CHAPTER 26

Someone shook Books. He pushed away the fog hazing his mind and focused on the face above him. Basilard. A rifle fired nearby. Akstyr.

“Mal?” Books rasped. A film of fine dirt caked his tongue.

Basilard pointed into the chamber.

“Is he…?” Books started.

A commotion interrupted him.

“Hah, missed me, you badger-kissing slag pile!” came Maldynado’s voice from the far side of the chamber.

Books rolled onto his belly. Pain pulsed through his head, but he squinted through it and found Maldynado. He harried the constructs with his rapier, though the thin blade did little against their metal hides.

“Making friends, is he?” Books knelt and crawled to the edge of their dwindling perch. Another shot or two from that cannon, and the ledge would be dust.

But the constructs had changed their focus to Maldynado. He jumped and waved, evading their projectiles.

“Idiot,” Books said. “What’s he doing? If he can do that, he can make it back up here.”

“He said he’d distract them so you could come up with something bright,” Akstyr said.

“Oh. That’d be noble if it wasn’t…stupid.”

“You calling Maldynado nobly stupid?” Akstyr asked. “Or stupidly noble?”

“I can hear you!” Maldynado jumped out of the path of two bipeds trying to corner him.

Come up with something bright, Books thought. Yes, that was supposed to be his job. “Akstyr, Basilard, give me your powder.”

They poured out a few rounds worth, then complied. Books found the other fuses and crafted two more explosives. How could he take out all of the constructs with so little? He had to get them all in one place somehow.

Maldynado yelped in pain. “Metal-headed dogs!”

Books did not look up in time to see the attack, but Maldynado clutched his arm. Blood flowed through his fingers. Still cursing, he dodged another harpoon, but all of the constructs were targeting him, pressing him back against the wall.

“Get out of there, fool!” Books called.

Basilard shot, but his ball ricocheted off without deterring the target. Books still had the unloaded pistol, and he could light one of the fuses, but Maldynado was in the middle of the mess.

“I’m trying!” Maldynado faked a step one direction, then angled for a gap between two of the constructs, but, through some intelligence no machine should have, they anticipated him and narrowed the opening.

A serrated blade spun out, veering toward his head. Maldynado scrambled backward, but his heel caught on the uneven ground. He went down.

Basilard jumped off the ledge and sprinted in to help. Books snapped the hammer on the flintlock, trying to light the fuse. Maybe if he threw the powder toward the backside of the constructs…

Before a spark landed on his fuse, he spotted movement at the tunnel entrance.

“Now what?” he groaned, fearing the shaman had decided to come help his creations.

But Sicarius burst out of the tunnel, and Amaranthe hustled after, an arm clutching her belly.

Taking the situation in with a glance, Sicarius flowed across the chamber and leaped onto the back of the construct with the saw. His black knife appeared in his hand, and he slipped it into creases between sheets of metal covering the machine’s innards.

Amaranthe hobbled toward the ledge and tossed a satchel to Akstyr. “See if there’s anything you can use in there.”

Akstyr dug into it. Across the chamber, Basilard pulled Maldynado out of immediate danger, though little had changed. The constructs had three targets instead of one. Amaranthe stood, poised, her face thoughtful, as if she was considering jumping into the mess. She did not even have a weapon.

Books lay on his stomach and extended his arm. “Smart people up here. We have to figure out the solution.”

“While it’s flattering that you’re including me in your group, I haven’t done anything smart lately.”

Books wriggled his fingers. “They like to shoot things this direction. Come up here to discuss it.”

Amaranthe waved the hand away. “We have to get out of here. The shaman is dead. I doubt these will follow us past the mine entrance. How fast are they? Can we outrun them?”

“Oh!” Books perked. If all they had to do was outrun the constructs… He hefted one of the powder flasks. “Maybe we can use these to—”

A crack and a screech of metal sounded, followed by a war whoop from Maldynado. A construct tottered, a cannonball hole in its torso. Metal parts rained from the gap like petals shaken from a flower. The construct toppled.

