The Prophecy Con (Rogues of the Republic) (23 page)

“Did she get onto the grapple-line?” Kail asked. He couldn’t look himself, since he was kneeling by Tern on the deck of
Iofegemet
and trying to help her not bleed out. Hauling her up on a grapple line hadn’t helped matters much.

“She did not,” Icy said. “She secured Hessler to it, but the daemon forced her back inside.”

“All right. Haul Hessler in.” Kail had been running
Iofegemet
dark in order to avoid giving away the airship’s position to anyone on the train who might raise an alarm. His eyesight had adjusted reasonably well, but he’d still rather have light when dealing with a through-and-through. “Lamps on.”

Icy fumbled at the console. “We have an additional problem.”

“Don’t really care, Icy.” The lights flickered on, a warm amber glow that illuminated Tern. She was significantly pale, and her side was soaked. The bolt stood out below her shoulder like some impossible costume decoration. Kail turned her gently. There was blood on the deck, but no exit wound that Kail could see.

He had really been hoping for an exit wound.

“I have been watching the Knights of Gedesar,” Icy said. “They have maintained their distance, and I believe, from the way that they are maneuvering their ship now, that they have succeeded in repairing their flamecannon.”

“Close in and open up with ours.” Kail looked at the bolt, at least the bit of it that he could see. Professional grade, steel shaft, thin silver foil for the fletching instead of feathers. The odds that the head wasn’t barbed to do a hell of a lot of damage when he pulled it out seemed low at best.

“You know that I cannot do that, Kail.”

“Sure you can.” Kail held Tern’s collar gently. He could still feel her pulse, but her skin was clammy. Then he unfastened the dress and peeled it free from her shoulder. “Any idiot can fire a flamecannon. That’s not the job they gave the big thinkers during the war.”

“I swore an oath to do no violence to living creatures,” Icy said, hands steady on the control console.

“That doesn’t mean you
can’t
, Icy. That means you don’t
want
to.” Her dress was free. There was definitely no exit wound on Tern’s back.

“Kail—”

“You wanna talk
can’t
? When the bad guys hit me with a soul-binding and bound me to their will, and I had to watch helplessly while I betrayed all of you? That was a
can’t
. When I held a blade at Loch’s throat while I battered against the walls of my own mind and screamed? That was a
can’t
.” Kail put one hand on the bolt protruding from Tern’s chest, and the other hand on her shoulder, and shut his eyes. “If you don’t
want
to defend us from the bad guys while I save Tern’s life, that’s on you, but man the hell up and admit that it’s a
choice
.”

He pushed hard, gritting his teeth at the noise as tissue ripped and slid beneath the bolt.

He looked down. The head of the bolt protruded from Tern’s back, silver stained black with blood. It was indeed barbed all over the damn place, but it was out.

Gently, trying to jostle the wound as little as possible, Kail worked the head of the bolt free. As he tossed it aside, a ball of flame sprayed across the great balloon overhead, licking fire along its sides.

“Portside wards at forty percent,” Icy said quietly.

Kail pulled the headless bolt free in one smooth, clean movement. It still produced more blood. “Can you put pressure on both sides of this?” he asked, cupping Tern’s shoulder with both hands.

“I can, yes. I may even be able to perform mild energy work to stimulate healing—”

“Fine. Go.” Kail waited until Icy was beside him, and then lifted his hands as Icy put his down. “Keep her still.”

Then he wiped his hands on his breeches, stepped to the control console, and put Tern out of his mind and the airship with the flamecannons into it.

And also, he supposed, the unconscious mage still hanging from the grappling line below.

“Have to do
everything
myself,” he muttered, flicking a crystal to draw up the line. He swung
Iofegemet
into a tight turn to point his nose at the airship, ignoring the ball of flame that flashed out from the enemy ship and sprayed across
Iofegemet
’s forward hull.

“How are our wards?” Icy asked, holding Tern steady as
Iofegemet
rocked.

