Conspiracy

by Lindsay Buroker

  Amaranthe lifted a hand toward Sicarius, about to ask him to check it out, but he was already heading for the exit.

  “What do you think, Sergeant Yara?” Sespian asked. “Are these outlaws to be trusted?” He said it casually, as if he were simply making conversation, but something in the intent set of his face made Amaranthe think the answer might matter.

  Yara turned in the engineer’s seat to face Sespian. “I think you can trust Lokdon, Sire.”

  At that simple endorsement, Amaranthe let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. Sicarius, halfway out the door, had paused to hear the exchange. He met and held Amaranthe’s eyes for a moment before leaving, and she thought it might be an acknowledgement that she hadn’t been an idiot for involving Yara after all. She didn’t know if the sergeant’s words would sway Sespian in the end, but they couldn’t hurt.

  Only a few moments passed before Sicarius returned. “There’s something flying overhead,” he said without preamble.

  “Books and Akstyr?” Amaranthe asked.

  “Not unless Maldynado pleasured a whole platoon of wealthy businesswomen.”

  “That’s... not impossible,” Amaranthe said, but Sicarius had already swung back outside.

  “What?” Sespian asked.

  “I’m not sure. Stay here, please, Sire.” Amaranthe headed for the door.

  Snow greeted her when she climbed outside. They were still in the forest, with evergreens towering to either side of the tracks, but the railway sloped upward more steeply than it had before. Amaranthe climbed into the coal car, where the men were crouching and looking skyward.

  “That thing’s huge.” Maldynado spotted Amaranthe. “Did you see it?”

  “No, what is it?”

  “A flying... I don’t know. Castle?”

  It wasn’t a castle, Basilard signed.

  “Then what was it?” Maldynado asked.

  Big.

  Amaranthe scratched her head. A big, flying not-castle. Lovely description.

  Sicarius was crouching on top of the locomotive cab. Amaranthe clambered up beside him.

  “Can you describe what we’re dealing with?” she asked.

  He pointed through the falling snow toward the slope ahead. At first, Amaranthe saw nothing. Then, dark against the white mountainside, a massive black craft floated across the railway, dwarfing the evergreens beneath it. Intermittent lights outlined its half-sphere shape. It was flat on the bottom and convex on top, like the dome of a building. A steady, conical red beam shot out the front, its focus downward as it illuminated a swath of snow-covered trees in its path. The vessel had to be miles away yet, but its size made it seem much closer.

  “I’ve never seen anything like that.” Amaranthe twisted to look at the men. “Maldynado, is there any chance that’s the flying contraption you sent Books and Akstyr to pick up?”

  “No, they were getting a dirigible,” Maldynado said, “not a giant black flying fortress.”

  Up ahead, the craft had disappeared, but the image remained etched in Amaranthe’s mind. Was this some secret new technology Forge had designed or somehow gotten its hands on? She thought of the underwater laboratory her team had infiltrated that summer. For all its strangeness, it had appeared to be a mix of imperial technology and magic. Whatever this was, it seemed utterly alien.

  Sicarius hadn’t moved. He crouched, elbows on his knees, gaze toward the spot the craft had occupied.

  “Have you ever seen anything like it?” Amaranthe asked.

  “It’s making its way down from the mountains,” Sicarius said, “going back and forth over the tracks.”

  Looking for them, perhaps? “You didn’t answer my question,” Amaranthe pointed out.

  “It’s possible they haven’t seen us yet. The snow is picking up. It may hide our smoke.”

  “Sicarius...”

  He pulled out his collapsible spyglass and lifted it to his face. “There are three tunnels between here and the pass. If we speed up, we may be able to reach the closest one, stop the train, and hide in there until the craft flies past.”

  Amaranthe doubted he could see the tunnels with the spyglass, not with so many trees in the way, but she trusted he knew the railway by heart. While she had rarely traveled out of the city, he’d been all over the empire and to other nations during his previous career.

  Wind battered at Amaranthe and she pressed her fingers against the top of the cab for balance. “At the risk of sounding like a nagging wife, I’m going to ask again if you have an idea as to what we’re dealing with.”