“Though,” Amaranthe mused, “if we destroy them, we don’t need to worry about some aspiring megalomaniac getting them and using them against the city later.”

“I’ve arranged a nice flood, so I think that part is covered.”

“Got something,” Akstyr said. His eyes were bright as he sat back, a plain black box in his hands. “It feels like a controller. There’s writing on it. I can’t read the Mangdorian, but—”

Books slid it from his hands. “Attack, guard, and…hibernate.”

“The last one sounds good,” Amaranthe said without taking her gaze from the mad scrambling of the men.

“Agreed.” Books rotated the box. “I don’t see a switch or trigger though.”

Akstyr snatched the device back. “That’s because you’re uneducated in the Science.”

Books sniffed. “Really.”

Akstyr, head already bent over the device, did not seem to hear. His tongue stuck out of his mouth, and his face scrunched in concentration.

“Look out!” Maldynado shouted.

At first, Books thought it a warning for Sicarius or Basilard, but the entire cadre of constructs had turned their attention away from Maldynado and the others. En masse, they advanced toward the ledge. No, toward Akstyr. And Amaranthe was in the way.

“Uhm, Akstyr?” Amaranthe crouched, ready to spring one direction or the other.

A cannonball flew over Books’s head and cracked into the wall behind him. Shards of wood from the support beam flew.

“It’s possible there’s an anti-tampering device,” Akstyr said, voice strained.

Books reached down, intending to grab Amaranthe, but he still clutched the pistol and one of the black powder bombs in his hands. He hesitated a half a heartbeat, then struck sparks to light the fuse.

“Out of the way, Amaranthe.” He hurled the flask into the path of the advancing constructs.

In the second before the explosion, Books glanced toward the other men. Maldynado’s eyes bulged, and Books feared he had made a mistake. A huge mistake. Sicarius lifted a hand toward Amaranthe, though his gaze was locked past Books’s shoulder. A boom sounded. Wood snapped behind Books even as the explosion roared below.

The wall behind him collapsed. Rubble hammered him, throwing him into a landslide.

Rocks battered him from all sides. He clawed at them, trying to stay on top, but the moving pile dragged him off the ledge. He struck ground, and rocks pounded him into the earth. They smothered him, stealing light, and driving pain into his body from all sides.

He gasped, or tried to—it was as if a giant vise had clasped about his ribcage. What air he managed to suck in was hot, thick, and filled with dust. Fine powder coated his mouth, nostrils, and the back of his throat. It even seemed to paint the backs of his eyes. His body tried to cough, but agony ripped through him, and it came out as a whimper.

Had the others avoided the landslide? Or were they buried too? Were the constructs still harrying them?

Books tried to push up, but not a single rock budged. He might not even be pushing the right direction. What if he faced up or sideways instead of down?

He struggled to fight off panic, thoughts that he could die here. Buried alive.

Scratches sounded, echoing strangely inside his rock prison. They grew louder, and hope stirred in his breast. Another sound trickled through the rubble to him: voices. Books strained his ears.

“Books?” Amaranthe called.

Rocks shifted. A pinprick of light slanted into his black cocoon.

“Here,” he gasped.

More rocks moved away, and fingers brushed his face. Grateful tears slid down his cheeks.

“We’ve got you,” Amaranthe said.

“Is good?” he whispered. He wanted to ask a more intelligent question—or at least a grammatically correct one—but it hurt too much to talk.

“We’re fine,” Amaranthe said.

“Fine?” came Maldynado’s voice. “I’m so covered with dirt and blood, I’d probably have to pay to get into a woman’s bed right now.”

“Maldynado is especially fine,” Amaranthe said. “As are the others. That last cannonball took out the support. I saw Sicarius’s expression and got out of the way. Akstyr was far enough from you to miss most of the rock fall. You, ah, chose an inopportune time to cause an explosion.”

