Conspiracy (The Emperor's Edge Book 4)

by Lindsay Buroker

  His words failed to steal Amaranthe’s grin. “It’s all right. I won’t tell the world you’re not quite the malevolent butcher everyone thinks.”

  He looked like he might glare or otherwise object to this softening of his image, but he caught himself. Instead, he said, “Just tell one person.”

  “I will.” Amaranthe took the rifle’s bolt from him and studied the interior. By the poor light of the lantern, it was hard to see inside, but she thought she detected raised bumps to fit the groves in the cartridge. It seemed like an odd addition from a functionality standpoint. Why not simply keep the bullet smooth? Wouldn’t it have better aerodynamics that way? Then something clicked in her brain. “It’s a proprietary design, isn’t it?”

  “What?”

  Amaranthe waved to the racks of weapons and crates of ammunition. “If they made all the rifles the same way as this one, then only these particular cartridges will work in them. No smith could simply reproduce these. It’d take a sophisticated facility like this one to duplicate the design. So, the buyers of these weapons will have to continue to order ammunition from the sellers for life.” She picked up one of the bullets and rubbed it between her fingers. “Maybe this is a Forge plot after all. That seems like the sort of quasi-shady business practice one of their people might try.”

  Three thumps came from behind and above them.

  “Books,” Amaranthe said. “Someone must be coming.”

  Sicarius started toward the door, but Amaranthe caught his arm. “Wait, you have to put the rifle back together. We don’t want anyone to know we were here. Especially not if there’s a link to Forge.”

  “I opened a crate,” Sicarius said, but he returned to the table and started assembling.

  “Maybe they won’t notice that right away.”

  While he worked on the weapon, Amaranthe slipped a handful of the cartridges into her pocket. Being able to show someone the unique bullets later might prove useful. She tucked the ammo box back into the crate, trying to hide the fact that it had been opened, and affixed the lid. She manhandled the crate back onto the rack.

  Ker-thunk!

  “Uhm.” Amaranthe lifted her eyes toward the ceiling. That had been much louder than the earlier thumps, and if she had to guess where the sound had originated, she’d say above them and outside of the carriage house. “I don’t think that was Books.”

  Sicarius finished reassembling the rifle and returned it to the rack. He jogged toward the door, pausing briefly to test the booby trap and make sure it had not reset.

  Amaranthe waved to the cement slab. “Can we open it from in here?”

  Sicarius patted about the walls, but he didn’t find a lever.

  “Maybe the hoe is the only way in.” Amaranthe thought about knocking on the door, but if Books hadn’t caused that second noise, she didn’t want to alert whoever had to their presence.

  A long scrape grated at the rear of the chamber, in the dark back half they had not yet explored. Tendrils of unease curled through Amaranthe’s belly. That noise hadn’t come from above. Something was down there with them.

  Maybe someone already knew about their presence.

  Soft whirs and clanks emanated from the darkness. A grinding followed, and Amaranthe thought it sounded like wheels or treads rolling over the cement floor.

  “Oh, good, it’s been a while since I’ve been chased by a machine. It ought to be good training, right?” Amaranthe smiled.

  Sicarius did not.

  Chapter 5

  Amaranthe shifted from foot to foot while watching the darkness behind the racks of weapons. The grinding noise and soft clanks were growing louder.

  Sicarius was trying to lever his black dagger into a crack to open the door, but it didn’t sit flush with the jamb—the cement slab had slid a couple of inches into an indention. Amaranthe had a feeling they weren’t getting out that way, not unless Books returned and let them out. She also had a feeling that someone up there was keeping him from doing just that. She hoped he was only hiding and hadn’t been captured. Amaranthe cursed herself for standing down there and burbling when they should have been getting in and out as quickly as possible.

  Sicarius sheathed his blade. “We’ll look for another way out.”

  Amaranthe eyed the shadows behind the racks. “Back there?”

