Deadly Games (29 page)

“Impressive,” Books said.

“What is?”

“That you used the word pedantic.
Correctly.”

“You’re always going to be a stodgy
professor, aren’t you?”

Books’s eyes crinkled. “It does seem
likely.”

Amaranthe held up a hand to silence them.
“Akstyr, are you suggesting the perpetrators have a
hideout...
in
the lake?”

“I’m not wearing a diving suit again,” Books
said.

Amaranthe watched Akstyr, hoping he would
suggest another explanation, but he merely shrugged.

“Is it even possible to have a hideout on the
bottom of the lake?” she asked Books.

“If we were talking about something made
entirely with imperial technology, I’d say no, but with magic...”
He spread his arms. “I have no idea.”

“All right,” Amaranthe said. “This is all
speculation at this point. We need to find out if there’s anything
to it or not.”

“So...we need diving suits?” Books
grimaced.

“Unless Akstyr knows how to make one of those
bubbles to steer us around the lake depths.”

“Nope,” Akstyr said. “I’d sure like to learn
from someone who could though.”

“You’re not thinking of apprenticing yourself
to the enemy, are you?” Amaranthe teased, though it was not as much
of a joke as she pretended. She watched him carefully for a
reaction.

“Naw,” he said. “Not unless... Do you think
she’d have me?”

“She seems the type who would prefer a man
who could grow a real mustache,” Maldynado said.

“I can!” Akstyr probed his upper lip. “It’s
getting there.”

Amaranthe nodded to Books. “I know you’re not
excited by the idea, but I think we’re going to need those diving
suits. Can you do some research and see where we might get
some?”

Books sighed. “Why do I have the feeling
nothing good is going to come of this?”

“Because you lack optimism?” Amaranthe
suggested.

“That must be it.”

Footsteps rang on the other side of
Basilard’s door. He leaped out of his cot. The hours he had spent
searching, pressing, pulling, and pounding his fists had not
revealed any weaknesses in his prison.

The door opened, revealing the burly young
soldier who had held a pistol on him earlier. An equally young and
burly man accompanied him, though this one had a scraggily rat tail
hanging down his back and wore no military clothing. Both pointed
pistols at Basilard.

“Move,” Rat Tail said.

Basilard measured both men as he squeezed
past them. The tight doorway and corridor forced closeness, and he
thought about trying for their weapons, but they watched him
carefully. And what if he did overpower them? He had no idea where
he was or how to get back to the city. Hoping he would not regret
it later, he decided to wait for a better opportunity to
escape.

The men pushed him through a corridor so
narrow his shoulders brushed the walls, and he had to duck
frequently for pipes that crossed overhead. He waited for a
porthole that would provide a glimpse of their location, but
nothing broke the monotony of the dark gray bulkheads. The glowing
orbs provided the only lighting, and he had no idea if it was night
or day outside. Oddly, though engines pulsed somewhere in the
structure, he had no sense of forward movement nor the rise and
fall of waves.

Clanks, clacks, and a rhythmic sucking sound
came from ahead. The engine room? The corridor ended at a chamber,
but a transparent barrier filled with glowing yellow tendrils that
writhed about like snakes blocked the entrance. Basilard blinked,
questioning his eyesight.

“Stop,” one of the guards said before
Basilard reached the entrance.

The man pushed him aside and stepped forward.
He leaned into a bronze box mounted on the wall at head level, and
he pressed his face close to a concave indention. A blue pulse of
light washed over his face.

The shimmering tendrils winked out, and the
guard stepped through. The second guard shoved Basilard from
behind.

They entered a chamber cluttered with pipes,
equipment, moving machinery, and tanks of yellowish blue liquid.
Flesh-colored blobs floated in some. Machinery and pipes filled the
center of the space and one could go left or right down confining
aisles jammed with consoles and narrow tables, or perhaps those
were beds. Some lay horizontal and others were tilted upward to
stand against the wall. Trays near them held scalpels, saws, and
scissors.

Basilard swallowed. He did not know what this
place was, but it was nothing so innocuous as an engine room.

