Emperor's Edge Republic (35 page)

“Another inland appearance of the plant?” Amaranthe wondered.

“I hope not,” Sespian said.

“Those are those religious blokes.” Maldynado pointed. “Look at the cloaks.”

Many of the people in the crowd were simple onlookers, but she spotted at least thirty of those dark robes. Some of the men carried signs.

“Are they protesting your building site?” Amaranthe asked. She couldn’t read the signs yet.

“Not that I know of,” Sespian said, “but I’m beginning to think winning this contest wasn’t quite the honor I first thought.”

“If this is about the building, it’s likely to do with the presidency and not with you personally.”

“And that’s... comforting?” Sespian asked.

“Well,” Amaranthe said, “it probably means they won’t start throwing stones at you. Or rotten fruit.”

Maldynado patted Sespian on the shoulder. “I would take that as comforting if I were you.”

A trolley chugged down the street, but people were standing on the tracks. A whistle squealed. The crowd parted, but not to let the trolley past—the people were backing away from a man wearing a golden medallion in addition to his dark robe. He knelt in the street and pried open a manhole cover. A green vine that must have been coiled right beneath it, burst forth, the top three feet wavering in the gloomy morning light.

Amaranthe grimaced. She had heard about the plant’s incursion into the sewers—and that it was winding about the president’s hotel at that very moment—but hadn’t realized one could pluck up any manhole cover and find it. Maybe this person had scouted ahead of time and knew what to expect.

“There it is.” The cloaked speaker pointed downward. “As if the monstrosity in the harbor were not enough, it’s spreading, because of our sins, because we have turned our backs on the gods for so many centuries, because we have created yet another blasphemous government that denies the existence of greater powers.”

“I didn’t know President Starcrest was denying anyone’s existence,” Sespian murmured.

“I thought he had signed laws allowing people to believe and practice however they wish,” Amaranthe said.

“He did, though he also refused to give any special rights and privileges to any particular religious group, though some were lobbying for that.” Sespian scratched his jaw. “These people look like they might want to be privileged.”

At the least, they wanted attention.

“Our president and his atheist soldiers have been unable to stop the encroachment of this verdurous evil into the city,” the speaker said, his voice loud enough to be heard over the murmurs of the crowd.

“Verdurous evil?” Maldynado said. “What a blowhard.”

“It is a sign that the gods do not favor them,” the speaker—the priest, Amaranthe amended, for what else could he be but some leader of this religion?—went on. “Our order is the only one who has their favor, who has the right to rule in Turgonia. We were here millennia ago, and we have never truly left, even though we have been persecuted and forced to live underground, to deny the gods, and to carve the heads off our holy statues. But the gods live on, and so do we. We have the power to—”

“Shut your slagging yap,” someone from the trolley yelled. “And get off the tracks.”

The steam whistle screeched again. The operator frowned at a pocket watch and nudged the trolley forward, probably thinking that, at a slow speed, he could simply push these people out of the way without running them over.

Amaranthe, Maldynado, and Sespian had drawn close enough to read the signs now, though Amaranthe could have guessed at their messages based on the speech.

Pray to Dagu and Magu and be saved!

Keep the heretics out of office.

Let those with divine right rule!

“I see you need a demonstration of my power, my ability to save the city,” the speaker said, lifting his arms, fingers spread to the sky. He tilted his face toward the dark clouds. Thunder rumbled again, louder and closer than before.

“You know,” Maldynado said, “it would be hilarious if the trolley started up right now and smacked that shrub in the backside, so he flew headfirst into the manhole.”

“Heretic,” Amaranthe murmured.

The steam whistle screeched again. “Someone get that dumb slag pile out of the street,” the operator hollered.

A few trolley passengers disembarked, pushing up their sleeves as they strode toward the would-be priest. The crowd of robed men seemed to thicken in that spot, providing a barrier.

“Should we do something?” Maldynado asked.

“Given our relationship to the president, it might not be wise to draw attention or be perceived as attacking people in his name,” Sespian said.