  Sicarius was already heading down the aisle with the worktable. The source of the clanking sounds seemed to be coming up an aisle on the opposite side of the rectangular chamber. Amaranthe jogged after Sicarius. Maybe they could bypass... whatever it was. But before she reached the aisle entrance, something metallic rolled out from behind the racks on the opposite side of the room.

  Not rolled... It seemed to hover an inch off the ground. The two-foot-wide black semicircle looked like a ball someone had cut in half. Brass shingles plated it like an armadillo’s shell, and four waving antennae-type structures rose from each of its quadrants. Small glowing red balls perched on the tops. The way they moved about gave Amaranthe the impression of eyes scanning the area.

  “That’s not your standard farm equipment,” she observed.

  The machine turned in place, and all four of the antennae stretched out, the “eyes” staring at her. A single word was engraved on the front of its body: Deklu.

  Amaranthe stepped backward, and her heel thumped against the concrete wall. She thought about sprinting down the aisle after Sicarius—he had already moved out of sight—but she hesitated. She should figure out what the device could do first. It didn’t have any obvious weapons protruding from it. Maybe it had another purpose. Maybe—

  A hum emanated from the machine, a strange, otherworldly sound that raked across Amaranthe’s nerves like a claws. Her instincts propelled her to lunge into the aisle, putting three rows of racks between herself and the construct.

  Four red beams blasted into the cement wall where she’d been standing. Smoke blossomed, and chunks of aggregate flew, cracking against the rifles and racks. As quickly as they had come, the beams winked out. Amaranthe raced down the aisle without waiting to see how much damage the thing had done to the wall. Anything that could shatter cement had to be powerful enough to burn right through a human.

  “Definitely not a farm machine.”

  Amaranthe came out of the aisle on the far end and almost crashed into one of four smithy stations spanning the chamber. She lifted a hand to stop herself from tumbling into the closest one. The bricks beneath her palm still radiated heat from the day’s activity, and she craned her head back, eyeing the spot where the chimney met the ceiling. Maybe that was a way out? But they’d seen no smoking vents in the yard, so perhaps not. The smoke was probably diverted somewhere far away.

  The construct floated into the entrance of the aisle Amaranthe had raced down. She’d taken her lantern when she ran, leaving the machine in darkness, but its glowing red eyes identified it. She darted to the side, using the racks for cover again.

  A red beam knifed out of the darkness, slicing into the space she’d occupied.

  “Watch out,” Amaranthe called for Sicarius’s sake. She didn’t see him—only the hint of his light somewhere deeper in the room—but she didn’t want him getting a stray beam in the back. “I made a friend.”

  As she spoke, Amaranthe dodged between two of the freestanding forges, jumped over a bin of coal, and came face-to-face with a flywheel so tall it nearly brushed the ceiling. It was part of some towering device for stamping metal. Other machines loomed in the shadows.

  The grinding from the ambulatory construct grew louder behind her, and she continued into the maze of machines, picking her way toward the other lantern.

  “Find a door yet?” Amaranthe asked. “Because we don’t want to be trapped by—” She rounded a machine and almost ran into a pair of black-clad legs dangling in the air.

  Sicarius hung by one hand from the frame of a wooden double door set in the ceiling. His fingers gripped a thin reinforcing board no more than an inch thick, and Amaranthe had
no idea how he could hold his body up that way. He held his knife in his other hand and was probing the crack between the two doors.

  “It’s secured from above,” Sicarius said, as calmly as if he were standing beside her. “I’m attempting to see if there’s a bar that can be dislodged.”

  “I’m not sure there’s time for that.” Amaranthe checked the route behind her. The machines offered some cover, but they were not solid obstacles, so it was possible the construct could fire through them. “I have a... Deklu after me,” she said, naming the word on the machine, though she didn’t know if it was a description or a name or something else entirely.

  “Sentry,” Sicarius translated.

  “In what language?”

  “Mangdorian.”

  “Hm, another machine made by that shaman who wanted your head?” If so, Amaranthe wondered anew if Forge might be involved here.

  A red beam streaked out of the darkness. A flywheel on a machine deflected part of it, but it also caught the side of Sicarius’s arm.

