Maldynado drew his rapier and prodded the body. It didn’t move. He crouched for a closer inspection and wished he’d thought to pick up lanterns while he’d been shopping.
Blood stained the gravel and saturated the person’s shirt. Maldynado rolled over the body, revealing a man with short-cropped hair and a clean-shaven face. A soldier, perhaps, though the tight-fitting black outfit was more suited to an assassin’s trade than the battlefield. A crumpled hood lay next to the head. Someone else had been there, trying to identify the man.
Soft crunches sounded behind him—Yara edging closer.
“Knife fight, I think,” Maldynado whispered.
“You think?”
“Sorry, identifying killing techniques by starlight isn’t something my boyhood tutors covered.”
“If you hadn’t spent so much time selecting curve-enhancing outfits, we could have stumbled across it in daylight.”
Maldynado wasn’t sure if that was a criticism or a joke. Maybe some of both. “I don’t think it would have been here then. His skin is still warm.”
Down by the river, the frogs stopped croaking.
Maldynado lifted his head.
“Your colleagues?” Yara murmured.
“Let’s find out.”
Though only a smear of twilight remained, Maldynado didn’t want to stroll straight down the path where his silhouette might be visible against the distant backdrop of houselights. The gravel wasn’t conducive to sneaking either. He veered into the knee-deep grass and wildflowers alongside the path and angled toward an old log-hauling wagon. Behind it, a row of hedges defined one of the park’s boundaries. He and Yara could follow the shrubbery to the river, hiding in the shadows.
Dew drops dangling from the vegetation hadn’t yet turned to frost, and water soon soaked the cuffs of Maldynado’s new trousers. The mercenary life was not conducive to maintaining a fine wardrobe. He wondered what Cousin Lita and the rest of his family would think if they knew what he did for a living. Or maybe the family did know. Could that by why they wanted him back? If Ravido had learned that Maldynado had been training with the infamous Sicarius and had more combat experience than anyone else in the family, maybe he wanted Maldynado for help with the coup.
“Right,” Maldynado muttered. Father was, more likely, embarrassed by having to explain that his youngest son was roaming around with outlaws and assassins. He probably wanted to bring Maldynado back and put him to work on one of the family’s remote wineries, so he couldn’t continue to make a spectacle of himself in the capital.
Distracted by the thoughts, Maldynado almost missed the soft clack, clack that whispered across the park.
“What was that?” Yara asked. She’d been doing an admirable job of walking silently behind him.
“It sounded like it came from the old mill.”
Maldynado wondered if they should have searched in that direction first. The grounds around it were open, though, and, if someone waited in there, odds weren’t in favor of being able to sneak up without being noticed.
“Let’s check the river first,” Maldynado said.
A dozen paces ahead, water lapped at the banks. The frogs remained silent.
The hedge ended at a pebbly beach. Downstream, a hint of orange came into view—burning embers in a campfire. Maldynado didn’t see anyone, but reeds strangled the shoreline in places, and driftwood large enough to hide behind littered the beach.
Staying low, he headed for the fire. The grasses and vegetation weren’t high enough to provide much camouflage, and Maldynado felt vulnerable as they approached, but nobody jumped out at them, nor did snipers start shooting from the mill. He and Yara reached the remains of the campfire. Cook fire, Maldynado amended, after almost stepping in a refuse hole filled with fish heads and bones. A flat rock by the fire held the oily remnants of a fried meal. Hints of green drew him closer. Yes, those were the remains of herbs—most people in the empire would call them weeds—that someone had chopped to add to the fish. Only Basilard would scavenge up seasonings for a meal cooked on a rock.
“They were here,” Maldynado said.
Foliage rustled. That was the only warning Maldynado received.
He spun toward the brush in time to see a dark figure leaping out of the night at him. The outline of a knife was visible against the night sky, a knife meant to pierce Maldynado’s back, but he dropped to his belly before his attacker reached him.
“Visitors,” Maldynado barked for Yara’s sake as he rolled away from the fire pit.
