Amaranthe had no intention of walking that ten miles, soaking wet and in nothing but her undershirt. “Are you sure you can’t let us know? If you don’t, we’re liable to wander around the compound and stumble across who knows what secret information before leaving.”
“I’ll already be in trouble,” Verosh said, taking another step back, clearly fearing they would attack him. “I can’t tell you.”
A shadow moved behind him, and a black blade came to rest against his throat.
Deret flinched almost as much as Verosh.
“Can you tell us now?” Amaranthe asked.
Verosh gulped. “Big house. I think they’re in the room to the right of the entryway.”
Amaranthe lifted a hand toward Sicarius, who was barely visible in the poor lighting. “He helped us escape. Please don’t exsanguinate him.”
“Tie him up?” Sicarius asked.
Verosh didn’t look happy at the idea, but Amaranthe nodded. “Maybe it’ll keep him from getting into trouble with his boss.”
Sicarius had brought along his own rope and quickly took care of the task. Amaranthe was glad. Though she didn’t think the tank experience had drained her as much as Deret, her limbs were heavy with weariness, nonetheless. Deret hobbled around until he found a pole he could use to lean on.
Only after Sicarius finished tying Verosh and they were walking toward the door did he give her bare arms and thinly covered chest a raised eyebrow. She blushed, wishing she hadn’t lost her shirt, especially when that plan hadn’t worked.
“Was there a snake?” Sicarius asked mildly.
Remembering the last time she had been running around shirtless, Amaranthe blushed further. “No.”
“I see.” He paused, perhaps considering other possible explanations. “An explosion?”
“No.” She thought about blaming Deret, but the cool gaze Sicarius had leveled at the man when he had returned with his pole had already implied that he was in more danger of feeling an assassin’s blade than the young priest had been. “A true gentleman would offer a cold, wet woman his own shirt rather than... interrogating her so.”
“It’s true,” Deret said. “I would have offered her mine, but it’s just as wet. And it’s bloody.”
Sicarius considered this, doubtlessly weighing the benefits of keeping his shirt, which allowed him to blend into the night nicely, against pleasing her. Ultimately, he decided in her favor and removed a knapsack and unfastened his throwing knife sheath from his arm. He took off his shirt and handed it to her. She wasn’t too proud to accept it, not when it was this early in the spring and the coldest part of the night awaited them. She pulled it over her head, glad for the warmth of his body heat.
Deret eyed Sicarius’s lean muscular torso with disgust.
“Rethinking your definition of all-muscle?” Amaranthe asked.
“I never had a chance at that park, did I?”
Amaranthe couldn’t think of a way to say he would have if she had never known Sicarius, especially with Sicarius standing right there listening, so she merely shrugged.
“I brought a vehicle.” Sicarius pointed through the door and toward the orchards. “It is hidden. Mancrest may wait in it.”
“Just me?”
“You are injured.”
“He’s intuitive too,” Deret muttered to Amaranthe.
Sicarius’s eyes narrowed slightly.
“Intuitive enough to know I want to snoop around.” Amaranthe patted Deret on his good shoulder. “We’ll fetch your swordstick. Go rest and keep the vehicle running in case we need to escape in a hurry.”
“So by ‘go rest’ you mean go shovel coal into the furnace to keep the fire going.”
“Yes. Doesn’t that sound peaceful compared to the rest of the night?”
“I think... perhaps I’ve been mistaken in envying your assassin this last year.”
Amaranthe smiled. “Likely so.”
Sicarius pointed toward a path, and Deret limped off in the indicated direction. They waited to make sure he reached the trees before heading off to “snoop.”
Amaranthe gave Sicarius a hug before he could lead the way deeper into the compound. “Thank you for coming. How did you find us?”
“A competent tracker always finds his prey.”
“Even when his prey was driven ten miles in a lorry?”
Sicarius withdrew something from a pocket and pressed it into her hand. Amaranthe couldn’t see much in the darkness between house lamps, but she rubbed it between her fingers. It felt like an apple stem that had been mashed by the tread of someone’s boot. She was skeptical that he had decided they had been taken to a local orchard on that clue alone, but they were drawing close to the main house, so she left him his secrecy.
