Beneath the Surface

CHAPTER 6

On the middle deck, Amaranthe and Sicarius stood guard by an interior door while Akstyr crept through yet another cabin. Bunks stacked three high lined the two longest walls, and snoring figures occupied half of them. She doubted they’d find any signs of Science use in there, but she certainly couldn’t track magic on her own, so she had to follow Akstyr’s lead. After a few moments, he slipped back out into the narrow corridor, its lamps dimmed for the night, the tiny flames barely providing enough illumination for one to navigate the passageway. The evening’s dinner and show had long since completed, and only those people necessary to keep the boat traveling after dark remained awake.

“ It feels like we’re farther away on this deck,” Akstyr whispered.

“ The circus troupe is housed below,” Amaranthe said. “If they’re smuggling contraband into the empire, they’d probably keep it close so they can keep an eye on it.”

“ I already hunted all over that deck. I even pawed through people’s closets.”

Amaranthe tried to catch Sicarius’s gaze, but his thoughts seemed to be turned inward. Maybe he was worried about Sespian. He hadn’t been in his cabin when they’d gone to collect him for the search. After the news she’d given Sespian earlier in the day, Amaranthe also worried, but there weren’t many places he could go on a boat. He probably just needed private time to think.

She touched Sicarius’s arm. “Any ideas?” He knew more about the Science than anyone else on the team, save Akstyr. Actually, she wasn’t positive Akstyr truly knew more, despite all his studies.

“ Under the deck,” Sicarius said.

Amaranthe had long since grown accustomed to decrypting his terse statements and guessed, “You think there’s storage down there?”

“ Oh!” Akstyr blurted. “Maybe that’s why I couldn’t get to it.” He lowered his voice to mutter, “Knew my skill wasn’t the problem.”

“ The boat doesn’t have a deep draw,” Sicarius said. “It’d be a couple of feet at most.”

“ Enough room to house artifacts though, right?” Amaranthe asked. “If they’re not too big.”

“ There may be schematics in engineering,” Sicarius said.

“ Let’s go.” Akstyr bounced on his toes, then launched himself down the corridor. Not much enthused him, but artifacts surely did. He nearly crashed into a woman in ship’s whites entering the hatchway as he tried to exit.

“ Who’re you?” She frowned at his rumpled, baggy clothes. “This area is for crew only.”

“ I know. Wrong door!” Akstyr pushed past her, nearly knocking her into the wall, and disappeared into the night.

Amaranthe and Sicarius had to exit through that hatchway as well, but she worried that two more people using Akstyr’s tactic would cause the woman to raise an alarm. Not wanting to give Sicarius a reason to throw anyone overboard, Amaranthe stepped in front of him to approach the exit first. He’d be more recognizable than she, especially since he never bothered changing out of his familiar black. Or his knives. With luck, the shadows would make recognition difficult.

The woman, young and prim and wearing an ensign’s rank pin next to a bar that declared her a navigation officer, jammed her fists onto her hips and stepped into Amaranthe’s path, blocking the exit. “You choose the wrong door too?”

“ Not us,” Amaranthe said, then lifted a hand and whispered around it conspiratorially. “We both have roommates upstairs, so we were looking for a quiet, dark place for amorous activities, if you get my meaning.” Amaranthe threw in liberal winks to ensure it couldn’t be missed.

“ Here?” The woman scowled. “You came here for that?”

“ Yes.” In her mind, Amaranthe ran through the rooms they’d searched. A couple of the larger ones had possessed two bunks instead of three, such as a young officer might rate, and one of those cabins had sported an empty sleeping area. “The door was open at the end of the hall, and the person in the other bed was sleeping so hard, she didn’t even notice-”

“ The end of the hall?” The woman dropped her hands. “That’s my room. You-that’s disgusting!” She sprinted down the corridor and would have caromed off Sicarius, but he glided out of the way. She never glanced at his face.

