Chapter 43.2: Alarming Mistakes
Before long Jinkke and Penny reconvened with the two soldiers, who appeared to have been long since roused by the screaming alarm and were fully prepared for the next step, geared and ready to move. Fjornsson spotted them first, calling their incoming position to Jindel as he hoisted his big broadsword into the scabbard over his shoulder. At his hip was the asuran warhammer they’d gotten from the Vigil captain, a tool that looked a great deal smaller when hanging from a norn’s belt.
Jindel followed Fjornsson’s gesture to see the two passing toward them through the trees. “Took you long enough.”
Penny glanced at Jinkke as they slowed to a stop. She couldn’t help but grimace in anticipation of what the asura might say. However much it stung, she would have every right to whatever cutting, coward-bookah insult her big brain came up with.
Minkus’ sister, however, did nothing of the sort. “Past delays are irrelevant,” she said, casting a sidelong look at Penny. “We’re here now and ready to proceed.”
Jindel frowned but didn’t pursue it, instead ducking to the captive guard who sat a few yards away, tied, quaking, and dressed in nothing but his underwear. Jindel slid a fat hunting knife from her belt and cut the ropes that held the little man’s wrists. She slapped into his hands the two silvers that Minkus had left for that purpose, but she left his ankles bound for a moment, leveling the curved tip of the blade at him. “You run in any direction other than southeast, or make the slightest hint of a noise to alert the people in that complex, and this knife will be the last thing you feel, right between your shoulder blades. Believe me, I’ve killed much bigger creatures than you.”
The norn behind her nodded approval at the threat, and the asura’s head shook nearly off his shoulders as Jindel sawed the final binding apart and stood him on his feet.
The moment she got him upright, the little man was off at a sprint, leaving both them and his fellow guard behind. He fumbled himself around, backpedaling a few strides. “My thanks,” he squeaked anxiously. “Oh, you have my thanks!” He spun back and bounded away through the trees the same way Penny and Jinkke had just come.
Yult paused for only the second it took Jindel to rise back to her own full height. “Enough waiting.” The huge man turned toward the still wailing alarm and started forward. “By the Bear, we need to go. Now.” The others exchanged a look, but no one argued.
Jindel grabbed Ventyr’s staff in one hand and passed Jinkke her pack, helmet, and rifle with the other. The asura shrugged into the pack with only a fraction of her brother’s dexterity and plopped the steel cap atop her head, tightening it down. With the armor and the weapon—hell, even with the pack that Penny knew was half full of rifle rounds—Jinkke looked painfully out of place. Determined, but out of place.
Penny glanced past Jinkke, meeting Jindel’s eyes. There’d never been any love lost between the two, and Penny had no idea what the young soldier thought of her right then, but it didn’t seem to matter. Flicking a long lock of straw-blond hair out of her face, Jindel only nodded at the uncomfortable leather chestpiece Penny already had on. “Keep it tight. Might save your skin.”
Penny nodded, tugging on one of its straps before taking up her tool belt and buckling it on.
The norn had already reached the edge of the trees. “Wurms frozen in ice move faster than you three!” he barked.
Leaving the less cooperative guard still gagged and tied to a tree, Jindel, Jinkke, and finally Penny started after Crusader Yult at a clip fast enough to catch up, and together they all moved into the clearing and toward the butte on the other side, where they’d first encountered the patrolling guards. They traversed the gap as quickly as they could, watching the ridges for spying eyes and scanning the earth for any sign of more defense pylons, but there was no wasting further time. The continued wails of the alarm grew louder with every passing yard. Penny couldn’t tell if the sound drowned out or amplified the fear that still bubbled inside her; it seemed to be both.
The norn remained in the lead, darting along the cliff’s face from one patch of trees to the next with the three females in his wake. They took any cover they found but kept it no longer than their pace allowed, and soon the earthen wall that had hemmed in their right flank gave way to the stone, steel, and illumination cells of Thaumacore.
The alarm was deafening now, but Penny thought she could hear something else beneath it, like the chittering of rats, or distant, whiny children. If anyone else noticed it, they gave no sign, so she held her peace.
Aside from the strange sound, nothing impeded them as they crept cautiously along the southeastern wall of the facility, approaching the center courtyard, where Minkus and Wepp should have entered. There was an occasional golem working in the distance, but they seemed so caught up in their own work that none of them noticed the odd assortment of people sneaking along the wall. Unlikely as it was, it seemed that Wepp’s scheme to move the krewe northward had actually worked. Penny had no expectation that the rest of this would go to plan—gods, nothing ever went to plan—but at least that part had worked.
Coming to the corner that would lead them into the courtyard of the complex and the final phase of this cockamamie plan, the big, bald norn stopped, pressing himself nearly into the stone itself. Whispering began among the group, planning what came next, but Penny’s attention drifted, first to the pair of soldiers. Whatever else she thought of them, the two were ready, utterly poised for what came next—whatever came next. Quietly she envied that. Just a step ahead of her, Jinkke clutched her rifle, pressing her back to the wall and listening to the crusaders. She had ammunition packed into every available pocket, and her ears and golden hair seemed to burst out of the plain, steel cap on her head. Minkus’ sister was a tiny, brown caricature of a soldier, but her eyes gleamed steady with resolve. She had to be thinking about Minkus.
