Forged in Blood II (50 page)

“I had an idea while you two were out there,” she announced. “I don’t know if there’s any molasses left in those tanks, but I’m figuring there might be. The business left all their equipment in the building, so maybe some of their product is still here too.”

“You think you can blow them up?” Akstyr asked.

“We only have two sticks left,” Amaranthe said, “and throwing them at the mob isn’t doing much. Maybe we can at least get the makarovi too sticky to attack people.” Her mouth twisted. A joke? If so, a bleak one. There wasn’t a hint of humor in her eyes.

Komitopis was trying to make Starcrest sit down so she could tend to his shoulder, but he stepped back to the side of the roof and gazed at the sizable tanks. Each one rose three stories high, and Sicarius didn’t know if even a blasting stick would rupture the metal walls.

Someone fired below, and Komitopis pulled Starcrest back.

“
Rias
,” she hissed. “Stop trying to get yourself killed.”

“I’m going to throw it,” Amaranthe said, “before the makarovi get too far away for it to matter.”

She knelt to thrust the fuses into the flame, but Starcrest dropped down beside her and blocked the lantern with his hand.

“What?” she asked.

“Let me do it.” Starcrest opened his palm, asking for one of the blasting sticks.

“She can throw it that far,” Sicarius said, not understanding Starcrest’s objection, but sensing it might stem from a doubt in Amaranthe’s abilities. “And with accuracy.”

Starcrest’s smile held no joy. “That is not my concern.” He met Amaranthe’s eyes. “Enough blood stains your sword for this lifetime.”

In the second while she was puzzling this out, Starcrest took a blasting stick from her. Her eyes widened with understanding, but he’d already lit it, stood, and hurled it toward the tanks beside the building.

This time, the stick did not explode on impact. Unnoticed by those in the streets below, it skidded to a stop beneath the closest tank. Sicarius watched the fuse burn down, curious as to what the results would be. Nothing if the tanks were empty, though the shrapnel from the explosion might damage those near the intersection. If there was liquid inside, would getting “sticky” truly deter the makarovi?

A heartbeat before the stick blew up, his mind caught up with Starcrest’s, the estimates for a volume equation forming in his thoughts.

The tanks dampened the explosion, and Sicarius worried the force hadn’t been enough to damage the sturdy walls. But a resounding pop sounded over the fading boom from the blasting stick. Rivets shot in a hundred directions with the velocity—and destructive power—of bullets. Screams burst from the people crowding the intersection, and no less than two dozen fell to the ground, struck by the shrapnel. One of the makarovi was hit, and its roar turned to the squeal of a pig gone to slaughter. Those who died in the initial blast suffered the least.

In a chain reaction, both of the tanks were destroyed, their bellies ruptured. One was empty, but the other… was not. Molasses, brown and thick and almost as fast-flowing as water, gushed into the streets. Sicarius had never seen a tidal wave, but he imagined it must look like this: channeled by the surrounding buildings, the liquid rose ten feet high and bore down on the people in the street. Too fast to outrun, it swept over them, the force knocking them from their feet and pulling them under. Even the heavy makarovi couldn’t resist its power, and the beasts roared in terror as they were tugged into the deadly flow.

Like water, the molasses obeyed gravity and found the path of least resistance. It gushed down to the waterfront, then broke like a wave, its height diminishing as it flowed across the docks and into the lake. Sicarius stared down at the intersection and the streets leading up to it, at the swath of brown gunk left behind, and at the disappearance of the crowd. Oh, a few beslimed people lay unmoving in the streets, and a survivor clung to a lone standing lamppost—the others had been flattened and torn away. From the shouts within the warehouse, a few more had survived by being on an upper level when a gush had torn down the doors and broken the windows to sweep through the building. Those who hadn’t been swept away were hacking to rid their lungs of fluid and staggering away from the scene. A few cast stares of disbelief up at the warehouse roof, but most simply scurried into the shadows as fast as they could.

“Are they gone?” Amaranthe rasped, a hysteric edge to her voice.

Sicarius knew she meant the makarovi, not the people. She never would have, of her own volition, chosen to kill human beings, not even gang thugs who were trying to kill
her
.

“Guntar,” Starcrest called to a soldier on the far side of the roof, someone with a better view of the waterfront. “Makarovi?”

