Patch and Jhor hunted for tracks on the icy paving stones and in the piles of snow shoveled against the buildings. Lapis remained within the gazebo, alert to more orange lights and shouted orders, but prickles racing down her arms and across her shoulders divided her attention. Something was wrong, off. But what? The khentauree? The mercs? Or did the whole situation bother her?
She flashed her light around the gazebos, but only human boots tromped to several of the structures, and no obvious signs of a khentauree hoofprint. Avoiding deeper snow seemed wise, but whatever threw off the enemy threw them off, too.
They checked half a block before slipping into a narrow alley between buildings and moving on, hoping to catch a track or other sign on the next street. They wove through the thoroughfares, her partner scouting for hidey holes before they examined a new area. Once they exhausted the search, they continued southeast. Only once did they scurry out of sight, fleeing down a side alley and huddling behind a metal water barrel in the corner of a stone wall that surrounded a shorter, whitewashed building. The whir of a bird reached them, and orange light faintly brightened the atmosphere before everything faded back into cloud-covered darkness.
“Persistent, aren’t they?” Jhor whispered after crunching to the far side and peeking over the wall to make certain the bird had gone.
“Yeah.” Patch adjusted his patch, then jerked his head. “I wonder if their hunting through mansions was to find Seeza’s cargo, or the unknown khentauree.”
“Maybe both,” Jhor said. He glanced back at them. “I wonder what they’re scanning for. It’s not aquatheerdaal; we have that, in my device and your patch, and that isn’t drawing their attention. I think they’ve attuned their equipment to another mineral, which means they had to know which one powers the unknown khentauree.”
“Khentauree have many different power sources, depending on age, depending on location,” ENZ said.
“Very true.” Jhor rose and absently adjusted his coat. “It’s curious, this sudden interest in smuggling parts. It can’t all be related to Mesaalle Kez.”
“There’s something more going on than we think,” Lapis whispered. “Unless they were held in close confidence by Gall, I don’t think nobles would have chanced hiding theerdaala minerals and tech without the promise of a big payout. Dentheria wasn’t picky about who they executed for transgressing the tech prohibitions.”
“Which explains why a couple someones decided to take advantage of the chaos and move items that would normally have gotten them arrested and executed,” Patch said as he pointed at the gate. “Typical underhanded noble shit.” They crept out of hiding and continued their search.
Flakes of snow drifted down from puffy clouds that crossed the moon, and the echoing shouts of shanks urging their fellows to hurry increased. That, too, made her uneasy. Considering the freezing weather, they should be holed up in their favorite den, rather than looting businesses or hauling crates. Patched outwear could only do so much to keep one warm, and the buildings, which had lacked heat for a few days, were as icy and unwelcoming as the streets. Add in the danger of tech clashes, and she did not think it worth a stolen item or two, especially if the undermarket became glutted and they turned potential sales away.
Why had the rebels not noticed the arrival of such strange objects? Or was this a recent development? Neither Sherridan nor Patch mentioned the parts before they visited Ambercaast, and both shopped at the undermarket often enough to know typical inventory. Sherridan had cultivated merchant goodwill for years, and brought back many juicy tidbits as rewards for his efforts. He even sent her and Patch on rebel missions based on the info he collected. He would have known when strange items hit the stalls, but nothing seemed to have made it to underground sellers until they discovered Kez’s Ambercaast operation. She would eat her hood, if Hoyt’s men had not been the primary deliverers of those goods.
Of course, the accessible khentauree parts at Ambercaast lay rusting where the being fell. No one would buy them in that condition, and shining them up would make no difference, because what would one do with a chunk of arm metal or a plate off the head? Little was still viable, unless someone, like Jhor, had an interest in researching the remains.
Since the heads came from somewhere else, she bet the more viable smuggled items did so as well. Where else had Kez sent mercs? Ambercaast and the Shivers could not be the only places on Theyndora that grabbed her interest. How many bases had the Taangins deserted, leaving the khentauree behind to rot, only to be rediscovered by a woman intent on immortality through their chassis?
She clutched ENZ closer. Empires had no sympathy or empathy, did they? She despised that the ancient military abandoned the mechanical beings without a word, and they, in turn, spent centuries following worthless commands because their programming told them to.
