Conspiracy (12 page)

“
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.

She found the brick forges by feel and eased
between two. With the full bags pressed against her chest, she
groped her way toward the big machine with the towering flywheel.
She had a spot in mind for placing the powder, but groaned and
halted. With her lantern out, she had no way to light the fuse.

“
Don’t kick over that
lantern,” she called out. “I’m going to need that flame in a
moment.”

Amaranthe pressed onward. She’d set the bag
into place first and then go for it.

“
I see. It’s the—” The
sound of rubble raining down interrupted Sicarius’s words. He
coughed before saying again, “It’s the
lantern
you’re worried
about.”

Amaranthe smiled. If he could make a joke,
he must be managing sufficiently up there.

She found the flywheel by clunking her knee
against it. Grumbling, she leaned the rifle against it, left one
bag of powder on the floor, and climbed the wheel with the second
in hand. There were only a couple of inches of space between the
top of the machine and the ceiling. She stuffed the bag into the
gap and unraveled the fuse so that it hung to the floor. If it
hadn’t been cavern dark at her end of the chamber, she might have
jumped off, but she took care to climb back down carefully.

When she turned to grab the rife, four
blazing crimson eyes stared at her.

“
Bloody ancestors!”
Amaranthe blurted and dropped to her belly.

Beams shot out, burning through the air
inches above her head. She grabbed the rifle and scrambled behind
the machine. She tried to find the second bag of black powder as
she fled, but couldn’t find it and wasn’t about to go back. That
cursed thing was only a few feet away. And she wagered it could see
a lot better in the dark than she could.

The grinding clanks approached. Amaranthe
rounded the back of the stamping machine, using it for cover.
Through the gaps in the flywheel, she glimpsed red eyes burning in
the darkness as the sentry rolled past the front.

“
Did you lose something?”
Amaranthe shouted.

A couple of heartbeats passed before
Sicarius answered, “No.”

“
Then there’re three
now.”

Amaranthe rose from her knees to a low
crouch. She circled to the left, trying to keep the machine between
her and the sentry.

It paused, and one of those eyes swiveled. A
beam sizzled through a gap in the machine. The metal deflected part
of the attack, and it missed Amaranthe, but it sliced into the
nearby brick of a forge. Shards pelted her back and bare neck.

The sentry rolled back into motion, and she
moved again. She’d come all the way around and almost tripped over
the discarded bag of powder. The darkness was disorienting, and she
wished the glowing eyes put out light. Something warm trickled down
the back of her neck. Blood.

“
I’ve been able to cut off
several of the antennae,” Sicarius called.

Amaranthe was reaching down for the bag when
his words came. She left it, instead taking cover behind a forge,
and she lifted the rifle to her shoulder. If his fancy knife could
cut the antennae, maybe one of these fancy bullets could do the
same thing.

Amaranthe leaned out, and as soon as one of
the red eyes came into sight, she fired. In the dark, she could
only estimate where her target lay, but her shot was true, and the
crimson ball fell to the ground with a soft clink. The glow winked
out.

“
Hah!” Amaranthe
said.

Her victory was short-lived, for the three
remaining eyes swiveled to point at her.

She ducked behind the forge, hoping the
solid construction offered enough protection. Three beams chiseled
into the bricks, spraying shrapnel and dust everywhere.

Staying in a low crouch, Amaranthe scrambled
around the forge, wanting to catch the sentry from behind while it
was still firing at her original position. She made it to the other
side and raised the rifle to shoot, only to have nothing happen
when she pulled the trigger.

She cursed under her breath. There’d been
some kind of loading lever, hadn’t there? To push the next round
into the barrel? She fumbled for it, but the sentry was already
spinning toward her. She dove across empty ground and skittered
behind the machine with the flywheel again.

A beam lanced out, but missed her. It hit
something though, for the scent of burning kerosene wafted into the
air.

Amaranthe’s eyes widened. Her fuse.

She bolted back toward the forges. Her hip
clipped one, and she gasped but didn’t slow down. Hands
outstretched, she groped her way down one of the aisles toward
Sicarius’s lantern.

“
Boom coming!” she
yelled.

Before the last word escaped her mouth,
light flared behind Amaranthe, and an explosion roared through the
chamber. The ground heaved beneath her running feet. Around her,
the racks rattled and wobbled, hurling weapons off the shelves.
Behind her, thumps and bangs sounded as earth and cement sloughed
to the ground.

She raised her arms, deflecting the weapons
flying from the racks, and she sprinted the last few meters to come
out in the front of the chamber. She almost tumbled into Sicarius’s
arms. He caught her and grabbed his lantern. His two sentries were
rolling about, their antennae chopped down to stumps, their eyes
missing. The constructs kept bumping into piles of sod and cement
on the floor.

“
Emperor’s eye teeth,”
someone outside snarled.

“
Watch out,” another said.
“Don’t get too close to the edge.”

The voices were no longer muffled, and a
draft of cold air whispered against Amaranthe’s cheek. She took
note of Sicarius’s lantern and said, “There’s another bag of powder
wrapped up with a fuse. If it didn’t explode when the first one
went off...”

Sicarius cut off the lantern and placed it
in her hand. “Stay back for a minute. They’ll be watching the
hole.”

He headed for the shadows made by flames
dancing on the other end of the chamber. Though she remembered
mostly metal in that machine area, there must have been a few
things capable of catching fire.

She followed him,
navigating over and around heaps of rubble. She passed the
workbench where he’d disassembled the rifle and snorted. They could
have left it disassembled. There was no hiding that they’d been
there
now
.

Voices drifted to her from outside, but the
men were being quieter now. Lying in wait.

When Amaranthe reached the first forge, a
gaping ten-foot-wide hole in the ceiling came into view. A set of
metal reinforcing bars had survived the blast and stretched across
the gap, but they were far enough apart that she and Sicarius ought
to be able to wriggle out. Lanterns burned somewhere above the
hole, highlighting singed tufts of grass dangling over the rim. On
the floor below, scattered pieces of coal that had flown from one
of the bins were burning or smoldering.

A shadow moved above the hole, but the men
were careful not to step into view. Amaranthe imagined them up
there, on their bellies, rifles aimed at the gap, ready to shoot
anything that came out.

She looked for the machine with the
flywheel, figuring Sicarius would be there, hunting for the other
bag of powder. She almost didn’t recognize it. The giant wheel was
warped and had toppled against one of the forges. What was left of
the forges, that was. Two of them were nothing more than heaps of
rubble.

Something brushed her arm, and Amaranthe
jumped.

“
I found it,” Sicarius
whispered.

“
Good. We can light it,
throw it up there for a distraction, and sneak out under the cover
of the smoke.”

Sicarius considered her for a moment, but
all he said was, “Stay by the wall.”