Conspiracy

Chapter 5

Amaranthe shifted from foot to foot while watching the darkness behind the racks of weapons. The grinding noise and soft clanks were growing louder.

Sicarius was trying to lever his black dagger into a crack to open the door, but it didn’t sit flush with the jamb-the cement slab had slid a couple of inches into an indention. Amaranthe had a feeling they weren’t getting out that way, not unless Books returned and let them out. She also had a feeling that someone up there was keeping him from doing just that. She hoped he was only hiding and hadn’t been captured. Amaranthe cursed herself for standing down there and burbling when they should have been getting in and out as quickly as possible.

Sicarius sheathed his blade. “We’ll look for another way out.”

Amaranthe eyed the shadows behind the racks. “Back there?”

Sicarius was already heading down the aisle with the worktable. The source of the clanking sounds seemed to be coming up an aisle on the opposite side of the rectangular chamber. Amaranthe jogged after Sicarius. Maybe they could bypass… whatever it was. But before she reached the aisle entrance, something metallic rolled out from behind the racks on the opposite side of the room.

Not rolled… It seemed to hover an inch off the ground. The two-foot-wide black semicircle looked like a ball someone had cut in half. Brass shingles plated it like an armadillo’s shell, and four waving antennae-type structures rose from each of its quadrants. Small glowing red balls perched on the tops. The way they moved about gave Amaranthe the impression of eyes scanning the area.

“That’s not your standard farm equipment,” she observed.

The machine turned in place, and all four of the antennae stretched out, the “eyes” staring at her. A single word was engraved on the front of its body: Deklu.

Amaranthe stepped backward, and her heel thumped against the concrete wall. She thought about sprinting down the aisle after Sicarius-he had already moved out of sight-but she hesitated. She should figure out what the device could do first. It didn’t have any obvious weapons protruding from it. Maybe it had another purpose. Maybe-

A hum emanated from the machine, a strange, otherworldly sound that raked across Amaranthe’s nerves like a claws. Her instincts propelled her to lunge into the aisle, putting three rows of racks between herself and the construct.

Four red beams blasted into the cement wall where she’d been standing. Smoke blossomed, and chunks of aggregate flew, cracking against the rifles and racks. As quickly as they had come, the beams winked out. Amaranthe raced down the aisle without waiting to see how much damage the thing had done to the wall. Anything that could shatter cement had to be powerful enough to burn right through a human.

“ Definitely not a farm machine.”

Amaranthe came out of the aisle on the far end and almost crashed into one of four smithy stations spanning the chamber. She lifted a hand to stop herself from tumbling into the closest one. The bricks beneath her palm still radiated heat from the day’s activity, and she craned her head back, eyeing the spot where the chimney met the ceiling. Maybe that was a way out? But they’d seen no smoking vents in the yard, so perhaps not. The smoke was probably diverted somewhere far away.

The construct floated into the entrance of the aisle Amaranthe had raced down. She’d taken her lantern when she ran, leaving the machine in darkness, but its glowing red eyes identified it. She darted to the side, using the racks for cover again.

A red beam knifed out of the darkness, slicing into the space she’d occupied.

“Watch out,” Amaranthe called for Sicarius’s sake. She didn’t see him-only the hint of his light somewhere deeper in the room-but she didn’t want him getting a stray beam in the back. “I made a friend.”

As she spoke, Amaranthe dodged between two of the freestanding forges, jumped over a bin of coal, and came face-to-face with a flywheel so tall it nearly brushed the ceiling. It was part of some towering device for stamping metal. Other machines loomed in the shadows.

The grinding from the ambulatory construct grew louder behind her, and she continued into the maze of machines, picking her way toward the other lantern.

“Find a door yet?” Amaranthe asked. “Because we don’t want to be trapped by-” She rounded a machine and almost ran into a pair of black-clad legs dangling in the air.

Sicarius hung by one hand from the frame of a wooden double door set in the ceiling. His fingers gripped a thin reinforcing board no more than an inch thick, and Amaranthe had no idea how he could hold his body up that way. He held his knife in his other hand and was probing the crack between the two doors.

“It’s secured from above,” Sicarius said, as calmly as if he were standing beside her. “I’m attempting to see if there’s a bar that can be dislodged.”

“I’m not sure there’s time for that.” Amaranthe checked the route behind her. The machines offered some cover, but they were not solid obstacles, so it was possible the construct could fire through them. “I have a… Deklu after me,” she said, naming the word on the machine, though she didn’t know if it was a description or a name or something else entirely.

