Far Called Trilogy 01 - In Dark Service (64 page)

‘You know who you were just talking to?’ asked Duncan.

‘Hard not to,’ said Hesia. ‘I flew her to Baron Machus’s district the day she arrived here.’ The pilot tapped her flight overalls. ‘She saw me drop my brooch on the field. Clasp’s broken. You’ve heard how the woman got her ticket out of the sky mines?’

‘Yes. And it might have been
me
the guards executed,’ said Duncan, ‘if I had joined the escape attempt.’

‘Best decision you ever made,’ said Hesia, pushing her long hair back over her shoulder. ‘I’ve flown supply runs across the dead zone. Unless you’re on one of our ships, you’re never getting out, not unless you count being made a corpse as escaping.’

‘You live long enough and everyone betrays you in the end,’ said Duncan, sadly.

Hesia put her hand on Duncan’s chest and landed a quick, passionate kiss against his lips. Duncan glanced around to see if anyone had spotted them. ‘Damn, but is Doctor Horvak testing a special scent in my quarters that I haven’t been told about?’

The pilot smiled, coyly. ‘Just thought I’d taste some of that celestial-caste honey while it’s still on offer. See what all the fuss is about.’

His face flushed red. ‘Is there anyone in the castle who doesn’t know?’

‘Don’t worry, Weylander, it’ll be me that flies you to the slave market after that scent’s novelty has worn off. And it always does.’ She prodded him playfully in the shoulder. ‘Count on it.’

‘You’ve got the rest of the evening to get over me. Cassandra’s flight has been cancelled. Paetro says it’s time to give the helo a full maintenance check.’

‘Lucky me. Stepping out with a grease can and a set of spanners.’

Duncan nodded goodbye to the pilot and walked away.

‘Don’t be too judgemental about your country girl,’ Hesia called after him. ‘You’ve served in the sky mines, so you know how it goes out there.’

Duncan turned back. ‘Would you trust Adella on
your
crew, if she’d been given a position inside the castle?’

‘Well, I believe Machus deserves her more than we do. They suit each other, don’t you think?’

Duncan couldn’t disagree. Helos still touched down beyond the hangar’s blast doors, the gust from their rotors helping to cool the heat on his cheeks. He left for the doctor’s laboratory before someone assigned him a party of visiting nobles to nanny. Lady Cassandra was already at study by the time he arrived inside the lab, and, as he had predicted, in a churlish mood having being made to vacate the gathering just as the major players replaced the minor nobles around the table.

‘What is the point,’ she complained, ‘of being taught politics and oratory, if when I have an opportunity to see the heads of great houses deploy such skills at first hand, I am sent away like a scullery maid to my books?’

‘I doubt if there are many scullery maids with access to a library as fine as mine,’ said the doctor, sounding a little peeved. ‘And who is to say that there may not be the chronicles of greater politicians than our current crop of leaders buried among your tomes?’

‘My mother,’ said Cassandra, tartly. ‘What do you think, Paetro? Would I not be better in the real world, seated downstairs around the table with my equals?’

The bulky guard winked at Duncan. ‘I think the real world prefers to share their strategies in private. Master patience, little Highness. Your place at the table will come with age.’

‘I may choke on book dust first,’ she muttered.

‘Please,’ said the doctor. ‘You’ve arrived late for your studies. I hadn’t expected you to be allowed to attend the start of the gathering. Time to apply yourself now.’

Cassandra was due a three-hour session of tuition, and Duncan knew that they had reached the halfway point when the food cart arrived from the kitchens. It was fancier than the normal fare delivered during study sessions. Hot fresh crab taken from the bay outside, stuffed with a multi-coloured assortment of cold fish – considered a delicacy in the empire, if a little too slippery for his tastes. Duncan suspected the kitchens were overworked with extra guests and not­ables cramming the castle. The princess and her staff had been served the overflow from some head of house’s idea of a meal; dished up on engraved gold platters, and with portions that could have fed an entire barracks in the sky mines. Duncan tried to ignore the mixture of guilt and worry over what his sister would be enduring right now. He found it hard to remember how hard and endless working days had been on the station. But he would never forget waking up every bit as hungry as he had gone to bed.
Please let Willow be safe. Please let someone back there be looking out for her.
But that should have been his job.

Paetro interrupted his thoughts. ‘Come on, lad. Everyone here is hungry. First mouthful… the young Highness needs to check you don’t turn blue and keel over on us.’

