Amaranthe shifted from foot to foot while watching the darkness behind the racks of weapons. The grinding noise and soft clanks were growing louder.
Sicarius was trying to lever his black dagger into a crack to open the door, but it didn’t sit flush with the jamb-the cement slab had slid a couple of inches into an indention. Amaranthe had a feeling they weren’t getting out that way, not unless Books returned and let them out. She also had a feeling that someone up there was keeping him from doing just that. She hoped he was only hiding and hadn’t been captured. Amaranthe cursed herself for standing down there and burbling when they should have been getting in and out as quickly as possible.
Sicarius sheathed his blade. “We’ll look for another way out.”
Amaranthe eyed the shadows behind the racks. “Back there?”
Sicarius was already heading down the aisle with the worktable. The source of the clanking sounds seemed to be coming up an aisle on the opposite side of the rectangular chamber. Amaranthe jogged after Sicarius. Maybe they could bypass… whatever it was. But before she reached the aisle entrance, something metallic rolled out from behind the racks on the opposite side of the room.
Not rolled… It seemed to hover an inch off the ground. The two-foot-wide black semicircle looked like a ball someone had cut in half. Brass shingles plated it like an armadillo’s shell, and four waving antennae-type structures rose from each of its quadrants. Small glowing red balls perched on the tops. The way they moved about gave Amaranthe the impression of eyes scanning the area.
“That’s not your standard farm equipment,” she observed.
The machine turned in place, and all four of the antennae stretched out, the “eyes” staring at her. A single word was engraved on the front of its body: Deklu.
Amaranthe stepped backward, and her heel thumped against the concrete wall. She thought about sprinting down the aisle after Sicarius-he had already moved out of sight-but she hesitated. She should figure out what the device could do first. It didn’t have any obvious weapons protruding from it. Maybe it had another purpose. Maybe-
A hum emanated from the machine, a strange, otherworldly sound that raked across Amaranthe’s nerves like a claws. Her instincts propelled her to lunge into the aisle, putting three rows of racks between herself and the construct.
Four red beams blasted into the cement wall where she’d been standing. Smoke blossomed, and chunks of aggregate flew, cracking against the rifles and racks. As quickly as they had come, the beams winked out. Amaranthe raced down the aisle without waiting to see how much damage the thing had done to the wall. Anything that could shatter cement had to be powerful enough to burn right through a human.
“ Definitely not a farm machine.”
Amaranthe came out of the aisle on the far end and almost crashed into one of four smithy stations spanning the chamber. She lifted a hand to stop herself from tumbling into the closest one. The bricks beneath her palm still radiated heat from the day’s activity, and she craned her head back, eyeing the spot where the chimney met the ceiling. Maybe that was a way out? But they’d seen no smoking vents in the yard, so perhaps not. The smoke was probably diverted somewhere far away.
The construct floated into the entrance of the aisle Amaranthe had raced down. She’d taken her lantern when she ran, leaving the machine in darkness, but its glowing red eyes identified it. She darted to the side, using the racks for cover again.
A red beam knifed out of the darkness, slicing into the space she’d occupied.
“Watch out,” Amaranthe called for Sicarius’s sake. She didn’t see him-only the hint of his light somewhere deeper in the room-but she didn’t want him getting a stray beam in the back. “I made a friend.”
As she spoke, Amaranthe dodged between two of the freestanding forges, jumped over a bin of coal, and came face-to-face with a flywheel so tall it nearly brushed the ceiling. It was part of some towering device for stamping metal. Other machines loomed in the shadows.
The grinding from the ambulatory construct grew louder behind her, and she continued into the maze of machines, picking her way toward the other lantern.
“Find a door yet?” Amaranthe asked. “Because we don’t want to be trapped by-” She rounded a machine and almost ran into a pair of black-clad legs dangling in the air.
Sicarius hung by one hand from the frame of a wooden double door set in the ceiling. His fingers gripped a thin reinforcing board no more than an inch thick, and Amaranthe had no idea how he could hold his body up that way. He held his knife in his other hand and was probing the crack between the two doors.
“It’s secured from above,” Sicarius said, as calmly as if he were standing beside her. “I’m attempting to see if there’s a bar that can be dislodged.”
“I’m not sure there’s time for that.” Amaranthe checked the route behind her. The machines offered some cover, but they were not solid obstacles, so it was possible the construct could fire through them. “I have a… Deklu after me,” she said, naming the word on the machine, though she didn’t know if it was a description or a name or something else entirely.
“Sentry,” Sicarius translated.
“In what language?”
“Mangdorian.”
“Hm, another machine made by that shaman who wanted your head?” If so, Amaranthe wondered anew if Forge might be involved here.
A red beam streaked out of the darkness. A flywheel on a machine deflected part of it, but it also caught the side of Sicarius’s arm.
He dropped to the floor. Amaranthe stepped forward to help him, but he grabbed his lantern and pointed her toward the side of the chamber. Smoke wafted from his sleeve; she couldn’t tell if the beam had struck flesh as well.
Before they had gone more than a few feet, something pounded against the overhead door. Books?
Laughter sounded, muffled by earth and wood. Not Books.
“That’s right ya vagrant thieves,” someone called, “stay down there and die!”
“Thieves,” Amaranthe said as Sicarius led her to the wall. “At the worst, we’re spies.” A wall aisle lay clear for them to run back to the front door if they wished, but she saw little point in that.
“You took some of their ammunition.” Sicarius parted from her side and hopped onto a machine to check the sentry’s progress.
“Just a couple of bullets. That’s more like sampling than thieving, don’t you think?”
“Did that argument work on you when you were an enforcer?” His gaze shifted to the ceiling, searching for weaknesses to exploit perhaps.
“No, but I’ve changed this last year. You’ve influenced me with your law-skirting ways.”
“I see your classification of me as heroic was short-lived.”
The grinding of the sentry drew closer, and Amaranthe glimpsed it moving through the open space beneath the overhead door. Sicarius jumped down from his perch a second before another beam split the air. It burned into the cement wall behind them, hurling pieces to the floor.
With few other options, Amaranthe and Sicarius ran past the forges and toward the front of the chamber.
Sicarius glanced back. “Those beams remind me of technology I saw once before, a long time ago.”
“A long time ago?” Amaranthe stopped before several crates of ammunition. “It looks irritatingly modern and deadly to me. It’s made from the Science, I’d assumed.” She tapped a crate thoughtfully, wondering if whatever was in the cartridges was as flammable as black powder.
“The body perhaps.” Sicarius eyed her tapping fingers. “Causing an explosion might not be the wisest course when we’re beneath so much concrete and earth.”
“How’d you know that’s what I had in mind?” Amaranthe had been about to ask for his help in opening a crate. Despite his warning, she held out a hand for his sturdy dagger.
“I know you.” Sicarius waved her hand away and nodded toward the front of the chamber. “Come, there are kegs of black powder in the middle aisles. It’ll be easier to work with in free form.”
To their rear, the sentry floated out from behind one of the forges, still hovering an inch above the floor.
