CHAPTER ONE "I hear," said Gaer, from the doorway, "that Corso's found some suspicious caves." Iari looked up from the much-wrinkled map on her table. Windscar's Aedis had a mix of old-style hinged doors and automated, depending on where you were in the compound. The Brood hadn't gotten to officers' quarters, last surge; Iari's door was still the original wood-and-metal arrangement. Gaer was a smear of shadow in the corridor, except for the gleam off his optic and the mesh on his jaw. "There's a briefing at the end of the day, Gaer, in the conference room. Not now and in my quarters." "Yesss. But I'm here now. I assume that's why you left the door open." It was, in fact, exactly why. Iari shrugged. "Because a closed door would stop you? Ha. But since you're here, come in. And shut the door." Truth, she had bet on two things: that Corso would tell Gaer about the caves as soon as he'd cleared the debrief with Knight-Marshal Keawe, and that Gaer would sit with that knowledge for no more than a quarter-hour before he decided to come find her. Which-Iari glanced at the chrono on her terminal-seemed about right. Gaer stepped into her quarters. He flicked a look at a few of the Windscar cats on her bed, and the propped-open window, and blew an amused breath through his jaw-plates. "It's warmer in the corridor." "Now you know why the door was open. Come here." The table on which she'd spread the maps of Windscar took up most of the working floorspace. She moved over, making room for Gaer. Vakari ran hotter than everyone else. It was a little like standing next to an open oven door (welcome in Windscar, especially in winter, especially since she wasn't going to shut the window anyway). Gaer canted forward, tilting his tall vakar frame from the hips. His spine, ridged with, well, spines , wasn't inclined to hunch. The effect made him look like the kind of menacing sculpture one expected to find on the facades of old alwar buildings. "Is this a paper map? With hand-drawn notations? Dear dark lords. Do we not have holodisplays in the great wastes of Windscar? No tablets?" "It is, twice, and we do, twice, but this isn't one of them." The Aedis AVs and their onboard systems were hexed against Weep interference, but even so, "Corso was regular army. You go prepared for equipment failure." "You were regular army once, and I do not notice you hand- drawing maps. Which I appreciate." Gaer reached out and hover- traced a fingertip over the fissure-line. "Corso thinks they're k'bal ruins. The ones we're looking for. The ones Jich'e'enfe's altar referenced. Do you concur?" "No. I think they're the other ruins we just found by happy accident." "Sss. Sarcasm does not suit you, Captain." "Don't setatir call me that." She mangled the accent a little (on purpose), and his chromatophores rippled amusement across his cheeks. Ungentle Ptah have mercy, that she'd been around Gaer long enough to understand which colors meant what. Ungentle Ptah twice over, that Gaer was relaxed enough around her to let her see them. Most of the world got his professional (ambassador, SPERE operative, battle-trained arithmancer) neutrality in shades of charcoal vakar-hide. "Guess your face is feeling better," she said, not entirely kindly. "You're talking enough." Gaer snapped her a look, one of those sharp vakari motions, half raptor, half reptile. His jaw-plate flared out on one side, amused. The other side only opened half as far, stopped by a web of scar tissue and fine metal filaments holding the hinge in place. That mesh bumped up on the edge of the definition of invasive implants. Medical or not, necessary or not, it had taken special permission from the vakari Five Tribes Senate for Gaer to have it. "Then you tell me a story, Captain." He cocked his raptor-stare at the map. The light caught his optic, washing it briefly and luminously opaque. "How did the Aedis miss finding these caves? Because they seem rather large and conspicuous." "Yeah. They do." Iari straightened up, scowling as much at the map as the twinge in her back. "I went through the cartography archives. After the last surge, we ran patrols all over the steppes." Looking for Brood stragglers, but, "Patrols should've found them." "Troubling that they didn't." "Meaning?" Her tone earned another side-eye. Less raptor this time, more surprise. "I'm not suggesting carelessness or dereliction of duty or whatever you're imagining. I mean -what kind of hexes were, or are, on this cave that concealed it from Aedis drones and templars, but not Corso Risar?" Oh. Voidspit. "Right. Sorry. Um. Something aimed at Aedis hexwork specifically?" Gaer's mouth had been open to answer his own question. He left it that way a moment, considering. "I had not thought of that. But yes, the hexes could be Aedis-specific. Corso has no implants or arithmantic training, and everyone on an Aedis patrol would have