Forged in Blood II (31 page)

Horrified, Amaranthe stared at her open palm. Slick with blood and gore, the opal pulsed three times, revealing slender tendrils on its underside, tendrils that had, she realized sickly, grown through his skull and snaked into his brain.

After the final pulse, the opal went black. Everything went black.

Tremors coursed through Amaranthe’s body. Disgusted by the device, she hurled it as hard as she could. It had grown eerily quiet in the factory, and she heard it hit one of those vats and clunk to the floor.

“Sicarius?” she whispered, her voice hoarse. “Sicarius, are you…?”

She couldn’t say it. Tears welled in her eyes. If that thing had been so intertwined with him… with his brain, had its destruction destroyed him too?

P
ain. He’d experienced it countless times in his life, and this, he told himself, was no different. He set about erecting the barriers in his mind, walling off the areas that were affected. Later he could meditate and work on healing those areas, but first he had to regain full consciousness and assess the exterior situation. He couldn’t remember exactly what, but something important had been going on.

Breathing. He hadn’t been doing it, he realized, so he focused on that for a time. The expansion of his lungs, in and out, drawing in rejuvenating air. He gradually grew aware of cold stone beneath his back. The grate, the drain. Amaranthe. The memories returned in a rush, bringing a fresh wave of pain, if a different kind.

She was alive!

And he’d almost killed her.
Again
.

Sicarius had experienced a surge of pure joy when he’d realized she was the one in the factory, that he’d been mistaken and that she’d somehow survived that crash. But he’d rushed to squash the feeling, afraid of how Kor Nas would react. Now shame and anguish filled him, underlaid with frustration for his inability to thwart that cursed Nurian. The memories of the man’s thoughts, of what he’d wanted Sicarius to do to Amaranthe, the pleasure he’d derived from learning that “his pet’s woman” still lived and could be tormented as punishment for Sicarius’s attempts at defiance. Or maybe Kor Nas’s fantasies hadn’t had anything to do with anything as logical as punishment. He’d simply delighted at—

No, Sicarius told himself. Push it aside, like the physical pain. Kor Nas was gone, or at least Sicarius was free of him.

She’d done that. Yes. He owed her again. He hadn’t been certain if the stone could be removed without killing him—or if some fate worse than death might await. Having his throat slit had seemed a superior alternative. She’d made the decision for him though. Good.

A new sensation pierced the cloudy haze of pain and awakening awareness that surrounded him. Moisture. On his face, his cheek and nose. Saltiness touched his lips.

Tears. His?

No…

It took an eternity before he could open his eyes—he needn’t have bothered, for only darkness awaited—and he realized that he remained in the pit. And that Amaranthe was down there with him. Her arms were around him, his head cradled to her breast, her fingers twined in his short hair.

“Should let you… cut that… sometime,” he whispered, his voice hoarser than a blade rasping across a whetstone.

Amaranthe stiffened, lifting her head. Her forehead had been pressed against his, he realized when an unpleasant coolness replaced the warmth of her flesh.

“You’re alive,” she blurted.

“Yes.”

“But you weren’t. You weren’t breathing.”

“A temporary setback,” Sicarius said.

“Did you… did the wizard…” Her grip tightened about him. “Is he gone? Are you… you?”

He remembered her asking those exact words once before on Darkcrest Isle, and a fresh surge of disgust came over him for his inability to do better this time. Focus on her, dolt, he told himself. She’d asked a question.

“I believe so.” Sicarius lifted his fingers to his temple and probed about the crater in his flesh. That would take a while to heal. He hoped he hadn’t endured brain damage that might afflict him later in life. “My body will suffer another scar though. Allying with you remains deleterious to my health.”

Amaranthe let out an explosive laugh, or maybe it was a sob, given the way her chest trembled against his head. “That
has
to be you. No Nurian wizard would be so…”

“Sespian suggested he and I may share hereditary tendencies toward social awkwardness.”

Amaranthe snorted and wiped her eyes. “An understatement, though he’s not so awkward as his father.” She lifted her gaze toward the open grate above. “What are the odds of either of us, being rather battered and broken, climbing out of here and finding a more comfortable place to sit? Perhaps even growing so ambitious as to apply bandages to each other.”

