The Prophecy Con (Rogues of the Republic) (44 page)

“I imagine that was expensive,” Loch said. “Speaking of which, I raise six thousand.”

“Check.” Helianthia shoved her chips into the pot. Her hand was shaking.

“The only problem with putting your faith in the lovely little unicorn in the low-cut dress, Isafesira, is that you assume I needed the ring to beat you.” Irrethelathlialann pointed at Loch. “No straight. You’re hoping to draw inside, but you won’t, because Veiled Lightning had one of the eights you needed, and I discarded another.” He shifted to Helianthia. “You’re sitting on three, hoping for four, but even you know it won’t happen.” He sat back. “I can read your body language. I can read this one-stoned dealer’s movements as he shuffles. I can read the odds, even without the very expensive ring I’ll be peeling slowly from the unicorn’s lovely body later . . . among other things.” He slid his chips in. “Check. Next card is either a five or three. I raise twenty thousand.”

The dealer flipped out the three of crystals as the last shared card. “One-stoned is a bit offensive.”

Loch folded, smiling tightly. Helianthia did the same.

“Ma’am,” Dairy said beside her as Irrethelathlialann raked in his chips, “you don’t look very good.”

“I’m fine, Dairy,” she said in a low voice, not looking over.

Dairy coughed. “Would you like a drink?”

Loch looked over then. Dairy held a shotglass on a napkin with a pale pink liquid inside.

“Yes, Dairy. Yes, I would.”

Loch took it, raised it, downed it, and handed it back to him. It tasted sweeter than she liked and stronger than she needed, buzzing in her mouth and burning in her throat as it went down.

And something in it crackled and hummed as well, and a moment later, Loch’s ears popped.

And a voice in her head said,
As the vixen covers her tracks, so have Tern and Hessler masked my voice to you, Little One. Whenever you are ready, we may show this elf how one
actually
cheats at cards.

The good news where security golems were concerned was that they were fairly slow. As long as Pyvic kept running, the golems were in no danger of catching them.

The bad news where security golems were concerned was that even Desidora and her magical hammer hadn’t been able to do much more than knock them a few steps backward.

So they ran through the night, bolts hissing behind them and metal feet clanking. The glowlamps inside the gates had flickered and died a few moments after their fight had started, and Pyvic had lost track of time, concentrating only on staying alive and having somewhere to keep running to. They were in the western hedge garden now, which wasn’t quite a maze, but offered enough cover to buy them some time.

“Suggestions?” In the darkness, the whole palace had burned like a brand, but now
all
the glowlamps were starting to dim.

“We cannot survive against both the Knights of Gedesar and the golems,” Icy said. “Any guards not loyal to the enemy are likely dead.”

“The mausoleum,” Desidora said between breaths. “There’s an entrance that should give us a way inside. Tern, Hessler, and I used it when we broke in last time.”

“All right. We’re all dead anyway if we don’t get inside, so the mausoleum’s as good a place as any.” Pyvic looked over at Kail, who was scanning the hedges with a scout’s ready eyes. “Can you pick the lock?”

“
Besyn larveth’is!”

“Good point,” Pyvic said, nodding to Ghylspwr. “At this point, we can probably just break the door down and be fine.”

“I
could
pick the lock, though,” Kail muttered.

“We all believe you,” Desidora said.

“
Kutesosh gajair’is.”

“Well, most of us, anyway.” Desidora had recovered enough to breathe normally. She nodded and set off through the hedges with Pyvic and the rest in tow.

They passed the stately mausoleum and reached a small servant’s entrance shortly after, sneaking through the hedges as far as they could and then finally dashing across a short stretch of lawn. By the time they neared the door, the glowlamps were almost entirely dead.

“I’m guessing that isn’t good,” Kail said as the lamp by the door failed altogether.

“They must be drawing power to prepare for the next blast,” Desidora said.

“Or you sabotaged them,” came the calm voice from behind them, and Pyvic turned.

