The Mask And The Master (Mechanized Wizardry Book 2) (50 page)

Willl with three L’s looked up, surprised.  Then his blue eyes softened too.  He adjusted his glasses—newly repaired—and looked down at the floor.

“I have two homes,” he said.  “If they’re gonna fight, then no matter what I do, one of my homes will be unhappy with me.”

“Two homes.  Delia and Svargath?”

“This is the right side to be on though, I know it is,” he said, nodding.  “Delia needs a King.  We all know it.”

“Sure, yes, fine!  What does Svargath have to do with any of this?” Lundin hissed.  They were almost at the cell door.

Willl with three L’s blinked.  “We’re giving King Torvald an army.  I thought he would have told you that,” he said, perplexed.

The guards had to shove him bodily into the cell as he stood there, stunned in the hallway.  Even Martext stood up at the sight of him, showing a modicum of concern.  The door slammed shut, followed by the customary rattling of locks.

“Spheres,” Martext said as he and Elia stepped closer.  “What happened to you?”

“Busy afternoon,” Lundin said, his brain racing.  “Okay.  One.  We have to finish transcribing Iimar’s spell from yesterday, and you have to present it to him tomorrow, or he’ll kill you.”

“I’m not doing anything to help these people,” Martext said.

“Then he’ll kill you.  Elia too.  So don’t do it for them; do it for her.”

“Yeah, do it for me,” Elia said, her eyes very wide.

“Two.  I need you to think of everything you know about the spell box.  Willl’s already drawn them a set of blueprints—perfect blueprints.  I fed Iimar some nonsense about why they were wrong to slow them down.  We need to be ready to draw up our own set of blueprints at a moment’s notice, with enough non-glaring flaws so that these people don’t get anywhere.”

“Great!  Hey, that’s actually good news!”  Martext relaxed his frown a little as Elia whispered cheerily.

“Three.  And it’s not so much an action item as, a, well.”  Lundin wet his lips and blurted it out.  “It’s not a civil war we’ve got coming up.

“It’s an invasion.”

Chapter Eighteen

The Warlord’s Valley

Dame Miri wiped the sweat off her face.  Her silken sleeve was just as bad at absorbing moisture as it had been the last time she’d tried to wipe herself clean. 
Typically, the temperature’s supposed to go
down
when the sun sets
, she thought sullenly.  This evening was clearly an exception; she felt like the bright white moonbeams tanned her skin every time they filtered through the canopy of trees.  She pulled the mask back down over her face, wrinkling her nose at the stink of her own sweat and saliva, which covered the inside of the faceplate like a coat of varnish after all this time in the woods.

Can it really have been three days?
she thought, shaking her head.  Her legs and empty stomach registered woeful assent.  The face of that strong-jawed ‘naut was far brighter in her mind whenever she put the mask on, which seemed promising.  She had to be close now. 
There’s no doubt I’ve made better time than a Campos search party would have
, Dame Miri thought. 
Of course, unless the kidnappers give me a hot meal and a comfy bedroll before we get to fighting, I have no idea how much use I’m going to be when I get there. 
The mask’s golden eyes beamed down at the dirt in front of her.  She stepped over a cluster of roots and rolled her shoulders, stifling a yawn.

The leaves moved, about a hundred meters to her left.  It could have easily been a squirrel, or a mouse, but Dame Miri stopped in her tracks.  Something didn’t feel right about that sound.  There was a quiet whining noise, like a motor—

On instinct, she leapt straight up.  Twigs shattered against her head and shoulders, and she scrambled for a sturdy branch.  Down on the forest floor, a gunshot barked, and a ball of lead sailed through the air she’d just been occupying.  As she hoisted herself onto the teetering branch, the footsteps in the leaves below started running towards her.

“Spheres,” she hissed, wrapping herself around the branch.  It was barely thick enough to hold her weight; even worse, the tree was leafless and dead, so the wood was that much likelier to snap at any moment.  She inched herself towards the tree trunk, praying she could make it.  It was only about two and a half meters away, brightly illuminated by the golden cone from her eyes.

My eyes!  Burn me
, Dame Miri thought, grabbing the wire looped around the back of her head. 
Talk about a target!  Wearing this mask at night, I might as well shoot myself.

