Deadly Games (43 page)

Basilard led the way to the laboratory from
which he and Sicarius had escaped mere hours earlier. Books,
Akstyr, and the athletes followed, grunting and panting as they
toted the unconscious practitioners. Clunks and thumps sounded as
limbs—or heads—collided with pipes and bulkheads. Despite the
damage the vessel had taken, the barrier remained in place,
blocking the laboratory entrance.

“Do you know how to get past?” Books
asked.

Basilard stared at the eyeball-reader
thoughtfully. He had no desire to try Sicarius’s method.

“Akstyr, do
you
know how to get past?”
Books asked over his shoulder.

“That work’s beyond me,” he said.

“Can we hurry up?” a man asked at the rear.
“This bloke’s stirring. I think they’re going to wake up soon.”

Basilard pointed at an unconscious woman
strung between Books and Akstyr.
Lift her up, pry her eyelid
open, and wave her face in front of that device.

“That’ll work?” Books asked skeptically.

The alternative is to gouge her eyeball out
and wave it on a stick.

“Let’s...make the first thing work,” Books
said. “And please don’t tell me if you know for a fact the other
method works.”

He and Akstyr jostled the woman into place.
Basilard used his good arm to pry her eyelid back and held his
breath. Nothing happened. The iris was rolled back in her head.
Grimacing—and worried she would wake up—he used his finger to slide
her eyeball downward.

The barrier winked out.

Before he could let his breath out in relief,
something tinkled to the deck inside. Basilard had no idea how many
of the crew had been accounted for. Not everybody, apparently.

He drew his knife and motioned for the rest
of the team to wait inside the threshold.

Only tables and equipment occupied the first
aisle. Basilard tiptoed toward the second and paused at a tank on
the end.

In case someone waited around the corner with
a pistol, he stuck his hand out as a decoy, then whipped it back.
No shots fired. He listened but heard nothing. Knife in hand, he
peeked around the corner....

Only to find it empty. He ducked to see if
someone might be hiding beneath the beds. Nothing. The hairs rose
on the back of his neck, and some instinct told him to look up.

A pair of black boots swung toward his
face.

Basilard dropped into a crouch so low, his
rump smacked the deck. He bounced up instantly, whirling as a
gray-haired soldier hanging from the ceiling pipes swung past him.
Taloncrest. Before he could release the pipes and drop down,
Basilard jammed his knife into the man’s kidney.

Taloncrest snarled as his boots hit the deck,
and he whirled, a pistol in hand.

Basilard dropped again, this time hurling
himself onto his back. He kicked up, sending the pistol flying with
surprising ease. Taloncrest stood there, face slack, a bulky tote
slung over one shoulder, papers fighting to escape the flap.

His eyes grew glazed, and he toppled
forward.

Basilard scrambled backward in the tight
aisle and barely avoided having the man land on top of him. A
second knife protruded from his back.

Akstyr stepped forward and removed it.
“You’re welcome.”

Thank you
, Basilard signed.

“This goon’s waking up,” someone said.

A loud thump sounded.

“Never mind,” someone else said.

Let’s get these people strapped to the
beds
, Basilard signed.

Books stuck his head around the corner in
time to see the message. “Do you know how to sedate them?”

Basilard pointed to one of the globes that
perched beside each table.
I saw it done.

“So, that’s a yes?” Books asked.

Basilard hesitated.
Not really.

“This should prove interesting then.”

* * * * *

After retrieving their swords, Amaranthe and
Maldynado wound through the corridors, following Sicarius. She
focused on carrying her helmet, not tripping over her oversized
boots, and watching for guards; she most definitely did not focus
on Sicarius’s bare rear end as he jogged ahead of them.

“If Deret’s on board the
Saberfist
,”
Maldynado said, “he might be able to keep the marines from shooting
us when we pop up.”

“Why would Mancrest be there?” Sicarius
asked, his tone as friendly as the edge of that black knife of
his.

“His brother is the captain of the marine
salvage and rescue vessel dropping explosives on us,” Amaranthe
said. “I had to chat with Deret to make that happen.” Another
charge blew nearby, and the corridor trembled. “Which has been a
boon and a bane, I’ll admit.”

