Beneath the Surface (2 page)

Maldynado lifted his hands. “I was just talking about sleeping arrangements. I don’t know
what
you’re suggesting, my lady.”

Evrial snorted. “Let’s just go talk to her. If more Forge people than that old lady are here, and they know
we’re
here, we might be in for trouble.”

“
Yes, I suppose it was too much to hope that we’d have a week’s vacation to recover from our wounds before arriving to that mess back home.” For once, Maldynado’s face held only grimness and not a trace of humor.

* * * * *

Amaranthe Lokdon darted from shadow to shadow, hugging the railing and avoiding the freshly lit lanterns burning on the steamboat’s hull. The wooden doors between those lanterns were closely placed at this end of the vessel, indicating the smallness of the cabins. Engineering lay right below, and the reverberations from the paddlewheel’s pumping pistons vibrated through the textured steel decking.

A door opened a few meters away. It wasn’t one of the rooms her team had claimed, so Amaranthe turned her back to it, propped her arms on the railing, and pretended to be fascinated with the farmlands drifting past on that side of the river. Though she gazed forward, she watched the door with her peripheral vision. A man and woman walked out, arms linked. They didn’t glance in her direction. Good. Amaranthe patted the brown paper bag tucked beneath a flap of her parka. It seemed she might get away with her discreet outing without having to explain herself to anyone.

After the couple disappeared down the nearest stairwell, Amaranthe trotted to her own door, holding her parka closed—and protecting the bag—with one arm. She slipped out the key and inserted it in the lock... only to find that someone had unlocked the door since she left fifteen minutes earlier. Sergeant Yara must have returned from her exercise session. That was all right. She probably wouldn’t betray Amaranthe to any fitness-obsessed assassins. Yara and Sicarius had never, insofar as Amaranthe had noticed, held a conversation.

She opened the door and stepped inside, a greeting for Yara on her lips, but she found herself face-to-face with Sicarius. Arms crossed over his chest, he stood in the center of the small cabin. He wore his usual fitted black clothing and knife-and-dagger collection. His cool expressionless stare had a where-have-you-been mien to it. Or maybe her imagination conjured up that nuance. Her
guilty
imagination.

Amaranthe pursued the age-old strategy employed by those seeking to avoid answering questions—she preempted them with her own unrelated rambling. “That’s odd. I distinctly remember locking this door before I left.” She tapped her chin thoughtfully. “And Yara is my only roommate and the only other key holder, but I don’t see her here.” She made a show of surveying the cabin. She peered under the lower of two bunks mounted on the back wall, then beneath a table bolted to the floorboards near another wall, and she finally pulled open the table’s single drawer to peek inside. “Nope, she’s not here.”

Amaranthe turned, intending to continue her show, this time checking behind the door, but found herself gaping at a new addition to her tiny cabin. Someone had bolted an iron bar in the corner so it hung horizontally a few inches below the ceiling. Two chains dangled from it. A couple of clunky iron balls with handles sat on the floor beneath the apparatus.

“
What’s all this?” Amaranthe asked, though with Sicarius being Sicarius, she had a suspicion.

“
There is something in your pocket.” Sicarius hadn’t moved from the center of the room, but his gaze had lowered—to the bulge in her parka.

“
No, there’s not.” Amaranthe feared her attempts at evasion were in vain, but couldn’t bring herself to give up. Maybe if she could get him to go over and explain the new addition, she could slip her bag into that table drawer. It looked deep enough... “If this were Maldynado’s handiwork—” she tilted her head, trying to draw his eye toward the bar and chains, “—I’d assume it was some sort of apparatus for... sex play, but since we haven’t even, uhm, played in the bed yet...” Dear
ancestors
, what was she doing? She should have simply confessed. That would have been less painful. “...That would seem premature,” she finished weakly.

“
It is for training,” Sicarius said, once again demonstrating his ability to mask his thoughts in the face of
any
commentary. “Since those of us with notorious faces have been ordered to remain in our cabins for the duration of the journey.”

Er, yes, that had been her order, so she could hardly balk at it. But his explanation offered an opportunity; maybe she could yet salvage this conversation. “Training? Care to demonstrate?”

Sicarius walked past her, though not without giving her an all-too-knowing sidelong gaze, and gripped the bar with both hands. His back was to the room. Perfect. While he performed a variety of pull-ups, demonstrating different grips, Amaranthe tiptoed toward the desk. With one hand still holding her parka flap closed, she eased the drawer open. Meanwhile, she kept an eye toward Sicarius, making sure he didn’t glance back. Emperor’s burst bunions, he didn’t expect her to do those one-armed chin-ups, did he?

“
What are the chains for?” she asked when it looked like he might be finishing his demonstration.

She opened her parka flap slowly, careful not to rustle the bag. The man had the hearing of an owl.

“
They can be used for abbreviated maneuvers while some of your weight remains on the floor.” Sicarius gripped the chains and demonstrated. “This may be necessary while you regain your strength.”

Amaranthe pulled out the crinkled brown bag, its bottom spotted with grease stains. A faint smell wafted up, teasing her nose. Cinnamon. She placed the bag in the drawer as fast as she could without making noise. Sicarius’s
hearing
wasn’t his only preternatural sense.

The chains rattled as he released them. Amaranthe slid the drawer shut, coughing to cover the rustle as the top of the frame scraped at the bag. The drawer snagged against something. She winced and started to reach in to adjust the bag, but Sicarius was turning to face her. She spun about, leaning a hand casually on the table and using her body to block his view.

