Forged in Blood I

Chapter 3

Amaranthe tried to pierce the basement darkness with her eyes, but there wasn’t enough light filtering down the stairwell to reveal anything. For all she knew, she might be standing on the edge of a secret bottomless abyss that opened up beneath the newspaper building. However, the amount of dust hanging in the air, tickling her nostrils, suggested a clutter-filled room of manmade origins.

With the grinding and thumping of machinery filtering down from above, she could almost believe she’d imagined the voice, but Maldynado had heard it too.

“That sounded like Deret Mancrest,” he said, “but I can’t believe a warrior-caste lord would get himself locked in a grimy cell more than once in the same year.”

“No, you wouldn’t think so.” Amaranthe waited for the voice in the darkness to speak again, but all she heard was a soft thump. Such as that of a forehead thudding against a wall? “Watch our friends, will you?”

While Maldynado hauled their prisoners out of the stairwell, Amaranthe shrugged off her knapsack and dug out a lantern. She shut the door before striking a match. The small flame did little more than highlight the scowls of the two captives and Maldynado’s perennially amused features. Yara never had a chance. The man even managed to look stop-and-gape handsome with dust blanketing his brown curls, mud on his boots, and a dubious green smudge smeared across one of his well-defined cheekbones.

Leaving him with the soldiers, Amaranthe walked into the widest of several aisles branching out from the entrance. Old hand-powered printing presses and stacks upon stacks of dusty, faded newspapers filled the basement from faded brick floor to worn wooden ceiling. The box- and press-framed route took her to an open area hemmed in by giant bottles of ink and crates full of machine parts. A six-foot-tall iron cage rested in the center, a single occupant hunched inside. Deret Mancrest.

If his oily hair, limp clothing, and beard stubble were apt indicators, he’d been locked inside for a few days. An empty plate sat outside the door, and a water jug and chamberpot rested inside the cage, so no one had intended him to starve and die, but he certainly didn’t look his best. A heavy padlock secured the cell gate. The swordstick he used for a cane, the support necessary due to a war wound that had left him with a limp, leaned against a crate out of his reach. He stared at Amaranthe warily, probably wondering if, in these tumultuous times, she was friend or foe. Or maybe he was simply wondering if she’d mock him for his predicament. After all, she’d once left him in a similar position when he tried to lure her into a trap, intending to turn her over to the army.

Fortunately for him, she was too professional to mock a potential ally.

“Good evening, Lord Mancrest.” Amaranthe waved at the cage. “You haven’t been pestering me of late, so I’ll assume there’s some other woman you’ve irked so greatly that she felt compelled to lock you up.” Maybe that wasn’t that professional after all.

“I greatly irked my father,” Deret said.

“Ah.” Amaranthe wanted the details, but they could wait until later, when they were somewhere without armed soldiers roaming about on the floor above. “Are you agreeably serving out your paternally-induced prison sentence?” she asked, thinking Mancrest might be grateful enough to share all of the goings on in the city if she freed him from his cell. “Or would you like to be let out?”

“Trust me, nothing about this is agreeable.”

“I don’t suppose there are keys nearby?” Amaranthe glanced around, though her fingers were already dipping into her knapsack for the lock-picking kit.

“My father has them.”

“Too bad. I believe your father just left with Ms. Worgavic.” She said it casually, but watched his face through her lashes to see if he knew anything about the affair.

Mancrest straightened, clunking his head on the cage’s overhead bars. “You know that woman?” He squinted at her, his listless apathy fading.

“Yes.” Amaranthe reserved further explanation for later. If she had information he desired, maybe she could offer a trade. She couldn’t count on Mancrest simply telling her all she wanted to know. They hadn’t parted enemies last summer, but the last time she’d spoken to him had involved an awkward apology for abandoning him in the middle of their date in the Imperial Gardens. She’d left out the fact that she’d run off to smooch with Sicarius in the hedge maze, but he was bright enough to piece together the puzzle. “Do you know her?” she asked.

