“She was my little sister,” Maldynado said.
The base of the bridge had come into view, and he quickened his step, leaving Yara to trail behind. He’d shared as much as he cared to that day.
Amaranthe had expected a spacious cell, given the monstrous size of the aircraft-in her head, she had started calling it the Behemoth. Something stark, bleak, and black certainly, but roomy. Instead, Pike and his guards had taken her to an empty room with nothing but a surgeon’s operating table in the center and a bronze-and-iron crate on the floor, the sort of thing one might stick a dog in for traveling. A small dog.
Without anything so friendly as a, “Welcome to your new home” or “Step in please, ma’am,” the guards had forced Amaranthe into the crate, their strength and numbers defeating her attempts to fight the entombing. The inside lacked windows, grates, or even pinholes for light. What if she ran out of air? Her body tensed at the thought. In the cramped blackness, with her knees to her chest and her back, shoulders, and feet smashed against the walls, she couldn’t do anything to release that tension, that fear. Relax, she ordered herself, and inhaled deep breaths, trying to find calm. It worked-sort of-but she found a new emotion too: disgust. The scent of lye soap clinging to the interior failed to hide the underlying odor of urine and feces. Pike must not be the sort to let his captives out for latrine breaks.
With no room to turn around or switch positions, Amaranthe almost dislocated a few joints when she probed the door and seams to search for weaknesses. A few minutes convinced her that there were none. There wasn’t any noise either. If anyone remained in the room outside her crate, she couldn’t hear signs of it.
After exploring her prison, there was little to do but sit and think. Especially about what would happen on that operating table. To distract herself, Amaranthe made a list of things she wanted to ask Pike. Perhaps it was overly optimistic, but she figured as long as she was in the enemy stronghold, she ought to gather what intelligence she could. And keep the conversation away from Sicarius.
The idea of betraying him worried her as much as thoughts of Pike and that table. It had happened before, when that shaman, Tarok, had used the Science to delve into her mind. She’d been powerless to stop him. Sicarius had killed Tarok before he could spread any secrets, but Sicarius wasn’t here. If the information escaped through her lips, there’d be no one to silence Pike.
She dropped her chin onto her chest. In the first few months she’d known Sicarius, before they’d developed a… friendship-yes, she felt confident in calling it that-Amaranthe had wondered if he might ponder the benefits of her death. With his dearest secret in her head, she represented a threat to him. Anyone who learned that Sespian was his son could use Sespian to strike at him. After a lifetime as an assassin, Sicarius had a long list of enemies who’d like to do just that. Amaranthe also represented a threat to the stability of the empire, or at least Sespian’s right to rule. Sicarius had to have thought of that from time to time, that if he got rid of her, this very scenario could never play out. But he hadn’t, and here she was. She could not betray him.
When hours passed and nobody came to question her, Amaranthe drifted back to less useful thoughts, like what would happen on that table. Logically, she knew she had to keep her mind busy lest self-pity, defeat, and fear start to gnaw at her, and she knew also that being stuffed in that tiny crate was meant as some marinade to tenderize the meat before roasting it. But the discomfort of growing thirst, hunger, and muscle cramps from being unable to shift positions intruded upon her thoughts, making it difficult to send her mind elsewhere. Most of all, she noticed the silence, the utter lack of anyone with whom to talk. Sicarius would probably find the solitude restful, but Amaranthe liked being around people. A few days with no one to talk to and she’d be in the right state of mind to babble every secret to Pike.
“Easy, girl,” Amaranthe whispered. “Don’t let him break you before he’s so much as plucked an arm hair out.”
A soft clank sounded, the first noise to penetrate the metal walls of her crate. Someone had entered the room. Amaranthe wished she could maneuver her feet beneath her, to prepare to spring out and attack-or flee-if she saw the opportunity, but the tight space denied that much movement. Several moments passed, and nobody opened her door. Ear pressed to the wall of her prison, she listened for voices or footfalls. Maybe there were people out there, but the crate possessed a sound-dampening quality that kept her from hearing them.
