Books kicked him in the shin. “ Sire.”
“ Sire. I was lucky I was actually shoveling instead of working on-” Akstyr glanced toward the spot where the dancing makarovi had been, “-things.”
“Things?” Maldynado asked. “I think the emperor has figured out your secret occupation by now. Him and fifty other witnesses now practicing their swimming skills.”
Akstyr grimaced, perhaps remembering that there was a gang with a bounty on his head.
“If we force everyone to… disembark,” Sespian asked Books, “do you think we can pilot and power the steamboat with this small team?”
Books rubbed his own jaw-it had no trouble sprouting hair, and he was already bristly enough to scrub dishes with his face. “Two on stoker duty, one or two people in the engine room, and one at navigation. That leaves one person free to guard prisoners, should we find any we wish to take.”
“Such as Brynia?” Maldynado asked, noting that she was nowhere around. If the team didn’t have her, it wouldn’t matter that they controlled the steamboat, because they wouldn’t know where to take it.
Books winced. Had he been the one to let her escape? “Yes.”
“Your duty roster doesn’t factor in time for sleep,” Sespian said.
Books spread his arms. “It’s a luxury we don’t always receive.”
“Very well. Let’s get rid of any lingering opposition and see what we can do.” Sespian looked at each of them. “Does anyone have experience piloting a steamboat?”
Nobody raised a hand.
“I had a wind-up steamboat as a child,” Maldynado said. “I could get it racing around the bathtub without clunking against the walls more than once or twice a lap.”
That earned him a number of unimpressed stares.
“It was a joke,” Maldynado said.
Books lifted a finger. “Whoever you decide on to navigate, Sire, I heartily suggest that Maldynado be placed on stoker duty.”
“Understood,” Sespian said.
“You crash one dirigible… ” Maldynado muttered as the team dispersed.
Before Basilard walked away, he signed, Your butt.
What? Maldynado checked his backside, thinking he’d sat in something.
That’s what she looks at when you’re not facing her.
“Ah!” I knew she looked. So, Yara wasn’t a chest-and-biceps gal. She liked tight buns. Maldynado was on the verge of plotting a way to display those buns more fully for her, when Basilard signed again.
Miraculous that she bothers, considering your spelunking comment.
Basilard walked away before Maldynado could do more than groan and wonder if everyone had heard his earlier exchange with Yara.
Chapter 13
It was hard to hide from a swamp full of soldiers when one’s stomach was growling louder than a busy sawmill blade. Weariness dragged at Amaranthe’s battered body, and each step irritated the cut and bruised bottoms of her feet. Though she’d obtained a knife and a rifle, fate hadn’t been kindly enough to favor her with a chance to acquire boots or clothing. Everything from her feet to the bullet gash at her temple ached, and she wanted to crawl into a dark hole, curl up on her side, and hide until the pain went away.
She had lost track of how many times she’d evaded her hunters by inches, slipping beneath a pond full of lilies or scrambling between shrubs just before men passed. Luck wouldn’t favor her forever. Even now, they were herding her. She’d long since lost track of the trail and, not twenty minutes earlier, she’d glimpsed the massive dome of the Behemoth in the distance. She’d made no progress and was no better off than she’d been when she started out. Her earlier notion that she might, Sicarius-style, take down each soldier in the swamp one at a time seemed foolish now. After the first man had disappeared, the others had started searching in pairs. She’d thought of sniping from the treetops, but the alligator had stolen her soldier before she could search him for ammo, so she only had a few bullets.
For the fiftieth time, Amaranthe glanced toward the canopy, wondering if darkness would ever come and if she’d have more luck slipping through their net at night.
She stepped around a cypress tree and almost landed on a dead soldier lying face-down in the mud.
Stupefied by her weariness, Amaranthe could only stare at it for a puzzled moment. Another alligator, she thought, but wouldn’t an animal have dragged the man away to eat?
She shook away the cobwebs lacing her mind. She put her back to the tree and lifted her rifle as she scanned her surroundings. This might be a trap. Maybe the man wasn’t even dead; maybe he was a diversion while someone else crept up on her.
Nothing stirred the foliage around her, not even a breeze. Only mosquitoes buzzed about, flying through the humid air and giving Amaranthe another reason to wish she weren’t naked. She eyed the worn shirt and trousers on the still form at her feet. He didn’t seem to be breathing; if he was playing dead, he was doing a convincing job of it.
She propped her rifle against the tree, gripped the man’s arm and leg, and tugged him onto his back. Her breath caught. His throat had been slit.
Sicarius? No, she wanted to believe that, but he couldn’t have come so far in… She’d lost track of the days. Five? Seven? More? Even if he could have made it, how would he have found her in this place? Maybe she had some other ally out there. Whatever the case, she couldn’t stay in one area to contemplate it.
Knife in one hand, rifle in the other, Amaranthe stood up, ready to slip into the vegetation again. A dark figure stepped out of the brush ahead of her.
Pike. That was her first thought, but her visitor’s hair was blond, not white, its arrangement more tousled than usual, littered with cypress needles and moss tufts. The start of a scruffy beard covered his jaw, and his face seemed leaner than she remembered. Road grime coated black clothing plagued with holes and tears. Worn and dusty, his soft boots had little sole left to them. His garments hung more loosely than usual, and she imagined that he’d jogged all the way with little in the way of food and water. Looking for her.
A lump tightened Amaranthe’s throat, and tears welled in her eyes. She tamped down an urge to leap across the intervening meters and fling her arms about him. What if it was a trick, something else her enemies could do with that ancient technology, something designed to tease her from hiding?
Sicarius did not move except to look her up and down, his eyes full of concern and… pity. In that second, Amaranthe knew it wasn’t a trick. Pike and the Forge people never would have put emotion on his face. Indeed, she must look awful to have elicited it. For the first time, in the presence of someone who mattered, she felt self- conscious about roaming the wilderness stark naked except for a weapon in each hand.
“ Oh,” Amaranthe said, “are you supposed to wear clothing for skirmishes in an alligator-filled swamp?”
She barely managed to get the words out. Emotion, something bordering on hysteria, threatened to bubble out of her. She was tired of holding herself together.
When Sicarius lifted an inviting arm and said, “They are optional,” she nearly tumbled into his embrace.
Despite his worn appearance, the arms he wrapped around her were strong, and his body offered the solid dependability of a boulder. Or a steel slab. She wanted to bury her head against his chest and let him worry about Pike and the others. But the memory of her failure arose in her thoughts, bringing forth the tears that had only threatened before. She’d have to tell him, and as soon as she did…
Maybe Sicarius already sensed that she’d failed him in some way, for his body grew rigid beneath her arms, and tension radiated from him. More than tension. Anger.
Amaranthe wiped her eyes and stepped back. She searched his face, trying to guess what he knew.
“Thank you for coming,” Amaranthe said carefully. It occurred to her that his being here instead of with the team might mean that Sespian hadn’t made it. Maybe rage, and a desire to avenge his son’s death, had driven Sicarius down here as much as a need to find her. “Is Sespian… Did he survive the crash?”
“Yes.”
