Conspiracy (27 page)

* * * * *

Akstyr ducked behind a stump and flattened
his hands over his ears. Books knelt beside him, watching a flame
dance up a long fuse attached to a cord of blasting sticks nestled
at the base of the rockslide. At the last moment, he, too, ducked
his head and covered his ears.

Even in the open, with nothing but a field
of stumps to reflect echoes, the boom was deafening. Boulders
bigger than Maldynado flew into the sky, and rock shards slammed
down, battering the earth like a hailstorm. More than one chunk
hammered Akstyr in the back, and he tried to tuck himself into a
tiny ball.

A long moment passed, and something tapped
him on the shoulders. Books.

Akstyr lifted his head. A dust cloud filled
the air, and a moment passed before he could make out the results
of the explosion. So many rocks littered the stump-filled hillside
that it looked like a quarry had vomited. However, a dark tunnel
opening waited in the hillside where only boulders had smothered
the slope before. Though rubble half-buried the entrance, Akstyr
and Books ought to be able to wriggle inside.

“
Huh,” Akstyr
said.

“
You needn’t sound so
surprised.” Books dusted off his clothing and headed for the
mineshaft.

“
I didn’t know professors
knew how to do useful things. Like setting explosives.”

Books gave him a withering scowl. “You don’t
believe some of my ecumenical knowledge might be useful in
determining where to place blasting sticks to achieve the desired
result?”

Akstyr climbed over one of the rocks in the
entrance. “I guess.”

Before following him in, Books stopped to
light a lantern.

“
I can make light, you
know,” Akstyr said.

“
I should not wish to rely
on you. If you were hit on the head by a falling rock, where would
that leave me?”

“
Carrying me out?” Akstyr
grinned.

Books didn’t. His scowl hadn’t entirely
disappeared either. There were too many stodgy oldsters in the
group. Akstyr always felt like they were judging him.

Books looked back toward the stump field
where they’d landed the dirigible. “I hope nobody was around to
hear that explosion. I shouldn’t like to return to find our
borrowed conveyance had been stolen.”

“
Maybe we shouldn’t stand
around all day and talk then, eh?” Akstyr had already crawled over
several meters of rock, and he willed one of his globes of light
into existence.

“
A valid point.” Rubble
shifted as Books clambered after him, the lantern banging and
clanking as he went.

The dust continued to harass Akstyr’s nose,
and he sneezed repeatedly. It disturbed his concentration and his
light winked out several times. Some brilliant Science practitioner
he was.

“
I hope nothing’s left down
here to hear our clamor,” Books said.

“
I’m sure anything down
here would have starved by now.”

“
I wasn’t thinking of
living beings.”

“
Oh.” Akstyr remembered the
battle he and the others had fought against all those mechanical
constructs. Yes, there might be booby traps and Made creations yet
about. “I’m not sure if any of those things we fought last spring
had ears.”

“
Comforting.”

The dust faded and the debris on the ground
dwindled until they could walk on the wooden ties of the old mine
cart tracks. An intersection waited up ahead, and Akstyr increased
his pace. He hadn’t had a chance to see the shaman’s laboratory,
and the idea of exploring it now filled him with anticipation.
While Books was looking for those implants, maybe he could find
some small artifacts to take with him and study. Or more books.
He’d never had a chance to learn anything about Mangdorian
magic.

“
The cart’s been moved,”
Books said, and Akstyr paused before reaching the
intersection.

“
What?”

“
Remember that cart that
rolled up to us as we were leaving? It was here.”

Yes, that cart carrying the message had been
creepy. “Maybe the soldiers moved it.”

Books grunted dubiously. “Amaranthe said the
workshop is to the left there.”

Akstyr walked into the intersection and into
a puddle. With his mind, he nudged his light ball higher and
farther out. The tunnel straight ahead sloped downward and
disappeared into water.

“
Nobody around to fix the
pump,” Books said.

