Akstyr trotted over, which fortunately resulted in Maldynado bringing his story to an end.
“Look.” Akstyr held his hand out, oblivious to the fact Maldynado had yet to find his trousers.
Basilard lifted the lantern, wanting to see what had occupied the younger man’s attention so thoroughly. It looked like...
“A cork?” Maldynado asked. “You’ve been here for two hours and that’s all you’ve found?”
“A cork with the residue of something Made,” Akstyr said. “A powder or maybe it was a liquid in a vial. I need to do some research.” He snapped his fingers. “That Nurian book I have has a section on potions, powders, and airborne inhalants. Oh, but I’ll need Books to help me translate it. Where is he?” Akstyr looked around and blinked in surprise when he noticed Maldynado’s state of undress. “Why are your crabapples hanging out?”
“Crabapples? More like Mountain Generals.” Maldynado made gestures with his hands to denote the size of the largest local apple.
“Uh, whatever.” Akstyr nodded at Basilard. “Books?”
Back that way, last I saw. Basilard pointed toward the other side of the grounds.
“All right, tell Am’ranthe we may have something.” Akstyr waved the cork and jogged off. “I’ll grab him and go back to the boneyard,” he said over his shoulder.
Excited about his find, he sprinted away almost as quickly as Maldynado’s conquest had. A nervous thread wove through Basilard’s belly. Akstyr had promised he would share nothing of their discussion with anyone, but losing track of the young man made him uneasy. Also, this left Basilard alone with...
“So, Bas.” Maldynado slung an arm over his shoulder. Thankfully, he had located his pants and put them on. “Looks like we found what we needed to find tonight. We ought to be able to head off and have a few drinks now, eh?”
Is Amaranthe still coming?
“Later, I think. She got held up.” His easy-going smile faded. “Deret tried to set up a trap to capture her. He used me to get to her.”
Alarm coursed through Basilard. Is she all right?
“She’s fine, or was when I left. Sicarius figured it for a trap before we went in. She’s going to visit Deret for dinner and still might get in trouble that way. You know how she likes to take risks.” Maldynado lowered his arm and swatted a tree branch brushing his hair. “I helped buy her groceries, but I’m irked at Deret. I always thought him a decent fellow. Sure, I could see him feeling compelled to set the enforcers on Sicarius’s tail, but the boss doesn’t deserve that bounty.”
Agreed, Basilard signed. We shouldn’t drink if she’s coming here. She might expect us to be working.
Maldynado shrugged. “We can’t find magic stuff.”
Let’s check the stadium for anything suspicious. We haven’t yet, and the athletes should have stopped training for the day.
His prediction proved true, and nobody occupied the arena or the tiers of seating surrounding it. Lanterns burned at periodic intervals, providing enough light for walking. He and Maldynado did a lap of the track, though Basilard did not know what to look for. Without Akstyr’s nose for magic, they would have to search for mundane clues.
It took Maldynado only a few minutes to grow bored of investigating. He wandered into the middle of the arena where the furnace powering the Clank Race still burned. Someone must have been out training recently.
Maldynado threw a couple of levers. Gears turned, pistons clanked, and a moan of releasing steam sounded as the massive machine powering the obstacle course started up. While the wood and metal structure remained stationary, the moving parts created a strange sight in the darkness. Arms and spindles rotated and turned, propelling sharpened axes and battering rams out to thwart someone crossing spinning logs and tiny moving platforms. In more than one spot, bloodstains spattered the sand beneath the contraption.
Anyone ever die at your Games? Basilard signed.
“Oh, sure,” Maldynado said, “but I think there are more injuries in the wrestling. Most of the people crazy enough to do this thing are agile as foxes. But, yes, someone dies most every year, and others lose arms and legs. People get careless when they’re trying to earn the best time.” Maldynado tapped a paper stuck to the side of a support post. “Looks like some cocky athletes have posted their times already. Hm.” He eyed the machine speculatively.
