“Check the area,” Sicarius said. “They may be attempting to cut a hole elsewhere so they can bypass us and retrieve their men.”
“They think their men are dead.” As Amaranthe had found during her attempted chats. When the enforcers hadn’t responded to her pleas to work together and destroy the deadly rockets, she’d attempted hostage negotiation. They’d refused to believe Sicarius took hostages.
She left to check the rest of the area anyway. Even if they believed their men dead, the enforcers would love to sneak around from behind and take her and Sicarius by surprise. Nobody wanted to face him head-on.
As Amaranthe felt her way through the meandering aisles of crates, she thought about lighting a lantern, but she didn’t want to brighten the area, lest it make Sicarius more visible to the enforcers.
Steel screeched back at the trapdoor. She paused. Maybe they were attacking en masse and risking his skill after all. A new thought crept into her mind. What if that smoke held a sedating agent? What if breathing it in would make Sicarius vulnerable to attacks? She almost went back. But, no, he was capable of handling anything the enforcers hurled at him. If the smoke did hold more of a threat than tearing one’s eyes, he’d know it and adapt. He could probably hold his breath for an entire battle.
Amaranthe kept going, trying to keep a map of the under-stage area in her head as she navigated the darkness. The clangs of metal and grunts of effort—and pain—over by the trapdoor guided her. She thought about checking first on the weapons, but they’d pushed the crate back over the grate earlier to block the glow, and she didn’t see any hint of light ahead. Instead she veered toward the front wall and paused to listen. That’d be the easiest place for the enforcers to access since the stage’s other side and back abutted bulkheads.
Amaranthe heard orders being barked, and occasionally something would clunk against the stage. The words were hard to make out. She climbed over a pile of padded leather equipment, navigating as close to the wall as possible.
“Someone get a blasted cannon! If they’re not going to come out, we’ll tear that stage apart piece by piece.”
“...hit our own men.”
“...dead anyway.”
“...don’t know that!”
Amaranthe tried to decide if the frenetic shouts were authentic or cover for some more threatening action. She pressed her ear to the wall. Soft rasps vibrated through the wood.
Amaranthe jerked back. “Knew it.”
The rasps came from her right, from the side of the stage opposite Sicarius and the trapdoor. Sword in hand, she patted her way in that direction as quickly as possible. Her knee clunked against something hard. She bit back a curse and slowed down. No need to announce to the enforcers that someone was coming...
The blocky shapes of crates loomed ahead of her, and she picked her way around them. At first, she thought her eyes had adjusted more fully to the darkness and she was finally able to see slightly, but she’d been in the dark for an hour or more. No, almost imperceptibly, the light level had increased.
Amaranthe stood as fully as she could, her upper back and head pressed to the top of the stage. Peering over crates, she tried to pinpoint the direction of the light source. Though faint, it had a familiar yellowish tinge. Her stomach sank. Someone had uncovered the grate. Their prisoners must have escaped their bonds.
She glanced at the dark wall where the enforcers were trying to cut through, then back toward the grate. “It’ll take them a while to saw out a hole,” she muttered and headed for the glow. She thought about yelling a warning to Sicarius, but if the enforcers had freed themselves, it’d be better to sneak up and catch them by surprise. Bloody ancestors, she hoped it was just one and not all four.
Still clenching the sword, Amaranthe crept closer, easing around the crates, careful to step toe first and test each floorboard before placing her weight behind it. The light brightened, but she didn’t come across anyone. She thought about circling around to the far side, but decided to take a peek at the grate first. How much was exposed? Did the enforcers know what lay below?
Amaranthe peered around a corner. Five feet away, yellow light seeped through the grate. The entire width was exposed, the crate pushed to one side. Bright after the hour in the darkness, the illumination made her squint. It took a moment for her to realize that it wasn’t shining through the bars of the grate. The entire grate hung open.
She stared at it in confusion. As far as she knew, Sicarius had the only key. Why would he have opened it? Or left the trapdoor to do so? He wouldn’t have. The enforcers must have evaded the magic somehow and picked the lock.
