“Are warrior-caste men allowed to make snide remarks about our rulers?” Amaranthe poked into the desk drawers, hoping for something illuminating.
“They are if they’re disowned with bounties on their heads.”
She spotted a crumpled piece of paper on the floor behind a desk leg and grabbed it. “Hm.”
“Is that a page from the dastardly villain’s diary?” Maldynado asked. “One carelessly dropped that conveniently reveals the secret to destroying these vile artifacts?”
“It’s an invoice.”
“Villains get bills?”
“It’s the invoice for the appraisal on Hagcrest’s land,” Amaranthe said. “The woman must have brought it up here to meet with her client, expecting to get paid…”
“And she got a knife across the throat. Who would have thought being an appraiser could be a deadly line of work?”
Amaranthe tucked the paper into her pocket, though it held nothing so helpful as a name and address for the person who ordered the appraisal.
Rifle shots cracked, clear and close.
“Guess the dam tour is over,” Maldynado said. “Too bad. I liked this room. Fresh air, a good view…”
“No corpses,” Amaranthe said.
“That did improve the general ambiance.”
Sicarius was already heading back into the tunnels.
“Time to see what they’re firing at,” she murmured.
They did not walk far before the darkness ahead changed from black to a greenish gray. Amaranthe frowned at the unnatural hue. No lantern could be responsible for that.
Moist, guttural snorts and snarls filled the air. A stench wafted from ahead: blood again, along with the musky, earthy odor of that fur. Amaranthe’s grip tightened on her rifle. It was not too late to back out, to leave the soldiers to their fate. If her team destroyed the artifact, that would be enough, wouldn’t it?
Agitated voices murmured, barely audible over the animalistic sounds.
“Hurry up,” someone said.
Sicarius paused. Amaranthe stood on tiptoes to peer over his shoulder. A few paces ahead, the tunnel changed from an enclosed passage to a metal walkway, open on one side.
“Let me by,” she whispered.
Sicarius did not, though he moved forward. He stopped again as soon as they stepped onto the metal grating of the walkway.
To their left, the wall continued, but to the right, a dim chamber opened up with a floor twenty-five or thirty feet below them. A massive pipe, perhaps twenty feet in diameter ran through the chamber parallel to the walkway. Ten soldiers stood or crouched atop it. They were busy reloading their rifles and watching huge, bulky creatures that milled on the floor. Lanterns perched between the soldiers, but the source of the sickly green light was a small, flat glowing device attached to the top of the pipe. Men knelt on either side, tools out, trying to disarm it or perhaps pry it loose.
Amaranthe pictured the schematic from the control room. “That’s the pipe leading to the city.”
“Figures.” Maldynado had come up behind them. He was tall enough to observe over her head. “Those the makarovi down there?”
“Yes,” Sicarius said.
The shadows made it hard to count, and the great pipe hid the back half of the chamber, but Amaranthe guessed at least six beasts prowled, each one more than ten feet tall.
Without warning, one leaped. It made it to the top, but could not gain purchase on the smooth, sloping side of the pipe. It hung, claws squealing as it tried to dig in.
A soldier fired a rifle at its face. The creature dropped. It landed on its feet, shook itself like a dog recovering from a smack on the nose, then began stalking about again.
“I guess it does take a cannon to drop one,” Amaranthe whispered.
“I knew we were forgetting something,” Maldynado said.
“Though…if they can be drowned, we might not need a cannon.” She nibbled on a fingernail, thinking of Sicarius’s earlier words and the diagrams in the control room.
“Whatever scheme you’re concocting,” Sicarius said, “remember there are several down there. Several who will go after you first and be impossible to deter once they get your scent.”
“Funny they haven’t noticed her yet,” Maldynado said.
“Yes,” Sicarius said. “It must be the collars.”
Collars? Amaranthe squinted into the gloom.
A second makarovi leaped, hurling itself toward the soldiers tinkering with the glowing box. One man jerked back and almost fell off the opposite side of the pipe. Only a reflexive grab from his comrade saved him.
