Conspiracy (29 page)

“
You’re just not around for
it. Ready?” Amaranthe waved toward the front door, trying not to
focus on the fact that they had to walk between two army lorries to
reach it.

“
You voluntarily spend time
with him, so you can’t blame anyone except yourself,” Maldynado
said as they started walking. “You could always spend more time
with me.” He wriggled his eyebrows. “I’m fun.”

“
Yes, I’ll keep that in
mind.”

When they walked past two soldiers posted at
the front door, Amaranthe tilted her face downward, ostensibly
watching the steps. Maldynado didn’t seem to have it in him to
avoid looking anyone in the eye. Though the bounty on his wanted
poster had never been raised above a meager two-hundred-and-fifty
ranmyas, Amaranthe wouldn’t be surprised if numerous soldiers
recognized him at this point. She hoped his drab clothing would
keep them from looking too closely.

As they entered the brick building, though,
the soldiers weren’t paying much attention to visitors. Some
patrolled along the boardwalk outside, but more simply seemed to be
waiting. Quite a few had rucksacks with them and were sitting on
them. She had the sense of men preparing for a trip to the borders
to stave off an enemy encroachment rather than soldiers ready for
an immediate brawl.

While pretending to study the blackboard
listing arrivals and departures, Amaranthe eased toward a group of
chatty privates. With her back to them, she listened to the
conversations.

“
...was going fast and hard
when the call came. Can you believe it? Finest girl in
town.”

“
Should have seen
what
I
was doing
with that buxom woman from the eating house up the
street.”

“
Oh, yeah? I was with
her
sister
. And
she was way more...”

Maldynado snorted as the
bragging-disguised-as-complaints continued. “Bet none of them were
entertaining more than their hands.”

Amaranthe was about to give up on getting
information from the group—maybe there were some officers around
with more to talk about—when a familiar voice addressed her from
behind.

“
You’re audacious to show
up here.”

Careful to keep her back to the soldiers,
Amaranthe turned to face Sergeant Yara, someone else who could hurl
a glare like a cannonball. Yara wasn’t wearing her enforcer
uniform, but she managed to appear stern and authoritarian even in
an unadorned gray wool sweater. In fact, she looked extra stern.
Irked and irritated might be better words.

“
Good evening, ma’am,”
Maldynado drawled, giving Yara a lazy smirk. “You’re looking
well.”

Amaranthe winced. She doubted Yara was in
the mood for Maldynado’s charms.

“
You’re looking like a
buffoon,” Yara told him. “Hasn’t anyone shot you to collect on your
bounty yet?”

“
Any number of degenerate
hoodlums have tried, but they lacked the fighting prowess to
threaten me.”

Amaranthe decided not to encourage the
conversation by pointing out how many of those degenerate hoodlums
had been children armed with slingshots. They had more pressing
matters to discuss.

“
Sergeant Yara,” Amaranthe
said, “I thank you for coming. Ah, you didn’t have anything to do
with all of this, did you?” She waved at the soldier-filled
lobby.

“
No.” Yara’s hard gaze grew
harder. “Reinforcements are being sent to the capital because
of
this
.” She
removed a knapsack—it clinked, probably from weapons stuffed
inside—and withdrew a pair of wrinkled newspapers. She thrust them
at Amaranthe.

The headline on the first one was familiar,
the story of the assassinations she’d read about before they got on
the train. Amaranthe flipped to the second, a Forkingrust newspaper
from that morning. It updated the death tally, adding another six
men and women, and posited theories as to the culprits. Sicarius’s
name was mentioned more than once. A paragraph at the end implored
citizens not to worry because troops from nearby garrisons were
being called in to aid in finding the murderer and to protect
innocent citizens.

Amaranthe slumped. All of these soldiers
were on the alert because of Sicarius’s actions? That meant their
presence had nothing to do with her choice to talk to Yara, but she
couldn’t find it within herself to gloat. This would only make
things more difficult for her team. It was odd, though, that
soldiers would be called in; enforcers handled crimes in the city.
A discordant twang sounded in the back of her mind. Was it possible
someone was using the murders as an excuse to bring more troops to
the city? Troops possibly loyal to the commanders ordering that
advanced weaponry?

