Dark Currents

CHAPTER 9

“S icarius?” Amaranthe called from the doorway of the pipe room.

He did not answer. She had sent Books off to purchase supplies while making a stop of her own on the way back, and she had not seen any of the men yet. She held a book under one arm for Akstyr, but she wanted to confer with Sicarius first, preferably in private. Books’s interest in Vonsha concerned her, or, more accurately, Vonsha concerned her.

“Sicarius?” she called again, squinting into the gloomy corner where she had seen him last.

The only sounds in the pumping house came from the endless ker-thunks of the machinery. Her mind conjured unpleasant thoughts. What if the water did more than make people sick? What if drinking it proved deadly? What if her men-her friends -were…

Down the narrow hall, a door slammed open. Maldynado, wet and naked, staggered out, a cloud of steam wafting out with him.

“What are you doing?” Amaranthe forced her gaze upward, toward his face, and fought against the blush encroaching upon her cheeks.

Maldynado pushed damp curls off his forehead and squinted at her. “Oh. Hullo.” He yelled a warning through the open door: “Boss lady’s back home in case you want to cover your dangle-sticks.”

Apparently, he could not be bothered to take his own advice. He shuffled down the hall toward her, using the wall for support. She would have guessed him drunk, but supposed he was still sick. That kept her from lecturing him on the inappropriateness of nudity in the pumping house. Even if he did not worry about propriety in front of a woman, there were all sorts of machines with moving parts that could catch unprotected…protrusions.

“The outfit looks good.” Maldynado smirked. “I’d flirt and charm, but I’m not feeling well enough for that.”

“You seem to be doing better,” she said, not wanting to fuel any comments about her attire. “You’re standing…without vomiting.”

Books climbed down the ladder with canvas market bags hanging from his shoulders. He landed in the hallway behind Amaranthe and groaned when he spotted Maldynado. “Why are you wet? And naked? Buffoon.”

“A little better,” Maldynado said, answering Amaranthe and ignoring Books. “We turned the boiler room into a steam bath. Sicarius and Basilard said the Mangdorians sit in steam huts to purify their contaminated blood and sweat out sickness, and some of them live to over a hundred. So we figured we could turn that big old furnace into a steam generator.”

“Did you move my work-all those notes and newspapers-out first?” Books asked.

Maldynado touched a finger to a chin in need of a razor. “Perhaps…not.”

“You thoughtless nude oaf. Why didn’t you go to the public baths?”

“Because we’re sick. And that would have involved walking. Far. And I’m a wanted man, you know. I can’t be too careful what with the bounty on my head.”

Amaranthe could not resist: “Books is wanted, too, now. His bounty is for five thousand ranmyas.”

Maldynado staggered, pressing a hand against the wall for support. “What? How is yours more than mine? You’re not even a threat to anyone. Now, me, I’m threatening.”

“Especially to any paperwork left out,” Books groused.

Amaranthe maneuvered past Maldynado, careful not to bump anything, and left them to squabble. She wanted to talk to Sicarius, preferably not with Books in the room.

Basilard and Akstyr shuffled out as she was about to enter. Thankfully, they wore towels about their waists. Amaranthe stopped, holding the book out for Akstyr, and his eyes locked on it.

“On Healing,” he breathed.

“Is that what it says?” she asked. “I just figured it was a book on magic because the fellow I was talking to was very nervous about having it in his office.”

Akstyr stretched out a hand. “For me?”

“Of course.” Amaranthe handed the book to him. “Thank you, by the way, for taking a chance on getting that key for us in the gambling house.”

Eyes fixed on the book, he did not answer. He almost dropped it in his haste to throw back the cover and examine the first page. He did drop his towel and shuffled off down the hallway without noticing.

“Women,” Amaranthe muttered, ducking into the boiler room. “I should have put together a team of women.”

Heat and steam wrapped around her, obscuring visibility. No lanterns burned, though embers glowed red behind open furnace slats. Water-drenched rocks spat and hissed.

Amaranthe assumed Sicarius would be dressed-or un dressed-to a similar degree as the others, so she kept her gaze downward. Well, maybe she peeked out of the corners of her eyes once or twice, but shadows cloaked the room, and she did not see him.

She swept Books’s soggy papers and notes into a stack and met him at the door with them. She did not have to ask him to give her a moment alone with Sicarius, for he accepted them with an aggrieved expression and rushed down the hallway, waving the papers to dry them.

