The Assassin's Curse (4 page)

Amaranthe stared at him. That a dead Nurian
was somehow reaching out from the afterlife to affect Sicarius
seemed impossible. Though there were countless stories involving
ancestor spirits in the empire, she’d never seen anything to prove
that they truly existed. Of course, a year earlier, she hadn’t
believed magic existed either, but she’d seen ample examples of the
mental sciences in recent months.

“What does he want?” Amaranthe asked.

“For me to kill you.”

“Me?” she squeaked. She cleared her throat,
fighting for a calm voice, but she was all too conscious of the
fact that Sicarius still gripped her arms, and he continued to
breathe hard, as if he was fighting against something. Something
that was trying to compel him. “Why me? I’ve never even met—”

“You’re Turgonian.”

“So are you.”

“Yes,” Sicarius said, “and he already tried
to get me to commit suicide.”

Amaranthe swallowed. When had
that
happened? When Sicarius was up ahead? Or back on the beach when
they first came ashore?

“But you resisted,” she said.

“Yes.”

With more confidence than she felt, Amaranthe
patted him on the side and said, “You’ll resist killing me
too.”

For a moment, he didn’t move, didn’t breathe,
and, through his grip, Amaranthe could almost sense the loathing of
the dead sorcerer.

Then Sicarius released her. “Yes.”

The strain in his voice when he said that, as
if he were speaking through clenched teeth, worried her. Everything
here worried her, and she wondered if this good deed was worth it.
She also regretted wishing Sicarius was less infallible.
Resist
, she silently urged him.

“You should leave the island,” Amaranthe
said. “Get out of his range of power.”

“I won’t leave you here alone.”

“I can handle a couple of thieves on my own.”
Or so she hoped. If the Nurians had sneaked into a heavily guarded
army fort and stolen all that equipment, they certainly weren’t
neophytes. Amaranthe shifted, and her ankle twinged. She couldn’t
forget the roots, branches, and falling trees that seemed to want
her dead too.

“You’ll have to,” Sicarius said. “I already
tried to kill them, and he stopped me. He’s protecting his
countrymen.”

“Why’s he only attempting to manipulate you
and not me?” she asked. As far as she knew, no spirit was marauding
through her head, trying to convince her to kill herself.

“Perhaps he can only control one person at a
time.”

Sicarius left her side to jump on the back of
the machine crumpled against the boulder. He yanked his dagger free
with a grinding of metal. Amaranthe had seen his black blade in
action numerous times, and it did not surprise her that it could
pierce metal—it probably wouldn’t even be scratched.

Amaranthe picked up her crossbow and examined
it, careful not to brush against the poisoned quarrel. “Why would
he choose you over me? I haven’t had any training to resist magic,
so I’d be easier to control.” As soon as the words left her mouth,
she realized it might not be a good idea to announce such things to
the malevolent island. “No, he must realize you’re the better
tool.”

She dropped the crossbow. The firing
mechanism was broken.

“Do you have any poison left?” Sicarius
returned to her side. An owl hooted nearby.

“Yes,” Amaranthe said.

Sicarius pressed something cool into her
palm—the handle of his dagger. She stared at the dark blade.

“Apply poison to the tip,” he said. “If I...
bother you, use it.”

“Sicarius, this is ridiculous. Just swim back
to shore.”

“I’m not sure he’ll let me,” he said
softly.

“Try. You’re not getting yourself killed out
here, and you’re certainly not killing me. I’ll just go take a look
and see if there’s a way to talk these people out of leaving their
ill-gotten plunder behind, and then I’ll meet you back at that
dock.”

“Amaranthe...”

She planted her free hand on his chest. “Go,
I’ll be fine without you. Trust me, you’re the biggest threat to me
on this island.”

“Understood.” He turned his back and strode
away, disappearing into the night.

After a moment of consideration, Amaranthe
pulled her vial of poison from her ammo pouch and, by the light of
the burning wreckage, brushed some of the clear liquid onto
Sicarius’s blade. There was no way she would use it on him, but
maybe it would come in handy against the thieves.

