Beneath the Surface (5 page)

“
The same people somersaulting and juggling all over the boat?” Evrial asked.

“
The same. They’re—”

Voices sounded in the corridor, and Evrial threw up a warning hand. The doorknob rattled as someone applied a key. Amaranthe shoved the book back into a drawer, and Evrial closed the closet doors, careful not to slam them. Amaranthe lunged for the beds and started turning down the covers. Evrial grabbed a wastebasket a heartbeat before the door opened.

“—
didn’t know they were on
this
boat,” a woman, one of four standing around the entrance, was saying.

“
Sssh, someone’s in there.”

Surprised by the number of people coming in, Evrial stared for a moment before she remembered she was supposed to be keeping her face down. Not before the gray-haired woman who’d been sneaking about met her eyes. Evrial dumped the wastebasket into the bin on the bottom of the cart. She didn’t
think
the woman had seen her following before.

“
It’s just the maids.” Gray-hair walked in first, grunting when her arm caught the corner of the cart. “Get this garbage out of my way.”

“
Yes, ma’am,” Evrial said.

“
Ma’am
?” one of the other women asked. “That’s ‘my lady,’ to you.”

“
Yes, my lady.” Evrial hated debasing herself before anyone, but she’d had to suffer through worse as a low-ranking enforcer.

“
Not me, you dolt.
Her
.”

Amaranthe, who was doing a better job keeping her head down and staying unnoticed, shot Evrial a stop-talking look. She took her time creasing the sheets and fluffing the pillows. Evrial just wanted to get out of there. She tried to pull the cart to the side so the women could pass, but even the more luxurious cabins were small.

“
Out of the way, you hulking behemoth.” A woman tried to brush past Evrial, but bumped into her thigh instead.

The poorly-fastened knife fell to the floor with a noticeable clunk. Evrial dove down to pick it up, trying to hide it before anyone saw what it was. It didn’t work.

“
Uhm, the maid’s got a dagger the size of a broadsword.” The woman who had knocked it free hustled backward, almost tripping over her feet in her haste to find the corridor.

Evrial didn’t know whether to deny that her dagger was
that
big or claim she’d found it somewhere or—

“
Well, of course she does,” Amaranthe said. She kept her face down as she stepped up beside Evrial, but she was clearly addressing the women. “Have you seen the womanizing leers of some of the men working in the kitchens? A girl has to defend herself.”

Judging from the way the rest of the group was backing toward the corridor, the women weren’t believing the story. “Those aren’t the usual maids, are they? That one has muscles like a wrestler in the Imperial Games.”

“
We’re from the second deck,” Amaranthe said. “Your regular maids didn’t show up for work, so we had to take over.”

That much was true at least. The women kept backing away though. Only one of the four was still in the cabin, the rest having slipped into the corridor. Nobody had bolted off to find security yet, but they were exchanging a lot significant glances with each other.

Evrial crouched, thinking to spring after them, but Amaranthe stopped her with a hand on the arm.

The last woman hustled into the corridor. “You stay here. We’ll just check out that story.”

The door slammed shut, trapping Evrial and Amaranthe in the cabin.

Evrial spun on her comrade. “Why did you stop me? We could have dragged them in here, tied them up, and locked them inside.”

“
Of that I have no doubt,” Amaranthe said, “but then what? Unless we wanted to kill them, they’d be found eventually, at which point they’d identify us and cause a search. We’d have to grab the entire team, jump overboard, hike to the next port, and wait for another steamer to come. We need to get to the capital as soon as possible.”

Evrial propped her hands on her hips. She wanted to point out that this scheme had been Amaranthe’s idea, and it’d be her fault if that happened, but she lowered her hands again.
Her
knife had been the one to fall. “Can your card open it again?” she asked.

“
Not from this side.” Amaranthe jogged to the door and tried the knob. “Hm, I didn’t know you could be locked in from the outside. Not very safe in the case of a fire.”

“
We won’t
stay
locked in. Move.” Evrial flexed her shoulders. She’d had to ram down more than a few doors in her years as an enforcer.

“
I don’t think that’ll work,” Amaranthe said, but she evacuated the threshold.

Evrial backed up a few paces from the door, then ran at it, shoulder leading. She smashed into it with a jaw-rattling thud. The wood trembled but held, though her teeth might be in danger of falling out. “Tougher door than it looks like.”

Amaranthe delved into the bottom of the cart.

Evrial kicked off the stupid slippers and measured off a pace-and-a-half for a step-behind side kick. Striking with her heel hurt less than with her shoulder, but it didn’t open the door either. She glowered at it. Those women hadn’t had time to push something in front of the door, had they?

Amaranthe tapped her on the shoulder. “You’re a lot like Maldynado. You should be nicer to him.”

Evrial turned her scowl onto her comrade.

Amaranthe waved toward the hinges. “It’s tough to kick open a door in the opposite direction from which it usually opens.”

Evrial’s scowl turned sheepish. Good point.

Amaranthe slipped something under the door. She grabbed a lantern and lit a—was that a fuse? What had she been doing in the laundry cart? Evrial eyed a bar of soap on the carpet next to a glass jar emitting pungent fumes.

“
Back around the corner, please,” Amaranthe said.

“
What?”

