CHAPTER 19
Lizanne
“I can see where it got its name,” Tekela commented, pulling back on the control lever so the Firefly ascended into a bank of cloud, the tall spike of the High Wall fading from view beneath.
The Okanas family had chosen to construct its seat in the crater of a long-extinct volcano. The narrow peak rose from the sea to a height of well over two hundred feet. The entire south-facing slope appeared to either have been shorn away by the elements or deliberately removed to be replaced by a wall of smooth granite. A massive iron door lay at the base of the wall, presumably to allow for the comings and goings of the family’s ships. Before the cloud closed in Lizanne had used a spy-glass to survey the cluster of buildings nestling in the volcano’s crater, marking the largest as a possible barracks and the more narrow but taller structure opposite as the Okanas mansion.
There was no sign of alarm in the crater or any indication they had been seen. Lizanne had ordered Tekela to stay as high as possible during the approach and make full use of the fortuitously plentiful cloud-cover. Also, the hour was late and the gathering gloom would make them harder still to spot, especially by look-outs accustomed to scanning the sea for likely enemies.
“The island three miles west,” Lizanne said, pointing at a stretch of sea visible through a gap in the cloud. “It’s flat enough for a landing. Wait until . . .”
“. . . dawn tomorrow before picking you up,” Tekela finished. “I know.”
“Steer north,” Lizanne said, reasoning there might be fewer sentries facing away from the most likely seaward approach. “Circle until it gets dark.”
The cloud-cover thinned as evening slipped into night, the two moons casting a long shadow from the High Wall and scattering glitter over the sea. “Are you sure this is the best idea?” Tekela asked, not for the first time. “It’s a tricky piece of flying.”
Lizanne rose from her seat, crouching to open the hatch in the floor of the gondola. “I have every confidence in your abilities,” she said, pulling on a harness. It was constructed from strong, heavily stitched leather with two additional straps above her shoulders that were joined by a steel ring. Once she had buckled the harness into place Lizanne reached for a twenty-yard-long coil of steel cable. One end of the cable was a standard eye hook whilst the other was something Jermayah had quickly put together before they set off. She buckled this device onto the harness’s steel ring before leaning down to reach outside and attach the other end to the half-ring on the gondola’s underside.
“Ready,” she told Tekela, swinging her legs into the opening and using the Spider to inject a large dose of Green.
“Engine off,” Tekela said, closing the throttle then taking a firmer hold of the central control lever. “Descending now.”
Lizanne jumped as Tekela put the aerostat into a steep dive, the force of the wind instantly whipping her back as the cable extended. The Green limited the effect of the jarring impact when the cable reached its limit, Lizanne feeling her vertebrae strain with the jolting instant deceleration. The cable scraped over the engine mounting as she swung behind the plummeting Firefly, and would have fouled the propellers if they hadn’t had the foresight to kill the power.
The aerostat continued to dive for about thirty seconds whereupon Tekela pulled back on the control lever and it came to a stop, the Firefly rearing backwards. Lizanne continued to plummet, the cable tightening to swing her beneath the gondola at near-terminal velocity. The High Wall loomed before her as she neared the apex of the swing, the fortified edge of the crater no more than fifty yards away.
Lizanne reached up and hit the catch on Jermayah’s hook, detaching herself from the cable. The momentum was sufficient to carry her across the edge of the crater and the parapet beyond. As she passed over it she could see only one sentry, face lit by a glow as he touched a match to his cigarillo, completely oblivious to anything that might be happening above.
She landed on the roof of the barracks, displacing several tiles in the process, then sliding to the edge of the roof. Lizanne twisted about and caught hold of the gutter, hanging there in rigid silence. She heard a few raised voices and the rapid tread of boots on cobbles, no doubt drawn by the cascade of falling tiles. Her Green-enhanced ears caught much of the subsequent conversation.
“Could be gulls again . . .”
“Too many fallen slates for that. Better take a look.”
“Do we tell him?”
“Fuck no . . .”
Lizanne waited for the tread of boot leather to fade then hauled herself back up onto the roof. It was overlooked by the parapet and she knew she had only moments before the inquisitive and overly conscientious guard climbed up and raised the alarm. The barracks were separated from the Okanas mansion by a twenty-foot gap, a relatively easy jump for a Blood-blessed stoked with Green, but requiring a decent run up and yet more fallen tiles. Instead Lizanne opted for the shorter jump to the crater wall to the rear of the barracks. It was a rough-hewn cliff-face with hand- and footholds aplenty, enabling her to latch on and descend rapidly into the shadows below.
Upon reaching the ground she immediately sprinted towards the mansion, disappearing into the refuge of the house’s shadowed rear in the space of a few heart-beats. Given the lack of alarm she had successfully avoided the attentions of the inquisitive guard.
Scanning the rear edifice of the mansion, she saw lights in the ground-level windows, but none in the floors above. Intelligence on this place had been meagre, garnered from the few sailors and refugees she could find with some familiarity of Varestian waters. Only one, a former Blue-hunter hand recently recruited into Madame Hakugen’s militia, had actually been to the High Wall but never reached these lofty heights. “They’re a right suspicious bunch to be sure, miss,” the man had said. “Don’t let visiting sailors wander from their docks. Though there’s rumours of all manner of treasure in the upper reaches of that mountain.”