As soon as the officer disappeared around the corner, Amaranthe stepped outside. Akstyr had already disappeared. The boy was like a hound on the trail when he sensed magic. She headed for a set of stairs, assuming he’d gone down to engineering to check on schematics.

Sicarius fell into step beside her. “You have a singular sense of humor.”

Amaranthe paused at the top of the stairs. “Singular as in remarkable or singular as in unique?”

“ Yes.”

Amaranthe snorted. “We better catch up to Akstyr before enforcers show up to throw us overboard. Those trailing after him don’t seem to fare well.”

Sicarius led the way down the steps. As soon as they reached the bottom, he gripped her arm and pulled her into the shadows beneath the staircase.

“ Are we avoiding someone’s notice?” Amaranthe whispered. At this late hour, there was only one other person outside on their side of the boat, a cloaked man leaning against the railing with his hood pulled up. “Or did my words to the officer stir thoughts of amorous activities in your mind?”

A finger came to rest on her lips. Two security guards in ship’s whites strode into view. That answered her question.

Though they bore lanterns and swords, one yawned widely, and neither appeared alert. They had the miens of men stuck on the night shift, simply doing their rounds. Neither glanced toward the shadows underneath the stairs.

“ I hope those enforcers don’t talk the captain into doing a full search,” one man said as he drew even with Amaranthe and Sicarius.

“ What do you care?” his partner asked.

“ The enforcers only have one squad of men on board, so you can guess who’ll end up doing the searching. At dawn probably. That’s when we’re supposed to get off and go to bed. Besides, if it is those outlaws, I don’t want to walk in on Sicarius. I want to live. I…” His voice drifted out of earshot as they kept walking.

“ I guess that means we need to move our belongings out of the cabins soon,” Amaranthe whispered.

“ Yes,” Sicarius said.

“ We’ll have to find a hiding place until we reach the next port.” She’d planned to disembark there anyway, so long as they could find these artifacts and deal with them by then. “Think these theoretical below-deck storage cubbies of yours are warm and cozy?”

Sicarius said nothing. He was watching the security team as it slowed down to approach the cloaked man. It was late for stargazing, so Amaranthe could understand why they might be suspicious.

“ That’s Sespian,” Sicarius said.

She stiffened. “What? How can you tell?”

One of the enforcers tapped the figure on the shoulder. Sicarius stepped out of the shadows. Amaranthe tried to catch his arm, wanting to tell him to give Sespian a chance to handle the problem on his own, but Sicarius moved too quickly. Cursing under her breath, Amaranthe ran after him. Amazing how the man could glide across the deck like a wraith, seemingly not in a hurry at all, but covering the distance as if he were sprinting. His feet didn’t make a sound as he closed on the three men.

“ Don’t kill anyone,” Amaranthe whispered after him, trying to pitch her voice so the security men wouldn’t hear it and Sicarius would.

“…remove your hood,” one of the enforcers was saying when Amaranthe came into hearing range.

“ It’s cold out here.” That was Sespian. He turned to face the men, but he didn’t reach for the hood. The darkness and the beard might disguise him, but they might not. “I’m out here getting some air. I couldn’t sleep.” His gaze shifted over the men’s shoulders.

Sicarius stood behind them, not bothering to hide his face as the breeze rifled through his short blond hair. He hadn’t drawn a weapon yet, and Amaranthe hurried to catch up, to keep him from doing so.

First one security man glanced over his shoulder and jumped, then the second emulated the move.

Sespian lifted a hand. “Don’t hurt-”

One of the men pointed to the side of Sicarius, cried, “Look, enforcers!” and hurled himself past Sespian and into the river. The second man squeaked, scuttled backward until his shoulders rammed against the railing, then grabbed it and also propelled himself into the water. His lantern caught and dropped to the deck instead of falling overboard. It clanked and highlighted a dubious puddle before tipping over and winking out. Amaranthe had forgotten how much Sicarius’s reputation affected the average person.