“Sentry,” Sicarius translated.

“In what language?”

“Mangdorian.”

“Hm, another machine made by that shaman who wanted your head?” If so, Amaranthe wondered anew if Forge might be involved here.

A red beam streaked out of the darkness. A flywheel on a machine deflected part of it, but it also caught the side of Sicarius’s arm.

He dropped to the floor. Amaranthe stepped forward to help him, but he grabbed his lantern and pointed her toward the side of the chamber. Smoke wafted from his sleeve; she couldn’t tell if the beam had struck flesh as well.

Before they had gone more than a few feet, something pounded against the overhead door. Books?

Laughter sounded, muffled by earth and wood. Not Books.

“That’s right ya vagrant thieves,” someone called, “stay down there and die!”

“Thieves,” Amaranthe said as Sicarius led her to the wall. “At the worst, we’re spies.” A wall aisle lay clear for them to run back to the front door if they wished, but she saw little point in that.

“You took some of their ammunition.” Sicarius parted from her side and hopped onto a machine to check the sentry’s progress.

“Just a couple of bullets. That’s more like sampling than thieving, don’t you think?”

“Did that argument work on you when you were an enforcer?” His gaze shifted to the ceiling, searching for weaknesses to exploit perhaps.

“No, but I’ve changed this last year. You’ve influenced me with your law-skirting ways.”

“I see your classification of me as heroic was short-lived.”

The grinding of the sentry drew closer, and Amaranthe glimpsed it moving through the open space beneath the overhead door. Sicarius jumped down from his perch a second before another beam split the air. It burned into the cement wall behind them, hurling pieces to the floor.

With few other options, Amaranthe and Sicarius ran past the forges and toward the front of the chamber.

Sicarius glanced back. “Those beams remind me of technology I saw once before, a long time ago.”

“A long time ago?” Amaranthe stopped before several crates of ammunition. “It looks irritatingly modern and deadly to me. It’s made from the Science, I’d assumed.” She tapped a crate thoughtfully, wondering if whatever was in the cartridges was as flammable as black powder.

“The body perhaps.” Sicarius eyed her tapping fingers. “Causing an explosion might not be the wisest course when we’re beneath so much concrete and earth.”

“How’d you know that’s what I had in mind?” Amaranthe had been about to ask for his help in opening a crate. Despite his warning, she held out a hand for his sturdy dagger.

“I know you.” Sicarius waved her hand away and nodded toward the front of the chamber. “Come, there are kegs of black powder in the middle aisles. It’ll be easier to work with in free form.”

To their rear, the sentry floated out from behind one of the forges, still hovering an inch above the floor. Amaranthe sprinted after Sicarius as its red eyeballs rotated in their direction. She caught the end of the rack and used it to swing herself around the corner ahead of not one but four beams. They shot forth in a scattered high-and-low pattern, taking chunks out of another wall.

“At least that thing’s slow,” Amaranthe said, chasing Sicarius past two rows of racks and down a middle aisle, though she silently acknowledged that the device was fast enough to make it difficult to find time to make a bomb for blowing a hole out of their prison. “We can keep ahead of it,” she said to reassure herself.

An ominous grating sounded at the back of the chamber. Another gate being opened, and another sentry rolling out? Or something else?

“Spoke too soon,” Amaranthe said.

Sicarius stopped before a series of upright kegs and pried the lid off one.

“Blessed ancestors,” Amaranthe said, “there’s enough here to blow up this whole facility.”

“Unwise while we’re inside.”

“I know, I was just-”

The grinding rasp of the sentry grew louder as it approached their row. Sicarius grabbed Amaranthe’s arm and headed for the opposite end. She snatched a fistful of black powder before he dragged her away.

They ran out of the aisle on the far end before the sentry appeared at the front and shot at them again. As soon as they turned the corner, Amaranthe heard the grinding tread of a second device somewhere amongst the machines. She and Sicarius crept to the worktable wall again and started to turn up the aisle, intending to circle back to the one with powder once the first sentry had gone down it, but it was waiting for them at the end of that row, all four crimson eyes focused in their direction.

Amaranthe stumbled in her rush to jump back under cover. Two of the eyeballs flared into burning embers, and the beams might have caught her in the chest, but Sicarius pulled her to safety.

“Is it just me or are they getting smarter?” Amaranthe whispered, heart thumping against her ribs.