Lizanne, of course, wasn’t interested in treasure tonight, merely maps and documents which experience told her would most likely be found on the first floor. The mansion was a close copy of a larger-than-average Mandinorian country-house, the kind purchased by the upper middle rank of the corporate managerial class desirous of a refuge from the odorous bustle of city life. She had had occasion to burgle such places before and the study would normally be found opposite the stairwell on the first-floor landing. Quickly identifying the correct window, she moved to the mansion wall and launched herself upwards, the Green ensuring she gained purchase on the window-sill some twelve feet off the ground. Hoisting herself up, she was gratified to find only a basic latch on the window, easily opened after a fractional injection of Black. She used the remaining Black to draw the window up and swiftly swung herself inside, crouching to survey the room with her enhanced vision. After a few seconds of squinting at brooms, buckets and a variety of mops she realised she had chosen the wrong access point after all.
Getting rusty, she chided herself, moving to press her ear to the door of what was plainly a closet. She could hear a faint murmur of voices from the lower floor, two or three, all male. The words were indistinct but the pitch was casual, lacking in urgency. Lizanne found the door unlocked and eased it open, seeing an empty landing and two stairwells, one leading up, the other down. Spotting another door opposite the cupboard, she stole out onto the landing, moving in a slow crouch, her feet testing each floor-board before putting her full weight on it. She found the other door secured by a heavy Alebond Commodities double-mortise lock, indicating something of value might well lie on the other side. Another injection of Black and some careful probing later and she was in, closing the door softly behind her.
The room was fully dark and the windows shuttered so even with Green in her veins it took a moment to confirm she had in fact found the study this time. However, it was more of a library-cum–map room, the walls lined with book-laden shelves from floor to ceiling whilst a number of chart-bearing easels were arranged around a large central map table.
Not so rusty after all. Lizanne allowed herself a small compliment as she went to the map table. Laid out on its surface beneath a thick sheet of glass was the largest complete map of the Arradsian continent she had ever seen. It was clearly several decades old from the foxing that discoloured the edges of the paper, but it also appeared to be remarkably accurate, albeit also heavily modified. Annotations in dense Varestian script had been scribbled all around the coast and at some places in the mostly blank Interior. Lizanne’s interest piqued, however, as her gaze tracked across the chart to Krystaline Lake where the annotations became a jumbled, overlapping frenzy.
“Mrreaaoow?”
Lizanne’s gaze snapped to the underside of the table, finding a pair of green eyes blinking up at her from the gloom. The cat slinked out of the shadows and wound itself around her legs, tail swishing. Lizanne ignored it and returned to the map, peering closer at the cloud of scribbles around the lake. Her spoken Varestian was perfect but her understanding of the written form less so. It was a curious mode of text in that it mixed pictography with phonetics, making rapid translation difficult.
“Current becomes . . . a vortex here,” she murmured, her finger tapping a notation next to a series of circular arrows. It was marked with several cruciform squiggles she knew to be the equivalent of a Mandinorian exclamation mark.
The cat let out another plaintive miaow then purred as it prodded her calf with its head. Keen to quiet the animal, Lizanne crouched and gathered it up, stroking it as she continued to examine the map. Large as it was the depiction of Krystaline Lake still lacked sufficient detail for her to identify a precise location. She gauged the swirl of arrows as about sixty miles south of the falls that fed the lake, and at least three miles from shore, but doubted that would be enough for Clay and his Contractors to pin-point it.
She stepped back from the map, turning her attention to the easels that surrounded it. She carried the cat to the closest one, the furry bundle purring as she scratched under its chin. The map was a detailed scientific study of the lake marked with the crest of the Consolidated Research Company. Various depths were depicted and coded in different colours and likely concentrations of “draconic activity” outlined in green ink, but the map itself gave no clues as to the location of what had so obsessed the late patriarch of the Okanas clan.
She examined each of the easels in turn, finding them all detailed renderings of various regions of Krystaline Lake, until she came to one that was plainly an enlarged version of the region with the swirling currents. The arrows depicting the vortex were drawn with more care, some rendered in black, others red and often marked with the Varestian equivalent of a question mark. However, what drew most of her attention was the large “X” in the centre of the vortex. The notation next to it was unusual in that it wasn’t written in Varestian, but something that resembled the flowing elegance of Dalcian. Ancient Dalcian, she decided, recalling what Clay had told her about the original legend regarding the treasure of Krystaline Lake. She didn’t know this script and therefore couldn’t translate it, but was sure if she had it would have read “a vessel of wonder, unbound by earth or sea, come to rest with precious cargo ’neath the silver waters.”
“I do believe,” Lizanne said, giving the cat a hug, “I may have found what I came for.”
The cat squirmed in her arms, suddenly agitated. A flicker of movement drew Lizanne’s gaze to a near by bookcase, finding another cat perched atop it. Unlike the grey tabby she held, this one was black, and considerably larger. Also, judging by the white teeth it bared at Lizanne as it hissed, much less desirous of petting.
