The Prophecy Con (Rogues of the Republic) (22 page)

Hessler turned away, then looked back at Kail. He wanted to say something, but when he looked at Tern, her face pale, nothing came. Kail looked at him hard again, then nodded, and Hessler turned away.

He leaned over the angled side of the rooftop and looked down at the window on the wall below. He’d studied the plan. He knew the privacy suite’s location, even when trying to get to it from here, instead of the original plan, in which they were to have cleverly walked past the guards on the inside of the car and gone straight to the elf’s room.

The window was crystal. Hessler leaned down, pointed at the window, and twitched his fingers as though twisting a phantom doorknob.

Nobody appreciated purely audible illusions the way they did the visual tricks. Humans were a visual species, and visual illusions had the most impact on the conscious mind, even though any good illusionist knew that the subtle cues of scent and sound made all the difference when it came to engaging the target on a gut level.

It didn’t hurt that sound waves at the right frequency would shatter crystal.

Hessler twisted his fingers, and the train vibrated around him. A moment later, the window exploded.

He stepped off the edge of the roof, slid down the side of the wall, caught the window with his heels, and stepped inside.

The elf’s private suite was furnished richly, with a small sitting table, a fold-out bed with burgundy satin sheets, and a chest of drawers made of polished wood instead of stone. It was lit by candles instead of crystals set into the ceiling. Hessler actually saw no crystals anywhere in the room, now that he looked.

What he
did
see was the elven manuscript, lying on the table on a velvet cloth next to some bottles of expensive elven wine and a thin-bladed dueling dagger that would probably have impressed Loch or Kail.

Hessler picked the book up and flipped it open. This time, it was most definitely elven text and not a dirty poem meant to insult someone who grabbed it by mistake.

Hessler looked back out the open window, where the wind still whistled, though it seemed little more than a whisper after the roaring atop the roof.

He heard footsteps out in the hall, loud and getting louder.

He had time for just one spell, and it needed to be a damn sight better than just an illusion.

A moment later, an elven warrior rushed in. Hessler got his hands up, and then a fist was coming at him, and then everything went black.

Twelve

L
OCH STUMBLED BACK
, caught one of the ruby-wood blades with a back-blade parry that made it dance along the rings, slashed while still moving back, and took a hit to the arm that caught muscle anyway.

She was bleeding from the wineglass-puncture in the leg, the thin slash on the back, and half a dozen wounds that ranged from minor scrapes to the new ugly gash on her right bicep she’d just gotten, which was going to keep bleeding until she got weak and then got killed.

Her trick with the fire had kept her from getting flanked for a few seconds, but then it had died out, and the fight had turned into three against one. Irrethelathlialann was damned good on his own. Accompanied by two more elven swordsmen, there was no way Loch could take them in anything remotely approaching a fair fight.

As such, Loch avoided anything remotely approaching a fair fight.

So when the train rocked with a sudden jolting impact that sent everyone stumbling, Loch made use of it. Even as she caught her balance, she lunged forward with an ugly chop that sank cleanly through the fancy leaf-armor one of the swordsmen wore, crunching into his collarbone with a noise that meant he’d be spending some time with the medics learning slowly how to lift anything heavier than a teacup.

As he went down, coughing and gasping, Loch threw her sword at the other swordsman.

He parried it brilliantly, his thin green face twisting into contempt at her desperation even as he slid to the side—and into the point of his friend’s rapier, which Loch had grabbed with her other hand.

Swordsman number two went down with a blade in his stomach, and Loch dove for her blade. She wrapped her hand around it and spun just in time for a sick stabbing pain to lance through her side.

“Those were two of the best swordsmen in the Elflands,” Irrethelathlialann said, stepping in to finish his thrust.

“Nobody’s dead yet.” Loch stepped
in
, grunting through the pain, and swung her blade, which the elf blocked, thus leaving himself open for her forehead to smash into his face. As he fell back, the blade slid slowly free from her side.

She saw that Irrethelathlialann was down on the ground, groaning, and only then did she let herself sink back against the wall and put a hand to her bleeding side.

It hadn’t hit anything vital. Assuming Kail still remembered his field stitches, she’d be fine.

It still hurt, though.

“You’re good.” The elf’s voice cut into the slow blackness that had been dancing around the edge of Loch’s mind, and she looked up to see him looking at her from the ground. “How unfortunate that you’re on their side.”

“Your men will live.” Loch pushed herself upright, shoulders back, legs locked to cover the weakness. “And the only side I’m on is not going to war.”

