Ice Cracker II (and other short stories) (The Emperor's Edge) Read online

  Tempted to go anyway, Amaranthe stopped when Nelli shook her head.

  “We’ll be fine,” she said. “It’ll just take a moment.”

  As soon as the duo left, Sicarius caught Amaranthe’s eye and jerked his chin toward the loft ladder. She followed him up, and they found a small table in the back.

  “What is it?” Wind railed at the roof, and she eyed the split-log ceiling. “Something worse than mare-cats?”

  “You should know—” Sicarius looked at her steadily, dark eyes holding hers, “—I remember killing a Corporal Tollen near the Kendorian border.”

  Amaranthe winced. “Uncle Ordin?”

  “I don’t know his first name. Tollen was on his fatigue jacket. His body is in a canebrake in Deadscar Ravine, south of Fort Erstden.”

  She dropped her face into her hands and rubbed her forehead. She had bumped up against Sicarius’s past a number of times and couldn’t claim to be surprised. With a million ranmyas on his head, bounty hunters were frequent visitors, and every soldier and enforcer in the empire had orders to kill him on sight. Unfortunately, it wasn’t an unjustly placed bounty. Long before she had met him, he had assassinated Lords Generals, satrap governors, famous entrepreneurs, and various other Important People. If he weren’t now in her employ, she would have a much easier time clearing her name, but she owed him her life a dozen times over. More, she knew most of his secrets, and she wasn’t entirely sure he would let her walk away with them in her head for any torture-happy maniac to discover.

  “All right.” She leaned back in the hard wooden chair. Melting snow trickled down her collar. “Let’s not share that information. I suspect that’d push Tollen over the edge, and you’d defend yourself, and—” she sighed, “—it’s not good for business to kill the client’s father.”

  No hint of a smile or appreciation for her humor cracked Sicarius’s facade. By now, she was used to it.

  “I followed the cougar tracks to the lake’s edge,” he said. “They disappeared.”

  She knew he did not mean he had lost the trail. “What do you think is going on here?”

  “There are numerous possibilities. I need more information to make a useful guess.”

  He produced a weapons cleaning kit and started removing knives and daggers. Amaranthe pushed back her chair and stood.

  “Where are you going?” he asked.

  “To get information.”

  “Stay inside.”

  “You don’t think I should interview the mare-cats, huh?” She smiled.

  He didn’t.

  Amaranthe shrugged, then descended the ladder. Her boots had barely touched down on the sawdust floor when a screech sounded above the wind. Shouts followed, and a cry of pain rose above it all. A pistol shot fired.

  Sword in hand, she ran to the door. It burst open before she grabbed the latch. A mass of people tumbled through. A huge black form leaped inside, landing amongst them.

  The creature spun and writhed like a cat, legs raking in every direction. Claws slashed people’s clothing and tore into flesh. Slavering fangs glinted with the reflection of lamplight before digging into a man’s shoulder. Screams of pain and desperation bounced from the timbers.

  Amaranthe stabbed at the mare-cat’s hindquarters, but iron-hard muscle armored the creature. Her blade barely cut through the sleek fur. A long tail slapped her face. The fight rolled away before she could attack again.

  “Close the door!” Tollen cried from the middle of the jumble.

  Before obeying, Amaranthe glanced outside to make sure no more people were trying to get in. Two mare-cats leaped straight at her.

  She slammed the door shut and lunged for the bar. It dropped into place just as the creatures crashed into the wood.

  The impact flung her back a pace, and the timbers trembled. The door held—for the moment.

  She whirled back toward the fight.

  The mare-cat had its feet under it now and shook off attackers like a dog flinging water from its coat.

  Nelli slipped in the blood-slick sawdust and pitched to the floor. The creature pinned her with one massive paw and raised the other to strike, dagger-like claws extended.

  “No!” Tollen fired his second pistol.

  The shot lodged in the creature’s shoulder, but it didn’t seem to notice.

  A black figure dropped from the loft. Sicarius.

  He landed on the mare-cat, arm wrapping under its great head. He pulled it back and slashed a dagger across the beast’s throat.

