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  When she broke the surface, she let only a couple inches of her face come out, just enough to breathe in several deep breaths. When a few seconds passed with no one shooting at her, she lifted her head farther.

  She was indeed back on the island, kneeling in the shallows. The woman’s voice floated to her from twenty meters away. Her boat was sinking—only an inch or two remained above the water—and she had pulled the man to its side. She was repeating something over and over. His name? He floated in the water on his back, unmoving.

  Amaranthe closed her eyes, grimly realizing that she’d killed the man. The poison. Even in the water, some of it must have remained on Sicarius’s knife.

  When Amaranthe opened her eyes, the woman was looking in her direction. The darkness hid the thief’s features, but there was no mistaking the long gaze toward the beach. The woman grabbed a rifle and slid into the water, leaving the man and her sinking cargo behind. She stroked toward the beach.

  Without turning her back on the woman, Amaranthe eased out of the water herself. She backed to the foliage and ducked behind a tree. She still had Sicarius’s knife, and she judged the distance to the beach where the woman would be wading out. The thief would be most vulnerable then, slogging out of hip-level water. Amaranthe flipped the blade and mentally steeled herself to make a throw. If she didn’t take her adversary out, the thief would blast those fancy new bullets into Amaranthe’s chest.

  When she raised the blade to throw, a calloused hand grabbed her wrist.

  She jumped to the side, trying to twist her arm and pull it free, but the steel grip held her firm. “Sicarius?” she whispered, not certain whether to hope it was him or not.

  “Muk derst.”

  It was his voice, but she had a feeling it wasn’t him. On the beach, the thief was stepping out of the water, her rifle held before her, her gaze roving the tree line. All it would take was a shout from Sicarius, or this Nurian spirit possessing him, to alert the woman. She would come charging up the beach, shooting to kill.

  A hand came to rest on the back of Amaranthe’s neck.

  She swallowed. Or Sicarius could do the killing for the thief. A tremor went through the calloused hand, and she knew Sicarius was fighting this spirit, but if he had been unable to leave the island, what could he do now?

  “Muk derst,” he repeated, more insistently.

  She took a guess and dropped the knife. He did not let go.

  “Azon Amar?” Amaranthe breathed. “Do you understand me?”

  Pebbles crunched on the beach, the thief walking slowly, her rifle turned inland. She glanced toward the lake where her boat and its cargo of stolen goods had succumbed to the leak and disappeared beneath the waves. The moonlight was not quite bright enough to illuminate the woman’s firm, determined chin, but Amaranthe had no trouble imaging it.

  “Yes,” Sicarius whispered. The word came out, not in his usual monotone, but in an accent that put more emphasis on the vowel than was normal for a Turgonian.

  “I don’t want to die out here,” Amaranthe said, wondering what type of bargain she could try to make that would entice a dead man. “Is there anything I can do to win my life?”

  Sicarius’s hand tightened about her neck. “You already cost one of my people his life, his plan.” He spun her about so quickly and with such power that her toes dragged in the dirt. They bumped against a rock, almost knocking it from its resting place.

  Sicarius did not lower her, and her feet dangled. Her neck protested the manhandling, but she bit back a moan of pain, not wanting to alert the thief to her position. Besides, her neck would hurt a lot more if he decided to break it....

  “You see those ruins?” He pointed up the slope.

  Trees choked the view, though she knew what he was talking about. The old Darkcrest homestead was on this end of the island, a sprawling stone structure choked with vegetation that was gradually taking back the land.

  “I’ve seen them, yes,” Amaranthe whispered.

  “They’ve been my home for decades now,” Sicarius whispered. “An abandoned haunt filled with spirits of people who loathe me and my kind. I’ve had to suffer their taunts, about how I failed my mission, about how Turgonia will wipe my people from the world and write them out of history. I’ve had to—”

  “You think you failed?” Amaranthe asked.

  Sicarius—no, Azon Amar, she reminded herself—had turned so Amaranthe’s back was to the beach, and she could see the thief out of the corner of her eye. The woman had stopped and turned in their direction. If Sicarius was fighting the Nurian spirit, might his reflexes be a touch slower than usual?

