“I assumed you had,” Amaranthe said, “because you kidnapped two of my men.”
“Oh,” Spectacles growled. “Sicarius. You run with his group?”
“He runs with my group.” Amaranthe turned to Maldynado. “I make all the decisions and do all the planning. Why is nobody ever aware of that?” She hoped her whining made her sound innocuous, like someone who wasn’t a threat, like someone who could be invited in to chat further....
“Because you’re friendly and nice, and he’s...someone who likes to kill people who are friendly and nice?” Maldynado suggested.
“That must be it.” Amaranthe faced the practitioners again, empty hands spread. “Gentlemen, it looks like you’re in a dungeon with few prospects for escape. Am I correct in deducing that my men are making trouble in your engine room?”
“We’re taking care of them,” Spectacles said.
Another boom rattled the fortress. The men’s wary eyes lifted toward the ceiling. If the marines kept dropping charges, one was bound to land on top of the vessel eventually.
“I could get them to walk out right now,” Amaranthe said, “and you people could amble in, fix up those engines, and escape this lake before the marines get lucky.”
“The kraken will handle their ship,” Spectacles said. “Even now, it’s attacking them. They will either sink or flee to the docks, wetting their trousers on the way.”
“Uhm,” Amaranthe said, “you speak Turgonian very well, but you don’t seem to understand the warrior mentality of our people. The captain will be tickled at the idea of facing a kraken. A training exercise, if you will. If they thought the beast a severe threat, they’d be too busy facing it to drop charges over the side.” That story sounded plausible, anyway. In truth, there were probably a couple of lowly privates up there, assigned the task of sending the explosives down in hopes that destroying the fortress would make the kraken lose interest in defending it. “Once they dispatch your little pet, they’ll be able to focus all their attention on this vessel.”
“We’ll be fine on our own,” Spectacles said. “We—”
The balding man stopped him with a raised hand, and Amaranthe wondered if he, despite being the quiet one, might be in charge. “What are you proposing, woman?”
“Amaranthe,” she said, figuring they’d be more likely to see her as an ally if they were on a first name basis. “May we come in to discuss this? Some of your guards have been looking for us, and we’d rather not get shot in the back while we’re talking to you.”
The men frowned at her. Despite her attempt at wide-eyed innocence, they seemed to think she might be up to something. Annoying when the villains had a modicum of intelligence.
Spectacles murmured a few words to his boss in their language. Amaranthe hoped it was something like, “They’re simple fighters and not a threat to our magical greatness.”
“Drop your weapons and kick them back into the tunnel,” the leader finally said.
“Kick?” Maldynado said. “One doesn’t kick a Teldark and Brook blade.”
“Ssh.” Amaranthe tossed her short sword onto the floor behind them.
Maldynado gently laid his rapier next to her weapon.
Spectacles walked to the wall to the left of his side of the barrier where a box emitting a soft green glow perched at face level. He lowered his spectacles and leaned forward to stare into it. The barrier shimmered and winked out.
Amaranthe waited for the man to step back and gesture for them to enter. She eased inside, hands open and spread. Maldynado did the same, but he stepped to her side, a couple of feet closer to the vials in the weapons locker.
“Stay there,” the leader said. “What’s your proposal?”
“I’ll get my men to leave peacefully,” Amaranthe said, “and you let us walk, or swim, out of here unmolested.”
“Sicarius is worth a million ranmyas.”
“Yes, and if you wanted that, you should have kept him unconscious.” She assumed that was how they had captured him in the first place, no doubt thanks to her sending him off to snoop. Someone must have caught him with a whiff from one of those vials.
“Litya woke him up,” Spectacles said. “We told her not to. She paid for it, too. Your men have killed many of our guards and some of our practitioners. Letting them walk away unpunished isn’t acceptable.”
“I see. Are you two in charge?” Amaranthe asked, wondering if she was negotiating with someone who had the power to do anything.
“We’re on the committee.”
“Committee? As in shared powers? And votes?”