“
That’s very thoughtful of you to install that,” Amaranthe said, “but I thought we’d agreed to let the group relax and recuperate on this voyage upstream, considering the battering we’ve all taken.” She touched one of the remaining bruises on her neck. Though she preferred to forget about her wounds, and was glad they were fading, she thought he might be moved by compassion and forget about her suspicious behavior. “We’ll be in the capital in a few days, and we’ll have enough hard work to occupy us then. We’ll need to be fresh.”

“
There is a difference between fresh and out of shape.” Sicarius strode toward her.

Amaranthe tried to force the drawer shut with her butt. That last inch wouldn’t budge. She spread her parka to further block the view of the cursed thing. Only when Sicarius stopped in front of her, less than a foot of space separating them, did she realize that the way she was leaning against the table, touching her neck with one hand, spreading her parka open with the other, probably looked like... an invitation. Sicarius might not have reacted to her “bed play” comment, but they had discussed a future that involved such things—insomuch as she could imagine him playing at anything. When she was ready, he’d said. If he thought she was ready to resume training, maybe he thought she might be ready for other activities. Amaranthe swallowed. Might she be?

Sicarius was gazing steadily at her. She couldn’t tell what thoughts lurked behind his dark brown eyes, but he didn’t seem annoyed or irritated—those emotions she could usually read in the extra degree of hardness to his jaw. He lifted his hands to touch either side of her waist. Her breath hitched. The warmth of his fingers radiated through her shirt. He stepped closer. He was going to—

Sicarius’s grip tightened, and he lifted her from her feet.

Amaranthe blurted a startled protest as he picked her up, rotated her, and set her down behind him. Sicarius slid open the desk drawer, plucked out the bag, and dropped it on the table. He arched a single eyebrow. It was all Amaranthe could do not to squirm and shuffle her feet like a child caught filching cookies from the kitchen.

“
You risked being seen by security to acquire a bag of tarts?” Sicarius asked.

“
They’re pastries, not tarts. Besides...” Amaranthe set a hand on her hip. “
You
risked being seen by security to acquire iron bars and chains.”

“
I was not seen.”

“
Neither was I.” All right, that was a lie. The baker had been making up a fresh batch for dessert, and Amaranthe had needed to offer her most charming smile to convince the man that some of the pastries had been hastily frosted and were in no condition to be served to the high-paying guests whose tickets earned them seats in the formal dining hall.

Sicarius’s eyes narrowed slightly.

“
By anyone who would turn me in,” Amaranthe amended. “Anyway, you did a good job providing me with nourishing food on the trek from the Forge ship to the lake, and then again on the way to Port Dremel.” At least during that second part of the journey, they’d been with the rest of the team, and Basilard had foraged for late-season herbs to add flavor to Sicarius’s organ-delight meals. “I’m feeling much better, and there’s no need for such stringent dietary guidelines now.”

Sicarius’s grunt didn’t sound terribly convinced.

“
On the other hand,” Amaranthe said, “you could stand to add a pound or two, after all those days of running you endured to find me. I have enough to share.” She opened the bag, letting more of those delicious scents waft out. “Would you like one?”

“
I have no need for sweets.”

“
You could take one to Sespian. As a peace offering.”

Sicarius eyed the bag, and for a moment Amaranthe thought he might do it.

“
I do not believe he would accept a peace offering from me.”

Yes, though Sespian hadn’t pulled any more weapons on Sicarius, their new relationship wasn’t off to a brilliant start. Like a mother hoping to make two young brothers get along, Amaranthe had tried to put them together as roommates, but Sespian had traded berths with Basilard before ever stepping into the cabin.

“
You have to keep trying,” Amaranthe said. “Be friendly in the face of his dark glares, and he’ll eventually grow weary of rejecting you. Why, just look at us. In a short ten months of sparkling smiles and effervescent one-sided conversations, I thawed your icy exterior and got you to profess your undying love for me.”

Sicarius blinked slowly.

“
It’s possible we remember the events a little differently,” Amaranthe said. “The female mind has an interesting way of filtering reality.”

“
Yours certainly does,” Sicarius said, a hint of dry humor finally infusing his tone.

Amaranthe rattled the bag and pulled out a flat round roll drizzled with frosting. “Seriously, you should take him one. It’ll be funny. It’ll warm the frosty air between you.”

Sicarius’s gaze went from her to the roll and back to her. “Funny.”

His monotone had returned, and she couldn’t tell if it was a question, but answered anyway.

“
Yes, funny, because of the name.” Amaranthe hefted the sticky roll, but didn’t spot any sign of illumination in Sicarius’s eyes. She supposed a man who never consumed sweets wouldn’t know what the various types were called. “They’re emperor’s buns,” she explained. “Given his occupation, there’s all sorts of potential for humor, don’t you think?”

“
Or for causing offense.” Sicarius clasped his hands behind his back. “I will stay here and see to your recovery and training.”

How... considerate. As much as Amaranthe appreciated his new interest in caring for her—and
demonstrating
that he cared for her—he’d been around a
lot
, first during their trek to Port Dremel and then hourly since they boarded. His eyebrow had twitched a good millimeter when she’d announced Yara would be her roommate. She’d shooed him out at bedtime the last two nights and had made him promise not to stand guard outside the door.

“
I’d like it if you two reached an agreement, or working relationship at least, before we arrive in Stumps.” Amaranthe wondered what he’d say if she tried to make it an order. “We’ll need the team to be working flawlessly together if we’re to have a chance against our opponents.”