"Ah, right." Alaeron reached into his coat, his fingers finding the right vial by the markings incised on the lid, and passed over a substance of his own devising. You might call it "glue," but only in the same way you might call a broadsword a potato peeler. Zernebeth carefully tipped over the vial, dropping a blob of the pale pink adhesive onto the floor, then pressing the end of a climbing rope into the substance before it could dry. They waited a few seconds, then she tugged on the rope experimentally—the adhesive held it fast. The rope was stuck there permanently, probably—the glue was the strongest Alaeron could make, and it would hold the weight of a war mammoth.

  Alaeron descended first, slowly easing his way down the slope—he could slide down, except there was no telling what he might slide into. The ramp went down for what felt like miles but was really probably only a few hundred yards, based on counting his steps. Zernebeth came after, and finally the passage flattened out again ...and dead-ended in a door of sorts, a circular hatch with no visible hinges.

  "We must be deep underground," Zernebeth said. "Few passages go so far below. Here—take a breathing apparatus." She passed him a pair of small filters for his nostrils. He slipped them in, though he hated the discomfort. Better than being killed from inhaling some ancient gas from the stars, though. Of course, a corrosive mist could still melt their flesh, or a horror that only existed halfway in this dimension might emerge and eat their souls, but those things happened relatively rarely, so the odds were in their favor. Such were the risks you took when you explored the Mount. Most chambers the League unsealed were entirely empty, or full of nothing but dust and bones that crumbled into similar dust when touched.

  Zernebeth examined the crack that ran around the outside of the hatch, then chose a long prybar from her pack. She slotted the flattened end of the bar into the gap and heaved, putting all her weight into it. The door creaked and squealed but didn't open. "We need more force," she said. "You brought your mutagen?"

  Alaeron sighed. That was one of the ways he'd bought his way into the Technic League, and they'd even forced him to demonstrate the effects of his mutagenic potion for the Black Sovereign himself, not that the barbarian had seemed to pay any attention. But Alaeron hated the way the mutagen made him feel, dulling his mind as the cost of enhancing other capabilities. "Yes." He fished out the vial, then took off his coat and handed it to Zernebeth—no reason to burst that at the seams. He uncorked the vial and tossed back the slimy contents in a single gulp, the better to avoid tasting it. A mixture of hormones, chemicals, extracts from fell monsters, and other secret ingredients, the mutagen gave Alaeron himself certain properties of a beast.

  The change came over him quickly, and he shivered, coarse hairs sprouting from his skin with pinprick sensations, fingernails elongating and hardening, spine curving and hunching him over, muscles gaining mass and definition, teeth growing longer and more crowded in his mouth as his face lengthened, almost forming a snout. His vision constricted and grew dimmer, but the acuity of his nose increased hugely in compensation, smell his most powerful sense even with the nostril filters in. He took in Zernebeth's icy scent, with its odd floral undertones; the alien metal of the Mount itself; and, beyond the hatch, wisping through the tiny crack Zernebeth had made, the scent of dust and ancient death.

  "Go on, before it wears off," Zernebeth said.

  Alaeron bared his fangs—who was she to tell him what to do, she was little, he could tear her arms off without effort—but he wasn't entirely bestial, and his conscious mind overrode his instinctive rage. He moved closer to the hatch, feeling constricted by the narrowness of the passageway and eager to open up more space. He seized the prybar in his clawed hands and shoved, pushing with so much force it would have snapped his bones if they hadn't been strengthened by the mutagen.

  The hatch howled, metal grinding against metal, and Alaeron growled and pushed harder. The barrier popped open, not swinging on hinges but simply falling to the floor with a huge clang. Like it wasn't meant to open at all, but merely set in place to seal something in. No gases emerged—not visibly, anyway. Alaeron dropped the prybar and picked up the lantern in one of his clumsy clawed hands, then stepped through the hole into the space beyond, swiveling his head around in search of lurking dangers. Sometimes members of the League went into the Mount and never came out again. Even in this massive tomb, things yet lived, and some of them were hungry.

  The room was spherical, as round as the inside of an eyeball, the size of a decent inn's common room. The walls were mostly the same silver as the corridor, except for a wide rectangular panel of black glass, so smooth it made a shadowy mirror.

