“Ah. That means she’s not interested. A few years wouldn’t matter if she was attracted to you.”
Sespian sank deeper into the chair. “I was afraid of that.”
“That doesn’t mean there’s no hope. You might simply need to make her see a different ore in your vein.”
A spark kindled in Sespian’s eyes. “How?”
“Well, for one thing, you look young. Younger than Akstyr even. Can you get any of those chin hairs to grow out?”
“Not… densely.”
“I’ve heard of apothecary potions that might help. We’ll come back to that. Let’s talk about the rest of your look. We all thought you were the bookish and artsy type.”
Something in the way Sespian lifted his eyebrows told Maldynado that Sespian thought he was the bookish and artsy type too.
“In my experience, women say they like men like that, as friends. You do not want her thinking of you as a friend. You want her daydreaming about you when the sun is out and fantasizing about you when she’s alone in bed at night, eh?”
A flush crept into Sespian’s cheeks. “I suppose.”
“It’s all right to have a sensitive side—they love finding warm, gooey stuff hidden beneath the crusty outside of an apple tart—but you need to be manly too.” Maldynado sat straighter, puffed his chest out, and flexed a biceps to demonstrate. “Virile and powerful. Not powerful in the I-was-born-an-emperor-so-of-course-I’m-powerful way, but in how you strut about the room and make things happen. If you take your shirt off, there should be muscles there. You may want to start throwing sand balls around. No matter how independent the woman is, she’ll have times when the world sends a grimbal after her. When that happens, she needs to lean against someone with strong arms, someone who makes her feel safe and secure.”
“I’m not sure—”
“Don’t tell me that’s not you.” Maldynado pointed a finger at his nose. “You sneaked up behind me and put a knife to my throat, and I’ve seen you prove useful in a few scraps. You just need to invest some time in your physique.” Maldynado thumped a fist against one of his pectoral muscles. “It’ll make it easier to strut around in a manly way if you feel manly.”
“So, your advice so far is to grow hair and muscles.”
“Any businesswoman will tell you that you have to spruce up the packaging before you put a product on the market. I’ll take you clothes shopping when we’re back in the capital.”
Sespian tilted his head back, watching Maldynado out of the bottoms of his eyes, like he might have some regrets over having started the conversation. Or perhaps having opened the door at all.
“Enough of the superficial,” Maldynado said, sensing his pupil’s flagging belief. “There’s a bigger issue you have to deal with when it comes to the boss. Her pet guard dog.”
“Sicarius.”
“They go everywhere together. I kid you not, I set her up for a nice dinner date with Deret Mancrest last summer, and she took him along. I’m not sure whose idea it was, but can you imagine trying to share tender moments with a woman while an assassin is standing there, glaring at you over her shoulder?”
“No,” Sespian said. “I can’t imagine wanting him in the same city as me. I have wondered… ”
“Yes?”
“If he’s controlling her somehow. He’s very powerful and dangerous, and I’m sure it’d be easy for him to exert his influence to… You’re shaking your head.”
“That’s because nobody controls Amaranthe. We’ve all tried. Not to control her, but to rein her in on some of her crazier ideas. She has a strong will and a thought process slipperier than the contents of an icehouse. She’s the one who rounded us all up after all. Sicarius might be harder to wrangle than a Books or an Akstyr, but she’s talked him into doing a lot of things I know he otherwise wouldn’t have.”
“So, I have to get rid of him somehow,” Sespian said, a hint of calculation in his eyes. “They’re not… I suppose I should have asked this first, but I didn’t get the impression that Amaranthe was… romantic with anyone in your group.”
“Nah, I don’t think so,” Maldynado said without hesitation. Forget Books’s hunch. Even if there were something to it, Maldynado did not want to see Amaranthe doomed to a relationship with a man colder than the razor-sharp blades he carried around. “I doubt Sicarius even knows what the word romantic means,” he added.
“Good.” Sespian nodded to himself. “That’s good. Maybe—”
Someone pounded at the door. Sespian hopped to his feet, reacting more quickly than Maldynado, and snatched up his dagger. He reached the window first. Night’s grip had relaxed outside, and Basilard stood visible against the rosy sky. Akstyr jogged up behind him.
