Emperor's Edge Republic (68 page)

Sespian settled down beside him, his legs scrunched in. This was the only spot to stay out of the way as Starcrest and the engineer jogged back and forth from navigation to the bulging miasma of machinery that comprised the new engine room.

“I know why I’m here,” Sespian said. “Why are
you
here?”

“The president and his daughter have the seats up front, and the sleeping cabin is full of metal thingies... weapons, I guess. And crates. And fuel cans.”

Sespian snorted softly. “I mean why did you volunteer for this? Amaranthe usually talks you into risking your life, doesn’t she? It’s not something you typically sign up for of your own accord.”

Maldynado twitched a shoulder. “I don’t know. It was an impulse.”

Sespian studied him, not believing a word of that, Maldynado could tell.

“Fine, it was Evrial.”

“You want to prove something to her?”

“No, I already did that in staking out your building site and fighting the saboteurs. At least that’s what I was trying to do. She wasn’t... I don’t know. I’m pretty sure she’s leaving me to go back to her town and her family, and some stupid career opportunity. I mean, it’s not stupid. It’s just... I think she was using it as an excuse. She didn’t really want...” Me, Maldynado thought, but couldn’t say it out loud. He had already admitted more than he intended to.

“Ah.”

Thankfully, Sespian didn’t probe further or point out how funny it was that Maldynado, the man who had no trouble getting women to sleep with him, couldn’t convince one to stay with him for more than three months.

“Why are you here?” Maldynado asked, not wanting to linger on his own mess.

“Hm?”

“You said you knew why you were here.”

Mahliki jogged past carrying a clipboard and a plant specimen in a jar. She jangled as she moved, glass vials clinking inside her vest. Sespian’s gaze followed her, and Maldynado had the answer to his question before Sespian responded.

“Never mind,” he said.

Sespian blushed. “I wasn’t planning to, but then when she joined the team... it seemed cowardly not to volunteer when a girl had.”

Hah, liar. That wasn’t the
real
reason. But maybe Sespian hadn’t figured out his feelings yet. Maldynado wondered if they would survive so he could throw his dinner party. While he had been waiting in the shadows at that construction site, he had decided on a caterer and a drum group, the latter to ensure some lively dancing at the end. Dancing that would inspire all those shy couples to thump some body parts together. Something he would gladly do, too, if Yara would come. Would she even be in the city by then?

“So the building is continuing on schedule?” Sespian asked. “I haven’t been by since... I don’t even know what day it is. Or when I slept last.”

Maldynado yawned. “I know the feeling. This has been the longest night ever. I still don’t know who the lead saboteur is, but at least that crotchety foreman won’t have any fresh trouble in the morning.”

“Good. Thank you. I feel as if I should have been out there with you. Starcrest asked for my help, but I don’t know how imperative a part of the team I was. Though—” Sespian brightened, “—I do believe I kept Mahliki from having her eyebrows torched off.”

“A noble act.”

“Of course, if she hadn’t been following me to that lorry, they might not have been in danger of being sizzled...” Sespian prodded thoughtfully at the light brown stubble fuzzing his jaw.

“Nah, I’m sure that girl would have thrown herself into danger one way or another tonight. It was good you were there to look out for her.”

Mahliki jogged back past them again, this time heading to navigation. She glanced at Maldynado, and he wondered if she had heard his comment. If so, she didn’t attempt to deny the statement. Maybe she was too busy to bother.

The hull lurched under them, and a faint splash sounded. Maldynado planted his palms on the deck, bracing himself—or maybe his stomach.

“We’re in.” Sespian pointed toward the oval viewing window above the navigation controls.

Maldynado couldn’t see much from the deck, but he wasn’t sure how much he wanted to see. A line of water stretched across the display with the night air visible above and black water below. The horizon was blocked by dark sinewy shapes rising in the distance. The blasting sticks might have cleared an area, but he had no idea how they would get out into the lake and to open water. Maybe they didn’t need to. Nobody had yet briefed him on the plan, beyond the possible need for diving suits. And bodies to go into them.

Sespian pulled out the black dagger and a rag for cleaning it.

“You better do that
after
we finish fighting,” Maldynado said. “And before Sicarius sees all those crusty plant bits plastered to the blade.”

“This is the president’s knife.”

