“The cabin,” Sicarius said.
“We need to get back to the lorry and over to the Spearcrests. The shaman knew about the family, so I think it might have been a mistake sending Books and Maldynado there.”
“Not tonight.”
Lightning flashed. For a moment, trees and branches stood out, stark and cold in the white brilliance. Seconds later, thunder rumbled, a great peal that rang in Amaranthe’s ears. Up here, surrounded by mountains, the storm seemed louder, rawer, and more dangerous than any she remembered from the city.
“You don’t understand,” she said. “I may have sent them into a trap. We have to warn them.”
Sicarius spun about even as lightning flashed again, highlighting his wet blond hair and the hard angles of his face. “It’s foolish to stay out in this. Going—”
Thunder drowned out the rest of his words, but she got the gist. Going down that trail in the dark would be treacherous. She knew it in her head; her heart was what objected.
Amaranthe was about to nod and wave Sicarius onward, when the hair on her arms stood on end. Her skin tingled, as if ants crawled all over her.
“Down!” Sicarius dropped, pulling her with him.
She tucked her head under her hands, burying her face in the ground. The sharp earthy scent of mud flooded her nostrils.
Lightning struck, and a boom hammered her ears.
The air stank of charred wood. A tree groaned, then cracked like rifle fire. Branches snapped. She wasn’t sure whether to look up or keep her head buried.
Something—Sicarius’s arm?—snaked around her waist, tearing her from her huddle.
Mud and trees blurred before her eyes as she was yanked several feet. She landed hard on her rump, her back thudding into Sicarius.
The trunk of a massive tree smashed to the ground where she had lain. Eyes wide, chest heaving for breath, she gaped for several long seconds. Sicarius held her, arm wrapped around her waist.
“Are you injured?” he asked.
Amaranthe waved her hand in dismissal, not trusting her voice.
He released her and helped her to her feet. She wiped rain out of her eyes with a shaking hand. Despite the downpour, flames leaped where lightning had struck the tree. Their orange glow helped her find her rifle.
“The cabin, you say?” she asked.
“Yes,” Sicarius said dryly.
She followed him back to the clearing without further suggestions of getting off the mountain that night. The wind continued to rail, flinging branches into their path, and flashes of lightning illuminated the mountains. The rain turned to hail and pounded their heads and shoulders.
The cabin came into view, and Amaranthe broke into a run. Even knowing a dead man waited on the floor inside could not dim her relief at the prospect of sanctuary—though she almost hugged Sicarius when he dragged the body outside by himself. She decided a comment about it being good of him to help with the house cleaning would be in poor taste.
While he tended to that grisly task, Amaranthe laid a fire. Water dripped from her clothing and pooled on the cold hearth stones beneath her knees. The hurried trek across the hillside had kept her from noticing the chilly air that had ridden in with the storm, but it made her shiver now. Though the long wooden matches had heads the size of coins, it took her shaking hands several tries to strike a flame. Fortunately, Hagcrest had kept the cabin well-stocked, and enough wood for the night was stacked in a bin near the hearth.
Sicarius returned as her fire started crackling. He did not say what he had done with the body, and she did not ask. She doubted any scavengers would be out in the downpour to bother it. They could build a funeral pyre in the morning.
“Venison.” He laid strips of dried meat on the table and headed for his rucksack.
She added a final log to the fire. “You purloined food from a dead man’s smokehouse?”
“He doesn’t need it.” Sicarius removed a set of neatly rolled dry clothes and tugged off his shirt, revealing the hard, lean muscles of his back.
Amaranthe caught herself staring. She grabbed the fireplace poker and turned away from him, cheeks heating. Too many hard angles, she told herself. It would be like sleeping with a rock. Who would want that?
Me, some insidious thought whispered.
That worried her. Even if there were not already enough reasons to keep the relationship purely business, the shaman’s revelations alone should have horrified her enough to keep the notion from entering her mind. What would her father think of her, daydreaming about an assassin? A man who had killed, not just soldiers in a combat situation but innocents as well.