“Sicarius?” Amaranthe closed the door. “Are you better?”

“What fellow?” Sicarius’s raspy voice came from a dark corner.

“Huh?”

“What fellow did you get that book from?”

“Roskar Rockjaw,” Amaranthe said. “I’ve been getting to know some of the other mercenaries and underworld sorts in town. Ally shopping, as my marketing instructor called it. Anyway, I stopped in to see if he’d heard anything about the city water. He hadn’t, and I ended up telling him what we knew since he was sick himself. He did verify that Ergot’s Chance is under protection, but he didn’t know whose. As for the book, I noticed it on Rockjaw’s desk. He said one of his thieves had filched it on accident, and he didn’t want anything to do with the vile thing. I volunteered to dispose of it. I even made him believe I was doing him a favor.”

“Rockjaw is a murderer and a thief,” Sicarius said, an edge to his tone.

“Yes. I don’t imagine he’s quite what Ms. Morkshire had in mind when she spoke of acquiring business allies, but this is the social set I find myself operating within these days.”

“He’s dangerous. You shouldn’t have gone to see him alone.”

“Funny, that’s the advice people give me in regard to you.”

He snorted. “You shouldn’t see me alone either.”

“Nobody’s ever accused me of being wise.”

Amaranthe sat on the crate next to the desk, annoyed that she had to cross her legs artfully to avoid displaying…areas she preferred to keep off-display. At least the darkness ought to hide the details of the skimpy outfit. She spent the next ten minutes telling Sicarius about the events at Vonsha’s house.

“While we could wander around the city,” she said, “digging for clues and questioning people for the next few days, I’m thinking we might get to the bottom of things more quickly by taking a trip into the mountains to see what’s going on with that parcel. Do you mind if we use your winnings to purchase provisions? If Maldynado can recover enough to charm the heart of a matronly businesswoman, we might be able to afford a vehicle of some sort.”

“Acceptable,” Sicarius said.

“Good. There’s something else I want to discuss with you. It’s Vonsha. Books seems smitten. Do you remember anything more about her? That she spent time working for Hollowcrest and Raumesys isn’t much of an endorsement.”

“Really,” Sicarius said dryly.

“Really.” Amaranthe smiled. “Was she a good, honorable person, working for the welfare of the empire? Or was she someone involved in their underhanded plots?”

“You’re asking me to act as a character judge?”

“Maybe?”

“We never spoke. She did her work professionally. That’s all I know. Do you suspect her of playing a role in the water plot?”

“That’s what I’m trying to decide. It’s hard when I’ve never talked to the woman.”

“No chance to wheedle information out of her yet?”

“Precisely. You know how I love to chitchat with folks.”

“Yes.”

“That must be why we get along so fabulously,” Amaranthe said. “You being the less talkative sort and me being happy to fill in the awkward silences with…awkward un-silences.”

Sicarius said nothing.

“Yes, just like that. See? We make a good team.”

Amaranthe decided not to pester him further and headed for the door. When she opened it, letting light from the hallway in, Sicarius stopped her with a question:

“What are you wearing?”

More than the room’s heat warmed her cheeks. She should have changed before looking for him. “Uhh, it’s the disguise Maldynado got me. It’s…not exactly what I had in mind. As I’ve recently discovered, it’s not terribly practical for fighting, and, er, it was probably a mistake to send him clothes shopping, however good he is at obtaining bargains.”

Though she felt ridiculous in the outfit, and a touch vulnerable, a part of her wished he would say she looked good in it.

“Yes,” Sicarius said. “If you want the respect of the men, you should dress like a professional, not one of their conquests from the brothels. Also, costumes create a sense of security that encourages inattention. Better to remain vigilant.”

Great. Not only did he not think she looked good, he’d compared her to a whore. Maybe it wasn’t too late to put together that all-women team after all.

• • • • •

Rain thumped against the oilskin hood of Amaranthe’s jacket and pooled on the footboards beneath the driver’s bench. She sat next to Maldynado, who steered the newly acquired steam lorry, while Books, Basilard, and Sicarius rode in the large cargo bed in the back. Akstyr hunkered beneath a poncho behind the boiler with his nose inches from the pages of his new book.

Amaranthe’s position offered her a cushioned seat instead of cold metal, though in return for this luxury, she had stoking duty for the furnace. Coal dust stained her hands and her gray army fatigues. She had torn her “costume” off as soon as she left the steam room the day before.

