“That was always my plan.” The lock had numerous pins, and it took concentration to wrestle them into submission, but Sicarius forced himself to go into more detail-Sespian had never asked about that time. “I thought you might employ me differently than Raumesys and Hollowcrest had, and that you might eventually consider me as an adviser, not simply a tool. I did not think you would fire me before Raumesys’s body had finished burning.”
Sespian cleared his throat. “I didn’t think I could trust you.”
He didn’t add, I was afraid of you, but Sicarius knew and understood.
“Would you have told me the truth?” Sespian asked. “If I hadn’t pushed you away?”
“Eventually. Preferably after you’d decided…” Sicarius wrangled the final pin into place and turned the lock. He replaced his tools.
“Decided what?” Sespian asked. “That you weren’t a, uhm.”
“Monster?”
Sespian nodded.
“I didn’t know if that would be possible, but I thought you might come to accept me as your monster.”
Sespian didn’t have a response for that, so Sicarius pressed an ear to the door. It was thick wood, but he thought he heard a faint drip of water. That was odd. He’d expected voices. It might be the middle of the night, but these rooms were supposed to be manned around the clock, if only to protect the centuries of secret files contained within the cabinets and vault. Even the makarovi shouldn’t have driven everyone from their posts.
Still kneeling on the floor, he touched a hand to the smooth marble, seeking the vibrations of footsteps. All he felt was the cool stone.
He stood to one side, waved Sespian to the other, and pushed open the door. Nobody fired a gun, or shouted, nor did a single sound come within, save for the drip of water. A lamp burned somewhere, so the space hadn’t been abandoned for long.
Sicarius blocked Sespian from stepping inside first, taking the spot for himself.
A large room full of tables and desks waited inside, with doors opening to interior offices. Cabinets and shelves filled the windowless walls. The headquarters for the Imperial Intelligence Network hadn’t changed much since he’d last visited, save for the contraption sitting on the same table as the lamp.
“What’s that?” Sespian whispered.
A cylinder wrapped with wires lay on its side, strapped to a block of ice. The corners of the block had worn smooth as water dripped off and trickled over the edge of the table. A puddle lay on the floor. Some sort of stiff string stuck out of the cylindrical device, hovering an inch above the flame. Not a string, Sicarius realized. A fuse.
“Blasting sticks.” He strode toward the table.
“They booby-trapped the office?”
Sicarius’s first instinct was to yank the lamp away, so the fuse wouldn’t descend into the flame, but the ice was melting slowly, so he took the time to walk around the table and examine the bomb, lest it hold extra surprises.
“Why?” Sespian asked. “To blow up the records? Some angry bit of sabotage?”
“More than the records.” Sicarius counted twenty blasting sticks in the bundle. Old blasting sticks with crystals of nitroglycerin edging the sides. He’d have to move them carefully. “There’s enough power sitting on the table to take out the back half of the building.”
Sespian’s head jerked up. “The dungeons too? And the basement? Amaranthe’s almost directly under us, down two stories.”
“The blast itself might not, but the building could implode in the aftermath of supports being blown out.”
Sespian stared at him. “In other words, Amaranthe and all the people we just put in the dungeon would be crushed.” He reached for the lantern. “Get it out of there.”
Sicarius caught his hand. “Wait.”
His first walk around the table hadn’t revealed anything more untoward than the bomb itself, but with only the single lantern in the windowless room, the lighting was poor. He inhaled, smelling the sweet scent of the glycerin and a hint of black powder as well. “Interesting.”
He crouched low. A second device-more like a soft pouch-was pasted to the bottom of the table, right under the lamp. Though he couldn’t tell exactly what it would do, he spotted the firing mechanism from a flintlock rifle, a string wrapped around the trigger. The other end of the string disappeared through a tiny hole in the table. Ah, lift or move the lamp, and the string would be pulled taut, firing the trigger and causing a spark that ignited the powder. That would, in turn, ignite the fuse on the blasting sticks as surely as the flame from the lamp would.
“See if there’s another lantern you can light,” Sicarius said.
Sespian had squatted down on the other side of the table. His face grew pale. “All right.”
A minute later, he returned with another lamp. With it shedding illumination under the table, Sicarius stuck a finger into the firing mechanism to keep the trigger stationary and sliced through the string. He laid the pouch on the table and did another study of the area, searching for hidden trip wires. When he was convinced he’d caught everything, he cut off the flame in the lantern on the table. Sespian stepped back, a hand raised, as if that would provide any protection if the blasting sticks exploded.
They remained inert.
“How fortunate that we thought to check here,” Sespian breathed. “All those people below…”
“There may be other bombs.” Sicarius removed the wire-wrapped cylinder of blasting sticks from the ice.
“In here?” Sespian frowned at the office doors.
“They could be anywhere. If the rogue intelligence officers wanted to strike a last blow against you, they might have set multiple traps.”
“How… encouraging. If their Forge people can’t have the throne, no one can.” Sespian frowned again. “That’d be a likely place for a bomb. The throne room. Even if it’s decorative these days and only used for ceremonies.” He licked his lips. “How long do you think it would have taken that ice to melt down?” And for the bomb to go off, he left unspoken.
“A half hour perhaps.” Sicarius picked up the blasting sticks. “Come, we’ll gather the others and search the Barracks.”
Sespian followed him out of the office, but said, “Evacuating the Barracks would be a better plan, don’t you think? It’s not worth risking lives for a building, however historically significant.”
“How will you keep people imprisoned then? You have few men you can rely on to guard them.”
“I’ll think of something. But we can have them search for twenty minutes and then evacuate the building if we still need to.”
Sicarius headed for the nearest set of stairs. He would have broken into a jog, but the nitroglycerin crystals that had seeped out to the sides of the old blasting sticks meant they were even less stable than usual. Intelligence must have done a rushed search of the armory and found them in a back corner.
Sespian glanced at the bundle. “Is there a reason you’re cradling that like a baby and bringing it with us?”
“To show the others what to look for. You should run ahead and warn the rest of the team. We’ll want as many men as possible searching the building.”
“Just don’t trip and blow yourself up. That’d be an ignoble way to end after all the scrapes you’ve survived.”
“Your concern is noted,” Sicarius said.
“What concern?” Sespian smiled briefly. “I don’t want the building to collapse on top of me while I’m down in the dungeon warning everyone else.”
• • •
“Good evening, Lord Marblecrest,” Amaranthe said. “My name is Amaranthe Lokdon, and I work for Sespian Savarsin. You’re familiar with my associate.” She inclined her head toward Maldynado.
He stood next to the furnace, one hand on his hip and the other leaning against the top of the canister. A scowl she’d rarely seen stamped his face, and none of his usual warmth softened his brown eyes. His older brother had the same eyes, and they were even harder as he glared back and forth from Amaranthe to Maldynado. Kneeling, his wrists and ankles still bound by strips of curtain, Ravido wasn’t in a position to do anything more threatening.