Conspiracy (43 page)

Sicarius lifted the man by the hair and
pulled his throwing knife free. Amaranthe winced. She wondered if
he ever felt any remorse for those he killed. Perhaps not.

“
Shall we leave him here
or...?” Amaranthe waved to the forest. Tossing the body overboard
sounded callous, even if they’d given the living soldiers the same
treatment.

“
Leave it.”

Amaranthe closed her eyes and sent a silent
apology to the man’s spirit and to any family he might have. Small
solace.

“
Sespian will find out that
some of his men died regardless,” Sicarius said.

“
I know. I wasn’t planning
to lie to him, but statistics tend to be easier to stomach than
corpses.” Especially when the knife-in-the-eye wound would tell
Sespian exactly who had been responsible. The last thing Amaranthe
wanted was for Sicarius to get the blame for her failures out here.
“We better head in and talk to him, find out what he wants us to do
now that he’s free of Forge’s influence. Am I right in assuming his
female chaperone is dead?”

“
Yes,” Sicarius
said.

Amaranthe stepped toward the locomotive, but
Sicarius rested a hand on her uninjured arm.

“
We need to arrange time to
speak with him alone.”

She nodded. That was part
of the plan, although... “When you say
we
do you mean you and he or you,
he, and me?”

Sicarius hesitated. “I do not believe he
would listen to anything I had to say.”

“
So, Books is translating
for Basilard, and I’m translating for you?”

“
He will listen to
you.”

Maybe not after she told Sespian about the
dead soldiers, Amaranthe thought, but what she said was, “And,
should we find this time alone, do you want me to tell him
everything?”

“
You don’t know
everything.”

Not surprising. “Do you
want me to tell him everything I
do
know?”

Sicarius gazed toward the forest. He was
still holding Amaranthe’s arm, and she rested her hand on his,
trying to offer reassurance, if he needed it. One never knew with
him.

“
What do you think would be
an appropriate course of action to ensure an optimal result?” he
finally asked.

Amaranthe didn’t know if he
had ever asked for her opinion on anything before. Given the
occasion, she wished she had a better answer for him. “I don’t
think you can
ensure
anything when it comes to people. I’m sure you find it odd,
but most of us react based on feelings, not pragmatism. Rational
hypothesizing can’t necessarily predict the outcome.”

His gaze shifted from the trees to her eyes.
“People are impractical.”

“
Of that I have no doubt.
I’ll give you the same recommendation I offered Basilard. Spend
some time with him. Let him get to know you as a person, not as the
scary assassin who stalked the Imperial Barracks all through his
childhood.”

“
That
is
the person I am.”

“
You’re more than that. Be
yourself, but try to be... friendly. Talk about small, unimportant
things. Ask him how he’s doing. Make a joke.”

“
A joke.”

“
You’ve done it before,”
Amaranthe said. “Your sense of humor is dryer than the desert
city-states, but it does exist.”

He stared at her as if she’d told him he had
fur and horns.

“
Also, smile after you make
your joke. To let him know that’s what it was.” Amaranthe gave him
a zealous smile to demonstrate. “As for what you should tell him...
if he believes you, he might abdicate. He seems to be an honorable
man, and he might feel he doesn’t have a right to the throne given
that particular piece of information.”

“
He would be safer that
way,” Sicarius said. “I should have told him long ago.”

A lump of emotion tightened Amaranthe’s
throat. A lot of people in Turgonia, when given the chance to have
a son rule over the entire empire, would lust for the position it
would earn the family without worrying about whether or not it was
good for the child.

“
Do you want me to tell him
then?” she asked.

“
No. I will do that. You
tell him... that he has nothing to fear from me.” Sicarius released
her arm.

Amaranthe squeezed his hand before letting
go of it. “I will.”

Akstyr shivered and stuffed his hands under
his armpits. The snow had abated, but dark clouds lingered in the
sky. Icy wind gusted across the mountaintops. Akstyr would have
stamped about the snow-covered precipice to generate warmth, but
his calf hurt, and the deep drifts made moving about difficult
under any circumstances. He’d ventured close enough to the edge to
verify that he could see the landslide-smothered railway below and
then scooted back. Icicles the length of swords hung from a nearby
outcropping, and he didn’t need to see if more ice lay
underfoot.

The rounded top of the dirigible hovered
behind him, with most of it floating below the level of his ledge.
Anyone approaching the pass from the direction of Forkingrust
wouldn’t see it. Akstyr had a red flag—technically it was a shirt
one of the stowaways had been wearing—to toss over the side to let
Books know when the train showed up. If Akstyr didn’t freeze to
death before then.

“
Shoulda kidnapped the
emperor when he was near some army fort on the Gulf,” he groused.
“By a beach. With palm trees. And sun. And girls not wearing
any...”

A faint rrr-ring noise drifted to Akstyr’s
ears, and he closed his mouth to listen. The train, that was his
first thought—what else would be cruising through the mountains at
night?—but the sound wasn’t right. Nor did it seem to be coming
from the correct direction. The emperor’s train would be chugging
in from the southwest, but this noise came from...

Akstyr tilted his head and spun slowly,
trying to pinpoint the location. Mountain peaks surrounded him on
all sides, and noise bounced about unpredictably, but he thought
the noise originated in the north. He inched toward the edge of the
precipice and peered into the darkness in that direction. Nothing
but snow, rocks, and cliffs lay to the north. Akstyr didn’t think
there was a road over there, or even a trail. The rrr-ring grew
louder though, and he became more and more certain it was coming
from that direction.

“
Something in the ground?”
he wondered. “In the mountain?” He thought of mining equipment, but
didn’t think they were near any mines.

Then lights came into view,
a
lot
of lights.
And they weren’t on the ground. They outlined a sleek black
dome-shaped craft gliding into view above a pair of peaks to the
north. The noise grew louder as it cleared the ridge.

