Maldynado’s step faltered and Basilard, swinging into the cabin after him, had to skitter to the side to avoid crashing into him. For a moment, Maldynado looked like a bumbling private caught at the end of an enemy cannon, or at least like someone who’s secret was out, but he recovered and shrugged.
“Technically, I’m not, Sire,” Maldynado said. “I’m disowned. Disappointed the old man one too many times, as it were.”
I can’t imagine why, Basilard signed.
The cab grew crowded with everyone inside, and when Maldynado lifted an arm to say, “You wound me, Bas,” he clunked Yara in the head with his elbow.
“I told you not to touch me, you ungainly goon,” Yara said.
Maldynado bowed deeply, this time bumping Basilard. “My apologies, my lady. Perhaps you’d like me to drive while you stand in a place less likely to be disturbed by human activity?”
Amaranthe opened her mouth to say less yammering and more focusing on the problem would be good, but Sicarius acted first. He spun away from the furnace and hurled his favorite dagger at the floor. Instead of bouncing off, the black blade sank an inch into the textured metal. Even though she’d been watching him, Amaranthe jumped in surprise. She started to ask what he was about, but Sicarius pointed at the quivering dagger hilt.
“Unless I miss my guess, that is the technology we’re dealing with up there.”
Chapter 17
“If we don’t avoid detection, we will die shortly,” Sicarius said, his knife still quivering where it had stuck in the metal floor.
It took a moment for people to pull their eyes away from the dagger, especially Yara, who hadn’t seen the weapon before.
“Yara,” Amaranthe said quietly, “push the train to full speed, please.”
Yara tore her gaze from the knife. “Understood.”
“As soon as we enter the tunnel, start braking,” Sicarius told her. “We need to stop before we come out on the other side.”
Yara nodded once.
Sicarius yanked his dagger out of the floor, sheathed it, and returned to shoveling. Heat poured from the furnace, and a vortex of red and orange flames writhed inside. The needle on the gauge that marked miles per hour crept toward the maximum line. Without the dozens of heavy cars behind it, the engine needn’t work as hard as usual, but they were climbing a steep slope, and the locomotive trembled as it picked up speed. Vibrations thrummed through Amaranthe, rattling her teeth in her skull. She tried not to think about curves in the tracks that they’d encounter as they ascended into the mountains, curves that were not safe to go around above certain speeds.
Basilard gathered the firearms left in the cabin from the soldiers and hopped onto the coal box. He started checking and loading everything. If that craft was made from a material similar to Sicarius’s dagger, Amaranthe couldn’t imagine what a black-powder weapon could do to damage it. Maldynado was standing next to her, and she gave him a bleak look.
“My plan’s starting to sound better now, isn’t it?” he asked.
Amaranthe might have laughed, but she didn’t want to draw Sicarius’s ire. She simply said, “What if it’s a man?”
“A what?”
“A man in charge of the enemy craft,” Amaranthe said. “Would you still be willing to seduce him so the team could escape?”
“I… uhm.”
“Just wondering how far into the realm of self-sacrifice you’d be willing to travel to help your comrades.”
Maldynado propped his hands on his hips and gazed out one of the front windows. “Is it a pretty, young man, or an ugly old curmudgeon?”
Basilard’s eyebrows arched, and Yara looked over her shoulder at Maldynado.
“What?” he asked.
Amaranthe decided to join Sicarius at the furnace before he started throwing knives around again to silence the conversation. His grimness worried her, and she wished she’d tried harder in the past to pry out the story of where he’d gotten that dagger.
Sicarius lifted his foot from the pedal, letting the furnace door swing closed. He gripped the shovel and watched the tracks ahead. The snow was picking up outside, cutting down on the visibility, but Amaranthe spotted a hint of red light in the distance. That search beam.
“I’d have more ideas if I knew more about what this is,” she said.
“I have no facts, only conjecture,” Sicarius said.
“That’s more than the rest of us have.”
The train headed around a slight curve, and Amaranthe had to grab the wall to brace herself. The floor quaked beneath them. The needle on the speed gauge had passed the last line and was pressing against the rim.
When the tracks straightened out again, Sicarius pointed through the snow. “There.”
In the distance, a towering cliff rose with a dark tunnel entrance in the center of it.
“We’re going to make it,” Amaranthe said, “and then you can take the time to enlighten us while we’re hiding in the dark.”
The domed top of the black craft came into sight above the cliff.
“Or not,” she murmured.
The craft was still a ways from reaching the edge of the cliff, and its beam swept back and forth over the rocky hillside above the tunnel, but it was covering ground rapidly. Amaranthe remembered math problems from school where she’d had to calculate when the paths of two trains coming from opposite directions would cross. She chose not to attempt such a calculation now. It was going to be close, and she didn’t want to know if they’d be on the wrong side of that closeness.
“What’s the worst thing that can happen if they spot us?” Amaranthe’s voice vibrated with the trembling of the locomotive.
Sicarius shook his head once, then pinned Sespian and Yara with his stare. “Increase speed.”
“If we go any faster, the train will fly apart,” Sespian said.
“Let it,” Sicarius barked.
As the train closed on the tunnel, the cliff seemed to grow larger, filling the sky, and the black craft disappeared from view. It hadn’t gone anywhere though, and Amaranthe could see it in her mind, drawing ever closer.
“Can that beam do more than light up the scenery?” she asked.
Sicarius didn’t answer.
“Even if it’s just to tell me that you don’t know, or that my questions are annoying, some kind of response would be appreciated,” Amaranthe whispered to him.
Sicarius met her eyes, his gaze considering, and he opened his mouth to say something, but a loud clank came from the engine. Resounding thunks followed as something dropped off the bottom, banged against the wheels on its way by, then flew out onto the tracks behind them.
Maldynado stuck his head outside, watching behind them. “I hope that wasn’t an important part.”
“A few more seconds, and we’ll be in the tunnel,” Yara said.
An ominous shadow fell across the train. The snow stopped abruptly. No, it hadn’t stopped; it was being blocked.
Amaranthe grabbed the side of the doorway and stuck her head outside. The sky was gone. She couldn’t see anything above the trees except the flat black bottom of the craft. There was nothing to look at except that blackness, no protrusions, no color, no etching or detail. Under daylight it might be different, but now Amaranthe had the impression of the same inky alloy as that of Sicarius’s dagger.
The train sped into the tunnel before the red of the searchlight crossed over the edge of cliff. Safe, Amaranthe thought. Maybe. When she glanced back, she saw a scarlet curtain fall across the tunnel entrance. It must have covered a quarter mile swath of snowy forest. More, the light caught the back half of the coal car before the train was swallowed by darkness.
“Full stop,” Sicarius said.
Yara pulled gradually on the brake lever. Sicarius pushed her out of the way, grabbed the lever, and threw his weight backward.
Brakes screeched. In the confining tunnel, the noise blasted at Amaranthe’s eardrums. She was too busy being hurled forward to notice for long. Someone slammed into her back. With her cheek already flattened against the window, she was in no position to complain.