Conspiracy (56 page)

Amaranthe unfastened a safety latch and
tugged at the unlocking mechanism. It took several tries before she
could muscle it loose. A smack sounded, as suction was broken, and
the door dropped outward. It happened so abruptly that she might
have followed, if not for Basilard. He grabbed her by the back of
the shirt and kept her from falling.

Wind tore at her hair and clothing. The
black craft loomed closer than ever, blocking out everything but a
sliver of the ground where a swath of flames burned, devouring
trees and undergrowth. The stink of smoke filled the cargo hold,
and Amaranthe stumbled back, coughing.

Basilard waved at Books for one of the
blasting sticks and pulled the slingshot back until his arms
quivered. He nodded for Books to light the stick and place it in
the center of the pouch. Books lit the fuse, then fiddled with the
placement of the stick for so long that Amaranthe feared it would
go off in the cargo hold. Basilard swatted his hand away and
released the slingshot in time.

The blasting stick sailed through the
doorway. With the black craft so close, it would have been hard to
miss, but Amaranthe held her breath, not knowing what to
expect.

The explosive disappeared in a starburst
that filled their view and made her squint. She lifted an arm to
protect her eyes from the brilliance.

“
Get another one ready,”
Amaranthe said before the smoke cleared. She doubted one would be
sufficient.

The wind shredded the black-powder cloud.
Nothing had changed. The great craft was still closing, with no
hint of damage marring its inky hull.

“
Did we hit it?” Books
asked. “The stick must have exploded too early, before it struck
the craft. We’ll try to time it better with this one.”

Amaranthe nodded, waving at them to ready
another attack, but a heavy feeling plagued her gut. The blasting
sticks might not be enough to damage the other craft.

* * * * *

Though Akstyr kept his eyes closed, he could
feel Sicarius watching him with the intensity of a starving wolf. A
bead of sweat dribbled down the side of Akstyr’s face and dripped
from his chin. He chastised himself for noticing. Concentrate, he
told himself. He had to block out Sicarius, and block out the
awareness of his body if he hoped to find the artifact.

It had left its spot beneath the emperor’s
knot of scar tissue to burrow deeper. As Books had said, it was
designed to hook to the jugular to deliver its poison if tampered
with, so that must be where it had gone.

Akstyr imagined his senses were blood cells,
able to navigate through the body with ease. Slowly, his
consciousness drew closer to that main artery. Something alien
brushed against his awareness. The device. Yes, it was there,
attached to the jugular.

As he had started to do before, Akstyr
coiled his mental energy, preparing to hurl an attack. He dared not
loiter, because that thing must have already sensed a threat. One
chance. That was all he had.

“
It’s on his jugular,”
Akstyr whispered without opening his eyes. “Right here.” He pointed
at the emperor’s neck, directly over the artifact, and was careful
not to touch the skin. “You’ll have to slice deep to get it out,
but not too deep.”

“
Understood,” Sicarius
said.

Sespian heard, and he had to be terrified,
but he kept his breathing calm. He continued to lie still, though
his knuckles tightened where his hands gripped each other across
his belly. A detached part of Akstyr observed that it was
interesting that he could sense all of that with his eyes closed,
but he forced the thought away, turning his concentration again
toward the artifact.

He summoned all of his mental might into a
tiny ball, targeted the artifact, and unleashed the coiled energy
in a single blow.

At that moment, the dirigible shuddered, as
if they’d hit something—or something had hit them. The disturbance
affected Akstyr’s aim, and his mental blow glanced off the artifact
instead of hitting it squarely. He kept his concentration and eased
in closer, prepared to hurl another attack, if he had time. The
artifact was frozen though. His blow must have been enough to stun
it.

“
Now,” Akstyr said, his
eyes flying open. “Get it out.”

Sicarius gave him a hard, appraising look—it
only lasted a half a second—but his hesitation filled Akstyr with
alarm.

“
I swear,” he blurted.
“It’s stunned, but only for a...”

Sicarius’s hands blurred into motion.

