Tikaya started to object, but Agarik smirked and spoke first.
“ But since you’ll doubtlessly make arguments until you get me to change my mind, we may as well go now.”
“ Good man.”
Thousands of stars glittering like ice crystals blanketed the black sky above the fort. Tikaya almost felt she could reach up and stir them with her fingers. Here and there lanterns sputtered on lampposts or in sconces. Agarik hugged shadows barely dented by the flickering light as he led her beneath the ramparts and through an alley suffocated with piles of snow. They stopped at the back door of a two-story building. She had the feeling he was avoiding the other men and hoped he would not get in trouble for escorting her around. Her desire to poke through the commander’s office kept her from asking.
They slipped into an unlit kitchen where copper pots and steel counters gleamed, reflecting the lantern’s flame. Agarik led her around an island to avoid a body clad in bloodstained cook’s whites. Tikaya ripped her gaze from the melted flesh, glad the lighting did not illuminate too many details.
They passed through a mess hall lined with tables. Plates of bread, carrots, and now-frozen meat waited for someone to finish them. Bodies, some fallen across tables, some sprawled on the floor, matched the place settings. One man had died tending the coal stove in the corner, and the door stood open, ashes spilled onto the wood floor.
“ Surprise attack,” Agarik said, disgust hardening his voice. “There’s no honor in killing like this.”
“ I can’t believe how quickly the poison acts,” Tikaya said, chilled by the idea of something that could kill a man before he could even get out of his seat and wonder if something was wrong.
There were not any bodies at the tables nearest the far door, and wet footprints suggested the marines had started carting them out. Heavy footsteps sounded on the floor above. Tikaya doubted she would make it to the commander’s office without being spotted. She hoped no one would question her for snooping about.
They entered a corridor, and Agarik led her to a stairwell. Broad steps rose toward a second floor, while narrow ones turned a corner and dropped into darkness. That made her pause. A basement in a land where permafrost hardened the earth inches below the surface?
Agarik headed upstairs, but voices came from the lower level.
“ Wait,” Tikaya whispered, cocking her head to listen.
“ I think…a Nurian,” someone said.
“…doing out here?”
They had found a Nurian? Had someone been caught nosing around in the carnage of the fort? Her breath hitched. What if it was the person who had fired the rocket? The person who knew enough of the language to know how to fire the rocket?
She edged closer to the stairs. The men were not whispering, so the discussion was probably not secret, and nobody had forbidden her from exploring.
Agarik gripped her forearm. “Tikaya…”
She frowned at him. “What do you know?”
“ The cells and interrogation chamber will be down there. It’s not…a fitting place for a lady to visit.”
Tikaya almost laughed. Was he worried she would see something more macabre than the legions of bodies around the fort? She patted his hand before drawing her arm away. “I just want to see if they found someone who knows more about what’s going on than we do.”
If Agarik’s frown grew any deeper, he would pop the stitches out on that gash. Still, he followed with the lantern when she eased down the stairs.
She anticipated a pitted rusty iron door streaked with blood at the bottom, but the bland wood was no different from any other door they had passed. Beyond it, gray stone lined a narrow hallway. At the end, light seeped through the cracks of a partially open door. The voices had dropped to murmurs.
On the way down the hall, Tikaya checked a door to the side, expecting racks filled with torture implements. Instead, it was a supply closet loaded with brooms, lye soap, lanterns, kerosene tins, and painting supplies. So far, this dungeon was not living up to expectations.
Chains rattled in the room ahead.
“ Where’s the slagging key?” a familiar voice growled.
Tikaya froze. Ottotark.
She started to turn, not wanting anything to do with him, interesting prisoners or not, but someone thrust the door open. Two marines tramped out, a body between them, but if it was Nurian she could not tell. It was as melted and featureless as the rest in the fort.
The marines halted.
“ What’s she doing down here, Corporal?” one asked.
Agarik shrugged. “Looking for language clues.”
Ottotark leaned through the doorway, his eyes narrowing to slits when he spotted her. For a long speculative moment, he stared, and she fought the urge to race up the steps in retreat. He would not do anything with so many witnesses, and surely this was not the time regardless.
“ Go on,” Ottotark told the marines, “take the body out. Agarik, come help me get the other one. I expect the captain will want to see the Nurian, so we’ll leave him here for now.”
Tikaya stood aside for the men to pass. Agarik headed for the chamber, and she almost bumped into his back when he stopped in the doorway.
“ What is it?” she asked.
But Agarik had already moved to the side so she could see. She wished he had not. The amount of human carnage from the last couple days should have numbed her to it, but this dead man was different. The naked Nurian hung from shackles on the wall. His fingernails and toenails were ripped out, flesh mutilated with blades and brands. Someone had gut his genitals off and dug both eyeballs out. The removed organs lay in a tidy pile next to the dangling body, and Tikaya had to gulp several deep breaths to keep from vomiting. Thank Akahe the temperature kept everything frozen, and no odor accompanied the visual horror.
“ By the book,” Agarik commented.
Ottotark nodded. “Professional job. I’ll bet two weeks pay one of our people ran the torture session, but who? This is recent work, done by somebody- to somebody-who showed up after everyone else got their faces slagged like ore in a smelter.”
“ Unless…” Tikaya took one more deep breath to steady her gorge. “Unless the basement protected people here from the poison.”
“ Look around, idiot woman.” Ottotark pointed past racks containing wicked metal instruments whose purpose she could only guess.
Steel bars in the shadows formed a pair of cells. A corpse in one had suffered from the same affliction as all those in the fort above. And, of course, she had seen the body those two marines had taken out.
“ Sorry, yes, I’m not thinking.” Odd that this deliberate cruelty affected her more than the mysterious otherworldly deaths. The marines, even Agarik, seemed to find this torture commonplace. Just when she was thinking some Turgonians might be normal people. “You must be right. So, one or more of your people got here ahead of us. And this fellow, I wonder if he’s the one who launched the rocket. Or…” She looked past the damage to what remained of the man’s features, and her stomach did a little flip. “I recognize him.”
Ottotark stared at her. “What?”
“ He’s the bodyguard of the practitioner who attacked me on the ship.”
“ You sure?” Ottotark’s forehead scrunched. “He’s not looking too recognizable at the moment.” He threw back his head and laughed.
Agarik rolled his eyes.
“ Come, Corporal,” Ottotark said. “Help me drag that other body up to the pyre. We’ll leave the librarian to clue hunt, though I don’t reckon this bloke was worrying overmuch about languages in the end.”
He laughed again, and the inappropriateness ground on Tikaya’s nerves.
“ I’m supposed to stay with her,” Agarik said.
Ottotark’s humor evaporated. “That wasn’t a request, Corporal. I’m sure the captain didn’t mean for you to get out of all the physical labor with your special assignment. You can come back when we’re done hauling bodies.”
Agarik looked at Tikaya, and she gave him a quick nod. He had risked enough trouble for her, and she would give him up for a while if it would get Ottotark out of the room as well.