street, frowning in her and Maldynado’s direction. “Someone may have noticed our mad sprint through town and found it suspicious.”
“ Let’s take a walk then, shall we?” Maldynado bowed, then strode down the dock.
Evrial hurried after him. They reached the head of the dock before the enforcers and turned north, toward a handful of factories and warehouses.
“ Are they following us?” Maldynado murmured.
Evrial risked a glance. “They stopped at the second dock. They’re discussing something.”
“ Us?”
“ They did look this way.” She glanced again. “No, we’re fine. They turned down the dock, probably to check their boats.”
“ If anything is locked, they’ll have the keys. This might be a good time to proposition them about borrowing one of their lovely conveyances.”
Evrial grabbed Maldynado’s arm and tugged him into a weed-choked alley between a warehouse and a factory. “We’re not beating up any enforcers. Any more enforcers anyway.” She leaned against a cedar-shingled wall and pushed a hand through her hair. “A few weeks ago, I was an enforcer. I can’t believe I’m now getting in fights with them and… contemplating stealing a fifty-thousand-ranmya boat. Do you have any idea how much trouble those two would be in if they lost a boat on their watch? You can’t exactly deduct that from an enforcer’s pay. We don’t make that much in two years.” Aware that her words were coming out rapidly, and with a hysterical edge, she forced herself to take a deep breath.
“ Listen, Evrial.” Maldynado leaned against the wall opposite of hers. “If you don’t want to help, that’s fine, but I need to get back on that steamboat. It’s not just about the magical whatchamacallits. Those enforcers knew about Akstyr and they knew about me, so that means they know the rest of the team is on board too. They’ll be looking for them. And it’s at least partially my fault.”
“ Lokdon has Sicarius. They’ll be fine. We can walk or catch a train and meet up with them in Stumps.”
“ Maybe,” Maldynado said, “but what if it’s not in time to keep the whatever-they-ares from slipping away into the city where they can be used against the emperor-er, us?”
Evrial jabbed a finger toward his chest. “ You don’t even know who you’re backing, and you expect me to go along with your people, just because?” Evrial pinned Maldynado with her exasperated glare. None of this was his fault, but he was the only one there to yell at.
“ I don’t know because I haven’t talked with Books, as I prefer to avoid his lengthy babbles about history and politics and such. But I trust Amaranthe. I’m sure she’s got a scheme all worked out that’s for the good of the empire. You need to talk to Books though, to figure out if you’re staying with us. I know, I get that.”
“ It’s hard to talk to people who are heading upriver while you’re stuck in a trash-littered alley that stinks of… what is that smell?”
“ Tobacco.” Maldynado pointed to the brick wall above Evrial’s head. In red paint, letters over a side door spelled Darkencrest Cigars: Deliveries. He peeked inside a dusty window. “Looks like the workers are off today, though I see a cart of cleaning supplies, so there might be one fellow about. Maybe we can convince him to take a break while we set up a diversion in here, something that would draw the enforcers over to investigate. Then we can sneak out the back and invite ourselves onto one of their boats. Yes, I could see Amaranthe approving of that plan.”
“ We’re not blowing up a factory,” Evrial said.
Maldynado tilted his head. “Who said anything about explosions?”
“ When Lokdon and I were stuck in that cabin together, she used cleaning supplies to blow a door off its hinges. I assumed it was a team tendency.”
“ Nah, I wouldn’t know how to do that. I’m surprised the boss did. Knowing about chemicals and useless trivia is more of a Booksie trait.” Maldynado tried the door, found it unlocked, and eased it open. He stuck his head inside. “The janitor may have taken a break anyway. I don’t see anyone.”
Evrial didn’t move. She was still balking at the idea of stealing an enforcer boat, though she had to admit, she was beginning to see how Amaranthe had ended up with a bounty on her head. One decision to pursue justice outside of the realm of the law, and getting back on the righteous railway could become a daunting feat. “What sort of diversion do you have in mind?”
“ Nothing major,” Maldynado said, poised on the threshold. “There’s certainly no reason to blow up a building. A small fire should suffice.”
“ Maldynado!”
“ What?” He smiled innocently. “Let’s look around and see what inspirations come to us.” He disappeared into the dim interior.
Evrial groaned. When she followed him into the building, she had a feeling she’d regret it, but someone had to keep him from burning down the town.
Amaranthe’s legs and back ached from crouching in the darkness for so long. She wanted to sit down, but didn’t dare. Every few minutes, the enforcers made another attempt to gain entrance. Blood spattered the floorboards in front of the trapdoor. Sicarius hadn’t killed anyone, but he’d injured enough enforcers to deter them from barreling inside. Amaranthe had made attempts at negotiating, but it seemed men who’d just carried out dead comrades weren’t in the right state of mind to consider the words of outlaws. Despite her efforts at informing them otherwise, the enforcers were determined to believe that Sicarius had killed their comrades and had sought the magical devices all along, for his own nefarious uses.
The scent of smoke wafted to her nose. Since Sicarius had thrown a knife, pinning an enforcer’s shoulder to the nearby wall, the men had been careful to stay out of sight, but Amaranthe guessed at least fifteen were out there, plotting his demise. And hers too, since she was crouching in the darkness next to him.
“ It was so nice of the captain to pick up all these reinforcements along with sugar, rice, and persimmons,” Amaranthe muttered. She wondered if the cement had made it on board, and her men for that matter. The vibrations of the paddlewheel hummed through the boat, and she suspected Port Medar had long passed out of view.
“ They’re going to try and smoke us out again,” Sicarius said. “Be ready.”
No hint of worry crept into his voice. Not the way it did when dealing with the ancient technology. Amaranthe wished she could view the enforcers as calmly. Though he might be the superior warrior, they could win through sheer numbers.
“ Ready.” She waved a short sword she’d taken from their prisoners’ gear pile, though in the darkness, Sicarius probably couldn’t see the gesture.
“ It may be a distraction,” he added.
“ I wish Books and the others would show up with a distraction of their own,” Amaranthe said, though she hated that she’d put herself and Sicarius into a situation where they needed rescuing. Oh, Sicarius could probably escape, even if it meant dodging a dozen crossbow quarrels from enforcers poised around the dining hall, and she might be able to slip out in the wake of his destruction, but what then? They’d be unlikely to find a hiding place on the boat, so they’d have to dive overboard, leaving the rockets. Either the enforcers would break them out of ignorance or the artifacts would continue upriver to those who had ordered them for their own nefarious purposes. Neither alternative appealed.
“ Is it questionable that I’m considering sinking the steamboat as our only option?” Amaranthe said.
“ Yes,” Sicarius said.
“ Would you like to recommend a better option?”
“ Escape overboard. We can run upriver ahead of the boat and steal the weapons when the crew is less prepared.”
He might be able to manage that. Amaranthe questioned her own ability to outrun the boat-perhaps during the day she could, but she’d have to sleep, while the tireless steam-powered paddlewheel would keep churning all night. And what of the rest of the team? “You’d go without the others? Without Sespian?”
Sicarius hesitated. “They’d realize where we’d gone and follow our example.”
Movement stirred near the curtain. Something glinted. A can arched toward the trapdoor opening, smoke streaming from a fuse. Sicarius’s knife arm shot out. His blade deflected the projectile, knocking it aside before it crossed through the opening. Crossbows twanged, but he whipped his arm back out of sight before the bolts
