Conspiracy (7 page)

Sicarius rose to a crouch. “If we don’t wish
to be discovered, we should get out now.”

“
We might just be slowing
for a turnoff.”

“
I’m hungry as a bear fresh
out of hibernation,” came one of the men’s voices from the front.
“Think we can filch some eggs and ham off Ma Kettle?”

“
She’s getting paid to look
the other way, not feed your fat caboose,” the second man
replied.

“
The woman can do
both.”

Amaranthe waited, hoping the conversation
would steer into more illuminating areas, but the men were done
talking. The lorry turned and slowed further.

Amaranthe shook Books’s foot. Sicarius
already had his pack over his shoulders and was poised to hop out.
He pushed the tarp aside, checked behind them, and then climbed
onto the gate so he could gaze out over the front of the
vehicle.

“
Come,” Sicarius said,
ducking back in. “There’s little time.”

Books lifted his head. “Huh?”

Sicarius leaped out.

“
Time to go,” Amaranthe
whispered, shrugging into her own pack.

She waited for Books to grab his gear before
jumping out. They’d timed it well, since the lorry was rolling past
a cross section of split-rail fencing. Amaranthe ducked low and
followed its contours. While it didn’t provide full cover, it was
better than streaking through the pumpkin patch. Books clambered
after her. She had already lost track of Sicarius.

“
Horrible leader,”
Amaranthe grumped, heading for a small shed.

Ahead of the lorries, a two-story farmhouse
waited. A number of outbuildings dotted the property as well.
Carriage house, canning facility, smoking sheds, a bunkhouse...
Amaranthe didn’t see anything remotely resembling a weapons
manufacturing factory. Smoke drifted from the stovepipe of the
farmhouse and also a chimney on the canning building.

Amaranthe slipped behind the shed and waited
for Books. Morning sun beat against her face. Normally she would
appreciate it, but not when it would make sneaking about difficult.
Rolling hills started to the east, and a few deciduous trees with
brown and red leaves lined a distant stream, but fields dominated
the nearby landscape.

The two lorries rolled into the carriage
house. The tall doors stood open, apparently awaiting their
arrival. Though it was hard to see inside the building from her
vantage point, Amaranthe spotted a tractor and a wall full of hand
tools. No rifles. Nothing that even looked like a forge.

She told herself it was too early to worry
that she’d made a mistake and that they were now stuck someplace
far from the main road and railway. If nothing else, the men who
had driven the trucks would know something. Sicarius might get to
question somebody yet.

“
Where’d he go
now
?” Books
asked.

“
I don’t know,” Amaranthe
said, continuing to watch the carriage house.

Two of the men stayed behind to put out the
vehicles’ furnace fires while the other two headed for the
bunkhouse. Usually such a building would be used by workers hired
to help with the harvest. Was it possible these fellows were hired
hands who had taken the farm’s lorries to deal with their insidious
side business? But, no, the one had said “Ma” was being paid to
look the other way.

Books removed his pack and sat on the
ground. “It’d be nice if he stayed with us, especially to help with
such fraught activities as sneaking into the enemy’s transport
vehicles.”

“
I imagine he leaves us
during such endeavors because we’re more likely to get caught. If
he stuck by our sides, he’d be caught too.”

“
So, for self-preservation
purposes, he abandons us at every opportunity?” Books
asked.

“
Er, yes, but in doing so
he puts himself in a position where he can rescue us if we’re
apprehended.”

Books snorted. “I wouldn’t hold my breath
waiting for him to rescue me.”

“
Didn’t you say he came to
your assistance the first time you two met?” Amaranthe eased back
from the corner. The last two men had gone inside, leaving little
of interest to watch.

“
Because he needed
something,” Books said. “I don’t believe for a moment he’d put us
ahead of his own interests, or even that he’d bother to ‘rescue’ us
if he had something more interesting on his plate.”

When Amaranthe faced Books, she found
Sicarius leaning against the far corner of the shed behind him. She
wondered how much of the conversation he had heard. All of it
probably. Oh, well. By now he knew his aloof ways had not won him
many friends in the group.

“
I doubt that. Have you
seen the sorts of meals he puts on his plate?” Amaranthe met
Sicarius’s eyes and smirked at him. “I wouldn’t call any of those
interesting.”

Sicarius held her gaze in return. “Only
because your palate is accustomed to sweets.”

Books jerked his head around and cursed
under his breath.

“
I know,” Amaranthe said.
“The worst part about being out here is the distance from Curi’s
Bakery.” She hadn’t told him that she paid a university student to
buy sweets for her a couple of times a month—she wouldn’t risk
going to Curi’s on her own, not when it was a popular stop for
enforcers—but a girl couldn’t let outlaw status get in the way of
apple cinnamon tarts.

Sicarius said nothing, though she knew he
disapproved of her vice. Time to get back to work.

Amaranthe waved to encompass the farm. “I
don’t see anything blatantly inimical happening here. It seems I
was a tad impulsive in assuming that following those boys home
would lead us to the source of those weapons.”

“
Perhaps not.” Sicarius
crouched and placed the flat of his palm on the ground.

Amaranthe lifted an eyebrow but did the
same. Dry tufts of grass scrapped at her palm. She focused on the
cool earth beneath them, trying to feel... whatever he thought was
worth feeling.

Slight tremors pulsed through the ground,
similar to what one might sense touching a railway track when a
train was still miles off. More, faint rhythmic clanks reverberated
through the earth as well.

“
It could be machinery in
that canning building.” Amaranthe pointed to the smoke wafting from
its chimney.

“
We wouldn’t feel that this
far away,” Sicarius said. “Also, the banging is irregular, made by
man, not machine.”

Books also placed a hand on the ground. “An
engine... and a smith at a forge?” he guessed.

