“Body parts?” Sicarius asked softly, not wanting his voice to carry to shore.
“A buoy from a ship and a piece of the wooden hull of a fishing boat. I’ve never seen seaweed that likes to collect souvenirs from its travels.”
Sicarius, focused on the cliff, did not answer. The lantern light disappeared. It hadn’t moved out of sight—there shouldn’t be anywhere to hide on that bare rock—so it had gone out. Been put out. In his black clothing, he shouldn’t stand out, but someone knew he was watching.
Perhaps nothing. To a local unaware of the existence of Starcrest’s submarine, he must appear a strange sight drifting across the lake. Someone might report them to the local garrison—wherever it had been moved to—believing them spies sneaking up on the city at night.
Sicarius called out a few more soft directions to Amaranthe, and they soon glided into the cove. The Explorer drifted to a stop twenty meters from the bank.
Amaranthe stuck her head through the hatchway. “That’s as close as I can get us without risking grounding the sub.” She peered past him. “The water looks cold. I don’t suppose you’d like to practice your swimming skills by carrying me above your head? And the luggage as well.”
He thought about pointing out that they would not need to swim if she hadn’t chosen this cove over the dock in front of the Fort Urgot remains. But he understood her reasoning. Besides, he wanted to see who carried that lantern.
“I will go ahead and check for danger.” Sicarius slipped off into the water.
“Danger? Is there more seaweed around?”
He did not respond. After the warm tropical waters of the southern climes, the icy temperature shocked his system, encouraging him to start moving immediately. He would have to resume training and reacclimatize his body as soon as possible.
He swam underwater, not wanting the sound of surface-level kicks and strokes to reach whatever ears might be waiting on land. His fingers soon brushed the pebbly bottom. He patted around until he found a boulder that would hide his approach from someone in the trees or on the promontory. Despite the cold, he lifted only his head at first, listening, looking, and smelling the air before leaving the camouflaging water. He didn’t hear anything beyond the rustlings of the grasses in the breeze and an owl hooting in the distance. This close to the city, he could smell little more than coal smoke from stoves and that unfamiliar jungle vegetation.
Once in the trees, Sicarius paused again to listen and smell. For an instant, he detected the faint fumes of kerosene, though the scents from the city almost overpowered them. Trusting his nose, he glided into the woods, like a hound after his prey. He came out of the brush near the wide running trail and hunkered down, gazing up and down the route, a hand to the earth. The soft crushed-brick surface had been recently re-laid, but not so recently that he might pick out fresh prints from amongst the hundreds that trod the route every day. Still, the freshness was a clue that whatever might have occurred in the city in his absence, this routine maintenance had not been neglected. Again following his nose, he crossed the trail and weaved through maples and aspens, tiny leaves budding from their branches. The scent of a recently snuffed lamp grew stronger. There, he spotted a lump against a tree, one with the blocky dimensions of a man-made item rather than the contours of nature.
A quick touch confirmed that he had located the lamp, its metal hull still warm from use, but nothing else waited on the forest floor. He patted around in the fresh spring grass and found some of the blades bent. Something had been resting in the spot. A rucksack? Someone had come out here prepared. Prepared for what?
Sicarius leaned close to the grass, inhaling with soft sniffs. A faint odor lingered. Black powder? No, not exactly. It was more like...
He bolted to his feet. Blasting sticks.
He had handled them often enough to recognize the scent. Whoever was out here... they weren’t simply strolling along the lake, watching for spies.
Sicarius ran through the trees, forcing himself not to sprint so quickly he made noise, though concern for Amaranthe made him want to charge with reckless abandon. The submarine was the only thing out here one might employ blasting sticks on, and she might still be gathering their gear inside it. He leaped a log and was about to sprint onto the beach, when a dot of light drew his eye. It was up on the promontory again.
