The assassin curse

Part I

The afternoon sun beat onto ducks floating in the lake shallows and turtles basking on logs. Amaranthe Lokdon would have turned herself over to bounty hunters for a chance to float or bask. Instead, out in the middle of an inlet, she struggled to keep her head from going under as waves sloshed into her mouth and eyes.

Using both hands, she held a ten-pound brick in front of her face while her burning thighs rotated beneath the surface, kicking furiously to keep her afloat. Barely. Despite the cold lake water, sweat dribbled down her face. Her leaden arms ached and threatened to let the brick dip below the surface.

A few feet to her side, Sicarius, notorious assassin and fellow outlaw, held a heavier brick higher out of the water. No hint of strain flushed his cheeks, and a calm, expressionless facade masked his thoughts. He didn’t disturb the water with his kicks, and neither his face nor his short blond hair were damp. The summer heat might be enough to wilt normal men’s ambitions toward physical activity, but apparently this miniscule workout wasn’t enough to make him sweat.

Though Amaranthe appreciated his fitness and dedication to his training, there were times when she wished he were less perfect. More… human.

Feeling all too human herself, she groaned and ducked her head beneath the water to cool her face. The brief reprieve felt good, but she was careful not to let the brick dip below the surface. If she failed to keep it up there for long enough, he would make her to start over. For the third time.

Amaranthe was in charge of their group of mercenaries, but she bowed to him in manners of training. She wasn’t sure whose idea that had been, but she was beginning to regret it.

“How much… longer?” she asked when she came up.

“You grow weary?” Sicarius asked.

“Of course not.” Amaranthe tried not to pant or gasp as she spoke, or at least not to sound as if she were panting or gasping. “I’m just… concerned that… if we’re out here too long… we’ll get sunburnt. A bad burn… could inhibit our… ability to train tomorrow.” There, he wouldn’t see right through that. Of course not.

“It’s been three minutes.”

Dear ancestors, was that all? “Three minutes already? This isn’t… a very challenging exercise, is it?” A wave shoveled water down Amaranthe’s throat, and she sputtered, almost letting the brick drop before she recovered.

“Shall we switch weights?” Sicarius held his brick out toward her.

Why she always insisted on bravado with him, she didn’t know. Some deluded feeling that he would be more impressed with her that way, she supposed. “I wouldn’t want to deprive you of your training. It’s-”

A great crash boomed, drowning out Amaranthe’s words. At first, she thought it sounded like metal ramming against metal, but then a thunderous crack of wood echoed, like a tree snapping in two during an ice storm.

She lowered the brick and scanned the nearby shoreline. This far south of the city, rocks and trees dominated the coast with the land being too craggy for farming or building. Roads and the main railway to the capital did cut through the terrain, and she wondered if there might have been a train crash, or perhaps someone had run a steam lorry into a tree. Unfortunately, she couldn’t see rails or roads from the secluded inlet.

Amaranthe looked south, thinking a boat coming out the mouth of the river might have crashed into the rocks around Darkcrest Isle. The newspapers reported such incidents more often than one would think, and the island was supposedly haunted. Though she put little stock in such notions, the craggy landmass, gone wild with evergreens and brambles, did have a tendency to appear dark and brooding even on a sunny day.

Sicarius’s gaze was toward the mainland though, and he pointed at a hillock dotted with pine trees.

“Is that smoke?” Amaranthe asked.

“Yes.”

“A wreck? Shall we check it out?”

“It is unlikely that it involves us. Your brick.” He had not lowered his, of course.

Amaranthe hid a grimace. Her shoulders ached at the notion of holding that thing out of the water any longer. After all, they had swum two miles before this. Thanks to a couple of her men complaining about the difficulty of training due to the heat, she had been inspired to suggest water workouts. Her mistake.

“It could involve us,” Amaranthe said, smiling. “What if someone is in dire need of aid? Some warrior-caste patron or soldier on an errand for the Imperial Barracks? If we rushed to the assistance of someone like that, he could put in a good word for us with the emperor, a word that might help in our goals of exoneration. What do you think?”