As soon as the door opened, Akstyr thrust a hand toward the river behind the steamboat. “We’ve got a problem.”
Maldynado and Sespian stepped outside. It didn’t take long to find the “problem.” Two sleek, gray boats were cutting up the river after the steamboat.
Basilard waved a spyglass and signed, They’re enforcers. At least twenty men on each boat. They’re well armed and have grappling hooks. There are also guns mounted on the foredecks. Big guns.
“Uh oh,” Maldynado said. “Some of those passengers we tossed overboard must have found their way to town to report the hijacking.”
“This vessel doesn’t have any weaponry, does it?” Sespian asked.
“No, but it has a swimming pool and netball courts,” Maldynado said.
“We’re almost to the lake.” Sespian fiddled with the dagger. “If we can simply reach it, those enforcers can have their steamboat back.”
“How do you suggest we tell them that?” Maldynado asked.
“Just… get ready to defend the ship. You, Basilard, you’re a fighter, right? Can you and Maldynado handle the defenses? Akstyr, join me in the wheelhouse. I understand you’re good with makarovi.”
Akstyr grinned. “Yup.”
“We’ll relieve Sergeant Yara and send her to the boiler room to help Books,” Sespian went on. “We’ll need all the power we can get out of those engines. We’re already going against the current, so these last few miles will be a push.”
A boom sounded, and birds erupted from the trees on either side of the river. A round splashed into the water several meters to the side of the steamboat.
“Warning shot,” Maldynado said.
“Go.” Sespian waved to the men, then sprinted for the closest stairs.
Akstyr ran after him, leaving Maldynado and Basilard alone.
Basilard signed, We get to defend this huge boat by ourselves? Against forty trained fighters?
“Apparently,” Maldynado said. “You want the left side or the right side?”
Basilard gave him a grim look. We need an Amaranthe Plan.
“I’m going to round up as many rifles as I can find. Let me know if you come up with one.”
• • •
Though the pink glow of dawn lightened the eastern sky, fog shrouded the lake, making it feel as if morning had yet to come. The rowboat Sicarius had purloined glided through the calm waters, surging forward with each powerful stroke of his oars. Across from him, Amaranthe shifted on the hard bench, feeling a tad useless, even if he had, with a wordless pointing of his finger, insisted she assume the passenger role.
“When are you going to stop treating me like a wounded kitten that you’ve adopted, and go back to insisting that all forms of physical exertion are ‘good training’?” Amaranthe asked.
“You wish to row?” Sicarius had abandoned his workman’s garments and returned to the humorless black, now clean and wrinkle-free. Perhaps he’d only donned the other clothing because his preferred garb needed time for a wash and dry.
“No.” She smiled. “I was just wondering how long I could milk this torture experience to get out of work.”
Sicarius rowed onward without comment. He was probably watching the mainland to make sure no enforcers with sniper aspirations lurke
d there. Amaranthe couldn’t fault his dedication to duty, but it was a long trip to Marblecrest Island, and a conversation would be nice. In truth, there were questions on her mind, questions she’d been trying to muster the courage to ask. Once they reunited with the team, private moments might be hard to come by.
She took a deep breath. “A couple of weeks ago… you mentioned that I didn’t know all the secrets from your past. Is there… anything you’d like to tell me? To help you with Sespian?”
“No.”
Not exactly an invitation to probe further. She chewed on her lip and finally asked what had been lurking in her thoughts. “Pike said you killed Raumesys.”
Sicarius’s features, masked as usual, betrayed nothing of his thoughts.
“Is it true?” Amaranthe asked, remembering that he didn’t always consider statements worth comment.
He didn’t respond to the question either.
“Did he find out that Sespian wasn’t his son?” Amaranthe guessed. “And you had to… take care of him before he disowned Sespian? Or punished his mother? No, wait, she died a few years before Raumesys, didn’t she? The winter that Nurian flu ravaged the capital. But if Raumesys had found out, he would have… ”
Sicarius was giving her a flat, you’re-imagination-is-working-too-hard look. “Soon,” he said.