“
It doesn’t look like the
laboratory will be affected.” Akstyr headed left, swinging his
glowing sphere back around the corner to light the way, and he
almost stepped onto a skeleton. A human skeleton. Startled, he let
his concentration slip and the light winked out again.

Books, holding his lantern aloft, joined
him. Tiny teeth marks marred the bones, and only scraps of gray
fabric remained. In the shadows ahead, Akstyr could make out the
white skull of another skeleton.

“
It seems the soldiers
attempted to explore before blowing up the entrance,” Books
said.

“
Seems.” Senses stretched
outward, Akstyr stepped over the skeletons and headed deeper into
the dark passage.

Books knelt to take a
closer look at the skeleton, maybe trying to figure out what had
killed them. Or what had
eaten
them. Akstyr just wanted to get to the workshop,
though he was careful to probe every inch of the way, searching for
the residual tingle of an area touched by a Maker.

He reached an open wooden door, and stepped
over two more skeletons to enter a long, rectangular chamber with a
ceiling and walls chiseled from the rock. Workbench after workbench
ran down the length of one long wall, while cabinets and machines
occupied the opposite one. Disassembled equipment and tools
scattered the surfaces, and more than a few metallic heads, hooks,
and articulating arms appeared to be from the sorts of constructs
that had attacked Akstyr and the others the spring before. The team
had been eager to leave the mines after being mauled so thoroughly,
so he had never seen the workshop before, and he couldn’t tell if
anything had been touched. He wanted to explore everything, but the
skeletons on the floor were disconcerting. But they’d been
Science-ignorant soldiers. He ought to be able to detect traps
before he triggered them.

It was hard to focus on the idea of hunting
for traps. Residual energy plucked at his senses from all sides,
begging him to investigate. He’d love to take back souvenirs to
study. In particular, a half-orb set into the body of a knee-height
brass spider drew his eye—it pulsed a soft purple, creating an
interesting play of light and shadow on the walls and equipment in
a far corner.

“
Don’t play with anything,”
Books stood in the doorway, the ex-pilot’s pistol loaded and in his
hands.

Akstyr sniffed.
“Practitioners do not
play
. They study, they ponder,
they—oh! Is that a mind foci artifact?” He veered toward a
fist-sized golden ball with a lustrous shell.

“
Shiny,” Books said dryly.
“Can you look for the implants, please? I’m assuming that whatever
killed these soldiers could still be a threat.”

Akstyr pocketed the ball to study at a later
date. “We’re not even sure those devices are here, are we?”

“
If they’re not, this trip
was a waste of—”

A clank sounded in the tunnel behind Books.
He jumped inside, spinning in the air to land with his pistol up,
poised to fire. The wooden door slammed shut in front of him,
smacking the pistol and nearly tearing it from his hands. Gears
ground behind one of the stone walls, followed by a soft click. An
armoire near the door emitted an ominous hissing sound.

“—
life,” Books finished
bleakly.

“
Uhm,” Akstyr said. It
wasn’t his most brilliant utterance.

Books tried the door, but it seemed to have
locked itself. It was the only exit from the workshop.

Books strode to the armoire and pointed to
pink gas flowing out of a vent near the top. “Can you stop that?
I’m guessing it doesn’t promote haleness and longevity.”

Akstyr joined him, crinkling his nose as a
scent like mildew and fungus wafted toward him. Books had already
pulled his shirt over his nose. Akstyr doubted that would be
effective. Instead, he concentrated on the idea of a filter,
something that formed over his nose and mouth, a tight mesh weave
that allowed air through but blocked out larger particles. Though
it never grew visible to the naked eye, he thought he was
successful in creating it. He sniffed experimentally and no longer
detected the mushroom odor.

Good for him, but that probably didn’t help
Books. If he passed out, Akstyr would have to fly the dirigible
himself. He paused, intrigued by the off-hand thought. If he could
figure out how to fly it, maybe it’d be his chance to leave the
empire forever.

