Forged in Blood II

Chapter 7

Two hours before dawn, Sicarius glided through Flintcrest’s new camp, following paths freshly tramped into the snow, his feet soundless on the hard crust. None of the perimeter guards spotted him, none of the sleeping soldiers heard him, and nobody saw the heavy bloodstained bag hanging from his shoulder. He wound through the trees and tents, searching for the Nurian area. Flintcrest had moved his men in the night, marching south, choosing a wide route around the lake, up the eastern side of Stumps, and into the Emperor’s Preserve. Though the wilds were dense, they didn’t span that many acres, and the army wouldn’t remain hidden for long. Flintcrest must intend to strike soon. What target? The Imperial Barracks?

Sicarius found the Nurian tent, not by the lack of activity around it this time, but by voices coming from within. Elsewhere, only snores emanated from the tents, the soldiers sleeping hard after their night’s work. From dozens of meters away, he heard the Nurians, speaking in their own tongue, their voices raised in argument.

Though he suspected Kor Nas would know his precise location, Sicarius slowed his approach to listen.

“The assassin is acceptable,” a young man said. “Nobody back home objects to that method of dealing with enemies, and using one of their own people to deliver the killing blows, it’s a better choice than the soul construct, but I don’t want you to send him after Enemy Chief Fox.”

Who? Sicarius stopped outside the tent flap. He knew the Nurians gave animal nicknames to their honored chiefs and some of their enemies as well, but he had only worked in Nuria once and wasn’t familiar with many of them.

“Your attitude… puzzles me, He shu,” Kor Nas said. Ah, he was speaking to the diplomat. “To lay his head at your father’s feet, would that not be a great prize? Resulting in great honor and prestige for your family? For twenty years, he made the Turgonians untouchable at sea, and he destroyed more of our ships-our crews-than one can count.”

An uncharacteristic bout of anxiety wormed into Sicarius’s belly. Starcrest.

“If he dies in the fighting here, so be it,” the diplomat said, “but I do not wish to be the cause.”

Kor Nas did not speak for a long moment, and Sicarius expected to be called inside, anticipating that the practitioner had paused because his senses had alerted him to Sicarius’s presence. But when Kor Nas spoke again, it was to continue the conversation.

“I do not understand why you feel that way, He shu, but if you do not wish to lay Enemy Chief Fox’s head at the Great Chief’s feet, allow me the honor. As soon as his hiding place is discovered, I will send the assassin, and-”

“No.”

Another long pause. “Your stubbornness in this matter mystifies me. He is an enemy of Nuria. To have a chance at him and not take it is tantamount to treason.” Kor Nas lowered his voice to a harsh whisper. “Your father would not be pleased if he learned that you could have arranged his death and turned your back on the opportunity.”

“I do not appreciate the implication that you would go to my father and speak ill of me, Kor Nas.” The young man managed an impressive amount of cold menace in his voice. Was he a practitioner as well? One capable of standing toe-to-toe with Kor Nas? It seemed unlikely in one half of Kor Nas’s age. If he was one of the Great Chief’s sons, perhaps he believed himself untouchable because of his father’s influence. An unwise assumption, perhaps, if he chose to let Starcrest live. Indeed, the Nurians would likely see that as treason, even if twenty years had passed since the war. Sicarius understood Kor Nas’s logic, but he found himself hoping the younger man had a way to stand up to him effectively.

“Do not force me to do so then, He shu.”

“Do you think my father will care? We’re not here to settle old grudges. We’re here because our people are hungry, and our resources are limited. Our soil is depleted after thousands of years of farming, there’s scarcely any coal or ore left in the mountains, and few of the great forests remain standing. My father wants a deal with the Turgonians, some of the resources they have so many of, and that is all that he cares about.”

“He’ll be more likely to get that deal if all of Flintcrest’s enemies are thwarted. Starcrest can only be here to cause trouble.”

“We don’t know why he’s here. Maybe he heard about the nascent fighting and came to collect whatever family he has left in the area.”

“Don’t be naive. Let me send the assassin.”

“What honor is there in killing a gray-haired old man, Kor Nas? It’s been over twenty years since he bothered us. He probably walks with a cane, has three teeth left in his mouth, and can’t remember half of the crimes he committed against our people.”

“He is my age, He shu.” Sicarius had never heard the practitioner so dry. “I know at thirty it seems that anyone over sixty must be doddering and infirm, but I assure you this isn’t so.”

