A couple of heartbeats passed before Sicarius answered, “No.”
“Then there’re three now.”
Amaranthe rose from her knees to a low crouch. She circled to the left, trying to keep the machine between her and the sentry.
It paused, and one of those eyes swiveled. A beam sizzled through a gap in the machine. The metal deflected part of the attack, and it missed Amaranthe, but it sliced into the nearby brick of a forge. Shards pelted her back and bare neck.
The sentry rolled back into motion, and she moved again. She’d come all the way around and almost tripped over the discarded bag of powder. The darkness was disorienting, and she wished the glowing eyes put out light. Something warm trickled down the back of her neck. Blood.
“I’ve been able to cut off several of the antennae,” Sicarius called.
Amaranthe was reaching down for the bag when his words came. She left it, instead taking cover behind a forge, and she lifted the rifle to her shoulder. If his fancy knife could cut the antennae, maybe one of these fancy bullets could do the same thing.
Amaranthe leaned out, and as soon as one of the red eyes came into sight, she fired. In the dark, she could only estimate where her target lay, but her shot was true, and the crimson ball fell to the ground with a soft clink. The glow winked out.
“Hah!” Amaranthe said.
Her victory was short-lived, for the three remaining eyes swiveled to point at her.
She ducked behind the forge, hoping the solid construction offered enough protection. Three beams chiseled into the bricks, spraying shrapnel and dust everywhere.
Staying in a low crouch, Amaranthe scrambled around the forge, wanting to catch the sentry from behind while it was still firing at her original position. She made it to the other side and raised the rifle to shoot, only to have nothing happen when she pulled the trigger.
She cursed under her breath. There’d been some kind of loading lever, hadn’t there? To push the next round into the barrel? She fumbled for it, but the sentry was already spinning toward her. She dove across empty ground and skittered behind the machine with the flywheel again.
A beam lanced out, but missed her. It hit something though, for the scent of burning kerosene wafted into the air.
Amaranthe’s eyes widened. Her fuse.
She bolted back toward the forges. Her hip clipped one, and she gasped but didn’t slow down. Hands outstretched, she groped her way down one of the aisles toward Sicarius’s lantern.
“Boom coming!” she yelled.
Before the last word escaped her mouth, light flared behind Amaranthe, and an explosion roared through the chamber. The ground heaved beneath her running feet. Around her, the racks rattled and wobbled, hurling weapons off the shelves. Behind her, thumps and bangs sounded as earth and cement sloughed to the ground.
She raised her arms, deflecting the weapons flying from the racks, and she sprinted the last few meters to come out in the front of the chamber. She almost tumbled into Sicarius’s arms. He caught her and grabbed his lantern. His two sentries were rolling about, their antennae chopped down to stumps, their eyes missing. The constructs kept bumping into piles of sod and cement on the floor.
“Emperor’s eye teeth,” someone outside snarled.
“Watch out,” another said. “Don’t get too close to the edge.”
The voices were no longer muffled, and a draft of cold air whispered against Amaranthe’s cheek. She took note of Sicarius’s lantern and said, “There’s another bag of powder wrapped up with a fuse. If it didn’t explode when the first one went off…”
Sicarius cut off the lantern and placed it in her hand. “Stay back for a minute. They’ll be watching the hole.”
He headed for the shadows made by flames dancing on the other end of the chamber. Though she remembered mostly metal in that machine area, there must have been a few things capable of catching fire.
She followed him, navigating over and around heaps of rubble. She passed the workbench where he’d disassembled the rifle and snorted. They could have left it disassembled. There was no hiding that they’d been there now.
Voices drifted to her from outside, but the men were being quieter now. Lying in wait.
When Amaranthe reached the first forge, a gaping ten-foot-wide hole in the ceiling came into view. A set of metal reinforcing bars had survived the blast and stretched across the gap, but they were far enough apart that she and Sicarius ought to be able to wriggle out. Lanterns burned somewhere above the hole, highlighting singed tufts of grass dangling over the rim. On the floor below, scattered pieces of coal that had flown from one of the bins were burning or smoldering.
A shadow moved above the hole, but the men were careful not to step into view. Amaranthe imagined them up there, on their bellies, rifles aimed at the gap, ready to shoot anything that came out.
She looked for the machine with the flywheel, figuring Sicarius would be there, hunting for the other bag of powder. She almost didn’t recognize it. The giant wheel was warped and had toppled against one of the forges. What was left of the forges, that was. Two of them were nothing more than heaps of rubble.
Something brushed her arm, and Amaranthe jumped.
“I found it,” Sicarius whispered.
“Good. We can light it, throw it up there for a distraction, and sneak out under the cover of the smoke.”
Sicarius considered her for a moment, but all he said was, “Stay by the wall.”
While he darted in to pick up one of the burning coals on the flat of his dagger, Amaranthe watched the hole, making sure nobody leaned in. Sicarius held the smoldering ember to the fuse. He had cut it much shorter than the one she’d originally made, so when he lit it, Amaranthe gulped, realizing how quickly it would burn down.
In one sure movement, Sicarius tossed the bag toward the hole. If it bumped into one of the bars and dropped back down…
But Sicarius’s aim was better than that. The powder-filled bag lofted between the bars, sailing above ground toward the earth outside the hole.
Guns fired. It sounded like an entire army out there.
The powder exploded with a boom. The charge wasn’t as powerful or loud as the first, but the ground still trembled beneath Amaranthe’s feet, and she had to brace herself against the wall. More rubble rained down around them, though fortunately small pieces. Smoke filled the air outside. Men coughed and cursed.
Sicarius wasn’t watching the hole; he was watching her. Amaranthe tilted her head, expecting him to ask her something. For a second, it looked like he might, but then he firmed his jaw and simply said, “Give me two minutes, then follow.”
Before she could ask what he meant to do, he bounded on top of one of the machines and launched himself toward the hole as easily as a squirrel navigating trees. He slipped between two bars and disappeared into the smoke.
Amaranthe waited, anticipating the sound of gunfire. Concern for Sicarius formed a lump in her throat. As seconds passed and the silence went on, her concern shifted to what Sicarius was doing.
She climbed on top of the machine closest to the hole, hurrying now, her own safety forgotten. She had said sneak out. If he was up there killing everybody…
Smoke stung her eyes before she stuck her head through the bars. She couldn’t see anything and hesitated before thrusting her arms through. It hadn’t been two minutes. It might not have been one. Someone standing up there with a rifle aimed at the hole could decide to shoot, even if he didn’t see more than an indistinct shape.
A breeze whispered through, stirring the smoke. It brought the scent of freshly spilled blood to Amaranthe’s nose, and her gut clenched. With unfailing certainty, she knew nobody was going to shoot her. Nobody was left alive to do so.
She pulled herself through the bars and had no more than stood when a dark shadow strode out of the smoke.
“They’re dead?” Amaranthe asked.
