“You thought to do this by hijacking our train?” Starcrest asked, his voice mild. Deceptively so? There might have been an edge beneath it. Amaranthe had heard foreigners call the Turgonian language guttural and harsh, but his accent had been polished smooth by so many years away from the empire.
Books nudged her and whispered out of the side of his mouth, “Sespian wasn’t born yet when he was last in the empire. He might not care about him.”
“It’s not a good idea to remind your captors of their advanced age when they’re holding firearms on you,” Starcrest told him.
Amaranthe thought it had been a joke, but Books’s eyes widened with concern. “Urp?” he announced.
Akstyr snorted. He was doing his best to look tough and surly, a hard image to convey when hunched in a ball on the floor. In addition, his sneer faded every time he glanced at the girl.
Amaranthe was on the verge of deciding Starcrest’s humor might be a sign that they weren’t in as much trouble as she’d thought, but his tone grew cooler for his next question, “Why did you seek to commandeer the train?”
“It wasn’t the original plan. We were…” Amaranthe tilted her chin skyward, then caught herself-explaining a flying lifeboat that traveled hundreds of miles in minutes seemed a daunting task-and shifted her chin tilt toward the back of the train, toward the mountains they were leaving. “We were stranded in the pass and needed to get back to the city as quickly as possible-Fort Urgot was under siege, and there may be full-on war in the streets by now.”
Starcrest’s jaw tightened, and he glanced at the children. As one, they blinked innocently, clasped their hands behind their backs, and pretended to study the ceiling. Amaranthe imagined some past argument about whether they should be allowed to come or not.
“Sespian needs us,” she continued. “We’ve been helping him with-I don’t know what you’ve heard, but there’s been a business coalition trying to control him from within the Imperial Barracks for the last year, and before that, Hollowcrest was drugging him, and… well, he hasn’t had a chance yet to prove what he can do for the empire. He hired us to help him.” Technically true, though he’d only wanted to be kidnapped, and they’d succeeded at that task several weeks earlier.
“Sespian is dead,” the colonel snapped. “My lord, you can’t accept any of this woman’s words as truth. She’s a criminal, and I sincerely doubt she’s ‘wrongfully accused.’ She runs with that assassin, Sicarius, after all.”
Starcrest’s face grew closed, masked. “Does she?” he said neutrally.
Cursed ancestors, of all the times for him to hide his thoughts… He and Sicarius had met in those tunnels, twenty years earlier, she knew that, but had they been working together? Or against each other? Sicarius would have been doing the emperor’s bidding-quite loyally at that age, she imagined-and Starcrest had gone his own way afterward. Had they parted as enemies? Allies? Agreed not to kill each other this time, but with no promises for the future? She knew Sicarius respected Starcrest-one might almost say idolized, though that was a strong word to attribute to someone so cool and aloof as he. What had Starcrest thought of him?
“Where is the assassin now?” Starcrest asked.
“I haven’t seen him in a couple of days,” Amaranthe said, “but I can take you to him once we return to the city if you want to talk to him. I understand you had an adventure together once.” She raised her eyebrows, inviting him to elaborate.
He didn’t. His face grew colder.
Amaranthe couldn’t tell if that was a warning or a threat in his eyes. “He should be with Sespian right now. I know Sespian would like to see you.” Belatedly, she added, “My lord.” She wasn’t sure what his status was, as Emperor Raumesys had been the one to send him into exile and Raumesys was years dead now. The military men were “my lord”ing him, though, so she better do it too.
“If Sespian has been alive all this time,” the colonel said, “why’d he let all of this come to pass? Why isn’t he on the throne now?”
“Forge ushered him out of the city on that months-long inspection of the border forts,” Amaranthe said. “They tried to arrange his death on the train ride back, only, with the help of some plucky outlaws, he refused to die in the fiery explosion that lit up the night.” She decided not to mention that the plucky outlaws had been responsible for the explosion. The Behemoth had been on its way with plans to annihilate the train anyway.
“My lord,” the colonel said in an exasperated you’re-not-believing-any-of-this-rubbish-are-you voice.
“Let’s secure them in one of the freight cars,” Starcrest said. “I’ve kept in touch with General Ridgecrest over the years, and my understanding is that he’s currently commanding Fort Urgot.” When the colonel nodded, Starcrest finished with, “I’ll get the latest intelligence from him.”
“He doesn’t know the latest intelligence, my lord,” Amaranthe said. “He might only have the version that’s been in the newspapers. Very few know what’s really going on, that Forge has been angling to run the empire, more than the empire, from the beginning. They own Ravido Marblecrest. They-erk.”
The captain had grabbed her arm, hauling her to her feet. With her ankles bound, she had to concentrate on not tripping over Starcrest’s boots-that seemed a faux pas an exoneration-seeking outlaw should avoid-instead of speaking. Books and Akstyr were similarly hoisted. Akstyr did trip and would have planted his nose in the metal decking right in front of Starcrest’s daughter, except someone caught him by the collar, like a mother wolf picking up a pup by the scruff of its neck. This save didn’t keep Akstyr from blushing with indignation, perhaps embarrassment.
“Sergeant,” someone yelled out the doorway.
Were there reinforcements waiting in the coal car? There must be, for mere seconds passed before three burly men swung inside, crowding the already crowded cab further. Amaranthe got a face full of someone’s back, then a meaty arm wrapped around her waist, hoisting her into the air. She landed with an “oomph” on someone’s shoulder.
Her captor swung out of the cab and climbed along the narrow ledge back to the other cars. Icy wind clawed at them, and tree branches whipped past, all too close for comfort, but neither the threat of a fall nor his burden slowed him down. Amaranthe decided not to wriggle or attempt any sort of escape at that moment.
Not until she, Akstyr, and Books had been paraded through five cars of troops-more than one man hissed at her with recognition in his eyes, half-rising from a seat, a hand reaching for a dagger-and dumped in a freight car did she start considering escape plans again. Crates were piled all about them; surely she could find something to facilitate rope freeing. Although, given the overpowering smell of turnips and potatoes, that wasn’t a guarantee. The two armed soldiers stationed on either side of the door provided a further obstacle to freedom.
“Did I not say we should ride back to town and forgo the hijacking attempt?” Books asked.
Alas, the soldiers had not thought to gag anyone. Well, that could be to her advantage. Perhaps she could plant some suggestions in their captors’ minds.
“You did say that,” Amaranthe agreed. “But if we had, we wouldn’t know that Fleet Admiral Starcrest has returned to the empire, and we couldn’t have begun the process of wooing him to our side.”
One of the guards grunted with disbelief while the other rolled his eyes. Books and Akstyr’s expressions weren’t much more supportive.
“He didn’t look wooed,” Akstyr said, “and didn’t we agree to stop using that sissy word?”
“Maldynado mocked it, but we didn’t discuss removing it from our collective vocabulary.” Books dropped his head, looking much like a man who would be pinching his nose and rubbing his temples if his hands weren’t bound. “Are you suggesting that this is all going according to plan, Amaranthe?”