Forged in Blood II (25 page)

If Amaranthe hadn’t been so weary, she might have laughed. Had they spent the last hour racing around for no reason?

Then a brilliant flash lit up the interior of the lifeboat. Still hanging over Maldynado’s shoulder, Amaranthe wasn’t facing the front and could only assume a viewing window up there allowed the flood of light to enter. A boom sounded right after, though it wasn’t as loud as she’d expected.

“That’s… quite a show,” Mahliki breathed.

Mutters and whimpers came from the throats of the rest of the crowd.

Maldynado finally elbowed enough space to set Amaranthe down. If not for the press of bodies holding her upright, her trembling legs would have collapsed. She twisted around, trying to see over people’s heads, but had to accept that she wouldn’t have a view of this final devastation. She did have a view of a familiar man’s stubbled jaw. It was the person Basilard had shot, the one with the crossbow.

He stared at her. “You weren’t lying.”

“No,” she said, ridiculously pleased that he’d found his way out. For all she knew, he was a thief or a murderer, but she hoped the rest of his team had escaped too.

“I’m going to forgive you for shooting me,” he said.

Amaranthe decided not to point out that it’d been Basilard who’d shot him. It didn’t matter, and it would have taken too much effort. “Thanks,” she mumbled and leaned back against Maldynado.

“I’m taking us down to the lake,” Tikaya announced.

Good.

Maldynado supported Amaranthe with a comradely hand, though that didn’t keep him from saying, “I hope one of you heroic types remembered to bring back my watch.”

“Will some lady be affronted if she finds out you lost her gift?” Amaranthe whispered, closing her eyes. They’d have to figure out how to get rid of the lifeboat, this one and the one they’d left in the mountains. Though small and simple, they were pieces of the same technology as the
Behemoth
.

Later. That mission that could wait until everyone was safe.

“My mother, actually,” Maldynado said.

“She gave it to you? Before you were disowned?” Amaranthe had been under the impression there wasn’t much familial adoration between the two of them.

“No, I stole it when she kicked me out of the family. I hear she’s still looking for it. I want to wear it to her funeral pyre someday.”

“You Marblecrests are an odd lot,” Amaranthe said.

“Oh, no argument there. I wonder if the professor would land this thing on the roof of the Imperial Barracks so we could scare my brother’s troops a little.”

“Let’s just worry about getting back together with the others.” And finding out whether Starcrest did indeed have anything to do with those explosions, or if they had some new enemy to face.

A
s dusk gathered in the Emperor’s Preserve, Sicarius strode into Flintcrest’s camp, another sack of heads slung over his shoulder. Most of the soldiers were off on assignment, and he walked the paths unchallenged. He wished he could veer down one of the side trails, letting his feet take him away from the Nurian tent instead of toward it.

Drying blood saturated his clothing and stained the skin of his hands—one of the remaining Forge founders had a Kendorian bodyguard who had sensed Sicarius’s approach. The ensuing battle had been more challenging—and messy—than the others. All through it, in the back of his mind, he’d felt Kor Nas’s presence, watching and enjoying the show. It was Sicarius’s method to make his kills quick and efficient, but Kor Nas liked having the deaths drawn out, a vice that had been growing with each assassination. Maybe Sicarius was his first human “pet,” or maybe he’d never operated in a foreign land without anyone around to enforce the rules and mores of his own culture. Power without the potential for repercussion, an insidious temptation.

On the way back to camp, Sicarius had chanced across a newspaper page caught in the wind, flapping and skidding across a frost-slick street. The headline had made him halt for a long moment.

As Intra-Army Fighting Grows Fiercer, Vicious Assassin Slays Innocent Civilians

His name was in the first sentence, followed by a list of “prominent and upstanding members of society” found dead in their abodes, their heads missing, their bodies mutilated. Worgavic topped the list, along with several other Forge people, though the business coalition itself was never mentioned, simply the names of the “respectable and worthwhile” organizations the dead had run, the charities they’d contributed to, and the scholarship programs they’d financed.