Jyrre stood with a half-dozen Knights of Gedesar at the edge of the nearest hedge. Her normal blade was gone, tossed aside in favor of one of the crystal-tipped maces that the knights favored. Pyvic gave the knights a quick glance. Most of them had chunks torn from their armor, bands battered and hanging loose.

“No crossbows?” Kail asked. “I mean, not that I’m complaining, since you probably would’ve opened fire instead of coming up to talk with us . . .”

“They lost them,” Pyvic said, “when it turned out that the golems weren’t on their side, either.”

“They are controlled by the unseen player,” Icy said, “the one who wishes for the Republic and the Empire to destroy one another.”

Pyvic nodded. “So, the question now is whether the Knights of Gedesar want to save the Republic.” He looked at them, young men and women for the most part, only a few his own age. “Ladies and gentlemen?”

“You’ve got a lot of nerve,
Captain
.” Jyrre sneered. “You want to act like you’re playing some big game the rest of us don’t understand, all the while working with a
death priestess
—”

“She’s not a death priestess anymore,” Kail tossed off.

“And monsters,” Jyrre went on, as if he hadn’t spoken, “and criminals. You were a damned fine justicar until you let them corrupt you. Now you’d rather play in the shadows than carry out the law you swore to uphold. I grew up on the frontier, Captain. I learned the hard way that you don’t go into that darkness. You don’t cross that line. And when others do, even people you respect . . .” She brought up the hand she’d had down by her side and stared at Pyvic down the length of a bolt. “And we didn’t lose
all
our crossbows.”

“Captain!” The cry made all of them turn, and then Justicar Derenky tackled Jyrre and crashed to the turf.

Pyvic went in fast, Kail at his side. He stabbed at one knight’s face, and as the man blocked, Kail tackled him at the knees. Pyvic stabbed down through the visor, deep enough to be sure, and then spun and kicked another knight in the knee as he raised his mace over Kail.

Off to the side, Desidora smashed one knight to the ground with a blow that tore a furrow in the ground, then blocked a blow from another.

“Thought these guys were tough.” Kail slammed a stolen mace into the helmet of the knight who’d dropped to one knee. “What’s the matter, guys? Did I leave your mothers too tired to make you breakfast this morning?”

Pyvic ducked back from a blow that would have caved in his skull, lunged in, and trapped the knight’s arms. “I
assume
the golems left them tired.”

“Hell, we’re
all
tired.” Kail smashed his own mace into the back of the knight’s helmet before he could free himself. “Difference between a knight and a scout?” He turned as Desidora smashed a second knight to the turf, then blocked a blow from the third.

Kail’s mace flew end over end and smashed into the third knight’s legs from behind.

As the knight dropped to his knees, Pyvic took two running steps and slashed through ringmail to open the man’s throat. “Tired just makes a scout fight dirtier,” he called back, and went for Jyrre.

She had a knife in Derenky’s ribs, though the blond justicar had gotten a few blows of his own in and wasn’t finished yet. Pyvic hauled her off of him and put his blade to her throat as she turned.

“You backed the wrong side,” he said. “You got good people killed doing it, and I don’t have time to arrest you right now. If I were what you thought I was, it’d be
really
easy for me to slit your throat. But I’m not. Ghylspwr? Unconscious, please.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You bastard,” she snapped, one hand coming up so that he wouldn’t notice the one going to her waist. “If you think—”

“Shut up, Jyrre.” He grabbed her wrist with his free hand, twisted it into a lock, and put her on her knees. “And if you wake up before I get back, I suggest you turn yourself in peacefully, because you and I both know I’ll find you, and if it’s heat of battle next time, I can cut you down and sleep like a baby.”

“Kun-kabynalti osu fuir’is,”
Ghylspwr said in Desidora’s hands, and rapped Jyrre sharply on the head. The justicar dropped without another word.

