Clanks sounded as Akstyr and Maldynado rummaged in a new crate.
“They get people noticed too.” Amaranthe held his gaze but did not sense any give behind his eyes. “We’ll be fine. We have a well-trained group of men with unique talents and skills.”
“Ouch, ouch, get it off!” Maldynado hollered.
He was hopping about with a hand clamp hanging from…ah, that was a nipple. Amaranthe dropped her face into her hands.
“Oops,” Akstyr said.
Amaranthe avoided Sicarius’s gaze as she helped Maldynado unfasten himself. “Need anything else, Books? How long will it take you to set up?”
He lifted a hand. “I should not wish to make promises about time or even success. If that artifact is as deep as Maldynado believes, we may have trouble with water pressure. Bones and muscle can hold up, but air-filled spaces in our bodies, such as the ears and lungs-”
“ Books,” Maldynado groaned.
“If we do go in, we should walk in from the shore and gradually let our bodies acclimate. Likewise, it could be hazardous to come up quickly.”
“All right,” Amaranthe said. “Go get set up. You can wait for us to return to go into the water. I don’t want you somewhere vulnerable without lots of help up above to ensure you’re kept safe.”
Books blew out a relieved breath. “Good.”
“Of course, if we all get eaten, you’ll have to do it on your own,” she said.
Books’s relieved expression turned to a worried frown. Even Sicarius gave her a dark stare.
Amaranthe patted Books on the arm. “We’ll be careful.”
She headed for the main chamber, but Maldynado paused and pointed at Books.
“Watch out for the giant man-sized catfish while you’re down on the lake bottom. I hear they’re carnivorous.”
Books scoffed. “Those are stories told by uneducated rural mountain folk, nothing more.”
“Sure, Booksie. You believe what you want to believe. Just make sure to take a sword down there. Can’t fire a rifle underwater, you know.”
“You’re a bastard at times,” Amaranthe told Maldynado when he fell in beside her. Sicarius was already leading the way toward the tunnel.
“Yup, but he deserved it. I wouldn’t have done anything unsafe when he was underwater.”
“Perhaps it’s your insouciant manner that leads others to believe you shouldn’t be placed in positions of responsibility.”
“Yes,” Maldynado said, “but I thought Books bright enough to see past a man’s painstakingly cultivated levels of insouciance.” He wriggled his eyebrows.
“Are you saying you have hidden depths?”
Maldynado scratched an armpit. “Naturally.”
“Hm,” was all she said.
The new tunnel, too, dripped copious amounts of water and stank of mildew. It continued to slope downward and soon came to a T-section. A faint draft of fresh air whispered from the right. Maybe that passage led to the top of the dam where those towers perched.
“Left,” Amaranthe said when Sicarius paused. “Akstyr’s magic is that direction, right?”
Wordlessly, Sicarius headed left. They reached a doorway in the side of the tunnel. Inside lay a small room with a panel on a wall, hanging diagrams, a desk and chair, and a series of levers.
Amaranthe unclasped a bolt and pushed on the panel. It slid sideways, opening a window of sorts. The roar of water intensified, and cool misty air gusted inside, spraying dampness onto her face. A panoply of stars gleamed in a clear, black sky, while a quarter moon shone silver on three streams of water pouring from flood gates open beneath them. A half a dozen more closed flood gates marked the dam wall.
Maldynado joined her. “Looks like we found the control room.”
“I wonder how they open and close those heavy gates.” Amaranthe leaned out and twisted her neck to peer upward, but whatever mechanism did the work was hidden in the walls.
“Here.” Sicarius stood behind them, an eye toward the exit, but he pointed at one in a series of diagrams on the wall.
Amaranthe studied it. “Ah, I see. Those things on the top of the dam aren’t watchtowers after all. Or at least they’re not just watchtowers.”
The diagram showed cranes housed in each structure with cables that could pull up the heavy gates. The next display riveted her attention for longer. It displayed vertical and horizontal lines-pipelines-and the topography of the surrounding area, all the way down to Stumps and the lake.
She ran her finger along the diagram. “This pipe routes water to the aqueducts that lead into the city. These go to fields. The river itself flows south and empties into Little Sister Lake over one hundred miles from the capital. Whichever emperor was in charge when this was built sure didn’t mind making a lot of extra work for people.”
“Isn’t that every emperor that’s ever existed?” Maldynado asked. “Making work, that’s their job, isn’t it?”
“Are warrior-caste men allowed to make snide remarks about our rulers?” Amaranthe poked into the desk drawers, hoping for something illuminating.
“They are if they’re disowned with bounties on their heads.”
She spotted a crumpled piece of paper on the floor behind a desk leg and grabbed it. “Hm.”
“Is that a page from the dastardly villain’s diary?” Maldynado asked. “One carelessly dropped that conveniently reveals the secret to destroying these vile artifacts?”
“It’s an invoice.”
“Villains get bills?”
“It’s the invoice for the appraisal on Hagcrest’s land,” Amaranthe said. “The woman must have brought it up here to meet with her client, expecting to get paid…”
“And she got a knife across the throat. Who would have thought being an appraiser could be a deadly line of work?”
Amaranthe tucked the paper into her pocket, though it held nothing so helpful as a name and address for the person who ordered the appraisal.
Rifle shots cracked, clear and close.
“Guess the dam tour is over,” Maldynado said. “Too bad. I liked this room. Fresh air, a good view…”
“No corpses,” Amaranthe said.
“That did improve the general ambiance.”
Sicarius was already heading back into the tunnels.
“Time to see what they’re firing at,” she murmured.
They did not walk far before the darkness ahead changed from black to a greenish gray. Amaranthe frowned at the unnatural hue. No lantern could be responsible for that.
Moist, guttural snorts and snarls filled the air. A stench wafted from ahead: blood again, along with the musky, earthy odor of that fur. Amaranthe’s grip tightened on her rifle. It was not too late to back out, to leave the soldiers to their fate. If her team destroyed the artifact, that would be enough, wouldn’t it?
Agitated voices murmured, barely audible over the animalistic sounds.
“Hurry up,” someone said.
Sicarius paused. Amaranthe stood on tiptoes to peer over his shoulder. A few paces ahead, the tunnel changed from an enclosed passage to a metal walkway, open on one side.
“Let me by,” she whispered.
Sicarius did not, though he moved forward. He stopped again as soon as they stepped onto the metal grating of the walkway.
To their left, the wall continued, but to the right, a dim chamber opened up with a floor twenty-five or thirty feet below them. A massive pipe, perhaps twenty feet in diameter ran through the chamber parallel to the walkway. Ten soldiers stood or crouched atop it. They were busy reloading their rifles and watching huge, bulky creatures that milled on the floor. Lanterns perched between the soldiers, but the source of the sickly green light