“I think you seek to cut out the last half hour of your training.”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Amaranthe flipped onto her side and stroked toward the mainland with the brick on her hip. She was tempted to drop the thing, but he’d probably make her fetch it.

A boom roared through the hills, its power so great it sent ripples across the lake.

Amaranthe gaped. Where a gray wisp had floated into the blue sky before, great back plumes now wafted upward.

“That was more than a crash,” she said.

“Catastrophic boiler failure,” Sicarius said.

Despite his indifference, he was swimming after her. Good. If Amaranthe chanced upon a platoon of soldiers, they might be less interested in the fact that she had good intentions and more concerned about the fact that she was an outlaw with a death mark on her head. Sicarius’s head was even more wanted than hers-to the degree of a million ranmyas instead of ten thousand-but he could handle a platoon of soldiers, probably wearing nothing except his soggy trousers.

When they reached the shore, Sicarius put on his black boots and started strapping on his ample collection of daggers and throwing knives. The small armory never left him without the right tool for the job-a job that had been assassinating people until Amaranthe recruited him for her team. The dagger that rode on his right hip had a plain black handle and a matching blade made from some alloy she’d never seen anywhere else. He’d never told her the story of where he’d found it, but she’d seen him cut through rock, bone, and even metal with it.

Amaranthe stripped out of her smallclothes and tugged on dry trousers and a sleeveless shirt she had left folded on a rock. She didn’t worry about modesty. Sicarius had seen her nude before, and unfortunately he never seemed inclined to ogle her. She, on the other hand, had to make a point not to stare when he was walking about shirtless, with water snaking down his lean, muscled chest…

Amaranthe realized he had finished donning all of his gear and was waiting for her. Blushing, she stuffed her feet into her boots, tugged her wet brown hair back into a ponytail, belted on her short sword, and grabbed her repeating crossbow.

Sicarius took the lead, choosing a route that wound through trees instead of following the path. They passed the road, railway tracks, and the running trail that circled the lake without seeing anyone. Perhaps because sane people didn’t wander about in the late afternoon heat. Amaranthe was already sweating, and she was glad they didn’t tramp uphill for long before Sicarius raised a hand and dropped into a crouch behind a stout pine.

Amaranthe knelt by a stump a couple of feet away, crinkling her nose at the scent of scorched metal and burning wood. Flames, visible through the trees ahead of them, licked at branches and devoured brown needles carpeting the rocky terrain.

“We’d better not get too close,” Amaranthe said. “A forest fire is a possibility this time of year.”

Sicarius was gazing off to the left. Amaranthe leaned around her stump and caught her breath. The remains of a bipedal army steam tramper lay on its side, dwarfing the surrounding ferns and logs. The explosion had torn its boxy chest open, leaving metal peeled back like flower petals.

“That, on the other hand, shouldn’t be a possibility,” she muttered, referring both to the destruction and the location of the machine. Fort Urgot was ten miles north of their position, at the opposite end of the lake, where the soldiers had fields and special tracks for practicing maneuvers with their steam vehicles. They didn’t take them for strolls into the woods.

Sicarius lifted a finger to his lips, then signed, We are not alone, using the hand code one of their team members had taught them.

Soldiers? Amaranthe signed back and pointed to the wreck. She wondered if anyone could have survived that if they had been inside at the time of explosion.

Sicarius shook his head once. It could have meant no, or that he didn’t know. He was always hard to read. Before she could ask for clarification, he waved for her to stay put and disappeared into the foliage.

Amaranthe intended to be good and wait for him to return from scouting, but a breeze rattled the branches, and a beam of sunlight caused something to glint amongst the needles. She managed to ignore it for almost five seconds before easing out from behind the stump and creeping over to take a look.

A gleaming metal… thing lay on the ground, half-buried by dead leaves and needles. It was a weapon of some sort, but nothing she recognized. It had the length and breadth of a canon, but the barrel was divided on the inside. Two bronze wheels with spokes were smashed beneath it, one warped into uselessness. A metal lever-a crank? — dangled from the back of the barrel.

Something touched her shoulder, and Amaranthe jumped to her feet, spinning in the air. As she came down, her crossbow came up, finger finding the trigger.