  He dropped to the floor. Amaranthe stepped forward to help him, but he grabbed his lantern and pointed her toward the side of the chamber. Smoke wafted from his sleeve; she couldn’t tell if the beam had struck flesh as well.

  Before they had gone more than a few feet, something pounded against the overhead door. Books?

  Laughter sounded, muffled by earth and wood. Not Books.

  “That’s right ya vagrant thieves,” someone called, “stay down there and die!”

  “Thieves,” Amaranthe said as Sicarius led her to the wall. “At the worst, we’re spies.” A wall aisle lay clear for them to run back to the front door if they wished, but she saw little point in that.

  “You took some of their ammunition.” Sicarius parted from her side and hopped onto a machine to check the sentry’s progress.

  “Just a couple of bullets. That’s more like sampling than thieving, don’t you think?”

  “Did that argument work on you when you were an enforcer?” His gaze shifted to the ceiling, searching for weaknesses to exploit perhaps.

  “No, but I’ve changed this last year. You’ve influenced me with your law-skirting ways.”

  “I see your classification of me as heroic was short-lived.”

  The grinding of the sentry drew closer, and Amaranthe glimpsed it moving through the open space beneath the overhead door. Sicarius jumped down from his perch a second before another beam split the air. It burned into the cement wall behind them, hurling pieces to the floor.

  With few other options, Amaranthe and Sicarius ran past the forges and toward the front of the chamber.

  Sicarius glanced back. “Those beams remind me of technology I saw once before, a long time ago.”

  “A long time ago?” Amaranthe stopped before several crates of ammunition. “It looks irritatingly modern and deadly to me. It’s made from the Science, I’d assumed.” She tapped a crate thoughtfully, wondering if whatever was in the cartridges was as flammable as black powder.

  “The body perhaps.” Sicarius eyed her tapping fingers. “Causing an explosion might not be the wisest course when we’re beneath so much concrete and earth.”

  “How’d you know that’s what I had in mind?” Amaranthe had been about to ask for his help in opening a crate. Despite his warning, she held out a hand for his sturdy dagger.

  “I know you.” Sicarius waved her hand away and nodded toward the front of the chamber. “Come, there are kegs of black powder in the middle aisles. It’ll be easier to work with in free form.”

  To their rear, the sentry floated out from behind one of the forges, still hovering an inch above the floor. Amaranthe sprinted after Sicarius as its red eyeballs rotated in their direction. She caught the end of the rack and used it to swing herself around the corner ahead of not one but four beams. They shot forth in a scattered high-and-low pattern, taking chunks out of another wall.

  “At least that thing’s slow,” Amaranthe said, chasing Sicarius past two rows of racks and down a middle aisle, though she silently acknowledged that the device was fast enough to make it difficult to find time to make a bomb for blowing a hole out of their prison. “We can keep ahead of it,” she said to reassure herself.

  An ominous grating sounded at the back of the chamber. Another gate being opened, and another sentry rolling out? Or something else?

  “Spoke too soon,” Amaranthe said.

  Sicarius stopped before a series of upright kegs and pried the lid off one.

  “Blessed ancestors,” Amaranthe said, “there’s enough here to blow up this whole facility.”

  “Unwise while we’re inside.”

  “I know, I was just—”

  The grinding rasp of the sentry grew louder as it approached their row. Sicarius grabbed Amaranthe’s arm and headed for the opposite end. She snatched a fistful of black powder before he dragged her away.

  They ran out of the aisle on the far end before the sentry appeared at the front and shot at them again. As soon as they turned the corner, Amaranthe heard the grinding tread of a second device somewhere amongst the machines. She and Sicarius crept to the worktable wall again and started to turn up the aisle, intending to circle back to the one with powder once the first sentry had gone down it, but it was waiting for them at the end of that row, all four crimson eyes focused in their direction.

  Amaranthe stumbled in her rush to jump back under cover. Two of the eyeballs flared into burning embers, and the beams might have caught her in the chest, but Sicarius pulled her to safety.

