Rias knelt beside her and put a hand on her good shoulder. “Are you all right?”
Aware of the others, she said, “Yes, just tired.”
“ Nurians,” Bocrest growled. “Those cussed Nurians are responsible, have to be.”
Rias arched inquiring eyebrows at Tikaya. She guessed his question and nodded permission.
“ I don’t think it’s them, at least nothing sanctioned by their government.” Rias explained the orders he and Tikaya had found on board the Nurian ship.
“ Then who?” Bocrest demanded.
“ The Turgonians have many enemies,” Rias said.
Bocrest tugged off his cap and scrubbed his short steely hair. “This whole slag pile is giving me a headache.”
“ There’s something else to consider,” Rias said, tone grim. “We haven’t hidden our approach to this fort, so it’s very possible whoever did this knows we’re here.”
CHAPTER 12
Tikaya sat cross-legged next to the rocket and finished copying the runes into her journal. Coldness seeped through her trousers to numb her backside, and shivers made her pencil hand shake. As if writing with gloves on was not bad enough. She ought to move somewhere warmer. But, oh, there was another symbol she recognized from the table of elements. And interesting how each grouping on the rocket held thirteen runes. Could the different prime clusters alter the meaning of-
Light splashed across her pages, and Tikaya dropped her pencil.
Agarik stood beside her, holding a lantern. Only then did she realize twilight had descended on the fort.
“ Thank you,” she said. “When did you leave to get that? And where’d everyone else go?”
He stared. “You didn’t notice people coming and going, ma’am? Talking? Arguing?”
“ Er.” She vaguely remembered Rias saying something about finding surveying tools. “Not really.”
“ Half the men are retrieving corpses for a funeral pyre while half are off on a mission Five concocted. Looking for people who might have died outside the fort and searching for more cubes and recording where they landed. Seeing how it’s night, that sounds about as fun as hunting for a wrench in a scrapyard. He says he can figure out where the rocket was launched from, though, and Bocrest wants it done tonight, so he can take a team up there at first light.”
In case someone was up there preparing another weapon to launch at the fort. Yes, that seemed wise.
Tikaya rose, an awkward movement with her shoulder in a sling, and her injury twinged despite her care. A noisy yawn escaped her lips. She thought of her bed back home, though right now she would be tickled with a blanket in front of a fireplace.
Agarik’s jaw dropped in a noisy yawn of his own.
“ Sorry,” Tikaya said. “Are you tasked with watching me again?”
“ I don’t mind, ma’am. Of the jobs I could be assigned, it’s not a bad one.”
Men crossed a nearby courtyard, lantern light bobbing at their feet. They worked in grim silence, bringing wood for a fire. She looked away as others dragged a body from a building and laid it at the end of a grisly queue.
Though tempted to ask Agarik about sleeping arrangements, Tikaya wanted to search the fort for other language clues first. If the marines feared an attack imminent, they might march out at dawn. Somewhere, she hoped to find an artifact she could slip into her rucksack to take home for study-and to prove to her people this nightmare had been real.
“ Mind if we find the fort commander’s office?” she asked.
“ I don’t think the captain wants you wandering around.”
Tikaya started to object, but Agarik smirked and spoke first.
“ But since you’ll doubtlessly make arguments until you get me to change my mind, we may as well go now.”
“ Good man.”
Thousands of stars glittering like ice crystals blanketed the black sky above the fort. Tikaya almost felt she could reach up and stir them with her fingers. Here and there lanterns sputtered on lampposts or in sconces. Agarik hugged shadows barely dented by the flickering light as he led her beneath the ramparts and through an alley suffocated with piles of snow. They stopped at the back door of a two-story building. She had the feeling he was avoiding the other men and hoped he would not get in trouble for escorting her around. Her desire to poke through the commander’s office kept her from asking.
They slipped into an unlit kitchen where copper pots and steel counters gleamed, reflecting the lantern’s flame. Agarik led her around an island to avoid a body clad in bloodstained cook’s whites. Tikaya ripped her gaze from the melted flesh, glad the lighting did not illuminate too many details.
They passed through a mess hall lined with tables. Plates of bread, carrots, and now-frozen meat waited for someone to finish them. Bodies, some fallen across tables, some sprawled on the floor, matched the place settings. One man had died tending the coal stove in the corner, and the door stood open, ashes spilled onto the wood floor.
“ Surprise attack,” Agarik said, disgust hardening his voice. “There’s no honor in killing like this.”
“ I can’t believe how quickly the poison acts,” Tikaya said, chilled by the idea of something that could kill a man before he could even get out of his seat and wonder if something was wrong.
There were not any bodies at the tables nearest the far door, and wet footprints suggested the marines had started carting them out. Heavy footsteps sounded on the floor above. Tikaya doubted she would make it to the commander’s office without being spotted. She hoped no one would question her for snooping about.
They entered a corridor, and Agarik led her to a stairwell. Broad steps rose toward a second floor, while narrow ones turned a corner and dropped into darkness. That made her pause. A basement in a land where permafrost hardened the earth inches below the surface?
Agarik headed upstairs, but voices came from the lower level.
“ Wait,” Tikaya whispered, cocking her head to listen.
“ I think…a Nurian,” someone said.
“…doing out here?”
They had found a Nurian? Had someone been caught nosing around in the carnage of the fort? Her breath hitched. What if it was the person who had fired the rocket? The person who knew enough of the language to know how to fire the rocket?
She edged closer to the stairs. The men were not whispering, so the discussion was probably not secret, and nobody had forbidden her from exploring.
Agarik gripped her forearm. “Tikaya…”
She frowned at him. “What do you know?”
“ The cells and interrogation chamber will be down there. It’s not…a fitting place for a lady to visit.”
Tikaya almost laughed. Was he worried she would see something more macabre than the legions of bodies around the fort? She patted his hand before drawing her arm away. “I just want to see if they found someone who knows more about what’s going on than we do.”
If Agarik’s frown grew any deeper, he would pop the stitches out on that gash. Still, he followed with the lantern when she eased down the stairs.
She anticipated a pitted rusty iron door streaked with blood at the bottom, but the bland wood was no different from any other door they had passed. Beyond it, gray stone lined a narrow hallway. At the end, light seeped through the cracks of a partially open door. The voices had dropped to murmurs.
On the way down the hall, Tikaya checked a door to the side, expecting racks filled with torture implements. Instead, it was a supply closet loaded with brooms, lye soap, lanterns, kerosene tins, and painting supplies. So far, this dungeon was not living up to expectations.
Chains rattled in the room ahead.
“ Where’s the slagging key?” a familiar voice growled.
