The Captured Princess Ch. 07

Outside, smoke was drifting across the grounds from a dozen rents in buildings. To Tir's eye the damage didn't look very significant; small explosives, not a rain of missiles. But the bulk of the people on the grounds were slaves, without combat training, and they were terrified. The guards were divided between looking for an attacker and keeping people from panicking.

Another explosion, across the parade ground, shook the air. And night was falling. Scattered explosions at night would increase the terror and completely disrupt most activities, Tir knew. As terror went, it was well planned. But all that would result is that the guards would lock everything down tight, and that was the last thing Tir wanted now. Whatever his benefactor's plan was, it was unclear that it was in Tir's best interest.

He stuck to the trees between the buildings, partly for the cover it offered from blasts, and partly because Enjine was carrying weapons and that was going to be difficult to explain to any guards.

What mattered most was avoiding contact at all. As a result, Tir wasn't happy to see that the building he needed had a guard at the door.

He stopped, still in the shelter of trees. "Drop weapons," he murmured.

"We're giving up?" Engine panted, dropping both guns.

Tir laughed softly. "No. We can't. No screaming when this turns violent. Follow."

They left the trees and covered the twenty meters to the door.

Tir eyed the guard. "Open, guard. She's to be sheltered here."

"No, Lord," the guard replied. "Orders are to allow access to the royals only."

"Maybe you misheard. You recognize the girl? Who do you think she's being brought to? Stand aside. A Great Lord of Narsana just gave you a command."

"I cannot co-"

Tir's fist struck the guard's solar plexus, then uppercut his jaw. As the guard stumbled back, Tir stepped forward and drove an elbow against his temple, and then his fingers caught the guard's hair and snapped him downwards, into a violent collision with Tir's rapidly rising knee. The guard collapsed in a heap.

Enjine whimpered. "Is he-"

"For pity's sake, no. Put on his pack."

Tir opened the door with the comatose guard's thumbprint, and then dragged the guard in, grunting. He looked around. All was quiet for the moment. Enjine closed the door behind them.

"He's one of our own guards, and you just-"

"We no longer have an allegiance. All we have now is a goal. We are cogs in a plan that's clearly much bigger than we are, and we're going to be good little cogs and turn as designed because we will be dead tomorrow if we don't. Go left, we need the library."

"We left your two guns outside."

"We're not going back. But I took the guard's guns and you can - no, you can't. Starsdamnit, they have a fingerprint reader in the trigger."

The flat voice buzzed in Tir's ear. "Open the grip, remove the red microcard, turn the switch labeled S4 to on, bend the third pin from the left on the adapter until it snaps, and reinsert the card."

"There's a trick I didn't know," Tir muttered, snapping the handle open.

"Very few do," buzzed the voice.

Tir adjusted the gun, watched the indicator blink green, and handed it to Enjine.

"You have less than 30 seconds to get through the elevator," said the voice. "The secret door is behind stack 14 and the keycode reader is built into the fire alarm on the wall next to the door."

The library was dimly lit and predictably deserted, and large cracks in the wall attested to some nearby explosion that had made it that way. Tir made his way towards the stacks quickly; sheaves of glasslight were stacked there, glowing their oddish blue color. "Ever been here?"

"Once," Enjine said. "Arj had me to put on a wig and pretend to be studying here. There was apparently a girl in school he didn't get to bone..."

"Yeah, I did that once."

"Really? What color was the wig?"

"Very funny."

Lord Tir frowned and opened the fire alarm, found a keypad inside and punched in 1389. The wall next to it shifted and exposed a door, which opened silently.

They stepped into the elevator, and the door shut behind them.

++

The voice rasped in Tir's ear as the elevator slowed. "When the door opens you'll have less than a minute before three guards and Alani come through the door. Alani is on a hover-stretcher. She must not be killed. In a choice between Enjine and Alani, you must save Alani."

Tir was thankful Enjine couldn't hear that.

The door opened, and they stepped out into a maintenance tunnel choked with pipes, tanks and conduits. Tir located the door the guards were expected through, and quickly put himself and Enjine behind a tank.

He inspected his gun, and glanced over the many pipes and tanks. "Benefactor, this is a dangerous environment for gunfire."

