“Yet? Does that mean you’re willing to don such clothing for an experiment?”
“No.”
“Only nudity, eh?” Amaranthe rested a hand on his shoulder, thumb brushing his collarbone, the defined muscle beside it.... “I suppose I wouldn’t mind seeing you roam around menacingly in your... natural state. So long as you don’t get cold.”
Sicarius caught her hand, his gaze locking onto hers. “I am not feeling cold right now.”
She wanted to ask him what he was feeling, but stopped, sighing. “My... shopping mission failed. I suppose we shouldn’t contemplate further heat today.” Or tomorrow, she thought glumly. Or the next day, or any other day until they returned to the empire or somewhere else that they could restock certain supplies. “Although I do wonder. I don’t even know if I need egata tea, or whatever the islander equivalent is. I may not be able to...” She avoided Sicarius’s eyes. He had never proclaimed that he wanted to have children with her, but he had hinted from time to time that a second chance at fatherhood might have its appeal.
“There is a way to find out,” Sicarius said softly. His hand lifted, as if to stroke her cheek, though he hesitated. They had grown closer and more comfortable with each other in the past months, but he still didn’t quite seem to know what to do in situations that involved her feelings.
Amaranthe caught his hand, kissed it, but ultimately released it. “That is true, but I don’t want to find out by becoming pregnant. I mean, eventually I could see having children,” she rushed to correct, lest he think she was eternally opposed to the idea, “but I don’t think I’m ready yet. I’m still trying to figure out... I’m not sure who I am now that I’m not fighting to save the empire. A mother should know who she is, shouldn’t she? And I’m not sure I’m ready to give up having adventures yet, either, though I’m terribly relieved not to be responsible for anything or anyone anymore. Out here... it’s been quite delightful seeing and experiencing new places. Though I suppose one needn’t stay locked in a tower once one has a baby. The Starcrests went all over the world, raising their children on a submarine, didn’t they? And it worked out. Their kids are all bright. Though they’d have to be, you’d think. With, uhm.” She realized she had been talking for a long time. The topic made her nervous and brought back her burbling tendency, as Sicarius called it. They had never discussed children other than obliquely. Just explaining that she had lost her special tea—yes, she had called it “special tea” like she’d been talking to a toddler rather than a grown man—to the pirates had been difficult.
“I meant you could see a doctor,” Sicarius said.
“Oh.” Amaranthe flushed. He hadn’t been suggesting sexual abandon after all. “Yes, that makes sense. Though I’m not sure I trust imperial medicine in this manner. Er republican medicine.” She grimaced, not sure if that was the right term. It would take a long time to get used to thinking of Turgonia as anything except an empire.
“We could visit the Kyatt Islands,” Sicarius said. “Their scientists are known for medicinal acumen.”
“That’s true. We could even visit Akstyr.”
Sicarius’s expression grew flat.
“I didn’t mean visit him for medical advice,” Amaranthe said, in case that hadn’t been understood—Akstyr might have healed her before in an emergency, but she shuddered at the idea of asking a teenage boy for advice on her... womanly parts. “I meant we’d stop by and check on him as long as we’re there.”
Sicarius grunted. She supposed she couldn’t expect more enthusiasm. Those two had never bonded.
“While I’m there,” Amaranthe said, “you might be able to get in to see some of the other submarines Admi—President Starcrest built there. I understand there’s a whole fleet of science vessels.” There, that ought to stir his interest more than chatting with old comrades.
Before he could verify her supposition, an unfamiliar noise came from the sleeping cabin, a long beep that repeated three times. Amaranthe had grown used to the various glowing and blinking doodads—or Made devices, as the practitioners called them—around the sub, but she hadn’t heard this before.
Sicarius headed for the compartment. The cabin didn’t hold much more than a bed, but that bed had cabinets beneath it, and he delved into them. As soon as he opened the one on the left, a bright yellow glow washed over him.