“Thank you. Derenky, any chance you’re going to die and leave me in peace?”

“Sadly, sir,” Derenky said, holding the blade in his stomach, “I still very much want your job.”

“Noted.” Pyvic looked at Desidora. “If you were the control mechanism for a giant energy weapon, where would you be?”

It was Kail who answered. “The big room with the runes on the floor. It controlled all the security for the archvoyant’s palace. You remember, Diz?”

“Being possessed by the power of death didn’t affect my memory,” Desidora said, grinning. “I can get us there.”

She smashed open the door with a single blow from Ghylspwr and took off down the hallway.

“Possessed by the spirit of death?” Pyvic asked, falling into step with Kail as the two of them jogged after Desidora.

“Yeah, she was dead for a bit, and when she came out of it, she was pretty pissed off.”

“That when whatever happened to you two happened to you two?”

“More or less,” Kail said, and didn’t elaborate. “Later I got possessed and took out her and Tern. That wasn’t good, either.”

Pyvic shook his head and kept running.

Desidora’s memory was sound, and she led them to a narrow hallway not far from the grand ballroom, where a previously blank section of wall had slid open to reveal a darkened doorway.

“I believe you guessed correctly,” Desidora said. “Shall we?”

Pyvic nodded, and they went in, weapons raised.

The room was lit primarily by the floor, where runes glowed in a flickering pattern, shifting through the rainbow with no two the same color at any given moment. Half the floor ended in a great chasm that presumably led to the underside of the city, although Pyvic suspected that the rules of nature in this room might be a bit looser than usual.

Archvoyant Bertram sat at a hub of crystals. A figure stood before him that was much more human than the great stomping piles of metal out in the gardens, but much less human than anyone else in the room. It turned as they came in, and its eyes shone blue. “You have come.”

“Ghylspwr, please hit it,” Pyvic said, not altering his stride, “and continue to do so every time it tries to put itself back together. Archvoyant Bertram, I’m guessing the golem has
not
informed you that using the weapon on the Temple of Butterflies will destroy half the Republic?”

Bertram didn’t respond, didn’t even look up from the console.

Desidora and Ghylspwr smashed into the golem, who seemed too surprised to resist. Kail had his mace raised and was looking off into the darkness of the chasm. “Last time, there were spectral . . . ghosts? Spirit golems? I don’t know. They came out of the chasm. If someone’s using the golems, they might show up again.”

“Noted. Archvoyant, please. I know you didn’t want this war, and no matter how far you’ve gone, it’s not too late to . . .” Pyvic trailed off as he reached the control console and looked down.

The crystals on the control console had sprouted dozens of little spurs, a forest of needle-thin spikes that extended from their base into Archvoyant Bertram’s fingers. They glowed in an oscillating pattern that matched the runes on the floor, and Pyvic realized with sick fascination that he could see them glowing under the skin of the man’s hands and arms.

The archvoyant didn’t move his head to look at him, but his eyes flicked ever so faintly up to Pyvic. Words whispered from under the man’s slow and wheezing breaths. “Help . . . me.”

The whites of his eyes were glowing as well.

“Desidora? Ghylspwr?” Pyvic looked over to where they stood over the slowly reforming pile of crystals. “I may need you to do some very careful smashing.”

“Besyn lar—”

The chasm flared with crackling radiance, and then it went dark, so dark that it was as though the darkness itself were a shade of light, bathing the room in a blackness so complete that even the afterimages were wiped from Pyvic’s eyes.

When that darkness faded, a tall man in Imperial armor stood at the edge of the chasm. It was the bodyguard Pyvic had fought on Kail’s airship, the one with the magical ax.

“The groundside amplifier has been prepared,” he said, “but I would prefer not to risk waiting for a normal recharge. Continue recalibrating the matrix for a forced burn.”

The golem, still reforming, started to say something, and Desidora hit it again. The Imperial man seemed to notice them for the first time.