Emperor's Edge Republic (58 page)

They had reached Seventh, the broad street that led to the hotel, and unlike many of the roads closer to the waterfront, its gas lamps had been lit for the night, so Maldynado could make out Basilard’s gestures.

“I wonder where he ran off to that’s so important. You don’t think Amaranthe is in trouble, do you? He wouldn’t have come with us if that were the case, right?”

Unlikely
.

“I hope he didn’t go to check out that address. He is
not
the type of person a child wants to have appear out of nowhere in the middle of the night. That would be worse than a makarovi popping out of the closet.”

I wonder why the woman thought Sespian would be a good choice to care for a child.

“Maybe the least bad choice out of a whole pile of bad choices. If she doesn’t know any people here... or if there’s no way the kid can be sent back to Nuria...” Maldynado shook his head. “I can’t figure out why someone would take a child into enemy territory, especially when she was there to kill people.”

More enemies left at home, perhaps.

“That’s hard to imagine. I—”

Something snagged Maldynado’s ankle. Startled he jerked back, almost dumping his load. Whatever had him didn’t let go. He and Basilard were in the shadows between street lamps, and he couldn’t make out anything on the sidewalk at his feet, but he had a hunch as to his captor.

“That blasted plant. A little help, Bas?”

Basilard drew a knife and crouched. The tendril—it must have been two inches thick—tightened around Maldynado’s ankle. He shifted the dead assassin off his shoulder and pulled out a dagger of his own. Clouds had obscured the moon. He wished he had a match so he could see what he was doing. Or maybe a blasting stick. He had heard explosives, Sicarius’s black dagger, and lightning strikes were about the only weapons that made a dent in the plant’s green armor.

“I’m coming down to help,” Maldynado warned, not wanting Basilard to mistake one of his fingers for the plant.

He patted around his calf and found the thick tendril, its flesh smooth and slick in the night air. Vibrations coursed through it—Basilard was sawing at it a few inches from Maldynado’s leg. Maldynado poked with his own blade, trying to get it between the vine and his calf without cutting himself. His stabs proved ineffective. If anything the plant tightened its grip.

“It hasn’t attacked people so quickly before, has it?” Maldynado was sure he hadn’t stepped on anything; that vine had slithered out of some crack to snap around his leg like a hunter’s snare. “I mean, I know some people got caught but—” he hissed as the tendril tightened yet again, “—I thought it was because they were slow. Or being stupid. Or—ouch, this thing is going to squeeze my leg right off. Bas, I hope you’re making some progress.”

Basilard couldn’t sign and cut at the same time—and in the shadows, Maldynado wouldn’t have been able to interpret his gestures anyway. Maldynado redoubled his efforts at prying the thing off, no longer worrying if he cut himself. This time, he simply sawed at the vine. The rasps of Basilard’s dagger—he must be using one of the serrated ones—were comforting, but he couldn’t tell how many millimeters were being shaved away—if any.

Maldynado resisted the urge to start yanking his foot around, certain it would mess up Basilard’s cuts, but he couldn’t feel his toes any more, and urgency and desperation were encroaching. He glanced around as he continued to cut, his blade doing next to nothing on the rubbery vine, hoping some steam vehicle might turn down the street and run over the plant a few times for him. Instead, he spotted movement in a nearby alley and heard a soft rustle, like that of snakes whispering through the grass. Except there were no snakes in the city—and no grass on the street.

“More are coming,” he whispered. “What in the universe
is
this vile plant?”

Basilard’s rasps grew faster. He felt the urgency too. Maldynado grimaced as some new sensation came to his leg, something damp seeping through his clothing. He probed it with his finger, then jerked his hand back. The dampness had...
bit
him. He wiped his finger on his jacket and dug his knife into the vine again. The blade slipped on its slick flesh. The ancestors-cursed plant was oozing something caustic.

The rustles grew closer, even as the acid bit into his skin. Maldynado cursed, hardly believing that after all he had survived, he was in danger of being killed by a plant on some random street corner.

“Bas, get out of here. More are coming. Don’t let them grab you. Tell the others—tell Evi... I was wrong. I should have gone to the country with her. I—”

Basilard slapped him on the chest. What was
that
supposed to mean? Maldynado pulled on his leg, not expecting anything to happen. But it came away from the sidewalk. The tendril still had a death grip around his calf, but he could move.

