Dark Currents (32 page)

His boot had no effect on the makarovi, and it continued to cling to the bottom of the walkway. Its lower half thrashed as it tried to pull itself up. Another creature jumped, banging its head. The walkway trembled and shuddered.

Maldynado brushed past Amaranthe. He lowered his rifle so the barrel poked through the grate, and he fired into the makarovi’s eye. The orb exploded, splattering liquid. The creature dropped. For a moment, the scent of black powder overpowered the animal stink.

Amaranthe expected—hoped for—the thing to die, but it rose again after it hit the ground.

“You better get out of here, woman,” the sergeant said. “These things aren’t fierce bright, but you might excite them enough to figure out the way from the lower level to the upper. And we don’t want them where they can jump across and get to us. We’ve got to…” He waved at the device.

While Maldynado reloaded his rifle, Amaranthe mulled. She could retrieve Akstyr to work on the device, but only if the soldiers allowed them onto the pipe. However Akstyr’s knowledge of magic would make him suspect in their eyes and perhaps earn him a quick death. She had to win the sergeant over somehow. If—

Sicarius bent over the rail, distracting her from her thoughts. He sighted down his rifle and shot a makarovi. The creature’s collar snapped, and the broken band clanked to the floor.

The soldiers murmured. Sicarius withdrew into the tunnel to reload.

“How’d he manage that shot in the dark? Who is that over there?”

Amaranthe was too busy watching the creature to answer. As soon as it was free of the collar, it bolted to her corner of the chamber. It jumped, claws scraping at the metal grating. Saliva flung from its jowls, spattering the wall. As soon as it fell, it leaped again. It snorted and whined in frustration, unable to reach its target—her. For the moment. If there was another way up…

For the first time, true fear clutched Amaranthe’s heart, and she had to fight to stay there instead of fleeing back outside. “Any particular reason you did that?” She meant her tone to sound casual, not terrified, but the last word cracked.

“To see if it was possible,” Sicarius said. “Without the collars, they’ll return to the wilds eventually.”

“
Eventually
.”

“Look.” The sergeant pointed at the makarovi trying so hard to reach her. “It’s stopped being a guard dog for this ancestors-cursed contraption. It’s acting more like a normal hungry predator now. An agitated hungry predator denied its favorite food.”

“Lovely way to put it,” Amaranthe said.

“Sergeant.” One of the soldiers leaned close to his leader and whispered in his ear.

“We should try to get the rest of those collars off,” a corporal said. “It’ll be easier to figure out that device without those bastards leapfrogging over each other, trying to get to us.”

“Wait!” Amaranthe said, a plan solidifying in her head, a plan that would be much easier to implement if they only had to face one makarovi at a time. “I have an idea how to kill them. If you leave the collars in place for just a half an hour, I can—”

“Are you sure?” the sergeant asked, responding to his soldier’s whispered comments. He squinted into the gloom on the walkway, eyes toward the tunnel and Sicarius.

“Uh oh,” she muttered. “I think they figured out who—”

Sicarius brushed past her and stepped onto the walkway again. He ignored the leaping makarovi below him and, in one swift motion, brought his rifle up and shot the device.

The ball clanged off without damaging it or diminishing the glow. The soldiers near it fell to their bellies in surprise.

Amaranthe jumped, almost as startled.

“You lunatic!” the sergeant yelled. “You could have shot one of us.”

“Unlikely,” Sicarius said.

“It
is
Sicarius,” one said.

“Fire!” the sergeant yelled.

Atop the pipe, all the soldiers lifted their rifles, sights seeking Sicarius. This time, Amaranthe went with him when he pulled her back into the tunnel. A rifle cracked and the ball slammed against the wall above the walkway.

“Give us a half an hour,” Amaranthe called into the chamber without poking her head around the corner. “Don’t shoot off any more collars!”

Nobody answered. She hoped the soldiers listened to her, though that seemed unlikely now.

“You need to stop taking Cold and Flinty here with you when you’re trying to talk people onto our side,” Maldynado told Amaranthe.

“We’ve talked enough.” Sicarius strode back the way they had come, reloading the rifle as he went.

