Forged in Blood II

by Lindsay Buroker

  “Yes, of course,” Amaranthe said, realizing that long seconds had passed. “I’m sure I can find something. Stay there.”

  “Naturally,” Sicarius said dryly.

  Too much emotion, he was showing too much emotion. She was sure of it.

  Amaranthe scrambled out from under the dock and ran up the slope and onto Waterfront Street. She sprinted up the hill toward the factory. Funny how quickly she reached the back door, considering the eternity that had passed while she’d been pulling herself through that drain. But if Sicarius was tricking her, her “quickly” might not be quick enough.

  She slowed down enough to close the door softly behind her and stepped lightly as she ran through the factory, trying to think of things—and remember where they were in the dark—she could pile onto the grate.

  If Sicarius was free of the wizard, good. The worst that would happen was that he’d spend a few hours trapped down there while she hunted down Starcrest and verified the Nurian’s death. If he wasn’t…

  She had to work fast. He might not be stuck in that bend at all, he might be crawling back to the start, even now.

  Remembering a pile of machine parts along one of the back walls, Amaranthe veered in that direction. She ran as quickly as she could without allowing her boots to clomp on the cement floor, but Sicarius had the hearing of a hound. She could only hope that backtracking through the tight tunnel would delay him.

  In the dark, she almost tripped over the machine parts. She did hammer her shin into something unyielding. Another bruise to add to the night’s collection. She’d admire it later.

  Groping about, Amaranthe found a pole attached to a cylindrical wheel, some sort of grinding device. It didn’t matter what it was. So long as she could carry it. She dragged it off the pile, wincing when something else clanked off and rolled across the floor, striking one of the vats with a resounding gong. It wouldn’t take a hound to hear that.

  Fortunately, the pit wasn’t far. She pulled her prize over and patted about, expecting the grate to be open. It wasn’t. Sicarius had let it fall shut behind him. Believing she wouldn’t have the strength to climb up the wall and open it from below? She shuddered at the idea of that wizard smirking somewhere while she tried.

  Amaranthe maneuvered the wheel onto the grate, then ran back for more gear to pile on top. Even Sicarius would have a hard time pushing that grate open from below, but she wouldn’t feel safe until she had hundreds of pounds of gear stacked atop it. Starcrest and the others could laugh at the overkill when they came in the morning to help pull him out. So long as the wizard was dead, and Sicarius’s mind was free, they could all laugh. She didn’t care.

  Some rusty pipe sections followed the grinding wheel, then a couple of cement blocks after that. She was in the process of dragging over something that felt like an industrial-sized funnel when a new thought occurred to her. She halted a few inches from the edge of the grate, the certainty of her mistake slamming into her like a wrecking ball.

  If Sicarius freed himself from that bend and reached the bars blocking the drain exit, it wouldn’t matter how big his head was. He had that cursed black knife. How many times had she seen the thing cut through substances no normal blade could? Not more than a few weeks ago, he’d hurled it at the floor in the cab of a train, a textured steel floor, and it had bit in and stuck. If he reached those bars, he’d cut through them. Or if he came back this way, he could cut through the grate. Sure it might not be like slicing through butter, but she’d be shocked if that knife couldn’t do it.

  “Emperor’s eyeteeth,” she muttered.

  What if he’d already escaped and was running back to the factory at that very moment? Or—she eyed the broken window and the back door—what if he was already inside again?

  Something latched around Amaranthe’s ankle.

  She shrieked. And was yanked off her feet.

  She landed on the cement so hard, the blow slamming into her back, that it stunned her. For a second, she couldn’t breathe and couldn’t think. Then she was being pulled toward the grate.

  Amaranthe flailed with her hands, trying to find something to grab onto. Most of her body was still on the cement, but he’d reached through and grabbed her ankle and—curse him, he had her other leg now too. There wasn’t anything to grab onto, and the smooth floor didn’t help. Even from his awkward position—he had to be hanging from the grate, hanging from her—his power dwarfed hers; she couldn’t find any leverage to fight him off.

