Blood and Betrayal (12 page)

“I have an idea for a distraction,” Maldynado whispered just loud enough to be heard over the crackling fire that had engulfed the mill. “Yara or, uhm, Sire… ” Was it unseemly to ask the Turgonian emperor to tote one’s comrade on his back? No time to worry about it. “Can you carry Akstyr? I’ll—”

As one, Sespian and Yara grabbed Akstyr. Maldynado waved toward the neighborhood on the far side of the park. “Head that way. I’ll catch up with you.”

Gravel crunched. The newcomers, at least a dozen of them, were surrounding the burning mill. They didn’t seem to realize that Maldynado had made it out of the building. With all the light the fire threw off, they would soon.

After Basilard and the others moved a ways into the darkness, Maldynado sprinted toward the river. He thrashed through the foliage, making as much noise as he could. A rifle fired, and he dove to the earth, rolling to gain ground as he went. More shots fired over his head, but the branches stabbing him as he careened past were more painful. As soon as his momentum faded, he found his belly and low-crawled toward the river at top speed.

Though damp leaves slapped at Maldynado’s face, and roots sought to entangle his arms and legs, he made it to the beach without slowing—or being shot. The rifles had stopped, but snaps and rustlings in the brush behind him promised pursuit. That was good… so long as he had time to put his plan into action before they caught up with him. Unfortunately, the men, running instead of crawling, were gaining ground quickly. Lanterns rattled and banged as people tore down the trail to the beach.

Maldynado veered toward the campfire. Only a couple of dull red embers still glowed, not enough to illuminate the beach. Good.

Maldynado found the body of the man he’d stopped with the knife throw. He dragged it to the edge of the water, then risked rising to his knees to gain leverage. Careful not to grunt or make a sound himself, he hefted the body with both arms and hurled it as far as he could.

It landed with a noisy splash that ought to be audible for dozens of meters in each direction. Maldynado grabbed a few sizable branches from the woodpile by the fire pit and tossed those in too.

“There!” one of his pursuers shouted. “They’re trying to swim away.”

Yes, keep believing that, Maldynado thought as he crawled back toward the foliage. Doing his best to emulate a snake, he shimmied into the weeds even as the riflemen stormed onto the beach. Pebbles clattered and flew under the barrage of boots.

Maldynado’s first instinct was to crawl straight toward the far side of the park, in the direction he’d sent the others, but he remembered his shopping bags. They lay discarded by the path where he and Yara had come across the first body. He stifled a groan. To leave empty-handed, without the emperor’s disguise or any of the clothes he’d bargained for, clothes he’d desperately need when dawn showed him just how many new grass—and dirt-stains plagued his current attire…

Maldynado kept crawling away from the river, but lifted his head, trying to gauge where he’d left those bags. It wasn’t far from the park entrance and the lorries. The darkness made it difficult to tell for certain, but he didn’t think that more than one or two people stood guard over there. The rest were stomping around the beach, calling, “Can you see them?” and “Are you sure they went in?”

A new plan formed in Maldynado’s mind, one of which he believed Amaranthe would approve. Still crawling, except where the foliage rose high enough to hide him as he darted forward in a running crouch, he angled toward the bags and the lorries. This wasn’t an unnecessary risk, he told himself. It wasn’t
just
for clothing. The others might need more time to escape. They were carrying two inert bodies, after all.

“Yes, give that excuse to Books when he’s bailing you out of jail,” Maldynado whispered to himself. “Or, more likely, lighting your funeral pyre.” The sobering thoughts couldn’t quite squelch the grin on his lips at the idea of his plan.

Maldynado reached his shopping bags. They’d been kicked into the foliage with a footprint mashing one.

“No respect for fashion around here,” he whispered and, taking the bags with him, continued onward.

As Maldynado drew close to the lorries, he stayed lower than ever to avoid the notice of a guard stationed between them. When he circled around the back, he noticed the newness of the vehicles. He would have recognized military vehicles, but these were civilian models. Forge-owned toys?

Maldynado set his bags down and slipped between the two vehicles, hoping to sneak up behind the guard.

The shouts by the river had stilled. He hoped the men hadn’t figured out his ruse.

