Amaranthe? Deret prompted. Shall I take her somewhere?
Let her go, Amaranthe thought. They didn’t need her now. But Suan knew where their hideout was. Of course it wouldn’t be a hideout much longer, not with five hundred men going in and out of the area.
“Leave her,” she said quietly. “I’ll explain her to the soldiers if they ask. She’s a Forge founder. Questioning her could be valuable.”
“Questioning, how? With the use of your-” Deret must have remembered they were being observed for he lowered his voice to finish, “-assassin?”
Amaranthe could only imagine how bleak her expression was when she said, “I don’t think he’ll be questioning anybody any time soon.” Her voice cracked on the last word. She needed rest, a break, something. You need to have not survived when half of your team is dead, the voice in her head whispered. No, she didn’t know for sure that they’d been in the fort when the Behemoth had crashed. Maybe they’d been out fighting on the field, or infiltrating the enemy camp, or… She rubbed her face. Did it matter, given how many soldiers had died? Not everybody could have escaped.
“Amaranthe,” Deret prodded.
“I don’t know. I’ll figure it out later.”
“You should talk to her. She’s not a raving sycophant. She’s intelligent and seems reasonable.”
Because she wants to get you to let her go, Amaranthe thought. “Good,” she said aloud. “But tonight I need to be… left alone.” She walked toward the door, not caring whether the colonel tried to stop her or not. She avoided Starcrest’s eyes, everyone’s eyes.
No one stepped into her path. She made it inside and stumbled up the stairs to her office. Once the army moved in, she probably wouldn’t be able to keep it. Would her people be allowed to join in with whatever planning Starcrest started? Did she care at this point?
Amaranthe dropped onto her blankets, lamenting the cold seeping up through the floor, and flung her arm over her eyes.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d gotten more than a couple of hours of sleep-wait, yes, she did… with Sicarius keeping watch from her blankets. But tonight, as weary as she was, it eluded her. There was too much noise in the factory. Barked orders, hundreds of boots thudding on the floors and catwalks, the thumps, clanks, and grunts of people settling in… Then conversations started up in the office next to hers.
She ignored it all until someone knocked at her door. Maybe if she didn’t respond, the person would go away. It was dark in her office, after all.
The door creaked open, and a lantern’s light probed the room. That would teach her for not throwing the lock. Maybe if she kept her back to the door and ignored-
Thunk!
The light flickered. Either the lantern had been slammed down on the desk with maximum force, or the ceiling was falling.
Reluctantly, Amaranthe rolled over and faced the intruder.
Sergeant Yara stood beside the desk, her face flushed, her eyes puffy, her lips peeled back in a snarl. “Were you responsible?”
Amaranthe didn’t have to ask for what. She wished she could disappear beneath the blankets.
“Were you?” Yara demanded, her voice breaking on the “you.” “Was it your ludicrous scheme that-that-” She thrust an arm toward the wall, no, toward the north end of the lake beyond the wall. “He’s dead. They all are.”
“I know,” Amaranthe whispered.
“How am I supposed to-you’re the one who encouraged me to care about that dumb oaf, curse your ancestors. And then you-” Yara’s voice broke again, and her fists clenched.
Amaranthe wished she could muster the indignation to do more than say, “It wasn’t intentional, Yara.” She’d known Maldynado longer, and Basilard, and Sespian, and she’d loved Sicarius longer than Yara had known Maldynado existed. But she knew it was all her fault, that one of her plans had finally gotten her teammates killed-along with thousands of others.
“It wasn’t intentional? Oh, that makes it dandy, doesn’t it?” Yara’s fists clenched and unclenched at her sides.
Would she lunge forward and strike? If she did, would Amaranthe bother defending herself? No…
“You talked me into joining your team, into following you on this fool’s mission, because… You made it sound noble and honorable. Stop Forge, save the empire. But you’ve killed more people than any of them have, you know that, don’t you?”
“I didn’t singlehandedly kill everybody,” Amaranthe said. “I couldn’t foresee that the Behemoth would crash. Emperor’s warts, I wasn’t steering it into the fort.”
“It was damaged and crashed as a result of your plan, didn’t it?”
Amaranthe opened her mouth, though she didn’t know what she’d say. “Not exactly” didn’t have the ring of expiation she needed.
“If you hadn’t gone down there, they’d all still be alive, wouldn’t they?” Yara asked. “Wouldn’t they?”
Technically, there was no way to know that… The fort had been under siege, after all. Yara didn’t want a debate though, and Amaranthe was already blaming herself, so why bother arguing?
“Yes, it’s my fault, Yara. I’m sorry you lost someone you cared about. I cared about Maldynado too.” And Sicarius, curse it all. Fresh tears stabbed at the corners of her eyes.
“I’m sorry I ever saw you on that mountainside, you and your bungling team of miscreants.” Yara stalked outside, slamming the door so hard that a nail flew out of a wall and fell to the floor with an insignificant clink.
Amaranthe wished Yara had taken the lantern. She preferred the darkness. It was too much effort, though, to stand up and cut it out. She rolled onto her side, putting her back to the door-and the world-again.
• • •
Sicarius’s injuries were healed. Someone had repaired the rips in his clothes and retrieved most of the daggers and throwing knives he’d hurled during his illogical and ill-considered storming of the Behemoth. Now, he stood next to the entrance flap inside the Nurian tent, his hands clasped behind his back, his face devoid of emotion. In the center of a rug that kept people from having to walk on the frozen ground, General Flintcrest and Kor Nas sat on crates, speaking in low murmurs as a third man knelt, his eyes closed. A ledger, an elegant gold pen, and a couple of pieces of clothing rested before the kneeling man. A checkered scarf dangled from his fingers.
Though no one had introduced him to Sicarius, this new Nurian was clearly a seer, one talented at finding people. He must have been the one who’d figured out Sespian was still alive and suggested the creation of a soul construct to hunt him.
On that suspicion alone, Sicarius might have killed him. If he could.
The opal embedded in the flesh at his temple hummed softly in his mind, its warm tendrils of energy not painful but always present. He’d found that he could leave his cot and even the tent, but he couldn’t raise a hand toward anyone in the camp. Not the soldiers, and most certainly not the Nurians. He’d tried a few times to trick his body into responding in such a way that might hurl a dagger into Kor Nas’s chest, but it was the mind the artifact controlled, and he couldn’t trick his own mind.
“This one is living on top of that hill.” Without opening his eyes, the seer waved vaguely toward the city.
“We’ll need something slightly more precise.” Flintcrest tossed a notepad into the man’s lap. “Write down an address.”
Kor Nas’s jaw tightened at the disrespectful treatment of his fellow Nurian. The seer opened his eyes, a bewildered expression on his face. “An address? This is not-” His faced tilted toward Kor Nas, and he switched to the Nurian language. “Saison, have you not explained it to this… man?” He clearly wanted to use a different noun, but glanced warily at the general, perhaps fearing he understood Nurian.