She considered the uniforms again. On some of them, the rank pins hadn’t been removed. She selected one that might do for someone around six feet tall and handed it to Yara with a smile.
“Congratulations on your promotion to-” she glanced at the brass swords on the collar, “-captain.”
“Are you insane?” Yara whispered. “Nobody’s going to believe we’re officers. Or men.” She waved toward Amaranthe’s chest.
“It’s cold outside. We can bundle up. We only need to pass scrutiny for a minute. I’ll think of something to distract them.”
“Why don’t I find that comforting?” Yara growled, but she snatched the uniform.
“I’m certain I don’t know.” Amaranthe gave a cheery wink and grabbed the shortest uniform on the wall.
“They’d be more likely to be distracted if we ran out naked,” Yara muttered, fiddling with buttons.
“We want to distract the soldiers, not Maldynado.”
“…look around, don’t you think?” someone asked from the front. “…was a shifty looking girl… stealing from you.”
Stealing?Shifty? Hmmph. Amaranthe tore off her distasteful dress, hid it in a waste bin, and pulled on the uniform trousers. She donned a white shirt, not bothering to button or tuck it in before throwing on the jacket. There wasn’t time to dally over the subtleties of the costume. All she could do was make sure the rank pins on the collars matched those on the hats she grabbed. She’d be the lieutenant to Yara’s captain. She hoped the men outside didn’t stop to wonder why an LT was doing all the talking, or to look too closely at the ill-fitting uniforms. Too bad it wasn’t dark out. That would have hidden a lot of discrepancies.
“What about boots?” Yara whispered.
Amaranthe didn’t see any lying around. The military cobbler’s shop was probably next door. “Just wear your own.”
“We’re going to be the most disheveled officers in the army.”
In the midst of pulling up a pair of suspenders, Amaranthe froze. The “something to distract them” she’d been trying to think up had popped into her mind. “Yes,” she said, smiling. “Yes, we will.”
Yara shook her head in an I-don’t-want-to-know manner and pointed at Amaranthe’s face. “You look too much like a girl.”
Yes, between Yara’s height, more angular features and her short hair, she’d have an easier time passing for a man at a glance, but Amaranthe…
She grabbed a pair of scissors and cut off a swath of hair on one of the wigs. She dug into a brown glass jar labeled wig glue and cobbled together the worst fake mustache anyone had ever seen.
“That is not going to fool anyone,” Yara said.
“Sure it will,” Amaranthe whispered as she glued hair to her upper lip, “because I’ll be standing behind you and staggering.”
“Staggering?”
“I’ll check in the back,” someone said from the other side of the curtain.
Their time was up. Amaranthe grabbed Yara’s elbow and propelled her toward the door. “We’ve just been mauled in a surprise attack, and we’re injured. Stagger!”
Yara growled again, but she shoved open the door and staggered appropriately. Amaranthe clutched her abdomen, hunched over, and tumbled outside and down the steps after her. She bumped into Yara’s back, adding realism-she hoped that was the right word for it-to the staggering.
“What-” one of the soldier’s near the stairs asked.
Fortunately, none of the guns swung toward Amaranthe and Yara, not yet anyway. Maldynado, still surrounded by soldiers, his shopping bags on the ground with their contents strewn about, stared at Amaranthe, but didn’t say anything.
“They’ve got General Marblecrest,” Amaranthe blurted, making her voice as deep as she could. “General Flintcrest’s men.” She flung her arm toward the door, even as she tumbled to her knees. “Hurry, the others are knocked out. Some slagging magic.”
Before she’d finished speaking, soldiers were charging for the stairs. Only a sergeant and private with their guns trained on Maldynado hesitated.
“But, sir, we’ve got a prisoner. It’s Lord Marblecrest’s little brother. He might be in on it!”
“I’ll watch him,” Yara said gruffly, doing her own male-voice impression as she reached for the soldier’s pistol.
The private started to hand it to her, but the sergeant was peering at Yara’s face. “Wait. Who are-”
With the sergeant’s attention on her, Maldynado launched a fist at his jaw. It connected with enough force to spin him about. Maldynado rammed his shoulder into the man’s back, sending him face-first into the side of the stone building. Before the private could react, Yara grabbed his pistol with one hand and slammed her heel into his nose with the other. He reeled back, and she thrust him into the other wall.
Confident her comrades could handle those two, Amaranthe sprinted past them, scooped the fallen clothing into the bag, and grabbed the handles. “We need to get out of here. If Ravido’s still inside, it’s only going to take them a second to-”
The back door of the uniform shop slammed open.
“Go, go,” Amaranthe barked.
Yara took off promptly, though Maldynado paused to snatch a bag that Amaranthe had missed. “Can’t forget this one.”
“There they are!” someone shouted from the doorway.
Amaranthe shoved Maldynado toward the nearest intersection and took off at a sprint. Yara reached the corner first and raced around it. A pistol fired, a ball blasted into the brick building, inches above her head. Shards of red dust flew everywhere.
Amaranthe took the corner so quickly she almost smashed into the far wall.
“Careful,” Maldynado warned from right behind her. “Those bags have already been-” another weapon boomed, though he’d already ducked around the corner, escaping the line of fire, “-manhandled enough by ill-mannered louts with no fashion sense.”
Amaranthe had no idea how he could spout all that while sprinting. She followed Yara, who was weaving into alleys at random in the maze between thoroughfares, content to let her lead until a sturdy drainpipe came into view ahead. Conscious of the shouts and boots pounding the cobblestones behind them, she surged forward, tapped Yara’s elbow, and mouthed, “Up.”
“Up?” Yara slowed, neck craned as she considered the flat roof four stories above them.
“Up,” Amaranthe confirmed, darting past her and shimmying up the drainpipe. The climb would take a moment, so there was no time to spare.
Maldynado leaped and caught the pipe several feet up, scurrying up as nimbly as a cat scaling a tree. “Like this, my lady.”
Yara hadn’t experienced Sicarius’s urban obstacle courses yet, but it didn’t seem she’d let Maldynado show her up. She clawed her way up after him.
Amaranthe reached the rooftop and pulled herself over, dropping into a low crouch to scan the area. Though she didn’t expect anyone to be up there waiting, Sicarius had, more times than she could count, drilled her to always be aware of her surroundings. Nobody was up there. She could, however, hear the soldiers racing down the alley perpendicular to the one she’d just left. If they rounded the corner before Yara and Maldynado reached the roof…
Maldynado popped over the side, spun about, flattened to his belly, and caught Yara’s hand as soon as it was close enough. He hauled her up and over the edge as the soldiers rounded the corner.
“This way,” Amaranthe whispered, then led them in the opposite direction from their pursuit.
She’d been across the rooftops in that section of the city before, often in the dark, and she chose a route where the jumps between buildings weren’t too far apart and the vertical rises and falls weren’t too challenging. More than once, Yara cursed, arms flailing as she struggled to keep up without losing her balance, but she stuck with them.