“
Quickly.” Amaranthe sprinted away from the door, grabbing the wall to swing herself around the corner.

Before Evrial could more than stumble after her, an explosion roared. Something slammed into the wall behind her—a piece of wood. The arm-length wedge had embedded itself into the wall where it quivered like a thrown knife.

Amaranthe peeked around the corner. Evrial leaned over her shoulder, crinkling her nose at the burning-chemical scent of the smoky air. When it cleared enough to see the door, or rather the two hinges that were the only things left hanging on the frame, all she could do was gape. Amaranthe pushed a piece of wood off the desk and pulled out the business book.

She patted Evrial on the way past. “Time to go.”

Evrial couldn’t disagree with that. She jogged after Amaranthe, leaving her slippers and the cart—what was left of it—behind. Before they reached the corner and access to a service ladder, footsteps pounded up nearby stairs. Evrial jerked to a stop. Someone must have heard the explosion and was running to check.

“
It’s those maids!” a familiar voice screeched.

“
Back, back,” Amaranthe whispered.

Evrial was already opening the door of one of the cabins they’d serviced, one that didn’t have any people in it—or hadn’t when they’d been in earlier. Amaranthe pushed in right behind her. She shut the door, and darkness fell over them. Footsteps thundered past in the corridor.

“
I’m not sure your plan was better than my idea of beating those women up and locking them in their cabin,” Evrial whispered.

Amaranthe locked the door. “We’ll be fine so long as this cabin’s occupants don’t come back from dinner in the next few minutes.”

“
And security doesn’t decide to search the entire deck. Where’d you learn to blow up doors? That wasn’t a class at the academy either.”

“
I have Sicarius to thank for my lock-picking skills and Books for an education on the properties of certain household chemical compounds. He made smoke bombs in someone’s kitchen once.” The darkness hid Amaranthe’s smile, but it came through in her voice.

How could she possibly be having a good time?

Evrial pushed away from the door, stalked into the room, and promptly rammed her shin against the corner of a bed. “They may not have identified us, but they’re going to be suspicious when that book comes up missing.” She rubbed her shin. What a deplorable night. “Those people probably have enough money to order the captain to search the entire boat.”

“
Maybe,” Amaranthe said, “but the older lady has been lying low. Maybe they all have. They may not want to stride into the captain’s cabin. I hope the explanation as to why is in here.” Thumps sounded as she knocked on the book’s cover.

Evrial found that she could see the movements. A porthole on the far side let in faint nighttime illumination. “Maybe we can go out that way.” She pointed toward the window. Wedging her shoulders through it wouldn’t be easy, but she thought the feat doable. “There’s not a deck out there, is there?” Evrial pictured the layout of the boat in her mind. “But we’re near the top. Maybe we could climb up to the roof. As long as the helmsman is looking forward instead of backward, he wouldn’t notice us crawling across to a ladder going down.”

“
We may have to try that,” Amaranthe said from the door. “They’re going to search every cabin on this end of the deck.”

Evrial grumbled and groped her way past the furnishings to the porthole. Something scraped over the thin carpet—a chair? Amaranthe must be wedging it under the doorknob.

Evrial patted around the porthole, searching for a handle, but didn’t find anything. “It doesn’t open. You don’t really think I’m like Maldynado, do you?”

“
You favor a similar approach to opening doors.”

Heat flushed Evrial’s cheeks, and her shoulder ached in reminder of the ill-advised bashing. “He doesn’t take anything seriously, and he has the work ethic of a... a... well, an indolent son of the privileged caste. I’ve worked my entire life, and I...”

“
Take
everything
seriously?” Amaranthe suggested.

Evrial crossed her arms. “Maybe. So, what? Life isn’t a joke.”

“
No, but it’s easier to enjoy if you can find the humor in even the grim moments. Perhaps it’d be healthy for you to let someone bring a little levity into your life.”

Evrial dropped her arms. Maybe it would be if... “He’s silly about
everything
though. How could you count on someone like that to be serious when it counts?”

“
He is. Didn’t he stand by your side for the fight on that steamboat?”

“
I suppose. And he did risk himself to pull his comrades out of that booby-trapped building in that park. I guess I have seen him be serious and take responsibility, but he’s always... He says the dumbest things to me. I can’t imagine what’s inside his head.”

“
His smiles and silly lines usually work on women,” Amaranthe said. “And I think they’d actually work on you, too, if you weren’t worried about being hurt.”

Scowling, Evrial patted around the porthole again. They ought to be focusing on getting out of there, not talking about such unimportant matters. Unfortunately, the porthole still lacked a latch. She rapped a knuckle against the glass, wondering if they might break it. It sounded thick, but she still had her dagger.

“
It’s understandable,” Amaranthe went on. “If you believe half of what comes out of his mouth, he’s loved and left a lot of women.”

“
I don’t know why he’s bothering with me,” Evrial muttered, drawn back into the conversation despite her thought to drop the topic.

“
Even if you had no features which men find alluring, which isn’t true by the way, you represent a challenge to him. It’s human nature to want that which we can’t have. If you were so inclined to give in to his advances, that’d be the point where you could find out if there might be more to it than that.”

“
What more could there be with someone like him? I figure he’ll get his itch scratched, and that’ll be that.”