  Sicarius lowered the spyglass. “It reminds me of technology I saw in my youth. Extremely deadly technology. We don’t want to be noticed by whoever is piloting it.”

  “Technology? Not magic?”

  “Come.” Sicarius stood, unperturbed by the wind and snow gusting at his chest. “We need to hurry if we’re going to make the tunnel.”

  He slithered over the edge of the roof and into the cabin.

  “I don’t know why I bother asking him questions.” Amaranthe didn’t feel up to duplicating Sicarius’s exit, so she hopped down into the coal car before angling for the ledge leading back to the locomotive cabin.

  “Can we come back in now?” Maldynado asked. “I don’t know if you noticed the snow, but it’s getting a touch nippy out here. I’d hate to be unable to perform to my fullest capacity because of cold-induced... atrophies.”

  “The only thing that might atrophy because of the cold isn’t something you need right now,” Amaranthe said.

  Maldynado hopped onto the ledge and followed her into the cab. Sicarius had the furnace door open and was shoveling mounds of coal inside. Yara still sat in the engineer’s position, but a new grimness marked her face, and Amaranthe had a feeling she’d seen the mysterious craft. Sespian stood behind her, gripping the back of her seat.

  “You don’t know that for certain,” Maldynado said, stepping inside after Amaranthe. “What if there’s a beautiful woman flying that thing, and her people capture us using superior magics, and our only hope of survival will come if I can seduce her, thus distracting her while the rest of the team escapes?”

  “Maybe I was mistaken,” Sespian said, “and he’s not a Marblecrest.”

  Maldynado’s step faltered and Basilard, swinging into the cabin after him, had to skitter to the side to avoid crashing into him. For a moment, Maldynado looked like a bumbling private caught at the end of an enemy cannon, or at least like someone who’s secret was out, but he recovered and shrugged.

  “Technically, I’m not, Sire,” Maldynado said. “I’m disowned. Disappointed the old man one too many times, as it were.”

  I can’t imagine why, Basilard signed.

  The cab grew crowded with everyone inside, and when Maldynado lifted an arm to say, “You wound me, Bas,” he clunked Yara in the head with his elbow.

  “I told you not to touch me, you ungainly goon,” Yara said.

  Maldynado bowed deeply, this time bumping Basilard. “My apologies, my lady. Perhaps you’d like me to drive while you stand in a place less likely to be disturbed by human activity?”

  Amaranthe opened her mouth to say less yammering and more focusing on the problem would be good, but Sicarius acted first. He spun away from the furnace and hurled his favorite dagger at the floor. Instead of bouncing off, the black blade sank an inch into the textured metal. Even though she’d been watching him, Amaranthe jumped in surprise. She started to ask what he was about, but Sicarius pointed at the quivering dagger hilt.

  “Unless I miss my guess, that is the technology we’re dealing with up there.”

  Chapter 17

  “If we don’t avoid detection, we will die shortly,” Sicarius said, his knife still quivering where it had stuck in the metal floor.

  It took a moment for people to pull their eyes away from the dagger, especially Yara, who hadn’t seen the weapon before.

  “Yara,” Amaranthe said quietly, “push the train to full spee
d, please.”

  Yara tore her gaze from the knife. “Understood.”

  “As soon as we enter the tunnel, start braking,” Sicarius told her. “We need to stop before we come out on the other side.”

  Yara nodded once.

  Sicarius yanked his dagger out of the floor, sheathed it, and returned to shoveling. Heat poured from the furnace, and a vortex of red and orange flames writhed inside. The needle on the gauge that marked miles per hour crept toward the maximum line. Without the dozens of heavy cars behind it, the engine needn’t work as hard as usual, but they were climbing a steep slope, and the locomotive trembled as it picked up speed. Vibrations thrummed through Amaranthe, rattling her teeth in her skull. She tried not to think about curves in the tracks that they’d encounter as they ascended into the mountains, curves that were not safe to go around above certain speeds.

