That got the reaction I’d predicted.
“The destruction of the Spirit Wardens?” Grine exclaimed, too shocked to be suspicious. “But why? To what end?”
I shook my head, stern and severe. “Need-to-know basis,” I reproached him, and he looked chastened by his own lapse. “Your duty is to get a special strike force into the lab to retrieve the experiments. Nothing more, nothing less. Report to me when you’re ready.”
“Yes ma’am!” Grine saluted, Spirit-Warden fashion. Then he remembered something: “How will I contact you?”
I had an answer ready, of course. “Tuck a handkerchief in your mailbox so one corner shows,” I instructed. “When I see it, I’ll find you.”
“Yes ma’am,” he repeated, his face full of resolve.
----------------------------------------
Edwina, on the other hand, was much more nervous about the operation. “We – we – we’re sneaking into the Crematorium?” she squeaked when we called her into the orphanage conference room and gave her her marching orders. “Bellweather Crematorium?”
“Yes,” snapped Faith, who had no time for timidity or scruples. “Is there another Crematorium in Doskvol?”
“N-n-no….”
My crewmate ran a cool, assessing gaze over the young woman’s terrified features, searching for a bribe that would motivate our Tinker to pull herself together and work as effectively as we needed her to. Faith must have found one, because she smiled a smile that bore no resemblance to humor or mirth. “If you see anything exciting in the lab that you can carry out yourself, you can bring it back with you.”
At the thought, Edwina’s eyes lit up. “Really?”
Faith smiled again, serenely this time. “Really. Although, if you’re too greedy and try to bring too much out, or if you blow our cover, we’ll leave you in one of the experimental apparatuses.”
Edwina gulped. “I understand, Miss Karstas. I promise to be good.”
After that, she was all for the score.
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Two days later and half an hour before Elder Rowan was scheduled to lead Mass at Bellweather Crematorium, our crew met Grine in the alley behind one of the Nightmarket Tinker suppliers. Anonymous in his bronze mask and red robes, the Spirit Warden was waiting next to a covered cart loaded with crates and barrels. At our approach, he nodded at me and immediately began to remove the lids of four large crates, all of which were stenciled with the words, “Warning: Alchemical explosion.” They were also reinforced by complicated metal-and-electroplasmic mechanisms that Edwina poked at happily until Ash cleared his throat.
In a low, business-like voice, Grine ordered, “Put your gear in those barrels. Get in these crates.”
We obeyed quickly and efficiently, Faith having opted to forgo her theatrics in favor of success at Ascendent murder. Once we’d tucked ourselves into the crates, Grine fitted racks of fake spirit bottles over us to hide us from casual inspection.
“If you need to get out on your own for any reason,” he whispered to each of us in turn, “flip this latch here. The rack and lid will lift up as one unit.”
After that, we endured a blind, bumpy ride over the cobblestones of Six Towers and lower Charterhall. At last, the cart jolted to a stop, and I heard the driver’s seat creak as Grine got off. I thought he was about to let us out – but then I heard him arguing heatedly with two other people, their words distorted by the crates. The other two, probably Spirit Wardens on guard duty at the Crematorium, must have won, because three sets of boots marched around to the back of the cart. There was a metallic screech and thunk. Contorting myself until I could peek out a tiny hole, I saw one masked figure undoing the latches on Ash’s crate while a second watched. The third, whose robes were practically vibrating with anxiety, could only have been Grine.
The first Spirit Warden pulled a bottle out of the crate and half-turned towards their partner. “What is – ?”
The next second, all of the metal clamps on Ash’s crate heated to red-hot, the electroplasmic wires threw off showers of sparks, and the bottle itself started to flash with warning lights. From the way Grine jolted and recoiled, Faith must have attuned to make the effects extra dramatic.
The first Spirit Warden dropped the bottle back into the rack, slammed the lid, and hastily backed off.
There was another muffled, intense conversation that I couldn’t make out, and then the cart started to move again. As we proceeded down a steep ramp, the lid of my crate popped off. Glass clinked, the rack of fake bottles lifted up, and Ash’s voice murmured, “Faith says they’re going to send the crates to a special containment room, so we need to swap into the non-crazy barrels now.”
In the light of the sparks from his crate, which was still smoking in a very disconcerting manner, I saw the top of one barrel just settling into place. Ash was helping Edwina into a second one, so I pried open a third and climbed into it at the same time that he hopped into the last.
