Blood and Betrayal

Chapter 17

A couple of days had passed since capturing Brynia, and Maldynado was headed down to engineering. Basilard had mentioned that Books hadn’t been sleeping or eating. Why this was Maldynado’s business, he didn’t know, but he supposed he should make sure Books hadn’t fallen into a funk and started drinking again. Though they were getting by as satisfactorily as could be expected given how many plans had gone awry, the team did lack structure without Amaranthe and Sicarius there to demand everyone rise at dawn for training. At least Maldynado had finally caught up on his sleep and recovered from most of his wounds.

He strode into the engine room and almost tripped over a stack of books in front of the door. Books, his chin sporting several days’ worth of salt-and-pepper beard growth, was sitting on the floor next to a towering flywheel. Its revolutions ruffled the pages of journals and reference books spread out around him like spokes on a wheel. He must have pillaged the steamboat’s library. A few dishes loaded with untouched food sat near the wall. Books held a book open with one hand while he scrawled across the blank page of a journal with the other. His pen, one of several around him, zipped along, creating lines of text faster than a printing press. At least the straightness of those lines suggested he wasn’t drunk.

“What are you doing?” Maldynado asked over the clamor of the pumping machinery.

The pen didn’t slow, and Books didn’t acknowledge him.

“Researching more Forge stuff?” Maldynado asked.

“This facility lacks a desk,” Books said without looking up or slowing his scrawling.

Maldynado propped his hip against a railing. “It’s good to see that you’re alert and ready to jump to a specific piece of machinery, should a call come down from the wheelhouse, demanding quick action.”

Books finished his page of writing, blew on the ink to dry it, and promptly started on the next page.

Maldynado wondered if someone shouting a warning of an impending pirate attack would make that pen pause. He stepped closer until Books couldn’t possibly miss seeing his boots alarmingly close to his papers and said, “Booksie, Basilard said you’ve been skipping meals.”

When Books finally lifted his head, he seemed surprised to see Maldynado there.

“What?”

“Is that Forge stuff?” Maldynado waved at the mess.

“No.”

“Economics stuff the emperor asked for?”

“Also no, and perhaps you can find a more descriptive noun than ‘stuff’.”

“Would you prefer if I called it junk?” Maldynado asked, knowing it would irk Books.

Books’s lips flattened. Yup, pure irk.

“What are you working on?”

Books looked at something out the door. “That’s not the emperor out there, is it?”

“No, Akstyr. It’s his turn shoveling. The emperor… I haven’t seen much of him. He avoids me, despite the fact that I’ve been trying my best to be useful.”

“I believe he’s still struggling to disassociate you from your family,” Books said. “It doesn’t help that you came off as a fop the first night he met you.”

“Fop? I was fighting to defend him on the train.”

“You were telling him how great you’d look as a statue in the Imperial Gardens,” Books said.

“In between assaults on the locomotive cab, during which I bravely helped protect him.”

“I’m working, Maldynado.” Books bent over his papers again. “Go away.”

“People are concerned that you’re overly involved with that work. You’re not eating. What are you doing anyway?”

“Devising a new governmental paradigm for the empire.”

“Uhm. Why?”

Books started writing again.

“Did the emperor ask you to do that?” Maldynado asked.

“No.”

“Aren’t we helping him so we won’t have to have a new governmental paradigm?”

“We are helping him to ensure no idiotic relative of yours takes the throne. What happens after that… Let’s just say I have a hunch, and I am hoping to anticipate the youth’s needs.”

Trying not to feel completely perplexed, Maldynado walked out of the engine room. “I don’t know why I bother talking to that man.”

• • •

Amaranthe had never seen so many pickled vegetables in one place. Cucumber jars, of course, took up a number of shelves, in spicy, dill, garlic, and-she stopped to gape-chocolate varieties. Sicarius, walking behind her, followed her gaze with his eyes, and she hustled on, certain he’d disapprove of chocolate anything. Besides, though Amaranthe hadn’t had a dessert in a while, she wasn’t sure she wanted to break her sweets fast with candied pickles.

Other vegetables, from carrots to asparagus to beets were also represented in the tiny shop. Packed jars rose on floor-to-ceiling shelves lining narrow aisles that one had to turn sideways to navigate. Someone like Maldynado probably wouldn’t fit through the rows at all.

At the back of the store, Amaranthe and Sicarius found an older woman sitting in a chair, her legs propped on a large desk that was as cluttered as the rest of the store, with cages occupying most of the free space. Inside them, a mixture of long-haired and short-haired-or perhaps long-haired and shaved — rabbits munched on carrots. Amaranthe wondered if the half-chewed vegetables were pickled too.

“Help you?” the woman asked without looking up. Knitting needles dove and darted as they formed a sock.