The empire had always considered it cowardly and dishonorable to attack someone who could not fight back, so Hollowcrest and Emperor Raumesys had gone against seven hundred years of imperial mores by raising and employing an assassin. Perhaps they had sensed a future when brute force would no longer be enough to keep the conquered subjugated, or they had realized the rest of the world would catch up with the empire’s engineering and metallurgy advancements, and that their edge would eventually slip away. To understand their reasoning and condone it were different matters, and here she sat with the one who had done the dirty work for them.
“Did you do it?” Amaranthe prodded a log with the poker. “Kill the Mangdorian chief and…his family?” Including the children, she added to herself.
“Yes.”
She closed her eyes. It did not surprise her. She knew what he was by now and had heard enough from others to guess at much of what he had done. Sometimes she forgot, though, because she had never known him when he was purely Hollowcrest and Raumesys’s assassin. It was jarring to be reminded that his reputation was entirely founded.
“Was it… Do you regret it?” she asked.
No note of remorse had colored his “yes,” but he was so good at hiding his thoughts and emotions, one would never know if he actually felt something.
Sicarius set his boots by the fire and held her rucksack out to her. “Do you want me to go outside?”
“What?”
“While you change.”
“Oh.” She had forgotten the water dripping from her hair and clothing. “No need. I’ll go over there.”
Thanks to the disease Hollowcrest’s crazy dungeon scientist had infected her with, Sicarius had seen her naked before. Or maybe not. She was not sure if he had bothered looking. Despite everything he was, and knowing what she should and should not want, that disappointed her.
She grabbed her rucksack and walked to the bed, wet boots squeaking with each step. She turned her back to the fireplace and dug out dry fatigues. Alas, she did not catch him peeping while she changed.
They shared the purloined food, then Sicarius settled on the bearskin rug, one leg stretched out and the other bent, arm resting on his knee. His shirt was untucked, and he was barefoot. Amaranthe did not bother him outside of missions and training time, so she had never seen him in even that bit of undress. He almost looked…relaxed. She had never seen that either.
It did not seem right, considering the day’s revelations, but it was old news to him even if it was not to her.
Amaranthe sat on the rug, close enough to enjoy the fire’s warmth and talk to him—should he deign to converse—but she was careful not to intrude on his space. Strange that she could joke with him, however one-sidedly, while working, yet words eluded her now. Must be the bare feet. Most of the time, she felt comfortable around him. Indeed, over the last few months, when she dared not visit her old friends or enforcer comrades, he had become the person she confided in most. She trusted him to have her back in a fight—or a lightning storm. She wished she knew if his willingness to protect her represented fondness or if he was only interested in keeping her alive because she might be his best bet to one day establish a relationship with Sespian.
“Sicarius…” Amaranthe pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, eyes toward the fire instead of him. “You were watching the camp there at the end, I as
sume. If I hadn’t… If that shaman had started to interrogate me…” She licked her lips, not sure she should ask a question she might not want to hear the answer to; he never prevaricated, so she expected a blunt and honest response. “I’m guessing you had your rifle in hand, ready to fire, before I threw the blasting stick and escaped. If I hadn’t done that… Given what I know about you and…Sespian…and given what happened when I originally learned what I learned… Well, I wonder sometimes if you wouldn’t feel your secrets were more secure if I weren’t around.”
Wood snapped, and sparks disappeared up the chimney. Amaranthe waited, then finally looked his way. He returned her gaze but said nothing.
“Well?” she asked.
“Well, what?”
“You’re not going to answer?”
“You didn’t ask a question.”
“I did too.”
“A question is denoted by a higher pitched tone at the end of the sentence. Your voice never did that.” Curse him, his eyes glinted with amusement.
“Sicarius! This isn’t the time for you to practice being whimsical.”
He turned his dark eyes toward the fire. “It wasn’t in my mind to shoot you.”
