Emperor's Edge Republic (49 page)

Mahliki had already cut another length of vine, and two more cracks sounded on the other side of the table.

“They seem to be coordinating an attack,” Sespian said, grinding faster. “Does anyone else find that disconcerting?”

“Yes.” President Starcrest stepped into view, holding something that reminded Sespian of a branding iron with two prongs on the end. Wires stuck out of it, running up his arm to a bulky metal contraption hefted over his shoulder. He walked behind the table and flicked a switch on the big device. Arcs of blue sparked in the air between the iron tips of the forked end.

“They can’t know what we’re doing up here, can they?” Mahliki was alternating between hacking at the plant and hunting around for something to block the hole.

Sespian left the grinding station—halting the incursion was more important than cutting up the pieces—and jogged toward a heavy crate against a wall. He didn’t know if it would do anything to stop something that could push up through nailed floorboards, but he dragged it over, nonetheless.

“You wouldn’t think so,” Starcrest said, “but I wouldn’t rule anything out, not with this plant’s origins.” He stopped in front of a second tendril that had pushed up through a knothole and snaked up to waist height in a matter of seconds.

This was the fastest yet that Sespian had seen the plant grow. He shoved the crate on top of the portion vexing Mahliki. One corner immediately started rising.

“That was helpful,” Sespian grumbled to himself. The air tingled, and the hairs on his neck rose, as if someone were using magic nearby. “What the—”

Tzzzt-zipt.

“Hah,” Starcrest said in the aftermath of the strange noise.

“Did it work?” Mahliki lunged to her feet. “Did you burn it?”

“Yes, though it takes a prolonged application at this voltage. It’s not as effective as a bolt of lightning.”

Sespian leaned across the table for a look. The tendril that had burst through the knothole had collapsed into a blackened strand. Smoke wafted from the shriveled carcass.

“It works,” Sespian said. “That’s brilliant.”

“It works on a small scale,” Starcrest said grimly, not showing any signs of the exuberance Sespian felt. He simply walked to the next vine, which had thrust a floorboard aside to enter the warehouse.

“But that’s a start, isn’t it?” Sespian asked. “It can be scaled up, or we can make packs like that to give to the enforcers, right?”

Starcrest prodded the vine with the forked tip of his tool and flicked the switch again. The streaks of blue electricity vibrated between the metal prongs. He touched them to the plant, and it jerked away, almost like an animal feeling pain. He pinned it to the floor, and the tiny streaks of lightning seared its flesh, blackening it as it had the first.

“It’s a start,” Starcrest agreed. “But to make enough of these to slay the plant faster than it can grow in the time we have—”

Glass shattered, cutting off his words. A dark shape burst through the window nearest to him. Starcrest leaped back, but not fast enough. A tendril the thickness of a man’s thigh darted through the broken window like a tiger leaping after its prey. It wrapped around Starcrest’s waist, lifting him off his feet.

“Father!” Mahliki screamed.

Sespian grabbed the dagger from her hand and leaped over the table. Somehow Starcrest had kept his grip on the electricity generator and, even as he was being dragged to the window, his feet dangling in the air, jabbed the prod against the huge green limb. Sespian landed by the window, slashing downward with the dagger. The weapon cut into the plant’s fibrous flesh, but even the alien blade couldn’t fully slice through, not in one blow. The thick vine pulled away before he could cut into it for a second time, hauling Starcrest past Sespian and to the window.

The stench of burning vegetation filled the air, but the plant continued to pull on its prey. Starcrest managed to brace his legs on either side of the window frame. Sespian ran to the wall and cut down again, trying to find room to saw through the impossibly thick vine. Noxious smoke filled his nostrils and stung his eyes. He kept cutting. Starcrest kept the prod pressed against the plant flesh.

“Over there,” Mahliki barked to soldiers who had heard the fray and run inside. “Not everybody. Just people who can—you with the blasting stick. Light it and throw it through the window. Kill that plant at its base.”

Sespian was too busy sawing at the vine—it would be easier to saw down a redwood tree—to check to see if the soldiers were obeying her. At the least, nobody dared push Starcrest’s daughter to the side.

“Almost got it,” Sespian yelled, hoping to keep anyone from doing anything drastic.