By the time she reached his side, there was little left to worry about, except Sespian’s reaction. Not everybody appreciated protective looming the way Amaranthe did. The two men stared at each other, their profiles like mirror images, each unreadable.

“ Hello,” she said cheerfully. “Everything all right, here?”

“ It is unwise to stand with your back to the deck,” Sicarius told Sespian.

Oh, good. Lecturing. That’d be sure to warm Sespian’s heart.

Sespian lifted the flap of his cloak to reveal a small crossbow in his hand. Amaranthe recognized it as an enforcer-issue weapon, one that often had poison on the tip, making it ideal for subduing dangerous criminals during undercover missions. Had he already tangled with an enforcer to acquire it? Sespian kept it pointed at the deck, but he held it out for a long moment, as if to make sure Sicarius saw it, before dropping the flap. Letting his father know he could take care of himself?

Sicarius did not amend his statement.

“ We’re searching for contraband,” Amaranthe said. “Do you want to join us? We checked your cabin earlier, but you weren’t there.”

“ Is that what Akstyr’s doing?” Sespian asked. “He went by a moment ago. He was peering into every vent and grate he passed.”

Amaranthe nodded, pleased that, whatever thoughts had been going through Sespian’s head, he’d remained observant. Sicarius would notice that too, she knew.

“ Yes, we suspect magical weapons or something of the sort are being smuggled to the capital by the circus troupe.”

“ For Ravido?” Sespian asked.

“ Forge, we imagine, but Ravido will surely benefit.”

“ So it’d behoove us to find them and destroy them.” Sespian took a deep breath and blew it out, like a man bracing himself. Or perhaps acknowledging that whatever he’d been thinking about was less important than this new mission.

“ Or acquire them for ourselves.” Amaranthe smiled.

For the first time since identifying Sespian, Sicarius looked at her. A rather sharp look that implied the thought lacked prudence.

“ Let’s find them before worrying about what to do with them.” Amaranthe waved toward the nearby engineering room hatch. Faint light escaped from a porthole beside it. “Think you can find those schematics without being seen by the night shift?” she asked Sicarius.

“ Yes.”

A long moment passed, with Sicarius eyeing Sespian and Amaranthe in turn, before he walked away. He disappeared into the shadows long before he reached the hatch. She waited, expecting to see it open, but it didn’t. Perhaps he intended to go in another way.

“ Are you all right?” Amaranthe asked.

“ I’m fine,” Sespian said.

“ You’re sure? I didn’t share that particular tidbit in the most judicious manner this evening.” Maybe she shouldn’t be bothering him. She’d aligned herself with the enemy, more so than ever, as far as he was concerned. Maybe she was the last person he wanted to confide in or even talk to. If not for the limitations of the boat, he might have walked much farther away to think. “I apologize for that. And for continuing to bug you. I’m not good at simply letting sleeping grimbals stay in their dens. Just ask…” She was going to say ask Sicarius, but bringing him up might not be wise. “Ask anyone who’s known me for more than a month.”

“ A month?” Sespian smiled faintly. “It didn’t take me that long to realize you have a nosy streak.”

“ Well, you’re more perceptive than most people.”

She’d meant it as a joke, but Sespian’s smile faded and his eyes grew sad. “When you and your team barged into the train for me, and I learned how much you’d done in the last year, in the name of helping the emperor, I thought… Well, that’s what made me think you might also have… feelings for me.” Amaranthe opened her mouth to say that she did care for him, but he lifted a hand to stop her. “I thought you wouldn’t have done all that, risked your life and those of your men if you weren’t guided by more than indoctrinated imperial loyalty to the throne. But it was for him, wasn’t it?”

Amaranthe didn’t know what to say. She wanted to deny the accusation, but couldn’t, not when Sespian seemed to finally understand that Sicarius cared for him. That mattered more than what Sespian thought of her. Still, she couldn’t bring herself to simply nod, because it wasn’t the full truth. “Partially for you, partially for the good of the empire-I’ve always thought you were a better option than Ravido or any of those old-fashioned war-war-war men-and partially, no, a lot, for him, yes.”