  There was nothing else, except the bones.

  "Safe," he said, voice still half a growl, though his teeth were getting smaller, his muscles bulging less, his spine straightening. The mutagen didn't last long, though he'd been working on refinements to make it more powerful. He'd rather be smart than strong just now, though.

  Zernebeth came after him, grunting as she scanned the room.

  Alaeron crouched on the curved floor, examining the mess piled in the center of the room. At first he thought it was a jumble of bones from several people, piled together, until his perception oriented itself sufficiently for him to realize it was the remains of a single life form. The skeleton—which seemed at least as much stone and metal as bone, and had a few joints that appeared made of steel—had no fewer than nine limbs, some ending in a profusion of smaller bones that might have been fingers, others ending in fused lumps of metal that could have been decorative or prosthetic or something else entirely. Alaeron crab-walked in a circle around the skeleton, pointing out its flattened skull, which sported a single ocular cavity and no fewer than three jaws. "Amazing," he murmured. "Is this one of the creatures that piloted the Silver Mount through the heavens?"

  Zernebeth's silence was very loud. Alaeron glanced over at her. She stood with her arms crossed, staring critically not at the dead creature, but at him. He winced. "Of course, a fallacy of assumptions. Because it is on the ship does not mean the ship belongs to it. It could be a servant, or a slave, or a prisoner, or a stowaway."

  "Good," Zernebeth said, finally stepping into the room. "Though not good enough. You're still making assumptions. This creature could be vermin, the equivalent of a wharf rat. Or it could be livestock. For that matter, who says the Silver Mount is a ship? We simply have no idea." She squinted. "Look at these. Relics. Devices."

  Alaeron nodded. Scattered among the bones were six small objects: one gray and disc-shaped; another like an egg; a short length of golden chain; something like a child's toy top made of porcelain and gold; a circle of dark red metal that might have been a child's bracelet; and a toothed black gear-wheel the size of a saucer. "Do you think this creature had them in its clothes, and then the clothes rotted away? Or that it somehow wore them like jewelry, or kept them to hand as tools—"

  "All fascinating questions," she said, "but I'm more interested in seeing what they do." She reached out, touching the spindly golden chain—and it reacted almost as if alive, drawing its segments inward and curling into a ball, like a pill-bug rolling up to protect itself. "Hmm," Zernebeth said, but then all the other pieces started moving too: the top began to rotate slowly, not quite picking up enough speed to stand on its point; the egg jumped as if something inside it wanted to hatch; the disc hummed and levitated, floating a few inches off the ground; and the gear-wheel turned with a horrendous grinding sound, even though it wasn't turning against anything at all. The relics began moving toward one another in a shuddering, slow, inefficient way, with the terrible sounds of broken machinery trying to work despite catastrophic failure.

  Zernebeth hissed and drew back her hand. "Separate them. Who knows what will happen if they combine? I want to know, of course, but in a contained environment."

  Alaeron nodded, and hurriedly drew out one of the mesh bags they used for carrying dangerous relics—basically a chainmail shirt of skymetal made into a sack. He pulled on thick leather gloves, then reached out tentatively for the gear wheel, which continued turning, but slowly, as if it were sticking on something. He plucked it from the bones, and it stopped moving. All the other relics did, too, falling inert to the floor. He put three in one bag and three in another, unwilling to let them all touch, just in case. "All right," he said. "Do we take some of the skeleton with us, or—"

  There was a click, loud as a snapping twig in a silent forest, and Zernebeth swore, softly. Alaeron looked up and saw her staring down. There was a discolored patch on the floor beneath her boot, as if the metal were tarnished ...or just worn from being touched many, many times. "I think I just activated something," she said, in the same tone one might use to say, "I think it's incurable."

  "Should we run, or ..."

  She shook her head. "If it's a trap of some kind, and I remove my foot, it could do anything: explode, crush us, suck all the air out of the room—" She frowned. "Look."

