Forged in Blood II (3 page)

The girl murmured a question to her brother, not in Turgonian this time. He nodded back.

Amaranthe met Books’s eyes, sure he’d have an answer as to the language.

Kyattese
, he signed.

Kyattese
? Emperor’s warts, now what? It was bad enough the Nurians were tangled up in this vying for the throne—did the Kyattese want some part of it too?

Amaranthe signed,
Any idea who they might be?

She was aware of the siblings watching her, noticing the finger twitches, though she was positive they wouldn’t understand Basilard’s hand code. Even his own Mangdorian people were hard pressed to follow it, given how much he’d added to the lexicon over the last year.

“I’m out of rope and belts.” Akstyr had tied the lieutenant, but not the sergeant yet. He gave Amaranthe an aggravated look.

“Get creative,” she told him.

“My head hurts too much for creativity. I—” Akstyr stood abruptly. “Sci—” He switched to code:
Science
.

What?
Amaranthe stepped toward the siblings. She knew it wasn’t the soldiers, so that only left—was that one of those I’m-about-to-fling-magic looks of concentration on the boy’s face? Though she was reluctant to aim her rifle at a youth, Amaranthe prodded him in the chest with the barrel, hoping to distract him.

Something popped on the furnace, and black smoke poured into the cabin. Amaranthe cursed, left with little choice but to club the kid. As she drew back the rifle to swing, the girl reached into her coat, toward a pocket or perhaps a belt pouch.

“Books,” Amaranthe barked.

“I can’t—ergh.”

Someone grabbed Amaranthe from behind, yanking her away from the siblings and propelling her into the rear of the cab with jaw-cracking force. Though she threw an elbow back, trying to catch her attacker in the ribs, the person evaded the blow. Her rifle was torn from her fingers. She didn’t know if it was the same someone or someone else. Men in black uniforms moved in her peripheral vision, and soon the cabin was so crowded with bodies, she couldn’t have unpinned herself even if someone
didn’t
have a forearm rammed against her spine. Now it was her face that was smashed against something, her eyes meeting Books’s—he was in a mirror position two feet from her. It was neither the familiar sergeant nor the lieutenant who had him pinned, a cutlass prodding his back, but a grim-faced captain. Strong, calloused fingers tightened around the back of Amaranthe’s neck. She couldn’t see her own attacker, but he spoke from right behind her.

“Captain,” he asked in a rich baritone, that of an older but obviously not—as the grip pinning her proved—infirm man, “is hijacking a train still a capital punishment in the empire?”

“Yes, my lord. It is. In addition,” the captain said, his tone icy, “it is also quite illegal to attack warrior-caste children.”

Amaranthe blinked. It was all the movement she could manage at the moment. Warrior-caste children that muttered to each other in Kyattese? Just who in all the abandoned mines in the empire was standing behind her? Another general charging in to make a claim on the throne?

Books, with his head turned sideways toward her, must have had a better view of the man behind her, or he was simply more adept at assembling the pieces of this particular puzzle, for his mouth dropped open in… Amaranthe was sure that was recognition.

“Enlighten me,” she whispered to him.

“I… I could be mistaken,” Books whispered back, “since I’ve never met the man nor even seen him in person, military history not being my favorite subject in the least, but—”

The captain jostled Books, probably to discourage him from talking. Amaranthe wished the jostle would
en
courage him to get to the point.

“
Who?
” she mouthed, wanting the name, not an explanation.

The captain was discussing what to do with “these interlopers” with a third man, another officer. Take them to the capital to face the magistrate or simply hurl them from the train and let the mountain—and the high-speed fall—handle the matter?

“That one is a criminal with a bounty on her head.” A finger jabbed toward Amaranthe’s nose. “The others may very well be too.”

Books finally mouthed a response to Amaranthe’s question. “Fleet Admiral Starcrest.”

Amaranthe sagged insomuch as the iron grip holding her would allow.

One of the empire’s greatest war heroes. And her just outed as a criminal. Oh, yes, this was sure to go well.

• • •

The air smelled of musty tent canvas, coal smoke, and the pungent scent of sandalwood incense. That aroma was popular amongst Nurian practitioners; they believed it focused the mind. An odd odor to find in a Turgonian army tent, but not a surprising one.

