“Good job, Bas,” Maldynado said and jogged through the doorway, ensuring he couldn’t be trapped in the Un-Relaxation Grotto again. He anticipated another round of opposition in the foyer, but the oak doors leading out of the castle stood open, letting a nippy breeze flow inside. “Did everyone flee?” Maldynado wondered.
Slaps sounded on the stone floor of an inner courtyard that opened up beyond the foyer. Since Maldynado hadn’t had a chance to see any of that area, he didn’t know what to expect, and he kept his rifle ready.
A white-haired, pot-bellied man with a towel wrapped around his waist padded into view, his wet sandals slapping against the floor as he walked. He spotted Maldynado, squealed, and dropped the towel. As naked as a newborn babe, he gaped at the group. Almost as surprised, Maldynado gaped back. For a startled moment, the man stood there, his arms and hands in the strange tableau of someone torn between grabbing a towel to cover himself up and simply running away from view. He chose the latter, and sprinted up a set of stairs faster than someone that age typically ran.
“I should have given him a card,” Maldynado muttered, touching a breast pocket and finding the business cards still tucked within. Apparently the guards hadn’t deemed them as dangerous as his rapier—or his hat, which was also missing.
“It looks like nobody bothered to inform the guests that there was a kidnapping going on,” Maldynado said when Basilard and Yara joined him.
“You’d think the gunfire would have implied something was amiss,” Yara said.
Perhaps the grotto is soundproof, Basilard signed.
“So nobody will hear the screaming of the innocent outlaws the establishment is luring to their deaths?”
“Innocent?” Yara asked. “You’re about as innocent as a cat with cream smeared all over its whiskers.”
“Say, Basilard.” Maldynado gave him a thump. “Why’d you rescue her first and leave me tied up? Don’t tell me her insults have endeared her to you.” Or that you think she’s a more able fighter than I, Maldynado thought. That would sting.
I thought you could free yourself, Basilard signed. You’ve spoken often of exploits involving being tied up.
“There’s a difference between being tied to a bedpost by a hundred-pound woman and having one of those two-hundred-pound brutes trussing you up like the chicken going in the oven,” Maldynado said, waving at one of the fallen guards in view in the Grotto.
“I’m not sure what he said—” Yara pointed a thumb at Basilard, “—but, from your half of the conversation, it sounds like you’re whining again.”
Maldynado started to sigh—was this woman never going to recognize any of his finer qualities?—but he caught a slight smile on her lips. Hm. That was promising.
Basilard pointed at the doors leading outside. We must go after the others.
Maldynado hadn’t seen his rapier, or his hat, anywhere and was tempted to run around the resort to find it, but Books and the others might need reinforcements sooner rather than later. He started for the castle exit, but halted a few feet from the threshold, one foot in the air. Four gleaming metal creatures had slithered out of the moat and shambled onto the other end of the bridge. The alligators they’d seen before.
“That could be a problem.” Maldynado put his foot down.
“We’ll see.” Yara raised her rifle to her shoulder.
“I don’t know if bullets will work.” Maldynado waved toward the bronze-and-iron hides. He’d seen real alligators on a trip to the Gulf, and they had been green and distinctly non-metallic.
Two of the creatures moseyed across the bridge, their red eyes locked onto Maldynado. He glimpsed an engraving on the top of one of the heads. Tar-Mech. He groaned. That cursed shaman was dead. When were they going to stop running into his creations?
“You see that, Basilard?” Maldynado eased backward a few steps. “Those are like the things we fought in that mine. The things that took explosives to kill.”
Basilard nodded grimly. He fired at the lead alligator as it stepped off the bridge. As suspected, the bullet bounced uselessly off the metal hide. The mechanical creatures didn’t move quickly, but the two in front would be in the foyer in a few more steps, regardless. Maldynado wouldn’t count on those jaws being plagued with the same slowness as the legs.
“All right,” Maldynado said, backing farther. “Explosives. Any idea where we can find explosives in a warrior-caste resort?” Books would probably be able to mix something up in the kitchen, but he wasn’t—”What are you doing?” Maldynado barked, his thoughts interrupted by Yara running toward the alligators.
