“Very well.” The corporal tilted his chin toward Amaranthe as if he were granting some vast favor. “You may pass.”
Amaranthe decided against saying anything lippy or smug. She might pass this way again and had no idea what terms she would be on with Hollowcrest on the return trip. The guard searched her and confiscated her weapons.
“Come with me,” he said.
The same guard stood outside Hollowcrest’s door, though he regarded her with curious eyes this time.
“You killed Sicarius?” he asked as Amaranthe’s escort left without a word.
“Yes.”
“That’s...impressive.”
“Thank you.”
The guard straightened and seemed to remember his lines: “The Commander of the Armies isn’t here yet, but you may wait inside. He’ll be there shortly.”
Amaranthe entered and closed the door behind her. The office remained the same, though without Hollowcrest’s cool presence, it felt less imposing.
She inched forward. Maybe she had time to snoop.
On the desk, next to Sicarius’s dagger, a fat book hung precariously over the edge, one inadvertent nudge from landing in the trash can. Leave it be. It’s snooping time, not desk-tidying time. Amaranthe stared at the crooked tome for a few heartbeats before disobeying her inner voice.
She crossed the room and straightened the book so its edges precisely lined up with the edges of the desk. She noticed a piece of paper tucked—hidden?—between the pages. After a moment of hesitation, she stuck her thumb into the book to mark the spot and plucked the unattached sheet free.
Hollowcrest, it read, you said the emperor was under your control. Your puppet hasn’t made any of the changes we—
A thump sounded behind the wall to Amaranthe’s right. She jumped back from the desk. A vertical crack appeared—a hidden door. She stuffed the note into her pocket.
Hollowcrest emerged from the passage.
Don’t notice the book, don’t notice the book....
His glare never left her face as he moved around the desk to sit. Hostility gleamed in those eyes. That verified Sicarius’s supposition more thoroughly than any words could. No, sir, you didn’t expect me to succeed, did you?
“Corporal Lokdon, it’s good that you’ve returned unharmed. And so soon. Remarkable results.” His smile was as icy as the frost gathered on the panes of the window behind his desk.
“Thank you, sir.”
“This is indeed Sicarius’s dagger.” Hollowcrest ticked a fingernail against the dark metal. A conflagration of emotions swarmed across his face; in the mix, she thought she detected both anger and regret, neither of which seemed right. The cold facade returned quickly, masking further emotion. Much like Sicarius, she mused, except the assassin did it better.
“Yes, sir.”
“How did you manage to kill him?”
“Actually, sir, I’d like to start with a question of my own.” Tension coursed through her body, and she felt like a trap poised to spring. She had never questioned a superior officer. It was not done. “Why did you send me to die?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Sicarius is a professional at a deadly game I’ve little experience in. He appears out of the dark and moves across snow without making a sound. If he’s interested at all in women, I doubt he’d let it interfere with business. I no longer believe you expected me to defeat him.”
“Obviously, you did. The details, please.”
Amaranthe considered that cool face. Hollowcrest was not going to give anything away, and he certainly wasn’t going to answer her questions. She would be hauled off to a dungeon—or the gallows—never knowing why. Her only hope was to try and surprise him, startle the answers out of him.
“Sicarius isn’t dead,” she said. “He gave me the knife. We reached an agreement.”
“No!” Hollowcrest surged to his feet, upending his chair.
Amaranthe reacted without thinking. She grabbed the dagger from his desk and held it defensively before her.
“You conniving bitch,” Hollowcrest growled. “I don’t believe you seduced him too.”
What? How had he come up with that? Her mind caught up to her surprise, and she asked the more pertinent question: “Too?”
Hollowcrest seemed to notice the dagger in her hand for the first time. Amaranthe lowered it but made no move to return it.
“What do you mean, ‘too’?” she asked. “You can’t possibly be talking about...”
“Sespian.” Hollowcrest never took his eyes from the dagger, though calculation, not concern, showed on his face.