“Her name, but little else.”

“She’s one of Ravido’s allies, among other things.” Amaranthe slipped her picking tools into the padlock.

“Hm,” Mancrest said, not giving away much.

“Are you down here because you’re not a supporter of Ravido’s?” Amaranthe asked, fishing for information, not unlike she was fishing for the tumblers. The padlock, she noticed, was identical to the one that had secured the storm grate. Had the senior Mancrest been responsible for increasing security around the newspaper office? To keep people from learning about the extra publications being printed?

“I’m down here because I refused to be strong-armed into printing lies in the Gazette.” Mancrest gripped the bars. “Amaranthe, the emperor… is he truly dead?”

“Nah,” came Maldynado’s voice from behind her. “He’s probably out carousing with Akstyr by now, learning about magic, about growing up in the streets, and about how not to attract women.”

“Aren’t you guarding our prisoners?” Amaranthe asked without glancing at him. She kept her focus on the lock.

“I had to come see if you were chatting with who I thought you were chatting with, so I tied them to each other.” Maldynado leaned against the cage bars. “So, Deret, how’d you manage to get yourself locked up in your own building?”

“It’s my father’s building,” Mancrest grumbled. “How is it you’re not locked up somewhere yet? You’re the outlaw here, after all.”

“Yes, but a dashing outlaw with perfectly proportioned features. One doesn’t incarcerate perfect proportions.”

“One does if one’s earned a decent bounty. I suppose yours doesn’t qualify. Your scruffy Akstyr has an impressive one these days though. Were you aware that the gangs want him?” Mancrest had shifted his attention to Amaranthe. Was he making an offering she might find useful in hopes of opening up an exchange of information? If so, they wanted the same things. Good.

“We’re aware of it,” she said. “He should be safe for the moment. And, yes, Sespian is alive and safe too. He’s with-” She caught herself, realizing Mancrest’s interest in helping might shrivel up at the mention of Sicarius.

“Your assassin,” he guessed, his tone flat.

“Yes.” She waited, wondering if he’d heard about the father-son relationship yet. Perhaps not, since he’d referred to Sespian as the emperor. Had Forge not spilled that information yet? If not, why not? If Ms. Worgavic had made her way back to the capital, others in the organization would have too.

Mancrest didn’t say anything else. Amaranthe snapped the lock open and let the gate swing wide.

Thumps sounded near the door. At first, she thought they’d been made by the men Maldynado was supposed to be watching, but Mancrest blurted, “The stairs. Someone’s coming.”

“Maldynado,” Amaranthe said, “lock the door, please.”

He was already moving. “No lock,” he called back, but a heavy scraping sound nearly drowned out the words as he moved a crate in front of the door.

“They’ll know something is going on in here as soon as they can’t get in.” Mancrest hopped out of the cage, winced when his weight came down on his bad leg, and growled as he reached for his swordstick.

Amaranthe didn’t point out that they already knew something was going on, due to the two missing men.

More thumps sounded, someone pounding at the door.

“What’s the plan?” Maldynado asked.

Amaranthe thought of the walled up doorway in the storm water tunnel. “Back door?”

“We’re below street level,” Mancrest said. “That door and a trapdoor in the ceiling are the only exits we have.” He waved toward the sound of Maldynado dragging another heavy crate.

“The only exits you have now.” Amaranthe winked. She didn’t feel as confident as that wink suggested, but she led Mancrest through the shadows of old crates and rusty equipment. Warrior-caste men seemed to appreciate bravado anyway. As she walked, she kept an eye out for anything that might be useful for knocking down brick obstacles.

When they neared the back wall-the one that ought to line up with the storm tunnel-she found boxes stacked to within a foot or two of the ceiling. She grimaced as she lifted her lantern to survey the shadows. They might not have time for her plan.

“What are we looking for?” Mancrest asked.

