Chapter 25.3: A Losing Game

His arms crossed, Remi looked at Christoff and nodded. “Boss. Glad you’re not dead.” 

“Likewise,” Veritas replied, assessing the state of his lieutenant.

It had been seventeen days since the assault team had left to take Arterium Haven, and Remi Melicent looked no worse for the wear. No worse than usual, anyway. “Lost your hat?” Christoff asked, raising an eyebrow. He’d hardly ever seen the man apart from that ugly, wide-brimmed thing.

Remi’s face soured. “Smashed in the fight. Things got a little complicated.”

“Complicated?” Veritas asked, taking a step forward. One of his asura guards blocked his path with his weapon, but Christoff’s attention remained on Remi. “Did you do it, though? Tell me you got the rest of the jade.”

Remi nodded again, putting up a hand to calm his chief. “Don’t worry. We did it. Filled the cart and brought it back, just like you said.”

Christoff released a breath he didn’t know he’d held. “You sustained losses?” he asked.

“A couple.” Remi shrugged. “No one important.”

“Then what was the nature of the complication?” Christoff flashed a glance down at Kikka and the other asura around them, grimacing. “Something we anticipated?”

Remi shook his head. He clearly grasped the meaning. “Not unless you anticipated frogs.”

Christoff blinked in sudden confusion. He had no idea what Remi meant, but he had certainly not anticipated anything to do with frogs. The other man waved off his clear concern and continued. “Doesn’t matter, Boss. We got it all. And the mice held up their end of the deal—so far.”

Christoff Veritas grinned more broadly than he had in days. Somewhere in this mess, his plans were proceeding as intended.

The slender, hatless man came across the room toward him, his escort trailing just a step behind. It was at that point Christoff noted that Remi’s hands were free, not shackled as his own were. Apparently his lieutenant wasn’t a captive, not fully. Once again Christoff was aware of Kikka, standing off to the side and tapping her foot impatiently, a fierce eye on them both despite her strange quietude. He was quickly mindful once more of the threat she still posed to him. One momentary success was not victory. It wasn’t even a guarantee of survival.

He cleared his throat and raised his bound hands, adopting a dignified tone once more. “Dear Kikka,” he said, “if we might remove these? I feel I’ve earned that much.” The asura woman gritted her teeth but flashed a nod in his direction just the same, and one of the guards approached to release his hands.

With each key-turn, a lock popped and a manacle fell from his hand. Christoff rubbed his wrists. “My thanks,” he said, giving Kikka a thin smile. She scowled more deeply, grunting at him. For some reason, though, she still made no remark: not about his request, not about Remi’s derogatory term for the asura, not about anything. Christoff kept her in mind but continued his questioning of the other man. “Where are the others?”

Remi shifted, and his hand fell instinctively to his belt, inches above the holster currently emptied of its sidearm. His nonchalance melting for a second, he eyed the others around them warily. “That’s one thing I don’t know, Boss. The mice took them all away. Didn’t say where. Just brought me here, wherever here is.”

Veritas’ gaze snapped back to Kikka, whose scowl had turned into a sick smirk: half grin and half foul glare. She was normally so quick to move from one task to the next. The way she stood there, still and quiet—it was becoming unnerving.

“What, human? Mouse got your tongue?”

He couldn’t say what, but something in that snide question got to him. “Where are my people?” he growled.

She just shrugged, letting her eyes wander from him to the tablet still in her hand. “Back in their cell, bookah.”

“Their cell?” he asked. “What are you talking—”

With a shake of his head, he let the rest of his question fall off. Veritas knew what she meant: the rest of his men were now where he’d just come from, in that dank catacomb somewhere beneath the opposite end of this gods-forsaken outpost. Far from both him and his lieutenant, his strength of arms sat isolated in a cell where they likewise had no leadership. He shook his head. The little wench played this match very well.

“Well done, Kikka,” he hissed through gritted teeth. He ran a finger forcefully up and down the scar along his face. “Aside from separating me from my men,” he growled, slowly increasing in volume, “perhaps you’d like to share what you brought us to this lovely place for. For that matter, where is here? What is this damn place?” He gestured violently around the room he hadn’t yet even bothered to take in.

“This is lab delta,” she said with a chilling degree of calm. “And you, bookah, are here to work, to cast those ancient human spells you’re so verbose about. My team—” she lost herself in the term, visibly seething again as she looked at the milling figures across the lab. “My team of idiots and imbeciles can’t seem to reach focal stability for a high-concentration projection of your precious Unseen-One magic, and I have no room for their errors, calculated or not. Your knowledge is comically arcane, but only a moron looks a gifted golem in the intelligence core.”

“Work?” Christoff snorted. “Spells?” He let the callous chuckle build into laugh, then he fell stiff once more. “What are you talking about, you little wretch? You think I’m going to give you even more than I have? I’ve upheld my end of this bargain to the letter. I gave no instruction as to where my men should go; I certainly didn’t instruct to have them sent to the cell I’d just left. They are mine to govern, not yours. You give me my people, and I’ll consider doing any of this for you.” He crossed his arms, intentionally holding his hand in place instead of raising it to his scar once more. His move to blatantly oppose her was a longshot at best. She held the cards, and he knew it.