The diplomat had the grace to clear his throat, but he didn’t give up his argument. “Yes, but you’re a practitioner, not a warrior. You will retain your power as long as your mind remains sharp. Enemy Chief Fox was a marine.”

Kor Nas grunted. “He did not receive that moniker because of his sword arm, boy. I know you know that. He will be dangerous as long as his mind remains sharp. Are you not worried about why he is here? It may be true that your father didn’t care about him so long as he was on that island, but now that he is back in the empire… I’m warning you, to leave him alive be would be treason.”

“If his mind is still sharp, maybe he’ll have no trouble defeating your assassin, leaving you out here without a pet to watch your back while you work your craft.”

“Oh, I’m confident in the abilities of my assassin.” Kor Nas raised his voice-he needn’t have bothered. “Enter, my pet.”

Had Sicarius been capable of ignoring the derogatory summons, he would have. Even as his feet led him through the flap and into the tent, he longed to sling the heavy bag at the practitioner’s head, yank out his dagger, and drive the blade into his heart. All his arms would do, however, was lower his burden. He untied the cord binding the stained canvas shut and dumped the contents.

Seven heads rolled onto the carpet between the two Nurians.

The diplomat, fully clothed, shaved, and dressed with his flute and pipe ornamentation despite the early hour, didn’t stumble backward or flinch at the grisly trophies, but he did stare down at them for a long moment, his mouth set in a hard line. When his gaze lifted to Sicarius’s face for a wary few seconds, Sicarius read the fear in his eyes, though he tried to mask his features.

You don’t have to fear me, Sicarius wanted to say, for I’ll not raise a hand against an ally, acknowledged or not, of Admiral Starcrest’s. But he couldn’t.

“As you can see, Prince Zirabo,” Kor Nas said, “he is effective.”

The name, used for the first time, didn’t surprise Sicarius. He’d guessed from the conversation that this was one of the Great Chief’s sons, the youngest if he recalled correctly. With several older brothers, Zirabo wouldn’t likely be put in a position to rule Nuria, but he should have some sway. Not enough to daunt Kor Nas, it seemed. Kor Nas must be high up in the power structure over there as well. The Nurians had sent their best to ensure they received the concessions they wanted.

“Enemy Chief Fox won’t have a chance to apply his clever mind,” Kor Nas continued, “because he won’t see my pet coming until the dagger is plunging into his heart.”

“Then you’ll forgive me,” Prince Zirabo said, striding toward the tent flap, “if I hope the seer doesn’t find him.”

Kor Nas’s smile gave Sicarius little reason to share that hope, not when the man had already located so many of the Forge leaders that had eluded Amaranthe, Books, and Sicarius himself over the last six months. He stared down at the sightless eyes of Worgavic and couldn’t help but imagine Starcrest’s head in an identical position.

• • •

“Where’d everybody go?” Maldynado whispered.

“I don’t know.” Amaranthe headed for the dark intersection, holding a lantern aloft. “But if this place was eerie when it was lit, it’s even more disturbing now.” Her meager flame wasn’t much of a beacon against the black, windowless tunnels. It felt as if the oppressive darkness could reach out and snuff the single flame.

“Maybe we should wait here.” Maldynado pointed to the translucent membrane, the snowy field and nighttime sky visible beyond it. “We don’t have any longbows and whatever it was the professor thought could be used against the cubes.”

“Agreed, they might never find us if we wander off, but I want to see if we can see any sign of them from the corner.”

Amaranthe stopped at the seven-way intersection. Those ancient people hadn’t cared much for standard geometric shapes. Too basic for their tastes? She peered down each passageway until she spotted something on the floor. She almost leaped back. It was one of the cubes. But it wasn’t floating. It was…

She dared to shuffle closer for a better look.

Two of the sides had been melted away, the exterior crumpling in on itself, revealing a mess of innards made from the same black as the shell, but with thin boards and fine cables snaking about. An arrow shaft stuck out of the mess, the fletching still attached, though the head had either broken off or perhaps melted as well. A tendril of smoke wafted from the innards.

“That’s heartening,” Maldynado said.

“It’d be more heartening if our comrades were standing here over the broken husk, beaming with pride as they showed off their victory.”

“I don’t think Bas knows how to beam. His face is stuck in that saturnine expression of his.”

