“You’re not on the list.”
“I work for Ms. Worgavic. I’m the one who flies the… ” Amaranthe groped through her memories for the official name of the Behemoth. “Are you aware of the Ortarh Ortak? There’s a problem on board. I need to speak with Ms. Worgavic immediately.”
The greeter, or whatever he was, did not answer. Beneath her, the men shifted as much as they could in the confined space. More than one pistol had appeared. Sicarius crouched on his seat, one foot on the backrest as he faced the hatch, a throwing knife in hand.
Hoping to see more of the area, Amaranthe eased her head as high as she could without opening the hatch farther. A wide stone ledge rose on the other side of the pool, and it supported four sets of legs wearing shiny black boots and facing in her direction. She couldn’t see the men’s upper bodies, or what weapons they might hold in their arms, but she had no trouble making out belts laden with ammunition pouches. No powder tins hung on those belts, so she assumed the ammo was for the new multi-shot rifles.
Waves undulated across the surface of the pool. A few feet away, something black broke the surface. Amaranthe glimpsed a fin, a large fin, before it disappeared beneath the water.
“Show yourself,” the man above said.
Amaranthe lifted the hatch a few more inches, hoping she could crawl out without revealing everyone inside. Unfortunately, the man had other ideas. Perhaps thinking he was helping her, he pulled the hatch the rest of the way open. Amaranthe grabbed the lip and scrambled out. Maybe if she got her feet under her quickly enough, she could block his view of the interior.
It didn’t work. The man raised a shiny new rifle and blurted, “There’s a bunch of-”
A hand gripped his ankle and yanked him into the vehicle. A flying elbow caught Amaranthe in the ribs, and she barely avoided tumbling into the water. She scarcely had time to note a floating dock arranged in an X across the pool, with submarines tied up alongside it, before four rifles were being lifted in her direction.
Amaranthe had only a split second to decide what to do. She should have jumped back down into their craft to avoid being shot, but, with some deluded notion that she needed to draw fire so the men could climb out, she leaped off the craft and onto the dock. She sprinted several meters and, anticipating a barrage of gunfire, dove off the backside, landing on the square hatch of a long, tube-shaped submarine. She winced when she came down on one of her bruise collections, but managed to yank her pistol out anyway.
The dock hid the men from view-and, Amaranthe hoped, provided an obstacle they couldn’t shoot her through. When a couple of heartbeats passed without gunshots, she lifted her eyes over the level of the wood planks. Nobody shot her. Three of the men who had been standing on the ledge were lying on it now. The fourth had fallen into the pool. He paddled one-armed, trying to reach solid ground again, though pain contorted his face. Something silver stuck out of the front of his shoulder. Just as he found a grip on the ledge, the water stirred next to him. Amaranthe blinked, and he was gone, pulled beneath the surface. Bubbles floated up, but nothing except stillness followed. She realized the men on the ledge weren’t moving and rose to her knees.
Sicarius stepped into view on the dock. He lowered a hand toward her. Amaranthe accepted it, letting him pull her up beside him. Akstyr was sticking halfway out of their vehicle, staring at the downed men on the ledge.
He turned his stare to Sicarius. “I didn’t know you could do that.”
Without comment, Sicarius jogged off the dock and circled around to check the men. No, not to “check” them. To verify that they were dead and to pull his throwing knives out of their chests.
“He popped up and threw all four at once,” Akstyr said. “Two in each hand. I didn’t know that was possible.”
Sicarius gave Amaranthe a look, like he might be concerned that she’d chastise him for the deaths, but how could she? He’d likely saved her life-as usual-and he’d even kept the men from firing. She had no idea how far away this meeting place was, but she doubted it was so distant that people there wouldn’t hear gunshots fired in the parking pool.
“See if there’s anyone else nearby that we need to worry about, please,” Amaranthe told Sicarius.
He continued along the ledge toward a pair of tunnels. The underwater cavern had a twelve-or fifteen-foot ceiling, all chipped and hewn by tools rather than by nature. Gold-gilded lamps burned on the walls and in holders on the dock, spreading light about the chamber. At least twenty other submarines, or other types of underwater conveyances, were tied up in the wide pool, a variety of hatch styles and paint jobs on display in the portions that peeped above the water.
Someone jostled Akstyr from below.
“As much as we appreciate the view of your scrawny backside,” Maldynado called up, “we’d like to get out.”
Akstyr scrambled onto the dock.
“Be careful climbing up here,” Amaranthe said. “Whatever that thing in the water is, it finds humans tasty.”
“Joy,” Books said.
As the men were climbing out, a creak sounded behind Amaranthe. A hatch lifted, and a pair of eyes came into view. She dropped to a knee and aimed the pistol between those eyes.
“Nothing going on out here, friend,” she said, guessing this was someone’s servant or pilot left behind to watch the craft. “I suggest you lower that hatch and forget you saw us.”
The eyes sank out of view. Clanks drifted from within the man’s craft, as he not only shut himself in but bolted a lock or two.
“I have to say you’re looking particularly grim and serious today, boss,” Maldynado said.
He and the others were lined up on the dock behind her. Everyone carried weapons, Sespian included. Her team looked ready for a fight.
“It’s been a grim couple of weeks,” Amaranthe said. “Sire, any orders? Is there a way you have planned to go about this?”
“Planned?” Sespian pushed a hand through his pale brown hair. “My plans fell over a cliff more than a week ago. I’m still hoping to learn what Forge is up to-besides attempting to kill me and replace me with a warrior-caste puppet-but I don’t know how plausible that is at this point.”
Amaranthe lifted a shoulder. “They didn’t seem to know we were coming. Not these guards anyway. It might be useful to question someone.” She pointed toward the open hatch of their vehicle. “Is the first man still…?”
“He’s alive,” Maldynado said. “Not entirely conscious though. Questioning might be hard.”
“Well, there are only two tunnels.” As long as those two didn’t branch into fifty more, Amaranthe figured they had decent odds of picking one that would lead them to the Forge people. Sicarius had already disappeared into one. “Let’s see what we can find.”
She led the team off the dock. She was about to ask if anyone had seen which tunnel Sicarius had gone down when he emerged from the closest one.
“Lodging, baths, and kitchens are in that direction,” he said.
“Not tents and campfire pits, I’m guessing,” Amaranthe said.
“Forty separate domiciles carved into the stone walls, each with room for servants.”
“Under my family’s island?” Maldynado asked.
“Some of it is under the lake,” Sicarius said.
“It must have taken them years to hollow all of this out. I can’t believe my parents didn’t know. Or, if they knew all along… that’s hard to believe too. How long have these people been scheming?”
“It’s been ten years since I studied under Ms. Worgavic,” Amaranthe said, “and, if she recruited one of my classmates to learn the ancient technology, she must have known about it for at least that long.” At the round of blank looks the men gave her, Amaranthe remembered that she’d spoken of her old teacher only to Sicarius. “I’ll explain later. Forge has been a number of years in the making.”
“I’ll scout ahead,” Sicarius said.
He disappeared into the second tunnel without waiting for an acknowledgment.
“Was that a stay-here order or an invitation to follow?” Sespian asked.
Amaranthe eyed the submarine-filled pool. “Either way, we shouldn’t linger here. Since the guards didn’t shoot us as soon as we popped up, they must have been expecting at least one more party to arrive.”
“Good point.”
