Forged in Blood II ee-7 Read online

  He’s rumored to be in the city, came Kor Nas’s words in his mind. We don’t know where yet, but we will soon. He can’t be allowed to help our enemies.

  Chapter 6

  Squished. Was that the word Mahliki had used? An apt word. Amaranthe could breathe, though she would have preferred not to. Her new soldier buddies hadn’t visited the public baths in a while, and at least one had consumed sardines and fermented cabbage for dinner. In addition, an elbow was lodged in her stomach while a sword hilt jabbed into her kidney. There was plenty of room in the navigation area up front, where Tikaya and Mahliki sat with Lonaeo looking on, but the soldiers had, by some unspoken rule, decided not to crowd the Starcrest family. Too bad Amaranthe didn’t have Sicarius with her-his forbidding presence always commanded plenty of space. Neither she nor Basilard could see much past the towering men surrounding them. Perhaps it was for the best. Amaranthe would have been tempted to clean and organize if she’d had a better view of the papers, books, specimen jars, and tools littering the interior. She’d thought there was a rule about unattached items needing to be secured on ships, due to their tendency to fly about in rough waters, but the calm waters of the Goldar River must have convinced the two young scientists that they could bring out their projects. All of their projects.

  “We’re almost there,” Mahliki said, glancing apologetically at the packed crowd behind her.

  “No hurry,” Maldynado responded. “It’s cozy and warm down here, not to mention devoid of flying cubes that want to incinerate people.”

  Amaranthe might have chosen dealing with the cubes over breathing the miasma of body odors clogging the air, but she hoped they’d be able to avoid both once they climbed out. They’d go straight to the ship, figure out what needed to be done to get rid of it, and finish up as quickly as possible.

  “Did Lord Admiral Starcrest build this submarine?” one of the soldiers asked. He touched the hull a couple of inches above his head, stroking the sleek metal.

  “Yes,” Tikaya said. “This is the third one he crafted for the family, and he’s designed and helped construct a number of larger ones for the marine studies departments at the Polytechnic. He’s published his work, making it available to all, and we’re starting to see derivative models in the seas, though only nations willing to embrace… non-standard energy sources have made progress.”

  “He’s been publishing? For everyone?” The aggrieved soldier sounded more betrayed by this than the implication that the boats required magic to run. “I thought he was dead. We all did.”

  “Just in exile,” Tikaya said. “My understanding is that your last emperor wanted your people to believe he was dead rather than that he’d chosen not to follow criminal orders that would, uhm…” She glanced at her audience of hulking soldiers and decided to finish with, “I’m sure he would have returned to his homeland if he’d been allowed, at least to visit.”

  “It’s too bad he never had a chance to work for Sespian,” Amaranthe said.

  “The world knows little of the boy,” Tikaya said. “Most of what we heard in Kyatt was that he-”

  A soft thunk reverberated through the submarine. An algae-coated dock piling floated into view.

  “We’re here,” Mahliki said.

  Amaranthe remained silent, curious to hear what the world thought of Sespian, but Tikaya didn’t finish her statement. She and her daughter flipped a few switches, examined gauges, and finally pushed a lever. The submarine rose a few feet, then clunked against the ice.

  “This mode of transportation won’t be available to us much longer,” Mahliki said. “Give me a moment… We’ll have to… Oh, I’ll just use the auger.” She slid out of her seat and headed for a hatch behind the soldiers. “Pardon me.”

  Amaranthe was elbowed and jostled as the men made room for her to pass.

  “Auger?” Maldynado asked. “I thought we’d get to blow our way through the ice with some special underwater cannon.”

  “Torpedo,” Tikaya said.

  “What?”

  “Rias calls them torpedoes. They’re launched from tubes with charges contained within the shell. He has some that detonate on timers.”

  “They could blow through the ice?” Maldynado asked.

  “They could blow up the whole dock and any ships moored there.” Tikaya pursed her lips with faint disapproval.

  “And we’re not going to use one?” Maldynado asked.

