Deadly Games (41 page)

“The kraken will handle their ship,”
Spectacles said. “Even now, it’s attacking them. They will either
sink or flee to the docks, wetting their trousers on the way.”

“Uhm,” Amaranthe said, “you speak Turgonian
very well, but you don’t seem to understand the warrior mentality
of our people. The captain will be tickled at the idea of facing a
kraken. A training exercise, if you will. If they thought the beast
a severe threat, they’d be too busy facing it to drop charges over
the side.” That story sounded plausible, anyway. In truth, there
were probably a couple of lowly privates up there, assigned the
task of sending the explosives down in hopes that destroying the
fortress would make the kraken lose interest in defending it. “Once
they dispatch your little pet, they’ll be able to focus all their
attention on this vessel.”

“We’ll be fine on our own,” Spectacles said.
“We—”

The balding man stopped him with a raised
hand, and Amaranthe wondered if he, despite being the quiet one,
might be in charge. “What are you proposing, woman?”

“Amaranthe,” she said, figuring they’d be
more likely to see her as an ally if they were on a first name
basis. “May we come in to discuss this? Some of your guards have
been looking for us, and we’d rather not get shot in the back while
we’re talking to you.”

The men frowned at her. Despite her attempt
at wide-eyed innocence, they seemed to think she might be up to
something. Annoying when the villains had a modicum of
intelligence.

Spectacles murmured a few words to his boss
in their language. Amaranthe hoped it was something like, “They’re
simple fighters and not a threat to our magical greatness.”

“Drop your weapons and kick them back into
the tunnel,” the leader finally said.

“Kick?” Maldynado said. “One doesn’t
kick
a Teldark and Brook blade.”

“Ssh.” Amaranthe tossed her short sword onto
the floor behind them.

Maldynado gently laid his rapier next to her
weapon.

Spectacles walked to the wall to the left of
his side of the barrier where a box emitting a soft green glow
perched at face level. He lowered his spectacles and leaned forward
to stare into it. The barrier shimmered and winked out.

Amaranthe waited for the man to step back and
gesture for them to enter. She eased inside, hands open and spread.
Maldynado did the same, but he stepped to her side, a couple of
feet closer to the vials in the weapons locker.

“Stay there,” the leader said. “What’s your
proposal?”

“I’ll get my men to leave peacefully,”
Amaranthe said, “and you let us walk, or swim, out of here
unmolested.”

“Sicarius is worth a million ranmyas.”

“Yes, and if you wanted that, you should have
kept him unconscious.” She assumed that was how they had captured
him in the first place, no doubt thanks to her sending him off to
snoop. Someone must have caught him with a whiff from one of those
vials.

“Litya woke him up,” Spectacles said. “We
told her not to. She paid for it, too. Your
men
have killed
many of our guards and some of our practitioners. Letting them walk
away unpunished isn’t acceptable.”

“I see. Are you two in charge?” Amaranthe
asked, wondering if she was negotiating with someone who had the
power to do anything.

“We’re on the committee.”

“Committee? As in shared powers? And
votes?”

“We’re not savages like you Turgonians,”
Spectacles said. “We run a democracy here.”

“Well.” Amaranthe clasped her hands and
strolled to the porthole. Their gazes followed her, leaving
Maldynado unobserved. “I’m not going to talk Sicarius into walking
out if your intent is to capture—or shoot—him,” she said.

“Suppose we take you prisoner and use your
life to barter with the assassin?” Spectacles mused.

“That’d be a gamble on your part.” Amaranthe
leaned her back against the console, ostensibly so she could chat
face-to-face with both men, but she was more interested in checking
on Maldynado’s progress.

He was leaning on one arm that happened to
rest on the wall near the weapons rack, but his quick headshake
said he had not yet palmed the vials.

“The problem for you, gentlemen,” Amaranthe
went on, “is that Sicarius doesn’t care enough about anyone in the
group—about anyone at all—to risk himself on their behalf. He’s
like that kraken out there.”

She twisted and leaned toward the porthole,
gazing up as if she had spotted the beast. The men leaned forward,
too, no doubt worrying their prize kraken was idling about instead
of terrorizing the marines.

