Forged in Blood II (40 page)

“There aren’t even that many Forge people left, are there?” Books avoided looking at Sicarius.

“No,” Sicarius said.

“What a mess.” Amaranthe pushed a chunk of loose hair behind her ear and frowned—it was crunchy with dried gore. “In all possible ways.”

“I want Marblecrest out of the Barracks more than ever.” Sespian regarded first Amaranthe, then Sicarius, as if he wondered if he could make it an order and anyone would listen to him.

Amaranthe had never planned to give up, not when Starcrest had explicitly given her this mission, but she was glad to see the others nodding their heads in agreement with Sespian. Sicarius, too, gave a single nod when she glanced his way, though that surprised her least of all. He wouldn’t give up on a Starcrest-assigned mission either.

“I concur,” Books said. “Maldynado, why don’t we go back and fetch that canister? I imagine some stealthy assassin can find a route into the basement furnace room from here.”

“You’ll have to lift that barrel up through the hole in the roof back there,” Amaranthe said. “We haven’t found keys for this gate.”

“We’ll have to go through the courtyard to reach the door anyway,” Sicarius said. “There are shadows. And the soldiers are busy.”

“Maldynado.” Books slipped back through the bars, heading for the tunnel.

“Perhaps Sespian would like to go with you. He’s a slighter fellow with less substantially developed pectoral muscles.”

“Yes,” Books called back, “no belly either.”

Sespian lifted a hand in acknowledgment, then jogged after Books.

Maldynado propped his fists on his hips. “Yara, you’ve seen me naked. Do I have a belly?”

“Not at all,” Yara said. Before Maldynado could appear too mollified, she added, “I assumed it was your fat head that got stuck between the bars.”

Books was the one to smile.

Sicarius and Basilard, too professional to be drawn into the debate, had scouted the root cellar and, apparently finding nothing more insidious on this side of the bars than potatoes with eyes, headed up the stairs for the door in the ceiling. Crouching, Sicarius lifted it a few inches.

After a moment’s observation, he said, “It’s relatively quiet now. The makarovi who came up in the courtyard have either escaped or been killed. We’ll still want to use caution, as we have to cross two dozen meters to reach the basement and dungeon entrance.”

Amaranthe didn’t want to think about the dungeon entrance. Her time spent there had been only slightly less unpleasant than her days with Pike on the
Behemoth
. Maybe there was some justice in using insects again, or an insect-derived product, on her return visit.

“We’re ready,” came Sespian’s soft call from the tunnel.

Sicarius led the way into the courtyard.

Blood spattered the churned snow beneath their feet. Not for the first time, Amaranthe wondered how Maldynado could be related to Ravido. What a monster, to think up such a plan. Though she’d been guessing as to his intentions so far; they didn’t have proof that he was behind the makarovi.

Sicarius pointed most of the team toward the basement entrance around the back of the building, while he and Basilard jogged to the gaping hole a few meters away. Amaranthe went with them, keeping an eye on the walls and the courtyard as they bent to pull up the heavy canister from below. Shadows, Sicarius had said, but the courtyard was too well lit for her tastes. The guards would have to be wounded and unconscious not to notice a knot of strange men pulling up a—

“You there,” someone called from the auto-cannon station on the nearest wall—the gun was pointed
into
the courtyard instead of away. “What are you men doing?”

Basilard and Sicarius had already lifted the canister out of the hole. Books jumped, caught the lip, and pulled himself up at the same time as he knocked a small avalanche of dirt and snow inside. Ignoring the guard for the moment, Amaranthe grabbed his arm and helped him over the side.

Though he was having trouble—more earth crumbled away as he rolled toward her—Books was the one to respond to the soldier. “We got the makarovi poison the captain asked for.”

Amaranthe snorted. She didn’t know if that would work, but it wasn’t any worse than anything she would have come up with.

Sespian scrambled out of the hole with less trouble. He and Sicarius lugged the canister toward the basement door.

“Poison?” the guard responded. “What poison? And
which
captain?”

“Intelligence,” Books called back. Not a bad try. Most of the regular soldiers kept a wary eye on the supposedly sly officers who worked in that department.

“If you’ve got poison,” someone else from the wall called, “bring it up here. We need it.”

