Forged in Blood I ee-6 Read online

“They kidnapped a Kyattese ambassador in the capital, a bright woman with numerous degrees who’d come to work on establishing better trade and tariff policies with Turgonia.”

  “Oh?” Amaranthe asked, though she had an inkling of where the story was going. Maybe she didn’t want the details.

  “Paloic was instructed to inseminate her. Given the results, he must have done it, but one can surmise that it was a forced mating, something that, given his subsequent suicide, didn’t sit well with him.”

  Amaranthe dropped her chin into her hand. Hollowcrest had certainly had a knack for taking upright young soldiers-and enforcers-and using their indoctrinated loyalty to the empire to force them to do as he wished.

  “After a suitable male child was delivered, the mother was killed,” Sespian said. “Not only is the story of how my grandfather raped my grandmother to produce my father not one I want to see in the newspapers, it’s not going to improve my claim on the throne. If anything I’m in a worse spot now, because I’m one quarter Kyattese instead of being full-blooded Turgonian.”

  “That… shouldn’t be that important. All Turgonians have mixed blood if you go back far enough, but, yes… I don’t think that story would stir the hearts of the people.”

  “Sicarius’s heritage should remain a secret, as far as I’m concerned.”

  “Well, let’s not give up. If I can discombobulate Forge enough before you make your main push, maybe they’ll be too distracted to get their article into the newspaper.” Or maybe they could lock up the senior Lord Mancrest and put Deret back in charge of the Gazette. The backs of Amaranthe’s eyes throbbed. Her project list was getting longer and longer.

  “Maybe.” Sespian didn’t sound convinced. He stood up, putting a hand on her shoulder before leaving. “I do appreciate what you’re trying to do for me. Thank you.”

  Amaranthe could only sigh as he headed for the door.

  Sespian paused with his hand on the knob. “If it means anything to you, I saw some of the details of his childhood and how they raised him. I… can’t imagine ever wanting to spend time with him, but I… get why he is what he is.”

  You’ve seen him fight for us, for you, Amaranthe wanted to say. Wasn’t that enough? She clenched her teeth to keep from speaking aloud and tried to tell herself this represented progress. At least Sespian didn’t hate him any more. But, bloody dead ancestors, she wanted so much more for them, for Sicarius.

  Out in the factory, someone had covered all the windows and lit a few lanterns, so one might find one’s way to a room-or the water closet-without falling off a catwalk and into a vat along the way. She offered a silent thank you to Books or whoever had taken the initiative.

  A yawn so huge it evoked tears took over her mouth. She supposed she should find a place to sleep-were any of those offices left at this point? — but she remembered Sicarius’s request for a private audience. She should see what he wanted. He would have found a private room or nook somewhere for himself. She wondered what he’d say if she asked to share it with him. Maybe having the indomitable Sicarius’s arms around her would let her mind rest enough for a peaceful night of sleep. Of course, if past moments of closeness were anything to go by, she’d be too distracted to think about sleeping.

  Clangs sounded on the nearest set of catwalk stairs. Akstyr shambled toward her, his hair in disarray, even more disarray than earlier in the night.

  “We’ve got a problem,” he announced.

  “Oh?” Amaranthe asked.

  “I better show you.” With nothing more helpful than that, he climbed back up the stairs.

  Amaranthe followed him, not simply up to a catwalk but up a ladder as well. It led to a trapdoor that opened onto the roof. She climbed out after him and pulled her jacket tighter. Cold wind gusted in from the lake, which was just visible from the three-story perch. She wondered if their guess was correct, and the Behemoth lay on the bottom. Given how many inimical things her team had found lurking underwater, she was beginning to think the capital should have been settled in the mountains, with nothing except a small stream nearby.

  Clouds hid the stars and moon, and Amaranthe almost missed the dark figure stepping away from the chimney. She tensed, hand dropping to her waist, but she hadn’t been carrying her weapons around the factory.

  “Oh, good,” came Yara’s voice. “I was thinking about getting someone. I thought I heard… I’m not sure what it is. Something heavy pacing about down there.”

  “You’re standing guard?” Amaranthe peered about. “Alone?”

