Forged in Blood II

  “And what if…” Sespian traced a crack between the desks jammed together to form a table. “What if I want to throw my weight behind Books’s manifesto and suggest a restructuring of the empire—of Turgonia—into something fairer for the people and more suitable for a modern world?”

  “Constitution,” Books said.

  “Pardon?”

  “Manifestos are what you have before elections, being largely temporary and fleeting. My work is called a constitution. Not temporary.”

  “Would you run for office?” Amaranthe asked Sespian. “For president, or whatever Books has decided the head chief should be called?”

  “President, yes.” Books frowned. “A fact you’d know if you’d read my work.”

  “Sorry, I’ve been getting shot at and blowing things up. It’s kept me busy.”

  “I fail to see how you couldn’t find the time to read a short document in between drawing fire and crashing alien aircrafts,” Books said.

  “Short?”

  “I think,” Sespian said firmly, drawing their attention back to him, “my age would make me a less than ideal candidate to lead a republic.”

  Books beamed at him, less, Amaranthe suspected, because of his wise acknowledgment and more because he’d used the correct name for the government entity Books had defined.

  “Perhaps I could run for an ancillary role,” Sespian said. “Second to someone more experienced, someone whose reputation for fairness around the world could do more to establish peace between Turgonia and its enemies than armadas of warships.” He looked to Starcrest, and everyone in the room followed his gaze.

  Tikaya didn’t flinch exactly, but she dropped a hand—a warning hand?—onto her husband’s shoulder. It might have been because she didn’t want anything to do with Turgonia, or perhaps she didn’t want to see Starcrest burdened with all the responsibility, or maybe she feared for his life, as any state leader was wont to be a target for assassins and zealots. All legitimate reasons for concern.

  “I didn’t come here to run for office,” Starcrest said.

  “There is a saying in the desert city-states,” Books observed, “that a man who seeks power should be feared. Only he who seeks to avoid power should be granted it.”

  Starcrest and Tikaya opened their mouths at the same time, said a few words over each other, then acquiesced to the other, but neither started again.

  “You’ll have to discuss it in private, I’m certain,” Sespian said.

  “All of this is premature,” Sicarius said. “Our enemies remain on their feet with armies at their backs.”

  “A true point,” Starcrest said. “Your team must make plans to secure the Barracks. Meanwhile, Ridgecrest and I will see what we can come up with to capture, or at least further constrain Flintcrest.”

  “Yes, sir.” Sicarius bowed his head and held the door open for Amaranthe.

  They walked onto the catwalk together, Amaranthe already thinking about who she wanted to take. Akstyr, for certain, as they’d doubtlessly run into the shaman setting wards in the Barracks. Basilard was always an asset. Maldynado? Could she pry him away from Yara? Amaranthe hadn’t seen much of Yara since the other woman had railed at her, flinging accusations. She’d be an asset, too, but would she join the mission?

  The door clanked open behind them, and Sespian jogged out. He hesitated, a hand on the railing, when Amaranthe and Sicarius faced him.

  “I… I’d like to go with you.” He glanced at Sicarius. “Both of you. I think I can… uhm.”

  Amaranthe nudged Sicarius. “I think he missed working with you. That infiltration I heard about must have made an impression.”

  “I’m simply looking for my cat,” Sespian said. “I don’t know if anyone’s been taking care of him.”

  “Ah, yes, I understand,” Amaranthe said. “Of course.”

  Sespian’s cheeks colored.

  A clank sounded, and Yara strode through the back door and onto the factory floor. She veered for Maldynado and Deret at the base of the stairs. Deret must have finished trading insults with Maldynado, for he headed off at her approach. Well, Amaranthe had wanted to talk to Yara…

  “I’ll meet you back in one of the other offices for planning,” Amaranthe told Sicarius and Sespian, then walked down the stairs to intercept the other woman.

  It wasn’t hard. As soon as Yara saw her, she said something to Maldynado, waved for him to give them some space, and walked up to Amaranthe.