The second sentry rolled out from behind a flywheel, its wavering antennae in view above one of the forges.

“I’ll distract them.” Sicarius opened her hand and took her fistful of black powder. “You make the explosives.”

Amaranthe knew that was best, but she remembered the savage wound he’d received once before when distracting something dangerous for her, the deadly soul construct in Larocka Myll’s house. She had to force herself to nod. “All right. Be careful.”

He was already slipping past the forge toward the second sentry.

“That’s not being careful,” Amaranthe whispered.

Sicarius acknowledged her with a lift of the fist that held the black powder. Amaranthe grumbled to herself, but resolved to focus on her half of the problem.

She peeked back into the aisle closest to the wall. A blur of red streaked toward her. She jerked her head back as the beam cut into the corner of the rack, inches from her nose. The metal support bar melted before her eyes. The top corner of the unit crumpled, and a handful of rifles spilled onto the floor. On a whim, she snatched one, though she feared firearms might not work on the sentries. Using a few of the cartridges she’d pocketed earlier, she fumbled through loading the rifle. She hoped she wasn’t putting the bullets in backward.

One last time, she ducked her head into the aisle where the first sentry waited. Predictably it fired its beams at her. She tiptoed back over to the row that held the kegs of black powder.

A boom shattered the stillness.

Amaranthe winced and gripped one of the racks for support. “What was that?”

“The beams will ignite black powder,” Sicarius observed with bland detachment.

Amaranthe snorted. That she could have guessed, especially after seeing the first sentry melt the pole. “Did you destroy it?”

“The explosion blew off an antenna, but its armor protected it from further damage.”

Realizing Amaranthe had given away her position by speaking, she decided not to head down the powder aisle yet. She trotted across to the opposite side of the chamber, grabbed a fancy two-barreled pistol off a rack, and tossed it down the aisle next to the wall. It clattered hard onto the cement floor.

She waited around the corner to see if the noise drew the first sentry. As she crouched there, she began to feel silly. As far as she knew, the things had no ears. Why assume they hunted by sound?

Amaranthe was about to pull away when the familiar grinding reached her own ears. It was coming. She closed her eyes, listening. Just before she thought it would appear at the end of the wall aisle, she eased backward and headed for the powder row.

“I’ll try to get them both to one end of the chamber,” Sicarius called from a nearby row.

Not wanting to give away her position, Amaranthe didn’t respond, though she thanked him silently. He’d have his hands full if they were both in one area with him.

She rushed to the powder kegs, pausing only to grab a couple of canvas sacks from a stack on a shelf. Nothing so handy as a scooping cup rested nearby, so she shoveled powder into the bags by hand.

Cracks and thuds came from the front of the chamber, cement shattering and shards being flung. Amaranthe shoveled powder faster. When she had two full bags, she grabbed a third, and cut it into strips. She tied the strips together into two long lengths and fastened them around the tops of the bags. Unfortunately, her shortsighted enforcer academy instructors hadn’t included classes on how to make explosives. She could only hope her handiwork would be effective-and that she wouldn’t blow herself up. She sacrificed her light to pour the kerosene out of her lantern and douse the fuse.

Blackness descended upon her aisle. Up front, a single light glowed somewhere to the side, its illumination dulled by the cement dust clouding the air. The light wasn’t fluctuating or moving about, and Amaranthe hoped that meant Sicarius had set it down in a central location, not that he’d been hit.

“I’ve got two done,” Amaranthe called. “I’m going to try and put them where they’ll take out part of the ceiling.”

“Understood,” came Sicarius’s response, somehow still calm, though dodging those beams must be frazzling.

Amaranthe felt her way down her aisle, deeper into the darkness. Cement cracked behind her, and enough pieces banged to the ground that she suspected at least a partial cave-in. Maybe the sentries would destroy enough of the ceiling for her and Sicarius to escape without explosives.

She found the brick forges by feel and eased between two. With the full bags pressed against her chest, she groped her way toward the big machine with the towering flywheel. She had a spot in mind for placing the powder, but groaned and halted. With her lantern out, she had no way to light the fuse.

“Don’t kick over that lantern,” she called out. “I’m going to need that flame in a moment.”

Amaranthe pressed onward. She’d set the bag into place first and then go for it.

“I see. It’s the-” The sound of rubble raining down interrupted Sicarius’s words. He coughed before saying again, “It’s the lantern you’re worried about.”

