Forged in Blood I (7 page)

“Uhhhh,” Sespian said, drawing out the syllable in a way that ensured a rejection would follow.

“I have trained the others. They are better fighters for it.”

“I don’t—”

“I know you prefer cerebral solutions to problems, but, as you said, the people will want a strong warrior to rally behind.” Sicarius knew he was “trying too hard,” as Amaranthe would say it, and he lifted a hand to signify he was backing away from the argument.

“I’ll think about it,” Sespian said.

Not an outright objection. Good.

“I’ll see if Ravido is here.” Sicarius paused, thinking Sespian might volunteer to come along. He’d be more efficient on his own, but found himself hoping for his company nonetheless.

“Thank you,” was all Sespian said and headed back into the secret room.

Sicarius bowed his head. So be it.

Chapter 3

A
maranthe tried to pierce the basement darkness with her eyes, but there wasn’t enough light filtering down the stairwell to reveal anything. For all she knew, she might be standing on the edge of a secret bottomless abyss that opened up beneath the newspaper building. However, the amount of dust hanging in the air, tickling her nostrils, suggested a clutter-filled room of manmade origins.

With the grinding and thumping of machinery filtering down from above, she could almost believe she’d imagined the voice, but Maldynado had heard it too.

“That sounded like Deret Mancrest,” he said, “but I can’t believe a warrior-caste lord would get himself locked in a grimy cell more than once in the same year.”

“No, you wouldn’t think so.” Amaranthe waited for the voice in the darkness to speak again, but all she heard was a soft thump. Such as that of a forehead thudding against a wall? “Watch our friends, will you?”

While Maldynado hauled their prisoners out of the stairwell, Amaranthe shrugged off her knapsack and dug out a lantern. She shut the door before striking a match. The small flame did little more than highlight the scowls of the two captives and Maldynado’s perennially amused features. Yara never had a chance. The man even managed to look stop-and-gape handsome with dust blanketing his brown curls, mud on his boots, and a dubious green smudge smeared across one of his well-defined cheekbones.

Leaving him with the soldiers, Amaranthe walked into the widest of several aisles branching out from the entrance. Old hand-powered printing presses and stacks upon stacks of dusty, faded newspapers filled the basement from faded brick floor to worn wooden ceiling. The box- and press-framed route took her to an open area hemmed in by giant bottles of ink and crates full of machine parts. A six-foot-tall iron cage rested in the center, a single occupant hunched inside. Deret Mancrest.

If his oily hair, limp clothing, and beard stubble were apt indicators, he’d been locked inside for a few days. An empty plate sat outside the door, and a water jug and chamberpot rested inside the cage, so no one had intended him to starve and die, but he certainly didn’t look his best. A heavy padlock secured the cell gate. The swordstick he used for a cane, the support necessary due to a war wound that had left him with a limp, leaned against a crate out of his reach. He stared at Amaranthe warily, probably wondering if, in these tumultuous times, she was friend or foe. Or maybe he was simply wondering if she’d mock him for his predicament. After all, she’d once left him in a similar position when he tried to lure her into a trap, intending to turn her over to the army.

Fortunately for him, she was too professional to mock a potential ally.

“Good evening, Lord Mancrest.” Amaranthe waved at the cage. “You haven’t been pestering me of late, so I’ll assume there’s some other woman you’ve irked so greatly that she felt compelled to lock you up.” Maybe that wasn’t that professional after all.

“I greatly irked my
father
,” Deret said.

“Ah.” Amaranthe wanted the details, but they could wait until later, when they were somewhere without armed soldiers roaming about on the floor above. “Are you agreeably serving out your paternally-induced prison sentence?” she asked, thinking Mancrest might be grateful enough to share all of the goings on in the city if she freed him from his cell. “Or would you like to be let out?”

“Trust me, nothing about this is agreeable.”

“I don’t suppose there are keys nearby?” Amaranthe glanced around, though her fingers were already dipping into her knapsack for the lock-picking kit.

“My father has them.”

“Too bad. I believe your father just left with Ms. Worgavic.” She said it casually, but watched his face through her lashes to see if he knew anything about the affair.

