Beneath the Surface (18 page)

“
I wish Books and the others would show up with a distraction of their own,” Amaranthe said, though she hated that she’d put herself and Sicarius into a situation where they
needed
rescuing. Oh, Sicarius could probably escape, even if it meant dodging a dozen crossbow quarrels from enforcers poised around the dining hall, and she might be able to slip out in the wake of his destruction, but what then? They’d be unlikely to find a hiding place on the boat, so they’d have to dive overboard, leaving the rockets. Either the enforcers would break them out of ignorance or the artifacts would continue upriver to those who had ordered them for their own nefarious purposes. Neither alternative appealed.

“
Is it questionable that I’m considering sinking the steamboat as our only option?” Amaranthe said.

“
Yes,” Sicarius said.

“
Would you like to recommend a better option?”

“
Escape overboard. We can run upriver ahead of the boat and steal the weapons when the crew is less prepared.”

He
might be able to manage that. Amaranthe questioned her own ability to outrun the boat—perhaps during the day she could, but she’d have to sleep, while the tireless steam-powered paddlewheel would keep churning all night. And what of the rest of the team? “You’d go without the others? Without Sespian?”

Sicarius hesitated. “They’d realize where we’d gone and follow our example.”

Movement stirred near the curtain. Something glinted. A can arched toward the trapdoor opening, smoke streaming from a fuse. Sicarius’s knife arm shot out. His blade deflected the projectile, knocking it aside before it crossed through the opening. Crossbows twanged, but he whipped his arm back out of sight before the bolts struck.

The can skidded into a corner, popped, and a sickly greenish smoke flooded the air. A sulfuric odor assailed Amaranthe’s nostrils. She lifted her shirt over her mouth and nose, glad the smoke grenade hadn’t landed inside with them. Even so, a gray-green haze filled the air, obscuring visibility, and its stench teased her gag reflex. Enforcers would be able to get within a few feet without being seen, though she couldn’t imagine them trying, knowing Sicarius waited within.

“
Distraction?” Amaranthe whispered.

“
Check the area,” Sicarius said. “They may be attempting to cut a hole elsewhere so they can bypass us and retrieve their men.”

“
They think their
men
are dead.” As Amaranthe had found during her attempted chats. When the enforcers hadn’t responded to her pleas to work together and destroy the deadly rockets, she’d attempted hostage negotiation. They’d refused to believe Sicarius took hostages.

She left to check the rest of the area anyway. Even if they believed their men dead, the enforcers would love to sneak around from behind and take her and Sicarius by surprise. Nobody wanted to face him head-on.

As Amaranthe felt her way through the meandering aisles of crates, she thought about lighting a lantern, but she didn’t want to brighten the area, lest it make Sicarius more visible to the enforcers.

Steel screeched back at the trapdoor. She paused. Maybe they were attacking en masse and risking his skill after all. A new thought crept into her mind. What if that smoke held a sedating agent? What if breathing it in would make Sicarius vulnerable to attacks? She almost went back. But, no, he was capable of handling anything the enforcers hurled at him. If the smoke
did
hold more of a threat than tearing one’s eyes, he’d know it and adapt. He could probably hold his breath for an entire battle.

Amaranthe kept going, trying to keep a map of the under-stage area in her head as she navigated the darkness. The clangs of metal and grunts of effort—and pain—over by the trapdoor guided her. She thought about checking first on the weapons, but they’d pushed the crate back over the grate earlier to block the glow, and she didn’t see any hint of light ahead. Instead she veered toward the front wall and paused to listen. That’d be the easiest place for the enforcers to access since the stage’s other side and back abutted bulkheads.

Amaranthe heard orders being barked, and occasionally something would clunk against the stage. The words were hard to make out. She climbed over a pile of padded leather equipment, navigating as close to the wall as possible.

“
Someone get a blasted cannon! If they’re not going to come out, we’ll tear that stage apart piece by piece.”

“
...hit our own men.”

“
...dead anyway.”

“
...don’t know that!”

Amaranthe tried to decide if the frenetic shouts were authentic or cover for some more threatening action. She pressed her ear to the wall. Soft rasps vibrated through the wood.

Amaranthe jerked back. “Knew it.”

The rasps came from her right, from the side of the stage opposite Sicarius and the trapdoor. Sword in hand, she patted her way in that direction as quickly as possible. Her knee clunked against something hard. She bit back a curse and slowed down. No need to announce to the enforcers that someone was coming...

The blocky shapes of crates loomed ahead of her, and she picked her way around them. At first, she thought her eyes had adjusted more fully to the darkness and she was finally able to see slightly, but she’d been in the dark for an hour or more. No, almost imperceptibly, the light level had increased.

Amaranthe stood as fully as she could, her upper back and head pressed to the top of the stage. Peering over crates, she tried to pinpoint the direction of the light source. Though faint, it had a familiar yellowish tinge. Her stomach sank. Someone had uncovered the grate. Their prisoners must have escaped their bonds.

She glanced at the dark wall where the enforcers were trying to cut through, then back toward the grate. “It’ll take them a while to saw out a hole,” she muttered and headed for the glow. She thought about yelling a warning to Sicarius, but if the enforcers had freed themselves, it’d be better to sneak up and catch them by surprise. Bloody ancestors, she hoped it was just one and not all four.

Still clenching the sword, Amaranthe crept closer, easing around the crates, careful to step toe first and test each floorboard before placing her weight behind it. The light brightened, but she didn’t come across anyone. She thought about circling around to the far side, but decided to take a peek at the grate first. How much was exposed? Did the enforcers know what lay below?

