Forged in Blood II (30 page)

Out into what, she wondered, even as she scraped the skin off her temples in her first attempt. It was almost as dark outside as inside. If not for the fresh smell of ice and snow beneath her nose, she might not have believed she’d come to an end of the drain. She rotated and ended up on her back before she found an angle that allowed her to slip her head through the barns.

Dear ancestors, I’m vulnerable, she thought, staring up at something dark, her head hanging out of the drain hole, her neck exposed and her body sticking out on the other side. If Sicarius came up on her…

She thrust her arm through and clawed around the outside even as she crooked her knees, trying to push off the bottom of the drain. She flayed off more skin, but she managed to get her other arm through and from there her shoulders.

Oh, those are boards up there, the part of her mind that wasn’t busy panicking realized. The underside of a dock. She’d made it to the lake.

She wasn’t sure yet where she would run when she had the opportunity, but the notion that she’d be able to do so gave her the strength to haul more of her body between the bars, though it was a painful experience.

“Wonder if… Akstyr’s healing book… covered how to graft… new nipples onto a woman,” she panted.

When her hips made it through, there was nothing left to hold her back. She skidded down the slope and landed on the frozen lake, her momentum enough to send her skidding several feet. She hardly cared. She was free.

Of the drain, she reminded herself, not Sicarius. Where to next? If his head was any bigger than hers, he wouldn’t make it through that grate, but she couldn’t swear that it was. They’d never taken out measuring tape and compared. No doubt that was one of those things people waited to do until
after
they’d engaged in physical intimacies.

She rose to her knees, the first part of a plan cementing itself in her head. Race back to the factory, close the grate, and push a bunch of heavy stuff on top of it so he couldn’t escape that way. Yes, and then she could run into the city and check in on Starcrest’s team—what had they been doing all this time, anyway? Inviting that wizard to a teahouse to share a plate of Emperor’s Buns?

“Amaranthe?” came Sicarius’s voice from the depths of drain. From around where that bend had been, she guessed.

She’d found her feet and was poised to scramble up the bank and enact her plan, but she waited. “Yes?”

“I’m stuck.”

She’d expect him to make that statement in his usual monotone, but a hint of plaintiveness accompanied it.

“Sorry about that, but that
was
the point.” She wondered if he’d believe she’d planned for it to happen like that, not that her plan had simply been to desperately survive the next moment, and the next, in the hopes of chance favoring her.

“Did something happen to the practitioner?” Sicarius asked.

“Uh? Why do you ask?”

Maybe Starcrest
had
done his job. Had Sicarius been freed from his captor?

“I don’t sense him any more,” Sicarius said. “It’s possible he was distracted and forgot about me.”

Amaranthe crept back up the slope. Though she wanted to believe him, she approached from the side of the hole, so he wouldn’t see her from inside. Even he would have a hard time firing a throwing knife from the bowels of a drain that tight, but she wouldn’t believe it impossible for him.

“Where are you stuck?” she asked. “That bend?”

“Yes.”

“What do you want me to do? I love you, but there’s no way I’m scraping the rest of the skin off my head to try to get back through these bars.”

“No, I understand. Perhaps some of that lubricant you mentioned…” He chuckled.

A sick feeling washed over Amaranthe. He…
chuckled
? When had he ever…?

It wasn’t him. The wizard was trying to fool her. Either the Nurian didn’t know Sicarius well enough to know he never laughed, or Sicarius had somehow tricked his captor into believing he shared such activities with Amaranthe.

But what if… what if it
is
him, she countered to herself, and he’s so relieved to be free that he let the laugh escape? When they were alone together, he
had
occasionally let more emotion show…

“Yes, of course,” Amaranthe said, realizing that long seconds had passed. “I’m sure I can find something. Stay there.”

“Naturally,” Sicarius said dryly.

Too much emotion, he was showing too much emotion. She was sure of it.

Amaranthe scrambled out from under the dock and ran up the slope and onto Waterfront Street. She sprinted up the hill toward the factory. Funny how quickly she reached the back door, considering the eternity that had passed while she’d been pulling herself through that drain. But if Sicarius was tricking her, her “quickly” might not be quick enough.