Though he suspected he was too late, he veered in that direction. He could hope he was wrong about the blasting sticks or that the person missed, but—
The dot of light spun away from the top of the rocks, arcing toward the submarine. Sicarius almost changed direction again, to run out to check on Amaranthe, but he would be another target down there. That person might have a whole bundle of sticks.
A soft clang sounded—the stick hitting the sub? Boulders blocked his view. He hoped the explosive had struck the hull and bounced off.
He charged up the rocky slope like a panther, bounding meters with each step. Just as he crested the highest part and the ground flattened, a boom roared and orange light fired the sky from below. Though tempted to sprint to the edge to check on the submarine—Amaranthe—the figure crouching at the end of the cliff, preparing a second blasting stick consumed all of his attention. If he had hurt Amaranthe...
In his haste, Sicarius didn’t watch every footfall, and he landed on gravel that crunched softly. After the explosion, the noise was almost insignificant, but the crouching figure turned its head. A white cloak and cowl hid the person’s face and any distinguishing features; it almost hid the movements of the figure’s hands as he jumped to his feet. The blasting stick that had been meant to descend into the cove was hurled at Sicarius. He ducked and kept running. The figure jumped off the end of the cliff. Sicarius would have jumped after him, but the stick exploded behind him.
The force of it pummeled him in the back. He rolled with the power, using it to propel himself forward, and he jumped to his feet at the edge of the cliff. The rocky shoals below came into view, but the cove did as well, and that sight made him freeze.
The hull hadn’t been torn open—there was nothing to burn on the steel ship, and the light from the first explosion had faded—but a dense pillar of smoke roiled from the open hatch. And that hatch was all that remained above water. Most of the hull had disappeared. It was sinking. With Amaranthe within? He scanned the beach, but nothing stirred out in the open.
Sicarius stared down at the water beneath the cliff. Had their cloaked attacker come to the surface, he might have leaped down and given chase, but nothing moved down there, either. The waters were choppy in the aftermath of the explosion, but he should have been able to spot a head. Any sign that another person had been there had disappeared.
Sicarius turned his back on the water and ran down to the beach, searching and listening for Amaranthe. He was about to charge into the lake again, to swim out to the submarine, but he halted on the pebbles. The craft had disappeared beneath the waves. He would have waded out anyway, but a familiar scent drifted on the breeze. Amaranthe’s shampoo, one she had picked up on one of the islands they had visited: hibiscus and coconut. The scent of the latter he found pungent and easy to identify, and his nose led him up the coast.
“Did you catch him?” Amaranthe asked from the trees as he approached.
“No.”
“You probably should have, because your luggage was still on board. I grabbed mine and planned to go back for your collection of black shirts, trousers, and boots, until, ah... someone threw a blasting stick in the submarine.”
Sicarius drew close enough to pick out her form—and that of the duffel bag at her feet—in a copse of trees. She had chosen a spot where her back was protected. Good. From her voice, she did not sound hurt, but she was jumping up and down and swinging her arms. In agitation? Irritation at him for not capturing the one who had attacked her? He shared that irritation—that person must have doubled back after dropping off the lantern, intentionally hoping to lose him perhaps. Or maybe it had been ill luck and
the person hadn’t realized he was out there; instead, he had hoped to catch Sicarius still in the submarine. Had the attack been meant for him? Or Amaranthe? Or the Science-powered contraption itself?
Sicarius stretched out a hand. “Are you injured?”
“No, but this would be a good time for that hug.”
He stepped closer. “Because you were emotionally upset by the attack?”
“Because I’m cold.” Amaranthe flung herself into him, like a cat burrowing into a pile of blankets. “The calendar might say it’s spring here, but I bet it’s still frosty in the mornings.”
“Likely.” Sicarius wrapped his arms around her, though physical exertion would be a more efficient way of generating body heat. They ought to jog into the city to report to Starcrest promptly, though the idea of explaining that the submarine he had loaned them was at the bottom of the lake... Sicarius felt a renewed sense of failure. Perhaps on this vacation, he had allowed himself to relax too much, to grow less attentive. To have been fooled by this other person was unacceptable.