Yara rattled the papers, recapturing
Amaranthe’s attention. “Did your man do this?”

At least she didn’t accuse
the entire
team
.
“Why don’t we go outside to discuss this?” Amaranthe
asked.

“
Oh, certainly. We wouldn’t
want these soldiers to figure out who you are and put an end to any
felonies you’re in the process of committing.” Yara’s voice wasn’t
quiet.

Amaranthe kept herself from glancing about
nervously—and conspicuously. At least Yara wasn’t jumping up and
down, yelling and pointing at Amaranthe and Maldynado. Maybe there
was hope to placate her.

Amaranthe nodded toward the front door and
headed that way, hoping Yara would follow.

A few blocks away, a clock tower tolled
eight times. While the schedule for Sespian’s train hadn’t been
announced anywhere, Books had done some fancy math based on known
schedules for other trains sharing the railway to determine that
the emperor would likely arrive between nine and ten. That didn’t
leave Amaranthe a lot of time to win over Yara. At least the
sergeant was following them out of the train station without
alerting anyone on the way.

“
Why did you want me here?”
Yara asked as soon as she joined them. “It’s obvious that you don’t
have any interest in working within the boundaries of the law, or
even the dictates of humanity.”

Amaranthe and Maldynado stood in the shadows
of a mercantile store that had closed for the day. A kerosene
streetlamp burned at an intersection, its illumination dim compared
to the gas lamps that lined the streets in Stumps.

“
This—” Amaranthe lifted
the papers, “—wasn’t done with my knowledge or approval. As for why
I wanted you here, the emperor needs help, and I thought you cared
enough to want to see to his welfare.”

“
I wouldn’t be here
otherwise,” Yara said.

“
And here I thought she’d
come to trade terms of endearment with me.” The dim lighting was
enough to show off Maldynado’s white teeth when he flashed a
smile.

“
I wasted a week’s leave to
come,” Yara said without acknowledging him. “The soldiers are on
high alert, and nobody will risk kidnapping the emperor now. Not
here.”

“
Actually, someone will. I
promise you.” Amaranthe withdrew a carefully folded note from her
pocket and handed it to Yara. “One of my men won an event in the
Games this summer, and Sespian gave that to him at the dinner
afterward.”

Yara walked to the streetlamp to read the
note. Amaranthe forced herself to stay put, but it made her nervous
to let any distance form between her and that note. Though it
wasn’t signed, it was the closest thing to evidence she had in case
she ended up having to justify her actions to someone after the
mission.

“
Amaranthe Lokdon,” Yara
read, “I wish to hire your outfit to kidnap me. I can offer 100,000
ranmyas.” She lowered the note. “You expect me to believe the
emperor gave this to you?”

“
No, he gave it to one of
my men.” Amaranthe smiled, hoping a smidgeon of humor would lesson
Yara’s scowl.

It didn’t. If anything, the woman’s lips
turned further downward.

Amaranthe coughed and slid the note from
Yara’s fingers. She slipped it back into her pocket.

“
This means...
you’re
the one planning
to kidnap him tonight?” Yara asked.

Amaranthe nodded.

Yara lifted her eyes toward the sky. “This
is worse than sedition, more than a crime. It’s... It’s...”

“
Likely to be a good time?”
Maldynado asked. “You don’t have to do anything, you know. You can
just come along to watch. It ought to be entertaining, if you can
avoid being shot.”

Amaranthe lifted a finger to her lips,
hoping to hush him up. But Yara snorted. Or was that a short laugh?
Maybe Maldynado had said the right thing after all.

“
You
are
invited,” Amaranthe said. “It
might put Sespian at ease to have a friendly face. Someone he’s
fairly certain is loyal to him. Of course, we’re loyal to him, too,
but I don’t think he knows that yet. I must convince him of
that.”

Yara stared at her and shook her head.