“Not really looking.” Kail grabbed the portside flamecannon, checked the sights, turned it as far as it would go, and waited.

The enemy airship came into his sights a moment later, and he saw the silhouette clearly through the lenses in his sights. The Knights of Gedesar weren’t using a military-grade airship, which extended the wards holding in the wind-daemons to
protect the entirety of the ship. They were using a civilian airship, which only had crystals powerful enough to maintain wards along the balloon itself.

Kail aimed carefully, then fired.

Fire sprayed across their hull, catching and licking the ropes.

“Stay warm, boys,” Kail muttered.

He heard the cries off in the distance. He couldn’t see much on the ship itself, just a silhouette with fire crawling across the hull.

The flamecannon’s firing crystal chimed its readiness, and Kail fired again. Fire seared the enemy airship’s cabin, and something inside went up with a whoosh. Kail saw figures in the distance, running across the deck in black armor.

“Kail, I need you at the control console.”

“I’m sure you can handle it, Icy.” The enemy airship was crippled, but Kail had seen them pull through worse. They were fighting the fire, pulling away and descending for an emergency landing. He still had their range, though.

“We are approaching a mountain, Kail. If I take pressure off Tern’s wound, she will die.”

For one long dark moment, Kail considered what to say.

Then he stepped back and locked the flamecannon’s safety with an angry shove and stalked back to the control console.

They
were
getting close to a mountainside. It practically glowed silver-blue in the moonlight, all craggy peaks and icy snow with dark trees scattered sparsely along the slope. The dwarven railway cut a tunnel through the mountain, and Kail put
Iofegemet
into a sharp ascent. They could pick up Loch on the other side . . . assuming that she was taking care of her end down there.

“You have grown cold, Kail,” Icy said, still kneeling by Tern.

“I doubt you’re going to get the book and stop the war with your little acrobatic tricks,” Kail said, “so maybe you should try to impress someone else with those somersaults. Like your mother. She always loves it when I roll her over.” Kail looked over at the Imperial man, who looked back without flinching.

“You were hurt,” Icy said slowly and deliberately, “both by Silestin’s soul-binding and by Desidora’s actions as a death priestess, which caused you pain—”

“When she tried to suck the life out of me? Yeah, that’ll happen.”

“You cannot allow your pain to alter your values,” Icy said. “The morals that define you, the oaths—”

“Oaths,” Kail said, “are for people who are wealthy enough to afford them.” He checked their path one more time, then locked the console. “Now, if it doesn’t interfere with your values, I’m going to go haul up our wizard before he gets dragged through the trees.”

The fire-daemon was more of a general-parts-of-train-daemon at this point.

Its body was largely stone, with patterns of floor tile still visible in places, and glowing crystal spurs jutting out from its knees and elbows. Its claws were metal so hot they glowed cherry red, as were the fangs that sprouted out in all directions from its debatable mouth.

It had acquired furry trim around its ankles, likely from contact with the elf’s carpeted floor, which made the daemon look like it was naked except for a pair of socks.

The daemon plowed into Gart Utt’Krenner, slamming the dwarf into the wall. It turned to Loch as the dwarf sank to the floor, groaning. Its eyes, now multifaceted arrays of crystal that glowed with flickering purple light, narrowed into a monstrous glare.

“LOCH.”

Loch got back to her feet. Her side didn’t hurt as much any longer, but that probably wasn’t a good thing. She was definitely getting slow on that side. Her arm was still bleeding, too.

But she was starting to figure things out, and that helped.

“How are you doing, Jyelle?” she asked. “Last time I saw you, you were getting eaten by a daemon.”

The daemon flexed its claws. “YOU KILLED ME.”

Loch took an experimental breath and winced. “Technically, the daemon killed you. And you were standing over me with a knife at the time, so it’s hard to really feel bad about it.”

“IT ATE ME, LOCH.”