Sespian exhaled slowly and nodded to himself. “I’ll survive my dashed dreams. Don’t feel bad. I just need some time. All of this-you, Forge, my shattered identity-is difficult, but the hard part is that it’s him. A brutal murderer who I’ve seen…” He shook his head. “It would have been more palatable if it’d been someone else. Any one else.”

“ Come now, you wouldn’t want Maldynado for a father, would you?”

Sespian lowered his head and chuckled softly. “Perhaps not. His advice on winning women wasn’t particularly apt.”

Amaranthe didn’t want to bring the conversation back around to that topic again, so all she said was, “That’s one subject I’m fairly certain you’ll never have to worry about Sicarius advising you on. He thinks it’s appropriate to wear a dozen knives while leading a girl into the Imperial Gardens for a, uhm, chat.”

“ I don’t doubt it.”

Sicarius reappeared at Amaranthe’s side. For once, she didn’t twitch with surprise, but she did grimace, fearing he’d heard her comment.

“ Did you get the schematics?” she asked. Best to stick to business.

The hatch to engineering remained shut, the light glowing within. That didn’t mean much-Sicarius could have left a pile of dead bodies without her and Sespian ever having heard a thing.

“ They were on the wall,” Sicarius said. “I memorized them. To retrieve them would have involved revealing myself.”

“ Is there a secret cargo area?”

“ Inside and below the deck, yes.”

“ Lead the way then.” Amaranthe extended a hand toward engineering, though she had no idea where one might find an entrance to the storage area. “Let’s see if we can collect Akstyr on the way.”

They jogged around the deck to the opposite side of the steamboat, pausing only when they spotted Akstyr. He lay on his belly, face pressed to a grate near the boiler room.

“ This way,” Amaranthe told him.

They caught up with Sicarius at the door to the dining hall.

“ We already looked all around in there,” Akstyr whispered.

Sicarius didn’t respond. He found the door unlocked and disappeared into the dark interior. Amaranthe groped about until she found an unlit lantern mounted on the inside wall.

“ He’s heading for the stage,” Akstyr whispered.

“ How can you tell?” Sespian stood near the door, holding it open to allow in the faint lamplight from outside. It didn’t penetrate far.

“ I can see him,” Akstyr said.

“ Magically?”

“ With the Science.”

A moment passed before Sespian said, “How does he see?”

“ I haven’t noticed that he particularly needs to. I think he senses his way around.” Amaranthe took her lantern outside to light it from one of the burning ones. “You didn’t inherit that skill?”

“ Apparently not,” Sespian said.

Amaranthe stepped inside, shut the door behind them, and turned up her lantern. The flame illuminated tables with chairs turned upside down on top of them, along with Sicarius striding out of the shadows near the front of the room.

“ Training,” he said.

“ Is that an explanation for something?” Amaranthe asked. “Or a random statement of enthusiasm for the practice?”

“ Blindfolded training.” Sicarius took the lantern. “Get another light.”

“ Talkative, isn’t he?” Sespian asked.

“ Terribly so.” Amaranthe lit a second lantern, then weaved between the tables toward the stage.

“ So women wouldn’t be the only thing we’d not discuss if we spent time together?”

“ You’d probably not discuss a lot of things.”

Amaranthe smiled over her shoulder at Sespian, then focused on Sicarius. He’d knelt and unscrewed a panel at one end of the stage, revealing a trapdoor. Utter darkness waited through the hole. Amaranthe couldn’t tell if the space went back a few feet or extended the width of the stage. Akstyr stared intently into the dark space but didn’t say whether he sensed the artifacts more strongly there or not.

For a long, quiet moment, Sicarius gazed at the floor, his ear tilted toward the opening. Amaranthe was about to ask if he’d heard something or otherwise expected trouble when his head swiveled toward her.