Few sounds came from within the canvas enclosure—only the soft hiss of the fire—but outside, men moved about. Some spoke, some grunted and grumbled as they carried gear, and others simply walked past, their boots crunching on snow and ice.

Sicarius opened his eyes. He shouldn’t have. Wakefulness brought awareness.

And memory. And pain.

Finding the former too depressing to contemplate, he examined the latter, assessing his fitness. Though the aches that emanated from his calf, shoulder, and abdomen were not trivial, the physical pain wasn’t as intense as he would have expected. He recalled being shot multiple times, and before that, the soul construct had torn a chunk out of his leg. He grew aware of bandages around the wounds, stiff after being saturated with blood that had since dried. All of his digits responded to orders to move, and he flexed his muscles without untoward discomfort.

The mental pain…

Sicarius closed his eyes again. His son was dead. Amaranthe was dead. The rest of her team was likely dead as well—at the least Basilard and Maldynado would have fallen, just as Sespian had, crushed beneath that monstrous artifact from the past.

Footsteps crunched outside the tent. A moment later, the flap lifted, and cold air flowed inside.

A white-haired general with thick spectacles strode in, followed by two Nurians, one the silver-haired practitioner who’d created the soul construct and the other, a younger fellow with a limp. Enemies, Sicarius’s instincts cried, and he sat up, a hand going to his waist, where his black dagger usually hung. It wasn’t there. None of his knives were. He’d been stripped of shirt and shoes as well. He might have attacked the Nurians anyway, but a strange tingle throbbed at his temple. He found himself lying down on his back again, his muscles operating of their own accord—no, of the
practitioner’s
accord. In a final humiliation, his hands betrayed him by folding across his abdomen, fingers laced. His face tilted attentively toward the newcomers.

Flintcrest was eying him through those thick spectacles, chomping on a cigar as if he wished he were chomping on Sicarius. “It’s not a good idea, Kor Nas. Safest to kill him right now, if you can.”

“Of course I can,” the silver-haired man said smoothly, his accent barely distinguishable. “But I wouldn’t have brought my associate to continue healing his wounds if I intended to do that.”

“This man isn’t some soldier,” Flintcrest said. “He’s an ancestors-cursed assassin, a notorious one. He’s killed dozens of high-ranking Turgonians, including one of my fellow satrap governors.”

“I know precisely who he’s killed. The Nurians have also suffered at his hands. But he can be made to work for us now, as surely as my soul construct did. Perhaps one of his first tasks will be to figure out a way to retrieve my pet from the bottom of the lake.” The Nurian’s dark eyes glittered, the almond shapes narrowing further as they oozed menace toward Sicarius.

As far out into the lake as he’d hurled the creature’s trap, Sicarius would drown trying to swim down and open it. Perhaps that was a way to escape this. Better to be dead than enslaved, especially now when there was nothing to live for, nothing waiting for him if he fought and escaped. One way or another, these people would send him to his death eventually. He cared little what happened in the meantime.

“Well, get him fixed up and out of my camp,” Flintcrest said. “My men will welcome him even less than that beast of yours.”

“That is the plan, General. After which target should I send him first?”

Flintcrest grimaced. “You want me to make use of an assassin?”

“You were willing to make use of my beast, as you call it.”

“I… don’t remember agreeing to that exactly either.”

“So long as you agree to my people’s requests for favorable trade agreements,” spoke a third man as he pushed aside the tent flap and walked inside. In his early thirties, with shoulder-length black hair swept into a topknot, he wore a feathered flute and a long
rek rek
pipe across his back as others would wear a sword. The items were the symbols of a Nurian diplomat.

Kor Nas waved to the healer. “Finish repairing my new minion.”

“Yes,
saison
.”

Saison
, the Nurian word didn’t mean “master” precisely, more like a term of respect for a high-ranking practitioner, often a teacher, but it might as well have meant it in this case. He’d be loyal to the older man and do as told.

“I have not forgotten,
He shu
,” Flintcrest told the diplomat. “The trade agreements will be created as promised.”

