“Got to try something,” she muttered.
Amaranthe studied the steam-powered machines, noting their boilers and—she craned her neck—yes, there were furnaces on the back ends of the carapaces. Would the doors be locked or could she open them?
With one arm wrapped about her tree, holding on for her life, she fished in her pocket and came up with the fist-sized cartridge from the boat. She hoped her guess as to its contents was right.
Amaranthe leaped out of the tree, twisting in the air to land facing the back of one of her metal attackers. She grabbed at the latch on the furnace door. Hot metal seared her hand, but she ripped the door open anyway.
The saw pulled away from the tree, and the machine started to turn. Amaranthe thrust the cartridge into the door and ran in the opposite direction. She only made it two steps before an explosion boomed into the night. She dove into the undergrowth and covered her head.
Shrapnel pelted the trees, and debris rained onto her back. Not daring to stay prone for long, Amaranthe scrambled to her feet. The explosion had destroyed the first machine, but the second was already recovering. A hitch in one of its treads made it wobble, but it still pursued her with determination.
When Amaranthe tried to back up, she smacked into a towering boulder. The machine drew near, and its circular saw extended, whirring closer.
She darted sideways, but her foot found a hole instead of solid earth, and she sank to her knee, nearly snapping her ankle as she pitched sideways. Growling, she tried to extract her foot, but roots like hands grasped at her.
“Curse this slagging island!” she snarled, no longer caring about the noise she made.
She finally yanked her foot free, but another root tripped her up, and she fell onto her back. Something snapped—her crossbow. It was the least of her worries.
The metal beast lunged forward like an attack dog. The spinning blade rose, the steel gleaming beneath the moonlight.
A dark form dropped out of the trees, landing on the machine’s carapace. A man. Sicarius?
He lifted his arms, and Amaranthe glimpsed his black dagger, the inky blade not reflecting the moonlight at all. He drove the weapon downward with all his power.
Before she could tell if it pierced the metal hull, he leaped over the spinning saw to land next to her. He grabbed her as if she were a toddler, hefting her from the ground, and jumped out of the machine’s way.
It did not veer to follow. It smashed into the boulder, and teeth from its saw flew off, pattering into the foliage about them.
Amaranthe found the ground with her feet, though Sicarius did not let her go. He faced her, gripping her by both arms, and she could feel the rise and fall of his chest, his rapid breathing. Strange. With all his training, he was never out of breath. Had he gotten so far ahead that he had to sprint all the way back when he realized she needed assistance?
“I appreciate the help,” she said quietly.
“I can’t stay here,” Sicarius whispered. “He’s too strong.”
The hairs stirred on Amaranthe’s neck again. “Who is?”
“Azon Amar.”
“The dead assassin.” Amaranthe did not know what else to say. She didn’t even know what he was saying.
“The dead warrior mage,” Sicarius said. “He was powerful in life, and some of that power lingers in death. His spirit is here, restless and angry.”
Amaranthe stared at him. That a dead Nurian was somehow reaching out from the afterlife to affect Sicarius seemed impossible. Though there were countless stories involving ancestor spirits in the empire, she’d never seen anything to prove that they truly existed. Of course, a year earlier, she hadn’t believed magic existed either, but she’d seen ample examples of the mental sciences in recent months.
“What does he want?” Amaranthe asked.
“For me to kill you.”
“Me?” she squeaked. She cleared her throat, fighting for a calm voice, but she was all too conscious of the fact that Sicarius still gripped her arms, and he continued to breathe hard, as if he was fighting against something. Something that was trying to compel him. “Why me? I’ve never even met—”
“You’re Turgonian.”
“So are you.”
“Yes,” Sicarius said, “and he already tried to get me to commit suicide.”
Amaranthe swallowed. When had that happened? When Sicarius was up ahead? Or back on the beach when they first came ashore?
“But you resisted,” she said.
“Yes.”
With more confidence than she felt, Amaranthe patted him on the side and said, “You’ll resist killing me too.”