A second blast went off, this time right
outside the wall. The floor heaved, pitching her sideways. A light
on the wall bounced out of its holder and shattered on the deck.
Sicarius caught Amaranthe before she smashed against the
bulkhead—nothing so mundane as a shock wave would throw him off his
feet—and she nodded a thank you. It was good to have him back even
if the return look he gave her was on the cool and disapproving
side. She hoped it was because of Deret and not due to her own
clumsiness.

“Don’t worry about Mancrest,” she said. “You
were
right about that meeting at Pyramid Park being a bad
idea, but we’ve come to an agreement since then.”

If anything Sicarius’s gaze grew cooler.

“He gave me his word,” Amaranthe said. “He’s
not trying to turn me over to the military any more.”

“No.” Maldynado snickered. “He’s just trying
to date you now.”

Sicarius threw a sharp look at him.

A snap sounded, and a hairline crack formed
in a wall seam next to Amaranthe. A bead of water appeared at the
bottom.

“We better go.” She grabbed Maldynado and
Sicarius by the elbows, trying to hustle everyone down the
corridor. “There’s a lot of pressure down here. I don’t want to be
around if anything implodes.”

Sicarius strode forward, breaking free of her
grip. He led them around two corners and past a massive bulkhead
sealing off a corridor. Water pooled on the floor before it.

“Must be that wing they closed down,”
Amaranthe said. Too bad nobody was left in the navigation room to
drop more doors in case other sections flooded. “Is it possible
these ballast tanks won’t be enough to lift us if too much of the
interior has taken on water?”

“Very possible.” Sicarius stopped before a
panel filled with levers and smaller versions of the wheels that
opened the hatches. Though it looked like Turgonian technology, the
words etched on plaques were nothing she could read.

Sicarius handed her the manual, turned a
wheel, and twisted one of the levers in a half circle. A grinding
noise came from behind the wall, followed by a muffled hissing. Air
being forced into the tanks? Her thoughts tangled as she tried to
grasp the science—or perhaps Science—behind the system.

“It’s working.” Sicarius tapped a gauge. “But
there’s another tank along the other main corridor, and then two
more used for leveling the ship. We may need to open the flood
valves on those, too.”

Before he finished talking, he was jogging
again. Amaranthe and Maldynado hustled to catch up.

“What happens if we’ve taken on too much
water and this doesn’t get us off the bottom?” Maldynado asked.
“Everyone without diving suits drowns down here?” He seemed to
realize he was talking to someone without a suit, for he added,
“And, er, just so you know, this wouldn’t fit you, Sicarius, so
there’s no need to stab me in the back for it.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” Sicarius said as they
turned into another corridor.

“That’s a relief,” Maldynado said.

“It would compromise the suit.”

Maldynado grew pale, as if he were imagining
Sicarius forcing him out of the suit at knife point and
then
stabbing him.

Amaranthe elbowed him. “I think that was a
joke.”

Maldynado shook his head. “Given the source,
I doubt it.”

They reached a set of controls identical to
the first.

“How deep are we?” Sicarius asked as he
checked the gauges.

“Books estimates three to four hundred feet,”
Amaranthe said.

“I’ve studied free diving. I can make it
out.”

“What’s free diving?” Maldynado asked.

“Employing mind-body control techniques to
maximize the effectiveness of the mammalian diving reflex.”

Maldynado’s brow furrowed and he mouthed,
“What?” at Amaranthe.

“I think it means he’s good at holding his
breath,” she said.

“Oh.”

Sicarius twisted a wheel, turned a lever, and
they moved on.

Amaranthe was about to ask him if the vessel
should be lifting yet when they rounded a corner and entered an
occupied corridor. Two guards stood before a set of controls
similar to the other ones.

The men carried pistols, but Sicarius never
slowed. He strode toward them as determined as death. One of the
guards reached for his firearm, but he took one good look at
Sicarius and backed away. Both men turned and ran.

