“Go,” Kor Nas said. “He’s already had enough time to prepare. Don’t give him more.”
“I understand,” Sicarius said, not of his own accord, and his legs carried him to the side of the building. He climbed over the edge and descended into the darkening night.
• • •
Amaranthe walked through the dark factory, her lantern the only light. With the hundreds of soldiers about, the place had felt crowded and cramped. Now only their gear remained, most of it stacked out of the way near the walls, and she alone occupied the cavernous building. It was impressive how quickly an army could decamp if given the order. She didn’t know where Starcrest had moved them, but it didn’t matter. The only thing she had to worry about that night was delaying Sicarius so the rest of the team could search the surrounding area and deal with the wizard. Some of Ridgecrest’s stealthiest scouts had been sent to Flintcrest’s camp in case Kor Nas remained there, observing the planned assassination from afar. If he came in at Sicarius’s side, the task was to try and part them somehow, long enough to strike at the Nurian’s back. Either way, it was her job to distract Sicarius.
When they’d been discussing the note, Starcrest had originally placed himself in this role, but Amaranthe had pointed out that he, as the target, would be swiftly dispatched, perhaps without ever seeing the dagger coming. But she-seeing her alive-ought to muddle Sicarius’s clarity of purpose. Oh, it was possible the wizard would simply order him to kill her as soon as he spotted her, but she thought he’d fight it and that she’d have more time. Time in which she could… what? She hadn’t figured that out yet. And she didn’t know how much longer she had to plan.
She walked along the catwalks, pausing here and there to lean over a railing with her lantern and consider a vat or piece of machinery or some series of pipes snaking from the creation area to the holding tanks outside. Though she hoped Sicarius would fall to his knees and fight off any order to kill her, she couldn’t bet on it. Not after Darkcrest Isle. When she’d reluctantly spoken of that event to the others, Tikaya had pointed out that a living practitioner in the prime of his powers would be even harder to resist. So she needed to lay a trap for Sicarius, one that would delay him or separate him from the wizard.
Near the back of the factory, a row of grating traversed the cement floor, running from the vats to a larger square of grating in the corner.
“Must drain into the sewer system,” she murmured, “or maybe straight into the lake.” Amaranthe didn’t know much about how molasses was made, but figured there’d be a food-grade equivalent of slag, useless liquid or pulp that wasn’t employed in the final product.
She jogged down to the floor to investigate the drains further.
A soft bang sounded somewhere above her.
Amaranthe jumped into the shadows beneath the stairs, putting her back to a wall. Ears straining, she listened for footsteps or a repeat of the noise.
Anxiety dampened her palms and quickened her heart. For all her calculating analysis of what Sicarius might and might not do, she couldn’t manage to push aside the knowledge that the most deadly assassin she’d ever heard of was now working for the other side, and he was coming to this building with the intent to kill. Kor Nas had no reason to spare her, and somehow she doubted that the Nurian would think kindly toward her because she meant something to Sicarius. Or had meant something when Sicarius had been… himself. What would he be like now, under the influence of the wizard’s magic? Would he possess his memories? His feelings?
“He must,” she whispered, for he’d thought to warn Starcrest.
Or had he? Though Starcrest thought that Nurian prince might be on his side, how could he be certain? This could all be a trap, the other side trying to trap Starcrest even as her team tried to trap the wizard.
The bang sounded again, and she flinched.
“Stop it,” she told herself. “It’s the wind batting against some shutter or loose tile on the roof.” Hadn’t Basilard mentioned something about a warm front blowing in?
Besides, if she could rely on nothing else, she could be certain Sicarius wouldn’t make any noise when he entered.
Her thoughts so fortified, Amaranthe jogged to the drain system. She reached the three-foot-wide line and pried up one of the grates, revealing a shallow channel that stunk of… She crinkled her nose. She didn’t know what to call it. Could sugar turn into mold? If so, it’d probably smell like that, though this had a richer, earthier scent. Many things had probably been funneled down there over the years.
Amaranthe lowered the grate. She might trap a cat in the shallow channel, but not a man. She followed it to the larger square in the corner, one about six feet by six feet wide. Much deeper than the channel, its bottom wasn’t visible to her light. She fished out a tenth ranmya coin and dropped it. The copper fell about ten feet before clanging, then bouncing a few times, the echoes suggesting it’d slipped into a drain. Amaranthe winced at the chain of noises, alarmingly loud in the silent factory.
When she was peeking around to make sure nobody had heard and was rushing out of the darkness, her gaze caught on one of the tall upper windows. A spider web of cracks stretched out from a large hole in the bottom pane. A hole large enough to crawl through? She wasn’t sure. She also wasn’t sure if it’d been there all along-the abandoned factory wasn’t in the best state of repair-or if it might be a new hole, such as the sort a person who romped about on rooftops and entered through windows might make. Was it her imagination that she could feel the draft whistling through the gap, its icy fingers teasing her flesh?
Yes, she decided, and stop imagining. There was a trap to be laid.
Amaranthe found the latch for the grate. She had to drop into a crouch and lift with her whole body to raise the wrought iron lattice. Expecting a noisy groan of rusty hinges, she said a silent thank you to whatever janitor had kept them well greased when they opened with a soft whisper.
Too bad the grate lifted up instead of falling downward. She’d had a vague notion of tricking Sicarius into falling into it, but it’d be a rather obvious trap if the huge grate were leaning against the wall behind it, waiting to be dropped shut. Besides, how would she have gotten him to fall in? Throw a carpet over it and stand on the other side? That only worked in the old fables and to animals with the brightness of inebriated sloths.
A cold draft whispered across the back of her neck, sending a shiver down her spine. She lifted her head, eyeing that window again. Maybe the hole was new. Or maybe her senses were telling her something. That she wasn’t alone in the building any more.
She stood, ready to abandon her feeble trap idea for something else when a new idea popped into her mind. If delaying him was her main goal, and the way to do that was to keep him busy…
Amaranthe prodded her fingers into the fastening mechanism for the grate. There was a hole where one could fasten a padlock.
“Great, just need a padlock,” she whispered and nibbled on the edge of her nail, thinking.
She’d seen one somewhere around the building, hadn’t she? On a storage shed outside, yes, but that one was locked. She had a feeling she didn’t have time to pick locks.
Oh, there was an open one in her office, hanging on the big metal locker that had housed that horrible frilly dress she’d borrowed. As if something like that needed to be secured. The lock had been left open though. Even as the sequence of thoughts ran through her head, her feet were moving. She raced toward the stairs, running on her toes, trying to keep her steps soft in case her senses were correct and she wasn’t alone.