Blood and Betrayal (26 page)

Amaranthe groaned. Retta knew. Cursed ancestors, the last however many days of resisting Pike—all that suffering beneath his knife—had been for nothing. Retta knew, and soon all of Forge would know.

Amaranthe’s vision blurred as tears formed. A click sounded, and Retta stepped back from the table. She started toward the door, but paused, then turned back. She grabbed the map, unfolded it, and held it above Amaranthe’s eyes.

“I better not leave any evidence that I helped you,” Retta said. “Can you memorize this quickly? I seem to remember you were bright and got good grades.”

Amaranthe barely heard her. She had the presence of mind to stare at the map, but her thoughts were a jumble, and she wasn’t sure how much she would remember. She’d failed. All she could think about was how Sicarius would react when he found out.

•  •  •

Maldynado and Yara crouched in the darkness on one of the two long, cylindrical boilers filling the space. From their perch, they could see two doors, one leading to engineering and the other out to the deck. They could also jump on anyone who came inside. The black knife lay on the engine room floor, with Basilard, Books, and Sespian hiding in the shadows provided by the towering machinery. The plan was for Maldynado and Yara to wait for Mari’s bodyguards—or whomever she sent—to pass, then drop down behind them. Basilard and the others would spring the trap first. Akstyr remained by the furnace, grumbling softly about being stuck shoveling coal. If something went wrong, and muscle and fists weren’t enough, he and his Science skills were on backup duty.

Maldynado shifted his weight, careful not to crack his head on the metal ceiling beam between him and Yara. They only had a few feet of clearance above the boiler. Laughter floated down from the dining hall on the deck above. He wondered how many crew and passengers the
Glacial Empress
claimed.

“If they don’t come tonight, we’re going to be in trouble,” Yara said. “An officer will be down in the morning to relieve the night-shift engineer, the night-shift engineer you thumped and dumped into the river.”

“I know,” Maldynado said. He hadn’t
wanted
to thump and dump anyone else, but with the engine room adjacent to the boiler room, it hadn’t been particularly surprising that the officer in charge had stumbled across the team making plans for their ambush.

“Covering one of your people in soot isn’t going to make him pass as an officer,” Yara said.

“I know that too.”

They
ought
to have until morning to figure that aspect out. With Akstyr shoveling and Books keeping an eye on the engines, nobody from navigation should find anything amiss until that shift change.

Maldynado adjusted his crouch again. “I hope Mari sends her people soon. My thighs are burning.” As soon as the admission slipped out, he wished it hadn’t. Yara would accuse him of whining.

All she said was, “I’d laugh if we’d set this all up and they were up there sleeping.”

“You do that?” Maldynado asked.

“What?”

“Laugh. I haven’t heard it.”

The shadows hid her scowl, but Maldynado knew it was there.

“That’s because you’re not as funny as you think you are,” Yara said.

“I haven’t seen you laugh at anyone else’s jokes either.”

“I haven’t heard many jokes.”

“Ah, that’s right,” Maldynado said, “you can’t understand Basilard. He’s hi-
lar
-i-ous.”

Yara didn’t respond. Maldynado wondered if he’d stunned her to silence or she merely thought the notion ridiculous.

“Really?” Yara finally asked. “He seems glum.”

“He is, but he has his moments. He’s had a rough past. His people are pacifists, but he was captured, made into a slave, and forced to kill to survive pit-fighting bouts.” Maldynado shifted his weight again, trying to find a more comfortable spot on the boiler. He was tempted to straddle the thing, but that’d be a poor position from which to launch an attack. Also, given how much warmth seeped from the metal, he might scorch something important. “All the boys have tough pasts,” Maldynado continued, thinking Yara might be more sympathetic to everyone if she knew that misfortune, rather than a puerile urge to irk enforcers, had led them to the outlaw lifestyle. “Books watched his son get killed by Hollowcrest’s men. Akstyr grew up on the streets. Sicarius, I don’t think, knows what to do with himself now that he’s not Emperor Raumesys’s personal assassin.”

Yara stirred, and Maldynado wondered if that last tidbit was news to her. Sicarius probably wouldn’t appreciate him chitchatting about his personal history, but he wasn’t there, so too bad.

“I think,” Maldynado said, “everyone’s hoping that, in helping the emperor, they can rise above their pasts and make a difference in the world. Amaranthe makes a man want to do that.”