“You cut it off? Basilard, you’re—”

Basilard grabbed him and hauled him several feet down the street. He pointed at the alley.

“Right, right, more coming. Let’s go.”

Basilard ran back for the body. Maldynado hoped more tendrils hadn’t already wrapped around it—he hadn’t been worrying about preserving it when he had dropped the corpse, but the dead woman had already suffered enough tonight. Nobody deserved to be eaten street side by some mutant plant.

Basilard slung the body over his shoulder and jogged away from the alley. Maldynado tried to run after him, but he still couldn’t feel his foot, and he pitched forward, almost grinding his face into the street.

“Gonna need a medic—or a logger—to hack the rest of this thing off me when we get back to the hotel,” he growled as he grabbed the pole to use as a crutch.

Basilard only shook his head, his face grim as they passed through the light of the next street lamp. Carrying a body didn’t slow him down, and Maldynado struggled to keep up. He was starting to worry that the vine would act like a tourniquet and that he would lose his foot if he didn’t find a way to get the rest of it off soon. That spurred him to keep up, the pole clacking loudly on the cement with each awkward step.

His breath whooshed out in relief when the lighted stone wall of the hotel came into view. Someone in there would be able to help.

Basilard led the way, pounding toward the front gate. A gate that was usually guarded by two men. Nobody stood beside it now, and it was open, inviting anyone to enter. Strange, but Maldynado would worry about it later. He would—

A thunderous boom blasted from within the hotel, and a volcano of light burst through the roof and poured into the sky. Even on the street fifty feet away, Maldynado felt the power of the explosion. It hurled him onto his back, and the pole spun out of his hands. Basilard staggered but somehow kept his feet, not even dropping the body hanging over his shoulder. Maldynado rose to his knees, staring in astonishment at the scene through the gateway. The explosion had left a hole the size of five rooms in the center of the roof, and walls were crumbling on every side, bricks tumbling to the ground like water streaming over falls. Flames leaped from doorways and broken windows. Glass and wood littered the grass and the upturned earth. Thanks to the plant, the entire yard of the beautiful old hotel looked like giant gophers had been using it for a playground, but those vines were oddly absent now.

“Bas,” Maldynado croaked. “Is there... Do you see... Could anyone have survived that?” He didn’t see anyone. Wouldn’t
some
people have made it out? Beyond the windows, curtains and furniture burned in some rooms. In others, it looked like the floor had been blown away, and everything had tumbled to the levels below.

Basilard had been staring at the fire, his gaze transfixed. He shook away whatever thoughts had claimed his mind—concern for Amaranthe? his translator? the others?—and looked around the yard and to the street as well. Not another soul was out there with them.

The guards
, Basilard signed.
They were not here.

“Do you think maybe...
nobody
was here?” Maldynado hoped for all of their ancestors’ sakes that his question proved true, that everyone inside had somehow gotten warning of this catastrophe and fled the building in time.

A clank sounded, rising over the cracks of breaking wood and the snaps of the fire consuming the hotel. A burned and blackened man staggered out the front door, tripped on the steps, and pitched to the ground.

“Dear ancestors,” Maldynado breathed, stumbling as he tried to walk forward to help. The others might not have made it out after all...

Chapter 23

F
rom the backyard by the carriage house door, Tikaya stared at the flaming roof of the hotel, shielding her eyes with her arm. Smoke buried the moon and clouded the air around the burning structure. A broad expanse of pockmarked grass stretched between her and the fire, but she could feel the heat, nonetheless. She had expected... She didn’t know what she had expected, but the realization that she had been inside that hotel not five minutes ago made her shudder. The weight of her bow, strung and hanging from her shoulder, reminded her that she had taken the time to return to the suite and pack—she was lucky her choice to delay hadn’t ended her life.

She hadn’t believed anything would come of her random observation about the “suspects” who weren’t in the hotel tonight. This was... unthinkable.

Clanks and thuds came from the carriage house behind her, Dak’s men and the hotel staff preparing vehicles to drive them off the premises before the fire spread. Five minutes earlier, the men had been groggy and grumbling. They were all wide-awake now, their eyes as haunted as Tikaya’s must look.

A familiar uniformed figure stepped out of the smoke. “Lady Starcrest,” Dak rumbled. “I believe I owe you my life.”

