by Joseph Lallo
Amaranthe realized she had been lathering the same shoulder with the bar of soap for some time. She switched to a leg.
Force was out. If she couldn’t bring herself to assassinate a murdering assassin, she doubted she could kill anybody else in cold blood either. Nor would stealing get her anywhere. Blackmail? What could she hold over both parties? Economic trouble? That would be a disaster for government and business alike, but she could hardly start a recession by willing one into existence. Not unless she could magically decrease the value of money. She supposed printing counterfeits would achieve that. The addition of fake paper money that was not backed by the gold in the Imperial Treasury could devalue all the real money out there, plus it would undermine people’s confidence in the ranmya. The threat alone might be enough to coerce Hollowcrest and Forge into dealing.
Amaranthe let the soap fall from her fingers and leaned on the edge of the tub. You’re not actually considering this, are you?
Deliberately sabotaging the economy. Her mind shied away from the potential for widespread devastation, the utter vileness of the idea. Of course, she would be operating on a bluff, with no intention of actually circulating the money. Forge and Hollowcrest would not know that. It would represent a tangible threat to them. In a period of hyperinflation, Forge’s fortunes would become meaningless. Hollowcrest would have to deal with the repercussions of millions of citizens terrified their savings would evaporate. Yes, she decided, it might just worry both parties enough to negotiate with her.
She looked at Sicarius. He seemed lost in thought again and was not facing her direction. She experienced a surge of indignity that he did not find her interesting enough to peep at in the bath but forced herself back to more important issues.
“I have finalized the details of my plan,” she announced.
“Really,” he said dryly.
“We’re going to produce counterfeit money.” She went on to explain her reasoning and emphasized several times her intent to bluff rather than unleash the fake bills. “We’ll have to make enough, however, to lend a sense of verisimilitude to our operation.”
Sicarius did not speak for a time after she finished. Amaranthe waited apprehensively, afraid he would reject her plan, point out a dozen reasons it was ludicrous, or simply walk out without saying anything.
“I would not have expected such an idea from an enforcer,” he said.
“But do you think it could work?”
Sicarius made a noncommittal gesture with his hand. “Theoretically, it’s possible. To set everything up in two weeks is improbable.”
“I could get some more men to help,” she said.
“You have underworld connections? Money to pay people?”
“No, but anyone can run a printing press once it’s set up. I’m sure I can explain the situation to a couple of folks and enlist their help.” Of course, she would have to get a press and find someone to engrave ranmya plates, but she would worry about that later.
Sicarius’s blond eyebrows twitched upward. From him, it seemed a riot of emotion. Unfortunately, the emotion was skepticism.
“If I can get a couple men to help with printing, and maybe someone who could assist with researching Forge, would you agree to stick with me for the duration? If Sespian’s birthday approaches, and it’s obvious this won’t work, I won’t begrudge you for leaving. If you have a better idea, right now, I won’t begrudge you for leaving. I suppose you could assassinate Hollowcrest and the Forge people, if you can figure out who they are, and then you wouldn’t need me and my crazy plan. As much as I’d love to clear my name by being the one to rescue the emperor, what really matters is saving him, period.”
“I’ve never heard of Forge before,” Sicarius admitted. “With time, I could identify the leaders, but someone who could more easily move about the business world might make a less obtrusive and more efficient researcher.”
Amaranthe bit back a smile. In other words he needed a girl, ideally one who had gone to business school before becoming an enforcer. At last she had something to offer him as an ally.
“I’m sure someone from my old school could suggest a starting point,” was all she said.
“I know someone who could be a feasible research assistant.”
“Oh? A friend of yours?” Amaranthe tried not to grimace. One assassin was all she could imagine working with at a time.
“No.”
“But he’d help us?”
“I’d have to threaten him to get him to work for me,” Sicarius said. “Perhaps you can recruit him by other means.”
“I can. It won’t be a problem.” She was overselling herself, but for some strange reason she felt more exhilarated than terrified.
“If you can get a team together, I’ll work with you.”
Amaranthe just managed to curtail a triumphant fist pump. “That’ll be acceptable. Any other concerns? Any questions?”
“One,” he said. “During what phase of this plan will you start wearing clothes?”
She looked down. It wasn’t exactly that she had forgotten she was standing in icy water, stark naked; she’d just forgotten to care. Reminded of her state, she blushed and grabbed the towel.
“Truly, Sicarius, if it weren’t for your sinister reputation, I’d suspect you of a sense of humor.”
“Huh,” was all he said as he walked out the door.
Chapter 8
A locomotive roared through town, rattling barred windows, and kicking up a newspaper that skidded across the icy street to smack Amaranthe’s calf. She shook it off with a sheepish glance at Sicarius. Dressed all in black—again—he waited at the base of steps leading up to the Brookstar Tenements. Only his panoply of daggers and throwing knives broke the monochromatic look of his attire. Fate, she supposed, would never be so blasphemous as to pelt him with trash.
She adjusted the tight collar of her business suit. Where he had found the outfit, she did not know, but everything from the boots to gloves to the parka and fur cap fit reasonably well. And there were no grizzly bloodstains to suggest he had killed someone to get it. That was something, at least.