“I’m glad you decided to look for me,” she said instead. “I hadn’t planned this much excitement for the night.”
“It was urgent that I find you promptly,” Sicarius said.
“Oh?” She could envision all sorts of problems back in the city. Had the plant become more aggressive? Had the assassin caught up with Starcrest? “Trouble?”
“Sespian may soon be expected to take on the role of father.”
“What?” Amaranthe almost tripped over a root—or maybe her own feet. “I didn’t think... I mean... Maldynado said Mahliki liked him, but I didn’t think they had... have they?”
“I am unaware of what you are speaking about in regard to Starcrest’s daughter. The Nurian mage hunter is dead. With her last breaths she gave me a message—an address—to deliver to Sespian, and reminded me that he owes her a favor.”
Amaranthe’s mind, which had hiccupped to a stunned stop, started working again. “Oh. I... huh.”
“Indeed. It seems she studied him and found him a more likely adoptive parent than I.”
“Er.” Amaranthe couldn’t imagine either of them as someone’s choice for an adoptive parent—Sespian might do in another ten years, but now? It seemed a bizarre decision. But she didn’t have the experience with Nurians to truly understand their culture, either. Maybe there was some cachet attached to properly raising an enemy’s child, so people tended to do a good job when presented with the opportunity. Or maybe the Nurians deemed honor the primary factor in considering suitability. She did know that was a key component of their culture. And Sespian was honorable; as far as she knew, no imperial enemy had ever disputed that. “Have you checked on the child yet?”
“No. That is why I came in search of you first.”
“Oh,” Amaranthe repeated, feeling a numbness that had nothing to do with the cold air needling her skin through her wet trousers. “Yes, you probably shouldn’t be the one to go to the child first. Especially since... er, I assume you killed the—” she stopped herself from saying mother, as that seemed far too condemning, “—the assassin?”
“She attacked me.”
“Sespian isn’t quite as intimidating a figure as you, so maybe he wouldn’t... alarm the child.”
“He is busy working for Starcrest,” Sicarius said.
And the girl couldn’t be left in an apartment by herself indefinitely, right. She rubbed her face. What had that Nurian woman been thinking? To foist a child on someone so young, someone who was, at the moment, barely earning enough to pay for food for himself and his cat. Maybe the Starcrests would take the child in or some Nurian kin could be found.
“We’ll pick her up in the morning,” Amaranthe said. “In the meantime... there are more pressing matters to attend to.”
“Mancrest’s swordstick?”
“My snooping.”
• • • • •
Tikaya watched with concern as Sespian walked away from the vehicle. She hadn’t handled that well, but she had been distracted by Rias jumping down from the roof of that smoldering warehouse. Sespian would hear the full story soon and have an opportunity to decide what he wanted to do. She found it perplexing that an enemy of Sicarius had wanted his son to care for her daughter. Perhaps they wou
ld find the child had been sent away already and someone else waited at that address.
“Tikaya,” Rias rumbled, brushing past the entourage of people who were congratulating him on surviving the battle and who wanted to know if he had completed the submarine so he could be ushered off to some new military headquarters where he could be kept safe.
Tikaya was more interested in checking him for wounds. She stepped down from the lorry, but he wrapped her in a hug before she could pat him down. Given the fierceness of the hug, she guessed Dak had delivered a quick report on the status of the hotel before hustling inside to bark orders. She was happy to return that hug with equal ferocity—what had he been doing up there on the roof, dodging fire and hurling blasting sticks as if he were some young private?
Mahliki gave them both a quick hug before heading into the warehouse.
“We’ll be discussing a few things later, Mahliki,” Rias called after her, a warning in his voice, one Tikaya had heard as many times as Mahliki and which she doubted would worry their daughter much.
“I hope you didn’t need to put that bow to use here,” Rias murmured in a gentler tone, brushing a strand of hair away from Tikaya’s face.
“No, your nephew had cannonballs, so my arrows seemed superfluous.”