What?
“Want to try it?”
What? Basilard signed. After you just told me it’s killed people?
“Come on. Odds are good Sicarius is going to make us try it at some point anyway.” Maldynado mimicked Sicarius’s stony face and monotone to say, “Good training.” The serious facade lasted almost a second, before he grinned and said, “Doesn’t it look fun?”
Basilard eyed the swinging blades, clanking machinery, and the puffs of steam escaping into the darkness with soft hisses. The long lost boy in him admitted it might be enjoyable. They were not competing with anyone, so they did not have to sprint through recklessly.
“Ah, you’re tempted, aren’t you?” Maldynado grinned and trotted over to a giant clock, its hands visible even in the dim lighting. “Let’s see, how do we time ourselves.... Here we go. Loser buys the winner drinks tonight. Ready? Go!”
Maldynado threw a lever on a giant time clock and darted up a ramp leading into the course.
What? Basilard had not agreed to the terms, but he sprinted after Maldynado anyway. They did not get paid enough for him to buy drinks for that bottomless gullet.
He raced up the ramp to a wooden platform seesawing up and down. Two spinning logs stretched ahead. Maldynado had taken the left, so Basilard ran right. He darted across as fast as he could, staying light-footed on the rotating wood, knowing that going slow or with tense muscles would be more likely to cause a misstep.
He caught up with Maldynado at the next platform.
“Look out,” Maldynado barked.
Half expecting the warning to be a trick designed to slow him down, Basilard almost missed the man-sized dummy swinging down at him on a series of ropes. Spikes protruded from all of its wooden sides.
Basilard flung himself to his belly. The dummy swung past, the draft stirring the hairs on the back of his neck.
When he rose, Maldynado was already jumping onto a rope that dangled from a beam. Something—spikes?—protruded from the ground beneath.
Basilard growled and chased after Maldynado. After the rope climb, they had to traverse along pegs sticking out of the beam, thirty feet above the ground. A net took them to the next obstacle. Tiny circular platforms, some only a few inches wide, rotated about while axe blades and battering rams swung out of the darkness. Basilard jumped and darted, relying on instincts more than thought. By luck more than design, he reached the next seesawing platform before Maldynado. He clambered up a mesh wall, over a beam, through a rope swing course, and finally hurled himself into a net where he scrambled to the bottom and toward a ten-foot wall.
He burst over that last obstacle and sprinted to a finish line, beating Maldynado by several seconds. He staggered a couple of weary steps and collapsed in the sand to rest.
Stars had come out overhead, though they were not as bright as those he had once known in his mountain home. He inhaled deeply; here, surrounded by grass and trees, the air was cleaner than in the city core, but it still smelled of burning wood and coal. A homesick twinge ran through him, an aching for a life to which he could never return.
“Great time, Bas.” Maldynado stood by the giant clock. “You were as fast as some of these athletes. Pretty impressive considering this is your first time doing it. Of course, I would have beaten you, but I was a touch weary from my earlier vigorous exertions.”
Basilard was about to sit up when a dark figure loomed over him. Sicarius.
The flickering illumination from a lantern hanging on the obstacle course frame cast his face half in shadow, half in light, enhancing his hard, angular features. When he stared down, Basilard struggled not to cringe or
show any nervous reaction. Sicarius could not know what he and Akstyr had been discussing earlier. He had just arrived.
“What’s going on, gentlemen?” Amaranthe’s voice came from a few paces away. “Finding anything interesting?”
Basilard jumped to his feet and faced her, glad for the excuse to turn his shoulder toward Sicarius. He had sensed Sicarius’s suspicions toward him since the incident in the shaman’s hideout, and now he knew why. He must suspect Basilard would one day find out about his crimes in Mangdoria. That wariness would make it all the more difficult to surprise him.
“We found out Basilard can run the Clank Race as fast as some of these pampered athletes,” Maldynado said.