Three rifles fired, and the creature dropped out of sight again, but not before Amaranthe, watching for it this time, glimpsed the collar. Partially hidden by the shaggy black fur, the silver chain wrapped the makarovi’s neck like a choker.
“Now there’s a sexy look for the homeliest beast in the mountains,” Maldynado muttered.
“The collars are magical?” she asked, figuring they had found the multiple devices Akstyr sensed.
“Yes,” Sicarius said.
“Who’s there?” a soldier called. He faced the walkway, rifle gripped in both hands. The wan green light illuminated crossed muskets embroidered on his sleeve, the rank of a sergeant.
“Is it the enforcers?” another asked while Amaranthe debated how to answer.
“Did you get the rest of the garrison to come up here?”
“Ssh,” the sergeant said, his gaze never turning from Amaranthe and her men. “It’s too soon to be them.”
He lifted his rifle, not yet aiming it at her, but the barrel pointed at the walkway below her feet.
Sicarius tried to draw her back into the tunnel where the walls would protect them from fire, but she braced herself with a hand on the corner.
“We’re from the city,” she called. “Can we help?”
The snarls intensified below, and the makarovi shuffled closer to the walkway below her. Something seemed to stop them, though, some invisible pull. It drew them back to the pipe below the glowing box.
“Who are you?” the sergeant asked again, brow furrowed. “Random people from the city don’t know about this dam.” His finger flexed on the trigger.
“Maybe she’s the one behind all this,” another said. “Some witch who made these slagging contraptions.”
“No,” Amaranthe said. “We’re just typical imperial citizens, but we can help. We have weapons.”
“We have weapons too,” one of the men fiddling with the box said. “They’re not doing much.”
“We are running low on ammo,” someone muttered, so quietly Amaranthe almost missed it.
“We talked to Sergeant Yara,” she said, hoping the soldiers would prove more amenable if she implied she knew their ally. “She said you needed help.”
“She told you to come in here?” The sergeant stared, mouth slack. “You know what these things do to women?”
“We saw,” Amaranthe said. Even as they spoke two beasts broke away from the pipe again and drew closer to her. Moist snuffles and smacking lips assaulted her ears. The creatures’ stench floated up, stronger than ever. “We have a man who may be able to disarm that device.” Maybe if they hurried back to the machine room, she could catch Akstyr before he went outside with Books and Basilard.
“Help disarm a magical device?” The sergeant scowled. “That’s an unlikely skill for ‘typical imperial citizens.’ Who are you?”
She hesitated. They might believe Sicarius ecumenical enough to help, but they would never let him. He was watching her, and he shook his head once when she met his eyes. All right, she would simply tell them her name. She could bring Akstyr out, and Sicarius could stay in the shadows.
“My name is—”
Sicarius gripped her arm. “Do not—”
One of the creatures below jumped and hit the bottom of the walkway. The floor heaved, and Amaranthe stumbled back. Claws slipped through the grating. One bear-like paw gripped the edge of the wal
kway. Sicarius stomped on it, then stepped back, joining her in the tunnel mouth.
His boot had no effect on the makarovi, and it continued to cling to the bottom of the walkway. Its lower half thrashed as it tried to pull itself up. Another creature jumped, banging its head. The walkway trembled and shuddered.
Maldynado brushed past Amaranthe. He lowered his rifle so the barrel poked through the grate, and he fired into the makarovi’s eye. The orb exploded, splattering liquid. The creature dropped. For a moment, the scent of black powder overpowered the animal stink.
Amaranthe expected—hoped for—the thing to die, but it rose again after it hit the ground.
“You better get out of here, woman,” the sergeant said. “These things aren’t fierce bright, but you might excite them enough to figure out the way from the lower level to the upper. And we don’t want them where they can jump across and get to us. We’ve got to…” He waved at the device.