Amaranthe would be saturnine, too, if they couldn’t find the others. The tunnel stretched away beyond the cube, and if anything else waited down it, she couldn’t tell. She wondered if there was anyway to return power to the lights. In crashing the ship, had she broken the entire thing? Given what she’d seen of the technology, it seemed incomprehensible. But, then, it was fifty thousand years old. Maybe the furnace had run out of coal.

“There must have been more than one cube,” she said. “They’ll probably take care of it and circle back.”

“I hope there wasn’t a lot more than one cube,” Maldynado said. “The professor didn’t have that many arrows.”

Her quiver had been stuffed, but that didn’t mean much. Twenty arrows perhaps. And how many cleaning cubes existed in the vastness of the Behemoth? “I wonder why she didn’t ask us all to bring some.”

“Maybe they were only able to make so much of… whatever was in that jar.”

“Something applied to the arrowhead,” Amaranthe guessed. “That must be it, or maybe she expected me to be able to guide her right to the control room before we had to face many problems.”

“Can you? From here?”

“I might have been able to if we’d gone in a door I’d been through before, but this is a new one.”

Amaranthe was contemplating sticking her tongue out at the confusing seven-way intersection when she noticed a scratch on one of the walls. More than a scratch-something had gouged a centimeter-deep hole in the impervious metal. No arrow could have done that. She probed the dent with a finger and found it slightly warm.

“Oh, right,” she murmured, remembering the damage in the control rooms.

“Hm?” Maldynado prompted.

“Whatever Retta’s assistant did to change the cubes caused them to do more than incinerate people. Their beams started damaging the walls, punching through the walls to whatever equipment lay behind them. That’s why we crashed.”

“That wasn’t your fault then,” Maldynado said. “I can tell you’re blaming yourself for all of this. You shouldn’t be.”

“Enh.” Amaranthe didn’t feel like explaining the chain of events that had led to Retta’s assistant making those changes, a chain she had started as surely as she was breathing now. Instead, she wandered about the intersection, searching for more signs of damage. The number of shots marring the walls confirmed her suspicion that there’d been more than one cube attacking the team. At least two, but maybe more. Tikaya had used her bow to destroy one, but the other must have overwhelmed them and they ran. “I think they went this way,” Amaranthe said after a few more moments of study.

Maldynado nodded toward the scarred walls. “Follow the holes, and we find them?”

“I’m assuming the cubes were shooting at our people as they fled.”

“You sure you don’t want to wait here for them to come back for us? What if they circle back by some other route and we miss them?”

“You’d think they would come back the same direction to stave off that very possibility. We can meet them in the middle.”

“Unless they’re still fleeing cubes and they can’t come back in the same direction,” Maldynado said. “We could get very lost in there.”

“They have exactly one effective weapon between the three of them. I’m not going to stay here and wait when they could need our help.”

Maldynado sighed and walked down the corridor at her side. He did not, she was glad, point out that they had exactly no effective weapons to help balance the equation. “Just promise me you won’t hurl yourself in front of any cannons. At least not when I’m standing close to you.”

“I’ll try to sublimate any urges to do so.”

They continued down the tunnel, watching the walls for scars. In some spots, there was a clump of them. In others, often around bends where their comrades must have gained ground, there weren’t any. Amaranthe grew nervous in those blank-walled areas, especially when they crossed an intersection and other tunnels branched off. They had to double back twice to find the trail again.

“I hope random cubes aren’t roaming through the corridors, shooting up the walls for their own amusement,” Maldynado said.

“Our people wouldn’t have run off for no reason,” Amaranthe said firmly.

“I’m not so sure. Did you see the way the professor’s eyes lit up when she saw this thing? She couldn’t wait to get inside. Those other two soldiers are probably at the docks right now, wondering where she is.”

Amaranthe stopped walking and lifted a hand. She’d heard something.

A clank sounded in the distance, somewhere ahead of them and… above them? Could that be right?

“Is that-”

“Sh.” Amaranthe held a finger to her lips, then jogged down the tunnel. Listening as she went, she tried to keep her footfalls soft and stop the clatter of her gear, though her rucksack thumped annoyingly on her back.

Maldynado ran beside her, stealing glances at her. Hadn’t he heard anything? Maybe she’d imagined it.

A blocky shape came into sight in the tunnel ahead. Another destroyed cube. Good. They were on the right track. They ran past it without stopping to examine it.