Sicarius must have deemed them no threat, for
he stopped at the controls without bothering to hurl knives into
their backs. Maybe Amaranthe’s influence was mellowing him. Right.
Or maybe their situation was so dire there was no time for knife
play. As far as she could tell, the vessel had yet to budge.

“How come no guards turned and ran from us
when we were infiltrating the place?” Maldynado asked.

“Their employers were conscious,” Amaranthe
said, “and their ship wasn’t half-destroyed, so they had higher
morale.”

“Oh, good. I’d hate to think that even naked,
Sicarius is scarier than us.”

Sicarius finished with the controls and took
off.

They threw the last lever in the forward
section of the vessel and returned to the transition chamber where
the team had first entered. Akstyr, Books, Basilard, and some of
the athletes waited there. All of Books’s charges had found
clothing, if only the white jackets the practitioners wore, which
left Sicarius as the soul nude member of the group. He did not seem
to care.

“Are the practitioners subdued?” Amaranthe
asked.

“You mean those stinking wizards?” one
athlete asked with a sneer. “They’re taken care of.”

“They’re strapped down so the marines can
pick them up when they board,” Books said. “We weren’t sure how to
operate the drugging mechanism, but we tossed a couple more of
those vials into the room before we left.” He shrugged. “Best we
could do. I left a couple of women there to warn us if anyone
stirs. I didn’t know if one of us should stay or if you’d need us
for the next phase of your plan.”

The next phrase of her plan. That sounded
very official and organized. If only that were the truth.

“Thank you, Books. Sicarius, how long should
it take for air to fill the tanks and for us to rise?”
If
they were going to.

“Soon,” Sicarius said.

Some of the athletes stirred again at the
mention of his name. They were probably wondering why the city’s
most notorious assassin was helping them. Maybe it was time to make
sure her charges could tell the journalists about their
rescuers.

“I’m Amaranthe Lokdon,” she told them. “We’re
an outfit called The Emperor’s Edge. I bring this up in case you
want to mention it to someone later on.”

Books chuckled. She wondered if she should
further tout their merits. There wouldn’t be a chance once they
were on the surface and the marines were swarming onto the foreign
craft. Amaranthe certainly wasn’t planning to stick around then.
Just because Deret had talked his brother into checking out the
laboratory did not mean—

The floor tilted.

Amaranthe caught herself on the wall. Was it
another attack? No, she had not heard an explosion.

“We’re rising,” Books said.

The floor titled further, and Amaranthe
braced herself.

“Lopsided as a drunken marine,” Maldynado
said. “Who’s driving this boat?”

Basilard signed,
Are there still people in
navigation?

“No,” Amaranthe said. “We convinced them to
come out and join the others on the deck in front of your hatch. It
seemed logical at the time.”

Convinced? How?

Amaranthe twitched a shoulder. “A little
palavering.”

Basilard lifted an eyebrow at Sicarius and
signed,
No eyeball required.

Amaranthe frowned, wondering if she had
misread a sign. Eyeball? That did not sound right.

Sicarius’s eyes glinted though, and he signed
back,
As predicted.

It felt strange to be on the outside of a
joke between Sicarius and someone else. More than strange—a twinge
of jealousy reared its head. She stomped it down. It was good for
the men to bond, those two especially.

The vessel left the lake bottom with a
scrape. Amaranthe checked the nearest porthole.

The orange exterior lights still shone, but a
cloud of sediment was rising with them, and dust swirled about. A
startled school of fish flitted close enough to the porthole to
see, but more than a few feet away, the haze obscured
everything.

Amaranthe started to return to the group, but
her men had come to join her. She rapped her knuckles on her
helmet. “Everyone with suits, get ready. We’ll assume the kraken is
troubling the marines and take the harpoons out to help with it.
We’ll exit roughly twenty feet before reaching the surface.”
Assuming the dust cleared and they could
tell
when the
surface drew close. “Based on what I’ve seen of this place from the
outside, it’s the sort of craft most sane people would shoot at on
sight and wait to investigate until it’s capsized and dragged up on
a beach. Any questions?”

“If the marines are handling the kraken, we
can use that as a distraction and swim away,” Sicarius said.
“There’s no need to risk ourselves against it.”