She formed one last mental picture of the way towards the square-jawed ‘naut and ripped the mask off her face.  With a flick of the wrist, she sent it sailing like a discus through the trees.  It clattered and spiraled on its way down with a chaotic light show that would do the Parade squad proud.  The footsteps below slowed their stride. 
That’s right, look over there,
she thought, squirming towards the trunk.

Dame Miri braced herself against the trunk and crouched onto her toes, looking down.  She’d been spoiled by her built-in torches all this time; the ground but was nothing but a black ocean an indeterminate distance below.  She furiously willed her eyes to adjust faster. 
I can only have jumped so high. Odds are the coils could handle it if I dropped back down
.  Then again, the ranine coils had started sounding awfully labored just before sundown.  With unfamiliar hardware, and no way of knowing how well it had been maintained, she had to treat every jump now as a risk.

She ground her teeth.  To come this far, and then to get stuck in a tree and shot by that gun-toting hostile below?  (A ‘naut, too, from the sound of those motors and gears.) 
Unacceptable
, she decided.

The footsteps kept heading towards her tree, rather than chasing the mask.  Dame Miri shimmied around to the far side of the trunk and wrapped both hands around a fist-sized branch.  She swung down and held herself there by her arms, her feet braced against the dead tree’s trunk.  Her eyes were adjusting.  It was only about five meters to the ground, and there was another tree close behind her.  She couldn’t see the ‘naut, but she heard the unmistakable sound of another round being chambered into a wrist gun.  Dame Miri held her breath.  She’d have to risk it.

She swung away from the tree, coiling her legs up to her chest, and just as her swing started carrying her back, she slammed both boots into the dead trunk with a kick like a horse.  Dame Miri let go of her branch and sailed backwards, far too fast to be safe.  With a weepy creaking sound, her tree broke in half.

She landed in the branches behind her, bruising her shoulder on the second tree as she scrabbled for handholds.  Another shot flew through the night as the top half of the spindly tree came crashing down towards the hostile.  It wouldn’t be enough to crush the ‘naut, but it was a mighty nice distraction.  Dame Miri swung herself down to the ground as fast as she could, gasping as the last drop shuddered through her leg bones, all the way from her feet to her hips.  The ranine coils were definitely shot. 
Guess I’ll have to take a new pair from this joker
, she thought grimly, drawing her knife.  She raced towards the splintered tree, her feet flying against the leafy ground.

There was a springing sound on the far side of the tree, and Dame Miri tucked and rolled as the ‘naut leapt past her, thudding heavily to the ground not two meters away.  She sprang up onto her feet and hesitated, unable to see anything in the dark.  Then she noticed a glint of moonlight on the black armor just in time to bend away from a metal fist.

She closed the distance, got a hand on the metal pauldron, and tried to loop a leg behind the big figure’s knee in a takedown, praying for momentum.  But the big ‘naut spun with her, getting one hand on her tricep and one on her hip, and tossed her to the dirt.  She rolled from her shoulder to her back, and heard the ‘naut charging after her.  She did a backwards somersault onto her feet, and spun just in time for the ‘naut to crash into her.  Dame Miri felt the knuckles pressed to her belly rotate as the next round was chambered in.  She raised the hooked curve of her knife to the ‘naut’s throat, searching for the seam she knew was there—

The moonlight was clear, white and warm as it broke through the trees.

“What?”  Dame Miri and Sir Mathias said simultaneously.

“You smell terrible,” Samanthi crowed.

“You should have smelled the other guy,” Dame Miri said, hugging her back. She gasped, looking over the tech’s shoulder at the array of tents in the Delian encampment.

“Spheres, it’s an army!  How many of you chumps did it take to find this place?”

“Just over a hundred with the prisoners,” Sir Mathias said absently, fiddling with the golden-eyed mask.  “And, uh, we didn’t so much find it as convince the prisoners to bring us here.”

“And by we, he means me,” Sir Kelley said, smiling tightly.

Dame Miri gently pulled out of the hug with Samanthi and inclined her head politely to Kelley.  He shook his head slowly.  “The Feastday Hero herself!  For a Parade ‘naut, Dame Miri, you sure find yourself in interesting places.”

She brushed her grimy black bangs out of her eyes and looked confused.  She jerked her thumb towards the stony castle, just visible in the valley behind them.