Sicarius stood there, and he caught her weapon before her instincts aimed it anywhere that would have threatened him. It was a little disheartening how easily he did that, but as long as he was on her side, it didn’t matter. A blush warmed her cheeks though; she shouldn’t have been so entranced that it was easy to sneak up on her.

Find anything? Amaranthe signed the words in a rush, so he wouldn’t have time to point out her deficiencies.

He tilted his head toward the wreckage and strode in that direction.

“That’s what I like about you, Sicarius,” Amaranthe murmured. “You don’t over-explain things and ruin the mystery.”

He paused at the smoldering wreckage and pointed inside the toppled steam tramper body before moving aside so Amaranthe could look.

Though she had never ridden in one of the towering machines, she had seen them back in her days as an enforcer, when she could openly jog past Fort Urgot for her morning runs. There was a protected seat up top where a sniper could fire in three hundred and sixty degrees, while the inside held a cramped bench for two soldiers, a pilot and an artillery man, who worked a quad breach-loader with shells the size of cannon balls. The metal body rode on two articulating legs with duck-like feet that could maneuver across all sorts of terrain.

That was how it was supposed to look anyway. With holes blown through two walls due to the ruptured boiler, this one was such a mess that Amaranthe struggled to identify parts. The only thing she could tell for certain was that it had a lot of cargo, mostly weapons and none of them familiar. She pulled out a rifle, thinking it the most normal-looking find, but even it was more advanced than the percussion-cap firearms she had seen. She thumbed open a latch under the hammer to find an empty chamber.

“They’re prototypes.” Sicarius must have decided whoever had crashed the tramper had moved out of the area, for he spoke instead of signing. “The army has been working on cartridge ammunition.”

“Cartridge?” Amaranthe peered about the inside of the tramper, looking for… whatever a cartridge was.

“Bullets, powder, and primer in one shell. Come.”

Before she could digest the implications, he led her around the tramper. A man in black army fatigues lay prone, blood saturating the brown needles and dry dirt beneath him.

“He died in the explosion?” Amaranthe asked, thinking it must be the driver. Had he been stealing a bunch of priceless weapons, including the tramper, to sell to someone?

“No. His throat was cut.”

“Really?” She supposed it was wrong of her to find her interest piqued at the idea of murdered bodies, but if there was some grand scheme going on here, thwarting it could lead to the right kind of recognition for her and Sicarius.

“Two people walked that way.” Sicarius pointed south, toward the shoreline. “They were trying to hide their tracks.”

“But not skillfully enough to fool you, eh?” Amaranthe extended a hand, indicating he could lead. “Have I mentioned recently that I’m glad you’re on my side?”

“Compliments will not get you out of the last half hour of training,” Sicarius said and strode down the hill.

She groaned. “ Why I’m glad you’re on my side, I’m not entirely sure.”

They eased down a hillside that only a goat could have navigated without slipping. A goat and Sicarius. For her part, Amaranthe did her best to keep from knocking pebbles free, pebbles that skittered and bounced down to the trail below, making far too much noise on the way.

Sicarius paused now and then to check some sign on the ground, but they reached the lake again without seeing anyone. The trail wound past a vacant log cabin with more moss on the roof than shingles before stopping at a beach. Sicarius lifted a hand and crouched behind a copse of trees near the water. A rickety dock stretched into the lake where waves glittered like candles beneath the low-hanging afternoon sun. The brightness almost made Amaranthe miss the rowboat gliding across the water toward…

She groaned again. “Darkcrest Isle?”

Two figures sat in the boat, one male and one female. The man rowed while the woman kept watch, her face toward the mainland rather than the island. Did she know Amaranthe and Sicarius were following? She didn’t seem to be looking at them directly, rather her face shifted slowly from side to side, eyes scanning the shoreline, but there was a wary tenseness to her posture, as if she knew someone was tracking them.

“Nurians,” Sicarius murmured.

Amaranthe threw him a sharp look. “How can you tell?”

From this far away, she could see they had black hair and bronze skin, but most Turgonians had dark hair and olive to bronze skin. Even Sicarius, with blond locks that were rare in the empire, had the skin coloring of an imperial citizen.