Amaranthe was about to say nothing, but her light played across the wall above a box of reference books, and it revealed a different shade of brick, more of a dull red instead of the gray that comprised the rest of the basement. A relatively recent addition.

“Help me clear away these boxes.” Amaranthe set down her lantern and clambered atop one of the piles.

“Do men always obey your orders?”

“Only when they’re curious to see what the result of following those orders will be.” Amaranthe heaved a box to the floor. Dust flew into the air, and Mancrest jumped back, coughing. Her fastidious streak cringed at the idea of making a mess, but the thumps on the door convinced her she didn’t have time for an orderly rearranging. “There’s nothing important in these boxes, is there?” She shoved another one to the floor. “Nothing you’ll be upset about losing?”

“If the boxes are buried down here, I guess not.” Shaking his head, Mancrest started moving aside the pile of boxes next to hers.

“And this wall? Would you be upset about losing it?”

Mancrest paused. “What?” He stared at the bricks-with some of the boxes out of the way, the outline of the walled-in doorway was coming into view. “Oh.” For a moment, he looked like he might object, but then he clenched his jaw and said, “No, curse him. I don’t care what happens to this building. Not after he locked me up down here.”

“Good.” Amaranthe hopped to the floor. “Keep moving those, will you? I need to locate materials for the second half of this plan.”

Seemingly forgetting his objection to being ordered around, Mancrest heaved aside the boxes while she hunted for something they could use to blow a hole in the wall. There shouldn’t be much structural support behind the brick addition, but it’d take more than a shoulder thump to topple it.

“Maldynado?” Amaranthe called. “How’re you doing over there?”

“Between keeping these rowdy prisoners subdued and piling as much junk as possible in front of the door?” came the response.

“Yes.”

“Fine, but I heard someone in the stairwell holler to get Lord Mancrest, and I believe the words ‘battering ram’ also came up.”

Amaranthe didn’t think a ram would prove effective in that tight stairwell, but if Deret’s father came down and started hollering at his son through the door, that might have a scheme-withering effect. If Deret decided they should give in and let the others in, that wouldn’t leave Amaranthe and Maldynado in a good place. “If you’re done piling up junk, come give me a hand.”

“Be there in a minute.”

Amaranthe paused beside a rusty press beneath a drop cloth. She eyed the furnace and boiler. It wouldn’t be the first boiler she’d caused to explode, but she feared it was too big and too surrounded by other heavy objects for three people to push over to the wall. She kept looking. Perhaps there was a smaller press, or perhaps… Her thoughts took a jog to the left when she spotted the jars of ink again. Nodding to herself, she lugged two of them through the crooked aisles toward the back wall. On the way, she caught sight of Maldynado and his so-called rowdy prisoners. Both were sitting on the ground, their wrists and ankles still tied. She paused, setting down the heavy jars.

“Ten ranmyas says they get caught in the next ten minutes, and these outlaws get shot,” one said.

“I’m not taking that bet,” the other said. “That’s a foregone event. The real question is whether Lord Mancrest will give his son a spanking when he finds him out of his cage.”

The two men shared snickers. Maldynado was leaning against one of numerous crates he’d shoved in front of the door, wiping sweat from his brow. “We’re not getting caught,” he told the prisoners. “But if we did, I’d pay a lot more than ten ranmyas to see Deret spanked.”

“Maldynado,” Amaranthe said, causing him to start.

“I was taking a break. A quick one. I swear. Look at all I did.” He flung his arms wide to highlight the size of the stack he’d piled up.

“You and your prisoners aren’t in trouble.” Amaranthe smiled at the tied men, figuring it couldn’t hurt to start talking to them if she hoped to draw them to her side later. “But I need help.” She picked up one of the jars of ink and nodded for Maldynado to grab the other.

“I’d rather see her spanked,” one of the prisoners said as she moved away.