  “Your general, Hollowcrest, said the emperor lived,” Azon Amar said.

  A plan whispered into Amaranthe’s thoughts, a dangerous one, especially considering her foe was occupying her closest friend’s body. All she could hope was that the thief wouldn’t be a good shot.

  “He lied to you,” Amaranthe said. “You succeeded in killing our old emperor.”

  “I...” He shook her. “You would tell me anything to live.”

  “You’re in my friend’s head. He knows the truth. Look around.”

  “No. I will kill you now. With your friend’s hands.” He chuckled without mirth, and it was jarring coming out of Sicarius’s mouth. Sicarius never laughed.

  His second hand came up next to the first, and his fingers tightened about Amaranthe’s throat.

  She kicked the rock. It clunked and skidded into the undergrowth.

  A shot fired.

  Sicarius grunted and his grip loosened. Amaranthe rammed an elbow into his ribs and leapt free.

  Not certain if he had been shot or simply surprised by the noise, she rushed to grab the knife on the ground and sprint into the brush. In the darkness, there was no way to run quietly. Leaves shook and branches snapped as she sprinted away, parallel to the beach.

  She kept an eye toward the thief and ducked a heartbeat before the rifle fired again. A bullet thudded into a tree over her head.

  Amaranthe popped up, steadied herself, and hurled the black knife. It was too dark to see it spinning through the air, but the thief reeled back and dropped her rifle.

  Afraid Sicarius—Azon Amar—whoever—would recover quickly, Amaranthe abandoned the foliage and sprinted down the beach. The moon peering over the crest of the island illuminated her all too well, and she ran with her shoulders hunched, fearing a bullet or knife in her back at any second. She sprinted five hundred meters, pebbles shifting and flying beneath her feet, until she reached the side of the island closest to the mainland.

  She chanced a glance back down the beach as she veered into the water. A black-clad figure was sprinting after her, closing the distance quickly.

  Had she the breath to spare, Amaranthe would have cursed Sicarius’s athletically inclined ancestors. She high-stepped out as far as she could before diving into the water. She was paddling her arms and kicking before her belly splashed down.

  Sicarius could easily overtake her before she reached the mainland. Her only hope was that Azon Amar’s reach ended before Sicarius caught up with her. And she had best move quickly enough that no blighted seaweed had time to stretch up and entangle her.

  For the first thirty meters, Amaranthe did not even lift her head to breathe. Her legs burned from the effort of kicking, and her arms turned into lead weights. Finally she lifted her head for air and to get her bearings. Through the water streaming into her eyes, she spotted the dock where they had stopped earlier. She shifted her angle toward it, put her head back down, and kept swimming.

  If Sicarius was right behind her... she didn’t want to know. She was out of weapons and out of tricks.

  Her knuckles grazed the bottom, and she scrambled out of the water. Fear-charged limbs propelled her up the slope and to the cabin. She tried the door but found it locked. She spun about, putting her back to the wood, and scanned the lake, searching for blond hair made silvery by the moonlight. He wasn’t there. Had he already climb
ed out?

  The logical part of her brain insisted that Sicarius would be himself if he reached this shore again, that the Nurian’s curse would have faded. The panicked tired-of-being-shot-at-and-tormented-by-that-island part of her brain had trouble believing it.

  Time limped past, and Sicarius did not appear.

  Amaranthe walked back down to the dock, a new fear worming its way into her mind. What if Azon Amar had summoned Sicarius back before he could swim away from the island? What if the Nurian spirit meant to keep Sicarius there as a prisoner for the rest of his life?

  Amaranthe lifted her chin. That would not happen. If she had to, she would return to the city and collect the rest of her team to rescue him. They could drug him if needed and carry him—

  Someone touched her shoulder, and Amaranthe jumped and whirled about.

  Sicarius stood there, damp hair sticking up in tufts, his face hidden by the night.

  Amaranthe skittered back until her heel found the edge of the dock. He did not move.

  “Are you... you?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  The accent had disappeared, and the monosyllabic answers had returned, so she supposed that meant it was him, but she had a hard time relaxing. She would not soon forget the memory of those fingers wrapped around her neck.

  “You sure?” she asked.