A shadow moved beneath the opening. Someone was already down there. Amaranthe had the presence of mind to keep her string of curses silent. She wanted to check the area around the grate, to see if other enforcers lurked in the darkness, poised to protect their investigating comrade, but she dared not delay, not when a single slip could kill everybody on the boat.
Amaranthe hustled forward. She glimpsed brown hair beneath a gray enforcer cap and lifted her sword, intending to clunk the man with the hilt. Something moved to her left.
She spun, adjusting her grip and thrusting her blade out in front. A man surged out of the shadows between two crates. Something glinted in his hand. She lifted the sword, throwing her second hand onto the hilt to brace it. The man’s eyes bulged, but he’d seen the weapon too late. He impaled himself on it, his scream belting Amaranthe’s ears.
He still tried to plunge his own weapon down, to finish off Amaranthe with his dying breath. She dropped to the floor, rolling away from the grate, and pulling the sword after her, or trying. The man’s momentum had forced the blade deep.
A knife thunked into the wooden deck, inches from her ear. She jerked away, but something new slammed into her. Another enforcer.
The back of her head banged into a crate hard enough to stun her. She let go of the stuck sword and scrabbled for the dagger at her waist. The rage-filled face of one of the snarling prisoners filled her view, and he pinned her with his weight. He raised a dagger of his own, and she saw her death in his eyes.
Hands grasped him under the armpits, yanking him off of her.
“Sicarius,” Amaranthe breathed, then lunged for her sword, fearing they’d have another two enforcers to face. This time she succeeded in yanking it free. She spun around, ready to fight more, but the enforcer facing her had a familiar face.
“It’s not always Sicarius, you know,” Sespian said with a sad sigh.
“Amaranthe, are you all right?” came Books’s voice from the storage area. He climbed out, grunting at the tight quarters and banging his head on the top of the stage. “Oof, am I all right?”
“Not usually,” Akstyr said, crawling out after Books. They were all wearing enforcer uniforms. A cap mashed down Akstyr’s hair, but Amaranthe doubted anyone would believe him a law keeper, not with that brand on his hand and the ever-present sneer on his lips. Then again, the outfits had gotten them this far.
“Is Basilard with you?” Amaranthe asked.
“He’s guarding the new entrance,” Books said.
For a moment, Amaranthe could only stare as the men crowded into the space around her. New... entrance? Finally, realization trickled into her mind. They must have cut a hole in that bulkhead Sicarius had mentioned and come through from engineering. She’d get the details later. “Good to see you. What about Maldynado and Yara? Any sign of them?”
“Nothing,” Books said. “Sorry.”
“All right. We have work to do. Sicarius is guarding the entrance over there.” Amaranthe flung a hand in his direction. “Akstyr, we might need you to hurl some Science about. There are two more enforcers in here—” she pointed toward the back wall, though they’d probably moved by now, “—maybe tied, maybe not.” She eyed the two men who’d attacked her. Sespian had disarmed her second foe without killing him, but the first... She swallowed. It’d been too much to hope that they could destroy the weapons and escape without killing anyone
. She shoved the thought to the side for later. “Sespian and Books, come with me. The ones outside may have cut their way in by now.”
Reminded of the fact, Amaranthe rushed toward the front of the stage.
“Also,” she added over her shoulder, “thank you for coming. Excellent timing.”
“You’re welcome.” How Books managed to beam when his six-and-a-half-foot frame was bent into a three-foot-high space, she didn’t know, but he looked pleased with himself. “It’s not often we get to save her,” he whispered to Sespian. “Sicarius usually handles that.”
“I don’t need rescuing that often,” Amaranthe said.
“Is that why she moons after him?” Sespian asked.
“Most likely,” Books said before Amaranthe could manage a flushed protest. “If I rescued her every week, she might have started mooning over me instead.”
“I don’t need rescuing every week,” Amaranthe protested again, though the notion of all the men thinking she mooned after Sicarius bothered her more than the rescuing bit.