“What do you mean?  I don’t know why you’re here, but I’m doing my cabaret act in there in fifteen minutes, so… I mean,” she paused, head tilted to the side, and pressed her fingers against Kelley’s arm. “You can help, if you want.  Share the stage?”

“Yeah, I’ll juggle scarves.”

“How can we make that happen?” Samanthi whispered to Mathias, her eyes widening.

“There isn’t enough liquor in the world.  Now can someone please tell me,” Sir Kelley said, “why in the black flames
you
are
here
?”

“To save my team,” Dame Miri said, her face growing serious.

Kelley frowned.  The castle beyond them was at the center of a valley, not on any of the charts they had of this poorly mapped part of the Tarmic.  Thick stone walls formed a rectangle around the keep, clearly built in the days before artillery.  That kind of quarry work was far too labor-intensive for walls any cannon could blast into rubble.  The building itself had the footprint of a plus sign with the northeast corner filled in, giving it a lopsided feel.  A cylindrical spire rose up on the fat side of the castle, topped with a cone of dark black shingles.  It had to be five stories tall at the peak of the spire, and probably had a few dozen rooms spread out across its wide floors.

One of their musketeers had been a university student before doing her Service, and put the castle’s age at two hundred to two hundred fifty years.  It was a relic from the height of the Warlord years.  From the buttressing, and the panes of expensive glass on the western side, it was even possible it was an old Haberstorm fortress.  But those elements weren’t exclusive to castles built by the top dynasty; and not even Sir Kelley was ready to believe the Golden Caravan had the gall to go squatting in a Haberstorm ancestral home while they preached the downfall of Delia.

The sight of the place raised plenty of questions, but the one chief on their minds—how many soldiers were inside—was beyond anybody’s guess.

“Do you mean to tell me,” Kelley said, minutes later, “that the Golden Caravan launched an attack on Fort Campos for the express purpose of kidnapping Horace Lundin?”

“Yes.”

“
Horace Lundin
?”

“To be fair,” Dame Miri said, raising her spoon as a point of order.  She set the stew bowl on her lap and swallowed.   “They wanted to kidnap all four of us.  I got away because I’m too squiggly,” she elaborated to the other ‘nauts.  Zig turned the color of his hair and stared into their campfire.

The Delian encampment was back in the trees, on the far side of a ridge from the castle.  They kept their fires low-burning, hoping not to give their position away with stray wisps of smoke.

“Why take that risk for a bunch of Civics?”  Dame Gaulda said, chewing on a hunk of bread.

“It may not be as crazy as it sounds,” Samanthi said, reaching out for the mask.  They’d draped a jacket over the thing so they wouldn’t have to look at its golden eyes, glaring up into the night.  She pulled it out and flipped it over, running her thumbs along the edges.  “I’ve gone over this thing the best I can, and I didn’t find any seams or machinery.  Did you, Zig?”

“Uh, no.  Nothing.”

“And yet, bright glowing lenses that never burn out, that you can see through without being blinded while you’re wearing it?”  She tapped a fingernail against the luminous crystal lenses, firmly wedged in place in the eye sockets.  “And even more amazingly, the projected image of a square-jawed brawler that shows up in your mind when you wear the thing, and leads you right here?”  She dropped it on her lap and shrugged.  “It’s got to be magic.”

“But magic only works on people, not things.  Right?” Sir Mathias said.

“Hey, when it comes to magic, I mostly know how much I
don’t
know.”  She scratched her shoulder under the dark brown strap of her overalls.  “But I look at this, and I can’t imagine how you’d possibly build it.  Which says to me—”

“It’s magic,” Dame Julie finished.  “Their gear is magical.  And so this wizardry machine your team made… it’s something that would help the Golden Caravan?”

“Well, it lets you cast spells quicker, easier, with a one hundred percent success rate,” Dame Miri said, finishing her stew.  “And all without dealing with a human wizard.”

The circle of ‘nauts took that in as the embers crackled.  “Did you want some bread?”  Dame Gaulda said into the silence, tearing off a hunk of the white loaf.

“Sure, thanks.”

The Shock Trooper looked over at Dame Miri appraisingly.  “You came all this way out here, alone, to save your squad.”

Dame Miri held the bread in her hands, sifting through a selection of jokes or self-deprecating quips in her head.  She took a deep breath and nodded instead.  “I did.”