A twang cut through the air—a crossbow firing. The quarrel bit into the pebbles inches from Maldynado’s face, spraying sand. He leaped to his feet, his rapier in hand, his back to the river. Two hooded men charged him. Two more men were already trading blows with Yara on the other side of the campfire.
Before Maldynado’s attackers crashed into him, he leaped to the side of one. As Sicarius had so often demonstrated in group sparring practice, the way to fight multiple opponents was not to fight multiple opponents. If he kept one in the way of the other, he’d only have to face the nearest man.
As the closest figure spun toward him, Maldynado launched a feint-stab combination to test his opponent. With multiple foes to worry about, the temptation was to rush and try to finish one first, but a man in a hurry could make mistakes. Especially in such poor lighting.
Maldynado’s feint didn’t fool his attacker. Steel clashed against steel and the jolt of a hard parry from a heavier weapon ran up his arm. The follow-up came by way of a combination of slashes, alternating toward his chest and thighs. His foe wielded a saber, and Maldynado recognized the style. Pure army. The sort of combinations that were drilled into young soldiers during their early years of training. The attacks were competent, but lacked the lightning speed of something from Sicarius or even Basilard. Maldynado kept his feet moving, so the second man couldn’t circle around his comrade, and parried blows while waiting for his foe to repeat a familiar pattern. Further, he used the man’s body to block any snipers aiming at him from the brush.
The second man made a wide circle in a new attempt to reach his side, so Maldynado decided to take care of him first. Without slowing his parries, or looking at the encroaching foe, he dipped his left hand to his belt and drew the utility knife there. Using his swordplay to hide the movement, he readied the shorter blade to throw.
“What’s the story with the hoods?” Maldynado asked, hoping to further distract the men. “The executioner look isn’t in fashion this season, you know.”
The hooded figure in front of him said nothing, though, as the saber blows failed to hit more than steel, his movements grew faster and choppier, a sign of growing frustration. Good. Maldynado would turn defense to offense in a moment, but he wanted the second man out of the ring first. He continued to defend, his sword gliding from side to side, eyes ostensibly focused on the opponent to his front, until the other fellow committed himself to a charge.
Without missing a parry, Maldynado hurled the knife. The blade took the man in the chest with enough force to stop him mid-run. He pitched sideways, hands clutching his chest as he thudded to the pebbles.
The attack startled the first man, and he stumbled on a rock. Maldynado knew he had the man off-balance and didn’t bother with a feint. He batted his foe’s blade to the side and lunged in, leading with his rapier. Under other circumstances, he might have tried to subdue his foe instead of stabbing him, but Yara, enmeshed in a battle of her own, might need help. His rapier slid between ribs, and the man screamed. His saber clattered onto the pebbles.
Maldynado pulled his blade free and raced around the campfire. One of Yara’s attackers lay prone a couple feet away from her, but she was on the ground, entangled with the other. Even as Maldynado ran toward them, Yara yelped with pain, and the dark figure found his way on top. He straddled Yara, holding her down with one hand while the other raised a knife, ready to plunge it deep.
Maldynado leaped, kicking the blade as he came down besid
e them.
Yara’s attacker snarled and reached for another weapon on his belt, but Maldynado launched a second kick, this time into the person’s shoulder. The man tumbled sideways, helped aside by an angry thrust from Yara. She jumped to her feet, landing in a crouch, hands balled into fists. She snatched her sword up from the rocks and looked like she was going to ram it down the man’s throat.
Not certain any of the other three would live, and figuring information would be helpful, Maldynado lifted an arm to block her at the same time as he stepped on the fallen man’s shoulder to keep him from going anywhere. Yara snarled, and Maldynado wasn’t entirely sure she wouldn’t ram her sword down his throat. Saving a woman didn’t count for as much as it once had.