“What?”
“If you are hale enough to burble, you are hale enough to exercise. Your training will resume soon.”
Amaranthe didn’t quite manage to stifle a groan. “Fine, you don’t have to tell me. But how many other people know? If it comes out later and Sespian learns of it, will he be angry with you for killing the man he considered his father?”
“Unlikely.”
Amaranthe glowered in response to the one-word answer.
“Raumesys treated him poorly,” Sicarius said. “Sespian,” he added, his voice softening, “preferred to spend time with his mother.”
“Did Raumesys… beat him?” Amaranthe wondered if that might explain the emperor’s premature demise. The newspapers had claimed Raumesys had succumbed to a fatal heart condition, but many poisons could simulate such a death.
“Physical abuse was rare,” Sicarius said. “Verbal assault, less so. Raumesys was disgruntled that Sespian showed no interest in military and combat studies. He told the boy. Often.”
“Mental abuse can be as cruel as physical. And it’s difficult to watch when it’s happening to someone you care about.”
Sicarius grunted.
“Did it bother you?” Amaranthe asked. “Raumesys’s treatment of Sespian?”
“Yes.”
“But not enough to kill him over it?”
Sicarius glanced over his shoulder. His sure strokes had brought them into the shadow of Marblecrest Island more quickly than Amaranthe would have guessed. She feared their approach meant she wouldn’t receive an answer.
Above the fog shrouding the beaches, verdant foliage bathed steep hills with deep draws that might hide numerous secret nooks. Near the island’s high point, the roof of a log structure came into sight. Amaranthe would call it a mansion or lodge, but Maldynado’s family probably thought of it as a rustic cabin.
Sicarius took a few extra strokes on the right side to angle the rowboat toward a cove with a dock.
“Sicarius,” Amaranthe said, taking one last stab at pulling the answer out of him, “Sespian will want to know.” All right, she wanted to know.
A few more strokes passed in silence as he made adjustments to their approach. Finally, he pulled them in, letting the boat’s momentum carry them across the serene, misty water. “Sespian was a catalyst. I had many missions and was rarely in the Imperial Barracks. Had I witnessed more of his interactions with Raumesys, I may have… rethought my allegiance sooner. It wasn’t until I stood before Raumesys and refused an assignment that my relationship with the emperor changed. My declination of the mission did not mean I had thoughts of betraying the throne, but he interpreted it that way. I believe he had long feared me. I’d always been Hollowcrest’s employee, more than his, and we rarely interacted. Shortly after that day, Raumesys tried to have me poisoned. I learned of it ahead of time and meant to discuss the situation with Hollowcrest, but he was away from the city. Before he returned, I walked in on Raumesys berating Sespian. That was when I decided.”
“To kill him?” Amaranthe’s voice came out as a whisper.
“At fifteen, Sespian was still too young to rule in his own stead, but I imagined I could stand at his back and protect him from those who sought to connive or ingratiate themselves to him. I did not anticipate him… ”
“Firing you?”
“Essentially.”
The rowboat glided up to the dock, bumping softly against a wood piling.
“What was the mission you turned down?” Amaranthe asked.
“A story for another time.” Sicarius secured the boat and hopped out.
Amaranthe hmphfed, but she supposed she’d gotten more out of him than expected.
Despite his threat that he’d resume her training soon, Sicarius extended a hand. She accepted it and climbed onto the dock. A rat skittered out of a clump of grass at the base and disappeared through a crack in the boathouse. Sun-faded and peeling, the dock had not seen a maintenance man in many years.
“I guess the Marblecrests have been too busy plotting coups to enjoy their vacation getaway in recent years,” Amaranthe said.
Sicarius did not comment, and they were soon pushing through foliage, walking up a gravel road so overgrown a machete was almost required. More of the log home came into view as they climbed, including expansive glass windows that promised no less than fifteen or twenty rooms inside. Halfway up the hillside, the path meandered past a rocky precipice that was bare of grass and trees. Amaranthe diverted from the trail to walk to the edge. It overlooked the lake and offered a view of three nearby islands, all dark and quiet in the early morning light.
