“And as a Turgonian citizen, you’re responsible for paying taxes on income earned even when you’re across the borders,” Maldynado said. “Really, Amaranthe, how do you expect to enjoy the benefits of being a citizen, such as enjoying the protection of the enforcers—” he waved at Yara, “—when you’re not contributing?”
“I had no idea she wasn’t paying her taxes,” Yara said. “Should I be walking by her side, agreeing to help her with this investigation?”
Amaranthe gave them both the squinty eye. “I suppose you’re saying you two have both kept up with your taxes, despite all the craziness that was keeping us busy last fall and winter?”
“I did,” Yara said.
“And she filed mine for me too.” Maldynado smiled. “You’re the only criminal here.” He nudged Yara. “I think you’re right. You shouldn’t be walking beside her, looking so enforcerly. At the very least, don’t raise a hand to protect her until she’s left a suitable deposit on the president’s desk.”
“Are you two enjoying this conversation?” Amaranthe asked, coming to a stop in front of the shop.
“I am,” Maldynado said. “I’ve missed having you around, boss.” He patted her on the shoulder.
Amaranthe eyed the spot then looked at Yara. “Should I accept that pat with good humor or feel offended because it’s the same hand he was using to rub that statue?”
“I always make him wash before he touches me,” Yara said.
“Sounds... hygienic.” Amaranthe turned her attention to the brick shopfront with the metal shutters securing the windows. The patchwork copper-and-steel door appeared equally impregnable. Amaranthe tried the latch. It didn’t open, though numerous scratches marred the frame.
“Does this look like it’s seen the attention of a crowbar lately?” she asked.
Yara touched the scratches. “Yes.”
“Perhaps a few customers were feeling irate due to the fact that the shop isn’t open yet, and it’s four hours past dawn,” Maldynado said.
“Or perhaps someone wanted badly to get in,” Yara said.
“She does have quality wares,” Amaranthe said. “And a meticulously organized shop appealing to both customers and employees.”
Maldynado snorted. “Assuming she’s continued to use the system you installed. Some people simply fling their cogs and wrenches into the corners of the room when they’re done with them.”
“Yes,” Yara said, “some people do the same things with their undergarments.”
“You say this as if it’s not normal. Strange would be stopping to fold them in the middle of amorous beginnings.”
“I just don’t see why the hats get carefully tucked into a glass display case when other garments are treated so cavalierly. Don’t you think that’s odd, Lokdon?”
“Uh.” Amaranthe couldn’t decide if being included in their not-quite-married-life conversation was entertaining or horrifying. She resolved never to discuss Sicarius’s undergarments in public.
Maldynado nudged Yara with an elbow. “Don’t ask her. Who do you think I was talking about with the folding?”
“Ah.”
Amaranthe knocked on the door. As Maldynado had pointed out, it was well into Ms. Sarevic’s first set of office hours, the ones publicly posted on one of the metal shutters. The perpetual-motion clock above the door confirmed that it was less than an hour until noon. Even a store proprietor who had overslept should have wandered out by now.
“Store hasn’t been open for three days,” a bald fellow with a beard down to his belt said from a vendor’s cart a dozen meters up the street. Numerous automata toys stood, rolled, or teeter-tottered on the cobblestones around him. “Might be I can help you though. I can make all sorts of precision instruments, not simply children’s toys.”
“Thank you,” Amaranthe said. “If we can’t find her, maybe we’ll come back to see you.”
She headed around the corner of the building and into an alley she had been invited to use before. Without the invitation—and the key that came with it—she didn’t know how she would get in, as Ms. Sarevic had designed the shop to withstand invasions by enforcers if need be.
“There’s an entrance back here?” Yara asked.
“Yes, though we won’t be getting into it unless my lock-picking skills are sufficient to tackle a steel door with what is likely one of the more advanced locks in the city.” Not to mention that it might be booby-trapped.