  Amaranthe had only a couple of seconds to decide whether to mention their last conversation, or to pretend it hadn’t happened. “How are you doing, Yara?” She was having a hard time exuding bright perkiness lately, but she gave it her best. “I’ve been assigned the task of putting together a team to infiltrate and capture the Imperial Barracks. Are you interested in joining?”

  A finger raised, Yara had been about to say something herself, but she stopped, her finger still hanging in the air. “You never give up, do you?”

  “Rarely. But to what specifically are you referring?”

  “Recruiting people to your insane schemes. No matter how horribly the previous ones failed.”

  “Ah.” Amaranthe feared pretending their previous conversation hadn’t occurred wouldn’t work. “I’ll admit that it may be some sort of disease that’s difficult to fully eradicate from the system, but I have, in fact, been assigned this mission, and it’d be unwise of me to believe I can handle it by myself. Therefore… recruiting.”

  “Assigned. You’re letting someone give you orders? I didn’t think you knew how.”

  “I was an enforcer for seven years,” Amaranthe said, deciding the conversation was promising. Yara seemed her usual gruff self, not that irate tear-ravaged person who’d hollered at her in the office. “I was very good at biting my tongue and not arguing with my superiors, no matter how shortsighted their orders might have been. Of course that didn’t get me far in my career.”

  “Hm.”

  That didn’t exactly invite further details, but Amaranthe wasn’t ready to give up. “I’ll be asking Maldynado to come too. It might be fun.”

  “Or it might be crazy.”

  “There’s no ancient super advanced technology in the Barracks.” A true statement, Amaranthe hoped. “I’m certain things can’t get that crazy.”

  “Really,” Yara said, her tone flatter than a stone paver.

  “Starcrest’s daughter is thinking up something involving insects, but other than that…”

  Yara snorted. “Look, Lokdon…” She glanced around. With Starcrest’s troops running all over the city to enact his plans, not many people lingered inside the factory. Yara lowered her voice anyway. “I don’t think I was wrong about some of the things I said the other day, but I know you already felt awful, and I shouldn’t have…”

  “Stomped on me like a makarovi?”

  Yara grimaced. “I should have waited before reacting and saying things…”

  Things that she regretted? Would she regret them if Maldynado hadn’t returned? Even if he had, most of the rest of the fort hadn’t.

  “They were valid,” Amaranthe said. “I don’t think anything we accomplish here can justify… no, nothing can ever justify that. It was surely accidental, but that doesn’t help those people, their families.”

  “I know.” Yara stared down at a crack in the cement. “But we have to go on anyway, right?”

  “Wallowing on a blanket in a corner of an office only satisfies you for so long. Eventually you get bored.”

  “So… insects you say?”

  “Insects or something derived from them, I’d guess. That area of study is the girl’s specialty.”

  “Studying bugs. Huh. The Kyatt Islands must be an interesting place.”

  “So I hear. It’d be nice to visit them someday.” Someday when they didn’t have so much work to do. Counting Yara in, Amaranthe headed off to gather the rest of her team.

  Chapter 14

  High above the factory floor, Sicarius
sat cross-legged in the rafters, his chin propped on his fist, watching as men came and went below. Actually, he was watching Amaranthe’s door. She’d spent the remains of the night putting her team together, all of her usual men plus Yara and Sespian, then retreated “to get some sleep,” as she’d said. He should be resting, too, as the night would doubtlessly be a busy one, but he kept wondering if she was in there, plagued by nightmares. Before this… divergence with Kor Nas, he’d promised to teach her how to meditate. It would be negligent of him to rescind his offer now, but if he showed up at her door, would she think he expected more? Did he still? With so much fresh blood on his hands?

  He sighed. He appreciated his freedom from the practitioner, and from the others who had caged him before and made his decisions for him, but admitted life was simpler when all one had to do was follow orders.

