“ Er, what?” His smug tone vanished. “I mean, who told you about… what were you told?”
“ Akstyr said you used to be a male prostitute.”
“ Prostitute! I was an escort. I accompanied ladies and successful businesswomen to social events. That’s all.”
“ I see,” Evrial said. “And these social events never involved after-hours entertainment?”
“ Well, naturally, I’d escort women wherever they wished to go for the evening, but I didn’t get paid for events that happened, er, off-the-clock as it were. And I have standards. It wasn’t like I’d sleep with any old crone.”
“ Hm,” Evrial said, trying to decide if she should feel honored or not that she’d met his standards.
Her laconic answer must have made him nervous, for he fiddled with the controls for a moment, then said, “Let’s worry about what we’re going to do when we catch up to the steamboat, shall we? I’m skeptical that we’ll be able to sneak up behind it, toss a rope, and climb aboard without anybody noticing.”
Evrial hesitated to voice her next suggestion, but they’d already tormented a cleaning woman and stolen a boat. Did it truly matter if they added another entry to their list of crimes? “Most of the clothes I found were uniforms.”
“ Are you suggesting we impersonate enforcers?”
“ You object?” Evrial asked.
“ No, but I want to make it clear that your seal is stamped on this so I can righteously proclaim innocence later when I get blamed.”
“ I won’t try to shift blame onto you.”
“ You say that now, but in my experience, the woman never gets blamed. It’s always the poor sap standing nearby. Usually me.”
“ You must spend time with shifty women.” Evrial smiled, knowing he was talking about Amaranthe.
“ No argument there. Is there a hat in that cabinet? I don’t think my luxurious locks are regulation.”
Evrial snorted. “No, they’re not, but your hair is going to be the least of our concerns. How are we going to keep the enforcers we tangled with yesterday from recognizing us?”
“ Maybe we can avoid them?”
“ Or maybe they’ll be the first ones on deck to greet us,” Evrial said and sank back into her chair.
Full darkness had descended on the river by the time the steamboat came into sight. Evrial closed the furnace door and leaned the coal shovel against it. They wouldn’t need more fuel. Now, they’d need some luck.
“ It’s awfully bright over there,” Maldynado said from the pilot’s seat. “Did they always have all the running lights and lanterns lit at full strength?”
“ They probably did, and we just didn’t notice it from within.” Evrial silently admitted that the boat did seem brighter-and busier-than she remembered. Numerous white-uniformed officers and security guards occupied the decks along with several men in enforcer grays. She didn’t spot a single person in civilian clothing. “There are more enforcers on there than I realized.”
“ Or they picked up some in town. There’s no way we’re going to be able to sneak aboard.” Maldynado tapped his uniformed chest. “Let’s hope our ruse works.”
Evrial searched the cupboards until she found a spyglass. She scanned the steamboat decks. “Nobody’s looking this way. That’s surprising.”
“ We don’t have any lanterns lit. Unless they spot the smoke we’re venting, we should just look like a dark smudge on the water. Besides, we’re coming in from behind. The helmsman will be facing ahead.”
“ Every body is facing ahead,” Evrial said. “Except for a knot of people around… I think that’s the dining hall entrance.”
“ Maybe the troupe is performing again, and there’s not room for everyone inside.”
“ I don’t think so. The people outside the door are enforcers and security guards. There are a lot of big, alarmed gestures, and two men just jogged up with a bunch of crossbows. Someone’s running out of the room. He’s clutching a hand to his opposite arm.”
“ A bloody arm?” Maldynado asked.
“ I can’t tell, but that’d be my guess.”
“ Sounds like the work of the team.”
“ You don’t think they’re trapped in the dining hall, do you?” Evrial asked.
“ It’s hard to believe they’d let themselves be trapped. Unless…”
“ They’re guarding magical weapons?” Evrial suggested.
“ We better hurry up.” Maldynado urged their stolen boat to greater speed. “They may need help.”
“ Wait. There are a lot of people looking out across the bow. I can’t see anything through the boat. Can you veer to the side before taking us in?”
Maldynado muttered something about “delays” and “increasing the odds of being spotted” under his breath, but he angled their craft away from the main channel. Dark trees rose ahead of the steamboat, signifying a bend in the river. Maybe she wouldn’t spot anything. Evrial surveyed the water with the spyglass anyway.
A boat came into sight. The black vessel had a similar style as that of the enforcer craft, but it was much larger with two decks instead of one and with far more guns mounted along those decks. People in uniforms, not enforcer grays but military blacks, stood ready at those weapons. Evrial did a quick head count and doubled it, figuring some of the men rode inside.
“ Forty marines heading toward the steamboat,” she said.
“ Forty?”
A second military boat appeared around the bend.
“ Make that eighty,” Evrial said.
“ Emperor’s warts, this is going to be a bloodbath.” Maldynado pushed his hair back from his forehead, not noticing that he knocked off his enforcer cap.
“ For your friends?” Evrial thought of Sicarius’s deadly skills-and his unhesitating willingness to use them. “Or the marines?”
“ I don’t know. Both probably.”
CHAPTER 11
The cracks of breaking boards and the squeals of nails torn free from wood assaulted Amaranthe’s ears. She hunkered next to the hole the enforcers had cut, ready to defend the entrance, though she feared there’d soon be too many holes to guard. The enforcers-or maybe it was the marines-were tearing into the stage with crowbars and axes. Light flowed through numerous punctures. They must have guessed Amaranthe and Sicarius didn’t have crossbows or a way to shoot projectiles, for they hacked away with impunity.
Someone tapped Amaranthe on the shoulder. “I have an update,” Books said from the darkness behind her.
“ An update I’ll like or one I won’t?”
“ We’ve built a framework, mixed the cement, slathered it all around the rockets.”
Slathered didn’t sound as good as totally buried.
“ Enough, to smother the light and, I hope, add a layer of protection and make the weapons difficult to access in the future. But the cement won’t harden for…” Somewhere nearby, a board was torn free with a nerve-wrenching crack. “For more time than we have,” Books went on. “We did get a marine mix that’s capable of hardening underwater. I’m hoping that it’s set enough that even if we drop it…” Books might have shrugged, but Amaranthe couldn’t see the gesture in the gloom. “I’m also hoping that the impact of the weapons striking the bottom of the river won’t be hard enough to… I’m hoping for mud down there.”
That was a lot of hoping. What if all their effort resulted in them doing the very thing they’d been trying to stop others from doing? Detonating the weapons?
“ If not, better the poison is unleashed here, between towns, than in the capital,” Books said.
Better not to unleash it at all, Amaranthe wanted to cry, then grab his shirt and shake a better plan out of him. Stay calm, she thought, reminding herself that she was in charge and people in charge weren’t supposed to lose their minds.
“ Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” she said. “I’ll… think of something.” Right. Sure, she would. No problem.
“ Oh?” Books sounded encouraged. At least one of them was. “We’re heating up the blow lamp to cut a hole in the hull.”
“ Good. Tell Sicarius. We’ll-”
Someone thrust a smoke bomb through a newly opened gap, and an acrid scent flooded the tight space. Cursing, Amaranthe yanked her shirt over her nose and crawled toward it. She intended to grab it and throw it back out, but she paused. It was a sphere, rather than the cylindrical cans the enforcers had been tossing in earlier. New weapons the marines had brought?