When the door swung open, Amaranthe spilled out. Light blinded her, and she squinted her eyes shut. Her legs were numb after being locked in one position for so long, and she couldn’t feel her feet, much less get them beneath her. Several hands grabbed her and hoisted her from the floor. No, not hands. Something harder, colder.
Amaranthe forced her eyes open and urged them to adjust to light as harsh and as brilliant as the sun. It emanated from all directions, the walls, the ceiling, and even the floor, though there were no lanterns or obvious sources.
Whatever held her was moving her through the air. It halted with a jolt.
“No, not that one, that one. Yes.” Odd. It was a woman’s voice.
Amaranthe’s eyes finally adjusted to the light. She hung horizontally in the air, face toward the ceiling. The first things she made out were six black bars, or maybe arms, around her. They articulated and had six-pronged pincers at the ends, pincers that gripped her as effectively as human hands. She tried to squirm out of their grasp and decided they were more effective than human hands. The arms were attached to a vertical bar that attached to a blocky device-some machine, she supposed-mounted on the ceiling. The claw-like device carried her away from the crate and swung her toward the operating table. It appeared depressingly secure with a sturdy metal body and legs somehow sunken into the floor.
The gripping machine slid her onto the table, almost. She wasn’t high enough, and her head clunked against the edge.
“Oops,” came the woman’s voice again, followed by a few words in another language. Curses, Amaranthe would guess. She tried to see the speaker, but the claw blocked her view. It bumped her against the table again before rising a couple of inches and laying her flat on her back.
“So this is how it’s to go?” Amaranthe asked. “I’m to be beaten against things with strange alien technology until I talk?”
“It’s generally not a good sign when the prisoners are mocking you,” came Pike’s voice from somewhere behind Amaranthe’s head. The dry amusement in his tone surprised her. He hadn’t struck her as someone human enough to have a sense of humor.
“I’m sure you’ll put an end to that shortly,” came a new female voice. “The girl needs practice with the equipment. It took too long to shoot down that dirigible.”
Amaranthe’s mouth sagged open. The voice was familiar. Her thoughts flashed back to her school days. One of… her teachers? Yes, that sounded like-
“I translated everything in the navigation chamber, Ms. Worgavic,” the owner of the first voice said, “but even a year of study couldn’t prepare me to understand and operate the Ortarh Ortak fully.”
“Ms. Worgavic?” Amaranthe twisted her neck, trying again to see the speakers.
Ms. Worgavic had taught economics at the private business school Amaranthe had attended as a girl. It shouldn’t be a shock that one of her old teachers had been drawn in by Forge-Larocka Myll had been providing scholarships for the school, after all-but Ms. Worgavic? She’d liked Ms. Worgavic. She still quoted the woman on occasion.
The claw pincers held Amaranthe fast, keeping her from seeing much, but the two female speakers walked over to stand beside the table. Yes, that was definitely Ms. Worgavic, a short, buxom woman with a few strands of gray in wavy black hair pulled back from her face with a clip. Dressed in a long wool skirt and short jacket that accentuated but didn’t flaunt her curves, she was the epitome of professionalism, or so Amaranthe had always thought. Her teacher had changed little in the last ten years, though the spectacles perched on her nose were a new addition.
It took Amaranthe longer to identify the younger woman. She was even shorter than Ms. Worgavic and more chubby than curvy beneath her wrinkled clothing. A pencil perched above one ear, and, beneath it, a gold chain clipped to her collar held a monocle with a thick magnifying lens. She clutched a couple of books and had a finger stuck in one, acting as a bookmark. She was about Amaranthe’s age, no, a year younger. That was right. She’d been in the class behind Amaranthe. Retta Curlev. That was it. A frumpy girl, who’d avoided eye contact with everyone, read constantly in class, and been teased often. Amaranthe might not have remembered her at all, except that Retta had an older sister who’d been a legend at school, holding all of the academic records, and
