Flintcrest was eying him through those thick spectacles, chomping on a cigar as if he wished he were chomping on Sicarius. “It’s not a good idea, Kor Nas. Safest to kill him right now, if you can.”
“Of course I can,” the silver-haired man said smoothly, his accent barely distinguishable. “But I wouldn’t have brought my associate to continue healing his wounds if I intended to do that.”
“This man isn’t some soldier,” Flintcrest said. “He’s an ancestors-cursed assassin, a notorious one. He’s killed dozens of high-ranking Turgonians, including one of my fellow satrap governors.”
“I know precisely who he’s killed. The Nurians have also suffered at his hands. But he can be made to work for us now, as surely as my soul construct did. Perhaps one of his first tasks will be to figure out a way to retrieve my pet from the bottom of the lake.” The Nurian’s dark eyes glittered, the almond shapes narrowing further as they oozed menace toward Sicarius.
As far out into the lake as he’d hurled the creature’s trap, Sicarius would drown trying to swim down and open it. Perhaps that was a way to escape this. Better to be dead than enslaved, especially now when there was nothing to live for, nothing waiting for him if he fought and escaped. One way or another, these people would send him to his death eventually. He cared little what happened in the meantime.
“Well, get him fixed up and out of my camp,” Flintcrest said. “My men will welcome him even less than that beast of yours.”
“That is the plan, General. After which target should I send him first?”
Flintcrest grimaced. “You want me to make use of an assassin?”
“You were willing to make use of my beast, as you call it.”
“I… don’t remember agreeing to that exactly either.”
“So long as you agree to my people’s requests for favorable trade agreements,” spoke a third man as he pushed aside the tent flap and walked inside. In his early thirties, with shoulder-length black hair swept into a topknot, he wore a feathered flute and a long rek rek pipe across his back as others would wear a sword. The items were the symbols of a Nurian diplomat.
Kor Nas waved to the healer. “Finish repairing my new minion.”
“Yes, saison.”
Saison, the Nurian word didn’t mean “master” precisely, more like a term of respect for a high-ranking practitioner, often a teacher, but it might as well have meant it in this case. He’d be loyal to the older man and do as told.
“I have not forgotten, He shu,” Flintcrest told the diplomat. “The trade agreements will be created as promised.”
He shu, that was an address for a male who shared blood with a great chief, close blood usually. After all the missions Sicarius had undertaken for Emperor Raumesys, ensuring Nuria wouldn’t gain a toehold in the empire, it irked him to know that the Nurians might have found a way in anyway. He didn’t know whether they’d be worse than this Forge outfit or not. He decided he didn’t care-what could he do about it at this point anyway? — though he did admit that it bothered him that everything he had endured in his life had been for naught.
The healer laid a hand on Sicarius’s bandaged abdomen and warmth spread from the fingertips. Weariness seeped in as well. He didn’t bother seeking a meditative state, didn’t bother with trying to control his sleep-or his dreams. He simply sank into oblivion.
Chapter 2
Amaranthe, Books, and Akstyr sat against the back of the locomotive cab, their wrists tied behind them and rifles aimed at their chests. This wasn’t quite how Amaranthe had imagined the hijacking going. Judging by the scowls Books and Akstyr were shooting her, they thought the team should have remained in the coal car for the rest of the ride.
The fireman and engineer had returned to their duties, while a captain and colonel stood in a cluster with Starcrest, discussing the situation. In the confined space, one couldn’t have squeezed in any more men, so the captain had been elected to hold the rifle on the prisoners. A redundant security measure, since Amaranthe’s ankles were tied as well as her wrists, with her legs folded beneath her. She couldn’t have started a brawl if she’d tried with all her might. In addition to Starcrest and the army men, the two siblings remained in the cramped cabin; they were standing in the doorway, probably hoping their presence wouldn’t be noticed and they wouldn’t be ordered to go back to the passenger cars. The captain glanced at them a few times, as if he wished to give precisely that order, but he refocused on Starcrest and said nothing.
Amaranthe considered the legendary man, not surprised that he could command the respect of officers twenty years after his exile, but impressed. One might have expected a softness in someone who’d spent so long on the Kyatt Islands, but he appeared lean and powerful, even in his civilian clothing, a mix of browns and forest greens beneath a fur-trimmed parka. Beneath his beaver cap, his silver hair was short and thick, a regulation military cut. His height and broad shoulders surely lent him authority-he had to duck his head to keep it from bumping the ceiling of the cab-but Maldynado possessed the same physical dimensions, and people didn’t stare raptly at him, awaiting an opportunity to please-unless they were women of course. Starcrest probably had a few admirers of that sex too. His face, not so angular as Sicarius’s but of a similar vein, was weathered and creased from the sun, with an old scar bisecting one eyebrow, but he’d still fit any woman’s definition of handsome. Amaranthe could easily imagine him as a rock-solid admiral, commanding his troops in the heat of battle, though his brown eyes lacked the cold intensity she associated with so many of the senior military officers she’d met; rather, there was a hint of warmth in them, or even mischievousness, as he chatted with the men, as if now that the threat to his children had been nullified, he appreciated this break from the monotony of cross-country train travel.
So, Amaranthe mused, how do I get a legend to join our team?
Unfortunately, she feared he was heading in to join one of the other candidates, Ravido most likely, given Forge’s connection to the ancient technology and Starcrest’s history with it. Though his wife was the expert at deciphering it, wasn’t she? If the children were along, did that mean she’d come on the trip too?
After all Amaranthe had done to ensure Forge didn’t have anyone left who could control the Behemoth-she winced, remembering Retta’s horrible death-here came someone who had a better mastery of the technology than anybody else in the world.
“Lord Admiral Starcrest,” Amaranthe said during a lull in the men’s conversation, “I…” She grew uncharacteristically shy as every set of eyes in the cab swiveled toward her-even those of the engineer. Shouldn’t he be studying the snow-covered trees and bends in the tracks ahead? Amaranthe cleared her throat and pushed on. “I must apologize for any harm you perceived we meant to do to your children. We didn’t know they were up here and that they were… gifted enough to impact our, uhm, results.” Right, reminding them that she’d meant to take over the train probably wasn’t wise. She shifted to, “What the captain says about my comrades and me is true. We’re outlaws, but we’re wrongfully accused outlaws and seek to clear our names. We also seek to put the rightful emperor back on the throne, Sespian Savarsin.”