“If the emperor is alive, he’ll likely be on that boat,” Maldynado said. “We can’t abandon him.” Not if there was any chance Sicarius would learn about it anyway.
Basilard nodded firmly. Doubt filled Yara’s eyes as she studied the drop.
“If you don’t think you can make it,” Maldynado said, pushing thoughts of Sicarius’s threats out of his head, “I’ll stay here with you and fight.”
“I didn’t say I couldn’t make it.”
A steam whistle blew, its pitch low and eerie as it floated up to the castle. They had to decide quickly if they hoped to catch the boat, but Maldynado didn’t want to say anything else that might cause Yara to put pride ahead of wisdom. He wasn’t entirely sure he could make that leap without landing on the rocks.
Yara cursed, not a choice succinct word or phrase, but an entire stream that impressed him for its ecumenical vulgarity. She hiked up her dress, backed up, and took a running leap, her bare feet launching her from the low wall around the balcony. Maldynado gawked as she arced out over the moat and the rocky drop beyond it. He held his breath, his hands clenched into fists. If she didn’t make it…
Yara splashed into the river with a few feet to spare. Maldynado waited for her head to pop up, but it didn’t. What if she’d reached the goal only to plunge into water too shallow?
Basilard slapped his arm and pointed. They had to go as well. Maldynado nodded, though he couldn’t tear his gaze from the spot where Yara had gone in.
On top of the nearest tower, a rifle cracked. The bullet skipped off the stones at Maldynado’s feet.
Basilard backed up for a running start and leaped. Knowing he’d be shot if he delayed further, Maldynado readied himself to do the same. He backed up to the far edge and bent his knees as if he were lining up for the start of a race at the Imperial Games.
His careful preparation was ruined when the door to the balcony flew open so hard it slammed against the wall. Guards surged out of the stairwell and onto the roof, their hands stretching toward him.
Maldynado smacked them away and sprinted for the edge. He jumped onto the low wall and pushed off with all of his strength.
Cold wind whipped hair into his eyes and railed at his clothing. Blood surged to his muscles, and Maldynado wanted to flail his arms, to try and hurl himself through the air by will, but he tucked into a ball instead, hoping it’d carry him farther. He peeped down, trying to judge his path and whether he’d jumped far enough—and trying to see Yara as well. He’d reach the water, but would it be deep enough? Had it been deep enough for her?
Maldynado landed with alarming momentum; the impact from striking the water sent a jaw-rattling jolt through him. As he plunged downward, the cold shocked his body, and he couldn’t move, but he was too worried about smashing into the bottom to pay attention to the fact. He must have plummeted twenty feet before slowing. Darkness smothered the depths, and he couldn’t see anything in the black water. Praise his dead ancestors, he didn’t strike anything. Grateful for the river’s depth, he tried to swim for the surface. Glacial numbness clutched his chest, and he couldn’t feel his arms or legs. A current tugged at him, and he envisioned himself being swept downstream, trapped beneath the surface by some undertow.
Spurred by panic, Maldynado got his legs working and kicked as if all his ancestors were lined up, watching and mocking his lack of manliness. His elbow banged against a rock. Startled, he let out his air. Water filled his mouth. He kicked harder, hoping he was going in the right direction.
Maldynado broke the surface and almost smashed face-first into an algae-slick boulder. His first instinct was to push away from it, but the current was tugging at him, and he didn’t want to end up miles downstream. He wrapped his arms around the boulder like an enthusiastic lover. He’d lost his rifle at some point during the fall, but he hardly cared. Shivers wracked his body, and he wanted nothing more than to scramble out and find a towel—or, in lieu of that, beat up some guard for his clothes—but concern over Basilard and Yara stayed him. He searched about, trying to find them in the gloom. The lights from the castle didn’t brighten the rocky bank, but he could see it above the treetops and used it to guess his position. He’d gone from the back side of the island to the southern tip. He couldn’t see the docks, but maybe if he craned his head about—yes, there was the steamboat.
A figure in the water between it and Maldynado waved. Basilard.