“ Akstyr and I can go alone,” he said.

Akstyr frowned.

“ What’s in there?” Amaranthe whispered.

“ I smell something.”

“ What?”

“ Death,” Sicarius said.

“ Bloody bears,” Sespian murmured.

“ Death?” Akstyr eyed the hole. “As in dead rats and stuff? Or people?”

“ Humans,” Sicarius said.

Amaranthe spread a hand. While she couldn’t claim to enjoy stumbling across corpses, it wasn’t anything new for her team. But maybe Sicarius wanted to protect her. Or Sespian. If people were dead down there, something had to have killed them.

“ We’ll all go,” she said.

“ Akstyr.” Sicarius jerked his chin. “Enter.”

Akstyr drew back. “What? I don’t want to go first if there are bodies.”

“ There may be booby traps,” Sicarius said. “Science-crafted ones.”

“ But…”

“ I will also lead. To check for mundane traps.”

Whether due to this addendum, or the unwavering stare that accompanied it, Akstyr’s shoulders drooped and he didn’t utter a further protest. “Fine, but I want a light.”

As Sicarius ducked into the darkness beneath the stage, Amaranthe handed Akstyr one of the lanterns. “Be careful.”

Her words were for both men, but only Akstyr responded, voicing a sullen, “Whatever.”

He clunked his head as he scrambled through the trapdoor, inspiring a string of curses involving street licking and donkey balls.

Amaranthe lifted her eyebrows, silently asking if Sespian wanted to go next or take up the rear. He gripped the edge of the square opening and stared into the gloom. Akstyr’s light played across crates, mesh bags of ice skates, and disassembled acrobatic apparatuses.

“ Sensing dead people isn’t a skill I inherited either,” Sespian said. “Are you sure about this paternity link?”

Amaranthe smiled. “I can see it even if you can’t.”

“ Well, at least he never hit me. That’s more than I can say for my-Raumesys.” Sespian slipped through the low opening with more alacrity-and less head bumping-than Akstyr had demonstrated.

“ I can see it even if you can’t,” Amaranthe repeated in a whisper to herself as she reached for the panel. She doubted anyone would wander into the dining hall in the middle of the night, but it wouldn’t hurt to camouflage their route. She propped the panel against the wall, hiding the under-stage entrance, and scooped four screws into her hand. Sicarius had left them in a tidy row by the molding after he’d removed them, but, on the off chance that someone did discover the panel ajar, she didn’t want anyone to have the idea of screwing it back into place. Especially not if there were bodies down there.

Holding the second of the group’s lanterns, Amaranthe hustled after the others, half-crawling, half-crouching in the three-foot-high space. Though most of the gear appeared to belong to the circus troupe, and would have had to have been recently loaded, the air smelled of dust. And mold. And… Erg. She crinkled her nose, catching the meaty odor Sicarius must have noticed. Well, he’d warned her.

“ Yup, that’s a body all right,” came Akstyr’s voice from ahead. “One of those enforcers. Not stinking much yet anyway.”

Sespian peered back at Amaranthe, and she had no trouble reading his your-people-are-ghouls expression. She twitched a shoulder and scooted closer.

“ He triggered a trap,” Sicarius said. “Hold while I check for others.”

Amaranthe held her lantern up, hoping for a better view of the storage area, though she regretted it when her light illuminated suspicious dark stains on the ceiling. Mold, mildew, and… was that dried blood? Maybe on a previous voyage, the stage had hosted duels or gladiator matches for the diners. What she didn’t see anywhere was anything otherworldly.

“ We haven’t gone beneath the deck yet, have we?” Amaranthe asked.

“ No,” Sicarius said. “There’s an entrance over here.”

With Sespian and Akstyr in between her and Sicarius, Amaranthe couldn’t see where he pointed. “Any traps?” she asked.

“ They’ve been disarmed by people bumbling into them,” Sicarius said. “Akstyr. Science?”

