The Palace Job (46 page)

Hessler turned back to the others.

"We should get to Loch and the others," he said. "We're behind schedule."

"I will leave by a different means," Icy said, dusting off his palms. "There is something else I must attend to."

Tern raised an eyebrow. "You sure?"

"I will be fine." Icy smiled faintly, and then, as Tern looked at him, blushed.

"Oh. Well, aren't
you
just full of surprises." Tern grinned. "See you at the meeting point."

Icy headed off toward the main ballroom, and Tern, Hessler, and the kid headed for the vault, with the kid slipping back to talk with Silestin Senior about what it was like to be a zombie.

"What did it say?" Tern asked quietly once the kid was out of earshot.

Hessler glanced back. Dairy was smiling nervously, and when he gestured, the birthmark on his arm was visible.

"Nothing important," Hessler said, and turned away.

When Loch reached the sumptuous room with the hidden door that led to the vault, Ululenia, Desidora, and Kail were already there. Kail looked shaky, and Desidora looked like hell. "Trouble?"

"Nothing we couldn't handle," Kail said.

"I died," Desidora said. Loch looked at her, and Desidora shrugged weakly. "I got better."

"There is someone in the palace," Ululenia said. "An assassin who moves unseen. We must be wary of the shadows." "Everyone is
full
of good news," Loch said acidly.

"Sorry we're late!" called Tern as she, Hessler, and Dairy stepped inside and shut the door behind them. "We got held up by the guy with the spear."

"Mister Icy blew him up!" Dairy said enthusiastically.

Loch looked at Tern with one eyebrow raised.

"Golem." ”Ah.ft

Hessler's face was drawn and bleak. "Loch, I need to speak with you." Then he turned and waved a hand, and a zombie shimmered into view. "What, no trouble dealing with Urujar?"

The zombie shrugged. "Some of the best damn soldiers I've known have been Urujar. Anybody who survives what they've survived has to be tough. Silestin, ma'am."

Loch gave him a quick soldier's nod. "What's the problem, Hessler? Desidora, can you and Silestin do the honors?" She stepped over to the corner of the room, and Hessler followed. Behind them, Desidora grew pale while the zombie pressed his hand to a crystal plate hidden behind a painting. Kail looked nervous, staring at Desidora as though he expected something bad to happen.

"I've been thinking," Hessler said, "about why a trained thief would allow an untrained kid to come along on a mission." "Everyone's gotta start somewhere, Hessler."

Hessler shook his head. "Something twisted the world around us. It pulled me into that cell with Dairy, and it pulled you to that cell to find us, so that I'd come with you, and he'd come with me, and... Loch, are you familiar with the Champions of Dusk and Dawn?"

A hidden panel slid back next to Desidora. No alarms went off. Loch grinned. "I've heard of it."

"I think... I think that Dairy is the Champion of Dawn."

"Took you 'til now, huh?" Loch nodded at the doorway and raised her voice. "Let's go. Tern, you're on the vault. Where's Icy?"

"He's fine." Tern grinned. "We think there might be a woman."

"You... you
knew?"
Hessler asked in a furious whisper.

They all moved into the hidden room, which looked like Cevirt's vault room, only larger. Tern took out the duplicated crystal, a tuning fork, and some other tools, and began to tinker with the vault door. "Give me some room," she said. "This is... well, I have no
idea
what this is, but I think having room will help."

"You heard the woman," Loch said. "Stand back in case she botches it and there's a massive explosion." As everyone hurriedly stepped away from the glowering Tern, Loch turned to Hessler and lowered her voice. "Saw the birthmark that first night, remembered a bit in the old poem about going to a city in the sky, and figured that I was supposed to help him out with his destiny," she said with a little smile.

"You're dragging him into
danger!
He's supposed to fight the Champion of Dusk to determine the
fate of the world!"

"Right. That's written into the prophecy. And, if that's really destined to happen," Loch added, "it stands to reason that he
has
to survive to get
to
that fight." To Hessler's openmouthed stare, she said, "Look, we were going to arrive at the port, where it turned out that guards were waiting. Luckily for us, the kid screwed up, and the ship crash-landed instead. You and the others were in that sitting room right before Pyvic and everyone else came to arrest you. Then the kid screwed up, and most of you went elsewhere in the palace just in time. If he's going to get to that fight, he
will
survive. And as long as we stay near him..."

"By all the gods..." Hessler put a hand to his face. "He's your
insurance policy."

"Lucky charm," Loch corrected, and then looked around to see everyone except Silestin Senior and Dairy himself looking at them, wide-eyed. Dairy was listening to Silestin Senior tell stories about the old days. "Tern, the safe? Today?" Loch lowered her voice again. "Look, Magister, if the kid's going to fight for the sake of the world, nothing can change that. But if he's picked up a few pointers from tagging along with us, that can only help."

Tern was still tinkering with the vault door. It glowed with a pearly radiance, and Tern pulled more things out of her pockets every few seconds. "Tern?" Loch called. "We have a problem?"