one or the other or both." "Huh. So if you weren't thinking hexes specific to the Aedis, what were you thinking?" "I was going to say hex-rot. It's hard to tell from this"-he jabbed at the paper map-"but it looks like the entrance is at least partly under this hillside. That would make sense. If this is where the k'bal went to hide, they would have picked something not readily observable from above. They wouldn't need much arithmancy to fool a drone mecha's scan, especially back then. But ground forces-and whether or not the steppes were crawling with angry natives and Confederation troops at the time, the Protectorate would have come looking for k'bal survivors anyway, you know this-would've been a problem. They should've found this cave." He paused, waiting for her to ask why, what problem? She raised an eyebrow instead. Bared one of her tusks. His chromatophores rippled again. "The k'bal would've needed hexes that make people look away, hexes that actively discourage investigation"-he flicked his fingers-"whether through provoking discomfort subconsciously, or by tricking the eye. The vakari had those sorts of hexes. The k'bal certainly did. But enough time, enough weather, maybe enough fissure emanations, and surfaces erode. Should an equation on that eroding surface smear, the concealment hexes fail." He folded his fingers into a fist, paused for effect. Sighed, when she only stared at him. "That's the most likely reason Corso could see the cave. How did he know where to look?" "Finding things is his job. Probably the result of a lot of interviews." "That a nice way of saying bought a lot of locals a lot of beer ?" "Yeah. And listened to a lot of grannytales." "Oh. Well. There we go. Drunk tenju superstition has undone years of concealing hexwork." She hesitated. Elements bless, she could guess what Gaer would say to this next bit. "Corso said those particular caves have a reputation. Haunted. Or, or cursed. That no one talks about them, or goes near them. He tell you that?" She'd been expecting a hiss, laughter, mockery. Gaer surprised her by doing none of those things. This was working Gaer, arithmancer Gaer, all closed plates and muted chromatophores and his full attention. "Well, that would make sense, if they're hexed for concealment. Even as the hexes failed, they'd still have an effect. People could see the caves. They just wouldn't want to linger." "So the hexes could be rotting, and that's why no one goes there and no one's found them, or there are new hexes meant to hide them from Aedis scans specifically." "Or both. Or Corso has the imagination of old bricks, and the hexes just didn't work on him." Gaer tried to sound snappy and dismissive, and ended up sounding like he had a mouthful of rotten meat. "No, that's not fair. I'd like to say it's just hex-rot, but honestly, I don't know without looking. Which I assume is why you wanted to talk to me before the general meeting. Wait. That's not all, is it?" "You reading my aura?" She meant it to sound accusatory. Sometimes you didn't want a nosy arithmancer reading your emotional state in electromagnetic waves. Gaer was immune to shame. "No need. Your face is loud." Iari drum-tapped a pair of fingers on the table's edge. "Corso told me he saw something moving in the cave. He says . He also says, could've been a trick of the light, that time of day, his imagination. He mention that to you?" "No." Gaer stared hard at the nothing half a meter over the table. "I'd lament his lack of confidence in me, but I am assuming he did not put this tidbit in the official report, either." "He did not." "He thinks the Knight-Marshals would doubt his credibility?" "Not Keawe or Tobin. Probably the ones in Seawall, though. Definitely the Synod. He's not Aedis." She let her loud face tell Gaer what she thought about that. Gaer clicked sympathetically. "He probably thinks I would report it, too." Gaer's ethical balancing act, between being a SPERE operative for the vakari Five Tribes as well as an Aedis asset commandeered under treaty, was a delicate thing. She'd seen Gaer's Seawall superior, Karaesh't, no formal introduction, just passing in the B-town Aedis hallways. Smallish, as vakari went, even more inscrutable features than Gaer's. According to Gaer, she was a formidable arithmancer. Iari supposed there were ciphered reports going south from Gaer to the embassy in Seawall. Maybe orders coming north, too, first to B-town and now, with their reassignment, to Windscar. So she had to ask. "Will you report it? The caves, yeah, I expect that. I mean, the thing Corso thinks he saw?" "I won't, in case there is nothing," Gaer said. "If it turns out there is something, or someone, in residence. Like Brood. Or wichu insurgents. Or mundanely unpleasant raiders. Or a pack of setatir wolves-that, those, I will have to mention." "Corso saw raiders heading north past those