“Almond-shaped eyes,” Sicarius said.

Amaranthe squinted, but without a spyglass she couldn’t make out facial features, especially with the boat drawing ever farther away. The pair wore Turgonian factory-made clothing rather than the flamboyantly colored silks she associated with Nurians, but they were in the heart of the empire, thousands of miles from their homeland. Of course, they would have disguises.

“I know you’re better than me at… everything,” Amaranthe whispered, “but must you even have superior eyesight to mine? I’ve been wondering if you’re entirely human.” Even as she spoke, her mind was spinning at the possibility of Nurians. The empire had spurned the development of the mental sciences in favor of technology. It had used that technology to dominate the Turgonian continent and thrust back Nurian attempts at infiltration. The empire’s ironclad steamships and black powder weapons had equaled the otherworldly resources those western wizards commanded, but what if Nuria got some of that technology and started developing it alongside their mental skills? Surely that would tip the scales in their favor.

Sicarius bumped her arm, and she tore her gaze from the boat. He held a collapsible spyglass in his hand.

“Oh, I see. You’re not inhuman; you just pack better than I do.”

“Yes, are you scheming a plan?” He nodded toward the island. The two Nurians had hit land and were dragging the boat ashore.

“ Now you’re interested in things, eh?”

“They represent a threat to… the empire.”

Amaranthe smiled. She knew he cared about the emperor, not the empire, but she wouldn’t correct him. “They took the only boat. I guess we could swim over after dark and see what they’re up to. Is someone meeting them there to pick them up, or do they have another craft waiting? Their first plan must have been to steal the steam tramper, and maybe march it all the way to the Gulf where they could find a ride back home on a merchant ship.”

“You want to set foot on Darkcrest Isle?”

“Yes…” She frowned at him. He was the most unflappable man she knew. Surely, he didn’t believe the stories about the place. “Are you concerned the island is haunted?”

Sicarius gazed steadily at her, his face an unreadable mask. “Not haunted, cursed.”

If it had been anybody else, she would have laughed. “What?”

“You’re familiar with the public story, that a warrior-caste family lived there two-hundred years ago and everyone on the island was slain during a surprise attack on the city.”

“Supposedly leaving restless-and angry-ancestor spirits roaming the island. Yes, I’ve heard the…” Amaranthe frowned as she considered his words. “What do you mean public story?”

“Are you aware that forty years ago, Azon Amar, a famous warrior mage and assassin from Nuria killed Emperor Morvaktu?”

“Uhm, Emperor Morvaktu, father to Raumesys, and supposed father of current emperor, Sespian-” they both knew why she said supposed, but even out here, alone, she felt compelled to keep the details vague, “-died in a hunting accident.” Or so the history books said.

“He died in his bed in the Imperial Barracks after being poisoned by Azon Amar’s blade. An alarm went up and the assassin fled the city with platoons of soldiers on his heels. They destroyed the boat he planned to escape in, and he swam to Darkcrest Isle. He made a stand here, wielding a pair of Nurian scimitars and Science such as most of those soldiers had never seen. In Nuria he was a legend for his skills and powers, and their king hand-selected him to carry out the assassination in hopes of throwing the empire into chaos. Raumesys was still quite young then.”

Amaranthe was shaking her head through his speech. “None of this is in the history books. I’ve never even heard of Azon Am-whatever.”

“Commander of the Armies Hollowcrest, then Lord General Hollowcrest, squashed the story and kept it out of the papers. He led the charge that finally took down Azon Amar, and they kept word of the assassin’s success from reaching Nuria. For three months, they pretended Morvaktu was still alive, and claimed an illness kept him from public appearances. Finally, so the state could return to normal, they announced his death in a hunting accident, burned the body at a funeral pyre, and appointed Raumesys as emperor.”

It was the longest story Amaranthe could remember Sicarius giving her. Though he did not always answer her questions, he had never lied to her, and she could not believe he was lying now. “How do you know all this?”

“If not for this incident, I never would have been born.”

Amaranthe stared at him. She knew he had been raised since he was a babe to be the emperor’s assassin, a position he had held until Raumesys’s death six years earlier, but she hadn’t realized the old emperor and Hollowcrest might have arranged the mating that brought him into existence. “They wanted to create an assassin of their own in case the Nurians tried again? To protect the emperor?”