Amaranthe slowed as she neared the side door. The formerly gleaming steel was distinctly soot-colored now. The entire wall around had a blackened hue, with broken bricks and disintegrated mortar littering the rough stones of the alley.
Maldynado ambled up to the door and pulled it open with a finger. It wobbled on its hinges. “Doesn’t look that advanced to me.”
“It’s... changed,” Amaranthe said.
Yara picked up a piece of iron. “This looks like the plunger from one of the old-style military hand grenades.”
Amaranthe pictured the ordnance in her mind—when working correctly, the little ovals detonated on impact, the plunger being pushed in to ignite the black powder when it struck its target. “Too crude to be one of Sarevic’s weapons, I think. But I guess it proved effective.”
“Shall we invite ourselves in?” Maldynado peered into the dark stairway behind the door.
“Trespassing?” Yara frowned.
“It’s not trespassing,” Amaranthe said, “when you’re simply concerned about the proprietor of a business and you’re going inside to try and ascertain why she hasn’t been here to open her shop in three days.”
“Actually it is. I’m beginning to see why your enforcer captain hasn’t hunted you down to offer you your job back now that you’re no longer an outlaw.”
“I’m sure he would have if I hadn’t been out of the country.” Amaranthe ducked beneath Maldynado’s arm—he had been nodding knowingly through this discussion and holding the door open—and headed down the stairs. Broken glass crunched beneath her boots. The door at the bottom had been forced open too. Before they stepped inside, Amaranthe was already worrying that they wouldn’t find Ms. Sarevic or anything useful left intact.
“Anyone bring a lamp?” she asked. What little light filtered down from the alley did nothing to illuminate the subterranean workshop. She crinkled her nose at the mix of leather, grease, and something that was either mildew or a crafting ingredient that smelled a lot like mildew. She took a step into the room, patting in the air to her right, remembering that there had been a tool-filled credenza there, and thinking there might be a lamp on it. Her toe clunked against something. She bent and identified it by touch. “Never mind, I found a lamp. Anyone have a match?”
A flame flared to life near her head. “Were you this unprepared when you were an enforcer?” Yara asked. “I always had this image of you being the model officer, before you started lurking about with an assassin.”
“I got used to having Akstyr around to light things for me.” Amaranthe held out the dented lantern toward the match.
“That lamp looks like an elephant stepped on it,” Maldynado said.
“The whole room looks that way,” Yara said.
With the lamp pushing back the darkness, Amaranthe gaped at the mess before them. The shelves and racks she had installed, labeled, and alphabetized had all been torn from the walls or had their contents flung onto the floor. Broken tools and machine parts lay everywhere. Pieces of leather and fabric dangled from the pipes running along the walls. A cog hung from a light fixture near the ceiling, as if it had been tossed there in a disc-hurling competition at the Imperial Games. Sticky substances competed with oily substances for space on the cement floor. The wooden stairs leading up to the street-level shop had been broken, the treads snapped in half as if Maldynado’s elephant had been guided up them.
“I’m not sure the proprietor is employing your organizational system to its highest potential,” Maldynado observed, prodding a manikin in an armored vest—its stuffed head had be
en knocked off to land who knew where.
“You worked for Sarevic at some point?” Yara asked.
“Don’t answer that,” Maldynado said, “or she’ll have to stand witness before the magistrate when you’re called in to answer about those taxes.”
“I did some cleaning and organizing for her since we didn’t have the cash to pay for an order in full.” Amaranthe was torn between cursing over the fact that all her work had been destroyed and grabbing the nearest broom to set things aright. “Was this a robbery or a war zone?”
“Are any valuables missing?” Yara asked.
“Who could tell?” Maldynado asked.
“Actually...” Amaranthe wandered into the room and pushed an upturned case into an upright position. “I did an inventory when I was designing the system, so I could probably tell you that in a few minutes. Although the best items are supposed to be stored in the safe. Sarevic didn’t let me in there. That’s where all her prototypes and bars of precious metals were.”
