Under the light of the lantern, Amaranthe decided “door” might be an optimistic term for the flat cement wall before them. Vertical cracks at the corners were the only indication that the gray slab might be movable. It seemed to be designed to slide to the side somehow, but there was no lock, knob, or latch to be seen.
She put a hand on the cool cement and tried to push it. Not only did it not move, but Sicarius gave her a flat look.
“You already tried that, eh?” Amaranthe shrugged and shuffled in a circle to face the ladder. She tried twisting the rungs-they were the only ornamentation in the confining space-but nothing budged.
After a pat down of everything around the door and on the floor, Sicarius reached over her head and climbed up the ladder.
“That man never wants to linger in dark nooks with me,” Amaranthe muttered. “Or explain where he’s going when he rushes off. It’s enough to damage a girl’s self-esteem. And cause her to start talking to herself.”
Up top, Books asked a soft question, but Sicarius didn’t explain anything to him either.
Left alone, Amaranthe reapplied herself to the task of finding a latch or trigger. She would love to locate one when Sicarius had failed to, but she wouldn’t hold her breath waiting for that to happen.
Amaranthe laid an ear against the cement, thinking she might hear some machinery ticking inside. The Imperial Barracks had doors controlled by steam engines that opened automatically when someone approached. One didn’t expect such sophistication from the basement of a farm’s carriage house, but maybe-
The door rumbled to the side.
Amaranthe skittered backward, clunking her shoulders on the ladder. Her first silly thought was that her ear had somehow triggered the door to open, but Sicarius soon reappeared.
“There’s a hoe on the wall that opens it,” he said, climbing down.
“Ah, how’d you find it so quickly?” Amaranthe told herself it wasn’t important that he’d located the trigger first. “There must be fifty farm tools hanging on the walls.”
“Closer to a hundred, but only one had all the sawdust worn away beneath it.”
“You saw which one he pulled, Books?” Amaranthe called up as Sicarius slipped past her, stepping onto a dark threshold.
“Yes,” Books said.
Sicarius removed his rucksack and withdrew a lantern of his own.
“If the door closes behind us,” Amaranthe said, “and we’re not out in fifteen minutes, open it again, please.”
“Yes, of course. Understood.”
Amaranthe followed Sicarius inside. He had only gone a couple of steps. His lit lantern rested on the floor while he crouched beside it, eying the room’s contents thoroughly before moving forward. When Amaranthe looked around herself, she decided “room” was a weak word to describe what stretched before them.
The small flame illuminated only their corner of the space, but it revealed rows of racks filled with rifles, shotguns, and other firearms Amaranthe couldn’t name. The underground chamber’s boundaries stretched well beyond the walls of the carriage house above. Beyond the rows of racks, at the far end of the rectangular space, dark blocky shapes-machinery? — loomed. Bland gray cement comprised the walls, floor, and a high ceiling, and Amaranthe decided no woman had been involved with designing the facility. It would take someone like Sicarius to choose such a monochromatic palate. He probably thought it was practical.
The door rasped behind them, cement rubbing against cement as it slid closed. Amaranthe stifled a surge of panic over the idea of being trapped inside. There ought to be a switch on a nearby wall-surely the workers had to be able to leave to pee whenever they wished-and, even if there wasn’t, Books waited up top.
“Shall we explore?” Amaranthe asked.
Sicarius rose from his crouch, but when she started to step forward, he stopped her with a hand. He pointed to the wall a couple of feet ahead of them. At first, Amaranthe saw nothing, but when he lifted the lantern, she spotted a tiny hole in the cement. It didn’t appear unnatural in the porous wall, until she realized there were five such holes, all in a vertical line. The first was at calf level while the top was over her head.
“Interesting,” Amaranthe said. “Booby trap?”
She drew a knife and waved it before one of the holes, figuring anything that popped out would be deflected by her blade.
A click sounded and shapes buzzed through Amaranthe’s field of vision. Before she could figure out what they were, Sicarius pulled her back and pressed her against the door behind him. Several items clinked off the walls and floors, but with her view smothered by Sicarius’s shoulder, it was hard to tell what they were. She did, with the projectiles bouncing off everything and skidding everywhere, belatedly realize that triggering the trap hadn’t been a good idea.
Sicarius stepped away before Amaranthe’s curiosity prompted her to try and wriggle past him. He gave her a head-to-foot check before kneeling to pick something up. A tiny bolt. Others lay scattered where they had landed after caroming off the walls. Something viscous gleamed on the tips. Poison?
Amaranthe swallowed. “Booby trap number one?”
“Yes. That was a foolish way to trigger it.” Sicarius slanted her a hard look.
“I know.” She thought of the conversation she had had a few months earlier with Books, the one where she had resolved to pursue prudence in dealing with enemies. She would need to adopt a policy of prudence for all deadly situations, enemies present or not. “Sorry, that was thoughtless.” Especially since one could have hit him.
Sicarius dropped the bolt, and Amaranthe patted his shoulder. “I do appreciate your willingness to throw yourself in front of ricocheting darts to protect me.”
Sicarius ignored her pat and turned his attention back to the chamber.
“And your ability to ignore the human need to socialize in order to remain focused on the mission,” Amaranthe added.
“This is not the time for burbling.”
A retort rose to Amaranthe’s lips, but she stopped herself. He was right.
After another inspection of the booby trap, Sicarius moved past it. He led the way down the first aisle, heading for a worktable full of sketches. As he walked, his gaze roved about, probing every inch of wall, floor, and ceiling for signs of more traps. Though Amaranthe wanted to investigate the racks of weapons, she followed close on his heels. If he triggered a booby trap, he could probably avoid the consequences with those reflexes of his. She would likely trip and fall into the path of the poisoned dart.
When they reached the workstation, Sicarius picked up a rifle with four barrels and examined it. Amaranthe’s fingers strayed toward the sketches scattered on the table, but she caught herself before her hands could rearrange the clutter into neat piles. As the men were quick to tell her, spies weren’t supposed to clean while they snooped.
Sicarius set the rifle aside and pulled a crate off one of the racks. He slid his black dagger under a lid that was nailed shut. Using it as a crowbar was not likely to damage that blade. Amaranthe was still waiting for the story of where it had come from and what the indestructible material comprising it was.
Sicarius popped the lid off the crate. It was filled with rectangular brown boxes that read Brakhork D-1 Rifle Ammunition.
“Brakhork?” Amaranthe fished a notebook out of her pocket and wrote the name down. “That’s interesting. You wouldn’t expect someone to put the family name on something that’s going to be used for inimical purposes. Of course, it could simply be a made-up name.”
When Sicarius glanced at her, Amaranthe said, “I’m not burbling. I’m musing constructively.”
“I see.”
She tried to decide if he sounded amused while he opened one of the boxes and pulled out a long slender cartridge wrapped in a coppery casing. It had a pointed tip and three concentric rings circling the bottom.
Sicarius thumbed the rings. “I’ve not seen a design like this before.”
“How many designs have you seen?”
“Many. Everything the army’s been working on for the last ten years,” Sicarius said. “They’ve had the technology to make repeating firearms, and there have been experimental trials, but they haven’t rushed to get production on line.”
“Why not, I wonder? Surely, these repeating firearms offer significant advantages over flintlock and
