Amaranthe hung on with fingers like vise clamps, but soon she dangled fifty feet above murky water, the slingshot the only thing keeping her attached to the dirigible. Smoke clogged the air, and she struggled to see what had happened. The back half of the craft dangled, severed from the balloon.
“Amaranthe!” Books called. “Hold on!”
She looked up, hoping help was coming. But a boom erupted from within the cargo bay, and smoke gushed out the doorway.
“Books?” Amaranthe called. “What was that?”
Shards of wood and the battered remains of the blasting-stick box spilled out of the doorway. The sticks followed, falling like deadly rain drops.
Amaranthe let go of the slingshot.
Better to fall into the water than be pelted with explosives. That’s what she told herself anyway, though her heart tried to leap out of her chest as she plummeted more than forty feet. What if the murky water was only a half a meter deep? What if she landed on a log? Or an alligator? Or what if that white beam cut her in half before she hit the water?
A boom thundered a few feet above her. The shock wave slammed into Amaranthe, hurling her sideways and down. She hit the surface at an angle, and, instead of dropping in feet first, landed on her back. The water slapped her as hard as if she’d struck cement. She submerged a few feet and hit the bottom. The dense mud was more giving than solid earth, and nothing snapped or cracked in her body, though landing on her back had stunned her so badly, she couldn’t move her limbs. For a terror-filled moment, she feared she’d broken her spine and would be paralyzed for life.
Something brushed her hand, and her fingers twitched away from it. Thank her sturdy ancestors, she could move. More objects brushed against her. Blasting sticks. The water ought to render them useless, so she didn’t worry about them. Finding the surface was more important.
Forcing still-stunned limbs into movement, Amaranthe managed to push off the mud. Her head broke the surface, and she swiped water out of her eyes. Smoke tunneled down her throat, and she coughed up water with air. At least her lungs were working. Her ears rang, and she could barely hear herself coughing. Something warm-blood? — trickled out of one ear. She ignored it and searched the sky for the dirigible, for her men.
Smoke shrouded the wetlands like a fog, but she spotted orange above a cluster of trees on the horizon. Flames bathed the half-deflated balloon, and its body hung in branches, dented and dangling.
No sooner had Amaranthe located the dirigible than it dropped out of sight behind the trees. She didn’t see it crash, but she heard it. Though it must have gone down a mile from her, the sounds of snapping wood and groaning metal traveled clearly across the wetlands. A flock of ducks paddling near the shoreline hurled themselves aloft amidst much quaking.
Half swimming, half walking on the muddy bottom, Amaranthe maneuvered toward the closest bank. She checked the sky as she traveled, expecting to see the black craft hovering nearby, but it was nowhere to be seen. The smoke slowly cleared, and insects resumed droning. Or perhaps they’d been droning all along and Amaranthe’s ringing ears were now recovering enough to hear them.
A splash sounded to her right. An alligator flicking its tail before disappearing beneath the surface.
Amaranthe touched her belt, but she didn’t have any weapons, not even her knife. Maybe she should have kept one of the soggy blasting sticks, if only to beat at predators with it.
She reached the shoreline without incident and climbed toward dry land, mud sucking at her feet with each step. Twice she almost lost a boot, but she would have slogged through the swamp barefoot if she had to. She needed to check on the others. Between the crash and the explosion in the cargo hold, she worried that…
Amaranthe clenched her jaw and forced worries out of her mind. She’d find them and see what was what. Until then, she’d simply focus on walking there. Nothing more.
She found herself on a muddy peninsula, blanketed with wet, brown leaves. Vines and curtains of moss dangled from tree limbs, and animals skittered away from her, rustling the underbrush.
Before Amaranthe had taken more than five steps, a black-clad figure stepped out of the trees ahead. She started to smile, to lift a battered hand in greeting, but it wasn’t Sicarius. The man had white hair, not blond, and the weapon belted at his waist was a long trench knife with brass knuckles at the hilt, not a sleek black dagger. A crescent-moon scar cupped the bottom of one of his eyes.
Though Amaranthe had never seen him before, she recognized him from the men’s description. Major Pike, Hollowcrest’s old Master Interrogator.
He wore a pistol at his waist as well as the dagger, and Amaranthe didn’t think challenging him to a fight sounded like a good idea, not when she was battered from the events of the last twenty-four hours, and she lacked a weapon. She eyed her surroundings, wondering if she could run along the shoreline and evade him long enough to find the downed dirigible. But other people were stepping out of the trees as well. Four men in black fatigues wore swords and approached Amaranthe with rifles aimed at her. Two women she didn’t recognize walked behind them. A fifth man approached her from the side, and he had a familiar face. He looked like an older, harder version of Maldynado. The army general brother who wanted to take Sespian’s position on the throne.
Amaranthe glanced behind her, wondering if it might be best to hurl herself into the water and take her chances with the alligators.
“I wouldn’t, Ms. Lokdon,” Major Pike said, his voice hard and raspy, as if someone had applied a garrote to his throat once. “You’re not so valuable to us that we’d be upset if we had to put a bullet in your back.”
“Thanks for the tip,” Amaranthe said.
The major waved toward two of the men. They stepped forward as a pair, one keeping a rifle aimed at Amaranthe’s chest while the other unclasped handcuffs. The efficient way they approached her left little doubt that they were well trained. Even if they weren’t, there were too many other guns pointed her way. There was nothing she could do.
As the cold metal handcuffs snapped about her wrists, Amaranthe lifted her chin and stared defiantly at her captors. A tight smile came to Major Pike’s lips, and a predatory gleam of anticipation entered his eyes.
