Deadly Games

have found him before they got startedwith…whatever it was they were doing exactly. He shuddered.

Sicarius bumped him on the shoulder andjerked his head toward the exit.

The first captive was stirring.

Wouldn’t it be better to work withthem? Basilard asked. A combined force to confront ouradversaries?

Athletes would be useless againstpractitioners.

Basilard was not certain what value he mighthave against a shaman or wizard either. He recalled the humiliationof his old owner, Arbitan Losk, plucking him from hiding andflattening him to the floor with a force he had been unable toelude.

A noise started up, a throbbing whine thatvibrated from the walls loudly enough to wake any slumberingguards.

“Alarm.” Sicarius jogged toward the exit.

Basilard remembered the invisible barrier andwondered if Sicarius had disabled it. He must have if he had comein from the woman’s quarters or somewhere that direction, but itwas up now, evinced by a strange sheen with yellow tendrilsshimmering in the air.

Sicarius plucked a thin knife off a consolenear the hatchway. A bloody ball was skewered on the tip.

Though Basilard noted the gory thing, he didnot realize what it was until Sicarius held it up to the eyeballreader. The recognition did not quite make Basilard flinch, but hedid curl a disgusted lip. Given his background, he ought not besqueamish about such things, but he could not help but find itdiscomfiting. Maybe because his putative ally was the one who hadremoved it, and it might very well have belonged to that woman.

The shield wavered and disappeared.

Sicarius and Basilard passed into the longcorridor outside, ducking their heads to dodge intermittent pipesalong the ceiling. The glow of the orbs on the wall waxed and wanedwith each pulse of the alarm. The corridor curved in angledsegments like some mechanical snake stretched along the lake floor.They passed closed hatches, but Sicarius did not pause to check anyof them.

Rhythmic thumps sounded above them.Footfalls? Was there a second floor? Basilard had not noticedladders on his previous trip, but that had been a short journey.They had already passed the cabin he had started out in.

Sicarius ran through a four-way intersection,then rounded a bend. A few feet before a dead end, a ladder rose toa closed hatch in the ceiling.

Instead of starting up, Sicarius smashed hisblack dagger into an orb on the wall. Shadows thickened in thecorridor. He darted behind the ladder and crouched, his back to thewall. Basilard joined him.

Above, the footfalls started and stopped acouple of times, and Basilard had the impression of guards pausingto collect reinforcements.

Plan? Basilard asked.

If a manageable number of men come down,we jump them. Sicarius retained the eyeball-on-a-knife, and itmade a grisly accent to his hand signs.

Would you have done that if Amaranthe werehere? Basilard caught himself asking.

He thought Sicarius might give him a frostylook or tell him to pay attention to what they were doing. Insteada faint ruefulness softened his stony expression.

Doubt I would have needed to. She would havesubverted one of the guards.

You can’t subvert one? Basilard joked,not expecting a reaction beyond a glare.

Apparently, I lack charisma.

Basilard gaped at him, not certain if thathad been a joke or not. Overhead, the footfalls clomped to a stopat the hatch, and he focused on the matter at hand. Sicarius, too,turned his attention upward.

The hatch creaked open. A pistol descendedfirst, then a guard eased his head through. Basilard held hisbreath. Attacking the guards on the ladder would be the best spotfor catching them by surprise.

Wariness stamped the man’s face, though, andhe checked both ways, aiming the pistol without stepping onto therungs. His eyes turned in Basilard’s direction and paused. Maybethe shadows weren’t deep enough.

“Hobarth.” The guard squinted and shifted thepistol toward the shadows.

The only warning Basilard had of movement wasSicarius’s arm brushing his. A throwing knife zipped between theladder rungs and thudded into the guard’s eye.

In less than a heartbeat, Sicarius darted outof the shadows and up the ladder. He grabbed the dying man by theshirt, hurling him to the floor below, then disappeared through thehatchway.

Basilard leaped out and grabbed the fallenguard’s pistol. He clenched it between his teeth, tugged thethrowing knife from the eye socket, and climbed the ladder withSicarius’s blade and his own balanced in his hands.

He pulled himself onto the next floor,landing in a fighting stance, ready to help.

Two guards were sprawled on the deck, theirthroats cut. Sicarius was patting one down for keys or weapons or,for all Basilard knew, something to eat.

Feeling useless, he took the pistol out ofhis mouth and checked the charge. With his hands full, he had tojuggle the weapons to sign a question, Should we take theirclothes?

The guards were all bigger than Basilard, buthe felt vulnerable running around nude.

To what end? Sicarius took histhrowing knife from Basilard and sheathed it.

Pockets?

Sicarius flicked an indifferent finger,picked up the eyeball knife, and headed down the corridor. Basilardstripped the fatigue jacket off the smallest guard and put it on,grimacing at the sensation of cloth sticky with blood pressedagainst his skin. He hustled to catch up.

Sicarius stopped at a barrier before anintersection to fiddle with the reader. He glanced at Basilard’snew attire but said nothing. Clothes or not, he probablynever felt vulnerable. Between the eyeball in his hand and thestreaks of someone else’s blood smeared across his forearm andchest, he looked like nobody one would want to tangle with.

You better stick with Amaranthe,Basilard signed. She humanizes you.

The barrier dropped. Sicarius looked himselfover and considered the gory eyeball before stepping through.

Agreed, he signed.

There was no time to mull over the response.More footfalls and numerous voices rang throughout the structure.The alarm continued pulsing. If all they met were soldiers,Basilard and Sicarius might be able to handle them, but Basilardexpected practitioners at some point, and who knew whatotherworldly obstacles.

The corridor sloped upward. Closed hatchesmarked the walls to either side, each with a reader set nearby ateye level. Sicarius did not slow to try any of these. He obviouslyhad a destination in mind. Or maybe their eyeball only openedcommunal doors, not private laboratories.

They passed another ladder leading down, andBasilard tried to imagine a map of the place in his mind. Theycould no longer be above the tunnel they had run through on thefirst floor, because there had been no ladders leading up beforethe one they had taken. How much of a maze might this place be? Hehoped Sicarius knew where he was going.

After the ladder, the corridor continued onin a straight line. Its riveted, gray walls offered no alcoves orniches for hiding in, should someone come out shooting at them.

The narrow passage ended at another barrier.In a chamber on the other side, the back of a large black chair wasvisible before a control panel and a horizontal, oblong porthole.Dark water pressed against the glass. It could be night or day atthe lake surface and no one would ever know down here. Around thechamber, lever- and gauge- filled panels ran from floor to ceiling.Many held multi-hued glowing protuberances, all amorphous, morelike fungi that had grown there naturally than mechanical devices.Was this the navigation area? Basilard struggled to imagine thisunwieldy ship-if one could call it that-floating up a river, but ithad to have arrived somehow. Perhaps it could become compact fortravel.