Maldynado hesitated before swimming out to him. Where was Yara? What if she needed help? What if she lay smashed on a boulder somewhere? Or what if she’d been swept into the current and had never been able to find the surface?
Basilard splashed the water and pointed at the steamboat. It was on its way to the center of the river, and it’d be cruising downstream, full steam ahead before long. Maldynado wanted to call out to Basilard, to ask if he’d seen Yara, but guards patrolled the boat’s deck and the docks would hear. Basilard couldn’t respond anyway.
He turned his back on Maldynado and swam toward the boat.
“Emperor’s hairy backside,” Maldynado growled.
Left with few options, he swam after Basilard. They paddled with the current while angling toward the Glacial Empress. At first, Maldynado worried only about being seen. But, as he failed to gain ground quickly, he worried that he wouldn’t be able to catch up. Hoping the darkness would hide his approach, and the splashes of the paddlewheel would camouflage his own splashes, Maldynado buried his face and stroked at top speed.
His body forgot the cold, and he caught up with Basilard a few meters from the steamboat. It had reached the channel. Water frothed and churned as the giant paddlewheel, as broad as the entire back end of the boat, increased the speed of its revolutions.
Legs weary, Maldynado used his last burst of energy to swim along the hull to a dark blob. The anchor. Though it was pulled up, its chain out of sight in a hole, the dangling T-shaped hook offered a handhold. Panting, Maldynado gripped it so he could rest. The deck was lower to the water than on an ocean-going vessel, and it wouldn’t take much effort to clamber over the railing, but it might be smart to wait and let security believe they’d escaped the island without unwanted passengers. The guards would be on high alert if Mari’s people had sprinted down the hill, shouting of prisoners on the loose.
“Psst,” came a whisper from the deck.
Maldynado’s heart lurched. He’d been so worried about catching up with the steamboat that he hadn’t checked above. For all he knew, three guards were sighting down the barrels of their rifles at him.
“Pssst!”
Maldynado tipped his head backward and made out a single dark figure, though he couldn’t identify features. Lights burned on the boat, but mostly on the second and third decks where passenger and crew cabins awaited. The lower deck of the sternwheeler housed the engine and boiler rooms.
“Yara?” Maldynado guessed after a moment of analyzing those pssts. They hadn’t sounded very masculine. It was hard for him to believe that she had reached the boat—and climbed onto the deck—before him.
“No, it’s the emperor’s dead grandmother. Get up here, you twit. Don’t they teach warrior-caste brats how to swim decently?”
By then, Basilard had maneuvered around the hull to grab onto the anchor alongside Maldynado. With his mangled throat, he couldn’t laugh out loud, but Maldynado had a suspicion the quakes that ran through his body were a result of chortles rather than trembles from the cold.
Maldynado climbed up to the metal railing encircling the deck and, after checking to make sure nobody besides Yara waited nearby, hopped over. He almost landed on an inert body.
“He objected to me coming aboard,” Yara explained.
“He’s not dead, is he?” Maldynado asked.
“Of course not. But I wasn’t sure what to do with him. If we throw him overboard, people might miss him.”
“Nah. In the chaos of everyone boarding early and dinghies being blown up in harbor, I’m sure it’ll be seen as natural
for a few guards to get lost.” Maldynado grabbed the man by the back of the shirt, eliciting a sleepy groan—he’d wake up soon enough—and rolled him over the railing. “Like so. Lost.”
Basilard had climbed over and joined them. He watched the man splash into the water, then signed something.
“What was that?” Maldynado turned his back to the water, and tried to line Basilard’s hands up with a lantern burning near some stairs farther down the deck.
Basilard exaggerated his signs. Are we going to hide? Or take over the boat?
“Taking over the boat sounds… ambitious,” Maldynado said. Now that he’d stopped swimming and climbing, he noticed the cold wind sweeping down the river, battering at his sodden clothing. All he wanted was to warm up somewhere.
“Take it over?” Yara whispered. “There must be two dozen guards, not to mention the passengers and crew.”