"The tanks contain toxic compounds but nothing explosive. Call me Ben, by the way."

"Bennie?"

"I can arrange it that you do not survive this adventure. My primary uses are for Enjine and Alani."

"Ben it is. Now... Enjine?" Tir said. "When the door opens, let them step through and then shoot at the head of the tallest man you see. If you miss, empty the gun trying, but aim high. Don't step out from behind this tank."

They settled into place. Tor could feel Enjine shaking, and laid a hand on her shoulder. It didn't help the shaking.

The door opened, and three men stepped out. Tir and a terrified Enjine opened fire. In two seconds it was over, with all three guards down.

++

Enjine dropped the gun and sobbed. Tir darted forward and grabbed the free floating stretcher. Alani was unhurt, and sleeping deeply, bound to it.

The voice crackled. "Where you are now, I cannot see you, only hear. Do you have her?"

"Yes."

"The left front handgrip on her stretcher is a steel tube. Pry off the cap and inside there is an injection. Give it to her."

Tir removed the needle, and injected Alani. "For this to work, you would have had to have known which stretcher they would grab to transport her, in advance."

"No, Lord Tir. It was only necessary to hide needles in all twelve stretchers in the Tormentor's lab. Please do not waste time with idle speculation about my methods. You are in a dangerous situation and there is not much spare time in this plan of mine." The voice paused. "How is Enjine?"

"Sobbing and horrified."

"You need her to be calm. For this we will make time. Give her a few moments of comfort."

"Enjine," Tir said. "I know that was frightening but it's absolutely essential that you pull yourself together. I know that's nothing you ever want to have seen, but you need to put it behind you."

The voice rasped in Tir's ear. "That is how you comfort? Never mind then. As soon as the foreign princess can walk, you will go down the tunnel away from the door for one hundred and fifty meters and find tank 148-14-A. You'll open the valve on top."

"And how many people will that kill?"

"Does it matter?"

"Yes."

"Wise answer. It shouldn't kill anyone, but I wouldn't stay in that part of the tunnel afterwards. As for the guards you shot, they were part of the Tormenter's guild and they are disposable by definition."

"You have an interesting set of moral rules."

"More like guidelines, really."

++

I moaned, softly. I looked up and saw Enjine's face, streaked with tears. I had a sudden urge to vomit, but it passed.

"I'm sorry," she said to me, working the straps. "About a number of things. You need to stand up and be able to walk, and you need to do it quickly. I can't explain because I don't fully understand what's going on, but we are with Lord Tir and you are away from the Prince and it's possible you will stay that way."

Intellectually I understood the words but there was no emotional response. I felt energetic and restless, and as the stretcher pivoted and deposited me on my feet, I felt alive and alert, very unnaturally so. Drugs again, I realized. I was starting to feel like a pincushion.

"Now we must move," said Lord Tir, from behind me. "Enjine, take your weapon."

"No."

"I require it."

"And I refuse," she said, her voice shaking. "I will not touch one again. You will have to protect me. No woman can act as a man does."

"History is not on your side on this one, Enjine. But it's the wrong time for that discussion. I need your obedience in this."

"I cannot obey." She crossed her wrists in front of her. "I am a good slave."

I was next to Tir in that moment and I faintly overheard the words spoken into his ear: "Let it go. You have found her limits, now honor them."

Tir cursed, and tapped Enjine's crossed wrists, the gesture of unbinding. "Stay behind me and pray to whichever chunk of rock or ball of plasma works for you. Benefactor? We're travelling again."

It took me a second to understand about the earpiece. "Who-"

Enjine put her hand over my mouth. Tir grunted. "Too many women don't know when the right time is to ask questions. Learn to live happily with uncertainty."

"That's another thing no woman can do," Enjine muttered, uncovering my mouth.

"Oh," I said suddenly. "Bodies."

"Leave them," Tir snapped.

I ignored him and knelt beside them. One of them did not have much of a head left, but I closed the eyes on the other two. And I reached into the pocket of one and removed an injector I'd seem him put there earlier. "Moon be kind to you in the final moonrise," I murmured, and stood.

Enjine was green and looking away, fixedly. Tir looked at me, assessing me. "No fear of the dead, Princess?" He started walking, and we followed.