  “Is it just me or are they getting smarter?” Amaranthe whispered, heart thumping against her ribs.

  The second sentry rolled out from behind a flywheel, its wavering antennae in view above one of the forges.

  “I’ll distract them.” Sicarius opened her hand and took her fistful of black powder. “You make the explosives.”

  Amaranthe knew that was best, but she remembered the savage wound he’d received once before when distracting something dangerous for her, the deadly soul construct in Larocka Myll’s house. She had to force herself to nod. “All right. Be careful.”

  He was already slipping past the forge toward the second sentry.

  “That’s not being careful,” Amaranthe whispered.

  Sicarius acknowledged her with a lift of the fist that held the black powder. Amaranthe grumbled to herself, but resolved to focus on her half of the problem.

  She peeked back into the aisle closest to the wall. A blur of red streaked toward her. She jerked her head back as the beam cut into the corner of the rack, inches from her nose. The metal support bar melted before her eyes. The top corner of the unit crumpled, and a handful of rifles spilled onto the floor. On a whim, she snatched one, though she feared firearms might not work on the sentries. Using a few of the cartridges she’d pocketed earlier, she fumbled through loading the rifle. She hoped she wasn’t putting the bullets in backward.

  One last time, she ducked her head into the aisle where the first sentry waited. Predictably it fired its beams at her. She tiptoed back over to the row that held the kegs of black powder.

  A boom shattered the stillness.

  Amaranthe winced and gripped one of the racks for support. “What was that?”

  “The beams will ignite black powder,” Sicarius observed with bland detachment.

  Amaranthe snorted. That she could have guessed, especially after seeing the first sentry melt the pole. “Did you destroy it?”

  “The explosion blew off an antenna, but its armor protected it from further damage.”

  Realizing Amaranthe had given away her position by speaking, she decided not to head down the powder aisle yet. She trotted across to the opposite side of the chamber, grabbed a fancy two-barreled pistol off a rack, and tossed it down the aisle next to the wall. It clattered hard onto the cement floor.

  She waited around the corner to see if the noise drew the first sentry. As she crouched there, she began to feel silly. As far as she knew
, the things had no ears. Why assume they hunted by sound?

  Amaranthe was about to pull away when the familiar grinding reached her own ears. It was coming. She closed her eyes, listening. Just before she thought it would appear at the end of the wall aisle, she eased backward and headed for the powder row.

  “I’ll try to get them both to one end of the chamber,” Sicarius called from a nearby row.

  Not wanting to give away her position, Amaranthe didn’t respond, though she thanked him silently. He’d have his hands full if they were both in one area with him.

  She rushed to the powder kegs, pausing only to grab a couple of canvas sacks from a stack on a shelf. Nothing so handy as a scooping cup rested nearby, so she shoveled powder into the bags by hand.

  Cracks and thuds came from the front of the chamber, cement shattering and shards being flung. Amaranthe shoveled powder faster. When she had two full bags, she grabbed a third, and cut it into strips. She tied the strips together into two long lengths and fastened them around the tops of the bags. Unfortunately, her shortsighted enforcer academy instructors hadn’t included classes on how to make explosives. She could only hope her handiwork would be effective—and that she wouldn’t blow herself up. She sacrificed her light to pour the kerosene out of her lantern and douse the fuse.

  Blackness descended upon her aisle. Up front, a single light glowed somewhere to the side, its illumination dulled by the cement dust clouding the air. The light wasn’t fluctuating or moving about, and Amaranthe hoped that meant Sicarius had set it down in a central location, not that he’d been hit.

  “I’ve got two done,” Amaranthe called. “I’m going to try and put them where they’ll take out part of the ceiling.”

  “Understood,” came Sicarius’s response, somehow still calm, though dodging those beams must be frazzling.

  Amaranthe felt her way down her aisle, deeper into the darkness. Cement cracked behind her, and enough pieces banged to the ground that she suspected at least a partial cave-in. Maybe the sentries would destroy enough of the ceiling for her and Sicarius to escape without explosives.