Forged in Blood II

Chapter 9

In the dark tent, Sicarius listened to the soft exhalations of his Nurian roommates for a long time before rising from his spot at the foot of Kor Nas’s cot. Everyone had drifted off, he was certain of it. And tonight, for the first time since Sicarius had been in the camp, Prince Zirabo slept in one of the cots. There’d been one set up during the prior nights, but it had remained empty. Maybe he had a Turgonian lover somewhere. It didn’t matter. This was Sicarius’s chance-possibly his only chance.

He crossed to the Nurian’s cot and considered his options before acting. If he woke Kor Nas, his chance would be gone. He wouldn’t be able to explain what he was doing without thinking of Starcrest and the letter in his pocket, one he’d written the night before, before the practitioner woke for the morning. It’d been hard enough keep his thoughts away from the topic during the day. Kor Nas had sent him off to collect a few more heads, and that’d served as a distraction. After that, he’d asked for a practice session, ostensibly to keep his skills sharp, but in truth, he’d needed to keep thoughts of his plan away from the surface of his mind, from where Kor Nas kept plucking thoughts, even when Sicarius tried to disguise them.

With few other options, he gently shook the prince’s shoulder. In the darkness, Sicarius couldn’t see Zirabo’s eyes open, but he sensed it in the sudden rigidness of the body, followed by the reaching for a dagger at his waist.

Sicarius had hoped curiosity might stay the prince’s hand, and that he might be led outside for a quick meeting, but it seemed not. Sicarius dropped a hand across his mouth and caught the wrist before the fingers found the weapon. Before the prince could recover, Sicarius hoisted him from the cot and propelled him through the tent flap, barely stirring it despite his captive’s attempts to struggle. The prince tried to yell, and some noise escaped through Sicarius’s muffling fingers, but by then, they were outside, and there were other sounds to mask their quick walk away from the Nurian tent.

This close to the city, with the potential for an attack high, a full night shift remained awake with numerous soldiers patrolling the camp, the inside as well as the perimeter. Sicarius hunted about for a quiet place to take his prisoner, one where they could talk openly, but that wasn’t far from the Nurian tent. From experimentation, he knew he had the freedom to walk off far enough to piss without the stone implant chiming an alarm in Kor Nas’s head, but not much farther.

A lorry rested in the shadows behind the chow hall. Lanterns burned inside the tent, and a few voices and the thunks of tiles being played drifted from within, but the back of the lorry lay dark and empty. Sicarius forced his prisoner in that direction. When they reached the cargo bed, and had to climb up to enter it, the Nurian tried to tear free. He was smaller and lighter than Sicarius, without a lot of muscle on his frame, truly a diplomat and not a warrior, and it didn’t take much to squash the outburst. In a few more seconds, Sicarius had him inside, pressed against a tall pile of bags of rice. There were benches along the walls, and two men might sit, facing each other to converse, but he had to convince the Nurian to talk to him first.

“I wish to speak with you, that is all,” Sicarius whispered. “It’s about Admiral Starcrest.”

The prince didn’t relax, but he did stop struggling.

“You did not seem to want him dead.” Sicarius loosened his grip on the man’s mouth, ready to clamp down again if anything except a quiet response came out.

He didn’t get a response at all. Not surprising. The Nurian would not see him as anything other than an enemy, one that couldn’t be trusted. That Kor Nas had… domesticated him would not change anything. Judging by the exchanges Sicarius had witnessed, the prince didn’t consider the practitioner a close ally anyway. He’d have to keep talking, convince the man they had a common interest. Too bad none of Amaranthe’s charisma had fallen into his boots the time she’d tried them on.

“I do not wish him dead either,” Sicarius murmured.

The prince snorted. “Of course not. He’s one of your people.”

“I’ve killed many of my people in the last two days.”

“Because Kor Nas forced you to through his artifact.”

“I’ve killed many Turgonians in the last few years too,” Sicarius said. “There are few who have ever mattered to me one way or another. Most of those who do-who did-are gone now.”

The prince, still pressed into the rice bags, heavy iron pots hanging on racks all about his head, said nothing. Sicarius searched for something else that might draw him into a conversation. He didn’t know how much time he had. As soon as Kor Nas woke up and found him gone…

“Except Starcrest?” the prince asked.