“Where is the safe?” Yara asked.
“This way.” Though it made her fingers itch to step over a mess instead of straightening it, Amaranthe picked a route over, around, and between the toppled shelves and cases. It would take days to clean up, and they had more pressing matters to deal with. Admittedly, she did put a few items back on shelves if they happened to be on the way. “It’s behind that bookcase in the corner.”
“The bookcase that’s clearly been shoved away from the wall?” Maldynado asked.
“Yes, someone may have already broken into the safe,” Amaranthe said, though the wall lacked soot, and neither those shelves nor anything nearby had the utterly destroyed appearance of something that had endured a blasting stick discharge. “If this happened three days ago, our assassin and whoever else has been shopping here—” she waved toward the pocket where Maldynado was keeping the stamped scrap of metal, “—could have walked in anytime and taken what they wanted.”
“The assassin probably did this,” Yara said. “After killing the woman to ensure there wouldn’t be witnesses.”
“That’s a possibility.”
“A likely possibility,” Yara said.
“The question is whether this assassin is also responsible for the sabotaged lorries at Sespian’s construction site,” Maldynado said. “And if so, why? You wouldn’t think that would be related to someone trying to kill Sicarius and the boss. Or was it the submarine they were after?”
That thought had crossed Amaranthe’s mind. Maybe someone hadn’t wanted the submarine returning home, since it might be used against the plant. Those priests couldn’t save the city if the president figured out how to do it on his own.
Yara, in the midst of climbing over a pile of scrap metal, paused to look at Maldynado.
“What?” he asked.
“Every now and then, you surprise me by actually seeming to care about something other than hats and sex. What is that construction site to you? And why are you bothering to research sabotage there?”
Maldynado lifted a shoulder. “Starcrest sent me there to do a job.”
“Yes, one that involved shoveling dirt, at least that’s what you were complaining about last night.”
“I decided to take some initiative in hopes of earning a promotion.”
“To what? Foreman over the dirt shovelers?”
“Nah, that would be too much responsibility. I want to drive the cement mixer. That would be fun.”
Yara shook her head. Amaranthe couldn’t tell if she had yet figured out that Maldynado cared about quite a few things beyond hats and sex. He might have to actually reveal that, and to be serious from time to time, to keep someone as strict, honorable, and work-loving as Yara.
“Starcrest might be afraid you would pour the cement into a Maldynado statue mold if he were to give you that job,” Amaranthe said.
She had reached the wall and was patting around, trying to remember where the secret switch was to push aside the veneer and reveal the safe. She had never been allowed to touch it herself, but she had seen Sarevic do it a couple of times. As far as the combination of the safe went, she had no idea about that.
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Maldynado said. “I could leave a little present in the basement. Or on the front lawn.”
“Ugh,” Yara said.
A click sounded, and Amaranthe stepped back. “There we go.”
The wall slid aside an inch. She pulled it open the rest of the way, like a door on a freight train, the rollers hidden inside. As she had suspected, the steel vault was closed.
“Emperor’s warts,” Yara said, “that’s a big safe. Was she running a bank on the side?”
“Don’t you mean president’s warts?” Maldynado asked.
“Enh, I haven’t gotten used to that yet. I’m not even sure that works. Wasn’t that saying born in the fourth century, because of an emperor who truly was covered in warts?”
“Emperor Grigothferduvk the Crusty,” Amaranthe said. Books had given her the story once; she wished he were here to expound on the details—and provide a history on safes and safecracking as well. She tried turning the wheel and pulling it open, but met resistance promptly.
“So we’ll have to wait for a warty president to be elected before we can use that phrase?” Maldynado asked. “Starcrest does have that scar. Maybe we could design a curse around that. President’s blighted eyebrows.”
Yara stared at him.
“What?” he asked again.
“I’m surprised you were even able to talk him into giving you a shoveling job.”
“I charmed him with my golden tongue.”