  With blood spurting from the severed artery, the beast finally faltered. Men fell upon it with picks and axes. Even after it had stopped moving, they hacked, striking back at the fear that had haunted them the last couple days.

  Tollen pulled his daughter back, but his gaze pinned Sicarius, who had backed away as soon as his part was done. Not a drop of blood splashed his skin or clothing. Elsewhere, it looked—and smelled—like a butcher shop. The expression painting Tollen’s face was neither gratitude nor jealousy, but anguish…defeat. The emotion surprised Amaranthe, and it took her a moment to make her way around the carnage to Nelli’s side.

  “Are you all right?” Amaranthe helped her old friend to stand.

  “Yes.” Nelli looked about, her lips moving as she counted heads. A couple men and women clutched at injuries, but no one’s wounds appeared life-threatening.

  Outside the door, several screeches competed with the wind.

  “We all made it,” Nelli said. “Thank you. Tell your man, thank you.”

  “I will.” Amaranthe’s lip twitched into a half smile. Sicarius had mastered the art of appearing unapproachable, and she had grown accustomed to being the conduit through which messages traveled to him.

  The crashes at the door continued. People cringed with each blow. How long could the bar and hinges hold against those heavy bodies? Occasionally the shutters rattled as well, as the cats tested the windows. Amaranthe thought them too big to enter that way, but who knew? Soon, footfalls sounded on the roof as something heavy prowled about up there. Every thump, every gust of wind, made people flinch.

  No doubt to keep people’s minds occupied, Tollen started barking orders. “Let’s get this mess cleaned up, our people fixed up, and some food in bellies.”

  Until they could take the body outside, there was a limit to what they could do, but Amaranthe helped sweep up the blood-drenched sawdust for later disposal. Sicarius returned to his weapons cleaning. Despite the crowded cabin, everyone gave him space. Merla started fixing soup in a pot over the coal stove.

  “Hello,” Amaranthe said, coming up beside her. Time to start looking for information.

  The other woman shrank away.

  “Rough night,” was all Amaranthe said.

  It took more idle chatter before Merla seemed to realize Amaranthe was not going to bring up the earlier attack.

  “I was supposed to be home tonight.” Merla sliced potatoes into the pot. “With my girls. Instead I’m here, doing a slave’s work, killing my back, hauling fifty-pound blocks of ice out of the lake, being threatened by mystery beasts.”

  Amaranthe made an encouraging sound. Listening to the woman rant probably wouldn’t reveal anything crucial, but one never knew.

  “I went to the same school you two did, you know,” Merla said.

  “Oh?”

  “You probably don’t remember. I was two years ahead, but then I got pregnant and had to quit. I was good at math, great at balancing books. I would have been… I always wished I could go back, but who has the money?”

  Behind them, Sergeant Tollen finally sat down. He laid his pistols on the table and withdrew a cleaning kit. While his hands worked, his gaze shifted back and forth from the thuds at the door to Sicarius’s corner.

  “Some birthday,” Merla muttered.

  “Hm?” Amaranthe asked.

  “He turns fifty tomorrow.”

  Amaranthe waited until others sampled from the communal soup pot—she did not think Merla still wan
ted to kill her, but one could not take chances—and took two steaming bowls. She sat at the table next to Tollen and placed one in front of him. He ignored it in favor of glowering at her over his disassembled pistol. He ran a rag through the barrel, and the sharp tang of cleaning oil mixed with the soup’s cider and beef aroma.

  “Your father must be disappointed in you,” he said before Amaranthe could start speaking.

  She blinked. It wasn’t exactly what she had expected him to bring up.

  “I remember talking to him once,” Tollen said. “He was sacrificing a lot so you could go to that school. He must be horrified that you’re walking around with that monster—” a head jerk toward Sicarius’s corner, “—and making pay as a cursed mercenary.”

  If Amaranthe had been a hound, her hackles would have reared. As it was, she kept herself to a tightening of her fingers around the soup spoon. Most insults she brushed off, but the ones that thudded into the dartboard close to the target were harder to dismiss.

  “Yes, I’m sure he would be disappointed,” she said, “if he hadn’t been dead for eight years.”