Amaranthe smiled. If he could make a joke, he must be managing sufficiently up there.

She found the flywheel by clunking her knee against it. Grumbling, she leaned the rifle against it, left one bag of powder on the floor, and climbed the wheel with the second in hand. There were only a couple of inches of space between the top of the machine and the ceiling. She stuffed the bag into the gap and unraveled the fuse so that it hung to the floor. If it hadn’t been cavern dark at her end of the chamber, she might have jumped off, but she took care to climb back down carefully.

When she turned to grab the rife, four blazing crimson eyes stared at her.

“Bloody ancestors!” Amaranthe blurted and dropped to her belly.

Beams shot out, burning through the air inches above her head. She grabbed the rifle and scrambled behind the machine. She tried to find the second bag of black powder as she fled, but couldn’t find it and wasn’t about to go back. That cursed thing was only a few feet away. And she wagered it could see a lot better in the dark than she could.

The grinding clanks approached. Amaranthe rounded the back of the stamping machine, using it for cover. Through the gaps in the flywheel, she glimpsed red eyes burning in the darkness as the sentry rolled past the front.

“Did you lose something?” Amaranthe shouted.

A couple of heartbeats passed before Sicarius answered, “No.”

“Then there’re three now.”

Amaranthe rose from her knees to a low crouch. She circled to the left, trying to keep the machine between her and the sentry.

It paused, and one of those eyes swiveled. A beam sizzled through a gap in the machine. The metal deflected part of the attack, and it missed Amaranthe, but it sliced into the nearby brick of a forge. Shards pelted her back and bare neck.

The sentry rolled back into motion, and she moved again. She’d come all the way around and almost tripped over the discarded bag of powder. The darkness was disorienting, and she wished the glowing eyes put out light. Something warm trickled down the back of her neck. Blood.

“I’ve been able to cut off several of the antennae,” Sicarius called.

Amaranthe was reaching down for the bag when his words came. She left it, instead taking cover behind a forge, and she lifted the rifle to her shoulder. If his fancy knife could cut the antennae, maybe one of these fancy bullets could do the same thing.

Amaranthe leaned out, and as soon as one of the red eyes came into sight, she fired. In the dark, she could only estimate where her target lay, but her shot was true, and the crimson ball fell to the ground with a soft clink. The glow winked out.

“Hah!” Amaranthe said.

Her victory was short-lived, for the three remaining eyes swiveled to point at her.

She ducked behind the forge, hoping the solid construction offered enough protection. Three beams chiseled into the bricks, spraying shrapnel and dust everywhere.

Staying in a low crouch, Amaranthe scrambled around the forge, wanting to catch the sentry from behind while it was still firing at her original position. She made it to the other side and raised the rifle to shoot, only to have nothing happen when she pulled the trigger.

She cursed under her breath. There’d been some kind of loading lever, hadn’t there? To push the next round into the barrel? She fumbled for it, but the sentry was already spinning toward her. She dove across empty ground and skittered behind the machine with the flywheel again.

A beam lanced out, but missed her. It hit something though, for the scent of burning kerosene wafted into the air.

Amaranthe’s eyes widened. Her fuse.

She bolted back toward the forges. Her hip clipped one, and she gasped but didn’t slow down. Hands outstretched, she groped her way down one of the aisles toward Sicarius’s lantern.

“Boom coming!” she yelled.

Before the last word escaped her mouth, light flared behind Amaranthe, and an explosion roared through the chamber. The ground heaved beneath her running feet. Around her, the racks rattled and wobbled, hurling weapons off the shelves. Behind her, thumps and bangs sounded as earth and cement sloughed to the ground.

She raised her arms, deflecting the weapons flying from the racks, and she sprinted the last few meters to come out in the front of the chamber. She almost tumbled into Sicarius’s arms. He caught her and grabbed his lantern. His two sentries were rolling about, their antennae chopped down to stumps, their eyes missing. The constructs kept bumping into piles of sod and cement on the floor.

“Emperor’s eye teeth,” someone outside snarled.

“Watch out,” another said. “Don’t get too close to the edge.”

The voices were no longer muffled, and a draft of cold air whispered against Amaranthe’s cheek. She took note of Sicarius’s lantern and said, “There’s another bag of powder wrapped up with a fuse. If it didn’t explode when the first one went off…”

Sicarius cut off the lantern and placed it in her hand. “Stay back for a minute. They’ll be watching the hole.”