We were none too soon. The cart stopped again. This time, a whole contingent of heavily armed Spirit Wardens swarmed us and clanked away with the four crates.
That over with, we drove on again, and when we stopped for the third time, Grine actually let us out into an underground warehouse. His body language screaming tension, he whispered, “She should have just started Mass. You have an hour and a half.” We’d already agreed that it would be best for him to maintain plausible deniability, so now he left to keep a lookout and head off anyone going towards Rowan’s lab.
The rest of us retrieved our gear and crept into the halls of the Crematorium basement for one of the most nerve-wracking walks of my life. Ash, as the orphans had established at the Sanctorium, was abysmal at sneaking – and Faith was even worse. Over and over, I had to grab one or the other before they stepped into a Spirit Warden’s path, or knocked over the experimental apparatuses that were just sitting all over the place. Even though I could tell that we were leaving a trail, I had to balance fixing everything that they disarranged, against moving quickly so we had enough time to set our trap.
Edwina, at least, looked perfectly at home gliding around lab equipment.
At last, a miserable twenty minutes later, we came to a pair of wooden doors with a bronze plaque that said “Rowan Lab.” On the wall next to the doorframe was a large red button that was clearly connected to an alarm system.
Tipping my head at it, I whispered, “Should we break it?”
Edwina gulped but stretched a hand towards it.
Ash stopped her. “Too suspicious.”
Faith, on the other hand, had ignored the alarm button entirely and was breezing through the doors.
My first impression of Rowan’s personal lab was a complete, unmitigated disaster zone, somewhat akin to Charhallow after a gale. Nuts and bolts and screws and spools of wire and sheets of metal were strewn all over the floor and the shelves and the work benches. Here, I nearly tripped over a pile of heads of various types that were tumbling out of a storage closet. There, I saw a heap of humanoid and insectoid limbs, tangled together so badly that I had no idea how Rowan planned to use any of them. And there, in the back, perched on the edge of a desk with a view of the entire room, was a cat-like hull that slowly and deliberately rotated towards us and stared.
Out of the corner of my eye, I glimpsed a glint of metal – right before two human-height hulls shaped like tarantulas scuttled around a mountain of cannisters. Their heads swiveled around until their glinting, bulbous, metallic eyes locked onto us, and then they charged.
Ash yanked out his lightning hook. I drew my sword.
In the same conversational tone that she might use to observe that the moon was full tonight, or that Mylera Klev did not like the color pink, Faith said to Edwina, “Those two are guards, but what is that?” She pointed at the cat.
Poor Edwina’s mouth was open in a silent shriek, but at Faith’s words – and as a measure of what she feared more – she tore her eyes from the tarantulas and squeaked,“Surveillance and recording, probably.”
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Without a word, Faith attuned at the cat.
Off the desk it toppled, straight into a trashcan where it vanished in a swoosh of paper. I could hear it scuffling and fighting to right itself while the papers slipped and shifted under it.
Meanwhile, the two tarantulas were halfway across the room and barreling at us, pincered forearms raised. Ash shot an arc of lightning right into the chest of one, freezing it in place. Crackling with blue energy, it jerked and twitched, its sharpened feet gouging deep scratches across the tiles. When the lightning ran out, the hull collapsed into a motionless heap of long, skinny legs.
Without warning, the second tarantula sprang through the air, both pincers aimed at Ash’s chest. He twisted out of the way, but it caught him in the shoulder and punctured his armor.
At the same time, I leaped forward with my sword and beat it off Ash. I targeted its legs, hacking at the clockwork mechanisms in the joints that seemed to be its biggest weak point. The gears resisted, then screeched and gave way. The front end of the tarantula fell heavily to the floor, but its back legs, which were armed with razor blades, whipped at my face.
I jumped back. My armor creaked under the impact and parted. Blood seeped out in a thin line across my chest. Panting, I raised my sword and smashed all the sensors that ringed the tarantula’s head, and it lay on the floor, arms swiping wildly at where it had last detected the intruders.
Surveying the scene, Faith turned to Edwina, who’d been frozen and pressed against the wall through all of this. “You look like you want to make yourself useful.”
Edwina shuddered but squared her shoulders and stepped away from the wall. “Yes….”
In her classroom-lecture voice, Faith said, “Elder Rowan built lots of electroplasmic devices to destroy spirits. Which of these would work best?”
