Blood and Betrayal (40 page)

He seems to be loyal to Sespian
, she signed.
He can help us.

Pabov didn’t respond to her questions right away. Maybe he
had
heard rumors about Sicarius’s past. Mitsy, the former owner of The Maze had once told Amaranthe that everyone knew Sicarius was Hollowcrest’s man. Of course, she’d been talking about the underworld “everyone,” not soldiers.

“I’ll believe he’s working for the emperor when I see Sespian alive and walking arm-in-arm with him,” Pabov finally said.

That… might be possible. If Sespian was on his way down, maybe he’d arrive soon. Or already had.

“If that happens, you’ll let us borrow your craft?” Amaranthe asked.

“If Emperor Sespian strolls in here, alive, and wants a tour, I’ll drive him around the lake myself.”

Sicarius regarded Pabov’s back. This time there was nothing harsh about the stare. Amaranthe wondered what people would think if they knew they could soften his razor-sharp edges simply by proclaiming allegiance to Sespian.

“I’ll accept that as a promise,” Amaranthe said. “In the meantime, we need to gather information about a meeting we believe to be taking place down here. That business coalition I mentioned? They’ve come down here to plot. Any idea about where a clandestine gathering might be held?”

“No,” Pabov said.

Amaranthe sensed that he’d withdrawn within himself and had no intention of providing helpful answers. She couldn’t blame him. With nothing else to go on, her claims had to seem wild to him. “Did you see or hear of any strangers walking through town? Perhaps yesterday or the day before?”

“No.”

“Truly?” Amaranthe asked, disappointment creeping into her tone.

Pabov frowned up at her. With his face still mashed into the ground, he couldn’t feel that sympathetic toward her plight, but he offered an apologetic, “I don’t get into town much.”

Amaranthe’s gaze returned to the map on the wall. She’d planned to ask after the Forge party in town, but if she could figure out which island they’d gone to, she wouldn’t need to wander around, raising people’s suspicions as she poked into everyone’s business.

“Is there a real estate library in Markworth?” she asked. “Someplace where records are kept of who owns what land and where it lies?”

“I think the records are in the capital,” Pabov said.

The capital that was over a week’s travel away. Not helpful. “There must be someone local who handles real-estate transactions.”

Pabov hesitated, his gaze flicking toward Sicarius.

“We won’t harm the person,” Amaranthe said.

“The Pickle Lady,” Pabov said.

“The
Pickle
Lady?”

“She breeds long-haired rabbits and knits their fur into sweaters too. I don’t think the stipend the empire pays for handling real estate is particularly large.”

This place was even more rural than Amaranthe had realized. No wonder Forge had chosen it. Nobody who mattered in the grand political or business scene would be down here to chance upon their meeting. “Thank you,” she told Pabov. “I’m grateful for your help.”

“Grateful enough to untie me?”

“Do you promise not to tell anyone we were here?” Amaranthe had no idea if there was a local military garrison, but Markworth would have enforcers to ensure nothing untoward happened to those wealthy people vacationing on the lake.

A moment passed before Pabov answered, and Amaranthe wasn’t surprised when he said, “No.”

Sicarius pinned Amaranthe with one of those cool gazes, one she had no problem reading as, “Leaving him alive is going to cause trouble.”

She waved her hand. They weren’t killing someone when she’d been the one trespassing on
his
property.

After they walked outside, Sicarius stepped in front of Amaranthe. “You told him much.”

“I was preparing him to eventually join our side and help us.” Amaranthe smiled. “If Sespian shows up, this fellow is ready to be his devoted guide.”

“
If
Sespian shows up,” Sicarius said, a grimness to usual monotone.

“You’ve heard what the newspapers are reporting?” Amaranthe had thought he’d been gone a long time just to furnish his wardrobe.

“I heard.”

“I’m sure he’s well,” Amaranthe said. “Forge knows Ravido can’t make a real move until the populace believes Sespian is gone. Since he’s not in the capital to refute the reports of his, er, death, they can print whatever they want.”

“
The Gazette
is the paper that published the story,” Sicarius said, his grimness disappearing, replaced by an iciness that, even after all the time they’d spent together, still sent a chill curling through Amaranthe. She was glad Deret Mancrest was hundreds of miles away.