“Oh?” Amaranthe regarded him with more interest than Basilard thought the statement warranted. “That might be perfect,” she said, talking more to herself than him.
What? Basilard signed.
“It seems the winners of each event get to have dinner with the emperor. That’ll be...thirty-six people, but most of those youngsters won’t have anything to talk about.”
Maldynado smirked. “I like how you talk about youngsters as if your twenty-six years make you venerable and wise, boss.”
Basilard smirked, remembering her memorable birthday party at the Pirates’ Plunder.
Amaranthe, eyes bright, continued her vision without acknowledging Maldynado. “Those young athletes will likely be cowed by Sespian’s royal presence. If you won, you could angle your way in there and talk with him about your people, about the underground slavery that still exists in the city.”
Basilard almost sank back down to the earth. Was that possible? For him to win an interview with the emperor? In one night, could he truly bring awareness of the slave problem to Sespian? Basilard glanced at Sicarius, abruptly regretting his vow to kill the man. That was a task he was not sure he could carry out without being killed himself. Maybe it could wait until after the Imperial Games? But perhaps his mind was spinning too quickly. What were the odds of him actually winning an event? Against agile young athletes half his age?
“You could take Books to translate for you,” Amaranthe said.
“Most men would prefer to take a woman on a dinner date with the emperor,” Maldynado said.
“Well, if Basilard could find one that could translate for him, I suppose. I’m too notorious to show up at such a venue these days. But anyway, Basilard are you interested in entering? Sicarius can help you train.”
I can train on my own, Basilard signed swiftly.
Amaranthe gave Sicarius a bemused smile. “I guess nobody else appreciates your stair-climbing sessions the way I do.”
Sicarius did not respond. Their relationship—if they could be said to have one—baffled Basilard. She treated him like a friend and confidant, and half the time he did not even respond when she spoke to him.
“Where are Books and Akstyr?” Amaranthe asked.
“They went back to the hideout,” Maldynado said. “Akstyr found...I don’t know. Bas, did we decide it was a cork?”
Magic, Basilard signed.
“Oh?” Amaranthe asked. “Related to the kidnappings?”
“I’m not sure precisely,” Maldynado said. “I was looking for my pants at the time.”
Amaranthe opened her mouth, then shut it, probably deciding she was better off not knowing. “Have there been any more kidnappings?” she asked. “Are the people who disappeared last night still gone?”
Three total, Basilard signed. Two foreigners and one Turgonian man from a different...place. Though he had added a lot of signs, giving his language versatility amongst the group, saying “The Chevrok Satrapy” was beyond him for now, but Amaranthe nodded understanding, and he went on, The enforcers I overheard are starting to accept that something strange is going on. They’re blaming Sicarius since he was sighted this morning.
“Supposedly sighted,” Amaranth said. “I wonder if we can find out who sent that fellow and what he wanted to accomplish. Basilard, I apologize, but my reason for wanting someone from our team in the Imperial Games isn’t entirely selfless. I’m hoping an insider might be more likely to hear about what’s going on. Maybe they’ll even target you for one of the kidnappings.” She bounced on her toes, then caught herself. “Sorry, that should probably not excite me.”
I’ll take solace knowing you’d be just as happy if you could pose as an athlete and get kidnapped.
Maldynado snorted. “That’d make her even happier.”
“Basilard, you’ll need someone to play the role of trainer and translator,” Amaranthe said. “Akstyr and Books may be busy, so...”
Maldynado slung an arm over Basilard’s shoulder. “I’m always happy to spend time at the stadium and watch all the fine...events.”
Just keep your pants on, Basilard signed.
Amaranthe opened her mouth again, shut it again, and shook her head.
“No promises.” Maldynado winked.