“Er.” Amaranthe hadn’t realized she had been sleeping above some strange wizard device during the whole trip. “What would that be?”
Sicarius set it on the bed. “A communication artifact.”
“Oh, right.” She had seen a set of those before—her first nemesis Larocka Myll had communicated to her Forge allies with them. “Is someone trying to reach us? Or maybe someone’s trying to reach Starcrest.” Who from superstitious Turgonia would know how to use one of these devices? Maldynado would probably think it a lamp or a hand-warmer. She smiled at the thought, a twinge of homesickness touching her. Though she had enjoyed her time with Sicarius, she did miss her friends back home.
Sicarius placed a hand on top of the orb. This seemed to be the required gesture, for the yellow glow faded, and shadows stirred behind the opaque surface. President Starcrest’s head and shoulders came into view. The short gray hair, dark eyes, and handsome if determined visage were as Amaranthe remembered, though the furrows along his forehead and the creases framing his eyes seemed deeper, his face more tired.
She would not want that man’s job.
Starcrest turned his head toward something or someone out of sight—the orb showed only him and a few maps on a wall behind him.
“Ready,” a faint voice said. Professor Komitopis?
Starcrest nodded and faced forward, giving the illusion he was gazing at them.
Sicarius straightened like a soldier coming to attention. Amaranthe found herself leaning forward with interest. Nobody had contacted them before. This might signify trouble.
“Sicarius and Ms. Lokdon,” Starcrest said, his voice sounding tinny through the device, not quite the rich baritone she remembered. “I trust you are both there and well. I apologize for interrupting your vacation, but we have... a problem here.”
“Just one?” came the faint voice from the side again. Yes, judging by the fondness in Starcrest’s not-quite-squelching glower to the side, that was definitely his wife.
Starcrest faced forward again. “We have one problem in particular that’s proving nettlesome, and I hate to ask, but...”
Amaranthe braced herself, anticipating some soul-devouring favor. A request to return to the capital to lead her men again. A request for Sicarius’s assassin skills, skills she wanted him to be able to retire. Some mission that would thrust them both into the deadliest dangers again.
Starcrest cleared his throat. “We need the sub back.”
“What?” Amaranthe blurted, but he was still talking. This wasn’t a live conversation, she realized, but a message that had been saved to display when she and Sicarius noticed the flashing orb.
“Building a new one would take time,” Starcrest said, “and if there are any Makers looking to open their shops in the new Turgonian Republic, I haven’t heard of them yet. Again, I apologize for this inconvenience, but I would appreciate it if you would return as soon as possible. Thank you.”
The orb went dark, though Sicarius continued to gaze at it for a time.
“What do you think’s going on in the city?” Amaranthe asked. “Or in the lake?” Starcrest couldn’t need the sub for any land-based purposes, surely.
“Unknown.”
Amaranthe tried to decide if he looked pensive, or if she was, as usual, reading things into his bland features that weren’t there.
“We’ve left a few, uhm, inconvenient relics on the lake bottom in the last year,” she said, thinking of the underwater laboratory in particular. “Someone might have dug them out. Or started up a new underwater base from which to vex the city. Forge? No, we decimated them, and Starcrest’s new economist is working hand-in-han
d with that Curlev woman, right? Some other enemy then? The Nurians? They couldn’t have been pleased with how things worked out.”
Sicarius was watching her, his face unreadable.
“What?” she asked, wondering if the term burbling would come up.
“You sound intrigued.”
Huh. Was she? A minute ago, she had been cringing at the idea of being called back for some mission. Was it possible she had missed the chaos of the previous year? The need to come up with harebrained schemes on the fly? The need to talk fast and promise faster in order to win allies to her cause? She did miss her friends, that much she had no trouble admitting. As to the rest... perhaps she would welcome new challenges into her life.
“Maybe I am,” Amaranthe said. “Aren’t you?”
“Perhaps. Though...” Sicarius let his fingers trail down the riveted steel bulkhead next to him.