“Oops,” Books whispered. He may have been premature in telling Amaranthe that “smart people” were on top of the ledge. Between Akstyr’s fiddling and his own work, they had caused most of the trouble.

“You did destroy all the constructs,” Amaranthe said.

“Good.”

“Though…” Amaranthe lifted the last of several rocks off his back. “While we appreciate your efforts, I think you might want to retire from heroic deeds. Bad things seem to happen to you as a result.”

“Library work is more my forte,” he agreed.

Thanks to their efforts, Books managed to crawl out and stagger to his feet. Or tried. Pain burst from his knee, and he gasped and reached out for support. He caught the nearest shoulder, realizing afterward it belonged to Sicarius. Fine dust coated his black clothes and smudged his jaw, and blood stained his blond hair.

“Sorry,” Books muttered, anticipating a glare—and the need to find a walking stick or someone else to lean on.

Sicarius looked at Basilard and jerked his chin toward Books. The two men draped Books’s arms over their shoulders. Amaranthe smiled and pointed to the tunnel exit.

Maldynado offered her an arm though Books was not sure if it was so he could support her or she could support him. Both perhaps. The group definitely needed a rest.

Maldynado pointed at the destroyed constructs, half of them buried by rubble. “Nice work, Booksie. Though you owe me powder and a new rifle.”

“You didn’t lose your rifle,” Akstyr said, taking up the rear.

“I know,” Maldynado said, “but it’s all bunged up, and that’s Books’s fault.”

“It’s still functional,” Amaranthe said.

“But scratched and dented. You don’t expect someone like me to run around with a weapon like that do you? I had it custom made. The inlay alone took a master engraver three days.”

“Maldynado?” Books said. “You’re an ass.”

“But sort of a lovable ass, right?”

“Like the odd dreadful in-law one gets when one marries,” Books said.

“So…you think of Maldynado as family?” Amaranthe smiled over her shoulder at him.

Books stumbled. Dear ancestors, did he?

Maldynado threw Books a wink.

Books eyed his and Amaranthe’s backs then glanced from side to side at his escorts. Basilard’s lips curved upward, and, while nothing would move Sicarius to smile, one of his eyebrows did arch slightly.

“Well, I…” Books thought of his long-dead father, a man he had barely known, a man who had always seemed to prefer spending time with his soldier friends to his nagging wife and a boy who loved words not swords. For the first time, Books thought he might, if not condone those choices, understand them. “My father used to say some families are made by shared blood and some families are made by spilled blood. I used to dismiss it as some pugilistic glorification of a combat unit, but I can see where spending enough time with the same folks, facing dangerous situations day in and day out, would tend to make one feel a familial kinship toward those comrades, even when they are people one wouldn’t normally choose to spend time with in casual, everyday life.”

“What did he say?” Maldynado whispered to Amaranthe. “I forgot to listen halfway through.”

Books sighed.

“He said he loves you all like brothers,” Amaranthe said, “and thanks for coming after him down here.”

“Oh,” Maldynado said. “Good.”

Books’s first thought was to dispute the preciseness of Amaranthe’s translation, but the approving nods of the other men made him pause. Maybe it was good to have a woman in the “family.”

A hollow, grinding noise came from the tunnel ahead.

“Please, not more fighting,” Books muttered.

Sicarius left Books for Basilard to support and stepped in front of Amaranthe, a throwing knife at the ready.

A rusty metal ore cart rolled around a bend, its iron wheels following the track down the center of the tunnel. If not for the fact it was moving, it would have appeared normal. No weapons or advanced features protruded from it.

The cart rolled to a stop a few paces in front of Sicarius.

“Maybe it’s here to give us a ride out,” Maldynado said.

“I wish,” Amaranthe said. “Let’s—”

“It feels like it’s been touched by…” Akstyr jogged past Sicarius to peer inside.