She slowed down enough to close the door softly behind her and stepped lightly as she ran through the factory, trying to think of things—and remember where they were in the dark—she could pile onto the grate.

If Sicarius
was
free of the wizard, good. The worst that would happen was that he’d spend a few hours trapped down there while she hunted down Starcrest and verified the Nurian’s death. If he wasn’t…

She had to work fast. He might not be stuck in that bend at all, he might be crawling back to the start, even now.

Remembering a pile of machine parts along one of the back walls, Amaranthe veered in that direction. She ran as quickly as she could without allowing her boots to clomp on the cement floor, but Sicarius had the hearing of a hound. She could only hope that backtracking through the tight tunnel would delay him.

In the dark, she almost tripped over the machine parts. She
did
hammer her shin into something unyielding. Another bruise to add to the night’s collection. She’d admire it later.

Groping about, Amaranthe found a pole attached to a cylindrical wheel, some sort of grinding device. It didn’t matter what it was. So long as she could carry it. She dragged it off the pile, wincing when something else clanked off and rolled across the floor, striking one of the vats with a resounding gong. It wouldn’t take a hound to hear that.

Fortunately, the pit wasn’t far. She pulled her prize over and patted about, expecting the grate to be open. It wasn’t. Sicarius had let it fall shut behind him. Believing she wouldn’t have the strength to climb up the wall and open it from below? She shuddered at the idea of that wizard smirking somewhere while she tried.

Amaranthe maneuvered the wheel onto the grate, then ran back for more gear to pile on top. Even Sicarius would have a hard time pushing that grate open from below, but she wouldn’t feel safe until she had hundreds of pounds of gear stacked atop it. Starcrest and the others could laugh at the overkill when they came in the morning to help pull him out. So long as the wizard was dead, and Sicarius’s mind was free, they could all laugh. She didn’t care.

Some rusty pipe sections followed the grinding wheel, then a couple of cement blocks after that. She was in the process of dragging over something that felt like an industrial-sized funnel when a new thought occurred to her. She halted a few inches from the edge of the grate, the certainty of her mistake slamming into her like a wrecking ball.

If Sicarius freed himself from that bend and reached the bars blocking the drain exit, it wouldn’t matter how big his head was. He had that cursed black knife. How many times had she seen the thing cut through substances no normal blade could? Not more than a few weeks ago, he’d hurled it at the floor in the cab of a train, a textured
steel
floor, and it had bit in and stuck. If he reached those bars, he’d cut through them. Or if he came back this way, he could cut through the grate. Sure it might not be like slicing through butter, but she’d be shocked if that knife couldn’t do it.

“Emperor’s eyeteeth,” she muttered.

What if he’d already escaped and was running back to the factory at that very moment? Or—she eyed the broken window and the back door—what if he was already inside again?

Something latched around Amaranthe’s ankle.

She shrieked. And was yanked off her feet.

She landed on the cement so hard, the blow slamming into her back, that it stunned her. For a second, she couldn’t breathe and couldn’t think. Then she was being pulled toward the grate.

Amaranthe flailed with her hands, trying to find something to grab onto. Most of her body was still on the cement, but he’d reached through and grabbed her ankle and—curse him, he had her other leg now too. There wasn’t anything to grab onto, and the smooth floor didn’t help. Even from his awkward position—he had to be hanging from the grate, hanging from
her
—his power dwarfed hers; she couldn’t find any leverage to fight him off.

She twisted and scrabbled at her belt for her knife. She might not have thrown it at him earlier, but, blast it, she
would
stab him through the hand.

The instant she stopped fighting his pull, though, he gained ground, spinning her sideways so that her body rolled onto the grate. She’d no more than unsheathed the knife when his fingers snaked through an opening, tearing it from her grip. It’d been too fast; she hadn’t noticed him let go of one of her legs before his hand had been upon her. A clatter sounded below, her blade striking the stone at the bottom of the pit. She didn’t have another one.

She froze—he’d pulled her onto her belly, her face mashed into one of the openings—and tried to think of something to say. A quip, a plea, anything to buy time. She found herself staring into his eyes.

