Ears straining, she forced herself to tread slowly-silently-instead of racing into danger. Concern for Maldynado lent urgency to her steps, though, and she wasn’t as cautious as she should have been.
A cry of surprise and pain came from the darkness above. Maldynado.
Amaranthe rushed up the last few steps. Lighting the lantern had affected her night vision, and she almost didn’t see the dark shape sprinting toward her.
She leaped to the side. Instincts screamed in her ears, and she lifted her blade. She couldn’t see much, but she judged the figure’s height and path and angled her weapon so it had a good chance of deflecting a dagger or sword, should there be an attack.
Even so prepared, the clash of steel surprised her.
Amaranthe reacted instantly, with reflexes honed from hours of training with Sicarius. Before the blades had parted, she grabbed the person’s forearm with her left hand and yanked. Her opponent was lighter than she expected, and Amaranthe pulled the figure off balance. She twisted the person’s wrist while ramming her knee upward, angling for the groin.
But her foe was too quick. Finding the gap between Amaranthe’s thumb and fingers, the person tore the captured arm free even as a thigh came up to block the groin attack.
Amaranthe shifted, trying to get around to her opponent’s back, to wrap her arm around the vulnerable throat. She was only partially successful and caught her assailant by the shoulder instead of the neck. She latched on, gripping with the ferocity of a pit bull, and pulled her short sword back to jab at the kidneys.
The blade met only air. Amaranthe still gripped the shoulder, meaning her opponent had remarkable flexibility. She whipped her short sword toward the person’s side, but it collided with metal in a screech. Her foe twisted to face her, wrenching Amaranthe’s fingers. She was forced to release the shoulder grip and did it with a shove, thinking to put space between her and her attacker, so she could restart the encounter from a neutral position. Surely, Maldynado and Yara had to be running up to help.
Luck favored her, though, or perhaps she could claim greater awareness of the terrain. A startled grunt rose over the noise of the train’s engine, and the figure’s arms flailed. The stairs. The person’s heel must have gone over the edge.
Knowing the agile fighter would recover quickly, Amaranthe pounced. She drove her short sword into flesh. The blade scraped past ribs, angling into the tender flesh of the abdomen.
A cry came, and the person fell away. The woman, Amaranthe corrected, her mind catching up to the fact that the voice had been feminine.
She managed to keep her sword, though it was almost pulled out of her hand when the woman tumbled down the stairs. The falling figure almost crashed into Sergeant Yara who was on her way up, the lantern in one hand, an enforcer-issue short sword in the other.
Despite the gut wound, the injured woman found her feet. She jumped off the stairs, one hand clutched to her abdomen, and tried to bypass Yara and sprint for the door.
Yara raised her sword, but the other woman lifted a bloody hand, and steel glinted. A throwing knife.
“Look out!” Amaranthe barked.
Yara dropped to her belly, flatting herself to the stairs, evading the knife by inches. The blade clattered off the brick wall. Yara’s lantern escaped her grip and landed on the flagstone floor. The flame winked out, and darkness engulfed the shed again.
The fleeing fighter yanked the door open.
Grimly determined, Amaranthe judged the distance and hurled her short sword. They couldn’t let anyone escape and draw attention to the refueling station.
In the darkness, she couldn’t see her sword spinning through the air, but she could tell from the dark figure’s reaction that it struck. The woman collapsed in the doorway.
Amaranthe ran down the stairs, jumping to the floor to bypass Yara, and dragged the woman inside, away from the threshold. She checked the square outside, afraid someone might have heard the fight and would be running to investigate, but nothing stirred nearby. Everyone at the station was probably focused on the train.
The train! Reminded of the need to hurry, Amaranthe shut the door, groped about to find the lantern, and ran for the stairs.
At the last second, she remembered Yara and kept from crashing into her. “Are you injured?”
“I’m fine,” Yara said. “Your warning saved me.”
“Welcome. Hurry, upstairs. We have to get-”
A light flared to life at the top of the stairs. Maldynado stood, wearing a dazed expression as he held his lantern up and squinted down at them. Blood smeared the side of his face.
