Conspiracy (3 page)

Amaranthe dropped into the rail car last and
pulled the door shut. Maldynado sat up with a start, thumping his
head on the ceiling, but barely noticed.

“
Hullo, boss,” he
said.

Books lowered his newspaper and gave
Amaranthe a respectful nod.

“
Who’s hungry?” Amaranthe
grabbed one of the group’s rucksacks. “We have a bounty of
delicious ready-to-eat-without-being-heated delights.”

“
So long as it’s not
noodles and lamb chunks again,” Maldynado said. “A man shouldn’t
have to eat anything with the word chunks on the label.”

“
On that we can agree,”
Books said.

Maldynado gave him a suspicious look, as if
he expected an insult to follow. Books was busy eyeing Amaranthe’s
rucksack, as if she might pull poisonous snakes out of it. Akstyr
thought the others were wimps. He’d eaten far worse stuff when he’d
been growing up. The winter when he’d lived on used cooking lard
and skewered rats, sometimes cooked, sometimes not, came to
mind.

“
Uhm.” Amaranthe rooted
through the bag, passed on a couple of cans, and pulled out a flat
tin. “How about beans and sausages?”

Books’s eyes narrowed. “What’s that small
print say?”

“
That the sausages are
chunked and formed.”

Books’s lips flattened.

“
How is that better than
the lamb chunks we already vetoed?” Maldynado asked.

“
I wasn’t sure if it was
chunks specifically you had a problem with,” Amaranthe said, “or
all permutations of the word.”

Basilard lifted his hands
and, in his Mangdorian hunting code, signed,
I could make a real meal if we had access to a
fire.

“
Alas,” Amaranthe said, “I
don’t think the engineer would have kind words to say if we showed
up at his furnace with frying pans in hand.”

“
He might if all he’s been
eating are meat chunks dubiously made in some squalid factory.”
Books lifted his newspaper again. “These are strange times we’re
living in. Every technological advancement removes us further from
nature.”

“
Beans sound good to me,”
Akstyr said, hoping to interrupt whatever lecture or diatribe Books
might be working himself up to. The man had some gray at his
temples, and was probably in his forties, but sometimes he acted
like the doddering geezers who played Stratics in the park and
whined about wayward youths.

Sicarius removed a package from his rucksack
and unwrapped his supply of bricks. That’s what Akstyr called them
anyway. They were some sort of dried fat and meat concoction
Sicarius pounded into bars for traveling. Akstyr doubted the
starving people on the streets where he grew up would eat them
unless the rat supply was extremely low.

Sicarius offered a bar to Amaranthe. She
glanced back and forth from the can of beans to the proffered brick
while wearing the pained grimace of someone deciding between
torture by branding irons and torture by toenail pulling.

Sicarius looked in Akstyr’s direction.
Akstyr pretended to be engrossed in his book, but he could feel
that stare upon him anyway, about as friendly and warm as a piss
pot frozen over in winter. Sure, Sicarius always looked at people
that way, but Akstyr couldn’t help but worry. Sicarius knew more
about the Science than most Turgonians, and maybe he knew a few
practitioners’ tricks himself. Like mind reading.

Though Akstyr appreciated that Amaranthe
watched his back, and nobody here cared that he studied the mental
sciences, he figured it would be better for his health if he got
out of the area sooner rather than later. And far out. Far enough
that Sicarius wouldn’t bother coming after him if he ever learned
the truth. Some place like the Kyatt Islands. They were way out in
the middle of the ocean, and they were known for their Science
practitioners. Maybe Akstyr could even go to school at their
Polytechnic and finally learn what texts alone couldn’t teach
him.

“
Huh.” Books’s paper
rattled. “Look at this. We’re mentioned.”

“
Oh?” Amaranthe had a
couple of cans in her lap and was digging out an opener. “I thought
you were researching links to Forge people, not reading the
exploits of a heroic and wrongfully accused band of
outlaws.”

