Amaranthe leaned over the side to check on Basilard and Maldynado. In the blackness beneath the train, it was hard to see anything, but she thought she spotted two promising lumps. She thought to wait and help them up, but Sicarius called down from the coal car, his voice low and barely audible.
“Amaranthe, come.”
She crawled up to join him. At first, she thought he needed help unfastening Sespian, but Sicarius jerked his head toward the front of the car.
Amaranthe sank to her knees in the hard coal. The soldiers they’d tied up were gone.
“They got free,” she said, then chastised herself for stating the obvious again.
“Or were set free,” Sicarius said.
Amaranthe thought of Yara. Unless the soldiers had rushed back to help with the emperor, they had to have found her in the locomotive. What if Amaranthe had recruited Yara to help, only to get her killed?
Sicarius finished untying his load. Sespian startled Amaranthe by scrambling backward, duck-crawling several feet before dropping to his backside, hands bracing him, his chest heaving as he stared at Sicarius.
Chapter 15
Emperor’s bunions, when had Sespian woken up? Under the train? That must have been a terrifying way to regain consciousness. Had he realized yet who’d been carrying him? In the darkness, perhaps not, but he would soon enough.
Without a word, Sicarius left, sprinting toward the locomotive. The wide-eyed way Sespian watched him go told Amaranthe he had figured out who was carrying him. Sicarius had once admitted that Sespian feared him as a boy, and she couldn’t imagine that adulthood had quite stolen that feeling.
Torn between wanting to check on Yara and reassuring Sespian, Amaranthe blurted a quick, “Good evening, Sire,” then winced. What an inane thing to say at such a moment. But it sounded blase, too, and it pulled Sespian’s gaze back to her. “Welcome to your kidnapping. I imagine you have questions and requests, and I hope to be able to accommodate them shortly, but we have more work to do. Ah, if you don’t mind, wait here. The next two men who pop up will look after you.”
As Amaranthe raced after Sicarius, she realized she’d not only been insulting, by saying Sespian needed looking after, but that she’d presumed to give him, the emperor of the entire Turgonian nation, an order. Maybe she could later claim it’d been a suggestion.
Sicarius had already swung down into the locomotive cab via the left side of the train. Amaranthe headed right.
Envisioning Yara dead on the floor, her throat slit, Amaranthe scrambled around the outside of the car too quickly. She misjudged a ledge in the darkness, and her feet skidded down the slick metal surface. The sudden weight shift yanked at her shoulders, nearly tearing her fingers loose from their grips. For a moment, she hung by one hand, legs dangling above the rails, the wind threatening to rip her from the train altogether. Her breath escaped in a terrified squeak.
Her first reaction was fear-mind-numbing terror-but fury replaced it. She wasn’t going to survive crawling beneath the moving train and pulling the emperor out of a car full of soldiers only to stumble and fall for no reason.
With that thought, she found the strength to fling her arm up where she could reach a handhold again. Once she had solid metal beneath all ten fingers, she hauled herself up, biceps quivering, and pulled her legs back onto the ledge.
After that, it took a monumental effort not to fling herself into cab-and onto its solid, reassuring floor-before checking to see if it was stuffed with soldiers. She forced herself to approach slowly and peer around the corner before revealing herself.
Sicarius stood at the far side of the cab with three downed soldiers piled about him, including the fireman they had tied earlier. He wasn’t tied any more. A fourth soldier stood on the side closest to Amaranthe, his back protected by the engineer’s chair. He gripped Yara, using her as a shield as he held a knife to her throat. A cut lip streamed blood down her chin, and both of her eyes were swelling. She hadn’t given up the engine room without a fight.
Sicarius had been crouched, his black knife in his hand, as if he meant to spring, regardless of the threat to Yara, but he must have seen Amaranthe, for he straightened and lifted an open hand toward the soldier. He said something, though she couldn’t hear the words with the wind whipping at her hair and clothes. An offer to deal perhaps.
His eyes never flickered toward her, and Amaranthe didn’t think the soldier had noticed her yet. His back was mostly toward her. She eyed the arm holding the blade to Yara’s throat.
Amaranthe eased her own knife out. She lunged into the cab, her weapon slashing at the soldier’s arm before her feet hit the floor. It sliced through clothing and flesh, and he cursed, but he didn’t drop his own blade. Without releasing Yara, he stabbed at Amaranthe.
She skittered back, but the blade never came near her. Yara rammed an elbow into the man’s gut at the same time as Sicarius sprang across the cabin. He ripped the soldier away from Yara, and, in one fluid move, fastened his arms about the man’s neck. Under other circumstances, he might have broken that neck, but he merely applied a chokehold. The soldier’s face turned red, then purple, and Amaranthe knew he’d pass out from lack of air shortly.
Basilard appeared in the doorway that Sicarius had vacated. With so many people sprawled about the floor, he didn’t seem to know where to stand.
Yara slipped back into the engineer’s seat.
“Are you all right?” Amaranthe asked. The question earned her a dark glower.
“I hope you pay your men well if you put them through events like this often,” Yara said.
“Not really. I think they stick around to see what crazy scheme I’ll come up with next.” Amaranthe nodded to Basilard. “Did you pass the emperor?”
Basilard signed, Yes. Maldynado banged up his knees and the emperor was helping him into the coal car.
“Uh, I think we’re supposed to be helping the emperor, not the other way around,” Amaranthe said. “We better bring him up here to keep him safe. We’ll have to find some space.” She chewed on her lip and surveyed the packed cab. Sicarius dropped the purple-faced soldier, adding another unconscious man to the pile. “I don’t quite know what to do with all these bodies though.”
“The furnace is getting low on fuel,” Yara said.
Amaranthe threw her a startled look.
“It was a joke.” Yara touched her split lip. “Mostly.”
“The rest of the soldiers will figure out where we went before long,” Amaranthe said. “See if you can slow the train down to twenty miles an hour. At that speed, we ought to be able to drop people outside without killing them, but it won’t be so slow that men can jump off and run up here to attack us from the ground.”
“I haven’t figured out how to adjust speed yet,” Yara said.
Amaranthe looked around. “What happened to the engineer?”
“The soldiers who swarmed me untied him, and he was one of the first to attack your assassin when he burst in. Your man sidestepped and assisted him on his way off the train. I’m surprised you didn’t hear the scream.”
“Ah.” Amaranthe decided not to mention that she’d been busy almost assisting herself off the train at the time. “It’s probably not a good idea to get rid of the people with the knowledge of how to operate the massive piece of machinery you’ve hijacked.”
Sicarius wasn’t around to hear her comment. He’d stepped out of the cab and was standing on the ledge outside, head turned toward the coal car. Checking on the emperor or keeping an eye out for soldiers or both, Amaranthe guessed. Knowing they’d have company soon, she dropped her chin into her hand and considered the meager offerings of the engine cabin.
“Basilard,” she said, “can you try to… I don’t know, stack these men up in the back here, so we have room if