“Bi-monthly?” Books suggested.
“All right, I’ll give you that. Though—” she glanced back at Sespian, “—sometimes I’m the one rescuing other people on the team.”
Books offered an agreeable nod.
They’d reached the front wall, and she picked her way along, searching for what she expected to be a gaping hole by now. She hoped the enforcers weren’t already streaming inside, but feared her delay had given them the time they needed. Had she known her own team was inside the cargo area, she would have left the escaped prisoners for them to deal with.
In the dim area, spotting the light ahead wasn’t difficult. As Amaranthe had expected, it seeped through a jagged hole in the front wall. A hole with a head sticking through it. With his face tilted up, the man sawed a serrated blade back and forth, trying to widen the new entrance. Amaranthe hoped the partial progress meant nobody had made his way inside yet, though the opening appeared wide enough that a small or medium-sized man could have wriggled through it.
A soft clunk came from behind, Books or Sespian bumping something. Amaranthe winced, fearing the noise would give away their approach. The enforcer kept sawing, perhaps not hearing anything over the rasp of wood, but she didn’t want to take another chance. Leaving the others behind, she surged ahead. The darkness allowed her to approach unseen.
Focused on his work, the enforcer didn’t notice her approach. She rushed toward him, thinking to tear the saw from his hands and shove him back outside, but spotted a dark figure at the last moment. Tucked between two crates, another enforcer stood guard across from the hole.
He spotted her as soon as she entered the light. He raised a short sword. Amaranthe whipped out her dagger and flung it toward the beam his hair brushed against. He jerked back, clunking his head on the low ceiling. Amaranthe dove in beneath his sword, grabbing his wrist to slam his knuckles into a crate even as she smashed the heel of her hand into his chin with her other hand. The blow drove his head back into the ceiling yet again, and his sword clattered to the floor. She silently apologized for the headache he’d endure in the morning, but it was better than the fate his comrade had met. She dragged him into the open, wrenching his arm behind his back. He tried to fight back, swinging at her face with his free hand, but his knuckles clunked against another beam. In the tight space, her smaller size gave her an advantage. When he tried to stand to achieve better leverage, she drove her elbow into the back of his knee. He dropped to the deck and scrambled toward the hole, apparently having had enough.
While she’d been busy with the guard, Books had handled the man in the hole. He’d torn the saw away and had a fistful of the enforcer’s hair. “Thank you for attempting to join our small but elite group, but you’ve been uninvited.” Books shoved the sawyer back through the hole.
“Small but elite?” Sespian asked mildly.
“Yes,” Amaranthe said. “Haven’t you seen our fliers?”
“Shoot them!” someone hollered from the other side.
“You’ll hit your own man,” Amaranthe yelled back. “Get out,” she told her prisoner, poking her dagger into his back.
He couldn’t claw his way out fast enough. His head smacked the wall one more time before he escaped through the hole. He’d barely cleared it before a barrage of crossbow bolts zinged through the opening.
Amaranthe and the others had anticipated it and weren’t in the line of fire, but she gulped at the array of quarrels that sank into a crate. Through the hole, she glimpsed uniformed men reloading their crossbows and moving around, trying to find angles that might allow them to hit their targets. Amaranthe guided her men by touch, pushing them back several feet so those random shots wouldn’t find flesh.
“What now?” Sespian whispered.
“We guard the entrance.” Amaranthe patted about, found a crate, and heaved it in front of the hole. That wouldn’t deter the enforcers for long, but it would make it harder for them to fire inside. “I’ll handle it. Why don’t you two check on Akstyr, see if he’s subdued the other men? Then... what’s your plan for the cement, Books?” She didn’t know how long the new hole from engineering would remain undiscovered—Basilard might already be fighting to defend it—but she questioned whether they’d be able to, under any circumstances, tote the weapons out now. All it would take was one stray crossbow bolt...
“We dragged as many bags of cement in with us as we could before someone asked why enforcers were helping unload the cargo,” Books said.