“Are the chocolate pickles good?” Amaranthe asked. Maybe she could find the woman’s passion, the way she had with Pabov, and encourage chattiness.

“No, I keep them on my shelf because they’re disgusting.”

The woman’s delivery was so deadpan that it took Amaranthe a moment to recognize the sarcasm. Perhaps pickles were not her passion.

“Are there any you’d recommend?”

“They’re all good.”

“Do you have any samples?”

“No.” The woman still hadn’t looked up from her knitting.

I’m getting a sense of why this woman needs three jobs to make ends meet, Amaranthe signed to Sicarius.

Just get the information.

As always, business first with him.

“This seems like a nice town,” Amaranthe said. “I heard you’re the one to ask about acquiring property near the lake.”

With an exasperated sigh, the woman set her knitting down. “You have money?”

“Yes,” Amaranthe said, though she lacked a single ranmya. “Not enough for one of those islands, of course, but I can’t imagine any of them are for sale anyway.”

“No, they’re not.” The Pickle Lady dug in her desk and pulled out a thick notebook with corners and edges of pages sticking out on all sides.

Sicarius shifted, perhaps thinking of simply taking it and leaving, but Amaranthe held up a hand behind her back.

“Are they ever for sale?” Amaranthe asked. “Do you remember anyone buying one?”

“If you can’t afford them, they’re not any of your concern, are they?”

“I suppose not, but I get curious. Don’t you?”

“No.”

Amaranthe was on the verge of waving Sicarius forward to do whatever he had in mind when a bell jangled, announcing another customer’s entrance. Several thuds sounded, heavy feet jogging across the threshold. Maybe not customers after all.

Sicarius pushed Amaranthe behind him, a knife appearing in his hand.

“No killing,” she whispered.

Feet pounded down the aisle. A jar smashed to the floor, glass shattering.

The Pickle Lady jumped to her feet. “Blast your ancestors,” she hollered before anyone came into view, “what’re you doing?”

Before the woman finished yelling, Sicarius had pulled Amaranthe into the aisle adjacent the one with the charging intruders. He clenched his knife between his teeth, gripped the shelving unit with both hands, and heaved. It wobbled for a moment, hundreds of pickles quivering, before succumbing to its fate and toppling. Shelves and jars thudded into people and crashed to the floor amidst startled grunts and cries of pain.

One man had reached the end of the aisle before the unit collapsed, a fellow in a gray uniform and carrying a short sword. It wasn’t the same uniform as Amaranthe had once worn, but she knew an enforcer when she saw one. Sicarius did too. He pounced on the man like that alligator in the swamp. The enforcer hit the desk, and rabbit cages toppled. The Pickle Lady skittered backward. Amaranthe, hoping the woman wouldn’t notice in the chaos, grabbed the notebook.

Sicarius slammed the enforcer’s head into the desk. The man’s eyes crossed, and he slumped to the floor. The Pickle Lady screamed for the enforcers.

In the collapsed aisle, broken glass and shelves shifted as men tried to climb free.

“Leaving would be good.” Amaranthe headed for the door.

Sicarius slipped past her before she could lead the way outside, but she supposed she couldn’t fault him for being protective when she was armed only with a notebook. Thanks to the imperial day of mourning, there weren’t many passersby on the cobblestone street outside, so she and Sicarius slipped into an alley and out onto the next block without anyone noticing. He lifted a hand to stop her, then climbed a drainpipe to the roof of a two-story warehouse next to the public docks. Scouting the neighborhood and seeing if any other enforcers were about, Amaranthe guessed. She eyed a sternwheeler ferry docked at the last pier, wondering if the Forge people might have passed through the area on the way out to their island. More likely, they had arranged private transportation from a private dock.

“Your new friend is loose,” Sicarius said from behind her shoulder.

Amaranthe almost dropped the notebook. “That was fast. I thought you had better tying skills than that.”

Sicarius leveled a cool stare at her. Just when she’d thought they were to the point in their relationship where he’d stop doing that.

“Never mind.” She patted him on the arm. “He was an engineer. They’re crafty.” She waved to the rooftop. “No more enforcers coming?”

“That may be the town’s entire complement. They’re regrouping outside the pickle store.”

“Perhaps we should take to the woods.” Amaranthe lifted the notebook. “And hope the answers we seek are in here.”

“Agreed.”

Amaranthe yawned and squinted at the real-estate notebook, trying to read by the predawn light. She sat on a boulder perched on the water’s edge with gentle waves lapping at the base. From the surrounding trees, birds chirped a variety of songs. The spot would have been peaceful if she weren’t straining her eyes, anxious for the sun to come up so she could read what the pages held.

