Pacific Fire (25 page)

Without lifting his eyes from his book, the guard turned and headed back down the floor.

“Leech victims?” Sam whispered.

“Maybe,” Em said. “But what for?”

“A project like this needs a lot of osteomancy. They're probably wringing it out of any low-level osteomancer or user they can find.”

“Suppose so. Anyway, when he comes back this way I'm going to shoot him, unless you have a better idea.”

“Too noisy,” he said. “This'll have to be Em-quality fisticuffs.”

“I knew it,” she said with a sigh.

At the end of the chamber, the guard turned and started his next circuit.

Em untied one of her boots and removed the lace. She made eye contact with Sam and pulled the lace taut between her hands. Sam understood.

The meretseger-impregnated soles of her boots made no noise as she rushed the guard in several long strides. With her bootlace, she reached over his head, put a knee in his back, and pulled down on the lace, garroting him.

Sam was right behind her. Kneeling, he grabbed the guard's face with both hands and exhaled gorgon essence. Like the sentries above, the guard stiffened and turned gray. When Em loosened the garrote, he fell, and the sound of his cheek striking the floor was stone grating against stone.

“We can stash him in one of the pens if there's an empty one,” Em said.

“Why does it have to be empty?”

“If it's not, we have to deal with prisoners trying to get out.”

“So?”

“Effecting a prison break's not part of our mission objective.”

“Then let's change our mission objective. I say we bust them out.”

Em arched an eyebrow. “And do what with them?”

“They can climb out the way we came in. The gunners we left up top aren't in any condition to do anything about it, so maybe they'll make it to a beach.”

“And then what?”

“And then maybe they'll steal a boat. Whatever, at least they're spared the glue factory.”

“Not part of the mission,” Em whispered.

“We were being held with people like this just yesterday. And a breakout could be a useful distraction.” Daniel used to tell him about the use of deliberately introducing chaos: fire alarms, actual fires, massive explosions.

Sam could tell he was winning the argument. Missions of liberation were kind of Em's thing, after all.

“Fine,” she hissed.

Sam went to one of the pens. He didn't recognize anyone from the leech boat in the desert, but these people would have fit in with them: Some had fading scales or molting feathers. One woman had scimitar incisors curving over her bottom lip. He tried to ignore the faces staring at him through the diamond-shaped gaps in the fence and concentrated on the gate. It was held shut with a heavy chain and padlock.

“The guard's got the keys somewhere on him,” said a boy in the pen Sam was examining. He couldn't have been older than ten.

Em fished a key ring from the guard's pocket, but didn't toss it over when Sam held out his hand.

“If we let you out, it's going to cost you,” she said to the boy. “You tell us everywhere you've been in this complex, everything you've seen, everything a guard's ever said to you. Everything.”

“It's a trick,” said a man from an adjacent pen. Flaking horns grew from his temples. “Don't tell them anything.”

“This room's the only one we've seen,” the boy said, ignoring him. “We were all picked up by leeches and they sold us to some people in San Pedro and they put us on a boat, but we were under the deck so we couldn't tell where we were going, and then we were inside and they locked us up here. They took my mom and my sister yesterday.”

The woman with the scimitar teeth nodded. “They move a few of us out every day. At different times, not on a schedule.”

“Where do they go?”

The woman didn't answer, but she didn't need to. They were being processed for their magic. Whatever was left didn't matter.

The horned man turned to the others in his pen. “We don't know what happens to the ones they take away. Maybe they're still alive. If we try to escape they'll just capture us again. They'll kill us. Maybe they'll do worse.”

“There is no worse,” the boy said flatly.

Em unlocked the gate and swung it open, then moved to the next. She let out the woman with the scimitar teeth.

“There're three gunners up top,” Sam said. “I magicked them pretty good. But the rest of the island could be crawling with sentries, and there'll be even more once they find out you've escaped. But if you can make it to Avalon, maybe you can steal a boat—”

“And in the meantime, we're a diversion so you and your partner can do whatever you came to do?” the woman said.

