Conspiracy (8 page)

It didn’t take long for men to come
searching for their missing comrades. Akstyr was standing
guard—actually he was sitting and practicing some of his mental
science exercises—when new footsteps clomped on the roof. He kicked
Maldynado’s boot to wake him up and stop a bout of snoring that had
probably already given away their position. He tossed an empty food
tin at Basilard, clunking him in the chin and waking him instantly.
Akstyr might have woken them more gently, but he wasn’t feeling
accommodating after they stuck him with the watch.

Overhead, the footsteps ceased. Akstyr
grabbed one of their new rifles. By the early morning light
slanting through gaps in the wooden car walls, he’d figured out
that it was loaded with six rounds.

Basilard squatted next to him and put a
restraining hand on his arm. Akstyr squinted to read Basilard’s
hand signs in the morning gloom.

That’ll make too much
noise
.
The
engineer might hear and halt the train. We need him to make the
weapons delivery, so we can see where they go.

Akstyr doubted the engineer could hear
anything over the noise of the locomotive, but he shrugged and set
the rifle aside. He had other ways to deal with people.

The footsteps resumed, and Akstyr tracked
them across the top of their car. It sounded like two men again,
but this pair didn’t try to open the trapdoor. They moved on to the
next car.

“
What do you boys think?”
Maldynado asked when the footsteps had been gone for a minute.
“Should we try to pick them off on their way back?”

Perhaps they will give up
and return to their car when they don’t find their comrades,
Basilard signed.

“
They’ll think it’s strange
that their buddies are missing. It’s not like the train has stopped
and people could have strolled away. I think they’ll keep looking.
I’d look for
you
two if you went missing.”

“
Yeah,” Akstyr said, “but
you probably like us more than they like each other. We’ve been
through heaps together.”

“
Easy, boy, don’t get
sentimental on me.”

Akstyr snorted. He should have kicked
Maldynado harder.

Maldynado slid the trapdoor open a couple of
inches, and a slash of early-morning light slipped into the car. He
winked. “Let’s see how observant they are on the way back.”

Basilard signed,
Same plan?

“
What plan is that?” Akstyr
asked. “The one where you two pummel them while they’re looking at
your underwear?”

“
That’s the one.” Maldynado
scooted into the shadows. “Though it’s too bad Amaranthe’s pack
isn’t here. Her underwear would be a lot more likely to distract
hardworking rural men who probably haven’t seen too many ladies in
a while.”

Basilard and Akstyr eased away from the
trapdoor to hug the shadows as well. They did not have long to wait
before the two men returned, and the fellows did indeed stop to
investigate the open door. Subduing them was painless, and
Maldynado and Basilard were soon atop the rail car, dusting their
hands off and sharing congratulatory pats for work well done.

Akstyr rolled his eyes as he climbed outside
with them. After the months of training they had spent under
Sicarius’s elite tutelage, subduing two common laborers and dumping
them off a train wasn’t a meaningful victory. At least he’d gotten
to practice a little more of his art.

Basilard signed,
What now? Wait to do it again?

“
Did anyone see how many
men stayed on the train with the weapons?” Maldynado
asked.

Basilard shook his head.

“
I can figure it out,”
Akstyr said.

With the freight car trembling beneath him
and wind tearing through his hair, he wasn’t sure how well he could
concentrate, but he liked it when he got a chance to show off how
useful his skills could be. He sat cross-legged on the roof and
closed his eyes.

The first Science book he had found, the one
from Larocka Myll’s mansion, had been on Thermodynamics. It was a
beastly hard text to understand, and it didn’t help that Akstyr had
to have Books translate the language for him, but Akstyr had
figured a couple of things out from it. For one, he had learned how
to sense heat. At first, that hadn’t seemed very useful, until he’d
realized that living things had body heat, and he could detect it
at a distance. Not a great distance, but he was improving all the
time, and he thought he could sense people a few cars away.

