Except that it was too short to fill the crate. Ripka returned the woman’s smirk. “True, but I’m more interested in what’s in the crate’s false bottom.”
The woman’s grin lost its mirth, her eyes went hard as flint. “I don’t know what you mean, captain. Perhaps you’d like to take a bottle to try? To make sure the quality is up to the standards you expect for Aransa.”
“Bribes?” Ripka clucked her tongue. “You must think you’re talking to someone else.” She caught the man’s gaze and flicked her eyes to the crate. “Break that open completely. Now.”
The man shifted his weight, fingers going white around the neck of the bottle he’d presented to her. The woman chewed her lip, and Ripka allowed herself a small smile at the recognition of nervousness, of distress.
“Scatter!” the woman yelled loud as her lungs would let her.
Before Ripka could get a shot off, the man threw the bottle at her feet, a foamy explosion of alcohol-drenched honey sweetening the air. She swore and fired at the woman, swore again when she saw the bolt skim off the woman’s cheek without causing more damage than a rockcat scratch.
Banch loosed his shot, missed, then leap-tackled the man who had thrown the bottle as he bolted right by him. Ripka jumped over the tangled pair, reloading her bow with practiced ease as she ducked into the warehouse after the woman.
Mountains of identical crates dotted the warehouse, great stepped pyramids of them rising up on all sides. Ripka spared them only the briefest of glances. Some part of her couldn’t help but register the expense involved in such an operation. Her steps were silent, the dirt-packed floor smoothed by the passing of many feet. Half of the wall sconces had been lit in anticipation of the night’s work, the flickering flames throwing strange shadows in her path.
“Turn yourselves over, and we won’t use force,” Ripka called, though the words felt pointless, perfunctory. These people, whoever they were, had been ordered to run. Which meant that they more than likely had orders to keep themselves out of official hands at all costs.
“Captain!” Taellen yelped from around a pile of crates to her right, his voice high with surprise.
Before she could move two steps in his direction a crash broke through the night, the splintering of wood and shattering of glass louder to her overstrained senses than any crack of thunder.
Rounding the crate-pile, her foot went out from under her. The world skewed as she crashed down hard on one knee, bright spikes of pain lancing up her leg. Ripka got a hand down to steady herself, old instincts overriding momentary terror. The floor was sticky mush, sugared mud. She peeled her hand free and glared down at the syrupy muck coating her palm. Tried to ignore the needles of pain radiating from the knee she had fallen on.
“Look out!” Taellen barreled into her from the side just as a crate went flying through the air where her head would have been. Ripka grunted and gasped once, quick to recapture the air that had been driven from her lungs. Taellen rolled away from her and sprang up, the easy agility of youth driving his knees. He dragged his cudgel free and brandished it, the crossbow lost.
Ripka heaved herself upright with, she supposed, far less grace but just as much effectiveness. The cart driver was opposite them, his scrawny arms flailing like a broken windmill as he clambered up the stepped mountain of crates. Where in the pits did he think he was going? The ceiling?
“Easy now,” she called, reining in her anger. “That’s not the most stable of locations.”
“To the pits with you!” he screeched and whirled around. Ripka blinked, slow as honey rolling downhill, as the driver grabbed a crate from the pile he was climbing and flung it one-handed straight at her. She skittered away and the cheap wood crashed into dozens of pieces, throwing its delicate cargo high into the air.
The crate’s bottom broke, spilling weapons onto the liqueur-drenched ground. They gleamed in the flickering light, wicked expanses of steel winking at her out of the dark. She took a half-step back and scanned the mountains of crates all around her once more.
There were thousands. Did they each carry a deadly gift?
And how had he managed such a ferocious throw? The crates weren’t big – they barely came up to her knee – but they were laden with thick glass bottles, liqueur, and steel. Too heavy by far to pitch around like toys.
Another crate burst upon the ground, just before her feet, and she flinched back into reality.
“Cease this immediately!” she demanded, keeping the man in her line of sight as she skirted the detritus, looking for her crossbow. Where were Banch and the others?
“Blasted skies he’s strong!” Taellen called out as the man flung yet another crate one-handed without so much as a grunt. The heavy wooden box sailed through the air as if it were as light as a paper airship. Ripka froze, squinted down at the thick puddles, their surfaces pockmarked with tiny bubbles, and realized just why the man found the crates so light.
“Surrender!” Banch’s voice echoed all around, the heavy tromp of the other five watchers hard on his heels.
The cart driver’s eyes went wild – mad.
“He’s sensitive! There’s sel in the booze! ’Ware the crates!” Ripka yelled.
Too late. The man’s hand shot out toward a pile opposite him, his fist clenched around empty air, and yanked. The crates groaned, shifted, wood cracking as the heavy contents pushed against the friction of being stacked one atop the other.
Ripka spun around, saw her watchers running her way, faces red with exertion and boots slamming the ground so hard they could scarcely hear the complaint of the wooden heap beside them. It twitched, leaned.
The face of the cart driver went red, sweat sluicing down his cheeks. Ripka made her decision, and sprinted.
Her knee complained, her shoulders burned, but still she flung herself at the pyramid the man had climbed and heaved herself upward. He saw her, his expression of intense concentration flickering only a moment as he catalogued this new threat. In that moment he lost his tug on the crates threatening her people. It was enough.
With a roar of effort she leapt upward and threw one arm out, cudgel raised high, and brought it down in a punishing arc against the side of the sweating cart driver’s head. He slumped, a leaf cut free of its branch, and began to slide down the stacks. Ripka scrambled, gathering the fabric of his coat in one numb fist, and leaned her weight against the mountain, breath coming in sharp gasps.
“Captain!” Banch called from the ground below, his expression a mix of bewilderment and fear.
“Get ready to catch this sonuvabitch, because I can’t hold him much longer,” she called back.
The five scrambled to get into position, and she tossed the cart driver so that he wouldn’t bounce all the way down the sharp corners of the crates. When he was safely in hand, she let herself down with care. By the time her feet touched the ground they had bound the blasted man.
Taellen offered her an arm of support. She was grateful to take it.
“The others?” she asked Banch.
“Our rear guard detained the woman, but the man made it out.” Banch glanced away as he spoke, a flush of embarrassment mingling with the fresh bruise on his cheek.
“That will have to do.” Ripka ran her hand through her hair, then immediately regretted it as her hair stuck up in a mass of sticky spikes. She sighed. “I need a bath.”
Banch chuckled and clapped her on the shoulder. “I’ll secure the area, don’t you worry captain.”
Shrugging off Taellen’s support, she directed the loading of the prisoners into the donkey cart, making sure to offload all the selium-enriched bottles of liqueur just in case the sensitive were to awaken. The last thing she needed was another avalanche of overly sweet booze coming her way.