Beneath the Surface

by Lindsay Buroker

  Akstyr lifted his head and propped himself up on his elbows. “I don’t know what they do, but there’s power in them for sure. They’re long and skinny and remind me of fireworks from the solstice fests, but they’re not solid. There’s glass or something like glass with a yellow gunk inside. There are little clear blocks floating in the gunk.”

  “Clear blocks?” Sicarius asked sharply.

  “Uh huh. Small ones. I think there’s something in them.”

  Sicarius took Akstyr’s spot and lowered his head. Sicarius’s sharp tone concerned Amaranthe—when did he ever let emotion seep into his voice?—and she nibbled on a fingernail. It usually wouldn’t take him more than a heartbeat or two to absorb all the sights visible from the grate, but he lay there unmoving for many seconds.

  Amaranthe’s patience—and fingernail—ran out. She dropped to her belly beside him, bumping his shoulder in an effort to make room for herself. She lowered her head and peered around a dangling thatch of short blond hair to see a pyramid of long, glowing yellow tubes. Rope woven through the stack tied them to each other, and cloth padding ensured they wouldn’t shift about with the bumps and sways of the steamboat. After the dim lighting of the hold above, the artifacts’ illumination made Amaranthe squint, but her eyes soon adjusted, and she spotted the clear blocks Akstyr had mentioned. Perhaps one-inch wide, they were suspended in the yellow substance like raisins and nuts in the sweet carrot gelatin salad at Curi’s Bakery. She couldn’t tell if any letters or symbols marked the cubes.

  “Get back,” Sicarius whispered and pulled his head out.

  As soon as Amaranthe cleared the grate, he lowered it into place with a firm clang. He twisted the key in the lock, considered it for a moment, then tucked it into his pocket. He waved the others back and pulled a crate over the grate.

  “That bad, huh?” Amaranthe had assumed they were dealing with human-made artifacts—Akstyr sensed them after all—but perhaps those cubes came from elsewhere. Her gaze dropped to the knife always sheathed at Sicarius’s waist. So far all of the ancient technology they’d encountered had been black. Was this some exception?

  Sicarius crouched, his forearms balanced on his thighs. “I have seen those cubes before.”

  “On your mission up north?” Amaranthe asked.

  “Yes.”

  “What do they do?” Sespian asked.

  “The ones I saw were sprayed via a rocket detonating in the air above Fort Deadend. When the cubes broke open, the substance inside killed everyone within a ten mile radius.”

  “Rockets.” Akstyr snapped his fingers. “Yes, that makes sense. The energy I sensed comes mostly from the base. It must be stored somehow to propel the tubes into the air.”

  Nobody looked at him.

  “Killed?” Sespian hadn’t taken his gaze from Sicarius. “How?”

  “I came upon the bodies after it’d happened. Some airborne inhalant, I assume. The effects on the people within range were grisly.”

  Amaranthe couldn’t imagine how badly mauled a body would have to be for someone as desensitized to death as Sicarius to feel compelled to use such a word.

  “And those weapons are going to the capital?” Sespian asked. “I can’t allow—I mean, even if I’m not... We can’t allow something like that to be used.”

  “I can’t believe Forge would bring something like that into the city,” Amaranthe said. “A ten-mile radius? So, twenty miles in diameter? That’d devastate the majority of Stumps.”

  “A million people,” Sespian breathed.

  “Maybe they only mean to use the weapons as a threat,” Amaranthe said. “A bluff. They’d be in danger, too, if they set them off.”

  “Not if they’re flying around in their big black aircraft,” Akstyr said.

  “True.” Whatever armor the Behemoth possessed, it’d probably protect those within from any number of attacks. “Still, what would they gain from killing everyone in the city?” Amaranthe asked. “They’re business people, and those are customers.”

  “They may not know precisely what they have,” Sicarius said.

  “Well, isn’t that comforting?” Sespian gripped the edge of a nearby crate. “They’ll kill everybody by accident.”

