Amaranthe lifted her hand and pressed it to her lips to hide a smirk. How many enforcers had it taken to manhandle those four into cells?
“It makes sense,” she said. “If they was to stay here six months, all four of ‘em, that’s a lot of meals you’d have to be feeding them, and them doing no work in return, just lounging in them cells. I reckon that’d add up to a lot more than four hundred ranmyas over time. Seems like a better deal for the city if you let me take ‘em back to the farm.”
“I’m not the one paying for their meals,” the corporal muttered, but he glanced at his subordinate, who waited hopefully in the doorway. “All right, get them out.”
“That’s kind of you, sir.” Amaranthe smiled, and it was no act.
The corporal grumbled under his breath, disappeared into the office for a moment, and returned with paperwork. He laid the four sheets on the desk, stamped them closed, and scribbled something intentionally illegible in the box for recording the fine as paid. Illogically, the old enforcer in Amaranthe cringed at this ham-handed handling of the law.
Scuffles sounded beyond the doorway, and something crashed to the floor and broke.
“Rotten apples.” The corporal pointed at Amaranthe. “Can you help, or will they just get worse when they see you?”
Sicarius strode through the doorway. Amaranthe hustled after. She had to speak first, before the men blew her story.
She need not have worried, for they halted and stared when they saw her and Sicarius. It was not disbelief at their arrival, she realized, but amusement at the farmer outfits. Maldynado managed to open his mouth at the same time as he smirked.
“Junior,” Amaranthe blurted to beat him. “How could you leave the farm-leave my sister -like that? You plant your seed, then just run off to the city to get yourself wound up in antics that put you in jail. For six months! You expecting her to have the baby and care for it without no men-folk to help provide?”
Maldynado’s mouth did not shut; rather his jaw dropped lower and hung there.
Books slapped him on the shoulder. “Lout.”
“And the rest of you. There’s work to be done, even if there’s still snow on the ground. You forget your contracts? You forget your word what you gave me?”
Basilard appeared glad for his missing voice. An indignant expression lurched onto Akstyr’s face, and he started to say something, but Books elbowed him.
“It was a mistake, ma’am,” Books said. “We’re ready to come back to work.”
“Not soon enough.” Maldynado issued a disparaging glare at the corridor of cells behind him.
Amaranthe led them out of the station before anybody could say anything that might give away her story. Outside, snow squeaked under their boots and black ice glinted beneath the street lamps, but gusts of wind from the south promised warmer weather coming.
“Thanks for springing us,” Akstyr said.
“Indeed,” Books said.
Basilard nodded.
“Not that we couldn’t have gotten out on our own charms,” Maldynado said.
“I saw your charms on a couple of enforcers’ faces,” Amaranthe said. “I’d call them contusions, but it’s your story.”
Maldynado grinned. “So, what’s next, boss?”
“Since you asked…”
By the time they reached the icehouse, she had explained her plan.
“There’s just one thing I want to know,” Maldynado said at the end. He stabbed a finger at Amaranthe. “Is that the uniform?”
Smiling, she removed her straw farmer’s cap. She stood on her tiptoes and plopped it on Maldynado’s head.
“Only for you.”
Maldynado started to reach up to remove it but paused. He wriggled his eyebrows at Amaranthe. “Does it look good on me?”
“You look like an illiterate buffoon,” Books said.
“But does it look good?”
• • • • •
Sespian eyeballed the bowl of lotion his new valet had dropped off. The honey-and-cinnamon scent left him wondering if it was edible. He smeared some on his cracked cheeks and forehead.
Trog hopped onto the desk and swished his cobweb-draped tail.
“Yes, I know I look silly.” Sespian smeared another glop on his burned skin, sat in the chair, and patted the cat. A couple of papers rested beneath Trog’s paws. “You’re just in time to help me with a decision.”
Trog sniffed Sespian’s chin, and the sandpaper tongue darted out to sample the lotion.
“I guess that answers the edible question,” Sespian murmured. “We’re here to decide something a little more momentous though.”
He slid the wanted posters for Amaranthe and Sicarius out from beneath the cat. He picked up a pencil and sighed at the fresh feline tooth marks decorating it.
“Money alone doesn’t seem to be enough of an incentive for someone to get rid of Sicarius.” Sespian tapped the pen against his chin and then added the promise of a title and land to the reward money.
Next he considered Amaranthe’s poster. Or at least he tried to. Trog flopped down and stretched out across it, inviting a belly rub.
“Don’t worry, boy. I’m not going to upgrade her bounty.” Sespian wished he remembered more of what happened in the smelter. The guards said Amaranthe had been there at the end, but he had no memory of anything after Sicarius demanding his head. No one had seen who killed Dunn. Sespian tapped the pencil thoughtfully. “I still have no idea what Lokdon has done and whether she’s been acting of her own volition.”
Trog meowed.
“Yes, yes, and I suppose there’s the hope that maybe she…” He finished with a silly shrug.
On her poster, he crossed out the line about her being a magic user and simply wrote: “Wanted Alive – 10,000 ranmyas.”
• • • • •
A young officer in the Imperial Intelligence Network intercepted the emperor’s revisions before they could go to Enforcer Headquarters. The officer left Sicarius’s poster alone, but he amended the one for Amaranthe Lokdon. “Wanted Dead – 10,000 ranmyas.” Those with knowledge of Forge could not be allowed to walk the streets or contact the emperor.