“Of course.” Irrethelathlialann rolled over onto his back, groaning, and Loch used her own blade to edge his rapier out of reach. He held a hand up to his face, running thin fingers along the crystals that glowed in his cheeks. “Look at this, Isafesira de Lochenville. How do you think these got here?”

“You got drunk and wanted to show your parents how grown up you were?” Loch’s side wasn’t getting any better, but she was getting used to the pain.

“We’re born with them, you Urujar ass.” The elf glared at her, fingers spinning the ring on one hand in agitation. “And when I hyperanalyze sensory stimuli ignoring emotional and societal expectations . . .” He broke off, shook his head. “Did you think that just
happened
?”

“I try not to judge other folks,” Loch said.

The elf smiled. “You really ought to start. We were
bred
, Loch.” At her stare, his smile faded. “Like the dwarves were bred to mine and craft and fight, we were bred to work the crystals that kept the world running, to be so
perfectly
attuned to that magical energy that the mere
presence
of active crystals would shift our minds into more efficient patterns.”

“What are you—” Loch started, and then the fire-daemon roared in from the far end of the car.

It flowed in like a wave of molten metal, the door collapsing under the weight and heat, and as it rolled into the car, it rose to a shape that was slowly approaching humanoid. Its arms were lined with stone, curled into rocky claws that glittered in the glowing lamplight.

“It’s broken its binding.” Irrethelathlialann slid back to his feet, shaky but stronger than he’d been acting.

“Like the ones you sent after us at the museum?”

“What? That wasn’t me.” The elf looked over at her. “I just rigged up the trigger crystals so you’d trip the alarms.”

The fire-daemon roared, jagged stone teeth bubbling to the top of its face like dead rats in a barrel.

“Wonderful,” Loch muttered.

“Problem with daemons?” Irrethelathlialann asked.

“I watched one eat someone once.”

“That must have been traumatic.”

“She was trying to kill me at the time. I got over it.” Loch kicked a ruby-wood rapier in his direction. “Truce?”

He caught the blade on his foot, flipped it up into his hand, and smiled. “Why not?”

The fire-daemon saw them and pounded the floor. As its arm came back up, the pattern of the floor tiles was visible on the rocky armor that now covered its limb, as though the tiles from the floor had slid from the ground up onto it. “RRRRRRRRLLLLLLLLLLL,” the daemon said, and lunged.

It was far faster than something that big should have been. Loch dove to one side, ignoring the searing pain in her side as she did, and the fire-daemon’s rocky claws smashed through the bar, sending what few bottles were left crashing to the ground.

Loch slashed out with a backhanded blow that cut a chunk of stone from one arm, revealing molten magma still flowing underneath the armor. Behind the beast, Irrethelathlialann thrust his blade into daemon’s back, then pulled his rapier out with a look of disgust. It was glowing cherry-red with heat.

“I don’t suppose you have any abjuration charms on hand?” he asked as Loch sidestepped another blow and took a chunk out of the daemon’s leg with a chop to the knee.

“No. Are we hurting it?”

“RRRLLLLLLLKKKK.” The fire-daemon stepped forward, trying to catch Loch in a bear hug this time, and she stabbed it in the face and rolled away. She came back to her knees instead of her feet, panting at the pain that wracked her whole body at this point.

The daemon had glassy crystal eyes now, and where Loch had slashed it on the leg and arm, a slow stain of steel was spreading across the rocky hide.

“A little,” the elf called over, stabbing it again and wincing, “but not much, and as you may possibly have noticed, it’s adapting to any matter it comes into contact with, so our strikes are—”

“Yeah, got that.”

The daemon was more rock than fire now, though heat still bubbled in cracks between the slabs of stone. It turned to Loch, its crude mouth cracking as it opened.

“LLLLLLLURRRKKKKK!”

“Hmm.” Irrethelathlialann looked at Loch.

She shoved herself back to her feet. “It could be saying
anything
.”

“LLLLLOKKKKKKKK!”

The elf raised an eyebrow. “The truce was predicated on a shared threat, Isafesira. But this appears to be
your
problem.”

Loch shot him a glare as he stepped back, blew gently on his still-hot blade, and smiled.

“Guess I’ll just take my book and leave, then,” Loch said, and since her last roll had taken her to the doorway, she stepped back out of the car and darted into the car that contained the elf’s private suite with a “LLLOCCCCCCH!” and a “Hey!” trailing after her.