“Dragged them in where?” Amaranthe asked.
Books thumped his boot against the deck. “Down with the rockets. We grabbed some tools too. If we can cut through to one of the water tanks in the boiler room, we might be able to mix the cement right down there.”
“Might?”
“It was a hastily composed plan,” Books admitted.
“It’s a good compact space. We can set the cement right in there.” Sespian thumped on a crate. “There’s plenty of wood around here to make a mold.”
“And then what?” Amaranthe asked. “The weapons are still—”
A series of thunks interrupted her. Another barrage of crossbow quarrels.
“Stop firing,” someone barked. “They’ve blocked the entrance. Get more smoke bombs.”
“That’s not enough, Sergeant. We need to light the stage on fire, smoke ’em out.”
“That’ll light the entire steamboat on fire, you idiot.”
“Then we need bigger cutting tools. There has to be something in engineering.”
Amaranthe grimaced. If the men hadn’t found the hole Basilard guarded yet, they would soon. “That plan will leave the weapons on board,” she continued. “Once the cement hardens, they’ll be on board forever.”
“We plucked a blow lamp out of engineering,” Books said. “I thought we might cut the hull away beneath the cement block once it hardens.”
“Cut the hull away? There’s nothing but water under there.”
“Yes, that’ll leave a hole in the bottom of the ship, through which the block can fall and find a resting spot in the mud at the bottom of the river.”
If Amaranthe hadn’t been holding weapons in both hands, she would have rubbed her face or massaged her temples. Or something. “You’re the one who’s lectured me about prudence, Books. That sounds... imprudent.”
“Our options are limited. As is our time—the cement will take some hours to harden.”
“Hours?” Amaranthe blurted. While the enforcers’ attacks hadn’t been effective thus far, she couldn’t believe they wouldn’t come up with an alternative given that much time.
“The sooner I get started—”
“Yes, yes, go,” Amaranthe said. “You’re right. What else can we do?”
Thumps and grunts sounded as Books groped his way back to the grate.
“I didn’t take as many engineering courses as I should have, given my architecture interests,” Sespian said, “but I’m fairly certai
n cutting a hole in the bottom of a ship will cause it to sink as well.”
Amaranthe sighed. “That’s my understanding of holes and boats too.”
“It’s amazing how many conveyances your team destroys for the good of the empire.” He sounded more amused than condemning. That was something at least.
“Yes, and unfortunately Maldynado isn’t here, so we can’t blame this one on him.”
A horn blasted somewhere. An alarm? A warning?
Amaranthe tilted her ear toward the blocked hole. Voices that had been plotting in hushed tones fell silent. Boots pattered against the deck—men running to look at something? She was tempted to push the crate aside and peek outside, but a voice stayed her hand.
“Mind that hole, Private,” a man said, not more than five feet away. “If they escape, it’ll be on you.”
“Yes, Corporal.”
A laugh rang out in the distance, from the doorway to the dining hall perhaps. “For once seeing the marines is good news.”
Amaranthe slumped, wishing she could sink into the floor and disappear. “The marines?”
“Perhaps,” Sespian said, “someone has come downstream to escort their important cargo to the capital.”
Whatever the case, Amaranthe feared a marine vessel would have the tools and manpower to disassemble the stage. Or utterly destroy it. And those hiding within.
CHAPTER 10
Inside the cigar factory, rows of tables stretched beneath a high, beamed ceiling. Outside, twilight approached, and the shadows grew long. Evrial stood near the door, wrinkling her nose at the sweet pungent aroma thickening the air, while Maldynado roamed through the spacious interior looking for... who knew what? What sort of distraction could they create that didn’t involve fires or explosives? When Maldynado paused to tick a finger against one of the stoves stationed in the corners of the room, Evrial scowled at him. He resumed his stroll.
He paused in front of a tall, narrow window overlooking the waterfront. “One enforcer is pushing a wheelbarrow of coal up the dock. I think the other is building fires in the furnaces.”