Blood and Betrayal (48 page)

“Better do as the man says.” She waved him back to his seat.

“We’re not
supposed
to be expected,” Sespian murmured.

“Not cordially expected anyway,” Books said.

Sicarius pressed the pistol into Amaranthe’s hand and returned to the controls. As he maneuvered their craft, following the directions, other vessels came into view. Akstyr was right. They were all submarines. Or at least, all underwater conveyances of some kind. There was no uniformity amongst the eclectic designs, and Amaranthe had the sense of looking at custom furnishings in a woodworking show. Or perhaps, she mused, custom-designed yachts for the wealthy. What if everyone except Maldynado’s sister-in-law and those on the
Behemoth
had come down the river in these underwater crafts to ensure no one would witness their passing?

“Any reason why your sister-in-law wouldn’t have one of these?” Amaranthe asked Maldynado.

“She’s claustrophobic?”

“Are you asking her or telling her, you dolt?” Books said.

“Either way, I wasn’t talking to you.” Maldynado nodded to Amaranthe. “She
is
claustrophobic. There’s a family rumor about her being unwilling to, ah, service my brother on conjugal visits when he was a young LT staying in the barracks. She found the tiny rooms too constricting.”

“Thanks for the details,” Amaranthe said. “I think.”

“According to my network of trusted spies in the Imperial Barracks,” Sespian said, “Mari Marblecrest was the only one likely to be tracked. Perhaps everyone else did have submarines crafted for this meeting.”

“You have a trusted spy network, Sire?” Amaranthe asked, surprised he had managed to find allies amongst all the Forge infiltrators. “It’s good that you’ve been able to suss out loyal people and make use of them.”

“Actually… I’m the network. I spy by crawling through the old hypocaust ducts in the Barracks. In my socks. So as not to make noise.” Sespian studied the floor. “I haven’t particularly trusted my ability to choose loyal people since the debacle with Lieutenant Dunn.”

Amaranthe didn’t know if she’d met that lieutenant, but he might have been the one who’d tricked Sespian into entering Larocka’s clutches the winter before.

“We have arrived at the designated docking space,” Sicarius said.

Something bumped into their craft, rocking it to the side. If not for a control lever she could grasp, Amaranthe might have ended up in Sicarius’s lap.

“What was that?” Maldynado asked.

A dark shadow swam across the front of the craft, blotting out the view for a moment. It was too close to identify features, but the length made Amaranthe think of those eels Basilard had caught and frizzled up. Except this had been far too large to fit into a frying pan.

“The welcoming committee?” Amaranthe suggested.

Three more knocks struck the hatch. Maybe it was her imagination, but they sounded rushed and nervous this time.

“I’ll stick my head out first.” Amaranthe looked for a place to tuck the pistol, but her dress lacked a belt. She settled for tucking it into an apron pocket and wondered if any other mercenary in history had charged into battle wearing a farmwife’s smock. “If they’re expecting more people, maybe they’ll think I’m a Forge member arriving late.”

“Or they’ll recognize you and shoot you,” Sicarius said.

Amaranthe patted his arm. “Your cheery optimism always bolsters my spirit.”

Sespian snorted.

Amaranthe slipped out of the seat and grabbed the wheel that controlled the hatch’s locking mechanism. It squeaked as she turned it. A couple of footfalls sounded. Their greeter stepping off the hatch? There wasn’t much room for walking around on top of the sphere-shaped vessel.

Amaranthe opened the hatch an inch. “Hello?”

Their vehicle lacked a ladder, so Amaranthe would have to fling the hatch open before she could pull herself out. She didn’t want to expose the interior though. Maybe she could—

Hands gripped her waist, hoisting her until her head was level with the hole. That worked.

“Thank you, Basilard,” Amaranthe whispered.

“State your name,” a man said. A pair of shiny black boots waited to the side of the hatch.

“Retta,” Amaranthe said.

“You’re not on the list.”

“I work for Ms. Worgavic. I’m the one who flies the… ” Amaranthe groped through her memories for the official name of the
Behemoth
. “Are you aware of the
Ortarh Ortak?
There’s a problem on board. I need to speak with Ms. Worgavic immediately.”

