In seconds, Sicarius finished the other four women in the room. He acted quickly, in part to ensure their prolonged screams wouldn’t bring additional security, and in part so Kor Nas wouldn’t have time to demand more torture.
Directed by the opal, he knelt to collect Worgavic’s head. He glanced around the room as he worked. No one remained alive. No one had tested his abilities. Odd that he should find himself missing Amaranthe’s crazy plans, the challenge inherent in them. In her insistence that they leave people alive, or suborn them to her side, she’d often made things difficult for him. And for herself. Too difficult in the end.
Grimly, he finished cutting and went to the next head. Sicarius felt nothing for the dead. There was no one left among the living whom he cared about.
As he stood there, amidst the blood and bodies, a new image flashed into his mind. This time he was standing with Amaranthe on a road outside of Markworth at the southern end of Lake Seventy-Three. He was penning a letter, dredging up a remembered military encryption key from two decades earlier to encode it for its recipient. Former Fleet Admiral Sashka Federias Starcrest.
He’s rumored to be in the city, came Kor Nas’s words in his mind. We don’t know where yet, but we will soon. He can’t be allowed to help our enemies.
Chapter 6
Squished. Was that the word Mahliki had used? An apt word. Amaranthe could breathe, though she would have preferred not to. Her new soldier buddies hadn’t visited the public baths in a while, and at least one had consumed sardines and fermented cabbage for dinner. In addition, an elbow was lodged in her stomach while a sword hilt jabbed into her kidney. There was plenty of room in the navigation area up front, where Tikaya and Mahliki sat with Lonaeo looking on, but the soldiers had, by some unspoken rule, decided not to crowd the Starcrest family. Too bad Amaranthe didn’t have Sicarius with her-his forbidding presence always commanded plenty of space. Neither she nor Basilard could see much past the towering men surrounding them. Perhaps it was for the best. Amaranthe would have been tempted to clean and organize if she’d had a better view of the papers, books, specimen jars, and tools littering the interior. She’d thought there was a rule about unattached items needing to be secured on ships, due to their tendency to fly about in rough waters, but the calm waters of the Goldar River must have convinced the two young scientists that they could bring out their projects. All of their projects.
“We’re almost there,” Mahliki said, glancing apologetically at the packed crowd behind her.
“No hurry,” Maldynado responded. “It’s cozy and warm down here, not to mention devoid of flying cubes that want to incinerate people.”
Amaranthe might have chosen dealing with the cubes over breathing the miasma of body odors clogging the air, but she hoped they’d be able to avoid both once they climbed out. They’d go straight to the ship, figure out what needed to be done to get rid of it, and finish up as quickly as possible.
“Did Lord Admiral Starcrest build this submarine?” one of the soldiers asked. He touched the hull a couple of inches above his head, stroking the sleek metal.
“Yes,” Tikaya said. “This is the third one he crafted for the family, and he’s designed and helped construct a number of larger ones for the marine studies departments at the Polytechnic. He’s published his work, making it available to all, and we’re starting to see derivative models in the seas, though only nations willing to embrace… non-standard energy sources have made progress.”
“He’s been publishing? For everyone?” The aggrieved soldier sounded more betrayed by this than the implication that the boats required magic to run. “I thought he was dead. We all did.”
“Just in exile,” Tikaya said. “My understanding is that your last emperor wanted your people to believe he was dead rather than that he’d chosen not to follow criminal orders that would, uhm…” She glanced at her audience of hulking soldiers and decided to finish with, “I’m sure he would have returned to his homeland if he’d been allowed, at least to visit.”
“It’s too bad he never had a chance to work for Sespian,” Amaranthe said.
“The world knows little of the boy,” Tikaya said. “Most of what we heard in Kyatt was that he-”
A soft thunk reverberated through the submarine. An algae-coated dock piling floated into view.
“We’re here,” Mahliki said.
Amaranthe remained silent, curious to hear what the world thought of Sespian, but Tikaya didn’t finish her statement. She and her daughter flipped a few switches, examined gauges, and finally pushed a lever. The submarine rose a few feet, then clunked against the ice.
“This mode of transportation won’t be available to us much longer,” Mahliki said. “Give me a moment… We’ll have to… Oh, I’ll just use the auger.” She slid out of her seat and headed for a hatch behind the soldiers. “Pardon me.”
Amaranthe was elbowed and jostled as the men made room for her to pass.
“Auger?” Maldynado asked. “I thought we’d get to blow our way through the ice with some special underwater cannon.”
“Torpedo,” Tikaya said.
“What?”
“Rias calls them torpedoes. They’re launched from tubes with charges contained within the shell. He has some that detonate on timers.”
“They could blow through the ice?” Maldynado asked.
“They could blow up the whole dock and any ships moored there.” Tikaya pursed her lips with faint disapproval.
“And we’re not going to use one?” Maldynado asked.
“You needn’t sound so distressed,” Amaranthe said. “It’s not as if they were going to invite you to flip the switch that launches them.”
Maldynado digested that for a moment. “Well, you never know.”
A grinding sound came from above them. Mahliki had disappeared into a small cabin behind the hatch, some sort of research area, Amaranthe guessed from the cabinets, shelves, and tools she glimpsed.
“Do you need any help?” Lonaeo asked.
“No, I’m already through,” Mahliki called back. “I’ll crack it a bit and… try surfacing now.”
Tikaya’s hands darted across the controls, a confusing array of gauges, levers, switches, and… Amaranthe didn’t have words for some of the doohickeys. The submarine rose again. Snaps and cracks erupted above, almost like overzealous logs throwing off sparks in a hearth. They broke through, the buoyancy of the craft discernible beneath their feet as it bobbed.
Lonaeo squeezed past Maldynado and Basilard and hopped up, catching a beam near the hatch above them. For someone of Starcrest’s height, or even Tikaya’s, it would have been easy to do while standing, but he had to dangle from one arm while he spun the wheel.
“Care for some help?” Maldynado tapped a ceiling beam with a finger.
“Nah,” Lonaeo said, “I’m used to scrambling up trees and under shrubs to collect insects. This isn’t much different.” When the lock released, he pushed the hatch open, still dangling from one arm as he did so. He was stronger than his scrawny form would have suggested. He caught the lip and pulled himself out. “Come on out, boys,” he called down. “Don’t forget your fur coats. I think the temperature dropped a couple hundred more degrees in the last fifteen minutes.”
The soldiers snorted.
“Foreign weaklings,” one muttered, though not loud enough for Tikaya or Mahliki to hear.
“What kind of career is collecting bugs?” Maldynado asked while the soldiers clambered out ahead of him. “That doesn’t sound very useful.”
Mahliki stepped out of the hatchway behind him, a hurt frown on her face.
Hoping to alleviate any abraded feelings, Amaranthe asked, “Should you be questioning other people’s life choices, considering what you were doing for a career when we first met?”