“We’re not savages like you Turgonians,” Spectacles said. “We run a democracy here.”
“Well.” Amaranthe clasped her hands and strolled to the porthole. Their gazes followed her, leaving Maldynado unobserved. “I’m not going to talk Sicarius into walking out if your intent is to capture—or shoot—him,” she said.
“Suppose we take you prisoner and use your life to barter with the assassin?” Spectacles mused.
“That’d be a gamble on your part.” Amaranthe leaned her back against the console, ostensibly so she could chat face-to-face with both men, but she was more interested in checking on Maldynado’s progress.
He was leaning on one arm that happened to rest on the wall near the weapons rack, but his quick headshake said he had not yet palmed the vials.
“The problem for you, gentlemen,” Amaranthe went on, “is that Sicarius doesn’t care enough about anyone in the group—about anyone at all—to risk himself on their behalf. He’s like that kraken out there.”
She twisted and leaned toward the porthole, gazing up as if she had spotted the beast. The men leaned forward, too, no doubt worrying their prize kraken was idling about instead of terrorizing the marines.
Amaranthe thought about signaling to Maldynado to sneak up on the men and bash them both on the backs of their heads, but practitioners seemed to be good at sensing bodily threats.
“Sicarius is pragmatic and practical and out for his own interests. He’ll crush you if you inconvenience him.” She faced the men again and, in her peripheral vision, saw Maldynado nod once. She hoped it meant he had the vials, not that he agreed with her assessment of Sicarius. “Don’t let greed lead you to disaster,” Amaranthe urged the practitioners. “Money isn’t what brought you here in the first place, is it?” In truth, she had no idea, but it sounded like a promising guess.
“Our research requires funds,” Spectacles said. “Ultra modern mobile labs don’t build themselves.”
“Why do you need to be mobile?” she asked, figuring the more they chatted with her, the less likely they would be to hold a knife to her throat as part of a bargaining ploy.
The men’s lips grew flat.
“Your research isn’t sanctioned by your government?” Amaranthe asked, her tone not one of accusation. No, she gave them her best brotherhood-of-folks-beleaguered-by-oppressive-government-policies smile.
“You could say that,” Spectacles said. “Most of our funds won’t come through until we deliver the babies, and that’s a long-term project, obviously.”
Babies? What were these people doing down here?
“A project that will be more difficult to complete without Litya,” Spectacles added.
The quiet man whispered something in a string of vowel-rich syllables. A warning not to reveal so much? Whatever it was, both men scowled at her. Litya must have met the sharp side of one of Sicarius’s daggers.
“Out of curiosity,” Amaranthe said, pretending not to notice their flinty stares, “were you hired or told to come here by a group called Forge?”
The men exchanged sharp looks.
“We have Turgonian customers, but your people didn’t fund our mission,” Spectacles said.
That...wasn’t quite what she had asked. That they recognized the organization told her much though.
“Forge is just a client, then?” Amaranthe asked.
Spectacles shrugged. “Who in Turgo
nia couldn’t find a use for a child gifted enough to win at the Imperial Games or excel on the battlefield? That’s the only way to join your archaic aristocracy, is it not?”
Amaranthe said nothing. Was that what the miners had been planning? If they combined funds to buy a son who could one day gain entrance into the warrior caste through merit, the parents would share the family honors: land, entitlements, access to the emperor. Though businesses had brought common citizens many opportunities, no amount of money could buy what the warrior caste received as a birthright.
Something clunked against the hull of the vessel. A flash of light appeared outside the porthole, and a massive boom coursed through the fortress.
Amaranthe grabbed the console and managed to stay upright, but Spectacles tumbled to the floor, cracking his head on the seat. A wailing reminiscent of an injured bird started up, creating a cacophony as it competed with the ongoing alarm. The rangy man gripped the console with both hands, and his eyes closed to slits as he concentrated on something.
Maldynado crept toward Spectacles. Amaranthe nodded, thinking this might be a chance to subdue these two.