“Yes.”

“And what is that, exactly?”

“I'd rather not say. But we're going to hit the people running this place as hard as we can.”

The woman took up the guard's pistol and cleaver-club. “If we run into anyone, we'll hit them even harder.”

Sam turned to gather up Em and go but froze when he saw the man with the horns at the room's entrance. His hand was on the pull-switch of an alarm box.

“Don't—” Sam said. But it was too late. The man stared him straight in the eyes and pulled the alarm.

“You know that thing Daniel told you about jobs going to shit?” Emma said.

“Let's have a nice conversation about that after we've hauled ass out of here.”

They ran from the chamber, into unknown parts of the facility, while the alarm bells clanged. They did not lollygag.

 

SIXTEEN

Moth wiped sea spray from the binoculars and handed them back to Daniel. From their inflatable commando boat a hundred yards offshore, Daniel watched the opening to the sea cave. They were supposed to make their entry here, but it didn't look promising.

In addition to a sandbagged machine-gun nest, an operator sat behind an array of eight war tubas—giant horns with a complex of tubes that fed into the operator's ears.

“Can he hear us?” Moth mouthed.

Daniel shook his head. “They're aimed at the sky, for airplanes.”

“We can take these guys,” Moth said, pleading. He was more of a smasher than a sneaker, and too much hunkering made him cranky. “We rush them with overwhelming force, fight our way in, make it to the dragon, you drop in your little jar of poison, we bash our way out, and then it's nothing but the finest meats and cheeses for the conquering vandals.”

“You're an adorable ape. But I want to find Sam and the Emma. That means we sneak.”

“They must have found a way in,” Moth offered, as if this were a sound argument for storming the castle.

“Okay. So we find another way.”

“Can you sint holo both of us?”

“If I extend confusion miasma to you, you'll just get confused. I could maybe walk you across a room, but over rocks and a minefield…?”

Moth massaged his temples, as if he had a headache. “All the things I could have done with my life. I could have been a bank robber. I could have been a jewel thief.”

“Come on, it'll be just like old times.”

“Terrific. I so miss the hellish disasters of old times. Okay, how about this: I storm the beach and let them shoot me. And they're like, ‘Oh, holy shit, we just shot that guy!' and they come down to look. Then, when my guts grow back, I'm all, ‘Ha-ha, suckers!' and I bash their heads together, and we're in!”

“Will you please take this seriously?” Daniel said.

“I'm willing to get my guts shot out and you don't think I'm taking this seriously?”

“How long does it take your guts to grow back?”

“Okay, about a day. You're a jerk. So, what's your bright idea?”

Daniel landed the boat on a narrow apron of gravel, about 250 yards north of the machine-gun nest. From there, they picked their way over sea-carved sandstone, trying not to slip on green slime coating the rocks. Where passage was impossible, they waded into the water.

The current alternately tried to suck them out to sea and smash them against the rocks. Moth had an easier time with his strength and bulk, and his firm grip saved Daniel from becoming driftwood a few times. But when they neared the sea cave, it was up to Daniel to get them both inside, alive.

The machine-gun nest was tucked in front of the cave opening, on a ledge six feet above a rocky shelf. It was a problem, but not insurmountable. Daniel was more concerned about the mines he smelled.

“We could go in bold,” he suggested, “like those Norwegians who took the Nazi hydroplant in the Global War.”

“I don't know that one,” Moth said. “Where the fuck's Norwegia?”

“God, Moth, read a book some time.”

“Crumville ain't got a good library.” He sighed. “I guess we go beetle, then.”

Daniel unhappily agreed. He unsheathed his knife, covering the blade with his hand to prevent its gleaming black iridescence from drawing attention. The blade was impregnated with shinjin-mushi beetle shell, an abrasive essence good for tunneling. To conceal the noise of digging, he timed his attacks to coincide with the incoming surf. His blade dug into the cliff face, chipping away at soil and scrub root and sandstone as if it were rock candy. But even with his digger's best friend, this was going to take a long time.