“Look out,” someone yelled ahead of them. Mahliki.

“I see it,” came Tikaya’s response, calm but harried.

A sickly smoke scent, something between burning rubber and scorched metal, reached Amaranthe’s nose. Maldynado picked up speed, outpacing her. Lantern light came into view ahead.

His broad back blocked her line of sight, so she didn’t see why he yanked out his rapier, but she trusted he had a good reason. She pulled out her pistol. Neither of their weapons would be effective, but maybe they could distract the cubes.

Maldynado bellowed and took a swing at something in front of him, wielding the blade as if it were an axe instead of a slender rapier. Hugging the wall, Amaranthe went down on one knee and lifted her pistol, expecting a cube to hover in the air ahead of them. She was in time to see his blade clang against something else, something larger but also floating. The blow caused it to bump against the wall and wobble before righting itself. Whatever it was, it didn’t retaliate.

Four feet tall and reminiscent of two big snowballs one atop the other, the black object hovered a few inches above the floor. Two thick white beams shot from its body, painting the wall next to it. Maldynado twitched, almost leaping back, but when he saw that the beams weren’t aimed at him, he swung again. Again, the contraption hit the side of the tunnel, bounced off, and wobbled, but again righted itself and refocused its beam on the wall, a smoldering patch of wall.

Amaranthe raised a hand to stop him. “I don’t think-”

“Not those,” came Tikaya’s voice from ahead.

Amaranthe and Maldynado were at the end of a tunnel that opened into a strange chamber with a spiky floor plan-she didn’t know what else to call it. Long angular alcoves thrust outward in all directions from an open center area, the walls coming together at the shadowy ends of those alcoves like the tips of a triangle with a column of lights at each point. Control stations?

“They’re repairing the damage,” Tikaya went on. Her head was sticking out from one of those alcoves. “They won’t hurt you, but-”

“Look out,” her daughter barked again.

“-the cubes will!” Tikaya finished, ducking back into the alcove before a splash of crimson struck the wall. The sturdy metal didn’t explode or even sheer off in great shards, but flakes did rain to the floor as the beam bore in.

“Where’s Basilard?” Maldynado called.

“Where’s your bow? And that royal gunk?” Amaranthe asked. Now that she’d been told it wouldn’t hurt her, she scooted past the large hovering device, ducking to avoid its white beam, though she paused, startled as a putty-like substance floated through the light and affixed itself to the wall.

Not important, she decided and slipped out of the tunnel. From there, she could see the full room, including two cubes floating toward the alcove Tikaya and Mahliki shared. The two of them were out of sight, but if their alcove was like the others she could see down, it dead-ended at one of those columns. Unless those columns housed secret weapons, the women were in trouble. Where was Basilard?

She’d no more than thought the question when he sprinted out of an alcove-no, that was a tunnel-on the opposite side of the chamber. Five arrows were clenched in his fist, and he ran toward the women’s hiding spot, but he halted, almost skidding on the smooth floor when he spotted the cubes. One stopped advancing toward the alcove and rotated toward him. He only had the arrows and a dagger, nothing that would help him against it.

“Get out of there, Bas,” Maldynado barked, jumping out of the tunnel with his rapier.

Basilard hesitated, but didn’t backpedal. He glanced toward the women’s alcove, then, jaw set with determination, sprinted toward it.

Maldynado charged at the cube targeting Basilard. Amaranthe fired before the men drew too close. Her ball clipped its back corner, but didn’t make it so much as twitch.

A red beam speared the air, aiming straight for Basilard’s heart. He anticipated it and dove, rolling toward the alcove, arrows held away from his body so he wouldn’t impale himself. He came up zigging and zagging, then dove again, this time disappearing from Amaranthe’s sight.

Maldynado skidded to a stop a few feet behind the cube.

“Get out of there,” Amaranthe shouted. “You can’t do anything.”

She couldn’t either. She dropped her useless pistol and spun about, eyeing the repair device. It had sealed the hole in the wall and was drifting off up the tunnel.

“Oh, no you don’t.” Amaranthe chased after it and grabbed it around the middle, figuring it couldn’t be that heavy-Maldynado had moved it by beating on it with a rapier, after all. She was right, and she was able to pull it back into the chamber.