Akstyr had no idea what it was—some kind of
flying contraption, but it didn’t have a balloon for lift, nor
could he see any propellers or wings. All he knew was that it was
huge. Anything should have appeared small next to the substantial
mountain peaks, but it did not. He looked down at the dirigible for
comparison. This new machine had to be at least four times the
size. More like four hundred times the size, if one didn’t count
the balloon on the dirigible, but only the occupiable space.

The lights illuminated hints of an inky
black hull, but Akstyr would need a spyglass to see details. Or
he’d need to be a lot closer, but that didn’t sound like a good
idea. Somehow he doubted the thing was friendly.

After the craft cleared the ridge, it turned
toward Akstyr, showing a narrower but still substantial profile and
confirming that there weren’t wings. He let his eyelids drop and
stretched out with his senses, seeking the telltale tingle of a
construct that had been crafted using the mental sciences. He
sensed... nothing.

“
Mundane technology?”
Akstyr muttered, shaking his head. How could that be? There wasn’t
anything in the empire like that. Was there? Maybe he was just too
far away to sense the Science being used.

He squinted at a horizontal bank of light
near the top half of the dome’s front end. The illumination seemed
to come from within rather than from the running lights—or whatever
one called them—attached to the hull. Maybe the windows represented
a navigation chamber, similar to the one Books occupied. Except
there had to be room for a whole crew behind them.

A wolf howled in the distance, and another
responded from a different ridge. The nocturnal wildlife was
probably wondering what sort of monstrosity had invaded the
mountains.

A cone of red light shot out of the base of
the craft. Akstyr jumped. The crimson light bathed the snowy
landscape below the dome, then started moving slowly from side to
side.

“
Searching,” he
mumbled.

Akstyr stretched out his
senses again. No kerosene lantern could throw out a beam like that.
This
had
to be
something made from the Science. But again, he sensed
nothing.

The only thing he knew for certain was that
it was heading in their direction.

Akstyr scrambled toward the slope he had
climbed up to reach the precipice. He had no idea what they could
do—that dirigible didn’t even have weapons—but he had to warn
Books.

Snow sloughed down the slope ahead of Akstyr
as he half-ran, half-slid back to where a rope dangled from the
hatchway at the bottom of the dirigible. His leg and shoulder sent
stabs of pain shooting through him, but he ignored them. If that
flying behemoth found them, he might have a lot more than minor
wounds to trouble him. He figured it belonged to that Forge group,
but he couldn’t help but wonder if his mother had been the one to
tip them off to the team’s location as well. If so, his stupid plan
might have dropped buckets of donkey piss all over the team, and
there’d be no cleaning up that mess.

Akstyr leapt out of the snow and caught the
rope. “Books!” he called up. “Books, are you there?”

He was almost to the top when a shadow fell
across the rope. Books grabbed his arm and helped him inside the
craft.

“
I told you to simply
signal with a flag that they were coming,” Books said. “I would
have flown closer to pick you up.”

“
We didn’t work out a
signal for gia-gantuan flying machine bearing down on us.” Akstyr
slammed the hatch shut, not worrying about the rope still dangling
through it. He pushed past Books and grabbed the ladder. He would
have rushed straight up to navigation by himself, but he had no
idea how to fly the dirigible. “Are you coming?” he
demanded.

Books hadn’t moved. “I... yes. I’m just
stunned.”

“
By the flying
machine?”

“
That and the fact that you
think giant can legitimately be combined with gargantuan to form a
word.” Books collected himself and waved for Akstyr to continue up
the ladder.

“
Cut out that light, will
you?” Akstyr pointed at a lantern on the wall. “Maybe if we go
completely dark and stay in this little nook they won’t be able to
see us.”

Books blew out the lamp and rushed to
navigation, while Akstyr ran through the corridor and the cargo
room, turning off every lamp he found. The engine pulsed softly in
its room, throwing alternating light and shadows against the walls.
Akstyr thought about tossing a blanket over it, but there weren’t
any windows or portholes in that cabin, so he simply shut the door
and let it be.

By the time he stumbled into the navigation
cabin, Books had darkened it as well and had his nose pressed to
the bank of windows. Fortunately, none of the gauges or panels in
front of Books glowed or blinked—as far as Akstyr could tell their
engine was the only Science-based mechanism in the dirigible, and
nothing else was likely to glow sporadically. Unfortunately, they
were still hanging from a giant beige balloon that would stand out
against the snow and craggy lines of the mountains.

“
I see it,” Books said.
“What
is
it?”

“
I don’t know, but can you
really disagree that it’s gia-gantuan?”

“
Now is not the time for
jokes.”

“
Who’s joking?” Akstyr
leaned closer to the window, trying to see the details of the
valley beneath them. “Can you take us lower? So that we’re right
above the snow? Maybe we’ll blend in.”

“
Maybe we’ll blend
in
?” Books frowned over
his shoulder. “We’re mounted under an enormous
balloon.
It’s not white, so unless
you want to get climb out and shovel snow on top of it, we’re not
going to blend in. Besides, that... that...
thing
has a light beam shooting out
of it. It must be magic. Won’t they just sense us out
there?”

“
It’s not
Science-based.”

“
What?” Books leaned so
close to the window that he bumped his nose. “You must be wrong.
There’s no mundane technology in the world that could put something
like that into the air.”

“
I’d be able to sense it if
it were a construct.”

“
They must be cloaking
themselves from you somehow.”

“
Whatever,” Akstyr said. It
was impossible talking Science with people that hadn’t studied it
at all.

“
Whatever it is, that beam
is searching systematically, like it
expects
us to be here.” Books’s
words came out in a tumble. He was scarcely taking time to
breathe.