Not surprisingly, the article was out of the
Gazette
and had been penned by the senior Lord Mancrest. The newspaper must have repaired enough of the building and machinery to return to printing its lies. Lies? Sicarius admitted the article was somewhat accurate, if biased and incomplete—it hadn’t mentioned Flintcrest or his Nurian allies. How Mancrest had known
he
was the assassin responsible, Sicarius didn’t know; he hadn’t been seen at any of the kill sites. Perhaps the
Gazette
owner had guessed based on his reputation.

Sicarius would have stopped reading after the first paragraph, letting the newspaper continue scraping and skidding down the street, but a name lower on the page snagged his attention: Sespian.

He’d picked up the newspaper and slipped into an alley, putting his back to a wall to finish reading. It stated that new evidence had been brought forward, proving that the “dastardly and vile” Sicarius, who’d once worked in the Imperial Barracks for Emperor Raumesys, had raped Princess Marathi and that Sespian had been an illegitimate heir all along.

Sicarius had stared a long time at that passage. With Sespian dead, none of it mattered, though he would have preferred it if his son’s reputation hadn’t been tarnished so. With most of the Forge founders dead, this article was nothing but bitterness and spite. He couldn’t help but sigh to himself though, and think of the way Sespian had been concerned about Sicarius’s reputation, about improving it so he might one day work for the throne, in whatever incarnation it continued to exist. Now…

Sicarius crumpled the page and dropped it in the alley. It didn’t matter, he repeated to himself. Sespian was gone, and he no longer cared who stumbled into power.

Unless, came a whisper from the back of his mind, Starcrest could find the support of the people and somehow…

He shook his head, reminded that his thoughts might be monitored.

Now, as Sicarius jogged to the Nurian tent, he clamped down on those thoughts and all others, turning his mind into a blank, unthinking place.

Before he could sweep the flap aside and enter, sounds inside told him someone was coming out. Head bent, Prince Zirabo slipped outside. He saw Sicarius, gave one quick nod, then strode past.

What did that mean? That he’d located Starcrest? Or arranged for the note to be delivered? Or did it mean that Kor Nas had snaked into his mind and learned everything of their exchange? The prince’s face had been grave; that nod might have been a warning.

Again pushing the thoughts out of his mind, Sicarius stepped into the tent, the flap catching on the bulky bag. He came face-to-face with Kor Nas, who stood in the center of the carpet, wearing a fur travel cloak as well as his colorful robes. His long silver hair was tied back in a tight Nurian topknot, a style favored by men about to go into battle. A braided rope belt at his waist supported numerous pouches, some of them giving off auras to those sensitive enough to detect them.

“Starcrest has been located,” Kor Nas said, his eyes shut to slits. “But this news is not unexpected to you.”

Sicarius said nothing, and he tried to keep his mind from saying anything as well.

“Interestingly, I understand I have you to thank for providing the suggestion that allowed my seer to locate him.” Kor Nas held out Sicarius’s black dagger. “Less than an hour ago, he gave me the news.”

Though Sicarius accepted the blade, and he longed to know when the seer had first learned the news and if he’d informed Prince Zirabo first, he kept his mind a blank.

“Drop those off in Flintcrest’s tent.” Kor Nas pointed to the bag. “Then join me on the south perimeter. We are leaving immediately.”

“Later would be better,” Sicarius said. “This early in the evening, Starcrest will still be awake, as will the men he brought with him. I doubt he came into the capital without troops at his back.”

“We are leaving immediately,” Kor Nas repeated. “Lest he have time to prepare for your visit.”

The cold, hard look the practitioner gave before stalking outside said much. He knew that Sicarius had arranged a warning. Had he learned of it in time to stop it? Sicarius guessed not, otherwise there’d be no reason for haste now. He hoped the note had been delivered in time for Starcrest to receive it and read it. Had encoding it been wise? Sicarius had assumed it would be passed through the hands of lesser soldiers before finding Starcrest’s desk, and he hadn’t wanted others to understand it, but what if it took the wife to decode the message and she wasn’t there when it arrived?

If that was the case, he could only hope that Starcrest had expected attacks from assassins all along and was prepared. Sicarius, under the influence of that stone, needn’t be his craftiest, but physically, he could be no less than utterly competent. And it was without arrogance that he acknowledged his competence far surpassed most people’s best days.

