know we’re alive. They may already be looking for us. If someone on board that craft can trigger your implant… Well, I’d find it rather inconvenient to lose you so soon after retrieving you. I doubt Maldynado’s older brother would pardon me.” There, finish with a smile. What more could she do?
“I’d like to hear the life story sometime,” Sespian said, surprising Amaranthe. That wasn’t the part of her speech he was supposed to focus on. “If we survive the next few weeks, perhaps you’d like to have dinner with me? Some place quiet? And private?”
“I… uh…” Amaranthe felt like a deer caught on the railway with a train barreling out of the night toward it. Her mind wouldn’t come up with something useful to do, and she could only gape at Sespian. He wasn’t supposed to be interested in dinner with her any more. He was supposed to want to have dinner with Yara. “Sire, you’re…” The son of the man I love, she thought, but she couldn’t possibly say that. “Young. Yes, young to me. I don’t think we’d be a good…” Amaranthe trailed off when she realized Sespian was watching her intently. It wasn’t, she sensed, in hopes that she would agree to his proposition. A moment passed, and he said nothing. Finally, she asked, “Was that a test?”
Sespian smiled sadly. “If you’d said yes, it wouldn’t have necessarily proven or disproven anything, but because you said no… I suspect I can trust you.”
Amaranthe slumped back into the cushy chair. She wasn’t certain whether she was more relieved that Sespian had admitted to trusting her or that he hadn’t truly had his hopes pinned to her saying yes about the dinner proposition.
“As to conditions for the surgery,” Sespian said, “I want everything explained. It has to sound logical and there has to be a good probability of success. I don’t want Forge to be able to hold that power over me any more, but I also don’t want to commit suicide.”
“Of course, Sire.” Amaranthe stood up and headed for the door. “I’ll let Akstyr know.”
“Corporal Lokdon?” Sespian slipped off the bed and met her a couple steps from the door.
“Yes, Sire?”
“If we both survive this with our sanity intact, I hope you’ll reconsider the dinner offer. I won’t always be young. If it helps, I’ll probably be old and doddering before you, thanks to the drug that curmudgeon Hollowcrest used on me.”
Amaranthe gripped his hands. “Sire, I’m sure you’ll live a long and fulfilling life.” Except she wasn’t sure of that. Sicarius, she recalled, had been concerned when he learned the name of the drug Hollowcrest had used. That knowledge had fueled his cold fury when he broke the old general’s neck with his bare hands.
The door opened. Belatedly, Amaranthe remembered that she’d told Basilard to send Sicarius in.
She released Sespian’s hands and yanked hers behind her back, but not before Sicarius witnessed the handholding. His expression never changed, but he looked into her eyes for a heartbeat, and then he looked into Sespian’s for several more.
“Nothing’s going on,” Amaranthe said, though she promptly realized that made it sound as if there were something going on. “We were just-”
Without a word, Sicarius walked away.
Chapter 20
Sun shown through the porthole in the tiny cabin, and Akstyr pulled his blanket over his head, trying to block it out. At Amaranthe’s insistence, he’d slept a couple of hours, and he wouldn’t have minded more, but the light was bugging him. Something else was bugging him, too, though he couldn’t put a finger on it. A nagging unease.
Akstyr stretched out with his senses and nearly fell out of the bunk when he felt someone in the cabin with him. A dark cool presence. He tore the blanket off his head, spotted Sicarius standing in the shadows by the door, and bolted to his feet. That was the goal anyway. The blanket tangled around his legs, and he tumbled to the floor in an ungainly heap. Certain Sicarius wasn’t there for any comradely reason, Akstyr rushed to untangle himself and find a standing position. He finally managed, but not without the help of a hand on the wall.
If Sicarius were the type to cackle diabolically before killing someone, he’d surely be doing so now. But he simply stood there, wearing all of his knives, his body unmoving, his face unreadable.
“What do you want?” Akstyr tried to sound gruff and unconcerned, though he knew he wasn’t fooling anyone. Also, it was hard to look tough standing barefoot with a blanket pooled at one’s feet.
The quietness of that Science-made dirigible engine meant there were no thrums or reverberations coursing through the craft, and Akstyr could feel his heart thumping against his ribs. Fast. He wondered if Sicarius could hear it too. He wasn’t saying or doing anything, but Akstyr had the impression that Sicarius might be debating whether to kill him.
Akstyr clenched a fist. Sicarius could try. Akstyr knew ways to defend himself that had nothing to do with physical contact.
“Well?” Akstyr demanded.
“You’ve been talking with bounty hunters,” Sicarius said. “I know you’ve thought often of having me killed.”
Akstyr tried to swallow, but his throat was too dry. He wanted to say something valiant, but he couldn’t get any words out.
“You may have doomed us all by speaking of our plans to your mother.” Sicarius’s eyes bored into him, hard and unwavering.
“That was a mistake, I know. It won’t happen again.”
“I kill those who threaten me.” He wasn’t attempting to intimidate or posture; he was simply stating a fact. That made it worse.
“I saved Am’ranthe that one time. Amaranthe,” Akstyr added, thinking that it might be somehow important to pronounce each and every syllable in her name just then. Respectful-like. “I’m important to the team. She wouldn’t want you to kill anyone important to the team.”
“I’ve studied the schematics for the implant,” Sicarius said.
“Uh?” The topic change surprised Akstyr, but encouraging it seemed like a good idea.
“The artifact is designed to be sensitive to physical tampering. It hides if it’s touched, and if someone attempts to remove it, it kills its victim.”
Why was Sicarius telling him this? Akstyr had studied the schematic too. He already knew all about the devices.
“It’ll take someone with Science training to destroy it,” Sicarius said.
“I know. I’m not sure I can destroy it, on account of that shaman having been so experienced at Making things, and it’s real strong for something so little, but I was thinking I could stun it for a few seconds. Then someone like you could go in and cut it out before it can squirm away. Once it’s out, you can drop it on the floor and stomp on it.” Akstyr finished with a gulp of air. He’d rushed to make sure he got out the second part, about how he might be able to do something, before Sicarius decided he was useless after hearing the first part. Akstyr didn’t know why Sicarius would care about the emperor or the implant, but if he did that was good for him.
“If you are successful in removing the implant,” Sicarius said, “I will forget your prior transgressions.”
A part of Akstyr wanted to be indignant-the man was a notorious criminal, so he hardly had any justification for calling anything Akstyr might have done to get rid of him a “transgression”-but a bigger part of him was so relieved, he could barely think of an answer. If Sicarius was willing to forget the past, then he could start over, work with the team, get the money for school without betraying anyone, and not have to spend his life looking over his shoulder. And he’d been planning to get that implant out anyway. That was why he had joined the group in the first place, so he could work on Science stuff. The challenge of trying to beat that old shaman’s invention intrigued him.
“Agreed?” Sicarius asked, startling Akstyr from his thoughts.
It wasn’t like Sicarius to get impatient and prompt someone for an answer. Usually he didn’t care if someone answered or not.
“I’m planning to get it out, yeah,” Akstyr said. “But, out of curiosity, what happens if something unforeseen