CHAPTER 5
An ice wagon trundled across the grounds, selling blocks to vendors who turned them into chilled tea and strawberry juice. Amaranthe thought about buying a glass of the latter, but the midday sun left few shadows for wanted women to hide in. Clad in white athlete togs again, she was sitting on a bench on the edge of the grounds with a wide-brimmed sun hat pulled low over her eyes while she waited for Fasha to meet her. Sicarius had pointed out that night meetings would be safer, but Amaranthe wanted to listen in on the local gossip. The trail leading from the stadium to the baths and barracks wound past her perch, and she had already overheard quite a bit.
“...need more guards,” a woman with sweat-dampened bangs told her comrade as they strolled past.
“The enforcers aren’t admitting to anything,” the other woman answered. “They’re saying nothing’s going on, that the missing athletes probably went home.”
“Oh, sure, they trained all year, and then just went home before the competition even...”
The women walked out of hearing range. Amaranthe bent her head to study the short list of names on a notepad in her lap. Five athletes were missing now: two foreigners, including Fasha’s sister; and three Turgonians, one a local, and two from other satrapies. She recognized the local man, a warrior-caste wrestler, because they were the same age and had competed in the junior events at the same time. What eluded her was the common theme. All of the missing people had disappeared in the middle of the night from their barracks or, in the wrestler’s case, a private room in the lodge.
“You should pay attention to your surroundings when you’re in a public area,” Sicarius said from the shrubs a couple of feet behind the bench.
Amaranthe stifled her usual twitch of surprise and did not lift her head, wondering if she could wheedle her way out of a lecture. “I knew you were on the grounds.”
A long moment passed before he answered. “You are assuming that you’re safe, simply because I’m in the area?”
“You know I’m not at my most attentive when I’m plotting and mulling. I’ve come to trust you’ll keep an eye on me.”
“That’s reckless,” Sicarius said. “I’m your colleague, not your bodyguard, nor can I guarantee your safety since I cannot walk about freely here. If you must study papers in a public area, you should scan your surroundings every fifteen seconds, ensuring you are aware of the movements and interests of everyone within a radius of at least… Why are you smiling?”
Actually, it was more of a grin. “You called me a colleague,” Amaranthe said. “I’m flattered.”
“You are not taking my admonishment seriously.”
“I am, too,” Amaranthe said.
Another pair of athletes was approaching, so Amaranthe left the bench to join Sicarius in the foliage. Mischievous branches tugged at her hat and rained leaves onto her shoulders. She dusted them off. As much as she liked the idea of nature, it was difficult to maintain a tidy appearance when surrounded by it.
“I’m just bad at admitting out loud that I’m wrong about some
thing,” Amaranthe added.
“A character flaw you should correct.”
“Likely so.” She lifted her notepad, intending to ask his opinions about the names, but he surprised her by continuing.
“It would bother me if you died while I was attending to biological needs.”
Amaranthe’s grin returned at the admission. “It would bother me if I died then, too. Or any time.” She handed him the notepad. “These are the people missing thus far. One disappeared three nights ago, two the night before last—that was when Fasha’s sister went—and one last night. I’m trying to figure out what the common link is. After talking with Fasha, I figured it might be another ploy against foreigners, but we now have more Turgonians missing than outsiders. The wrestler, Deercrest, has won often, so I could see him being targeted as someone to get rid of. Though it’s not honorable to make opponents disappear, it’s certainly not without precedent in the history of the Imperial Games. But the other four are young no-names. One isn’t even old enough to compete in the regular events; he was entered into the junior Clank Race.”
“Perhaps they are promising contenders for this year’s competitions,” Sicarius said.
“How would a kidnapper know? The qualifiers don’t start until tomorrow. Sure, some people post their practice times, but most don’t, and the best athletes often only compete hard enough to make the cut in the early rounds.” Amaranthe leaned against a tree. “Besides, who would want to get rid of multiple good athletes? I could see rigging your own event, or your child’s event, but why wrestling, running, and the Clank Race?”
As was often the case, Sicarius did not answer, but she knew he was listening.
“Could it be a gambling scheme?” she mused. “People bet on the events, and some people bet a lot. Is someone trying to set things up so they can guess the winners?”