The men prodded him toward the far aisle. He
rounded a tight corner and stopped. Two red-haired women leaned
together, heads almost bumping. One wore her hair in a long braid
and the other had hers pinned up in a wild swirl of hair. They
spoke in soft tones. Litya and the sister.... What was the name?
Metya.

One of Basilard’s guards cleared his throat.
The women turned in unison. They were twins, identical except for a
few freckles and an old half-moon scar on one’s temple. He picked
Litya out as the woman without the marking.

As one, their eyes shifted up and down,
studying Basilard. Under other circumstances, he might have flushed
with embarrassment—he
was
naked, after all—but there was no
sexual interest in their perusal. He struggled to keep from
squirming under their scrutiny.

The aisle behind them held more beds,
occupied by nude men and women. Most were propped upright against
the wall, the people held tight by leather straps, but the bed
behind the twins lay in the horizontal position with a muscular man
on it, not strapped like the others but chained, the links so
secure that he could do no more than lift a hand or twitch a toe,
though he did neither while Basilard watched. Cords snaked from a
machine to coin-sized, spider-like devices with the tips of the
“legs” digging beneath the skin on the man’s naked chest.
Translucent tubing ran from a pulsing green globe, and a viscous
fluid of the same color flowed through it and into a needle in his
arm. Not just his arm. His vein.

“Put him on that table.” Metya pointed to an
empty one behind her. “I have the
pok-tah
solution ready.”
She stepped to the side, so the guards could shove Basilard past.
“Once we hook him up, he won’t—”

Basilard sucked in a startled breath when the
view opened up and he saw the face of the man on the table. He
should have guessed. Sicarius.

His eyes were open. That surprised Basilard
again—he would have assumed, even with the restraints, someone
would keep Sicarius unconscious if they dared to detain him. When
those dark eyes swiveled toward Basilard, though, they were glazed
and dull. No sign of recognition glinted in them.

The guard shoved Basilard, trying to force
him around the end of Sicarius’s table and toward the vertical one
a few feet away. He balked and groped for a way to communicate.

“Wait.” Litya pointed the pen at Basilard.
“Do you know him?” She shifted the pen and tapped Sicarius on a
bare toe.

Basilard choked on her audacity. He didn’t
think even
Amaranthe
would poke Sicarius’s toe, and he
tolerated more from her than anyone else.

“Well?” Litya demanded. She grabbed a
clipboard from a wall where it dangled on a string, a pen
attached.

Basilard did not know whether admitting he
knew Sicarius would help him or hinder him. He just knew he would
have to make his escape attempt soon—if these people strapped him
down and drugged him, he might never wake again.

Basilard lifted his fingers and signed,
Can you understand me?

“Why does it matter?” Metya asked. She stood
near the second bed, tapping buttons beneath a dark orb identical
to the green one at Sicarius’s station.

“Aside from this one—” Litya waved her pen at
Basilard again, “—the assassin is the only one here whose lineage
we haven’t been able to discover. He proved resistant to the truth
elixir, and he’s the one I’m most curious about.”

“It’s not crucial,” Metya said.

“No, but the information could prove useful
for our studies. He’s already what our clients wish us to
create.”

Basilard lifted his eyebrows. Assassins?
Gifted warriors? Superior athletes?

Metya sniffed. “I’m sure we can make
improvements.”

Litya gave her sister a slit-eyed glare and
shuffled a blank page to the top of her clipboard. She held it out
to Basilard. “Can you write? I can read Turgonian, Kendorian,
Kyattese, and Nurian.”

Which of those was her native tongue? He took
the implements and wrote,
I know him. What’s in it for me if I
can extract the information?

When he handed Litya the notepad, the other
sister came over as well. Not a foot from Basilard, they bent their
heads together to read his message.

If he could grab one, spin her about, and use
her as a shield against the guards’ firearms, maybe he could barter
for his freedom.

Before the thought had finished, a cool
pistol muzzle pressed against the back of his neck. He sighed. He
would have to find a better moment, one when the guards were less
attentive.

“Help us,” Litya said, “and we’ll let you
walk out of here when we’re done collecting specimens.”