  He extended a hand, palm up. Amaranthe hesitated before stepping closer and accepting it. Gently and slowly, he pulled her into a hug. It surprised her, and she did not know what to say. The closest he usually came to hugging people was grappling with them in wrestling practice—the “hug” tended to end with one being hurled head-over-heels onto one’s back. He held the embrace for a long moment, and she found herself wondering just how close he had come to killing her. Had he been aware of everything he had been doing while under the spirit’s influence?

  She did not want to dwell upon that, so she kept her tone light when she said, “Is this supposed to convince me that you’re telling the truth? The real Sicarius doesn’t hug me often.” Despite her words, she slid her arms around him, intending to appreciate the gesture of camaraderie. Her hands encountered dampness, not dripping water from the swim but sticky warm dampness. “You’re bleeding,” she blurted, pulling her arms away lest she hurt him further.

  “You did arrange to have me shot,” Sicarius said dryly.

  “I didn’t think she’d luck into actually hitting you,” Amaranthe said. “I’m sorry. I needed a distraction to—”

  “I know,” Sicarius said grimly. “I should never have gone over there with you. I’d heard the story, of a team of soldiers sent to plant a box of blasting sticks and blow up the island, and of the warrior mage’s spirit taking over one of the strongest and using him to kill many of the others.”

  Amaranthe thought of the skeletons on the beach. How many more dotted the island?

  “I thought I was mentally strong enough to resist the spirit.” Sicarius rolled his head back to stare at the heavens before lowering it again to add, “Hubris.”

  Amaranthe bit her lip. She shouldn’t feel tickled by his admission, especially when he was standing there, bleeding on the dock, but Sicarius so rarely gave away his feelings that she had to admit pleasure at hearing him so clearly disgusted with himself. “Hubris is a common flaw amongst imperial men.” She had more than her share of it herself.

  “Yes.”

  “A very human flaw as well.”

  “You sound pleased.” A hint of puzzlement infused his tone.

  “It’s just that between your athletic prowess and your dedication to your training... Well, it’s like I said earlier. Sometimes you don’t seem human.”

  “There are other people like me in the world.”

  Yes, that Nurian warrior mage certainly must have been one, but Amaranthe had never met anyone else of Sicarius’s caliber. “Oh?” she asked, seeing a chance to tease him—they could use a little lightness after that adventure. “How many? Twenty? Thirty?”

  “Five.”

  Amaranthe smiled, wondering if he knew them by name. “Do you know if the female thief made it?”

  She touched the sheath on his waist that usually held his black knife and found it there once again. He had gone to retrieve it.

  “She did not. Your aim was accurate.”

  He sounded faintly proud. Amaranthe couldn’t help but remember that her intent had been to take the thieves to the magistrate, or at least tie them up somewhere the army could find them.

  “I wonder if they were in it for the money or if their government sent them,” she said, hoping for the former. If she had to kill people, she wanted them to be people who... well, people who deserved it, though she admitted she wasn’t someone who could fairly judge that.

  “I heard them speaking,” Sicarius said.

  “And?” Amaranthe prompted when he did not volunteer more.

  “They were brother and sister, seeking to regain their family’s honor after a disgrace. They would have been heroes, had they returned home with that much Turgonian technology.”

  “I see.” Maybe she shouldn’t have asked. It disheartened her to realize those two had been on a mission not so dissimilar to her own. “We better tend to your wound and head back to the city. We’ll have to take a break from training while you recover.”

  “We?”

  “You don’t expect me to tread water while holding a brick over my head by myself, do you?”

  THE END

  ALSO BY THE AUTHOR

  Novels with Amaranthe and Sicarius:

  THE EMPEROR’S EDGE

  DARK CURRENTS

  DEADLY GAMES

  Other novels:

  ENCRYPTED

  Novellas:

  FLASH GOLD

  HUNTED

  PEACEMAKER (Winter 2012)

  FIND THE AUTHOR ONLINE

  http://www.lindsayburoker.com/

  http://twitter.com/GoblinWriter

  http://www.facebook.com/LindsayBuroker

 

 

  Lindsay Buroker, The Assassin's Curse

 

 

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