“You, too?”

“Nah, I just lost a bet.”

Yara snorted. It
almost
sounded like a laugh.

Yara stretched her legs out for a moment. Hah, her thighs must be burning too. “Your family sounds awful.”

“Uhm,” Maldynado said, surprised that she’d bring it up. “I guess.”

“My brothers always teased me growing up, and I had to learn to be tough, but I knew they cared for me. Mevlar might have gotten me in trouble after your employer and assassin showed up on my father’s doorstep, but only because he thought he was saving the family from dishonor. And because he’s being a whiny loser over the fact that I was promoted first.”

Maldynado smiled, both because she was opening up and because he now knew why whining might not sit well with her. He grunted to let her know he was listening. Women always seemed to appreciate that.

“But that’s how you expect siblings to be,” Yara went on. “You don’t expect them to send their wives to throw you to the mechanical alligators.”

“To be fair to Ravido, I don’t think he was thinking of me at all when he sent, or let Mari go downstream. She saw the opportunity to turn me into alligator fodder of her own volition. Maybe she thought it’d make a nice anniversary present in case the throne-usurping gig didn’t work out.”

“I never thought I’d feel sympathy for some warrior-caste dandy, but it must be hard knowing your family wants you dead, even your parents.”

For a long moment, Maldynado didn’t say anything. He had to run her words through his head a few times, because he couldn’t believe Yara had implied she felt sympathy for him. Though a few teasing replies came to mind, he thought she might appreciate a serious response. Something about the shadows made it feel safer to be serious. Still, he lowered his voice to make sure the others wouldn’t hear from the next room. “They have a reason.”

“What happened with your sister?”

Maldynado poked at the riveting on the boiler seam. “I have seven older brothers. My parents kept trying because Mother wanted a girl. Finally, three years after I was born, she had Tia. She was forty and knew it’d be her last child. Somehow, as second youngest, I always got put on babysitting duty while my parents were at their parties and military functions. Mostly, I loved being the big brother and watching out for Tia, not that she needed a guardian. She was real sweet, and everyone loved her. She was good at charming folks, a lot like Amaranthe, and she usually got what she wanted. Like to tag along with me. She—” Maldynado’s throat had grown tight, and he paused to clear it. “She always wanted to do what I was doing and to go where I wanted to go. Mother said she could so long as I kept an eye on her. Tia was
my
responsibility, she’d say. By the time I was twelve… Well, I was as dumb as any kid that age and didn’t want my little sister hanging around. There was a lot of teasing from the other boys and even my older brothers. Looking back now… it’s stupid that I let that bother me, but one summer, when it was hotter than a smelter, we went to the river to swim. We had a great spot with rope swings and platforms to jump off, a whole obstacle course of stuff to play on. Anyway, that day there’d been a storm up in the mountains, and the water was rough and high. I told Tia to stay on the bank and play there. I wasn’t watching her though. I was in the water with the boys. I never saw her go in. She was just there, and then the next time I looked, she was gone.”

Maldynado blinked and forced himself to focus on the shadowy boiler room and the doors he was supposed to be watching. While he’d been speaking, he’d been back there by the river, playing with his peers. Baking his bare shoulders under the summer sun. Jumping in the cold water to cool off and avoid mosquitos. How vividly he remembered that moment, looking over to the bank by the rope swing and feeling that icy sensation of dread.

“A couple of days later, the neighbors downriver came up to the estate. They’d found… ” Maldynado swallowed. “They’d found the body.”

Beside him, Yara let out a long, deep exhalation. Maldynado wondered if she was still feeling sympathetic toward him, or if she saw him as more of a careless idiot than ever. The latter most likely. That was the consensus his family had reached.

“Anyway,” Maldynado said, finding the silence awkward, or maybe fearing the judgment in it, “it’s not my favorite story to tell for obvious reasons. Amaranthe doesn’t even know it.” Few of his adult friends and acquaintances did. Only those people who had known him all those years ago. Deret Mancrest was one—he’d been among the boys playing on the river that day. Thinking of him made Maldynado wonder what was going on in the capital. Deret’s newspaper had reported the emperor missing before anyone
should
have known about the train incident. And the story had given a positive, non-alarming reason for Ravido’s troops to be entering the city. Maldynado wondered if Ravido or Father had spoken to him. Deret had always been an honorable fellow, not the sort to kowtow to pressure to publish certain stories, but Deret’s father owned the paper and had been friends with Maldynado’s father for years. When Amaranthe reunited with the team, they’d have to visit Deret. Assuming she
did
reunite with the team. Maldynado rubbed his face.

