The Kraken King (67 page)
But he had to accept that answer. It was Meeng’s way. The man wouldn’t make a promise now if he wasn’t certain he could honor it.
Zenobia joined Ariq as he stood at the rail, watching the cargo lift carry the three men to the ground. Children played below, laughing and daring each other to race near the platform as it lowered.
By the time the lift began rising again, her brother had taken up the rail at her left side, with Mara, Cooper, and Captain Corsair nearby.
His wife’s voice was quiet as she asked, “Do you think they will come?”
“I don’t know.” The admission was difficult, as if his throat and chest were caught in a vise. “I think he’ll try to persuade them.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“Then I fight,” he said bleakly. “I fight to the end.”
Her brother pushed away from the rail, shaking his head. “This war machine—you can’t give it up? We can find you another. We can have it brought to you.”
Just as any former smuggler would say. But Archimedes Fox didn’t know the Skybreaker wasn’t just any war machine. If it was, Ariq could find another, too.
“Not like this one,” Ariq said. “Ghazan Bator would use it to destroy the Khagan, but would also smash anyone caught in his path.”
Mara glanced over the rail at the playing children and her lips tightened, as if she’d imagined the young of the Golden Empire caught in that path. “You fear the Nipponese empress would, too?”
“Not that she would use it against the Khagan,” he said. “She would be less likely to use it at all. But I’ve seen how quickly she will strike against a threat, even if the evidence turns against it. Should I leave my town with no defense against that?” Ariq couldn’t. “If I give up the Skybreaker, it is a choice between allowing the slaughter of the people I spent years fighting for, or to leave defenseless the people I fight for now. Which would you choose?”
Her face troubled, Mara shook her head. The silence from the others said they saw no good alternative, either.
And so this was what it felt like to be trapped. To have no options. To have worry and helpless frustration crawling through his chest like a cold, barbed worm.
“What next?” Captain Corsair said. “Do we wait here?”
Ariq couldn’t. “We fly to my town. If the Wajarri decide to come, they will come—but if Ghazan Bator still occupies the town, even their presence might not be enough. The general cares nothing for the treaties between them and the Nipponese.”
“Will the admiral?” Zenobia asked. “Tatsukawa is already going against the empress’s wishes by pursuing this route. Will he care about the treaties?”
“He would. He wants to destroy the Khagan so that the Golden Empire won’t be a threat to Nippon. Starting a war with the Wajarri or any of the other tribes would create a new threat. I think he’ll try to avoid that.”
“To Krakentown then,” Captain Corsair said. “Quietly?”
“Yes,” Ariq said. The general had to know he was coming, but Ariq didn’t have to announce his arrival.
“Are you taking back your town?”
“I am. But I would like to hire your crew to help me.”
“Then we’ll go wherever you toss your gold.” The captain glanced up at the sky. The sun hung low on the western horizon. “Travel will be a little over three hours, and we’ll arrive under clear skies and a bright moon. Our balloon will be spotted on our approach.”
“We have the autogyros we designed to infiltrate New Eden,” Archimedes said. “They can carry eight of us and are quiet.”
Us.
Zenobia’s brother was already including himself in this mission. All right. Ariq had worked with the man before. He would again.
Zenobia’s brother was already including himself in this mission. All right. Ariq had worked with the man before. He would again.
“We can fly the machines in from the southeast,” Ariq said. “There’s a chamber underground. We’ll use it as a tunnel to access the town. It opens up behind my residence.”
The captain nodded. “You know the town and the general best. Can you sketch out a plan of attack?”
He’d already formed one. “Yes.”
“Then we’ll take this into my cabin and talk it out while we fly.” Moving with purpose, the captain started across the decks. A moment later the quartermaster was shouting orders to the crew. The engines fired.
Her face pale, Zenobia waited as the others filed toward the companionway, briefly leaving her alone with Ariq at the rail. She’d caught her lower lip between her teeth and Ariq knew what she was stopping herself from asking. “You want to go,” he said softly.
She sighed. “I know I can’t. They already have your brother. I won’t give them another weapon against you, so that you have to give up the Skybreaker to save us.”