The lorry rumbled along a well-kept concrete road, with the tall buildings of the city fading into the distance behind them and sprawling homesteads and farmlands ahead. Tracks ran alongside, though few locomotives headed east into the mountains. Most imports came from the gulf, to the south, and the west coast with its populous port cities. Rikavedk, the easternmost satrapy, had been the last chunk of land added to the empire, more out of Emperor Dausrak’s ancestrally appointed vision that Turgonia should stretch from sea to sea than out of any value in the vast steppes on the other side of the mountains. Amaranthe imagined the spirits of dead rulers hanging around in the Valley of the Emperors, arguing over who had acquired the most land. Less lurid than comparing lengths of certain body parts, she supposed.

“All that money,” Maldynado grumbled, wiping raindrops off the brim of a broad peacock-feathered hat.

“Pardon?” Amaranthe asked.

“All that money you two won, and you made me buy a used-to-within-an-inch-of-collapsing lorry with an open cab. An open cab in the rainy season.”

“We may need money later on. I thought it best to reserve some of our funds.” She was mulling over a ploy to feign interest in purchasing the mysterious mountain lot as a cover story to justify some poking about.

“I was this close.” Maldynado held up two fingers a hair’s breadth apart. “Almost had that dour old lizard ready to sell us a shiny green Dondar lorry for half its value. She was a beauty. Fast too.”

“Perhaps if you’d spent less money on water-” Amaranthe eyed the crates in the cab with their gear, “-we would have had more for vehicular purchases.”

“That’s bottled safe water. It won’t make us sick. You’ll thank me later if all the rivers up here are poisoned.”

“Safe water? What pretty young entrepreneur told you that?”

“A couple of girls selling them out of a cart. The water was bottled at an artesian spring at the base of the mountains.”

“It’s probably from the lake,” Amaranthe said. “The city water hasn’t been suspect long enough for someone to go up to the mountains and bottle anything from springs.”

Books stuck his head into the cab. “Unless said person had previous knowledge of the impending calamity. I saw the cart. There was a line around the block to buy the water at five ranmyas a bottle.”

Maldynado sniffed. “I didn’t pay that much or stand in line.”

“Nonetheless, it looked like a profitable business,” Books said. “Maybe we should have questioned them. Perhaps they’re behind the attack on the water. Make the city supply unsafe, then make a fortune selling imported water.”

“Poisoning the source just to cash in on bottled water is extreme,” Amaranthe said, “especially considering there will be hordes of competitors flooding the market within a day or two.”

“Maybe our entrepreneurs didn’t think their plan through well.”

“It’s probably someone taking advantage of the situation,” Amaranthe said. “One of my instructors used to say, ‘In every crisis lies opportunity.’”

“Yes, politicians have that motto too.” Books clambered over the low wall dividing the bed from the cab and squeezed onto the bench beside Amaranthe. “Perhaps, when we’re up there investigating that lot…” He glanced at Maldynado and lowered his voice. “Perhaps we should visit Vonsha’s family estate. Since their property is across the river from the other one, they might prove a font of information.”

“Oh, please,” Maldynado said. “You just want to question her family about her interests so you can smooth-talk your way into her font.”

Books coughed and cleared his throat.

Amaranthe lifted a hand to rest on his shoulder and noticed a plume of smoke smudging the road to the rear. The undulations of the terrain hid whatever vehicle was making it, but she shifted uneasily, wondering if someone might be after them. Aside from the usual possibility of bounty hunters, there was the doubtlessly irked Ellaya and her mysterious protectors.

“I don’t think,” Books said, “that people who resort to spending their evenings at The Pirates’ Plunder should mock me for my interest in a woman.”

“Nothing wrong with The Pirates’ Plunder,” Maldynado said. “Fine ladies there.”

In the bed of the lorry, Sicarius stood, his head turned toward the smoke cloud behind them.

“In even finer costumes.” Akstyr grinned. “I liked the woman with the eye patch.”

“Oh, yes,” Maldynado said. “Though I’m not sure if it’s appropriate to call it an eye patch when it’s actually covering-”

“Enforcer vehicle,” Sicarius announced.

Maldynado cursed.

“Easy,” Amaranthe said. “It might be a coincidence.”

“What do you want me to do?” Maldynado asked. “Turn off the road?”

