Deadly Games (20 page)

“The towel boy hasn’t come back,” she
said.

“What?” Maldynado asked.

Even if Basilard had decided to find the
latrine or change out of his white togs, the boy should have
returned to attend to the remaining competitors. Why had he
followed Basilard, anyway? No boys had accompanied any of the other
athletes.

“I think Basilard’s in trouble,” she
said.

“What?” Books asked.

“He’s been gone too long.” Amaranthe wondered
if it signified paranoia that neither of them seemed concerned. “Do
either of you two ‘coaches’ want to try to go down there? See if
you can get into that tunnel?” Amaranthe eyed a pair of enforcers
stationed where they could keep spectators from wandering into the
arena to bug the athletes. “I’ll go outside and see if I spot
anything suspicious.”

“Which of us should—” Books started.

“Either. Both. I don’t care.” She was already
maneuvering through the packed benches toward the aisle, worrying
that they had wasted too much time. How long would it take to drag
an unconscious man out through a back door? “Maybe I’m
overreacting,” she muttered under her breath. “Maybe it’s
nothing.”

Though she said the words, they did not keep
her from pushing past spectators and running down the stairs. At
the bottom, she reluctantly slowed down, aware that a sprinting
woman might draw the enforcers’ suspicions.

Only when she reached the stadium exit did
she break into a run. Maldynado caught up with her.

“Books is going in since Basilard already
vouched for him today.”

“Understood,” Amaranthe said.

They ran off the path to follow the curve of
the stadium’s outer wall. Twenty meters of neatly trimmed grass
stretched away from the structure before trees and shrubbery
started, hiding the locomotive tracks in the distance. Amaranthe
scanned the leafy green canopy, searching for the telltale smoke
trail of a steam-powered lorry. Anyone in the kidnapping business
would need a getaway vehicle.

“I don’t see anybody,” Maldynado said.

“Me either.”

Intermittent metal doors marked the outside
wall, too many for her and Maldynado to watch. Amaranthe took a
guess at which one corresponded with the corridor Basilard had gone
down and tried it. It did not budge, nor did it have a lock on the
outside one might pick. A single pull-bar handle rose from a sea of
brass rivets and steel.

“No way to pick the lock, huh?” Maldynado
asked.

Amaranthe knelt to examine tracks in the
earth. Dozens, if not hundreds, of people had been in and out of
the door that day, so they told her little. A dirt trail led to the
wider road ringing the stadium.

“We’re smart though,” Maldynado said. “We
ought to be able to figure a way in.”

“Got an idea?”

Amaranthe touched a long gouge in the earth.
Was it her imagination, or did that look like the sort of mark that
might be left if a couple of men were dragging another?

“Lots of ideas.” Maldynado grabbed the
pull-bar and heaved for all he was worth. Muscles strained beneath
the thin fabric of the back of his shirt, but the door did not
budge. He released it with a growl, then kicked it.

“Watching your mind work is always a
pleasure,” Amaranthe said.

“Because it’s unique?”

“Something like that.” She pointed at the
gouge. “I think they may already have him.”

She trotted to the opposite side of the road
and examined the ground. If kidnappers had dragged Basilard out of
there, they would not have stuck to the main path where witnesses
would be many. Even now, a pair of female athletes was jogging
along the road, warming up for the upcoming races.

Half-crouching, half-walking, Amaranthe
searched for unusual prints. Too bad Basilard was the one missing;
he was a great tracker.

“Afternoon, ladies.” Maldynado swept his hat
from his head and dropped into a low bow when the athletes
approached.

Amaranthe expected him to ask them to
accompany him somewhere for drinks or other activities, but he
stayed on task.

“Has either of you seen anything suspicious
out here?” he asked.

One of the women eyed Amaranthe, who was
still poking at the earth, looking for tracks, and asked, “Aside
from you two?”

“Yes.” Maldynado offered a sparkling smile,
the kind known for making the most standoffish ladies swoon, and
the women’s visages softened. One blushed. “Anyone dragging an
athlete across the grass, for instance,” he said. “Or a towel boy
roaming around where he shouldn’t be?”

