“Yes, I gathered that from the dead man she left marinating in his own blood. Do you recognize her?”
“The Crimson Fox,” Yara said.
Amaranthe tried to place the name. “That’s someone with a bounty on her head, right?”
“Yes, she is- was — regarded as the best female assassin in the satrapy. Some say the empire.”
Amaranthe snorted. “ Some say? Like who? Her?”
“It’s a twenty-five-thousand-ranmya bounty.” Yara was still staring at Amaranthe, her eyes wide with… awe?
Amaranthe decided not to mention how much luck had played into that squabble. A little awe from Yara might help her position. “We don’t have time to turn people in for bounties right now, so some soldier’s going to have a good time this weekend.”
“Wait.” Maldynado touched his wounded temple. “You’re saying the person who hit me was a woman?”
“You’re lucky she didn’t kill you.” Yara’s awe-struck expression disappeared when she faced Maldynado. “I’m not surprised to find that your employer does the real work in this outfit.”
“When you’re as pretty as I am, there’s no need to do real work.”
“You’re calling yourself pretty?” Yara asked. “You have a black eye, a split lip, and there’s blood smeared all over your face.”
“I’d still have an easier time getting a date than you. What’d you cut your hair with? Your service sword?”
Amaranthe lifted her hands in a placating gesture. “Let’s focus, please. We can squabble when the emperor is safe.”
While they glared at each other, Amaranthe peeked past Maldynado and into the bin. Coal continued to flow into the open car while the irritated corporal stomped back and forth with a rake. Busy pushing and scraping to distribute the load, he kept his head down. Amaranthe risked sticking hers out to better see up and down the train.
In front of the coal car, the hulking black engine idled, its long cylindrical shape stretching ahead like a hound’s nose. She couldn’t see into the cab where the engineer and fireman waited, which was good because they wouldn’t be able to see into the coal bed without leaning out of the side entrances, but someone watching from the train station would have a decent view. She checked the boardwalk and grimaced. Soldiers were filing into some of the passenger cars. Of course, if they were going to the capital, it made sense for them to get a ride.
“Reinforcements,” Amaranthe muttered. “Lovely.” She kept herself from sighing at Sicarius, irked anew by his string of assassinations. She had certainly messed up often, and he hadn’t held it against her.
Some of the soldiers on the boardwalk were stationed at the doors, and they were checking identifications, orders, and faces carefully before letting people on. No civilians boarded. As Amaranthe had suspected, this was a private train, and it would have been difficult, if not impossible, for her team to walk through a door, even if they’d had sophisticated disguises.
“When do we get on?” Yara asked.
“Soon,” Amaranthe said. “After that corporal says he has all the fuel he needs and tells the engineer to get moving.”
“Won’t the people on the boardwalk see us jump into the coal car?”
“It’s dark,” Amaranthe said. “We’re hoping not.”
“Hoping?”
“Are you doubting the woman who slew the Crimson Fox?”
Amaranthe was joking, or at least hoping to distract Yara from her concerns, but the sergeant considered the body again and said, “I guess not.”
Huh, something to be said for establishing a sense of awe in one’s colleagues.
“The Crimson Fox?” Sicarius asked.
“Apparently.” Amaranthe pointed at the body.
“She’s from the capital. It’s unlikely her presence here was a coincidence.”
“Well, I didn’t invite her.” Amaranthe eyed Yara, but she couldn’t imagine the enforcer sergeant having anything to do with an assassin showing up. If Yara had meant to tattle on Amaranthe and the team, it would have been to her superiors, not a criminal. Nor was it likely Sicarius’s night of slaying had anything to do with it. Amaranthe feared they might have Akstyr to thank for the assassin’s appearance. Had she come to kill Sicarius? Or maybe she’d meant to collect on Amaranthe’s bounty. She was going to have a chat with the lad later. Maybe Books was right, and it was simply time to let him go. “We’ll worry about it later,” she told Sicarius.
Lines creased Yara’s brow as she eyed the stairs.
“Problem?” Amaranthe asked.
“I was entertaining the idea of staying here, turning that body in for the bounty, and going back home a hero for having helped slay such a notorious assassin. I suppose it’d be ignoble of me to take credit for any of that though. I doubt ducking when she threw a knife was crucial in her defeat.”
Amusement tugged at Amaranthe’s lips. It sounded like the sort of scheme she’d think up. Maybe there was hope to bring Yara fully over to her side yet. “You don’t want to leave when the emperor needs you.”
“No,” Yara agreed, lifting her chin, “there’d be no honor in that act.”
Sicarius had moved to the shadows near the chute, where he could look outside without being seen.
“We about ready?” Amaranthe asked.
“Yes.”
Below them, the corporal leaned the rake against a pile of coal and hopped onto the roof of the cab. From there, he jumped down onto the locomotive “nose” to one of the water tanks. So much heat rose from the metal encasing the engine that the air shimmered around the corporal. He checked a gauge, then waved to the water tower.
“That’s enough. Cut it off.”
A moment later, he pulled the thick hose out and screwed a brass cap into place. Amaranthe couldn’t see Basilard from her position, but the hose retracted, spinning onto a giant reel. The corporal skittered back to the coal car where a hill of the black rocks had formed in his absence.
He grabbed his rake. “That’s enough!”
Amaranthe and Sicarius closed down the chute.
“You should at least leave a business card,” Yara whispered from behind them.
“What?” Amaranthe asked.
“Your card. You could leave it on the body of the assassin, so someone would know you were responsible for bringing down a criminal.”
“If I left a card, the soldiers that found the body might blame that worker’s death on us.”
“But doesn’t it grate on you not to get credit?”
Daily, Amaranthe thought. “We’re used to it.”
Yara stared at her.
“If we can get the emperor to know we’re not villains,” Amaranthe said, “that’ll be enough. He can clear our names with a scribble of a pen.”
“And have statues commissioned in honor of our greatness,” Maldynado said.
“Nobody’s going to believe you’re great if they see a statue of you in that hat,” Yara said.
“Oh, nobody wears fur when modeling for a sculpture,” Maldynado said, “It’s too hard for the artist to get all the fuzzy strands to look good. I already have a statue hat picked out.”
“Dear ancestors,” Yara murmured.
Amaranthe patted Maldynado on the shoulder. His silence had been making her wonder if he was more injured than she thought. Maybe he only needed bolstering after being beaten up by one woman and criticized by another.
“Ready to go, sir!” the corporal called to the locomotive cab.
Everyone who had orders to board must have done so, for the boardwalk had cleared. Good. Nobody inside the train would have a good view of the coal shed or water tower-or the people leaping from them.
Two men in black uniforms wearing cutlasses and rifles trotted up to the locomotive and climbed into the cab. Both of them had to duck and turn their substantial shoulders sideways to fit through the doors.