  The back door banged open, and two young people entered amidst snow flurries. Starcrest’s daughter walked side-by-side with a relative of the professor’s, judging by the fair complexion. Speaking rapidly to each other, they were too involved with their conversation to shut the door—or acknowledge a half-asleep soldier on the floor who complained about the draft. With their arms full of shopping bags, they headed for the stairs. The lettering on the bulging canvas sacks read Madolich’s Insect Farm and Emporium in large text and in small print underneath: Lizard food, medicinal ants, venom sacs, and more!

  Sicarius was familiar with the establishment, though he hadn’t visited in some time. A wizened woman who worked in the attic sold poison-making supplies. He wondered what sort of concoction the pair might come up with that could be used in a large-scale application.

  They climbed the catwalk and the girl used her elbow to thump on a door. Starcrest himself answered, listened to their words, and watched the excited gestures, then pointed them toward the cafeteria. They scampered back down the stairs.

  Instead of returning to the office—from his perch, Sicarius glimpsed other men sitting inside, including Sespian—Starcrest stepped to the railing and surveyed the floor. He yawned and rubbed his face. Taking a break? No, there was more to it than that; he was looking for something.

  Sicarius sat taller. He didn’t have any reason to think Starcrest might want to speak with him, but might it not be so? He hadn’t decanted his information on Flintcrest’s camp, troop numbers, and last heard plans. Starcrest hadn’t asked for the intelligence, but he would doubtlessly find it useful.

  Then why haven’t you talked to him yet, he asked himself.

  Sicarius didn’t know where he stood with the admiral, not after coming to the factory with the intent of assassinating him. Twenty years earlier, they had parted… not as friends precisely, but not as enemies. It had taken time for Sicarius to unravel the admiral’s last words to him and to understand his reasons for not continuing to serve the emperor. A part of him wanted to tell Starcrest that he understood now, but an unfamiliar feeling of trepidation left him reluctant to speak with the admiral alone. Odd how one could face a boyhood hero as a youth, filled with confidence in one’s own abilities, brazen in one’s beliefs as to his own superiority, and not be intimidated at all. Now, older, he was less certain of the world and his place in it than he’d ever been.

  Starcrest’s gaze lifted toward the rafters. Sicarius wasn’t hiding—if he were, no one would see him—but simply sitting where he could observe and nobody could approach him unaware. The admiral’s eyes met his. His face was hard to read. Interesting turnabout. Starcrest pointed toward the third office door, the one that Books and Akstyr had given up for him, and arched an eyebrow. An invitation?

  Starcrest stepped inside, leaving the door open. Sicarius stood, trotted along the beam, and dropped onto the catwalk by the office.

  Though bedrolls were spread for two, and Kyattese journals and notes cluttered the desk, only Starcrest waited inside. He stood, hands clasped behind his back in a loose parade rest.

  Unconsciously, Sicarius came to a military-style attention, heels together and back straight, as Hollowcrest had once demanded from him when he was delivering reports. He launched into a description of Flintcrest’s numbers, last known location, and camp layout, followed by a point-by-point analysis of the general’s defensive and offensive capabilities.

  “Thank you,” Starcrest said at the end, a hint of amusement in his voice. It made Sicarius wonder if he’d already possessed the information, via spies of his own. “It is good that you were able to keep your wits about you during your ordeal.”

  As always, Sicarius kept his wince internal. “Yes, sir.”

  “I appreciate your thorough report, but it was actually a personal matter about which I wished to speak with you. A matter of curiosity.”

  “Yes, sir?” Sicarius wondered why he felt like a youth again, seeking to impress a tutor with his rigid attentiveness. Oh, he recognized the psychological reasons, but he’d thought he would be past seeing Starcrest as more than a man. He’d thought he might… what? Ask him out to the drinking house to become inebriated and swap stories of adventures they’d had? An unlikely scenario given that Sicarius didn’t drink and few Turgonian warriors would be delighted by tales of assassination.

  “Nearly twenty years ago, I sent sealed letters to old colleagues and relatives over here,” Starcrest said. “They included instructions not to be opened until a certain date which came and went some years ago. Emperor Raumesys was alive at the time. I had assumed there’d be, if not retaliation, at least some action taken when the contents were revealed to him. I believe you were still working for him then. Do you know anything about this matter?”