From his hands and knees, Spectacles flung his fingers outward. An invisible force hurled Maldynado back, and he hit the wall with a resounding thump. His helmet dropped from his hands, hitting the floor with a clatter. He slid down the wall and onto his backside, then slumped into a stunned heap.
Amaranthe bit her lip. Maldynado looked like he would survive, but if his crash had cracked one of the vials, they might all end up unconscious.
“I’ll thank you to keep your bodyguard by the door,” Spectacles growled. He had his feet under him and was straightening his jacket.
“That wasn’t necessary,” Amaranthe said. “I told you we’d work with you if you release my men.”
“That brutish behemoth was going to work my face into the floor.”
“Brutish?” Maldynado had recovered enough to manage an indignant tone. “Brutish? I’m a child of the warrior caste, descended from generations of noble warriors and distinguished matrons of exquisite manners and taste. I’m no brute.”
“I’m sure he was only coming to help you,” Amaranthe told Spectacles.
“Er, yes.” Maldynado staggered to his feet. “That’s right.”
“Stop blathering,” the rangy man said. “The hull has been breached in the upper port wing. I’ve closed it off from the rest of the Areyon, but if we take on too much water, we’ll never be able to leave the bottom of this Akahe-forsaken lake.”
“It’s time to accept your losses and escape while you can,” Amaranthe said.
The two men argued with each other in their own tongue. Another explosion went off, this one too far from the porthole to view the flash, but Amaranthe felt its power in the tremors that rocked the vessel. The accompanying groans and creaks of the structure sounded ominous. How much damage was the fortress—no, laboratory was the better term—designed to take?
“We agree,” Spectacles told Amaranthe. “You can have your two men, but we will keep the rest of the test subjects.”
If you can find them, Amaranthe thought, but she kept her sneer inward and shrugged. “I’m only concerned about my people.”
Spectacles strode to the barrier again. He leaned into the box, and the field winked out again. “You first,” he said.
“Very well.” Amaranthe lifted her helmet and fastened it as if it were a typical Turgonian thing to do. She caught Maldynado’s eye and gave him a nod. He put his helmet on as well.
Spectacles watched with a frown. “What are you doing? We’re not going outside to get to the engine room.”
Amaranthe pointed at the ceiling. “With those marines dropping charges, I’m not taking any chances. What if one lands right on top of us?”
The men gave her exasperated looks. That was fine. So long as they didn’t find her suspicious.
“Mind if we collect our weapons?” she asked before the group started down the corridor.
“Yes,” Maldynado said. “It’d be unforgivable to leave my fine blade on that grungy floor.”
“No weapons,” Spectacles said. “Walk.”
Though the two practitioners stood more than an arm’s length away from her, Amaranthe felt a nudge of pressure against her back. The sensation sent an uneasy tingle down her spine, and she worried they could do much more than “nudge” her with their powers.
When they reached the ladder, Amaranthe waved for Maldynado to descend first. The helmets made it hard to see one’s feet, and she had little trouble feigning a clumsy climb. At the bottom, she deliberately missed a rung and tumbled into Maldynado. He caught her and pressed a vial into her hand. Thank his ancestors for hiding a brain beneath all that arrogance.
She straightened before the practitioners reached the bottom. “Perhaps donning the helmets wasn’t such a good idea after all.”
“Nah,” Maldynado said. “This way if you trip and hit your noggin, it’ll be protected.”
“Stop dawdling,” Spectacles growled.
Amaranthe headed for the intersection. Low, excited voices came from around the corner. She imagined the foreigners saying, “We’re almost in....”
She stopped to wait for the two practitioners to pass her, but Spectacles said, “You first,” and applied another invisible nudge of force.
Unwilling to walk into a den of wizards unannounced, Amaranthe called out, “New allies coming around the corner. Don’t shoot or incinerate us or do other unpleasant wizard-ish things, please.”
That drew snorts from the men behind her. Arms spread, and the vial pressed to the underside of her hand with her thumb, she stepped around the corner.