“How could I have seduced him? I haven’t—”
“Spare me your meager denials. He came back the day he met you, gushing about a fabulous enforcer woman. How competent and pretty she was. What a wonderful mother she’d make. I couldn’t risk Sespian courting someone so—” Hollowcrest’s sneer took in the dagger, “—inappropriate. It was easier to get rid of you than to turn his interests elsewhere.”
“You sent me off to my death so that I wouldn’t inconvenience your marriage plans for the emperor?”
“Precisely. A shame you weren’t considerate enough to die.”
“I spoke to him twice.” Amaranthe spread her arms. “I assure you I have no designs on the emperor.”
“You lie. I saw the ambition on your face when I spoke of a promotion. But why settle for being a lieutenant when you could be an empress? A seat next to the most powerful man in the empire, whispering in his ear, influencing him, having everything you ever dreamed of.”
“I can see why that would concern you, since you currently occupy that position.” Her audacity surprised her, but it hardly mattered if she offended Hollowcrest now. If he was telling her all this, he had already decided to have her killed. She frowned. Actually, there was no reason for him to explain anything, even if he did plan to kill her. It was almost as if he was stalling.
“I deserve the position,” Hollowcrest said. “I have the experience. I’m the one who worked with his father for more than thirty years.”
“What would the emperor say about that?” she asked. “I assume he doesn’t know you’re drugging him.”
“And he’s not going to know.” Hollowcrest opened a drawer.
Before Amaranthe could reply, the door swung open. She turned, and she abruptly knew why Hollowcrest had been stalling.
The emperor and his six bodyguards crowded the hallway. At first he appeared delighted to see her, but a startled question flashed across his eyes when he spotted the dagger in her hand. Then he looked harder at it. Those eyes widened and his jaw sagged open.
Amaranthe winced. Sicarius, you didn’t tell me the emperor would recognize your dagger too.
“Sire,” she started, “I can—”
Papers rustled behind her. She whirled. Hollowcrest lunged at her with a knife. Instinctively, she sidestepped and lifted Sicarius’s dagger. Going over the desk made Hollowcrest’s attack awkward, and she blocked it with her own stab. Her blade raked across his forearm. Hollowcrest cursed and dropped the knife.
“She’s a traitor,” he yelled. “Kill her!”
Steel rasped from scabbards, and the guards charged.
“No!” Sespian grabbed at the closest, but none of the men paused. They were following Hollowcrest’s orders, not his.
Amaranthe jumped onto the desk, flung her arms over her face, and leaped through the window.
* * *
Sespian grabbed the doorjamb, stunned. The sound of shattering glass echoed through the room. Swords in hand, the guards started to run for the door.
“Nobody leaves!” Sespian blocked the exit with his body, trapping them inside.
The guards looked at Hollowcrest. Sespian noticed they were more concerned about his advisor’s orders than his, but he could only stare at the window.
Had Amaranthe survived? Broken an arm? A leg? Sespian swallowed. Her neck?
Torn between needing to kno
w and being afraid to find out, he hesitated before going to the window. Finally he started across the room. He had to know.
Hollowcrest intercepted him. Sespian tried to push past, but the older man gripped his arm with surprising strength.
“Let go,” Sespian said.
Hollowcrest did not. Blood ran down his arm and dripped onto Sespian’s wrist.
“She’s a traitor,” Hollowcrest said. “She attacked me.”
“You attacked her first. Do you think I don’t have eyes? She was defending herself.”
“She came to kill me, and you as well. I know you recognized that knife!”
Hollowcrest so rarely raised his voice, so rarely showed any emotion at all. His tone made Sespian pause. But, no. It could not be true.
“There’s an explanation,” Sespian said. “There must be. You’re the one who brought her here, sent her on a mission.”
“One which she did not complete. She’s allied with Sicarius.”
Sespian pushed past him to the window. Footprints trampled the snow below. Even from the third floor, the spots of blood were visible. But the courtyard was empty, Amaranthe nowhere to be seen. The front gate was locked, the guards in place. She had not fled that way.