  Amaranthe found herself nodding. “Not comforting, but maybe correct. I got the impression that the girl who was doing the translating of how to work the Behemoth was learning as she went.”

  “What are we going to do about this?” Sespian asked. The lost-puppy look that had haunted his eyes for days had faded, replaced by determination.

  “Get off the boat?” Akstyr suggested.

  Sespian glared at him.

  “What? Nobody else is disturbed by the fact that we’re standing on top of something that can kill us instantly?” Akstyr’s voice had grown squeaky.

  “Technically, we’re crouching on them, not standing,” Amaranthe said, hoping a little levity would relax Akstyr.

  He glowered at her. “I say we grab our stuff and get off the boat before it gets to Stumps. A good ten miles before it gets there.”

  Amaranthe wondered if he was thinking of escaping to the Kyatt Islands again. With his mother and her bounty-hunting cronies waiting in Stumps, he had little incentive to return to the capital anyway. This was one more reason for him to abandon the team and head west. But she needed him for what lay ahead. She needed all of them.

  “Wouldn’t it be better to destroy the weapons?” Amaranthe suggested. “If we left and they were removed from this boat, we’d be forever wondering who had them and if they might be used against the city. Any city. Perhaps Forge doesn’t intend to drop them on the capital, but means to use them against other nations, nations who we’ve warred with in the past. If Ravido could suddenly wipe out the Nurians, or bring the Kyatt Islands under imperial rule—” she gave Akstyr a frank stare, hoping he’d realize he might not be safe even there, “—the people would throw their support behind him. There’d be no fighting. He’d simply be given the throne.”

  Sespian released the crate he’d been gripping only to sink against it for support. “I hadn’t thought of that, but that does seem a plausible scenario.” He closed his eyes. “If we—the empire—did something like that... there’d be no hope for the peaceful future I’d envisioned. Some atrocities can never be forgiven.”

  “Destroying them is the best choice,” Amaranthe said.

  “Uh.” Akstyr hoisted a finger. “How do we do that if breaking them releases their fumes?”

  Good question. “Sicarius?” Amaranthe asked.

  “I do not know.”

  “We better find Books and see if he has any ideas.” Amaranthe sent a silent apology across the miles to Maldynado and Yara. They were going to have to take care of themselves.

  CHAPTER 7

  Dawn approached as Amaranthe and the others jogged through a light snow, heading back to their cabins. Sicarius lifted a hand before they reached their block of doors, though, and slipped into the shadows along the rail. Amaranthe, Sespian, and Akstyr followed his example. She checked her hood to make sure it hid her face. It was still early enough that she’d expected only her men to be about, but perhaps that was not the case.

  She stood on her tiptoes to whisper, “What is it?” beside Sicarius’s ear.

  There wasn’t anything to hide behind on the narrow stretch of deck before their cabins, not so much as a lounge chair. If anyone were standing there, even the dim lighting wouldn’t have hidden them. Maybe someone was inside the cabins.

  “Visitors,” Sicarius said.

  “Are they still here?”

  Sicarius tilted his head back, eyeing the deck above, or perhaps the framework below the deck. Amaranthe squinted into the shadows over her cabin door. Did that dark smudge have a human form? Or was it her imagination? She couldn’t remember anything significant to hang from up there, but Sicarius was focused on the spot. It must be something.

  The “smudge” dropped from its perch, a human form distinguishing itself from the
shadows. Before it hit the deck, Sicarius sprinted across the intervening meters. By the time the figure’s feet touched down, Sicarius had circled behind, a knife in hand. In an instant, he’d turned the person into his captive, the blade pressed to a pale throat. Sicarius nudged the cloaked figure forward, into the light beneath one of the low-burning lanterns.

  After a quick scan of the remaining dark spots, Amaranthe walked over. The figure’s hood dropped about its neck, revealing Basilard’s scarred face.

  Amaranthe propped her hands on her hips. “You’re not an enforcer.”

  Basilard eyed the blade at his throat before signing, No, but I thought you might be. They were just here. Enforcers and steamboat security, using a master lock to open doors.