caves. And there are no wolves this close to the fissure." "Wolves are wise. Brood eat wolves." "I'm less worried about Brood than about wichu." Because Iari knew what to do with Brood-swarm, boneless, slicers, tunnelers, the big nasty one-off Brood you got in a surge. Wichu hexwork was something else. "If it is wichu insurgents, and they've got hexes against us , how will we see the caves?" "I am not Aedis," said Gaer. "But if you're asking, what do we do, Gaer, if the wichu insurgents have created hexes specifically to defend themselves against the Aedis? Then I would remind you that wichu hexes are generally scribed onto a surface- artificed , if you will-and are as a result more vulnerable to hex-rot. Which means I tell you what bit of wall to blow up, or which bit for Char and Winter Bite to smash, and then, sss, no more hexes. And if there is a live arithmancer or artificer in those caves to repair the hexes . . ." He peeled lips back from his teeth, blue-etched and dyed: the marks of his house, his tribe, his mothers carved onto sharp, sharp teeth. No one who ever saw that expression could ever mistake it for friendly: among the vakari, bared teeth were both introduction and the first cousin to an oath, a boast, a promise. "Then, well. We have you ." Iari returned his smile, lips curling back, baring more of the ever-visible tusks in her lower jaw. One of them was capped, dull metal, a souvenir of a shattered faceshield in her army days. She wouldn't have gotten that wound if she'd been in a templar battle-rig. If something had the kind of force to shatter Aedis hexes-and some of the big Brood did-they took the whole face and the head. Damn near had happened with Gaer, last summer, in that B-town warehouse cellar. Because Jich'e'enfe had managed a tesser-hex in close quarters, and Gaer's rig wasn't rated for void. Iari supposed her rig would've done the same thing, if she'd been caught in the same radius Gaer had. Instead she'd been buried by Brood. Instead, something else had happened. She'd become some kind of channel to the Elements (Ptah and Hrok, plasma and vapor). Or something alchemical, arithmantic, magic beyond her understanding. Her stomach clenched like a nervous fist. Her smile hardened into a grimace. Gaer was watching her, probably reading her aura (no sense of boundaries, what did you expect from a spy?). His pigments rippled. "I meant we would have your axe," he said, guilty-voiced. "But, ah. I do recall the other matter. How many people know about it?" She wanted to stare at the map, to shrug. To act the way she felt. Instead she lifted her chin and focused on his optic. "You. Corso." His pigments rippled again, a different spectrum this time. "Not Knight-Marshal Tobin?" "Did I say Tobin? I did not. Swear to Ptah, you run through a list of everyone we know, ask me about everyone-" She stopped. Let her breath out. "You and Corso. Like I said. That's it." Gaer sat with that a moment. "I thought you intended to tell Tobin, at least, before we came north." "I did." As her commander, Tobin had a right to know. She had an obligation to tell him. And as Tobin -void and dust. Until now, she'd never lied to him, not by omission, not directly, in all the years he'd commanded her, from Templar-Initiate Iari to Captain, through the surge and things that stripped rank away from the way she thought about him, even if he was always Knight-Marshal of B-town when they spoke. But whatever had happened to her-to her nanomecha-in that cellar . . . that was the sort of thing that got people taken off active duty. Subjected to tests, arithmantic, alchemical, medical, whatever . Iari wasn't especially bothered by needles, but she was fond of neither the chief chirurgeon in B-town, nor losing her field command. Especially that. Gaer watched her, for once silent, likely enjoying her aura's pyrotechnics. She scowled up at him. "Who'd be in command up here if I'm locked in a lab somewhere? It'd be one of the Windscarrans." "Luki." "Is a sergeant. Char and Winter Bite are newly promoted privates. They need an officer." "They probably have more field experience than any of us. But to your point, I don't relish the idea of that lieutenant . . . what's his name? The arrogant neefa Keawe's stuck us with?" "Everyone calls him Notch." Because Keawe, Knight-Marshal in Windscar, wanted a fireteam of her people involved in this mission, not just Tobin's B-town detachment that included two riev. B-town and Windscar were the two northernmost Aedis compounds, its Knight-Marshal commanders allied by geography and proximity to the Weep fissure. Gaer grimaced. "Yes, him. Notch. I don't relish the idea of him in command. The good Knight-Marshal has made her, ah, distrust of me rather clear, and I suspect he shares it." Excerpted from Nightwatch over Windscar by K. Eason All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