“If our men are with Sespian,” she said, “they’ll keep him safe.”

“If Sespian dies, I’ll kill Maldynado.”

“Levity?” Amaranthe asked, though she knew it wasn’t.

“No.”

“I’m still not clear on how Maldynado came to be in charge.”

Sicarius stalked away without a word. That probably meant he wasn’t sure either, but now considered his choice a mistake.

Amaranthe followed Sicarius back to the beach where she’d originally intended to wait for him. He moved aside something bright and picked up a stack of folded garments on a log half-hidden by ferns. Wordlessly, he handed her the clothing and a practical pair of canvas boots. She shook out an ankle-length walking dress, a high-necked blouse, and a long muslin apron. Though Maldynado would perhaps fault the sedate colors, Amaranthe thought Sicarius had a surprising knack for picking out clothing that matched and, more importantly, fit. More than that, the outfit would hide a multitude of bruises. She was on the verge of complimenting and thanking Sicarius when he dropped a woven hat into her arms. The pastel greens, blues, pinks, and yellows crisscrossed each other in a pattern that could only have been imagined by a woman deep in the applejack bottle.

“This
has
to be levity,” Amaranthe said.

“Yes,” Sicarius said, though no spark of humor glinted in his eyes. He walked away to give her the privacy to change.

He was too worried about Sespian to find amusement in anything at the moment, Amaranthe supposed, but couldn’t help but call after him, “I don’t know why you’d want to kill Maldynado, when it’s clear you’d make fabulous hat-shopping buddies.”

A
couple of days had passed since capturing Brynia, and Maldynado was headed down to engineering. Basilard had mentioned that Books hadn’t been sleeping or eating. Why this was Maldynado’s business, he didn’t know, but he supposed he should make sure Books hadn’t fallen into a funk and started drinking again. Though they were getting by as satisfactorily as could be expected given how many plans had gone awry, the team
did
lack structure without Amaranthe and Sicarius there to demand everyone rise at dawn for training. At least Maldynado had finally caught up on his sleep and recovered from most of his wounds.

He strode into the engine room and almost tripped over a stack of books in front of the door. Books, his chin sporting several days’ worth of salt-and-pepper beard growth, was sitting on the floor next to a towering flywheel. Its revolutions ruffled the pages of journals and reference books spread out around him like spokes on a wheel. He must have pillaged the steamboat’s library. A few dishes loaded with untouched food sat near the wall. Books held a book open with one hand while he scrawled across the blank page of a journal with the other. His pen, one of several around him, zipped along, creating lines of text faster than a printing press. At least the straightness of those lines suggested he wasn’t drunk.

“What are you doing?” Maldynado asked over the clamor of the pumping machinery.

The pen didn’t slow, and Books didn’t acknowledge him.

“Researching more Forge stuff?” Maldynado asked.

“This facility lacks a desk,” Books said without looking up or slowing his scrawling.

Maldynado propped his hip against a railing. “It’s good to see that you’re alert and ready to jump to a specific piece of machinery, should a call come down from the wheelhouse, demanding quick action.”

Books finished his page of writing, blew on the ink to dry it, and promptly started on the next page.

Maldynado wondered if someone shouting a warning of an impending pirate attack would make that pen pause. He stepped closer until Books couldn’t possibly miss seeing his boots alarmingly close to his papers and said, “Booksie, Basilard said you’ve been skipping meals.”

When Books finally lifted his head, he seemed surprised to see Maldynado there.

“What?”

“Is that Forge stuff?” Maldynado waved at the mess.

“No.”

“Economics stuff the emperor asked for?”

“Also no, and perhaps you can find a more descriptive noun than ‘stuff’.”

“Would you prefer if I called it junk?” Maldynado asked, knowing it would irk Books.

Books’s lips flattened. Yup, pure irk.

“What
are
you working on?”

Books looked at something out the door. “That’s not the emperor out there, is it?”

“No, Akstyr. It’s his turn shoveling. The emperor… I haven’t seen much of him. He avoids me, despite the fact that I’ve been trying my best to be useful.”

“I believe he’s still struggling to disassociate you from your family,” Books said. “It doesn’t help that you came off as a fop the first night he met you.”

“Fop? I was fighting to defend him on the train.”

“You were telling him how great you’d look as a statue in the Imperial Gardens,” Books said.