“Yes. I’ve only met him twice, but he was a brilliant commander in the eyes of our people. In my eyes as well,” Sicarius said, suspecting he’d have to be more open with this man than he was wont to be with others if he wanted to earn his trust in such a short time. “I read all of his books as a boy and those written about him.”

“Strange then that you chose to become an assassin.” Coldness had crept into the prince’s voice. “Enemy Chief Fox was honorable. You are Sicarius, are you not? You were Emperor Raumesys’s personal assassin. You came to Nuria over twenty years ago and killed my uncle. He was my father’s older brother, and he would have been Great Chief. Your emperor did not think my father, who was studying medicine at the time, would be accepted as a leader; he thought there’d be war.”

Now it was Sicarius who didn’t respond right away. He hadn’t known he’d ever been identified by the Nurians as the perpetrator of that assassination. Gaining the prince’s trust in this matter would be harder now. Dissembling or flattery would not do; he could only be blunt and hope the Nurian respected such traits.

“As you have been sent to take advantage of our succession issues, so I was sent two decades ago.” It’d been one of his early missions-he’d been only sixteen at the time-one that had involved months of travel, and it’d been the one that had finally convinced Raumesys of his capabilities and usefulness. “We do as our masters bid us to do. I was raised to be an assassin for the throne. For the first thirty years of my life, it was all I knew. Did you ever have a choice to do anything except serve your father?”

The prince shifted his weight. Sicarius took a chance and leaned away from him, letting him turn around. He still blocked the exit, standing so he could keep an eye on the prince and an eye on the camp outside, and also so he could stop his prisoner from escaping if need be. But when the Nurian sat on one of the benches, Sicarius allowed it.

“What do you want, assassin?” the prince asked. “Why risk punishment-” he waved toward Sicarius’s temple, “-by dragging me from my cot?”

“Kor Nas will send me to kill Starcrest as soon as his location is determined. You know this. You were there, arguing against this act. I heard you.”

“Did you.” It wasn’t a question. The prince rested his elbows on his knees and considered his hands. There wasn’t any light nearby to judge the expression on his face.

“If I’m sent after him and cannot control my actions-” Now Sicarius was the one to wave at the artifact, “-I will kill him. He is a brilliant man and a capable fighter, but he is not my equal with a weapon.”

“No,” the prince whispered, still studying his hands, “I saw you practicing today.”

“I would try to warn him, but I cannot leave this camp. If he were warned, I believe he could figure out a way to avoid me.” Sicarius did not voice his true thoughts. He didn’t know why this man wanted to protect Starcrest, but he highly doubted those feelings would transfer to betraying his people. Even if he had no fondness for Kor Nas, he must have been trained to be loyal to Nuria and to his family, much as Sicarius had once been trained to be loyal to Hollowcrest and the emperor.

The prince snorted. “I believe he could figure a way to defeat you.”

Sicarius said nothing. In truth, he was pleased to see that Starcrest had admirers, even amongst his enemies, but he did not want to lead this man to suspect the depths of his plans. “He means something to you,” Sicarius said by way of diversion, and also because he was curious how it could be. He judged the prince to be in his early thirties, too young to have battled against Starcrest in the Western Sea Conflict. Had he been to the Kyatt Islands at some point in his life?

“We’ve met,” the prince said, “when I was a foolish boy. He saved my life. I had the opportunity to repay the debt not long after, but… I would still not raise a hand against him, unless given no choice.”

Good. This might work out yet, if Sicarius could keep Kor Nas from discovering his thoughts. What sort of punishment might the prince receive for helping protect Starcrest? Would he be immune from his father’s wrath? Or might Kor Nas retaliate by arranging some… earlier punishment? Sicarius imagined himself forced to kill the prince and the wily practitioner proclaiming that it’d been accident, that his “pet” hadn’t been monitored and had found a way around the device. Indeed, the opal hadn’t tried to stop him or even sent a warning stab of pain into his mind when he’d dragged Zirabo from his cot.

“Do you know where he is?” The Nurian sat up, considering him. “No, you mustn’t, else Kor Nas would have dragged the information out of your head. Telepathy wasn’t his primary mode of study, but he’s competent enough at it. In the morning, he’ll know of this meeting.”

“No, I can keep it a secret. I had training from one of your wizard hunters as a boy.”