“Don’t do that,” Lizanne said, patting the cat she held on the head. “See? I’m nice.”
The black cat, however, seemed unimpressed, its hiss becoming louder still as it lowered itself for a pounce. The cat in Lizanne’s arms let out a frightened growl and tore itself free, bounding off into the gloomy recesses of the study, swiftly pursued by its darker cousin. Soon came the sound of tumbled books and furniture as the cats raced around the room, letting out a chorus of shrieks and hisses as they did so. From the sound of raised voices from below, it was evident the commotion hadn’t been missed.
Lizanne snapped her gaze back to the map on the easel, trained eyes drinking in every detail in the space of a few seconds. Hearing keys rattling in the door’s lock she ran to the nearest window. The shutters were locked so she injected Black and tore them away before shattering the window itself. She leapt through just as the door to the study burst open. A pistol shot boomed behind her as she tumbled into space, followed by a stern rebuke in Varestian: “No firing, shit-brain! I need her alive!”
Lizanne landed amidst a cluster of rose-bushes in the mansion’s small garden. Tearing herself free and ignoring the sting of thorns, she refreshed her Green and ran for a stairwell carved into the surrounding crater wall. As she scaled the steps a man leapt down from above to land in front of her, swinging the butt of a carbine at her head, then finding himself tumbling through the air as she blasted him aside with Black. Below light flooded the crater as torches and lanterns sprang to life accompanied by a chorus of shouts and orders. Loudest amongst the babble of voices was one calling for “Morva! Get up here, you lazy bitch!”
Messy, Lizanne reproached herself as she neared the top of the stairwell. Next time just throttle any cats.
A five-strong squad of sentries charged at her when she got to the parapet, arms locked and grouped together in a tight bunch in the hope it might protect them. They were wrong. She swept their legs away with a wave of Black, sending them all sprawling face-first onto the parapet. Lizanne leapt the struggling quintet, landing atop the battlement and pausing to gauge the distance to the crashing waves below. It would be the highest dive she had ever attempted, but survivable with sufficient Green in her veins and Black to part the water as she came down.
Lizanne leapt, her form perfect, legs straight and toes pointed, arms outstretched then pulled forward and hands clasped together . . .
The air rushed out of her lungs as an invisible fist closed about her chest, holding her in mid air for a second before dragging her backwards. She managed to cushion the impact with Black, sending out a pulse just before she collided with the cobbled surface of the courtyard to the front of the mansion. She rolled as she landed, jerking to the side as a wave of heated air told of a near miss with Red. Lizanne whirled and dodged, gaze roaming the courtyard for her assailant, taking in the onlooking cordon of Varestians. They were all carrying weapons and many were in a state of undress, having just been roused from their beds. The Blood-blessed wasn’t hard to find, a tall slim figure standing apart from the others, female with a scarlet headscarf. She stood with her arms crossed and head tilted in a way that put Lizanne in mind of the cat that had just undone her mission. It didn’t improve her mood.
She sent a contained blast of her own Black straight at the woman’s face then followed it with one to the chest as she dodged aside, Lizanne experiencing the satisfaction of watching her opponent spun into an untidy pirouette by the force of the blow. The woman let out a frustrated yelp, bounding upright in an impressive display of agility and letting loose with a stream of Red. It was an undisciplined riposte, one Lizanne easily evaded with a Green-enhanced leap that brought her to a height of twenty feet, whereupon she pinned the woman to the cobbles with a stream of Black. Lizanne drew both her revolvers and landed astride the woman’s prostrate form, levelling one pistol at her forehead as she tracked the other across the surrounding Varestians.
They all raised their own weapons with a metallic rattle of drawn hammers and chambered rounds. They held a mix of carbines and pistols along with the occasional shotgun. Lizanne knew in an instant the chances of evading so many projectiles at once were non-existent, and given the confident anticipation on their faces, so did they.
“Kill her if you want,” said one of the Varestians, a bearded fellow of broad stature who stepped from the cordon with a long-barrelled pistol in hand. He cast a withering glance at the woman on the ground, who returned it with a resentful frown. “My niece has never really earned her salt,” he said, sliding the pistol into a shoulder holster. “So you would in fact be doing me a great favour.”
Lizanne cast a final glance around at the ring of armed men and women, then slowly raised both pistols above her head. “My name is Lizanne Lethridge . . .” she began.
“Miss Blood herself?” the bearded man cut in, eyebrows raised in apparent awe. However, the awe disappeared almost instantly and he began to voice a laugh that was soon shared by his compatriots, the sound of their humour echoing through the crater. “I did rather think it might be,” he added once the laughter had faded, inclining his head in a grudging gesture of respect. “Alzar Lokaras, Custodian of the High Wall. And before I hang your worthless corporate hide from said wall, I should very much like to know what you’re doing here.”
Lizanne replied with an affable nod, smiling to distract him before dropping the pistol in her right hand and pressing the fourth button on the Spider. Alzar Lokaras swore and lunged towards her as she collapsed, Blue flooding her veins and dragging her into the deepest trance.