Amaranthe thought about signaling to
Maldynado to sneak up on the men and bash them both on the backs of
their heads, but practitioners seemed to be good at sensing bodily
threats.

“Sicarius is pragmatic and practical and out
for his own interests. He’ll crush you if you inconvenience him.”
She faced the men again and, in her peripheral vision, saw
Maldynado nod once. She hoped it meant he had the vials, not that
he agreed with her assessment of Sicarius. “Don’t let greed lead
you to disaster,” Amaranthe urged the practitioners. “Money isn’t
what brought you here in the first place, is it?” In truth, she had
no idea, but it sounded like a promising guess.

“Our research requires funds,” Spectacles
said. “Ultra modern mobile labs don’t build themselves.”

“Why do you need to be mobile?” she asked,
figuring the more they chatted with her, the less likely they would
be to hold a knife to her throat as part of a bargaining ploy.

The men’s lips grew flat.

“Your research isn’t sanctioned by your
government?” Amaranthe asked, her tone not one of accusation. No,
she gave them her best
brotherhood-of-folks-beleaguered-by-oppressive-government-policies
smile.

“You could say that,” Spectacles said. “Most
of our funds won’t come through until we deliver the babies, and
that’s a long-term project, obviously.”

Babies? What
were
these people doing
down here?

“A project that will be more difficult to
complete without Litya,” Spectacles added.

The quiet man whispered something in a string
of vowel-rich syllables. A warning not to reveal so much? Whatever
it was, both men scowled at her. Litya must have met the sharp side
of one of Sicarius’s daggers.

“Out of curiosity,” Amaranthe said,
pretending not to notice their flinty stares, “were you hired or
told to come here by a group called Forge?”

The men exchanged sharp looks.

“We have Turgonian customers, but your people
didn’t fund our mission,” Spectacles said.

That...wasn’t quite what she had asked. That
they recognized the organization told her much though.

“Forge is just a client, then?” Amaranthe
asked.

Spectacles shrugged. “Who in Turgonia
couldn’t
find a use for a child gifted enough to win at the
Imperial Games or excel on the battlefield? That’s the only way to
join your archaic aristocracy, is it not?”

Amaranthe said nothing. Was
that
what
the miners had been planning? If they combined funds to
buy
a son who could one day gain entrance into the warrior caste
through merit, the parents would share the family honors: land,
entitlements, access to the emperor. Though businesses had brought
common citizens many opportunities, no amount of money could buy
what the warrior caste received as a birthright.

Something clunked against the hull of the
vessel. A flash of light appeared outside the porthole, and a
massive boom coursed through the fortress.

Amaranthe grabbed the console and managed to
stay upright, but Spectacles tumbled to the floor, cracking his
head on the seat. A wailing reminiscent of an injured bird started
up, creating a cacophony as it competed with the ongoing alarm. The
rangy man gripped the console with both hands, and his eyes closed
to slits as he concentrated on something.

Maldynado crept toward Spectacles. Amaranthe
nodded, thinking this might be a chance to subdue these two.

From his hands and knees, Spectacles flung
his fingers outward. An invisible force hurled Maldynado back, and
he hit the wall with a resounding thump. His helmet dropped from
his hands, hitting the floor with a clatter. He slid down the wall
and onto his backside, then slumped into a stunned heap.

Amaranthe bit her lip. Maldynado looked like
he would survive, but if his crash had cracked one of the vials,
they might all end up unconscious.

“I’ll thank you to keep your bodyguard by the
door,” Spectacles growled. He had his feet under him and was
straightening his jacket.

“That wasn’t necessary,” Amaranthe said. “I
told you we’d work with you if you release my men.”

“That brutish behemoth was going to
work
my face into the floor.”

“
Brutish
?” Maldynado had recovered
enough to manage an indignant tone. “
Brutish
? I’m a child of
the warrior caste, descended from generations of noble warriors and
distinguished matrons of exquisite manners and taste. I’m no
brute.”

“I’m sure he was only coming to help you,”
Amaranthe told Spectacles.

“Er, yes.” Maldynado staggered to his feet.
“That’s right.”