His cohort guffawed. “I’d pay fifty ranmyas for that.”

Maldynado snickered. Amaranthe raised an eyebrow at him.

“Sorry,” he said, “I could thump them around so they couldn’t say such things, but you mentioned winning them over. I thought that might be easier if we didn’t mash up their faces or perforate any important organs.”

“Thoughtful of you.” Given that spanking comment, she wouldn’t mind some light thumping, but she decided she shouldn’t encourage brutality.

When they reached the wall, Deret was still pushing boxes aside. Amaranthe and Maldynado deposited their loads and went to retrieve more jars of ink. By the time they’d made their last trip, Deret had cleared the area. He stopped to mop sweat from his face and eye the semicircle of giant jars.

“You think the storm tunnel is on the other side?” Maldynado waved to the outline on the wall.

Amaranthe pictured the street, the tunnel, and their location within the building in her mind. “I’d guess ten or twelve feet away.”

“What if this side stub is bricked in all the way?”

“Let’s hope it’s not.”

A resonating bang came from the stairway. Huh, the soldiers might have gotten a battering ram into the stairwell after all.

“Deret, printing press ink is flammable, right?” Amaranthe had better make sure she had her facts right before she started making fuses.

“Yes. It’s made of soot, walnut oil, and turpentine. When we run the presses, we have to be careful not to let the bearings on the rollers overheat or…” Deret’s eyes narrowed. “Why do you ask?”

Maldynado laughed. “The more pertinent question, old boy, is which one of us will get blamed when she blows up your father’s building?”

Deret looked back and forth from the bottles of ink to the brick wall. “Oh.”

Maldynado elbowed Amaranthe. “He’s volunteering.”

“Really?” Amaranthe asked. “I didn’t get that.”

“It was inherent in the lack of a strenuous objection. Please note, I am objecting. Strenuously.”

“We can face the soldiers if you wish, Deret,” Amaranthe said, though she fervently hoped he did not wish-especially if someone had run off to fetch the elder Lord Mancrest and if Mrs. Worgavic was still with him. She was the last person to whom Amaranthe wanted to reveal her presence.

Still eyeing the ink, Deret rubbed his jaw. She shifted from foot to foot, but didn’t rush him, though the banging at the door surely made her wish to do so.

“No,” Deret finally said. “I meant what I said earlier. I’m done arguing with my father-and those Marblecrest lackeys.” He scowled at Maldynado.

“Don’t look at me like that.” Maldynado prodded his thumb to his chest. “I’m disowned, remember? And when Ravido finds out I was present-though not, I assure you, responsible-for his wife’s death, I’ll be lucky if I’m not dismembered.”

“Mari’s dead?” Deret gaped at him, then turned the gape onto Amaranthe.

“I’m not responsible either,” Amaranthe said. “I was busy being tortured by Hollowcrest’s former master interrogator at the time.”

“What?” Deret continued to gape, though his gaze shifted back to Maldynado, as if to check if this were a joke. Maldynado shook his head solemnly. Deret swallowed, pity entering his eyes.

Amaranthe hadn’t wanted that. She’d just meant to-bloody ancestors, she shouldn’t have brought it up at all. They needed to get out of here.

“It seems we have much information we should exchange with each other,” Deret said.

Glad he was ready to drop the conversation too, Amaranthe managed a smile. “That’s why we came looking for you.”

“And here I thought it was because you’d grown weary of the company of that assassin and sought emotionally stimulating conversations.” Deret picked up one of the jars of ink.

Amaranthe tried to read whether there was hurt lacing his flippant words-and whether that hurt might be a problem. She thought the humor reached his eyes, but she couldn’t be sure.

Deret must have understood her uncertain silence, for he patted her arm and said, “I’m teasing. I’m actually seeing a nice girl-or I was until Father detained me.” He growled and set the jar down by the wall.