Maldynado grabbed the man by the shirt and pinned him to the beach. His prisoner snatched a handful of pebbles and hurled them at him. They plunked off his chest. After what Maldynado had endured in the recent train battle, the pebbles were laughable. Using both hands, he hauled the man to his feet. More than his feet. The man lacked Maldynado’s height, so his toes dragged across the pebbles. It wasn’t necessary, but Maldynado hefted him a couple more inches into the air, in case such power might impress Yara.
She said nothing, merely yanking the figure’s hood off. A young, short-haired man sneered at them.
“Who are you?” Maldynado asked. “Why’d you attack us?”
The prisoner growled.
“That’s not an acceptable answer.” Maldynado lowered one arm and curled his fingers into a ball. He wasn’t much for torturing folks, but a fist to the belly often softened a man’s resistance—or caused him to throw up on one’s shoes.
Twang!
A crossbow quarrel sped out of the darkness and sliced into the outside of Maldynado’s arm. He cursed and released his prisoner. The man sprinted for the river. During the split second Maldynado was debating whether to chase him or hurl himself to the ground and find cover—idiot, how had he forgotten the crossbowman?—Yara raced into the brush. Afraid she’d be shot, Maldynado charged after her.
Before he reached the undergrowth, foliage thrashed ahead of him, followed by a loud thunk.
“Awk!” came a man’s pained cry.
Leaves rattled, and the crossbow wielder darted onto the beach, dropping his weapon when it caught on a bush. He leaped over the campfire and dove into the river. His comrade had already disappeared into the water. Splashes announced enthusiastic swimming, and Maldynado couldn’t muster the desire to hurl himself into the river on a cold night to give chase.
“Brave men.” Yara picked up the discarded crossbow and waved it in the air.
“Well, you did hit him,” Maldynado guessed. “And you’re an intimidating figure. He probably lost the urge to fight after he wet himself.”
Yara snorted.
Maldynado headed for her, but paused, his gaze drawn by a light across the park.
“Thanks for helping,” Yara half-mumbled. “Not that I couldn’t have handled those two on my own, but, if I hadn’t been able to, it’s good you were there to—Maldynado, are you listening?”
“Uhm.” Maldynado pointed at the mill building where soft green light glowed behind the windows and seeped out through cracks between the timbers. “This night is getting stranger and stranger.”
• • •
Maldynado and Yara crouched beside a rusty donkey engine ten meters from the mill. The stout machine, with its broad base and vertical boiler, offered the last bit of cover before one had to cross the gravel paths and short-cropped grass surrounding the old building. A pair of tall, split-log doors marked the front of the structure. One stood ajar, allowing a slash of sickly green light to flow out.
“What’s the plan?” Yara whispered.
“I was hoping the rest of the team would show up and tell us,” Maldynado said. They’d passed two more bodies on their way to the mill, but encountered no sign of their comrades.
“Do you always wait for others to take charge?”
“Surely, as an enforcer, you’re familiar with the chain-of-command concept. And with being one of the lower links.”
“Surely you’re familiar with the concept of the lower links being capable enough to step up and take charge when the upper links aren’t around.”
A snippy comment came to Maldynado’s lips, about how she wasn’t taking charge or offering ideas either, but he merely said, “Not really. If Amaranthe is missing, Sicarius bosses people around. If they’re both gone, Books lectures us until we submit to him. If those three are all gone… it’s usually time to go find a drink and a woman.” He rubbed his head. Maybe it was the arguing, but a headache had taken up residence behind his eyes.
“Your devotion to your duty is impressive,” Yara said.
“You should be impressed that, in the absence of my teammates, I haven’t dragged you off into the bushes to engage in carnal relations yet.”
Yara bared her teeth. “You could try.”
Maldynado wouldn’t admit it, but he found the idea of facing rogue soldiers and creepy magic less intimidating. “I’ll look in the mill. Watch my back, will you?” He flicked a finger at the crossbow Yara had claimed for herself.
“Acceptable.”
At least she was willing to take orders if he gave them. Yara must believe that, as a newer member of the team, she held a lower rank than he did. Or maybe she just wanted him to be the one to wander in and get fried by some strange, light-emitting doodad.