  Basilard gathered the firearms left in the cabin from the soldiers and hopped onto the coal box. He started checking and loading everything. If that craft was made from a material similar to Sicarius’s dagger, Amaranthe couldn’t imagine what a black-powder weapon could do to damage it. Maldynado was standing next to her, and she gave him a bleak look.

  “My plan’s starting to sound better now, isn’t it?” he asked.

  Amaranthe might have laughed, but she didn’t want to draw Sicarius’s ire. She simply said, “What if it’s a man?”

  “A what?”

  “A man in charge of the enemy craft,” Amaranthe said. “Would you still be willing to seduce him so the team could escape?”

  “I... uhm.”

  “Just wondering how far into the realm of self-sacrifice you’d be willing to travel to help your comrades.”

  Maldynado propped his hands on his hips and gazed out one of the front windows. “Is it a pretty, young man, or an ugly old curmudgeon?”

  Basilard’s eyebrows arched, and Yara looked over her shoulder at Maldynado.

  “What?” he asked.

  Amaranthe decided to join Sicarius at the furnace before he started throwing knives around again to silence the conversation. His grimness worried her, and she wished she’d tried harder in the past to pry out the story of where he’d gotten that dagger.

  Sicarius lifted his foot from the pedal, letting the furnace door swing closed. He gripped the shovel and watched the tracks ahead. The snow was picking up outside, cutting down on the visibility, but Amaranthe spotted a hint of red light in the distance. That search beam.

  “I’d have more ideas if I knew more about what this is,” she said.

  “I have no facts, only conjecture,” Sicarius said.

  “That’s more than the rest of us have.”

  The train headed around a slight curve, and Amaranthe had to grab the wall to brace herself. The floor quaked beneath them. The needle on the speed gauge had passed the last line and was pressing against the rim.

  When the tracks straightened out again, Sicarius pointed through the snow. “There.”

  In the distance, a towering cliff rose with a dark tunnel entrance in the center of it.

  “We’re going to make it,” Amaranthe said, “and then you can take the time to enlighten us while we’re hiding in the dark.”

  The domed top of the black craft came into sight above the cliff.

  “Or not,” she murmured.

  The craft was still a ways from reaching the edge of the cliff, and its beam swept back and forth over the rocky hillside above the tunnel, but it was covering ground rapidly. Amaranthe remembered math problems from school where she’d had to calculate when the paths of two trains coming from opposite directions would cross. She chose not to attempt such a calculation now. It was going to be close, and she didn’t want to know if they’d be on the wrong side of that closeness.

  “What’s the worst thing that can happen if they spot us?” Amaranthe’s voice vibrated with the trembling of the locomotive.

  Sicarius shook his head once, then pinned Sespian and Yara with his stare. “Increase speed.”

  “If we go any faster, the train will fly apart,” Sespian said.

  “Let it,” Sicarius barked.

  As the train closed on the tunnel, the cliff seemed to grow larger, filling the sky, and the black craft disappeared from view. It hadn’t gone anywhere though, and Amaranthe could see it in her mind, drawing ever closer.

  “Can that beam do more than light up the scenery?” she asked.

  Sicarius didn’t answer.

  “Even if it’s just to tell me that you don’t know, or that my questions are annoying, some kind of response would be appreciated,” Amaranthe whispered to him.

  Sicarius met her eyes, his gaze considering, and he opened his mouth to say something, but a loud clank came from the engine. Resounding thunks followed as something dropped off the bottom, banged against the wheels on its way by, then flew out onto the tracks behind them.

  Maldynado stuck his head outside, watching behind them. “I hope that wasn’t an important part.”

  “A few more seconds, and we’ll be in the tunnel,” Yara said.

  An ominous shadow fell across the train. The snow stopped abruptly. No, it hadn’t stopped; it was being blocked.

  Amaranthe grabbed the side of the doorway and stuck her head outside. The sky was gone. She couldn’t see anything above the trees except the flat black bottom of the craft. There was nothing to look at except that blackness, no protrusions, no color, no etching or detail. Under daylight it might be different, but now Amaranthe had the impression of the same inky alloy as that of Sicarius’s dagger.

