Conspiracy (53 page)

“
The pilot wasn’t open to
discussing the situation with us, and the other two died in the
fight. Akstyr was lucky to survive.”

Amaranthe glanced at Sespian, worried he
would frown with disapproval over men being dispatched, whether it
was in a fight or not, but whatever he was thinking wasn’t on his
face. He’d been much easier to read when he’d been influenced by
that drug. Now, he reminded her more of Sicarius, though there was
a gentleness to his visage, even when it wasn’t giving anything
away.

“
Is it possible Maldynado’s
lady friend is a member of Forge?” Amaranthe asked Books. “Or one
of their allies? And unbeknownst to Maldynado, she sent the men
along to hinder us?”

“
Perhaps. Or...” Books eyed
the open door and lowered his voice. “What if it
wasn’t
unbeknownst to
Maldynado?”

A chill crept in the pit of Amaranthe’s
stomach. “What are you saying?”

“
He’s the one who directed
us to Lady Buckingcrest and this mode of transportation. As I
recall, you had another errand you wished him to accompany you on
that night, but he insisted that we needed a superior
conveyance.”

Sespian’s interest sharpened at this new
turn in the conversation. “As a Marblecrest, he could stand to gain
much if his family took the throne. If Forge knows you’re between
them and success, they might have infiltrated your group with a
spy.”

Amaranthe raised both hands and patted the
air. “Maldynado’s not a spy. He’s the first man I recruited for my
team, and running into him was accidental.”

“
Are you certain?” Sespian
asked.

“
Yes. I was dodging
enforcers at the time, and he was wearing a loincloth. Nobody would
set something like that up. Since then, he’s been among my most
loyal of team members.”

“
Well, he would be,
wouldn’t he?” Sespian stroked his chin. “An unreliable man would be
suspect or in danger of being released.”

“
He’s not a spy, Sire.
We’ve been through life and death together in the last nine months.
He would have gotten fed up and left my side at some point if he
didn’t have a very good reason for being there.” Amaranthe glowered
at Books, annoyed that he’d brought this up in front of the
emperor. Sespian had just met Maldynado and had no reason to trust
him yet, but Books ought to know better.

“
And what is that reason?”
Sespian asked.

“
He wants a statue made of
himself,” Books said.

“
I see,” Sespian said in a
tone that meant he didn’t think that was “a very good reason” at
all.

Amaranthe sighed. “Let’s wait until we have
more evidence before we start accusing comrades of colluding with
the enemy. For all we know, those two men followed Books and
Akstyr, snuck on board, and were hoping to collect someone’s
bounty.”

“
That wouldn’t explain why
the pilot attacked us,” Books said, “but I’ll agree that there’s
insufficient evidence to accuse anyone. Besides, Akstyr might be
the one to blame for at least some of our troubles. He has a new
bounty on his head, and he told his mother he’d be at Forkingrust
or the pass.”

“
His
mother
?” Amaranthe resolved to get
the full story from Books, but he’d already said more in front of
the emperor than she would have liked.

Someone cleared his throat
in the corridor. Basilard.
We are
approaching a tall mountain, and this boat may need to make a
course adjustment.

Books stood, bowed to Sespian with a,
“Sire,” and headed for the door.

Also Maldynado is attempting to teach
himself how to pilot.

“
Dear
ancestors
.” Books’s calm walk toward
the door turned into a sprint.

“
Boat?” Amaranthe asked
Basilard, in part because the word choice amused her and also
because she wanted Sespian to know they weren’t chatting about
suspicious things when her people signed back and forth.

No word yet for...
Basilard pointed toward the ceiling.

“
Not many dirigibles in
your mountain homeland, eh?” Amaranthe asked. Though Sespian had
other concerns at the moment, it wouldn’t hurt to remind him that
Basilard was a foreigner, here helping because he wanted to improve
his people’s lot.

Basilard shook his head and lifted a hand
for a departing wave.

Shut the door,
please,
Amaranthe signed.
And if you see Sicarius, can you tell him to join
us in a few minutes?

