Maya held her breath until he was out of sight, trying to think. Ten squads is a big part of the garrison. That implied that Raskos thought Yora and Halfmask were a serious threat. So why doesn’t he want us “blundering about”?
She glanced around the doorway again. The torn envelope was still on the desk. I shouldn’t. But …
Before she could talk herself out of it, she slipped into the room. There was a sheet of folded paper still on the desk beside the envelope. Maya reached out, then hesitated. The dux just left it here. So how secret can it be? Jaedia probably would not have approved of that logic, but for the moment it quieted Maya’s pangs of conscience. She flattened the sheet with her hand.
She was almost immediately disappointed. It was written in neat, block capitals, on good paper, but the letters spelled only nonsense. Ciphered. Beq had mentioned that. No wonder Raskos doesn’t worry about anyone reading his mail. She glanced at the hearth. He must have burned the legible copy—
Maya paused. It had been a hot day, and the servants had only laid a small fire after dark. Flames leapt from the front of the hearth, but the back was dark and gray with soot. He threw it pretty hard. So maybe …
She touched her haken and closed her hand, and the fire went out. Yes! Wedged in the back of the grate was a small wad of paper, slightly singed but otherwise untouched. Maya knelt to dig it out, careful to avoid getting ash on her uniform. Excitement warred with guilt as she pocketed the crumpled page, straightened up, and reignited the fire with another brief touch to her haken.
Slipping back out into the corridor, she rounded a corner and found herself faced with a couple of footmen. Maya flagged one down.
“Yes, Agathios?” the man said with a bow.
“I was looking for the party,” Maya explained, “but now I think I’m feeling a bit poorly after all. Do you think you could direct me to my room?”
“Of course,” he said. “Follow me.”
Maya followed, fingering the stolen letter, heart thumping hard.
Chapter 10
The sketch on the table was growing more elaborate by the moment. It had begun as a simple outline of Raskos’ private warehouse, an unassuming square building with a sloped roof and high, small windows. Then Nevin had started adding annotations in colored pencil, with accompanying mutters.
“Screamers here, here, and here. Reverser coils behind the walls here. Thread ward on the doors. Windows …”
The picture that took shape was practically a fortress. Raskos had spent years skimming off the scavengers, keeping the best finds to sell under the table for his own benefit. Gyre had known that, but he hadn’t realized that the dux had also been grabbing every nasty trap dug out of the ghoul warrens—often at considerable cost in blood—and installing them around his own private safe house. What in the name of the Chosen is he keeping in there?
Well. The Core Analytica, apparently. Whatever that is. He glanced at Kit. She sat at one end of the table, watching the preparations with hooded eyes, apparently bored. Yora, on the other hand, seemed to grow more restless with each passing moment, walking back and forth with her spear in her hand, tapping the butt against the ground. She tried not to show it, but Gyre knew Harrow’s death had hit her hard, as had Ibb’s defection.
Sarah was the only one who seemed immune to the oppressive atmosphere. She worked away on her own notes, writing as fast as Nevin could sketch. If anything, the prospect of tackling the dux’s trap-laden storehouse seemed to excite her.
With Harrow and Ibb gone, Yora had pulled in a few hands from outside her core team to act as security. A couple of broad-shouldered manufactory workers leaned against one wall, carrying cudgels and knives, and she’d posted lookouts in the approach tunnels to their secret meeting room. The newcomers seemed competent enough, but Gyre had to admit that he would have rather had Ibb with his blaster and rapier.
“I think that’s it,” Nevin said. “That we know of, anyway. None of our people have been past the anteroom, so there could be more inside.”
“Which leaves us with a whole set of contingencies,” Sarah said, scribbling rapidly. “We wouldn’t want to get past all the outer defenses and get stuck—”
“Can you do it?” Kit said. “Or not?”
Sarah blinked and looked at Yora, who gave a quick nod. The arcanist shrugged.
“We can do it,” she said. “We’ll need time and a fair bit of cash to line up the appropriate countermeasures. Lynnia can make some of what we need, but the rest we’re going to have to buy from the black market, and we don’t want to attract attention.”
“Cash I can manage,” Kit said. “Time may be in shorter supply. Raskos is trying to find a buyer for this thing. If he does, he may move it out of our reach.”
Sarah spread her hands. Nevin laced his fingers together, looking down at the table, and said, “If we run into a screamer and don’t have a way to shut it down, we’ll all end up buried under the Spike.”
“Every job has risks,” Kit said, waving a hand.
“She told you what we need,” Yora said. “We’ve already risked enough for this project.”
Kit raised her eyebrows but said nothing. After a moment’s glare, Yora turned away, tossing her spear from hand to hand.
“How much cash are we talking about?” Gyre said.
“Hard to say,” Sarah said. “I can make a scouting trip tomorrow—”
“Boss!” A young woman in rough laborer’s garb burst into the chamber, panting. “Auxies!”
Gyre was on his feet instantly, and Kit bounced up with her usual grin.
“Where?” she said. “How many?”
“Twenty at least,” the scout gasped. “Coming this way. I left Villam to keep an eye on them.”
No sooner had she spoken than a rumble echoed through the tunnels, attenuated but clearly recognizable. Blaster. Yora slapped her spear into her other hand and turned to the pair of guards.
“Gul, Hil, check if the other exits are clear. Go!”
Nevin was frantically gathering up his maps, and Sarah had pocketed her notebook, pulling down a pair of dark-tinted goggles. For a few heartbeats, they waited in silence.
Gyre knew—because he’d mapped it himself—that of the six tunnels exiting the meeting room, three were dead ends. Only one had originally been open, but a little patient excavation had cleared a narrow path through the others, precisely for this sort of situation. Unfortunately, the tunnel the scout had come down was one of the backups, which strongly suggested that the dux’s people had stolen a march on them.
Which leaves us with plan B. He’d never been particularly happy with plan B.
The snap of crossbow bolts echoed down one of the other tunnels, and a moment later the responding roar of blasters. One of Yora’s people emerged, badly cut up and bleeding from splinters of flying rock.
“Parak’s dead,” he reported. “Lots of ’em coming, loaded for fucking thickhead. Not getting out that way.”
Yora glanced at the third tunnel, where there’d been only an ominous silence.
Plan B it is, then.
“Get away from the table,” Gyre said. “Back up. Now.”