No camp fire burned, and no eggs waited. As Amaranthe and Sicarius crossed the bridge, she expected the men to come out and greet them-or berate her for leaving them to the elements-but nothing moved. Basilard and Akstyr must have been miserable during the storm and found shelter elsewhere.
A furry lump came into sight near the base of the bridge: a dead raccoon. She rolled it over with the tip of her rifle. A hole the size of a pistol ball ran through its skull.
“I’ll scout,” Sicarius said.
“Akstyr?” Amaranthe called. “Basilard?”
A bird tweeted a querulous response. While Sicarius circumnavigated the area, Amaranthe checked the lorry. She passed two dead squirrels, a fire lizard, and a mangy opossum.
She lifted the tarp in the back of the vehicle. “The gear’s still here. Soggy but here.”
“The money?” Sicarius asked.
Amaranthe climbed into the cab and checked under the driver’s bench where she had secured the strongbox. It was gone. She winced.
“No.”
“Come.” Sicarius stood by a pine tree growing out over the shallows. He pointed downstream. “They went this way.”
More small animal corpses littered the trail.
“Any theory on the dead raccoons?” she asked.
Sicarius lifted a hand for silence. He tilted his head for a moment, then slipped into the undergrowth, barely rustling the ferns. Before Amaranthe could decide if she should follow, the foliage swallowed him from view.
“What’s that?” she muttered. “You want to explore on your own? Very well. I agree.” Amaranthe snorted. He might leave the scheming up to her, but she would be delusional if she thought herself the absolute boss over these men-especially him.
Not sure whether Sicarius had detected some enemy, she refrained from calling Akstyr and Basilard’s names as she continued forward. But a familiar voice soon reached her ears.
“…gotta be safe to get down by now,” Akstyr was saying. A moment passed, and he spoke again. “Dead? What dead? I don’t know that sign.”
Amaranthe stepped around a cluster of trees and the two men came into view. They perched in the crotch of an ancient aspen, rifles clutched in their hands. Their damp clothes hugged their bodies, and Akstyr’s hair appeared more bedraggled than usual. His foot pressed into Basilard’s chest while Basilard’s head lolled off to one side, neck crooked awkwardly. If they had spent the night in the uncomfortable spot, they had her sympathy. She had seen lovers less entwined.
“Good morning,” Amaranthe said.
Akstyr fell out of the tree.
“Sorry.” She jogged over to help him up. “I didn’t intend to startle you.”
The toe of her boot clunked against something hard. She brushed aside leaves and found the strongbox. They must have removed it from the lorry to guard it as they ran away from…what?
“Did you spend the night up there?” Amaranthe asked. “And, if so, why?”
Basilard climbed down.
Akstyr pointed at him. “Say nothing.”
Basilard swatted the finger away and signed to Amaranthe: Attacked. Flee here. Make defense.
“What attacked you?” Her gaze drifted to a dead squirrel in a puddle.
Basilard lifted his hands to sign again.
“Bears,” Akstyr blurted. “ Big bears. And…grimbals!”
“I believe grimbals only live on the northern frontier,” Amaranthe said dryly.
Sighing, Basilard pointed at the squirrel. After storm, small creatures come. Rabid. Eyes shine. Bite and claw us.
Akstyr pushed back a baggy sleeve to display a long gash.
“A squirrel did that?” Amaranthe wrestled with her lips to keep them from smiling. No doubt it had been a crazy night for these two.
“A raccoon,” Akstyr growled. “A giant raccoon.”
Basilard winked and held his hands less than a foot apart to illustrate the not-so-giant size of the raccoon.
“It was bigger than that,” Akstyr said.
Basilard moved his hands closer.
“Oh, why don’t you eat the dung on every street in the slums?” Akstyr kicked a pine cone. “It was hectic and dangerous, all right?”
“I understand,” Amaranthe said. “Thank you for protecting the money. The, ah, giant raccoons didn’t try to take it, did they?”
“No.” Akstyr glowered suspiciously, probably thinking he was being mocked. “We just didn’t want to leave it.”
“Good thinking.” Amaranthe hoped the compliment would appease him. “Something suspicious is definitely going on out here.”
Sicarius glided out of the trees, carrying a pile of leaves. They glowed faintly.
“What’d you find?” Amaranthe asked.
A grassy, decaying odor tainted the air, and she crinkled her nose. Sicarius laid the leaves on the ground, revealing a regurgitated mess on top of them. A glowing regurgitated mess.
“Disgusting,” Akstyr said.
“Is that…?” Amaranthe pointed at the heap.
“Vomit,” Sicarius said.
“When I implied I’d like to see your foraging skills, this isn’t what I had in mind,” she said.
Akstyr snickered. “ That’s why we don’t want him to have a turn making meals.”
Sicarius turned his cold stare on Akstyr.
“Sorry.” Akstyr skittered back several feet. “Just a joke. A bad joke.”
Basilard pointed at the radiant pile. Color eyes.
“Same hue as the eyes?” Amaranthe thought of the wolves. “You’re right. So maybe it’s something they’re eating that’s making the animals crazy. And, er, luminous.” She blinked. “Or something they’re drinking.”
Sicarius’s eyes locked onto hers. “Possibly.”
“I wish I had a copy of this morning’s paper,” she said, “so we could see if there’s any more news about people getting sick in the city.” In particular, she wondered if anyone’s eyes were glowing. Could that and the aggression be a symptom of continuing ingestion of the contaminated water supply? “Akstyr, would it be possible for a magic-user to poison a population’s drinking water?”
He stuffed his hands in his pockets and studied the ground thoughtfully. “You could put something into water to poison it or a really smart practitioner could alter the basic structure of water at its tiniest level to be something just a little different that makes it poison to humans and animals. But to do it for the whole city, I don’t know. The quantity of water you’d have to alter would be huge, and it’s not like it’s just pouring out of some steady source, right? There’d be new snow melting into a river or lake or whatever, so you’d have to keep applying your power to keep the water flowing downriver poisoned. I can’t imagine the energy required.”
It always amazed her when Akstyr spoke more than a sentence. He could be halfway eloquent when discussing magic.
“So, if we’re dealing with a practitioner,” Amaranthe said, “it’s a very powerful one.”
“ Very,” Akstyr said.
She looked at Sicarius. “Probably not the shaman you shot then.”
“He could not even stop a rifle ball to his chest,” Sicarius said.
“Yes. A true wimp.” She did not mention how he had captured her easily enough. “Basilard, can you tell us anything about your people’s abilities with the Science?”
Basilard’s eyebrows rose, and he touched his chest. My people?
“The woman who ran the gambling house and had that contraption in the basement was Mangdorian, and so was the shaman we just dealt with. He may have killed Lord Hagcrest.”