He was gripping her with both hands, one on the back of her thigh and one on her opposite shoulder, all of his body weight hanging from those points. He’d lost the wool cap somewhere, and that stone at his temple glowed, a sickly opal with a myriad of colors in it. The light was enough to illuminate his face. And hers, too, she imagined. What terror did he see there? Or did her calculation show in her eyes? Little good it was doing her.

“Where is Starcrest?” he asked, his voice calm and emotionless, no hint of the earlier exertion in it. Was he not fighting the wizard now? Obviously it’d been the Nurian when he’d been trying to trick her at the bend. Where was Sicarius? Still in there? Or utterly defeated? Squashed down into some tiny corner of his own mind, unable to effect any power over his body at all?

“Why don’t you let go,” she whispered, “and we’ll discuss it?”

Amaranthe tried to get her arms beneath her, to brace her palms against the iron bars so she could push away. It’d be futile, though, as long as he held on.

Think, she ordered herself. Do something. What? Spit on him, anything. But such tactics would be useless against him. Talking. As inane as her words sounded in her ears, she had to try, to hope she’d break through somehow and lend him the strength to pull away from the wizard, even if it was only long enough for him to let go. That was all she needed.

He dug into her thigh and shoulder deeper and swung his legs. She ground her teeth to keep from gasping in pain, both from the steel-fingered grip and from the way it mashed her harder into the bars. His legs came up, his boots finding bars to brace against so they lay horizontally, body to body, except for the grate between them. The weight pulling against her lessened, but when she tried to push away, she couldn’t gain so much as an inch. She couldn’t knee or elbow him—she’d hit the bars.

What was he going to do next? Grab his knife. If he tried he’d have to let go with one hand. That’d be the best chance she had to pull away. She’d save the desperate spit-in-his-face maneuver for that moment.

“It’s not that I wouldn’t enjoy having you this close under other circumstances,” Amaranthe said, searching his eyes, trying to find some sign of the man she knew in there, “but I’d really appreciate it if you let go right now, dropped down in that hole, and waited until my comrades come back.” Preferably with that wizard’s head on a stake. “Starcrest too. The letter you sent, it brought him. He’s helping Sespian. We’ll have a resolution before long, I’m certain of it. And the
Behemoth
is gone. Forge is greatly weakened. Er, you know about that part. But with the technology gone, the remaining members will have less to draw on. Victory is close, Sicarius. Don’t let this foreigner control you, to make you do… anything you don’t want to any more.”

His grip on her shoulder tightened. “Where is Star—”

Abruptly, he threw his head back and roared in pain or frustration—or both. She’d never heard such a cry from him, and it startled her, but not so much that she failed to notice his fingers slipping a half an inch.

Now’s your chance to pull away, she thought, while he’s distracted. Do it!

“Fight it,” Amaranthe whispered, not moving. “Just for a moment. That’s all it takes.”

His arm dropped from her shoulder, and his knife was between their faces so quickly she hadn’t registered more than the released grip. She’d missed her chance to pull away. Or… maybe not. The blade was in his hand with the hilt laid bare between them. It was the familiar black dagger.

“Take… it…” he gasped. “Use it…
end
it.”

End what? His life? His eyes were pleading with her, and it broke her heart. She couldn’t hesitate, couldn’t argue—who knew how long he’d hold out?

Amaranthe slipped her hand through the grate, hooking it around a bar to grab the knife. He released it and tilted his head back again. He was shaking, as if from the effort of holding his bodyweight up in that position, but she knew it had nothing to do with physical exertion.

In a movement as efficient as she could manage, she slashed the knife across flesh. Not, as he seemed to expect, his neck; she cut into the skin around that cursed opal, trying to slice the full circle before he could jerk away. And jerk away he did, his eyes widening with surprise, or maybe that was pain. Agony.

She dropped the knife and grabbed the opal with her bare hand. Digging her fingers into flesh slippery with blood, she struggled to grasp enough of it to pull out.

Sicarius screamed.

The alien sound startled her so that she reared back, yanking her arm back with her. The hands that had gripped her released. Sicarius fell into the black depths below.