If Ghazan Bator used Taka to force Ariq into giving up the machine, making that trade wouldn’t be saving his brother. It would destroy him, instead. But Ariq didn’t say so. No matter what happened in his town, he didn’t want his wife caught in the middle.
And she wouldn’t be unprotected here. “Mara and Cooper will be staying with you.”
Her sharp features instantly set into stubborn lines. “No. They can help you—”
“They could. But I hired this this crew because you once told me that Captain Corsair could help me, too. Now will you tell me this crew isn’t good enough?”
“They are. But—”
“Even your brother? You called him an idiot.”
She seemed to choke. Startled by the question, but laughing now. “As long as he doesn’t wear his brightest yellow breeches and give away your position.”
“Yes,” Ariq agreed. Though his own white blousy shirt would compete for the attention.
With a heavy sigh, her laughter faded away. “Please be careful.”
That he could do. Catching her hand, he kissed her ink-stained fingers and swore, “I will.”
XXXI
Ariq had never liked autogyros—they were too unstable and easy to tip—yet these maneuvered well. They could fly near enough to the ground to avoid attracting attention, and the quiet whirring of the blades overhead wouldn’t be noticed by anyone aboard the Nipponese airships.
They approached the southeast entrance of the Skybreaker’s chamber and he breathed deep of the cool air as soon as they sat the machines onto the ground. His town had its own smell, of ocean and baked earth and roasting kraken. Ariq hadn’t realized how much he’d missed it until he’d filled his lungs with the scent again.
The entrance was little more than a hole in the ground marked by a tree and concealed by dirt. He uncovered the door and dialed the lock combination. On bare feet, he began to descend the ladder. The water was up to his shins when he reached the bottom; Taka hadn’t been able to run the pumps with the general in town. It didn’t matter. If Ariq was forced to use the Skybreaker, soon this chamber would be completely full of water.
It was an endless trek past the machine, all but invisible in the darkness overhead. Captain Corsair and her crew splashed behind him, led by the pinpoint lantern he carried for them to follow. After a few minutes, she caught up to him.
“I thought you were exaggerating the size,” she said quietly.
“No.” And he hadn’t realized she could see in the dark.
“It could easily destroy a city.”
It could destroy much more than that. But Ariq only said, “Yes.”
Water splashed around their legs. The sound echoed from the sides of the chamber and the machine.
“I was raised in Constantinople,” she said, and the words were heavy with meaning, like a dagger dripping with blood. “Do you know what your uncle did there?”
Ariq did. Twenty years before, a claimant to the Khagan’s throne had been marching his way east toward the royal city, and Temür Agha—the Khagan’s most feared general—had destroyed Constantinople to stop him.
“I know,” he said softly.
“He would have used a machine like this if he’d had it. Now he marches east with his rebel army. Do you intend to let him use it now?”
“He wouldn’t use it now,” Ariq said. “He won’t even ask for it.”
And if his uncle ever did, all of Ariq’s hope for the rebellion would vanish.
“You’re so certain?”
“Yes.” He stopped and faced her. She was hardly more than a tall shadow beside him. “You must hate him, yet you helped him escape Rabat when it fell.”
She laughed a little. A moment later the flare of a spark lighter revealed the hardness of her expression. She lit a cigarillo before extinguishing the flame, and the glowing tip was all that he saw of her through the dark. “While I was there—just before the uprising—I spent every moment planning to kill him. I would have only needed to get past Nasrin long enough to twist his neck.”
She might have been able to. Ariq didn’t think many others would have stood a chance against his uncle’s guard. This woman might have had a slim one.
“Why didn’t you?”
She started forward again. “He freed everyone in Rabat years before that. All of those people were under the tower’s control, yet even though he had been appointed governor by the Khagan, he freed them—and when they no longer accepted his governorship or Horde rule, he didn’t crush them. He could have.”
Easily. “That cannot atone for Constantinople.”
“No. Nothing ever could.” Her voice was bleak. “Not even killing him would. But now I wonder how
you
support him. You don’t want Ghazan Bator to have this machine because he would destroy innocents in his path. Yet your uncle already has.”
you
support him. You don’t want Ghazan Bator to have this machine because he would destroy innocents in his path. Yet your uncle already has.”