“Let’s just find a place to hide.” Maldynado gave her a placating pat on the shoulder. “And get warm. Maybe we can convince the blokes in the boiler room to let us cozy up to their furnaces.”
“They probably have orders to throw intruders into the furnaces,” Yara said.
“If that’s the case, they can become just as lost as that first fellow.”
“If we keep throwing people overboard, the crew’s going to figure out that there are intruders.”
“Don’t worry. It’ll be fine.”
The words sounded confident. Maldynado hoped they proved true. It’d likely take a lot of days traveling down the river to reach Mari’s destination, wherever that was. If Sespian and the others hadn’t found a way on board, it might not matter anyway. Only the emperor knew what he hoped to learn from the Forge meeting.
Maldynado gazed back at the lights of Rabbit Island, which were receding as the steamboat picked up speed. He hoped he hadn’t, in choosing the steamboat over searching the harbor for his comrades, made yet another poor decision.
Chapter 9
Amaranthe’s stomach growled. How stupid of it to worry about food when there was so much else to worry about. Once again, she lay pinned to the operating table by the claw’s black metal spikes. Somehow, when they were piercing her thighs, wrists, and shoulders, they never struck bone or an artery—she chose not to think that someone had designed them with such precision for just this purpose—but they hurt like sword wounds to the gut every time they went in.
Soft crunches sounded a few feet away. Pike had taken a break from his work to munch on an apple and peruse a chapter of his torture book. Meanwhile, tremors coursed through Amaranthe’s naked body, and blood dripped down her sides to pool beneath her back and legs.
“Don’t you have that book memorized yet?” she hated how weak her voice sounded and, thanks to swollen lips, how muffled the words came out. It was the first she’d spoken that day. She wondered how much longer she’d have the energy for it.
“Nearly so,” Pike said around a bite of apple.
It disgusted her that a man could nosh away while a human being lay spread out before him, bleeding and mutilated, but Amaranthe ignored her feelings. She needed to figure him out, to get in his head, and suss out a way to escape before she was too weak to use an opportunity if it arose. She’d hoped Retta might be her way, but the girl hadn’t been back since they’d landed. Nor had Ms. Worgavic returned. Pike was the only human being she’d seen of late, and his humanity was questionable. Still, he was the only one with whom she had to work.
“Why do you care?” Amaranthe asked.
Pike strolled to her side, still munching. His black clothing was neat, unstained, and unwrinkled, and, not for the first time, his similarity to Sicarius bothered her.
“Ms. Worgavic set the rules I was to abide by,” Pike said. “I will not break them.”
“You’re from the warrior caste originally, right? Why would you obey a common-born woman?”
“I’ve been promised the position of Commander of the Armies should we succeed in putting Lord General Marblecrest on the throne.”
Amaranthe closed her eyes. She didn’t know Maldynado’s older brother, but anyone who would employ a torture-aficionado as his right-hand-man couldn’t be good for the empire, not the empire Sespian wanted, one where the nation tried to make amends for past evils and pursue diplomacy over war as it went forward. The odd thing was that there could have been a place for strong female entrepreneurs under Sespian’s regime. But Forge, perhaps accustomed to negotiating with Hollowcrest and Raumesys, must have chosen to strong-arm Sespian instead of working with him.
“You do not approve.” Pike smirked. “You’re not good at hiding your thoughts. I’m surprised you’ve lasted so long without telling me what you know about Sicarius. I’m even more surprised Sicarius inspires such loyalty in you. Or is it fear?” He cocked his head. “Are you worried about what he’ll do to you if you betray him?”
Amaranthe had wanted to take charge of the questioning herself, but Pike’s words made her pause in consideration. Maybe it was odd, or overly optimistic, but she wasn’t afraid of what Sicarius would do to her. She was more concerned about disappointing him. She didn’t think he’d hurt her physically—she believed they were past that—but he might walk away, never to be seen again. That’d hurt more.
“If that’s the case… ” Pike leaned closer and stroked a finger along her abdomen. “I’m sure we can arrange protection for you.”