“Where is she?” Sespian whispered.
“Sire—”
Sespian waved Hollowcrest to silence and charged out the door. He raced through the halls and down the stairs. More than once he skidded on the polished marble floors and banged into the walls, but he did not slow.
When he ran out the front door, cold air wrapped around him, but he hardly noticed it. He veered off the walkway and followed the wall of the building. Only when he reached the spot below Hollowcrest’s office did he slow.
The gas lights in the courtyard provided little illumination this far from the walkways. Blood spattered the snow, but only under the window. There was no trail leading away. The darkness, and dozens of boot prints, thwarted Sespian’s attempts to pinpoint Amaranthe’s tracks.
A shard of blackness against the white ground demanded his attention. He bent and brushed aside snow, revealing the midnight black dagger.
A twinge of old fear wound through his gut. What had she been doing with Sicarius’s weapon? Hollowcrest couldn’t be right, could he?
Voices at the front of the building returned him to the moment. Feeling dizzy, Sespian staggered back to find Hollowcrest and two guards talking on the stairs. When Sespian approached, Hollowcrest sent the men inside.
“What happened?” Sespian asked.
Hollowcrest met his gaze. “She broke her neck in the fall. The guards have taken her body away for incineration.”
“No. She’s too good. She wouldn’t... I don’t believe it.” The headache that always lurked behind Sespian’s eyes intensified. Perhaps all that running had been too much. He put a hand on one of the statues for support.
“Sespian,” Hollowcrest said, “she wasn’t what you wanted her to be. She was a traitor. I brought her here because I suspected she was not the loyal enforcer she appeared to be.” He reached out and touched the knife in Sespian’s hands. “She was in league with Sicarius.”
“No,” Sespian whispered.
He leaned forward, panting. The running had strained him more than it should have. Spots floated across his vision, and blackness probed the edges. The constant pain in his head intensified. He hunched over, clutching at his temples—and collapsed into unconsciousness.
6
Shackles bound Amaranthe’s wrists behind her back. Two guards dragged her through dark narrow hallways and down a dank stairway framed by walls of roughly quarried stone. Lanterns burned at distant intervals, hanging from old torch sconces. As the group moved in and out of the shadows, Amaranthe felt as if she had stepped back hundreds of years in time.
Warm blood trickled down her temple. Numerous glass cuts afflicted her face and scalp. Worse pain came from her battered muscles, courtesy of the pummeling they received in the three-story fall. This discomfort was only the beginning, she knew. I can survive this. Whatever torture they inflict on me, I will survive, and I will plan, and I will escape.
Then she entered the dungeon.
She was expecting shackles, instruments of pain, and moldy, bloodstained walls. The archaic atmosphere ended at the doorway, however. Inside, a honeycomb of whitewashed tunnels and chambers spread out. They were brightly lit by gas jets and smelled of lye soap. The first man she saw likewise did not meet expectations.
Amaranthe had anticipated towering, monosyllabic guards led by a sadistic, whip-cracking overseer who had not seen the sun in twenty years. Instead, a gray-haired man in crisp black military fatigues greeted her with a smile.
“Ah!” he said cheerfully. “A female. You’re our first. Excellent.”
The pin on the left side of his collar proclaimed him a colonel; the pin on the right bore a needle, the symbol for a surgeon.
A shiver raised the hair along her arms. “First for what?”
“I’ll show you.” The surgeon hummed and tapped his clipboard against his thigh as he led the way down the stark, white corridor. “Come along, come along.”
The guards forced Amaranthe to follow. If her hands had not been bound behind her, she might have tried for one of the swords or pistols hanging from their belts, but she had no hope of reaching them.
Cells lined either side of the corridor, each secured by steel bars and locked gates. Male prisoners occupied most. Some stood and watched her pass, but most lay prone and unresponsive. One had black fingers and toes, symptoms of the advanced stages of frostbite. Another had pox marks all over his skin. Occasionally, medics in military fatigues surrounded the prisoners. One would hold a clipboard and pen while others stabbed and prodded at their victims.