  “Oh.” The glower softened. “How did he die?”

  “Black Lung.”

  “That’s right, he was a miner, wasn’t he? A slow, painful way to die, I imagine, but better than suicide.”

  Suicide? Amaranthe’s anger drained, and she tapped her spoon on the edge of the bowl, wondering what had prompted the sergeant to mention suicide.

  “He did contemplate that near the end, I believe,” she said.

  “But he wouldn’t have done it, I’m sure. To destroy one’s soul for eternity…”

  Amaranthe nodded. Thanks to the Mad Emperor Motash, atheism was the official “religion” of the empire, but memories of ancestor worship remained a part of imperial history, and the old religion promised an eternal soul for those who died as warriors—or in otherwise respectable ways. Suicide, considered cowardly, destroyed the soul and made it unavailable for descendants to consult.

  “Sergeant,” she said, “there’s something I’ve been wondering. As you mentioned, my father made a lot of sacrifices to pay for my education. As a foreman in the mines, his salary would have been comparable to an enlisted soldier’s. We had very modest accommodations. As I recall, Nelli grew up in a nice house with a nanny. And she said you financed the startup of her business.” She did not want this to sound like an interrogation, so she stopped short of asking the question. But she waited expectantly.

  “I gambled,” Tollen said.

  “Successfully? Really? Was it pit fights? Strat Tiles? The Maze?” She knew numerous gambling venues but few people who beat the odds and won big enough to change their fortunes.

  “One time, long ago. Uluaria, her mother, died in childbirth, and I was away so much, for months and years at a time. Soldiering was all I knew, but the border was no place to raise a girl. I had to…take chances, make sure she was cared for.”

  “Of course, it certainly seems she’s doing well, present danger aside. And you’re here now to spend time with her. I know how much that must mean to her. My mother died when I was young, too, and I didn’t see my father often either.”

  She kept her tone casual, conversational. There was something here, she knew it, but she didn’t want to accuse him of anything and raise his defenses.

  Tollen glanced at his daughter, who sat on a stool across the cabin, bandaging a man’s arm. Then he leaned forward, pressing a finger into the table. “Did you ever resent him? For not being there?”

  She almost said no, thinking it was the answer he wanted to hear, but he would probably appreciate honesty more. “Sometimes. As a child, I’d wish he would quit mining and get a job in the city, even if it meant having less.”

  Tollen winced.

  “But now I know he wanted to give me everything he could, no matter what sacrifices he had to make, and I understand. You’re right, I do fear he’d be disappointed with me now, but fate has played a hand in that. I never intended to become a fugitive or a mercenary. It is temporary.”

  A clank sounded above them. The metal stove pipe rattled. The cats were far too large to fit through it, but they seemed to be checking every part of the cabin for weakness.

  Tollen picked up the barrel and started reassembling his pistol. Amaranthe withdrew a box from her parka and flipped it open. It held quarrels and a couple vials of poison. She liked the repeating crossbow, since it allowed her to fire several shots in as many seconds, but the tradeoff was power. The bolts lacked the chain-mail splitting oomph of a regular crossbow or a pistol.

  “If I killed Sicarius, would you shoot me?” Tollen asked.

  The question startled Amaranthe so much she almost dropped the vial of poison. Tollen was not looking at her, but staring at the freshly smeared quarrel tip.

  “Uhm, if it were after the fact, I’m not sure. I’m not the avenger sort. I’d certainly defend him to the death during a fight.” Still watching his face, she sealed the vial. “But, if you’ll excuse my bluntness, you’re not a match for him.”

  “Hm,” was all Tollen said.

  Amaranthe finished with the quarrels and padded through the sawdust to sit next to Nelli, who had finished helping the wounded.

  “A word?” Amaranthe asked.

  “What is it?”

  “Your Da. Has he seemed different at all to you since he retired?”

  “Well, I’ve seen more of him this last two months than the last ten years.”

  Amaranthe nodded, inviting more.

  “He seems older, of course,” Nelli said. “And he’s been preoccupied since things started going wrong around here, but I assume he’s just worried for me. He keeps trying to get me to go home, insisting an ‘Operations Manager’ can handle this. I can’t stay home and be safe while my workers are being killed though. For all I know, this curse, or whatever it is, is my fault.”

