The Palace Job (27 page)

"Are you prepared to continue?" Icy asked, bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet. "Our timeline is flexible."

"What, me?" Kail pushed himself to his feet, ignoring the screaming pain in his back. Judging by the indentations in the carpet, he and Icy had knocked the desk a good couple feet, and it wasn't a small desk. "I'm fine." A flare of purple radiance lit in the air over Kail's head.

"That would appear to be the ambient ward that detects falsehoods," Icy said politely.

"Stupid ward's probably just misfiring." Kail snorted. Another flare of purple radiance lit in the air. "Let's hit it."

He didn't think of himself as a proud man, but he was damned if he was going to limp as he opened the door and ushered Icy out into the hallway.

"Which way?" Kail murmured, and Icy turned confidently to the right and started down the hallway. Kail fell in behind him.

They walked down some hallways and up another flight of stairs. Icy walked without hesitation or pause, and Kail, who got lost after about three turns, just walked alongside him staring at nothing.

"Hold on just one moment!" Kail blinked and looked at the portly lapitect who stood in their path. "I don't recognize you two! What are you doing here?"

And then Kail was back in charge.

"Oh, come on, man," he said indignantly as Icy began to stutter out a response. "What do you
think
we're doing here?"

The portly man turned to Kail and raised a finger. "Security is a vital part of maintaining the
Lapitemperum,
and it is not only the right but the
responsibility
of all staff to verify—"

"Sure," Kail cut in, "so if you saw a couple of
white
technicians coming in to perform a, a, a..."

"Time-curve analysis of energy dispersion for the Spire's levitation field," Icy finished.

"Right, if you saw white technicians coming in to do that, you'd ask them the same thing? And you've recognized everyone else you've passed in the halls today?"

"I..." The portly lapitect flushed. "It's simply a matter of—"

"Oh, afraid to answer the question?" Kail crossed his arms indignantly. "Maybe afraid you'd get a little flare of purple over your head?"

The lapitect glared. "That's the most... I don't have to stand here and listen to this!" He brushed past them and stomped away.

"I am impressed," Icy said after a moment, "by your ability to dissemble within such limited parameters."

"It's not so hard," Kail said. "Most people, you ask questions at them, they just want to get rid of you as quick as they can. You learn to work that, you can get a lot of doors opened."

Icy started down the hallway again. "It is as though your body is entirely motivated by
kaj
energy..." Seeing Kail's blank look, he added, "We of the Empire believe that the body is made of two energies, the
jar,
or receptive, quiet, female energy, and the
kaj,
or aggressive, loud, male energy."

"So I'm, like, more male then most men?" Kail asked with a hint of pride.

Icy pursed his lips. "That is certainly one way of interpreting my statement," he said, and glanced briefly overhead before continuing. "And you seem almost to transmit this disharmony to others by your speech and attitudes, such that your very presence disrupts the balance of their spirit."

"You're saying I get them mad and confused?" Kail asked.

"I... yes." Icy stopped at a door marked "Primary
Lapisavantum
Chamber—Authorized Personnel Only".

"I can work with that. We here?"

"We are."

Kail studied the door. "Just like Tern said. Mechanical lock, no crystals or anything." He pulled Iofecyl from her special case (which he'd sewn into his sleeve last night) and got to work on the lock. "Come on, baby, let's make this fast..."

"Tern theorized that the ambient magic of the
lapisavantum
would preclude... are you anthropomorphizing your lockpick?"

Kail squinted, trying to feel the tumblers. "You know, she really works better when it's quiet."

"Tern often says the same thing." Icy shrugged, went back to keeping a lookout. "Although she does not, to my knowledge, anthropomorphize her lockpicks."

A few moments later, Kail felt the tumblers click as he raked his one true love gently across the grooved surface. He gave a quiet "Hah!", pulled the door open, and darted inside with Icy close behind.

It could have been a broom closet, except that one entire wall was made of glowing blue crystal, and the blue crystal had hundreds of sparkly lights in it, some blinking in different colors. "All you, Icy. Do your thing."

Icy nodded and stepped up to the rock. He touched one glowing thing, then another. Some of the lights changed colors. He touched another glowing thing and moved his finger across the crystal's surface, and the lights started flashing crazily.

"Hey, are they supposed to do that?" Kail asked.

"Tern did not mention that particular pattern," Icy said absently, "but then, I was instructed only to follow a specific course of action."

"Right, but if they're not supposed to do that—"

"I memorized the specific pattern of actions Tern described," Icy said, "and interrupting me in mid-application is unlikely to prove beneficial."

"Oh, fine." Kail leaned against one of the side walls, which was blank except for a lot of narrow slots that might have held levers or extra crystals or something. "I'll just sit here and shut up, then."

"Thank you." Icy pressed a final glowing thing, and there was a
plink
noise, and a crystal popped out of one of the little slots in the wall. "I believe that this should be what Tern wished us to retrieve."

Kail grabbed the crystal, opened the door, and ushered Icy out. "So, are you two...?"

"We are simply friends and partners," Icy said. "Much like you and Loch." He coughed. "Actually, I may be seeing someone as of yesterday. "

"And just what are you two doing in the
lapisavantum
chamber?" came a sharp voice from around the corner and out of Kail's view, stuck as he was behind Icy.

There was a brief and hopeful silence.

"What do you think we are doing in the
lapisavantum
chamber?" Icy asked carefully.

Kail made a mental note to spend some time discussing the importance of
delivery.

"Right, the two of you just stay where you are!" the sharp voice declared. "I don't know who you are, but you're not going anywhere until—"

"Hey, come on!" Kail pushed into the hallway and saw an ascetic-looking man whose lapitect robes had some little stars on the collar. "We're trying to work, here! Do I go down to where your mother works and push the sailors out of her bed?"

