Conspiracy (13 page)

While he darted in to pick up one of the
burning coals on the flat of his dagger, Amaranthe watched the
hole, making sure nobody leaned in. Sicarius held the smoldering
ember to the fuse. He had cut it much shorter than the one she’d
originally made, so when he lit it, Amaranthe gulped, realizing how
quickly it would burn down.

In one sure movement, Sicarius tossed the
bag toward the hole. If it bumped into one of the bars and dropped
back down...

But Sicarius’s aim was better than that. The
powder-filled bag lofted between the bars, sailing above ground
toward the earth outside the hole.

Guns fired. It sounded like an entire army
out there.

The powder exploded with a boom. The charge
wasn’t as powerful or loud as the first, but the ground still
trembled beneath Amaranthe’s feet, and she had to brace herself
against the wall. More rubble rained down around them, though
fortunately small pieces. Smoke filled the air outside. Men coughed
and cursed.

Sicarius wasn’t watching the hole; he was
watching her. Amaranthe tilted her head, expecting him to ask her
something. For a second, it looked like he might, but then he
firmed his jaw and simply said, “Give me two minutes, then
follow.”

Before she could ask what he meant to do, he
bounded on top of one of the machines and launched himself toward
the hole as easily as a squirrel navigating trees. He slipped
between two bars and disappeared into the smoke.

Amaranthe waited, anticipating the sound of
gunfire. Concern for Sicarius formed a lump in her throat. As
seconds passed and the silence went on, her concern shifted to what
Sicarius was doing.

She climbed on top of the
machine closest to the hole, hurrying now, her own safety
forgotten. She had said
sneak
out. If he was up there killing
everybody...

Smoke stung her eyes before she stuck her
head through the bars. She couldn’t see anything and hesitated
before thrusting her arms through. It hadn’t been two minutes. It
might not have been one. Someone standing up there with a rifle
aimed at the hole could decide to shoot, even if he didn’t see more
than an indistinct shape.

A breeze whispered through, stirring the
smoke. It brought the scent of freshly spilled blood to Amaranthe’s
nose, and her gut clenched. With unfailing certainty, she knew
nobody was going to shoot her. Nobody was left alive to do so.

She pulled herself through the bars and had
no more than stood when a dark shadow strode out of the smoke.

“
They’re dead?” Amaranthe
asked.

“
Yes.”

“
What happened to
sneak
out?” she asked in
a harsh whisper, though there was probably no need to whisper at
that point.

Cursed ancestors, she hadn’t wanted to kill
anyone. She hadn’t even wanted to leave a sign that they’d been
there. All she’d wanted to do was look around, see what was going
on, and then leave without anyone the wiser. Or the deader. Curse
it all, why didn’t anything ever go as planned?

Sicarius took her arm and guided her away
from the hole. A numbness grew in her chest, and all Amaranthe
managed to say was, “We need to find Books.”

“
Yes,” Sicarius repeated
and kept walking.

They were trying to kill
us, Amaranthe told herself, attempting to justify his actions, but
she sneered as soon as the thought passed. Of
course
they were trying to kill us,
her mind countered. We were trespassing on their property and, for
all they knew, stealing months of their work.

It was illegal to own firearms, she reminded
herself. Making them had to be even worse. Whatever these people
had been doing, they weren’t guiltless. Except Sicarius hadn’t
likely killed the masterminds behind... whatever this plot was
exactly. He’d killed a bunch of men who’d probably only hired on
because they needed the pay. Still, even if they had been simple
workers, they had chosen to get involved in manufacturing firearms.
They had to have known their work was against the law.

Amaranthe moaned and grabbed her head with
both hands. She wanted to yell at her brain to shut up, and might
have, but Sicarius’s presence stayed her tongue. Only crazy
out-of-control people shouted at themselves, and she wasn’t going
to be either, not in front of anyone.

A fence materialized out of the darkness,
the one by the shed where they’d hidden that morning. Amaranthe
gripped the cold, rough wood and leaned against one of the
supports. She looked back the way they had come.