“ We’re definitely close to something,” Akstyr said. “Several somethings. I can’t tell if anything is a trap, but… I think they’re all lower than we are.”

“ Understood,” Sicarius said. “Proceeding.”

Amaranthe paused when she drew even with the dead enforcer. He didn’t have any obvious wounds. “What killed him?”

“ Poison.” Sicarius had disappeared into a crooked aisle of crates, and his voice came back muffled. “Look at his palm.”

Amaranthe gingerly maneuvered the arm to reveal the enforcer’s palm. Rigor mortis had come and gone, so the man had been dead a couple of days. Since before Akstyr, Maldynado, and Yara had come searching, and since before any enforcers had known her team was on board. Amaranthe examined the hand. A cut marred one finger. Such a small mistake to lose one’s life over. Surely, she’d committed numerous larger errors.

Sespian touched her shoulder. “Are you all right?”

“ Yes, thanks. Let’s just… be careful and get out of here.”

“ Yeah,” Akstyr said. “It’ll stink down here in a few days.”

Sespian glared in his direction. “Do you ever want to smack him?” he whispered.

“ Daily,” Amaranthe said.

She maneuvered past the dead enforcer, careful not to step on him, and picked her way over a pile of cleated shoes and into the crate aisle to join Sicarius. He knelt before an iron grate set into the floor. A shiny steel lock unblemished by rust or corrosion appeared to be a recent addition. A yellow glow emanated from somewhere below. Amaranthe wriggled closer, but whatever accounted for the light wasn’t directly beneath the grate. The only thing in view was a tiny mirror and a sliver of brass lying against the darker metal of the ship’s hull. A key, she realized. For the grate lock? If so, a lot of good it did down there. Maybe the enforcer had stolen the key, dropped it down there by accident, and tried to get a look by lowering a mirror. She’d never know for certain; whatever curiosity-or orders from superiors-had driven him here had killed him.

Sicarius was in the process of unstringing a trip wire so slender Amaranthe wouldn’t have noticed it in the dim lighting. He laid the small coil next to a couple of pins beside the grate.

“ The traps are disarmed.” Sicarius withdrew his compact lock-picking kit.

“ Wait,” Akstyr said. “There’s something about that lock. You’d almost miss it, compared with the power oozing off whatever’s down there, but it tingles a bit.”

“ With… magic?” Sespian had joined them around the grate.

Akstyr nodded. “And I think… What is that down there? Beside the mirror. There’s an aura about it too. It’s Made.”

“ It’s a key,” Amaranthe said.

“ In all senses of the word,” Akstyr said. “I bet if you stick a pick in the lock, you’ll trigger a trap. That key’s probably the only thing that works. I wonder how the enforcer got his hands on it.”

“ Maybe they’ve been tracking this shipment for some time,” Amaranthe said. “Any chance you can nullify the trap, Akstyr?”

“ I don’t know. It seems intricate. Good, quality work. Why don’t we just get the key?”

Amaranthe waved at the crisscrossing grate bars. “I’m the smallest one here, and my arm isn’t going to fit through any of those holes.”

“ Do you sense any other Science about the grate?” Sicarius asked.

“ No, just the lock. And the key.”

Sespian poked the grate with one finger. When nothing happened, he tried to pull it open. It didn’t budge. He offered a sheepish shrug. “You never know.”

“ There were nets back there,” Sicarius said. “Someone make a length of rope.”

“ Fishing?” Amaranthe asked, though she didn’t know how they’d hook the key. It didn’t have a hole, and it lay flat on the hull.

Sicarius didn’t respond. He’d drifted off farther down the aisle. He must have some idea.

Amaranthe returned to the bags of ice skates, opened one, and removed a couple of laces. She tied them into a three-foot long string and returned to the grate. Sicarius had found a nail-or, judging by the splinters clinging to the head, pried it out of the stage framework. He pulled out a compass, laid it on the floor, and aligned the nail just so. He unsheathed his biggest knife, a singled-edged serrated blade that could cut firewood if needed, then hammered the blunt side against the nail several times.