Starcrest was holding his position, one boot on either side of the window frame, though wood creaked and his thighs were quivering. More green shoots came into sight beyond the window.

“Don’t tell me those slagging things are coming to help,” Sespian growled.

The vine quivered, its flesh blackening. Sespian was halfway through. So long as no reinforcements reached through the window.

A uniformed figure darted beneath Starcrest’s arm. Sespian glimpsed a burning fuse before the soldier threw a blasting stick.

Starcrest spat something in Kyattese, then switched to Turgonian for, “Cut faster, boy. I’m exposed here.”

Sespian bore down, sawing with all his strength, but the vine snapped higher up, where Starcrest had been applying the electricity. He dropped to the ground, managing to twist and get his feet beneath him. He grabbed Sespian’s arm and lunged backward, taking them both to the floor.

The blasting stick exploded outside the window. Wood pummeled Sespian, and all he had time to do was turn his face from the force before something hammered his back. The blow hurled him into the table, and it skidded away. Something would have crashed down on his head, but hands darted in and caught it. The crowbar. Shards of wood continued to rain down, though the big pieces stopped striking them. When Sespian dared glance over his shoulder, he found not only the window frame gone but a huge chunk of the wall missing as well. On the ground outside, vines smoked and writhed, retreating toward the nearby shoreline. Only the fat vine that had grabbed Starcrest, the one he had burned with electricity, lay unmoving.

“Dear daughter,” Starcrest rumbled. “I appreciate your willingness to order soldiers into the fray to protect my life, but in the future, please consider the consequences of throwing a blasting stick between a man’s legs. Nature put things down there that are intended to remain intact.”

Mahliki tossed the crowbar on the table. “You’ve got three children. I didn’t think you needed anything down there all that much anymore.” Though she clearly meant the words to be light, her voice cracked. She flung her arms around her father for a hug.

Sespian, having landed in a pile with Starcrest, tried to extricate himself from the family embrace, though, between the upended table and the soldiers who had gathered around, it was hard to stand up. No less than six hands descended, trying to help Starcrest to his feet. Sespian decided not to be jealous that only one hand lowered for him, as he wouldn’t want Starcrest’s job for anything in the world. The more days that were between him and being in charge, the better he liked it.

Starcrest waved away the hands and climbed to his feet of his own accord. “Please return your attention to the plant, gentlemen. We’ve learned how to hurt it, but an injured beast fights harder than an uninjured one, and we must consider this more beast than plant.”

Major Rydoth, a gray-haired man of fifty or so, gripped Rias’s arm and guided him back to the workstation, saying, “Are you sure you need to stay down here, My Lord? I can finish the work on the submarine—we’ve already got most of your new weapons loaded onboard, don’t we?”

“Yes, but I’m not leaving while there’s work to be done.”

“So long as I don’t have to be the one to explain to your wife how a plant burst through a window and ate you.”

When Sespian had stood, blackness had danced at the edges of his vision, and the effect was slow to fade. He groped about and braced himself on the table.

“Are you all right?” Mahliki asked, stepping past broken glass and rubble to take his other arm.

He thought about being manly and self-sufficient and waving away her concern, but it was rather nice having her at his side, supporting him. “I think I will be. Something hit me in the back. I need a moment.”

She slipped an arm around his lower back. “Come over here and sit down.”

That was nice, too—having soft, curvy parts pressed against his side. As he let her guide him around the table and past heaps of broken wood, he mused that it would have been nicer to be entangled on the floor with her than with her father. That thought gave him a guilty start, and he glanced around to find Starcrest, suddenly afraid that he might be watching. What would he think of catching Sespian gazing at his daughter with thoughts of tangled limbs dancing in his head?

But Starcrest was busy picking up his generator and dusting off debris. He clutched it to his chest and headed back to his impromptu laboratory, pausing only to give Sespian and Mahliki pats on their shoulders as he passed.

“Sorry about the blasting stick,” Mahliki said, releasing Sespian long enough to pick a stool up off the floor for him. She dusted off the surface and gestured for him to sit. “I wasn’t sure whether the dagger or the electricity would be enough, and... it seemed like a reasonable option at the time.”