"I'm sure we're fine!" Tern called back. "But if anyone can make a broken additive-magic algorithm stop from overloading and blowing us all halfway to the Empire, that would be great."

I will attempt to assist you.
Ululenia closed her eyes, and her horn blazed in the dim light of the room.

"As will I." Desidora grew pale again, and Kail nervously took a step away.

The zombie finished whatever story he was telling Dairy with a laugh that made a bit of his nose fall off, and Dairy lurched back in surprise, lost his balance, and fell into Tern, who banged one of her crystals heavily against the vault. With a short musical chime, the pearly radiance faded.

Everyone looked at Dairy. Everyone looked at Loch.

"To be fair, that could have been one of us," Desidora said. "Sorry!" Dairy cried. "Tern, did I mess anything up?"

"You're doing fine, Dairy." Tern's eyes were wide as she looked at him, and she turned back to the safe. "I'll just... yeah.

You're fine."

"Lucky charm," Loch murmured to Hessler.

"Your amoral plan has a tiny problem,
Captain."
Hessler leaned in close. "Bi'ul appears to be the Champion of Dusk. You've just put a sixteen-year-old boy in the same palace as the thing that's going to fight him to determine the fate of the world!"

The vault opened.

"Hah! Take that, stupid ancients!"

"Besyn larveth'isr

"Er, no offense."

"I was really hoping that tingly feeling was just youthful vigor," Loch muttered. She stepped into the vault chamber, a featureless room of black stone lit only by pale crystals overhead.

In the middle of the room, a single book lay alone on a square of velvet. Loch picked it up, folded in the corners to turn the velvet square into a velvet bag, and ushered everyone else in.

"You knew that
too?"
Hessler's face reddened with what looked like the academic version of a killing rage.

"Found out at the party," Loch said quietly, "which is why I sent him out to you. Relax, Magister. If the world falls into eternal night, that's going to hurt my plans to sell this book and get very rich." She smiled. "Now come on. The hardest part's over. Everybody ready?" She looked around. "Tern, activate the failsafe and transport us out of here."

Tern traced a pattern into a crystal panel on the wall. "Everyone get ready. This might feel a bit—"

With a great crash, the vault door slammed shut and the lights went out.

"Hessler, light. Tern?" Loch asked, pinching the bridge of her nose.

Tern's voice was carefully steady. "I'm sure it's just a—"

A great metallic screech cut off the rest of what she was saying.

Hessler's magic illuminated the room and Loch saw the ceiling closing down on them.

Twenty-Two

Ambassador Bi'ul reformed in his guest room some time later. Very little could hurt him in this world, since the foolish mortals were interacting with a shadow-formed simulacrum made manifest across the worlds.

Nevertheless, the sheer energy of the conduit had been too much for him. He had been forced to give it up as lost and go through the tiresome process of re-forming a shadow in which to place his consciousness again.

He made himself a little taller this time.

When he finished, fully solid and glowing radiantly, he returned to the room where the mortals had gathered to engage in their social charades.

He found Silestin, who was speaking with the Urujar girl and a young man wearing a noble's vestments.

"Now, Naria, this man is from a wonderful house, and—"

"Your palace is being robbed," Bi'ul greeted Silestin. "Some mortals were vandalizing an energy conduit, likely to disable a security ward."

What Bi'ul liked about Silestin, in as much as he liked anything in this pitiful world, was that Silestin could dismiss the casual charades of this world almost as well as Bi'ul himself. "Take a walk, Naria," said the Archvoyant, and dismissed the young man as well. He pressed a small crystal on one of his rings, and a moment later Elkinsair arrived. "The ambassador here indicates that we are being robbed. Any thoughts?"

The little security chief paled. "I was examining the entry wards, but detected no changes within the... of course, if they are already inside... I will see to it directly, sir."

"Good man. Inform the others. Bi'ul, I am in your debt." Silestin nodded to him, then walked off, the matter evidently concluded.

What Bi'ul
respected
about Silestin was that phrases like "I am in your debt" were constructed to avoid mentioning exactly
how
that debt would be paid.

"Thank you for bringing this matter to my attention," said Elkinsair. "I take such things quite seriously —"

"I was discorporated while dealing with the thieves," Bi'ul said. "If I am inconvenienced again in any way, I will ensure that you remain alive while I violate you with the fused vertebrae of your own spinal column."

Elkinsair swallowed. "That seems fair, Ambassador."

Then he trotted off, and Ambassador Bi'ul decided to mingle.

Icy had changed out of his guard uniform and into his traditional golden silk robes, which Ululenia had thoughtfully dried for him after leading the other guards away.

He strode into the palace ballroom with an expression of benign serenity, the picture of the exotic and untouchable Imperial.

"And on this most important day of victory," Archvoyant Silestin was saying to a quiet room, "we must not forget that no victory is without cost—that even now, we must be prepared to defend the freedom we won from our oppressors."