Knowing he might not have much time, Maldynado lunged straight for the guard without checking to see if he had a friend in one of the cabs or on the far side. He took the fellow by surprise, wrapping an arm lock around his neck. Even as he cut off the man’s airway, Maldynado forced him to the ground to steal his leverage.

A click sounded—a door opening.

“Emperor’s
balls
,” Maldynado cursed.

His plan to subtly take down the man by denying him air turned into slamming the bloke’s head into the nearest lorry door. It clunked with satisfying solidity. He duplicated the move to ensure its effectiveness, then spun as a second dark figure launched a kick at his head.

Maldynado dropped into a butt-scraping squat in front of the man, just evading the attack. With both hands, he caught the fellow’s calf before the foot could return to the ground. He leaped up, hoisting the leg over his head. The man pitched over backward.

Maldynado scrambled onto his foe and pummeled him into the ground. Amaranthe would choose tying people over beating them into a stupor, he admitted, but he didn’t have time. So long as they were too battered to move for a few minutes…

When Maldynado stood, neither man did more than moan and curl into a ball. Good.

After a quick glance toward the river—lanterns still moved about on the beach—Maldynado climbed into the cab of the far lorry. He yanked open the furnace door for light and located the safety valve. He grabbed the coal shovel, flipped it, and used the handle to break the gauge. The loudness of the cracking glass made him wince, but he doubted he had time for a quieter tactic. He shoveled heaps of coal into the furnace.

“Oskat, what’re you doing?” came a shout from the beach.

Uh oh. Maldynado hustled out of the cab of the sabotaged lorry, grabbed his bags, and climbed into the other vehicle. Whistling a little tune, he threw a control lever into reverse. The lorry belched smoke and rumbled backward.

“Oskat!”

“Hurry, they’re stealing our lorries!”

By the time the men were racing back up the trail, Maldynado had the vehicle turned around and was rolling into the street beyond the park. Houses lined the curving avenues, so he resisted the urge to thrust the control lever to maximum speed. Besides, he didn’t think he’d need to worry about pursuit. That second lorry shouldn’t go far before the overburdened boiler became inoperable. Or airborne. One of the two.

Though Maldynado had only a vague recollection of the neighborhood, he took a few turns and found a route around the park. The shouts faded from hearing. As the lorry rumbled down a broad avenue lined with cedar-shingled houses, he was wondering how he would find the others when he spotted a shadow near the side of a corner market that had closed for the day. Yara?

He clucked to himself, slowed down the vehicle, and stuck his head out the window. Sicarius never would have let the team be so easily spotted. Yara was waving, though, so maybe she’d spotted him first. In the shadows of the building, Basilard supported a groggy Books while Sespian stood with Akstyr’s arm slung around his shoulders. Maldynado’s lip twitched as he recalled an imperial law about commoners not touching emperors.

“Say,” Maldynado called, “do any of you gents, or ladies, need a ride?”

A boom sounded in the distance. Maldynado leaned out and craned his neck to look behind him. A plume of smoke rose from a street somewhere near the park.

“I guess they didn’t notice that safety issue,” he said blandly, then waved out the window. “You chaps coming? I don’t know that it’s wise to linger.”

“Sire,” Books said weakly.

Maldynado rolled his eyes. Barely conscious and Books was correcting him.

“You chaps and
Sires
coming?”

Books shook his head at this disgraceful use of language, but allowed Basilard to guide him into the vehicle. Akstyr, strung between Yara and Sespian, looked less cogent, though he did cast a longing glance back toward the park. He probably wished he’d had a better look at that magical gewgaw before passing out. Maldynado tossed them a couple of shopping bags.

“Don’t worry, I didn’t lose your new ensembles.”

“Joy,” Books said.

Sespian climbed into the cab beside Maldynado while the others piled into the cargo area in the back.

“Am I any closer to getting a statue?” Maldynado wriggled his eyebrows at the emperor. It was probably silly, given how the day had gone thus far, but he felt proud of his rescue.

Sespian stared at him as if a fine set of elk antlers had sprouted from his temples. Ah, well.