She stopped at the threshold and grabbed one of the heavy oak doors.
“Oh, good idea.” Maldynado darted for the other door.
He expected it to be heavy, but not so heavy it wouldn’t move when he pulled. The shoulder he’d nearly dislocated earlier stabbed him with pain, and he gasped. He gritted his teeth and tugged harder. The door inched away from the wall. Too slow.
Maldynado was about to suggest running into the castle and letting the nude bathers deal with the alligators when the door gave way. Both doors did, snapping shut so quickly Maldynado almost lost his nose. Yara tumbled onto her backside. The doors slammed closed with a thump as one smashed into the lead alligator’s snout.
Basilard waved to a spot on the wall and signed, Switch.
“Steam-powered doors, right,” Maldynado said.
Thuds nearly drowned out his voice. The alligators ramming against the oak. At first, Maldynado didn’t think they’d have a chance at breaking in, but the wood planks shuddered under the assault. It sounded like all four constructs had started banging away.
“Who’s up for finding a back door?” Maldynado asked. “Maybe we’ll stumble across our gear on the way.”
“I just hope you don’t find that hat with the ludicrous feather.” Yara jogged into the courtyard before Maldynado could respond.
Bare feet slapping on the stone floor, Yara veered around benches and potted plants only slightly less densely placed than in the Grotto. Maldynado and Basilard raced after her. She headed for a back wall where a hallway, sets of stairs, and closed doors offered numerous options. She chose the hall, something that might lead to the kitchen perhaps. Kitchens had back doors, didn’t they? For throwing scraps out to dogs or man-eating mechanical alligators?
They found a swinging door at the end. Maldynado peeked inside. A trio of chefs and bakers gaped back at him.
“How do you get out?” Maldynado figured it couldn’t hurt to ask. Meanwhile his comrades checked other doors, only to find them locked.
“You don’t,” a man in a flour-dusted apron said. “You use the garbage chute. Otherwise the gators will—”
An older man shushed him and gave Maldynado a suspicious squint. “Who are you? You don’t look like guests.” He grabbed a butcher knife.
“Just visitors.” Maldynado smiled and shut the door. He looked at the others, hoping they’d found a way out, but Yara and Basilard merely shrugged. “We’ll try another way. I don’t want a fight with the kitchen staff.”
Someone thrust the door open behind him. A glimpse of that butcher knife convinced Maldynado to thrust the door back with enough force to send the chef staggering.
“This way,” Maldynado barked and ran back toward the courtyard. Those stairs ought to take them up to the parapets. If nothing else they could climb down an outside wall.
He lunged out of the hallway, ready to race for stairs to the right, but a man stood there, a forty-year-old flintlock musket pointed at Maldynado’s chest. It was the old fellow they’d seen in the towel. He was wearing clothes now, and an officer’s saber hung from his waist.
“Watch out,” Maldynado said, throwing an arm out to stop the others, even as he skittered back, intending to duck into the hallway.
Someone grabbed Maldynado’s shoulder. The musket fired, but he was too busy being pulled to the floor to worry about it. Basilard leaped over him and barreled into the old m
an. Maldynado rolled over and jumped to his feet. Basilard had already knocked the fellow down and taken his musket. He stopped at that. Good. They didn’t need to leave a pile of dead resort-goers behind.
“Thanks for the help,” Maldynado said, realizing Basilard had been the one to yank him down before the musket ball found his chest.
Basilard nodded once. What do we do with him?
The white-haired man wasn’t done doing things himself. After a moment of lying quiescent, he tried to hook one of his own legs around Basilard’s to throw him off. In his younger days, he might have managed the move, but Basilard reacted quickly. He used the man’s momentum against him, flipping the old officer over and pinning him to the floor.
Maldynado pointed for Yara to lead the way up the stairs. “Let’s just—”
A bevy of footfalls pounded the hallway floor behind him. The chef with the butcher knife burst around the corner. He’d added a heavy copper skillet to his arsenal. The rest of the kitchen staff—no less than six men—crowded after him.
