He pulled the top half of the diving suit down and was surprised when his movements did not bring pain. He pushed a sleeve up to check his wound. No fish tooth marks violated the flesh of his arm. The shaman had healed him. To what ends?
Books pushed the suit lower so he could relieve himself. At that moment, footsteps sounded to his left. A familiar white globe of light floated into view, illuminating a rough-hewn tunnel running past his cell. A rusty ore cart rail bisected the center of the passage.
He started to clamp things off, but a defiant thought curled his lip. Let the bastard find Books peeing on the floor of his hideout.
“What do you want me to do?” a female voice asked. Books’s eyes bulged. A familiar female voice.
“Just identify him.”
Two figures strode into sight behind the light globe. Books fumbled, hurrying to button himself in, though he feared she had already seen him in action. Heat flamed his cheeks. Why did these things happen to him? No villain would presume to walk in on Sicarius while he was peeing.
Vonsha and the shaman stopped before Books’s cell. She wore a dagger at her belt and carried a lantern. Her stance said “not a prisoner,” though it stung him to admit it. She did seem surprised to see him, so maybe she was not in on the larger scheme.
Something skittered along the floor behind them, a silver spider-shaped creature the size of a fist. A coin- sized circle on its front glowed red. As the spider passed below the shaman’s light, Books realized it was not a creature at all. The tiny “legs” moved mechanically, and metal, not skin, comprised the carapace. It disappeared into the darkness, heading deeper into the tunnel. Neither person facing Books reacted to it.
“You recognize him?” the shaman asked. His green eyes were calm instead of raging today. Lines creased the corners of those eyes, making him older than Books had first guessed. Fifty or sixty perhaps. Old enough to have mastered his craft.
Vonsha hesitated before answering. “He’s one of the party that came through the pass.”
She knew more than that. Was she protecting him? Maybe she truly liked him. But the fact that she was here with an enemy of the empire…
“I know that,” the shaman said. “Is he close to the assassin? Is he a murderer too?”
“I haven’t murdered anyone,” Books said, figuring he better speak for himself before he was condemned for more than wrecking the artifact. “I just came to thwart the threat to the city’s water supply.”
“Yes, we know about that,” the shaman said.
A tendon flexed along Vonsha’s neck, as if Books’s statement annoyed her equally. But she defended him. “He’s not a killer; he’s a history professor.”
“He’s working with that gutless butcher, Sicarius.”
“I know, Tarok,” Vonsha said. “But I don’t think Books would-”
Something clanked in the distance, and the shaman glanced the way the spider construct had gone.
“What are you doing with him?” Books mouthed to Vonsha.
She had time for nothing more than an apologetic shrug before the shaman’s attention returned to them.
“What are you to the assassin?” he asked Books. “Will he come for you?”
Of his own accord? Not likely. Amaranthe would, but Books did not know if she was alive. He dared not volunteer either piece of information. “I don’t know.”
“He’s the one who killed Yereft, too, isn’t he?”
“I don’t know who that is.” Books guessed it was the other shaman Amaranthe mentioned.
“Who is the Mangdorian who travels with you?”
“Nobody who’d be friends with someone like you. Why are you doing this? Attacking the empire?” Yes, there. Books ought to be asking questions. Amaranthe would have had this fellow’s story by now.
“Chief Yull was a friend,” the shaman said. “I’ve sought his killer for a long time, and now that I know who it is, he won’t escape me.”
Chief Yull? Books had a feeling Amaranthe had forgotten to tell him something crucial, but he could puzzle things together.
“You need to kill innocent people and make the whole city sick to get at one person?” Though Books was responding to the shaman, he watched Vonsha. She lifted her chin and stared back. Did she have a reason to want revenge on Sicarius too?
“I’m no killer,” the shaman-Tarok she had called him-said. “I simply make the artifacts. That’s the deal.” He hitched a shoulder. “They can be used for a number of purposes.”
“You knew what that device would do when you put it in the lake. Doesn’t your religion forbid you from hurting people?”
“ I’ve not harmed anyone,” Tarok said.
“Your artifacts have.”
“Many people make devices that can be used for good or evil. You cannot blame the blacksmith when the swords he crafts are used to kill.”
“And can you also not blame the person who leads a pack of monsters into a dam to kill all the employees?” Books asked.
Tarok looked away, as if that particular part of the plot might not sit well with him. Books wished he knew how to use that information.
“Your people have killed thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of mine,” Tarok said. “You pushed us out of fertile valleys and into these inhospitable mountains. And that assassin…” The shaman’s calmness faded, and he gritted his teeth, glaring. “Do you know what manner of demon you travel with?”
Books did not answer. How could he? Sicarius was one person he could never defend, not on a question of morality.
“Tell me,” Books said instead.
While Tarok launched into a diatribe, Books nonchalantly leaned against the wall near the cell entrance. He checked up and down the tunnel, trying to see whatever device maintained his prison. Nothing on the far wall. He leaned his cheek closer to the barrier. The air crackled with energy. There. Less than a foot from the barrier, a small white box protruded from the wall on his side of the tunnel. Though it lacked the telltale glow of the device on the pipe in the dam, it did not appear like something Turgonian miners would have left behind.
“Enough about the assassin.” Vonsha touched the shaman’s arm. There was a familiarity in that gesture that turned Books’s stomach. “Can you fix your artifact?” she asked. “If the city water returns to normal…all this was time wasted, and your employers won’t be pleased.”
The shaman shook her hand away. “Yes, of course. But not now. I want that man dead first. I should have grabbed the woman.” He thrust a finger toward Books. “You’d better hope the assassin comes for you.”
He stalked back up the tunnel, taking his light globe with him. Shadows threatened, until Vonsha turned up her lantern.
“He leaves me in the dark a lot,” she said, “in all senses of the saying.”
Books pressed his hands against the invisible barrier, ignoring the jolt. “What are you doing with him? Vonsha, I thought…” What? That they could find happiness together? Form a family? Dear ancestors, surely he was too old to be that naive. To fall for a woman he barely knew, one whose placement and actions had been suspicious from the beginning.
“Books, I tried to get you out of the way.” She slumped against the stone wall opposite him. “Why couldn’t you go off to the other side of the mountains, like I suggested?”
“Because you were lying.”
“Yes, but you weren’t supposed to figure that out.” She smiled sadly.
“What’s in this for you? Why are you working with him?”
“I’m protecting my parents. They wanted my family’s land, and they were offering a fraction of its value. My father refused-where would my parents go with so little money?-and those people would have killed him if I hadn’t intervened. I nosed around, ran into Tarok, and through him met the leader of this scheme. I found out why they wanted the land.”
“To build a dam and take over control of the city water supply?” Books said. “That’s what they’re doing on the other side of the river, isn’t it? Quarrying rock for the new dam.”
