Emperor's Edge Republic (30 page)

“Through my
lab
?” Mahliki sounded more offended at this than at the notion of a security breach.

“Maybe,” Sespian said. “I’ll go see if there’s a manhole cover or other access from the yard.”

“Do you want us to go with you?”

“You’d better focus on your friends in here.” Sespian waved at the vivarium. “I’ll let you know if anyone is about to break down your wall and kidnap you.”

“I’d be more alarmed at the idea of having my samples kidnapped.”

Sespian smiled at her as he jogged for the door. “Yes, I imagine you would.”

She returned his smile, and he decided it was quite a pleasant smile, even if it soon disappeared as she bent over her notes again. Sespian passed the guards in the hallway, nearly stumbling because they had their shirts off and were slathering themselves with grimbal grease. They glowered at him, glowers that clearly said, former emperor or not, they would have no trouble punching him if he commented on their state of undress and... slickness.

Sespian kept his comments to himself and ran up the stairs, through the corridors to the foyer, and past a yawning receptionist. Outside, numerous gas lamps kept the yard free of deep shadows. A spy or assassin would have been hard-pressed to hop the fence and approach a door or window without being spotted by the perimeter guards. Assuming that spy or assassin approached from
above
the ground...

Someone else must have heard the crack, for Colonel Starcrest and two young soldiers were already in the side yard. As a security precaution, the area had been cleared of shrubbery, so only clipped grass ran from the hotel walls to the fence at the street. There was a manhole, one Sespian might have had trouble finding, except that the two soldiers were standing on either side of it. One had a crowbar in hand.

“I don’t care how rusty it is,” Colonel Starcrest said. “Get it open. I want to know what’s down there.”

“Yes, Colonel.”

Starcrest nodded to Sespian when he ran up. “You heard the noise?”

“Yes. I was in the basement lab. We thought someone might be trying to tunnel in.”

“Hm.” Colonel Starcrest didn’t offer his own hypothesis, merely motioned for the men to try again to open it. Given the dirt scraped away from it and the pile of nearby sod, the grass had been growing over it for a long time.

After much heaving of muscles, the iron lid finally popped free. The first soldier held out a lantern and leaned over the hole to peer inside. He froze.

Colonel Starcrest strode over to join him. When he looked inside, he froze too. Then he swore. For a long time. In multiple languages.

Another time, Sespian might have been impressed by the colonel’s ecumenical vocabulary, but now... he let his shoulders slump in defeat. Before he walked over, he had a notion of what he would see. He wasn’t wrong.

The three-inch-thick greenish brown rhizome wasn’t quite the same as the aerial vines that the plant sprouted, but there was no mistaking its identity. The long growth stretched across the sludge of the old sewer channel, its length disappearing into darkness in both directions.

• • • • •

Sicarius was crouching in the shadows on the rooftop, his back to one of the chimneys, when the steam carriage drove up. He thought of slipping inside to warn Amaranthe but trusted she would have heard the vehicle’s approach. Besides, there was too much going on outside; he would be better served staying and watching. The person who had been following them since they left the president’s hotel remained—Sicarius had tried twice to catch up with their stalker, only to find him gone when he arrived. He had no sense of the Science being used, and believed this might be their mage hunter. What had brought the person to Turgonia, he did not know, but he was well trained. Sicarius had yet to find so much as a footprint or hear a snapped twig. It was more instinct than evidence that kept telling him their follower was out there.

The man spying on the house from behind a shrub in the front yard had been easier to spot. Though also discreet, and clad in featureless gray clothing, Sicarius judged him a soldier. His way of moving stealthily—sweeping steps that were more circular than straightforward, designed to find objects in the dark and test the earth ahead before committing one’s weight—was the method taught to scouts in the Turgonian army. This might be a veteran who had switched to mercenary work, but it seemed more likely that he was one of Colonel Dak Starcrest’s intelligence officers.