  “You needn’t sound so distressed,” Amaranthe said. “It’s not as if they were going to invite you to flip the switch that launches them.”

  Maldynado digested that for a moment. “Well, you never know.”

  A grinding sound came from above them. Mahliki had disappeared into a small cabin behind the hatch, some sort of research area, Amaranthe guessed from the cabinets, shelves, and tools she glimpsed.

  “Do you need any help?” Lonaeo asked.

  “No, I’m already through,” Mahliki called back. “I’ll crack it a bit and… try surfacing now.”

  Tikaya’s hands darted across the controls, a confusing array of gauges, levers, switches, and… Amaranthe didn’t have words for some of the doohickeys. The submarine rose again. Snaps and cracks erupted above, almost like overzealous logs throwing off sparks in a hearth. They broke through, the buoyancy of the craft discernible beneath their feet as it bobbed.

  Lonaeo squeezed past Maldynado and Basilard and hopped up, catching a beam near the hatch above them. For someone of Starcrest’s height, or even Tikaya’s, it would have been easy to do while standing, but he had to dangle from one arm while he spun the wheel.

  “Care for some help?” Maldynado tapped a ceiling beam with a finger.

  “Nah,” Lonaeo said, “I’m used to scrambling up trees and under shrubs to collect insects. This isn’t much different.” When the lock released, he pushed the hatch open, still dangling from one arm as he did so. He was stronger than his scrawny form would have suggested. He caught the lip and pulled himself out. “Come on out, boys,” he called down. “Don’t forget your fur coats. I think the temperature dropped a couple hundred more degrees in the last fifteen minutes.”

  The soldiers snorted.

  “Foreign weaklings,” one muttered, though not loud enough for Tikaya or Mahliki to hear.

  “What kind of career is collecting bugs?” Maldynado asked while the soldiers clambered out ahead of him. “That doesn’t sound very useful.”

  Mahliki stepped out of the hatchway behind him, a hurt frown on her face.

  Hoping to alleviate any abraded feelings, Amaranthe asked, “Should you be questioning other people’s life choices, considering what you were doing for a career when we first met?”

  “What’s wrong with bringing delight and pleasure to the lives of lonely women?”

  “You were wearing a loincloth,” Amaranthe said.

  “I fail to see your point.”

  “They have loincloths in Turgonia?” Mahliki asked, securing the uppermost buttons on her jacket. “For… summer use?”

  “For decorative use,” Amaranthe said firmly, “by dandies.”

  “Really, boss.” Maldynado sniffed.

  He might be offended for the next thirty seconds, but at least Mahliki’s frown had turned into a slight smile.

  “I’m sure entomology is fascinating,” Amaranthe said, then realized she didn’t have much of a notion of what an entomologist did, so she voiced the one thing she knew about insects. “I’m told bugs are a superior source of protein and that it’s a shame they’re largely lacking in the Turgonian diet.”

  “Fifty ranmyas says I know who told her that,” Maldynado muttered to Basilard.

  “You wouldn’t say that if you’d spent two weeks in the South Fernsils living on palm weevil larvae,” Tikaya said. She’d finished at the controls and now stood beneath the hatch. A soldier lowered a hand, offering to help her up.

  “I don’t think we have those here,” Amaranthe said. “But if you spend any time in the woods with Sicariu
s, he’ll attempt to feed you cicadas, grasshoppers, and giant black ant eggs.”

  “I knew there was a reason I didn’t care for that boy,” Tikaya said, though she smiled while she spoke. She accepted the proffered hand and disappeared through the hatchway.

  Her daughter followed without further comments on entomology or loincloths.

  “Did she call Sicarius a boy?” Maldynado choked.

  “He was when they met.” Nobody lowered a hand to assist her, but Amaranthe managed the hatch without trouble.

  “Yes,” Maldynado said in response to some comment from Basilard, “it sounds like he was as charming as a youth as he is today.”