“There are two?”

“Apparently they got them at the same time.”

“Huh.” Maldynado scratched his chin. “I didn’t know they had a connection from the past.”

“Twenty years in the past, when a young Sicarius was sent to make sure Admiral Starcrest obeyed the emperor’s orders in some ancient and very deadly tunnels.”

“Huh,” Maldynado repeated, his mind boggling at the idea of a
young
Sicarius still working for the emperor. He’d had the warmth and personality of a block of ice when Maldynado first met him; it was hard to imagine an even more humorless version. “Well, I doubt Starcrest would want his knife returned with plant crusties sticking to it, either.”

“That is likely.”

“We’re lucky he even chose us to come along.” On second thought, Maldynado didn’t know if
lucky
was the right word, but he went on, nonetheless. “Sure, we’ve been in the suits before, but I’m surprised he didn’t think his soldiers would be more... reliable.”

“You mean more likely to obey him without arguing?”

“Not exactly. He doesn’t seem to think highly of me. At least that’s the impression I get. But maybe he’s changing his mind. I
have
been helpful of late.” Though Maldynado didn’t know if anyone had briefed the president on that helpfulness yet. Had he heard about the saved building? Admittedly, it was a low priority, but surely the president would appreciate having a new residence to move his family and offices into once the rest of this mess was cleared up...

“Hm,” Sespian said.

Maldynado squinted at him. “You have something else on your mind?”

“It may be my imagination, but he seemed to be studying everyone who volunteered, eying them from head to toe. I’m wondering if we were just the two people who looked like we would fit in the diving suits his men had loaded into the submarine.”

Maldynado snorted. “You’re a pessimist, aren’t you?”

“Maybe so. I have my reasons to be one.”

Maldynado supposed having Sicarius for a papa would sour his outlook on life too.

Sespian put away the dagger and pushed to his feet. “They’ve stopped running back and forth so much. I’m going to take a look at where we’re going.”

Maldynado didn’t know if he wanted to
know
where they were going, but he had never enjoyed having only his own company for entertainment. He trudged into the navigation chamber after Sespian, though he wondered if they would be kicked out. There wasn’t much room up there. Starcrest and Mahliki sat in the two seats, their hands resting on the controls. Maldynado had only been in the submarine once, for a very brief ride across the lake, so he wasn’t sure how anything worked, but Starcrest had the more complicated control panel. A number of gauges on the side held his attention for the moment. Maybe he was worried about whether his modifications would work. Nothing had been tested.

“Light,” Starcrest said.

Mahliki flipped a switch. Some exterior lamp brightened, shining a cone of yellow ahead of the nose of the craft. Green foliage and vines stretched all along the lake bottom below them, leaving only a few spots where the sand and pebbles were visible. Stubble poked a few inches out of the earth, but many of the small vines had been shorn off. Courtesy of the blasting sticks, Maldynado guessed. The vines would probably grow back within the hour.

“We’re still at the surface?” Sespian asked. Occasionally a wave came, and the water line dropped below the top of the viewing port.

“Yes,” Starcrest said. “We can’t be frivolous with our oxygen with this new system. We’ll stay on the surface until we reach the original spot in the harbor.”

“Why the harbor? Aren’t there roots we can attack anywhere?”

“That’s where it started,” Mahliki said, “and that’s where all the rhizomes branch out from. Based on my experiments earlier today, they conduct electricity. Not the plant itself, mind you, but the rhizomes. Father’s weapons are predicated on that.” Her voice dropped to a mutter when she added, “So I sure hope my experiments were right.”

“So if we apply electricity to the core roots, it might carry to more distant plants?” Sespian asked.

“That’s the hope.”

“What’s a rhizome?” Maldynado whispered to Sespian.

Mahliki answered in a distracted tone, as something outside had caught her attention. “A continuously growing diageotropic subterranean stem that sends out adventitious roots and lateral shoots from its nodes. Though I’m not sure I’d consider anything this plant does adventitious. We’re reaching the end of the area the soldiers cleared with blasting sticks, Father.”

“I see it.”

“As I always used to tell Books, the definition of a word shouldn’t require the definitions of three other words,” Maldynado said, making his whisper lower this time so Mahliki wouldn’t hear it.

“Three other words?” Sespian asked. “I was only stumped by one of them.”