One of her braids had fallen over her shoulder, and she fiddled with the end. Shyly, he thought, though maybe that was his imagination. When she was around others, even strangers, she always appeared confident, especially given her age. She might be a couple of years younger than he, but she had been having world-spanning adventures since she was a toddler, whereas Sespian had been ensconced in the Imperial Barracks for much of his life, watching the world through the windows. It would be nice to find private time with her to ask her about some of the adventures that she and her parents had only hinted at.

Sespian wondered what she would look like with her hair down, streams of lush black locks falling about her shoulders. Of course, it was lovely in braids too. And somehow the plant guts spattered on her arms and face didn’t detract from her beauty. Aside from the blue eyes, she had her father’s features more than her mother’s, but her nose and jaw were finer, elegant rather than handsome, and far more attractive overall to Sespian’s eye.

He dragged his gaze away, reminding himself that her father was only ten feet away, and just because clanks and thunks were emanating from his space didn’t mean he wasn’t aware of his daughter being gawked at by a... a nobody. A nobody who didn’t know what a methyl ester was. Sespian doubted Starcrest would care if his daughter developed an interest in someone who wasn’t warrior caste, but he might be disappointed in someone who preferred using pencils for drawing rather than scribbling equations or cracking enemy encryption codes.

“It’s fine,” Sespian said, realizing Mahliki was watching him out of the corner of her eye, waiting for a response. “I mean, it certainly convinced that plant to leave us alone for the time being.”

“Not exactly
alone
.” Mahliki eyed the engineers still scampering in and out of the submarine, and the soldiers, many of who had stayed inside and stationed themselves close to the laboratory area.

“Maybe when this is all over, we can...” Sespian faltered when her gaze swung back to him, her eyes locking onto his.

“Yes?”

“Uhm.” Why was fighting man-slaying plants easier than looking into a woman’s eyes? Sespian couldn’t get his real question out. “Where did you get that dagger?” he asked instead. “I didn’t think Sicarius let anyone use it. I haven’t even seen it in Amaranthe’s hands.”

“This one belongs to my father.”

“I had no idea there was more than one in the world.” Nor did he particularly care. Why couldn’t he summon the courage to ask his true question?

“I’m not supposed to know about this, but there are heaps of artifacts from that race buried under a mountain up in your Northern Frontier.”

“Ah, right. I did read those reports when I was... in my former occupation.” Sespian winced. It seemed odd—or like bragging—to say, “when I was emperor,” but his workaround only sounded awkward. “I didn’t think many artifacts had made their way out though.”

“They didn’t, but my father was using the knives as tools to build something. I think he gave one to Sicarius as a distraction, to keep him from killing them. Or maybe it was the bat guano collection mission that was the distraction.”

Sespian blinked. The reports he had read obviously hadn’t been complete. “I hadn’t realized he had been given that mission, to kill your father.”

“Your emperor wasn’t pleased that Father didn’t come crawling back to be his good little attack dog when asked.”

Sespian knew Sicarius had assassinated many people in the years he had worked for Emperor Raumesys, but he had a hard time imagining Sicarius seriously contemplating killing Starcrest. The president was one of the few people in the world—if not the
only
person in the world—he seemed to respect.

Mahliki nudged him with an elbow. “I have all
sorts
of interesting stories I’m not supposed to know about, if you’d like to hear them sometime.”

That sounded like an invitation, like she might want to have conversations with him. In private. Alone. It would be rude of him to decline such an invitation, wouldn’t it? Fierce and formidable fathers notwithstanding?

“Mahliki, when this plant issue is resolved, would you like to go—”

“Sespian?” Starcrest asked.

Sespian jumped off the stool, almost knocking it into Mahliki. He caught it before it pounded her in the stomach, even as he spun toward Starcrest. “Yes, sir?” he blurted, worried again that Starcrest had guessed his thoughts and wanted to interrupt anything before it started.

Starcrest had pulled open a panel on his portable generator and had his head stuck inside. He couldn’t even
see
them. “Will you come give me a hand? If we’re going to put a factory into operation to make more of these, they’ll need a less cumbersome design. And you were ready for the specifications for the submarine machinery, weren’t you?”