  The rest of the party was waiting on a wide dock buried beneath eight inches of snow. Full darkness had fallen, but it did nothing to cloak the fact that a giant dome-shaped craft had smashed Fort Urgot into oblivion. Most of the trees around the lake and the parade fields had been mowed down or hurled down by the force of the landing. Even the water tower, which hadn’t been crushed, leaned to one side, the tank tilted precariously over the slope of the hill beneath it. Fresh snow had fallen since the… incident-no, carnage, Amaranthe told herself, utter devastation and carnage-but body-sized lumps remained on the field. Someone should burn funeral pyres for the dead, but that ominous black presence must have convinced the military to flee.

  “What’s the plan, boss?” Maldynado asked.

  “We’ll scout the area to determine if it’s safe to approach,” a sergeant, the highest-ranking soldier in the group, said after leveling a cool look at Maldynado. Amaranthe guessed that meant they weren’t going to line up to take orders from her. “Lady Starcrest,” the sergeant finished, “please wait here until we return.”

  With a couple of quick hand signs, he divided his team in half, and two soldiers jogged in each direction, their rifles at the ready.

  “Return to me if you see any of the kelbhet,” Tikaya called, then added, “cubes,” for clarification. “I have a way to deal with them.” She dropped her voice to say, “Lady Starcrest, how odd.”

  “Not the name you usually go by?” Amaranthe asked.

  “No, and my understanding was that due to his exile status, Rias has no right to claim that name any more either.”

  “Who’s left alive that knew he was exiled?” Amaranthe asked.

  “I… don’t know,” Tikaya said. “Do you think it’d be terribly unwise to ignore their admonishment to stay here and get right to work?”

  “Uh.” Amaranthe had no problem going off on her own, but she hadn’t guessed a fifty-year-old linguistics professor would be quite so bold.

  “They didn’t tell us to stay here,” Mahliki said. “Just you, Mother.”

  “Oh, but staying here is nice,” Lonaeo said. “You have a good view of anything inimical that might be approaching, and you can hop into the submarine and escape beneath the surface.”

  “You can stay if you wish, Lonaeo,” Tikaya said. “Your mother won’t be pleased with me if I get you killed. As I recall, she objected to you coming along in the first place, deciding for whatever reason that Turgonia was more dangerous than some of the islands full of spear-flinging, brain-eating cannibals we’ve visited.”

  Lonaeo tugged at his scruffy beard. “Was she wrong?”

  “That… remains to be seen.”

  While waiting for them to decide who was staying and who was going, Amaranthe signed, Do you two have any idea which direction Sicarius went when he left the fort?

  Basilard pointed to the western side of the lake.

  Watch for signs of him or the soul construct while we’re out here, please.

  Understood.

  “I haven’t heard any yowls the last couple of nights,” Maldynado said quietly. “That’s promising, don’t you think? Maybe he killed it somehow.”

  “Or led it out of the area.” Amaranthe had a vision of Sicarius standing on the rear of a train, the giant fanged hound chasing after him.

  “We’re ready when you are.” Tikaya had put on gloves and a fur cap in addition to her bow, quiver, and rucksack, and she’d lit a lantern. Her daughter stood at her side, similarly clothed for the cold weather, though she stomped her feet and had pulled her scarf up to her eyes. This weather must be quite shocking after the tropics. Lonaeo had disappeared back into the submarine, pulling the hatch down behind him. “Lonaeo will keep the Explorer ready in case we need to leave swiftly.”

  “What about the soldiers?” Amaranthe asked.

  “If they can’t find us, they aren’t the scouts they think they are.” Tikaya tilted her chin toward the Behemoth. “You’ve been in there twice, you said? Can you find one of the entrances?” She was bouncing in her boots, too, though Amaranthe wasn’t certain if it had anything to do with the cold. There was an eager gleam of anticipation in her eyes. Dear ancestors, was she looking forward to climbing into that monstrosity? After all the death it had delivered?

  And who are you to judge her, her mind asked. Especially now…

  “I’ll try.” Amaranthe checked her weapons and readjusted her own pack, then led the way up the road she knew to be buried beneath the snow. It would take them past the jogging path and to what had been the front gates of the fort. “The hull is smooth, and I don’t remember any markings. I wasn’t given a lot of time to explore on my previous visits.” Though she had a distinct memory of a close-up chance to study an interior wall, thanks to Pike smashing her face against it.