In one cell, a man was stretched facedown on a metal table with a surgeon poking around several inches of exposed vertebrae. He screamed with each prod, and blood flowed from his back. It splashed the floor, ran down a slight slope, and poured into a central drain. Amaranthe experienced the unwelcome insight that someone had angled the floors and placed the drains with exactly that purpose in mind.
Torture, but more methodical than the simple cuts and burns designed to extract information. They were performing medical experiments on these people. She shuddered.
“The emperor might not like the idea of a lady being dissected in his dungeon,” one of the guards holding Amaranthe whispered to the other as they traveled deeper into the tunnels.
“This was his idea,” the other said. “He wanted more money to go into medical research, right?”
“He has no idea what’s going on down here, and I’m sure this isn’t the kind of research he meant.”
“That’s ‘cause he’s soft, and you are too if you listen to him. Hollowcrest is smart to keep his thumb on the boy. The Nurians would be mauling us if they had any idea how weak-minded our supposed emperor is.”
Amaranthe wondered how many men in the Imperial Barracks were loyal to Sespian and how many to Hollowcrest. If these two were representative of the whole, Hollowcrest’s supporters were more vocal.
The surgeon turned into a large room with four occupied cots against the back wall. A counter with upper and lower cabinets stood along one side and a coal stove along the other. No fire burned in it, and the room was cold. The men on the cots were inert, flushed faces and wheezing breaths the only indications of life. A bumpy red rash covered their skin.
The surgeon paused by a cot. “Ah, good. This one’s dead. Take him to my examination room. A few more dissections and we ought to make some headway.” He rapped his knuckles on his clipboard. “It’s not right that those magic-throwing Kendorian shamans can cure this while sound imperial medicine lags behind.”
The guard who had spoken up for Sespian left Amaranthe to obey the surgeon’s orders. He touched her shoulder briefly, eyes sad, before he dragged the corpse away. The pity unnerved her more than the callous attitudes of the others.
“M
agic-throwing shamans?” Amaranthe asked. The empire’s stance was that magic did not exist. Of course, the empire also forbade its use, so one tended to wonder about the truth of the first statement. Either way, she had never seen any evidence of magic in her life.
“Yes, their healers sacrifice chickens, wave their hands, and cure the disease.” The surgeon sniffed disdainfully. “Fear not. Your sacrifice will help us find a legitimate cure and distribute it to our troops along the southern border.”
“Oh, good.” Amaranthe swallowed. “What is the disease?”
“Hysintunga.”
“And it’s always deadly?”
“Oh, yes.”
“How long does it take to ah...” She nodded in the direction the corpse had been taken.
The surgeon unlocked a cabinet and rummaged inside. “Three to four days from infection to death, at least based on the cases we’ve had so far. Perhaps it’ll be faster for you, since you’re smaller than the men.”
A locomotive trip to Kendor took over a week. I’m dead if I let them infect me.
She flexed her shoulders and tried to work her wrists free of the manacles. The remaining guard clamped his hand tighter around her biceps and gave her a warning frown. The hilt of his sword dug into her side. If she could somehow get his weapon, maybe she could hold it to the surgeon’s throat and bargain her way free. She would need her hands free first.
“I don’t suppose you’d—” she started, but a shadow fell across the doorway.
Hollowcrest entered the room, and four guards came in on his heels.
Amaranthe slumped.
He regarded her coolly, hefting his right arm. A bandage wrapped it from wrist to elbow.
“You are a tedious pain, woman. In more ways than one.”
“You attacked me,” she said, seeing no reason to bother with honorifics at this point. “After you sent me on a suicide mission. I’m the one who’s a pain?”
He snorted. “Don’t put this on me, girl. It seemed a shame to waste a bright enforcer; it’s not like they’re a common breed. Your ambition is what made you dangerous. I couldn’t let you at the emperor.”