They entered yet another street, this one a back way with old, cracked pavement pieces sticking out of the dirt. Frozen slush coated the ground, preserving the splash formed from heavy boots. Whoever had passed by did so in numbers, making enough of a trampled texture to hide the step of smaller hooves that came later.
The men searched, and Lapis hid in darker shadows, alert, pressing the back of ENZ’s head into her chest as if he were a comforting doll. The growing anxiety annoyed her, but there was little she could do to quell her shuddering. Perhaps the quiet darkness, broken only by the crackle of icy snow and the crunch of her companions’ boots, made her uneasy. It felt anticipatory, like something bad was going to happen—identical to the sensation she experienced as a child, when a bear nosed around the berry bushes, eating their fill. As soon as the prickles began, she grabbed her basket and whoever was with her and raced back home.
Did that mean she sensed a predator? Maybe, but no light or sound from shanks or mercs echoed off the stone walls, and neither Patch nor ENZ mentioned that they detected the enemy.
Maybe they could not, because the unknown’s power source was not part of their scan info? And if they chased a military khentauree, she knew, from experience, they had ways to manipulate the light around them to appear nearly invisible. She doubted they could detect the blur surrounding one in the darkness.
She tamped down on the swirl of panic the thought caused.
“How you doing, ENZ?” she whispered.
“I feel odd.” His buzz barely reached her ears.
“Me too.”
“Something dangerous comes near, but my sensors see nothing.”
Not what she wanted to hear.
The moon peeked through heavy clouds and gave a half-hearted attempt to illuminate the ground, its beams reflecting off random gutter pipes and metal bars. A faint flicker between her and the men caught her attention, and she stared at the bottom of a ladder that had fallen onto a snow pile. She fished for her light and shone the beam on it; no rust or damage marred it, so someone recently unscrewed it and let it drop, making it difficult for anyone to follow as the lowest tread now sat far above head-height. Typical shank, she supposed.
Or typical khentauree.
She hissed and swiped the beam around the ladder. Patch and Jhor hastened over, and they studied it, then the snow beneath it.
“That’s within a khentauree’s reach, if they stood on their back legs,” Patch murmured. “And we know they can use ladders if they have to.” He focused on the three-story structure, his patch lights circling slowly. “I see scrapes on the wall.”
“That would explain the lack of hoofprints,” Jhor said. “They’re using the building roofs as much as possible, only coming down when they can’t make a leap or to hide.”
“Sanna does not think you should go onto the roofs if the khentauree is there.” ENZ buzzed low enough to crackle. “She has told them we are safe, we will help them escape the enemy, but since they do not answer her, they do not trust. A khentauree who does not trust is dangerous.”
Prickles raced down Lapis’s arms again, and by the stiffening of Patch and Jhor and their intense examination of the surrounding street, they felt it, too. She glanced both ways, but detected no light, no sound, from mercs or shanks.
A spatter of tiny bits of snow rained down to the side of the ladder; she looked up, instinct rather than curiosity driving her. A shadow whipped away from the edge, a blur of motion. Fear punched her, and she turned—in time to watch a black metal tech bird fly around the western cross street’s corner, an orange light slowly swiveling back and forth from its belly.
“People with tech just entered the periphery of my scans,” Patch said. “A lot of people.”
“Sanna says to go,” ENZ whispered. “We have given the stranger a chance, and they refused our help.”
“Might not be a bad idea to send them the coordinates to the House,” Jhor said. “An act of goodwill.”
“There’s another bird further east, coming this way,” Patch said. “They’ve cornered them. And us.” The lights racing around the edge of the leather froze and disappeared.
“Sanna sends one last offer of aid,” ENZ said. “There is nothing more we can do.”
“It’s up to them to catch up.” Patch motioned to them, and they headed for a narrow alley between buildings opposite the one the khentauree stood on. “If they do, I know shortcuts off Greencastle. We can take the sewers back to the House.”
“You are strange, for humans,” ENZ said. “You sound concerned for them. Why?”
Flares of orange lit the street behind them.
“We’ll talk when it’s safer,” Patch said. “Right now, we need to run.”