“Oh!” The blushing girl sidled closer to
Maldynado and laid a hand on his forearm. “On our last lap, we did
see a young boy standing at that door.” She pointed to the one
Maldynado had tried to open. “It looked like he was beckoning to
someone in the woods. I didn’t see anyone, and he ducked back
inside when he spotted us.” She gazed up at Maldynado and batted
her eyelashes. “Does that help?”

Amaranthe shook her head in bemusement. At
times, Maldynado could be downright useful.

“Tremendously, dear,” he said. “Thank
you.”

“We should go, Reeva,” the girl’s companion
said. “Our race starts soon. If you don’t want me to win again, you
should probably be there to compete against me.”

“Win again?” Reeva released Maldynado and
propped her hands on her hips. “You only won
last
time
because that stupid warrior-caste girl tripped and took me down
with her.”

“On second thought,” her comrade said, “you
should stay here and go off with him.” She resumed her jog, heels
kicking up dust on the dry path.

Reeva pouted at Maldynado. “I have to go.
Would you like to come watch my race? It starts soon. And then
afterward, perhaps we could have an iced tea in the garden.”

“Why, I’m quite tempted, my lady,” Maldynado
said.

Amaranthe gripped his arm. “No, he’s not. Our
friend needs us.” She jerked her chin toward the trees.

The girl scowled at Amaranthe. She ignored it
and tugged Maldynado along.

“Sorry, miss,” he called to his newfound
friend. “I’m not the sort to put my own pleasure above a friend’s
needs. Not a good friend’s, anyway.”

Amaranthe led the way into the trees, and
Maldynado caught up with her. She was debating whether to look for
tracks or go straight through to the railway when voices drifted to
her ears.

Somewhere ahead of her, men spoke in urgent
tones. She picked up the pace, though she stepped lightly, not
wanting to be heard. She held a finger to her lips, and Maldynado
softened his own footfalls.

“...got him,” someone said ahead of them.
“Go, go.”

Machinery ground and clanked. An engine
starting? Amaranthe sniffed and caught a whiff of burning coal
mingling with the earthier scents of the woods.

She gave up stealth and ran full out, dodging
trees and trampling through dry brush. Her hand strayed toward her
belt, where she often wore her short sword, but it wasn’t there.
Right. She’d decided a woman with a sword would stand out at the
stadium. At least Maldynado had his.

The chugging of machinery floated through the
trees clearly now. It sounded more like the great pumping pistons
of a locomotive rather than the smaller engine of a carriage. But
nobody had a train for an escape vehicle. She hoped.

The woods thinned ahead with sunlight
streaming through a gap in the canopy. The railway tracks?

The sounds of the machinery were moving away
from her. More, the distinctive clickety-clack of a car moving on
rails joined with the chugs. No doubt now. She was listening to a
train.

Amaranthe sprinted the last ten paces, burst
out of the trees, and scrambled up the raised ballast bed
supporting the train tracks. Twenty meters away, a combination
locomotive-carriage was rumbling toward the city. Puffs of gray
smoke wafted from a short stack. Though doors on either side held
windows, the carriage had moved too far away for her to see through
them. For a second, she thought of running after it, but it picked
up speed even as she watched. No, she would never catch it.

Growling, she kicked at the gravel between
the wooden sleepers.

Branches snapped and brush rustled,
announcing Maldynado’s exit from the woods. Amaranthe pointed at
the carriage dwindling in the distance.

Maldynado blew out a low whistle. “What a
beauty. An expensive conveyance for a private owner to pay for,
too. My father talked about getting one for the family businesses
at one point, but we never did.”

“So our kidnappers are well-to-do,” Amaranthe
said. “Or they stole it from someone well-to-do.”

“Always a valid vehicle acquisition
strategy.” Maldynado threw a wink at her, no doubt thinking of the
times they had borrowed enforcer wagons as a means of creating a
distraction.

She could not muster a response, not with a
second man now missing. Amaranthe squatted on the tracks, elbows on
her knees, head hanging. If she had thought Basilard would be a
target in the middle of the day, she never would have suggested he
enter the competition. Well, not exactly true. She would have had
him enter with the intent of using him as bait to lure the
kidnappers, and she wouldn’t have been sitting hundreds of meters
away in the stands when it was time to spring the trap.