Training that hadn’t done much good against Kor Nas yet.

“Hm,” was all Zirabo said, though he managed to convey a lot of doubt in that one syllable. “What do you want of me? If you don’t have any better an idea of where he is than I, then I could no more warn him than you could.”

“Your comrade is a seer.”

“Yes… but, if you were trained in our ways, you should know this: a seer must have an item that belongs to the person they seek. It’s like a hound following a trail after sniffing a scrap of clothing that carries the owner’s scent.”

“I know,” Sicarius said. “I thought it might be possible…” He unsheathed his black dagger and held the weapon up to the back of the wagon, so the prince might see its dark outline against the white snow of the forest. “Starcrest gave this knife to me twenty years ago.”

“That’s a long time. I doubt there’d be any residue. Did he have it for many years before that?”

“No, he only handled it for a short time.” Sicarius had feared nothing would come of the idea, but he’d had to try.

“May I see it?” the prince asked. “That’s one of those… it’s from that strange ancient technology, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Ji Hoc may be able to See using the technology itself. Aside from that rather ill-placed… thing that landed on the north end of the lake, it’s quite rare, isn’t it? Would Starcrest have any of it? I understand he and his wife have studied it and were on the original mission that first discovered it.”

The depth of the prince’s knowledge wasn’t surprising-surely, spies would have uncovered any number of truths, given twenty years-but it certainly would have flummoxed Raumesys, were he still alive. “At one point, he had a knife similar to this. I do not know if he carries it with him.” As an assassin, Sicarius had had no end of uses for the blade over the years, but, for all he knew, Starcrest used it for a letter opener in his office back on Kyatt.

“May I borrow this to let him use?” the prince asked.

“Is he loyal to you? Or to Kor Nas?”

“He better be loyal to me.”

That did not answer Sicarius’s question. He stared at the prince, hoping for a more compelling affirmative.

But the Nurian only spread his palm and said, “I’ll tell him to give me the information on Starcrest’s whereabouts first.”

A risk. Sicarius had no other choice but to take it. He placed the dagger in the prince’s hand, and he also withdrew a folded note. “My warning for Starcrest.”

“May I read it?” The question was asked casually, but the prince probably didn’t trust Sicarius entirely yet. Why would he? Sicarius might be here on Kor Nas’s behalf in some attempt to entrap him, or to distract Starcrest from the real attack.

“Yes. But it’s encrypted with an old military cipher.”

“I… see. Will he be able to read it? In time?”

Time, yes, there was that. How long until Kor Nas learned what was going on around him? Even if Sicarius could successfully hide his thoughts, could the prince? Or the seer? On the Kyatt Islands, there were legislative and social rules against telepaths delving into the minds of others, but he’d heard the Nurians were less restrained. Those who commanded the mental sciences ruled over there, and they were rarely questioned.

“He may remember the key,” Sicarius said. “If not, his wife will. They presumably decrypted my last message, since they are here.”

The prince accepted the folded note. “Then we better hope Starcrest is in a bunker somewhere with his wife, not out planning mayhem to trouble the troops.”

• • •

Amaranthe shook her hand, trying to alleviate a writing cramp. Her notebook was jammed with hastily sketched maps, troop numbers and movements, incoming weather fronts, and everything else they’d been able to discover that she deemed worthwhile. She hoped Starcrest would have a good use for the information. In the short time they’d watched, the fighting around the Barracks had escalated, and she’d witnessed skirmishes around the river and railroad checkpoints too. Of course, Amaranthe’s mind kept drifting to Flintcrest’s camp and the image of Sicarius sparring while that cursed stone glowed cheerfully in his head. She wanted to stalk straight to the Preserve and rescue him, but destroying this ship had to be the priority. Besides, she didn’t know how she could rescue him. After they returned to the factory, she would gather the others for a planning session.

When Amaranthe lifted her head to massage a crick in her neck, she found Tikaya gazing at her. It was one of the few times the professor hadn’t been riveted by the control room’s myriad options.

“Are we ready?” Amaranthe asked.

“I believe I’ve discovered how to engage the self-immolation method.”

“And?” Amaranthe didn’t know if she cared for that word choice, but perhaps it would be best, leaving nothing behind to be studied by unscrupulous sorts.

