Unlike Hollowcrest’s suite, these rooms had seen recent occupation. Though Sicarius didn’t spot anyone at the moment, the lamps burned, a fire crackled in the hearth, and the sheets and furs on the bed had been turned down. In addition to the Nurian smoke, he smelled the leather of bookbindings, the tang of weapons cleaning oil, and the potato-based starch officers employed for pressing their uniforms.
Sicarius remained motionless, waiting for Ravido to come in and listening for the breaths of someone who might already be hiding in the suite. Nothing stirred. The fire in the hearth burned down.
He would need to return to the others soon. It would not prove propitious if they grew restless and started wandering the Barracks on their own.
A series of resounding clangs thundered through the building, echoing through the ducts with the force of a great bell’s reverberations. Sicarius recognized the cacophony instantly. The Imperial Barracks alarm.
Doors banged and shouts echoed in the hallway. The team must have been discovered, or perhaps security had stumbled upon evidence of the other intruder’s presence. Either scenario would be problematic.
Sicarius backed away from the vent opening, intending to return to Hollowcrest’s chambers, but a figure sprinted through the doorway, veering straight for him. He had a glimpse of black clothing, a dark topknot of hair, a dagger clenched in hand, and a silver medallion on a leather thong flapping against the man’s chest. Then the figure was diving into the vent, and Sicarius had no more time for observation, no time for thought; he could only react with instincts honed since birth.
His black dagger had already found its way into his hand. Like a viper waiting in a rocky hollow, he waited until his prey was least prepared. The man had thrust himself halfway into the duct and was turning on his side to yank his legs in when Sicarius attacked. Though his target’s body blocked all the light, he saw with his other senses, his instincts. The man didn’t know he was there until the dagger dipped into his throat. Metal clattered on the porcelain duct tiles-the assassin’s own blade dropping.
Throughout the building, the alarm bells continued to clang. Knowing the imperial suite would be searched soon, Sicarius left the dead man’s legs dangling out of the duct. Finding the intruder wouldn’t delay security for long-they’d assume he had a partner who’d betrayed him and was still in the Barracks-but they’d have to pause to investigate. He hoped that’d give Sespian and the others time to escape without being noticed. Ideally, they weren’t waiting for him and had already left.
He backed to the first intersection, using the extra space to turn around, and glided back through the ducts to Hollowcrest’s office. The room was dark, though the scent of a recently snuffed wick lingered in the room.
Shouts and heavy footfalls pummeled the hallway outside of Hollowcrest’s suite. Inside, it was silent, but Sicarius sensed he was not alone.
Starlight filtered in through a window in the sitting room outside of the office. Still poised by the vent, he picked out a dark figure in the room at the same time as a whiff of Akstyr’s hair concoction reached his nose.
“There was an istapa,” Sicarius said, using the Nurian term for those assassins trained not only to fight but to resist mental attacks from practitioners.
Akstyr twitched. “A wizard hunter? Really?”
“Yes.”
“He got away?”
“No.”
“Oh.” Akstyr sounded disappointed, though less for the loss of the man’s life than for the fact that he’d missed meeting a wizard hunter.
“The others have gone ahead?” Sicarius asked.
“Yup, back to the furnace room. I stayed behind to warn you. There’s a practitioner, the one who installed the wards, I bet.”
“He’s here,” Sicarius said, guessing the reason for the alarm. If the practitioner lived in the Barracks, he would have sensed that one of his wards was no longer working. The disarming of one might not have alerted him as dramatically as one being tripped, but if he did a nightly check…
“She, I think,” Akstyr said.
“We’ll seek to avoid her then. Come.”
Akstyr clambered into the duct after Sicarius. “If she’s checking where that one ward was, we’ll go right by her.”
“There are other ways out. Alert me if you sense a freshly laid trap.”
Akstyr grumbled under his breath, but the continuing alarm clamor drowned out the words.
Long ago, Sicarius had trained with a Nurian wizard hunter, one of Hollowcrest’s carefully selected tutors. He had never expected to see another one in the Imperial Barracks. Was his original theory correct? That the man had been an assassin sent to kill Ravido? And if so, why? If Nurians were here, did they simply want to create chaos, more than there already was, or did they have a different candidate they intended to back, another puppet, this one loyal to Nuria instead of Forge?
Either way, Amaranthe would want this information. It would add further complications to her plans, plans she’d not fully revealed to him yet, a fact that concerned him. She’d used him often as a confidant in the last year, and the only reason he could see her withholding information was because she knew he wouldn’t approve of what she had in mind.
“Hst,” Akstyr said, the sound somewhere between a grunt and a warning.
Sicarius halted. They’d dropped down to the subterranean level, and the intervening tons of rock were muting the alarm clangs. “Problem?”
“I’m not sure. I thought I felt… I don’t know. Something like power being unleashed. It’s gone now.”
“Understood.”
Sicarius hastened forward, winding through the wider ducks of this level, and heading toward the furnace room from whence they originated. A string of pain-filled curses came from somewhere ahead. Books?
Sicarius turned the last corner. Hot air blown from the furnace pushed against him. Light flowed through an access panel in the ductwork, one they’d removed earlier. Earlier, the furnace room hadn’t been illuminated. Now, orange and yellow firelight flickered beyond the open panel.
Though Books clearly sounded distressed, Sicarius didn’t rush his approach. He wanted to assess the situation before bursting into it. He listened as he continued forward at his same steady pace. Metal clacked twice-a dagger hitting a wall, then dropping to the floor. Boots stomped about, more than one set.
Sicarius drew his own dagger, using his ears to pinpoint the likely location of the nearest attacker.
“Look out!” Sespian barked as Sicarius flowed out of the duct.
The warning almost made him pause, for he thought it was meant for him, but he went with his instincts, hurling his dagger before visually taking in the scene. He trusted his senses.
His black blade whistled through the air and smashed into the chest of a black-haired woman. Instead of piercing flesh and organs, it ricocheted off with a twang and landed on the floor.
“She’s a wizard!” Books blurted from where he hid behind the furnace, flapping his jacket to put out flames crawling up his sleeve.
Sicarius was too busy racing across the room to respond to the obvious comment. He took in the winking light of a square box hanging from the woman’s belt. It must indicate an armor tool similar to the ones he’d encountered earlier in the year, amongst the practitioners in the underwater laboratory. This woman appeared Turgonian, though. Odd.
The thoughts in his head did not slow the pace of his legs. The woman saw him coming and spread an arm toward him, fingers stretched outward. A hint of concern widened her eyes, but he wouldn’t bet on it being enough to disrupt her conjuring. Anticipating an attack-similarly to a warrior about to strike a blow, wizards tended to tightened their diaphragms, exhaling as they released their mental energy-Sicarius threw himself into a roll.