Page 17 of Only Hard Problems

Silas slid his shock baton back onto his belt, then grabbed the unconscious guard’s ankles and quickly dragged him behind a stone planter bristling with honeysuckle vines. He stepped back around the planter, pulled a small comm device out of his pocket, and nestled it into his right ear.

“Exterior guard neutralized,” he said in a low voice. “Moving to first objective.”

I didn’t hear whatever response was made, but Silas nodded, opened the door, and slipped into the castle.

I yanked my own tablet out of my pocket, but a message on the screen indicated that I didn’t have a signal anymore. I muttered a curse. Silas—and whoever was working with him—must be jamming all other communications, which meant I had no way to warn Beatrice or Wendell or get any help from the House Rojillo guards.

I could return to the ball, find Lord Jorge, and tell him what was happening, but that would take far too long and draw too much attention. The last thing I needed was for the guests to panic. Besides, Castle Rojillo was a massive, sprawling structure, and if I didn’t follow Silas now, then I risked losing him for good. And given my current foul mood and simmering frustration of the past few weeks, I wanted to hit something, and Silas’s face would make an excellent punching bag.

I shoved my tablet back into my pocket, slid out of the shadows, and hurried over to Thompson, the unconscious guard. I made sure he was still breathing, but there was nothing else I could do for him right now, so I went through the same door Silas had used.

I stepped into a long, wide corridor made of glossy pink stone. Tall, skinny tables were spaced down the corridor, each one boasting a crystal vase, a quartz statue, or some other expensive, useless knickknack. Hoverglobes bobbed gently up and down in midair, although the pink flames inside had been turned down low, and they created far more shadows than they banished.

Silas was about fifty feet ahead of me, quickly and quietly moving from one doorway to the next and peering into all the rooms he passed. I followed along behind him, careful to keep my footsteps as soft as his. It wasn’t hard to do, since husky murmurs and passionate cries echoed out of many of the darkened rooms.

Some of the Regals had already indulged in chembonds, which were just what their name implied: chemicals that mentally connected people for a brief period of time. Several different types of chembonds existed, but they were most commonly used for sex, especially at society balls. Clothes rasped, furniture squeaked, and low, throaty moans bounced off the walls as the Regals enthusiastically pleasured themselves and their partners.

Silas stopped and peered into another room. Three loud, enthusiastic voices drifted out of that area, indicating that everyone involved was having a grand time. Silas pulled out his tablet and angled the device in their direction. Perhaps his intentions were more greedy than nefarious. Gossipcasters—and blackmailers—often snuck into places they weren’t supposed to be to get juicy scoops on illicit Regal dalliances.

But instead of snapping a photo or recording a video, Silas lowered his tablet, ignored the passionate sounds, and veered to the left through an archway. I frowned. If he wasn’t here for gossip or blackmail, then what was he doing? Where was he going?

I hurried forward and peered through the archway. Silas crossed an interior courtyard, then used a key card to open a locked door and stepped through to the other side. I pulled my stormsword off my belt and followed him.

The door had locked behind the rogue guard, so I tapped on one of my opal cuff links three times, then held it up to the card reader. The opal burned a bright blue, and a tiny electromagnetic pulse zinged out of the stone, frying the keypad. One of my father’s more useful inventions.

The door clicked open. I winced at the unwanted noise, but I cautiously stepped into another corridor. Instead of smooth pink stone, this area was made of sterile gray tile. Sturdy metal doors were set into the thick walls, and there was nary a knickknack in sight. This was the industrial heart of the castle, where Jorge Rojillo created his designs, and it was an eerie mirror to a similar area where my father worked in Castle Zimmer.

Silas wasn’t here for gossip or blackmail. He had his eye on a much larger prize—he was a thief here to steal House Rojillo technology.

Corporate espionage among the Regal Houses was quite common. Every Regal family was always searching for new ways to raise themselves up and undercut their rivals, and stealing proprietary designs while Lord Jorge was hosting the summer solstice celebration was a clever way to accomplish both goals. But which House was Silas working for? And what tech was he after? House Rojillo made all sorts of things, from air purifiers to shielding grids for homes and ships to the climate-control wristwatch Jorge had shown me earlier.

