Forged in Blood II (55 page)

Sicarius stared at the keys in his hand, the meaning of the admiral’s monologue sinking in.

“What’s that?” Sespian asked, walking up.

“I believe it is… a vacation.” Huh. They wouldn’t even need to find a remote beach to take advantage of privacy. Simply descend ten meters in any lake or sea, and who would bother them?

“For you and Amaranthe? That’s good. She could use it for sure.”

Sicarius lifted his head. “Only her?”

Sespian eyed the scar at his temple. “I’d say you, too, but do you even know how to… vacation?”

“I will learn. She will help me.”

“Good. Ah, how long do you think you’ll be gone?”

Sicarius wondered if that meant Sespian would miss him and wanted him to return eventually. “I do not know.”

“It’s just that I talked to Rias, and mentioned that I’d had a position in mind for Amaranthe. That diplomatic spot.”

Rias? Sespian was calling Fleet Admiral Starcrest by his first name? How much time had they spent together while Sicarius had been… unable to return?

“Do you think she’ll want it?” Sespian asked. “If Starcrest is elected, he said it’d be simple enough. He has a few contemporaries in mind for positions, but agrees that some young blood would be healthy.” The way Sespian smiled suggested he’d been the one to point this out.

“I do not know if she wishes to remain,” Sicarius said. “We have not discussed much beyond the vacation.”

“Do you actually do that?” Sespian asked.

“What?”

“Discuss. You’re often… monosyllabic.”

“She discusses enough for both of us.”

“Ah.”

“Are
you
remaining in the capital?” Sicarius asked, wondering if Sespian, too, sought a position or if he wanted a break from government. Sespian had launched a few speculative gazes toward Starcrest’s oldest daughter.

“For a while,” Sespian said. “It’s strange though, that I don’t have a place to live now. Or any money. Or a job. I hope Trog’s last couple of months roaming free in the Barracks have prepared him for a life of scraps instead of choice kitchen treats.”

“What happened to the money you paid us for your kidnapping?”

“Oh, Amaranthe was good about toting it around—we’d figured we might need it to buy weapons and bribe troops—and she had it stored in a safe nook in the factory. I understand the molasses flood rather thoroughly took out bedrolls, rucksacks, and suitcases of ranmyas.”

“It’s on the bottom of the lake?”

“Most likely,” Sespian said. “And encased in a sticky goo.”

Sicarius wondered how deep Starcrest’s submarine could descend. He doubted Sespian cared overmuch about the money, but retrieving it might prove a good training exercise, a chance to learn the boat’s capabilities.

Sespian noticed someone’s wave and started walking toward the bier. The director had come with a lantern and the oil-doused lighting torch. They were ready to begin.

Sicarius thought about finding a tree to lean against, but Amaranthe, standing with Tikaya and Yara, met his eyes across the bier. There was no request or demand in them, but he thought he read a hint of vulnerability. Maybe he simply wanted her to need him. Either way, he chose to walk over and stand beside her before the pile of logs and branches arranged, as was tradition, in the shape of a shield. Bearers laid Books’s body across the wood, as a fallen warrior might once have been carried off the battlefield on his shield.

Though Sicarius watched, he was also aware of Sespian coming to stand beside him. They listened in silence as the director spoke at length of Marl “Books” Mugdildor, pulling up information from his past that Sicarius hadn’t known. He wondered if Amaranthe had given the history to the director, or if he’d researched independently.

“Who will speak before his spirit is sent into the next world?”

Akstyr mumbled, “He saved my life,” but shifted uncomfortably under everyone’s gazes and didn’t say anything further.

Maldynado stepped forward, removing a sedate beaver fur cap and pressing it to his chest. “Books was the sort to harass you with lectures, but I think it was because he was stuck in a situation where he didn’t know how to interact with any of us uneducated louts, and he did the best he could. I wish he’d surviv…” Maldynado’s fingers curled into a fist. “Cursed ancestors, Books, what’s wrong with you? Why couldn’t you have made it another night? Another
hour
? We were almost done with every—” He broke off, blinked rapidly, then brought the fist to his chest in a salute and bowed. More softly, he said, “Goodbye, Booksie.”