Mancrest straightened, clunking his head on the cage’s overhead bars. “You know that woman?” He squinted at her, his listless apathy fading.

“Yes.” Amaranthe reserved further explanation for later. If she had information he desired, maybe she could offer a trade. She couldn’t count on Mancrest simply telling her all she wanted to know. They hadn’t parted enemies last summer, but the last time she’d spoken to him had involved an awkward apology for abandoning him in the middle of their date in the Imperial Gardens. She’d left out the fact that she’d run off to smooch with Sicarius in the hedge maze, but he was bright enough to piece together the puzzle. “Do
you
know her?” she asked.

“Her name, but little else.”

“She’s one of Ravido’s allies, among other things.” Amaranthe slipped her picking tools into the padlock.

“Hm,” Mancrest said, not giving away much.

“Are you down here because you’re not a supporter of Ravido’s?” Amaranthe asked, fishing for information, not unlike she was fishing for the tumblers. The padlock, she noticed, was identical to the one that had secured the storm grate. Had the senior Mancrest been responsible for increasing security around the newspaper office? To keep people from learning about the extra publications being printed?

“I’m down here because I refused to be strong-armed into printing lies in the
Gazette
.” Mancrest gripped the bars. “Amaranthe, the emperor… is he truly dead?”

“Nah,” came Maldynado’s voice from behind her. “He’s probably out carousing with Akstyr by now, learning about magic, about growing up in the streets, and about how
not
to attract women.”

“Aren’t you guarding our prisoners?” Amaranthe asked without glancing at him. She kept her focus on the lock.

“I had to come see if you were chatting with who I thought you were chatting with, so I tied them to each other.” Maldynado leaned against the cage bars. “So, Deret, how’d you manage to get yourself locked up in your own building?”

“It’s my father’s building,” Mancrest grumbled. “How is it
you’re
not locked up somewhere yet? You’re the outlaw here, after all.”

“Yes, but a dashing outlaw with perfectly proportioned features. One doesn’t incarcerate perfect proportions.”

“One does if one’s earned a decent bounty. I suppose yours doesn’t qualify. Your scruffy Akstyr has an impressive one these days though. Were you aware that the gangs want him?” Mancrest had shifted his attention to Amaranthe. Was he making an offering she might find useful in hopes of opening up an exchange of information? If so, they wanted the same things. Good.

“We’re aware of it,” she said. “He should be safe for the moment. And, yes, Sespian is alive and safe too. He’s with—” She caught herself, realizing Mancrest’s interest in helping might shrivel up at the mention of Sicarius.

“Your assassin,” he guessed, his tone flat.

“Yes.” She waited, wondering if he’d heard about the father-son relationship yet. Perhaps not, since he’d referred to Sespian as the emperor. Had Forge not spilled that information yet? If not, why not? If Ms. Worgavic had made her way back to the capital, others in the organization would have too.

Mancrest didn’t say anything else. Amaranthe snapped the lock open and let the gate swing wide.

Thumps sounded near the door. At first, she thought they’d been made by the men Maldynado was supposed to be watching, but Mancrest blurted, “The stairs. Someone’s coming.”

“Maldynado,” Amaranthe said, “lock the door, please.”

He was already moving. “No lock,” he called back, but a heavy scraping sound nearly drowned out the words as he moved a crate in front of the door.

“They’ll know something is going on in here as soon as they can’t get in.” Mancrest hopped out of the cage, winced when his weight came down on his bad leg, and growled as he reached for his swordstick.

Amaranthe didn’t point out that they
already
knew something was going on, due to the two missing men.

More thumps sounded, someone pounding at the door.

“What’s the plan?” Maldynado asked.

Amaranthe thought of the walled up doorway in the storm water tunnel. “Back door?”

“We’re below street level,” Mancrest said. “That door and a trapdoor in the ceiling are the only exits we have.” He waved toward the sound of Maldynado dragging another heavy crate.

“The only exits you have
now
.” Amaranthe winked. She didn’t feel as confident as that wink suggested, but she led Mancrest through the shadows of old crates and rusty equipment. Warrior-caste men seemed to appreciate bravado anyway. As she walked, she kept an eye out for anything that might be useful for knocking down brick obstacles.