Amaranthe peered around a corner. Five feet away, yellow light seeped through the grate. The entire width was exposed, the crate pushed to one side. Bright after the hour in the darkness, the illumination made her squint. It took a moment for her to realize that it wasn’t shining through the bars of the grate. The entire grate hung open.

She stared at it in confusion. As far as she knew, Sicarius had the only key. Why would he have opened it? Or left the trapdoor to do so? He wouldn’t have. The enforcers must have evaded the magic somehow and picked the lock.

A shadow moved beneath the opening. Someone was already down there. Amaranthe had the presence of mind to keep her string of curses silent. She wanted to check the area around the grate, to see if other enforcers lurked in the darkness, poised to protect their investigating comrade, but she dared not delay, not when a single slip could kill everybody on the boat.

Amaranthe hustled forward. She glimpsed brown hair beneath a gray enforcer cap and lifted her sword, intending to clunk the man with the hilt. Something moved to her left.

She spun, adjusting her grip and thrusting her blade out in front. A man surged out of the shadows between two crates. Something glinted in his hand. She lifted the sword, throwing her second hand onto the hilt to brace it. The man’s eyes bulged, but he’d seen the weapon too late. He impaled himself on it, his scream belting Amaranthe’s ears.

He still tried to plunge his own weapon down, to finish off Amaranthe with his dying breath. She dropped to the floor, rolling away from the grate, and pulling the sword after her, or trying. The man’s momentum had forced the blade deep.

A knife thunked into the wooden deck, inches from her ear. She jerked away, but something new slammed into her. Another enforcer.

The back of her head banged into a crate hard enough to stun her. She let go of the stuck sword and scrabbled for the dagger at her waist. The rage-filled face of one of the snarling prisoners filled her view, and he pinned her with his weight. He raised a dagger of his own, and she saw her death in his eyes.

Hands grasped him under the armpits, yanking him off of her.

“
Sicarius,” Amaranthe breathed, then lunged for her sword, fearing they’d have another two enforcers to face. This time she succeeded in yanking it free. She spun around, ready to fight more, but the enforcer facing her had a familiar face.

“
It’s not
always
Sicarius, you know,” Sespian said with a sad sigh.

“
Amaranthe, are you all right?” came Books’s voice from the storage area. He climbed out, grunting at the tight quarters and banging his head on the top of the stage. “Oof, am
I
all right?”

“
Not usually,” Akstyr said, crawling out after Books. They were
all
wearing enforcer uniforms. A cap mashed down Akstyr’s hair, but Amaranthe doubted anyone would believe him a law keeper, not with that brand on his hand and the ever-present sneer on his lips. Then again, the outfits had gotten them this far.

“
Is Basilard with you?” Amaranthe asked.

“
He’s guarding the new entrance,” Books said.

For a moment, Amaranthe could only stare as the men crowded into the space around her. New... entrance? Finally, realization trickled into her mind. They must have cut a hole in that bulkhead Sicarius had mentioned and come through from engineering. She’d get the details later. “Good to see you. What about Maldynado and Yara? Any sign of them?”

“
Nothing,” Books said. “Sorry.”

“
All right. We have work to do. Sicarius is guarding the entrance over there.” Amaranthe flung a hand in his direction. “Akstyr, we might need you to hurl some Science about. There are two more enforcers in here—” she pointed toward the back wall, though they’d probably moved by now, “—maybe tied, maybe not.” She eyed the two men who’d attacked her. Sespian had disarmed her second foe without killing him, but the first... She swallowed. It’d been too much to hope that they could destroy the weapons and escape without killing anyone. She shoved the thought to the side for later. “Sespian and Books, come with me. The ones outside may have cut their way in by now.”

Reminded of the fact, Amaranthe rushed toward the front of the stage.

“
Also,” she added over her shoulder, “thank you for coming. Excellent timing.”

“
You’re welcome.” How Books managed to beam when his six-and-a-half-foot frame was bent into a three-foot-high space, she didn’t know, but he looked pleased with himself. “It’s not often we get to save her,” he whispered to Sespian. “Sicarius usually handles that.”

“
I don’t need rescuing that often,” Amaranthe said.

“
Is that why she moons after him?” Sespian asked.

“
Most likely,” Books said before Amaranthe could manage a flushed protest. “If I rescued her every week, she might have started mooning over me instead.”

“
I don’t need rescuing every
week
,” Amaranthe protested again, though the notion of all the men thinking she mooned after Sicarius bothered her more than the rescuing bit.

“
Bi-monthly?” Books suggested.

“
All right, I’ll give you that. Though—” she glanced back at Sespian, “—sometimes
I’m
the one rescuing other people on the team.”

Books offered an agreeable nod.

They’d reached the front wall, and she picked her way along, searching for what she expected to be a gaping hole by now. She hoped the enforcers weren’t already streaming inside, but feared her delay had given them the time they needed. Had she known her own team was inside the cargo area, she would have left the escaped prisoners for them to deal with.

In the dim area, spotting the light ahead wasn’t difficult. As Amaranthe had expected, it seeped through a jagged hole in the front wall. A hole with a head sticking through it. With his face tilted up, the man sawed a serrated blade back and forth, trying to widen the new entrance. Amaranthe hoped the partial progress meant nobody had made his way inside yet, though the opening appeared wide enough that a small or medium-sized man could have wriggled through it.