  Alaeron turned his head. The black glass panel on the wall was changing, shapes flickering across it in clear white lines, diagrams and drawings like blueprints or maps or schematics, flickering past too quickly for comprehension. Beams of light shone forth from the corners of the screen, and when Alaeron traced their paths, he saw the beams converged directly on Zernebeth's face—shining right into her eyes. Her expression was glassy, and her breathing became ragged. "So much," she murmured. "I see, I see, it's so much, it's ..."

  Then she screamed. Smoke began to rise from her eye sockets, and as Alaeron watched, blood poured from her nose, ears, and mouth. Still she screamed, but she seemed rooted where she stood, unable to step away, and now the black screen was alive with colors, more colors than a rainbow, than a slick of oil on water, than the Silver Mount at noon. Alaeron scrambled backward, averting his eyes from the screen. The twist of colors made his stomach churn. The relics in their sacks buzzed and jerked and twisted, and Alaeron nearly dropped them—but he was arcanist enough to hold on. Zernebeth began to jerk and shiver as if being jolted by lightning, and Alaeron's hair all stood on end. Something was happening in the room; some sort of charge was building. "I'm sorry," he said, though Zernebeth was beyond hearing, and he bolted from the room. He snatched up his coat, shoved the relics into the wide pockets, and seized the rope with both hands, climbing as fast as he could, the lantern left behind on the floor. As he ascended through the darkness, away from the puddle of light below, he heard a great crash, as of glass shattering, and the whole passageway hummed and vibrated, a resonance that made his teeth ache.

  He made it to the top, down the hallway, through the gash in the skin of the Mount, and into the light. The Gearsman still stood guard. "Zernebeth," Alaeron said, gasping. "Of the Technic League, she's inside, I—I think she died."

  The Gearsman regarded him impassively for a moment, then picked up the metal sheet cut from the Mount and slid it back into place, closing up the opening and hammering on the metal to bang it firmly back into place. Then it returned to its position, standing and waiting for who knew what.

  "Are you going to ...to retrieve her body, or ..."

  The Gearsman said nothing, and Alaeron backed away until he reached the walker. Then he cranked it up and awkwardly guided it back to Starfall, shaken by what he'd seen and trying to think of what he would tell the members of the League.

  Deciding, early on, that he wouldn't be telling them about the relics he'd recovered. Zernebeth was the closest thing in this place he'd had to a friend, and she'd given her life to get those relics out of the Mount. He owed it to her to find out what they were.

  Chapter Nine

  Confusion Bombs

  Hmm," Skiver said when Alaeron finished speaking. "Not bad, but next time you tell it, make it so you and Zernebeth were in love. Makes a better story, and there's a whole added bit of heartstring-pulling when she dies that way. Makes you more mysterious and all scarred by loss and such too. Makes you seem more deep. People love that."

  Alaeron shook his head, and almost laughed. "You said you wanted the truth."

  "Well, sure," Skiver said. "But the truth shouldn't get in the way of a good story." He tossed the relic shaped like a child's top toward Alaeron, who snatched it from the air and slipped it into his pocket. Gods, what if Skiver had decided to set it spinning? Here, on a boat, at sea, the consequences would have been disastrous.

  He'd never told that story before, and though it was sad to think of Zernebeth's death again—even if she had been, looking at it objectively, nearly as bad as everyone else in the League—it was also nice to let it all out, and Skiver was an attentive and appreciative audience.

  "Want to play again for another of your toys?" Skiver said. "I wouldn't mind hearing how you made it out of Numeria, assuming you didn't just give them a week's notice and say you'd had a better job offer someone else."

  Alaeron nodded. "I suppose I could—"

  The door rattled, and Skiver rose as it opened. Jaya was there, eyes wide, hair wild, with a bow in her hand and a quiver of arrows slung over her shoulder. "Come on!" she shouted. "Up on deck, right away!"

  "What's the trouble?" Skiver said, more serious than Alaeron had ever seen him before.

  "Pirates," Jaya said grimly. "Following us, and getting closer."

  Skiver began to grin. "Oh, good. There's killing to be done, then."

  But all Alaeron could think was: What if it's not pirates?

  What if it was his past, trying to catch up with him again?