Maldynado stepped back. Yara took his hand, and they leaned against each other.

After a silent moment, during which Amaranthe and a few others wiped their eyes, Basilard stepped forward. He nodded to Amaranthe and she translated his words for those who didn’t understand the signs.

Though fate forced him down a road on which he reluctantly turned himself into a warrior,
Books had the heart of a peaceful man
.
He would have been liked and honored among my people. Perhaps one day, Mangdoria as well Turgonia will benefit from the documents he constructed.

When Amaranthe translated the mention of Mangdoria, Basilard lifted his head, meeting Starcrest’s eyes. They must have discussed Basilard’s issues at some point, for Starcrest returned the nod. The idea of the number of deals, negotiations, and overseer duties waiting for the admiral, assuming he took office, was enough to make Sicarius glad nobody would put his name on a ballot for anything. He’d rather go through the rest of his life with that bounty on his head than spend a year in charge of a nation.

Amaranthe stepped away from his side to speak at the head of the bier. “I regret that Books—Marl—didn’t live to see his work adopted or the results that we as a team fought so hard for this last year. It’s been a far bloodier resolution than any of us would have wished, but I have hope that the future will be a good one, one that will make our sacrifices—
his
sacrifice—worth it.” She wiped her eyes again and took a deep breath before continuing. “I wish he’d known more happiness in his life, but I hope his spirit will find a peaceful rest with the awareness that he made a difference. Losing his son always plagued his heart, and one of his biggest regrets, he once told me, was that his last words to Enis were harsh. It ate at him that he didn’t get a chance to say, ‘I love you’ one last time before his son’s loss. I hope that they’ll find each other and make amends in the afterworld.”

Basilard shifted his weight, a thoughtful expression on his face.

Sicarius found it odd that a people could deny the belief in deities, magic, and other mysticism, but had no trouble accepting that the human spirit was eternal and lived on in some everlasting incarnation. Perhaps the other things weren’t required for the sanity of the human mind, but the idea of mortality being final was too depressing a concept to accept for those who inevitably drew closer to such an end themselves.

He noticed Sespian watching him, but when he turned to make eye contact, Sespian lowered his gaze.

“Does anyone else wish to speak?” the director asked.

Those who had not known Books that long or that well deferred. Maldynado, Amaranthe, and Basilard all looked at Sicarius though. They expected him to speak? What would he say? No words could change the fact that Books was dead, nor did he require some ceremony to accept a person’s passing.

They
did, though. His comrades sought something from this experience that he might never understand fully. For them, he took a step forward, though he didn’t know what to say. What wouldn’t be inane? What wouldn’t be boorish? They probably wouldn’t be impressed if he spoke of Books’s progress in his training over the last year, and that it was unfortunate that chance had killed him even as he’d grown into a competent warrior.

Aware of all the gazes, of Amaranthe’s and Sespian’s in particular, Sicarius finally said, “In our memories he will survive.”

So much for not uttering anything inane.

People nodded though, and Amaranthe gave a sad smile. “Perhaps that’s where it matters most, and the history books are just… vanity of a sort.”

Sicarius stepped back into the circle of bystanders, and she took his hand. As the boughs were lit beneath the body, Sespian took his other hand. It startled Sicarius, but he managed to keep from commenting or staring with incredulity.

The branches, doused with oil, caught flame quickly. The faces of those watching as the fire enveloped the body were sad, but Sicarius couldn’t help but share Amaranthe’s belief that the future would be better than the past. With her on one side and his son on the other,
his
future already was.

THE END

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THE EMPEROR’S EDGE UNIVERSE

NOVELS

The Emperor’s Edge, Book 1

Dark Currents, Book 2

Deadly Games, Book 3

Conspiracy, Book 4

Blood and Betrayal, Book 5

Forged in Blood I, Book 6

Forged in Blood II, Book 7

Encrypted

Decrypted

SHORT STORIES AND NOVELLAS

Ice Cracker II
(and other short stories)

The Assassin’s Curse

Beneath the Surface

THE FLASH GOLD CHRONICLES

Flash Gold

Hunted

Peacemaker

THE GOBLIN BROTHERS ADVENTURES