“Yes.”
“What happened to sneak out?” she asked in a harsh whisper, though there was probably no need to whisper at that point.
Cursed ancestors, she hadn’t wanted to kill anyone. She hadn’t even wanted to leave a sign that they’d been there. All she’d wanted to do was look around, see what was going on, and then leave without anyone the wiser. Or the deader. Curse it all, why didn’t anything ever go as planned?
Sicarius took her arm and guided her away from the hole. A numbness grew in her chest, and all Amaranthe managed to say was, “We need to find Books.”
“Yes,” Sicarius repeated and kept walking.
They were trying to kill us, Amaranthe told herself, attempting to justify his actions, but she sneered as soon as the thought passed. Of course they were trying to kill us, her mind countered. We were trespassing on their property and, for all they knew, stealing months of their work.
It was illegal to own firearms, she reminded herself. Making them had to be even worse. Whatever these people had been doing, they weren’t guiltless. Except Sicarius hadn’t likely killed the masterminds behind… whatever this plot was exactly. He’d killed a bunch of men who’d probably only hired on because they needed the pay. Still, even if they had been simple workers, they had chosen to get involved in manufacturing firearms. They had to have known their work was against the law.
Amaranthe moaned and grabbed her head with both hands. She wanted to yell at her brain to shut up, and might have, but Sicarius’s presence stayed her tongue. Only crazy out-of-control people shouted at themselves, and she wasn’t going to be either, not in front of anyone.
A fence materialized out of the darkness, the one by the shed where they’d hidden that morning. Amaranthe gripped the cold, rough wood and leaned against one of the supports. She looked back the way they had come.
Up the road, the farmhouse remained, its shutters pulled tight. Lantern light glowed in an upstairs room, but there was no sign that anyone was going to come out and look at what had happened or search for those who had done it. The bunkhouse was dark and silent. All of the workers must have come outside, or perhaps those left inside were too afraid to venture out. The smoke over the hole had cleared. A few lanterns burning near the carriage house, providing light enough to hint at unmoving bodies in the grass. A coyote pack yipped in the distance, their high-pitched yells sending a shiver down Amaranthe’s spine. The unwelcome thought that they smelled a meal came to her mind.
“You knew I wouldn’t want this,” Amaranthe whispered. She remembered that long look Sicarius had given her before jumping out of the hole and the way she’d thought he might ask her something. He’d known then that he meant to kill everyone out there, and he’d known she wouldn’t wish it. Yet he’d done it anyway. “Why would you choose to kill them?”
“Sneaking past them wasn’t practical. Smoke offers camouflage, yes, but not cover. With those rapid-fire weapons, they could have hit us by shooting blindly.”
Yes, true, but… “Why couldn’t you have knocked them out? Why’d you have to…?”
“Rendering a man unconscious takes longer than killing him.”
“Oh, dear ancestors, that’s a sage piece of advice, now isn’t it?” Amaranthe’s voice had grown loud and high-pitched. Calm, she told herself. Yelling at Sicarius wouldn’t change anything. He was who he was. Had she truly been thinking him heroic earlier? She rubbed her face with both hands. Moisture dampened her fingertips. Tears for the dead? No, she hadn’t even known those men, and they had been ready to shoot at her. Tears of frustration, she decided and dashed them away. Time to find Books and move on. Though she couldn’t resist one last question, “How come you could sneak around well enough to kill people but not to escape?”
For a moment, Sicarius said nothing. He simply stood next to her, straight as a ramrod, with his hands clasped behind his back. Why the silence now? Was he sparing her some truth?
“I had to clear the way for two,” Sicarius said.
Oh. So, maybe he would have been able to sneak out if it’d just been him, but he had to think about her.
“I…” Amaranthe swallowed. “I would have been willing to accept the risk of getting a stray bullet in my backside if it meant not slaying everyone.”
“I was not willing to accept that risk,” Sicarius said.
So, he’d done this for her. Amaranthe closed her eyes. The idea of him watching her back, protecting her, had warmed her when he’d been saving her from booby traps. Killing people on her behalf wasn’t quite as endearing.
“All right.” Amaranthe couldn’t bring herself to thank him, not for this.
“They weren’t enforcers,” Sicarius said.
Amaranthe stared at him. Of course they weren’t enforcers. It was a strange thing to say. Unless… Oh. He was referencing the time he had killed her old partner and several other enforcers to help her and Maldynado with an ambush. She had been furious at him for that. Now… now, she knew what he was. She couldn’t walk around with a lion and then be surprised when it bit someone.
“I know they weren’t,” Amaranthe said, wondering if he could understand that she hated being responsible for anyone’s death, stalwart citizens or not. Yes, she decided, thinking again of that look. He understood. He had known she would be upset with his choice, but hadn’t believed there’d been time to come up with a better one. So be it. “Let’s find Books.”
Amaranthe pushed away from the fence, intending to help him search, but he lifted a hand.
“Stay. I’ll be able to search faster alone.”
She flopped back against the fence again and tried not to find his statement insulting. Sicarius disappeared into the darkness.
Long moments passed before a rumble started up from the direction of the carriage house. One of the vehicles that had been used in the weapons delivery rolled outside.
Amaranthe moved to the side of the shed, so she wouldn’t be visible from the road. Maybe Sicarius hadn’t killed all of the men, and the remaining ones had sneaked out to escape. It was too dark to see who occupied the cab, and the tarp on the back hid the cargo area from view too.
When the lorry drew even with the shed, it stopped. Amaranthe sank low in the shadows and found the hilt of her sword.
The door opened. “Amaranthe?” came Books’s low voice, barely audible over the rumbling engine.
Ah. And that must be Sicarius in the driver’s seat. Yes, killing people wasn’t enough of a crime. They should steal a vehicle too.
Amaranthe walked toward the lorry and resolved to keep her sarcasm to herself. It was an abysmal night, but she couldn’t fault Sicarius’s logic. They needed to get back to the city, and it wasn’t as if those men needed a vehicle any more. At least Books sounded like he was uninjured.
He climbed out as she approached and held the door open, offering her the seat beside Sicarius. She wondered if that meant he had seen the pile of bodies and didn’t want to sit next to the person responsible.
“What happened?” Amaranthe asked him before getting in. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” Books said, “and I’m sorry I didn’t get the door open before they charged in. Two of the men came running out of the bunkhouse, and I barely had time to thump the floor in warning and hide behind the lorries. They knew someone was down there and ran to pull some lever to release… the hounds, that’s what they called them. Did you trip over some kind of alarm?”
Amaranthe thought of the darts that had shot out of the wall, the darts she triggered. Emperor’s warts, she truly was responsible for all this carnage. If she’d been less impulsive and let Sicarius find a way to disarm the trap, none of the killing would have happened. They might have walked in and out without anyone ever knowing.
“Thank you, Books,” Amaranthe said numbly. “I’m glad you weren’t injured.” She climbed into the lorry and sat next to Sicarius. Something rustled beneath her boot. She patted the cab floor and found a crinkled newspaper. In case it was recent, she smoothed the crinkles and laid it on the seat for Books. “Let’s get going.”
“Back to the city, correct?” Sicarius asked as Books climbed in.
Amaranthe wanted to say yes-the sooner they left the country and this night behind the better-but hearing