Up the road, the farmhouse remained, its
shutters pulled tight. Lantern light glowed in an upstairs room,
but there was no sign that anyone was going to come out and look at
what had happened or search for those who had done it. The
bunkhouse was dark and silent. All of the workers must have come
outside, or perhaps those left inside were too afraid to venture
out. The smoke over the hole had cleared. A few lanterns burning
near the carriage house, providing light enough to hint at unmoving
bodies in the grass. A coyote pack yipped in the distance, their
high-pitched yells sending a shiver down Amaranthe’s spine. The
unwelcome thought that they smelled a meal came to her mind.

“
You knew I wouldn’t want
this,” Amaranthe whispered. She remembered that long look Sicarius
had given her before jumping out of the hole and the way she’d
thought he might ask her something. He’d known then that he meant
to kill everyone out there, and he’d known she wouldn’t wish it.
Yet he’d done it anyway. “Why would you choose to kill
them?”

“
Sneaking past them wasn’t
practical. Smoke offers camouflage, yes, but not cover. With those
rapid-fire weapons, they could have hit us by shooting
blindly.”

Yes, true, but... “Why couldn’t you have
knocked them out? Why’d you have to...?”

“
Rendering a man
unconscious takes longer than killing him.”

“
Oh, dear ancestors, that’s
a sage piece of advice, now isn’t it?” Amaranthe’s voice had grown
loud and high-pitched. Calm, she told herself. Yelling at Sicarius
wouldn’t change anything. He was who he was. Had she truly been
thinking him heroic earlier? She rubbed her face with both hands.
Moisture dampened her fingertips. Tears for the dead? No, she
hadn’t even known those men, and they had been ready to shoot at
her. Tears of frustration, she decided and dashed them away. Time
to find Books and move on. Though she couldn’t resist one last
question, “How come you could sneak around well enough to kill
people but not to escape?”

For a moment, Sicarius said nothing. He
simply stood next to her, straight as a ramrod, with his hands
clasped behind his back. Why the silence now? Was he sparing her
some truth?

“
I had to clear the way for
two,” Sicarius said.

Oh. So, maybe he would have been able to
sneak out if it’d just been him, but he had to think about her.

“
I...” Amaranthe swallowed.
“I would have been willing to accept the risk of getting a stray
bullet in my backside if it meant not slaying everyone.”

“
I was
not
willing to accept that risk,”
Sicarius said.

So, he’d done this for her.
Amaranthe closed her eyes. The idea of him watching her
back,
protecting
her, had warmed her when he’d been saving her from booby
traps. Killing people on her behalf wasn’t quite as
endearing.

“
All right.” Amaranthe
couldn’t bring herself to thank him, not for this.

“
They weren’t enforcers,”
Sicarius said.

Amaranthe stared at him. Of course they
weren’t enforcers. It was a strange thing to say. Unless... Oh. He
was referencing the time he had killed her old partner and several
other enforcers to help her and Maldynado with an ambush. She had
been furious at him for that. Now... now, she knew what he was. She
couldn’t walk around with a lion and then be surprised when it bit
someone.

“
I know they weren’t,”
Amaranthe said, wondering if he could understand that she hated
being responsible for anyone’s death, stalwart citizens or not.
Yes, she decided, thinking again of that look. He understood. He
had known she would be upset with his choice, but hadn’t believed
there’d been time to come up with a better one. So be it. “Let’s
find Books.”

Amaranthe pushed away from the fence,
intending to help him search, but he lifted a hand.

“
Stay. I’ll be able to
search faster alone.”

She flopped back against the fence again and
tried not to find his statement insulting. Sicarius disappeared
into the darkness.

Long moments passed before a rumble started
up from the direction of the carriage house. One of the vehicles
that had been used in the weapons delivery rolled outside.

Amaranthe moved to the side of the shed, so
she wouldn’t be visible from the road. Maybe Sicarius hadn’t killed
all of the men, and the remaining ones had sneaked out to escape.
It was too dark to see who occupied the cab, and the tarp on the
back hid the cargo area from view too.

