She spun back around the column. The dynamite had taken down most of the front part of the room. The floor was filled with broken statues and columns, how much of it was real stone and how much was plaster replicas, she couldn’t tell. Most of the oni were under the rumble, not moving. Hopefully they were oni. She shot them regardless because they’d moved beyond talking their way out of the mess.
Getting out alive was one thing. How were they going to get out of this mess on the grander scale? The innocent ticket taker and the elderly human guard both saw them enter. Even if they got away from the oni alive there was still the EIA…
…waiting at the entrance of the library.
An entire platoon of EIA in combat gear crouched on the stone steps, guns leveled at the door.
Jane put her hands in air and hoped that they didn’t shoot first and ask questions later.
Seconds later, her team was face down on the pavement, being searched for weapons.
The museum guards chasing them came spilling out of the building. One of them panicked at the sight of the combat troops. He opened fire and a hail of bullets answered.
The silence after the thunder of guns and the heavy thud of bodies was sickening.
Taggart was beside her, staring anxiously at her.
“I’m fine,” she mouthed. She turned her head. Nigel lay to her other side. There was a slight tightening around his eyes but he seemed unworldly calm. He gave a slight nod to Jane. Beyond him, Hal was curled in a ball, arms around his head. It was Hal’s normal fetal position when he couldn’t talk his way out of trouble or run from it.
“Cease fire!” A male voice shouted.
Someone walked through the bullet casings that littered the ground. Jane could only see knee high boots. They stopped inches from her.
“When I asked you to kill the monster—” Director Maynard glared down at Jane. At Sandcastle, he’d assumed that Hal ran the show. He’d realized his mistake since then. “—I wasn’t giving you carte blanche to run amok in my city.”
“Half the museum staff are disguised oni,” Jane said. “We did something that spooked them. They tried to kill us.”
“What did you do?”
“We filmed without permission,” Jane said as honestly as she dared. Maynard would report to Windwolf or Sparrow. Since Jane couldn’t prove Sparrow was a traitor to her race, the truth could be deadly. “I think they thought we saw something we weren’t supposed to see. I did field trips here as a kid; I didn’t see anything new on display or anything missing. The director showed up with a bunch of guards. She confiscated our memory cards and then ordered her men to kill us.”
That sounded innocent enough.
Maynard called an officer over. He pointed into the museum. “Find the director and get the memory card off her. If she refuses, tell her we don’t need a warrant for stolen property.”
Jane considered telling them that she’d killed the director. No, they would find out soon enough. Besides, the woman might still be alive.
There was a sudden parting of the EIA personal as if an invisible force cleaved through the gathered mass. From Jane’s prone position, she couldn’t tell what was coming. If it was Sparrow, they were lost.
The last rank of EIA stepped aside, revealing a sekasha male. Jane wasn’t sure if she should cheer or cringe at the sight of the warrior. He could free them with a single word or strike them down. No one could stop him. She didn’t recognize the male; the sekasha only came to Pittsburgh with the Viceroy. The male wasn’t Dark Harvest, who’d saved them after the fight with the namazu. He seemed young, but it was hard to tell with elves. His black hair was gathered into a single braid threaded with blue glass beads. Despite his youth, he was taller than most of the men gathered around Jane. His wyvern armor vest and the shield spells tattooed down his arms were both in Wind Clan blue. He carried the magically sharp sword that only his caste was allowed to wield.
He was young, beautiful, deadly, and extremely confused looking.
“Walks Among Storm Clouds Looming on Wind.” Maynard bowed to the young warrior. “Is something wrong? Does Wolf Who Rules Wind need me?”
“A message has come via the distant voices.” The warrior frowned at a piece of paper in his hands. “It’s from the Queen. She sends an order to you. I’ve been looking for you to deliver it.”
“Me?” Maynard said in surprise.
The sekasha unfolded a piece of paper and read it aloud. “Our dear trusted ally, Director Derrick Senequa Maynard. You are to remember that the house of history belongs in full to the crown and not to the humans. It is only by our generosity that it operates as a place of study and reflection. Those who hunt monsters should be given full rein to the house of history in order to do a general cleaning of any and all vermin. Do not detain them in any manner.”
“It is a long complicated story,” Yumiko had said. “The kind that comes into being when people like Pure Radiance dabble in the lives of others. Impossible convergences of fate lead to extraordinary events. The more I tease apart the cause and effect, the more I realize that there are multiple oracles warring with each other, moving others around like chess pieces. What we’re seeing today is the collision of their plans as they crash toward their end game.”
Pure Radiance knew that Jane was looking for the deadly box. She just cleared the path for Jane to find it if it was still in the museum.
Yumiko had also claimed that Pure Radiance had set Tinker up to be captured by the oni, knowing full well that Tinker would destroy them.
“Thank you, Cloudwalker.” Maynard bowed to the young warrior. “I will obey the Queen’s wishes.” The director turned to his men and gestured at Jane and her team. “Let them go.”
While Cloudwalker seemed young and somewhat naïve, he quickly grasped what his queen meant by “vermin.” When all the dead guards turned out to be disguised oni, he called in laedin-caste warriors from the nearby enclaves to sweep the building. As it was after hours for the museum, it meant the librarians were rounded up and tested. Luckily they all turned out to be human.
Meanwhile the director’s body was found and the two memory cards brought to Maynard. He demanded that they play the video so he could see for himself what started the fight. Jane fought to keep her face neutral as Taggart slotted the card back into his camera.
The video didn’t start outside the museum or even with Nigel staring in amazement at the wyvern. It cut straight to Hal standing by the massive leg giving the later part of his segment.
“This wyvern was an unprecedented gift from Queen Soulful Ember,” Hal said on the video. “Because normally the scales of the creature are used to make the chest armor worn by the holy warriors and the ruling caste.”
Taggart had recorded up to the moment that Lefèvre held out her hand for the memory chip. He’d focused on the incriminating bracelet seconds before the video ended.
What the hell, Jane thought while struggling to keep the surprise off her face. There should have been a good half hour of recording on the chip before Lefèvre made Taggart hand it over. Somehow he’d swapped in a decoy when they’d heard Lefèvre coming, recording only Hal’s explanation of “bullet-proof” on it. The real memory chip with Nigel explaining his connection to Andrew Carnegie must have been the second one, the one taken from Taggart’s shirt pocket.
But it wasn’t. It was totally blank.
Relief warred with confusion. What had Taggart done with the real memory chip? It could be deadly evidence against them.
Jane remembered Nigel kneeling to straighten his pant cuff. Taggart must have handed the real memory chip off as cleanly as he later handed Nigel the camera. They’d done it without a word spoken, so she’d missed it.