Conspiracy (38 page)

Amaranthe spun, thinking to find Maldynado
and get his smoke grenade. The less those soldiers outside could
see the better.

She almost tripped over her first
attacker—he’d collapsed onto the carpet. A step past him, Maldynado
knelt over a prone soldier, seemingly having the upper hand, but he
was gripping a chair for support. His mask hung askew, leaving his
nose exposed to the air.

Amaranthe adjusted it for him while keeping
an eye on the action—even as she watched, a body flew through the
air, landing hard against a bank of windows before sliding down
onto a sofa. The smoke made it impossible to see who was where, but
she was relieved that the numerous inert figures sprawled on the
floor or draped over furniture were all wearing uniforms.

“
No falling asleep,”
Amaranthe told Maldynado, yelling to be heard over the shouts and
bangs coming from without as well as lingering ones from within.
She tightened the strap around his head and added, “You’re too
heavy for anyone to carry out of here.”

Maldynado blinked at her with glassy eyes,
but he managed to lever himself to his feet. “What, only the
emperor gets a free ride?”

He pointed toward the left side of the car,
and Amaranthe was tempted to head in that direction, but glass
broke behind her. Someone was going to have to fight off the
soldiers trying to get in on her end. She swapped the crossbow for
the blowtorch and handed the tool to Maldynado, then took a smoke
grenade clipped to his belt.

“
Let’s trade,” she said.
“Find the others, and as soon as they have Sespian, cut a hole in
the ceiling so we can get out that way.” Amaranthe didn’t like the
vision she had of leaping from rooftop to rooftop with soldiers
shooting at them from each balcony, but now that they’d been forced
to move before the landslide distraction, she didn’t see that they
had another choice, not if they wanted to get back to the
locomotive.

More glass cracked behind her. Amaranthe
grabbed her crossbow and strode back to the door, only to find the
glass hadn’t yet broken under the soldiers’ assault.

She spun around, looking for what had
shattered.

A weapon fired, and a bullet whizzed past
her ear, stealing a tuft of hair. She lunged behind an upturned
table, her heart thundering in her chest, and tried to see where
the shot had come from.

There. A soldier was hanging from the roof
by one hand and knocking broken shards of glass away from one of
the side windows, trying to make a hole large enough to crawl
through. He’d discarded the one shot pistol, but the determined
fury on his face said he’d have no trouble strangling Amaranthe
with his bare hands once he got inside.

Amaranthe thumbed the tab open on the smoke
grenade and set it where it’d cloud the air between her and the
soldier and also between her and the door. Crossbow in hand, she
jumped onto a chair near the intruder. He saw her coming, but he
couldn’t stop her when he was dangling from one hand outside the
train.

“
Go back to the other car,”
Amaranthe said, trying to look like a crazy woman who would love
shooting him, as she aimed the crossbow at his face.

Thanks to the smoke wafting
everywhere, her bloodshot eyes probably
were
crazy looking, but there was no
fear on the soldier’s face. Lips curled into a ferocious snarl, he
thrust his arm through the window, grabbing for the crossbow. The
length of his reach surprised Amaranthe, but she pulled the weapon
back, evading him. The soldier let go of the roof and gripped the
glass-filled frame of the window with both hands. Blood streamed
down the broken pane, but he didn’t seem to notice. He pulled
himself forward, trying to thrust his broad shoulders through the
window, even as his legs dangled outside, thumping where they
bumped against the train wall.

Amaranthe’s finger tightened on the trigger.
She couldn’t let him in, not when more would follow, but if she
shot him, if they shot anyone...

Bashes continued at the door she’d come
through, and the chair she’d used to add strength to the lock fell
away. A crack sounded, the thick glass finally giving.

Amaranthe flipped the crossbow around,
gripping it by the lathe. She swung the weapon at the soldier’s
face like a club. He couldn’t dodge, not when he was wedged part
way through the window, and it cracked against his skull.
Reverberations coursed up Amaranthe’s arm. She gritted her teeth
and swung again.