“Why don’t we see if we can find some enforcers to handle this?” Even though Amaranthe had been off the force for more than a year, it still seemed strange to say something like that instead of taking action herself. “If that man is going to stand there with his face getting rained on until the gods fill him with power, he might be there all day.”

Another peel of thunder rolled across the sky. Maybe the storm was supposed to be a sign of some deity’s power. Amaranthe wondered if the zealots had been waiting in their hideout for weeks with someone on watch for gloomy weather so they could race out and take advantage of it.

“Looks like we won’t have to run and fetch anyone.” Maldynado pointed down the street.

An armored enforcer lorry was rolling around a corner, the smoke billowing from its stack, matching the clouds in color.

“Maybe Evrial will be in there,” Maldynado said. “This is her district, for now anyway. I do enjoy seeing her pummel brutes.”

Under normal circumstances, a crowd would have dissipated at the approach of enforcers, but the robed figures didn’t seem to notice. They had started swaying in synch with each other and chanting under their breaths—too low for Amaranthe to make out the words, or maybe it was simply that they weren’t Turgonian words.

The enforcer vehicle stopped, and four men and two women leaped out with short swords hanging from their waists and shields and cudgels in their hands. Sergeant Yara was among them, jaw hard, eyes cool. Amaranthe wondered if she had dealt with this group before.

Though she was clearly on duty and busy, Maldynado grinned and waved at her. A flicker of the eye was the only indication that she saw and acknowledged him, at least insofar as Amaranthe noticed.

Maldynado, however, said, “She’s ecstatic to see me.”

“Clearly,” Amaranthe said.

“Get out the handcuffs, boys,” Yara ordered. “We’re going to make some arrests this time.”

The crowd continued to sway, ignoring everything going on around it. The priest continued to gaze up at the sky, rain spattering onto his face and dripping off his chin. The vine seemed to have grown another six inches, and it leaned toward him. Maybe it would grab him and pull him down into the hole. That would startle the crowd into breaking up.

The enforcers grabbed those in the rear. The people didn’t resist, but they didn’t show any sign that they would disperse without being forced to do so.

Thunder peeled again, and lightning branched across the sky. A second trolley came around the corner, and brakes squealed. It barely stopped in time to avoid crunching into the one ahead of it.

“What’s going on up there?” its operator yelled.

Lightning flashed again. Thunder roared, and the sky dumped a waterfall. Amaranthe grimaced as cold water slithered past her collar and down her back. She should have brought a cloak and an umbrella, not that she had planned to spend much of the morning outside...

“We may want to find some cover,” Sespian said. “We’re not doing anything useful.”

Amaranthe touched her short sword. “Actually, I’m going to go over and see if the enforcers need any help. At some point, the crowd might resist, and there are only six of them.”

“Good idea,” Maldynado said. “I’m sure Evrial will—”

Thunder boomed, and lightning streaked out of the clouds and hit the street in the center of the crowd. The sky lit up like a sun, and Amaranthe threw an arm up, jumping back.

Some of the people in the crowd jumped back, too, but others merely stared, transfixed.

“That, my friends, is the power of the twin gods,” the priest cried, his arms stretched toward the heavens.

From the rear, Amaranthe couldn’t see what had happened—nobody had screamed in pain, so she had assumed the lightning had struck the metal manhole cover—but judging by the wide eyes of those in front, their faces all tilted downward, something more profound had occurred.

She climbed the nearest street lamp and found herself staring with wide eyes as well.

The vine lay limp in the street, a charred and desiccated husk. Only the speaker’s boot on the tip kept it from slumping back into the sewer.

Chapter 13

M
ahliki was beginning to hate the dark, underground laboratory, and the sprites-licked plant was turning her dreams to nightmares. The night before, she had been collecting specimens growing from the fragile eco systems on the sunny side of a volcano back home, when a vine had burst out of the hardened lava and grabbed her. She had woken with a scream on her lips and the memory of the prehensile thing wrapping about her neck.