“Looks like they all drowned, sir. Lots of those gang brutes did too. We shouldn’t have any trouble getting out of here.”

“Understood,” Starcrest said. “Thank you.”

Amaranthe dropped her face into her hand. To cry? Sicarius couldn’t tell, but surely she deserved a release after all this. His own gaze lifted toward Arakan Hill. The flames had died down—or been put out—but the night sky didn’t hide the black plumes of smoke pouring from whatever remained of the Imperial Barracks. He wanted to race up there and find Sespian, but he wouldn’t leave until he knew Amaranthe would be all right. She was strong, but she’d been through so much, and Sicarius didn’t think she’d be able to let Starcrest accept the blame for the deaths her idea had wrought. She’d never failed to feel for those who had died at Sicarius’s hand, after all, not when he’d been in her employ.

“That was…” Akstyr was staring down at the carnage in the street. Sicarius expected him to say, “brilliant,” or, “the best revenge ever,” but he wiped his eyes instead and finished with, “not worth the price.” He walked over, sat beside Books’s body, and buried his face in his hands.

“If this is how it had to end anyway,” Amaranthe whispered, staring at the barren streets, “I wish I’d thought of it sooner.”

She lifted her head to find Sicarius’s face. Her eyes were like pools with rivulets escaping down her cheeks. Her hand twitched toward him, and his feet swallowed the three steps between them. He pulled her into a hug, wishing he’d thought to do so immediately, but she always tried so hard not to let her emotions or her… human fallibility show in front of the others. This time was different, he realized, and lifted his hand to the back of her head, letting her cry into his shoulder.

• • •

The enforcer wagon crawled up Arakan Hill, and trepidation tightened Sicarius’s fingers on the steering controls. Starcrest sat in the seat beside him, with his family, Amaranthe, Akstyr, Mancrest, and the soldiers in the back. Books’s body was back there too. Amaranthe and Akstyr had refused to leave it behind, and both had glared at Sicarius when he’d pointed out that nobody would take it.

As the Barracks walls came into view, with the heavy double doors charred and blown half off their hinges, Sicarius wondered how many people they’d be preparing a funeral pyre for. Not Sespian. Sespian had known the danger, known there might be more bombs. If he’d gotten himself killed…

A pair of enforcers standing outside the warped gates frowned at their approach. It was still a few hours until dawn, and Sicarius doubted they could tell who occupied the shadowy interior of the cab, but he watched their eyes—and their hands—nonetheless. A sergeant wearing the reds of the Imperial Fire Brigade jogged up to them, and Sicarius drove through into the courtyard without being stopped. With so many enforcer wagons and army lorries, one more shouldn’t seem strange. Besides, Sicarius thought, as the front of the Barracks came into view, what was left to protect?

Black bricks and charred wood lay all about the slushy courtyard, along with pieces of furniture, clothing, and a set of purple velvet draperies that were wrapped around the flagpole. The face of the building had been blown off; the remaining walls and floors, their edges crumbling, stood open to the elements, laid open like a giant diorama. Water dripped from it all, courtesy of the Imperial Fire Brigade’s hoses. With the fire quenched, they’d been turned off, but they still snaked across the ground to fire plugs in the corner of the courtyard, and steam still rose from the rubble crowding the base of the building.

Sicarius drove to one side, passing the vehicle house he’d taken a different vehicle from earlier. That vehicle remained on the street where they’d parked it; molasses had reached three feet up the side of it, leaving a sticky mess of the engine.

Though he remained alert for danger from the enforcers they passed, Sicarius searched the rubble for bodies and searched the courtyard for signs of Sespian.

“The back half of the building is relatively undamaged,” Starcrest observed.

Sicarius didn’t care about the building. Where was Sespian?

“I don’t see any bodies,” Starcrest added quietly.

A more useful observation. If Sicarius hadn’t been busy hunting for his son, he would have realized it too. Sespian—or someone—must have succeeded in evacuating the Barracks.

“Where is everybody?” Sicarius asked. He had rounded the back of the building and come out on the other side. He could almost see back to the courtyard gate, but he hadn’t spotted Sespian or anyone else on the team. Enforcers and Fire Brigade personnel roamed everywhere, taking notes, searching the inside of the building, and making inspections to figure out if the rest would collapse, but where was everyone
else
?