It wasn’t a good solution, but it was the
best she could come up with. If he was forced to let go and fell,
he might still live. If she had to shoot him...

The man roared in pain, but hung on with the
tenacity of a tick. She refined her attack and aimed for his hands
instead of his head. Despite battered, broken fingers, he refused
to let go.

Footsteps beat against the roof. Amaranthe
glanced over her shoulder, hoping Maldynado had burned an escape
hatch and that was the sound of her men climbing out, but that
wasn’t the case. Maldynado and Basilard were standing in the middle
of the aisle, pointing upward and arguing. She didn’t see Sicarius,
but smoke obscured the back half of the car. Either way, that
wasn’t him up there. There was far more than one pair of feet
making those thumps.

Another window broke on the other side of
the train. In the seconds she’d been distracted, Amaranthe’s
soldier had crawled farther inside. Her swings grew harder and more
desperate. He knew she wasn’t trying to kill him, and he wasn’t
going to give up.

Frustration burned Amaranthe’s eyes almost
as must as the smoke. They weren’t going to be able to get out of
this. If soldiers were on the roof and on either end of the car,
where could her team go to escape?

“
Let go, curse your
ancestors,” Amaranthe growled at the soldier.

“
Die, bitch,” he spat
back.

Something in his tone made her pause.
Defeat? The soldier had stopped pushing through, and he was glaring
at her and breathing heavily, but his eyes had a glassy mien. Maybe
he’d sucked in enough knockout gas to dull his senses. Or maybe
he’d lost enough blood to do the same. He’d probably done more
damage to himself crawling through the glass than he’d received
from her beating.

Something brushed Amaranthe’s shoulder, and
she spun, crossbow clenched in her hands.

Sicarius stood in the aisle with Sespian
slung over his shoulder and a pistol in his hand. His eyes were
grim above his mask, and blood spattered his hands and face.
Sespian wasn’t moving.

“
They’re on the roof,”
Sicarius said, his voice distorted by the mask. “We’ll have to
start shooting people if we hope to escape.”

“
No,” Amaranthe
said.

A slam sounded at the door, and more glass
cracked. Smoke hid the window, but she knew it was weakening.

“
Then we’ll be captured,”
Sicarius said.

“
No, give me another
option.”

Maldynado and Basilard joined them.
Maldynado waved the torch. “I stopped trying to cut through the
roof when people started climbing around up there. There’s all
sorts of wood in here. I could light the place on fire.”

“
With us inside?” Amaranthe
asked. “That’s not the option I had in mind.”

A window broke in the middle of the car, and
shards of glass flew inward. Basilard ran to take care of the
intruder.

“
Everyone in here is down,
but there’s a man in the corner that was trying to get up,”
Maldynado said. “I think this stuff is already wearing
off.”

Amaranthe stood, eyes searching the car,
seeking inspiration. If they couldn’t go out the windows, through
the doors, or through the roof, the only way open was...

She arched her eyebrows. Down. Was down a
possibility?

“
How much clearance is
there beneath the cars?” Amaranthe tried to picture the area
between the wheels in her mind.

“
You’re not serious,”
Maldynado said.

Amaranthe looked at Sicarius, figuring that
with Books not around he’d be most likely to know the answer. He
was staring at her, probably thinking exactly what Maldynado had
said.

“
Could we crawl underneath
the cars and couplings to bypass the soldiers and get back to the
engine?” Amaranthe asked, though she grimaced as her gaze fell on
Sespian. With him unconscious, someone would have to carry him, and
she couldn’t imagine there was enough clearance for
that.

“
Boss, you’re
not
serious,” Maldynado
repeated. “Are you? That’d be hard enough if the train were
standing still. Even if there’s enough room...” He shook his head.
“Miss one handhold or let your foot slip free, and you’d fall and
be mangled to death under the wheels.”

Amaranthe grabbed the cutting torch from
him. “I’m going to take a look. Give me two minutes.” She waved to
encompass the windows and doors, or, more specifically, the
soldiers trying to batter them down.

