Turn 103

Emmett cranes his head a little past Alais and mutters a single word - brilliant red light erupts from his eye, illuminating the passageway. Now that he'd done it he expects the half elf to complain about the amount of light, the color, or something else, but at least now they can clearly see down its Stygian depths. Smoke swirls like fog in the hellish beam.
    Fortunately, ibn Fadil is *not* looking back when the brighter light appears. "Thank you, Emmett."
    "Three will get you five there's another spelljammer down there - or at least the docks for one."
    No one takes him up on it, and they advance cautiously down the narrow passage, necessarily in single file. It runs straight and level--dwarf-work, perhaps, hewn who knows how long ago in the course of the conflict between the two peoples, and now put to other use.
    It ends at last in a round chamber, perhaps fifteen feet across and with a slightly domed ceiling. On the far side the tunnel becomes a stair leading steeply upward, but no one is looking at that just yet, their attention taken by the thing in the center of the room, atop a square stone block perhaps three feet on a side.
    It seems at first glance to be a clockwork device, but of no kind of any of them has ever seen or even imagined before, a many-limbed ball incorporating dozens of materials, all of them precious to some degree, and every limb bearing some edge, point, or pincer. Each is stained with blood. Inlaid into the central body are the red arrows of Hextor.
    It is exquisitely crafted, weirdly beautiful, and entirely evil; to gaze at it for long is to be caught in uneasy admiration. It seems... pure, in a way that defies explanation, a cold and perfect execution of power, and it tempts the thoughts down passages better not walked in the waking world.
    Some time passes before any of them can shake off their unwilling fascination enough to realize that the thing is not finished; there are a number of holes in the central mass that look as if they must yet have their pieces fitted in. The curse is not quite complete; more would have been doomed to die in this buried room had any number of events above chanced differently.
    Ibn Fadil looks both appalled and deeply troubled; half-unconsciously he murmurs a childhood prayer for protection from evil.
    And Emmett grasps--perhaps Gond touches him then--that it is not an actual, working clockwork. It is too simple, too small for what must be a bewildering number of mechanisms required to make each of those legs move. It is a sort of model, what might be built if one had seen a painting of a thing, but not the schematic. Terrible though it appears, it is not real.
    Not yet.
    The half man recovers his sangfroid, wandering around the thing, peering into the holes. "Guys, I hate to make this worse, but this Gond-damned thing is just an imitation. They're basing this model on one they've seen."
    A shudder thrills Lynden's back at the suggestion that there may be another such device in or around Myrr and in working order at that. He would give much to be able to locate and deactivate the original. Torture was to be abhorred.
    The stair turns out to lead up to a locked trapdoor. Ibn Fadil, knowing by now what to expect, locates and disables the trap very carefully. He is about to start on picking the lock when he looks back at Emmett, and after a moment of consideration, steps back from the door.
    It gives way under the half man's forged and tempered disgust, shattering as he straightens his arms and back after bracing himself on the stairs. If there were anyone outside to see it, the splintered wood and flying dust would look very much like Emmett had just torn his way free from an entombment through sheer bloody-minded power.
    It lets up into a basement, which in turns lets into a building near the harbor; this ground floor appears to be used entirely for storage, and there is no one about.
    * * *
    Emmett threads his way through the crowd to meet Inez, whom he gives a deep embrace, grateful that she is all right and just a trifle shaky after his encounter with the machine. She seems surprised to see him in such a mood, and gives him a somewhat worried look.
    Seeing that the others were settling in for the questioning, Emmett uses some of his newly minted status to lay claim to a horse and do a quick run out to the ship.
    There are a half dozen very edgy town guardsmen there. "Rolf's relief came out and found him," one of them tells Emmett, indicating the dead man at the base of the ladder. "And what he found up there...." He looks a bit shaken. "Well. Better show you, I suppose."
    It's cold up in the belly of the ship; the stove has been put out. Even so, the smell of death is everywhere. As they move slowly through the _Distraction_, Emmett counts twelve corpses, all of them armed like the men who attacked ibn Fadil and Nyala the other night, many of them bearing Hiro's distinctive signature, but others different and hence very puzzling wounds -- but no sign of the enigmatic swordsman himself, until they reach the bridge.
    There is a neatly rolled and tied paper on the helm. _Forgive my haste in this writing, and also in my departure, if you can, after so long a time as comrades. An attempt this evening was made to seize the ship, which failed._ Emmett can just hear Hiro's deadpan tone. _I now find myself called away by an urgent errand, about which I think it better to say too little than too much. If the fates will it, we shall meet again. If not, do not be troubled on my account, for hope has returned when it least was looked for. May your endeavors be blessed by your gods._
    Outside the ship once again, Emmett casts about a final time, ranging in a wide circle for additional signs. Some distance from the ship he comes upon Hiro's trail unspoiled by the boots of the guardsmen. Beside it is another set of tracks--the small, booted feet he has seen once before. The trails are headed along the coast when they vanish.
    Ibn Fadil offers to help with a search of Cenon's home and any other properties, pointing out the way the underground hideout's entrances were supplied with poisoned traps and that he knows how to deal with such things.