Purpose of specimens?

“Nothing you’d understand,” Metya said.

“Stay focused,” Litya said. “Are you willing
to cooperate for your life, or not?”

All these other people will die?

Metya shrugged.

“Not by our hands,” Litya said, “but our
colleagues have more invasive experiments. Some of them prefer
fresh cadavers. However, you were something of a bonus. We’d
already collected our handful of chosen men and women.” She laid a
hand on Sicarius’s bare leg and smiled.

Basilard shifted, uncomfortable with the
entire situation and not certain how to read her. He had never had
much of a knack for perceiving when women were telling the truth,
but going along would prolong his stay amongst the upright and
un-drugged.

What about him?
Basilard nodded to
Sicarius, then wrote,
Will you let him go as well?

He wasn’t sure why he asked it. If Sicarius
met his death here, at the hands of these scientists, that would be
a way to see the Mangdorian royal family avenged. It seemed
cowardly to shy away from doing it himself, but if God had other
plans, why should Basilard interrupt?

“Well...” Litya started.

“No,” Metya said, throwing her sister a sharp
look. “Why do you think we were trying to get him to show up at the
stadium where we could snatch him? This is a long-term project, and
the bounty on his head will fund the latter half of our work. It’s
far more than we’re getting from our clients.”

“
I
wanted him for research,” Litya
muttered.

The speculative gaze she cast Sicarius made
Basilard wonder if this one had more than science in mind.

He wrote,
Research for what?

“The main goal of our research is to—”

“Litya,” a male voice said from the corridor.
Footsteps thudded, and Taloncrest appeared at the head of the
aisle. “I know you’re a newcomer to our land, but here in Turgonia
we don’t explain ourselves to our captives.”

The guards shuffled aside to let Taloncrest
through, and Basilard took note of the pistols no longer pointed
directly at him. Unfortunately, people fenced him in on either
side, so his odds of getting by were poor. Besides, where would he
go? He had yet to glimpse a door to an upper deck on this ship or
even a porthole so he could see what lay outside. Footsteps sounded
as other people walked in and out of the laboratory, and he
suspected there were far more people on board than he had seen.

“We’re not interested in adopting Turgonian
tactics,” Metya said. “Your people aren’t known for their
negotiating skills or anything else that doesn’t involve
bloodshed.”

Taloncrest leaned against one of the tanks,
apparently intending to watch. Though he carried no weapons beyond
a utility knife at his belt, he towered over the women. Sensing
they would be less forthcoming with Taloncrest there, Basilard
pointed at Sicarius and indicated he was ready to start.

Can you lessen his stupor? He doesn’t
recognize me. I won’t be able to get answers from him.

“I wouldn’t,” Taloncrest said, the first to
respond to Basilard’s scribbles. “You girls aren’t from the empire,
so you may not be that familiar with his reputation, but he’s
dangerous. That you got him at all was...”

“Impressive?” Litya suggested.

“Lucky,” Taloncrest said.

Metya snorted. “We are highly trained
practitioners. Setting a trap for a mundane warrior is easier than
a first-year telekinesis test.”

“Turgonian men are horrible at acknowledging
that women can be skilled,” Litya said, sharing a look with her
sister. “One wonders why the intelligent women living here don’t
leave.”

“Perhaps,” Taloncrest said, “you’d have them
go to the Kyatt Islands where they’d be kicked out if their
research methodologies did not fit in with the humanitarian values
of your Polytechnic?”

“We’ll handle this,” Litya said. “Go back to
your research on your side of the lab, the lab that
our
gold
funded and that we are graciously letting you work in.”

Taloncrest stepped past Basilard to thrust a
finger at the woman’s nose. “Don’t order me around. You
presume—”

Metya closed her eyes briefly, then flicked
her own finger. Taloncrest lurched to the side, his head cracking
against the back of the machine he’d been leaning against. In the
process, he bumped against Basilard.

Basilard feigned a stumble and used the
movement to palm Taloncrest’s knife. The ex-officer glared at the
women and did not seem to notice. He clenched his fists and stood
to his full height. The veins in his neck strained beneath the
skin.