She stepped over unconscious bodies to find
a spot in the middle of the car, then yanked out a dagger to cut
away a square of the carpet. She wasn’t ready to start a fire.
Yet.

A shot fired, and a lantern on the wall
exploded.

“
You idiots are going to
shoot your own emperor!” Amaranthe yelled.

“
Surrender or die!” someone
yelled back.

“
Surrender
and
die is more likely,”
she huffed, shoving the severed carpet patch away.

Amaranthe maneuvered the blowtorch into
position and found the trigger. A funnel of flames shot out, and
she cursed, yanking it back so it wouldn’t light a nearby chair on
fire. She found an adjustment knob, and the flame narrowed into a
tight beam. She applied it to the floor, hoping it would perform as
promised and cut through metal. The floor, she feared, would be
thicker and sturdier than the roof.

The flame scorched the metal, but a hole
appeared. A small hole. She moved the torch a half an inch. This
might work, but it was going to take time. Maybe more time than
they had.

A shot fired, this time from within the
car.

“
Who’s shooting?” Amaranthe
demanded without taking her eyes from the torch.

“
I’m not aiming to kill,”
Maldynado said, “but they’ll be less eager to thrust themselves
inside if they’re convinced I’m trying to shoot ’em.”

On the other side of the square she was
cutting, Sicarius knelt to face Amaranthe. He hadn’t said anything
about her plan. He set Sespian down, and the emperor’s head lolled
to the side. With his eyes closed, soft brown hair across his brow,
and his face peaceful with sleep, he appeared young, like a kid,
not an emperor. Akstyr was younger, but Amaranthe doubted many
people would guess on looks alone.

Her gaze slid to Sespian’s neck, and
queasiness rolled into her stomach. The bump they had seen in the
newspaper picture was there. Not a mole or wart or any sort of
growth on top of the skin. It was definitely something burrowed
beneath the flesh, leaving a bulge the size of a pencil top. It was
identical to nodules they’d seen on the necks of other people who’d
crossed Forge. All too well, Amaranthe remembered the thug Sicarius
had been questioning in a warehouse and how the man had launched
into convulsions before pitching to the floor, dead.

Sicarius caught her wrist and took the
cutting torch. Amaranthe hadn’t been paying enough attention, and
she’d strayed away from her line. He went to work, moving the tool
along more efficiently than she had been.

“
Does this mean you’re
willing to try my idea?” Amaranthe asked.

Gunshots punctuated her words.

“
We have few options,”
Sicarius said. “I won’t surrender him.” He gave her a quick,
determined look, and it sent a wave of fear over her. Not for
herself, but for the soldiers shooting, chopping, and hacking their
way into the car. Sespian would never forgive Sicarius for killing
all of his men, and Sicarius had to know that, but maybe he was
afraid that leaving Sespian here would mean his death at the hands
of Forge, and he was willing to risk Sespian’s eternal hatred to
save his life.

“
Sicarius...”

He ignored her. The flame burning through
the floor reflected off the textured metal around it and cast a
wavering orange glow upon Sicarius’s face, creating a dance of
shadows and light across it and showing his intense
determination.

“
Boss!” Maldynado called.
“I almost lost my left nut with that shot. These soldiers aren’t
worrying about—ouch! I mean, they’re not worrying about where
they’re shooting. We can’t hold ’em back for long.”

“
Light off any more smoke
grenades you have,” Amaranthe yelled. “And pile up any loose
furniture in front of the doors.”

Sicarius finished cutting the square in the
floor. He set the torch aside and wedged his black dagger into one
of the cracks.

“
Be careful.” Amaranthe
eyed the smoke rising from the blackened metal. “That’ll be
hot.”

Sicarius flicked her a dry glance before
prying open their new trapdoor without touching the edges.

“
I know, I’m stating the
obvious again,” Amaranthe said, “but remember, that saves you from
something gooey and sentimental.”

Sicarius had stuck his head through the
opening, and she didn’t know if he heard her. It was a good thing
her aim had been ragged and the hole had ended up on the wide side,
because there was a thick beam running beneath the right three
inches.