“Stop, and I’ll ask,” Starcrest said.

He climbed out gingerly, his bandaged arm cradled against his abdomen. In a hasty bit of field surgery that Starcrest had insisted upon, Komitopis had removed the musket ball from his shoulder while his daughter had filled the role of nurse. Their practiced professionalism—and the way Komitopis had shaken her head while glaring and
tsk-tsk
ing at her husband—had led Sicarius to believe it wasn’t the first musket ball they’d removed from Starcrest’s body.

“Root cellar,” Starcrest said when he climbed back into the cab. “It was undamaged, aside from the addition of a smelly makarovi den.” He raised his eyebrows, silently asking if Sicarius already knew about this and of the cellar’s location. When Sicarius nodded, Starcrest added, “It’s been claimed as the headquarters suite for now. Most of the troops and staff that were in the Barracks were evacuated to hotels in the area.”

Sicarius barely heard the addition. He would have simply run to the root cellar, but there was enough light in the courtyard that people would spot—and recognize him—so it was best to get closer using the vehicle. Besides, Amaranthe and the others would want to rush in to see the rest of the team too.

Four soldiers stood guard around the reinforced root cellar door. Sicarius stopped the vehicle.

“I’ll talk to them,” Starcrest said.

Not interested in waiting—or being the recipient of rifle fire when the soldiers figured out who he was—Sicarius slipped out of the cab and used the vehicle to cover his approach to the ragged hole in the lawn. He hopped into the tunnel, breathing the makarovi scent anew. It was almost better than the smoke that lingered in the courtyard, the smell of wet, charred wood dominating everything else.

Sicarius heard voices as soon as he landed, and he found himself sprinting up the slope and into the makarovi cage. Numerous lamps burned in the root cellar, and the number of bodies holed up inside made the room warm. Sespian, Yara, Maldynado, Basilard, and a handful of officers were standing around a food crate turned into a table. Their backs were to him. Another man lay bound and gagged in a corner by a box with air holes. Ravido.

Sicarius paused only long enough to make sure nobody with a pistol stood ready to shoot him, then slipped through the bars. “Sespian.”

A profound relief filled him when Sespian turned, his hair tousled and his uniform rumpled, but with no injuries marring his flesh. Before his rational mind caught up to his reflexes—his feelings—he’d grabbed Sespian and wrapped him in a hug.

Startled, Sespian leaned back, as if to pull away, but he decided to accept the embrace and offered an awkward back pat. It warmed Sicarius’s heart.

The door creaked open. “Fleet Admiral Starcrest and Corporal Lokdon here to see you, sir,” a soldier called.

“Thank you,” Sespian said. “Send them down.”

It wasn’t until footsteps sounded on the earthen stairs that Sicarius released Sespian and stepped back. A faint furrow creased Sespian’s brow.

“We saw your explosion from the waterfront,” Sicarius said, realizing the hug had been out of character and likely puzzled his son. “I did not know if you lived.”

“Ah,” Sespian said, nodding in understanding.

“What’s this?” Maldynado asked. “No hugs for us?” He smirked at Sicarius and opened his arms in an invitation.

Basilard’s eyebrows twitched up, and Yara stared at Maldynado as if he’d grown a new eye in the center of his forehead, right under that idiotic tentacle hat that he’d managed to retain throughout the night’s action.

Sicarius was almost tempted to take a step toward the man, to see what he’d do, but he must have taken too long to act, for Maldynado shrugged and faced the stairs, his arms still spread. “I know the boss will hug me!”

Amaranthe
was
on the steps, but she was coming down behind Starcrest, and he was the one to receive the enthusiastic smile.

The admiral raised his eyebrows at the proffered embrace. “Given my injury, I’ll pass.”

“Er, yes,” Maldynado said. “Quite right.”

Yara pulled him out of the way of the people coming down the stairs. “Are you always going to be a frivolous buffoon?”

“Of course. You wouldn’t want a serious old stick, would you?” Maldynado flicked a glance toward Sicarius.

Before the conversation could go further, and before Sicarius could decide if he wanted to rebut with anything more than an icy stare, an ear-splitting yowl made most people in the cellar wince.

Ravido, his ear inches from the box that housed whatever feline beast was emitting the noise, groaned through his gag. He tried to say something too. It sounded like, “Just kill me; it’d be less torture.”