“He’s such a warm fellow,” Maldynado said. “Can’t see why people try to kill him so often.”

Amaranthe trotted after Sicarius—why was she always running after that man?—and caught up with him in the machine room. Books and the others had cleared out of the alcove. She would have to get Akstyr to look at the device later.

“Where are you going?” Amaranthe had to jog to keep up. “I have a plan.”

Sicarius did not slow down. “Telling a room full of armed soldiers our names should not be part of it.”

Ah, so that was why he was miffed. “I wasn’t going to give them your name, just mine. And they figured it out on their own anyway. It doesn’t matter. They have to know who we are if the emperor is to find out about our work.”

“Leave them a note afterwards.”

He entered the narrow tunnel and she could no longer walk beside him. She stopped. Her plan did not involve leaving yet.

Maldynado caught up and patted her on the shoulder. “Problem, boss?”

“I don’t think he appreciates my strategy of obtaining information and making friends by talking to people.”

“Probably because it doesn’t work on him.”

Her first inclination was to argue that it did work on him, somewhat, but the splinters of information she teased from Sicarius would not impress any interrogators. And whether or not he would call her a friend was no sure bet either.

“Coming?” Sicarius asked from the shadows.

She had not realized he was still there. “We’ve work to do here.”

“The soldiers can shoot the rest of the collars off,” Sicarius said. “You don’t want to be nearby when they’ve completed that. We should assist with destroying the lake artifact. It may be unnecessary to remove the other if the first is nullified.”

“That still leaves a pack of makarovi alive and roaming the dam. How will the soldiers get off that pipe? They’re running out of ammunition, and what they have isn’t effective anyway. I want to get rid of the makarovi.”

“How?”

“Yes, how?” Maldynado asked.

“Lure them up top one at a time, use those cranes that open the floodgates to hook the creatures, and dump them over the side of the dam. If they truly have trouble swimming, they’ll drown. Even if they don’t, they’ll probably travel miles downriver before they escape the water. That’ll leave them far from the dam in unpopulated wilderness.”

“That’s…a crazy plan, boss,” Maldynado said.

“Too dangerous,” Sicarius said.

Amaranthe gave them her best smile. “We can do it. Look who I have with me: the deadliest assassin in the empire and the best duelist in the city.”

Maldynado lifted a finger. “Which of those professions was supposed to prepare us for hooking giant man-eating monsters with cranes?” He turned to Sicarius. “Did you learn that in little assassins school? Because I don’t remember that lesson from the fencing academy.”

“You’re both agile and smart,” Amaranthe said. “That’ll be enough. Besides, we’ll just lure one up at a time, snare it from the safety of the tower, and then go back for the next.”

“Lure,” Sicarius said, tone flat.

“How?” Maldynado asked.

Amaranthe swallowed. “Since I’m the most appealing bait, I figure that will be my job.”

“That’s a bad idea, boss,” Maldynado said. “We won’t be able to get them off you. Our rifle balls are bugging them less than mosquito bites.”

Though Sicarius said nothing, the way he crossed his arms over his chest and glared let her know his opinion.

“Maldynado, give us a moment, please,” Amaranthe said.

“Oh, sure, I’ll just go hang out with one of the corpses.”

“We won’t be able to draw them into reach without bait,” she said after Maldynado moved away.

“I’ll do it,” Sicarius said.

She supposed it was cowardly, but she was tempted to agree. She was a decent athlete, but she could envision all too many scenarios in which she could trip at the wrong time and be overcome by a snarling beast. But, no. She could do it. “Unless you’ve been keeping even more secrets from me than I thought, I’m the more logical choice to attract them.”

“No.”

“It makes sense.”

“You’re not—”

“Fast enough? Strong enough? Agile enough?” She did not necessarily disagree, but she wanted him to have faith she could do this.

“Expendable,” Sicarius said.

“Oh.” She blinked. “Because you care and would miss me or because nobody else would be around to come up with these crazy schemes if I weren’t here?”

“It would be…” The lantern light kept his angular features in shadow, but they seemed to soften an iota. “Inconvenient.”

“We better set this up so there’s no chance of me dying then. Coming to help?” She pointed back toward the T-section where she guessed the unexplored tunnel led to the higher levels. Maldynado yawned and scuffed his feet a few meters away.