“How many people were up there?” Amaranthe’s teeth chattered.
“One.” Sicarius nudged her duffel bag with his foot. “You should change into dry clothing.”
“Yes, I know.” She pulled away from him, reluctantly, he thought, and dug into the bag.
He should have dragged his own gear out before slipping into the water, but the attack on the submarine had been unforeseen.
“And how did this one person know where we were going to anchor?” Amaranthe pulled out a shirt and trousers that had remained perfectly folded despite being stuffed in a bag. “We didn’t even know when we came out of the river. Nor did we know exactly when we’d return. Do you think Starcrest told people we were coming back? So someone could have been waiting? But why would he do that?”
“Someone sensitive to the Science could have detected the sub’s approach.”
“Oh, right, because of the magic power source. That thing’s big too. Or it was.” Amaranthe frowned toward the lake. No telltale glow illuminated the water. “It must put out a large... aura. Is that the right term?”
“Sufficient.”
“But it takes longer to run along the lake than it does to sail across it in the sub. How did this person figure out where we were going and beat us here?”
“A bicycle perhaps. I did not smell the smoke from a nearby lorry.” Sicarius wished he had answers for all of her questions. He had already been making a lot of unfounded guesses. That someone could sense the sub’s power source was not inconceivable, but to have sensed it from miles away? Even with artifacts and constructs being rare here, that would take an incredibly strong practitioner. More likely the person had been watching the river and waiting for them to come in. But who would have known to lie in wait? How many people had Starcrest told of their return? And why would one of them have wanted the submarine destroyed? “It is imperative that we report to the president.”
“I agree. And you were right about something else. Spending all that time cleaning the sub wasn’t necessary.” She waved to the cove, where all sign of the craft had disappeared from sight.
Sicarius, gazing out toward the water where the figure had jumped in—where he had lost his prey—did not answer.
Amaranthe finished changing and fastened the duffel bag. “I wonder if there’s any chance someone on the president’s staff could do my laundry.” She hefted the bag. “Seeing as we don’t have a place of our own to stay in yet. Or jobs to pay for a place.”
Sicarius took the bag from her before she could sling it on her back. They had three or four miles to march, and they could go faster if he carried the extra burden. And since his failure with their attacker meant he had no bags of his own to carry...
“Thank you,” Amaranthe said, sounding faintly surprised. “Is that because you’re being a gentleman and wish to do kind things for me or because you know we’ll go faster if you carry the heavy things?”
“Yes.” Sicarius trotted into the trees, angling toward the trail.
Amaranthe jogged to catch up. “Just so you’re aware, I know you’ll give me that answer whenever I ask questions like that, and I do it anyway because the ambiguity lets me choose to apply your response to the option that most suits me.”
That comment was almost twisty enough to challenge a reader of one of Starcrest’s advanced tactics and strategies books. Sicarius had heard enough of them to catch the gist though. “If you wish to see me as a gentleman, Amaranthe, I will not object.”
“Good.” They came out on the jogging path and picked up their pace, running side-by-side. Amaranthe nudged him with her elbow. “Just so you know, a gentleman steps forward to take the blame when a president wants to know how his submarine came to be blown up.”
Sicarius had already intended to accept the blame for that, though he dreaded making the confession to someone who doubtlessly would have been clever enough to outthink that saboteur. Still, he sensed Amaranthe was teasing him and sought an appropriate reply.
“You believe he will not lend you his laundress if he thinks you are responsible?”
Amaranthe chuckled softly. “I fear he’ll instruct said laundress to throw me in the bucket and grate me over the wash board.”
That she could find the humor in this situation wasn’t surprising, and it pleased him, for during that first month after Books’s funeral, he had worried her spirit would remain dampened. For now, though, Sicarius could not share her mirth. As they headed toward the outskirts of the city, he kept all of his senses alert to the night, to any other danger that might be lurking in it. Their vacation was over.