Kikka’s face tightened, but instead of screaming at him, she burst into a momentary fit of laughter. It was a joyless, mocking sound that Christoff had not heard before. It was chilling. But before he could process it, the moment was gone, and her face wrinkled with wrath once more, her eyes aflame and her voice raised. “You infantile, half-witted excuse for a sentient creature! If you believe for an instant that you hold any further power in this arrangement, you’re even duller than I give you credit for. At this moment, your absurd horde is being packed once more into your cell, disarmed and locked away behind a repulsor wall that none of them are passing without my say-so. You and this buffoon are here alone, surrounded by experiments and equipment you couldn’t hope to pronounce, and the host of engineers responsible for them—inept though they presently prove themselves to be—is also present and ready to use them on you. You’ve brought me the only bargaining chip you had right to my doorstep, and now you conclude you hold some manner of sway?” She stepped closer, glaring up at him from beneath a tightened brow, and her voice grew louder with every commanding word. “By the Alchemy, human, you will do what I say!”

Feeling the heat rise in his cheeks, Veritas balled his fists and stared down at the floor. The arrogance of this creature was staggering; it had been since he’d arrived. He’d tolerated it, even accepted it at some level, but this was more than he could bear. He shook with rage at her dishonor, at her pompous fear mongering, at her hideous and predatory grin, and perhaps most of all at the fact that she was right—that at the moment, she was right. Until he found a way out, he was almost entirely at her whim.

Still taking in the situation for what it was, he slowed his breathing, a faint attempt at calming himself, and he looked up at Kikka once more, but she was no longer before him. The insolent creature had walked away across the room. He almost cried out, screaming his rage at her, when he stopped. It was the first time he’d looked up from the people around him long enough to see the chamber itself.

Just like every other room he’d seen in this complex, this space was entirely walled in, without window or lightshaft, lit only by the glowing bars embedded in the corners between wall and ceiling: that strange, synthetic lighting these people seemed to cherish. Maybe some forty yards across, the large space was constructed entirely of massive stone blocks and filled with more of those magically glowing workstations the asura had everywhere else. A dozen asura skittered this way and that around the space, working at the glowing consoles, pressing stonework and metal machinery together at worktables, and tending to the handful of pill-shaped, legless assistant golems that floated almost aimlessly around the room.

The largest concentration of Kikka’s drones, however, were busy with their work in the far corner of the room. Christoff squinted to get a better look. That crew surrounded a large, stonework form hanging from steel hoists anchored into the walls. Hollowed and filled inside with other materials and components, this huge mechanical construction faintly glowed from various places. It was roughly the size of a norn, maybe larger, and on a ladder beside it, an asura worked with a flaming instrument, lodging devices inside the huge, stone casing as another worker played at a console attached to it. Lesser pieces were also strung up beside those hulking shells, with still others resting on wooden and stone tables erected around the area. Some of these had protrusions at their ends, with technicians checking their movements and making notes on data pads.

Christoff blinked stupidly. He’d seen enough else in this complex to recognize golem components when he saw them, but these components were enormous. If assembled, the finished product would easily stand several feet taller than the largest ones he'd seen lumbering about the premises so far.

As Christoff considered what he was seeing, an argument began between a pair of engineers on that side of the room. He couldn't make out any of the content of the debate, but the voices of the little dancing figures continued rising, until finally Kikka screamed, “Enough!” It drew the attention of every person in the space.

That, Christoff had to admit, was something the little witch had a knack for.

Angrily, Kikka waved a pair of asura and a strange, gray beast of burden into the room and toward Christoff. Then she turned to face the now silent crowd across the chamber and stomped off in a rage. “What in the Alchemy are you imbeciles doing?” she yelled. Christoff tried to hear more, but the room’s echo muddled Kikka's words beyond recognition, however loud she got.

“Hey,” someone nearby whispered. Christoff’s attention broke, and he looked around his immediate vicinity.

“Boss,” Remi said, drawing Christoff’s attention. The slender man nodded toward the cart being pulled closer and closer to them. “That’s the stuff.”

It took a moment for Christoff to transition his thoughts, but he quickly grasped what Remi was saying, and as though by instinct, he stepped toward the moving wagon, unconsciously raising a hand toward it. Like a shot, though, one of the guards rammed a rifle's butt into the back of his leg, and Christoff lurched forward, barely catching himself as he stopped.

“Not so fast, bookah,” the little person demanded.

Veritas ground his teeth. His objective, his jade, was yards away and moving still toward him, and yet these little fools were intent on exerting any authority over him they thought they could. He cracked his knuckles and stood still, hands tight at his sides, waiting. He heard the creak of those wooden wheels turning behind a beast so odorous he could already smell it, but he waited.