“
It’s a tiny piece,” Books
said, “tinier, I see, than this editorial on a perceived cat
overpopulation problem in the city. But listen to this: Eye
witnesses claim that Amaranthe Lokdon and the group of mercenaries
calling themselves the Emperor’s Edge defeated notorious murderer
and gang leader Bloody Batvok last week, ending his illegal
taxation-for-protection stranglehold on the merchants and grocers
working along Thistlemount Avenue. Local enforcers offer no
comment. The group consists of a former warrior-caste fop,
Maldynado Montichelu—”

“
Fop?
” Maldynado asked. “Who wrote that?”

“—
gang member, Akstyr, last
name unknown,” Books went on without a glance at Maldynado, “former
professor Marl Mugdildor, and a Mangdorian named
Temtelamak.”

Basilard rolled his eyes at his moniker.
Maldynado had entered Basilard into the Imperial Games with the
name of an old war general who’d been known for his bedroom
exploits. Apparently, it had stuck.

“
The assassin Sicarius is
also believed to have been there,” Books finished.

Amaranthe grinned and
shared a long look with Sicarius. “Not exactly front-page fame—and
it’s hard to compete with feline population problems for
attention—but at least someone’s writing us up now. That’s not
even
The Gazette
,” she said, naming the paper where she’d made friends with
that journalist, Deret Mancrest.

Akstyr felt satisfaction of his own because
he’d helped take down Batvok. The thug had been from a rival gang
that had always been trying to stomp out the Black Arrows when
Akstyr had been a member. Too bad he didn’t have any aspirations to
be famous. Given his hobby of studying the illegal and forbidden
mental sciences, it was best for him to be invisible in the empire.
Fame would only—

His thoughts hiccupped.

Maybe this was his way out
of the empire. Everyone knew about the million-ranmya bounty on
Sicarius’s head, and now that Akstyr’s name had been mentioned
alongside Sicarius’s, people might know that Akstyr ran with the
infamous assassin. There was no way Akstyr would try to kill
Sicarius himself, but what if he didn’t have to? What if he just
sold information to someone on how to
find
Sicarius? Akstyr didn’t need
a
million
ranmyas
to get out of the city. If he had twenty or thirty thousand, that’d
be plenty to buy a train ticket, a steamship ticket, and maybe even
pay for his tuition at the Polytechnic. Hairy balls, it might even
buy him food and a place to stay while he studied. His heart
swelled at that idea of himself as... well, as a wizard. Sure, only
Turgonians called practitioners that, but he had to admit it
sounded brilliant. It sounded more than brilliant.

“
Beans?” Amaranthe asked,
touching Akstyr’s arm.

He flinched in surprise, and his elbow
bumped against his lantern. It toppled, and he lunged to catch it.
In the process, he lost his book and slid down the pile of
greenhouse kits. He ended up wedged into a gap that left his knees
pressed to his chin.

“
Sorry,” Amaranthe said,
though her eyebrow quirked in amusement. “I didn’t realize you were
so engrossed in your book.”

“
My book?” Akstyr asked
blankly.

She lifted the tome and handed it to
him.

“
Oh, right. My book.”
Akstyr swallowed. Idiot, he cursed himself. All he’d done
was
think
about
his plot, but he was already acting suspiciously.

“
Maybe he’s just
that
excited over the
idea of sausages chunked and formed,” Maldynado said.

“
Yeah, that’s it.” Akstyr
laughed. Did it sound nervous? Or forced? He hoped not. He accepted
the book and the food.

Amaranthe smiled, but
Akstyr felt Sicarius’s gaze upon him again. Emperor’s warts,
Akstyr
was
acting
suspiciously. He was no good at lies.

In that second, Akstyr decided he’d be a
fool to actually betray Sicarius. Maybe he’d sell false information
instead. False information on Sicarius’s hideouts and the best way
to capture him. Thanks to the newspaper, people should believe he
had that information. He still knew gang members who might put him
touch with those who could afford to pay well for a chance at a
million ranmyas, and by the time everyone figured out what he’d
been up to, he’d be out of the city and on his way out of the
empire forever. By winter, he’d be on a tropical beach on Kyatt,
enrolled in school to learn about the only thing he truly
loved.