“ Uh,” Akstyr said.

Sespian also watched in puzzled silence.

Amaranthe nodded and handed Sicarius the string. Thanks to having seen the trick done before in a drinking house, she caught on, but she kept her mouth shut. Sicarius tied the string around the head of the nail and lowered his fishing “hook” through the bars. When the nail hovered over it, the key wobbled. The nail brushed it, and the key attached itself.

“ Oh,” Sespian said, as Sicarius carefully pulled up the key. “The Inverse Magnetostrictive Effect.”

“ The… huh?” Akstyr asked.

“ Mechanical stress can cause a change of magnetization in a ferromagnetic material.”

Akstyr’s face scrunched up in bewilderment.

“ He made a magnet,” Sespian said.

“ Why didn’t you say that to start with?” Akstyr squinted at Sespian. “You sure you aren’t Books’s kid?”

“ I’m not sure of anything any more.”

“ I’m sure you’d have more job opportunities than you think if you decide to get out of government.” Amaranthe grinned.

Without commenting on the exchange, Sicarius pulled the key through the grate and slipped it into the lock. It clicked open. Everyone held his breath, but no booby traps sprang. Sicarius opened the grate and Akstyr, despite his earlier disinterest in leading, was the first to flatten to his belly and stick his head through.

Amaranthe caught Sespian watching Sicarius with his mouth parted in surprise. Remembering his comments about Sicarius being nothing more than a brutal murderer, she hoped he’d rethink the assessment. She recalled her own early meetings with Sicarius and how she’d also been surprised to learn he’d been educated in far more areas than fighting and killing. She’d been intrigued. Maybe Sespian would share a modicum of that interest.

Akstyr lifted his head and propped himself up on his elbows. “I don’t know what they do, but there’s power in them for sure. They’re long and skinny and remind me of fireworks from the solstice fests, but they’re not solid. There’s glass or something like glass with a yellow gunk inside. There are little clear blocks floating in the gunk.”

“ Clear blocks?” Sicarius asked sharply.

“ Uh huh. Small ones. I think there’s something in them.”

Sicarius took Akstyr’s spot and lowered his head. Sicarius’s sharp tone concerned Amaranthe-when did he ever let emotion seep into his voice? — and she nibbled on a fingernail. It usually wouldn’t take him more than a heartbeat or two to absorb all the sights visible from the grate, but he lay there unmoving for many seconds.

Amaranthe’s patience-and fingernail-ran out. She dropped to her belly beside him, bumping his shoulder in an effort to make room for herself. She lowered her head and peered around a dangling thatch of short blond hair to see a pyramid of long, glowing yellow tubes. Rope woven through the stack tied them to each other, and cloth padding ensured they wouldn’t shift about with the bumps and sways of the steamboat. After the dim lighting of the hold above, the artifacts’ illumination made Amaranthe squint, but her eyes soon adjusted, and she spotted the clear blocks Akstyr had mentioned. Perhaps one-inch wide, they were suspended in the yellow substance like raisins and nuts in the sweet carrot gelatin salad at Curi’s Bakery. She couldn’t tell if any letters or symbols marked the cubes.

“ Get back,” Sicarius whispered and pulled his head out.

As soon as Amaranthe cleared the grate, he lowered it into place with a firm clang. He twisted the key in the lock, considered it for a moment, then tucked it into his pocket. He waved the others back and pulled a crate over the grate.

“ That bad, huh?” Amaranthe had assumed they were dealing with human-made artifacts-Akstyr sensed them after all-but perhaps those cubes came from elsewhere. Her gaze dropped to the knife always sheathed at Sicarius’s waist. So far all of the ancient technology they’d encountered had been black. Was this some exception?

Sicarius crouched, his forearms balanced on his thighs. “I have seen those cubes before.”

“ On your mission up north?” Amaranthe asked.

“ Yes.”

