Tikaya froze. Ottotark.
She started to turn, not wanting anything to do with him, interesting prisoners or not, but someone thrust the door open. Two marines tramped out, a body between them, but if it was Nurian she could not tell. It was as melted and featureless as the rest in the fort.
The marines halted.
“ What’s she doing down here, Corporal?” one asked.
Agarik shrugged. “Looking for language clues.”
Ottotark leaned through the doorway, his eyes narrowing to slits when he spotted her. For a long speculative moment, he stared, and she fought the urge to race up the steps in retreat. He would not do anything with so many witnesses, and surely this was not the time regardless.
“ Go on,” Ottotark told the marines, “take the body out. Agarik, come help me get the other one. I expect the captain will want to see the Nurian, so we’ll leave him here for now.”
Tikaya stood aside for the men to pass. Agarik headed for the chamber, and she almost bumped into his back when he stopped in the doorway.
“ What is it?” she asked.
But Agarik had already moved to the side so she could see. She wished he had not. The amount of human carnage from the last couple days should have numbed her to it, but this dead man was different. The naked Nurian hung from shackles on the wall. His fingernails and toenails were ripped out, flesh mutilated with blades and brands. Someone had gut his genitals off and dug both eyeballs out. The removed organs lay in a tidy pile next to the dangling body, and Tikaya had to gulp several deep breaths to keep from vomiting. Thank Akahe the temperature kept everything frozen, and no odor accompanied the visual horror.
“ By the book,” Agarik commented.
Ottotark nodded. “Professional job. I’ll bet two weeks pay one of our people ran the torture session, but who? This is recent work, done by somebody- to somebody-who showed up after everyone else got their faces slagged like ore in a smelter.”
“ Unless…” Tikaya took one more deep breath to steady her gorge. “Unless the basement protected people here from the poison.”
“ Look around, idiot woman.” Ottotark pointed past racks containing wicked metal instruments whose purpose she could only guess.
Steel bars in the shadows formed a pair of cells. A corpse in one had suffered from the same affliction as all those in the fort above. And, of course, she had seen the body those two marines had taken out.
“ Sorry, yes, I’m not thinking.” Odd that this deliberate cruelty affected her more than the mysterious otherworldly deaths. The marines, even Agarik, seemed to find this torture commonplace. Just when she was thinking some Turgonians might be normal people. “You must be right. So, one or more of your people got here ahead of us. And this fellow, I wonder if he’s the one who launched the rocket. Or…” She looked past the damage to what remained of the man’s features, and her stomach did a little flip. “I recognize him.”
Ottotark stared at her. “What?”
“ He’s the bodyguard of the practitioner who attacked me on the ship.”
“ You sure?” Ottotark’s forehead scrunched. “He’s not looking too recognizable at the moment.” He threw back his head and laughed.
Agarik rolled his eyes.
“ Come, Corporal,” Ottotark said. “Help me drag that other body up to the pyre. We’ll leave the librarian to clue hunt, though I don’t reckon this bloke was worrying overmuch about languages in the end.”
He laughed again, and the inappropriateness ground on Tikaya’s nerves.
“ I’m supposed to stay with her,” Agarik said.
Ottotark’s humor evaporated. “That wasn’t a request, Corporal. I’m sure the captain didn’t mean for you to get out of all the physical labor with your special assignment. You can come back when we’re done hauling bodies.”
Agarik looked at Tikaya, and she gave him a quick nod. He had risked enough trouble for her, and she would give him up for a while if it would get Ottotark out of the room as well.
Though a troubled expression wrinkled his brow, Agarik helped Ottotark heft the other corpse, and they left. Tikaya did not wish to spend a lot of time alone down here, especially since the presence of the dead bodyguard implied the practitioner was around somewhere, probably alive, but she wanted a moment to think things through.
“ So,” she said in Nurian, as if the man’s spirit might hear and help, “you’ve been following us all along, biding your time, is that it?” She thought of the hour or two she had spent alone in Wolfhump and shivered, for that could well have been an opportunity for the assassins, but perhaps they, too, had been affected by the gas. “You ran ahead here to lay an ambush for me? Or someone transported you here?” That was a hard skill to master, but not an impossible one. Someone familiar with the arrival area could have done it. “Either way, it seems you got here after the weapon struck, or you’d have been killed the same way as the others. Unless you launched the weapon yourself and came to check the effectiveness of your work. But, no, your people wanted nothing to do with these artifacts.” She took off her spectacles and rubbed her face. “But when you got here, someone was waiting. Was it a Turgonian, or the person or persons who figured this rocket out? Or both?”
Not surprisingly, the dead man was not talking. Likely he had given up all his secrets to his interrogator. Tikaya glanced around, noting that the pliers, knives, and other implements she could not name had been meticulously cleaned after use and returned to the storage rack. Little else caught her eye, though, and she decided it would be wise to finish up and find a spot with people around.
She headed back to the stairs. Someone had shut the door at the bottom. She tried the knob, but it did not turn.
A kernel of dread formed in her gut.
She tried the door again. It could just be a flaky knob, but no. It was locked. She pounded on the door. Maybe someone working upstairs would hear her and let her out.
“ Is anybody out there? Hello?”
No one came.
Tikaya leaned her forehead against the cold wood. Ottotark must have locked the door on the way out without Agarik noticing. Maybe he had even ordered the men clearing bodies to work in a different building. She swallowed. Odds were Ottotark could make sure Agarik stayed busy for a while too.
The rack of torture implements flashed into her mind. “Dolt,” she cursed herself. Of all the places she could be trapped with that man, this had to be the worst.
She slipped the razor Agarik had given her out of her boot and unfolded the blade from the wooden handle. It seemed a puny tool compared to those in the other room. If Ottotark worried about her having weapons, he would not have chosen this spot. He obviously did not see her as a threat in close combat, and rightly so. This was no archery competition where she could stand back and plunk arrows into a target.
She needed to catch him by surprise. She hoped she had time to set one up.
Tikaya checked the supply closet. An idea came as soon as she saw the kerosene tins. Unlike the whale oil her people used, the vapors ought to be flammable. She grabbed a paint pan, a full tin of kerosene, and a box of friction matches. She would only have one chance. It had better work.
In the torture chamber, she closed the door part way. Footsteps thudded in the corridor on the floor above. She swallowed. If that was Ottotark, she did not have much time.
The safety lid of the unopened kerosene tin thwarted her fingernails, and her shoulder sent stabs of pain through her when she tried to brace the can with that hand. She huffed in frustration. Then she remembered the razor. Agarik’s tool would help after all.
She gouged a hole in the top of the tin and, careful not to spill any on herself, poured kerosene into the paint pan. The fumes stung her eyes, but she dared not slow down. Footsteps thudded on the stairs. For once, she had reason to thank her height. Though the doors had been made to accommodate the tall Turgonians, she reached the top without trouble and balanced the pan. The footsteps reached the bottom of the stairs, and the lock clicked. The door creaked open.
Tikaya hopped into the shadows beside the door.
“ I know you’re down here, bitch,” Ottotark said. “No point in hiding.”
