Conspiracy (30 page)

Sometime in the last hour, he and Basilard
had acquired army uniforms. They both had distinctive faces, and,
thanks to all the wanted posters around the empire, Sicarius’s was
particularly well known, so neither would pass for army men up
close, but they might be able to slip into the water tower without
anyone thinking anything of it.

“
Agreed.” Amaranthe pointed
deeper into the alley. “A word?”

The others had noticed Sicarius, so she
lifted a hand to keep them from following, and joined him a dozen
paces away.

“
The soldiers are waiting
for a train that will take them to the capital,” Amaranthe said.
“It seems someone murdered a bunch of prominent citizens, and
reinforcements are being called in to protect Stumps and aid with
the hunt of the killer.”

A moment passed before Sicarius said,
“Understood.”

The single word gave away nothing of his
thoughts, so Amaranthe tried to read the pause. Maybe it meant he
regretted his actions, or at least realized he’d acted rashly and
that there might be inconvenient consequences. Somehow she doubted
she’d get him to admit it, even if that were the case.

“
Do you think it’s odd,”
Amaranthe asked, “that soldiers would be called in to deal with an
assassin? I know they’ve hunted you before, but those were special
missions, out in the wilds, weren’t they? Crimes in cities are
almost always relegated to enforcers.”

“
Yes,” Sicarius
said.

“
You’re answering both
questions there, right?”

“
Yes.”

“
Have I mentioned how much
I appreciate your garrulousness?” Amaranthe asked.

“
No.”

“
Good.” She touched his arm
to make sure he knew she was joking, though something in the back
of her mind—her father’s spirit perhaps—told her she shouldn’t be
joking, touching, or even talking to someone capable of tearing
through the city, killing dozens of people in a twenty-four-hour
span. “I had an instructor in school, Ms. Worgavic, who had this
saying, ‘In every crisis lies opportunity.’”

“
You believe Forge is using
my attack to bring the soldiers to the city for a scheme of its
own?”

“
The idea entered my mind,
yes.”

He glanced toward the alley entrance. None
of the others were in sight. “My only concern is getting Sespian to
safety.”

Amaranthe tried not to feel irritation at
the statement. It wasn’t news. Sicarius had never claimed to have
an interest in helping humanity or saving the empire or anything of
that ilk. In fact, he’d told her quite frankly that he didn’t. That
he’d been letting her use him this last year only because they
shared the goal of keeping Sespian safe. That Amaranthe had other
goals too... She supposed that didn’t matter much to him. Though
she knew it shouldn’t, the reminder stung.

“
I understand that’s your
main concern, but—” Amaranthe lowered her voice, “—I thought you
hoped to become the type of person the emperor might wish to get to
know.”

“
That... cannot be the
priority.”

“
Oh, Sicarius.” She knew he
was the last person in the world who would want sympathy—and maybe
she was crazy to feel such emotions for him, knowing what he’d done
in his life and of the questionable choices he continued to
make—but it made her heart heavy to think of him never having a
relationship with his son. “We’ll see what we can do about you
getting a chance to deal with both concerns. But, in the meantime,
I don’t want any more glares from you in regard to who I chose to
add to my list of allies. It’d be premature for smugness on my
part, but I don’t believe any of our complications thus far—” she
waved toward the soldier-filled boardwalk, “—are a result of
anything
I’ve
done.”

“
Really,” Sicarius said
dryly.

“
Really.” Amaranthe smiled.
“I know, I can hardly believe it either.”

Footfalls sounded at the head of the alley.
Yara was striding toward them with Basilard and Maldynado hustling
after her. Maldynado gripped her shoulder and said, “Wait until
they’re done.”

Yara jerked away. “Unhand me, or I’ll
collect on your bounty right now.”

Maldynado lifted both hands skyward.

“
It’s all right,” Amaranthe
said. “We’re done.”

Yara stalked up to Sicarius. “Who’d you kill
for those uniforms?”