Amaranthe lifted a hand, as if to issue a warning, but Akstyr was already plucking something out.

“Just a piece of paper.” He pulled a single page out and checked both sides. “I can’t read this.”

Basilard stood straighter, as if he might also leave Books to take a look.

Not wanting to lose his support, Books waved a hand. “Bring it here. Maybe it’s in Mangdorian.”

Akstyr shrugged and headed their way. “If it’s secret Science stuff, you have to translate it for—”

Sicarius slipped the paper out of his hand as he passed. Books would not have noticed except Akstyr threw him a startled glance. Sicarius skimmed the note, crumpled it up, and pocketed it.

Basilard stiffened.

“A message?” Amaranthe asked.

A message? Who was down here except the dead shaman and what remained of his contraptions? Unless she thought Tarok had arranged for the note to be delivered before his death.

“It’s nothing,” Sicarius told Amaranthe.

Amaranthe lifted a shoulder. Too tired to argue, perhaps.

Sicarius turned a cool, assessing gaze toward Basilard, who did not quite keep the suspicion off his face as he returned it.

“We all ready to go back to the city?” Amaranthe asked, her words breaking the staring contest.

“Extremely so.” Books closed his eyes. “Extremely so.”

•  •  •  •  •

Late morning sun pried through the clouds, illuminating the countryside as the sloping foothills gentled to flatter lands dotted with farmsteads. The stolen lorry chugged along with all the men except Sicarius crammed in the cab. Amaranthe lay in the troop bed, propped on a rucksack leaning against a bench. If she did not move anything, she did not hurt. An improvement. Despite his injuries, Books sat with the others, chatting and even laughing. She still felt bad about the bounty on his head, but it seemed he had come to peace with being a part of a band of mercenaries.

Sicarius leaned against the back wall of the cab, his arms across his chest, his gaze roving the countryside and the road behind them. The soldiers had been pulling up to the mine entrance as her team slipped away. She wondered what they would make of the mechanical carnage left inside. More, she wondered if anything else would come of her words to Yara. The soldiers might have been too late to help, but their arrival might mean Amaranthe’s trip into their camp had not been a waste of time. If the enforcer sergeant had relayed Amaranthe’s ideas, and the soldiers had been acting on them… Perhaps her team had succeeded in earning recognition or at least planting a seed in someone’s mind that they might not be villains. She eyed Sicarius. Mostly not villains anyway.

Sicarius noticed her watching him and came to sit on the bench beside her. “You are well?”

“Well enough. Thank you for asking.” Amaranthe tried to remember if he ever had. “And thank you for…everything up there.”

Sicarius grunted. It was not a particularly inviting grunt, but she decided to say more.

“I know my plans aren’t always the epitome of precaution and wisdom, but I appreciate your willingness to trust me enough to give them a try. And I appreciate you risking your life to protect mine, no matter how stupid I might be to put mine—and yours—in danger to start with. I would have died in that tower, if not for you.” Amaranthe pictured him taking her hands and saying it would devastate him if he lost her.

Instead he said, “Likely,” and returned to surveying the farms drifting past.

She sighed. Of course, she had not told him how much it would mean to her to lose him after she had nearly gotten him blown up above the canyon. Sicarius had been trained to be hard to read, to keep his thoughts to himself. What was her excuse? She might have died in these mountains, and she would have left the world without letting him know what he meant to her. Though it might hurt to love him and not be loved in return, wouldn’t it be worse to never find the courage to let him know how she felt? Until it was too late?

“Sicarius,” Amaranthe said quietly.

He bent low, eyes toward her face.

With the men laughing and talking up front, and the lorry clacking and chugging as the stack billowed black smoke into the air, this was scarcely a romantic spot. But maybe it did not matter. His response would not likely be to wrap her in his arms and kiss her. Whatever response he gave—if he gave one at all—she anticipated it would sting.

“I…uhm…” Amaranthe forced herself to meet his gaze. “I love you.”