  Amaranthe kept her eyes on the towering black hull as they approached, pointedly not looking too closely at the body-sized bumps beneath the snow. Tikaya reached the side of the ship first, took off a mitten, and rested a hand against the hull.

  “I wouldn’t recommend doing that with your tongue,” Maldynado said.

  Tikaya cocked her head curiously at him.

  “Never mind. It’s not that cold yet anyway.”

  “Why don’t you and Basilard stand watch?” Amaranthe suggested.

  Basilard had his neck craned back, staring up at the black dome towering over them. He stepped closer to a lantern to sign, It must be a hundred stories tall. It’s… unfathomable.

  Amaranthe didn’t know if it was quite that high, but it might very well be. It certainly dwarfed the few trees left standing. If she remembered her city trivia, the tallest building in Stumps was sixteen stories high.

  A firearm boomed somewhere to their left. The Behemoth blocked the area from view, but Amaranthe’s hand dropped to her pistol.

  “Our soldier friends?” Mahliki slid her own hand into her jacket, toward something at waist level-hopefully something more fearsome than a collection vial.

  That was a pistol, Basilard signed. The soldiers are carrying rifles.

  “We have company out here then,” Amaranthe said. “Not surprising.”

  “The door?” Tikaya asked.

  Amaranthe stared bleakly at the unmarked hull. “The wall grew translucent, and I walked through it, but it wasn’t at ground level.” She waved to a spot above their heads. “I slid down the curve ten or fifteen feet. That was when I escaped. When I entered, we went up a ramp that came out of nowhere, but the door-more of a big bay opening-was higher. When we escaped in the lifeboat… I have no idea where that came out of, but some sort of tube. We shot out and…” She shrugged. “It was before the crash.”

  “I understand,” Tikaya said. “Let’s walk around and see if we spot any clues. I don’t see any writing or anything useful yet.”

  “I vote that we walk in the opposite direction from the shooting,” Maldynado said. “Just in case they’re shooting at some of those cubes.”

  “But it’d be acceptable if they were shooting at our soldier allies?” Amaranthe had been thinking they should check in that direction.

  “Er.”

  “We don’t have many soldiers on our side. We should try to keep the ones we do have alive.” Pistol in hand, Amaranthe led off, following the base of the ship.

  Tikaya strode behind her, thou
gh her focus was toward the Behemoth. Her daughter walked at her side, more like Amaranthe, watching the dark snowy fields. Amaranthe wondered if that signified less of a passion for the ancient technology or a more practical soul.

  More shots fired, farther away this time. Maybe the soldiers were leading them-whoever them was-away from the ship. There weren’t any other lights out on the field, and Amaranthe was conscious of their two lanterns, like beacons against the black hull.

  Three more body-sized lumps in the snow waited ahead of them, and her stomach squirmed. They’d have to walk around them. She wasn’t going to risk stepping on somebody, dead or not. Nor did she want a good look at them-they might have been cut in half by the edge of the Behemoth.

  Except it didn’t look like that, she admitted as they drew closer. The three bodies were crumpled, one half leaning against the hull. It was as if they’d died after the ship landed.

  Tikaya and Mahliki veered to the side to walk around the spot-Amaranthe wondered if it occurred to them what those snow-blanketed bumps were. She started to step to the side, too, but halted.

  “Wait,” she blurted.

  If these people had died after the ship landed, what had killed them? Injuries acquired jumping out of a door? Or maybe they’d been injured during the crash and had fled, but their wounds had been too bad to make it farther than the exit. Enh, that might make sense for one, but for all three?

  “What is it?” The way Tikaya eyed the lumps suggested she’d twigged to what they were.

  “People trying to escape, I think,” Amaranthe said, “implying a door up there perhaps.”

  “Ah?” Tikaya lifted her lantern as high as she could to study the hull.

  “Must be way up there,” Maldynado said, “if they broke their necks falling out.”