Not exactly a proclamation that he would never under any circumstances consider harming her, but she had not expected that. Hoped for, but not expected.
“Good,” Amaranthe said. “My ego likes to think I’m not expendable.”
Sicarius leaned back on his hands. Amaranthe added a couple more logs, relishing the heat that warmed her face. Rain hammered the roof, and wind beat at the shutters of the single window, but inside it had grown comfortable.
“Sespian was there,” Sicarius said.
“What?” Amaranthe blinked.
“When I returned from the mission to Mangdoria. With the heads. The emperor and Hollowcrest always wanted proof of a task completed. Sespian was there.”
“Oh.” She feared she did not want to hear the next part, but she gave him an encouraging nod anyway. She could not remember many times when he started a conversation or volunteered personal information. “How old was he?”
“Five. He was on the floor next to Raumesys’s desk, playing with wood blocks. Building something creative.” Sicarius continued to stare into the fire as he spoke, lost in the memory perhaps. “I asked Raumesys if the boy should leave. He said no. Sespian needed to be tough if he was to rule one day.” His jaw tightened.
“So he was sitting there when you dumped a pile of heads on the floor.” Amaranthe rubbed her face. A five-year-old boy confronted with that…
“Yes. I should have refused to do it with him in the room. I was…”
“Indoctrinated to obey the emperor,” Amaranthe said.
His gaze shifted to meet hers.
“I know. Even as an enforcer, I had a lot of that drilled into me,” she said. “Obey your chain of command without question, and the emperor’s law is immutable. If we want you to have an opinion, we’ll give it to you.” For the first time, she wondered what kind of person she would be if she had gone to a city school. Her father had sacrificed much to send her to Mildawn to study business, where she had received a far more liberal education than typical in the empire. By the time she entered the Enforcer Academy, she had been old enough to know her own mind and her obeisance had often been outward only.
“Yes,” Sicarius said.
A question she had wondered more than once trickled into the stream of her thoughts. With him more open than usual tonight, maybe he would answer it. It was on her tongue, but she hesitated. He had been the one to bring up Sespian, but he might not appreciate her prying.
Curiosity overruled wisdom.
“How did you come to be Sespian’s father?” Amaranthe asked. “Did you love his mother?”
He did not react with surprise to her questions—he never did. Just that schooled mask that revealed so little.
“Sorry,” she said. “I retract my question. It’s none of my business.”
He snorted softly. Yes, he knew she wasn’t retracting anything; she wanted to know.
Amaranthe shrugged. “At least I pitched my voice higher at the end of the question.”
She wondered if a man who could kill without remorse or self-doubt possessed the ability to love. Sespian’s fate mattered to him, but did he love his son? Or was his protectiveness born from a sense of duty? That imperative ran deep amongst Turgonian men. Duty to the emperor, duty to one’s family. That wasn’t the same as love.
“No,” Sicarius said.
It took a moment for her to realize which question he was answering. The love one.
“Oh.” She was not sure what answer she had hoped for. “No” could mean he had never loved anyone, and he never would. If he had said “yes,” it would have warmed her to know he had the capacity to love someone, but then she might be jealous of some long-dead woman.
“All right, no love,” Amaranthe said. “Then how… I mean, I know how, but why did she want you?” Oops, that sounded insulting. “I mean, of course I know why she’d want you because you’re smart and athletic, and I’m sure you’d make wonderful children, and, uhm…” She cleared her throat and avoided his eyes. “What I mean is how did things come to happen?”
Fortunately, her stumbling tongue did not seem to offend him.
“You know Princess Marathi was Raumesys’s second wife,” Sicarius said.
Amaranthe nodded. “His first wife, Alta, died of influenza.” She had been a toddler then, but it was well-known history.
“The first was killed because she didn’t produce an heir.”
“Ah? That’s not what the record books say.” An uneasy thought occurred to her. “Did you do it?”
“Raumesys did it himself. He married Marathi a week later. A year passed and she had not conceived either.”