Duncan did as he was bid, and when he didn’t expire the others in the room began tucking in. The two lab assistants helping the doctor fell on the meal as though they hadn’t eaten for a week. Duncan wished he had their appetite. He had been off his food of late.

Doctor Horvak leant in towards Duncan, speaking low enough that the others couldn’t hear. ‘Paetro and Lady Cassandra have never been slaves, but I know that look. The ones you had to leave behind?’

‘Yes,’ said Duncan.

‘At least I can comfort myself that my wife and daughters are safe as citizens of my country, even if it is firmly under the Vandian yoke,’ said the doctor. ‘Yours are slaves in the sky mines?’

‘My sister, Willow.’

‘Women are far more resilient than we are, Duncan of Weyland,’ said Horvak. ‘She will survive, I am sure of it. Come with me, young fellow. Honest work is always a cure for melancholy.’

Duncan didn’t say anything. Doctor Horvak might be a serf here, too, but at least the scientist had a country and a family and memories of them worth keeping. What did Duncan have from his old life? It had all been a lie… everything so obvious in hindsight. How the workers at home must have laughed at him behind his back. Adella’s feelings solely towards the Duncan’s title, heir of Hawkland Park. An inheritance he had treated as valueless; wealth and power as empty as his father’s dreams for endless expansion across the north. And when Duncan’s name was rendered worthless, Adella had abandoned him for Carter’s dubious protection, before exchanging the pastor’s son for the infinitely more comfortable and reliable security of Baron Machus’s bed. Maybe it would be better if Willow
was
more like Adella. At least then he could have more faith in his sister’s survival. Duncan followed sadly after the scientist as they left the others to finish eating. The doctor unlocked a glass door at the far end of the chamber. It led into a short corridor and a second glass door peering into an area that resembled a greenhouse, rows of plants growing tall under bright lights, steam misting the glass. They had come to the back of the castle, windows overlooking towering cliffs and the dark sea beyond, spray thrown up against the hold’s high concrete walls. When the doctor closed the door to the hot room there was a strange hissing noise under Duncan’s feet.

‘The air smells odd in here?’ said Duncan.

‘It’s pressurised,’ said the doctor. ‘In a similar manner to an aircraft’s interior as it travels through thin atmosphere.’

Duncan gazed along the rows of greenery – planting trays drip fed by rubber hoses and the smell of wet vegetation strong in the room. Behind each tray stood a set of glass canisters, coiled tubes feeding multi-coloured chemicals into the soil. ‘Why would you look to grow plants on a merchant carrier? You can send transport planes down to the ground to trade for food more cheaply.’

Doctor Horvak tapped the side of his nose. ‘Ah, but who knows how far we may need to travel one day?’ He pulled a cork clipboard off the wall and passed it to Duncan; a pencil attached to its edge with a length of string. ‘Mark the sizes on the right-hand column as I call them out.’

Duncan complied, the doctor walking the line of vegetation, muttering as he tapped the glass canisters, placing a measuring tape by the side of each plant – everything from cucumbers to cabbages growing in the soil – and then announced heights for Duncan to scribble down. They’d undertaken the exercise for ten minutes when Duncan heard what sounded like a distant thud, panes of glass in the wall rattling and dislodging flurries of dust above his head.

‘What was that?’

‘I’m really not quite sure,’ said the doctor, sounding perplexed.

Behind them the door was thrown open by Paetro, a hiss of escaping air – the outer portal hadn’t been shut properly. ‘My experiments!’ called Horvak.

‘Hang your experiments, Doctor,’ said Paetro. ‘That was an explosion.’

Duncan dropped the clipboard. ‘A bomb? The meeting—!’ If Helrena’s enemies had succeeded in infiltrating the gathering, they’d be able to wipe out the house’s leadership and its allies in a single stroke.

But Paetro wasn’t listening to Duncan – he stared in shock at what lay beyond window. ‘Get inside, now!’

They were barely inside the corridor, the burly guard half-dragging, half-pushing Duncan and the doctor forward when a shattering explosion echoed behind them, splinters of glass jouncing down the corridor. Paetro had his pistol out, slamming the inner door shut. ‘Glider chutes,’ snarled Paetro. ‘Carrying at least a company of commandos in on us! There’s an assault ship out at sea.’