“I’m ready,” Amaranthe called over the chugging wheels of the locomotive.
Sicarius led the way up the cracked concrete steps. Black, textured mats covered the ice but did little to enhance the decor of the old brick building. At the door, Amaranthe paused to straighten a sign that promised the availability of rooms for monthly, weekly, nightly, or hourly usage.
Inside, they stopped before a desk manned by a plump grandmotherly woman. Forehead furrowed, she did not look up. An abacus rested on the desk, and she alternately flicked its wooden beads and scribbled figures in a ledger.
“Is Marl Mugdildor here?” Sicarius asked.
“No.”
“He may go by Books.”
The landlady regarded them for the first time. “Yes, are you relatives? Are you here to pay his bill?”
Amaranthe sighed. Sicarius’s acquaintance did not sound particularly reputable.
“No,” she said. “We have some business with him. Can you direct us to his room?”
The landlady eyed Sicarius with apprehension. “Books, he’s not a bad fellow, just had a rough time this past year. He doesn’t really deserve...” She cleared her throat and turned beseeching eyes toward Amaranthe, probably thinking they had come to collect on a loan.
Sicarius did have the icy demeanor of a debt collector. If only he were that benign, Amaranthe thought dryly.
“We aren’t going to hurt him,” she promised.
“He’s usually in the common room on the third floor.” The landlady scooted around the desk. “I’ll show you up.”
“Thank you,” Amaranthe said.
A threadbare carpet led them up two flights of stairs permeated with the scent of lye, which did not quite overpower the underlying urine stench. At the end of the hall, the landlady stopped before a door and held up a finger.
For a moment, Amaranthe thought the lady meant to warn Books that someone was looking for him and that he should run, but exasperated words soon tumbled out, eliminating the concern.
“Books? Wake up, there’s a pretty young lady here to see you. Are you drunk already? Here, comb your fingers through that, that, why can’t you find someone to give you a haircut? And a shave? And, gah, why don’t you use the baths? Give me that bottle. It’s too early to be drinking. By the emperor’s teeth, why don’t you do something with yourself? You owe me three months back rent. Straighten up. You’re slouching like a—”
“Leave me be, you meddling shrew!” The male speaker, voice raspy from disuse, sounded hung over.
Amaranthe put her hand over her face and shook her head. She looked at Sicarius through her fingers. As usual, his expression was unreadable.
Maybe this was a test. If she couldn’t get this Books to help them, Sicarius would know she wouldn’t be able to deliver on her other promises either. If that was true, she had better win this fellow to their cause.
She lifted her chin and pushed the door open, entering even as the landlady was on the way out. Arms laden with wine bottles, crusty food plates, and newspapers, she wore a harassed expression but struggled to smile for Amaranthe.
“All yours,” the landlady said, as if she had done some great favor in “straightening” Books for his guest. If anything, the man would be harder than ever to talk to after that nagging session.
“Thank you,” Amaranthe said anyway and plucked a half-full bottle off the top of the passing stack.
Inside a spacious common room, three men sat near a clean but cracked window, chortling in the aftermath of the landlady’s ire. A game of green Strat Tiles sprawled over their table like creeping ivy. A young fellow with the mien of a university student sat reading near another window. When Amaranthe saw the textbooks on mathematics and engineering stacked next to him, she sighed wistfully. Why couldn’t this have been Sicarius’s acquaintance?
In the darkest corner of the room, in a faded floral chair, sat an unkempt man with gray peppering his bushy beard and scraggily black hair. He glared at Amaranthe, or maybe just at the door in general. Wine stained his shirt in multiple places.
When Sicarius glided in, the man’s brown eyes bulged.
“Dark Vengeful Emperor!”
“That’s not the name he gave me,” Amaranthe said with a smile, “but details aren’t important.”
The man hunkered deeper in the chair.
Sicarius cleared his throat. The gamers and the student looked at him.
“Leave us,” he said.
Amaranthe was glad the cold voice was not directed at her. The four men considered him, and the small armory he wore, for only a second before obeying.
Making no effort to greet—or even acknowledge—Books, Sicarius walked over to a window overlooking the street. It seemed Amaranthe was on her own.
She strolled closer to Books, forcing herself to keep the smile, despite the miasma of alcohol and unwashed armpits clinging to him. His gaze latched onto the bottle she had purloined from the landlady.
“I’m Amaranthe,” she said. “Do you have a few minutes? I could use your advice.”
His mouth sagged open. He made a show of sticking his finger in his ear, cleaning it out, and turning it toward her. “You’re a woman, and you want my advice? You don’t want to give me advice?”
She wondered how many tirades he had suffered from the landlady and felt a sympathetic twinge. “What would I advise you on? I’m sure you can handle your own problems.”
“Then by all means, join me.”
“Marl Mugdildor, right?” She deposited the wine bottle in his lap, dragged over a lumpy chair, and placed it closer to him than her nose suggested wise. “Or do you prefer Books?”
He seemed surprised to have his bottle returned. “I prefer Marl, but precaution necessitated the assumption of that dubious sobriquet.” He took a swig of wine.