  “Oh? Feeling guilty about something?” Amaranthe smiled to make the question feel casual.

  “I don’t know, maybe. I’ve had a lot of success with my business. Most people don’t become so successful so young. I used to assume it was just determination, hard work and talent, but I don’t know. You had all those traits back in school, and look at you now.”

  “Thanks,” Amaranthe said dryly.

  “I just mean…a lot of people who deserve success never achieve it. I’ve had a lot of luck. Maybe my luck has changed.” Claws scratched at the door, and Nelli jerked. “I wish they’d leave us alone. Tomorrow, when it clears up, I’ll show you everything else that’s been going on around camp. I know you’ll find the answers to the problem in something out there.” She stood and patted Amaranthe’s shoulder before crossing the cabin to join her father.

  “The problem isn’t out there,” Amaranthe said softly. “It’s in here.”

  As if in response to her thought, the screams outside ceased. Whatever had been worrying the roof stopped. The thuds at the door ended. Even the wind abated.

  People lifted their heads. No one spoke, but their hope felt palpable.

  The eye of the storm, Amaranthe thought.

  She walked to the door and listened, sublimating the urge to unlock it and peek outside.

  Sicarius glided out of the shadows, wearing all his weapons again.

  “Going somewhere?” she asked.

  “You know something,” he said.

  Amaranthe turned her back on the room and spoke softly. “It sounds like events have been escalating for days. Even since we arrived, we’ve seen it.” She looked at a clock on a shelf. “It’s after midnight, so I don’t think that’s the deadline, but—”

  “Deadline for what?”

  Wind screeched, wood splintered, and iron warped. The door blew open.

  Sicarius leaped before the entrance, pushing Amaranthe out of the way. He landed with daggers in hands. A step behind him, she drew her sword and dropped into a ready stance.

  Snow and wind rushed in, and the kerosene lamps blew out. Shou
ts collided with one another, and scuffles and clanks sounded in the darkness.

  A yellow light glowed outside.

  Squinting into the snow, Amaranthe tried to relax. She would be better prepared to face whatever lurked out there without tense muscles slowing her reflexes.

  Footsteps pounded up behind her. Sergeant Tollen. Behind him came Nelli.

  A snow-free dome cleared around the cabin. Though flakes still swirled in the sky above, some force kept the air still and clear before the door.

  Amaranthe blew out a long breath, then led the way outside. Sicarius, Tollen, and Nelli followed.

  The snow’s absence revealed dozens of dark humanoid shapes ringing the yard, cloaks wavering in the breeze, cowls pulled low over dark holes where faces should have been. Each entity bore a two-headed axe, the blades and long handles black.

  In front of the door, a giant muscular creature, also humanoid but larger than the others, stood bare-chested and bare-legged. Flames licked its skin and danced about its crimson hair. Two silver horns rose from its temples and curved down its back.

  “Ifrit,” Sicarius said. “And its army of death fixers.”

  Amaranthe was glad he recognized them because she had never seen nor heard of them. Before she could ask for details, the creature spoke, though not in a language she understood.

  “Kendorian,” Sicarius said.

  “What’s it saying?” Without turning her back to the ifrit, she looked at Tollen and Nelli. Nelli’s mouth hung open, and the whites of her eyes circled her irises. Tollen just looked grim. He wasn’t surprised.

  “The warnings have not been heeded,” Sicarius translated. “The hour is—”

  Tollen lunged and grabbed Amaranthe’s sword. Startled, she let him have it.

  Weapon raised, blade gleaming with a fiery reflection, Tollen charged the ifrit. His target did not move, nor did the dozens of black wraiths ringing the cabin.

  The sword swished through the creature as if through air. The ifrit tossed back its red-maned head and laughed at the night sky.

  A spark of hope stirred in Amaranthe’s breast. Was this all an illusion?

  Howling in frustration, Tollen spun on the nearest death fixer. This time, the sword struck something solid. It thudded against the figure’s arm, but did not penetrate. The blade might as well have hit steel.