A little shakily, the Tinker turned in a half-circle, studying all of the apparatuses. Her gaze settled on a small chamber with a ray gun in the far corner. She pointed. “That looks like it’s for destroying ghosts when she’s done with them.”
Hand clamped to his shoulder, Ash objected, “Do we really want to destroy the hulls’ spirits right now?”
Faith walked in a slow circle around the tarantula I’d crippled, examining it from all angles. “Well, I mean, we’re not going to be able to repair it. I don’t think destroying its spirit will be any worse.”
“Fair, fair.” Ash shrugged his good shoulder. “As long as you’re the one dragging in the flailing limbs.”
Naturally, she had no intention of doing personally what she could simply delegate. “Okay, Edwina!” she ordered cheerfully. “Go lure it in there!”
“Faith,” Ash scolded. “Edwina is slightly scared at the moment by, you know, the situation we find ourselves in.”
“Yes! That’ll just make her running away more convincing!”
However, despite her words, Faith trotted into the chamber herself and fired off a few small bolts from her lightning hook to get the tarantula’s attention. “Over heeere!” she taunted.
Its clockwork mechanisms grating, the tarantula hauled itself towards her. When it started to veer off course, Faith kept it moving in the right direction with a few more strategic lightning bolts. Once it was entirely inside the chamber, she skittered out, slammed the door, and called, “Now!”
Edwina threw the ray gun lever. A burst of blue light filled the chamber. When it faded, the tarantula was a heap of smoking scrap metal.
Rowan’s hulls thus subdued, we searched the lab for anything interesting, valuable – and transportable. Her face bright with awe, Edwina brought over a gleaming bronze orb the size of a fist whose surface was inscribed with delicate, interwoven runes. “This is a new type of soul gem,” she explained, cradling it in her palms. “Elder Rowan has been developing a way to power hulls using spirit essence instead of the full spirit.”
“Ooooh,” breathed Ash. “My mother would like that.” He started shoving soul gems and other smallish devices into a pouch.
Ash’s mother wasn’t the only one who could use novel spark-craft technology. Reaching out with my mind, I asked Grandfather, Is there anything you’d like?
Its answer filtered through a cloud of smoke and ash. I can think of nothing specific, but I’m sure the House could find use for anything…intriguing that you happen to pick up.
That was suitably vague, so I copied Ash and collected my share of soul gems.
As promised, Faith granted Edwina some playtime in this wonderful shop of shiny toys. Then she commanded, “Investigate whether we can reprogram the remaining tarantula hull.”
“Mmmm, I think I could. Although it would take some time.” Setting aside her own bag of goodies, Edwina grabbed a crowbar, clambered onto the tarantula that Ash had fried, and pried off a panel so she could poke around inside. Sticking her head all the way into it so she could locate the soul gem, she asked in a muffled voice, “What should I reprogram it to do?”
“Change the conditions so that when there’s an explosion, it will attack anyone who’s not dressed in black and carrying lots of equipment,” Faith directed.
Edwina set to work altering the runes.
Meanwhile, Faith started gathering bottles and jugs – all marked with explosion symbols – from various cabinets and piling them in the middle of the floor. “I spent so much time researching what supplies are found in alchemical labs that I’m going to use that knowledge, whether it’s doing this – or setting up a science lab for the orphans!” she declared. “Oh, that reminds me! I need to take some chemicals back with me!”
She was so distracted by her little monologue that some of the bottles were tilting and threatening to spill volatile chemicals. Luckily, she smelled the vapors and righted the bottles just in time. Satisfied with her handiwork, she pulled a bomb out of our gear and started setting it up next to the pile.
Edwina replaced the panel on the tarantula and hopped down, stumbling a little when she landed. “I don’t know if that’s perfect,” she reported with less certainty than any of us would have liked, “but I think it’s probably good enough.”
At any rate, it was too late for her to make any more changes. As soon as she was clear, the tarantula scuttled behind a pile of metal pieces that would partially protect it from the explosion, and none of us were inclined to go after it.
Dusting off her hands very showily and pointlessly, Faith announced, “All set! It will blow up any time now! I no longer have any control over this explosion at this point!”
That was almost certainly untrue given the detonator in her pocket – but it was our cue to leave. On our way in, we’d passed a storage closet with a view of the lab doors, so now we grabbed our gear and sprinted back to it. (Faith, of course, hung a mirror on the wall opposite the door, angling it so she wouldn’t miss a second of yet another Ascendent’s demise.) Just minutes after we crowded into the closet, we heard footsteps coming down the hall. Through a crack in the door, we watched an elderly, regal figure wearing the same bronze mask and red robes as the rest of the Spirit Wardens pass us. She went directly to her lab – and then stopped short.
