at Mahliki. He didn’t know if he had made her feel better about being teased, but he had at least deflected the attention away from her. These two looked like they had a lot of practice at flinging insults and were ramping up for a long bout, no doubt to make up for the months they had been separated.

Mahliki was... gazing back at him with an enigmatic smile. When Sespian raised his eyebrows in inquiry, she merely shook her head and clapped her hands to get the group’s attention.

“Time to go, everyone. That plant’s getting bigger every minute.”

After a last check of everyone’s gear, the team headed in, the marines leading despite Mahliki’s protest that she should go first. Sespian would back her up on anything related to biology and plant research, but silently agreed that the strong fighters should lead the way. He waved for Maldynado and Basilard to take the rear and slipped in ahead of Mahliki himself, giving the excuse that their hoses would tangle if she went ahead. He thought she might protest—it
was
a feeble excuse—but she smiled again.

Sespian descended the ship’s ladder into the dark water, expecting it to freeze him to the core. The suit insulated him, however, and he found the chill manageable. From the bottom of the ladder, the weights pulled him down ten, twenty, then forty feet before his boots stirred the seaweed and silt on the lake bottom. He worked his jaw to pop his ears. The hose trailed up above him, a beacon that would lead him back to the ship if he lost his sense of direction. Fortunately, enough light filtered down through the water to brighten the murky surroundings. Already, Sespian could make out the green horizon to the east, the forest of thick stems sprouting from the lakebed.

The marines had already fanned out to take the lead. Sespian waited until Mahliki landed so he could walk at her side. She clanked softly as she touched down. Sespian clanked a bit, too, when they headed toward the forest of green—after his encounter with the vine on the dock, he had not believed a standard-issue diving knife would prove sufficient. A sturdy one-handed axe hung from one side of his belt and a machete the other. He had a serrated dagger strapped to his calf as well. Maldynado and Basilard dropped down behind them, their weapons also clanking.

Sespian’s boots squished in mud and silt as they walked. The greenery took up more and more of the horizon, and the water seemed to grow darker. His imagination, no doubt.

The team slowed as it drew closer to the edge of the jungle, the stalks rising up toward the surface, the vines sprawling in all directions, waving and twitching in the current. The density of the wall of green was daunting, more like reeds crammed together in a marsh than trees in a forest or jungle. Even if the plant didn’t have appendages that liked to grasp a person, Sespian would be loath to push into the thick foliage. One might become entangled even without the plant doing anything.

The stalwart marines glanced back at Mahliki several times, perhaps wondering how close they would have to get. She kept striding forward, her faceplate pointed toward the wall of green.

One of the marines waved and pointed downward. A warning. Several of the vines or stolons—or whatever this thing had—snaked away from the forest core. They were branching out, the runners heading into the lake depths and also to the north and south, parallel to the shoreline. Here and there, vines rose from those runners, waving in the current as the group approached.

The marines were doing their best to avoid the green appendages. Mahliki strode straight up to the first one. She crouched, using pliers to try and lift the vine, but fine roots had grown from the bottom of it. She glanced at Sespian and pointed.

He took that to mean she wanted a sample. He stepped up to her side, his axe in hand. The way a nearby tendril—more like a tentacle—was leaning toward her made him nervous. He wasn’t displeased to see Maldynado and Basilard close in behind them, their weapons out as well. A few meters ahead, the marines were gesturing and pointing. Arguing? Sespian doubted they could hear each other’s words down here, but he followed their gazes... then swallowed.

Just inside the forest line, a swollen, waterlogged body dangled a few feet from the lake bottom. The remains of a body anyway. Green tendrils were wrapped about it, and the skin had been flayed away in places. From fish? Sespian hadn’t seen any fish since they had dropped into the water. Dear ancestors, the plant wasn’t eating that person, was it?

Mahliki jerked back, almost falling onto her backside. Sespian reacted before his mind caught up to his instincts—he lashed out with the axe and knocked away a tendril that had been darting toward her head. Less than a heartbeat later, Maldynado and Basilard had leaped over Mahliki and pinned the offending vine. Their daggers hacked through it in three places. The vine went limp and collapsed in the mud. The severed pieces drifted away. Sespian kept an eye on them, remembering the one he had cut on the dock and how it had continued to wiggle and writhe.

“I wasn’t expecting any of the vines to move that fast,” Sespian said, then, realizing nobody would be able to understand him, did his best to sign the same message with Basilard’s hand gestures.

Is this plant... sentient?
Basilard signed.

Maldynado tapped him on the shoulder. He had noticed what the marines were staring at.
Whatever it is... I’m thinking you should find a recipe and cook it. All of it.

Mahliki had recovered from her surprise at having the vine dart toward her face, and she stood, a sample vial in hand. She tucked it into her bag.

I hope it doesn’t start growing in your vial
, Sespian signed before realizing she wouldn’t be able to understand.

I hope not too
, she signed.
I have some... uh... chemicals?
She looked at Basilard, eyes questioning.
I don’t know the sign. Maybe there isn’t one. It should preserve the plants—and halt growth—but obviously I can’t pour it into the vials until we get back out of the water.

Sespian, Basilard, and Maldynado all stared at her for a moment before someone responded.

When did you learn my language?
Basilard looked pleased.

We spent that day on the ship together, remember?

Sespian realized her earlier question about Basilard’s signs must have been a result of her not seeing all of them rather than not understanding them.

One day?
Maldynado moved to scratch his head, but his knuckles clunked against the hard helmet. He settled for massaging a rivet.
It took me months to see through Basilard’s silent mystique.

Mahliki shrugged.
He was at the funeral too. I need a sample of the core root system. I believe that was akin to an ancillary taproot, more for securing the vine than providing sustenance.
She pointed toward the dense forest ahead—the marines were still up there and seemed to be debating whether they could cut the corpse down. The idea of leaving someone’s body down here without a proper funeral pyre bothered Sespian, but he wasn’t sure how close they should risk getting.
He
didn’t want to be left down here without a proper funeral pyre, either.

I think it’s getting its sustenance right there.
Maldynado pointed at the body, a disgusted sneer visible through his faceplate.

Perhaps
, Mahliki signed as she walked closer,
but like the Seruvian Insect Trap, it should still draw nourishment from the soil and...
she groped for a sign again before shrugging and choosing,
the sun
.

Photosynthesis was the word she wanted, Sespian guessed.

Looks like the shaman who made it gave it some terrifying traits
, Maldynado signed.

Shaman?
Basilard asked.
Is that who we believe is responsible?

Shaman, wizard, somebody
. Maldynado shrugged.