• • • • •
Mahliki strode down the carpeted hallway with as much determination as she could, given that she carried a fifty-pound brass diving helmet. She intended to thunk it down on her father’s desk. For emphasis. She had tried one of the diving suits in a bathing pool in the basement, and she had been ready to launch her expedition for two days. But she hadn’t been allowed out of the hotel for two days. She had tried multiple times to walk out, but kept bumping into security guards that referred her to Colonel Dak Starcrest, a cousin she vaguely remembered hearing about a time or two growing up, but not anyone she had met before this winter and certainly not someone she wanted to be restrained by. That plant was growing out of control all along the waterfront, doing thousands if not millions of ranmyas of damage, and she might as well be locked in the dungeon.
Mahliki staggered up a short stairway that led to a balcony overlooking the grand foyer three floors below. The door to her father’s office was at the end of the hall, an end much farther away then she would have liked. In reflection, a diving glove might have been a sufficient prop to throw down on the desk.
A side door opened, and she almost crashed into the gray-haired man who walked out, studying an open book almost as big and heavy as her diving helmet. She halted at the same time as he looked up, saw her burden, and stumbled back into the doorway. His thick brows rose, and his gray eyes widened behind his spectacles.
“Pardon me, Vice President Serpitivich,” Mahliki said, relieved she hadn’t dropped the helmet on his foot.
“No, pardon me, Lady Mahliki. I’m clearly in the way of an important... delivery?”
“Something like that.” If her arms hadn’t been quivering from fatigue, Mahliki would have chatted longer—despite early tensions between her father and his election-opponent-turned-vice-president—she liked the older man. He had a lot of the academic eccentricities that ran in her family. “Do you know if my father is in his office?” The last three times she had tried to hunt him down for this talk, he hadn’t been around.
“I believe so. Although...” Serpitivich closed his book—the title promised it a history of the city’s waterworks and sewer system. “You may wish to come back at another time. He has a... visitor.”
The idea of carrying the helmet back to her room and then back up these stairs again later was not appeal
ing. Mahliki was about to announce that Father was about to have two visitors, but Serpitivich spoke again first.
“Perhaps...” He shuffled his book under one arm and extended the other. “I could help you carry that somewhere in the meantime. Or you could leave it in my office and retrieve it later.”
“Thank you, but I’ll leave this on his floor if he kicks me out.” Mahliki smiled. Yes, Father would deserve that if he had been the one giving instructions to confine her to the premises. “Besides, I wouldn’t want to interrupt your scintillating reading. Sewers and waterworks, eh? Must be fascinating.”
Serpitivich’s eyebrows shifted upward again. “Oh, you saw the title? Yes, there’s a portion of the old city, a very poor portion, that isn’t on the sewer system. I have long wanted to run infrastructure to that area to improve the living conditions, in hopes of attracting a more affluent element to the neighborhoods or even inspiring the current residents to greater economic aspirations. Now that I have the means to effect such change, it’s simply a matter of making the numbers work. I have a few ideas if you’re interested in—” he adjusted his spectacles, almost dropping the book in the process.
“That sounds like a worthy project,” Mahliki said, taking advantage of his fumble. She needed to escape the conversation before her arms gave out. “If you write up a treatise on it, I should enjoy reading the paper.” She smiled at him, then made polite nods and returned to her mission.
“Why, I’ll certainly let you know if I write such a paper,” he called after her.
Mahliki had made such offers to more academic sorts than she could remember, including her own parents. It wasn’t exactly a brush-off—especially since it had resulted in more than one paper landing on her desk, including one that an earnest Polytechnic professor had mailed across an ocean and a continent for her perusal—but it did buy time and help her avoid being mired down in long conversations on subject matters that weren’t her passions. Even if the papers came, she was a fast reader and could skim the contents in less time than those prolonged conversations often took.