    Lynden agrees with the suggestion and offers to accompany him in case of further confrontation, confident that Lord Tesfaye would appreciate him being there to witness any discoveries made.
    The two of them and several guards descend on the large stone dwelling, near enough the guild hall that the smell of smoke is heavy. There is no one there except for some servants; the artificer's wife died many years ago (under apparently natural circumstances, but now people are wondering), he appears to have sacrificed his eldest son, and his other children have homes elsewhere.
    To do a thorough search takes them the remainder of the night; the guards are jumping at every shadow and afraid to touch almost anything after the warning about poisoned traps, so ibn Fadil and Lynden end up doing most of the work. The man had a small workshop on the upper floor, in addition to the one at the guildhall, and it's there (where the servants are forbidden to enter, let alone to clean) that the searchers strike paydirt. Ibn Fadil notices some marks on the floor indicating that one of the heavy benches has been moved back and forth. Behind it is a concealed cabinet in the wall. After long study while the others shuffle impatiently, he identifies the catch that opens it, and how the trap works--probably. No clear means of disarming it, and it might actually be in another room of the house, given the man's skills.
    "May I borrow that for a moment?" he inquires of a guard, who passes over his staff. "I'd get back behind the door." When they have done so, from one side and at an angle, he presses the end of the staff against the catch; two darts thump into the wall on the far side of the room, where they would have pierced anyone foolish enough to be standing in front of the thing while they tried to open it. The trap sprung, he opens the cabinet to find a square brass box inside. It's full of papers.
    Emmett stumps back in just as ibn Fadil is leaving. The two men share a brief explanatory glance in passing, making it clear that there'll be a general sharing of information once time is no longer such an obstacle to good intelligence.
    Around then, Yestin regains consciousness, and adds what he can to the story of the eventful night.
    Yestin ruefully rubs the top of his head, in the vain hope of suppressing the heavy throb that threatens to explode his brain. He blinks several times as though awakening from a heavy, dream-filled slumber, and knuckles his eyes to rub the sleep from them.
    The Giff discovers himself not alone and stares in surprise at the many anxious faces crowding the chamber around him, nervous to discover more than a few pairs of eyes turned to stare his way. _How did I get here? The last I remember..._
    Yestin sits bolt upright. He gives his eyes another turn around the room, searching for one face in particular among the throng. His round, pointed ears begin to twitch anxiously when the face he seeks fails to materialize.
    Turning his gaze towards Emmett, he asks tremulously, "Where is Captain Valarin?"
    "Hey big guy. I was just about to ask you the same thing." The half man grabs a stool and perches on it near the first officer's enormous purple head. "Do you want to hear ours first, or are you up to talking?"
    Giffish facial expressions are difficult for non-Giff to read, but the troubled thoughts that lay pooling behind Yestin's dark eyes are easy for his long-time crewmates to detect. The Giff stands erect, as though presenting an official military report, but his massive shoulders slump despite his efforts.
    "Captain Valarin was feeling better and suggested we take a turn in the fresh air. As we were passing an alley near the inn where we are quartered, we heard sounds of a struggle and saw a group of men apparently abducting a young woman. Valarin charged after them." Yestin doesn't need to elaborate on Val's motives to his crewmates. "He was outnumbered and getting the worse of it when I caught up. I fought his attackers, but then I felt a sudden blow and blackness fell. That was the last I saw of the captain."
    Yestin's grayish-purple skin deepens nearly to black and his ears twitch furiously, signs of embarrassment and shame over his failure to protect his captain. His eyes dart momentarily to Emmett for moral support, and, perhaps surprisingly, to one or two of the guards whom he has befriended during his days on Rigol.
    "I did not recognize any of the men. They seemed the sort of dockside trash found in almost any groundling port town. The woman I recognized as Tesfaye's, er..." Yestin's blush deepens. "As Tesfaye's."
    The room is full of surprised exclamations and a lot of very suspicious glances at Dorek, who glares back at them.
    "They won't get far," Feliks predicts grimly. "We'll find them."
    "Yes," is all Tesfaye says, clearly so far gone in fury that it's probably for the best that he can't actually stand up right now. Emmett is reminded of the "thorough" sort of justice these people practice.
    Later, when ibn Fadil and Lynden show up with the box, more is made clear. The papers appear to consist of coded exchanges between Nikodem and Cyryl, His Lordship's second son. Although it will take some time to decipher the entirety, given what they already know it seems plain that the idea was to kill Bogumil and kidnap Mela, with Dorek in position to take the blame, leaving Cyryl as heir. Apparently Nikodem believed him more fit for the coming tribulations than his older brother.
    Unfortunately, there is no indication of where they planned to take her or what was to be done with her.
    The castle is in a state of near-chaos at this point, as people try to simultaneously organize a search for the missing woman and captain, figure out how to uncover the rest of the cult members, and prepare a war party to attack Cyryl's manor.
    With the dawn, a ship arrives, blissfully innocent of all of this. It is the expected reply from the capital, with the summons of the High King to the outworlders.
    But first, they have a chance to discuss among themselves what they're going to do. And that evening, after everyone has had a chance to recover a little bit, His Lordship will want to see them.
    

| Top |