Sicarius recognized the woman who stepped out of the sleek black steam carriage as President Starcrest’s first wife. The well-dressed, gray-haired man who followed her out... Interesting. That was Deret Mancrest’s father. Sicarius had not been back in town long enough to learn of the state of the
Gazette
or who was running it, though he recalled that Amaranthe had rescued Deret from imprisonment by this man the winter before. An unnecessary act on her part, since the journalist had done little to prove his worth to the team.

“Are you sure you should be seen so openly with another man,” Lord Mancrest was saying, “now that you seem to be married again?”

“Now, now.” Sauda patted his cheek. “You’re just here to discuss that business proposition with me. Nobody could possibly think anything of that.” She waved toward the illuminated wing of the house—the raucous laughs of the servants had been silenced with the arrival of the carriage.

“Unless they know I’ve already made my feelings clear on that proposition.” Lord Mancrest caught her hand and kissed it. “And that we’ve moved onto discussing... other matters.”

“Such as the story you’re considering running to highlight the inappropriateness of that Kyattese woman as a president’s consort?”

While Sicarius watched the interplay in the driveway, he habitually scanned the roof, and the front and the back yards, a task made challenging by the park-like setting, with all of its possible hiding places. Movement in the street fifty meters away halted his roving gaze. With the intersections so far apart and the lots so large, streetlights were sparse up on Mokath Ridge, but his dark-adjusted eyes picked out the short, slight figure easily. A boy of ten or twelve approached wrapped in a ragged cloak two sizes too big for his body. Someone’s messenger. Perhaps one sent to deliver or receive a report from the intelligence officer.

But the boy didn’t venture onto the lawn. He crept around the influence of a single gas lamp burning at the head of the driveway and tiptoed to the mailbox, a stonework rectangle perched unobtrusively next to a shrub.

“I believe I got all the details of that story over dinner,” Lord Mancrest went on, linking his arm through Sauda’s.

“Did you?” she said, leaning against him. “Then you must be here to gather more details on
me
. The beleaguered and abandoned wife, naturally.”

“Naturally.”

Out in the street, the boy slipped a large envelope out of his cloak. He opened the mailbox and eased it inside, his eyes darting about as he did so, watching both ends of the street as well as the cozy couple pressed against each other in the driveway. The intelligence officer had crept around one of the statues so he could more fully watch the couple as well. He had not noticed the boy. The shrub might block his view, or he was simply too focused on other matters.

The boy closed the large brass mailbox door, then tapped something on the back of it. A red flag snapped into place, the cloth shivering in the night air. The boy raced down the street, his oversized cloak flapping.

Sauda and Lord Mancrest had been heading for the large flagstone front porch when the chauffeur cleared his throat. He didn’t say a word, but Sauda gazed toward the street, squinting into the darkness—at the mailbox. Expectantly.

“Get that, will you, Pevat? And leave it in my office.”

“Yes, my lady.”

Sicarius thought about waiting for the servant to collect the item and deliver it to the office, then sneaking inside to take a look, but he should be able to beat the man to the box without being seen. Why not intercept the mail, and find out what midnight messages this woman was receiving? True, this side trip had been Professor Komitopis’s idea, and it had nothing to do with Sicarius and Amaranthe’s plans—or what President Starcrest had asked of them—but this might be a part of some scheme. Something that could threaten Starcrest. The first wife seemed about as trustworthy as black ice on a bridge.

After another quick scan of the grounds, Sicarius darted away from the chimney in a low crouch, using the apex of the roof to hide himself from those in the front yard. An urgent pluck at his senses warned him that, despite his dark clothing and the shadows, he might be visible to someone in the backyard, someone keeping an eye on him as closely as he was keeping an eye on everything else.

Instincts dropped him to his belly before something clinked into the slate roof tiles above him. His ear calculated the trajectory in an instant, and he hurled a throwing knife at a shrub behind the third fountain from the fence.

Knowing he was vulnerable on the roof, he didn’t wait to see if anything came of the attack. He crawled for the edge and forewent the drainpipe he had climbed to reach the perch, simply dropping to the grass below, landing softly on his feet. No more attacks came from the backyard as he jogged for the fence running up the side of the property. He glanced toward the fountain to ensure nobody was sprinting after him. Utter stillness wreathed that half of the property, with not even a breeze stirring the leaves. He was tempted to pursue his attacker, but he had a limited amount of time to intercept the message in the mailbox.