He headed for the shadows made by flames dancing on the other end of the chamber. Though she remembered mostly metal in that machine area, there must have been a few things capable of catching fire.

She followed him, navigating over and around heaps of rubble. She passed the workbench where he’d disassembled the rifle and snorted. They could have left it disassembled. There was no hiding that they’d been there now.

Voices drifted to her from outside, but the men were being quieter now. Lying in wait.

When Amaranthe reached the first forge, a gaping ten-foot-wide hole in the ceiling came into view. A set of metal reinforcing bars had survived the blast and stretched across the gap, but they were far enough apart that she and Sicarius ought to be able to wriggle out. Lanterns burned somewhere above the hole, highlighting singed tufts of grass dangling over the rim. On the floor below, scattered pieces of coal that had flown from one of the bins were burning or smoldering.

A shadow moved above the hole, but the men were careful not to step into view. Amaranthe imagined them up there, on their bellies, rifles aimed at the gap, ready to shoot anything that came out.

She looked for the machine with the flywheel, figuring Sicarius would be there, hunting for the other bag of powder. She almost didn’t recognize it. The giant wheel was warped and had toppled against one of the forges. What was left of the forges, that was. Two of them were nothing more than heaps of rubble.

Something brushed her arm, and Amaranthe jumped.

“I found it,” Sicarius whispered.

“Good. We can light it, throw it up there for a distraction, and sneak out under the cover of the smoke.”

Sicarius considered her for a moment, but all he said was, “Stay by the wall.”

While he darted in to pick up one of the burning coals on the flat of his dagger, Amaranthe watched the hole, making sure nobody leaned in. Sicarius held the smoldering ember to the fuse. He had cut it much shorter than the one she’d originally made, so when he lit it, Amaranthe gulped, realizing how quickly it would burn down.

In one sure movement, Sicarius tossed the bag toward the hole. If it bumped into one of the bars and dropped back down…

But Sicarius’s aim was better than that. The powder-filled bag lofted between the bars, sailing above ground toward the earth outside the hole.

Guns fired. It sounded like an entire army out there.

The powder exploded with a boom. The charge wasn’t as powerful or loud as the first, but the ground still trembled beneath Amaranthe’s feet, and she had to brace herself against the wall. More rubble rained down around them, though fortunately small pieces. Smoke filled the air outside. Men coughed and cursed.

Sicarius wasn’t watching the hole; he was watching her. Amaranthe tilted her head, expecting him to ask her something. For a second, it looked like he might, but then he firmed his jaw and simply said, “Give me two minutes, then follow.”

Before she could ask what he meant to do, he bounded on top of one of the machines and launched himself toward the hole as easily as a squirrel navigating trees. He slipped between two bars and disappeared into the smoke.

Amaranthe waited, anticipating the sound of gunfire. Concern for Sicarius formed a lump in her throat. As seconds passed and the silence went on, her concern shifted to what Sicarius was doing.

She climbed on top of the machine closest to the hole, hurrying now, her own safety forgotten. She had said sneak out. If he was up there killing everybody…

Smoke stung her eyes before she stuck her head through the bars. She couldn’t see anything and hesitated before thrusting her arms through. It hadn’t been two minutes. It might not have been one. Someone standing up there with a rifle aimed at the hole could decide to shoot, even if he didn’t see more than an indistinct shape.

A breeze whispered through, stirring the smoke. It brought the scent of freshly spilled blood to Amaranthe’s nose, and her gut clenched. With unfailing certainty, she knew nobody was going to shoot her. Nobody was left alive to do so.

She pulled herself through the bars and had no more than stood when a dark shadow strode out of the smoke.

“They’re dead?” Amaranthe asked.

“Yes.”

“What happened to sneak out?” she asked in a harsh whisper, though there was probably no need to whisper at that point.

Cursed ancestors, she hadn’t wanted to kill anyone. She hadn’t even wanted to leave a sign that they’d been there. All she’d wanted to do was look around, see what was going on, and then leave without anyone the wiser. Or the deader. Curse it all, why didn’t anything ever go as planned?

Sicarius took her arm and guided her away from the hole. A numbness grew in her chest, and all Amaranthe managed to say was, “We need to find Books.”

“Yes,” Sicarius repeated and kept walking.

They were trying to kill us, Amaranthe told herself, attempting to justify his actions, but she sneered as soon as the thought passed. Of course they were trying to kill us, her mind countered. We were trespassing on their property and, for all they knew, stealing months of their work.