After eyeing each window and door for signs of people—snipers, more specifically—Maldynado crept toward the closest wall. Full darkness had fallen, but the green light leaking between the timbers cast its glow onto the grass. His skin appeared sallow under the influence. His headache grew in intensity, and he thought of the device Shaman Tarok had deposited in the lake the spring before, and how its power had contaminated water over a hundred miles away, not to mention filling the forest with deranged glowing-eyed animals. Maldynado hoped this light lacked similar properties.
He paused a few steps from a window with a shattered pane. A crossbow quarrel protruded from the frame, and a second one had probably been responsible for the breakage.
Careful not to make a sound, Maldynado eased closer. Scratched and dulled by time, the window offered a poor view. He wiped away a circle of grime and spattered grass clippings from the last mowing. A single, large room with worn wooden floorboards stretched before him. Old mill machinery, the cutting blades removed, had been pushed into corners, leaving a large open area in the center. A squat cylindrical device sat on the floor, emitting the light from four holes in a dome-shaped top.
Two men lay crumpled on the floor on either side of it.
“Emperor’s balls,” Maldynado whispered. It was Books and Akstyr, neither of them moving. Maldynado wasn’t even sure if they were breathing.
For a second, he thought about running inside and dragging them out, but the dull ache behind his eyes had turned to stabbing pain. He had to escape that light for a minute. He and Yara could figure out what to do from across the field.
Before Maldynado could step away from the window, cold, sharp steel touched his neck. Curse Yara, she was supposed to be watching his back.
His first notion was to hurl an elbow backward and try to catch his attacker off balance, but the dagger pressed deeper. Another hair, and it’d slice into his flesh.
Maldynado eased his hands out to the sides, palms open. “Mind if we step away from the light?” he murmured, careful not to let his emperor’s apple dance about—and get cut. “I think it’s melting my brain.”
“Tell me what you know about it.”
Maldynado’s jaw dropped, a movement he promptly regretted, because it made the knife cut into his skin. But the speaker—the person with the blade to his throat—was the emperor.
“Sire?” Maldynado squeaked.
“Did you arrange for this trap when you were in town?”
“No! We were shopping. Look, I’ll show you our bags.
We left them on the path—”
“Sire,” came Yara’s voice. “He didn’t arrange this. There was a conversation I should tell you about, but I heard enough to know it wasn’t about sending men to your hiding place.”
Maldynado bit his lip to keep from snapping at Yara for not warning him about Sespian’s approach. Best to stand still and not dig himself into a hole—a deeper hole.
A long moment passed before the blade disappeared from Maldynado’s neck. He touched his skin and grimaced when blood came away on his fingers.
Arms wide, Maldynado turned, intending to impress upon Sespian just how innocent he was, but the emperor was already stalking away. Basilard had joined Yara by the steam donkey. His approach must have kept her from noticing Sespian as he sneaked up on Maldynado. That Sespian could sneak so well was surprising. Maldynado might have to reassess his image of the young emperor as a harmless, bookish sort.
Basilard waved for attention as soon as everyone stood in the shadow of the donkey engine. Maldynado realized he was the only one there who could understand his hand signs.
We routed the men in black, but we must figure out a way to retrieve Books and Akstyr. Basilard pointed to the building. That device didn’t start glowing and affecting us—he paused to touch his temple—until they were inside. The men with the crossbows tried to ambush us while we ate. I noticed them coming, and we took to the field, but there were a lot of them firing rapidly. We decided to take cover in the mill. As soon as we approached, Akstyr said he sensed magic inside. We were being shot at, so he and Books volunteered to go in and investigate. I don’t know if they turned the device on or if it fired up of its own accord, but they fell unconscious before they could run back out. It’s been at least twenty minutes, and they haven’t moved.
“What’s he saying?” Yara asked.
Maldynado translated.
When he finished, Sespian added, “It was a trap. I think we were all meant to be in there when the device turned on. I don’t know how these men knew we were here—” the look Sespian gave Maldynado dripped with significance, “—but they did.”