Amaranthe told herself that it was good that he’d found someone else, though a silly part of her felt stung that he’d so quickly dismissed her and fallen for another. Come on, girl, she thought, you’re not some spell-bindingly alluring maiden from the stories of eld, the kind soldiers pined over for decades while they were away at war. So long as one certain man didn’t dismiss her, that was all that mattered.

Deret pushed the other jars toward the wall. “You two stand back a bit. I’ll handle this. I’ve inadvertently started enough fires with the presses that I’m practically an expert.”

Maldynado pumped a fist. “Yes.”

Amaranthe cocked her head at him.

“He is volunteering to take the blame.”

Deret snorted and waved for them to back away. “Turpentine is noxious stuff. You don’t want to inhale any more than is necessary.”

“You be careful, too, then. Especially if there’s a new lady worrying about you right now.” Amaranthe pushed Maldynado toward the blocked door. “Let’s get your rowdy friends.”

The two prisoners had been attempting to free each other. One clenched half of a broken pair of scissors in his mouth and was trying to saw the rusty blade across his comrade’s wrist bonds. Amaranthe doubted they’d free each other within the hour-or month-that way, but she removed the tool from the man’s mouth anyway.

“Sorry, gentlemen, but we’re taking a walk.” She nodded for Maldynado to hoist the bigger man to his feet. “You’ll have to try to escape later.”

Amaranthe had no more than helped the second fellow to stand-her pistol nudging his back to encourage alacrity-when an explosion roared through the basement. The ground bucked, and she staggered, catching her balance on a press. Crates and machinery crashed to the floor. The wooden ceiling trembled and groaned. She eyed the old boards through the clouds of dust that arose, choking the little lamplight they had. Maybe setting off an explosion in the basement of a centuries-old building wasn’t a good idea after all.

The noise in the stairwell disappeared. The creaks from the presses on the floor above sounded loud in the new quiet, one broken only by soft wheezing coughs and dirt and debris trickling from the ceiling, or perhaps that brick wall.

Still pushing her prisoner, Amaranthe continued in that direction. “Deret? Are you all right?”

The noxious odor he’d promised clogged the air, a charred burnt smell with a piny underpinning. It stung her throat and eyes, bringing on tears. Her prisoner balked, but she prodded him onward. At the same time, she tugged her shirt up over her mouth and nose.

“Did it work?” Maldynado choked out around a cough. “It better have, because it smells worse than an entire battalion’s worth of unwashed socks piled up behind a field latrine.”

“You’ve been spending too much time with Akstyr,” Amaranthe said.

“Nah, he would have worked donkey droppings into that claim.”

The lantern by the brick wall had either gone out of its own accord or Deret had cut if off. Amaranthe lifted her own light high, trying to pierce the cloak of dusty air. The boxes nearest to the explosion had been blown asunder, and bits of old newspapers and books littered the floor. Amaranthe grimaced at this destruction of property-she hoped some university library had copies of the documents somewhere-but forgot her regrets as soon as she spotted the jagged hole leading to a black tunnel.

“Deret?” Amaranthe peered along the wall in both directions.

“In retrospect,” came Mancrest’s raspy voice, “I should have laid a longer fuse.” He staggered out of a nearby hiding spot, leaning heavily on his swordstick. Soot smeared his face and clothing, and his hair stuck out in blackened spicules.

“Neophyte,” Maldynado said brightly.

“Are you-” Amaranthe had planned to inquire after Mancrest’s health, but the bangs started up at the door again, and she switched to, “-ready to go?”

Mancrest cast a glower in the direction of the cage. “More than ready.”

Amaranthe peered into the dark passage behind the wall. “Is there any more ink left? I think we’ll have to do that again to reach the storm water tunnel.”

Deret rubbed his finger into his eardrum, as if he were having trouble hearing her. “Again?”

“Women are never satisfied,” Maldynado said. “Not only do you have to impress them once, but you have to keep doing it again and again. You better learn these things if you’re going to enter into a relationship with one.”