“Where’s the cursed coal?” a voice called from outside.
There was no time to discuss anything. Amaranthe charged up the remaining steps and grabbed Maldynado’s arm.
“Answer,” she said, figuring a male worker would be more likely than a woman.
“Coming,” Maldynado called, a hint of a slur to the word.
“Bastard’s drunk,” the speaker from the train growled. “Inept civilians.”
“Stand there,” Amaranthe whispered to Maldynado, pushing him toward open double doors on the wall closest to the train. “Give them a wave. Here, let me have your lantern so they can’t see you well.”
“No, no,” Maldynado said, wobbling a little. “I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.” He braced himself against the doorjamb.
“You can complain later,” Amaranthe said. “Just don’t let them get concerned enough to check in here.”
She hunted about for levers to extend the chute and drop coal into the waiting car below. Bins lined the walls, leaving little room for moving about. Amaranthe weaved past cables attached to a lift system for raising coal to the top level. She was lucky that she hadn’t moved far enough from the stairs to get tangled in the ropes during the fight.
The largest bin in the room connected to the chute. Amaranthe ducked behind it and found her levers. A brass plaque with pictures showed which ones to move to extend and retract the chute and to dump coal. No need for literacy for this job.
She pushed a lever, and gears on the wall rotated, their grinding audible over the idling train. The chute thunked into place. Amaranthe hesitated, not certain if she should push the pouring lever to maximum.
“Take your time, Crisplot,” the complainer from the train yelled. “It’s not like we’re on a schedule here.”
Amaranthe shoved the lever all the way forward. Maybe a landslide would flood out, burying the mouthy man. Nothing happened.
Grumbling, she poked around the front of the bin. Maybe there was some flap she had to lift to enable to flow.
“Am I going to have to come up there?” the complainer hollered. “I’ll see to it that your pay is docked if I do.”
“I’ll check on him,” came Sicarius’s voice from the water tower. He and Basilard must have already extended the hose to refuel the locomotive’s tanks. Good.
Amaranthe found a safety release up front and flipped it. A spring twanged, and a door at the top of the chute slid up. The bin contents stirred and clacked about inside, and coal poured into the train car outside. There. That ought to placate the engineer, or whoever was bellowing.
When Amaranthe came back around the bin, she found Sicarius waiting beside Maldynado.
“We had a slight delay, but we’re fine,” she told him.
“ Fine? ” Maldynado touched his temple. “I don’t think it’s right of you to make general statements like that before a thorough medical examination has been performed on all members of the group.”
“There are two soldiers riding on the locomotive with the engineer and fireman,” Sicarius said. “A corporal is directing coal and water loading.”
“Just one man?” Amaranthe asked.
“Yes.”
“The one yelling?”
“Yes.”
“Trouble maker.”
Sicarius did not deign to respond.
Yara climbed into view, holding a lantern. She stare
d at Amaranthe.
“Something wrong?” Amaranthe asked.
“That was an assassin,” Yara said.
“Yes, I gathered that from the dead man she left marinating in his own blood. Do you recognize her?”
“The Crimson Fox,” Yara said.
Amaranthe tried to place the name. “That’s someone with a bounty on her head, right?”
“Yes, she is- was — regarded as the best female assassin in the satrapy. Some say the empire.”
Amaranthe snorted. “ Some say? Like who? Her?”
“It’s a twenty-five-thousand-ranmya bounty.” Yara was still staring at Amaranthe, her eyes wide with… awe?
Amaranthe decided not to mention how much luck had played into that squabble. A little awe from Yara might help her position. “We don’t have time to turn people in for bounties right now, so some soldier’s going to have a good time this weekend.”
“Wait.” Maldynado touched his wounded temple. “You’re saying the person who hit me was a woman?”
“You’re lucky she didn’t kill you.” Yara’s awe-struck expression disappeared when she faced Maldynado. “I’m not surprised to find that your employer does the real work in this outfit.”
“When you’re as pretty as I am, there’s no need to do real work.”