“Stop blathering,” the rangy man said. “The
hull has been breached in the upper port wing. I’ve closed it off
from the rest of the
Areyon
, but if we take on too much
water, we’ll never be able to leave the bottom of this
Akahe-forsaken lake.”

“It’s time to accept your losses and escape
while you can,” Amaranthe said.

The two men argued with each other in their
own tongue. Another explosion went off, this one too far from the
porthole to view the flash, but Amaranthe felt its power in the
tremors that rocked the vessel. The accompanying groans and creaks
of the structure sounded ominous. How much damage was the
fortress—no,
laboratory
was the better term—designed to
take?

“We agree,” Spectacles told Amaranthe. “You
can have your two men, but we will keep the rest of the test
subjects.”

If you can find them, Amaranthe thought, but
she kept her sneer inward and shrugged. “I’m only concerned about
my people.”

Spectacles strode to the barrier again. He
leaned into the box, and the field winked out again. “You first,”
he said.

“Very well.” Amaranthe lifted her helmet and
fastened it as if it were a typical Turgonian thing to do. She
caught Maldynado’s eye and gave him a nod. He put his helmet on as
well.

Spectacles watched with a frown. “What are
you doing? We’re not going outside to get to the engine room.”

Amaranthe pointed at the ceiling. “With those
marines dropping charges, I’m not taking any chances. What if one
lands right on top of us?”

The men gave her exasperated looks. That was
fine. So long as they didn’t find her suspicious.

“Mind if we collect our weapons?” she asked
before the group started down the corridor.

“Yes,” Maldynado said. “It’d be unforgivable
to leave my fine blade on that grungy floor.”

“No weapons,” Spectacles said. “Walk.”

Though the two practitioners stood more than
an arm’s length away from her, Amaranthe felt a nudge of pressure
against her back. The sensation sent an uneasy tingle down her
spine, and she worried they could do much more than “nudge” her
with their powers.

When they reached the ladder, Amaranthe waved
for Maldynado to descend first. The helmets made it hard to see
one’s feet, and she had little trouble feigning a clumsy climb. At
the bottom, she deliberately missed a rung and tumbled into
Maldynado. He caught her and pressed a vial into her hand. Thank
his ancestors for hiding a brain beneath all that arrogance.

She straightened before the practitioners
reached the bottom. “Perhaps donning the helmets wasn’t such a good
idea after all.”

“Nah,” Maldynado said. “This way if you trip
and hit your noggin, it’ll be protected.”

“Stop dawdling,” Spectacles growled.

Amaranthe headed for the intersection. Low,
excited voices came from around the corner. She imagined the
foreigners saying, “We’re almost in....”

She stopped to wait for the two practitioners
to pass her, but Spectacles said, “You first,” and applied another
invisible nudge of force.

Unwilling to walk into a den of wizards
unannounced, Amaranthe called out, “New allies coming around the
corner. Don’t shoot or incinerate us or do other unpleasant
wizard-ish things, please.”

That drew snorts from the men behind her.
Arms spread, and the vial pressed to the underside of her hand with
her thumb, she stepped around the corner.

Six faces stared at her. Six
practitioners
’ faces, she reminded herself. Suddenly her
plan with the vial seemed ridiculously simple and doomed to
failure. As soon as she dropped it, they would figure it out and
raise magical defenses.

“Good morning, all,” Amaranthe said. “I heard
you could use help getting a couple of pesky escaped prisoners out
of there.”

“Just talk to your men,” Spectacles
growled.

The practitioners parted to let her pass. The
man closest to the door held some sort of baton that was spouting a
stream of fire. It had burned three sides of an access panel into
the hatch, leaving smoke drifting from perforated singe marks.

Amaranthe tried to see through one of the
tiny holes, but the room appeared dark behind it. Or maybe
something else blocked the door. If her men were barricaded inside,
it would take time for them to come out and help if a fracas
started. She had to assume she and Maldynado were on their own for
this.

As she drew closer to the door, she wiggled
the cork loose with her thumb. The gloves stole some of her
dexterity, and she fumbled, almost dropping the vial.