“Did he ever run the Clank Race that quickly
in your practice sessions?” Amaranthe asked.

“Nah. He got under two minutes once, but who
knew he’d have the fastest time today?”

“Strange that the kidnappers went after him
right in the middle of the day when all their other abductions have
been at night. Did they know he didn’t sleep in the dormitories?
Maybe this was to be their last abduction, and they figured it
didn’t matter if someone saw them at work. Maybe they weren’t
planning on targeting him at all, but he beat the person they had
in mind so they switched—”

Crashes sounded in the woods from whence
Amaranthe and Maldynado had come. She drew her knife and jumped
down to take cover behind the four-foot-high ballast bed. Maldynado
knelt beside her, a rapier in hand. This one had an opal gem on the
pommel, and silver runes running up and down the steel blade.

“How many swords do you have?” Amaranthe
whispered.

“Only thirteen. That covers most of my
ensembles.”

The thrashing continued, closer now. Books
raced out of the foliage.

Amaranthe started to relax, but the
expression on his face stopped her. As he ran toward the tracks, he
glanced over his shoulder twice. The second time, he tripped over a
rock and nearly tumbled head long into the gravel.

“Time to depart,” Amaranthe said. She climbed
up to the wooden sleepers and waved for Maldynado to follow.
“Books,” she said, but he had already seen her.

He scrambled up the ballast bed and joined
them on the railway.

Amaranthe raced along the tracks, boots
striking the wooden sleepers with each stride. She wanted to
obscure their trail by running on a surface that wouldn’t leave
telltale footprints, but only for a moment. “How far behind are
your pursuers?”

“Not...far,” Books panted.

A steam whistle screeched in the distance, a
train heading for the city. Good. Maybe it would cut off
pursuit.

“This way!” a male voice shouted from the
woods.

Amaranthe led the way off the tracks, jumping
from the gravel to the weeds lining the edge of the woods, hoping
not to leave prints in the dusty band in between. Maldynado and
Books, with their longer legs, made the leap easily. The team
weaved through the trees for a hundred meters, then came out on the
paved trail that ran along the lake, the trail Amaranthe and
Sicarius had run together so many times.

The ache that formed behind her breastbone
had nothing to do with her running efforts. He hasn’t even been
gone a day, she reminded herself. Nothing to worry about yet.
Besides, they were going to find him. Basilard, too.

Thousands of footprints trampled the dusty
red clay of the trail, and her fear of pursuit faded as she and the
men continued along it.

“What happened?” Amaranthe asked Books.

“Basilard wasn’t back there,” he said.

“We know.”

She explained the towel boy and the rail
carriage as they continued running. Popular beaches sprawled
between the trail and the lake, many occupied with naked children
running, playing, and swimming about. It was a workday, and most
adults who could steal time away were at the Imperial Games, but a
few nannies attended the youths. One voluptuous and quite nude
woman waved to Maldynado who puffed out his chest and smiled
back.

“Well, there’s one witness to our passing,”
Amaranthe muttered. “Who was chasing you, Books? Enforcers?”

“Yes, I saw that towel boy, and I tried to
apprehend him. He pulled this out of his pocket.” Books plucked a
vial filled with a golden powder from his own pocket and held it
out for Amaranthe. “He tried to hurl it to the ground to, I
presume, knock me out. I was quicker than he and stopped him, but
he started screaming, and enforcers surged into the tunnels. One
thought he recognized me as a criminal—can you imagine that?—so I
had to run.”

Amaranthe took the vial. With that much of
the powder, perhaps Akstyr could give her more information on
it—confirm whether it was the one from his book or if it had other
properties.

“
You
bested a ten-year-old boy?”
Maldynado asked Books. “All by yourself? Why, I’m impressed.”

“Impressing a small mind is an insignificant
task.” Books lifted a hand, pointing toward a beach. “Is that
Akstyr?”

Amaranthe almost dismissed the possibility
without looking—Akstyr was supposed to be investigating
apothecaries—but they
were
getting close to the boneyard.
The shirtless figure lounging on his back in the sand had a
familiar spiky hairstyle, too....