He never did.”
Amaranthe groaned. Retta knew. Cursed ancestors, the last however many days of resisting Pike-all that suffering beneath his knife-had been for nothing. Retta knew, and soon all of Forge would know.
Amaranthe’s vision blurred as tears formed. A click sounded, and Retta stepped back from the table. She started toward the door, but paused, then turned back. She grabbed the map, unfolded it, and held it above Amaranthe’s eyes.
“I better not leave any evidence that I helped you,” Retta said. “Can you memorize this quickly? I seem to remember you were bright and got good grades.”
Amaranthe barely heard her. She had the presence of mind to stare at the map, but her thoughts were a jumble, and she wasn’t sure how much she would remember. She’d failed. All she could think about was how Sicarius would react when he found out.
Maldynado and Yara crouched in the darkness on one of the two long, cylindrical boilers filling the space. From their perch, they could see two doors, one leading to engineering and the other out to the deck. They could also jump on anyone who came inside. The black knife lay on the engine room floor, with Basilard, Books, and Sespian hiding in the shadows provided by the towering machinery. The plan was for Maldynado and Yara to wait for Mari’s bodyguards-or whomever she sent-to pass, then drop down behind them. Basilard and the others would spring the trap first. Akstyr remained by the furnace, grumbling softly about being stuck shoveling coal. If something went wrong, and muscle and fists weren’t enough, he and his Science skills were on backup duty.
Maldynado shifted his weight, careful not to crack his head on the metal ceiling beam between him and Yara. They only had a few feet of clearance above the boiler. Laughter floated down from the dining hall on the deck above. He wondered how many crew and passengers the Glacial Empress claimed.
“If they don’t come tonight, we’re going to be in trouble,” Yara said. “An officer will be down in the morning to relieve the night-shift engineer, the night-shift engineer you thumped and dumped into the river.”
“I know,” Maldynado said. He hadn’t wanted to thump and dump anyone else, but with the engine room adjacent to the boiler room, it hadn’t been particularly surprising that the officer in charge had stumbled across the team making plans for their ambush.
“Covering one of your people in soot isn’t going to make him pass as an officer,” Yara said.
“I know that too.”
They ought to have until morning to figure that aspect out. With Akstyr shoveling and Books keeping an eye on the engines, nobody from navigation should find anything amiss until that shift change.
Maldynado adjusted his crouch again. “I hope Mari sends her people soon. My thighs are burning.” As soon as the admission slipped out, he wished it hadn’t. Yara would accuse him of whining.
All she said was, “I’d laugh if we’d set this all up and they were up there sleeping.”
“You do that?” Maldynado asked.
“What?”
“Laugh. I haven’t heard it.”
The shadows hid her scowl, but Maldynado knew it was there.
“That’s because you’re not as funny as you think you are,” Yara said.
“I haven’t seen you laugh at anyone else’s jokes either.”
“I haven’t heard many jokes.”
“Ah, that’s right,” Maldynado said, “you can’t understand Basilard. He’s hi- lar — i-ous.”
Yara didn’t respond. Maldynado wondered if he’d stunned her to silence or she merely thought the notion ridiculous.
“Really?” Yara finally asked. “He seems glum.”
“He is, but he has his moments. He’s had a rough past. His people are pacifists, but he was captured, made into a slave, and forced to kill to survive pit-fighting bouts.” Maldynado shifted his weight again, trying to find a more comfortable spot on the boiler. He was tempted to straddle the thing, but that’d be a poor position from which to launch an attack. Also, given how much warmth seeped from the metal, he might scorch something important. “All the boys have tough pasts,” Maldynado continued, thinking Yara might be more sympathetic to everyone if she knew that misfortune, rather than a puerile urge to irk enforcers, had led them to the outlaw lifestyle. “Books watched his son get killed by Hollowcrest’s men. Akstyr grew up on the streets. Sicarius, I don’t think, knows what to do with himself now that he’s not Emperor Raumesys’s personal assassin.”
Yara stirred, and Maldynado wondered if that last tidbit was news to her. Sicarius probably wouldn’t appreciate him chitchatting about his personal history, but he wasn’t there, so too bad.
“I think,” Maldynado said, “everyone’s hoping that, in helping the emperor, they can rise above their pasts and make a difference in the world. Amaranthe makes a man want to do that.”
“You, too?”
“Nah, I just lost a bet.”
Yara snorted. It almost sounded like a laugh.
Yara stretched her legs out for a moment. Hah, her thighs must be burning too. “Your family sounds awful.”
“Uhm,” Maldynado said, surprised that she’d bring it up. “I guess.”
“My brothers always teased me growing up, and I had to learn to be tough, but I knew they cared for me. Mevlar might have gotten me in trouble after your employer and assassin showed up on my father’s doorstep, but only because he thought he was saving the family from dishonor. And because he’s being a whiny loser over the fact that I was promoted first.”
Maldynado smiled, both because she was opening up and because he now knew why whining might not sit well with her. He grunted to let her know he was listening. Women always seemed to appreciate that.
“But that’s how you expect siblings to be,” Yara went on. “You don’t expect them to send their wives to throw you to the mechanical alligators.”
“To be fair to Ravido, I don’t think he was thinking of me at all when he sent, or let Mari go downstream. She saw the opportunity to turn me into alligator fodder of her own volition. Maybe she thought it’d make a nice anniversary present in case the throne-usurping gig didn’t work out.”
“I never thought I’d feel sympathy for some warrior-caste dandy, but it must be hard knowing your family wants you dead, even your parents.”
For a long moment, Maldynado didn’t say anything. He had to run her words through his head a few times, because he couldn’t believe Yara had implied she felt sympathy for him. Though a few teasing replies came to mind, he thought she might appreciate a serious response. Something about the shadows made it feel safer to be serious. Still, he lowered his voice to make sure the others wouldn’t hear from the next room. “They have a reason.”
“What happened with your sister?”
Maldynado poked at the riveting on the boiler seam. “I have seven older brothers. My parents kept trying because Mother wanted a girl. Finally, three years after I was born, she had Tia. She was forty and knew it’d be her last child. Somehow, as second youngest, I always got put on babysitting duty while my parents were at their parties and military functions. Mostly, I loved being the big brother and watching out for Tia, not that she needed a guardian. She was real sweet, and everyone loved her. She was good at charming folks, a lot like Amaranthe, and she usually got what she wanted. Like to tag along with me. She-” Maldynado’s throat had grown tight, and he paused to clear it. “She always wanted to do what I was doing and to go where I wanted to go. Mother said she could so long as I kept an eye on her. Tia was my responsibility, she’d say. By the time I was twelve… Well, I was as dumb as any kid that age and didn’t want my little sister hanging around. There was a lot of teasing from the other boys and even my older brothers. Looking back now… it’s stupid that I let that bother me, but one summer, when it was hotter than a smelter, we went to the river to swim. We had a great spot with rope swings and platforms to jump off, a whole obstacle course of stuff to play on. Anyway, that day there’d been a storm up in the mountains, and the water was rough and high. I told Tia to stay on the bank and play there. I wasn’t watching her though. I was in the water with the boys. I never saw her go in. She was just there, and then the next time I looked, she was gone.”
Maldynado blinked and forced himself to focus on the shadowy boiler room and the doors he was supposed to be watching. While he’d been speaking, he’d been back there by the river, playing with his peers. Baking his bare shoulders under the summer sun. Jumping in the cold water to cool off and avoid mosquitos. How vividly he