  By the time Basilard finished signing, Sicarius had removed the knife and returned it to its sheath.

  “They didn’t catch Books, did they?” Amaranthe asked. That was a further complication they didn’t need.

  No. I heard them searching the other cabins. Basilard pointed at doors farther up the deck. I slipped out, warned Books, and helped him pack all his work.

  “How’d you manage to pack that library before the enforcers caught up with you?” Akstyr asked, joining the group. Sespian lingered behind, watching the nearest set of stairs.

  He had to leave a few things behind, Basilard signed. He was most distraught.

  “What about the rest of our stuff?” Akstyr asked, probably realizing he’d left books on magic in his cabin.

  They confiscated everything and positively identified it as belonging to us. I watched from above. Basilard nodded to his spot. I thought about attacking, but Books had already left, saying he had to protect his work, and it would have been me against eight men.

  “That’s a problem for you? Have we not been training enough of late?” Amaranthe smiled, though she was running through their inventory in her mind, trying to think if they’d lost anything they needed to get back. The Forge ledger book? No, she’d already read it, and it hadn’t held any condemning evidence.

  I know of your aversion for killing enforcers, Basilard signed. I wouldn’t have wished to irreparably harm anyone in my haste to deal with them all.

  “Yes, of course,” Amaranthe said.

  Your training apparatus did cause much speculation.

  “Oh?”

  “The what?” Sespian asked.

  “The chin-up bar,” Amaranthe explained.

  There’s more than a bar. The corners of Basilard’s eyes crinkled. They wondered... Basilard thrust his chest forward and enacted a haughty attitude, mimicking, Amaranthe assumed, one of the enforcers. What kind of sexual deviants employ chains and weights?

  Akstyr snorted.

  Amaranthe pointed a finger at Sicarius’s chest. “I told you.”

  If having his fitness equipment mistaken for the apparatuses of a deviant bothered—or amused—Sicarius, he’d never show it, at least not in front of this many people.

  “Where is Books?” he asked.

  “Yes, we need to talk to him,” Amaranthe said.

  Follow me, Basilard signed.

  Instead of heading for the stairs, he hopped up on the railing, grabbed the deck above and pulled himself up. Without questioning, Sicarius followed the example.

  “Is this a common method of transportation for outlaws?” Sespian asked as Amaranthe headed for the railing to make the same climb.

  “We’d rather not crash into security and be forced to fight.”

  Perched on the railing, Amaranthe found her balance, straightened, and gripped the edge of the deck above. She had to reach for the horizontal railing bars. It was a good thing she’d been practicing those chin-ups. One hand at a time, she pulled herself up the bars, then shimmied over the top and onto the deck. Sicarius and Basilard hadn’t stopped there. They were already climbing the wall between two cabin doors and heading for the roof.

  “Not Books’s usual studying place,” Amaranthe said.

  As soon as Sespian came into sight behind her, she climbed after the others. The icy metal hull numbed her bare fingers. She supposed the enforcers had confiscated her gloves along with the dubious training equipment.

  “Stay low,” Sicarius said when she crawled onto the roof.

  A thin coating of snow made for slick footing, and Amaranthe almost slipped. A face-first smash into the roof would be one way to stay low.

  Sicarius pointed to the lighted pilothouse perched at the front, then headed aft, toward the pair of smokestacks. Basilard’s dark form slipped out of sight behind one. Amaranthe waited until Akstyr and Sespian joined her, then headed for the smokestacks. She expected another stop before they reached Books, but found him hunkered behind one of the big black stacks, his bulging backpack at his side and a blanket wrapped around his shoulders.

  “Cozy.” Akstyr kicked a clump of snow off the roof.

  “It comes with a pleasant view at least,” Amaranthe said.

  Looking aft, they could see the river streaming behind the steamboat. The snow dusting the banks made the forest appear bright, despite the cloudy sky.

  “The enforcers have Akstyr’s magic books and know we’re all aboard,” Books said. “It won’t be long before they search up here. We have to get off at Port Medar and wait for the next boat. Or catch a train into the capital.”

