Relief washed over Amaranthe. “Thank his ancestors.”
No similar relief expressed itself on Sicarius’s face. He looked her over again, more slowly this time, as if he were memorizing every detail. “Stay here. Hide. I will find Pike.”
His words were short and clipped. His anger, Amaranthe realized, wasn’t directed at her. He was furious with Pike on her behalf.
“Sicarius, I… have to tell you something.”
“Later.” Face hard and grim, Sicarius looked like a man with murder on his mind.
Amaranthe had no argument for sparing Pike, but the rest of his men might not deserve the wrath of a deadly assassin. “Without the head, the wolf will die,” she blurted after him.
Sicarius disappeared into the brush without a comment or backward glance.
“Hide,” Amaranthe mumbled to herself.
It seemed like good advice, but she didn’t think she could bring herself to cower under a tree while Sicarius faced Pike. The emperor’s old master interrogator hadn’t moved with Sicarius’s sinewy grace, but who knew if he had more of that superior technology with him, ready to use in an emergency? At the least, he had a weapon capable of firing numerous shots without being reloaded, and he wouldn’t be alone.
Amaranthe eyed the rifle she’d taken from the dead soldier. It had five shots remaining. Maybe if she climbed a high tree, she could see out over the swamp and watch the confrontation. If Pike gave Sicarius a hard time, she could shoot the bastard.
“For once, I’ll have your back, Sicarius.”
Nodding to herself, Amaranthe headed for a cypress with the girth of a small house. A thorn gouged her thigh. Reminded of her vulnerability, she went back to the dead soldier to remove his clothes. She tucked the knife into a belt sheath, and, a couple of moments later, started up the tree, this time wearing green and gray clothes with the cuffs rolled up. The boots she left at the base of the trunk for later. A number of sizes too large, they would only hinder her on the climb.
Normally, scaling the tree wouldn’t have winded her. Now… her muscles quivered before she’d risen five feet. Amaranthe continued up doggedly, digging her fingers into the furrowed bark, and pulling herself from branch to branch with the rifle slung across her back on a strap. If Sicarius had traveled hundreds of miles to help her, she’d darn well figure out a way to climb a tree for him.
Amaranthe kept an eye out below as she pulled herself higher, aware that the foliage wasn’t as dense as that of the firs and cedars up north. The surrounding trees and leaves should make it hard for anyone to see her from below, but Sicarius would think her an idiot-rightfully so-if she’d survived all she had only to be shot by someone glancing upward.
The thought gnawed at her mind, and Amaranthe was on the verge of climbing down when something moved on the other side of a muddy inlet. A pair of people were hunting in a field of waist-high grass and cattails. One man gazed out at the water while the other bent to check the earth. The one looking at the water wore black; it wasn’t Sicarius this time.
Rage filled Amaranthe as she glowered at Pike. She could argue for sparing the men working for him, but, after what he’d done to her-and to Sicarius all those years ago-she wanted him dead. Not just for her sake, but for the good of the empire. Such a man shouldn’t be allowed into a position of power again, a position that would let him continue to torture people.
Amaranthe eased out onto a thick branch and lay belly-down along it. Once horizontal, she eased the rifle off her back, moving slowly so she wouldn’t stir the leaves. The two men were conversing and looking in the other direction now, but two more had walked into view on the far side of that field.
Amaranthe tucked the stock of the rifle into her shoulder and lined up her sights, targeting Pike’s back. Had she still been alone, she would have fired, but, knowing Sicarius was out there, she hesitated with her finger on the trigger. If she missed, Pike would be extra alert. And missing was a possibility, not necessarily because of the distance, but because her hands had started to sweat, and her heart seemed to be thundering with enough force to send tremors through the branch beneath her.
One of the men on the far side of the field disappeared from view. It happened so quickly that Amaranthe hadn’t the reason for it. One second he was there, the next gone. His partner, walking a couple of paces ahead and hacking at tall grass with a machete, hadn’t yet noticed.
Sicarius at work, Amaranthe presumed. She eased her finger away from the trigger. She’d let him handle the situation and only back him up if he needed it. Maybe it was small and weak of her to let someone else take out-no, not take out, kill — Pike for her, but Sicarius might relish the opportunity to get rid of a man who’d tormented him throughout his youth. He’d suffered more at Pike’s hands than she had.
The second man on the far side turned around and called out his partner’s name. Pike and his comrade heard.
“You see her?” Pike asked.
“No. I lost Bronc.”
Before Pike and his partner had taken more than a step in that direction, something grabbed the lone man’s leg and pulled him down. His head disappeared beneath the grass.
Pike and his comrade broke into a sprint. They reached the spot in seconds, but, from the way they turned in circles, it was clear they didn’t see Sicarius or their missing man. Pike frowned at the earth and knelt. Tracks in the mud?
When he stood again, his eyes were narrowed. Amaranthe had a feeling Pike knew now who he was dealing with. At the very least, he must suspect that hadn’t been her work.
Pike whispered something to his comrade, and the man’s eyes nearly popped out of his head. He rotated in place, his rifle clenched in his hands, his gaze darting in every direction. Meanwhile, Pike’s head bent for a moment. Amaranthe tensed. She couldn’t see his hands but thought he might have pulled something out of his pocket. If Sicarius was keeping his head below the weeds, he wouldn’t be able to see that.
Pike pulled out something black and dropped it. He clasped his hands behind his back and strolled-yes, it was definitely a stroll-a few paces.
“What is he doing?” Amaranthe wondered. She also wondered if she ought to simply shoot him. At this point, Pike knew someone was out there, killing his men, so even if she missed, it wouldn’t matter. It might even distract him for a moment so Sicarius could swoop in and take him down. “Not that he needs my help for that,” she muttered.
But she wasn’t that sure. Pike dropped something else several feet away from the first thing. Yes, he was definitely up to something devious. The other man kept spinning about, jerking his weapon in one direction and then another. Pike seemed as calm as a panther sunning itself on a rock.
Amaranthe rested her cheek against the stock of the rifle and lined up the pair of sights, centering the crosshairs on Pike’s chest. Her finger found the sleek, cool metal of the trigger. And she hesitated. She wiped a bead of sweat out of her eye. For all the evils he’d done to her, and countless others, Sicarius included, she had to wrestle with her instincts to nurture instead of kill. In her heart, she knew the man was beyond reform, and yet…
“Stop it,” she whispered to herself.
Pike wasn’t worth the self-doubt. If she and Sicarius failed to kill him, and he went on to become Ravido’s Commander of the Armies, with power over thousands, his ancestors only knew what harm he might do.
Amaranthe took a deep breath and found the trigger again.
An instant before she flexed her finger, something cold brushed her bare foot. She almost fell out of the tree in surprise. A startled squawk arose in her throat, but she clamped her mouth shut before her vocal cords could betray her.
Barely managing to keep the rife-and her perch on the branch-Amaranthe craned her neck about. A black- and-tan snake with a body as thick as her thigh was slithering across her foot on its way to…
She swallowed. It was coming out on the branch with her.
Its yellow irises stared into her soul, and she knew without a doubt that it wanted her for lunch. With a head that large and a maw that fang-filled, the snake could swallow her whole. She tried to pull her leg away, but it had already coiled halfway around her calf, pinning it to the branch. Its weight surprised her.
Amaranthe thought to maneuver the rifle about and shoot the beast between the eyes. But that would give away her position more surely than a scream. She glanced toward the clearing. Pike’s partner had disappeared. In