Amaranthe wanted to thrust his hand away and punch him in the nose, but the pins through her wrists denied the possibility. The slightest twitch of a finger roused pain. “Forge can’t even keep him from killing its own members. You’d best worry about arranging your own protection.”
For the briefest moment, Pike paused, his finger frozen where it touched her rib. He recovered and withdrew his hand, then shrugged and took another bite of the apple.
That hesitation inspired Amaranthe to try a new angle. “If you’re correct, and the emperor does mean something to Sicarius, do you truly want to be on the team that kills Sespian?”
“I’m not the one who’s been hired to kill the boy.”
“Nor, I suspect, were those thirty Forge people that Sicarius slew. It doesn’t matter to him. Guilt by association. And you’re associated. Also, judging from what you told me about the time you spent with him in his youth, I can’t imagine he harbors a great affection for you.”
Pike didn’t respond. Though he’d chomped the apple down to the core, he’d grown quite interested in it.
“As a boy,” Amaranthe continued, “he was indoctrinated to obey Raumesys and Hollowcrest, and I imagine that extended to his… instructors. But, last winter, he killed Hollowcrest, so he must be over any loyalty he once felt.”
Pike’s gaze sharpened as it fastened onto her face. “Did he? Kill Hollowcrest? From what I’ve heard, nobody’s sure what happened in that mansion.”
“Sicarius broke his neck with his bare hands. I was one of the few witnesses.”
“Interesting.” Pike seemed to have forgotten he was in charge of the interrogation, or that there was even one going on. Good. Amaranthe was about to speak again, but Pike whispered to himself, “So, he’s taken out Raumesys and Hollowcrest.”
Raumesys? Sicarius had killed the old emperor? He’d mentioned secrets that Amaranthe didn’t know about, but she hadn’t guessed that one. “Nobody from his old life is safe,” she said. Better to pretend she knew all of Sicarius’s secrets and had an advantage over Pike. “I don’t think he appreciated his upbringing.”
Pike snorted. “No doubt.” Despite the snort, he looked pensive.
“Unless you two became buddies after your years of tormenting him.”
“Oddly, he didn’t find my company stimulating.”
Amaranthe hadn’t expected anything else, but she found comfort in the flippant comment. It would have disturbed her to find out Sicarius’s boyhood tormenter had become a friend later on, once they’d been… peers in the emperor’s employ. In her heart, she believed Sicarius
could have been a good man if he’d been born into another world, another life, but it was hard to maintain that belief at times. The neat checkmarks in Books’s journal, denoting those he’d killed, still sent a chill through her.
Thoughts for another time. She had Pike answering questions. Best to press while she could.
“I’m not certain Sicarius knew you were still alive or around the capital,” Amaranthe said. “He does now.”
Pike tossed the apple core onto the floor.
“We’ve landed somewhere, haven’t we?” Amaranthe asked, ignoring the refuse, though the silly part of her that preferred cleanliness wanted to admonish him for littering. “It’s possible Sicarius has followed your craft and is waiting somewhere out there for you. Did you know he’s familiar with this technology? He’ll be able to find a way in here.”
Pike’s eyes flickered in surprise, but it only took him a second to regain his poise. “Even if that were true, we’ve come across hundreds of miles of unpaved wilderness since we picked you up. He couldn’t have covered the ground that quickly, assuming he had any idea where we were going. Even Sicarius can’t track a bird.”
“Perhaps not, but he’s relentless. If he’s not waiting for you today, he’ll be there tomorrow. Or the next day.” At that moment, Amaranthe wanted to believe that more than anything.
“Enough.” Pike gripped her thigh, fingers digging into a wound where he’d flayed the flesh away earlier.
A fresh wave of agony washed over Amaranthe, and she sucked in a pained breath. It was a warning, and she ought to heed it, but she had to plant a seed in Pike’s mind before he went back to his work. As soon as she recovered enough to speak, she panted out, “You needn’t live in fear of him. If you… were to release me from this… unpleasant incarceration, I could speak to him… on your behalf. He listens to me. I could get him to spare your life.”
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