“You’re calling yourself pretty?” Yara asked. “You have a black eye, a split lip, and there’s blood smeared all over your face.”
“I’d still have an easier time getting a date than you. What’d you cut your hair with? Your service sword?”
Amaranthe lifted her hands in a placating gesture. “Let’s focus, please. We can squabble when the emperor is safe.”
While they glared at each other, Amaranthe peeked past Maldynado and into the bin. Coal continued to flow into the open car while the irritated corporal stomped back and forth with a rake. Busy pushing and scraping to distribute the load, he kept his head down. Amaranthe risked sticking hers out to better see up and down the train.
In front of the coal car, the hulking black engine idled, its long cylindrical shape stretching ahead like a hound’s nose. She couldn’t see into the cab where the engineer and fireman waited, which was good because they wouldn’t be able to see into the coal bed without leaning out of the side entrances, but someone watching from the train station would have a decent view. She checked the boardwalk and grimaced. Soldiers were filing into some of the passenger cars. Of course, if they were going to the capital, it made sense for them to get a ride.
“Reinforcements,” Amaranthe muttered. “Lovely.” She kept herself from sighing at Sicarius, irked anew by his string of assassinations. She had certainly messed up often, and he hadn’t held it against her.
Some of the soldiers on the boardwalk were stationed at the doors, and they were checking identifications, orders, and faces carefully before letting people on. No civilians boarded. As Amaranthe had suspected, this was a private train, and it would have been difficult, if not impossible, for her team to walk through a door, even if they’d had sophisticated disguises.
“When do we get on?” Yara asked.
“Soon,” Amaranthe said. “After that corporal says he has all the fuel he needs and tells the engineer to get moving.”
“Won’t the people on the boardwalk see us jump into the coal car?”
“It’s dark,” Amaranthe said. “We’re hoping not.”
“Hoping?”
“Are you doubting the woman who slew the Crimson Fox?”
Amaranthe was joking, or at least hoping to distract Yara from her concerns, but the sergeant considered the body again and said, “I guess not.”
Huh, something to be said for establishing a sense of awe in one’s colleagues.
“The Crimson Fox?” Sicarius asked.
“Apparently.” Amaranthe pointed at the body.
“She’s from the capital. It’s unlikely her presence here was a coincidence.”
“Well, I didn’t invite her.” Amaranthe eyed Yara, but she couldn’t imagine the enforcer sergeant having anything to do with an assassin showing up. If Yara had meant to tattle on Amaranthe and the team, it would have been to her superiors, not a criminal. Nor was it likely Sicarius’s night of slaying had anything to do with it. Amaranthe feared they might have Akstyr to thank for the assassin’s appearance. Had she come to kill Sicarius? Or maybe she’d meant to collect on Amaranthe’s bounty. She was going to have a chat with the lad later. Maybe Books was right, and it was simply time to let him go. “We’ll worry about it later,” she told Sicarius.
Lines creased Yara’s brow as she eyed the stairs.
“Problem?” Amaranthe asked.
“I was entertaining the idea of staying here, turning that body in for the bounty, and going back home a hero for having helped slay such a notorious assassin. I suppose it’d be ignoble of me to take credit for any of that though. I doubt ducking when she threw a knife was crucial in her defeat.”
Amusement tugged at Amaranthe’s lips. It sounded like the sort of scheme she’d think up. Maybe there was hope to bring Yara fully over to her side yet. “You don’t want to leave when the emperor needs you.”
“No,” Yara agreed, lifting her chin, “there’d be no honor in that act.”
Sicarius had moved to the shadows near the chute, where he could look outside without being seen.
“We about ready?” Amaranthe asked.
“Yes.”
Below them, the corporal leaned the rake against a pile of coal and hopped onto the roof of the cab. From there, he jumped down onto the locomotive “nose” to one of the water tanks. So much heat rose from the metal encasing the engine that the air shimmered around the corporal. He checked a gauge, then waved to the water tower.
“That’s enough. Cut it off.”