"It's long gone. Your nation threw at us everything from machetes to missiles. It was a rare week we didn't honor the dead in the capital, and my brothers and I were expected to walk among the fallen and offer rites. Towards the end the casualties were numerous and there was not always time for proper wrappings, and I saw every mutilation there is. There is no fear now, only anger."

We arrived at a tank, and Tir strained to open a large valve on top. I paused, unclipped a large wrench from the wall, and handed it to him.

And I looked at the tank, and blinked.

"Do either of you know what 'Molten Na' happens to be?"

"No idea," Tir grunted as the valve suddenly turned. There was a strange, high pitched gurgling noise from the tank.

"We should leave," I said.

"Ben?" Tir said to the air. And then he nodded and we walked further down the corridor, passing doors that had obviously not been opened in some time.

++

The corridor sloped down, and ended in a set of doors, corroded shut. Tir threw his shoulder against them, and in the end bashed one ajar. We slipped though, and faint lights in the room came on.

There had not been much time to spare. Behind us there was a sort of grinding noise, and then an echoing explosion, more sounds of metal tearing, and a colossal rumble. I pulled the two of them away from the door as best I could, and then a cloud of steam and dust whipped into the room, and curled towards the high ceiling.

At first I thought the room looked oddly like a museum; more slowly, I realized that that was because it was one.

Tir nodded, and touched his earpiece, then clipped it to the leather at his hip. It spoke.

"Good evening, Enjine and Princess Alani. I will introduce myself shortly, but first we must deal with the current situation. Behind you, the tunnel has been deformed, and I hope blocked off, by an explosion. Don't go back, there is a fire and things may be toxic."

"It would be," I said. "Caustic soda suspended in steam."

"Ah. So you have studied, Princess?"

"As the war and my responsibilities permitted... Princess."

That got a stunned silence, and then Tir cursed softly and got down to his knees. Enjine followed. I remained standing -- she wasn't my princess.

A panel of glassee formed in the air in front of us. The projectors here did not work right; the image was strangely faint and flickery. But it was of a face.

It was not a pretty face. The eyes were asymmetrical, enough to be physically unpleasant to look at. And it seemed to me that there was evidence of a great deal of corrective surgery in her face. She smiled, but it was not a natural smile, as if some of the necessary musculature was missing.

"A lucky guess, I think, but it pleases me that you spoke your guess, and somehow it pleases me more that you were right. Lord Tir would never have worked it out. Would you, dear."

"It was not among my guesses," he said.

"And it will not be among Arj's, at least not very quickly. Get up, Tir. You are no longer my subject, being a traitor and an exile. Enjine, stay kneeling, it is what you are best at. Alani, you might at least press your hands together and bow your head for a moment."

"When you do," I said. She laughed merrily and complied, and I returned the salute.

"My role in this will probably be discovered in the end," she said. "But I will hope against hope that it isn't, and to preserve that hope, you will never speak of this to anyone. If you are captured it will be tortured out of you, so I would appreciate it, Tir, if you would shoot the girls and then yourself if capture is inevitable."

"The Princess has made her wishes clear."

"Ah. Well, it was worth asking for," the Princess said sourly. "Let us return to the matter of your escape. At the other end of the room is an early model of a maglev train. When it was installed here, over two hundred years ago, it was said to work. A previous raja was very fond of trains, it seems... it was one of his toys. If it can be gotten to work again, the tunnel built for it goes under the walls, and there is an emergency exit to the surface at the far station. That puts you in the city. You will take a waiting carriage to the airport, where you will carefully fail to fly out on a waiting plane, and then take a commercial freight train to the border. You will be packed as luggage, I'm afraid. Details will be provided as you go. All this depends on you getting to the freight train, and the train leaving, before your absences are discovered and the country goes into lockdown."

"And if the maglev right here cannot be made to run?"

"Then you have a long walk in front of you. And I fear that will take so long that your absences will be discovered, these tunnels will be remembered, and you will be caught. Hence the request that you kill yourselves. You are not as effective in my plan if you are dead, but I'll still achieve some of my intent."

"Forgive me, Princess," I said. "But I do not know my benefactress's name."