A long moment passed. She did not remember breathing.

Sicarius nodded infinitesimally. “I know.”

Amaranthe looked away and cleared her throat. “Of course. I figured you did. I just wanted to make sure. That’s all.”

As the lorry rumbled on, she tried to tell herself she had not been an idiot for saying something. He knew. Of course he knew. Nobody had ever claimed she was hard to read.

Sicarius dropped from the bench to sit shoulder-to-shoulder, though not touching. “You are my employer.”

Emperor’s eyeteeth, he was going to explain to her why her feelings were foolish. She groaned inwardly and told herself to drop it, to say nothing else. But saying nothing was not her strongpoint. “That was your choice. I wanted to work with you, not order you around.”

“Teams need leaders. Given the goals of this team, you’re the appropriate leader. We’ve discussed this.”

“Yes.”

Sicarius spread a hand toward the others. “That this works, a woman leading five men, is a marvel. I suspect it would work less if you were sleeping with one of us.”

Amaranthe stared at goats grazing beside the road and regretted sharing her feelings. That he was probably right made it worse. There would be resentment if someone, or two someones, got to have relations out in the woods while the rest had to pretend not to notice, but it was not what she wanted to hear.

“And there’s Sespian,” Sicarius said so softly she almost thought she imagined it.

She found his eyes again, sure her own were incredulously wide. “He barely knows me. Whatever he felt—he was drugged at the time. I’m sure he’s over that initial interest.”

“Perhaps,” Sicarius said. “But there’s already too much separating us. I would not wish to add that. Also—”

“All right.” Amaranthe threw up a hand. Now he chose to be a garrulous person? “I don’t need a list. I was just expressing a feeling. If you don’t share that feeling, that’s fine.” She sank lower against the rucksack and avoided looking at him. She sounded huffy, and she knew it. She thought of the handful of coworkers she had rebuffed during her years as an enforcer; she had wanted so much to show her supervisors that she was serious about her job, that she would never consider something as unprofessional as a patrol romance. Now, she was in the shoes of the spurned. Fitting, she supposed. “Sorry,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to be a further wedge between you two either.”

Sicarius’s shoulder came to rest against hers. He laid his hand on top of hers.

Amaranthe grew still. He had never held her hand. She kept her head facing forward, half afraid eye contact would make him leave, like some timid forest creature.

“Just to be clear,” she said, “you don’t share my feelings. Right?”

He did not answer.

“Sicarius? That was a question. I made sure my tone went up at the end.”

He snorted softly. “I care, Amaranthe. More than I thought myself capable.”

“Oh,” she mouthed.

Maldynado clambered out of the cab, munching on a fistful of dried pears. Sicarius released her hand.

“You two mind if I join you? Books is talking about his plans to invest Sicarius’s gambling house earnings. Invest! What kinds of mercenaries invest? Team money should be for carousing and buying weapons.” He rapped his knuckles on the roof of the cab. “Maybe acquiring transport that doesn’t have enforcer logos on the side. Or rust.”

“I thought you were just in this for your statue,” Amaranthe said.

“I am.” Maldynado snapped his fingers. “Say, do you think that enforcer gal is going to put in a good word for us? You won her over, right?” He ambled over, rounding Sicarius’s feet with much room to spare, then plopped down on the other side of Amaranthe. “You don’t mind me joining you, do you?” His eyes widened as he seemed to consider some possibility, but then he snickered dismissively. “You two weren’t having some private rendezvous back here, were you?”

Sicarius said nothing, though there was more ice in his gaze than usual.

Amaranthe merely sighed. “No rendezvous, no.”

“Good,” Maldynado said. “Let’s talk about your birthday celebration. This whole fiasco has crimped my plans terribly. The city is going to be a mess when we get back, and I’m not sure how we’ll find a decent…”

As Maldynado burbled on, Amaranthe exchanged looks with Sicarius. Would there ever be a someday when they could have a private rendezvous?