“Gotta report in first,” Books called. He and Amaranthe were jogging after Sespian and Sicarius. A few more meters and they’d round the corner of the building and be out of sight, at least to those on that particular wall.

“How come you’re not in uniform?” the first man called.

The second jogged over and nudged him.

“Hurry,” Amaranthe urged, though the men couldn’t go any faster while carrying that heavy load.

The auto cannon shifted, away from melee in one corner of the courtyard and toward her team.

“Get close to the building,” Sespian said. “They won’t risk shooting a hole in the first floor.”

When makarovi were involved, Amaranthe wasn’t so certain.

“Wait, that’s a woman!” Someone pointed at her. “Girl, you need to get out of there. As soon as those ugly bears catch a sniff of you—”

Amaranthe ducked around the corner. The canister gripped between them, Sicarius and Sespian were already jogging down the icy steps leading to the basement, as if they’d been carrying heavy loads together all of their lives. The metal barrel, almost too large for the walled in stairwell, scraped and clunked against the cement foundation. Fortunately the rest of the team held the door open at the bottom. It’d either been unlocked, or they’d found a way through that lock.

“You next,” Books said, a hand on Amaranthe’s back, guiding her toward the stairs.

Behind them, footfalls approached, crunching on the snow. Amaranthe hurried, expecting troops with guns.

But one of the makarovi leaped around the corner behind them. It roared, the bellow powerful enough to send the stench of its breath rolling over them. Books’s heel slipped off the top step. He would have gone down, but Amaranthe caught his arm.

“Don’t worry about me,” he yelled. “Go, go!”

The makarovi bounded toward them. Amaranthe pulled Books down the stairs. Halfway down, they both slipped on ice. Gravity threw them together, and they thumped and rolled to the bottom.

At the top of the stairwell, the makarovi reared onto its hind legs, its forelegs rising into the air, dark claws promising death.

A thunderous boom split the air in the same moment that someone grabbed Amaranthe’s shirt and yanked her through the basement doorway. Before she lost sight of the stairs, she saw the makarovi get clipped in the shoulder by a cannon ball. The creature spun into the air above the stairwell, a mass of black fur and legs flailing. Then Amaranthe was inside, the door slammed shut, and she didn’t see the rest. Though she did
hear
thumps on the stairs.

She tried to sit up, but she and Books were entangled, with someone standing over them.

A heavy bar thudded into place to secure the door. Sicarius, legs spread, was the one standing above them, and he gazed down, one eyebrow twitching ever so slightly.

“So,” Amaranthe said, “they’re
not
all gone from the courtyard.”

“I may have been mistaken,” Sicarius said, stepping aside.

“I’ve longed to hear those words for months.” Books groaned and rolled to a sitting position. “Though it was always in response to my claims that you chose obstacle courses entirely too long and difficult for our team’s collective abilities. Especially mine.”

Sicarius did not answer, though he bent to offer Amaranthe a hand up.

“Thank you,” she said.

“No, I’m fine.” Books lifted his own hand. “I can get up on my own.”

Several feet farther inside, Maldynado nudged Yara. “I’m not the only one who whines.”

“No, it’s a common trait amongst—”

Something slammed into the door, and Amaranthe didn’t hear the rest. She considered the thick metal hinges and the solid oak boards. “Makarovi aren’t as strong as soul constructs, right? It shouldn’t be able to break in here, should it?”

“Unlikely,” Sicarius said, “but we should act swiftly regardless.”

Another thump rattled the door.

“Oh, I agree, in every possible way.”

Akstyr and Basilard were in the lead, and Amaranthe and the others followed them through a short hall and down more steps. Before they reached the whitewashed walls of the dungeon, they stopped on a small landing and turned into a less inimical space: the basement. It smelled of wood and coal, scents she decided were pleasant when compared to the musk of the makarovi.

They found the furnace room—not much of a challenge since Sicarius, Akstyr, Books, and Sespian had been there before, albeit entering via a different route—and set the canister on the ground.

Maldynado, who’d been among the last to carry it, rubbed his back. “Let’s tell Admiral Starcrest that his next poison delivery mechanism should be lighter weight. Pocket-sized would be ideal.”