“As if you’re such an expert,” Deret grumbled.

Already on her way back to grab two more ink jars, Amaranthe missed part of the conversation, but came back to Maldynado explaining his new relationship with Yara.

“She’s the tall, muscly one?” Deret asked.

Amaranthe tried to remember if he’d ever met her. She didn’t think so, at least not when Yara had been a part of their group, but it wouldn’t be surprising if, as a journalist, Deret had been keeping track of the team, including recent acquisitions.

“Oh, yes,” Maldynado drawled. “Very athletic.”

“Are we preparing for the next explosion?” Amaranthe asked, dumping a jar into Deret’s hands. “And watching the prisoners?” She gave Maldynado a pointed look.

“Yes, ma’am,” Deret said at the same time as Maldynado proclaimed, “Naturally, boss.”

Deret grabbed a lantern and disappeared into the tunnel. Amaranthe intended to follow and help him if he needed it, but a thunderous snap rent the air.

“Was that the door?” she whispered. It’d sounded louder and closer than that.

“Must be,” Maldynado said. “What else would it be?” He knocked on a brick. “Hurry up, Deret. I think your old man’s about to join us.”

“I need some cloth and another jar,” Deret called back, his voice echoing in the enclosed tunnel.

Amaranthe eyed Maldynado’s shirt. It had… tassels wasn’t quite the right word, but the fluffy fringes looked like they could be shorn off for Deret’s fuse without leaving flesh exposed. She unsheathed her dagger and lifted a finger, intending to ask.

“Don’t even think about it.” Maldynado took a large step back. “My wardrobe has suffered dreadfully as a result of knowing you. Do you know that I haven’t been able to keep a hat for more than two weeks since we met?”

“Please, you’d find it tedious to wear the same hat for more than two weeks anyway.” Amaranthe veered toward the prisoners, lifting an apologetic hand as she sliced into one’s jacket.

“True,” Maldynado said, “but I prefer to retire a hat to a closet for possible later consideration, not watch it be blown up in a steamboat explosion.”

“Fussy, fussy.” Amaranthe took the purloined cloth and another jar into the tunnel.

At the far end, Deret was hunched over, assembling his bomb. Amaranthe set down the rest of the supplies, grabbed the lantern, and held it up to improve the light.

Another resounding snap came from out in the basement.

“That’s not the door.” Maldynado stuck his head into the tunnel. “I think those are the floor beams.”

A second noise echoed, this more of a boom than a snap.

“That was the door,” Maldynado said.

Deret grabbed the second jar. “Going as fast as I can.”

“Can I do anything to help?” Amaranthe asked.

“Yes. If my father barges through that door with the soldiers, shoot him.”

“Really?” Amaranthe wouldn’t have pegged Deret as the type to harm blood relations, even irritating ones.

“Not in the chest. Just blow out a kneecap or two.”

“Is he really the one who locked you up down here?”

“Yes.”

“Because…?”

“I refused to print Ravido Marblecrest’s half-truths. Ravido and his business contacts went to my father behind my back. I wish I could say there’d been blackmail or other coercion, but my father is the sort to believe that warrior-caste families should stick together, and he was never a big supporter of Raumesys or Sespian, so…”

“He was happy to help Ravido?” Amaranthe asked.

“That’s the impression I got. When I confronted him… we argued. With fists. He reminded me he owned the paper and sent me home. That was that, or so I hoped he’d think. I brought some of my workers in late that night, intending to change the typeset and print a lengthy story about everything that’s been going on in secret, at least that I’m aware of-thanks in part to you. I included that there’d been no evidence whatsoever to verify Sespian’s death and that anyone attempting to take the throne was doing so illegally.”

“I haven’t seen that edition of the paper.” Thanks to their travels, Amaranthe hadn’t seen a lot of editions, but she doubted anyone had seen that one.