The thin man stiffened in outrage, and Kail cold-cocked him, caught him as he fell, tossed his body into the room with the big blue crystal, and shut the door firmly. A few lapitects down at the end of the hall were moving their way with concerned looks.

"Your actions were indicative of just the form of disharmonizing influence I described earlier," said Icy, starting back the way they had come at a fast walk.

"And
your
actions were indicative of you not being able to lie worth a damn," Kail said, keeping pace while listening behind him. Someone called out in his direction, but they were calling it out like a question. "Okay, new plan. Do you think we can both do that pole-vault thing you did?"

Icy looked at Kail speculatively. "Do you have any formal acrobatic training?"

"Not formal, no, not really, I guess you could say." They got to the corner, which had been Kail's big goal for that twenty-second period. Behind them, someone started shouting, and Icy and Kail started jogging by mutual agreement. "Hey!" Kail shouted at some lapitects coming their way. "There's some problem, someone unconscious back there! Get help!" A few of them ran past Kail and Icy. A few ran in the other direction, presumably to get help. Nobody tried to apprehend him. This fulfilled another one of Kail's big goals.

"My plan to reach the streets was to leap from the window, strike the pole upon the ground vertically, and slide down as the pole began to tilt, trusting that my balance and tumbling ability would cushion the resulting fall."

Kail pursed his lips and jogged faster. "Yeah, I don't see that working for me."

They had just gotten back to the office when the alarms started chiming. As Kail slammed the door shut, Icy picked up the pole and gave Kail a questioning look. "Go, dammit, I'll be fine." Purple light flared over his head. "Oh, and take this." He passed Icy the crystal.

Icy pocketed the crystal, hefted his pole, and leaped out the window. Kail followed and saw the man do a kind of controlled falling slide down the pole to the ground, roll smoothly to his feet, and jog down the street and around a corner, disappearing into safety.

The fall looked to be about twenty-five or thirty feet. Not a killer—the ship had been worse, but then, the ship had had a lawn underneath it.

The chiming took on a new intensity, and red lights began dancing on the ceiling. Kail decided to risk it, got a running start, and dove out the window. He got about a foot and a half before crashing into an invisible wall and bouncing back into the office, now bruised in a
new
damn place.

Tern had mentioned something about barrier wards if things went wrong. Kail had sort of been counting on things not going wrong.

Running wouldn't help, not if they had wards up. Kail took a seat in the office and stared at the flashing red lights on the ceiling.

About fifteen minutes later, the guards showed up. He heard the booted feet on the stairs, heard them banging doors open and shouting to each other. Kail wondered if Warden Orris would be happy to see him.

He ducked down behind the desk. The door banged open. Two guards stepped in.

"All clear," said one of them—Kail couldn't see him, as he was still hiding behind the desk, but he sounded young. "Wait, it looks like this desk has been moved. And the window is open..." He came around the corner, saw Kail, and stared speechlessly for a moment.

"Please don't." The other guard cracked the first guard neatly on the temple with the butt of her truncheon. "It's too early for one of your lines about people's mothers. You're just lucky Ululenia could hex one of the guards to sleep for us."

"You look tense, Loch," Kail said, catching the unconscious young guard. "Weren't you going to get a massage or sauna package or something last night? How come you still look tense?"

Loch glared from beneath her helmet. "Get dressed, Kail. We've got two minutes until Ululenia and Hessler make a big distraction outside and all the guards run out to chase them. "

"Good, good." Kail slapped on the young guard's helmet and got to work on the jacket. "But really. You got a scented-water immersion or an herbal treatment at one of the baths or something, right?"

"Yes, Kail. Not that it's any of your business, but I had a very relaxing herbal treatment last night."

A purple light flared over her head. Kail figured it out and started laughing.

"Get dressed," Loch muttered, and went to guard the door. "When that outside alarm shuts down, we're leaving, even if you're bare-ass naked."

"You bringing up bare-assed nakedness for any reason in particular?" Kail asked innocently.

"Shut up, Kail."

"Happy to oblige, Captain."

Thirteen

Tern was waiting outside the temple of Tasheveth, by the fountain where she and Hessler had watched Archvoyant Silestin. The frolicking water nymph spouting the water was pissing Tern off. She began hunting through her pockets.

When Desidora finally came out, hair red, skin tan, and robes a nice flirty green, she gave the water nymph a concerned look. "What happened to its head?"

"Minor alchemical accident," Tern said flatly. "So, did they buy the act?"

Desidora blinked. "If by
the act,
you mean my faithful assumption of my former duties as a priestess of Tasheveth—" "Right, before you sold your soul to Byn-kodar."

"Kutesosh gajair'is!"

The green robes darkened slightly. "Tern, this may be an eldritch glimmering beyond the comprehension of man causing my sight to betray me, but I'm sensing some veiled hostility."

Tern narrowed her eyes. "Look, you can get the guys all lovestruck with the smoldering eyes and the 'former love priestess' angle, but I've seen warlocks with great daemon-augmented smiles, so I'm not buying it. You worship a
death god.
That's
evil."

"You crack safes," Desidora pointed out.

"You say that like it's a comeback!" Tern stamped her steel-toed boot, cracking the pavement slightly and causing the remains of the frolicking water nymph's head to fall off. "Safes! Not people! If you can't see past that, we have nothing to talk about."

Tern watched Desidora's hair and face change color and had a brief realization that perhaps she could have told the death priestess off with witnesses other than a mentally deficient warhammer present. "Not all stories of the priesthood of Bynkodar are true," Desidora said carefully.