Sicarius regarded Yara with as much warmth
as one might give a cockroach. A particularly invasive and pesky
cockroach. “No one.” Sicarius jerked a thumb toward two inert forms
farther back in the alley.

“
We brought a number of
gags, and I had a special wrist- and ankle-tying bands made,”
Amaranthe said. The latter had come from Ms. Sarevic and were
clever for their compactness and efficiency. “I told you the truth.
We’re hoping not to injure anyone tonight.”

“
We’ll see about that,”
Yara muttered.

Amaranthe checked her pocket watch. “We
better get started in a moment, but first, Yara, join me over here
for a moment, please.”

Amaranthe knelt at the end of a loading dock
and rummaged in her rucksack. She pulled out a mask and a canister
of the knockout concoction Sarevic had made. When Yara joined her,
Amaranthe held out the items.

“
You should take these. You
can use the canister to make those around you sleepy, maybe even
pass out.” Amaranthe wished she’d tested them, but they were among
the most expensive items Sarevic had made, and she couldn’t waste
them. Besides, she couldn’t imagine a stupider way to die than by
testing these on her men, causing everyone to lose consciousness,
and then having a soldier stumble across their hideout and kill
them all. That wasn’t the way she wanted to make the front page of
a newspaper. “The mask will protect you from its
effects.”

At first, Yara didn’t make a move to touch
the items. Amaranthe could understand her reluctance. If she was
captured and had the tools of guerilla kidnappers on her, there’d
be no way for her to claim innocence. Honestly, that was part of
the reason Amaranthe wanted Yara to take the items. It’d force her
to commit. She also didn’t want Yara getting killed or dropping
unconscious in the middle of the emperor’s car. That’d leave
Amaranthe and the others with two bodies to tote outside.

“
You’ve tested the mask?”
Yara finally asked.

“
Ah, sort of. We tested its
ability to block out noxious fumes.”

A few feet away, Maldynado snickered.

“
Let me guess who supplied
them,” Yara grumbled.

“
It was... a group effort.
After a meal that involved a couple of cans of beans. Uhm, but
anyway, that’s not important.” Amaranthe didn’t want to scare away
their new teammate with further details. “I believe the mask works,
and it would behoove you to keep it with you.”

Yara took the items. Amaranthe wanted to
give her a few minutes to familiarize herself with them, but
Sicarius said, “We should go now.”

Amaranthe almost said that five more minutes
wouldn’t make a difference, but he was right. Books’s estimate was
exactly that. An estimate.

“
All right,” Amaranthe
said. “You and Basilard know what to do. Maldynado, we have a coal
shed to subjugate.”

“
I love it when you say
things that make us sound fearsome and formidable,” Maldynado
said.

Amaranthe let Sicarius and Basilard go
first. Before he crossed the railway, Sicarius stopped to rest a
hand on the train tracks, and Amaranthe decided to wait for him. He
glanced back at her and lifted a hand, fingers outstretched. Five
minutes. Nerves tangled in her gut. The train was that close?

Sicarius and Basilard disappeared into the
shadows between the lampposts, only reappearing when they had to
stop before the well-lit door. Sicarius tried the knob. The door
was locked.

Still hunkered by the corner of the
warehouse, Amaranthe nibbled on a pinkie nail. Sicarius slipped a
lock-picking kit out of a pocket.

Maldynado tapped her shoulder. Yes, they had
to get on with their own part of the mission. She would trust that
Sicarius could slip in before trouble noticed him.

“
Stay close,” Amaranthe
told Maldynado and Yara, then led the way toward the coal shed,
trying to use its bulk to hide their approach from anyone at the
train station.

Avoiding lampposts and their damning light,
Amaranthe walked into the square fronting the refueling area. Here
and there, her boots slipped on oil-slick bricks and grime.
Incipient frost and damp leaves further complicated the footing.
She’d hate to fall on her backside in front of Yara. That’d make it
even harder to live up to Maldynado’s suggestion that they were
fearsome and formidable.