“Nor will you. My father guessed my intentions and barged in on me. He was furious. My basement internment was the result.” Deret backed away from his improvised ink-based explosive. “Time to light the fuse.”

“Are we sure we want to light another one?” Maldynado asked, poking his head inside the tunnel again. “Things don’t sound too structurally stable out here.” A crash punctuated his last word.

“Do we have a choice?” Amaranthe asked. “Sounds like company is coming.”

“Let’s get out of here,” Deret grumbled and grabbed the lantern.

Since he was leaning on his swordstick, his movements were awkward as he bent toward the fuse. Amaranthe wondered if his earlier near miss, as evinced by his soot-covered face and clothing, had come because he’d misjudged how much time he’d need to give himself to get out of range, thinking of how fast he’d once been able to move instead of how fast he moved today.

“Want me to light it?” she offered.

Deret’s glower could have withered daisies on a warm spring day.

“Or… I’ll just wait outside,” she amended.

“Do that.”

Amaranthe scooted out of the tunnel, almost colliding with Maldynado who was loitering at the mouth.

“We need to take cover,” she said.

Maldynado started to jog away, but she added, “Them too,” and waved at the prisoners.

Maldynado huffed a sigh and grabbed the men, propelling them before him. Amaranthe could understand the sentiment. At least they went along without making trouble. Nobody wanted to get caught in an explosion.

She joined them behind a couple of desks, ducking under one with a solid slab top.

The ceiling creaked ominously above their heads. She hoped the next explosion, which was outside of the building’s walls, wouldn’t affect the structure or supports.

More bangs sounded-crates being shoved off the pile Maldynado had erected up front. The soldiers must have broken down the door or found a way to remove it from its hinges.

“Deret,” a man bellowed. “Are you responsible for this ruckus, boy? I’m going to tie you down range at Fort Urgot for the privates to use for shooting practice.”

Deret skidded around the corner of Amaranthe’s hiding spot and dropped to the floor. There wasn’t room for him to squeeze under the desk beside her, but he pressed himself close and buried his head under his arms.

The thunderous boom that followed wasn’t as loud as the first had been, not with the wall blocking some of the noise, but that didn’t keep the floor from trembling beneath them. Cracks sounded, this time not in the wood but in the bricks, and more dust flooded the air.

“By great grandmother’s funeral pyre, what are you doing, boy?” came the senior Lord Mancrest’s voice.

Amaranthe touched Deret’s shoulder and climbed out past him. They had better get out of the basement before something important gave way-or the soldiers swarmed inside to capture them. Maldynado had already leaped to his feet, and he reached the opening in the wall first, a lantern in hand.

He stuck the light inside. “It worked.”

He’d neglected to grab the prisoners, and they looked like they meant to flee toward Deret’s father. Amaranthe was tempted to let them go so they wouldn’t have to deal with them any more, but she grabbed their arms. “This way. He won’t be happy with you for not capturing us in the first place.”

“I don’t care any more,” one muttered. “So long as we get out of here before-”

Wood snapped above them. A beam bowed down, boards cracking and giving way with each inch it drooped.

Deret grabbed Amaranthe’s arm. “Run!”

She needed no further urging and sprinted for the tunnel hole.

“Get back, get back,” came a cry from the other entrance.

Just as Amaranthe crossed the threshold, the beam gave away completely. Light fell into the basement as a huge chunk of the floor above collapsed. Steel screeched, then a cacophonous crash filled the space as one of the massive presses tumbled through the opening. Parts flew off, pelting the walls and landing on old machinery, leaving a twisted metal wreck that would never print again.

One of the massive paper rolls was flung across the room toward Amaranthe. She dove, somersaulting down the tunnel to put distance between herself and the machine’s attack. Brick crunched as the roller struck the outer wall. A curtain of dust and mortar sprayed the inside of the passage.

