Amaranthe laid out Maldynado’s food choices,trying to arrange the bread and pastries in such a way that onemight not immediately notice their battered state. Given what thesegroceries had gone through to arrive here, she was happy nothingwas poisoned with varnish.
She had forgotten Maldynado stashed anewspaper in a bag, too, and she glanced over it. Mancrest did havean article on the front page. Apparently the winners of each of theevents in the Imperial Games would be invited to dinner with theemperor.
“Wish I could enter,” she muttered. With allthe training the team did, she was more fit than she had ever been.Though she had never been tall enough to have a chance at thesprints, where the long-legged women excelled, she had won medalsfor the middle- and long-distance races as a junior. Unfortunately,any race she ran these days would end with enforcers taking herinto custody-or worse.
A crash sounded in the other room-a bigone.
Amaranthe lunged around the table, a visionof Sicarius mashing Mancrest with a meat cleaver stampeding intoher head. She shoved the swinging door open. A drawer lay on thefloor beside a butcher-block island; cutlery and silverwarescattered the travertine tiles. One wicked serrated knife hadsomehow struck a cabinet door with such force that it protrudedfrom the wood, handle still quivering.
Sicarius had Mancrest bent over the island,his cheek smashed into the butcher block, his arm chicken- wingedbehind his back, fingers jerked up so high he could have braidedhis own hair, were it long enough. Maldynado would have had aninnuendo-laden comment about the men’s positioning. Amaranthe onlypropped her hands on her hips and said, “Problem?”
“No,” Sicarius said.
“Yes!” Mancrest cried. “I was just trying toget silverware out.”
“Is it possible you’re being a touch jumpy?”Amaranthe asked Sicarius.
He kicked something on the floor behind theisland. An ivory-handled pistol skidded across the tiles and bumpedagainst the fallen drawer.
Amaranthe picked it up. The hammer wascocked. She lifted the frizzen, and powder poured out of thepan.
“I forgot it was there,” Mancrest said, voicemuffled by the fact his cheek was still mashed against the butcherblock.
“Really?” Amaranthe asked, prepared to givehim the benefit of the doubt.
Mancrest hesitated. “No.”
Given the situation, his honesty surprisedher, however belated.
“Care to tell us where the rest of the loadedfirearms in your flat are?” she asked.
“Not really,” Mancrest said.
“Then I guess Sicarius will have to followyou around all night, hovering over your shoulder while you eat.Breathing down your neck. Sharing your salad. Hogging yourcroutons.”
That might have drawn a snort from Sicariushad they been alone, but with someone else present, he gave nohints of emotion, and she could not guess what he was thinking.Probably that he did not want to be there. Perhaps that he wouldlike to finish grinding Mancrest’s face into the island.
“Do you actually think I’m going to sit downand dine with you?” Mancrest asked.
“Standing is an option, if you wish,”Amaranthe said. “Where are the other firearms? I’ll be morecomfortable eating and chatting with you, knowing it’s unlikelyyou’ll be able to shoot me between courses.”
“Parlor room desk drawer,” Mancrest said,“and in the latrine above the washout.”
“Thank you. I’ll…did you say latrine?”
“A man feels particularly vulnerable with histrousers around his ankles.” Mancrest tried to pull his arm free- afutile attempt. “Would you mind calling off your attack dog? Ican’t feel the blood in my fingers.”
Amaranthe nodded at Sicarius. “Want to gocheck on those firearms?”
He did not move.
“Or I could check,” she said. “Let himwriggle his fingers, will you?”
Amaranthe trotted through the rooms, wantingto find the weapons and come back to rescue Mancrest before lack ofcirculation lost him any digits. She found the pistols and returnedto the dining room. Mancrest sat in a seat- not the head of thetable-with Sicarius at his back, arms crossed over chest in one ofhis typical poses. Amaranthe handed Sicarius the pistols, which heunloaded, then tossed into a corner.
She slipped into an upholstered seat at thehead of the table, a throne of a chair that made her feel slight.The hand-carved feet resembled cougar paws and the rest of thedetailing also evoked a predatory feline feel. None of this man’sfurnishings had been produced in a factory or by anyone other thana master woodworker.
Mancrest, arms also crossed over his chest,glowered at her, and Amaranthe wondered how much force had beeninvolved in seating him.
A gold-and-silver corkscrew rested on thetable by the wine. She opened the bottle and poured twoglasses.
“Your dog isn’t drinking?” Mancrestasked.
Amaranthe fought to keep a scowl off herface. While she could understand Mancrest being irked withSicarius, her instinct was to come to his defense. She doubted thebarbs would bother him, but they bothered her. “Sicarius is mypartner in our endeavors. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t belittle,dehumanize, or otherwise deride him. Given the stories you’veprinted about him, I believe he’s showing admirable restraint innot killing you.”
“He’s a cowar-assassin, and I’ve done nothingbut print the truth.”
Hm, maybe that correction was a sign ofprogress. Or maybe he was gentlemanly enough not to purposelyirritate a woman.
“At least one of the stories you’ve printedis an untruth,” Amaranthe said. “We did not kidnap the emperor lastwinter. In fact, we saved his life.”
Mancrest snorted. “I interviewed witnessesthat say you were there and that Sicarius had an axe over theemperor’s head when the guards stormed in.”
“He was lifting the axe to cut the chainsbinding Emperor Sespian to a dispensary of molten ore, a situationset up by Larocka Myll and Arbitan Losk, the former heads of theForge organization. You’ve heard of them, I trust?”
Mancrest’s face grew as hard to read asSicarius’s. Since he was not scoffing, she decided to press on.
“Arbitan was a Nurian masquerading as aTurgonian businessman, and he was the creator of the monster thatwas killing people all over town last winter. That was little morethan a distraction, though, so he could plot against the emperor.And he almost succeeded. Sicarius saved Sespian’s life.”
Mancrest snorted. “Oh, please.”
Ah, there was the scoff.
“We also thwarted Forge’s attempt to pollutethe city water a couple of months ago,” Amaranthe said. “Thatepidemic you wrote about as well.”
“You’re claiming that, too?” Mancrestlaughed. “The entire army went up there.
“They cleaned up after we did all the work,including killing a half a dozen makarovi that had butcheredeveryone in the dam.”
Amaranthe stood before Mancrest could voiceanother statement of disbelief. She untucked her blouse anddisplayed the scars on her abdomen. Showing unfamiliar men-or
“Of course, if my plan had been betterthought-out, I might not have been mauled, but fortunately I hadtalented people to dig me out of trouble.” She smiled at Sicariusand caught him staring at her abdomen.
He lifted his gaze to meet her eyes, and foronce she was glad she could not read his face. She could notimagine the long look being for anything other than pity or perhapsguilt over not having kept her from that fate, and she did not wanteither from him. Ancestors knew that whole debacle had been aresult of her questionable-at- best scheme, one he had tried to talkher out of, and she had nobody to blame but herself.