“That is the difference. My uncle has known that weight, and he once told my mother that he would never bear it again, no matter what result might come of it.” And through his mother’s teachings, Ariq had learned that such a weight was never worth carrying. “My uncle is not an innocent man. If someone killed him for what he’d done in Constantinople, if you had killed him, it would have been a just death. But of all men who might end the Khagan’s tyranny, he is the only one I trust not to trample his own people. And he is the only one I trust not to seek the throne for himself, or to control the next person who sits upon it.”
By the bobbing of her cigarillo, he thought she nodded. “When I saw the machine,” she said, “I feared I might have to slit your throat. I’m glad I won’t have to.”
So was Ariq. But he understood. The Skybreaker was too much power in the hands of anyone willing to use it—and right now, the machine was in Ariq’s hands. “Why did you fear?”
“Zenobia would have hated me for it.”
“You hesitated for her?”
“Yes. And because of the crossbow bolts you took to save her.” The tip of her cigarillo glowed brighter as she inhaled. “Her trust is rarely given, so you must have earned it. So I will trust that you won’t use this machine to create another Constantinople.”
“I won’t,” Ariq said, even as a dreadful ache screwed deep into his chest. He knew exactly how precious Zenobia’s trust was. Now he might lose it because he’d been an instrument of her terror. In the quarantine tower, he’d done to her what he’d sworn never to do with the machine: justify the route he’d taken with the result he hoped to achieve.
But he couldn’t think of that now. He had to push the fear of losing her away, or risk losing everything—not just his wife, but the lives of everyone who depended on him.
Yet the fear still lingered, a dark ache beneath the calm when he reached the end of the chamber and began the long climb up the ladder. Once inside the pump house, Captain Corsair paused at the door, listening for movement outside. Unlike Mara, she didn’t have a listening device. She didn’t need one.
A moment later, she gave the signal and they slipped out into the dark behind his home.
Zenobia had been right about Captain Corsair’s crew. They were well-trained and efficient. Ariq couldn’t fault their silence or their swiftness as they fanned out, scouting for guards.
Captain Corsair and Ariq waited at the back wall of his exterior garden. Quietly, she said, “Something in the town is burning. It smells like dead flesh.”
He knew the scent. “A beached kraken.”
Roasting until the shell could be picked clean. Captain Corsair nodded, then glanced to the side as the first of her crew returned to report on the guards’ positions.
Only a half dozen men within his home, with another four at the front gate. Two were stationed outside his brother’s quarters, but the others on rotation within the residence. Still easy enough to ambush. Few of the rooms were connected, allowing them to slip between the buildings and attack all at once.
There might be other men within the living quarters—including Ghazan Bator. Mara had said the general had taken up residence in Ariq’s home. But the night was still young, and the number of guards suggested that the general was elsewhere. He would have wanted more protection while sleeping.
“Quickly and silently,” Captain Corsair told her crew when they’d assembled again. “After taking out the guards, check each chamber. No surprises. We don’t want to alert the guards stationed at the front gates.”
Ariq did. He wanted them to come running in so that he could smash them, too. But he settled for climbing over the garden wall and making his way around behind Taka’s quarters, his bare feet silent on the ground.
Two guards flanked the entrance, alert but with their weapons sheathed. They might have had a chance if those blades had already been drawn.
The signal sounded—a soft trill that couldn’t have belonged to any bird in this part of the world, but these guards didn’t know that. That ignorance was their death.
Ariq slipped from the shadows and snapped the first guard’s neck. The second guard died while pivoting to see what the movement had been. Around the courtyard, the thud of flesh and crack of bone joined the gurgle of blood as throats were sliced and the guards were silenced.
Taka’s doors opened. His brother’s face didn’t show any surprise when he spotted Ariq standing before him. Taka’s gaze took in the scene behind him before returning to Ariq.
“That was no night bird,” he said softly.
Ariq grinned. “No.”
His brother stepped into the courtyard—moving easily, Ariq was relieved to see. Whatever had happened here, and however Ghazan Bator had planned to use Taka against him, torture hadn’t been part of it . . . yet.