With his dagger in hand, she picked her way
back to the path, but she stopped there. There was no campfire to
check. She and Sicarius had smelled the wood burning in the
machines’ furnaces. The thieves could be anywhere on the island.
Or
—her head jerked up—maybe they’d used the machines to
distract her while they gathered their gear and prepared to
leave
the island. Maybe they were circling back to the boat
to escape.

An owl hooted above Amaranthe’s head.

She jumped, then rolled her eyes at herself.
This place had her on edge.

“A good reason to finish up and get off it,”
she told herself.

Amaranthe hustled back down the trail toward
the beach. This time, she worried more about speed and less about
stealth.

As she was clambering over the fallen log,
the first human sound came to her ear. Voices.

She could not understand what they were
saying, but their voices were underlaid by urgency.

Amaranthe ran down the final fifty meters of
trail as quickly as she could without making too much noise. When
she reached the pebbles, she spotted the thieves. Too late.

They had already launched the boat and were
paddling out so they could swing around the island’s contours and
head for the river. Both were rowing with a huge bulky pile between
them, its contents shrouded with a tarp.

Amaranthe clenched her fist. If she hadn’t
broken her crossbow, she might have shot them. She could swim out
to them, but they’d see her coming and simply shoot her with those
prototype weapons. Even if she managed to hold her breath long
enough to swim under water to their position, what then? Would she
slither over the edge of the boat and try to cut their throats
before they noticed her? Sicarius could manage that, but she had no
idea as to the thieves’ degree of combat prowess. She was not sure
she could assassinate someone in cold blood anyway, even someone
stealing imperial secrets.

She couldn’t give up yet though. Amaranthe
ran along the beach, hugging the shadows of the tree line for
camouflage. Pebbles shifted beneath her feet, and she hoped the
lapping waves hid the noise.

An owl hooted from a nearby tree, not a
single call, but a string of insistent hoots. Amaranthe halted
midstep. The thieves lowered their voices and looked in her
direction. They shouldn’t be able to see her against the dark
backdrop of the trees, but having their eyes turned toward her made
her nervous. That owl couldn’t be calling attention to her on
purpose, could it?

It hooted again from a closer perch.
Amaranthe grabbed a pebble from the beach and flung it toward the
noise. She didn’t expect to hit anything, but maybe the projectile
would startle the owl to silence. It worked, for the moment. The
thieves’ voices remained low, though, and they increased their
rowing speed.

Amaranthe kept going too. Running was faster
than rowing, so she soon pulled ahead of the boat, but to what end,
she was not sure. Before long, she would run out of beach and
island, and the thieves would be free to float down the river.

Sweat dribbled from her temples, courtesy of
the humid evening. Her shirt, still damp from the previous swim,
clung her to back, and her trousers chaffed her legs. Think, girl,
she told herself. She needed to come up with a plan, not worry
about the heat.

Amaranthe still held Sicarius’s dagger. She
thought of him crunching through metal with it and glanced over her
shoulder toward the rowboat. Wood ought to be an easier barrier to
pierce. A simple hole in the bottom of that boat, and the thieves
wouldn’t make it more than a half a mile down the river before
their cargo sank.

Her route took her into darker shadows,
thanks to the peak of the island blocking the low moon, and she
made her decision. Staying low, she scrambled to the water’s edge
and removed her shoes and sword belt. Carrying only Sicarius’s
black blade, she slipped into the lake.

The boat would pass through the island’s
shadow, and they should have a hard time spotting her as long as
she stayed still and made no splashes. Or so she hoped.

Holding the dagger made swimming awkward, but
Amaranthe wasn’t about to clench it between her teeth, not with the
poison on the blade. The boat drew closer, and she sank low in the
water, letting only her nose and eyes stick out. Seaweed from the
bottom curled around her leg, and she shook herself free while
being careful not to break the surface or splash. Grimly, she
wondered how far from the island that spirit’s influence
extended.

Splashes and drips sounded as the boat
approached, its oars dipping and rising in sync. Amaranthe waited
until the thieves were twenty feet away. When she was about to
submerge to swim underwater to the boat’s hull, that cursed owl
hooted again. It flew overhead, a dark winged form gliding beneath
the stars. It had to be warning the Nurians.

