Sicarius would have stopped reading after the first paragraph, letting the newspaper continue scraping and skidding down the street, but a name lower on the page snagged his attention: Sespian.
He’d picked up the newspaper and slipped into an alley, putting his back to a wall to finish reading. It stated that new evidence had been brought forward, proving that the “dastardly and vile” Sicarius, who’d once worked in the Imperial Barracks for Emperor Raumesys, had raped Princess Marathi and that Sespian had been an illegitimate heir all along.
Sicarius had stared a long time at that passage. With Sespian dead, none of it mattered, though he would have preferred it if his son’s reputation hadn’t been tarnished so. With most of the Forge founders dead, this article was nothing but bitterness and spite. He couldn’t help but sigh to himself though, and think of the way Sespian had been concerned about Sicarius’s reputation, about improving it so he might one day work for the throne, in whatever incarnation it continued to exist. Now…
Sicarius crumpled the page and dropped it in the alley. It didn’t matter, he repeated to himself. Sespian was gone, and he no longer cared who stumbled into power.
Unless, came a whisper from the back of his mind, Starcrest could find the support of the people and somehow…
He shook his head, reminded that his thoughts might be monitored.
Now, as Sicarius jogged to the Nurian tent, he clamped down on those thoughts and all others, turning his mind into a blank, unthinking place.
Before he could sweep the flap aside and enter, sounds inside told him someone was coming out. Head bent, Prince Zirabo slipped outside. He saw Sicarius, gave one quick nod, then strode past.
What did that mean? That he’d located Starcrest? Or arranged for the note to be delivered? Or did it mean that Kor Nas had snaked into his mind and learned everything of their exchange? The prince’s face had been grave; that nod might have been a warning.
Again pushing the thoughts out of his mind, Sicarius stepped into the tent, the flap catching on the bulky bag. He came face-to-face with Kor Nas, who stood in the center of the carpet, wearing a fur travel cloak as well as his colorful robes. His long silver hair was tied back in a tight Nurian topknot, a style favored by men about to go into battle. A braided rope belt at his waist supported numerous pouches, some of them giving off auras to those sensitive enough to detect them.
“Starcrest has been located,” Kor Nas said, his eyes shut to slits. “But this news is not unexpected to you.”
Sicarius said nothing, and he tried to keep his mind from saying anything as well.
“Interestingly, I understand I have you to thank for providing the suggestion that allowed my seer to locate him.” Kor Nas held out Sicarius’s black dagger. “Less than an hour ago, he gave me the news.”
Though Sicarius accepted the blade, and he longed to know when the seer had first learned the news and if he’d informed Prince Zirabo first, he kept his mind a blank.
“Drop those off in Flintcrest’s tent.” Kor Nas pointed to the bag. “Then join me on the south perimeter. We are leaving immediately.”
“Later would be better,” Sicarius said. “This early in the evening, Starcrest will still be awake, as will the men he brought with him. I doubt he came into the capital without troops at his back.”
“We are leaving immediately,” Kor Nas repeated. “Lest he have time to prepare for your visit.”
The cold, hard look the practitioner gave before stalking outside said much. He knew that Sicarius had arranged a warning. Had he learned of it in time to stop it? Sicarius guessed not, otherwise there’d be no reason for haste now. He hoped the note had been delivered in time for Starcrest to receive it and read it. Had encoding it been wise? Sicarius had assumed it would be passed through the hands of lesser soldiers before finding Starcrest’s desk, and he hadn’t wanted others to understand it, but what if it took the wife to decode the message and she wasn’t there when it arrived?
If that was the case, he could only hope that Starcrest had expected attacks from assassins all along and was prepared. Sicarius, under the influence of that stone, needn’t be his craftiest, but physically, he could be no less than utterly competent. And it was without arrogance that he acknowledged his competence far surpassed most people’s best days.
Compelled by the thing in his head, Sicarius delivered the heads, and strode off to join Kor Nas. As he inhaled the crisp freshness of the snow and the creosote taint of numerous camp stoves, he accepted that he was either walking to his death or to Starcrest’s death. One of them would no longer live in the morning. Odd to think that all this effort was to ensure he was the one who wouldn’t see another sunrise. So be it.
• • •
When her weary group slumped into the factory, the first thing Amaranthe noticed was that there were a lot fewer soldiers than there had been when she left. Her first concern was that the factory had been attacked or discovered, forcing men to flee, but all the rucksacks and bedrolls remained. Maybe the men were simply off working on some assignment? Revolutionaries couldn’t be expected to keep normal hours, after all.
Night had fallen again in the time it had taken her group to land the lifeboat, send the rescued relic hunters off on their own way-without any purloined gear-then reunite with Tikaya’s nephew and get a ride back to the city. Tikaya and Mahliki had figured out a way to sink the lifeboat to the bottom of the lake. It wasn’t the deepest trench in the ocean, but it would have to do for the time being. Basilard had stayed behind to make sure none of the would-be treasure hunters followed the team back to the factory-at least two people had eyed Tikaya’s sphere as she returned it to her pack.
The lights burned in the offices on the catwalk. Amaranthe headed straight for the stairs. She already knew she wouldn’t find Sicarius waiting for her in the factory-she certainly hoped not, or she’d have to watch her scalp-but she wanted to check in with the others. Not only did she need to know what Starcrest was up to, but she needed to start planning a rescue mission, to figure out how she could sneak Sicarius away from that wizard. Or, more likely, she thought with a determined set to her jaw, figure out how to kill that wizard so his trinket wouldn’t control anyone any more.
“Does she always walk this fast?” Tikaya asked from a few steps behind Amaranthe.
“No,” Maldynado said, “sometimes she paces about slowly and thoughtfully, such as when she’s mulling over some new scheme.”
“What does more rapid leg movement mean?”
“She’s already thought of a scheme and is about to put it into action,” Maldynado said.
“Given what I’ve witnessed in the last twenty-four hours, I’m guessing we should be concerned?”
“Oh, very much so.”
Not bothering to comment, Amaranthe took the stairs three at a time and… halted at the top with her leg in the air. Four shirtless men were jogging toward her. Not toward her, she amended as she took in the sweat-drenched hair and gleaming torsos, but toward the stairs, as part of a training circuit. Her breath formed clouds in the air in front of her, so it must have taken them time to warm up enough to sweat in the cold factory.
“Hm.” Amaranthe had imagined finding Admiral Starcrest hunched over a desk in the office, head bowed in some meeting with his men, not doing laps with Ridgecrest, Sespian, and Books.
“What’s going on?” Maldynado asked, stopping on the landing next to her.
“Strategy planning session?” Amaranthe guessed.
“Yes,” Tikaya said. She and Mahliki had stopped a couple of steps below, but were tall enough to see the men rounding the far corner and jogging onto their stretch of the catwalk. “I’ve learned Turgonians are vigorously active when they’re pondering, not at all like our Third Century Kyattese sculptures of people sitting with their chins on their fists, gazing out at the waves, poised in eternal contemplation.”