And now Penny did too: about Minkus, Ippi, her shop, Kikka, and her father. Her mind ricocheted between them all, just as quickly as it ever had when piecing together the parts of a mechanical puzzle. Only, these parts refused to fit together in any meaningful way. Gods, they just beat around in her head, competing for space until it hurt.
“Hey,” a hissing voice demanded. “Focus, Arkayd!”
Penny snapped to attention, blinking the world back into focus around her.
Everyone was watching her, but Jindel was the one speaking. “Did you hear me? Did you hear anything we just said?”
“Yeah, I got it,” Penny sighed, nodding. Somewhere inside she actually has heard it. “Smalls looks around the corner, gives the thumbs-up, and we head in. Join Minkus and Wepp, avoid fights we don’t need to have, and get to Vent and the scholar. It’s not like a lot has changed.”
The vigilwoman scowled at her but nodded just the same. “Everyone ready?”
The norn grunted and reached for his sword. Jinkke nodded, her body tensing. Penny only shrugged—what the hell else was she going to do?
“Good.” Jindel looked to Jinkke and gestured at the edge of the wall. “You’re up.”
Lowering the rifle to her side, the asura inched around the young woman and leaned cautiously past the edge of the building. Were there anyone on the other side paying any attention, they would have seen little more than a big, brown ear and one bright eye.
“Smoke and sparks!” Jinkke clutched the corner of the building and spun herself back fully to their side of the wall, eyes wide and chest heaving.
Jindel pulled her back a step from the edge. “What is it? What did you see?”
“It— they—” Jinkke gulped air and met Jindel’s gaze. “I don’t think they triggered the correct alarm.”
“What do you…” The question melted in Jindel’s mouth as she leaned past Jinkke and glanced around the corner for herself. “Merciful Dwayna.”
“What are you two on about?” Penny asked. Sure enough, something here had already stayed from the plan. She slid around the others and leaned out to look for herself. “Oh. Gods.”
She only glimpsed the scene for a moment before stepping back into hiding again. Yult, now the only one who hadn’t seen the situation, followed suit and eyed the scene beyond the wall, but Penny paid him no mind. Her vision contracted and the sound of her own heartbeat overtook the sound of the alarm as she stared southward into the wilds.
Around that corner, she now knew—they all now knew—was what looked like the population of the whole, damned facility. The guard they’d interrogated had estimated the complex’s population at a few dozen, and from the looks of the milling body of asura around that corner, he hadn’t been far from right. The sound of them—gods, that’s what Penny has been hearing—it had been mostly masked by the alarm, but the shuffling, chattering, disgruntled mass of people gathered at the southern end of the long courtyard couldn’t be more than 50 yards away from them, gathered around some small structure sitting at the center of the road that ran through the middle of the complex.
Penny waited a moment in silence, exchanging wide-eyed glances with the others. None of the asura had seen them; there was too much going on for any of them to notice four heads poke out for a brief second, but that hardly made the situation better. Penny leaned out to look again, heart still racing.
That small structure at the heart of the large group was stacked with what looked like crates. It was hard to see its base in the midst of the crowd, but Penny could see enough to know it was the wagon Yult had spied earlier from the thicket. She didn’t know what they were shipping, she didn’t know why the lot of them were surrounding it, and she didn’t care about either of those things, not right now. Glancing furtively for anyone looking in her direction, she leaned a hair farther, to bring the southern entrance of that east wing into view. That was where they had to get to, and to do that, they now had to pass four dozen Inquest enemies. It was literally the opposite of everything they’d planned. But of course—of course it was.
“Gods,” she whispered, “we’re all going to die.” The knot in her stomach clamped back down with sickening speed.
Before Penny could pull herself back into hiding, though, movement at the far end caught her eye. She shouldn’t have been able to pick out any single person that far into the milling mass, except that this person stood head, shoulders, and torso above everyone else there. Pinkish skin, a shock of brown atop the head, a frame smaller in every dimension than a norn’s would be— this was a human. And from the look of things, he carried something or someone over his shoulder as he spanned the courtyard toward the western structures. Dressed in some outfit of red and black, he jogged past the collected krewe in a straight, intentional line, and something about the person tickled at the back of Penny’s mind.
She slipped back from the edge and looked at the others, nodding toward the scene. “One of you want to tell me what a human would be doing with these people?”
Jindel and Jinkke each gave her an uncertain expression, and together they peeked around the corner once more, their gazes tracking the man.
“I don’t have the trace of a theory,” Jinkke said, returning to Penny’s side. “But I doubt a single human male could dramatically impact our ever-lowering odds in either direction, and presently, we need a substantial tip in our favor. We should—”
“Dwayna’s light,” Jindel growled, interrupting Jinkke. “What in Tyria is he doing here?” She spun back, her eyes suddenly aflame. “I know him.” She stared intently at Penny. “We both do.”