“Are those the ones on the map?” Amaranthe asked when Sicarius joined her. “The ones that form a rectangle with this one?”
“A trapezoid,” Sicarius said.
“Forgive my imprecision. I wonder if… should we be looking under the island instead of on top of it?”
“For entrances to mines?” Sicarius asked.
“Or whatever it is they were doing down there. Let’s check the house first though. Just in case.”
Amaranthe and Sicarius continued up the main path, which dove into a stand of trees clogged with blackberry brambles. A few minutes into the copse, a hiss sounded to their right. Amaranthe jumped.
“Hot springs.” Sicarius pointed to a side path barely visible through the overgrown shrubbery.
“Of course,” Amaranthe said, remembering Pabov’s tour.
On a whim, she veered onto the path. Wordlessly, Sicarius followed. Thorny vines grasped and scraped at exposed flesh, but it was a short trek. Tiny, steaming pools appeared through the trees, connected by a natural lava rock deck that overlooked a cliff on the north side of the island. Only one of the neighboring islands stood in view along with a river that flowed out of the lake a mile away. After another hiss sounded, a geyser to one side spewed a fountain of water.
Amaranthe bent and dipped a hand in the closest pool. Hot water caressed her fingers. Forget the beach, she thought. This was a bathing spot. Too bad they had other priorities; though she flirted with the idea of sending Sicarius to explore the house on his own while she tore off her clothes, flung herself into the pool, and soaked blissfully in sybaritic indulgence.
Sicarius’s hand came to rest on her shoulder. Maybe he was thinking of a soak too. But, no, he was pointing past the lake and toward the river. A three-decked steamboat was barreling up the waterway, gray plumes of smoke flowing from its twin stacks. It looked like one of the vessels that plied the Goldar River, carrying passengers from Stumps and other cities around the Chain Lakes down to the Gulf and back. For some reason, this one had diverted to Lake Seventy-three, som
ething that might be normal during the summer season, but now? It seemed unlikely.
“It’s going too fast,” Sicarius said.
Now that he mentioned it, the steamboat did seem to be exceeding its typical speed. The paddlewheel was churning so quickly that water flung in all directions. Two smaller craft plowed up the river behind the sternwheeler. Painted black with pointed bows and sleek, compact frames designed for speed, they were gaining on the steamboat.
Amaranthe recognized the symbols on the sides. Enforcer boats. If Forge saw the authorities swarming into the area, would they cancel their meeting before it started? “What idiot is leading enforcers down here?”
“Sespian.” Sicarius had a spyglass to his eye.
“Er, levity?” As much as Amaranthe wanted to see her men again, she didn’t want their arrival to spook Forge.
“He is at the wheel inside the pilothouse. Alive.” Uncharacteristic relief had seeped into Sicarius’s tone. “Though he looks concerned.”
“Understandable if they’re being chased by enforcers. It looks like they’re coming in our direction. We better get down to the beach.” When Amaranthe turned toward the path, she found that Sicarius had already disappeared, leaving only a few leaves rustling in the wake of his abrupt passing.
Chapter 19
Maldynado stood at the rear of the hurricane deck, next to the paddlewheel, with a row of loaded muskets and rifles leaning against the railing. Three pistols protruded from his belt where a cutlass and more knives hung. He felt like a Sicarius caricature.
A brisk wind tugged at his clothing and swept hair into his eyes. The steamboat bumped and swayed as it picked up speed, fighting the river’s current. At last glance, the lake hadn’t been in sight. The sky had lightened, and the enforcer boats were close enough that every armed and armored man waiting on their decks was visible. As Basilard had promised, several of those men carried grappling hooks. They all bore short swords and repeating crossbows. Maldynado wished his firearm collection assured victory, but the weapons ranged from old service muskets that had long since seen their prime to ornate—and probably ineffective—antiques from the private collections of the Glacial Empress’s former passengers. None of the firearms could hold more than one charge at a time. Though the enforcers themselves didn’t carry black-powder weapons, their boats had more than enough guns mounted on the fore and aft decks to make up for the lack. They hadn’t fired since that first warning shot, but that couldn’t last.