“ What do they do?” Sespian asked.

“ The ones I saw were sprayed via a rocket detonating in the air above Fort Deadend. When the cubes broke open, the substance inside killed everyone within a ten mile radius.”

“ Rockets.” Akstyr snapped his fingers. “Yes, that makes sense. The energy I sensed comes mostly from the base. It must be stored somehow to propel the tubes into the air.”

Nobody looked at him.

“ Killed?” Sespian hadn’t taken his gaze from Sicarius. “How?”

“ I came upon the bodies after it’d happened. Some airborne inhalant, I assume. The effects on the people within range were grisly.”

Amaranthe couldn’t imagine how badly mauled a body would have to be for someone as desensitized to death as Sicarius to feel compelled to use such a word.

“ And those weapons are going to the capital?” Sespian asked. “I can’t allow-I mean, even if I’m not… We can’t allow something like that to be used.”

“ I can’t believe Forge would bring something like that into the city,” Amaranthe said. “A ten-mile radius? So, twenty miles in diameter? That’d devastate the majority of Stumps.”

“ A million people,” Sespian breathed.

“ Maybe they only mean to use the weapons as a threat,” Amaranthe said. “A bluff. They’d be in danger, too, if they set them off.”

“ Not if they’re flying around in their big black aircraft,” Akstyr said.

“ True.” Whatever armor the Behemoth possessed, it’d probably protect those within from any number of attacks. “Still, what would they gain from killing everyone in the city?” Amaranthe asked. “They’re business people, and those are customers.”

“ They may not know precisely what they have,” Sicarius said.

“ Well, isn’t that comforting?” Sespian gripped the edge of a nearby crate. “They’ll kill everybody by accident.”

Amaranthe found herself nodding. “Not comforting, but maybe correct. I got the impression that the girl who was doing the translating of how to work the Behemoth was learning as she went.”

“ What are we going to do about this?” Sespian asked. The lost-puppy look that had haunted his eyes for days had faded, replaced by determination.

“ Get off the boat?” Akstyr suggested.

Sespian glared at him.

“ What? Nobody else is disturbed by the fact that we’re standing on top of something that can kill us instantly?” Akstyr’s voice had grown squeaky.

“ Technically, we’re crouching on them, not standing,” Amaranthe said, hoping a little levity would relax Akstyr.

He glowered at her. “I say we grab our stuff and get off the boat before it gets to Stumps. A good ten miles before it gets there.”

Amaranthe wondered if he was thinking of escaping to the Kyatt Islands again. With his mother and her bounty-hunting cronies waiting in Stumps, he had little incentive to return to the capital anyway. This was one more reason for him to abandon the team and head west. But she needed him for what lay ahead. She needed all of them.

“ Wouldn’t it be better to destroy the weapons?” Amaranthe suggested. “If we left and they were removed from this boat, we’d be forever wondering who had them and if they might be used against the city. Any city. Perhaps Forge doesn’t intend to drop them on the capital, but means to use them against other nations, nations who we’ve warred with in the past. If Ravido could suddenly wipe out the Nurians, or bring the Kyatt Islands under imperial rule-” she gave Akstyr a frank stare, hoping he’d realize he might not be safe even there, “-the people would throw their support behind him. There’d be no fighting. He’d simply be given the throne.”

Sespian released the crate he’d been gripping only to sink against it for support. “I hadn’t thought of that, but that does seem a plausible scenario.” He closed his eyes. “If we-the empire-did something like that… there’d be no hope for the peaceful future I’d envisioned. Some atrocities can never be forgiven.”

“ Destroying them is the best choice,” Amaranthe said.

“ Uh.” Akstyr hoisted a finger. “How do we do that if breaking them releases their fumes?”

Good question. “Sicarius?” Amaranthe asked.

“ I do not know.”

“ We better find Books and see if he has any ideas.” Amaranthe sent a silent apology across the miles to Maldynado and Yara. They were going to have to take care of themselves.