  “We can’t leave.” Amaranthe waved for Books to move his backpack, and she crouched in the snow beside him. The others joined them, hunkering close to stay out of the view from the pilothouse.

  “Why?” Books asked.

  Amaranthe explained the weapons and finished with, “I thought you might have some ideas.”

  Books groaned.

  “Is that a general this-night-is-getting-worse-and-worse groan or a we’ll-never-come-up-with-a-solution-to-this-problem groan?” Amaranthe asked.

  Books let his head clunk back against the smokestack.

  “I’m afraid that might be a yes to both,” Amaranthe said to Sicarius.

  “Can we remove the rockets and dump them overboard?” Sespian asked. “If the cubes are set into that yellow substance, you’d think they’d be difficult to inadvertently break.”

  Amaranthe brushed aside snow to clear a place to sit. “Once Forge found out they were missing, they’d just send a boat back downriver to retrieve them from the bottom.”

  “But that would take a while, right?” Sespian asked. “They wouldn’t know exactly where we dumped them.”

  “If Akstyr can track them, I’m sure Forge can find a practitioner to do the same,” Amaranthe said.

  “Oh. That makes sense. My mind isn’t accustomed to factoring magical solutions into problems yet.”

  “Even without a practitioner,” Akstyr said, “some farmer that wandered down to the river at night would probably see the glow seeping up from the bottom and tell everybody in town.”

  Amaranthe frowned. The possibility of innocent people accidentally setting off the weapons and destroying their entire community was too dreadful to consider.

  “What about dumping them in the lake?” Sespian asked. “There are spots hundreds of meters deep.”

  “And not as inaccessible as you’d think,” Amaranthe murmured. “Although... Akstyr, you didn’t sense that underwater laboratory from the surface, did you?”

  “Nah, not until we got close. Water’s real dense and there’s all those pesky fishes and things clogging it up.”

  Books snorted at this description of marine life.

  “You can’t sense artifacts as easily through it,” Akstyr continued, “unless you’re a strong practitioner.”

  “We better not assume Forge doesn’t have access to a strong practitioner,” Amaranthe said.

  “Wait.” Books shifted beneath his blanket to face Akstyr. “The density of a substance surrounding an... artifact affects your ability to sense it?”

  “Yup. There are even practitioners who specialize in making insulated lead boxes to hide items from other practitioners.” />
  “Hm,” Books said. “I have an idea, providing Port Medar has sufficient resources. I’ve not been there, but I understand it’s a small town with only a few industries.”

  “How destructive will this idea be?” Sespian asked.

  “I do not come up with destructive ideas,” Books said. “You are thinking of that ignorant buffoon, Maldynado.” Books gazed toward the nearest riverbank and lowered his voice for Amaranthe alone. “I should only need a couple of people to gather supplies for my plan. We could split up the team and search for him. If he and Yara ran all night, they may arrive at Port Medar shortly after us.”

  “We can do that,” Amaranthe said, thinking that it was amazing how men could constantly snipe at each other and yet, beneath it all, care for each other. She hoped Books got a chance to tell Maldynado that some day.

  * * * * *

  Evrial hiked upriver beneath the early morning sun, smiling to herself as she leafed through the enforcer’s journal. Behind her, Maldynado whistled a cheery tune, drawing enthusiastic responses from birds perched in overhead boughs. She thought to admonish him for making so much noise—after all, the enforcers they’d tossed overboard might have come ashore on the same side of the river—but she supposed that’d be hypocritical of her. After all, she hadn’t been thinking of keeping a watch or paying a whit of attention to their surroundings the night before. There’d been hours—her grin widened at the memory of those hours—when someone could have sneaked up on them.

  Her smile faded when she read further in the book. “Uh oh.”

  Maldynado ducked under a branch dripping melted snow onto the muddy trail. “Problem?”

  “We may want to pick up our pace. Can we catch the others at the next port?”

  “The River Dancer is probably already docked at Port Medar. I’m not sure how far away we are, but we lost a lot of time last night, er, warming up.”