The greeter, or whatever he was, did not answer. Beneath her, the men shifted as much as they could in the confined space. More than one pistol had appeared. Sicarius crouched on his seat, one foot on the backrest as he faced the hatch, a throwing knife in hand.

Hoping to see more of the area, Amaranthe eased her head as high as she could without opening the hatch farther. A wide stone ledge rose on the other side of the pool, and it supported four sets of legs wearing shiny black boots and facing in her direction. She couldn’t see the men’s upper bodies, or what weapons they might hold in their arms, but she had no trouble making out belts laden with ammunition pouches. No powder tins hung on those belts, so she assumed the ammo was for the new multi-shot rifles.

Waves undulated across the surface of the pool. A few feet away, something black broke the surface. Amaranthe glimpsed a fin, a large fin, before it disappeared beneath the water.

“Show yourself,” the man above said.

Amaranthe lifted the hatch a few more inches, hoping she could crawl out without revealing everyone inside. Unfortunately, the man had other ideas. Perhaps thinking he was helping her, he pulled the hatch the rest of the way open. Amaranthe grabbed the lip and scrambled out. Maybe if she got her feet under her quickly enough, she could block his view of the interior.

It didn’t work. The man raised a shiny new rifle and blurted, “There’s a bunch of—”

A hand gripped his ankle and yanked him into the vehicle. A flying elbow caught Amaranthe in the ribs, and she barely avoided tumbling into the water. She scarcely had time to note a floating dock arranged in an X across the pool, with submarines tied up alongside it, before four rifles were being lifted in her direction.

Amaranthe had only a split second to decide what to do. She
should
have jumped back down into their craft to avoid being shot, but, with some deluded notion that she needed to draw fire so the men could climb out, she leaped off the craft and onto the dock. She sprinted several meters and, anticipating a barrage of gunfire, dove off the backside, landing on the square hatch of a long, tube-shaped submarine. She winced when she came down on one of her bruise collections, but managed to yank her pistol out anyway.

The dock hid the men from view—and, Amaranthe hoped, provided an obstacle they couldn’t shoot her through. When a couple of heartbeats passed without gunshots, she lifted her eyes over the level of the wood planks. Nobody shot her. Three of the men who had been standing on the ledge were lying on it now. The fourth had fallen into the pool. He paddled one-armed, trying to reach solid ground again, though pain contorted his face. Something silver stuck out of the front of his shoulder. Just as he found a grip on the ledge, the water stirred next to him. Amaranthe blinked, and he was gone, pulled beneath the surface. Bubbles floated up, but nothing except stillness followed. She realized the men on the ledge weren’t moving and rose to her knees.

Sicarius stepped into view on the dock. He lowered a hand toward her. Amaranthe accepted it, letting him pull her up beside him. Akstyr was sticking halfway out of their vehicle, staring at the downed men on the ledge.

He turned his stare to Sicarius. “I didn’t know you could do that.”

Without comment, Sicarius jogged off the dock and circled around to check the men. No, not to “check” them. To verify that they were dead and to pull his throwing knives out of their chests.

“He popped up and threw all four at once,” Akstyr said. “Two in each hand. I didn’t know that was possible.”

Sicarius gave Amaranthe a look, like he might be concerned that she’d chastise him for the deaths, but how could she? He’d likely saved her life—as usual—and he’d even kept the men from firing. She had no idea how far away this meeting place was, but she doubted it was so distant that people there wouldn’t hear gunshots fired in the parking pool.

“See if there’s anyone else nearby that we need to worry about, please,” Amaranthe told Sicarius.

He continued along the ledge toward a pair of tunnels. The underwater cavern had a twelve—or fifteen-foot ceiling, all chipped and hewn by tools rather than by nature. Gold-gilded lamps burned on the walls and in holders on the dock, spreading light about the chamber. At least twenty other submarines, or other types of underwater conveyances, were tied up in the wide pool, a variety of hatch styles and paint jobs on display in the portions that peeped above the water.

Someone jostled Akstyr from below.

“As much as we appreciate the view of your scrawny backside,” Maldynado called up, “we’d like to get out.”

Akstyr scrambled onto the dock.

“Be careful climbing up here,” Amaranthe said. “Whatever that thing in the water is, it finds humans tasty.”

“Joy,” Books said.

