“Wait!” Amaranthe said, a plan solidifying in her head, a plan that would be much easier to implement if they only had to face one makarovi at a time. “I have an idea how to kill them. If you leave the collars in place for just a half an hour, I can-”
“Are you sure?” the sergeant asked, responding to his soldier’s whispered comments. He squinted into the gloom on the walkway, eyes toward the tunnel and Sicarius.
“Uh oh,” she muttered. “I think they figured out who-”
Sicarius brushed past her and stepped onto the walkway again. He ignored the leaping makarovi below him and, in one swift motion, brought his rifle up and shot the device.
The ball clanged off without damaging it or diminishing the glow. The soldiers near it fell to their bellies in surprise.
Amaranthe jumped, almost as startled.
“You lunatic!” the sergeant yelled. “You could have shot one of us.”
“Unlikely,” Sicarius said.
“It is Sicarius,” one said.
“Fire!” the sergeant yelled.
Atop the pipe, all the soldiers lifted their rifles, sights seeking Sicarius. This time, Amaranthe went with him when he pulled her back into the tunnel. A rifle cracked and the ball slammed against the wall above the walkway.
“Give us a half an hour,” Amaranthe called into the chamber without poking her head around the corner. “Don’t shoot off any more collars!”
Nobody answered. She hoped the soldiers listened to her, though that seemed unlikely now.
“You need to stop taking Cold and Flinty here with you when you’re trying to talk people onto our side,” Maldynado told Amaranthe.
“We’ve talked enough.” Sicarius strode back the way they had come, reloading the rifle as he went.
“He’s such a warm fellow,” Maldynado said. “Can’t see why people try to kill him so often.”
Amaranthe trotted after Sicarius-why was she always running after that man?-and caught up with him in the machine room. Books and the others had cleared out of the alcove. She would have to get Akstyr to look at the device later.
“Where are you going?” Amaranthe had to jog to keep up. “I have a plan.”
Sicarius did not slow down. “Telling a room full of armed soldiers our names should not be part of it.”
Ah, so that was why he was miffed. “I wasn’t going to give them your name, just mine. And they figured it out on their own anyway. It doesn’t matter. They have to know who we are if the emperor is to find out about our work.”
“Leave them a note afterwards.”
He entered the narrow tunnel and she could no longer walk beside him. She stopped. Her plan did not involve leaving yet.
Maldynado caught up and patted her on the shoulder. “Problem, boss?”
“I don’t think he appreciates my strategy of obtaining information and making friends by talking to people.”
“Probably because it doesn’t work on him.”
Her first inclination was to argue that it did work on him, somewhat, but the splinters of information she teased from Sicarius would not impress any interrogators. And whether or not he would call her a friend was no sure bet either.
“Coming?” Sicarius asked from the shadows.
She had not realized he was still there. “We’ve work to do here.”
“The soldiers can shoot the rest of the collars off,” Sicarius said. “You don’t want to be nearby when they’ve completed that. We should assist with destroying the lake artifact. It may be unnecessary to remove the other if the first is nullified.”
“That still leaves a pack of makarovi alive and roaming the dam. How will the soldiers get off that pipe? They’re running out of ammunition, and what they have isn’t effective anyway. I want to get rid of the makarovi.”
“How?”
“Yes, how?” Maldynado asked.
“Lure them up top one at a time, use those cranes that open the floodgates to hook the creatures, and dump them over the side of the dam. If they truly have trouble swimming, they’ll drown. Even if they don’t, they’ll probably travel miles downriver before they escape the water. That’ll leave them far from the dam in unpopulated wilderness.”
“That’s…a crazy plan, boss,” Maldynado said.
“Too dangerous,” Sicarius said.
Amaranthe gave them her best smile. “We can do it. Look who I have with me: the deadliest assassin in the empire and the best duelist in the city.”
Maldynado lifted a finger. “Which of those professions was supposed to prepare us for hooking giant man- eating monsters with cranes?” He turned to Sicarius. “Did you learn that in little assassins school? Because I don’t remember that lesson from the fencing academy.”
“You’re both agile and smart,” Amaranthe said. “That’ll be enough. Besides, we’ll just lure one up at a time, snare it from the safety of the tower, and then go back for the next.”
“Lure,” Sicarius said, tone flat.
“How?” Maldynado asked.
Amaranthe swallowed. “Since I’m the most appealing bait, I figure that will be my job.”
“That’s a bad idea, boss,” Maldynado said. “We won’t be able to get them off you. Our rifle balls are bugging them less than mosquito bites.”
Though Sicarius said nothing, the way he crossed his arms over his chest and glared let her know his opinion.
“Maldynado, give us a moment, please,” Amaranthe said.
“Oh, sure, I’ll just go hang out with one of the corpses.”
“We won’t be able to draw them into reach without bait,” she said after Maldynado moved away.
“I’ll do it,” Sicarius said.
She supposed it was cowardly, but she was tempted to agree. She was a decent athlete, but she could envision all too many scenarios in which she could trip at the wrong time and be overcome by a snarling beast. But, no. She could do it. “Unless you’ve been keeping even more secrets from me than I thought, I’m the more logical choice to attract them.”
“No.”
“It makes sense.”
“You’re not-”
“Fast enough? Strong enough? Agile enough?” She did not necessarily disagree, but she wanted him to have faith she could do this.
“Expendable,” Sicarius said.
“Oh.” She blinked. “Because you care and would miss me or because nobody else would be around to come up with these crazy schemes if I weren’t here?”
“It would be…” The lantern light kept his angular features in shadow, but they seemed to soften an iota. “Inconvenient.”
“We better set this up so there’s no chance of me dying then. Coming to help?” She pointed back toward the T-section where she guessed the unexplored tunnel led to the higher levels. Maldynado yawned and scuffed his feet a few meters away.
“One more concern,” Sicarius said.
Amaranthe met his eyes. “Yes?”
“Removing the collars. It’s likely the person who placed them there will sense their dormancy.”
“And come to check on his guard dogs?”
“Yes.”