Though the idea tickled his mind for a few
seconds, he told himself that Books would die, not pass out, if the
skeletons were any indication, and, anyway, leaving the team in a
lurch would be pretty despicable. It was surprising to realize that
mattered to him, because there had been a time when it wouldn’t
have. None of the people he’d grown up with would have thought
twice about ditching him for a chance to steal a dirigible.

“
Well?” Books
asked.

“
I made a filter for
myself, but let me see if I can make the gas stop,” Akstyr
said.

Concentrating on two things at once was an
intense challenge, one Akstyr hadn’t mastered yet, but by keeping
the picture of the filter in his mind, and imagining his thoughts
probing outward through it, he managed to sense of the armoire’s
otherworldly properties. Or he would have if it had any.
Surprisingly, he didn’t feel anything. What he did sense was a
complex mechanical miasma behind the doors, a maze of levers,
gears, and pipes that he couldn’t guess how to work.

“
I think it’s just a
machine,” Akstyr said.

“
Meaning there aren’t any
booby traps?” Books reached toward one of the cabinet
knobs.

“
Meaning the booby traps
aren’t magical.”

Books’s hand froze. “Ah.”

“
Maybe your great knowledge
of science and history would be useful here.”

“
Perhaps so. Why don’t you
find those implants?”

Books started coughing, and Akstyr hustled
away. He poked through boxes and cabinets, alarmed by how many were
locked. It’d stink donkey butts if what the emperor needed to save
his life was in the room, but they couldn’t get at it.

Akstyr pulled a small wooden box out from
beneath a bench. Intricately carved with a pattern of vines and
leaves, it looked like something that would hold jewelry or other
tiny, precious items.

Books coughed again, phlegmy coughs this
time, like those of someone suffering from consumption. He was
standing in the corner by the door, head bent, hands in front of
him. Akstyr couldn’t tell if he was doing something or not.

“
You need some picklocks to
open that door?” he asked.

“
I don’t believe... that’ll
be necessary... no.”

“
You have another way out?”
Akstyr opened the box and found himself staring at dozens of tiny
brass and silver spheres, each one less than a centimeter in
diameter. The different colored metals created a patchwork pattern
on the surfaces that reminded him of tiger stripes.

“
Yes. Did you find
something?” Books had joined him. His shoulders drooped, his eyes
were red and bleary, and he looked like he was about to drop to the
floor.

“
Maybe. What do you think
about these?”

Books bent over the box. “They’re the right
size,” he said between coughs. “I don’t suppose... there are...
directions or a... schematic... so we can... ascertain their
function.”

“
Maybe you should use
shorter sentences when you’re coughing like that.”

Books poked a finger into
box, touching a couple of the balls. Several of the “tiger stripes”
sprang away from the surfaces, unfurling tiny needle-sharp hooks.
At the same time as Books yanked his finger back, Akstyr slammed
the lid shut. A patter of
thunks
sounded beneath the wood.

“
I’m thinking their
function
is something
eerie scary,” Akstyr said.

Books gaped at his finger, though it didn’t
appear to be bleeding.

Akstyr fastened the clasp on the lid and
turned over the box to examine it more closely. Free of etchings or
paint, the wooden bottom was unremarkable, except for...

He nudged it sideways. A
panel slid open, revealing a shallow cubby holding a folded piece
of paper. Not paper,
parchment
. Like people used in the
old days. “This might be your schematic.” Akstyr unfolded it to
find two hand-drawn depictions of the sphere, one showing the
innards and one the outside. Foreign words scrawled all about the
margins. “You’ll have to translate this for me.”

Books was leaning against the workbench,
bracing himself with both hands. “We better get out of here,” he
rasped, then scrutinized Akstyr. “Aren’t you... feeling the
effects?”

“
No, my filter is
working.”

Books grumbled something uncomplimentary
under his breath, then handed Akstyr the lantern. “You pick the
locks, then.”