“More likely because they were impressed with the devastation one man could cause. Azon Amar killed dozens that night, some say hundreds, and with his dying breath, he left a curse on the island, one designed to aid any Nurians who might one day use it as a staging center to launch an attack on our capital. It’s also supposed to work against Turgonians who step foot on the beach.”

Amaranthe slumped against a nearby tree, the bark rough against her bare arm. The pair from the boat had disappeared into the foliage, and the sun was dipping below the tree line.

“I do not know how those two found out about the island,” Sicarius said. “The army sacrificed much to make sure no word made it back to Nuria.”

“Maybe this warrior mage had an ally he communicated with through some magical device. We’ve seen those ourselves.”

“It is possible.”

“How potent is this curse?” Amaranthe asked.

“Unknown.”

“Have you been on the island yourself?”

“No.”

“So it’s possible the curse is simply part of the legend?” She lifted her eyebrows hopefully.

Sicarius hesitated. “That they’re there, seeking refuge, suggests there’s something to it.”

“Let’s discuss our options,” Amaranthe said. “One of us could stay here while the other attempts to get the authorities, a proposition made difficult by the fact that the authorities have orders to shoot us on sight.”

Sicarius said nothing, and it was probably only her imagination that the look he gave her meant she was deranged for listing that as an option.

“Or,” she went on, “one of us could stay here and watch them while the other goes home to pick up the rest of the team.” It was seven miles back to town and still hot enough that she did not relish the idea of jogging the route; there was also the question of whether the men would be at the hideout or, if with the boss gone, they were out carousing. “Perhaps Books would know more about the history of the island that could prove useful, and Akstyr might be able to tell us about any magic being used.”

“Books will know no more than you did, and Akstyr is a self-taught boy. He’d be of little use.”

“The thieves probably aren’t looking to stick around for long either.” If Amaranthe had crashed a steam tramper, she’d want to be out of the area by dawn. Or before.

“Agreed.”

“If you believe we can handle it ourselves, you know I’m always game to go in and find trouble.” Amaranthe smiled, thinking that might draw a retort from him. He did have a sense of humor, albeit one dryer than the tufts of yellow grass sticking up near the dock. Sometimes, when there were no other witnesses around, he’d show it to her.

This time, he did not.

“What if you and I swim across after sunset?” Amaranthe suggested. “We can sneak up on those two, knock them out, tie them up, and retrieve whatever stolen weapons they’re toting. Then we’ll put everything in a tidy pile by the steam tramper, scrape a nice note in the dirt-something along the lines of, ‘Amaranthe and Sicarius thwarted these criminals’-and send an anonymous tip to Fort Urgot in the morning. What do you think?”

Sicarius gazed out at the island pensively.

“Is there something you’re not telling me?” Amaranthe asked.

“About the island or in general?”

“About the island. I know there are all sorts of things you don’t tell me in general.” She sniffed. “Despite the fact that I’m the only person I’m aware of who finds you terribly interesting and likes spending time with you.”

Though he continued to face the island, he said, with a faintly affronted tone, “Many people find me interesting.”

“No argument for the latter though?”

“No.” Sicarius nodded toward the isle. “I’ve had some training in resisting the mental sciences. Perhaps we’ll have no trouble.”

Yes, Amaranthe had seen him shrug off a Nurian wizard’s attack that left her and the rest of her team flattened, but it hadn’t been easy for him. And why did he bring that up anyway? “Do you suspect one of those two of being wizards? They could just be common thieves.”

Sicarius rose from his crouch, using the trees for cover so nobody watching from the island could see him. “Did you bring poison for your crossbow bolts?”

“A little, yes.”

“I suggest you apply it,” Sicarius said. “You may need it tonight.”

Before she could ask what exactly that meant, he walked away. At first, she thought he might simply be heading inland to settle down and rest for a while before darkness fell, but he soon disappeared into the trees, leaving Amaranthe alone.

“ Why I enjoy spending time with the man is a mystery,” she muttered and tried not to find his parting words ominous.