When the lorry drew even with the shed, it
stopped. Amaranthe sank low in the shadows and found the hilt of
her sword.

The door opened. “Amaranthe?” came Books’s
low voice, barely audible over the rumbling engine.

Ah. And that must be Sicarius in the
driver’s seat. Yes, killing people wasn’t enough of a crime. They
should steal a vehicle too.

Amaranthe walked toward the lorry and
resolved to keep her sarcasm to herself. It was an abysmal night,
but she couldn’t fault Sicarius’s logic. They needed to get back to
the city, and it wasn’t as if those men needed a vehicle any more.
At least Books sounded like he was uninjured.

He climbed out as she approached and held
the door open, offering her the seat beside Sicarius. She wondered
if that meant he had seen the pile of bodies and didn’t want to sit
next to the person responsible.

“
What happened?” Amaranthe
asked him before getting in. “Are you all right?”

“
I’m fine,” Books said,
“and I’m sorry I didn’t get the door open before they charged in.
Two of the men came running out of the bunkhouse, and I barely had
time to thump the floor in warning and hide behind the lorries.
They knew someone was down there and ran to pull some lever to
release... the hounds, that’s what they called them. Did you trip
over some kind of alarm?”

Amaranthe thought of the darts that had shot
out of the wall, the darts she triggered. Emperor’s warts, she
truly was responsible for all this carnage. If she’d been less
impulsive and let Sicarius find a way to disarm the trap, none of
the killing would have happened. They might have walked in and out
without anyone ever knowing.

“
Thank you, Books,”
Amaranthe said numbly. “I’m glad you weren’t injured.” She climbed
into the lorry and sat next to Sicarius. Something rustled beneath
her boot. She patted the cab floor and found a crinkled newspaper.
In case it was recent, she smoothed the crinkles and laid it on the
seat for Books. “Let’s get going.”

“
Back to the city,
correct?” Sicarius asked as Books climbed in.

Amaranthe wanted to say yes—the sooner they
left the country and this night behind the better—but hearing the
matron of the farmhouse speak of a female enforcer had left
Amaranthe wanting to investigate further.

“
Do you know where Ag
District Three’s enforcer headquarters is?” she asked.

“
No.” Sicarius’s tone
suggested he did not want to know.

“
It’s on the way back to
the city. I’d like to visit Sergeant Yara.”

Sicarius turned on the seat to face her
fully. “Explain.” Amazing how much displeasure one clipped word
could evoke.

Amaranthe told him what she and Books had
overheard from the farmhouse porch.

“
Explain
why that warrants a side trip,” Sicarius
said.

“
Should I step outside?”
Books asked.

The lorry was still idling, and Amaranthe
figured they shouldn’t linger on the farm. “No,” she said at the
same time as Sicarius said, “Yes.”

“
I see,” Books said. “I
believe I’ll listen to the person with the most knives.” He eased
out of the cab and walked several paces away from the
lorry.

“
We’ve been delayed for
long enough,” Sicarius said. “We need to return to the city to
ensure we’re in time to catch the last train to Forkingrust. I’m
not driving anywhere else.”

“
Sergeant Yara was useful
to us once,” Amaranthe said, “and she may be again. If she was the
one out here, investigating things, she may know more about the
weapons manufacturing scheme. What if this isn’t the only facility?
What if they’re all over the place out here, funneling supplies
into the city?”

Sicarius, she reminded herself in the
silence that followed her questions, wouldn’t care about this jaunt
to investigate weapons. He was focused on Sespian.

“
Remember the note she sent
us?” Amaranthe asked softly so Books wouldn’t hear. “Yara has seen
Sespian more recently than either of us. She wrote of advisors
being present when she met with him, so she may know more about the
pressures being applied to him. If we can get more information
about how he’s doing before we attempt to kidnap him, we’ll have
more to go on. Right now, we don’t even know if he genuinely wants
our help or if he’s setting us up for a trap.”