She came out of the tunnel, lugging the thing behind her, in time to see Maldynado run off down the opposite passage with a cube chasing him. The other one floated at the head of the women’s alcove and was firing inside. Amaranthe gulped. It couldn’t have hit anyone yet-there would have been screams, surely. But there weren’t any arrows coming out either.

Like a sled dog straining into the leads, Amaranthe hauled the repair device after her, hoping the cube wouldn’t notice her until she was ready. She didn’t know if she could replicate Basilard’s acrobatic beam dodging.

She passed a smoldering section of the floor, and her captured device whirred and pulled against her. Yes, it wanted to do its job, and she was stopping it. Intruders were so rude.

Watching the cube every step of the way, she managed to haul the device to within a few feet of the alcove. She shifted her grip, coming around the thing, and started pushing instead of pulling.

“There, you go, a nice chipped corner to work on,” she panted and gave it a great shove.

The double snowball jerked and trembled, but the momentum sent it floating in front of the alcove. It crossed into the path of the crimson beam. Amaranthe skittered back, fearing an explosion, but the cube’s attack merely bit in slightly, as it did with the walls. The repair device didn’t seem to notice. It rotated until its opening faced the damaged corner, and one of the white beams shot out, bathing the black wall in light.

Maybe the machines were talking to each other-as in, stop firing at me, you idiot box-for the crimson beam winked out. Unfortunately, the cube only turned toward the next target-Amaranthe.

She started to spin, intending to sprint back to the tunnel, but a flash of green streaked out of the alcove, just missing the repair device. It whizzed past to lodge in the cube’s orifice. An arrow, Amaranthe realized, noting the green fletching even as she kept scrambling back. If the strike didn’t work…

The hole flashed red, and a short, angry beam devoured the arrow.

Not good. Amaranthe tried to resume her sprint for the tunnel, but her changes of direction had thrown her off balance, and she tripped over her feet. She landed hard on her hip.

She scrambled back up immediately, risking a glance as she ran. The cube had stopped rotating to follow her. It hung there, motionless and soundless. Halfway back to the tunnel, Amaranthe paused. A slender wisp of smoke wafted from the cube’s hole.

“Ah?” she murmured.

Had it worked after all?

More smoke followed, then the cube clunked to the floor, unmoving.

“Thank you, Corporal Lokdon,” Tikaya said. She, her daughter, and Basilard had slipped past the repair device, which was still working on the corner, and stood at the front of the alcove. “That gave us the seconds we needed.”

Basilard still held four arrows while Mahliki gripped the jar in both hands, the lid having been removed at some point.

“You’re welcome,” Amaranthe said.

Tikaya touched the top of her head, as if to ensure her scalp was indeed still attached. In her other hand, she held the longbow. Somewhere along the way, she’d lost her quiver and rucksack.

Basilard handed her another arrow and signed, Maldynado.

“He went down that tunnel.” Even as Amaranthe pointed, footfalls sounded from that direction.

“Need a little help!” Maldynado called, though they couldn’t see him yet.

Tikaya dipped the tip of the arrow into the jar and nocked it. Maldynado dove out of the tunnel, tumbling more than rolling as he clawed his way to cover. A red beam cut through the air where his head had been. Missing its target, it streaked out into the chamber.

Amaranthe sidled closer to Tikaya and the others. She wouldn’t be above hiding behind that repair device again. The metal tip of Tikaya’s arrow was smoking. That gunk would eat through it as surely as it ate through anything else here.

The cube floated out of the tunnel. It angled toward Maldynado, who had found his feet, but didn’t look like he knew where to run. In turning in his direction the cube also turned its deadly orifice toward Tikaya.

Without hesitation, she loosed the arrow. The chamber was a good twenty-five meters across, but her aim was true. The arrow clinked into the hole. As with the last cube, it burned away the wooden shaft, but its defiance ended a few heartbeats later.

“Good shot,” Amaranthe said, impressed that a scholar from an island of pacifists had such skill.

The cube clunked to the floor.

“Thank you.” Tikaya lowered the bow.

Mahliki put a hand on her mother’s shoulder. “The answer to the question you asked, oh, about fifteen minutes ago, is, yes, it could hurt to stop and try and figure out how to turn on the lights.”

“Thank you, dear,” Tikaya said. “Why don’t you find the lid to that jar? In case we need it again?”

Mahliki disappeared into the alcove.

“Thank you, too, for your help.” Tikaya waved at Basilard, Amaranthe, and Maldynado. “What happened to the rest of our burly soldiers?”