After Basilard left,
Sespian crossed a finger over his throat and asked, “What’s
that
sign
mean?”

“
Ah, that’s the one
Basilard made up for Sicarius.”

Sespian grimaced. “I hope you were telling
him to have him leave us alone.”

“
If you’re left alone with
me, I’ll pour all my efforts into convincing you to let us perform
this surgery on you and then to use my team as your own personal...
emperor’s edge.” Amaranthe felt silly saying the group’s
name—Maldynado had teased her about it so often that she’d stopped
using it—but maybe it would amuse Sespian.

“
Hm,” was all he
said.

“
Are you thinking of
letting us try to remove it?” Amaranthe asked, wanting a feel for
where he stood.

“
Oh, I’m thinking of very
little else. Having the promise of instant death held over my head
every day for the last five months has dampened my enthusiasm for
my job. In the beginning, I thought I could fight Forge, keep them
out of the Barracks and the government, but they have spies
everywhere. Knowing they can track me down and end my life at any
time has made it difficult to keep up the fight, but if the implant
were gone...”

“
How did they embed the
device to start with?” Amaranthe asked.

“
A team of hooded men came
into my bedroom one night, held me down, and gagged me. My first
thought was that Sicarius had finally come to kill me, but he
always worked solo. I didn’t see any of these men’s faces, though
the leader was older. He had hard gray eyes, and I could see the
hint of a scar under one.”

Amaranthe sat up straighter, but Sespian
wasn’t looking at her. He was staring at his lap, and he continued
speaking.

“
While they held me down,
Peadraga, that woman who was with me on the train, strolled in and
inserted the device. She didn’t need any tools. She simply laid it
on my throat, and it burrowed in while I could do nothing to stop
it.” His lips twisted as if he wanted to spit. “I don’t know if my
personal guards, who should have been at my door, were Forge’s from
the start or were paid to look the other way. Turgonians pride
themselves on duty and honor, but it seems there’s little loyalty
that can’t be bought. Maybe I’m just not the ruler my father was
and people feel they have no reason to risk themselves backing me.”
He pushed a hand through his hair.

“
That’s not true.
You
care
about
the people. They’ll see that one day and appreciate it. You’ve been
born into a difficult era, where the empire is trying to reconcile
great technological and socio-economic changes with a centuries-old
system of government. None of your predecessors had to deal with
anything like this. Besides, you’ve yet to have a real chance to
rule, so you can’t compare yourself to Raumesys.” Amaranthe
realized that what she meant as an encouraging talk sounded a bit
like a lecture, so she tacked on a weak, “Sire.”

Sespian snorted softly.

“
I honestly believe you’re
the open-minded, forward-thinking person we need in charge right
now,” Amaranthe said. “We just need to make sure you survive and
have the leeway to apply your vision.” It wouldn’t hurt if he had
an older, experienced advisor he could trust either. She imagined
Books or even Sicarius in that role. Maybe it was hubris, but she
thought Sespian would benefit from having her whole team on board.
If only she could get him to see that. “Don’t let anyone beat you
down. This is worth fighting for.”

“
Odd,” Sespian
murmured.

That wasn’t quite the response Amaranthe had
expected. “Me? Or my speech? Or both?”

“
I get a lot flatterers
telling me what they think I want to hear in order to get what they
want. Why is it that I believe you when you do the
same?”

Maybe Amaranthe should feel
insulted—he’d just called her a flatterer who was angling for
something, after all—but the puzzled crease to Sespian’s brow took
the bite out of the words. “Because I don’t hide the fact that I
want something? And I don’t think I want anything that’s
particularly evil or would require you to compromise your
integrity. I just want my name cleared.” All right, she wanted
Sicarius’s name cleared, too, but that probably
would
compromise Sespian’s
integrity, and she doubted Sicarius particularly cared about that
aspect anyway. “There’s more to it than that, of course,” Amaranthe
went on. “Me wanting to be someone who matters and to live up to
the expectations of a dead father, for example. But my life story,
dreams, fears, and so on can wait for when we have more time. Right
now, I only wish to know what reassurances I can give you to get
you to say yes to this surgery. There was a beacon of some sort
left behind on that cliff, and I’m afraid that means the other
craft will know we’re alive. They may already be looking for us. If
someone on board that craft can trigger your implant... Well, I’d
find it rather inconvenient to lose you so soon after retrieving
you. I doubt Maldynado’s older brother would pardon me.” There,
finish with a smile. What more could she do?