“I’ll let you be the one to tell him that.” Amaranthe fished in her pockets for the instructions the admiral had given her on setting up the barrel. There were hasty notes about temperature requirements and dispersion rates, too, the latter penned by his daughter. “I’m sure he’s even more impressed with complaining than Yara is.”

“Maybe, but I’m not trying to ensure his good opinion so that he’ll keep sleeping with me.”

“Sicarius…” Amaranthe drew him aside as Yara made some retort about her good opinion having yet to be earned. “We need someone to make sure the vents and flues are adjusted so that our special smoke doesn’t flow out into the night.” She glanced at Books, and he nodded. “Also, we absolutely cannot put people to sleep up there if there’s a chance there’s a makarovi inside the building. If there’s a duct you can squirm through, would you mind taking care of this business?”

“Squirm,” he said in one of his flat tones.

“You’d prefer a different word?”

“I do not squirm.”

“Even in bed?”

“No.”

“Fine, is there a duct you can thrust yourself through in a manly manner? Thrust is an acceptable word, I hope.” She bit off an inquiry about whether he performed
that
verb in bed, deciding it was a tad crass.

That eyebrow was in danger of twitching again, but another bang sounded back at the exit door, and he must have decided the time for play was over. Sicarius jogged beneath a massive duct leading from the furnace and into the wall and unscrewed what she guessed was the vent to a maintenance shaft. He glanced at her before, yes,
thrusting
himself through the opening. If any squirming went on, he waited until he was out of sight to do it.

“Let’s see that paper, Amaranthe.” Books had tipped the canister upright beside the furnace and unfolded something similar to, but more complicated than, a hose and spigot. “We should have this ready as soon as he returns.”

Basilard was standing watch next to the exit leading to the stairs, and he closed the door firmly.
I don’t believe that basement door will hold.

“What happened to our allies with the cannon?” Maldynado asked.

“It’s hard to shoot a cannon around a corner and down a stairwell,” Sespian said.

“Just when you think technology is helping civilization progress in a useful way.”

Amaranthe handed the sheet of paper to Books, happy to let him puzzle over the details, and joined Basilard at the door. She touched the wood. Though these boards were oak, too, they weren’t so stout as the ones upstairs.

It won’t have much trouble breaching this door
, Basilard signed, echoing her thoughts,
if it makes it through the one above.

One that wasn’t as substantial as the thick gold-gilded entrance doors to the main floor—Amaranthe remembered their stoutness from her first trip. They’d been opened by steam technology rather than by a butler with a burly arm. Though there’d be women inside the Barracks, the makarovi might find those in the basement a more attainable prize.

“Let me know if anything changes,” Amaranthe said.

Basilard, his ear already pressed to the door, nodded once. If nothing else, they could escape into the ducts the way Sicarius had gone. The makarovi would be too big to follow them. They’d have to leave their canister behind though.

“Ah, there’s a foldout handle too,” Books said. “What a clever little contraption. I’d love to take it apart and see how the inside works.”

“Perhaps after we’ve dispensed the anesthesia,” Amaranthe murmured.

“When did he have time to build this?” Sespian asked. “Has anybody seen Admiral Starcrest
sleep
since he got here?”

“Aw, he’s been retired for twenty years,” Maldynado said. “I’m sure he had plenty of time to rest then.”

Amaranthe thought of the submarine she’d seen and the hints Tikaya and their daughter had offered as to some of their adventures. “I’m not sure retired is
quite
what he’s been.”

A crack and a crash came from outside. Basilard met Amaranthe’s eyes.

“Akstyr, I don’t suppose you have any Science tricks for distracting makarovi?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I guess I can’t pull down its underwear.”

Books frowned at him. “Surely, your creativity can fathom other applications of similar skills.”

“You want me to pull its fur down?” Akstyr asked.

“Never mind.”

“Is that contraption working yet?” Amaranthe pointed at the canister, now with tubing in a coil at its base.

“Yes, but you want to wait for Sicarius’s return, right?”

“I want to—”

Loud snuffles crept through the door. A few meters away, claws clacked on a cement floor.

Amaranthe clamped her mouth shut, and everyone else stopped talking, as if sound were what had led the creature to the basement.