Amaranthe stood, her interest in the farm
rekindling. “Like someone hammering steel into gun barrels?”

“
That process is usually
automated these days,” Books said, “but, yes, a smith would still
be required for fastening the stock and firing
mechanism.”

“
And where would this be
happening?” Amaranthe waved toward the bucolic setting.

“
Underground,” Sicarius
said. “There are a number of sleeping areas in that bunkhouse, far
more than there are people visible working on the farm right
now.”

“
People on the day shift,
eh?” Amaranthe said.

“
It’ll be difficult for us
to explore with the sun out,” Books said.

Sicarius flicked a glance down at him, and,
though his expression never changed, Amaranthe thought she read
“Speak for yourself” in it.

“
Maybe you can scout
around,” Amaranthe said to Sicarius, “while Books and I seek
out...”

“
Trouble?” Sicarius
suggested.

Books’s eyes narrowed.

“
Not necessarily. I thought
we might have a chat with this Ma Kettle.” Amaranthe smiled and
took up her idea of a backwoods drawl. “On account of how we come
up from the south, hoping to help with the harvest, and mayhap she
has some work left here for a couple of sturdy hands.”

“
Trouble,” Sicarius
said.

“
I concur,” Books
said.

“
So nice when you two are
in agreement.”

* * * * *

Amaranthe adjusted her borrowed straw hat,
pulling it lower over her face, then walked up the porch steps to
the farmhouse’s front door. To her side, Books alternated glancing
over his shoulder toward the bunkhouse and fidgeting with his own
straw hat, one she’d embellished with feather-and-bead tassels
dangling from the brim. “So they won’t recognize it,” she’d told
Books while he glowered fearsomely at her. They’d found the
headwear in the shed, and, while hers was plain and forgettable,
his had blue flowers on the brim, flowers now hidden by the
tassels. She was glad Maldynado wasn’t there to comment, though she
wasn’t sure whether it would have been to mock or approve; she’d
seen him wearing hats as silly, and he had no qualms about donning
tassel-bedecked clothing.

To further their disguises, Amaranthe and
Books had smeared dirt on their faces—after the night’s adventure
there’d been no need to add grime to their clothing. Amaranthe’s
fingers kept straying toward a kerchief in her pocket, and she had
to clench her fist to keep from grabbing it and cleaning the mess
off.

She knocked on the door, putting the fist to
good use. Books checked over his shoulder again.

“
Relax,” Amaranthe said,
ostensibly to him though the word could have been for her as well.
She worried that the information they might get out of this woman
wasn’t worth the risk of being identified later. She glanced at the
shuttered windows on either side of the wooden porch.

“
I’m not very good at
extemporaneous mendacity,” Books said. “Or carefully rehearsed
mendacity either.”

“
Think of it as
acting.”

“
What, in the credentials I
gave you when we met, suggested I’d be good at acting?” Books
asked.

“
You can’t be any worse
than...” Amaranthe inclined her head toward the field, though
naturally they could not see Sicarius about anywhere.

“
He acts?”

“
He stands there and goes
along with me, answering my prods in a monosyllabic
monotone.”

“
So, the same as usual,”
Books said.

“
Essentially.” Amaranthe
knocked on the door again. She’d seen a woman come out onto the
porch earlier to beat dust from a rug, so she knew someone was
home.

A shutter on one of the windows opened an
inch. Amaranthe pretended not to notice, figuring the person wanted
to make a secret inspection of them. Though she doubted rural
farmers were up on the latest wanted posters, she kept her chin
tilted downward, so the hat would hide part of her face.

Wooden floorboards creaked on the other side
of the door.

“
Who is it, Ma?” a voice
called from the depths of the house. “That enforcer woman
again?”

For a stunned second, Amaranthe thought
“enforcer woman” referenced her, but nine months had passed since
she’d been employed in that capacity, and she’d certainly never
visited this place. Because there weren’t many female enforcers,
her next thought was of Sergeant Yara, the woman they’d dealt with
on the dam mission. This was her district.

“
No,” came a voice from the
other side of the door. “Go back upstairs.”

Her mind caught on the notion of enforcers
visiting, Amaranthe barely heard the words. If the local
authorities were already snooping around, aware of illegal weapons
being manufactured in their district, that was good, but it meant
this might not be quite the discovery she’d thought.

“
What do you want?” a woman
asked, voice directed toward the door this time, though she did not
open it.

“
Friendly,” Amaranthe
mouthed to Books, before calling out, “We’re two hard workers
wondering if you’re hiring help for the harvest, ma’am.”

“
No.”

“
And blunt,” Books mouthed
back.

“
We’re real good workers,
ma’am, and help for nothing more than a hot meal and a chance to
sleep in one of your sheds.” Or perhaps whatever building was
hiding the machinery they’d felt...

“
Don’t need no more help,”
the woman responded. “Go away.”

“
It seems my acting skills
won’t be called upon after all,” Books murmured.

Amaranthe liked to think she was decent at
negotiating, or, as the men put it, talking people into things, but
it was hard to get a read on someone through a door. If the woman
was already being paid well to look the other way, Amaranthe didn’t
know what she might entice her with. Perhaps simply an appeal to
her humanity?

“
Please, ma’am, would you
let us talk to you for a moment? We’ve come down out of the
mountains on foot. Our rations are low. If you don’t have work, we
understand, but perhaps you could point us in the direction
of—”

“
If you ain’t off my porch
in five seconds, I’ll sic the hounds on you.”

Books scooted down the steps so quickly,
Amaranthe wondered if he had a dog phobia. She followed, though she
hated admitting defeat.

“
It seems I’ve lost my
touch for talking people into things,” she said as they walked
away.

“
I don’t know about that.”
Books removed the hat and flicked at the tassels. “You got me to
wear
this
.”

* * * * *