She pushed the red button.
At once, alarms started clanging all over the Crematorium. From a different part of the basement came shouts and running footsteps. I could only hope that Grine was sending the other Spirit Wardens in the wrong direction.
With the supreme confidence born of demonism and immortality, Rowan strode into her lab.
Faith triggered the detonator.
A split second before the bomb exploded, Rowan flashed forward at superhuman speed, seized it, and hurled it across the room. There was deafening blast. The entire basement quaked, and ceiling plaster showered down on us. When I could hear again, the shouts in the distance had grown much louder.
I pressed my eye back to the crack in the door. The mirror hung a little crooked now, but the scene reflected in it was unmistakable: Somehow, the explosion had missed both Rowan and the pile of alchemicals. Counting the near-debacle during the Lady Clave score, this was the second time that we’d failed at tinkering.
But that was what Edwina was for, wasn’t it?
At the sight of a humanoid figure that wasn’t wearing black and loaded down with gear, the tarantula lurched to life and launched itself at its creator. Rowan whirled to face it, but it lashed out first.
The Ascendent didn’t so much as flinch. Bleeding from a series of shallow slices on her forearms, she lifted her hand and pressed the palm to the same panel that Edwina had removed. A flash of red light incinerated the soul gem, and the tarantula’s husk crumpled to the floor.
So much for Plan B.
Cracking the storage closet door open, Ash maneuvered the tip of his lightning hook outside. A line of electroplasmic energy sprang from it and arced all the way across the hall, through the doorway, and halfway across the lab to strike the pile of alchemicals with a great whump.
The pile exploded into flames, bright as the fires of the U’Du.
When I could see again, the lab looked like Lockport after General Helker finished shelling it. Every surface was charred and blistered from the heat; shards of metal and glass glinted everywhere. And, emerging from the inferno, staggering grimly towards the source of that lightning bolt, was Elder Rowan. Her mask was cracked and crooked, her robes were burned half off, and her exposed flesh was blackened and shriveled, but sheer vindictive determination kept her on her feet and propelled her forward.
I drew my sword and held it by my side, waiting. When Rowan was two feet from the storage closet, I stepped out and lopped off her head in one smooth motion.
Edwina gasped.
The Ascendent’s head rolled on the floor, coming to a stop at our feet. Through the eye holes of the mask, a pair of brown eyes glared up in sightless, endless hatred.
The death bells pealed, all at the same time.
We ran.
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Grine must have done his part to delay his fellow Spirit Wardens, because we made it out of the basement. As we burst onto the foggy streets, the death bells switched from an urgent peal to a continuous, oppressive, mournful toll. Far overhead, in a storm of flapping and cawing, crows launched from the rookery – but they weren’t black.
They were blood red.
“What are those?” cried Edwina, skittering to a stop and pointing into the sky. “Why are they red?”
Shushing her and tugging her along, Ash replied, “I assume they’re to track whoever killed Elder Rowan.”
Face aglow in the moonlight, Faith gazed up at the crows. The flock had been spiraling out to track us wherever we fled, but now its formation changed. The birds curved back towards the spire of the rookery, turned in a “v,” traced a half-circle through the air, flew straight until they angled back sharply….
“Are you making them fly in a heart?” I demanded.
Faith grinned. “Uh huh! Isn’t it pretty?”
“Uh….”
While the blood-red, murderer-seeker crows flew in a pretty heart over Bellweather Crematorium, the four of us jogged back to the railcar.
“Congratulations, Edwina,” Ash announced, opening the door and gesturing her through first. “We are so happy to have you with us.”
The poor grad student didn’t answer. The instant he locked the door behind us, she pulled out her pipe, collapsed into the nearest chair (which belonged to Faith), and started puffing furiously. As the scent of Black Lotus filled the common room, the tension leached out of her body and she slumped down, dead to the world.
Faith eyed her, seemed to decide that pink bows framed drug addicts very nicely, and claimed my chair.
“Well,” said Ash, tipping his pouch across the dining table so he could crow over his looted goodies, “we’re at war with the Spirit Wardens now, aren’t we?”
Yes.
Yes, we were.