“There they are!” the chef cried.
“Run,” Maldynado blurted, finishing his sentence.
He used his rifle like a staff to block a surprisingly adroit skillet-knife combination attack. Maldynado stood his ground for a moment, giving Yara and Basilard time to race up the stairs without anyone throwing sharp kitchen utensils at their backs.
After blocking another attack, Maldynado teased out an opening and jammed his rifle butt into the chef’s stomach. As the man doubled over, Maldynado kicked a young dish boy trying to get at his side. Both attackers stumbled back, hindering the rest of the staff.
Maldynado wheeled about and sprinted up the stairs.
“Duck!” Yara yelled when he was halfway up.
No sooner had he obeyed than the butcher knife cracked against flagstones a few steps above him. Basilard fired from up top. Not to kill, Maldynado hoped, but he dared not pause to check. As soon as he burst onto the top, he, Basilard, and Yara took off, racing down a long landing that was—unfortunately—open to the courtyard below. More knives and sharp utensils clanged off the railing and the walls all about them.
“Unbelievable,” Maldynado muttered, pausing to try a door, one of many along the landing. “Only in the empire would the kitchen staff rally to chase off intruders instead of hiding in the pantry.”
Basilard ducked a hurled pan and gave Maldynado a quick nod as he tried another door. Both were locked.
“Here!” Yara flung open the last door.
Maldynado and Basilard ran to join her. The kitchen staff had taken to the stairs and the fastest were surging onto the landing.
Just as Maldynado reached the door and grabbed the jamb, intending to propel himself around the edge, something with the heft of a wrecking ball slammed into his back. He staggered forward, and his face smashed against the doorjamb.
“Cursed ancestors,” he growled.
A marble rolling pin clunked to the floor at his feet.
“Unbelievable,” Maldynado repeated as he darted through the doorway. “Why me? Nobody would throw rolling pins at Sicarius.” He was starting to rethink his decision not to shoot anyone on the kitchen staff.
The door lacked a security bar or a nearby armoire he could shove in front of it, but it did have a lock, albeit the flimsy type made only to keep an honest man honest, not deter a serious intruder. Or determined chefs. Maldynado thunked it into place, hoping it would slow the mob.
“Move! I see security coming!” someone yelled from the direction of the stairs. “They’ll have guns.”
Erg, repeating firearms would make short work of that lock. Maldynado spun, hoping Yara hadn’t led them into a walk-in closet.
A short hallway led away from the door. At first, all Maldynado could see was a chest of drawers against a wall, but a few steps took him into a bedroom brightened by candles. A man and woman were entangled amongst sheets. The candlelight was bright enough to give Maldynado a view of bare breasts; under normal circumstances, he would have stopped to gaze in admiration. As it was, he only noted that the naked couple had no weapons nearby, though with the night he’d had thus far, he wouldn’t be surprised if one of them yanked a dagger out from beneath a pillow. Or a rolling pin. At the moment, they were too busy staring at Basilard and Yara who had burst across the room to a window. Yara’s frustrated grunts and pulling motions suggested the wrought iron vines and leaves snaking across the panes were more than decorations.
Bangs sounded at the door.
“How do you unlock this slagging thing?” Yara thumped a fist against the window, sounding like a woman with her patience balanced on the edge of a precipice. She mustn’t have expected quite so much adventure when Amaranthe had recruited her to join them in Forkingrust.
“Easy, Yara, we’ll get out, and we’ll do it in time to help… people.” Maldynado glanced at the pair on the bed. The woman had yanked the sheet over her chest, and the man was eyeing a sword belt dangling on a chair near Basilard.
Yara glowered over her shoulder at Maldynado. “How can you be optimistic? Your plan has been a disaster.”
The thumps at the door intensified.
“That’s true,” Maldynado said. “When I imagined spending the night on Rabbit Island with my fiancée—” he winked at her, drawing a fresh lip curl, “—I was picturing us in something similar to that position.”
“You were?” Yara’s lip curl vanished, replaced by a gawk.
“Naturally,” Maldynado said, surprised by her surprise.
Focus, Basilard signed. We must open the window or find another way out.