Rest of…? Did the professor lump Amaranthe and her team into that category? Amaranthe supposed they hadn’t done anything to convince her they were brighter than privates fresh out of their initial training. “Outside. We ran into trouble with relic raiders. One of the soldiers was injured and the other had to carry him away. I’m not sure where the other pair went.”

“So, we’re on our own? All right, give me a moment, please. I was close to figuring out how to turn on the lights.” Tikaya returned to the alcove and added, “If they’re working,” under her breath.

Maldynado shambled over to join Amaranthe and Basilard, taking a wide route around the cube on the floor, though it’d been desiccated, eaten from the inside out by the acidic compound.

“I’d like to take this moment,” Amaranthe said, “to point out that you two are as crazy as I am at times.”

“Me?” Maldynado splayed a hand across his chest.

“Running up to those cubes and hacking at them with a sword isn’t any brighter than drawing fire from a cannon.”

Basilard’s eyebrows rose. You tried to get a cannon to shoot at you?

“No,” Amaranthe said, “it just happened that way. I thought those men would use their rifles.”

Oh. So you tried to get rifles to shoot at you. Eyebrows still elevated, Basilard met Maldynado’s eyes and slowly shook his head.

Amaranthe scowled at them.

Over the next few seconds, the light level grew in the room, eliminating the shadows the lanterns had struggled to pierce. If not for the white and red beams flying around during that skirmish, Amaranthe didn’t know how they would have seen anything.

Amaranthe peeked into the alcove. Tikaya’s rucksack sat on the floor at the end, and she stood before the column, fingers dancing over tiny illuminated symbols while she held a black sphere with her free hand. Amaranthe recognized the object from the desk back at the factory, but she hadn’t seen it doing anything. Now, glowing images hovered in the air above it, projected from some tiny hold. It reminded her of the floating interactive pictures in the control room.

“I’m seeing if this station can call up a map as well,” Tikaya said. “We’re in the… I guess you’d call it the bowels of the ship. This area handles the infrastructure-lighting, life support, routing of water and internal power, sewage.”

“Sewage?” Maldynado asked.

“Everybody goes,” Tikaya murmured.

“Fortunately, that’s a part of the craft that nobody showed me on my various tours,” Amaranthe said.

“Oh, no?” Tikaya asked, her back to them as she continued to work. “I would have found it fascinating.”

I’m telling you, Amaranthe signed to her men, there’s no way I’m the craziest person in this room.

Possibly true, Basilard allowed.

“You went on tours?” Mahliki asked Amaranthe. “Does that mean you can find your way to engineering or the control area from here?”

“Sorry, no. This isn’t the way I came when I was here before.”

“Ah.”

Amaranthe didn’t think there was condemnation in that soft syllable, but she wished she could take the lead and walk them straight to the control room nonetheless. Right now, she did feel like little more than the hired grunts.

“This should be it.” Tikaya twisted a final rune and turned around, facing the center of the chamber.

The air shimmered, then a large, three-dimensional image formed two meters above the floor. Retta had created something similar when she’d showed Amaranthe and Books how to reach her assistant’s room, though this was much larger with level upon level on display, along with massive open areas. In a steamer, she would have guessed they represented boiler and engine rooms. Who knew with this craft?

“Hm.” Tikaya turned back to the column, manipulating a few more symbols.

Amaranthe tried to decide if the way she knew exactly what she was doing was comforting or disturbing. Retta had been obsessed with the ship. She hadn’t had any interest in destroying it or burying it at the bottom of the ocean. What if Tikaya grew equally intrigued and didn’t want to let it go? What did Amaranthe truly know about the woman, after all?

“There we go.” Tikaya turned again, extending a hand toward the schematic.

A blue line had formed, weaving down one level, up several others, and into the core of the craft. The spiky medium-sized chamber it started in appeared to be their own.

“Who’s memorizing the route?” Amaranthe asked, daunted by all the intersections the line passed through.

“I’ve got it,” Tikaya and her daughter said at the same time.

They shared smiles, Tikaya’s fond, and Mahliki’s more of a wry smirk.

“I don’t think I could even find my way back to the door where we came in,” Maldynado muttered.

Me either, Basilard signed. This place is… I wish to complete our work here as quickly as possible.

From the eager way mother and daughter gathered their gear and led the way out of the chamber, Amaranthe wasn’t certain they would agree.