While Maldynado reloaded his rifle, Amaranthe mulled. She could retrieve Akstyr to work on the device, but only if the soldiers allowed them onto the pipe. However Akstyr’s knowledge of magic would make him suspect in their eyes and perhaps earn him a quick death. She had to win the sergeant over somehow. If—
Sicarius bent over the rail, distracting her from her thoughts. He sighted down his rifle and shot a makarovi. The creature’s collar snapped, and the broken band clanked to the floor.
The soldiers murmured. Sicarius withdrew into the tunnel to reload.
“How’d he manage that shot in the dark? Who is that over there?”
Amaranthe was too busy watching the creature to answer. As soon as it was free of the collar, it bolted to her corner of the chamber. It jumped, claws scraping at the metal grating. Saliva flung from its jowls, spattering the wall. As soon as it fell, it leaped again. It snorted and whined in frustration, unable to reach its target—her. For the moment. If there was another way up…
For the first time, true fear clutched Amaranthe’s heart, and she had to fight to stay there instead of fleeing back outside. “Any particular reason you did that?” She meant her tone to sound casual, not terrified, but the last word cracked.
“To see if it was possible,” Sicarius said. “Without the collars, they’ll return to the wilds eventually.”
“Eventually.”
“Look.” The sergeant pointed at the makarovi trying so hard to reach her. “It’s stopped being a guard dog for this ancestors-cursed contraption. It’s acting more like a normal hungry predator now. An agitated hungry predator denied its favorite food.”
“Lovely way to put it,” Amaranthe said.
“Sergeant.” One of the soldiers leaned close to his leader and whispered in his ear.
“We should try to get the rest of those collars off,” a corporal said. “It’ll be easier to figure out that device without those bastards leapfrogging over each other, trying to get to us.”
“Wait!” Amaranthe said, a plan solidifying in her head, a plan that would be much easier to implement if they only had to face one makarovi at a time. “I have an idea how to kill them. If you leave the collars in place for just a half an hour, I can—”
“Are you sure?” the sergeant asked, responding to his soldier’s whispered comments. He squinted into the gloom on the walkway, eyes toward the tunnel and Sicarius.
“Uh oh,” she muttered. “I think they figured out who—”
Sicarius brushed past her and stepped onto the walkway again. He ignored the leaping makarovi below him and, in one swift motion, brought his rifle up and shot the device.
The ball clanged off without damaging it or diminishing the glow. The soldiers near it fell to their bellies in surprise.
Amaranthe jumped, almost as startled.
“You lunatic!” the sergeant yelled. “You could have shot one of us.”
“Unlikely,” Sicarius said.
“It is Sicarius,” one said.
“Fire!” the sergeant yelled.
Atop the pipe, all the soldiers lifted their rifles, sights seeking Sicarius. This time, Amaranthe went with him when he pulled her back into the tunnel. A rifle cracked and the ball slammed against the wall above the walkway.
“Give us a half an hour,” Amaranthe called into the chamber without poking her head around the corner. “Don’t shoot off any more collars!”
Nobody answered. She hoped the soldiers listened to her, though that seemed unlikely now.
“You need to stop taking Cold and Flinty here with you when you’re trying to talk people onto our side,” Maldynado told Amaranthe.
“We’ve talked enough.” Sicarius strode back the way they had come, reloading the rifle as he went.
“He’s such a warm fellow,” Maldynado said. “Can’t see why people try to kill him so often.”
Amaranthe trotted after Sicarius—why was she always running after that man?—and caught up with him in the machine room. Books and the others had cleared out of the alcove. She would have to get Akstyr to look at the device later.
“Where are you going?” Amaranthe had to jog to keep up. “I have a plan.”
Sicarius did not slow down. “Telling a room full of armed soldiers our names should not be part of it.”
Ah, so that was why he was miffed. “I wasn’t going to give them your name, just mine. And they figured it out on their own anyway. It doesn’t matter. They have to know who we are if the emperor is to find out about our work.”
“Leave them a note afterwards.”
He entered the narrow tunnel and she could no longer walk beside him. She stopped. Her plan did not involve leaving yet.
