“Our soldier friends?” Mahliki slid her own hand into her jacket, toward something at waist level-hopefully something more fearsome than a collection vial.
That was a pistol, Basilard signed. The soldiers are carrying rifles.
“We have company out here then,” Amaranthe said. “Not surprising.”
“The door?” Tikaya asked.
Amaranthe stared bleakly at the unmarked hull. “The wall grew translucent, and I walked through it, but it wasn’t at ground level.” She waved to a spot above their heads. “I slid down the curve ten or fifteen feet. That was when I escaped. When I entered, we went up a ramp that came out of nowhere, but the door-more of a big bay opening-was higher. When we escaped in the lifeboat… I have no idea where that came out of, but some sort of tube. We shot out and…” She shrugged. “It was before the crash.”
“I understand,” Tikaya said. “Let’s walk around and see if we spot any clues. I don’t see any writing or anything useful yet.”
“I vote that we walk in the opposite direction from the shooting,” Maldynado said. “Just in case they’re shooting at some of those cubes.”
“But it’d be acceptable if they were shooting at our soldier allies?” Amaranthe had been thinking they should check in that direction.
“Er.”
“We don’t have many soldiers on our side. We should try to keep the ones we do have alive.” Pistol in hand, Amaranthe led off, following the base of the ship.
Tikaya strode behind her, though her focus was toward the Behemoth. Her daughter walked at her side, more like Amaranthe, watching the dark snowy fields. Amaranthe wondered if that signified less of a passion for the ancient technology or a more practical soul.
More shots fired, farther away this time. Maybe the soldiers were leading them-whoever them was-away from the ship. There weren’t any other lights out on the field, and Amaranthe was conscious of their two lanterns, like beacons against the black hull.
Three more body-sized lumps in the snow waited ahead of them, and her stomach squirmed. They’d have to walk around them. She wasn’t going to risk stepping on somebody, dead or not. Nor did she want a good look at them-they might have been cut in half by the edge of the Behemoth.
Except it didn’t look like that, she admitted as they drew closer. The three bodies were crumpled, one half leaning against the hull. It was as if they’d died after the ship landed.
Tikaya and Mahliki veered to the side to walk around the spot-Amaranthe wondered if it occurred to them what those snow-blanketed bumps were. She started to step to the side, too, but halted.
“Wait,” she blurted.
If these people had died after the ship landed, what had killed them? Injuries acquired jumping out of a door? Or maybe they’d been injured during the crash and had fled, but their wounds had been too bad to make it farther than the exit. Enh, that might make sense for one, but for all three?
“What is it?” The way Tikaya eyed the lumps suggested she’d twigged to what they were.
“People trying to escape, I think,” Amaranthe said, “implying a door up there perhaps.”
“Ah?” Tikaya lifted her lantern as high as she could to study the hull.
“Must be way up there,” Maldynado said, “if they broke their necks falling out.”
Broken necks? Would that explain it? Maybe they’d been running from some of those cubes-at the thought, Amaranthe gave their surroundings another quick check-and hadn’t realized the door would be so high above ground level.
“No, I think I see the bottom edge there,” Tikaya said, “about ten feet up. Can someone give me a boost? Maybe there are runes etched in the hull, something that would allow entry from outside.”
“Allow me to offer my shoulders, my lady.” Maldynado dipped to one knee and laced his fingers together, offering her a leg up.
As Tikaya removed some of her gear and prepared to scale Mount Maldynado, Basilard knelt next to the bodies and brushed away snow. Amaranthe had thought of doing the same thing, to figure out why these people had succumbed to the afterlife in that particular spot, but she hadn’t wanted to stare into the accusing eyes of the dead.
Stop it, she told herself. She had to accept the blame for now and deal with the guilt later.
Basilard knelt back, his pale blue eyes finding hers, a message in them.
“What is it?” Amaranthe leaned closer.
A lot of snow still coated the bodies, but the yawning red canyon slashed into the neck of the frozen woman on top of the pile was hard to miss. Arteries severed. A quick death. One that hadn’t been caused by the crash, and not one the cubes had inflicted either.
One of Basilard’s gloved fingers made his throat-cutting sign, the one he used for Sicarius’s name.
“I… don’t know,” Amaranthe said. “He’s not the only one in the world who cuts throats.”
“Just one of the best,” Maldynado muttered then grunted as he hoisted the professor into the air.
Not the natural athlete her daughter promised to be, Tikaya struggled, slipping and thumping a knee into Maldynado’s ear, but she did finally attain her perch atop his shoulders. “Light, please.”
Mahliki handed the lantern up to her mother.
Basilard uncovered the other two bodies, pointing out that they-a man and a second woman-had also been killed by a knife and that none of the three had been appropriately dressed for the sub-freezing temperatures outside.
“If it was him,” Amaranthe whispered, “what’d he do? Kill these people as they were coming out? Assume they were part of Forge and therefore enemies?”
Maybe he was looking for you, Basilard signed.
That was possible. If he’d seen the crash, he would have guessed that she’d be in the Behemoth. “So he killed these three and then ran inside, checking to see if Books, Akstyr, and I were still in there?”
Mostly you, I’d guess.
Amaranthe twitched her fingers, to wave that away. She reminded herself that they had no way to know Sicarius had killed these people. It could have been some private with a knife, determined to defend the capital from the invaders who had destroyed Fort Urgot.
“If he did go in there, looking for us, where is he now? It’s been a couple of days, long enough to search even that massive craft.” Assuming he hadn’t gotten lost-somehow she doubted it. She’d never seen him lose his way in woods, tunnels, or anywhere else. “Why didn’t he come back to the factory to see if we were there?”
Basilard hesitated, then shrugged.
Because he was injured or killed was probably what he thought, but wouldn’t say. Not to Amaranthe. As if she didn’t know how deadly some of the things inside the Behemoth were.
Her eyes widened as she spotted movement out on the field, or rather, floating above the field. There were, she reminded herself, deadly things out here too.
“Any luck with that door?” she asked, “because we may have a visitor coming.”
Mahliki groaned. “Not again.”
“I haven’t found any writing up here,” Tikaya said. “It’s possible though… hm.”
The black cube, blending with the dark night, wouldn’t have been visible if not for the snow, but everyone spotted it easily against all that white. It hadn’t turned toward them yet-it was drifting along, parallel to the hull of the Behemoth. It stopped here and there to shoot a crimson beam out, incinerating some stick or branch. It paused at one point and melted a hump of snow. At first, Amaranthe thought a body lay underneath it, but the cube simply seemed to be burning snow into water. Because it saw the white stuff as debris to be removed? Or because it was broken? Whatever Retta’s assistant had done to change the cubes hadn’t been that well thought out. Understandable, given the rush she’d been in….