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  The captain was standing on the deck at the back of the ship—Alaeron didn't know what it was called, stern or bow or mizzen or something—peering through a spyglass. He claimed to be of nearly pure Azlanti descent, and Alaeron had just managed to keep from rolling his eyes at such pretentious twaddle. The captain at least had the old Azlanti look, more or less, except for the bushy oversized sideburns he grew in apparent compensation for his receding hairline. The sailors were all working busily as usual, but they were casting lots of looks behind them to where a ship approached, growing visibly larger with each passing moment.

  The captain snapped his spyglass closed and looked around. "You two!" he shouted. "The archer says you might be of use. Can you fight?"

  Skiver produced a knife from somewhere and twirled it around his fingers a few times, grinning lazily. The captain nodded, then squinted at Alaeron. "You?"

  Alaeron coughed. "I have ...certain items, and expertise ...which could be useful in a battle."

  The captain stroked his beardless chin. "I've heard of alchemists who experiment on themselves—growing extra arms, tentacles. Gills like a fish. Wings. Great long claws and teeth. Are you that sort?" Jaya looked at Alaeron wide-eyed, and even Skiver lifted an eyebrow.

  Alaeron did have a vial of mutagen in his coat, and he'd improved the formula since his time in Numeria, but he'd never actually used it in a fight. Having teeth and claws and a terrible temper didn't actually make one a competent warrior. (As for tentacles, wings, and gills—not to mention mobile attack tumors, the power to vomit swarms of spiders, or spawning fully functional duplicates of his own body—he hadn't invested the time or considerable gold necessary to master such effects, his interests lying mostly elsewhere.) So he decided to mention something he thought they might like just as much: "Well ...I can make bombs."

  "What, alchemist's fire? Could be some use, I daresay—"

  "No," Alaeron said. "I mean, yes, I have alchemist's fire, but I also have rather ...more exotic items that could be of greater use once the pirates are in range."

  "Mmm," the captain said. "At the rate they're gaining, that'll be sooner rather than later. Just be sure you don't drop any of your bombs on my deck. Best get ready, everyone, to repel boarders."

  Skiver wandered over to a group of sailors snatching up swords from a barrel—mostly a battered bunch of secondhand weapons by the look of them. Alaeron went to Jaya's side, then knelt by his bag, mixing catalyst into prepared flasks, measuring out ingredients by hand. He'd had a lot of practice making bombs. The Technic League loved them. But he was making some bombs here that he'd never shown the masters of Numeria.

  "All those little bottles and things," she said. "They'll make explosions? Put a hole in that ship?"

  "Among other things," Alaeron said. "Are we sure they're pirates? I thought the shipping lanes in the Inner Sea were safe."

  Jaya shook her head. "They're flying no flag, and bearing down on us fast, but ignoring the captain's attempts to communicate with flags or signal mirrors. If they're not pirates, they're lunatics. But, yes, it's rare to see piracy so close to the Isle of Kortos—it's not as if we're in The Shackles. Absalom punishes pirates gravely. When they do strike here, they usually go after high-value targets, ships known to carry gold or treasures. We're carrying cloth, mostly. It's a routine trip ...the captain doesn't understand it. The pirates must be truly desperate to risk their lives attacking us. At least they don't have yellow sails—those are the trademark of the Okeno slavers, and they're merciless. With ordinary pirates it's possible to negotiate, though the captain seems determined to fight it out." She shook her head.

  Alaeron tried to weigh the possibilities. If this sort of piracy was rare ...What were the odds that Kormak would hire a ship to come after him? How would he even find Alaeron? Vadim was hardly the sort of man to let word of his business spread. Probably just coincidence, he decided. Corsairs, not Kormak.

  Once his bombs were prepared and arrayed in the belt of pouches he slung over his shoulder, he stood up—and was shocked to see how close the ship had come. Not within range of his bombs yet, but close enough to make out the individual figures on deck. The pirate vessel was smaller than their ship, and riding higher in the water, but Alaeron's lack of maritime knowledge prevented him from making any other determinations about it. The ship was fast, anyway, and the deck was swarming with figures. A few of them were practicing swinging ropes with grappling hooks on the end, the hooks splashing down into the water only to be reeled in and thrown again.