Jo Clayton - Shadow of the Warmaster

“And if we go in low, you won’t have to run the ballast motors.”

“Run them a shorter time anyway.” He spoke absently as he watched the pulses from the Palace scanners go ghosting past them, invisibilities made visible by the field, eerie undulating tadpoles of light swimming through the mist and vanishing behind them. Five minutes. He bent over the dead reckoner, touching the controls with careful delicacy to keep Wind-skimmer moving in the right direction. Ten minutes. Another chime. He started the pumps sucking. “Ten minutes more,” he said. “Then we’re there.”

He brought the airship down and down until she moved about forty meters above the grass, then he shut the motors off and let the wind take them. The sudden silence felt odd, almost painful. He didn’t want to talk, nor, it seemed, did any of the others. He watched the hypnotic dance of the scanner pulses as the silvery wigglers darted past and past, endless numbers of them-a dance that ended so abruptly he leaned forward, startled, not believing he wasn’t seeing them any longer. “Elli.”

“What?”

“Something’s happened to the scanners. Those dragonflies? Maybe they had business at the Palace.”

“What else could it be?”

He shrugged, settled back. “Pittipat wouldn’t put his hide at risk, not if he knew it. They did it, all right, those aliens. I wonder who they are and what they want.”

“I’m afraid we’re going to find out if we go in like we planned. How close are we?”

“Two, three minutes, why?”

“You sure the altimeter is working?”

“As well as it ever does. I’ve been flying since I was a tweener, Elli. You get to know where you’re riding by how the air feels. The reading’s not out more than a yard or so either way.”

“I was thinking we could have dropped below the wall, that would stop the pulses, wouldn’t it? Why don’t you take Skimmer up again and see what happens?”

“No. There’s no reason to risk the sound of the pump being picked up.”

She grimaced. “You’re the pilot.”

The Palace slept; dim red sparks looped steadily across the gardens like fireflies tied to a track, the guards undisturbed in their rounds. Karrel Goza brought Windskimmer over their heads to the open-air theater. He turned her nose into the wind, touched on the motors and used a trickle of their power to hold her in place for the minute or so it took Elmas Ofka and her isyas to slide down the ladders onto the top tier of the theater seats, then he brought the airship around and cut the motors off once more, let the wind drift her out of the enclosure and across the tip of the lake to the Imperator’s hunting preserve, an ancient forest that the Hordar had left wild and the Huvved hadn’t touched.

Half a kilometer in, he dropped a mooring cable with a grasping claw, anchored Windskimmer to one of the larger trees, turned off the cuux field and arranged the two chairs so he could stretch himself across them and drowse away the time until he had to go back for Elmas Ofka and the isyas.

6. Begin with Elmas Ofka on the top tier of theater seats, her isyas around her waiting for a guard to move on, then shift to-

the maze of corridors in the subterra of the Imperator’s Palace/concrete tunnels, gray paint on the walls, enigmatic numbers and glyphs in dirt dulled black, grit on the floors that make walking silently close to impossible, branches cutting off at angles to make things more confusing, ramps leading to lower levels at unpredictable intervals, stairways behind half-doors, pervasive hum of airmachines that keep cold dry air moving restlessly through the maze, six meter strips of coldlight tubes pasted in staccato lines overhead and on each wall. Voices echo an indeterminate distance.

Elmas Ofka crouched behind the curving stone bench; condensation trickled in cold rivulets down her body, dripped from her nose and saturated the tight cowl that covered her head and the lower part of her face. Around her she could hear the isyas breathing; they sounded louder than surf after a storm. Thankful that the wind was blowing into her face so the cats wouldn’t scent her, she held her own breath as she watched the guard below in the well of the theater wave his handlamp about. Even in the back beams of the powerful lamp he wasn’t much more than a silhouette, but she could see that he was broad and muscular, probably one of the laggas old Pittipat brought back from exile on Tassalga to put the boot harder into ordinary Hordar. He looked regrettably alert, more so than the cats who were shivering and stepping with exaggerated delicacy over the wet stone. Silently she urged them on, her teeth clamped so hard her jaw ached.

After what seemed an eternity, he gave the cats a toothy whistle, slapped at them with the leashes and followed them across the oval well. There were double doors at the far end; she heard the jingling of keys as he unlocked them, the sounds amplified by the acoustics of the place, then the chunk and thud as he pushed one of the doors open and whistled the cats outside.

As soon as the door boomed shut, Elmas Ofka stood, leaped onto the bench and ran along it to the nearest flight of stairs, the isyas trotting silently behind her. She led them down the stairs, but stopped before she stepped into the well to let Tezzi Ofka spray her once again with the scent-destroyer a cousin of hers had come up with, a mixture of kedaga, an herb cats avoided like most of them avoided water, crushed crab beetle and stinkfish oil. Even to her relatively insensitive nostrils it was a revolting mess, but better than having the cats set up a howl when they came across an intruder’s scent trace on the guard’s next appearance here.

As soon as the others were sprayed, she ran across the flagging to the raised platform in the center of the well and stopped by the door in the near end; according to her information it led down to the dressing rooms and, more importantly, into the tech’s area where the lighting was controlled and the other effects were contrived. And where there was rumored to be access to the subterra. She waved Harli Tanggаr forward, stepped back so the isya could work on the door.

Harli started to kneel, straightened up. She put her hand on the door and pushed gently. It swung open. “Ondar,” she breathed, “look.” She pointed at the latchtongue, neatly sliced through. “Someone’s ahead of us. The aliens you think?”

Elmas Ofka bent closer; whatever had dealt with the latch was similar to the cutters N’Ceegh made for them. “Probably.” She straightened, waved the isyas closer, pulled her cowl off her mouth. “I want to go in,” she whispered, “but I won’t take you where you don’t want to go. It’s all or none. Call it.”

Harli Tanggаr tugged at her cowl, uncovering a broad grin. “In,” she breathed. The grin went round the circle. In, in, yet again in.

Elmas Ofka nodded, drew the cowl higher so only her eyes showed. She pushed the door open and stepped into the vestibule.

The entrance to the subterra was wedged open a crack; a short distance inside a roving-guard was lying against a wall. Tezzi Ofka knelt beside him. “Still alive,” she said, speaking in a throaty mutter that dropped dead less than a bodylength away.

“Knocked out?”

Tezzi Ofka shook her head. “No bump or bruise. N’Ceegh is working on a thing he calls a stunner. Could be something like that.”

“They aren’t worried about someone finding him.”

“Looks like.”

Elmas Ofka frowned along the grimy corridor, glanced over her shoulder at the other branches fading into dimness as they dipped downward. “They seem to know where they’re going.”