“
I’d like to hear the life
story sometime,” Sespian said, surprising Amaranthe. That wasn’t
the part of her speech he was supposed to focus on. “If we survive
the next few weeks, perhaps you’d like to have dinner with me? Some
place quiet? And private?”

“
I... uh...” Amaranthe felt
like a deer caught on the railway with a train barreling out of the
night toward it. Her mind wouldn’t come up with something useful to
do, and she could only gape at Sespian. He wasn’t supposed to be
interested in dinner with her any more. He was
supposed
to want to have dinner with
Yara. “Sire, you’re...” The son of the man I love, she thought, but
she couldn’t possibly say that. “Young. Yes, young to me. I don’t
think we’d be a good...” Amaranthe trailed off when she realized
Sespian was watching her intently. It wasn’t, she sensed, in hopes
that she would agree to his proposition. A moment passed, and he
said nothing. Finally, she asked, “Was that a test?”

Sespian smiled sadly. “If you’d said yes, it
wouldn’t have necessarily proven or disproven anything, but because
you said no... I suspect I can trust you.”

Amaranthe slumped back into the cushy chair.
She wasn’t certain whether she was more relieved that Sespian had
admitted to trusting her or that he hadn’t truly had his hopes
pinned to her saying yes about the dinner proposition.

“
As to conditions for the
surgery,” Sespian said, “I want everything explained. It has to
sound logical and there has to be a good probability of success. I
don’t want Forge to be able to hold that power over me any more,
but I also don’t want to commit suicide.”

“
Of course, Sire.”
Amaranthe stood up and headed for the door. “I’ll let Akstyr
know.”

“
Corporal Lokdon?” Sespian
slipped off the bed and met her a couple steps from the
door.

“
Yes, Sire?”

“
If we both survive this
with our sanity intact, I hope you’ll reconsider the dinner offer.
I won’t always be young. If it helps, I’ll probably be old and
doddering before you, thanks to the drug that curmudgeon
Hollowcrest used on me.”

Amaranthe gripped his hands. “Sire, I’m sure
you’ll live a long and fulfilling life.” Except she wasn’t sure of
that. Sicarius, she recalled, had been concerned when he learned
the name of the drug Hollowcrest had used. That knowledge had
fueled his cold fury when he broke the old general’s neck with his
bare hands.

The door opened. Belatedly, Amaranthe
remembered that she’d told Basilard to send Sicarius in.

She released Sespian’s hands and yanked hers
behind her back, but not before Sicarius witnessed the handholding.
His expression never changed, but he looked into her eyes for a
heartbeat, and then he looked into Sespian’s for several more.

“
Nothing’s going on,”
Amaranthe said, though she promptly realized that made it sound as
if there
were
something going on. “We were just—”

Without a word, Sicarius walked away.

Sun shown through the porthole in the tiny
cabin, and Akstyr pulled his blanket over his head, trying to block
it out. At Amaranthe’s insistence, he’d slept a couple of hours,
and he wouldn’t have minded more, but the light was bugging him.
Something else was bugging him, too, though he couldn’t put a
finger on it. A nagging unease.

Akstyr stretched out with his senses and
nearly fell out of the bunk when he felt someone in the cabin with
him. A dark cool presence. He tore the blanket off his head,
spotted Sicarius standing in the shadows by the door, and bolted to
his feet. That was the goal anyway. The blanket tangled around his
legs, and he tumbled to the floor in an ungainly heap. Certain
Sicarius wasn’t there for any comradely reason, Akstyr rushed to
untangle himself and find a standing position. He finally managed,
but not without the help of a hand on the wall.