“Oh, shit,” I said. “Oh, Efan, what do we—”
“What is it!” Thessaly called, sitting up.
“A Deployer full of Kaleva militia,” Efan said. He shook his head. “That sounds so wrong to say. There is only one militia.” He leaned his head forward to see, and I, clinging to him, saw also. “It’s landing in the market square.”
Thessaly was with us. “You were right,” she said.
“I don’t think I got to where I am by my looks alone,” he said. “This is somewhat defensible. I doubt they’ll attack before daylight. Our gold, however, is probably going to fly with the night.”
The Deployer had settled in the square, half turned from us, and we could see men scurrying from it, flowing in that dodging zig-zag way towards the taverno and towards the airship. The props were still going, and it lit up the blank stone houses facing it five ways with its spotlights.
You see something like thjat drop into a country vilaĝo like this, it’s like seeing something come out of another world. I remember me the first time I rode in one, a civilian one, flew me to Clytemnestra with Barsina on a case. The speed! The sound! The agility. Compare that to a horse cart. Sometimes I wonder what the agrios think about what the aristoi and epistarchs get up to.
Well, there it sat, the spots ripping up the moonlight, and maybe twenty milita moving out. Three figures followed them from the yellow-lit innards of the Deployers, and Thessaly sucked in her breath. “It’s him!”
“Who is it?” Efan asked.
“Nestor Kaleva.” Her hands were white fists in the dark. “Goddess have mercy. I hate him!”
“You’ve met him.”
“He raped me.”
Efan was very still. His arms were like tree branches around me. ‘When did he do this?”
“A long while ago,” she said. The singing of the Deployer’s engines almost drowned her out. “Did my father tell you?”
“I have no idea,” he said honestly. “I don’t.”
“Perhaps he didn’t,” she said, looking out the window. “Perhaps if you’d known, you wouldn’t…”
“Of course I would. Step back. Someone will see, they will come this way fast enough. The archon will tell them where we are. Who else is there, I wonder?”
“That might be Subaltern Laurentino,” I suggested.
“Do I know him?”
“Not now,” I said sarcastically. “But you went with him to Clytmenestra. If you can’t tell by this, he isn’t to be trusted.”
“I didn’t imagine.”
“The other one?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “Barsina? Vera? Any ideas?”
“No, Miss,” Barsina said, and Vera shook her head in the dark. “What shall we do, Sir?”
Ĵapes joined us, belated: he was exhausted, poor lad, and could have used two baths, a shave, and a new uniform. “It depends on where Rados is,” he said.
“He disappeared like a blue ghost,” Efan said, disappointed. “Pity, we could use him about now.
“Can we bar the door?”
The archon had entered by means of an iron key the size of his hand, and I was sure he’d do it again, when Kaleva made them bring them again.
“Hope they try by night,” I observed.
“It’ll be by day,” Efan said. “Even as lightly armed as we are, we could hold them off the stair for a while in the dark. By day it will be seige”
“Sister Vera, we must find old furniture,” Barsina said, and they darted off.
“Plenty of that,” I agreed. “Come on, Thesnjo.”
“You have your pepperbox still, Dardana?”
“In my carpetbag, Efan.”
“Put it in your girdle. How many bullets do you have?”
“Six or seven, other than her load.”
He looked at me. “I remember a woman shooting three runaway catchers in Landing Park once.”
“That was me.”
“You think you can do it again?”
It was an honest question. Handling weapons, using weapons, injuring or killing citizens: well, all these things would get me nailed up somewhere to spend a pleasant half-week dying, even as a manumitted; hanged if I was ’specially fortunate
“Will it come to that?”
He pulled Thessaly and I close. “I’m nearly certain of it. I believe—must believe—” and he sounded strained, “that Deniz is sending a Deployer. I believe it will be here by dawn, and that we won’t have to fight, or at least we will not fight alone, and the fight will be short. But we are going to be ready. Carry any furniture you find to the foyer, but if you find anything for a weapon—knife, poker, table-leg, bring it.”
Back and forth we hurried, all four of us, laying benches and reclining couches against the door. Godess, they were heavy, even in their ancient, worm-eaten state. Even behind the door, we heard the voices of militia in the vilaĝo; the burr of the props had fallen silent, and the machine squatted there, waiting. Rados, whom we could ahve really used carrying these things, remained absent.
“Guess he’s scarpered,” I said.
“You’d think,” Thessaly puffed, “he’d show more gratitude.”
We dropped the chair. “He’s not like you nor even like me. He’s done enough for us. He sticks with us—”
“Yes?”
“Well, if things go bad, he’s dead, nah? And if we win out, what future’s he got anyway? He’s a lambda, what will Deniz do with a rebel lambda that Kaleva won’t?”
“Wish he’d stayed anyway,” she muttered, looking at the filth on her hands.
“Me too. Let’s check the kitchen.”
I was sure I could never get Barsina or Vera to use weapons. They looked at what we found with wide-eyed concern.
“Miss,” Barsina said shakily, “I will cut food in a kitchen all day, but I cannot cut a man.”
“Nor me,” Vera agreed.
“Barsnjo, I’ve seen you struggle and kick with the best of them.”
“You have never seen me wound a man,” she said sadly.
I handled the old kitchen knife. It felt slick and deadly and weighed heavy, dragging toward the floor like it was trying to escape me. I wondered if even I could, and there’s things wrong with me that make it possible.
“You don’t have to, girls,” Thessaly said. She put four knives in her girdle and looked wonderful piratical, like something out of Celia. “What can they do?”
“Look out windows sneaky and see who’s coming, I guess,” I said. “Barsnjo, hold a spare knife for me?” I slipped several home and offered her a fish-knife.
She took it, gingerly, and put it in her girdle, the blade inside her notebook. “As Miss pleases.”
“I do.”
Efan and the cornet ascended to the roof to survey the field, but what they determined I did not know: certainly, we were in a hard place to approach, but far from impossible. If Deniz did not have his Deployer there soon, it would not matter if it came at all.
Morning came cold, clear, and bright. Another sleepless night for us, but it might be the last, who knew?
The Deployer sat steely and dark in the square. The airship was still tethered. The militia were gathered there, and no vilaĝanos were visible in the streets.
The three figures we’d espied, two plainly civilian, one Subaltern Laurentino, stood, obviously studying our little fortalice on the cliffside.
And the sun was well up, and there was no other Deployer to be seen.
Nor was Rados.
The Pearl Crucible: A Dardana Fenek Mystery (Incidents on Iphigenia Book 4)(Amazon link)
Sci-fi Romance and How I Learned to Love Reading Again, by T. A. Leederman (review)
And more—now out!