What could go wrong?

On the last night of the three-day train
journey, Amaranthe woke to a touch on her shoulder. She remembered
not to sit up straight, because the ceiling of the freight car was
only a couple of feet over her head, and merely opened her eyes.
Cold air whistled through the open trapdoor in the ceiling. A dark
figure knelt between it and her.

“
Sicarius?” Amaranthe
guessed.

Books and Basilard were pressed against her
on either side, and she heard Akstyr and Maldynado snoring on the
other side of Books. A chill marked the autumn nights, and the
train lacked any sort of insulation, so most of the team was
sleeping wedged together to share body heat.

“
We’re slowing for a stop,”
Sicarius said.

Amaranthe rubbed sleep from her eyes.
“Early?” According to the schedule, the train should arrive at its
final stop at noon, not in the middle of the night.

“
We’re in Ag District
Three, not Seven,” Sicarius said.

She couldn’t feel the train slowing yet.
Sicarius must have already taken a look outside. Maybe he even
slept up there, cold as it was. He’d never shown any interest in
spending nights with the group. Too bad. She would have rather
shared a sleeping area with him than with Books and Basilard.

“
Maybe they got a late
request for an extra stop,” Amaranthe said, as she lifted her thin
blanket and shimmied away from the other men.

Books promptly pulled the blanket back over
him. Basilard rolled over to take her spot and claim part of the
covers. Amaranthe smirked when he snuggled into Books’s side.

“
Team bonding,” she
said.

Without comment, Sicarius hopped through the
open door. Amaranthe followed him topside with considerably less
alacrity. Her sore muscles protested the midnight rising. Sicarius
had been driving them hard for the last three days, and she was
starting to hate the sight of that wooden duck. At least he hadn’t
driven her to fall off the train again.

Within seconds of climbing outside,
Amaranthe wished she had brought the blanket with her. Though no
frost slicked the car’s roof, the cold metal penetrated her
trousers when she knelt on it. Wind whipped across dark fields,
bringing chilly air down from the black jagged mountains running
along the horizon. The stars overhead told her those mountains were
to the east, instead of to the north, as they would be if they were
in Ag District Seven. Sicarius was right. They were in Three, the
same rural area they’d passed through on their way up to
investigate the secret dam the spring before.

Lights burned a mile ahead, and, as the
train drew nearer, a single dark building came into view. All about
it low, flat fields stretched. Though the mountains helped
Amaranthe get a vague idea of their location, she did not recognize
the area. All of the major rural train depots had towns around
them, including stockyards and warehouses.

“
Did we go up some stub
away from the main railway?” Amaranthe asked.

“
Yes.” Sicarius crouched
beside her.

Amaranthe wondered if there was anyone awake
at that train depot to see them if they didn’t stay low. She
wrapped her arms around herself and curled a lip at the idea of
flattening to her belly on the cold roof.

“
In this situation,”
Amaranthe said, “
some
men would put an arm around a woman to keep her warm, that
being the chivalrous thing to do.”

Sicarius, eyes focused on the building, did
not answer. Steam brakes hissed, and the wheels further slowed
their reverberations. Interestingly, the engineer did not pull the
whistle to cry out the train’s approach. That was standard
operating procedure when nearing a populated area. Of course, one
building might not count as a population center.

People came into view on a loading dock in
front of the structure, and Sicarius dropped to his belly.
Reluctantly, Amaranthe lay down beside him, propping up on her
forearms, so less of her torso touched the icy metal. She
deliberately pressed her side against Sicarius.

He gave her a look she couldn’t
decipher.

“
There are times when I’d
like to know what you’re thinking,” Amaranthe said. “Right now, for
example. Are you thinking, ‘Why is she touching me when she hasn’t
bathed in three days?’ or is it more like, ‘Hm, that’s nice, maybe
we should try cuddling some time’?”

Sicarius withdrew a collapsible spyglass
from a pocket.

Amaranthe sighed. “I see. You were thinking,
‘Which pocket did I leave my spyglass in?’”