“ Oh, no,” Tikaya breathed.
Rias picked up a knife. “Yes, but he was going for my back, so I must thank you for my life.”
Tikaya closed her eyes for a moment. “Let’s just get that horrible device cut off.”
By the lantern’s light, they found the source of the draft. The first explosion had left a ragged hole in the ceiling of the room with the artifact.
“ Walk softly,” Rias said as they neared it. “The structural integrity has doubtlessly been compromised.”
“ Thank you for that brilliant engineering assessment. Maybe when I fall through the floor, I can take out my other shoulder.” Her grumbling made her wince and long for the sphere of protection around the artifact. It would be easier to problem solve if she did not feel so cranky. She hoped. It could be worse; she could have become an unthinking aggressive lout who thought it was a good idea to throw blasting sticks at innocent-
Her boot went through the floor, and she pitched sideways. When her body struck, the footing deteriorating further. Rias grabbed her and tried to pull her free, but the floor had enough of them: it dropped away completely.
She smashed to the level below and landed on something cloth covered. Not cloth, she realized as she looked under her. Clothing. Clothing on dead bodies.
She lurched away, igniting pain in her shoulder. Rigid fingers tangled in her braid, and she pulled, trying to free herself without using her injured arm or touching the corpse again. A disheartened cry escaped her lips when the dead man’s hand lifted with her, fingers fully snagged in her hair. Tormenting ancestors, this was too morbid, and too damned much. Why couldn’t the idiotic Turgonians run a decent Polytechnic so they’d have their own philologists to kidnap for secret missions?
“ Sorry,” Rias murmured, crouching beside her. “As soon as we get this taken care of, we’ll find the sawbones to check your shoulder.”
“ The problem is less the shoulder-though that is irritating me every three or four seconds too-and more the bodies. And the being attacked. And the part where I’m shooting people to death, and-” She brought her fist to her mouth and squinted her eyes shut, struggling to keep from breaking into sobs. Slow breaths, she told herself. This was not the time for wheezing and gasping and flirting with an emotional breakdown. React later. “I’m all right. I’m just… I’m better in a classroom, I swear.”
Rias wrapped his arm around her back, and she leaned on him.
“ I suppose you’ll think I’m odd-odder-if I admit this is the most exciting my days have been in ages,” he said.
She rubbed her eyes. “I’ll forgive you for being a crazy odd Turgonian who probably has had a horrible life for the last couple of years, if you’ll kindly disentangle that dead man’s fingers from my hair.”
“ Oh.” Rias released her to undertake the task, then stood. “We’re back in the artifact room, but they’ll figure it out soon. That new window doesn’t hide much.”
The blasting stick had blackened the floor, turned furniture to shrapnel, and torn holes not only in the ceiling and a side wall but in the building’s exterior as well. In the center of the room, the device remained, unharmed, symbols still glowing.
Tikaya picked up the book, set her jaw, and strode over to it. There was not much time. Shouts on the other side of the building promised the men were still looking for her.
She flipped through the chapter on chemicals. “There.”
“ Find something?” Rias stood nearby, weapons loaded and ready.
Reluctant to speak too soon, Tikaya pressed the appropriate runes. The regular image blanked out to be replaced by the new symbols. They hovered until she finished. Then, by some alien consciousness, the artifact understood what she wanted, and it arranged them in a way eerily similar to the layout in the book. Even though it was what she hoped for, it sent a shiver down her spine.
A soft click sounded in the core of the device.
Tikaya arched her eyebrows at Rias who gave her an encouraging hand gesture. She gripped the edge of the device and waited. Nobody stirred nearby. She tried to decide if the distant shouts were diminishing. Minutes passed, and a deathly quiet fell over the town.
Rias walked to the door. He cocked his head, listening.
“ What is it?” she asked.
Rias lifted a finger, cracked the door, and peered into the hallway. He leaned back in with a smile, and Tikaya heard the noise now too.
“ Snoring?” she asked.
“ The two men out there are sleeping, and the air has that sweet smell of chloroform.”
Tikaya exhaled slowly. “Good. That should mean we’re safe from being shot or knife-stabbed for the moment. Of course, now we have a lesser problem.”
“ How to wake everyone up, leave town, or even leave this room without succumbing to unconsciousness ourselves?”
“ That’s the one.”
She dropped to her back on the floor to gaze up at the writing beneath the machine. Before, she had been trying to translate it. Now, she just thought about cutting the artifact off. Only one of the groupings did not have alchemical elements in it. The first one. Nothing so obvious as a switch stood out anywhere on the machine, so she poked and prodded that grouping. They sat flush and she did not expect them to move, so she nearly cracked her head on the bottom of the box when they did. By pushing and twisting, she could rotate them.
“ What’d you do?” Rias asked. “The symbols are flashing.”
She could rotate them further, but she paused and peered up at him. “You sure you want those people awake again?”
He smiled gently. “I’ll possibly regret it later, but yes. We’ll need help to tackle the tunnels.”
“ Or you and I could devise some kind of masks, gather as many supplies as we need, take a couple of those dog sleds down the coast until we reach a port, and then sail somewhere far away, leaving the empire to deal with its own problems.”
Rias sighed and gazed into the night. “I cannot.”
“ Even though these people left you to die? Even though they probably got themselves into this situation?”
“ Even though,” he said. “But…” He took a breath and, with palpable reluctance, said, “If you want to go, I’ll keep them busy long enough for you to do so. It’s about three hundred miles south to Tangukmoo. If you grabbed a dog team and supplies, I’m sure you could make it in a couple of weeks. It’s technically an imperial town, but it’s eighty percent natives, and I suspect they’d hide you just to irk us. After the thaw, trade vessels come in to barter for whale oil and bone. With your skills, I’m sure you could bargain for passage and find a way home.”
“ Sounds like a lonely journey without any company,” Tikaya said.
“ Probably.”
“ Last week, you told me your people really needed my help. What’s changed?”
He looked back and forth from her to the dead bodies. “This is only the beginning, Tikaya. It’s going to get worse. I suspect this is also the only opportunity you’ll have to leave.”
That Rias offered meant a lot, but the journey he described would not be a speedy one. It was likely Bocrest would make it back to civilization first and send the order to have her family assassinated long before she reached home.
She rotated the grouping of runes as far as they would go. The crimson symbols in the air winked out. “When I’m complaining later about how horrible it is out here with your marines, remind me I had my chance and was an idiot who gave it up.”
The glum expression on his face waned, and one side of his mouth curved up. He pulled her to her feet and wrapped her in a hug, mindful of her injured shoulder. His stubbled jaw brushed her cheek, and a pleasant shiver ran through her.
“ Only if you remind me I was an idiot first,” he murmured.
“ Deal.” Tikaya wondered if that talk of marriage had been inspired only by the moment, by the uncertainty that they would live to see dawn, or if it meant something more. She lifted her good hand to brush strands of hair away from the cut on his temple.
Rias drew back slightly, eyes flickering, watching her face. Soft breaths frosted the air between them, and