“
If you come along,”
Amaranthe said, “you can rescue him if you two decide we’re not to
be trusted.”

“
Are you insane?” Yara
asked. It wasn’t clear whether the comment applied to Amaranthe’s
last suggestion or to the scheme as a whole.

“
We debate that
frequently,” Maldynado said, “but the boss hasn’t gotten us killed
yet, so we haven’t made a ruling.”

“
If you rescue him, or
simply make sure he doesn’t come to harm while he’s with us, I’m
sure he’ll be grateful,” Amaranthe said. “Maybe you’ll get another
promotion out of it, eh?” She said the last as a joke, but it
didn’t elicit a smile. She needed to stop trying humor on people
scowling so fiercely they were in danger of pulling muscles in
their necks.

“
I’ll be lucky to keep my
current rank after all this trouble. I’ll admit I got myself into
it by pestering my higher ups about those weapons, but having you
and your cursed assassin show up on my family’s stoop, and with my
enforcer brother there to witness it...” Yara groaned.

Amaranthe wondered if the week of leave Yara
had mentioned might have been someone else’s idea. A superior
suggesting she take the time off to figure out if she was truly
committed to being an enforcer?

“
We’re on his side, Yara. I
swear it.”

“
I don’t believe your
intent is to harm the emperor, but what of the men guarding
him?”

For some silly reason, it pleased Amaranthe
to hear that Yara believed they weren’t a threat to Sespian
himself. “The plan is not to harm them either.”

“
Is everyone on your
team
aware
of
that plan?” Yara eyed the darkness around them, probably wondering
if Sicarius was lurking nearby. “It doesn’t sound like you have a
lot of control over certain members.” She stabbed a finger at the
newspapers.

“
Yes, we’re agreed on how
to handle this.”

“
What are you going to do
with the emperor after you get him?” Yara asked.

“
Whatever he wishes us to
do.” A cold breeze drifted down the street, slipping beneath the
skirt of Amaranthe’s purloined dress and reminding her that she
needed to change back into her work clothes and return the disguise
before the emperor’s train came in. “We must leave shortly, so I
need your answer. Are you in?”

“
I’d be addled to join you
when you lured me down here under false pretenses. I’d be even more
addled if I believed half of what you’re telling me.”

Maldynado leaned close to
Amaranthe and whispered, “That’s a
yes
, right?”

Yara’s eyes narrowed. “If I do join you, do
you mind if I attempt to collect on this shrub’s bounty when
everything else is finished?” She pointed at Maldynado.

“
Not at all,” Amaranthe
said.

“
How can you say that,
boss?” Maldynado pressed his hand to his chest. “Your lack of
support wounds me.”

“
You need practice staying
on your toes.” Amaranthe waved toward the street. “Let’s get to
work.” Though she strode off with a confident air, she was more
relieved than she would admit when Yara walked after her and
Maldynado.

Amaranthe crossed the tracks again and used
the cover of the warehouses to skirt the train station. Instead of
approaching from the rear, as they had before, she came in from the
front. She paused at the last loading dock to consider the blocky
form of a brick water tower with an articulating arm that could be
lowered to fill the holding tanks of an engine idling beneath it.
In front of the tower, a two-story coal shed abutted the railway
with a chute angled over the tracks. Lamps illuminated the entire
area, and Amaranthe’s stomach sank when she realized the well-lit
door at the base of the water tower faced the station. Anyone on
the boardwalk outside could see it if they looked in that
direction. She might need to rethink that part of her plan. When
she’d concocted it, she hadn’t imagined soldiers swarming about the
station like ants on an abandoned pastry from Curi’s Bakery.

A hand caught Amaranthe’s arm, surprising
her from her thoughts. Before the others noticed, Sicarius drew her
into the shadows of an alley between the last two warehouses before
the water tower. Basilard joined Maldynado and Yara.

“
Basilard and I will take
the water tower,” Sicarius told Amaranthe, not acknowledging the
fact that Yara had joined them. “Your team can do the
coal.”