For a moment, he didn’t move, didn’t breathe, and, through his grip, Amaranthe could almost sense the loathing of the dead sorcerer.
Then Sicarius released her. “Yes.”
The strain in his voice when he said that, as if he were speaking through clenched teeth, worried her. Everything here worried her, and she wondered if this good deed was worth it. She also regretted wishing Sicarius was less infallible. Resist, she silently urged him.
“You should leave the island,” Amaranthe said. “Get out of his range of power.”
“I won’t leave you here alone.”
“I can handle a couple of thieves on my own.” Or so she hoped. If the Nurians had sneaked into a heavily guarded army fort and stolen all that equipment, they certainly weren’t neophytes. Amaranthe shifted, and her ankle twinged. She couldn’t forget the roots, branches, and falling trees that seemed to want her dead too.
“You’ll have to,” Sicarius said. “I already tried to kill them, and he stopped me. He’s protecting his countrymen.”
“Why’s he only attempting to manipulate you and not me?” she asked. As far as she knew, no spirit was marauding through her head, trying to convince her to kill herself.
“Perhaps he can only control one person at a time.”
Sicarius left her side to jump on the back of the machine crumpled against the boulder. He yanked his dagger free with a grinding of metal. Amaranthe had seen his black blade in action numerous times, and it did not surprise her that it could pierce metal—it probably wouldn’t even be scratched.
Amaranthe picked up her crossbow and examined it, careful not to brush against the poisoned quarrel. “Why would he choose you over me? I haven’t had any training to resist magic, so I’d be easier to control.” As soon as the words left her mouth, she realized it might not be a good idea to announce such things to the malevolent island. “No, he must realize you’re the better tool.”
She dropped the crossbow. The firing mechanism was broken.
“Do you have any poison left?” Sicarius returned to her side. An owl hooted nearby.
“Yes,” Amaranthe said.
Sicarius pressed something cool into her palm—the handle of his dagger. She stared at the dark blade.
“Apply poison to the tip,” he said. “If I... bother you, use it.”
“Sicarius, this is ridiculous. Just swim back to shore.”
“I’m not sure he’ll let me,” he said softly.
“Try. You’re not getting yourself killed out here, and you’re certainly not killing me. I’ll just go take a look and see if there’s a way to talk these people out of leaving their ill-gotten plunder behind, and then I’ll meet you back at that dock.”
“Amaranthe...”
She planted her free hand on his chest. “Go, I’ll be fine without you. Trust me, you’re the biggest threat to me on this island.”
“Understood.” He turned his back and strode away, disappearing into the night.
After a moment of consideration, Amaranthe pulled her vial of poison from her ammo pouch and, by the light of the burning wreckage, brushed some of the clear liquid onto Sicarius’s blade. There was no way she would use it on him, but maybe it would come in handy against the thieves.
With his dagger in hand, she picked her way back to the path, but she stopped there. There was no campfire to check
. She and Sicarius had smelled the wood burning in the machines’ furnaces. The thieves could be anywhere on the island. Or—her head jerked up—maybe they’d used the machines to distract her while they gathered their gear and prepared to leave the island. Maybe they were circling back to the boat to escape.
An owl hooted above Amaranthe’s head.
She jumped, then rolled her eyes at herself. This place had her on edge.
“A good reason to finish up and get off it,” she told herself.
Amaranthe hustled back down the trail toward the beach. This time, she worried more about speed and less about stealth.
As she was clambering over the fallen log, the first human sound came to her ear. Voices.
She could not understand what they were saying, but their voices were underlaid by urgency.
Amaranthe ran down the final fifty meters of trail as quickly as she could without making too much noise. When she reached the pebbles, she spotted the thieves. Too late.
They had already launched the boat and were paddling out so they could swing around the island’s contours and head for the river. Both were rowing with a huge bulky pile between them, its contents shrouded with a tarp.
