There's the self-deprecating quip I was waiting for
, she thought, relieved to be on familiar ground again. Her cheeks were flushed and her nerves were tingling.
And in a moment he'll push me away.
But she felt comfortable kneeling in front of him, his knees flanking hers, their bodies held inches apart by their ondium armatures. More comfortable than she'd ever felt with Alister.
'Keep them off,' she suggested. 'You don't need them right now.'
'Lady.' He rubbed the lenses on his flight suit sleeve and put his spectacles back on again. His lips tilted in a wry, sad smile as he gazed at her. 'Don't tempt me. If we keep doing that, we'll never find Alister's program.'
Taya studied him. There it was, the gentle push away. She couldn't blame him, really. He had to be as surprised by the moment as she was. But she still felt disappointed as she stood up, stretched her legs, and unsnapped the line between them.
'We'd better get to work then,' she said, forcing a light tone.
Cristof clambered to his feet, picking up his cap and goggles. She saw him tug irritably at the harness straps that ran around his thighs, when he thought she wasn't looking, and she felt a little better.
They walked to the tower silently, both lost in their own thoughts.
Taya had never entered Oporphyr Tower from the ground. The front door was locked, and nobody responded to their pounding. She flew up until she found an open icarus dock door on the tower's second floor. She leaned over the balcony and managed to talk Cristof through an ungraceful hop up to it. He was light enough, with all his extra ondium, for her to grab his harness and haul him in as he staggered through an upright landing.
'You're doing fine,' she assured him. 'Better than our fledglings.'
He shot her a sour look.
The building was dark, empty, and cold. They lit a lantern in the icarus dock office and carried it with them, their heavy boots loud on the tile floor.
'Wait.' Taya laid a hand on Cristof's arm as they reached the stairs to Alister's office. 'Look at that.'
Dirt was scattered over one of the steps. Cristof picked it up and crumbled it between his gloved fingers. Then he looked at the thick soles of his boots and behind them.
'We've left a track, too. Do you think it's from one of the icarii who helped evacuate the place?'
'I don't think so. An icarus would have flown straight to the dock, where there's no dirt. Maybe it was tracked in by a lictor.'
'Tower employees arrive by wireferry, which docks directly inside the tower,' he pointed out. 'But people might have been walking around outside the Tower during the rescues. I don't know why, though.' He pulled off his gloves and jammed them into his belt, then unbuttoned the bulkiest pouch around his hip and pulled out his needler.
Taya made a face. 'I'm really glad that didn't shoot me in the leg while we were flying.'
Or kissing
.
'It has a safety.' He tilted the barrel down and flipped a stiff switch by the trigger.
'Well, don't shoot some innocent lictor who stayed here to guard the place.'
'I'll be careful.' He stepped in front of her and headed up the stairs, muttering to himself whenever his metal feathers scraped the walls. He wasn't used to thinking in terms of wings yet. Taya followed, maneuvering more deftly through the halls.
The door to Alister's office was unlocked. Cristof pushed it open, looked inside, then let them both enter.
'It looks pretty much—' Taya stopped as her eyes fell on an empty patch on the floor. 'Something's missing.'
'A box?' Cristof leaned over the small rectangular area and brushed the papers next to it aside. 'Not much dust. Whatever was here was taken recently. Can you tell what it was?'
Taya walked over and looked at the books and papers surrounding the empty spot. To her chagrin, she couldn't conjure up a clear mental image of what had been there when she'd last visited the office. She hadn't spent much time looking around. Most of her attention had been on Alister. 'Let's see. There's a collection of Council minutes, two books on Si'sier economic theory, a book on, uh, reptiles of the Donweyr Waste? Wait, they're all written by people with C-names. So the box was probably a C, too. Clockwork Heart.'
Cristof turned, looking around. 'If this pile is C, where's L?'
'P is over there.' She pointed to the place where she'd set down the plaster bust of Abatha Cardium.
Cristof knocked over a pile of books with his wings as he passed, swore, and looked around. 'Plenty of ledgers here, but I don't see anything that looks like the Labyrinth Code.'
'P is for program.' Taya moved to the bust and stopped in front of a cabinet that matched the one in Alister's office. The lock on this one hung loose, too. She swung open the doors.
Row upon row of boxes, neatly labeled. None were missing.
'Maybe it's in here.'
They quickly removed the lid of each box, checking the numbers stamped into the tin punch cards.
'The official code wouldn't be LC. What was it?' Taya muttered, setting a box aside.
'SA? Security Access?'
'If he wasn't using the programs’ nicknames, then Clockwork Heart might not be the missing C.' Taya looked up, feeling a trace of panic. 'We might not recognize it, even if it's here.'
'He filed it under C in his office.' Cristof rocked back on his heels. 'And I don't see it in here, so it probably was in the box on the floor. So someone's taken it. And this version would be the one formatted for the Great Engine.'
'If someone's got it, and it really can disable the Engine's security, then we're in trouble.' Taya bit her lip, trying to remember everything the programmers had told them. 'But whoever it is will need the Labyrinth Code to run Clockwork Heart the first time, right?'
'You should have left me behind and brought Kyle.' Cristof scowled. 'He'd understand this better than I do.'
'No, I've got it,' Taya said, earnestly. 'Before the killer can run Clockwork Heart, he's got to run Labyrinth. But after Clockwork Heart has been run once, it doesn't matter what other security programs are set, because Clockwork Heart will let him bypass any security code that's added later. Right?'
'I don't know. Is that possible?'
'I'm pretty sure that's what got Kyle so upset.'
Cristof looked grim. 'I thought the twenty-five cards Pins had gotten her hands on were the first ones to be stolen. But remember what Emelie said about the technicians not noticing if the whole backup program were stolen? What if those cards were the last twenty-five? What if the thief already had seventy-five percent of the program?'
'But… once he found out from Pins that the last twenty-five cards were gone, he'd realize that his plan had been uncovered.' Taya's eyes widened. 'Maybe that's why he killed her. And that meant the only copy of Labyrinth Code he could use was the one still stored up here in Oporphyr Tower. And there was no way he could get access to it unless he moved everyone out of the Tower.'
'So the explosion might not have been about Alister or Caster at all,' Cristof said, looking pained. 'It might have simply been a convenient way to isolate the Tower.'
Taya rose with the lantern. 'How do we get to the Great Engine?'
Cristof reached down to pick up the needler.
'The access doors are through the Council chamber,' he said, standing. 'Let's go.'