“I hope these guards weren’t rebels that you trained,” Taka said. “I would doubt your leadership, brother.”
So would Ariq. “If I’d trained them, they would already be living in my town. Where is Ghazan Bator?”
“In the soup house. He’s taken to eating there with a full complement of men. Sometimes he invites one or two of your soldiers to dine with him.”
Hoping to work on them, most likely—so that they would either give up the location of the machine or expose any brewing resistance.
“Then I’ll be his guest tonight,” Ariq said.
But not in a blousy white shirt and bare feet. Quickly he entered his own quarters and changed his clothing. Taka and most of Captain Corsair’s crew had gone when he emerged—already leaving to quietly spread the word of his return. The captain and Archimedes Fox waited for him in the courtyard, their dark clothes splattered with blood.
Zenobia’s brother looked him over. “What do you expect now?”
“To have a crowd behind me by the time I reach the soup house,” he said. “I don’t believe that his men will attempt to stop me.”
“If they do?”
“I will stop,” Ariq said simply. Better that than have Ghazan Bator’s soldiers using force against his people. “They will take me to him, anyway.”
“Where do you want us?” Captain Corsair asked.
“Behind me.” Just in case events didn’t proceed as Ariq thought they would. “I’ll need you to help protect anyone who joins us.”
But it wasn’t necessary. The general’s men must have been told to stand down if Ariq arrived, because although far more than three people gathered behind him, Ghazan Bator’s rebels didn’t attempt to stop them. They should have. Because with every step Ariq took, every relieved face that he saw, his purpose and resolve only grew. Ghazan Bator had brought into his town the same quiet fear and oppression that so many of Ariq’s people had tried to escape. He would
not
fail them.
not
fail them.
Word of his return had spread through the town. Others townspeople already waited at the soup house gate, along with Taka and Ariq’s soldiers—all of them quiet while the guards watched uneasily. They’d have known what to do against a mob, Ariq thought. This silent resistance unnerved them.
Ariq only took Taka and Tsetseg with him up the path to the soup house entrance. He would have liked to have them all beside him, but better that the others remain behind to reassure the crowd.
More of Ghazan Bator’s soldiers sat at every table, but although food waited in their bowls, none of them were eating. They’d known he was coming.
All rebels, but Ariq didn’t know any of them. Most were young. Many were frightened. He didn’t know if Ghazan Bator had persuaded them that this course—first hiring marauders to fire on airships, then occupying a town—would benefit the rebellion or if they simply followed orders. He hoped it was the first. He knew how persuasive the general could be, and how he fed the fires of rebellion within his men until it burned away every other care.
But care could be taught; courage could not. And as much as they respected him, Ariq’s own soldiers would have rebelled against
him
if he’d sacrificed innocents in the name of the rebellion.
him
if he’d sacrificed innocents in the name of the rebellion.
The general sat at Ariq’s table, in Ariq’s spot, with Vasili beside him. The blond soldier didn’t hesitate before rising to his feet and making room for Ariq.
Ariq took his place. Ghazan Bator sipped his tea, as if this were all exactly what he’d expected.
Perhaps it was. The general glanced across the courtyard toward the soup house entrance, where Captain Corsair and Archimedes Fox stood quietly, watching. “Did you find mercenaries in the dens?”
“No. Only friends,” Ariq said. “But your presence here makes this town no different from the dens. You are the strongest; you have more men and a fleet at your side. So you have taken control.”
Like the twins and almost every other den lord would have.
The general seemed amused by the comparison. “Some would look to your strength and disagree that I am the stronger.”
“A man is only as strong as the weapons he possesses.” And Ariq had an iron heart. A steel will. A mind like a blade and words like arrows. Even a war machine was not more powerful than those.
But Ghazan Bator had forgotten that. “The rebellion could be stronger,” the general said. “The Skybreaker could change everything.”
Ariq shook his head. “It would be exactly the same. The Khagan doesn’t care who he destroys with his power; if you use the Skybreaker, nothing would change. Power would be in the hands of someone willing to destroy anyone who stands in the way of victory.”
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