hammered the blunt side against the nail several times.
“ Uh,” Akstyr said.
Sespian also watched in puzzled silence.
Amaranthe nodded and handed Sicarius the string. Thanks to having seen the trick done before in a drinking house, she caught on, but she kept her mouth shut. Sicarius tied the string around the head of the nail and lowered his fishing “hook” through the bars. When the nail hovered over it, the key wobbled. The nail brushed it, and the key attached itself.
“ Oh,” Sespian said, as Sicarius carefully pulled up the key. “The Inverse Magnetostrictive Effect.”
“ The… huh?” Akstyr asked.
“ Mechanical stress can cause a change of magnetization in a ferromagnetic material.”
Akstyr’s face scrunched up in bewilderment.
“ He made a magnet,” Sespian said.
“ Why didn’t you say that to start with?” Akstyr squinted at Sespian. “You sure you aren’t Books’s kid?”
“ I’m not sure of anything any more.”
“ I’m sure you’d have more job opportunities than you think if you decide to get out of government.” Amaranthe grinned.
Without commenting on the exchange, Sicarius pulled the key through the grate and slipped it into the lock. It clicked open. Everyone held his breath, but no booby traps sprang. Sicarius opened the grate and Akstyr, despite his earlier disinterest in leading, was the first to flatten to his belly and stick his head through.
Amaranthe caught Sespian watching Sicarius with his mouth parted in surprise. Remembering his comments about Sicarius being nothing more than a brutal murderer, she hoped he’d rethink the assessment. She recalled her own early meetings with Sicarius and how she’d also been surprised to learn he’d been educated in far more areas than fighting and killing. She’d been intrigued. Maybe Sespian would share a modicum of that interest.
Akstyr lifted his head and propped himself up on his elbows. “I don’t know what they do, but there’s power in them for sure. They’re long and skinny and remind me of fireworks from the solstice fests, but they’re not solid. There’s glass or something like glass with a yellow gunk inside. There are little clear blocks floating in the gunk.”
“ Clear blocks?” Sicarius asked sharply.
“ Uh huh. Small ones. I think there’s something in them.”
Sicarius took Akstyr’s spot and lowered his head. Sicarius’s sharp tone concerned Amaranthe-when did he ever let emotion seep into his voice? — and she nibbled on a fingernail. It usually wouldn’t take him more than a heartbeat or two to absorb all the sights visible from the grate, but he lay there unmoving for many seconds.
Amaranthe’s patience-and fingernail-ran out. She dropped to her belly beside him, bumping his shoulder in an effort to make room for herself. She lowered her head and peered around a dangling thatch of short blond hair to see a pyramid of long, glowing yellow tubes. Rope woven through the stack tied them to each other, and cloth padding ensured they wouldn’t shift about with the bumps and sways of the steamboat. After the dim lighting of the hold above, the artifacts’ illumination made Amaranthe squint, but her eyes soon adjusted, and she spotted the clear blocks Akstyr had mentioned. Perhaps one-inch wide, they were suspended in the yellow substance like raisins and nuts in the sweet carrot gelatin salad at Curi’s Bakery. She couldn’t tell if any letters or symbols marked the cubes.
“ Get back,” Sicarius whispered and pulled his head out.
As soon as Amaranthe cleared the grate, he lowered it into place with a firm clang. He twisted the key in the lock, considered it for a moment, then tucked it into his pocket. He waved the others back and pulled a crate over the grate.
“ That bad, huh?” Amaranthe had assumed they were dealing with human-made artifacts-Akstyr sensed them after all-but perhaps those cubes came from elsewhere. Her gaze dropped to the knife always sheathed at Sicarius’s waist. So far all of the ancient technology they’d encountered had been black. Was this some exception?
Sicarius crouched, his forearms balanced on his thighs. “I have seen those cubes before.”
“ On your mission up north?” Amaranthe asked.
“ Yes.”
“ What do they do?” Sespian asked.
“ The ones I saw were sprayed via a rocket detonating in the air above Fort Deadend. When the cubes broke open, the substance inside killed everyone within a ten mile radius.”
“ Rockets.” Akstyr snapped his fingers. “Yes, that makes sense. The energy I sensed comes mostly from the base. It must be stored somehow to propel the tubes into the air.”
Nobody looked at him.
“ Killed?” Sespian hadn’t taken his gaze from Sicarius. “How?”
“ I came upon the bodies after it’d happened. Some airborne inhalant, I assume. The effects on the people within range were grisly.”
Amaranthe couldn’t imagine how badly mauled a body would have to be for someone as desensitized to death as Sicarius to feel compelled to use such a word.
“ And those weapons are going to the capital?” Sespian asked. “I can’t allow-I mean, even if I’m not… We can’t allow something like that to be used.”
“ I can’t believe Forge would bring something like that into the city,” Amaranthe said. “A ten-mile radius? So, twenty miles in diameter? That’d devastate the majority of Stumps.”
“ A million people,” Sespian breathed.
“ Maybe they only mean to use the weapons as a threat,” Amaranthe said. “A bluff. They’d be in danger, too, if they set them off.”
“ Not if they’re flying around in their big black aircraft,” Akstyr said.
“ True.” Whatever armor the Behemoth possessed, it’d probably protect those within from any number of attacks. “Still, what would they gain from killing everyone in the city?” Amaranthe asked. “They’re business people, and those are customers.”
“ They may not know precisely what they have,” Sicarius said.
“ Well, isn’t that comforting?” Sespian gripped the edge of a nearby crate. “They’ll kill everybody by accident.”
Amaranthe found herself nodding. “Not comforting, but maybe correct. I got the impression that the girl who was doing the translating of how to work the Behemoth was learning as she went.”
“ What are we going to do about this?” Sespian asked. The lost-puppy look that had haunted his eyes for days had faded, replaced by determination.
“ Get off the boat?” Akstyr suggested.
Sespian glared at him.
“ What? Nobody else is disturbed by the fact that we’re standing on top of something that can kill us instantly?” Akstyr’s voice had grown squeaky.
“ Technically, we’re crouching on them, not standing,” Amaranthe said, hoping a little levity would relax Akstyr.
He glowered at her. “I say we grab our stuff and get off the boat before it gets to Stumps. A good ten miles before it gets there.”
Amaranthe wondered if he was thinking of escaping to the Kyatt Islands again. With his mother and her bounty-hunting cronies waiting in Stumps, he had little incentive to return to the capital anyway. This was one more reason for him to abandon the team and head west. But she needed him for what lay ahead. She needed all of them.
“ Wouldn’t it be better to destroy the weapons?” Amaranthe suggested. “If we left and they were removed from this boat, we’d be forever wondering who had them and if they might be used against the city. Any city. Perhaps Forge doesn’t intend to drop them on the capital, but means to use them against other nations, nations who we’ve warred with in the past. If Ravido could suddenly wipe out the Nurians, or bring the Kyatt Islands under imperial rule-” she gave Akstyr a frank stare, hoping he’d realize he might not be safe even there, “-the people would throw their support behind him. There’d be no fighting. He’d simply be given the throne.”
Sespian released the crate he’d been gripping only to sink against it for support. “I hadn’t thought of that, but