  The train sped into the tunnel before the red of the searchlight crossed over the edge of cliff. Safe, Amaranthe thought. Maybe. When she glanced back, she saw a scarlet curtain fall across the tunnel entrance. It must have covered a quarter mile swath of snowy forest. More, the light caught the back half of the coal car before the train was swallowed by darkness.

  “Full stop,” Sicarius said.

  Yara pulled gradually on the brake lever. Sicarius pushed her out of the way, grabbed the lever, and threw his weight backward.

  Brakes screeched. In the confining tunnel, the noise blasted at Amaranthe’s eardrums. She was too busy being hurled forward to notice for long. Someone slammed into her back. With her cheek already flattened against the window, she was in no position to complain.

  Sparks flew up from the wheels, brightening the dark stone tunnel walls. The exit, a slightly less dark hole on the far side, approached rapidly. With the speed the train had been going, Amaranthe didn’t know if it could stop in time.

  The forward force lessened a smidgen, and whoever was pressed against her back tried to peel away from her. She planted both hands on the window and pushed herself upright.

  On the other side of the furnace, Sicarius crouched, leaning back, the tendons in his neck standing out as he continued to pull at the long brake lever. Smoke poured from the engine, shrouding the view ahead. If something in there had caught on fire...

  The train halted inches from the snowy overhang at the end of the tunnel. Smoke continued to leak from the seams of the engine, though at least the noise abated. Amaranthe’s ears ached after all that screeching.

  “You’re insane!” Yara shouted. “You could have wrecked the train and killed us all.”

  Amaranthe stepped toward her and patted the air with a placating hand. Yelling at someone who carried as many knives as Sicarius was never a good idea.

  But all Sicarius said was, “Your efforts would not have halted the train in time.”

  Amaranthe touched his shoulder and nodded toward the tunnel exit. “Check it out, will you? I think they came over the cliff in time to see us go in.”

  Sicarius released the brake, slid past Basilard and Maldynado, and hopped out of the train.

  “That man is a lunatic,” Yara growled.

  Maldynado was pushing his shoulder-length brown curls out of his face with one hand, and with the other he patted Yara on the shoulder. “Yes, but
he’s a lunatic that’s good to keep on your side.”

  “Touching,” she snapped at him.

  Maldynado lifted his hand and met Amaranthe’s eyes. “The man who can tame this woman would excel in a career of training tigers, sharks, grimbals, and other wild creatures with bad attitudes.”

  “Are you trying to be clever?” Yara touched her forehead, where a new knot was rising. She must have banged against something too.

  “Rarely,” Maldynado said.

  Sespian pointed a shaky hand toward the ominous black plumes wafting from the engine. “Should we get out of here? I don’t think our train is making another run.”

  “I concur,” Amaranthe said.

  “We have to walk up to the pass?” Maldynado asked. “How far is it from here?”

  Yara glared at him.

  “I’m not whining,” Maldynado said. “I’m just concerned we won’t make our meet-up time with Akstyr and Books.”

  Basilard hopped to the ground and Amaranthe followed him, gravel shifting under her feet when she landed. She touched the rock wall for balance and grimaced when her hand came away dirty with algae or some other slick, damp growth. She pulled out her kerchief.

  Basilard coughed and waved at the smoke in the air. It had a tarry, burning-rubber odor that made Amaranthe’s eyes water.

  “Are you all right?” she asked Basilard, figuring he’d been the one to crash into her from behind.

  Fresh blood streamed from a deep gash on his head, but he merely nodded. When he caught her eying it, he signed, New scar.

  “We may all have them by the time this is over,” Amaranthe said.

  Whose idea was it to let Sicarius drive? That was worse than a Maldynado ride.

  “You haven’t been in a garbage lorry with him.”

  “I heard that,” Maldynado said from the other side of the train.

  “Do you have the emperor over there?” Amaranthe asked, wanting to make sure everyone was out.

  “Yes,” Sespian called back. “Though I think we should move away from the train before the boiler explodes.”

  “Get back in the train,” Sicarius called as he ran back down the railway toward them.