know, but he supposed he should make sure Books hadn’t fallen into a funk and started drinking again. Though they were getting by as satisfactorily as could be expected given how many plans had gone awry, the team did lack structure without Amaranthe and Sicarius there to demand everyone rise at dawn for training. At least Maldynado had finally caught up on his sleep and recovered from most of his wounds.
He strode into the engine room and almost tripped over a stack of books in front of the door. Books, his chin sporting several days’ worth of salt-and-pepper beard growth, was sitting on the floor next to a towering flywheel. Its revolutions ruffled the pages of journals and reference books spread out around him like spokes on a wheel. He must have pillaged the steamboat’s library. A few dishes loaded with untouched food sat near the wall. Books held a book open with one hand while he scrawled across the blank page of a journal with the other. His pen, one of several around him, zipped along, creating lines of text faster than a printing press. At least the straightness of those lines suggested he wasn’t drunk.
“What are you doing?” Maldynado asked over the clamor of the pumping machinery.
The pen didn’t slow, and Books didn’t acknowledge him.
“Researching more Forge stuff?” Maldynado asked.
“This facility lacks a desk,” Books said without looking up or slowing his scrawling.
Maldynado propped his hip against a railing. “It’s good to see that you’re alert and ready to jump to a specific piece of machinery, should a call come down from the wheelhouse, demanding quick action.”
Books finished his page of writing, blew on the ink to dry it, and promptly started on the next page.
Maldynado wondered if someone shouting a warning of an impending pirate attack would make that pen pause. He stepped closer until Books couldn’t possibly miss seeing his boots alarmingly close to his papers and said, “Booksie, Basilard said you’ve been skipping meals.”
When Books finally lifted his head, he seemed surprised to see Maldynado there.
“What?”
“Is that Forge stuff?” Maldynado waved at the mess.
“No.”
“Economics stuff the emperor asked for?”
“Also no, and perhaps you can find a more descriptive noun than ‘stuff’.”
“Would you prefer if I called it junk?” Maldynado asked, knowing it would irk Books.
Books’s lips flattened. Yup, pure irk.
“What are you working on?”
Books looked at something out the door. “That’s not the emperor out there, is it?”
“No, Akstyr. It’s his turn shoveling. The emperor… I haven’t seen much of him. He avoids me, despite the fact that I’ve been trying my best to be useful.”
“I believe he’s still struggling to disassociate you from your family,” Books said. “It doesn’t help that you came off as a fop the first night he met you.”
“Fop? I was fighting to defend him on the train.”
“You were telling him how great you’d look as a statue in the Imperial Gardens,” Books said.
“In between assaults on the locomotive cab, during which I bravely helped protect him.”
“I’m working, Maldynado.” Books bent over his papers again. “Go away.”
“People are concerned that you’re overly involved with that work. You’re not eating. What are you doing anyway?”
“Devising a new governmental paradigm for the empire.”
“Uhm. Why?”
Books started writing again.
“Did the emperor ask you to do that?” Maldynado asked.
“No.”
“Aren’t we helping him so we won’t have to have a new governmental paradigm?”
“We are helping him to ensure no idiotic relative of yours takes the throne. What happens after that… Let’s just say I have a hunch, and I am hoping to anticipate the youth’s needs.”
Trying not to feel completely perplexed, Maldynado walked out of the engine room. “I don’t know why I bother talking to that man.”
• • •
Amaranthe had never seen so many pickled vegetables in one place. Cucumber jars, of course, took up a number of shelves, in spicy, dill, garlic, and-she stopped to gape-chocolate varieties. Sicarius, walking behind her, followed her gaze with his eyes, and she hustled on, certain he’d disapprove of chocolate anything. Besides, though Amaranthe hadn’t had a dessert in a while, she wasn’t sure she wanted to break her sweets fast with candied pickles.
Other vegetables, from carrots to asparagus to beets were also represented in the tiny shop. Packed jars rose on floor-to-ceiling shelves lining narrow aisles that one had to turn sideways to navigate. Someone like Maldynado probably wouldn’t fit through the rows at all.
At the back of the store, Amaranthe and Sicarius found an older woman sitting in a chair, her legs propped on a large desk that was as cluttered as the rest of the store, with cages occupying most of the free space. Inside them, a mixture of long-haired and short-haired-or perhaps long-haired and shaved — rabbits munched on carrots. Amaranthe wondered if the half-chewed vegetables were pickled too.
“Help you?” the woman asked without looking up. Knitting needles dove and darted as they formed a sock.
“Are the chocolate pickles good?” Amaranthe asked. Maybe she could find the woman’s passion, the way she had with Pabov, and encourage chattiness.
“No, I keep them on my shelf because they’re disgusting.”
The woman’s delivery was so deadpan that it took Amaranthe a moment to recognize the sarcasm. Perhaps pickles were not her passion.
“Are there any you’d recommend?”
“They’re all good.”
“Do you have any samples?”
“No.” The woman still hadn’t looked up from her knitting.
I’m getting a sense of why this woman needs three jobs to make ends meet, Amaranthe signed to Sicarius.
Just get the information.
As always, business first with him.
“This seems like a nice town,” Amaranthe said. “I heard you’re the one to ask about acquiring property near the lake.”
With an exasperated sigh, the woman set her knitting down. “You have money?”
“Yes,” Amaranthe said, though she lacked a single ranmya. “Not enough for one of those islands, of course, but I can’t imagine any of them are for sale anyway.”
“No, they’re not.” The Pickle Lady dug in her desk and pulled out a thick notebook with corners and edges of pages sticking out on all sides.
Sicarius shifted, perhaps thinking of simply taking it and leaving, but Amaranthe held up a hand behind her back.
“Are they ever for sale?” Amaranthe asked. “Do you remember anyone buying one?”
“If you can’t afford them, they’re not any of your concern, are they?”
“I suppose not, but I get curious. Don’t you?”
“No.”
Amaranthe was on the verge of waving Sicarius forward to do whatever he had in mind when a bell jangled, announcing another customer’s entrance. Several thuds sounded, heavy feet jogging across the threshold. Maybe not customers after all.
Sicarius pushed Amaranthe behind him, a knife appearing in his hand.
“No killing,” she whispered.
Feet pounded down the aisle. A jar smashed to the floor, glass shattering.
The Pickle Lady jumped to her feet. “Blast your ancestors,” she hollered before anyone came into view,