“Two problems. It must be activated from here.” Tikaya pointed at the floor of the control room. “And I haven’t been able to determine how damaging it will be to the surrounding area.”

“How much more damaging could it be than squashing an entire army fort?” Maldynado asked. He and Basilard had grown bored of standing an assiduous watch, given the lack of trouble encroaching through the locked doors, and a travel-sized Tiles game sprawled across the floor between them.

“I don’t know,” Tikaya said. “If there’s intense heat or shrapnel or, goodness, I can only imagine how they might accomplish this feat-I gather it was usually done in outer space, not while landed on a planet-it may be destructive for miles around.”

“Miles… as in the city?” Amaranthe asked.

“Possibly. At the least, those gaping civilians and would-be relic raiders wandering about the outside of the craft would be in danger. For us…”

“I can’t imagine they’d require someone to die with the craft,” Amaranthe said. “See if there’s some sort of delay. There are lifeboats, or there should be. Unless all of them were fired when we crashed. Maybe you can check on that too. As for the rest…” She closed the journal and sat down. “I don’t want to risk the city. Can we lift off and then immolate?”

“Let me check on those things.” Tikaya returned to the images.

Amaranthe had been thinking of the professor as being in charge, as someone who saw her as nothing more than a bodyguard along to shoot things. That she’d asked for Amaranthe’s opinion, and even seemed to be following her… yes, they’d been orders, surprised Amaranthe. Maybe Tikaya figured it wasn’t her city and they weren’t her people, so it’d be appropriate to ask for a native’s advice. Or maybe she wanted to pass the blame to Amaranthe.

“Just what I need,” she muttered. “More deaths on my shoulders.”

Nobody was around to hear her. Mahliki, the closest person, was still manipulating the viewing image, trying to find those tunnel-boring machines or evidence of a fresh underground passage. She frowned deeply and murmured something of her own.

“What is it?” Amaranthe shook out her hand again, in case she needed to put her pen to use once more.

“I… don’t know. Come look.”

Amaranthe gazed up at the image. Their “bird” was providing a view from near the Emperor’s Preserve again, but it was focused toward the horizon instead of downward. The eastern mountains, their white craggy peaks thrusting skyward, were… burning? She wasn’t sure. Smoke smothered one of the peaks directly east of the city. It seemed to be drifting up from the front slope of the mountain.

She lifted a hand, intending to ask Mahliki to take them closer, but a brilliant explosion burst from the hillside, yellow and orange flames leaping into the air so high they would have been visible from the city by the naked eye. It might have been audible too, even across the miles and miles of intervening farmlands. Before, there’d been a smoky haze above the area, but now huge black plumes rose, darkening the sky.

“Whose demented ancestor caused that?” Maldynado asked. “And why?”

“What’s out there?” Tikaya asked.

“A pass,” Maldynado said. “There’s a road up into the mountains. We were there last spring. It…” He trailed off, chewing thoughtfully on the side of his mouth.

“More than a pass,” Amaranthe said, guessing her thoughts matched his. “There’s a hidden dam and a lake up there that supplies all the clean, fresh water to the city. Although… can you get closer with that thing?” She waved toward their floating map. “That explosion came from lower on the mountainside, I think.”

“There are a lot of old mines up there,” Maldynado said.

“Which would be pointless to blow up,” Amaranthe said. “The city’s water supply though… If they blew up the dam, they’d flood Stumps, and nobody wins there, but…” She snapped her fingers. “I bet it’s the aqueduct. There are reservoirs in the city, but with a million people, we’ll start to run out of water within three or four days.”

“I don’t understand,” Mahliki said. “There’s a lake right there.”

“A lake we pump our sewage into,” Amaranthe said. “It gets pretty diluted I think-people swim out there after all-but I’ve heard that if you drink much of it, you and you family can expect to enjoy some lovely bouts of cholera.”

“You don’t have any filtration systems in place?” Tikaya asked.

“Filtration?”

“I’ve read of sand filtration systems being used by some civilizations, and my people have experimented with chemicals that kill pathogens.” Tikaya lifted a shoulder.

“We never needed to develop anything like that,” Amaranthe said. “I’m not even sure we have the technology to do so. If it’s not metallurgy or engineering…” She shrugged-those were what the empire was known for.

“But your city’s vulnerable if it only has one water source,” Mahliki said.