Sirens began to wail in the passage outside. Lady Cassandra jumped to her feet. Paetro dipped down into his boot and pulled out a small concealed pistol, tossing it across the room to her. Duncan felt a flash of annoyance that Paetro hadn’t thrown the weapon to him. Wasn’t he meant to be protecting the young noblewoman too? Was he that useless?

‘Why aren’t our air defences shooting them down?’ demanded Cassandra. ‘I can’t hear our guns?’

‘As an educated guess, little Highness, the explosion we heard will have something to do with that.’ One of the doctor’s assistants panicked and scurried towards the door, but Paetro grabbed him by the collar, hauling him away from the exit, shoving the man back towards the plate of food he had abandoned. ‘Nobody goes out there. Some of our so-called allies at the meeting have betrayed us. That’s the only way our castle’s defences are silent.’

‘We need to head down to the shelters,’ cried the lab assistant. ‘We’ll be better protected underground.’

‘Please be quiet, Tarius, I need to think,’ said the doctor, a lot more calmly than Duncan felt. The scientist moved behind the bench where his super-conductors floated in an icy mist. ‘Yes, yes, Paetro is correct. If hostile forces have infiltrated the castle, the shelter’s stairwell will be the perfect position to ambush the house’s leadership. We cannot safely retreat below ground.’

Duncan’s mind raced. If Circae was behind the attack, then she might very well want to seize custody of Cassandra. If another enemy was behind the assault, then the house’s heir would be at the very top of the list of high-level targets to assassinate. Either way, they were in deep trouble. ‘Do you keep any weapons here?’

‘I have the blueprints for a few,’ said Doctor Horvak. ‘But they’re not of a scale to prototype inside my laboratory; and if we were to use them, we wouldn’t have much of a castle left to take refuge in.’

‘Lend me your back, lad,’ said Paetro, picking up one end of the heavy testing bench, still covered in plates and half-eaten food. Duncan took the other side, lifted, and they dragged it towards the entrance. At least the door was constructed of heavy oak plated with steel. Locked and with the makeshift barricade behind it, they had bought themselves a little time. But time for what?

‘My mother…’ moaned Cassandra.

‘There are dozens of guards at the gathering,’ said Duncan, trying to comfort her. ‘Well armed and ready for trouble.’

‘Our best soldiers,’ added Paetro. ‘Picked more than a few of them myself. They’ll stand, they’ll stand.’ It sounded to Duncan as though he was trying to convince himself.

‘What if the sound we heard was a bomb exploding in the meeting hall?’ fretted Cassandra.

Duncan’s heart went out to her. She had already lost her father to the imperium’s internecine feuding. So young, she didn’t deserve any of this.
Do you? Do any of us here?
He remembered how inconsolable he had been after watching his mother buried in Northhaven. Months of terrible darkness, hours the same as weeks. All happiness drained from his life, and Willow’s, too. What if that explosion
had
been the sound of Helrena being murdered? Would Cassandra be expected to assume the suicidally dangerous mantle of head of household? How long would the poor girl last in that cursed role? Duncan vowed he would help Cassandra survive, however difficult the task might be.

‘Don’t focus on what you can’t do anything about,’ barked Paetro at the young noblewoman. ‘Your pistol, check it, check the clip. What if I’ve passed it to you empty? Remember your training. You too, lad, search the science centre with the others – scalpels, acid, anything that you can poke, burn or pierce with, my braves.’

One of the assistants looked up, distracted by Paetro’s orders. He was standing bent by the greenhouse corridor door. Duncan could hear an odd whipping noise beyond. ‘There’s something—’ The man’s words ended with the thud of bullets removing the top part of his skull. His body tumbled in a blast of shattered glass; the plant lab’s door’s remains scattered as blood-spattered shards across the stone floor. The shots sounded wrong to Duncan, deadened, spitting too silently to have come from any firearm.

Paetro was by the side of the wall in a second, crouching low and firing down the plant lab corridor. ‘They’re sliding down the battlements on rappel lines!’ The bodyguard ducked back as more silenced weapons rattled down the passage, bullets cracking against their room’s far wall. Paetro’s pistol answered, sounding as a gun should, its barrel bucking after each thunderous eruption. Duncan sprinted to Cassandra, taking cover behind one of the doctor’s experiments. She was saving her ammunition for when the attackers entered the laboratory. Yair Horvak’s remaining assistant wrestled the doctor behind the furthest bench, trying to keep him safe.