  She twisted and scrabbled at her belt for her knife. She might not have thrown it at him earlier, but, blast it, she would stab him through the hand.

  The instant she stopped fighting his pull, though, he gained ground, spinning her sideways so that her body rolled onto the grate. She’d no more than unsheathed the knife when his fingers snaked through an opening, tearing it from her grip. It’d been too fast; she hadn’t noticed him let go of one of her legs before his hand had been upon her. A clatter sounded below, her blade striking the stone at the bottom of the pit. She didn’t have another one.

  She froze—he’d pulled her onto her belly, her face mashed into one of the openings—and tried to think of something to say. A quip, a plea, anything to buy time. She found herself staring into his eyes.

  He was gripping her with both hands, one on the back of her thigh and one on her opposite shoulder, all of his body weight hanging from those points. He’d lost the wool cap somewhere, and that stone at his temple glowed, a sickly opal with a myriad of colors in it. The light was enough to illuminate his face. And hers, too, she imagined. What terror did he see there? Or did her calculation show in her eyes? Little good it was doing her.

  “Where is Starcrest?” he asked, his voice calm and emotionless, no hint of the earlier exertion in it. Was he not fighting the wizard now? Obviously it’d been the Nurian when he’d been trying to trick her at the bend. Where was Sicarius? Still in there? Or utterly defeated? Squashed down into some tiny corner of his own mind, unable to effect any power over his body at all?

  “Why don’t you let go,” she whispered, “and we’ll discuss it?”

  Amaranthe tried to get her arms beneath her, to brace her palms against the iron bars so she could push away. It’d be futile, though, as long as he held on.

  Think, she ordered herself. Do something. What? Spit on him, anything. But such tactics would be useless against him. Talking. As inane as her words sounded in her ears, she had to try, to hope she’d break through somehow and lend him the strength to pull away from the wizard, even if it was only long enough for him to let go. That was all she needed.

  He dug into her thigh and shoulder deeper and swung his legs. She ground her teeth to keep from gasping in pain, both from the steel-fingered grip and from the way it mashed her harder into the bars. His legs came up, his boots finding bars to brace against so they lay horizontally, body to body, except for the grate between them. The weight pulling against her lessened, but when she tried to push away, she couldn’t gain so much as an inch. She couldn’t knee or elbow him—she’d hit the bars.

  What was he going to do next? Grab his knife. If he tried he’d have to let go with one hand. That’d be the best chance she had to pull away. She’d save the desperate spit-in-his-face maneuver for that moment.

  “It’s not that I wouldn’t enjoy having you this close under other circumstances,” Amaranthe said, searching his eyes, trying to find some sign of the man she knew in there, “but I’d really appreciate it if you let go right now, dropped down in that hole, and waited until my comrades come back.” Preferably with that wizard’s head on a stake. “Starcrest too. The letter you sent, it brought him. He’s helping Sespian. We’ll have a resolution before long, I’m certain of it. And the Behemoth is gone. Forge is greatly weakened. Er, you know about that part. But with the technology gone, the remaining members will have less to draw on. Victory is close, Sicarius. Don’t let this foreigner control you, to make you do… anything you don’t want to any more.”r />
  His grip on her shoulder tightened. “Where is Star—”

  Abruptly, he threw his head back and roared in pain or frustration—or both. She’d never heard such a cry from him, and it startled her, but not so much that she failed to notice his fingers slipping a half an inch.

  Now’s your chance to pull away, she thought, while he’s distracted. Do it!

  “Fight it,” Amaranthe whispered, not moving. “Just for a moment. That’s all it takes.”

  His arm dropped from her shoulder, and his knife was between their faces so quickly she hadn’t registered more than the released grip. She’d missed her chance to pull away. Or… maybe not. The blade was in his hand with the hilt laid bare between them. It was the familiar black dagger.

  “Take… it…” he gasped. “Use it… end it.”

  End what? His life? His eyes were pleading with her, and it broke her heart. She couldn’t hesitate, couldn’t argue—who knew how long he’d hold out?