Amaranthe clenched her fist. If she hadn’t broken her crossbow, she might have shot them. She could swim out to them, but they’d see her coming and simply shoot her with those prototype weapons. Even if she managed to hold her breath long enough to swim under water to their position, what then? Would she slither over the edge of the boat and try to cut their throats before they noticed her? Sicarius could manage that, but she had no idea as to the thieves’ degree of combat prowess. She was not sure she could assassinate someone in cold blood anyway, even someone stealing imperial secrets.
She couldn’t give up yet though. Amaranthe ran along the beach, hugging the shadows of the tree line for camouflage. Pebbles shifted beneath her feet, and she hoped the lapping waves hid the noise.
An owl hooted from a nearby tree, not a single call, but a string of insistent hoots. Amaranthe halted midstep. The thieves lowered their voices and looked in her direction. They shouldn’t be able to see her against the dark backdrop of the trees, but having their eyes turned toward her made her nervous. That owl couldn’t be calling attention to her on purpose, could it?
It hooted again from a closer perch. Amaranthe grabbed a pebble from the beach and flung it toward the noise. She didn’t expect to hit anything, but maybe the projectile would startle the owl to silence. It worked, for the moment. The thieves’ voices remained low, though, and they increased their rowing speed.
Amaranthe kept going too. Running was faster than rowing, so she soon pulled ahead of the boat, but to what end, she was not sure. Before long, she would run out of beach and island, and the thieves would be free to float down the river.
Sweat dribbled from her temples, courtesy of the humid evening. Her shirt, still damp from the previous swim, clung her to back, and her trousers chaffed her legs. Think, girl, she told herself. She needed to come up with a plan, not worry about the heat.
Amaranthe still held Sicarius’s dagger. She thought of him crunching through imperial steel with it and glanced over her shoulder toward the rowboat. Wood ought to be an easier barrier to pierce. A simple hole in the bottom of that boat, and the thieves wouldn’t make it more than a half a mile down the river before their cargo sank.
Her route took her into darker shadows, thanks to the peak of the island blocking the low moon, and she made her decision. Staying low, she scrambled to the water’s edge and removed her shoes and sword belt. Carrying only Sicarius’s black blade, she slipped into the lake.
The boat would pass through the island’s shadow, and they should have a hard time spotting her as long as she stayed still and made no splashes. Or so she hoped.
Holding the dagger made swimming awkward, but Amaranthe wasn’t about to clench it between her teeth, not with the poison on the blade. The boat drew closer, and she sank low in the water, letting only her nose and eyes stick out. Seaweed from the bottom curled around her leg, and she shook herself free while being careful not to break the surface or splash. Grimly, she wondered how far from the island that spirit’s influence extended.
Splashes and drips sounded as the boat approached, its oars dipping and rising in sync. Amaranthe waited until the thieves were twenty feet away. When she was about to submerge to swim underwater to the boat’s hull, that cursed owl hooted again. It flew overhead, a dark winged form gliding beneath the stars. It had to be warning the Nurians.
Amaranthe took a breath and submerged anyway, hoping the thieves could not understand the bird’s alert.
Darkness reigned below the surface, and she couldn’t see her own hand in front of her face. Only sounds guided her, the splash of the oars and scrapes as they bumped against the hull.
She swam toward the noises, hands outstretched. She needed to find the hull without bumping into the oars—that would give everything away too soon.
More seaweed grasped at her ankles. Amaranthe struggled for calm and tried to shake herself loose. When that failed, she used the dagger to cut herself free. The stuff was definitely trying to snare her. She had to keep moving. An image flashed through her mind, slimy tentacles wrapping about her whole body and pulling her to the bottom of the lake, never to let go....
Her hand brushed something. Wood. Yes, there was the hull.
Amaranthe found a grove and hung on as the thieves rowed, with luck unaware that they carried extra cargo now. Kicking softly, so they wouldn’t feel her weight dragging at the boat, she placed the tip of Sicarius’s dagger against the hull beneath the cargo. She pushed upward and wiggled the blade, trying to poke a hole without making noise.
