bag into her hands. “Go, please. You should never have been a part of this madness. I want you safely out of here.”
“Be careful.” Vonsha walked out, shoulders slumped.
Not Books’s Vonsha after all, Amaranthe decided, upset on his behalf.
The shaman turned to a task he had apparently started before she woke: packing a bag. Several small devices went inside, and he surveyed upper shelves, seeking some assassin-slaying ultra weapon, no doubt.
The constructs he had sent out earlier were still gone. Her stomach lurched. Had they found Books, Maldynado, and the others? Were they even now attacking her men? Maybe she could slip away and help them when he left. Or she could trail the shaman and assist Sicarius. If she was capable.
Since he did not seem to be paying attention to Amaranthe, she inspected her wounds. Her gut still ached, but fever no longer burned her skin. The other injuries did not hurt as severely as before either.
“Yes,” Tarok said. “I drove out the infection. I didn’t want to tax myself healing you completely, since I have a confrontation to attend shortly, but you’ll live if you don’t do anything foolish for the next couple of days.”
“Why?” Amaranthe asked. “I mean, thank you, but, er… why? Do you think…” If he had been in her head, he could not believe she would help him against Sicarius.
“No, your loyalty, no matter how misplaced, is clear. His disinterest in returning that loyalty is unsurprising. You’re a naive doll for thinking well of that animal at all, but otherwise you seem a good-hearted person. I thought you deserved a chance to straighten out your life. Perhaps one day you’ll thank me for my next task. It may make yours easier.”
Amaranthe sat up. She had to stop him, or at least warn Sicarius the shaman knew…far more than she had planned for him to know.
“You’ll forgive me, I trust, if I summon a guard.”
She groaned. That would make slipping out hard.
Sooner than she expected, a construct entered, the one that had first led her into the mine. The one that had led the other machines into the tunnels to hunt down her men. Blood smeared its barrel chest. Her fingers curled into a fist. Maybe she was too late to help anybody.
“They are defeated?” the shaman asked without looking up. He fastened the flap on his pack.
The construct clanked into the room, its gait more awkward than Amaranthe remembered. Someone must have damaged it. Hope stirred. Maybe Books had come up with something clever, and the men had defeated all the machines except this one, which had escaped to report back.
She eased to her feet.
The construct stopped a pace away from the shaman and raised an arm.
“Well?” Tarok faced his machine. “Are you impaired? Why-”
One of the harpoons fired into his chest. Amaranthe gaped, as shocked as the shaman. Two more harpoons slammed through his ribs, and the construct jerked its arm across, slashing the last blade across his throat. Tarok staggered back and collapsed.
Not sure what to expect next, Amaranthe snatched the closest tool off a nearby bench. Pliers. She brandished them like a knife.
The construct’s arms came up, not to aim harpoons at her, but to grab its head. Amaranthe stared. It wiggled its head back and forth, then removed it, revealing…Sicarius’s face. Blood matted his blond hair on one side, but he appeared otherwise hale. He tossed the hollow head-turned-helmet onto the desk, and Amaranthe glimpsed a few wires and broken innards inside it. Much more must have been torn out. Sicarius shucked the rest of the hollowed body parts and checked the shaman.
A half an hour earlier, Amaranthe might have gotten in line to stab the man, but that was before he healed her and called her a good person. Of course, he had also called her naive and misguided for associating with…
“Pliers?” Sicarius asked.
“Er.” Amaranthe loosened her death grip on the tool. “I’ve found them effective for snatching and twisting people’s…important parts.”
His eyebrows rose.
“Of course, I don’t employ such methods on friends and colleagues.” Amaranthe tossed the pliers on the bench. She stepped around the shaman and wrapped her arms around Sicarius. “I thought you weren’t willing to come after me.”
Sicarius did not return the hug, but he did pat her on the shoulder and endure the embrace without acting as if it was torture to do so. “Yes, you had to think that.”
She leaned back, though she did not release him fully. “You knew? That he could swim around in my head, collecting coins from the bottom of the pool?”
“Telepathy is one of the mental sciences. The Nurians and Kyattese train in it far more frequently than the Kendorians and Mangdorians, but I suspected someone as accomplished as he might have developed the skill.”
Amaranthe released him, wondering if he had come to kill the shaman to help her or just because he wanted to make sure his secrets did not find their way into someone else’s head through her. She shook her head. It did not matter. He was there. Besides, he had saved her life in the tower when there was no time for premeditated thought, when it was simply about instincts. That meant…a lot.
“Next time,” she said, “you might mention things like mind-reading foes before I stroll in to talk to one. It might alter my preparations.”
“I’ll consider it.” Sicarius eyed her. “He healed you?”
“The infection, yes.”
“How did you convince him?”
Amaranthe thought about answering honestly, that she had done nothing, but decided it might help her down the line if he believed she wooed the shaman with her tongue. Sicarius might have saved her life-twice in as many days-but she still believed he was sticking around because he thought she’d eventually be in a position to talk to Sespian on his behalf.
“You have your secrets,” she said with a smile, “and I have mine.”
A bang sounded somewhere in the depths of the tunnels. A rifle shot?
“The others,” Amaranthe said. “Have you seen them? Are they still fighting?” She jogged to the workstation to search for a weapon. Twinges in her abdomen reminded her she was not yet healed fully. One more hour, she thought. She would rest if she could abuse her body for one more hour.
“I don’t know,” Sicarius said. “I saw several machines leave this workshop and head deeper into the mine. I drew this one away so I could attack it alone.”
“How hard was it to destroy?”
“Hard.” Sicarius drew his black dagger. “I was able to climb on the back of it, cut a seam at the base of its neck, and slice the control wires leading from the power source.”
She peered in a toolbox but found nothing more lethal than the pliers. “Could you have done the job with a normal knife?”
“Slice the wires, yes. Cut through the seam, no.”
Another gunshot rang out.
“They sound like they need help.” She eyed the glowing orbs.
“It was difficult to destroy one construct. There are a dozen down there.”
At least he did not say the men were not worth saving. A couple of months ago, he would have.
“I understand that,” Amaranthe said, “but there must be something here that can help. What do the orbs do?”
“They’re the power sources. The shaman creates them, then uses mundane technology to build the machines.”
She thought of the one she had destroyed in the gambling house’s vault. At the time, it had been good that it had caused no great explosion, but now she wished they could be used as tiny bombs.
Amaranthe grabbed the bag the shaman had packed. “Maybe Akstyr can do something if we can get this stuff to him.”
“If he’s alive,” Sicarius said.