“One more concern,” Sicarius said.

Amaranthe met his eyes. “Yes?”

“Removing the collars. It’s likely the person who placed them there will sense their dormancy.”

“And come to check on his guard dogs?”

“Yes.”

“We’d best hurry then.” Her smile was grim.

F
og blanketed the shoreline, hiding the diving suits and curling about the air pumps. Books found himself cussing and hunting for things. The fire Basilard had started did little to help.

Akstyr belted out a yawn noisy enough to drown out the coyotes yapping in the distance. “We aren’t going down there tonight are we?”

“Given the proximity of animals wishing to slay us, it would behoove us to finish as promptly as possible.” Books counted to himself as he measured arm lengths of hose. “As soon as the others return, we’ll go down.”

Basilard leaned against a tree, a rifle cradled in his arms. The glowing-eyed forest creatures were still about, though Books felt safer out here than in the dam. He worried for Amaranthe and wished she had let Maldynado and Sicarius handle further explorations. He should have told her he needed her help out here.

“How’re we going to see what we’re doing at night?” Akstyr asked.

“If it’s truly thirty meters or more below the surface, then it’d be dark down there even if it was noon. The deeper you go, the more sunlight is absorbed, thus diminishing visible light. Though this water appears relatively clear, I’d estimate the artifact well below the euphoric depth. Fortunately the light from the device itself—”

“Crap,” Akstyr said.

Books glanced up from his work, thinking the youth had seen something.

Akstyr was shaking his head at Basilard. “Maldynado isn’t here to slap him and shut him up when he goes off like that.”

Books felt his jaw tightening and forced it to relax. He went back to measuring hose and simply said, “Perhaps it isn’t wise to irritate the man arranging the air flow to your diving suit.”

“You need me down there. I’m not worried,” Akstyr said.

“Until the device is destroyed,” Books said. “After that, the mission would be unaffected if you were eaten by Maldynado’s giant catfish.”

The fire did not provide enough illumination to drive the shadows from Basilard’s face, but white teeth flashed in a quick smile.

Akstyr had no response. Actually, he appeared not to have heard. He was staring across the lake.

Afraid the enforcers had returned, Books followed his gaze. The camp was dark and silent, but an orb of white light glowed on the hillside above it. His heartbeat quickened. That light did not burn with the natural yellow of a torch or a lantern. The darkness hid terrain features, but he guessed it to be moving along the road leading to the enforcer camp—and the dam.

“We better put out the fire,” Books said, though he feared if he could see the orb, its owner had already seen them.

•  •  •  •  •

Amaranthe did not want any extra weight slowing her down, so she carried nothing but a lantern. Sicarius strode before her, a rifle in each hand, pistols stuck in his belt, and his half dozen knives, as always, within reach. Grimmer than death, he said nothing as they traveled deeper into the concrete passageways.

On top of the dam, Maldynado waited in one of the guard towers, ready to hurl a great hook on a chain to snag the makarovi and swing each one out over the falls for release. It had sounded good when she laid out the plan, but the men’s skeptical expressions—a wide-eyed mouth-sagging-open one from Maldynado and a slight eyebrow twitch from Sicarius—had assured her they did not believe it would be so simple. Amaranthe hoped the soldiers had listened and not shot the other collars off.

The route to the control room felt longer than she remembered. The farther they had to travel to find the creatures, the farther she had to run before reaching the dubious safety of the tower. She had no doubt the ten-foot beasts could cover ground more rapidly than she.

They turned the final corner. Amaranthe strained her ears, expecting to hear more than the drip-splat of tunnel seepage. Nothing. Had the soldiers run out of powder in the half hour she, Sicarius, and Maldynado had spent preparing the tower?

They drew close to the walkway and the pipe chamber. Still no voices or rifle fire stirred the air.

Perhaps the soldiers had shot those collars off and the makarovi, with nothing left to bind them to the place, had left the dam altogether. But if that had happened, where were the men?

Then she heard it: the moist sucking and tearing sounds of someone—some
thing
—eating.

Dear ancestors. One of the soldiers must have fallen off the pipe.