Books eyed the mangled, fur-coated groin area, considered his hands, then clasped them behind his back. “No, thank you.”
“It’s not important,” Amaranthe said. “They’re here. We have to deal with them.”
“Anyone else think we should take the monster-grinder with us?” Maldynado tapped the gore-slick drill bit.
Amaranthe grimaced. So much for the earlier cleaning of the blades. It’d take a lot more than her kerchief to duplicate the feat now. At least her team had survived the fight without any serious injuries. Blood streamed from a gash on Basilard’s arm and a cut on Books’s jaw, but both men were still standing, swords and rifles at the ready.
“It would take time to drill a new tunnel at an angle sufficiently slight enough for the borer to climb into the courtyard,” Sicarius said.
A boom sounded somewhere above them-a cannon.
“I don’t know if those people up there have time,” Amaranthe said. Not to mention that another makarovi might catch her scent and hop into the tunnel. It might be more than one next time.
“This way,” Sicarius said, taking the lead again.
“Leave the canister,” Amaranthe told the men. “We’ll come back for it once we see how things are going up there.”
They didn’t need to walk far before the blackness ahead faded, and the caved-in hole in the ceiling came into view. Enough lamps burned in the courtyard that some of the light seeped below.
Sicarius made everyone wait while he hopped up, catching tufts of grass near the ragged edge, and checked the courtyard. When he dropped down, he waved them forward.
“Only one makarovi is in sight now, and it’s up on the parapet. Continue to the root cellar.” He waited for the others to pass, clearly intending to guard their backs.
A lantern in hand, Amaranthe hustled forward. The stench of the makarovi grew thicker, and she chose not to breathe through her nose. “If anyone invited me to a dinner at the Imperial Barracks right now, I’d have to pass, if the potatoes came from this cellar anyway.”
“Agreed,” Books said, his voice altered, as if he, too, was trying not to breathe through his nose. “What a dreadful place to house a cage.”
You wouldn’t think so from their strong smell, but with the proper seasoning, Makarovi steaks are quite edible, Basilard signed. Or so they say. The rarity of the beasts means I’ve never partaken personally, only heard from old warriors.
“They’re not nearly as rare as I’d like for them to be,” Amaranthe said.
“Agreed,” Books repeated. He’d given up on his earlier method of avoiding the scent and had pinched his nostrils shut.
There wasn’t a source of illumination in the root cellar, and Amaranthe almost missed where the tunnel ended and it began until her light played across steel bars. Her first thought was that they wouldn’t be able to get out this way, having entered into the cage itself, but she realized she could turn sideways and slip through the widely spaced bars. They might hold a makarovi in, but most people could squeeze through.
Maldynado cleared his throat. “Anyone have a key?”
He’d slipped an arm and his head through, but the chest proved a sticking point.
Footsteps thundered past overhead, the echo changing as they passed from earth to the wooden cellar door back to earth again. A shout of terror followed after them.
“Look for the key,” Amaranthe told the others, already moving toward the door, hoping a hook might hold a ring. Though she didn’t know yet how she might help those in the courtyard, their obvious distress filled her with urgency.
“We could simply pull him through,” Books gripped Maldynado’s arm. “If he can suck in that belly.”
“My belly isn’t the problem. It’s my well-developed pectoral area.”
“Oh, please,” Yara said.
“At least he didn’t say it was his third leg that was too big to pass through.” Akstyr snickered.
Just when Amaranthe thought the boy was growing up…
“Ouch-oomph!” A thud followed this unmanly cry.
Amaranthe abandoned her key search. Books and Basilard had succeeded in pulling Maldynado through.
Sicarius jogged out of the tunnel and slid through the bars with much less trouble.
“No belly on him,” Books said.
“It wasn’t my belly,” Maldynado growled.
“The doors and the shutters remain secured,” Sicarius said. “There aren’t many men fighting from the walls. A few snipers are on the roof, but it looks like everyone else has retreated inside, leaving the others to deal with the makarovi.”
“I thought Marblecrest had troops in there with him,” Sespian said. “What are those cowards doing? Why’re they sacrificing my men? I mean men who used to be mine, curse him.”
“If Ravido is the one who brought the makarovi,” Amaranthe said, “he may not want them killed. He may still believe they’ll do their job, if they can escape the Barracks.”
“Some of them have already done so.” Sicarius waved toward the tunnel, indicting the prints they’d first seen. “I saw one more dead in the courtyard, and one living, but no others were in sight, nor were there sounds of a fight coming from the other side of the building.”
“I’m going to flatten Ravido if I see him.” Maldynado clenched a fist. “Even if the collars lead those monsters to Forge people, they’re going to kill tons of other people on their way through the city. And women will get… gar, those things are horrible.”
“There aren’t even that many Forge people left, are there?” Books avoided looking at Sicarius.
“No,” Sicarius said.
“What a mess.” Amaranthe pushed a chunk of loose hair behind her ear and frowned-it was crunchy with dried gore. “In all possible ways.”
“I want Marblecrest out of the Barracks more than ever.” Sespian regarded first Amaranthe, then Sicarius, as if he wondered if he could make it an order and anyone would listen to him.
Amaranthe had never planned to give up, not when Starcrest had explicitly given her this mission, but she was glad to see the others nodding their heads in agreement with Sespian. Sicarius, too, gave a single nod when she glanced his way, though that surprised her least of all. He wouldn’t give up on a Starcrest-assigned mission either.
“I concur,” Books said. “Maldynado, why don’t we go back and fetch that canister? I imagine some stealthy assassin can find a route into the basement furnace room from here.”
“You’ll have to lift that barrel up through the hole in the roof back there,” Amaranthe said. “We haven’t found keys for this gate.”
“We’ll have to go through the courtyard to reach the door anyway,” Sicarius said. “There are shadows. And the soldiers are busy.”
“Maldynado.” Books slipped back through the bars, heading for the tunnel.
“Perhaps Sespian would like to go with you. He’s a slighter fellow with less substantially developed pectoral muscles.”
“Yes,” Books called back, “no belly either.”
Sespian lifted a hand in acknowledgment, then jogged after Books.
Maldynado propped his fists on his hips. “Yara, you’ve seen me naked. Do I have a belly?”
“Not at all,” Yara said. Before Maldynado could appear too mollified, she added, “I assumed it was your fat head that got stuck between the bars.”
Books was the one to smile.
Sicarius and Basilard, too professional to be drawn into the debate, had scouted the root cellar and, apparently finding nothing more insidious on this side of the bars than potatoes with eyes, headed up the stairs for the door in the ceiling. Crouching, Sicarius lifted it a few inches.
After a moment’s observation, he said, “It’s relatively quiet now. The makarovi who came up in the courtyard have either escaped or been killed. We’ll still want to use caution, as we have to cross two dozen meters to reach the basement and dungeon entrance.”