railing and into the lake.
“Don’t stop to fight them, sure.” Maldynado lowered Books down to her. “I’m game to follow those orders, but I’m not sure they’ll cooperate.”
Yara shifted Books onto his back, wrapped one arm across his chest and pulled him toward the shore. She looked like she knew what she was doing, so Maldynado offered a quick wave and sprinted for the nearest staircase.
As he climbed to the top deck, he finally got a good look at the island, and he nearly tripped when he realized where they were. Marblecrest Island.
“Of all the luck… ” He didn’t know whether to call it good luck or bad luck. At least he knew where the boathouse was and that there ought to be canoes and dinghies they could use to reach their real destination. Wherever that was.
When he reached the base of the stairs leading to the wheelhouse, Maldynado intended to charge straight up, but two enforcers were guarding the spot. Clangs rang out from up above, the clangs of swords banging against swords.
The enforcers spotted Maldynado immediately and lifted their crossbows to shoot. He hurled the unloaded rifle at them, whipping it sideways in an optimistic notion of disrupting both their shots. As soon as he threw it, he turned his run into a sprint and dove into a roll that, he hoped, would carry him crashing into their legs, causing a massive discombobulation.
Before he hit the deck, a crossbow bolt thudded into his shoulder. Pain ripped down his left arm. Idiot, Maldynado thought, even as his momentum threw him into that roll, you’re probably the only one discombobulated here.
Three rapid revolutions later, he smashed into something hard enough to drive the air out of his lungs. It wasn’t the enforcers’ legs, as he’d hoped, but the stairs themselves.
A nearby rasp announced a sword being drawn. Maldynado leaped to his feet. The enforcers had parted as he barreled toward them, and both had their swords out. He couldn’t fight one without putting his back to the other. Easy fix. He ignored them both and scrambled up the stairs.
A startled shout trailed him.
“Just following my lady’s advice,” Maldynado called back.
As he reached the top, Maldynado almost took a boot in the face. He jerked his head to the side, just evading heavy, black treads. Enforcers swarmed the catwalk between the stairs and the wheelhouse. More than one set of boots turned toward him, and he feared that his choice to charge up had been unwise.
“What’s new?” he grumbled, then ducked again, this time to avoid a sword slicing toward his head.
The stairs were wet from the rain, and his heel slipped off. He managed to keep his feet under him but stumbled down several steps, crashing into one of the enforcers who’d been on his way up. Sword raised, the man had been about to take a swing at Maldynado’s legs. To avoid the strike, Maldynado leaped over the railing. He would have landed on the enforcer waiting below, but the man scurried backward. Before his feet hit the ground, Maldynado kicked out, catching him in the chest. As soon as he landed, he sprang after the man. If he could pummel the enforcer into defenselessness before his colleague got turned around on the stairs…
The man went down beneath the assault, but wasn’t ready to give up. A knee rammed into Maldynado’s gut. He gripped the enforcer’s uniform jacket with both hands and slammed the man into the deck. His head clunked against the wood. Before the enforcer could recover, Maldynado jumped to his feet, still gripping the jacket. He dragged his opponent to the railing, gritting his teeth against the pain of having a crossbow bolt in his shoulder, and, with a great grunt, heaved the enforcer over the side. Again, Maldynado almost took a boot to the head as the man flung a kick outward, a last try at stopping him.
“Why do they always aim for my face?” Maldynado asked as he spun back, fists up, ready to defend against an attack from the second man. Given how long he’d had his back to the stairs, he was surprised he hadn’t already received that attack.
Oddly, the enforcer was lying on the deck. Face down. Maldynado didn’t remember hitting the man on his way over the railing.
A black-clad figure sprinted past, a throwing knife in hand as he vaulted up the stairs.
“Ah,” Maldynado said.
Shouts and, a split second later, screams came from above. Unlike Maldynado, Sicarius had no trouble flying off the steps fast enough to avoid attacks.
“I believe,” came a familiar voice from farther up the deck, “they aim for your face because of your looks. They’re envious and wish to mar your beauty so they’ll feel better about their own lesser visages.”
Maldynado’s throat tightened with emotion. Amaranthe, walking at a much slower pace than Sicarius and with a noticeable limp, smiled as she approached. For a moment, Maldynado forgot the fight. He ran forward and swept her into a bear hug.
Cracking wood and the clangs of steel convinced him it needed to be a short hug, so he reluctantly released her. “I always suspected that was the case,” he responded, his voice thick with emotion. She looked like a prisoner of war dragged out of some enemy camp’s dungeon, but at least she was smiling, and her brown eyes still held a warm sparkle.
“We should probably help them.” Amaranthe waved toward the wheelhouse.
“Right. I’ll go first.” Maldynado, at first focused on her bruises and the weary way she held herself, almost hadn’t noticed the garish pastel hat she wore. Blind ancestors, couldn’t he trust anyone in the group to dress themselves appropriately? “Unless you want to see if you can startle the enforcers into falling off the railing with that hat?”
“Not necessary.”
No more than a minute could have passed from the time Sicarius raced up the stairs to the time Maldynado and Amaranthe reached the catwalk, but it might as well have been an hour. The enforcers were gone. Not dead, Maldynado was pleased-for Amaranthe’s sake-to see, but thrown overboard. A few soggy souls were wading through the shallows to the beach. When Maldynado leaned over the railing, he spotted Yara and Books standing on a rocky bank. Good, Books was awake and alert, albeit leaning against a tree for support. He and Yara had acquired crossbows, and she was disarming enforcers while Books kept them in his sights.
The wheelhouse door had been half-torn from its hinges, and numerous dents marred the wood. The glass was cracked, too, and laced with bullet holes. The enforcers must have broken in right before Sicarius arrived. Maldynado hoped that his own distraction, however clumsy, had helped in delaying them.
“… could have handled them,” Akstyr’s voice floated out.
Maldynado stepped up to the doorway. Sicarius stood inside, looking as cold and deadly as ever, though he had lost a couple of pounds since parting ways with the team. Had he run all the way to Lake Seventy-three? There weren’t even roads out in that wilderness along the base of the mountains.
Two men in enforcer uniforms lay on the deck beneath the wheel. One was groaning, and Maldynado didn’t see any broken necks, so he didn’t attempt to block Amaranthe from entering when she squeezed past him.
Akstyr had been pushed back to the far corner. Sicarius stood beside Sespian, whose face had taken on a pale cast, whether from the crash or from Sicarius’s reappearance-and closeness-Maldynado did not know. He managed a smile, though, when Amaranthe stepped inside. He stepped toward her, his hands lifting, as if he might embrace her, but caught himself and dropped his hands. “It’s good to see you alive, Corporal Lokdon.”
Maldynado sighed. The hug would have been better.
“It’s good to see you alive as well, Sire,” Amaranthe said. “The newspapers have been alarming us with their reports of your passing.”
Her tone and polite smile were utterly professional. Even Deret Mancrest had earned more feminine interest from Amaranthe. The kid would have a tough time if he wanted to win her heart.
Sespian winced. “Yes, I’ve heard.”
Sicarius was looking out the back window, the only one that hadn’t been cracked in the crash. The second enforcer boat hadn’t appeared yet, no doubt thanks to its encounter with the beaver dam, but the remaining one was pulling up to a nearby beach. There might still be fighting to do.
“I will take care of them.” Sicarius strode out of the wheelhouse without a word of thanks, or even a friendly nod, to acknowledge that Maldynado had fulfilled his duty to keep the emperor safe and close. It figured.
Before he turned away from the window, Maldynado glimpsed a bald-headed figure swimming across the lake