  “Yes, sir,” Sicarius said. “It was revealed that the Kyatt Islands were originally claimed by Turgonian colonists, and that when the first Kyattese explorers landed, they sought the chain for themselves. They used a plague to weaken our ancestors, then kill them, so they couldn’t report back to the mainland.” Our ancestors, he’d said without thinking, forgetting that Hollowcrest’s records proclaimed him half Kyattese. But he’d been raised here. He’d never think of himself as anything other than Turgonian.

  “I see. You know quite a lot about it then.”

  “I was there when the emperor and Hollowcrest read the letter.”

  Starcrest cocked his head. “What was their response?”

  “Hollowcrest seemed indifferent, though he rarely grew impassioned about anything, at least not visibly.”

  “Yes, the few times I met him, he struck me as… passionless, yes.”

  Sicarius sensed that was a more civil word than Starcrest had first thought to use. “The emperor was livid. He wished to attack the Kyattese and reclaim the islands. Our ships were on alert in the Gulf at the time, due to all of the pirate raids, and Hollowcrest talked Raumesys into delaying hostilities. The emperor reluctantly agreed, but did wish to send an assassin to kill you.”

  No hint of surprise made its way to Starcrest’s face. He nodded as if he’d expected nothing else. “You being the assassin who was in the room, I’ll assume he wished to give you the job.”

  “Yes, sir. I refused it. That was when I looked up your postal address and tried to mail a warning. Your questions now lead me to believe it never arrived. I am not surprised.”

  “Yes, either the emperor’s spies or the Kyattese government may have intercepted it. The Kyattese were particularly twitchy then—though presidents have come and gone, their government remained aware of the threat. I must thank you then for—” Starcrest looked at himself, then Sicarius, and gestured to chairs. “There is no reason to stand in military stances while we speak. Please, relax.” He sat in one of the chairs.

  Sicarius hesitated. Relaxing wasn’t something he did while discussing important matters with people, nor had he ever found sitting in chairs particularly calming. People could sneak up on someone sitting in a chair with its back to a door, and one could not easily spring into action from the seated position. As a boy, one of his tutors had always squatted when he grew weary of standi
ng, and Sicarius had adopted the habit.

  “They’re not as comfortable as a hammock on a Kyattese lanai, I’ll admit,” Starcrest said, “but they aren’t booby trapped. You needn’t look at them so suspiciously.”

  “Yes, sir.” Sicarius shifted one of the chairs around so his back wouldn’t be toward the door and perched on the edge of the seat.

  “As I was saying, I thank you for refusing to assassinate me. Twice now.” Starcrest gave him a dry half smile. “Or is it three times?”

  “Three.”

  “Last night, a few years ago, and… in the tunnels? Did you have orders to kill me if I didn’t accept the emperor’s offer?”

  “Yes, sir. But you used your superior strategic mind to outmaneuver an inexperienced young assassin.”

  “That’s what you told the emperor?” Starcrest asked.

  “I thought I might receive less punishment that way. ‘I let him escape’ sounded unpromising.”

  “Ah, and did you? Receive less punishment?”

  “It is impossible to judge since I have no way of knowing what the punishment may have been had I voiced the more succinct phrase.”

  “Of course.” Starcrest leaned back in the chair. “Sicarius, I regret that your associations with me have always resulted in pain for you.”

  Sicarius almost whispered, “Me too,” but only gave another, “Yes, sir.” Those punishments were long past and inconsequential at this point.

  “Is there anything I can do for you now? I would offer you the use of a guest bungalow on Tikaya’s land on Kyatt, but if you can’t relax in a chair, I can’t see you swimming in the surf and lounging on a beach. Though I do recommend the practice. After years of constant fighting, the tranquility is a relief. At least for a time. Until your mind grows restless and dreams up a new challenge. Note, I do not recommend taking up surfing as said new challenge. Well, perhaps in your case, it would not be disastrous. You’re an agile sort.”