As soon as the man disappeared into the water closet, Amaranthe checked both sides of the long press. Nobody else was in sight.
Stay here, she signed, figuring she’d have an easier time crawling under a machine or slipping into a nook than Maldynado.
He propped his fists on his hips.
Amaranthe slipped out before he could argue. She wanted to see what their roll of paper was being turned into on the other end of the press and didn’t know how much time she’d have before the man returned. Automatic cutters rasped on the next machine over, but she found the uncut sheets and, with her back to the wall, stopped to read. Light from a floor lamp illuminated the text, an unfamiliar one-column layout.
“These aren’t newspapers,” she whispered after she’d read a few lines. “They’re pamphlets.” She skimmed further, her gaze sliding over lines like, “…an end to dangerous progressive policies,” and “deportation of foreign plunderers.” “Propaganda pamphlets,” she murmured.
Figuring the soldier would return soon, she jogged back toward the rear of the press. She’d like to have one of the pamphlets to take back to Books, but tearing one off from the uncut sheets wouldn’t be terribly subtle. Maybe she could sneak around the cutting machine and grab one of the-
Amaranthe halted. Maldynado was gone.
Back out to the loading dock? Or out into the pressroom?
The water closet door opened, and she shifted into the shadows without getting a chance to search. The man returned to the front of the press and resumed his job at the paper cutter.
Amaranthe drummed her fingers on her thigh. Search further into the pressroom or slip back outside? She hadn’t felt a cold draft that would have signified the outer door opening. Using the press to hide her advance, she crept farther into the room. A soldier with a box walked past the front end of the machine. She hid in the shadows of the machinery, halting all movement. He said something to the man working the cutter, but the clanking machinery drowned out the words. Someone else called a question from the other side of the room, then a third man walked past with an empty box, heading for the freshly cut pamphlets.
There were too many men around. This hadn’t been a good idea. It’d be best to find Mancrest at his tenement building, then, if they couldn’t get the truth out of him, return to the Gazette at a later hour.
She’d barely finished the thought when she spotted Maldynado. He had indeed gone farther into the room. He’d used a support column to hide his back-most of it-and had climbed up an inactive press to peer over the other side, toward the desk-filled front of the building.
Amaranthe let her head clunk back against the machine behind her. Though he wasn’t near any lamps, he wasn’t that well hidden. Any of those soldiers strolling about, filling boxes, might spot him when they walked past. Emperor’s teeth, she wasn’t well hidden either. She wanted to get his attention, to sign to him-what was he looking at that was worth risking discovery for? — but his back was to her.
She dropped to hands and knees to get close to him without being seen, and advanced into the room, peering through the legs of the press as she went. The man at the paper cutter had his back to her. The two with the boxes did too, for the moment. She rose to a crouch and slunk toward Maldynado’s column.
She almost made it, but the draft she’d been thinking of earlier came, a cold blast from the rear. One soldier held the door open while a second pushed a wheelbarrow full of coal inside. Turning her slink into a sprint so she could escape the influence of the lamps, she darted around the column.
The man with the wheelbarrow had been facing in Maldynado’s direction as he entered, and he squinted into the gloom.
Maldynado raised his eyebrows at Amaranthe’s appearance and pointed to whatever he was looking at over the press. She was too short to see it, and there was no time to climb up the column. The soldiers at the door had abandoned their wheelbarrow and were walking her way, their hands resting on weapons, one a short sword and the other a pistol.
Maldynado leaped from his spot, sliding out his rapier before he landed, and he charged the pair. Amaranthe didn’t know whether he assumed he could handle two trained soldiers on his own, or if he meant to distract them so she could sneak up on them from behind, but as soon as they were focused on him she sprinted from hiding too. She circled wide to stay out of their peripheral vision if possible. The one with the sword had swept his blade out to square off with Maldynado, and the man with the pistol was skittering back, lifting his arm and lining up a shot. Amaranthe didn’t want either gunshots or sword clashes ringing out, or the rest of the soldiers in the building would descend on them in heartbeats.
Maldynado feinted a few times, deliberately not touching steel to steel, but maneuvering to put his opponent in his comrade’s line of fire. He seemed to know what Amaranthe had in mind.
Yanking out her dagger, she ran up behind the pistol wielder, trusting the noisy machines to bury the sounds of her footfalls. She flipped the weapon and smashed the hilt into the back of his head. Taking advantage of his moment of surprise, she kicked at the inside of his knee, then darted about to wrest the pistol from his grasp. He recovered and spun toward her, tearing a dagger from a belt sheath, but she thrust the firearm into his face.
“Drop it,” she mouthed.
He blinked in surprise a few times, taking in that she was a woman, perhaps taking in that her face adorned wanted posters around the capital. The dagger clattered to the floor. He almost threw it-hoping the weapon would make noise and alert his comrades? Thus far, the fight had taken place behind the press, the bulky machine hiding them from the views of the other men, but that luck couldn’t hold for long.
Maldynado stood a couple of paces away, near the wall, his rapier sheathed and the newly acquired short sword in his hand. He yawned, standing casually with his elbow on his opponent’s shoulder, the blade resting across his neck.
“Who left the slagging door open?” someone called from the other side of the press.
The wheelbarrow stood on the threshold, propping open the door and letting frosty air inside.
“Let’s get out of here,” Amaranthe mouthed, unable to make hand signs while holding the pistol, and jerked her head toward the exit.
Maldynado tilted his own head toward his prisoner, silently asking what they were going to do with their captives.
“Take them for now.”
Amaranthe twirled a finger, indicating her prisoner should spin and start walking for the door. He glowered at her and eyed the pistol, perhaps wondering if a woman would fire, but he decided in favor of acquiescence, at least for now.
Before Amaranthe, Maldynado, and their prisoners had taken more than two steps toward the door, another soldier stomped into view, this one rounding the paper roll by the wall. Amaranthe and Maldynado flattened themselves to the side of the press, yanking their prisoners with them. She kept the pistol pressed to her man’s ribs to ensure silence.
The soldier pulled the wheelbarrow inside, then stuck his head outside. “Evik, Rudev, what are you doing out there?”
Amaranthe’s man inhaled and tensed, as if to shout and try to escape. She stood on tiptoes to clasp her hand across his mouth as she dug the pistol in deeper. “Nobody will hear the shot over the sound of the presses,” she growled in his ear. A lie, of course, but maybe it would give him something to think about for a few seconds. In that time, the fellow at the door stepped outside. He waved to someone, and lights flashed out there before the door closed, blocking the view. Another lorry driving up?