Amaranthe took a breath and submerged anyway,
hoping the thieves could not understand the bird’s alert.

Darkness reigned below the surface, and she
couldn’t see her own hand in front of her face. Only sounds guided
her, the splash of the oars and scrapes as they bumped against the
hull.

She swam toward the noises, hands
outstretched. She needed to find the hull without bumping into the
oars—that would give everything away too soon.

More seaweed grasped at her ankles. Amaranthe
struggled for calm and tried to shake herself loose. When that
failed, she used the dagger to cut herself free. The stuff was
definitely trying to snare her. She had to keep moving. An image
flashed through her mind, slimy tentacles wrapping about her whole
body and pulling her to the bottom of the lake, never to let
go....

Her hand brushed something. Wood. Yes, there
was the hull.

Amaranthe found a grove and hung on as the
thieves rowed, with luck unaware that they carried extra cargo now.
Kicking softly, so they wouldn’t feel her weight dragging at the
boat, she placed the tip of Sicarius’s dagger against the hull
beneath the cargo. She pushed upward and wiggled the blade, trying
to poke a hole without making noise.

Though the dagger cut through the wood
easily, the going was slow and Amaranthe’s lungs were starting to
burn. She might have to risk swimming away, catching her breath,
and coming back to finish.

More seaweed curled about her ankle, and she
jerked her leg free. Her knee bumped the bottom of the boat. The
oars paused.

Amaranthe grew still and curled her legs
beneath her to make sure they would not stick out to the sides of
the boat. She doubted the thieves could see anything under the dark
water, but...

One of the oars started probing about. It
brushed her sleeve. Cursed ancestors.

Amaranthe jabbed the dagger into the bottom
of the boat. No more time for stealth and finesse. The black blade
bit through the wood as if it were soft cheese. She sawed a
fist-size hole.

An oar angled in again, this time clipping
her in the ribs. Her air escaped in a parade of bubbles. Another
oar from the other side of the boat hammered against her shoulder.
They weren’t probing any more but attacking.

Her hole would have to do. Using her feet,
she pushed off the bottom of the boat. Her trajectory took her more
downward than she would have liked, and tendrils of seaweed snaked
about her from all sides. One piece clamped about her ankle, and
another snatched her wrist.

Fighting against panic, Amaranthe slashed
with the dagger, keeping her cuts calm and precise. It was hard
when her lungs were crying out for air and more seaweed clawed at
her on all sides. She could see nothing in the dark water either,
so everything was by touch. She cut the tendril restraining her
wrist and twisted, lunging for the one at her ankle. A cold strand
of seaweed slid beneath her shirt. She bucked away from the slimy
intrusion.

A loud crack sounded overhead. A gunshot
being fired.

They might not be able to see her, but they
must be able to see evidence of her thrashing with the seaweed.

Amaranthe finally cut herself free and
stroked away without any elegance. If she’d had any breath left,
she would have gone dozens of meters before breaking the surface,
but she had to come up long before then.

The squabble with the seaweed left her
disoriented, and Amaranthe didn’t know where she was in relation to
the boat and the island. As soon as she lifted a hand to dash water
out of her eyes, something slammed into her from above.

The weight forced her several feet under, and
she fumbled Sicarius’s knife, almost losing it. An arm snaked
around her torso, a strong muscled arm. The male thief. He was in
the water with her, on top of her.

Metal scraped against her cheek. He had a
knife too.

Amaranthe ducked her head to protect her neck
and slashed her blade into the arm restraining her. A yelp of pain
sounded, the noise distorted by the water.

She twisted so she faced the man and stabbed
again, trying to find his torso in the darkness.

Something brushed her foot. The cursed
seaweed again. It probably wanted to hold her down so he could
stick her like a pincushion.

Amaranthe yanked her foot free, and kicked
hard with both legs, angling around the thief—or where she thought
he would be—thinking to take him by surprise. He might think she’d
flee and be chasing after her.