“That’s why the aqueduct is underground,” Amaranthe said. “So it’s not easy for enemies to reach. And the existing maps aren’t even accurate. They’re deliberately misleading about where the water comes from and where the underground lines run. I can’t imagine who would know to strike out there.” She pointed at the billowing smoke. “My team only knows about all this because of the incident last year. Researching the snarl of lies and altered blueprints confused the spit out of us.”

Basilard waved a hand to get everyone’s attention, then made a single sign, the finger sweep across his throat. Sicarius?

Amaranthe’s stomach sank into her boots. If he belonged to that Nurian practitioner, and that practitioner was working for Flintcrest… “Why?” she asked. “What would one of the candidates gain from harming the city? They should want to inherit a glorious capital city, not writhing chaos.”

“There’s another explosion.” Mahliki nodded, not toward the mountains this time, but toward the southwest corner of the city, near the lake and the railway. “Multiple explosions.”

It didn’t take long for Amaranthe to figure out what the smoking cylindrical husks left behind represented. “The granaries.”

“Someone’s striking at your city’s food supply too?” Mahliki asked.

“There’s not much stored within the city itself,” Amaranthe said, “not when compared to the number of people here who need to eat. Most food comes in via the rail system from the surrounding countryside and other satrapies as well, but the granaries are symbolic. This is going to cause panic.”

“This may be our opportunity to destroy this craft without many people noticing.” Tikaya walked over and drew a finger through the map, returning its focus to the Behemoth.

The crowd that had been staring at the craft, trying to figure it out, had dissipated. Some people were gaping toward the eastern mountains, but more were leaving the field, racing back to their homes to check on their families. And to check their food and water stores, or at least that’s what they’d be doing when they figured out what had happened.

“I’ll take us off the ground and set the destruction mechanism,” Tikaya said. “If it blows up in the air, high above the lake, it might put on a good show, but it shouldn’t damage anything down here. Though I suppose there could be sizable chunks of shrapnel. I’ll move us out over the farmlands farther, where the population is less dense. I think I can give us ten minutes, maybe more, to run to the nearest of those lifeboats, where we can escape and make our way back to the factory.”

“Wait.” Amaranthe gripped her arm. “This might not be the best time to blow up the Behemoth. If Flintcrest wasn’t responsible for those explosions, if none of the candidates were, this could represent some new enemy to the city. Someone who’s swooped in to take advantage of the chaos.”

“But, who?” Maldynado asked. “The Nurians are already here with Flintcrest. Who else would attack? The Kendorians? How would they know about the secret aqueducts? The Mangdorians and the Kyattese prefer peace to war-they’ve never struck at us in force before. The desert city states haven’t shown any ability to come together to make a cogent attack on the empire in the last hundred years, so it seems unlikely they would now.”

“I don’t know,” Amaranthe said, “but we may need this craft to fight… whoever it ends up being.”

Tikaya arched her eyebrows. “The technology must be destroyed; I thought you agreed with that.”

“I did. I do. But maybe it should wait until after the city is safe. If we have some new enemy to deal with, some army we hadn’t anticipated…” Amaranthe imagined a massive invasion force poised on the nearest ridge, looking down upon the city. Was it possible that in all the chaos created by the succession squabbling, armies could have slipped past the border forts?

“Here in the heart of your empire?” Tikaya asked. “I deem that unlikely. Besides, those explosions weren’t acts of armies. They were guerrilla tactics. The kind you’d expect from a small group of desperate men. I have a feeling we should finish here as quickly as possible and go talk to Rias and our group of desperate men.”

Amaranthe stared at the professor. “You think… You don’t think Admiral Starcrest would have orchestrated this, do you?”

“It’s possible things are not as they seem. We’ve been away from your headquarters for nearly twenty-four hours. Let’s not make up fanciful new enemies until we’ve checked in. Either way, this craft cannot be kept in reserve. We must win this war with our own wits and resources, if it is to be won at all.”

Amaranthe hung her head. Had she been the one doubting the professor’s willingness to do the right thing when it came to disposing of the powerful technology? And then she’d been so quick to think of the ship as a potential means of defending the city. She wondered if Forge’s intentions had started out innocently.

“You’re right. Yes, do it.” Amaranthe met the eyes of her teammates. They’d all gathered their weapons and gear. “We’re ready.”