It seemed strange that he could get tired
from using his brain in a big way, but Akstyr always did when he
was exercising the mental sciences, and he had to wipe sweat off
his forehead when he finished. That didn’t keep him from giving a
triumphant smirk and saying, “Four.”

Basilard and Maldynado had flopped down on
their bellies and were pointing at something in the countryside and
arguing. Akstyr always lost track of time when he was practicing.
Since neither man seemed to hear him, he thumped Maldynado on the
boot to get his attention, then repeated himself.

“
Oh, good,” Maldynado said.
“As long as that was taking, I thought we might have to wait and
count people as they came out for their morning bush
watering.”

Akstyr scowled. Maldynado had no idea how
much work went into the mental sciences. He—

Basilard patted Akstyr on
the shoulder and signed,
Good
job.

Akstyr’s disgruntlement
faded slightly. He appreciated the words—at least
somebody
noticed that he
was useful in the group—but he shrugged and said, “Whatever.” It
was important not to let people know that what they thought
mattered. That gave them too much power.

“
Let’s pay them a visit,
shall we?” Maldynado asked.

Basilard signed,
What happens when the train stops to make its
delivery and nobody’s there to help unload the goods? The
recipients might be suspicious.

“
They’d be more suspicious
if the people who
did
arrive said half of their team had gone missing on the ride
over,” Maldynado said. “This way, they’ll think there was a mix-up
in the communications phase of their plan.”

“
That’s actually a good
point,” Akstyr said.

“
Don’t sound so surprised.”
Maldynado nodded toward the weapons car. “Let’s be quieter about
our approach than those lard-brains were. Maybe we can take out
these four before they wake up.”

Akstyr appreciated that Maldynado wasn’t so
strictly warrior-caste that he insisted on challenging the enemy to
a duel or fair fight or some heroic storybook thing like that.
Sometimes aristocrats didn’t have a clue about the real world.

Maldynado led the way across the rail cars,
jumping from rooftop to rooftop, until they reached the one just
before their destination. They paused to kneel on the edge before
crossing over to it.

“
Anyone have a plan?”
Maldynado asked.

“
That doesn’t involve
underwear?” Akstyr asked.

“
Preferably. We didn’t
bring any along.”

Basilard signed,
Akstyr, do you know where in the car the four
people are located?

“
Two were sitting across
from the door, smoking.” Akstyr had sensed the bright points of
heat and been tickled when he realized he’d identified cigars. “One
was on the floor, so maybe sleeping. Another was by himself in the
back.” He waved to indicate the end of the car farthest from
them.

“
Sleeping?” Maldynado
asked.

“
I don’t think so. He was
sitting or maybe crouching. Reminded me of Sicarius off by himself
cleaning his weapons.”

Maldynado grimaced.
“I
hope
we don’t
run into any Sicarius types with this crew, or we’re in trouble.
Basilard, do you want to charge that fellow? He’ll have the most
time to bring a gun to bear, but you’re deadly and scary, so maybe
he’ll get worried when he sees your scars.”

If Maldynado had told Akstyr to charge some
idiot that probably had a gun, Akstyr would have told him to stuff
his fist in his mouth and gag on it. But Basilard nodded. He
probably figured he was the best fighter and the logical choice.
Akstyr was happy to be a mediocre fighter if it meant not being
assigned deranged tasks like that.

“
I’ll take the smoking
men,” Maldynado said. “Akstyr, you get that fourth bloke and be
ready to clean up the mess.”

Akstyr wondered if cleaning up the mess
would involve healing Basilard when he got shot.

Maldynado shimmied across the coupling, then
reached around and grabbed the ladder. He climbed a few rungs,
careful not to clomp loudly at any point, and waved for Basilard to
come next. Basilard skimmed down and over, almost as deft as
Sicarius. Instead of staying on the ladder, he slid across the
door, having no trouble navigating the inch-wide threshold, and
perched on the other side. Akstyr couldn’t guess what tiny nubs
Basilard was using for hand and footholds. With the train speeding
across the flatlands and harsh winds whistling down the tracks, it
seemed a tenuous position.