“In
between
assaults on the locomotive cab, during which I bravely helped protect him.”

“I’m working, Maldynado.” Books bent over his papers again. “Go away.”

“People are concerned that you’re overly involved with that work. You’re not eating. What
are
you doing anyway?”

“Devising a new governmental paradigm for the empire.”

“Uhm. Why?”

Books started writing again.

“Did the emperor ask you to do that?” Maldynado asked.

“No.”

“Aren’t we helping him so we won’t have to
have
a new governmental paradigm?”

“We are helping him to ensure no idiotic relative of yours takes the throne. What happens after that… Let’s just say I have a hunch, and I am hoping to anticipate the youth’s needs.”

Trying not to feel completely perplexed, Maldynado walked out of the engine room. “I don’t know why I bother talking to that man.”

•  •  •

Amaranthe had never seen so many pickled vegetables in one place. Cucumber jars, of course, took up a number of shelves, in spicy, dill, garlic, and—she stopped to gape—chocolate varieties. Sicarius, walking behind her, followed her gaze with his eyes, and she hustled on, certain he’d disapprove of chocolate anything. Besides, though Amaranthe hadn’t had a dessert in a while, she wasn’t sure she wanted to break her sweets fast with candied pickles.

Other vegetables, from carrots to asparagus to beets were also represented in the tiny shop. Packed jars rose on floor-to-ceiling shelves lining narrow aisles that one had to turn sideways to navigate. Someone like Maldynado probably wouldn’t fit through the rows at all.

At the back of the store, Amaranthe and Sicarius found an older woman sitting in a chair, her legs propped on a large desk that was as cluttered as the rest of the store, with cages occupying most of the free space. Inside them, a mixture of long-haired and short-haired—or perhaps long-haired and
shaved
—rabbits munched on carrots. Amaranthe wondered if the half-chewed vegetables were pickled too.

“Help you?” the woman asked without looking up. Knitting needles dove and darted as they formed a sock.

“Are the chocolate pickles good?” Amaranthe asked. Maybe she could find the woman’s passion, the way she had with Pabov, and encourage chattiness.

“No, I keep them on my shelf because they’re disgusting.”

The woman’s delivery was so deadpan that it took Amaranthe a moment to recognize the sarcasm. Perhaps pickles were not her passion.

“Are there any you’d recommend?”

“They’re all good.”

“Do you have any samples?”

“No.” The woman still hadn’t looked up from her knitting.

I’m getting a sense of why this woman needs three jobs to make ends meet,
Amaranthe signed to Sicarius.

Just get the information.

As always, business first with him.

“This seems like a nice town,” Amaranthe said. “I heard you’re the one to ask about acquiring property near the lake.”

With an exasperated sigh, the woman set her knitting down. “You have money?”

“Yes,” Amaranthe said, though she lacked a single ranmya. “Not enough for one of those islands, of course, but I can’t imagine any of them are for sale anyway.”

“No, they’re not.” The Pickle Lady dug in her desk and pulled out a thick notebook with corners and edges of pages sticking out on all sides.

Sicarius shifted, perhaps thinking of simply taking it and leaving, but Amaranthe held up a hand behind her back.

“Are they
ever
for sale?” Amaranthe asked. “Do you remember anyone buying one?”

“If you can’t afford them, they’re not any of your concern, are they?”

“I suppose not, but I get curious. Don’t you?”

“No.”

Amaranthe was on the verge of waving Sicarius forward to do whatever he had in mind when a bell jangled, announcing another customer’s entrance. Several thuds sounded, heavy feet jogging across the threshold. Maybe not customers after all.

Sicarius pushed Amaranthe behind him, a knife appearing in his hand.

“No killing,” she whispered.

Feet pounded down the aisle. A jar smashed to the floor, glass shattering.

The Pickle Lady jumped to her feet. “Blast your ancestors,” she hollered before anyone came into view, “what’re you doing?”

Before the woman finished yelling, Sicarius had pulled Amaranthe into the aisle adjacent the one with the charging intruders. He clenched his knife between his teeth, gripped the shelving unit with both hands, and heaved. It wobbled for a moment, hundreds of pickles quivering, before succumbing to its fate and toppling. Shelves and jars thudded into people and crashed to the floor amidst startled grunts and cries of pain.