The woman let out another snarl, hand flashing to the knife tucked into the top of her boot.
“Morva,” the larger guard said as the woman crouched for a lunge. She came to a halt, features quivering with rage. The guard stepped between them, jerking his head at Lizanne. “Enough of this. He’s waiting.”
She was carried up the chasm wall in an elevating contraption. It was formed of a cage attached to a cable driven by some sort of counter-weight mechanism she was sure her father would have found fascinating. Lizanne noticed that the two guards became markedly more attentive as they neared the top, the larger one pointing his shotgun at her head whilst the other levelled his at the small of her back. When the cage came to a jerky halt at the top of the chasm the two guards kept pace with Lizanne as she stepped out. Their weapons never strayed from their target as Morva led them through the courtyard and up the stairway to the parapet.
Alzar Lokaras stood atop a raised turret on the western flank of the crater lip, playing a hand along the back of a large black cat sitting on the battlement beside him. The cat hissed as it caught sight of Lizanne, she instantly recognising it as the author of her current misfortune.
“Don’t mind Sherva,” Alzar said as the guards brought her to a halt a few feet away. “She’s bred to dislike strangers.” He gave the cat’s chin a scratch then beckoned Lizanne closer. “I found myself greeted by a curious sight during my morning stroll,” he said, pointing to something out at sea. “Perhaps you can enlighten me as to what it might be.”
Lizanne moved closer, aware of the increased tension of the guards as she did so. Their indifference to Morva’s well-being clearly didn’t apply here. She followed Alzar’s finger to a small, flat-topped island some three miles away. The Firefly hovered above it at a height of about fifty feet, Tekela pointing the aerostat into the prevailing wind so that it bobbed up and down continually, but showed no sign of leaving.
“It’s been there since first light,” Alzar said. “My crew are very keen to sail out and capture it. Should I let them do so, do you think? Or maybe just have my gunners blast it out of the sky.”
“You’ll miss,” Lizanne said. “And then it’ll just fly away.”
Alzar grunted out a short laugh. “I’m not too sure about that. I suspect whoever has charge of that thing is possessed of an unreasoning loyalty; otherwise, they’d have departed as soon as it became clear your mission here had failed.” He turned, resting his back against the battlement, regarding Lizanne with careful scrutiny. “I think if I tie a rope around your legs and dangle you over the side of this rock they might well decide to deliver that marvellous contraption to me. Am I wrong?”
I hope so, Lizanne thought, suspecting the opposite to be true. “What makes you think I failed?” she asked instead.
Alzar’s scrutiny faded, replaced by a cold calculation. “You tranced,” he said. “So it’s safe to assume your corporate masters have whatever information you came for. Therefore, I find it curious that the more interesting documents in my uncle’s library remain undisturbed. Nothing appears to have been taken or destroyed.” He jerked his head at the guards, who stepped closer, shotgun barrels pressing into Lizanne’s head and back.
“I am not some Imperial Cadre fool,” Alzar said, voice terse with harsh sincerity. “I will not play your games or entertain your bargains. Tell me what you came here for and why or I’ll show your friend over there what we do to spies at the High Wall.”
Lizanne replied quickly. Experience taught her how to spot a bluff, and this wasn’t one. “It’s quite simple, really,” she said. “Zenida sent me.”
“Quite a story you weave,” Alzar said a few hours later. After a hasty explanation on the parapet he had her brought to the mansion for a more fulsome account. Lizanne sat in a chair in the library, the larger of the two guards at her back and Morva stalking about on the edge of her vision. Alzar remained standing throughout, his gaze occupied by the huge table map of Arradsia. “What makes you think I believe a word of it?” he added.
“The fact that you haven’t killed me,” Lizanne replied. “And how else would I know the details of your feud with Arshav and his mother?”
“Ironship spies know a great many things, and they’ve always been overly interested in my family.”
“Indeed. In fact they were interested enough to employ Zenida as a privateer. She did the Syndicate some valuable service over the years.”
“What?” Morva said, stepping into view and addressing the question to her uncle. “What did she say?”
“Mind your place!” Alzar snapped, jaws bunching and shooting Lizanne a glare. “My cousin’s choices did not always meet with my approval,” he said as Morva retreated with a sullen scowl. “But she is truly of this clan, in blood and spirit, unlike her corrupted wretch of a brother and his bitch mother.”
“Who now hold sway over the Seven Walls and the Ruling Council,” Lizanne pointed out.
“Council.” Alzar grated out a laugh rich in contempt. “There never really was a Ruling Council. Just a bunch’ve puffed-up bilge rats playing politics, and failing for the most part. The High Wall had no truck with their empty prattle. Arshav and his mother can preen and pronounce all they want, Varestia has never truly had a government, nor has it needed one.”
“Until now. You do know what’s coming, I assume? A clan with so many ships at its command will surely have some notion of the threat this region faces.”
Alzar turned back to the map, saying nothing, though Lizanne discerned from his deeply furrowed brow her words had struck home.
“Melkorin has been destroyed,” she pressed on. “Other towns and cities will follow. Our enemy swells in number with every conquest and when it has sufficient strength it will be coming to lay waste to the Red Tides.”
He kept his gaze on the map, his expression that of a man forced into hateful consideration. “When I was a boy,” he said after a lengthy silence, “I would watch my uncle stare at this map for hours. There was something about this land that had once captured his soul and never let go for the rest of his life, right up until it killed him. Now, you tell me the key to saving us all rests at the very heart of his greatest obsession.” He gave a very small, humourless laugh. “And Zenida thought it all just an old man’s delusion.”
Alzar moved away from the map to sit in the chair opposite Lizanne’s. “I would like it remembered,” he said in a hard, resigned tone, “that, at any other time, your corpse would now be decorating our wall.”
“Duly noted,” Lizanne said.
“Take a message to Arshav and Ethilda. I’ll join our ships with theirs. We’ll fight for the Red Tides, but this changes nothing between us. He is still a bastard and a faithless cutthroat who sullies our name and she is still a scheming whore my uncle should have strangled when he had the chance. When this war is done and Zenida resumes her rightful place here, there will be a reckoning.”
“I’ll tell them.”
“I have three further conditions,” he went on. “Firstly, any prize captured by our ships belongs to the High Wall and not your absurd company. Secondly, we receive equal amounts of any weapons produced by your manufactory. And, thirdly.” He turned his gaze to Morva standing in sulky silence in the corner of the library. “I require a tutor for a wayward youth.”