“You don’t want to give back the submarine?” Amaranthe grinned. “Because it’s a sleek mechanical wonder, a Starcrest original, and a prototype among the fledgling new generation of underwater exploration conveyances? Or—” she wiggled her eyebrows, “—are you reluctant to let it go because we made so many unique memories in this little cabin?”
“Yes,” Sicarius said, the familiar glint in his eyes.
Chapter 2
Mahliki stood outside the door, tugging at her braids, first the left and then the right, for at least a minute before knocking. She only managed that bit of bravery because university students were roaming up and down the hall, a few giving her odd looks as they swerved to avoid bumping into her.
A bald man with a couple of extra chins answered the door. “Office hours are in the mornings, as my sign clearly states.” He pointed to a brass plaque on the wall that read Professor Edgecrest and started to close the door.
Mahliki thrust her shoe into the crack. “Yes, Professor, but I’m not a student.”
He scowled at this admission. Before he could call security, use her for defenestration practice, or employ whatever other savagery Turgonians applied to trespassers, she rushed to add, “I’m here to see Sespian. I was told he’s assisting you this semester?”
Her addition didn’t soften the man’s scowl. “He’s too busy to dally with girls right now. In addition to his regular studies, he’s working on his contest entry. The deadline is tomorrow.”
Mahliki had been nervous enough about seeking out a private conversation with Sespian; she hadn’t thought she would have to conquer some militant Turgonian gatekeeper to simply see him. “I know. My father recommended he enter it.” Relying on Father’s name to get through this man made her feel weak and incapable, but she also didn’t want to spend fifteen minutes trying to find clever methods to bypass his defenses. “It’s his contest, you know.”
The professor’s scowl abated, and his lips formed a silent, “Oh.”
“I know Sespian is busy, but I’m here on an errand for my father. An important errand.” That much was true, but said errand had nothing to do with Sespian, and she was technically wasting time by detouring to the university district...
“Yes, of course.” The gatekeeper stepped aside. “But for the sake of his post-imperial career, I hope you won’t delay him for long. Or frivolously.” He arched his eyebrows with meaning. Not quite believing her story? Probably because she kept twisting the tip of a braid around her fingers. That was a sign of nervous prevarication, wasn’t it?
“Yes, sir.” Mahliki passed a large desk full of mathematics tests and sketches of bridges with comments scribbled in the margins, and headed for a partially closed door to the side. She knocked and stuck her head into the tiny office—cubby, might be the word—reserved for use by the professor’s assistants.
Sespian sat on a stool at a large raised desk, the top angled toward him so she couldn’t see what he was working on. He was bent low over it, his handsome face utterly still with concentration, the tip of his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth, one pencil in his hand and another perched above his ear. He wore simple trousers and a sweater that fitted his form nicely and made her think of the first time she had seen him, when he had been jogging bare-chested with her father and another man, plotting the retaking of the city. He had cut a fine, athletic figure, though even then, a gentleness about his face had said artist rather than soldier. Or maybe she had simply revised her initial impression of him after seeing his work and learning more about him. Learning more about him from a distance, admittedly. The classes she had enrolled in that winter had kept her busy, as well as countless silly dinners and formal events it was apparently imperative that a president’s daughter attend. More than once, she had wondered if she shouldn’t have returned home to stay with Grandmother and finish her studies on the islands, as her younger siblings had done.
Except then she wouldn’t be here, gazing at a handsome man who... hadn’t noticed she was in the room.
Mahliki knocked again, this time on the inside of the door. She didn’t mind having to try again. She was used to being ignored—or not noticed—by people absorbed in their work, as it ran in the family. At home, only Father always retained awareness of the outside world, usually knowing when someone had arrived at his study before they did.
“Uhm, Sespian?” she asked. “Do you have a moment?”
He lifted his head. “Oh, hullo, Mahliki.”