"Morn," she said. "I was to be named after the radiant dawn in the language of Aireth, since I was expected to be a beautiful light to my people. Alas, it was not to be. Someone, as a prank, introduced something into my mother's food soon after she conceived me. As some sort of confused joke relating to her morning sickness, I believe... it was thought to be Arj that did it -- he would have been quite young -- but no one is sure. It does not matter. But I spell my name differently, with a U, to make a pun in the same language of Aireth... Also not important now. You have a train to catch."

"Princess, I must ask. My brother?"

"I have looked. As far as I can tell he was never brought to the capital; Arj was bluffing. But neither have I found proof he was killed in the fall of the capital. I believe he was, but I can't be sure. I am very sorry."

"I'd suspected." I felt nothing; I'd already given up hope.

"Then I was lied to," Enjine said.

"So was I," Tir said. "But I suspected that. We are all liars now, it seems."

He rose. "So, my Princess. Your rage against Arj's prank leads you to wish his political destruction?"

"Oh, Lord Tir, no," she replied. "I hate Arj, but not because of the damage done to me. He plans to murder our older brother, Raka, whom I am somewhat fond of, even if he does think me as stupid as I am ugly. Which is odd as I'm the best programmer and hacker in the capital; it comes of having nothing else to do. Raka brought me chocolate recently, and entertained me with stories of the outside world, which I of course am never supposed to see. But I also climb out of windows sometimes, and there are people who recognize my authority even if my father does not... But enough about me. Nothing is ever supposed to be about me. This is about the fact that Arj would be the worst possible future Rajah, and Raka might be acceptable. When it comes out that Arj lost his prized pet slave princess, and his head concubine, and they escaped with a noble lord believed to be loyal... I do not believe Arj can recover. The kingdom will be safe. And that is all that matters to me."

"I thank you for the elucidation, Princess. It is good to know this vast scheme is based on something as important as the kingdom's future, and not merely petty revenge for some prank gone wrong."

I felt myself go pale, and Enjine winced. I don't know if Tir noticed the icy silence his comment provoked -- why don't men realize these things, when they are so clear and loud and obvious? -- but the glassee went dark, and I knew that somehow, somewhere, somewhen, Lord Tir would pay for this moment.

Enjine rose and we all approached the train. I blinked suddenly, looking at it.

"It's a very old model," Tir said. "I have no idea how it's supposed to operate."

"What, this old thing?" I said, bounding up to the engine housing, and pushing it open. "You mean this Magnespeed 14-B turbo, with the, let's see... fifteen point one kilovolt regulator option and the upgraded air cooled stabilizers? It's in remarkable condition for the age -- they diamond-coated the parts and it's held up nicely..."

"Um..." Tir said.

"I read," I said. "Also, I had brothers. Also, the 14-B is legendary -- it broke speed records, it was the first train to reach mach 3, and then in the same year, mach 5. That was with the Cooley engine modification, which this doesn't have, of course, but it's still going to be a thrill ride. Alright, I sound like my older brother now. But if that generator behind the train still works, and the flexers aren't too brittle, I bet the train will work."

I slammed the cowling and jumped into the engineer's compartment. "Oh my goodness, they installed the optimizer. Top speed in 15.5 seconds. That's not even legal anymore." I hit Start, and the generator behind the train hummed to life. Indicators blinked and turned green, and I think I giggled. "Get in."

"Benefactress -- Princess Morn -- were you aware that Alani had knowledge of this train's design?"

"No," she said, coldly. "Fortune smiles upon you."

"Ah, Princess Morn," Enjine said, carefully. "When we get to the city... you may recall I am without clothing. Alani as well. In the city that will attract attention."

"There is clothing in the carriage for all three of you. Also a spray-on hair dye for Princess Alani. And now I wish you well, because someone has actually thought to come and see how I am weathering this attack. We may speak again, but perhaps not. Things should flow unheeded from here on. Or not? Farewell."

A burst of flame surrounded the earpiece, and Tir cursed and threw it from the train.

I manually trimmed the train to account for the very light load -- automatic in modern trains, but not the older ones - chose a speed envelope, and engaged the primary drive. With a quiet uneven purring noise, the train began to move.