Six faces stared at her. Six practitioners’ faces, she reminded herself. Suddenly her plan with the vial seemed ridiculously simple and doomed to failure. As soon as she dropped it, they would figure it out and raise magical defenses.
“Good morning, all,” Amaranthe said. “I heard you could use help getting a couple of pesky escaped prisoners out of there.”
“Just talk to your men,” Spectacles growled.
The practitioners parted to let her pass. The man closest to the door held some sort of baton that was spouting a stream of fire. It had burned three sides of an access panel into the hatch, leaving smoke drifting from perforated singe marks.
Amaranthe tried to see through one of the tiny holes, but the room appeared dark behind it. Or maybe something else blocked the door. If her men were barricaded inside, it would take time for them to come out and help if a fracas started. She had to assume she and Maldynado were on their own for this.
As she drew closer to the door, she wiggled the cork loose with her thumb. The gloves stole some of her dexterity, and she fumbled, almost dropping the vial.
Inside the stuffy helmet, a bead of sweat rolled down her nose. Too bad she had no way to wipe it.
The cork came free in her hand. Yellow smoke curled between her fingers, and she lowered her arm, swinging it to hide the evidence.
She pointed at the hatch. “Should I knock?”
“Stop him,” someone blurted behind her, then switched to another language.
Cursed ancestors, they must have seen Maldynado opening his vial. Two men reached for him, and a woman stepped back, her eyes growing glazed.
Amaranthe threw the vial at her nose. It bopped her between the eyes, breaking her concentration. The two men had tried to grab Maldynado’s arms, but he thrust them away. He did tower like a behemoth over these people. Too bad it wasn’t going to be a solely physical confrontation. But if they could keep the practitioners busy until the smoke kicked in...
A man grabbed Amaranthe’s wrist even as a prickle on the back of her neck alerted her to a magical attack from elsewhere. She kicked her captor’s shin and twisted her arm, yanking it free from the man’s grip. She jammed her knee into his groin and spun about, seeking the practitioner targeting her.
The man with the baton torch lunged at her. She ducked
and whipped her arm up in a hard block. The baton flew from the man’s grip, hit a wall, and spun into the fray. Someone screamed.
Nearby, a glassy-eyed male practitioner raised a hand toward Amaranthe. She lunged and launched a punch, twisting her hip to put her whole body into the maneuver. Her fist smashed into the man’s nose with bone-crunching force. He hadn’t made an attempt to block, and he went down like a brick. He wasn’t the only one with slow reflexes.
The vials. They were working.
Relief welled and caught in her throat. No, not relief. Something was tightening her airway. Though the helmet protected her neck, a force pressed in from all sides, as if someone were strangling her.
Amaranthe stumbled back, fighting the urge to clutch at her throat. That would do nothing. She whirled about, searching for her attacker.
Six of the eight practitioners were sprawled on the deck. Maldynado had crumpled to his knees, his face contorted in a rictus of pain behind his mask.
The rangy navigator stood in the intersection, his focus on Maldynado. A gray-haired woman had a fist clenched as she stared at Amaranthe with fierce concentration. Neither appeared affected by the smoke that wafted from the vials.
Lightheadedness swept over Amaranthe. Lack of air scattered her thoughts, and desperation crept in. She wheezed, groping for a plan while her body cried out for oxygen.
She tried to stalk toward her attacker, to stop the assault, but she bounced off a barrier protecting the woman. Hadn’t Akstyr always said practitioners could only concentrate on one thing at a time? That they couldn’t attack and defend simultaneously? That was why Arbitan Losk had conjured up that deadly soul construct to watch his back. Maybe someone down here was working on protection tools—artifacts, that’s what Sicarius called such things—and the woman had some physical object that could be destroyed.
Blackness crept into the edges of Amaranthe’s vision as she squinted, searching for some sign of a tool on the woman’s person. There. A blocky square jutting against the fabric inside her jacket. Little good the knowledge did. As long as the tool was inside the barrier, Amaranthe could do nothing to it.
A tight smile curved the woman’s lips. She had Amaranthe and she knew it.