She reached the coal shed without any
embarrassing falls. She already had her lock-picking kit in hand,
but the door wasn’t locked. It wasn’t even closed all the way.

“
Someone inside already,”
Amaranthe whispered. She didn’t bother using Basilard’s hand signs
since it was dark and Yara wouldn’t be able to understand them
anyway.

Maldynado puffed out his chest and indicated
that he would go first. Though Amaranthe doubted they would run
into more than one or two workers tasked to load coal on the
arriving train, she didn’t see a point to arguing with him. She
pushed the door open and listened. She thought she heard
something—a soft scrape perhaps—but the noise did not repeat.

A new noise from outside reached her
ears—the distant chuffing of an approaching train.

Maldynado stepped past Amaranthe. She
followed right behind and paused to listen again while her eyes
adjusted to the gloom. The earthy scent of coal hung thickly in the
air, and dust lingered, tickling her nostrils and coating her
tongue. Someone must have been shoveling fuel into the dispensary
bin upstairs in preparation for the train’s arrival. But where was
that person now? And why wasn’t there any light if someone was in
there working?

A set of stairs rose along the wall next to
the door, and Amaranthe pointed for Maldynado to check upstairs
while she investigated below. He padded up without a word.
Amaranthe waved for Yara to stay by the door and eased into the
dark room.

The only windows in sight were shuttered, so
little light crept inside. Searching by feel, Amaranthe passed
double doors and piles of coal, some in bins and some free on the
floor. A mountain of the stuff buried the entire back half of the
first floor.

She’d completed a circuit around the room
and was heading to the stairs when her boot caught against
something on the floor. It didn’t feel like coal.

With one hand on the hilt of her sword,
Amaranthe squatted down, her other hand outstretched. She
encountered clothing, damp clothing, and caught the familiar scent
of blood. The overpowering odor of the coal had masked it.

“
Body over here,” she
whispered to Yara.

“
Do you want me to come
in?”

“
No, someone better guard
the door.”

Amaranthe drew a kerchief and wiped her hand
before backing away. Deciding to risk a light, she shrugged off her
rucksack.

Floorboards creaked above her head.
Maldynado walking around, doing his own search. She thought about
calling a warning up to him, but she had a feeling they weren’t
alone, and she couldn’t risk a loud voice that someone outside
might hear.

The ground trembled faintly, a sign of the
train drawing close. Amaranthe reminded herself that it wouldn’t go
anywhere until it had refueled its coal car and water tanks. But,
then, if workers didn’t show up to do so promptly, someone would
come to investigate.

Awareness of the need to be
swift nagged at her, and Amaranthe almost dropped her lantern when
she pulled it out. She
did
drop the matches she’d been fishing for. She
patted the ground, looking for one, and encountered a warm puddle.
When she’d chosen this line of work, she’d known she couldn’t be
squeamish over such things, but touching bodies and blood never
seemed to get easy.

“
The blood’s still warm,”
Amaranthe whispered. Books could have told her the minutes the
owner might have been dead based on the temperature, but she didn’t
need a lot of precision to know it hadn’t been long.

A steam whistle squealed. Not much time.

Amaranthe found a match and lit her lantern.
Yellow light bathed a supine man in dust-coated overalls with a
slit throat. A shovel lay next to him, fallen where he’d dropped
it. He’d died with his eyes open, surprise on his face.

The creaks upstairs had ceased. Had
Maldynado stopped to study something? Or...

A nervous flutter tormented Amaranthe’s gut.
He wouldn’t fall to some assassin. Surely, he had too much fighting
experience to be caught unaware like the worker.

The train ground to a stop outside of the
refueling station, and Amaranthe had no hope of hearing what, if
anything, was going on upstairs. She handed the lantern to Yara and
gestured for her to stay by the door.

Amaranthe eased her sword out and climbed
the steps. They were narrow with a brick wall on one side and the
other side open to the floor. The pesky fingernail-nibbling side of
her brain noted that fights on stairs rarely went well for the
person in the lower position.

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.