Forged in Blood II (12 page)

“It is.” She seemed to be looking for a way to reach it. Though the submarine had come up in the 1473 berth, it was about four feet from the dock. Given the water and possibly ice that coated the concave hatch, landing on it without slipping off would prove a challenge.

“Basilard,” Amaranthe said, “you’re the most agile of us. I don’t suppose you’d hop out there and… knock?”

Basilard nodded and shrugged off his pack.

Maldynado frowned. “I’m agile too.”

“Yes, but I thought the hat might throw off your balance.”

That drew a snort from one of the soldiers, though his comrades were quick to glare him to silence.

Basilard made the leap, landing lightly on the hatch, his fingers touching down to steady himself. He considered it for a moment, then, as Amaranthe had suggested, knocked politely. She wondered if the enforcers had already tried that. For that matter, what had drawn them out to investigate? The boom of a weapon being fired to break the ice?

“You may want to stand in view of the opening,” Amaranthe told Tikaya, pointing her farther out on the dock. “In case they’re the sort to come out armed, a familiar face could keep an incident from occurring.”

“Yes, of course.” Tikaya picked her way out along the icy arm of the dock.

The hatch didn’t open though. Basilard spread his hands, asking what to try next.

“Is it possible they’ve arrived and gone into the city to explore?” Amaranthe asked, though if they’d broken through the surface with some weapon recently—as the enforcers standing around suggested—they shouldn’t have had time to wander off to explore anything yet.

“It’s possible,” Tikaya said.

A crack sounded behind Basilard, and he whirled about. A metal pipe of some sort broke through the ice and shot up a foot. There was a perpendicular bend near the tip, and it rotated toward them, the opening at the end reminding Amaranthe of a firearm’s muzzle.

She yanked out her pistol. “Is that a weapon?”

“No.” Tikaya waved at the orifice. “A periscope.”

Realizing the “muzzle” was glassed over, Amaranthe lowered her weapon.

“You may want to jump back, Mister Basilard,” Tikaya said. “If they come out, they’ll open the—”

A clank-thunk-clank sounded beneath Basilard’s feet. Eyes widening, he leaped back to the dock. A moment later, the hatch swung open, and a young woman with long raven hair braided similarly to her mother’s appeared in the opening. She had more of her father’s coloring, with olive skin less prone to freckles, but the blue eyes were much like Tikaya’s. It made for a striking combination, and Amaranthe wondered if she’d have to remind Maldynado that he was in a relationship, a monogamous one, insofar as she’d heard.

“Good to see you, dear,” Tikaya said warmly, still speaking in Turgonian. “Is Lonaeo well too?”

“Yes,” the girl, Mahliki, Amaranthe reminded herself, said. She didn’t send her mother a greeting, rather she peered in all directions visible from the hatchway. “Is it gone?”

“It?” Amaranthe and Tikaya asked at the same time.

“That black cube.”

Amaranthe rocked back on her heels. “You saw one? Out here?” Her mind spun. Maybe the girl meant something else. Something perfectly ordinary, like a… a… yes, what, Amaranthe?

“A
kelbhet
?” Tikaya asked. “You’re sure?”

“It looked exactly like the ones in your drawings,” Mahliki said.

“And it shot a red beam at us,” came a male voice from within the submarine.

“Yes, that was the truly defining trait,” Mahliki said dryly. Her rigid shoulders relaxed when she didn’t see any sign of the deadly device. “It was hovering above the lake when we arrived. We popped out and it veered in this direction. It shot its beam and—ah, yes, there’s the recipient of its damage.” She pointed at the boathouse Amaranthe had assumed burned in a fire.

“Odd,” Tikaya said. “The
kelbhet
are typically much tidier when they’re incinerating something.”

Yes, chillingly so, Amaranthe thought, picturing the guards she’d seen devoured by those crimson beams.

“You said they’d been modified?” Tikaya asked Amaranthe.

“Yes, by Retta’s assistant,” Amaranthe said. “The first modification changed them so they didn’t target humans, but then she changed them again so that they did. The last I saw them, they were mowing down their own people.”

“Not
their
people,” Tikaya murmured.

“Well, Forge people.” Amaranthe didn’t want to imagine the “people” who had thought incendiary cleaning constructs were a good idea.

“If it’s safe to come out…” Mahliki considered the thus-far mute soldiers, shrugged, and did something inside, near the lip of the hatchway.

