“Where did you get this vessel?” Amaranthe asked. She wanted to ask about everything that had happened since she’d last seen Retta and, oh, how do you go about blowing up the Behemoth too, thank you very much, but the guards might find those questions a tad suspicious.
The frown Retta gave her suggested she’d said something wrong anyway. “This is one of the ones you purchased on the Kyatt Islands.”
Oops. “Oh, is it? I handled all of the paperwork in town and didn’t get a full tour of the crafts.” There, that sounded plausible, didn’t it? How much information could the guards have been given anyway?
Retta nodded slightly. Right answer.
“They’re more Turgonian than I’d realized.” Amaranthe probably ought to keep her mouth shut for the rest of the trip, but she didn’t know if she’d get a chance to be alone with Retta in the Behemoth either. The Forge women hadn’t seemed to trust her fully-maybe they knew Retta had helped Amaranthe escape back down south. These guards might be permanent attachments to her ore cart.
“It’s to be expected, since all of the submarines in the world today-and, as you know, there aren’t many-are based on Admiral Starcrest’s designs.”
That “as you know” made Amaranthe pause. Suan had probably been the one trotting around the world, shopping for Forge’s imports. A warning not to ask for more details on this subject? Probably.
“I can’t believe he’s still alive,” one of the guards whispered in an awe-struck tone.
Thus far, both of the men had been too busy looming menacingly to speak, and this declaration surprised Amaranthe. The guard, previously the image of gruff professionalism, sounded like a wistful youth, lamenting that he’d never met the admiral. Not all that surprising, she supposed. Even Sicarius, who respected few people, could quote Starcrest’s books on military strategies and tactics and had admitted to reading a few of the “based on real events” but largely fictional Starcrest novels as a boy.
“What’s he like?” the guard asked Amaranthe.
“Er?”
“Didn’t you meet him when you were on the Kyatt Islands?”
“No, I understand he’s very busy with…” Work? Family? Nude sunbathing on the beach? How was Amaranthe supposed to know? Along with most of the rest of the populace, she’d thought he was dead until recently. That’d always been the official Turgonian statement, that he’d been killed in the Western Sea Conflict more than twenty years earlier. Unlike Sicarius, and apparently every other male in the empire, she’d never studied the man’s work either; she’d gone to business school, not a military academy, after all.
“He’s quite devoted to his family,” Retta said. “That’s kept him busy, and he’s taken on a number of subaquatic engineering projects for the Polytechnic’s research division, to help further underwater exploration around the islands and abroad. Now that the children are older, I understand he and his wife have been off-island, investigating ancient ruins and mysteries.”
The wife, that was the linguistics specialist Sicarius had met in those tunnels, wasn’t it? The one who’d originally decoded the language of the Behemoth. Amaranthe hoped she wasn’t involved with Forge in any way, but hadn’t Retta said she’d learned the language on the Kyatt Islands? What if Forge had the wife-and maybe Starcrest too-tucked into a back pocket?
“That must be why you didn’t meet them when you were there,” Retta finished, her eyebrow twitching ever so slightly.
She thought Amaranthe should shut her mouth and stop chancing discovery, too, but maybe it was better to learn this information here, in front of guards who couldn’t be fully knowledgeable about who and what “Suan” was supposed to mean to the Forge organization, rather than later when talking to some high-up official.
“Yes, that sounds right.” Amaranthe gave Retta an eyebrow twitch of her own, wishing she could mentally convey the suggestion that this would be a good place to relay information in some oblique manner that the guards wouldn’t see through. Too bad Retta wasn’t a true telepath. As far as Amaranthe knew, it had only been some Made tool that had allowed their minds to link and share memories.
“It’s fortunate that you were able to get a hold of so many of their submarines,” Retta said. Maybe she read minds after all, or could decipher twitchy eyebrows. “Though Admiral Starcrest gave out the plans to his original submarine to all the major governments in the world, no one has yet melded Turgonian metallurgy and engineering technology with practitioner-crafted power supplies the way the Kyattese have.”
The guards shifted at this mention of practitioners. Amaranthe wondered what she’d see if she opened the hatch in the back. Some flashing ball floating in the air, thrumming with energy? The submarine had leveled off and Retta was steering it along the lake bottom. The Behemoth should be in sight soon. If the guards had been down here before, they must have seen it, at least on the outside, and have some idea of what it might do. Maybe the idea of advanced ancient technology alarmed them less than that of magic-slinging contemporaries.
“I had to work hard to make that deal,” Amaranthe said, hoping for more details. Anything she could learn about Suan’s background could only help.
“Oh, yes, I’m sure it was quite difficult finding the right person to bribe in the Kyattese government,” Retta said, “especially with all that Forge money to throw about.”
Amaranthe was trying to decide whether to respond to that-it sounded like a comment directed at the real Suan, rather than her-when a thump came from the rear of the craft.
“What was that?” one of the guards blurted.
“Did something hit us?” the second asked.
“I don’t think so.” Retta considered the gauges, then peered through the viewing window.
Nothing except seaweed and silt-covered rock lay within the light’s influence, though Amaranthe had the impression of a presence ahead of them, something denser and blacker than the deep dark water around it.
“It came from inside,” the first guard, the one who’d spoken of Admiral Starcrest, said.
“What if something broke?” The second man shifted uneasily, his fingers tightening on the back of Amaranthe’s chair. “I heard… They said if a tank or a seam or something ruptures, the boat could implode, and we’d all die horribly.”
A second thump came, identical to the first.
“I’ll check on it,” Retta said.
She rose halfway out of her chair, but Amaranthe stopped her with a hand to the arm. “We’re getting close to our destination, aren’t we?” she asked, hoping nobody would remember that she wasn’t supposed to know anything about their destination. “I think you should stay in the pilot’s chair.” She tried to give Retta a significant look. She had a hunch about those noises back there.
Retta glanced out the viewing area again. “You’re right. I can see the Ortarh Ortak now.” She eased back into the seat. “Valter, will you check please?”
“I don’t know anything about these boats,” the second guard said, his fingers like talons where they gripped the chair. “Something could be broken, and I’d never know it.”
“Just open the hatch and describe what you see.” Retta flicked a couple of controls. The black shape ahead was growing more pronounced, something that spread for hundreds of meters in either direction. Amaranthe hadn’t been imagining it; they were approaching the Behemoth. She surreptitiously wiped a palm on her dress.
“I’ll go,” the Starcrest enthusiast said when his comrade didn’t move.
The other guard, Valter, was dealing with sweaty palms of his own as he stared at the seams of the hull, the whites of his eyes visible all the way around the irises. It seemed unsporting to attack such a man, but if Amaranthe’s guess about those thumps was right, she wouldn’t hesitate.