It was illegal to own firearms, she reminded herself. Making them had to be even worse. Whatever these people had been doing, they weren’t guiltless. Except Sicarius hadn’t likely killed the masterminds behind… whatever this plot was exactly. He’d killed a bunch of men who’d probably only hired on because they needed the pay. Still, even if they had been simple workers, they had chosen to get involved in manufacturing firearms. They had to have known their work was against the law.

Amaranthe moaned and grabbed her head with both hands. She wanted to yell at her brain to shut up, and might have, but Sicarius’s presence stayed her tongue. Only crazy out-of-control people shouted at themselves, and she wasn’t going to be either, not in front of anyone.

A fence materialized out of the darkness, the one by the shed where they’d hidden that morning. Amaranthe gripped the cold, rough wood and leaned against one of the supports. She looked back the way they had come.

Up the road, the farmhouse remained, its shutters pulled tight. Lantern light glowed in an upstairs room, but there was no sign that anyone was going to come out and look at what had happened or search for those who had done it. The bunkhouse was dark and silent. All of the workers must have come outside, or perhaps those left inside were too afraid to venture out. The smoke over the hole had cleared. A few lanterns burning near the carriage house, providing light enough to hint at unmoving bodies in the grass. A coyote pack yipped in the distance, their high-pitched yells sending a shiver down Amaranthe’s spine. The unwelcome thought that they smelled a meal came to her mind.

“You knew I wouldn’t want this,” Amaranthe whispered. She remembered that long look Sicarius had given her before jumping out of the hole and the way she’d thought he might ask her something. He’d known then that he meant to kill everyone out there, and he’d known she wouldn’t wish it. Yet he’d done it anyway. “Why would you choose to kill them?”

“Sneaking past them wasn’t practical. Smoke offers camouflage, yes, but not cover. With those rapid-fire weapons, they could have hit us by shooting blindly.”

Yes, true, but… “Why couldn’t you have knocked them out? Why’d you have to…?”

“Rendering a man unconscious takes longer than killing him.”

“Oh, dear ancestors, that’s a sage piece of advice, now isn’t it?” Amaranthe’s voice had grown loud and high-pitched. Calm, she told herself. Yelling at Sicarius wouldn’t change anything. He was who he was. Had she truly been thinking him heroic earlier? She rubbed her face with both hands. Moisture dampened her fingertips. Tears for the dead? No, she hadn’t even known those men, and they had been ready to shoot at her. Tears of frustration, she decided and dashed them away. Time to find Books and move on. Though she couldn’t resist one last question, “How come you could sneak around well enough to kill people but not to escape?”

For a moment, Sicarius said nothing. He simply stood next to her, straight as a ramrod, with his hands clasped behind his back. Why the silence now? Was he sparing her some truth?

“I had to clear the way for two,” Sicarius said.

Oh. So, maybe he would have been able to sneak out if it’d just been him, but he had to think about her.

“I…” Amaranthe swallowed. “I would have been willing to accept the risk of getting a stray bullet in my backside if it meant not slaying everyone.”

“I was not willing to accept that risk,” Sicarius said.

So, he’d done this for her. Amaranthe closed her eyes. The idea of him watching her back, protecting her, had warmed her when he’d been saving her from booby traps. Killing people on her behalf wasn’t quite as endearing.

“All right.” Amaranthe couldn’t bring herself to thank him, not for this.

“They weren’t enforcers,” Sicarius said.

Amaranthe stared at him. Of course they weren’t enforcers. It was a strange thing to say. Unless… Oh. He was referencing the time he had killed her old partner and several other enforcers to help her and Maldynado with an ambush. She had been furious at him for that. Now… now, she knew what he was. She couldn’t walk around with a lion and then be surprised when it bit someone.

“I know they weren’t,” Amaranthe said, wondering if he could understand that she hated being responsible for anyone’s death, stalwart citizens or not. Yes, she decided, thinking again of that look. He understood. He had known she would be upset with his choice, but hadn’t believed there’d been time to come up with a better one. So be it. “Let’s find Books.”

Amaranthe pushed away from the fence, intending to help him search, but he lifted a hand.

“Stay. I’ll be able to search faster alone.”

She flopped back against the fence again and tried not to find his statement insulting. Sicarius disappeared into the darkness.

Long moments passed before a rumble started up from the direction of the carriage house. One of the vehicles that had been used in the weapons delivery rolled outside.

