knife to my throat, and I’ve seen you prove useful in a few scraps. You just need to invest some time in your physique.” Maldynado thumped a fist against one of his pectoral muscles. “It’ll make it easier to strut around in a manly way if you feel manly.”
“So, your advice so far is to grow hair and muscles.”
“Any businesswoman will tell you that you have to spruce up the packaging before you put a product on the market. I’ll take you clothes shopping when we’re back in the capital.”
Sespian tilted his head back, watching Maldynado out of the bottoms of his eyes, like he might have some regrets over having started the conversation. Or perhaps having opened the door at all.
“Enough of the superficial,” Maldynado said, sensing his pupil’s flagging belief. “There’s a bigger issue you have to deal with when it comes to the boss. Her pet guard dog.”
“Sicarius.”
“They go everywhere together. I kid you not, I set her up for a nice dinner date with Deret Mancrest last summer, and she took him along. I’m not sure whose idea it was, but can you imagine trying to share tender moments with a woman while an assassin is standing there, glaring at you over her shoulder?”
“No,” Sespian said. “I can’t imagine wanting him in the same city as me. I have wondered… ”
“Yes?”
“If he’s controlling her somehow. He’s very powerful and dangerous, and I’m sure it’d be easy for him to exert his influence to… You’re shaking your head.”
“That’s because nobody controls Amaranthe. We’ve all tried. Not to control her, but to rein her in on some of her crazier ideas. She has a strong will and a thought process slipperier than the contents of an icehouse. She’s the one who rounded us all up after all. Sicarius might be harder to wrangle than a Books or an Akstyr, but she’s talked him into doing a lot of things I know he otherwise wouldn’t have.”
“So, I have to get rid of him somehow,” Sespian said, a hint of calculation in his eyes. “They’re not… I suppose I should have asked this first, but I didn’t get the impression that Amaranthe was… romantic with anyone in your group.”
“Nah, I don’t think so,” Maldynado said without hesitation. Forget Books’s hunch. Even if there were something to it, Maldynado did not want to see Amaranthe doomed to a relationship with a man colder than the razor-sharp blades he carried around. “I doubt Sicarius even knows what the word romantic means,” he added.
“Good.” Sespian nodded to himself. “That’s good. Maybe-”
Someone pounded at the door. Sespian hopped to his feet, reacting more quickly than Maldynado, and snatched up his dagger. He reached the window first. Night’s grip had relaxed outside, and Basilard stood visible against the rosy sky. Akstyr jogged up behind him.
As soon as the door opened, Akstyr thrust a hand toward the river behind the steamboat. “We’ve got a problem.”
Maldynado and Sespian stepped outside. It didn’t take long to find the “problem.” Two sleek, gray boats were cutting up the river after the steamboat.
Basilard waved a spyglass and signed, They’re enforcers. At least twenty men on each boat. They’re well armed and have grappling hooks. There are also guns mounted on the foredecks. Big guns.
“Uh oh,” Maldynado said. “Some of those passengers we tossed overboard must have found their way to town to report the hijacking.”
“This vessel doesn’t have any weaponry, does it?” Sespian asked.
“No, but it has a swimming pool and netball courts,” Maldynado said.
“We’re almost to the lake.” Sespian fiddled with the dagger. “If we can simply reach it, those enforcers can have their steamboat back.”
“How do you suggest we tell them that?” Maldynado asked.
“Just… get ready to defend the ship. You, Basilard, you’re a fighter, right? Can you and Maldynado handle the defenses? Akstyr, join me in the wheelhouse. I understand you’re good with makarovi.”
Akstyr grinned. “Yup.”
“We’ll relieve Sergeant Yara and send her to the boiler room to help Books,” Sespian went on. “We’ll need all the power we can get out of those engines. We’re already going against the current, so these last few miles will be a push.”
A boom sounded, and birds erupted from the trees on either side of the river. A round splashed into the water several meters to the side of the steamboat.
“Warning shot,” Maldynado said.
“Go.” Sespian waved to the men, then sprinted for the closest stairs.
Akstyr ran after him, leaving Maldynado and Basilard alone.
Basilard signed, We get to defend this huge boat by ourselves? Against forty trained fighters?
“Apparently,” Maldynado said. “You want the left side or the right side?”
Basilard gave him a grim look. We need an Amaranthe Plan.
“I’m going to round up as many rifles as I can find. Let me know if you come up with one.”
Though the pink glow of dawn lightened the eastern sky, fog shrouded the lake, making it feel as if morning had yet to come. The rowboat Sicarius had purloined glided through the calm waters, surging forward with each powerful stroke of his oars. Across from him, Amaranthe shifted on the hard bench, feeling a tad useless, even if he had, with a wordless pointing of his finger, insisted she assume the passenger role.
“When are you going to stop treating me like a wounded kitten that you’ve adopted, and go back to insisting that all forms of physical exertion are ‘good training’?” Amaranthe asked.
“You wish to row?” Sicarius had abandoned his workman’s garments and returned to the humorless black, now clean and wrinkle-free. Perhaps he’d only donned the other clothing because his preferred garb needed time for a wash and dry.
“No.” She smiled. “I was just wondering how long I could milk this torture experience to get out of work.”
Sicarius rowed onward without comment. He was probably watching the mainland to make sure no enforcers with sniper aspirations lurked there. Amaranthe couldn’t fault his dedication to duty, but it was a long trip to Marblecrest Island, and a conversation would be nice. In truth, there were questions on her mind, questions she’d been trying to muster the courage to ask. Once they reunited with the team, private moments might be hard to come by.
She took a deep breath. “A couple of weeks ago… you mentioned that I didn’t know all the secrets from your past. Is there… anything you’d like to tell me? To help you with Sespian?”
“No.”
Not exactly an invitation to probe further. She chewed on her lip and finally asked what had been lurking in her thoughts. “Pike said you killed Raumesys.”
Sicarius’s features, masked as usual, betrayed nothing of his thoughts.
“Is it true?” Amaranthe asked, remembering that he didn’t always consider statements worth comment.
He didn’t respond to the question either.
“Did he find out that Sespian wasn’t his son?” Amaranthe guessed. “And you had to… take care of him before he disowned Sespian? Or punished his mother? No, wait, she died a few years before Raumesys, didn’t she? The winter that Nurian flu ravaged the capital. But if Raumesys had found out, he would have… ”
Sicarius was giving her a flat, you’re-imagination-is-working-too-hard look. “Soon,” he said.
“What?”
“If you are hale enough to burble, you are hale enough to exercise. Your training will resume soon.”
Amaranthe didn’t quite manage to stifle a groan. “Fine, you don’t have to tell me. But how many other people know? If it comes out later and Sespian learns of it, will he be angry with you for killing the man he considered his father?”
“Unlikely.”
Amaranthe glowered in response to the one-word answer.
“Raumesys treated him poorly,” Sicarius said. “Sespian,” he added, his voice softening, “preferred to spend time with his mother.”