A panel on the bottom side of the hatch popped open, and a thin metal square with hinges slid out. It unfolded in four segments, creating a gangplank that thudded down on the edge of the dock.

“I told you it would reach,” Mahliki said into the submarine.

“Yes, yes, now get your big butt off the ladder so I can get out, will you?” came the cousin’s voice from inside.

Mahliki rolled her eyes. “My butt isn’t big. It’s
contoured
.”

“Please, everything you have is big. You’re a giant, just like Aunt Tikaya.”

“Not here, I’m not. Lots of Turgonian women are six feet tall, Father says, and the men are even taller, just like him.” Mahliki considered Maldynado and the soldiers, a hint of appraisal in the gaze. It seemed more like a tourist examining the curious natives rather than anything with sexual undertones, but Maldynado naturally straightened and returned this appraisal with a yes-I-
am
-a-handsome-fellow-aren’t-I smile.

“Stop dithering around, you two,” Tikaya said. “We have a larger mission to complete tonight.”

Amaranthe tapped a finger to her lips as she watched the exchange. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected, but the girl sounded like a normal teenager, rather than some precocious genius.

It’d been hard to judge height when only Mahliki’s head and shoulders had been sticking through the hatchway, but on the dock, she stood even with her mother, maybe even a hair or two taller. Amaranthe could understand why someone from Kyatt would consider her a big woman, though neither her butt nor anything else was disproportionate, despite her cousin’s teasing. Rather she had her mother’s curves along with an easy athleticism that captured every man’s attention as she climbed from submarine to gangplank to dock, catching herself quickly when her foot slid in a patch of ice.

Watching the soldiers puff their chests out, Amaranthe imagined her team of men starting brawls in their haste to gain the young woman’s favor. For the sake of simplicity, she hoped Tikaya intended to send her off to stay with the same grandmother who was housing the other children.

Mahliki clanked as she walked down the dock to join her mother. Curious, Amaranthe eyed her for weapons—surely, she didn’t have some knife collection beneath her jacket? Although with a Turgonian admiral for a father, perhaps it wouldn’t be that strange. Though, upon consideration, what she’d first thought of as clanks were more like clinks, such as bumping glasses might make.

Mahliki returned the gaze, cocking an eyebrow.

“Sorry,” Amaranthe said, “I was wondering why you were rattling.”

“Ah.” Mahliki unzipped her jacket and displayed rows of vials of various sizes secured to the inside flap, along with a few metal tools, and was that some sort of folded net?

“Dear,” Tikaya said, “what samples are you expecting to find here? It’s winter.”

“Not all flora, fauna, and insects die off or hibernate, Mother, and I’ve read that the nymphs of Turgonian flies live in ponds and streams, often under the ice. They feed throughout the cold months and emerge as adults in the spring. I’ve never had a chance to observe insects in a sub-freezing climate. I’m also terribly excited to find a dragonfly for my collection. We don’t have them on the islands. I’ll be curious to study them. They’re vicious predators.”

Tikaya pulled her parka closer, nodding and casting a wary eye toward the surrounding landscape, as if she expected the empire to be full of vicious predators.

“Those are for collecting insects?” Amaranthe asked, wondering if the girl knew she and her submarine had popped up in a war zone.

Mahliki waved a hand, as if guessing her thoughts. “Whenever there’s time.”

“And sometimes when there’s not,” Tikaya said. “She’s faster with those specimen collection tools than your assassin friend is with his knives.”

Mahliki smiled, not disagreeing.

The gangly man who climbed out in her wake was more of what Amaranthe imagined typical Kyattese citizens looked like. More bone than brawn, he had shaggy blond hair that hung into blue-gray eyes half hidden behind a pair of spectacles, and while he didn’t trip clambering through the hatchway and onto the gangplank, it was close. An equally shaggy tuft of hair dangled from his chin, the classification somewhere between beard, goatee, and flower gone to seed.

He paused on the gangplank, chomping down on his lip as he considered the soldiers lined up on the dock. His attention snagged on their swords and rifles, and he didn’t seem to notice that they were too busy pretending not to watch Mahliki to know he existed.

“Lonaeo,” Tikaya said, “can you secure the
Explorer
, please? We won’t be back tonight, perhaps not for a few days. If you have any food and water rations easily accessible in there, you may want to grab them too. We aren’t going to the city. We’re going to deal with… a problem.”

“A
problem
?” Maldynado asked, his eyes devoid of humor. “I assure you it’s more than that. I was there when it landed.”