A moment later, he pulled the thick hose out and screwed a brass cap into place. Amaranthe couldn’t see Basilard from her position, but the hose retracted, spinning onto a giant reel. The corporal skittered back to the coal car where a hill of the black rocks had formed in his absence.
He grabbed his rake. “That’s enough!”
Amaranthe and Sicarius closed down the chute.
“You should at least leave a business card,” Yara whispered from behind them.
“What?” Amaranthe asked.
“Your card. You could leave it on the body of the assassin, so someone would know you were responsible for bringing down a criminal.”
“If I left a card, the soldiers that found the body might blame that worker’s death on us.”
“But doesn’t it grate on you not to get credit?”
Daily, Amaranthe thought. “We’re used to it.”
Yara stared at her.
“If we can get the emperor to know we’re not villains,” Amaranthe said, “that’ll be enough. He can clear our names with a scribble of a pen.”
“And have statues commissioned in honor of our greatness,” Maldynado said.
“Nobody’s going to believe you’re great if they see a statue of you in that hat,” Yara said.
“Oh, nobody wears fur when modeling for a sculpture,” Maldynado said, “It’s too hard for the artist to get all the fuzzy strands to look good. I already have a statue hat picked out.”
“Dear ancestors,” Yara murmured.
Amaranthe patted Maldynado on the shoulder. His silence had been making her wonder if he was more injured than she thought. Maybe he only needed bolstering after being beaten up by one woman and criticized by another.
“Ready to go, sir!” the corporal called to the locomotive cab.
Everyone who had orders to board must have done so, for the boardwalk had cleared. Good. Nobody inside the train would have a good view of the coal shed or water tower-or the people leaping from them.
Two men in black uniforms wearing cutlasses and rifles trotted up to the locomotive and climbed into the cab. Both of them had to duck and turn their substantial shoulders sideways to fit through the doors.
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br /> “When you said soldiers,” Amaranthe told Sicarius, “I didn’t know you meant the emperor’s elite bodyguards. Men hand-picked to serve in the Imperial Barracks because of their martial prowess.”
“They are only men, as mortal as the next,” Sicarius said.
“They’re huge.”
“Huge men rarely move swiftly or with great agility. You know this.”
“Yes, but is that knowledge enough to keep me from tinkling down my leg when one of those towering behemoths swings a blade at me?”
Sicarius gave her one of his flat looks, reminding her that a tendency toward whining wasn’t an admirable trait in a leader.
“You’re right, it is enough,” Amaranthe said, “I was just making sure.” She’d hate it if she ever caught disappointment in one of his gazes.
Inwardly, she hoped the team would be able to stay hidden in the coal car until the train reached the pass and was forced to stop because of a certain landslide blocking the tracks. Then there’d be a nice distraction to keep some of those hulking soldiers and bodyguards busy, and she might not have to face any one-on-one.
A steam whistle blew again, and the train inched forward. Amaranthe drummed her fingers on her thigh. They needed to jump soon, but the corporal was still in the coal car, raking his piles into place. Normally, Amaranthe would appreciate someone with a fastidious nature, but right now she wanted the man to toss the rake in a corner and leave. Surely, he had a warm berth waiting for him in one of the passenger cars.
“We must go,” Sicarius said.
“I know.” The rail car was inching past them with the train picking up speed. A few more seconds, and they’d have to jump onto one of the passenger cars, and the soldiers inside were bound to hear kidnappers gamboling about on their roof. “Let’s do it.”
Sicarius went first. He didn’t drop straight down into the car, but leaped fifteen feet and landed on top of the corporal, a hand smothering the soldier’s mouth.
“Go, go,” Amaranthe urged the rest of her team.
She jumped and landed lightly in the coal, a foot from the back lip of the car. Maldynado and Yara dropped down beside her. They flattened themselves to their bellies. The passenger car behind the coal car didn’t have windows in the front, but it did have a door with a balcony. Anyone tall who stepped out to smoke or admire the night sky would be able to see straight through to the back of the locomotive. The coal level was only a foot below the lip of the car, so that didn’t leave them a lot of room for hiding. They’d have to undo the corporal’s raking and see if they could dig a hollow or two.
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