He and Moth took turns chipping away until Daniel's shoulder started screaming from fatigue and Moth took over completely, hacking away like a miner with gold fever. He muttered “Fuck you, cliff,” between blows, and by the time he broke through he was almost frothing at the mouth.

“You scare me sometimes,” Daniel said.

“That's just because you don't know what hard work looks like.”

“It looks awful.”

“Don't be an aristocrat, Daniel. It's ugly.”

They climbed through the chasm Moth had made with Daniel's weak help and emerged inside a latrine. The tile walls echoed with the sharp ringing of alarm bells. Hiding behind a doorway, they watched a patrol of guards jog past.

Some carried firearms, others cleaver-clubs or lances tipped with serrated teeth. All wore black shirts and trousers, tucked into boots. Otis's guys usually wore suits, so Daniel assumed Sister Tooth was providing security.

Daniel disliked the prospect of knocking out guards just to steal their uniforms. For one thing, it left you with the burden of finding an out-of-the-way place to stash their unconscious deadweight, and unconscious deadweight was
heavy
. Even more burdensome, you didn't really want to permanently injure or kill anyone.

Unless you did.

In which case, everything became much simpler.

A pair of guards met each other in the hallway. The smaller of the two was about Daniel's size. The larger one was bigger than Daniel, but still four inches shorter and fifty pounds lighter than Moth.

“What's going on. Break-in?” asked the bigger guy.

“More like a break-out. The livestock we were holding upstairs got out of their cells.”

“I didn't even know we were holding livestock. For leeching, I guess?”

The smaller guy shrugged. “Not my department. They had Beaumont watching them.”

“Beau-moron? No wonder they got out. So what's the big deal? There's no way they're getting off the island.”

“Bells ring, we scramble; that's all I know. Get your team and head upstairs.”

“Aye aye,” the bigger guy said, long-suffering.

Daniel exhaled with relief. They weren't looking for him and Moth. And, better yet, they weren't looking for Sam. The “livestock” were just a convenient distraction. Or, if Sam had actually paid attention when Daniel lectured him on heistcraft, maybe a deliberate distraction.

Moth pinched the cloth of his shirt and gave Daniel a questioning look.

Daniel nodded.

They stepped out into the hallway. There was less than a second of surprised hesitation from the guards, which was enough for Moth to drop both of them in one-armed chokeholds.

Minutes later, Daniel was comfortable in a slightly-too-roomy uniform, and Moth was grinding his teeth, trying to button his trousers.

Several pairs of footsteps sounded down the corridor, coming closer.

“Kill them?” Moth mouthed.

“Hold off,” Daniel mouthed back.

He knelt and covered the stripped and unconscious guards' faces with his hands and thought back to the first time he'd tasted sint holo bone. It had been prepared by his father, scalding hot from the kettle, refined well enough to render Daniel invisible and enable him to walk right past the men who were busy cutting his father to pieces on the living room floor.

He used remnants of his father's gift that still remained in his cells, pushing it through the palms of his hands.

“Hurry,” Moth whispered.

Five guards arrived, halting before Daniel and Moth. A tall woman with gray hair stepped forward.

“What's this?” she said, looking from the guards sprawled on the floor to Daniel and Moth.

“Two of the livestock,” reported Daniel crisply. “Looks like they were trying to exit through the cave.”

She looked them over, her eyes slightly glazed. “Are they still alive?”

“Yeah. We managed to take them down with nonlethal force. I don't think they're feeding them much upstairs. Should we take them back?”

The woman sluggishly brought her attention back to Daniel and Moth. She peered into their faces, regaining her focus.

“Good work,” the woman said. “Take them to Storage B, and then join up with your team. We've got to get the rest of these cows rounded up. Sister Tooth doesn't want any delays.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

She led her team off, but stopped and turned around several yards down the corridor.

“You,” she said, aiming a sharp finger at Moth.