“I’m guessing it was Old Raumesys’s rifle that wasn’t fully loaded. Poor Alta. Murdered because her husband was impotent. So, Marathi made some assumptions and figured Raumesys was the problem. To avoid Alta’s fate, she decided to get herself impregnated by someone else and let Raumesys think it was his doing.”
“Yes.”
“And she picked you.” Amaranthe nodded. While his training no doubt accounted for much of his martial prowess, a great deal of that skill had to be natural aptitude, something that ought to be passed along to children. Thinking of the way he had flawlessly drawn copies of ranmyas for her counterfeiting scheme, she had little doubt he would be good at any endeavor that relied on speed, dexterity, or coordination, all traits admired in the empire. Strange that Sespian’s interests did not lie along martial lines. Or perhaps not. Maybe Marathi had worked hard to make sure she did not raise a killer. “She had iron guts. Risking death if Raumesys found out. And approaching you. I can’t imagine…” Amaranthe couldn’t even tell Sicarius she had feelings for him. She certainly could not see herself brave enough to show up at his door to seduce him. “Or were you more cuddly and approachable as a teenager?”
His eyebrow twitched at the word cuddly. “No.”
“That was gutsy of you too. Sleeping with the emperor’s wife—that had to be a death sentence if you were caught. And you admitted you were inculcated to obey Raumesys. You certainly seem to have killed everyone he and Hollowcrest asked you to.” She winced. That had come out more accusing than she intended.
“Fifteen-year-old boys don’t do much thinking when pretty women show up at their doors.”
Fifteen? He had been young.
Sicarius stood and retrieved a canteen. “Also, I was recovering from punishment that nearly killed me. I wasn’t kindly inclined toward Raumesys at the time.” He took a swig of water, and she wondered if the conversation was making him wish he had something stronger. Not that she had ever seen him drink anything alcoholic.
“Punishment for what?” she asked.
“Failure.” His clipped tone did not invite further inquiry.
“At least it was an opportunity for you to?
??know something you might not have otherwise. Did you get to spend any time with him as a boy?”
“That would have been suspicious.” He screwed the cap back on the canteen.
“Surely, with your ability to be stealthy, you could have sneaked in for a moment here or there.”
Sicarius turned his back to her and set the canteen on the table. “Marathi did not want me around. And my presence scared Sespian.”
Of course. After seeing Sicarius deliver a pile of severed heads, Sespian must have been terrified of him. A son, yes, but one he could only watch from afar. And one who grew up fearing and hating him.
“Go to sleep,” Sicarius said. “I’ll take first watch tonight.”
The wind still howled outside, and thunder rumbled from time to time. She doubted anyone would intrude on them that night, but he was a stickler for running a watch, and she did not want to argue with him. She padded over to the bed.
“Sicarius?”
“Yes?” His eyes were hooded, wary.
Amaranthe wanted to tell him she was sorry his life had been chosen for him from his first day and that he never seemed to have known happiness. She wanted to tell him she never would have told him to stay away from his son. And she wanted to tell him she loved him.
“Good night,” she said.
Coward.
CHAPTER 15
Going down the mountain should have been easier than climbing up it, but Sicarius set a pace that would have tired a steam tramper. At least the storm had passed. Overhead, budding branches created a latticework framing a blue sky.
While admiring that sky, Amaranthe slipped on a wet, mossy stone. The barrel of her rifle caught on a tree and the butt jabbed her in the ribs. She winced at her klutziness. “Any reason we’re in such a hurry?”
“You find this pace taxing?” There was a hint of something in his tone—like maybe he intended to practice that teasing she had offered to receive.
“No.” Teasing aside, she suspected he would read any admission of weakness as a request for extra training. “It’s just that a more leisurely pace would let me think about everything. I meant to cogitate more last night, but I fell asleep as soon as my head touched that stiff, straw-stuffed object Hagcrest placed in the pillow position.” It was probably good she had fallen asleep before she could dwell overmuch on the fact she was sleeping in a dead man’s bed.