  “I drew the black tile, and, yes, alone because someone with a tendency to whine got cold when I pointed out that snuggling to share body warmth would be distracting and inappropriate during guard duty.”

  “Nobody wants to hear about that stuff,” Akstyr said. “Over here, Am’ranthe. We might be able to see-”

  A cringe-inspiring canine howl drifted out of the night, the eerie tone raising gooseflesh on Amaranthe’s arms. It made her want to run inside and hide behind Sicarius.

  Trying for a modicum of bravado, she finished Akstyr’s sentence with, “-something we don’t particularly want to see?”

  “What was that?” Yara demanded.

  Instead of saying what she wished, such as, “Why don’t we go inside, lock the doors, and not find out?” Amaranthe walked toward the edge of the roof on the lake side of the building. She thought the noise had come from that direction, but the way the wail had coursed through the streets all around them made it hard to tell. Wondering if she should have gone back inside for weapons, she peered over the side. Somehow she doubted weapons would help. If Akstyr had been the one to come and get her, it had to be something-

  Another yowl erupted from the shadows. Even expecting it this time, Amaranthe flinched. At least she drew a better bead on its location-perhaps a half a block away and in one of the alleys between the other buildings, but she still couldn’t tell what had made the cry. No wild animal, she feared. Snow dusted the ground and, in the light of a streetlamp down the block, she spotted prints, large prints made by something heavy.

  Akstyr shuffled up beside her. “I think it’s another soul construct.”

  Amaranthe groaned, remembering the night she and Sicarius had spent hiding in a storage cubby in the icehouse. Even he’d feared to face that beast. In the end, they’d defeated it by tricking it into hurling itself into a pit and burying it beneath bricks and cement, topped off with a steam lorry.

  “I don’t suppose there are any handy pits in the factory,” Amaranthe murmured.

  “What do you mean?” Yara had joined them also.

  “Nothing. Let’s hope it’s not looking for us.” Amaranthe thought of the assassin Sicarius had mentioned. “Maybe it’s here hunting Ravido.” She supposed it was uncharitable to be cheered by that thought.

  “Why would it be here then?” Akstyr waved toward the snow-dusted waterfront, which was, at this time of night, devoid of people. Except for her team.

  “Let’s just… make sure our guard stays near the door,” Amaranthe said, “and keep everyone else inside until dawn.”

  “What about Sicarius and Basilard?” Yara asked.

  Uneasiness settled into the pit of Amaranthe’s stomach. “What about them?”

  “They left a little while ago.”

  Amaranthe slumped. “I didn’t mean for them to go scouting tonight. I told Sicarius to get some rest.”

  “I don’t think Sicarius sleeps,” Akstyr said. “He’s not very human.”

  Amaranthe barely heard him. She was staring toward the black lake, a fingernail lifted to her teeth. Now she knew she wouldn’t sleep that night.

  Chapter 6

  An otherworldly soul-piercing howl drifted across the lake. Sicarius prodded Basilard’s arm, then jogged into the trees lining the frost-slick jogging path. He stopped beneath a stout cedar with branches that didn’t start until they were twenty feet up and put his back to the trunk. By unnoticed reflex, his dagger found its way into his h
and. As he listened for further howls, he scanned the dark path in front of them, the patchy snow on the hills, and the mud-turned-to-ice training fields of Fort Urgot. A few early-rising soldiers on those fields stopped and turned toward the lake.

  Basilard joined Sicarius in the shadow of the tree, a dagger in his hand as well. It was too dark to read hand signs, if he was making them, but the outline of the weapon stood out against the white ground beneath it.

  “A soul construct.” Sicarius couldn’t be positive yet, but no natural animal had issued that keen. “If we cross its path, our weapons will be useless against it.” His black dagger might hurt it, but he wouldn’t bet on it.

  Basilard pointed up the tree. That gesture Sicarius had no trouble seeing and interpreting in the darkness.

  The howl came again, eerie and undulating as it wafted across the hills. It was vaguely wolf-like, but deeper, with a more resonating timbre, as if issued from a great barrel chest.