Amaranthe climbed to her feet, saw that Maldynado and Deret had both made it inside, and started to release a relieved breath, but a cry of pain came from beyond the entrance. Her first thought was that Deret’s father, or some of his men, had been crossing the basement and had been pinned by flying pieces of machinery. Then she remembered the prisoners.

“Maldynado,” she whispered, “help me,” and headed back.

“Are you crazy?” Deret held the only remaining lantern, and he stood at the far end of the passage, one foot already through the ragged hole leading to the storm tunnel.

“We brought them down here. Maldynado,” Amaranthe repeated, knowing she’d need his brawn if someone was pinned.

A hand patted her back. “I’m with you, boss.”

Amaranthe stuck her head back into the basement as a metal filing cabinet tumbled through the hole from above, landing on the cage Deret had been confined in before. More wood snapped overhead. Before long, the whole ceiling would drop.

“Help,” someone whimpered from a few feet away.

Amaranthe swatted at the dust in the air. Fine particles slipped through her shirt and assailed her nostrils and throat. She stifled a cough. She doubted the soldiers would come streaming into this mess, but she didn’t want to let them know where she was. Who knew if they had rifles?

A long arm of machinery had fallen on one of the prisoners. The other man was trying to pull his comrade free, though the wrist ties made it impossible. Amaranthe slid out her dagger and slashed through the bindings, instantly raising her estimation of the soldier for not leaving his colleague. He gave her a quick nod, then bent to grab the end of the beam.

The pinned man groaned, his teeth clenched so hard she could almost hear them grinding above the noise of falling debris. Maldynado grabbed the beam as well. Amaranthe glanced about and found a pole sticking out of the wreckage. She joined the men, thrusting it beneath the beam to use as a lever. Those printing presses must weigh tons, for even this broken section took all three of them to lift.

More pieces of the ceiling cracked and fell as they heaved. The beam inched up.

“Go, Rudev,” the pinned man’s comrade urged.

As the weight lifted, the prone fellow groaned, his eyes rolling back in his head. For a moment, Amaranthe thought he would pass out, but he stretched his hands across the floor, grabbed the corner of a crate and started clawing his way free.

“There they are!” someone yelled from the other side of the basement.

A shot rang out. Instinctively, Amaranthe ducked, though it was probably the haze that saved her, rather than her reflexes. The pistol ball pounded into the brick wall.

“Go, go,” she whispered and risked casting her lever aside. She grabbed the crawling man by the shoulders of his jacket and threw her weight into pulling him.

A pained stream of curses flowed from his mouth, but his legs finally cleared the beam. Maldynado and the other prisoner dropped it, hurling more dust into the air.

A second pistol fired. Amaranthe and the others dropped to the ground and scrambled for the tunnel entrance on hands and knees. This time, the shot hit the ceiling. As if it were the kernel of rice that tipped the merchant’s scales, a second ceiling beam snapped, the ear-splitting noise directly above Amaranthe. She lunged into the tunnel, grabbing the others, pulling and urging them along, though nobody needed prompting at that point.

As Maldynado flopped to the ground beside her, the basement ceiling caved in. Dust flooded into the tunnel, and an ominous groan came from the bricks above their heads as well. This time it was Maldynado who grabbed her arm, and her feet barely touched the ground as he raced toward the storm tunnel. She glanced back, ensuring their prisoners were hobbling after-she didn’t know what she was going to do with them, but she wasn’t going to lose them at that point. In the darkness behind them, it was hard to tell, but she thought the rubble had closed off their escape route.

Maldynado let go of her when they reached the storm tunnel, but she waved toward the bend that led to the river. “Let’s get all the way out of here,” Amaranthe said. “People were shooting at us at the end.”

“Think they figured out who we are?” Maldynado asked.

“Either that, or Deret’s pa is very displeased with him right now.”

Deret, leading the way toward the river, said nothing to this, though he did give the wall nearest the building a long look. The booms and thuds of equipment falling through the floor continued to emanate from the Gazette.