When they neared the back wall—the one that ought to line up with the storm tunnel—she found boxes stacked to within a foot or two of the ceiling. She grimaced as she lifted her lantern to survey the shadows. They might not have time for her plan.

“What are we looking for?” Mancrest asked.

Amaranthe was about to say nothing, but her light played across the wall above a box of reference books, and it revealed a different shade of brick, more of a dull red instead of the gray that comprised the rest of the basement. A relatively recent addition.

“Help me clear away these boxes.” Amaranthe set down her lantern and clambered atop one of the piles.

“Do men always obey your orders?”

“Only when they’re curious to see what the result of following those orders will be.” Amaranthe heaved a box to the floor. Dust flew into the air, and Mancrest jumped back, coughing. Her fastidious streak cringed at the idea of making a mess, but the thumps on the door convinced her she didn’t have time for an orderly rearranging. “There’s nothing important in these boxes, is there?” She shoved another one to the floor. “Nothing you’ll be upset about losing?”

“If the boxes are buried down here, I guess not.” Shaking his head, Mancrest started moving aside the pile of boxes next to hers.

“And this wall? Would you be upset about losing it?”

Mancrest paused. “What?” He stared at the bricks—with some of the boxes out of the way, the outline of the walled-in doorway was coming into view. “Oh.” For a moment, he looked like he might object, but then he clenched his jaw and said, “No, curse him. I don’t care what happens to this building. Not after he locked me up down here.”

“Good.” Amaranthe hopped to the floor. “Keep moving those, will you? I need to locate materials for the second half of this plan.”

Seemingly forgetting his objection to being ordered around, Mancrest heaved aside the boxes while she hunted for something they could use to blow a hole in the wall. There shouldn’t be much structural support behind the brick addition, but it’d take more than a shoulder thump to topple it.

“Maldynado?” Amaranthe called. “How’re you doing over there?”

“Between keeping these rowdy prisoners subdued and piling as much junk as possible in front of the door?” came the response.

“Yes.”

“Fine, but I heard someone in the stairwell holler to get Lord Mancrest, and I believe the words ‘battering ram’ also came up.”

Amaranthe didn’t think a ram would prove effective in that tight stairwell, but if Deret’s father came down and started hollering at his son through the door, that might have a scheme-withering effect. If Deret decided they should give in and let the others in, that wouldn’t leave Amaranthe and Maldynado in a good place. “If you’re done piling up junk, come give me a hand.”

“Be there in a minute.”

Amaranthe paused beside a rusty press beneath a drop cloth. She eyed the furnace and boiler. It wouldn’t be the first boiler she’d caused to explode, but she feared it was too big and too surrounded by other heavy objects for three people to push over to the wall. She kept looking. Perhaps there was a smaller press, or perhaps… Her thoughts took a jog to the left when she spotted the jars of ink again. Nodding to herself, she lugged two of them through the crooked aisles toward the back wall. On the way, she caught sight of Maldynado and his so-called rowdy prisoners. Both were sitting on the ground, their wrists and ankles still tied. She paused, setting down the heavy jars.

“Ten ranmyas says they get caught in the next ten minutes, and these outlaws get shot,” one said.

“I’m not taking that bet,” the other said. “That’s a foregone event. The real question is whether Lord Mancrest will give his son a spanking when he finds him out of his cage.”

The two men shared snickers. Maldynado was leaning against one of numerous crates he’d shoved in front of the door, wiping sweat from his brow. “We’re not getting caught,” he told the prisoners. “But if we did, I’d pay a lot more than ten ranmyas to see Deret spanked.”

“Maldynado,” Amaranthe said, causing him to start.

“I was taking a break. A quick one. I swear. Look at all I did.” He flung his arms wide to highlight the size of the stack he’d piled up.

“You and your prisoners aren’t in trouble.” Amaranthe smiled at the tied men, figuring it couldn’t hurt to start talking to them if she hoped to draw them to her side later. “But I need help.” She picked up one of the jars of ink and nodded for Maldynado to grab the other.

“I’d rather see
her
spanked,” one of the prisoners said as she moved away.

His cohort guffawed. “I’d pay fifty ranmyas for that.”

Maldynado snickered. Amaranthe raised an eyebrow at him.