  “Tree climbing may be premature,” Sicarius said. “I’d guess its origins at two miles away. Do you concur?” He rarely asked anyone for second opinions, but Basilard was a skilled woodsman with hunting skills as great as his own, perhaps greater when it came to tracking prey outside of an urban environment.

  Basilard nodded, but also pointed at the Stumps waterfront, its lights visible across the lake. Yes, the source of the howls was prowling about in the direction they were traveling.

  “If it is a soul construct, it may return to whence it came at dawn,” Sicarius said, though he and Basilard would cover those last two miles well before the winter sun crept over the horizon. They’d completed their scouting mission at Fort Urgot, so there was little reason to dawdle. “Come.”

  Basilard gripped his arm and held up a palm. He stepped out of the shadows and exaggerated his hand signs so Sicarius could read them.

  If we have no way to fight it, we should make sure we won’t cross its path. We could go back into the fields and circle into the city from the north. It would add a few miles, but- Basilard shrugged, — we travel greater distances in training each day.

  Sicarius considered this piece of wisdom. Basilard was correct. A year ago, he would have nodded in agreement; no, he would have come to the same conclusion without being prompted. What had changed?

  “Amaranthe and Sespian will want information about this new Nurian player.” For the first time, Sicarius noticed that he wasn’t calling her by last name any more when speaking to the others. He supposed there was little point in continuing to pretend he was keeping her at arm’s distance. “Whoever sent the wizard hunter may control the soul construct as well.”

  A moment passed before Basilard signed, You want us to risk our lives to get a look at it?

  “I’d prefer not to risk anything, but it might be possible to find its trail and follow it back to its master.” It occurred to Sicarius that he was using Amaranthe-like logic on Basilard, albeit without the smile or any of the charisma. She truly was having an effect on him. Why should he talk Basilard into risking his life? He’d been useful enough for splitting up the large task of scouting the entire fort, but this was different. “I will go the direct way back to the factory.” Sicarius pointed in the direction of the creature’s howl. “Go the safer way if you wish.”

  He returned to the trail, taking up the soundless, tireless jog that he could maintain all night. A moment later, Basilard appeared at his side.

  Huh. Sicarius truly hadn’t meant to talk Basilard into joining him. It seemed strange that he would stay out of loyalty or some notion of comradeship.

  As if guessing his thoughts, or feeling the need to justify his presence, Basilard signed, Someone will need to tell Amaranthe what happened to you when your body is found mauled and half-eaten on the dock.

  “Of course,” Sicarius said.

  They continued their jog and, by unspoken agreement, stayed close to the trees. Images of past dealings with soul constructs came to Sicarius’s mind, most recently the blocky panther-like one that had chased him all over Larocka Myll’s mansion and the surrounding grounds. He’d barely stayed ahead of the preternatural predator, and if Amaranthe hadn’t come up with that scheme to bury it in cement, he would have died that night. There had been another instance where he’d dealt with a Nurian soul construct. A giant viper-like creature ritually raised from the sacrifices of a dozen villagers had been sent to chase him, to avenge the death of a great chief Raumesys had ordered assassinated. He hadn’t killed that soul construct, only evaded it long enough to catch a ship back to Turgonia. To this day, he wondered if it still prowled the Nurian continent, waiting for him should he ever step foot on the mainland again.

  This one, Sicarius told himself, pushing aside the memories to focus on the present, probably wasn’t here for him. His senses nudged him, and he slowed down. They were nearing the north end of the docks, not far from that yacht club where the Forge woman was supposed to be staying. Coincidence?

  Before they reached the first private docks, a faint crunch reached his ears. This time he stopped, easing to the side of the path, hugging the shadows provided by a snow-dusted evergreen bush.

  Basilard stepped off the trail with him. You saw something.

  The sky had lightened enough in the east that Sicarius could make out the hand signs more easily. He touched his ear in response. It had been a few minutes since they’d heard a howl, but that crunch-

  He lifted his head. There it was again.

  He pointed.