Compelled by the thing in his head, Sicarius delivered the heads, and strode off to join Kor Nas. As he inhaled the crisp freshness of the snow and the creosote taint of numerous camp stoves, he accepted that he was either walking to his death or to Starcrest’s death. One of them would no longer live in the morning. Odd to think that all this effort was to ensure
he
was the one who wouldn’t see another sunrise. So be it.

• • •

When her weary group slumped into the factory, the first thing Amaranthe noticed was that there were a lot fewer soldiers than there had been when she left. Her first concern was that the factory had been attacked or discovered, forcing men to flee, but all the rucksacks and bedrolls remained. Maybe the men were simply off working on some assignment? Revolutionaries couldn’t be expected to keep normal hours, after all.

Night had fallen again in the time it had taken her group to land the lifeboat, send the rescued relic hunters off on their own way—without any purloined gear—then reunite with Tikaya’s nephew and get a ride back to the city. Tikaya and Mahliki had figured out a way to sink the lifeboat to the bottom of the lake. It wasn’t the deepest trench in the ocean, but it would have to do for the time being. Basilard had stayed behind to make sure none of the would-be treasure hunters followed the team back to the factory—at least two people had eyed Tikaya’s sphere as she returned it to her pack.

The lights burned in the offices on the catwalk. Amaranthe headed straight for the stairs. She already knew she wouldn’t find Sicarius waiting for her in the factory—she certainly hoped not, or she’d have to watch her scalp—but she wanted to check in with the others. Not only did she need to know what Starcrest was up to, but she needed to start planning a rescue mission, to figure out how she could sneak Sicarius away from that wizard. Or, more likely, she thought with a determined set to her jaw, figure out how to kill that wizard so his trinket wouldn’t control anyone any more.

“Does she always walk this fast?” Tikaya asked from a few steps behind Amaranthe.

“No,” Maldynado said, “sometimes she paces about slowly and thoughtfully, such as when she’s mulling over some new scheme.”

“What does more rapid leg movement mean?”

“She’s already thought of a scheme and is about to put it into action,” Maldynado said.

“Given what I’ve witnessed in the last twenty-four hours, I’m guessing we should be concerned?”

“Oh, very much so.”

Not bothering to comment, Amaranthe took the stairs three at a time and… halted at the top with her leg in the air. Four shirtless men were jogging toward her. Not toward
her
, she amended as she took in the sweat-drenched hair and gleaming torsos, but toward the stairs, as part of a training circuit. Her breath formed clouds in the air in front of her, so it must have taken them time to warm up enough to sweat in the cold factory.

“Hm.” Amaranthe had imagined finding Admiral Starcrest hunched over a desk in the office, head bowed in some meeting with his men, not doing laps with Ridgecrest, Sespian, and Books.

“What’s going on?” Maldynado asked, stopping on the landing next to her.

“Strategy planning session?” Amaranthe guessed.

“Yes,” Tikaya said. She and Mahliki had stopped a couple of steps below, but were tall enough to see the men rounding the far corner and jogging onto their stretch of the catwalk. “I’ve learned Turgonians are vigorously active when they’re pondering, not at all like our Third Century Kyattese sculptures of people sitting with their chins on their fists, gazing out at the waves, poised in eternal contemplation.”

“Who’s
that
?” Mahliki asked.

Guessing it was neither her father nor the sixty-something General Ridgecrest who had caught her eye, nor—sorry, Books—her fit but graying scholar, Amaranthe said, “Sespian.”

He wasn’t as muscular as Sicarius, but the last few weeks of adventure, along with a natural filling out as he reached the end of his teenage years, had added pounds, none of it fat. Though he might describe himself as bookish—or, bookly, as Maldynado called him—he had his father’s natural athleticism and jogged along with the older men at an easy lope, speaking and gesturing, not at all winded. Though Amaranthe’s tastes had come to favor a certain man with a harder, more chiseled face—and body to match—she had no doubt Sespian would attract any number of young ladies, should he take the time to place himself in their midst.

“The Sespian who was emperor up until recently?” Mahliki asked.

“Yes, that’s him.” Amaranthe decided not to say, and he will be again, for she had no idea how the tile bag would truly shake out. Whatever Books was saying to Starcrest, it was accompanied by enthusiastic gestures.