Akstyr clambered down and settled beneath
Maldynado on the ladder. He withdrew his sword, a sturdy cutlass
good for close-quarters skirmishes, and nodded that he was ready.
Basilard grabbed the latch and pulled the door open with one swift
motion. He and Maldynado leaped into the car as if they practiced
the move all the time. They landed side-by-side and charged into
the interior.

Akstyr gave them a second to get out of the
way—and to make sure no bullets were flying—before jumping in after
them. He landed with his sword in hand, his feet pointed in the
direction he was supposed to run.

Before Akstyr had taken more than a step
toward the man on the floor, an invisible force slammed into him.
It knocked him backward, then smashed him to the floor. He tried to
push himself up, but a weight kept him pressed flat. The memory of
a similar situation, at the hands of the wizard Arbitan Losk,
flashed through his mind. Against all likelihood, these thugs had a
practitioner with them.

“
I can’t hold them for
long,” a strained voice said from the rear of the cab. “Hurry up
and kill them.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Akstyr could
see Maldynado and Basilard flattened to the floor as well. Two of
their enemies were already down in unmoving heaps, but one remained
standing. He nodded firmly at the order and yanked out a
dagger.

Akstyr focused on the practitioner. Already,
sweat beaded on the man’s forehead and dribbled down his cheeks to
drip off his stubbled jaw. This wasn’t someone of Losk’s caliber,
and Akstyr himself had grown a lot since the previous winter.
Having his physical body restrained did not mean he couldn’t use
his own mental powers.

He pursued the first tactic that came to
mind. Using telekinetics, he unbuckled the man’s belt. The
practitioner’s eyes widened, and his hand dropped in a startled
jerk for his trousers.

The pressure weighing down Akstyr vanished.
He lunged to one knee and hurled his cutlass. He ran in after it,
not expecting the blade to do more than surprise the practitioner
and keep him from reapplying his spell, but the sharp sword cut
into the man’s neck. He dropped, clutching at his throat as blood
gushed out between his fingers.

Akstyr grabbed his fallen cutlass and
finished the man off. One couldn’t be too careful when
practitioners were involved, though this fellow didn’t look much
older than Akstyr himself, and he’d sounded like a Turgonian. An
unfamiliar sense of remorse touched Akstyr as he watched the man’s
life fade away. What if this had been someone like him? A Turgonian
trying to teach himself the best he could?

“
Nice work,” Maldynado
said.

The praise surprised Akstyr
out of his musings. Maldynado
never
praised him.

Yes
, Basilard signed.
Good
work.

“
Uh, thanks,” Akstyr
said.

“
That move with the cutlass
was smooth,” Maldynado said. “You were like a little
Sicarius.”

Akstyr snorted. “Whatever.” Despite the
snort, he had to wrestle with his lips to keep them from a grin.
Sure, he wanted to be a practitioner, not a warrior, but being
compared to an assassin was nice.

Basilard gestured to the
fallen men—he and Maldynado had finished off their three—and
signed,
Now what do we do?

Unsecured crates of ammunition and bundles
of firearms bounced with the train’s vibrations. Akstyr was lucky
he hadn’t tripped over something on his way to the back. Behind the
dead practitioner, the bigger artillery weapons were strapped to
the wall.

“
The original plan was to
see where these weapons were being delivered,” Maldynado said, “and
I imagine we can still do that. I’m curious myself, now that we’ve
seen these people weren’t above employing magic to help things
along. That’s not exactly standard imperial operating
procedure.”

“
I think he was a local boy
keeping his skills a secret, to most of his comrades anyway.”
Akstyr thought of the way the first two men they’d subdued had
seemed terrified by the idea of magic, not like people who’d been
exposed to it often.

Someone must have known
about his skills and hired him,
Basilard
signed.