As the men were climbing out, a creak sounded behind Amaranthe. A hatch lifted, and a pair of eyes came into view. She dropped to a knee and aimed the pistol between those eyes.

“Nothing going on out here, friend,” she said, guessing this was someone’s servant or pilot left behind to watch the craft. “I suggest you lower that hatch and forget you saw us.”

The eyes sank out of view. Clanks drifted from within the man’s craft, as he not only shut himself in but bolted a lock or two.

“I have to say you’re looking particularly grim and serious today, boss,” Maldynado said.

He and the others were lined up on the dock behind her. Everyone carried weapons, Sespian included. Her team looked ready for a fight.

“It’s been a grim couple of weeks,” Amaranthe said. “Sire, any orders? Is there a way you have planned to go about this?”

“Planned?” Sespian pushed a hand through his pale brown hair. “My plans fell over a cliff more than a week ago. I’m still hoping to learn what Forge is up to—besides attempting to kill me and replace me with a warrior-caste puppet—but I don’t know how plausible that is at this point.”

Amaranthe lifted a shoulder. “They didn’t seem to know we were coming. Not these guards anyway. It might be useful to question someone.” She pointed toward the open hatch of their vehicle. “Is the first man still… ?”

“He’s alive,” Maldynado said. “Not entirely conscious though. Questioning might be hard.”

“Well, there are only two tunnels.” As long as those two didn’t branch into fifty more, Amaranthe figured they had decent odds of picking one that would lead them to the Forge people. Sicarius had already disappeared into one. “Let’s see what we can find.”

She led the team off the dock. She was about to ask if anyone had seen which tunnel Sicarius had gone down when he emerged from the closest one.

“Lodging, baths, and kitchens are in that direction,” he said.

“Not tents and campfire pits, I’m guessing,” Amaranthe said.

“Forty separate domiciles carved into the stone walls, each with room for servants.”

“Under
my
family’s island?” Maldynado asked.

“Some of it is under the lake,” Sicarius said.

“It must have taken them years to hollow all of this out. I can’t believe my parents didn’t know. Or, if they knew all along… that’s hard to believe too. How
long
have these people been scheming?”

“It’s been ten years since I studied under Ms. Worgavic,” Amaranthe said, “and, if she recruited one of my classmates to learn the ancient technology, she must have known about it for at least that long.” At the round of blank looks the men gave her, Amaranthe remembered that she’d spoken of her old teacher only to Sicarius. “I’ll explain later. Forge has been a number of years in the making.”

“I’ll scout ahead,” Sicarius said.

He disappeared into the second tunnel without waiting for an acknowledgment.

“Was that a stay-here order or an invitation to follow?” Sespian asked.

Amaranthe eyed the submarine-filled pool. “Either way, we shouldn’t linger here. Since the guards didn’t shoot us as soon as we popped up, they must have been expecting at least one more party to arrive.”

“Good point.”

Amaranthe led the team into the tunnel Sicarius had chosen. It angled downward. More gold-gilded lamps lined the chiseled black walls, each one worth more than an enforcer’s annual salary. The display of wealth couldn’t take away from the fact that the team was walking through a dank, underground—no, under
lake
—passage. Dampness clung to the walls, and a musty smell floated in the air. At least the tunnel was tall and broad with an even floor one could have driven a truck over.

As they rounded a bend, Books touched the porous black stone. “You said they’d acquired the
mining
rights? I haven’t noticed any promising veins.”

“Or promising anything,” Maldynado said. “This place is dreary.”

Up ahead, Sicarius glided out from behind another bend.

“The tunnel slopes steeply downward and ends at two closed double doors,” he said. “There are forty people waiting in a chamber outside, servants, I believe.”

“
Forty
?” Amaranthe asked. How were they supposed to sneak past forty people to spy on the meeting? “Any other tunnels that branch off along the way?”

“Many.”

Ugh.
Many
tunnels was as bad as forty people. Unless there was a handy map somewhere that proclaimed, “Spying Balcony this way,” Amaranthe feared they’d either get lost or spend so much time wandering that someone would notice the missing dock security men.

Sicarius tilted his head, indicating the team should follow. They soon reached the first of the tunnel branches he’d mentioned, and he paused in front of it. “There are four more before the doors. This is the only one that is unlit.”