“Given how heavy it is, it’ll be on the bottom floor,” Kit said. “And it’s big enough that they won’t have just tucked it in a corner.”
Gyre turned in a circle, but one way seemed as good as another. He picked a direction and started walking. This floor of the warehouse was divided into many smaller rooms, all carefully closed and locked. Kit darted ahead of him, checking the doors.
“Think we’ll have time to search some of these on the way out?” she said. “Raskos must have a lot of interesting things stored up.”
“Let’s just get this done,” Gyre muttered. Kit gave an exaggerated pout.
As he’d hoped, the corridor led to a stairwell, iron steps corkscrewing downward. Gyre descended carefully, wary of creaks and groans, and was relieved to find that the bulk of the warehouse was a single open space. A network of catwalks ran above it, with circular landings around the massive stone pillars that supported the roof. Below that, the main floor was a jumble.
Even with nighteye, it was hard to get a sense of just what Raskos had been collecting. There were boxes, barrels, and sacks, piles of stones and bricks, but mostly there were bits and pieces of arcana. Long metal tables were covered in smaller artifacts of every possible description, crystalline shapes embedded in dull ceramic or iridescent unmetal, ancient tools with no clear purpose or broken pieces of who knew what. In between were larger objects resting on wooden pallets. Some seemed tantalizingly familiar—an unmetal pod, bigger than a man, with delicate crystal vanes on either side, or a sort of chair with three wheels and a tall protruding spike. Others were just lumps, veined with crystal, complex and incomprehensible.
I had no idea there was so much. A consul’s ransom didn’t begin to cover it. What is he keeping it all for?
“There!” Kit said. Gyre winced at her excited tone, but they seemed to be alone in the warehouse. Following her pointing finger, he saw a misshapen lump of volcanic glass, about the size of a coffin. It looked like a black bedsheet thrown over a stack of rocks, then frozen in place.
“That’s it?” Gyre said.
“That is it.” Kit hurried forward. “It’s really fucking here. Plague and fire, I thought for sure …”
She reached a narrow iron stair near the thing and descended, Gyre close on her heels. The objects were arranged with aisles between them, and they came down a few rows over from the stasis web. Rather than find the nearest junction, Kit vaulted over a pile of stones etched with strange patterns, then dodged around the edge of a table spread with dull, broken sunsplinters. Gyre followed more cautiously.
The destabilizer, the black rod they’d found in the ghoul tunnel where Harrow had died, was already in her hand.
“Here we go,” Kit muttered. “Here we go here we go.” Her free hand was clenched and shaking.
“Is there a trick to it?” Gyre said.
“No,” Kit said. “You just jam this into this”—she pressed the end of the destabilizer against the slick black surface of the stasis web—“like so. And then you wait for a moment.”
Light spiderwebbed out along the surface of the stasis web from the point where the two touched, like a crack spreading through glass. There was a low buzz, and the black surface started to dissolve, motes breaking away and drifting into the air like fine ash. Kit tossed the destabilizer carelessly aside, staring at the disappearing surface as though it were all that mattered in the world.
Most of the web was empty, leaving nothing behind once it had finished its dissolution. Then, in the very center, something came into view. Kit let out a long breath and staggered back against Gyre, who put a steadying hand on her shoulder.
“Is that it?” he said.
“That’s it.” She bent to pick the thing up. “We actually fucking found it.”
The Core Analytica, after all that, wasn’t much to look at. It was cube-shaped, about the size of a man’s head, made of some dark, metallic substance without the sheen of unmetal. At first Gyre thought it was solid, but on closer inspection he saw it was formed of interlocking metal rods, slotted over and around one another to form a three-dimensional grid. The largest of them were as big as his thumb, but through the gaps he could see smaller and smaller grids inside the thing, delicate hair-thin rods, like filigree.
“What does it do?”
“Don’t know. Didn’t ask.” Kit stared at the thing in reverence. “Naumoriel wants it bad, and that’s good enough for me.”
His hand was still on her shoulder, and he gave her a tentative squeeze. “Then, let’s get it back to him.”
Kit nodded breathlessly.
Something rumbled, the sound coming in through the walls like distant thunder. The arcana shifted and clattered on their tables. A few windows, set high and narrow like arrow slits in a fortress, momentarily strobed with brilliant light.
“What in the plaguing fuck?” Kit said.
“I think,” Gyre said slowly, “that we should get out of here now.”
A moment later, the front door blew in.
Maya
Maya had learned to ride, of course, but she wouldn’t call herself an expert. She’d had a few turns around a yard on a broken-down old warbird, and once Jaedia had let her gallop a swiftbird up and down an empty field, but that was about it.
Fortunately, her current mount was well trained and responded easily to the reins and her half-remembered whistle commands. She clung to the saddle as it raced back into Deepfire, other traffic giving her a wide berth. When she had a moment, she glanced up at the Spike on her right, using the huge building to gauge her progress.
In her breast, rage and shame wrestled back and forth. She saw the light of her power as it consumed the rebel girl, Yora’s face as Tanax cut her down, Sarah’s muffled scream. Behind them was Jaedia, smiling her sad smile.
Raskos used us. Centarchs were supposed to be exemplars, both protecting civilization and demonstrating why it was worth protecting. The dux had turned them into his personal assassins.
He’s not going to get away with this.
The chimneys of the manufactories loomed ahead of her. It took a few turns to find Third Street and Broad Way, but eventually she reached a broad stone building, entrance blocked off by a high iron fence. Auxiliary guards lined the front, more than she’d seen last night, and there was a carriage parked just inside. For a moment, Maya hesitated.
Jaedia … She touched the Thing, a hard lump in her chest, and her resolve hardened. Jaedia would find some way to get the truth.
She whistled the warbird to a halt well short of the gates, dismounted without much grace, and turned to face the line of guards. There were a half dozen of them, with spears and pointed helmets, already watching her in the light of lanterns hanging from the fence. Maya stalked over, deiat still threaded into her panoply.
“Open the gate,” she said when they moved to bar her way.
“This is private property,” said a nervous woman with a sergeant’s marks. Maya stopped a few meters from them and drew her haken.
“I am an agathios of the Twilight Order,” she said as the blade ignited with a whoomph. “I answer to the Council of Kyriliarchs. Now, open the gate before I open it for you.”
The Auxies were edging sideways, out of her path, but the luckless sergeant was stuck. The woman’s throat worked nervously.