She pounded down the hallway, which in this car had been carpeted over in a nice forest green. She reached the door to the elf’s room, saw that it was slightly open, and barged inside.

Hessler lay unconscious on the floor in the middle of the suite, with another elven swordsman kneeling beside him. The swordsman was pulling the book from Hessler’s hand. The window was open, and shattered crystal covered the floor, likely explaining how Hessler had gotten inside.

“Mine.” Loch stepped in as the elf turned, drove the heel of her palm into his jaw, grabbed his shoulder, and pulled hard as she kicked his legs out from under him. He went down in a heap.

“LLOCCCH!” came a roar from the car outside in the hall.

Loch looked at the book, Hessler, and the elf for one stolen moment, hand pressed to her side. She nudged the elf into a corner with her leg, then stepped to the window and looked out, squinting until she caught sight of her airship overhead. She waved, then made a broad signal that Kail would hopefully recognize.

The fire-daemon burst into the room, stone shoulders tearing the doorframe. “LOCH!”

She turned and raised her sword. “Do your worst, daemon.”

The daemon lunged forward, an unstoppable mass of stone and fire and steel.

Loch stepped to the side, and the daemon slammed through the open window, smashing the stone of the frame as it plunged into the night outside.

A moment later, a grappling line hissed through the now much-larger window, caught on the crumbling frame, and held. Loch grabbed Hessler with one arm and the book with the other. The book was slippery in her hand. When she looked down, it was smeared with blood from her hand, which she’d had pressed to her side a minute ago.

“Going to want to get that looked at,” she muttered, and hooked Hessler into the grappling cable. Something in his pocket bumped her hand as she did, and she pulled out a lovely elven dagger that right now, she probably needed more than Hessler did.

She slid Hessler out through the window and waved up at the airship, which was still just a silhouette in the night sky. Over the hum of the train and the whistling wind, she could hear them shouting something to her, but couldn’t make out the words.

Then she heard the roar off to her right, looked, and saw the fire-daemon still clinging to the side of the train, clawing its way back to her.

She pushed Hessler away and dove back just as the great claw smashed down where she had been standing, tearing more stone free from the wall. The daemon roared and pulled its great bulk back into the room, and Loch turned, book still in hand, to run.

Of course, Irrethelathlialann was coming at her, and she got her blade up to parry his thrust just in time before lurching back in pain as he body-checked her into the wall with more force than someone with pointy ears should have been able to muster. She hit the ground, parried another stab, drove a booted foot into his knee to send him stumbling back, and only
then
realized that he’d grabbed the book as he took
her down.

He
was
fast.

She rolled back to her feet, damning the wound in her side that was now making her legs weak, and lunged through the doorway after him. His rapier parried her sword, but the very nice dagger she’d gotten from Hessler pinned his rapier, and then she slammed her head into his nose
again,
kicked the back of his knee as he stumbled, and smashed the pommel of the dagger into his face.

“I be needin’ ye to lower yer blades!”

Panting, Loch looked over to the door leading back to the dining car, where an armored dwarf held a truncheon with a ready grip. His ringmail glittered in the light of the lamps overhead, which were flickering themselves, likely because of the fire-daemon wreaking havoc in the car and smashing everything.

After a moment, she placed him as the dwarf from the museum. “Gart . . . Utt’Krenner?”

“Security Enforcer Gart Utt’Krenner, Justicar.” He stepped forward, truncheon still raised. “And I have some questions to ask ye regardin’ unpaid docking fees.” He saw the book lying on the ground next to Irrethelathlialann. “But as long as I be here, I might be arrestin’ ye for thievery as well.”

“Technically, the elf stole the real manuscript.” Loch gestured. Back in the private suite, the daemon was still clawing its way inside. “Listen, I respect your work, but I’ve got a daemon coming, and I don’t have time for this.” She slid her stolen dagger into her belt and reached down for the book. “If you’ve got anything that can banish a daemon—”

An impact like a hail of fists slammed into her chest, and Loch hit the ground and rolled.

“Perhaps ye didna hear me,” the dwarf said. Loch blinked away the blackness swirling at the edge of her vision and saw him still holding his truncheon extended out toward her, smoking at the tip. A half dozen black stone balls a little larger than slingstones rolled on the carpet where Loch lay. “Ye’re going nowhere.”

Gart Utt’Krenner would have said more, Loch guessed, but the daemon chose that moment to smash out into the hall.