Sespian stiffened, and tried to pull away,
but Sicarius held him down with one hand while the other...

Akstyr started. It had happened so quickly,
he had missed Sicarius switching tools. He already held the
artifact aloft, captured in a pair of tweezers. Sicarius dropped
the small sphere to the floor and smashed it beneath his boot.

The emperor sat up, a hand clasped to his
throat, his eyes wider than gold coins. Blood spilled between his
fingers, but not a lot. Sicarius hadn’t nicked the artery.

“
He got it.” Akstyr handed
the emperor a thick cloth from the table. “You’re not bleeding a
lot, but you can use that to stop it.”

A resounding thud sounded,
and another quake coursed through the dirigible. What was
Maldynado
doing
?
Mowing down trees?

Sespian took the cloth with
his free hand and pressed it to his throat. Blood dripped from the
palm of his other hand, joining spatters on his shirt. “What do you
people consider a
lot
?” he asked, though there was relief in his eyes.

“
Depends on who you ask,”
Akstyr said. “Basilard and Sicarius probably wouldn’t blink unless
they had a leg fall off. Maldynado’s been known to complain about
splinters.”

“
I will suture your wound.”
Sicarius picked up the needle and spindle of thread Amaranthe had
laid on the table earlier.

The relief faded from the emperor’s face. He
watched Sicarius thread the needle with concern. Akstyr wouldn’t be
thrilled about Sicarius being his surgeon either.

“
I can fix him up with the
Science,” Akstyr said. “The way I did with Am’ranthe that time.
It’ll probably leave less of a scar than the needle and
thread.”

Sicarius looked Akstyr in the eyes, and
Akstyr forced himself to hold the stare. He had a feeling there was
some measuring going on in there, measuring that went beyond
whether or not he was qualified to mend a cut.

When Sicarius gave one firm nod, Akstyr knew
it applied to more than the doctoring. Akstyr had passed the test,
and Sicarius was giving him another chance to do right by the
group. Akstyr nodded back, the same single nod.

“
You do not mind?” Sicarius
asked the emperor.

“
Oh, no.” Sespian blew out
a slow thankful breath. “That’s fine by me.”

“
Lie back down, Sire,”
Akstyr said, remembering to add the honorific this time. “Here,
I’ll hold the cloth there while I work.”

He thought of telling
Sicarius that he could leave to help the others—at the
least,
someone
needed driving assistance—but the way Sicarius folded his
arms over his chest said he wasn’t going to leave the emperor
alone. He might be willing to forget Akstyr’s past transgressions,
as he called them, but that didn’t mean he trusted Akstyr. Oh,
well. It was a start.

* * * * *

“
It’s getting closer,”
Books said. “They’re bound to figure out how to aim that beam
sooner or later.”

He was stating the obvious, and Amaranthe
bit her lip to keep from snapping at him. She pointed toward the
horizontal bank of windows—at least they looked like windows—near
the top of the dome. The feature was the only thing on the craft
that wasn’t made from the black material. “Aim for that, Basilard.
Maybe it’s something like glass and isn’t as—”

A fit of coughing overtook her. Smoke filled
the air outside and had invaded the cargo bay. Half of the wetlands
were burning below. As Amaranthe struggled to still her coughs, a
lake came into view. She recognized it from maps and knew it was
only a few miles outside of Sunders City. If her team could avoid
that beam for another fifteen or twenty minutes, they’d be flying
over farmhouses and orchards on the outskirts of town. Surely that
craft would leave them alone then.

Basilard must have gotten the gist of her
request for he sank low in an attempt to angle the next blasting
stick higher. He’d timed a couple of the previous ones to explode
right as they struck the hull, but they hadn’t damaged the craft at
all. Not a single scratch marred that impervious black alloy.

Books lit the blasting stick, and it sailed
away.

Amaranthe crept as close to the open door as
she dared. She craned her neck, watching the spitting fuse twirl
end over end as the stick sailed toward the glass-like material.
The explosive burst with a bang and a spewing of black smoke. She
was so focused on it that she didn’t see the white beam leave the
ground right away. Its angle changed, switching from vertical to
diagonal. It slashed through empty sky, then pierced the hull of
the dirigible.