She smiled, pleased at the personal greeting. They had spoken to each other so few times since they had met that she wouldn’t have been surprised if he didn’t know her name, thinking of her only as one of Starcrest’s children.
“Hello.” She ought to get straight to her request—he was clearly busy—but curiosity, and the fact that she couldn’t see what he was working on, prompted her to step into the small office and ask, “Is that your entry for my father’s contest? Is it going well?”
“It’s going...” Sespian pushed a waste bin full of crumpled papers under the desk with his foot. “I can honestly say this iteration is better than some of the others.”
Mahliki grinned. She didn’t consider herself a perfectionist, but the family had many of those as well, and she understood the type. “You sound so enthusiastic.”
Enough early spring sunlight made it through the window to highlight the pink that flushed his cheeks.
“May I see it? I’m self-taught when it comes to art, and not very well at that, but I can appreciate good work.” Mahliki decided not to mention how much of his art she had sought out. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much, as most of his belongings had burned in the explosion that had destroyed the Imperial Barracks. “I’ve seen you in the courtyard between classes, sketching those caricatures for students.” More than once, she had been tempted to stroll up and have him do one of her, but she hadn’t been sure how he would react.
His cheeks flushed to a darker shade of red. “You’ve, uh, seen that? With the tip jar? It’s not...” Sespian bent his head and rubbed the back of his neck, hair in need of a cutting falling into his eyes. “I guess a smarter former emperor would have put some money aside for himself before his career was demolished, but I was busy with... well, I never had to worry about money before, so it didn’t even occur to me. I was shocked to learn the price of a flat in the city. A very, very small flat with a window the size of an arrow slit—actually I think it was an arrow slit once. And Trog—that’s my cat, you know—he prefers fine food, not alley scraps. He’s very vocal if I give him substandard fare—to the neighbors’ chagrin.”
Mahliki stared at him in chagrin of her own. Dear Akahe, she hadn’t meant to embarrass him. Nor had she realized he was scraping by. Did Father know? Sespian probably hadn’t said anything. Surely Father would house him for free at the big hotel that had been donated for presidential use. There were plenty of rooms. Should she offer? Or would that embarrass him further?
“But, uhm, anyway, that’s all temporary,” Sespian said. “Professor Edgecrest is now giving me a small stipend in exchange for helping him with his classes
and a few other chores, and once I finish school and know more fully what I’m doing, I should be able to find people to hire me.” He pressed a hand against the drawing pinned to the table. “This contest could help. I’m sure I won’t win, but all the entries will be displayed, and maybe I’ll get some notice from people thinking of hiring architects in the future. Oh, and to answer your original question, which I seem to have deviated from slightly, yes, you can look.”
Mahliki didn’t usually have trouble coming up with things to say—or, as her little brother called it, butting into people’s conversations—but she didn’t know how to respond to Sespian’s rushed rambling. She wanted to let him know she didn’t care how much money he had, but he had moved on so quickly, he clearly didn’t want to discuss it.
Glad for the invitation to look at his project, Mahliki rounded the desk and stood at his shoulder. Front- and side-view sketches for a simple yet elegant building sprawled across the page. Though rectangular, it had an originality that one didn’t expect, at least not after viewing the thousands of sturdy and stolid Turgonian buildings in the city. “That’s lovely. I like the front. It’s almost... whimsical.”
Sespian grimaced. “Probably too much so. President Starcrest is so... well, he just seems so military to me, even when he’s not in a uniform. It’s hard to imagine him appreciating something so... well, it is functional. I’ve made sure of that much. If anyone knows what a ruler’s residence and offices need, that should be me.” He shrugged and waved a hand, as if to dismiss what might be construed as bragging about his former position. Mahliki hardly found it so. If anything, he seemed self-effacing to the extreme.
“Just because your first president is a military man doesn’t mean future ones will be,” she pointed out. “Besides...” She lowered her voice, aware that the professor had settled back into his desk and was grading papers a few feet away. “I shouldn’t tell you this, but he foisted this off on my mother.”
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