  Amaranthe slipped her hand through the grate, hooking it around a bar to grab the knife. He released it and tilted his head back again. He was shaking, as if from the effort of holding his bodyweight up in that position, but she knew it had nothing to do with physical exertion.

  In a movement as efficient as she could manage, she slashed the knife across flesh. Not, as he seemed to expect, his neck; she cut into the skin around that cursed opal, trying to slice the full circle before he could jerk away. And jerk away he did, his eyes widening with surprise, or maybe that was pain. Agony.

  She dropped the knife and grabbed the opal with her bare hand. Digging her fingers into flesh slippery with blood, she struggled to grasp enough of it to pull out.

  Sicarius screamed.

  The alien sound startled her so that she reared back, yanking her arm back with her. The hands that had gripped her released. Sicarius fell into the black depths below.

  Horrified, Amaranthe stared at her open palm. Slick with blood and gore, the opal pulsed three times, revealing slender tendrils on its underside, tendrils that had, she realized sickly, grown through his skull and snaked into his brain.

  After the final pulse, the opal went black. Everything went black.

  Tremors coursed through Amaranthe’s body. Disgusted by the device, she hurled it as hard as she could. It had grown eerily quiet in the factory, and she heard it hit one of those vats and clunk to the floor.

  “Sicarius?” she whispered, her voice hoarse. “Sicarius, are you…?”

  She couldn’t say it. Tears welled in her eyes. If that thing had been so intertwined with him… with his brain, had its destruction destroyed him too?

  Chapter 13

  Pain. He’d experienced it countless times in his life, and this, he told himself, was no different. He set about erecting the barriers in his mind, walling off the areas that were affected. Later he could meditate and work on healing those areas, but first he had to regain full consciousness and assess the exterior situation. He couldn’t remember exactly what, but something important had been going on.

  Breathing. He hadn’t been doing it, he realized, so he focused on that for a time. The expansion of his lungs, in and out, drawing in rejuvenating air. He gradually grew aware of cold stone beneath his back. The grate, the drain. Amaranthe. The memories returned in a rush, bringing a fresh wave of pain, if a different kind.

  She was alive!

  And he’d almost killed her. Again.

  Sicarius had experienced a surge of pure joy when he’d realized she was the one in the factory, that he’d been mistaken and that she’d somehow survived that crash. But he’d rushed to squash the feeling, afraid of how Kor Nas would react. Now shame and anguish filled him, underlaid with frustration for his inability to thwart that cursed Nurian. The memories of the man’s thoughts, of what he’d wanted Sicarius to do to Amaranthe, the pleasure he’d derived from learning that “his pet’s woman” still lived and could be tormented as punishment for Sicarius’s attempts at defiance. Or maybe Kor Nas’s fantasies hadn’t had anything to do with anything as logical as punishment. He’d simply delighted at—

  No, Sicarius told himself. Push it aside, like the physical pain. Kor Nas was gone, or at least Sicarius was free of him.

  She’d done that. Yes. He owed her again. He hadn’t been certain if the stone could be removed without killing him—or if some fate worse than death might await. Having his throat slit had seemed a superior alternative. She’d made the decision for him though. Good.

  A new sensation pierced the cloudy haze of pain and awakening awareness that surrounded him. Moisture. On his face, his cheek and nose. Saltiness touched his lips.

  Tears. His?

  No…

  It took an eternity before he could open his eyes—he needn’t have bothered, for only darkness awaited—and he realized that he remained in the pit. And that Amaranthe was down there with him. Her arms were around him, his head cradled to her breast, her fingers twined in his short hair.

  “Should let you… cut that… sometime,” he whispered, his voice hoarser than a blade rasping across a whetstone.

  Amaranthe stiffened, lifting her head. Her forehead had been pressed against his, he realized when an unpleasant coolness replaced the warmth of her flesh.

  “You’re alive,” she blurted.

  “Yes.”

  “But you weren’t. You weren’t breathing.”

  “A temporary setback,” Sicarius said.

  “Did you… did the wizard…” Her grip tightened about him. “Is he gone? Are you… you?”

