Akstyr shuffled up beside her. “I think it’s another soul construct.”
Amaranthe groaned, remembering the night she and Sicarius had spent hiding in a storage cubby in the icehouse. Even he’d feared to face that beast. In the end, they’d defeated it by tricking it into hurling itself into a pit and burying it beneath bricks and cement, topped off with a steam lorry.
“I don’t suppose there are any handy pits in the factory,” Amaranthe murmured.
“What do you mean?” Yara had joined them also.
“Nothing. Let’s hope it’s not looking for us.” Amaranthe thought of the assassin Sicarius had mentioned. “Maybe it’s here hunting Ravido.” She supposed it was uncharitable to be cheered by that thought.
“Why would it be here then?” Akstyr waved toward the snow-dusted waterfront, which was, at this time of night, devoid of people. Except for her team.
“Let’s just… make sure our guard stays near the door,” Amaranthe said, “and keep everyone else inside until dawn.”
“What about Sicarius and Basilard?” Yara asked.
Uneasiness settled into the pit of Amaranthe’s stomach. “What about them?”
“They left a little while ago.”
Amaranthe slumped. “I didn’t mean for them to go scouting tonight. I told Sicarius to get some rest.”
“I don’t think Sicarius sleeps,” Akstyr said. “He’s not very human.”
Amaranthe barely heard him. She was staring toward the black lake, a fingernail lifted to her teeth. Now she knew she wouldn’t sleep that night.
Chapter 6
An otherworldly soul-piercing howl drifted across the lake. Sicarius prodded Basilard’s arm, then jogged into the trees lining the frost-slick jogging path. He stopped beneath a stout cedar with branches that didn’t start until they were twenty feet up and put his back to the trunk. By unnoticed reflex, his dagger found its way into his hand. As he listened for further howls, he scanned the dark path in front of them, the patchy snow on the hills, and the mud-turned-to-ice training fields of Fort Urgot. A few early-rising soldiers on those fields stopped and turned toward the lake.
Basilard joined Sicarius in the shadow of the tree, a dagger in his hand as well. It was too dark to read hand signs, if he was making them, but the outline of the weapon stood out against the white ground beneath it.
“A soul construct.” Sicarius couldn’t be positive yet, but no natural animal had issued that keen. “If we cross its path, our weapons will be useless against it.” His black dagger might hurt it, but he wouldn’t bet on it.
Basilard pointed up the tree. That gesture Sicarius had no trouble seeing and interpreting in the darkness.
The howl came again, eerie and undulating as it wafted across the hills. It was vaguely wolf-like, but deeper, with a more resonating timbre, as if issued from a great barrel chest.
“Tree climbing may be premature,” Sicarius said. “I’d guess its origins at two miles away. Do you concur?” He rarely asked anyone for second opinions, but Basilard was a skilled woodsman with hunting skills as great as his own, perhaps greater when it came to tracking prey outside of an urban environment.
Basilard nodded, but also pointed at the Stumps waterfront, its lights visible across the lake. Yes, the source of the howls was prowling about in the direction they were traveling.
“If it is a soul construct, it may return to whence it came at dawn,” Sicarius said, though he and Basilard would cover those last two miles well before the winter sun crept over the horizon. They’d completed their scouting mission at Fort Urgot, so there was little reason to dawdle. “Come.”
Basilard gripped his arm and held up a palm. He stepped out of the shadows and exaggerated his hand signs so Sicarius could read them.
If we have no way to fight it, we should make sure we won’t cross its path. We could go back into the fields and circle into the city from the north. It would add a few miles, but- Basilard shrugged, — we travel greater distances in training each day.
Sicarius considered this piece of wisdom. Basilard was correct. A year ago, he would have nodded in agreement; no, he would have come to the same conclusion without being prompted. What had changed?
“Amaranthe and Sespian will want information about this new Nurian player.” For the first time, Sicarius noticed that he wasn’t calling her by last name any more when speaking to the others. He supposed there was little point in continuing to pretend he was keeping her at arm’s distance. “Whoever sent the wizard hunter may control the soul construct as well.”
A moment passed before Basilard signed, You want us to risk our lives to get a look at it?
“I’d prefer not to risk anything, but it might be possible to find its trail and follow it back to its master.” It occurred to Sicarius that he was using Amaranthe-like logic on Basilard, albeit without the smile or any of the charisma. She truly was having an effect on him. Why should he talk Basilard into risking his life? He’d been useful enough for splitting up the large task of scouting the entire fort, but this was different. “I will go the direct way back to the factory.” Sicarius pointed in the direction of the creature’s howl. “Go the safer way if you wish.”
He returned to the trail, taking up the soundless, tireless jog that he could maintain all night. A moment later, Basilard appeared at his side.
Huh. Sicarius truly hadn’t meant to talk Basilard into joining him. It seemed strange that he would stay out of loyalty or some notion of comradeship.
As if guessing his thoughts, or feeling the need to justify his presence, Basilard signed, Someone will need to tell Amaranthe what happened to you when your body is found mauled and half-eaten on the dock.
“Of course,” Sicarius said.
They continued their jog and, by unspoken agreement, stayed close to the trees. Images of past dealings with soul constructs came to Sicarius’s mind, most recently the blocky panther-like one that had chased him all over Larocka Myll’s mansion and the surrounding grounds. He’d barely stayed ahead of the preternatural predator, and if Amaranthe hadn’t come up with that scheme to bury it in cement, he would have died that night. There had been another instance where he’d dealt with a Nurian soul construct. A giant viper-like creature ritually raised from the sacrifices of a dozen villagers had been sent to chase him, to avenge the death of a great chief Raumesys had ordered assassinated. He hadn’t killed that soul construct, only evaded it long enough to catch a ship back to Turgonia. To this day, he wondered if it still prowled the Nurian continent, waiting for him should he ever step foot on the mainland again.
This one, Sicarius told himself, pushing aside the memories to focus on the present, probably wasn’t here for him. His senses nudged him, and he slowed down. They were nearing the north end of the docks, not far from that yacht club where the Forge woman was supposed to be staying. Coincidence?
Before they reached the first private docks, a faint crunch reached his ears. This time he stopped, easing to the side of the path, hugging the shadows provided by a snow-dusted evergreen bush.
Basilard stepped off the trail with him. You saw something.
The sky had lightened enough in the east that Sicarius could make out the hand signs more easily. He touched his ear in response. It had been a few minutes since they’d heard a howl, but that crunch-
He lifted his head. There it was again.
He pointed.
A creature four or five times the size of a lion hound-it must weight over six hundred pounds-padded out of an alley. Though there were no nearby lamps to illuminate it, Sicarius made out massive muscular limbs and the huge barrel chest he’d imagined when he first heard the howl. Like the panther-like construct they’d faced the year before, it lacked fur, having instead the bare, lumpy features of something sculpted from clay, if by a fat-fingered artisan. The fangs ringing the inside of its stout maw were too long to allow its jaw to close fully, but it probably didn’t matter; it could tear off a man’s limbs-or rip his heart from his chest-without closing its mouth. It didn’t need to eat meat, subsisting, if the stories were true, on less tangible fare. Human souls.