Sicarius didn’t feel up to standing, much less climbing out of the pit. He’d be content to continue to lie there for some time with Amaranthe cradling his head. Such weaknesses shouldn’t be admitted aloud. Besides, he didn’t know how long she’d be willing to cuddle with him once she learned about the atrocities he’d committed for Kor Nas. Or how little he’d fought to avoid committing them. If he’d known she was alive… and Sespian too. To learn they’d survived delighted him of course, but it deepened his shame as well.

“I’ll construe your silence as a stolid, ‘I could if I truly wished to, but I’m suitably comfortable here right now,’” Amaranthe said.

“Indeed,” Sicarius murmured.

“There are things I should tell you,” Amaranthe said. “I… oh, let’s save it for later.”

Her fingers traced the side of his face, the side without the raw wound, and he let his head loll back, content to let his mind rest and to appreciate the ministrations. He had a notion that he should return them, in some manner or another, but his mental war with the practitioner had exhausted him in a way physical skirmishes never did. Another time, he thought, then reluctantly added, if she wished it. If she saw the newspaper article, or, worse, the row of heads on pikes that Kor Nas had set up to show Flintcrest how effective his Nurian allies were, Amaranthe might not wish to accept any “ministrations” from him.

He reminded himself that he was appreciating, not thinking, and for a time his mind lay quiet.

“In retrospect,” Amaranthe mused, “I should have tied a rope up there and climbed down that way instead of flinging myself into the pit.”

“Such premeditation is rarely part of your strategies,” Sicarius said. He hadn’t meant it as an insult, rather a bit of that teasing she’d encouraged him to do, but her stroking fingers stilled, and he worried he’d hurt her feelings. After all that he’d put her through that night, he would not wish to cause her further upset.

“True, I must admit,” Amaranthe said. “I’m not sure when that happened. I used to go by the book and consider consequences before enacting a plan. Maybe my plans just grew so unprecedented and grandiose that I couldn’t foresee the consequences, so I stopped trying.”

She sounded chagrinned but not hurt, so he attempted teasing again, thinking it might lighten her mood more than a terse affirmation. “You could not foresee the consequences of jumping into a pit without a rope?”

“Not that.” She swatted him on the chest. “The
Behemoth
and its… landing spot. This—” she pointed toward the lip of the pit, “—is simply a result of me being too worried you were dead to think of more than hurling that junk aside and jumping down here to check.”

“Ah. Your solicitude is appreciated then. Almost as much as a rope would be.” Though she wouldn’t see the faint smile that touched his lips, he hoped she’d hear it in his voice.

“As if you’ve ever needed a rope.”

“As you pointed out, I was recently in a non-respirating state. I remain grievously weakened.”

“A non-respir… you
are
socially awkward. Now I see the real reason you’ve never talked much.”

No doubt it was a reflection of said weakened constitution that his smile lingered. It was too much effort to maintain the mask, and in the darkness alone with Amaranthe, what did it matter? Sicarius closed his eyes and hoped she’d go back to stroking his face.

“Are you in much pain?” she asked instead, her voice gentler, serious now. “I’m sure I could claw my way up there and find a rope and a first-aid kit.”

He hadn’t taken a thorough inventory of his body, but found he could move his arm. Nothing corporeal seemed damaged from the fall; it was only his brain that ached. Given their positions, with his upper body in her lap, wrapping that arm around Amaranthe was awkward, but he did it anyway. “Stay.”

“Not exactly an answer to my question, but I suppose it wouldn’t hurt me to obey
your
orders once in a while.”

He might have found another teasing response, but she bent, touching her forehead to his. Some of her hair had come free in the… he couldn’t bring himself to think of it as anything other than a harrowing trial. It had been for both of them, though certainly more so for her. The locks of hair brushing his cheeks made him forget the role he’d played in it, at least for a moment as he inhaled the smell of her shampoo. The delicate cherry and almond scent was far more pleasant than the smells of cold sweat and fear that lingered about both of them. He thought of teasing her again, this time about the new blonde coloring of her locks, but her lips brushed his, gentle and sweet, and he forgot all about hair.