Maldynado, not certain they had completely eluded their pursuers yet, nudged the lorry into motion. “Enjoying your time with our group thus far, Sire?” he asked in an amiable way, wanting Sespian to know that he didn’t hold a grudge for that knife-to-neck moment. Maldynado wished he could think of a way to convince Sespian he’d had nothing to do with that trap. Maybe it was good that they’d have to spend time alone in the cab. Maldynado could work on endearing himself to the emperor, or at least being likable. Amaranthe had often pointed out that people tended to trust those they liked.

“I haven’t enjoyed much about the last five years,” Sespian said after a thoughtful moment. He pointed behind them. “I still need to get across the bridge.”

“Want to see if there’s a map in that lockbox? There must be other bridges along the river, and now that we have a ride, it doesn’t matter if it’s twenty, thirty miles out of our path. We can still get into the city tonight.”

Sespian unsuccessfully tried to open the lid of the indicated box. “I don’t suppose you’ve seen a key to this anywhere?”

“Nah,” Maldynado said. “Might have been in one of the men’s pockets that I was bash—, er, subduing, but I didn’t have a chance to search them.”

It seemed unlikely that an emperor would have come equipped for lock-picking endeavors, so Maldynado withdrew his sturdy utility knife, leaned over, and slammed the tip into the metal box’s thin lid. The blade punctured it and mutilated the lock. When he pulled the blade out, the lid lifted too, hinges squealing. Papers and envelopes fell out.

“You’re welcome,” Maldynado said when Sespian gave him a strange look.

Maldynado had a feeling the young emperor didn’t know what to think of him. It was making him feel self-conscious, but he had to be himself, or he’d seem more suspicious, wouldn’t he?

“Not that you needed my help,” Maldynado said. “I’m sure you would have come up with a similar solution.”

“Perhaps,” Sespian murmured and picked up the papers.

“You seem handy with a knife. I reckon emperors get a lot of good training from master duelists and the like.”

“Weaponsmaster Orik would be pleased that you found my knife skills adequate.” Sespian flipped through the papers. “He found me an inattentive pupil and often lamented that I devoted the majority of my energy to thinking of ways to get out of his practice sessions.”

“Huh.”

Sespian opened a sealed envelope and frowned.

“Problem?” Maldynado asked.

“These look like orders, but they’re encrypted.” Sespian patted through the boxes again and sighed. “Nothing. I suppose it wouldn’t make sense to ship the decryption key alongside the secret orders.”

“You should let Books have a look. Give him some time, and I bet he can figure out what it says. He likes puzzles like that.”

“Ah, good idea.”

Before Maldynado could slow down the lorry, so Sespian could get out, walk around, and hand the orders to Books in the cargo bed, Sespian crawled out the window.

“Uhm,” Maldynado said.

He couldn’t see out that window from his position, but, a moment later, thumps sounded in the back.

“Odd lad,” Maldynado mused and decided it was unlikely they’d get to spend that time alone together after all.

“W
hat,” Pike asked for the fiftieth time, “is the emperor to Sicarius?”

“I… dunno,” Amaranthe mumbled around cracked and swollen lips that hadn’t touched water in… she had no idea how much time had passed. Anyway, a lack of water was the least of her problems. Strange that it should even enter her thoughts. Pain. That was the foremost concern.

Darkness ringed her vision, throbbing and undulating, teasing her with the promise of unconsciousness. A part of her wanted to invite it in, to let it swallow her world and steal her pain, but a larger part of her feared it might signify the end. She’d made a point not to look at Pike’s work, when he hadn’t forced her to, and she wasn’t sure what all he’d done, but she knew she’d lost a lot of blood. Would he let her die? Before he received his answer?

Pike set down his knife, and a tiny flame of hope lit within Amaranthe. He leaned against the table and withdrew a pocket watch. Maybe he’d had enough for the day. Or maybe he had a sexy dinner date waiting him, some Forge woman who found a killer with blood on his hands attractive. “Like you?” she thought, an image of Sicarius flashing through her mind. No, Sicarius was different. He wouldn’t…
enjoy
his work. That mattered. Didn’t it? Either way, after her sanctimonious comments on loyalty, she wasn’t going to betray him. She thought of their stolen moment in the dirigible, his hug and promise of “later,” and that brief hint of a smile. She knew he hadn’t known much happiness in his life, and she wanted to be the person to give him that, not someone who put his son at risk. If Sicarius lost Sespian without Sespian ever knowing the truth…