“Books would have liked you.”

“I barely got a chance to know him. I wish...” Sespian shrugged.

“Me too. I just hope they don’t expect me to do more than shoot at a target out there. Or cut at it. Or whatever we’ll be doing in those suits.”

“If we’re lucky, we’ll be able to cut through to the roots without leaving the
Explorer
,” Starcrest said.

“Are you going to test the weapons?” Mahliki pointed out the viewing port. They had run out of stubble, and thick vines stretched from the shallows, more than one shifting toward them.

“The electrification of the hull,” Starcrest said. “We have to cut a path at some point.”

“You don’t think we should test the weapon too?”

“Let’s not show our tiles before we play them.”

“Do we... think this plant is a Tiles player?” Maldynado asked.

“It’s proven itself far more intelligent than any other plant I’ve met,” Starcrest said, “if that word can be applied to plants.”

“Not generally,” Mahliki said, “though they have demonstrated sophisticated behaviors for propagation and self-defense. They’re able to sense and respond to many environmental variables, and some scientists have suggested that some brain-like system may exist for processing information and coordinating a plant’s behavioral response.”

Maldynado eyed Sespian, wondering if these spoutings of biological babble would make him second-guess his interest in spending extended periods of time with the girl, but he seemed... enraptured.

“That’s with plants from
our
world though,” Sespian said. “I assume this one breaks the rules.”

A thud came from the side at the same time as the submarine lurched, the deck tilting. Maldynado grabbed the ceiling to catch himself. “It’s breaking
something
.”

“One of those vines has wrapped around us,” the engineer called from the back.

“This is opportune,” Starcrest said and flipped a switch.

“Opportune,” Maldynado muttered. “Not the word I would have chosen.”

The hair on his arms stood up. A faint blue glow seeped through the viewing display. The air crackled with energy, and Maldynado was certain he could have given someone an electrical shock without shuffling his socks along a carpet.

Mahliki jumped from her seat to dart between Maldynado and Sespian. She ran to a porthole cover on the side of the craft and unbuckled it.

The deck shifted back to level.

“That did it,” Mahliki called. “It let us go.”

“Does it appear damaged?” Starcrest asked.

“You can’t really see any charring, but it’s... limp.”

“Good. I’m hoping that as we go forward, it’ll learn to avoid us altogether, maybe even part for our passing.”

That sounded optimistic, but Maldynado would hope for the same thing. A smooth slaying of the giant plant and home for breakfast would be fine with him.

“Were you this idealistic when you were commanding vessels at sea, Father?” Mahliki asked.

“No, but the men who served under me were prepared to die every time they left port. I didn’t have civilians on board whose spirits I needed to keep up.”

“Are you talking about me or Maldynado?” Mahliki asked.

“My spirits are just fine,” Maldynado said. “Sespian, do I not look like I have spiritual fortitude?”

“It’s possible he’s judging you based on your... fortitude level when you had that little vine wrapped around your ankle,” Sespian said.

“It wasn’t
little
. It was like a boa constrictor, thank you very much. And wait. President Starcrest wasn’t there. How could he know?”

“The colonel may have whispered a report in his ear.”

“I knew I didn’t like that man,” Maldynado said.

The submarine shuddered.

Maldynado gripped the ceiling again—with fortitude. “Another vine?” He kept his voice casual. He wasn’t worried, not him.

“It brushed us and jerked back,” Starcrest said.

“You’re leaving the hull electrified?” Mahliki asked.

“We’re moving into the thick of them now, so yes.”

“Does it... take a lot of power?”

Maldynado glanced toward the engine room where the machinery hummed. Nothing sounded strained, but who would know with these fancy new upgrades? Only Starcrest.

“Yes,” Starcrest said. “But we have it.” His voice lowered and Maldynado almost missed the rest. “For now.”

Nothing but green stalks and swaying tendrils occupied the water beyond the viewing port now. They were floating along near the surface, but the verdant jungle made it impossible to see more than a few feet ahead. The taps and bumps of the plant brushing the hull—
testing
the hull—were audible inside. Maldynado found himself holding his breath to listen, concerned some crack or other weakness would be discovered and those tendrils would damage the craft irrevocably. It had grown silent all around, and he had a feeling
everyone
was listening.