“You know,” Yara said, “if you’re willing to shovel or wield other tools for a living, we could find you a job in my town. There are lots of farms around the countryside.”
Amaranthe had her ear to the safe door and was spinning the dial slowly, hoping some click or tick might give her a hint. This new comment from Yara distracted her though.
“You’re thinking of moving back to your rural home?”
“I was offered a promotion there. Lieutenant. I would be the first female lieutenant and one of the youngest overall in the satrapy.” Yara smiled. “I looked it up.”
“Congratulations. When was this?”
“A few weeks ago,” Yara said.
“When do you start?”
Yara glanced at Maldynado. “I haven’t taken the job yet.”
“Oh.” Amaranthe wanted to ask more, but Maldynado was studying his feet, and Yara had stuck her hands into her pockets, the smile gone, her face masked.
Change the topic, those expressions said. “Anyone have any guesses as to the combination?” Amaranthe asked.
“One, two, three, four,” Maldynado said.
“Anyone have any good guesses?”
“No,” Yara said.
“Do you know what we should do?” Maldynado asked in an inspired tone, the sort that said he was indeed eager to switch to a different subject. “Plan a dinner party for Sespian and Mahliki.”
“What?” Yara asked, her own tone flatter than the cement floor.
“The girl likes him. He likes the girl. Between all this craziness going on and their own painful shyness—Sespian’s especially—they don’t seem to be making much progress toward developing a relationship. Left to their own devices, they could be too arthritic and feeble to make the bed rock by the time they finally admit that they have feelings for each other.”
“I’m sure they can figure it out without your help,” Yara said.
Hm. Amaranthe wasn’t usually the type to play matchmaker, but she had always felt bad that Sespian had developed feelings for her that she didn’t reciprocate. It had been even more of a blow to him to have her fall in love with his father. To see him happy with someone else would be a pleasure. And, all right, it would assuage some of the guilt that she shouldn’t feel but always did anyway. “I’ll help with that dinner party,” she said.
“You can’t be
serious,” Yara said.
“Do you think we should let Maldynado plan such an event by himself?” Amaranthe asked, though she confessed that he probably had more of a clue as to what should go into a dinner party than she did. “Did he ever tell you about the birthday party he organized for me last year?”
“The one at the brothel?” Yara asked.
“Yes, need I say more?”
“I’m sure the sex-addicted oaf has more tact than to invite the president’s daughter to a dinner party at a brothel.”
“You are?” Amaranthe raised her eyebrows.
“Mostly.”
“Come now, ladies,” Maldynado said. “You can trust me to plan something suitable. I’m quite aware of how innocent Sespian is.”
“You don’t think Mahliki is innocent?” Amaranthe asked.
“I... wouldn’t think so to look at her—surely, she’s received ample attention from the young males of the species. And the not-so-young ones too. But then again, given that she’s been traveling the world with her rather towering and intimidating father, I suppose it’s possible she’s been sheltered. Perhaps the dinner gathering should involve some educational activities? The better for both of their futures. What do you think?”
Yara’s jaw dropped.
“We definitely need to help with the planning of this party,” Amaranthe said.
Jaw still dangling open, Yara shook her head. “We need to stop this party from ever happening. And we also need to focus on what we’re doing, before some on-duty enforcer comes by and arrests us as suspects in this dishevelment.”
“Agreed.”
Maldynado didn’t say whether he agreed or not. He was busy stroking his chin and wearing a thoughtful expression. Maybe they would get lucky and the plant would eat all of the dining furniture in the city.
Amaranthe ticked the vault with a fingernail. She considered hunting for something that could be used to amplify the sounds of the dial clicking through the numbers. She had heard of criminals using such methods to thwart safes, but had never tried it herself and would probably be wasting their time. What did she hope to find inside anyway? Proof that the place had been robbed and not simply destroyed? A note signed by the assassin that read, “Thanks for the blasting sticks, and here’s my address if you want to send the bill?”
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