place, and he wouldn’t be talking now.
“I don’t care about Forge,” Pike called. “I just want my old job back and, all right, maybe a little more. Ravido has promised me Hollowcrest’s position along with the reinstatement of my title and lands. I’ll be Commander of the Armies, and the Marblecrests will be back on the throne. It was never meant for Sespian. You know that. You’ve always known that.” Pike cocked his ear, as if listening for a response. Even protected by his shield, Pike had to be worried. He couldn’t stand there forever. He’d run out of food and water eventually, and he must know Sicarius had the patience to wait. “You could take Sespian and disappear,” Pike said. “I have enough sway over Ravido to make sure neither of you are hunted. So long as Sespian can be publicly declared dead, he need not truly die. I’m the only one who can make you that offer. Now that Forge is ready to move, they want the boy dead.”
Amaranthe shot at Pike again. The shield ate the bullet, but the attack surprised him to silence, at least for a moment. She told herself she’d fired to distract Pike, in case Sicarius had thought up a way to attack him, but in truth she wanted to shut him up. She didn’t want him talking about how she’d blabbed. The bastard would probably take credit for getting the information out of her.
Pike faced her, a weary sneer twisting his mouth. But there was no fear or concern in his eyes. It was the type of sneer one gave to a mosquito. A mosquito might be annoying, but it had no power to kill.
“Eat street,” Amaranthe muttered and fired again, this time with more thought guiding her hand. She aimed for a spot about six feet above his head, trying to find the vertical boundary of the shield.
Another orange flash ate her bullet. For a moment, Pike looked like he might fire at her, but he returned his attention to the field.
Amaranthe fired again, higher this time. The bullet passed through without being incinerated, but a slight shimmer disturbed the air before it disappeared. Odd, that had been on the other side of Pike. Had she fired over the top of the barrier, but, because of her elevated position, caused the bullet to zip downward at an angle and catch the shield on only one side? Pike could obviously fire from inside. She tried to remember if the shield had shimmered when he’d been shooting at her, but she’d been too busy ducking to notice. No matter. She suspected she’d just proved that the cylinder was open on the top. Unfortunately, at fifteen feet or so, even Sicarius wouldn’t be able to leap that high, not when he’d have to throw his entire body over it without touching the barrier. Still, it was a starting point. If they could make an explosive of some kind and hurl it inside…
Lest Pike notice her silence and attribute it to scheming that he should worry about, Amaranthe fired another shot, aiming for his nether regions this time, for amusement’s sake.
Pike stuck a fist on his hip and faced her, leveling his pistol at her again. Unlike with the earlier rapid-fire shots, he took his time in lining up his aim. Amaranthe scooted backward on the branch, thinking it might be a good time to find Sicarius and explain what she’d learned.
Before Pike fired, a dark figure rose from the cattails several meters behind him. Sicarius. He sprinted for Pike, a long stick-a sapling? — in his hands. Before Amaranthe could guess what he intended, Sicarius planted the flexible pole in the ground and used the leverage to vault himself into the air. Amaranthe’s heart surged into her throat as he released the stick at the apex and soared toward Pike’s cylinder.
She gulped and held her breath. If he misjudged the spot by an inch…
Sicarius dropped out of the air without bursting into flame or disturbing the shield. At the last second Pike, perhaps watching Amaranthe’s expression, looked up. But he was too late. Sicarius landed on him like a boulder falling out of the sky. Both men disappeared beneath the tall grass and cattails.
Amaranthe tried to stand on her branch, to better see what was happening, but her foot slipped, and she almost fell again. She caught the trunk and steadied herself.
A scream tore through the swamp, only to end abruptly, cut off with a gurgle that left little doubt as to what had happened. Amaranthe was surprised, and, she admitted, disappointed at how brief that scream had been. For what he’d done to her-and to Sicarius-Pike had deserved to suffer, to have his own medicine forced down his throat.
An uneasy thought slithered into her mind. What if that scream hadn’t belonged to Pike? What if he’d been waiting for Sicarius with another trick in hand. She held her breath, waiting for the victor to rise.
Time trickled past, and nobody appeared. Amaranthe shook her head. What was going on? They hadn’t killed each other off, had they? They couldn’t have…
She had reconciled herself to the idea of climbing down and going over there to look for herself when a familiar voice called up from below.
“Hiding is generally done from the ground, under or behind an object that can serve as cover as well as camouflage.” Sicarius stood beside the dead snake, at the base of her tree, gazing up at her. “Leaves provide camouflage but not cover. We have discussed the difference.”
Amaranthe grinned so hard it hurt her cheeks. “I was afraid to hide on the ground because of the snakes.”
Sicarius regarded the dead creature in the mud. “This appears to have fallen from a great height.”
“How odd.” Still grinning, Amaranthe tossed the rifle to him and shimmied down the cypress.
In her haste, she missed a branch and tumbled the last ten feet. Sicarius caught her and drew her into a hug that was far gentler than she would have preferred. Though her wounds protested, she snaked her arms around him and demonstrated how fierce a hug should be. She buried her face in his neck. His hug was a relief-maybe he hadn’t realized, from Pike’s words, that she’d betrayed him. She’d have to tell him eventually-soon-but she needed to feel safe for a while first. The words “cathartic collapse” floated through her mind. No, it was more than that. She needed to be held by someone who cared.
Sicarius laid his chin on the top of her head. He was being careful not to disturb her injuries, so it was hard to tell, but she thought the hug might mean as much to him as to her.
Too soon for her tastes, he drew back, though he didn’t let her go. Amaranthe braced herself, expecting him to question her about Pike’s speech, to demand an explanation.
“You were following a fresh trail through the swamp,” Sicarius said. “Are its makers the priority? Or is it the craft?”
“The craft?”
“Do you wish to destroy it so Forge cannot continue to use it against us? Or is it more important to follow those who left the trail?”
“Oh. I… think destroying the Behemoth may be beyond us. Remember that submerged laboratory? This thing makes that look like something a clumsy child assembled on the playground.”
Sicarius’s eyebrows twitched. “The Behemoth?”
“My name, not theirs.” Amaranthe supposed it was possible that she and Sicarius could do something to disable the craft, if they could figure out how to get inside, and if they could find Retta and question her. Amaranthe didn’t even know if Retta was still alive. She might have crossed paths with Pike when she shouldn’t have. Amaranthe shied away from the thought. Even if Retta had stolen secrets, she’d saved Amaranthe’s life. “I think the meeting is the priority,” she said, hoping she wouldn’t regret the choice later. “Ms. Worgavic and other Forge founders will be there. I heard a few things, but no details. Somehow they intend to control the future of the empire. To hear Ms. Worgavic talk, maybe the future of the world. We might want to put a stop to that.”
“Ms. Worgavic?” Sicarius asked.
He must find it strange to hear Amaranthe add the title to the name; she was probably even saying it with a tinge of that old student-teacher respect.
“She’s one of the Forge founders. I only knew her as my economics instructor at the Mildawn Business School for Women.”
“I see.” Sicarius’s gaze shifted to something beyond her, reminding Amaranthe that there were still soldiers on the hunt. The wolf’s limbs might not yet know that the head was missing.
“We should-” Amaranthe started.
“Go, yes. The trail is already cold.” Sicarius stepped away from her and gave her another look up and down.
Amaranthe attempted to appear sturdy enough for the road, even if her knees wanted to buckle and her body craved nothing more than a hot bath followed by a bed smothered with feather-filled comforters. Alas, both were hard to find in swamps.
“Your pride would object to your body being carried?” Sicarius asked.
Amaranthe cringed at the idea of him burdened by her weight when he’d so obviously traveled a long,