  He remembered her asking those exact words once before on Darkcrest Isle, and a fresh surge of disgust came over him for his inability to do better this time. Focus on her, dolt, he told himself. She’d asked a question.

  “I believe so.” Sicarius lifted his fingers to his temple and probed about the crater in his flesh. That would take a while to heal. He hoped he hadn’t endured brain damage that might afflict him later in life. “My body will suffer another scar though. Allying with you remains deleterious to my health.”

  Amaranthe let out an explosive laugh, or maybe it was a sob, given the way her chest trembled against his head. “That has to be you. No Nurian wizard would be so…”

  “Sespian suggested he and I may share hereditary tendencies toward social awkwardness.”

  Amaranthe snorted and wiped her eyes. “An understatement, though he’s not so awkward as his father.” She lifted her gaze toward the open grate above. “What are the odds of either of us, being rather battered and broken, climbing out of here and finding a more comfortable place to sit? Perhaps even growing so ambitious as to apply bandages to each other.”

  Sicarius didn’t feel up to standing, much less climbing out of the pit. He’d be content to continue to lie there for some time with Amaranthe cradling his head. Such weaknesses shouldn’t be admitted aloud. Besides, he didn’t know how long she’d be willing to cuddle with him once she learned about the atrocities he’d committed for Kor Nas. Or how little he’d fought to avoid committing them. If he’d known she was alive… and Sespian too. To learn they’d survived delighted him of course, but it deepened his shame as well.

  “I’ll construe your silence as a stolid, ‘I could if I truly wished to, but I’m suitably comfortable here right now,’” Amaranthe said.

  “Indeed,” Sicarius murmured.

  “There are things I should tell you,” Amaranthe said. “I… oh, let’s save it for later.”

  Her fingers traced the side of his face, the side without the raw wound, and he let his head loll back, content to let his mind rest and to appreciate the ministrations. He had a notion that he should return them, in some manner or another, but his mental war with the practitioner had exhausted him in a way physical skirmishes never did. Another time, he thought, then reluctantly added, if she wished it. If she saw the newspaper article, or, worse, the row of heads on pikes that Kor Nas had set up to show Flintcrest how effective his Nurian allies were, Amaranthe migh
t not wish to accept any “ministrations” from him.

  He reminded himself that he was appreciating, not thinking, and for a time his mind lay quiet.

  “In retrospect,” Amaranthe mused, “I should have tied a rope up there and climbed down that way instead of flinging myself into the pit.”

  “Such premeditation is rarely part of your strategies,” Sicarius said. He hadn’t meant it as an insult, rather a bit of that teasing she’d encouraged him to do, but her stroking fingers stilled, and he worried he’d hurt her feelings. After all that he’d put her through that night, he would not wish to cause her further upset.

  “True, I must admit,” Amaranthe said. “I’m not sure when that happened. I used to go by the book and consider consequences before enacting a plan. Maybe my plans just grew so unprecedented and grandiose that I couldn’t foresee the consequences, so I stopped trying.”

  She sounded chagrinned but not hurt, so he attempted teasing again, thinking it might lighten her mood more than a terse affirmation. “You could not foresee the consequences of jumping into a pit without a rope?”

  “Not that.” She swatted him on the chest. “The Behemoth and its… landing spot. This—” she pointed toward the lip of the pit, “—is simply a result of me being too worried you were dead to think of more than hurling that junk aside and jumping down here to check.”

  “Ah. Your solicitude is appreciated then. Almost as much as a rope would be.” Though she wouldn’t see the faint smile that touched his lips, he hoped she’d hear it in his voice.

  “As if you’ve ever needed a rope.”

  “As you pointed out, I was recently in a non-respirating state. I remain grievously weakened.”

  “A non-respir… you are socially awkward. Now I see the real reason you’ve never talked much.”

  No doubt it was a reflection of said weakened constitution that his smile lingered. It was too much effort to maintain the mask, and in the darkness alone with Amaranthe, what did it matter? Sicarius closed his eyes and hoped she’d go back to stroking his face.