Tikaya nodded in acknowledgment. She probably hadn’t wanted to alarm her daughter, who was, it seemed, being invited along.

“A bigger problem than those cubes?” Mahliki asked.

“By a billion times,” Maldynado said.

“I thought we were going to visit Uncle Rias’s mother and cousins up north,” Lonaeo said.

“That was the plan, but we may need your help in the ship.” Tikaya caught Amaranthe’s dubious gaze. “Though they didn’t choose to study archaeology or linguistics for their careers, they grew up around my work, and they’ve both proved useful in navigating other ruins before.”

“How far is it?” Lonaeo asked.

“About five miles,” Amaranthe said.

“We’re walking?” Lonaeo peered toward the head of the dock. “No runabouts here?”

“There are steam carriages,” Amaranthe said, “for those who can afford them. And trolleys, but that’s for the city. Street skis and lots of bicycles, though the ground’s a bit treacherous for that now. Actually…” She eyed the submarine. “Fort Urgot is—was—” she winced, “—a couple hundred meters from the lake. It has a dock, if that wasn’t destroyed. Maybe we could…” She gestured toward the submarine.

“Boss,” Maldynado hissed, “haven’t we been underwater enough in this last year—” he caught Mahliki looking at him, and changed his complaint to, “—to develop a taste for that travel? Yes, indeed, I’d love to see that submarine.”

Amaranthe rubbed her face. This was going to be a problem.

“I suppose there’s room,” Tikaya said, though she eyed the four soldiers dubiously.

“We’ll have to squish,” Mahliki said.

“We’re fine with that,” Maldynado said brightly. The soldiers were quick to nod as well.

Yara is going to pound you if you don’t quit that
, Amaranthe signed tersely to Maldynado.

He blinked.
What?

For once, his innocence didn’t seem feigned. Maybe it was some sort of reflex, and he truly didn’t realize he was flirting.

“All right then,” Mahliki said. She’d noticed the hand signs and crinkled a brow at her mother, but Tikaya waved it away as nothing. Good. “Everyone in, I guess.”

“By the way,” Amaranthe said, gesturing for the soldiers to cross the gangplank before her, “which way was that cube heading when you saw it last?”

“North, I think,” Mahliki said. “It was hard to get a good look. We were busy diving back underwater and calculating the penetration speed and depth of those beams.”

“
She
was doing that,” Lonaeo said. “I was trying to figure out how to crawl under a seat that was bolted to the deck.”

Mahliki swatted him. “Which way is this Fort Urgot?”

“North,” Amaranthe said.

“Oh.” Mahliki grimaced.

“Did you find a way to get under that seat?” Maldynado asked as he passed the scruffy young man.

“Sorry, no.”

“A shame.”

When Tikaya drew even with her, Amaranthe quietly asked, “Any idea how many of those cubes are likely to be on a ship the size of the
Behemoth
?”

Tikaya’s met her eyes. “A lot.”

“That’s what I was afraid of.”

• • •

In an alley behind the Clearview Hotel, one block up from the yacht club, Sicarius set a canvas bag into the snow behind a waste bin. Bloodstains had seeped through the fabric, but it was dark enough that he doubted anyone would notice it. The information he’d pried from the Forge operative’s mouth before killing her had promised a meeting was taking place in Worgavic’s suite tonight, should he arrive early enough to find the attendees still there. He’d postponed the other assassinations on the Ridge to detour down to the waterfront.

He eyed the rooftop of the five-story building, the eaves stretching into the alley above him, then listened without moving, his back to the wall, the shadows cloaking him. This early into the night, many sounds drifted from within the hotel, the clinks of glasses in the drinking room, the chatter of guests in the lounge, the chops of knives in the kitchen, and the moans of couples who had retired to their rooms for trysts.

It was early to stage an assassination, but given the duress he’d applied to the Forge woman, he knew she hadn’t lied to him. He had experience enough to tell such things, even if he’d had little need to call upon it in the last year. Somewhere along the way, he’d stopped pointing out to Amaranthe the effectiveness of torture. Because she always rejected it, he’d assumed, but maybe there was more to it. This evening it had bothered him. It might simply be that he’d had no choice in the matter. Before he’d had more than a thought that he had enough information and could make a quick kill, Kor Nas’s voice had sounded in his head, demanding he spend
time
with his victim before ending her life, productive time. He didn’t know if the practitioner had known she had information or if he’d simply relished the idea of torturing someone through Sicarius.