Sicarius ran along the fence, using its bulk and deep shadows to his advantage. The crunch of footsteps on the gravel drive announced the chauffeur ambling toward the street on his errand before the man came into sight. Sicarius, racing along at a much quicker pace, soon passed him. But getting to the mailbox without being seen would be difficult with the servant looking in that direction. As he ran, he picked up a small rock. When he reached the street, he tossed it behind the servant. Frowning, the man craned his neck to look behind him. Mancrest and Sauda had gone inside. Sicarius didn’t spot the intelligence officer.

He glided through the shadows, staying low and using the shrubbery along the street to avoid the street lamp and arrive at the mailbox. He plucked out the envelope as the servant was turning back around. Too much open space lay on either side for him to make it back to the fence and the side yard without being seen. He melted into the closest shrub, not stirring a leaf. Once wrapped in its embrace, he froze.

The chauffeur continued to the mailbox, opened the door, and peered inside. He stood there for a long moment, outlined by the street lamp at the corner of the drive, and finally scratched his head and straightened. Sicarius remained frozen, not three steps away, branches prodding the back of his neck. He could hear the man’s breathing, smell the smoke and oil on his clothing, see the coal dust in the creases of his knuckles.

“Kid’s prank,” the servant muttered and pushed down the flag.

Sicarius waited for him to head back down the driveway to attend to the vehicle, then eased out of the bush. Aware of the other spy in the yard—two spies if the person in the back had moved to follow him—Sicarius crossed the street where shrubs on the other side could effectively camouflage him, then jogged to the next property before circling around. He climbed over the brick wall and dropped into the backyard of Sauda’s house again, where a copse provided cover for him. He waited, listening, smelling, and touching the ground and the wall, in case vibrations betrayed someone approaching from close at hand. When he detected nothing, he followed the shadows until he reached that third fountain on the other side of the yard. He checked the area, but didn’t find anyone there. At this point, he wasn’t surprised. He did, however, catch the faintest scent of blood. After a patient search, probing with his fingers rather than relying on his eyes in this dark nook, he located his knife lying in the dirt beneath a rhododendron. From its impact angle, he knew it had struck, or at least glanced off something else, before coming to rest in the spot. He plucked it from the ground, held it up to his nose, and inhaled.

Damp earth and warm blood.

Chapter 11

T
he sounds of male and female voices drifted down the hallway punctuated by laughter. Amaranthe glowered at the tapestries on the wall. She had checked behind each one and pushed that andiron three more times, and she still hadn’t found the secret door.

“We’re going to have to hide somewhere in the room,” she whispered.

Tikaya was on the other side of the bed, also poking and prodding sections of wall.

Amaranthe was certain the unlocking noise had come from somewhere near the fireplace though.

“While they have
sex
?” Tikaya whispered back, her lip curled.

“What? Voyeurism isn’t an acceptable hobby on Kyatt?” Amaranthe prodded a rug with her foot. Could that secret room be beneath them rather than through a wall?

“Not when one of the subjects used to have sex with your husband!”

Something thumped against the door, and a woman giggled.

Amaranthe lifted the rug and would have snorted at herself in disgust, but there wasn’t time—nor did she want to make any extra sounds. She grabbed her lantern and waved Tikaya over. She pulled on the circular iron handle set into the floor. The trapdoor creaked as it rose, and she grimaced, hoping the sounds of someone fumbling for the knob out there drowned out the poorly oiled hinges.

Stairs led into darkness. Tikaya was rushing for the trapdoor, and her knee caught on the corner of the bed. She tumbled forward and would have crashed, but Amaranthe thrust the lantern handle into her mouth and caught Tikaya before she could fall. Gripping the older woman’s arm, Amaranthe guided her onto the stairs, trying not to jump up and down with impatience as she let Tikaya go first. But after the stumble, Tikaya moved quickly, disappearing into the utter blackness below.