Amaranthe moved to the side of the shed, so she wouldn’t be visible from the road. Maybe Sicarius hadn’t killed all of the men, and the remaining ones had sneaked out to escape. It was too dark to see who occupied the cab, and the tarp on the back hid the cargo area from view too.

When the lorry drew even with the shed, it stopped. Amaranthe sank low in the shadows and found the hilt of her sword.

The door opened. “Amaranthe?” came Books’s low voice, barely audible over the rumbling engine.

Ah. And that must be Sicarius in the driver’s seat. Yes, killing people wasn’t enough of a crime. They should steal a vehicle too.

Amaranthe walked toward the lorry and resolved to keep her sarcasm to herself. It was an abysmal night, but she couldn’t fault Sicarius’s logic. They needed to get back to the city, and it wasn’t as if those men needed a vehicle any more. At least Books sounded like he was uninjured.

He climbed out as she approached and held the door open, offering her the seat beside Sicarius. She wondered if that meant he had seen the pile of bodies and didn’t want to sit next to the person responsible.

“What happened?” Amaranthe asked him before getting in. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” Books said, “and I’m sorry I didn’t get the door open before they charged in. Two of the men came running out of the bunkhouse, and I barely had time to thump the floor in warning and hide behind the lorries. They knew someone was down there and ran to pull some lever to release… the hounds, that’s what they called them. Did you trip over some kind of alarm?”

Amaranthe thought of the darts that had shot out of the wall, the darts she triggered. Emperor’s warts, she truly was responsible for all this carnage. If she’d been less impulsive and let Sicarius find a way to disarm the trap, none of the killing would have happened. They might have walked in and out without anyone ever knowing.

“Thank you, Books,” Amaranthe said numbly. “I’m glad you weren’t injured.” She climbed into the lorry and sat next to Sicarius. Something rustled beneath her boot. She patted the cab floor and found a crinkled newspaper. In case it was recent, she smoothed the crinkles and laid it on the seat for Books. “Let’s get going.”

“Back to the city, correct?” Sicarius asked as Books climbed in.

Amaranthe wanted to say yes-the sooner they left the country and this night behind the better-but hearing the matron of the farmhouse speak of a female enforcer had left Amaranthe wanting to investigate further.

“Do you know where Ag District Three’s enforcer headquarters is?” she asked.

“No.” Sicarius’s tone suggested he did not want to know.

“It’s on the way back to the city. I’d like to visit Sergeant Yara.”

Sicarius turned on the seat to face her fully. “Explain.” Amazing how much displeasure one clipped word could evoke.

Amaranthe told him what she and Books had overheard from the farmhouse porch.

“ Explain why that warrants a side trip,” Sicarius said.

“Should I step outside?” Books asked.

The lorry was still idling, and Amaranthe figured they shouldn’t linger on the farm. “No,” she said at the same time as Sicarius said, “Yes.”

“I see,” Books said. “I believe I’ll listen to the person with the most knives.” He eased out of the cab and walked several paces away from the lorry.

“We’ve been delayed for long enough,” Sicarius said. “We need to return to the city to ensure we’re in time to catch the last train to Forkingrust. I’m not driving anywhere else.”

“Sergeant Yara was useful to us once,” Amaranthe said, “and she may be again. If she was the one out here, investigating things, she may know more about the weapons manufacturing scheme. What if this isn’t the only facility? What if they’re all over the place out here, funneling supplies into the city?”

Sicarius, she reminded herself in the silence that followed her questions, wouldn’t care about this jaunt to investigate weapons. He was focused on Sespian.

“Remember the note she sent us?” Amaranthe asked softly so Books wouldn’t hear. “Yara has seen Sespian more recently than either of us. She wrote of advisors being present when she met with him, so she may know more about the pressures being applied to him. If we can get more information about how he’s doing before we attempt to kidnap him, we’ll have more to go on. Right now, we don’t even know if he genuinely wants our help or if he’s setting us up for a trap.”

Seconds floated past as Sicarius continued to face her, but she thought his gaze felt less hard, less intense. He finally released her from his stare and sat back in the seat.

“You should be negotiating with these Forge people instead of sneaking about,” Sicarius said.

“What? Why?” Amaranthe asked, startled by the topic shift.

“Because talking people into things is your gift.”

Despite the bleakness of the night’s events, Amaranthe managed a faint smile. “Does this mean you’ll drive after all?”