The day before, Sicarius had insisted on putting a few miles between them and Markworth’s enforcers, and twilight had fallen over the lake before they reached a suitable-to his vigilant eyes-campsite. They’d have to be doubly careful now that the law knew he was around. Perhaps Amaranthe shouldn’t have let her curiosity draw her to that research station. She hoped nobody in the Forge group was paying attention to the goings on in Markworth or keeping tabs on enforcer reports.

Amaranthe held the book up, angling the pages toward the brightest section of the sky.

“Millcrest,” she murmured, starting to be able to pick out words and names. Unfortunately, the unorganized notebook contained far more than recent real estate transactions. Rentals, within-family transfers, and boundary adjustments were all recorded, and not simply for the islands but for the numerous properties in Markworth and all around the lake as well. “This’ll take forever.”

She needn’t read every page, she reminded herself. She could simply skim through and look for names she recognized. Thanks to Books’s research and rooting around in Retta’s head, she knew quite a few Forge members. She could also look for properties purchased in the names of businesses as a way to hide personal ownership. Larocka Myll had done that back in the capital.

Bertvikar. Amaranthe pointed to the name. That was familiar, one of the founders.

“You found something,” Sicarius said from behind her.

Startled by his arrival, Amaranthe almost fell off the boulder. Even after she recovered her balance, her heart pounded in her chest. She gripped the cool stone beneath her and silently cursed her body’s overactive reflexes. She’d known he was about. Was she going to flinch at everything now?

Sicarius did not comment, though he must have noted her response.

Amaranthe cleared her throat and lifted the book, holding the pages close to her face. “Maybe. I recognize this name, but it doesn’t seem to be for a plot of land. It’s a… ” She flicked an annoyed glance to the east, wondering why the sun was taking so long to peek over the distant mountains.

“Should I have searched for spectacles to accompany your costume?” Sicarius asked mildly.

“Absolutely. If I were clearly near-sighted, people might assume I’d picked out that hat on accident. I… ” Amaranthe lifted her head as something dawned on her. “Did you just tease me?”

“Yes.” Sicarius stood beside her boulder, his hands hooked behind his back. “Are you offended?”

“No, no, I approve. I’ve been teasing you for months.”

“I’ve noticed,” he said dryly.

“I’ve been trying to figure out what might elicit a smile from you.”

“Knowing Sespian is safe.”

It would be tough to make that happen; as long as he was the emperor, there’d always be people plotting against him. Though she couldn’t imagine Sespian continuing to accept his position once he learned the truth about his parentage. Maybe Sicarius would be happy, or at least willing to smile, if he and Sespian could walk off somewhere and spend time together, not as emperor and imperial assassin, but as father and son.

“We better work on making that happen then.” Amaranthe handed him the open notebook. “Can you, with your superhuman anatomy, read this page?”

Sicarius accepted the book. “The Bertvikar entry?”

“Yes.”

“Bertvikar acquired the mineral rights in a… freehold estate.” He lifted his eyes.

“Ownership in perpetuity rather than for a fixed time period,” Amaranthe explained while she drummed her fingers on her thigh. Mineral rights? She wasn’t sure whether to find that interesting or dismiss it as a dead-end. Buying mineral rights might be what had brought the lake to a Forge person’s attention in the first place, but she couldn’t imagine all these wealthy people holding their meeting in some dingy mine shaft. “Which island is it, do you know? Those are map coordinates listed in the entry rather than the metes and bounds way of defining things that most of the parcels down here use.”

Sicarius gazed out upon the lake, running calculations in his head perhaps, as he considered the mouth of a river and a few dark islands silhouetted against the predawn sky. He flipped to a map at the beginning of the notebook. “It’s a trapezoid between Forestcrest, Arrowcrest, Marblecrest, and Duncrest Islands.”

“ Between? As in the land under the lake?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve heard of mining dry lake beds, but how would they pull minerals out from under all that water?” Amaranthe scratched her head. “It must have to do with the hot springs. The same power the military academy is researching could push minerals to the surface.”

Sicarius handed her the notebook. “It is unlikely this has anything to do with the meeting.”

“I know. I’ll keep looking. I-did you say Marblecrest Island?”

“Yes.”

Amaranthe switched from drumming her fingers on her thigh to drumming them on the open pages of the book. “Pabov said there was a Marblecrest Island, but I’d dismissed it as being too blatant a choice for a secret meeting, given that they’re Ravido’s allies. Of course, it’s not widely known that Forge has a link to the Marblecrests.” It wasn’t even widely known that Forge existed, Amaranthe reminded herself. “We didn’t know anything about it until a couple of weeks ago. Maybe it’s not such a stretch.”

Sicarius grunted noncommittally.

“You don’t think it’ll be that obvious?”

“No.”

“We might as well check,” Amaranthe said. “How do you feel about taking a morning row out to Marblecrest Island?”

The second grunt was even less enthused than the first.