“Maybe?”
“We never spoke. She did her work professionally. That’s all I know. Do you suspect her of playing a role in the water plot?”
“That’s what I’m trying to decide. It’s hard when I’ve never talked to the woman.”
“No chance to wheedle information out of her yet?”
“Precisely. You know how I love to chitchat with folks.”
“Yes.”
“That must be why we get along so fabulously,” Amaranthe said. “You being the less talkative sort and me being happy to fill in the awkward silences with…awkward un-silences.”
Sicarius said nothing.
“Yes, just like that. See? We make a good team.”
Amaranthe decided not to pester him further and headed for the door. When she opened it, letting light from the hallway in, Sicarius stopped her with a question:
“What are you wearing?”
More than the room’s heat warmed her cheeks. She should have changed before looking for him. “Uhh, it’s the disguise Maldynado got me. It’s…not exactly what I had in mind. As I’ve recently discovered, it’s not terribly practical for fighting, and, er, it was probably a mistake to send him clothes shopping, however good he is at obtaining bargains.”
Though she felt ridiculous in the outfit, and a touch vulnerable, a part of her wished he would say she looked good in it.
“Yes,” Sicarius said. “If you want the respect of the men, you should dress like a professional, not one of their conquests from the brothels. Also, costumes create a sense of security that encourages inattention. Better to remain vigilant.”
Great. Not only did he not think she looked good, he’d compared her to a whore. Maybe it wasn’t too late to put together that all-women team after all.
• • • • •
Rain thumped against the oilskin hood of Amaranthe’s jacket and pooled on the footboards beneath the driver’s bench. She sat next to Maldynado, who steered the newly acquired steam lorry, while Books, Basilard, and Sicarius rode in the large cargo bed in the back. Akstyr hunkered beneath a poncho behind the boiler with his nose inches from the pages of his new book.
Amaranthe’s position offered her a cushioned seat instead of cold metal, though in return for this luxury, she had stoking duty for the furnace. Coal dust stained her hands and her gray army fatigues. She had torn her “costume” off as soon as she left the steam room the day before.
The lorry rumbled along a well-kept concrete road, with the tall buildings of the city fading into the distance behind them and sprawling homesteads and farmlands ahead. Tracks ran alongside, though few locomotives headed east into the mountains. Most imports came from the gulf, to the south, and the west coast with its populous port cities. Rikavedk, the easternmost satrapy, had been the last chunk of land added to the empire, more out of Emperor Dausrak’s ancestrally appointed vision that Turgonia should stretch from sea to sea than out of any value in the vast steppes on the other side of the mountains. Amaranthe imagined the spirits of dead rulers hanging around in the Valley of the Emperors, arguing over who had acquired the most land. Less lurid than comparing lengths of certain body parts, she supposed.
“All that money,” Maldynado grumbled, wiping raindrops off the brim of a broad peacock-feathered hat.
“Pardon?” Amaranthe asked.
“All that money you two won, and you made me buy a used-to-within-an-inch-of-collapsing lorry with an open cab. An open cab in the rainy season.”
“We may need money later on. I thought it best to reserve some of our funds.” She was mulling over a ploy to feign interest in purchasing the mysterious mountain lot as a cover story to justify some poking about.
“I was this close.” Maldynado held up two fingers a hair’s breadth apart. “Almost had that dour old lizard ready to sell us a shiny green Dondar lorry for half its value. She was a beauty. Fast too.”
“Perhaps if you’d spent less money on water-” Amaranthe eyed the crates in the cab with their gear, “-we would have had more for vehicular purchases.”
“That’s bottled safe water. It won’t make us sick. You’ll thank me later if all the rivers up here are poisoned.”
“Safe water? What pretty young entrepreneur told you that?”
“A couple of girls selling them out of a cart. The water was bottled at an artesian spring at the base of the mountains.”
“It’s probably from the lake,” Amaranthe said. “The city water hasn’t been suspect long enough for someone to go up to the mountains and bottle anything from springs.”
Books stuck his head into the cab. “Unless said person had previous knowledge of the impending calamity. I saw the cart. There was a line around the block to buy the water at five ranmyas a bottle.”
Maldynado sniffed. “I didn’t pay that much or stand in line.”
“Nonetheless, it looked like a profitable business,” Books said. “Maybe we should have questioned them. Perhaps they’re behind the attack on the water. Make the city supply unsafe, then make a fortune selling imported water.”
“Poisoning the source just to cash in on bottled water is extreme,” Amaranthe said, “especially considering there will be hordes of competitors flooding the market within a day or two.”
“Maybe our entrepreneurs didn’t think their plan through well.”
“It’s probably someone taking advantage of the situation,” Amaranthe said. “One of my instructors used to say, ‘In every crisis lies opportunity.’”
“Yes, politicians have that motto too.” Books clambered over the low wall dividing the bed from the cab and squeezed onto the bench beside Amaranthe. “Perhaps, when we’re up there investigating that lot…” He glanced at Maldynado and lowered his voice. “Perhaps we should visit Vonsha’s family estate. Since their property is across the river from the other one, they might prove a font of information.”
“Oh, please,” Maldynado said. “You just want to question her family about her interests so you can smooth- talk your way into her font.”
Books coughed and cleared his throat.
Amaranthe lifted a hand to rest on his shoulder and noticed a plume of smoke smudging the road to the rear. The undulations of the terrain hid whatever vehicle was making it, but she shifted uneasily, wondering if someone might be after them. Aside from the usual possibility of bounty hunters, there was the doubtlessly irked Ellaya and her mysterious protectors.
“I don’t think,” Books said, “that people who resort to spending their evenings at The Pirates’ Plunder should mock me for my interest in a woman.”
“Nothing wrong with The Pirates’ Plunder,” Maldynado said. “Fine ladies there.”
In the bed of the lorry, Sicarius stood, his head turned toward the smoke cloud behind them.
“In even finer costumes.” Akstyr grinned. “I liked the woman with the eye patch.”
“Oh, yes,” Maldynado said. “Though I’m not sure if it’s appropriate to call it an eye patch when it’s actually covering-”
“Enforcer vehicle,” Sicarius announced.
Maldynado cursed.
“Easy,” Amaranthe said. “It might be a coincidence.”
“What do you want me to do?” Maldynado asked. “Turn off the road?”
Amaranthe eyed the food, water, footlocker, and other gear piled between the men. Flintlock rifles and pistols lay beside her repeating crossbow and everyone’s swords, but many people preferred firearms for hunting and laws forbidding their use were supposedly lenient outside the city.
“No,” she said. “Just keep the tarp over our supplies. Akstyr, hide that book.” His tome on magic was the most incriminating thing they had. “We’re just a group of hunters, heading into the mountains to take down some…”
“Scrawny elk that are still all ribs after a long hard winter?” Maldynado raised his eyebrows.