Upon entering the laboratory, she first checked on the new piece of plant in the vivarium, hoping to see that it had not grown during the night. She had left it in utter darkness and with cubes of ice mounted around it, figuring that cold or dark ought to signal winter and tell it to enter a dormant stage. After all, it hadn’t come up through the lake until the ice had thawed.

But her three-inch sample had grown a foot and a half overnight. Shoulders slumping, Mahliki sneered at the vine and walked around the lab, using her lantern to light others.

“If it’s any consolation, I’m stuck with my problem as well,” came her mother’s voice from the doorway.

They had eaten breakfast together. Mother had mentioned that she planned to watch Mahliki like a hawk to ensure she actually ate, having heard of meals being ignored during the previous two days. Of course, Mother’s resolution had lasted only until she grew distracted by her own project, the decoding of some intercepted message that she had uncovered the night before.

“I know,” Mahliki said, “and I appreciate you coming down to take another look in that encyclopedia.” Mother called the black sphere she had uncovered from the ancient tunnels twenty years earlier a “repository of knowledge,” but Mahliki had always found that title cumbersome. Nor could she pronounce the name for it in the ancient language. “I thought there might be something on the world where they came from, specifically what the night and day and seasonal cycles are like, if they had those things at all. If we can’t kill this plant, maybe we can at least figure out what makes it go dormant and buy ourselves some time.”

“I will look.” Mother slid onto a stool near a counter and pushed back a set of scalpels—little good they had done so far—to make room for her notes and the sphere. “Though I do wonder at the plausibility of creating an eighteen-hour-long night if we find out that is what’s required. With the plant now occupying numerous square miles, we can’t simply lock it in a dark closet.”

“I know, but if that’s what it takes, we can figure out a way to make it work.” Mahliki believed her words, though she doubted darkness alone would solve the problem, especially not when her sample had continued to grow overnight. At the moment, it was snuggled up to the half-melted ice block in the vivarium with it. Cold obviously didn’t damage its tissues either, at least not any degree of cold she could manufacture.

A knock came at the steel door a moment before it opened. Father strode in past the two guards who were busy bowing and thumping their fists to their chests for him. He had taken to wearing a pistol and a long dagger, even around the hotel, but at least he had been looking better in the last couple of days, less tired and headachy.

“Good morning, ladies,” Father said, walking over to kiss them on the cheeks. He lingered beside Mother, clasping her hand in one of his—not the one she was using to tinker with the sphere. “I had meant to catch up with you at breakfast, but your dining was not a leisurely one, I hear.”

“Mysteries to decrypt, and plants to kill,” Mahliki said. “One can’t tarry.”

She made light of their morning’s work, but in truth, she was disappointed in herself for not having a solution yet. Father might have come to visit to be supportive, but he probably also wanted to know what he could do to speed the process along.

“Indeed not,” Father said, pointing to the vivarium. “Find anything that harms it yet?” He asked it casually, his elbow leaning on the table behind Mother, but the intensity in his eyes belied that calm. He had to be dealing with thousands of complaints, fielding thousands of idiotic suggestions, and worrying that the entire city would be devoured by the plant in the first few months of his presidency.

Mahliki hated that all she could say was, “Not yet. Sorry.”

“I’m only taking an hour or so away from decrypting the note to look up a few things for her,” Mother said. She didn’t sound defensive exactly, but as if she wanted to let him know she hadn’t given up on her task for him. “It’s proving more difficult to crack than I thought, but I’ll get it.”

“I know you will,” Father said. “And the plant should be the priority, so any insight you can provide...” He extended a hand toward Mahliki.

“I know. I’m trying.” Mother’s eyes seemed tight. Maybe she hated not having a solution for Father too.

“I mistakenly put out two versions of a report on our likely headquarters relocation,” he said, winking at Mother. “If one reaches enemy hands and the other doesn’t, I’ll be able to narrow down the possibilities as to who our snitch might be.”

“Good idea,” Mother said.

“I wish Sicarius would return. I had Dak send out a few more men to keep an eye on possible suspects, but with Sauda compromised as it were, I doubt her house will be used as a mail drop any longer.”

“Compromised? Was she arrested?” Mother asked.