He shu
, that was an address for a male who shared blood with a great chief, close blood usually. After all the missions Sicarius had undertaken for Emperor Raumesys, ensuring Nuria wouldn’t gain a toehold in the empire, it irked him to know that the Nurians might have found a way in anyway. He didn’t know whether they’d be worse than this Forge outfit or not. He decided he didn’t care—what could he do about it at this point anyway?—though he did admit that it bothered him that everything he had endured in his life had been for naught.

The healer laid a hand on Sicarius’s bandaged abdomen and warmth spread from the fingertips. Weariness seeped in as well. He didn’t bother seeking a meditative state, didn’t bother with trying to control his sleep—or his dreams. He simply sank into oblivion.

A
maranthe, Books, and Akstyr sat against the back of the locomotive cab, their wrists tied behind them and rifles aimed at their chests. This wasn’t quite how Amaranthe had imagined the hijacking going. Judging by the scowls Books and Akstyr were shooting her, they thought the team should have remained in the coal car for the rest of the ride.

The fireman and engineer had returned to their duties, while a captain and colonel stood in a cluster with Starcrest, discussing the situation. In the confined space, one couldn’t have squeezed in any more men, so the captain had been elected to hold the rifle on the prisoners. A redundant security measure, since Amaranthe’s ankles were tied as well as her wrists, with her legs folded beneath her. She couldn’t have started a brawl if she’d tried with all her might. In addition to Starcrest and the army men, the two siblings remained in the cramped cabin; they were standing in the doorway, probably hoping their presence wouldn’t be noticed and they wouldn’t be ordered to go back to the passenger cars. The captain glanced at them a few times, as if he wished to give precisely that order, but he refocused on Starcrest and said nothing.

Amaranthe considered the legendary man, not surprised that he could command the respect of officers twenty years after his exile, but impressed. One might have expected a softness in someone who’d spent so long on the Kyatt Islands, but he appeared lean and powerful, even in his civilian clothing, a mix of browns and forest greens beneath a fur-trimmed parka. Beneath his beaver cap, his silver hair was short and thick, a regulation military cut. His height and broad shoulders surely lent him authority—he had to duck his head to keep it from bumping the ceiling of the cab—but Maldynado possessed the same physical dimensions, and people didn’t stare raptly at him, awaiting an opportunity to please—unless they were women of course. Starcrest probably had a few admirers of that sex too. His face, not so angular as Sicarius’s but of a similar vein, was weathered and creased from the sun, with an old scar bisecting one eyebrow, but he’d still fit any woman’s definition of handsome. Amaranthe could easily imagine him as a rock-solid admiral, commanding his troops in the heat of battle, though his brown eyes lacked the cold intensity she associated with so many of the senior military officers she’d met; rather, there was a hint of warmth in them, or even mischievousness, as he chatted with the men, as if now that the threat to his children had been nullified, he appreciated this break from the monotony of cross-country train travel.

So, Amaranthe mused, how do I get a legend to join our team?

Unfortunately, she feared he was heading in to join one of the other candidates, Ravido most likely, given Forge’s connection to the ancient technology and Starcrest’s history with it. Though his
wife
was the expert at deciphering it, wasn’t she? If the children were along, did that mean she’d come on the trip too?

After all Amaranthe had done to ensure Forge didn’t have anyone left who could control the
Behemoth
—she winced, remembering Retta’s horrible death—here came someone who had a better mastery of the technology than anybody else in the world.

“Lord Admiral Starcrest,” Amaranthe said during a lull in the men’s conversation, “I…” She grew uncharacteristically shy as every set of eyes in the cab swiveled toward her—even those of the engineer. Shouldn’t he be studying the snow-covered trees and bends in the tracks ahead? Amaranthe cleared her throat and pushed on. “I must apologize for any harm you perceived we meant to do to your children. We didn’t know they were up here and that they were… gifted enough to impact our, uhm, results.” Right, reminding them that she’d meant to take over the train probably wasn’t wise. She shifted to, “What the captain says about my comrades and me is true. We’re outlaws, but we’re wrongfully accused outlaws and seek to clear our names. We also seek to put the rightful emperor back on the throne, Sespian Savarsin.”

“You thought to do this by hijacking our train?” Starcrest asked, his voice mild. Deceptively so? There might have been an edge beneath it. Amaranthe had heard foreigners call the Turgonian language guttural and harsh, but his accent had been polished smooth by so many years away from the empire.