Though the dagger cut through the wood easily, the going was slow and Amaranthe’s lungs were starting to burn. She might have to risk swimming away, catching her breath, and coming back to finish.
More seaweed curled about her ankle, and she jerked her leg free. Her knee bumped the bottom of the boat. The oars paused.
Amaranthe grew still and curled her legs beneath her to make sure they would not stick out to the sides of the boat. She doubted the thieves could see anything under the dark water, but...
One of the oars started probing about. It brushed her sleeve. Cursed ancestors.
Amaranthe jabbed the dagger into the bottom of the boat. No more time for stealth and finesse. The black blade bit through the wood as if it were soft cheese. She sawed a fist-size hole.
An oar angled in again, this time clipping her in the ribs. Her air escaped in a parade of bubbles. Another oar from the other side of the boat hammered against her shoulder. They weren’t probing any more but attacking.
Her hole would have to do. Using her feet, she pushed off the bottom of the boat. Her trajectory took her more downward than she would have liked, and tendrils of seaweed snaked about her from all sides. One piece clamped about her ankle, and another her wrist.
Fighting against panic, Amaranthe slashed with the dagger, keeping her cuts calm and precise. It was hard when her lungs were crying out for air and more seaweed clawed at her on all sides. She could see nothing in the dark water either, so everything was by touch. She cut the tendril restraining her wrist and twisted, lunging for the one at her ankle. A cold strand of seaweed slid beneath her shirt. She bucked away from the slimy intrusion.
A loud crack sounded overhead. A gunshot being fired.
They might not be able to see her, but they must be able to see evidence of her thrashing with the seaweed.
Amaranthe finally cut herself free and stroked away without any elegance. If she’d had any breath left, she would have gone dozens of meters before breaking the surface, but she had to come up long before then.
The squabble with the seaweed left her disoriented, and Amaranthe didn’t know where she was in relation to the boat and the island. As soon as she lifted a hand to dash water out of her eyes, something slammed into her from above.
&
nbsp; The weight forced her several feet under, and she fumbled Sicarius’s knife, almost losing it. An arm snaked around her torso, a strong muscled arm. The male thief. He was in the water with her, on top of her.
Metal scraped against her cheek. He had a knife too.
Amaranthe ducked her head to protect her neck and slashed her blade into the arm restraining her. A yelp of pain sounded, the noise distorted by the water.
She twisted so she faced the man and stabbed again, trying to find his torso in the darkness.
Something brushed her foot. The cursed seaweed again. It probably wanted to hold her down so he could stick her like a pincushion.
Amaranthe yanked her foot free, and kicked hard with both legs, angling around the thief—or where she thought he would be—thinking to take him by surprise. He might think she’d flee and be chasing after her.
A current breezed past; the thief swimming by her?
Amaranthe took a chance and lashed out with Sicarius’s dagger. It slipped into flesh and muscle, far more easily than a normal blade would have. The man screamed, but he managed to grab her wrist as she was retracting the blade.
Knowing he had his own knife, Amaranthe pulled both legs up to her chest and kicked out. Her heels hammered into the man’s abdomen, and he released her with a grunt.
She ought to close and finish him, but she needed air. She clawed her way to the surface, though she tried to break the water carefully, so the woman would not hear if she were nearby. Maybe the thief would be busy with her sinking ship.
As soon as Amaranthe broke the surface, she inhaled a great gulp of air. A rifle cracked, and water splashed inches from her head.
Amaranthe ducked back below the surface and swam. She had not had a chance to get her bearings, and had no idea which way she was going, only that she needed to put a lot of meters between herself and the woman with the gun.
She stroked until her lungs burned for air, and then stroked farther. Only when her fingers scraped algae-slick rock did she come up. She had run out of room to run. In her heart, she hoped she had swum toward the mainland instead of the island, but her brain knew that was unlikely—she hadn’t traveled far enough for that.