“And it was unshackled at the time.” Loch nodded. “I didn’t know what that meant, just like I didn’t know why every daemon-powered magical device I came across was malfunctioning or trying to kill me . . . until I saw that the fire-daemon copying parts of whatever it touched.” She gestured. “Then I wondered if maybe, when that daemon killed you . . .”

“IT ATE ME. SO IT BECAME ME.” The claws rasped together, squeaking like a rusty gate hinge. “ALL DAEMONS ARE THE SAME ON THE OTHER SIDE. WHEN YOU ARE NEAR THEM, I CAN FEEL IT. I CAN PUSH THROUGH.”

“That’s about what I’d figured.” Loch nodded again. “So now you’ve got me. I’ve been stabbed, shot, banged up, knocked down . . . even you could probably take me right now, Jyelle.”

The daemon growled wordlessly and took a step forward.

“But I’m asking you not to.” Loch stepped forward to meet the daemon. “Or at least do it quick and quiet.” She pointed at the floor. “Do you feel this car shaking? You’ve torn the hell out of it already, and there’s another car unpowered because you broke loose. This train is barely holding together right now, and if you tear it up any more, innocent people are going to die.” She stood in a calm defenseless posture and looked up at the daemon, her bare neck unprotected. “Kill me if you have to, and then go, before anyone else gets hurt.”

The daemon stared down at her, its crystalline eyes motionless. Loch didn’t break the stare.

The blow smashed into her uninjured side. Loch saw it coming enough to roll, but it still swept her down the hall and bounced her off the wall. If the daemon had had a better wind-up, it could have crushed her with that single blow . . . which was part of why Loch had stepped in close.

“INNOCENT PEOPLE?” The daemon smashed its claws into the wall, tearing stone and crystals free as it stomped toward Loch. “WHY SHOULD I CARE ABOUT THEM,
CAPTAIN
? WHEN I’M DONE WITH YOU, I’M GOING TO TEAR THIS TRAIN APART, AND THEN—”

“Ye be sadly mistaken,” Gart Utt’Krenner said from behind the daemon, and slammed his truncheon into its back.

The blow hit with a strange sound, a rush of air that made Loch’s ears pop, and the daemon stumbled, crystals and bits of metal falling free from its body as the air shimmered around it.

“Damn, it really is you in there, Jyelle.” Loch used the wall to push herself back up. “Complete with your utter inability to tell when I’m trying to distract you.”

“Begone, daemon.” Gart swung his truncheon again. Loch saw that its tip glowed with pale flickering light, and the daemon stumbled back from the blow, roaring in pain as more of its shape sloughed off onto the carpet. “This be not yer home, and ye cannae threaten good folk while I stand before ye.”

The daemon lashed out. It was lumbering and slow, but it was still very large, and Gart tried to block rather than rolling. The blow crushed him to the ground, even as more of the daemon fell apart around the glowing truncheon.

“I’LLLL KILLLL ALLLLLVIUUUU!” it roared, the words blossoming like heat bubbles from a toothless lake of fire, and raised a blobby hand over the fallen dwarf.

Loch jogged past the daemon. “You sound bad, Jyelle,” she called over her shoulder. “Almost as bad as that time I kicked your ass on the airship. Remember that?” She grabbed the book and the sword where they lay on the floor, and turned to look back at the daemon. “Remember how I was unarmed and you had the element of surprise, and you still lost? That must have been really embarrassing.”

The daemon roared, stepped over Gart Utt’Krenner, and came after her.

“You owe me, dwarf.” Loch stepped back into the elf’s room, tucking the book into her belt as she did. Half the wall had been torn away, and she pulled herself up on rocky footholds, grunting at the pain in her side as she hauled herself onto the roof.

The train was rattling and bucking, and it was a lot more obvious up here with the wind whipping in Loch’s face. The car behind them was banging on the track now, and the tracks themselves glowed red instead of blue. Loch didn’t have Hessler around to explain what that meant, but it was almost certainly bad.