A boom roared in the hallway. The door shuddered, though the thumps that followed didn’t hurl it open. Someone had bad aim, or the lock was stronger than it looked.
Maldynado stepped further into the room, wondering if there might be a secret passage—this was a castle after all. The pair in the bed were probably only guests, but maybe they’d know.
Maldynado smiled, pretended to remove a hat and press it to his chest, and bowed deeply toward the woman. “Pardon our intrusion, but are there any other exits from this room?”
The woman pointed toward a tapestry featuring a pair of randy elk. “There’s a—”
“Ssh, don’t help them.” Her partner covered her mouth with his hand and glanced toward his weapons belt again. “Who are you people?”
“Innocent guests who couldn’t quite cover the bill.” Maldynado jogged to the tapestry and lifted the edge, revealing a door. Excellent. “The prices are a little higher than listed in the brochure.”
Maldynado unlatched the door and waved for his comrades to join him. A dark, narrow stairwell led upward to another door. The last words he heard, as he headed up, came from the man. “Brochure? There’s no brochure for this place, is there? I thought it was exclusive.”
Someone shut the door, pitching the stairway into blackness. Maldynado fumbled his way to the top.
“That door better not be locked too,” Yara said.
“If it is, it’s not my fault,” Maldynado said. “You chose this room.”
“You chose this situation. Besides, someone had to get us off that landing. You were seconds away from being pummeled to death by flying rolling pins.”
Maldynado groaned as he groped for a latch. Why’d she have to witness all his embarrassing moments? At least the door was unlocked. Freedom at last. He opened the door to the crisp, cold air of late autumn—and a very small, round tower top that on one side overlooked the courtyard, on the other the castle wall and the cliff on the back side of the island. Basilard and Yara joined him, crowding the tiny space. There wouldn’t be anywhere to hide if someone started firing at them from the looming towers at the castle corners.
“If the brochure promised this room came with a balcony, those folks better ask for their money back. You’d be hard-pressed to fit a single lounge chair up here.” Maldynado searched for a ladder or way off. There wasn’t one. The three-story drop on the wall s
ide led straight into the moat. Or, if one were terribly athletic and could leap past enough rocks, to the river, some seventy or eighty feet below.
“I see I can count on you to think of the important things in dire situations,” Yara said.
Basilard pointed at the head of the island. From the elevated perch, the docks and the steamboat were visible. The dinghy they’d arrived on was gone, and there was no sign of Books, Akstyr, or the emperor. The steamboat was belching smoke out of its stack and maneuvering away from the docks, the giant rear paddle turning slowly. In a minute or two, the Glacial Empress would be heading downriver at full speed.
“We going after that boat?” Maldynado asked. “Or staying here to look for the emperor?”
“Neither if we get shot.” Yara pointed to the courtyard at the same time as someone yelled, “Up there!”
“Fire!” came another cry.
Basilard dropped to a crouch. Maldynado, having already been hit by projectiles that night, took it further and flattened himself to his belly. It was perhaps a bit rude to take up so much of the limited floor space, for Yara tripped over him when she tried to crouch herself. Maldynado caught her as she fell, using his body to keep her from slamming into the unyielding stones.
“So,” he said, “we end up entangled after all.”
Yara was too busy elbowing him for Maldynado to savor the moment. She climbed past him to peer over the edge on the moat side. Basilard hunkered there too.
The women must have fled to the boat, he signed. The emperor wanted to follow them. If he and the others avoided capture, they will be there.
“We’ll never climb down and reach the docks in time.” Maldynado eyed the rocks and the moat. Maybe it was his imagination, but he thought he spotted a pair of crimson eyes floating by below.
If we jump, we might be able to swim around the island fast enough to catch up. They’re still maneuvering out of the docks.
“What are we discussing?” Yara asked.
“The plan.”
“Which is?”
Basilard made a jumping motion and pointed at the river.
“Jump?” Yara stared at Basilard and then at the meters of moat and rock between the edge of their perch and the start of the water. And the depth of the drop, too, perhaps. “Did someone kick your ore cart over?”