  A creature four or five times the size of a lion hound-it must weight over six hundred pounds-padded out of an alley. Though there were no nearby lamps to illuminate it, Sicarius made out massive muscular limbs and the huge barrel chest he’d imagined when he first heard the howl. Like the panther-like construct they’d faced the year before, it lacked fur, having instead the bare, lumpy features of something sculpted from clay, if by a fat-fingered artisan. The fangs ringing the inside of its stout maw were too long to allow its jaw to close fully, but it probably didn’t matter; it could tear off a man’s limbs-or rip his heart from his chest-without closing its mouth. It didn’t need to eat meat, subsisting, if the stories were true, on less tangible fare. Human souls.

  The creature was padding across the waterfront street, toward the lake, but it paused in the middle. Its broad head swung to the right, crimson eyes directed at Sicarius and Basilard. They’d gotten too close. So much for the tracking plan.

  A hound-like nose lifted, and snuffling sounds whispered across the intervening quarter mile as it tested the air. A long, thin tail stuck out straight behind it like a flagpole.

  Basilard touched Sicarius’s arm and pointed at the closest trees. Sicarius had already taken note of the surrounding options, choosing a sturdy hemlock as a likely candidate. If that creature, with those thick muscled haunches, sprinted toward them, it’d cross the quarter mile in heartbeats, but he believed he could reach that tree and scale it to twenty feet in the same amount of time. What he didn’t know was whether wood would be strong enough to deter the creature. It didn’t look like something built for climbing, but it might have the power to tear a tree’s roots from the ground.

  The sniffs halted, the tail grew even more rigid, and its front paw lifted. Like a pointer targeting grouse in a thicket, the creature aimed at Sicarius.

  “Go,” he whispered.

  Basilard was already in motion. So was the creature.

  Sicarius sprinted for his chosen tree. Basilard had picked the same one. Fortunately, the trunk was wide enough for both of them to scramble up on opposite sides. In the quiet morning surroundings, the beast’s exhales were audible, as was the churning of claws on snow as it covered the ground in twenty-foot bounds.

  Halfway up to the first branch, Sicarius paused to hurl his throwing knife. The mundane blade would not hurt the otherworldly creation, but maybe it would pause.

  Without waiting to see if the blade struck the construct’s eye, Sicarius returned to climbing, his practiced f
ingers finding holds in the rough bark. He reached for the first branch, his hand brushing the cold wood, but the creature slammed into the tree. The force knocked his hand to the side-he was lucky it didn’t knock him out of the hemlock entirely.

  Wood snapped somewhere above, and green needles rained onto the creature. It merely backed up to charge again.

  Sicarius picked out a second tree for a backup perch, though it was too far away to reach without returning to the ground first. Crossing the distance would take an eternity during which they’d be vulnerable to attack.

  Basilard lowered his hand, offering help. Sicarius climbed into the lower branches without it, giving Basilard a flat look. He’d merely been considering other options, not pausing because he needed assistance.

  Basilard looked… amused. At least until the creature slammed into the tree again. More needles fell to the snow below, and a groan emanated from the trunk. Their perch wouldn’t survive the battering indefinitely. Sicarius decided he’d made a mistake in not taking Basilard’s earlier advice. The admission would gain him little now.

  Basilard wrapped an arm around the trunk, freeing his fingers so he could sign. This isn’t the first time I’ve been stuck in an awkward position with you, due to your interest in seeking information for Amaranthe.

  “It was your choice to come.”

  Sicarius considered his knives and the contents of his pockets, wondering if he had anything that could harm the soul construct, or at least deter it from further molesting their tree. His black dagger might scrape its flesh, but he doubted even a pierced eye would stop it. He considered the cloud-filled eastern horizon and thought about sawing through a few branches and dropping them on its head, if only to buy them time. The last soul construct had possessed a built-in sense to stay hidden, meaning it had disappeared at dawn or when great numbers of people were approaching. He hoped this one had a similar instinct, or they would be in trouble.

  If I returned and you didn’t, Amaranthe would have been upset with me.

  Gnawing sounds arose from below-the canine construct had changed tactics. Instead of ramming the tree with its shoulder, it was tearing huge chunks from the base. The scent of freshly cut hemlock drifted up.