Given his sobriety level, Amaranthe was surprised he had made it through that tangle of words without stumbling. She supposed with a nickname like ‘Books,’ he must be a librarian or a teacher.
“Not that it matters. I don’t care if they find me or not anymore.” He held out the bottle, offering her a drink.
“You’re being chased too?” She accepted the bottle and, doubting he would be impressed if she went and found glasses, took a sip. The wine was as mellow as a steam hammer, but she held back her grimace. She caught Sicarius glancing her way and felt a self-conscious stab. Yes, I’m sharing a drink with someone in the middle of the morning. Go back to watching out the window for enforcers.
“Probably not any more. I don’t know.” Books’s bleary eyes focused on her. “Too?”
Amaranthe debated what to tell him. If enforcers were chasing him, he might not appreciate her occupation—former occupation—but if he found something similar in their stories, it could only help establish a rapport. “I’m not actually sure anyone is chasing me yet. If I’m lucky, they think I’m dead. But somehow I doubt Commander of the Armies Hollowcrest—”
“Hollowcrest!” Books sat up straight. “That murdering bastard!”
“Er, yes,” Amaranthe said, “that was his intent for me. He tried to kill you?” What could an academic have done to earn Hollowcrest’s ire? She almost snorted. What had she done?
Books slumped back in the chair, accepting the bottle when she passed it to him. “He had enforcers kill my son.”
“What? Enforcers wouldn’t kill a boy. They—”
“I’m not lying!” He clenched the chair arms, knuckles white. Almost immediately the anger turned to anguish and his face contorted with grief. “Why would anyone lie about...?”
For a moment, Amaranthe was too dumbfounded to respond. Enforcers had murdered a child? Even under Hollowcrest’s orders, they should never have done something so horrible. Some orders could not be followed.
No? Maybe they were hoping for promotions.
Amaranthe snapped at her too-frank conscience. She was different. I’m different. Still, the comparison was unsettling.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I can see you’re telling the truth.”
Books didn’t relax, but his voice returned to a less agitated register. “The enforcers do whatever Hollowcrest wants. My son, Enis, was only fourteen. He was so excited to earn a summer job working at the newspaper. He wanted to prove he could do more than run the presses. He set out to find stories, but he was...a little too good at investigating.” Books sighed and looked over her head, eyes distant. “He saw Hollowcrest and his flunkies murder a Nurian diplomat. He ran back to me at work, but they’d seen him, and I didn’t get him to safety in time. It’s all my fault. If I’d believed him right away...” Books drained the rest of the bottle. “The enforcers cut him down in the courtyard below my office window. I screamed, and they saw me. I should have just stayed there, let them finish me. What was left after that? My wife left years ago.” He picked at a thread on the chair arm. “But, coward that I am, I ran.”
Amaranthe wondered how many times Books had sat here reliving those moments. Maybe the alcohol let him forget sometimes.
“Six enforcers chased me out of the city and into the Emperor’s Preserve. They were younger, faster, and they were about to catch me when I ran into...” Books looked at Sicarius, who had moved to another window, checking a different street, and did not look back.
Amaranthe shifted in her chair. This story sounded familiar. Last summer, she remembered hearing about a squad of enforcers who had been found murdered outside the city. The killer had not been identified.
“We’d met the day before, you see,” Books continued. “When everything was still normal in my life. He was in the library researching some artifact I later found out he’d been hired to retr
ieve. I walked up to see if I could help him, told him I was a history professor, and—” Books glanced at Sicarius again and lowered his voice, “—he just stared at me, and I swear he was thinking about killing me just for daring talk to him.”
Sicarius, whether curious about something he had seen outside or just aware he was crimping story hour, chose that moment to walk out of the room.
Books lunged forward and startled Amaranthe by grabbing her arm. “What are you doing with him? Do you have a death wish?”
The concern on the older man’s face surprised her, and she kept herself from pulling away.
“We have an agreement,” she said. “He’s helping me to protect the emperor and maybe get Hollowcrest out of power.”
“He is not helping you. If he hasn’t killed you yet, it’s because you’re helping him.”
“What happened in the preserve?”
“He was camped there and saw me run in. Apparently, he had a use for a history professor in his research after all. He decided to haul me all over the satrapy to help with his assignment.”
“What happened to the enforcers?” She shouldn’t ask. It would be better not to know for sure, but she supposed she already did.
“Oh, he killed them. Six men in about six seconds. Maybe ten because the last one had time to get down on his knees and beg for his life, which earned him a dagger in the eye.”
“I see.” Amaranthe sat back in her own chair, and Books released her arm. She clasped her hands in her lap as she struggled for detachment. It’s not as if you didn’t know what he is.
“He says he never leaves enemies behind, and I got to see more evidence of that on our little adventure.”
“He did save your life,” Amaranthe said. “And he let you live afterward.”
“Because I was useful to him, and I wasn’t a threat. Don’t think we walked away friends. I was trying to mourn the loss of my son—actually I was thinking about killing myself—and he didn’t care, not one iota. In the end... Never mind. Just, listen to me on this: don’t ever let him think you’re a threat.”