“No more than I owe you mine,” she said. “I think perhaps we can call each other by first name now.”

“If you wish.” Something in his tone suggested he probably wouldn’t.

“Everyone didn’t make it out, did they?” Tikaya had heard a few screams after the explosion.

“We warned everyone,” Dak said. “Some people packed and left. Some people ignored us, or were too slow. There wasn’t time for hand-holding.” He pulled out a pocket watch and shook his head. “If I had known how little time there truly was...” Another head shake, this one almost violent, full of disgust. “I should have known about this, should have uncovered... whatever there was to uncover. We won’t know until the fire is out and a team can investigate. Explosives in the basement, or maybe lower. Someone might have tunneled in past all those cursed plants. I don’t know.”

An image of Serpitivich in the library flashed into Tikaya’s mind. “A couple of nights ago, I saw the vice president with blueprints for the hotel and maybe the underground infrastructure too. He said he’d been assigned the task of keeping that plant out of the sewers.”

Dak grunted. “
I
didn’t give him that task. Guess we can’t ask him about it since he’s not here. Conveniently.”

A man in a bathrobe broke a bottom floor window with a chair. He knocked out the glass and stumbled from the building. Coughing, he almost collapsed, but he wiped his face and lifted a hand toward the window. A woman in similar attire half climbed and half fell out after him.

“Baskic,” Dak called to a corporal, then pointed to the figures. They were stumbling away from the building, coughing and wheezing for air.

The soldier jogged toward the couple to help.

“I sent some soldiers to round up the fire brigade,” Dak said. “They’ll put out the fire, and my men will help them pull out anyone else who’s alive.”

Tikaya nodded numbly. “I feel useless standing here staring, but—”

“You would only endanger yourself if you tried to go back in there. Let the professionals handle it. You’ve already helped more than anyone else—we’d all be stuck in there if you hadn’t had that hunch.”

Tikaya wanted to shrug away this praise. She had only pointed out a piece of data that might suggest something. Dak had been the one to figure out what the something might be, not to mention having the audacity to force an evacuation when nothing might have happened.

“I’m also moving Serpitivich from my short list to my special list,” Dak said.

“What happens to people on your special list?”

“They get shot on sight.”

“I... see. Is anyone else on it?”

Dak snapped his pocket watch shut. “Rias might be if his report doesn’t arrive soon.”

“Those vehicles your men are readying, are any for checking on him?” Tikaya hadn’t forgotten the reason she had packed and dressed, throwing on boots, trousers, and a jacket, along with grabbing the bow and a knife. She had tried contacting him via the communications sphere they had in their quarters, too—as far as she knew, the other half was still in the submarine—but nobody had answered. She had stuffed it into her pack to try again later.

“Yes,” Dak said. “We’ll leave as soon as the fire brigade shows up.”

Tikaya would have started walking to the submarine warehouse at that moment, but there was little point when the vehicles could get her there ten times as quickly. As soon as the water in one of the boilers heated enough to be operational, she
would
go, fire brigade or not.

“Sir?” someone called from around the side of the building.

Two soldiers came into view, and they were escorting two other men, one carrying something large over his shoulder and one hobbling and leaning heavily on a pole.

“Bring them here,” Dak yelled, then lowered his voice. “That’s the Mangdorian diplomat, isn’t it?”

Tikaya squinted into the smoke. “Yes, that’s Basilard and Maldynado. Basilard is carrying... someone. Were they caught in the explosion?”

Dak jogged forward to meet the pair, and Tikaya followed, though not before casting a long look toward the vehicles. Soldiers were shoveling coal into furnaces. Surely one of those lorries would be ready soon.

“Hello, good Colonel,” Maldynado said, a deep grimace making the words come out oddly. “I don’t suppose you have a medic around, do you? While I’m sure there are survivors here who need assistance, I really need someone to remove this vine from my leg before I lose my foot.” He sounded like he was trying very hard to be polite and not to start screaming—or throttling someone—but given the tightness of the green tendril wrapped twice about his leg, he had to be in a lot of pain. Though a foot of it trailed behind, the rest severed somewhere along the way, what remained hadn’t loosened its grip. In addition, it had eaten away his clothing with its enzyme, and that must be burning into his flesh as well.