Amaranthe eyed the food, water, footlocker, and other gear piled between the men. Flintlock rifles and pistols lay beside her repeating crossbow and everyone’s swords, but many people preferred firearms for hunting and laws forbidding their use were supposedly lenient outside the city.

“No,” she said. “Just keep the tarp over our supplies. Akstyr, hide that book.” His tome on magic was the most incriminating thing they had. “We’re just a group of hunters, heading into the mountains to take down some…”

“Scrawny elk that are still all ribs after a long hard winter?” Maldynado raised his eyebrows.

She blushed. “Early spring isn’t hunting season, you say?”

“Haven’t been out of the city much, have you?” Maldynado’s eyes twinkled.

Amaranthe imagined him plotting some trick to play on her, the wilderness neophyte. “I have been to the mountains before.”

“Did you ever get out of the lorry?”

“It was a locomotive, and, yes, I stayed overnight in a cabin. A friend and I were visiting our fathers’ work camp.”

The twinkle failed to leave Maldynado’s eyes.

“We’ll say we’re going to make a bid on some property,” she said. “Which is sort of possibly a truth.”

“Decision’s made?” Sicarius called over the pumping pistons of the engine. “They’re closing on us quickly.”

“My grandmother on a bicycle could close on us quickly,” Maldynado said. “This slag heap was probably the first model ever made.”

“Yes,” Amaranthe told Sicarius. “You might want to cover your blond hair though. We wouldn’t want them distracted from their errand by your bounty.”

The armored lorry drew closer. Black plumes spewed from a smokestack painted silver to complement the red sheen of the body. Enforcer colors.

“What if we are their errand?” Books asked.

“Let’s hope we’re not and they go right by,” Amaranthe said.

“And if they don’t?” Books asked. “This isn’t enforcer jurisdiction, is it? If something out here was wrong, they’d call in the army, wouldn’t they?”

“Depends on the incident. There are rural enforcer units.”

The vehicle loomed behind them. A bronze plaque on the front of the lorry read: Ag. District #3. Maldynado steered their own vehicle to the side, leaving enough room for the other to pass.

Sicarius sat next to the gear, his back against the side of the bed, head ducked low to stay out of sight. Amaranthe faced forward, pulling her hood lower over her eyes.

As the enforcer vehicle drew even with them, she sat, shoulders hunched. Just an innocent traveler, beaten down by the rain. Out of the corner of her eye, the people in the cab came into view: two men and a woman. The latter looked their way.

Amaranthe twitched with surprise. Of course, she had not been the only female enforcer in the city, but they were so rare she knew most. She recovered and offered a nod toward the woman while searching her memory for the face. Nothing came to mind.

After a brief survey, the woman returned her attention to the road ahead. Nobody yelled at Maldynado to halt, and Amaranthe sighed with relief, glad she did not have to use her sketchy story.

The enforcer vehicle pulled ahead. A dark oilskin tarp protected the large lorry bed from the elements, but the rear flap was rolled up, allowing a view of the inside. At least thirty soldiers in army blacks crowded the benches, each man with a sword and rifle wedged between his knees.

Perhaps noticing her stare, one stood and untied the flap. It fell into place, hiding the interior.

“Since when do enforcer vehicles get used to transport the army?” Amaranthe asked.

“I have a more pertinent question,” Books said. “Are they going where we’re going, and, if so, should we revise our itinerary?”

Sicarius came forward, crouching behind Amaranthe.

“Thoughts?” she asked him.

“An enforcer vehicle traversing the countryside isn’t uncommon,” he said.

“Whereas a convoy of steam trampers and black army troop transports might cause the population alarm?” she asked. “Especially when there’s hardly anyone to war with to the east?”

“How delightful,” Books said. “Not only are they going someplace where a platoon of soldiers is required, but the situation is so dire people need to be kept in the dark.”

“It’s the empire,” Amaranthe said lightly. “People are usually kept in the dark.”

“How comforting,” Books said.

“This road leads to several destinations,” she said. “Let’s not get concerned until we’re sure we have something to worry about.”

“So, we should go back to teasing Books about his lady friend?” Maldynado asked.

“Perhaps we could travel in silence for a while.” Amaranthe gave Books a sympathetic smile.

The silence lasted almost a minute before the eye patch debate came up again. Amaranthe sighed and studied the craggy mountains ahead. Halfway up the green slopes, snow started, cold and forbidding. What else lay up there, waiting for them?