I do not deserve kisses, he thought—bless her ancestors, didn’t she know he’d been trying to catch her to torture her, to please that sadistic prick ruling his mind? He should have turned away, told her exactly why her compassion was misplaced, but his lips betrayed him. They parted and invited her to explore. For days, he’d thought her dead, that he’d never again stand at her side and feel the warmth of a smile directed at him alone. To have her back only to push her away? He couldn’t.

Later, if she decided she couldn’t stomach the level of… monster he’d reverted to, he’d understand. For now, he accepted her tender kisses, finding them far more of a balm than anything in a first-aid kit.

Sometime later, a door banged open in the factory above. Voices sounded, too muffled to identify, but there were a number of them.

Amaranthe sighed and her lips left his, though with a palpable reluctance, and she kissed his eyes, careful to avoid the wound at his temple, before drawing away fully. He wanted to capture the back of her head with his other hand and pull her back down. It might be their last kiss—why let it end because of a few people roaming about upstairs?

“I suppose those are the reinforcements,” she murmured, “here belatedly to save me from you.” She chuckled as she said it, as if the thought—the memories—weren’t horrific, but the reminder quenched his passion as surely as a hot iron being thrust into a bucket of water. “Maybe we can get them to supply our rope,” she went on, unaware of his thoughts.

Frantic bangs and shouts came from above. They were calling her name, not his. Understandable. He’d been the villain of the night. Who, except Amaranthe, cared if he’d survived?

“Down here,” she called when someone came close enough to their corner to hear.

The yellow glow of lights preceded the appearance of two familiar faces, Books and Akstyr.

“Amaranthe!” Books leaned over the open pit, his lantern extended. “Are you all right? Is that… uhm?” He squinted, probably trying to pick out Sicarius’s black-clad form in the gloom.

“Yes,” Amaranthe said, “and yes. We could use a rope and some bandages.”

“Of course, I understand.” Books scurried away.

Akstyr remained. He wore a self-satisfied grin as he thrust out a familiar rope belt adorned with several pouches. “Look what I got.”

Amaranthe regarded the item without comprehension. “If you’ve been out shopping with Maldynado, I would have expected something more stylish. Or at least grandiose and flamboyant.”

“Nah,” Akstyr said, “this belonged to the practitioner who was controlling Sicarius.”

“You killed him?” Sicarius asked, not having to modulate his voice to make it come out cold and flat.

If
Akstyr
had killed Kor Nas when Sicarius hadn’t been able to so much as give the man a hangnail… He ground his teeth. He hadn’t thought he could feel like more of a failure than he already did.

“I did.” If Akstyr had lifted his chin any higher, he would have fallen over backward. “And I was the one who found him, on account of the Science he was working. Sort of. At first I couldn’t do more than get the general vicinity down. He was able to mask himself somehow. Starcrest had his team and our people searching building by building. But then we heard this yell of pain.”

Yes, it didn’t surprise Sicarius that Kor Nas, too, had felt a mental backlash to the breaking of that bond.

“He was on the rooftop,” Akstyr went on. “Starcrest wanted to storm up there with all of his forces, but I didn’t wait for him to finish explaining. I thought the practitioner might sense them coming, even when he was in pain, and that he’d run away. So I crept up there first while they were still deciding things. He sensed me coming, and I thought he’d kill me, but I told him I’d been looking for him all over the city, that I wanted to be his apprentice. That little lie let me get close. I thought maybe I could stick a dagger in his chest. But he was a telepath and rifled through my mind. He flattened me—” Akstyr’s face grew sheepish at this, “—and I figured my plan hadn’t been so bright after all. But by then Starcrest and Maldynado and Basilard and the others were all climbing up to get him, blocking all the escapes, and he panicked. I got my chance and stuck my dagger in his back. Then the others were swarming all over him, finishing him off before he could hurt anyone else. It was great.” Akstyr grinned again and waved his belt. “I haven’t gotten a chance to see what all he had yet, but I hope I can learn from it.”

Something to his left drew his gaze—Books returning with the requested items.

Sicarius hadn’t removed the arm he had wrapped around Amaranthe, and he took this last moment alone with her to rub her back. “You made that happen,” he said, trying to let his approval seep into his voice. “If you hadn’t cut that thing out of my head, he wouldn’t have cried out. They never would have found him.”