Silas had vanished, so I crept down the corridor and glanced through the small permaglass windows set into the doors. Supply closets, tool depositories, cleaning stations. There was no sign of Silas in any of the rooms, and all the doors were locked, so I kept moving forward, my stormsword still clutched in my hand. The lunarium blade shimmered with a pale blue light, painting the gray tile corridor in a ghostly glow.

I glanced up, but no cameras were embedded in the ceilings, which meant no one was watching me or Silas creep around the corridors. Another security suggestion I’d made that Lord Jorge had failed to implement, but the lack of cameras wasn’t unusual. Most Regals relied on guards, alarms, locked doors, and energy shields to keep them safe, and few wanted cameras recording their comings and goings inside their own homes.

I stopped at a junction, my gaze flicking between three different corridors. They all looked the same, but Jorge had sent me the castle schematics to review for the solstice celebration, so I knew that his main research-and-development lab was off to the left. That would be my first stop if I was here to steal valuable tech for a rival House, so I headed in that direction.

A few twists and turns later, I reached another junction, a wide corridor that wrapped around a large interior space. Still no sign or sound of Silas. I glanced left, then right, and my gaze snagged on a nearby keypad. The light there glowed a steady green, and the door beside it was cracked open.

I lowered my stormsword to my side. I didn’t want the sword’s glow to give away my location, so I loosened my grip on the hilt, and the lunarium blade dimmed in response. I cocked my head to the side, listening, but I didn’t hear anything, so I tiptoed over to the door, grabbed the handle, and gently pulled it open. The door glided back without making a sound, and I silently slipped into the space beyond.

It was a large R&D lab. Tile counters studded with sinks hugged one wall, while clear, polyplastic workstations clustered together in the center of the wide, open space. Terminals covered the workstations, along with laser cutters, hammers, and pliers. Stray bolts, screws, and wires were also strewn across the surfaces, glinting like dull, jagged stars. Reusable plastipapers were stacked in folders, and gelpens clustered together in coffee mugs, but overall, the area was neat and tidy. The cool air smelled of a citrusy cleaner, along with a faint, underlying note of melted metal. I wiggled my nose from side to side to hold back a sneeze.

Microscopes, vises, and other tools perched on wheeled chrome carts nestled in between welding stations and larger pieces of machinery that were scattered around the perimeter of the lab. Gray tarps covered much of the machinery, making the equipment look like bulky ghosts that were about to break free of the walls and haunt the area.

But the centerpiece of the lab was the floor-to-ceiling lockers covered with heavy-duty metal grates that lined the back wall. Plastic and glass glimmered behind the grates, although given the dim lighting and distance, I couldn’t make out what projects and prototypes were stored back there. All the lockers were shut tight, and the lights on their keypads burned a bright, steady red.

My gaze flicked from one side of the lab to the other and back again. I still didn’t see anyone, but a faint presence tweaked my psionic senses.

Someone was in here.

I put my back to the wall and silently tiptoed forward, moving deeper into the R&D lab. When I reached the closest counter, I crouched down beside it so that whoever was in here couldn’t see me anymore, then headed toward the back corner of the lab. I stopped beside a metal cart and waited several seconds, but the intruder didn’t move, and the only sound was the whisper of recycled air circulating through the lab. If Silas wouldn’t come and play, I would just have to find him. I grinned. I had always loved hide-and-seek.

I tightened my grip on my stormsword and fed a tiny bit of my psion power into the weapon. The lunarium blade shimmered a pale blue in response. I lowered the sword, then angled the blade toward the right, casting the faint blue glow across the floor like an impromptu flashlight.

Hiding your body in the shadows was easy. Hiding your feet on the floor was much more difficult.

I slowly and carefully shone the lunarium blade across the tiles, but all I saw were the curved wheels and square legs of the carts and workstations, along with a few wayward pieces of plastipaper and several alarmingly large dust bunnies that looked like mutant monsters growing in the shadows.