Maldynado caught up and patted her on the shoulder. “Problem, boss?”
“I don’t think he appreciates my strategy of obtaining information and making friends by talking to people.”
“Probably because it doesn’t work on him.”
Her first inclination was to argue that it did work on him, somewhat, but the splinters of information she teased from Sicarius would not impress any interrogators. And whether or not he would call her a friend was no sure bet either.
“Coming?” Sicarius asked from the shadows.
She had not realized he was still there. “We’ve work to do here.”
“The soldiers can shoot the rest of the collars off,” Sicarius said. “You don’t want to be nearby when they’ve completed that. We should assist with destroying the lake artifact. It may be unnecessary to remove the other if the first is nullified.”
“That still leaves a pack of makarovi alive and roaming the dam. How will the soldiers get off that pipe? They’re running out of ammunition, and what they have isn’t effective anyway. I want to get rid of the makarovi.”
“How?”
“Yes, how?” Maldynado asked.
“Lure them up top one at a time, use those cranes that open the floodgates to hook the creatures, and dump them over the side of the dam. If they truly have trouble swimming, they’ll drown. Even if they don’t, they’ll probably travel miles downriver before they escape the water. That’ll leave them far from the dam in unpopulated wilderness.”
“That’s…a crazy plan, boss,” Maldynado said.
“Too dangerous,” Sicarius said.
Amaranthe gave them her best smile. “We can do it. Look who I have with me: the deadliest assassin in the empire and the best duelist in the city.”
Maldynado lifted a finger. “Which of those professions was supposed to prepare us for hooking giant man-eating monsters with cranes?” He turned to Sicarius. “Did you learn that in little assassins school? Because I don’t remember that lesson from the fencing academy.”
“You’re both agile and smart,” Amaranthe said. “That’ll be enough. Besides, we’ll just lure one up at a time, snare it from the safety of the tower, and then go back for the next.”
“Lure,” Sicarius said, tone flat.
“How?” Maldynado asked.
Amaranthe swallowed. “Since I’m the most appe
aling bait, I figure that will be my job.”
“That’s a bad idea, boss,” Maldynado said. “We won’t be able to get them off you. Our rifle balls are bugging them less than mosquito bites.”
Though Sicarius said nothing, the way he crossed his arms over his chest and glared let her know his opinion.
“Maldynado, give us a moment, please,” Amaranthe said.
“Oh, sure, I’ll just go hang out with one of the corpses.”
“We won’t be able to draw them into reach without bait,” she said after Maldynado moved away.
“I’ll do it,” Sicarius said.
She supposed it was cowardly, but she was tempted to agree. She was a decent athlete, but she could envision all too many scenarios in which she could trip at the wrong time and be overcome by a snarling beast. But, no. She could do it. “Unless you’ve been keeping even more secrets from me than I thought, I’m the more logical choice to attract them.”
“No.”
“It makes sense.”
“You’re not—”
“Fast enough? Strong enough? Agile enough?” She did not necessarily disagree, but she wanted him to have faith she could do this.
“Expendable,” Sicarius said.
“Oh.” She blinked. “Because you care and would miss me or because nobody else would be around to come up with these crazy schemes if I weren’t here?”
“It would be…” The lantern light kept his angular features in shadow, but they seemed to soften an iota. “Inconvenient.”
“We better set this up so there’s no chance of me dying then. Coming to help?” She pointed back toward the T-section where she guessed the unexplored tunnel led to the higher levels. Maldynado yawned and scuffed his feet a few meters away.
“One more concern,” Sicarius said.
Amaranthe met his eyes. “Yes?”
“Removing the collars. It’s likely the person who placed them there will sense their dormancy.”
“And come to check on his guard dogs?”
“Yes.”
“We’d best hurry then.” Her smile was grim.
CHAPTER 19
Fog blanketed the shoreline, hiding the diving suits and curling about the air pumps. Books found himself cussing and hunting for things. The fire Basilard had started did little to help.