Light exploded to Amaranthe’s right. The
ship bucked like a mule, its back end jerking up so quickly that
the men flew across the cargo hold and were smashed against an
interior wall. She caught the slingshot and kept from flying
through the air after them. Something clunked against the wall near
the men. The box of blasting sticks.

Amaranthe cursed, but there was nothing she
could do. She dangled by her hands, legs scrabbling to find a hold
on a floor tilted forty-five degrees.

“
Maldynado,” Amaranthe
yelled, “you need to land us now!”

“
We’re above the lake!”
came his shout from the navigation cabin.

White light flashed outside the doorway.
Before Amaranthe could groan a, “Now what?” another explosion
rocked the dirigible.

Thick, black smoke roiled past the cargo
door. The floor started to level, and she tried to get her feet
under her.

An ear-splitting snap echoed from outside.
The floor fell away again, this time in the opposite direction.
Amaranthe’s legs swung about, a hundred-and-eighty degrees, and she
scarcely managed to maintain her hold on the slingshot. Before the
flexible band had swung inward, but now gravity sent it—and
Amaranthe with it—toward the cargo door.

She flung a leg out, trying to hook it on
the jamb, but there was too much momentum carrying her downward.
The floor was still tilted at an impossible angle, and she only
managed to bump the edge of the door as she swung outside.

Amaranthe hung on with fingers like vise
clamps, but soon she dangled fifty feet above murky water, the
slingshot the only thing keeping her attached to the dirigible.
Smoke clogged the air, and she struggled to see what had happened.
The back half of the craft dangled, severed from the balloon.

“
Amaranthe!” Books called.
“Hold on!”

She looked up, hoping help was coming. But a
boom erupted from within the cargo bay, and smoke gushed out the
doorway.

“
Books?” Amaranthe called.
“What was that?”

Shards of wood and the battered remains of
the blasting-stick box spilled out of the doorway. The sticks
followed, falling like deadly rain drops.

Amaranthe let go of the slingshot.

Better to fall into the water than be pelted
with explosives. That’s what she told herself anyway, though her
heart tried to leap out of her chest as she plummeted more than
forty feet. What if the murky water was only a half a meter deep?
What if she landed on a log? Or an alligator? Or what if that white
beam cut her in half before she hit the water?

A boom thundered a few feet above her. The
shock wave slammed into Amaranthe, hurling her sideways and down.
She hit the surface at an angle, and, instead of dropping in feet
first, landed on her back. The water slapped her as hard as if
she’d struck cement. She submerged a few feet and hit the bottom.
The dense mud was more giving than solid earth, and nothing snapped
or cracked in her body, though landing on her back had stunned her
so badly, she couldn’t move her limbs. For a terror-filled moment,
she feared she’d broken her spine and would be paralyzed for
life.

Something brushed her hand, and her fingers
twitched away from it. Thank her sturdy ancestors, she could move.
More objects brushed against her. Blasting sticks. The water ought
to render them useless, so she didn’t worry about them. Finding the
surface was more important.

Forcing still-stunned limbs into movement,
Amaranthe managed to push off the mud. Her head broke the surface,
and she swiped water out of her eyes. Smoke tunneled down her
throat, and she coughed up water with air. At least her lungs were
working. Her ears rang, and she could barely hear herself coughing.
Something warm—blood?—trickled out of one ear. She ignored it and
searched the sky for the dirigible, for her men.

Smoke shrouded the wetlands like a fog, but
she spotted orange above a cluster of trees on the horizon. Flames
bathed the half-deflated balloon, and its body hung in branches,
dented and dangling.

No sooner had Amaranthe located the
dirigible than it dropped out of sight behind the trees. She didn’t
see it crash, but she heard it. Though it must have gone down a
mile from her, the sounds of snapping wood and groaning metal
traveled clearly across the wetlands. A flock of ducks paddling
near the shoreline hurled themselves aloft amidst much quaking.