“So, that’s why you follow her?” Yara asked.

“Huh?” It took Maldynado a moment to remember that he’d spoken Amaranthe’s name aloud. “Oh. Maybe.”

“Because in helping her, maybe even protecting her, you’re making up for the failure with your sister?”

“I guess. Except I’ve failed Amaranthe now too. She’s probably being tortured in that big black monstrosity. If she’s still alive at all.”

“What happened with your sister was tragic, and I’m not sure there’s anything I, or anyone else, could say that would make you stop blaming yourself for that, but Amaranthe isn’t a child. From what I’ve seen, she’s the one who gets herself into these situations. Didn’t Books say she was using a homemade slingshot to hurl blasting sticks at the other craft when she was thrown from the dirigible? There’s not much you can do to protect someone who takes risks like that.”

“I suppose not,” Maldynado said, surprised Yara was trying to make him feel better. None of her usual brusque gruffness colored her tone. “But I’m worried about her, and I can’t help but wish I’d figured out how to fly the dirigible better. Giant balloons aren’t as maneuverable as you’d hope.”

A few moments passed without comment, until Yara said, “That explains one thing anyway.”

“Oh? What’s that?”

“You see Amaranthe as a little sister. I was wondering why you didn’t leer lecherously at her like you do at every other woman.”

“My leers are
not
lecherous,” Maldynado said, relieved to have a lighter topic, one where he could shield himself with his usual flippancy. “I’m far too handsome and charming for anyone to consider my leers offensive or unwanted.”

“Please.”

“And I don’t leer at
every
woman.”

“
Please
,” Yara said with even more disbelief. “You leer at
me
. And I’m… not someone people leer at.”

Something in her voice made Maldynado consider his answer before responding. “Because… you’re tall, fierce, and intimidating, so you figure that deters lecherous leerers? Or because you don’t believe you’re attractive enough to draw leers?”

“Leerer isn’t a word, you twit,” Yara snapped.

Maldynado kept himself from asking if Books had recruited her to be a fellow dictionary-enforcer. He recognized that defensive snapping as a way to avoid answering his question.

“If it’s the fierce, intimidating thing, that’s your own choice, you know,” Maldynado said. “You could be a respected enforcer even if you smiled once in a while. If it’s the other thing, well, I wasn’t positive until I saw you in the dress, but… ” He tried to find an innuendo that wouldn’t be offensive and yet wouldn’t leave room for misinterpretation either. “Any man would be happy to go spelunking in your cave.”

Yara made a choking sound. “Dear ancestors, what sort of brain could consider that a flattering comment?”

Drat, misfire. Maldynado shrugged it off. “A male brain, naturally.”

Clomps came from a stairwell outside—a lot of clomps.

“About time,” Yara whispered.

Though the top of the boiler loomed eight feet above the deck, Maldynado scooted back so his shadow wouldn’t be visible if someone coming through the door thought to look up. He missed the comfortable feel of his rapier on his waist, but the emperor had instructed them not to kill anyone anyway. They were to knock everyone out and send them to visit the reeds along the shore. Fists would do for that job. Maldynado flexed his fingers and adjusted his crouch, ready to spring.

Lights appeared through the door window—lanterns dangling from men’s arms. Maldynado counted five or six burly guards queued up and ready to enter, more than one face familiar. Yes, these were the men from the Relaxation Grotto. As before, they all carried pistols and short swords or cutlasses. Maldynado craned his neck but didn’t see Brynia. She wouldn’t have given her important tracking artifact to the security grunts, would she have? Maybe she could tell from her suite where Sicarius’s knife was located.

The exterior door opened. A gust of cold air stirred the heat inside. The first two men jumped into the boiler room, pointing their pistols, one toward the engine room and one toward the furnace area. From their position, Akstyr wouldn’t be in view yet, but if men charged down that way instead of going straight toward the knife, Maldynado and Yara would have to jump down early. Or, if anyone looked up with eyes good enough to see through the shadows…