“Good. The role of a president’s wife hasn’t been fully established yet, but I don’t think that shooting his enemies full of arrows will be part of the description.”
“What about snooping around his intelligence office?” Tikaya figured she should mention that new hobby before Dak beat her to it.
Rias arched his eyebrows. “Is that an interest for you? You certainly have the qualifications.”
“I didn’t know being able to piece together potsherds and read two-thousand-year-old languages qualified one to work in military intelligence.”
“You know what I mean. Aside from decrypting intercepted messages, we could use someone who’s an expert on...” Rias waved toward the thick stands of green stalks all around the warehouse; the priests may have been defeated but the plant remained. “I’m sure we haven’t seen the last of artifacts and legacies from that civilization.”
“I—”
“Look out,” came Maldynado’s voice from behind.
Tikaya found herself shoved to the side at the same time as a dark shadow reared at the edge of her vision. Sespian sprinted over to a thick vine flicking toward them like the end of a whip. He jumped, a black dagger in his hand. He landed atop the vine as if it were a donkey waiting to be ridden—a rearing and bucking donkey.
Rias should have taken cover inside the building, but of course he ran over to help. The sharp knife cut into the vine, but even it couldn’t slice through that many inches of tough flesh in a single swipe. The thick tendril ought to have been forced to the ground by Sespian’s weight, but it continued to whip back and forth. At first, Tikaya thought it was trying to knock Sespian off, but the tip was lashing toward Rias instead.
“Mahliki,” Rias called, “where’s my generator?”
Mahliki had gone into the warehouse, but she ran back out at his call. “Sorry, I borrowed it,” she yelled and jumped back into the cab. She dragged the metal contraption out.
“Can I help?” Tikaya almost slung the bow off her shoulder, but her arrows wouldn’t do more than scratch the monstrous thing.
“We can handle it,” Mahliki called, running toward the whipping plant. “We’ve been doing this all night.”
Maybe so, but that didn’t keep Tikaya’s nails from digging into her palms. She wished she had figured out some way her knowledge of the ancient language could help. Dak ran out, a blasting stick in his hand.
“You’re not throwing that anywhere near them,” Tikaya ordered.
After trying several times to stab the whipping top section of the vine with a long iron fork, Mahliki ran around Sespian, closer to the base of the plant. This time she caught the fork against it. Before Tikaya could ask what good it would do, streaks of blue electricity leapt from the tool. After a moment, gray smoke poured from the vine, and the green flesh grew charred.
“Got it,” Sespian said a second before the sawn-off stump dropped to the ground. The several-feet-long tip that had been lashing toward Rias continued to flop and flail, but the rest of the plant slumped down. The charred area spread up to the stump and back to the base, and it soon appeared as limp and dead as bougainvillea after a freeze.
“Well done,” Rias told Sespian and Mahliki. He flicked a hand to wave away Dak’s blasting stick. “I’ve had enough of those thrown near me for one day.”
Dak shrugged and went back inside.
Tikaya strode forward, grabbed Rias firmly by the back of the arm, and propelled him toward the door as well. “Just what do you think you were doing there? You clearly didn’t have a weapon capable of harming it.”
“I... was distracting it so it wouldn’t focus on Sespian and Mahliki.”
“Please. You were risking your life needlessly. It wanted you.” A fact that Tikaya found alarming. It seemed as if this plant was gaining in sentience as it gained in mass. How were they going to destroy the thing now? “You’re going to march inside and leave the fighting for the young people.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Rias said sheepishly.
“It’s strange hearing him... reprimanded,” Sespian whispered to Mahliki.
“It doesn’t happen often,” Mahliki said. “Just when he deserves it.”
Tikaya snorted and followed Rias into the warehouse. She was tempted to order her daughter inside, too, but Mahliki and Sespian seemed to be the only people with tools capable of fighting the plant. She would have to trust that Mahliki could handle herself in this matter.
Inside, a swarm of engineers in uniforms had already accosted Rias. Tikaya continued to find it strange that this nation’s brightest minds all came from the military. She supposed the odds would naturally go that way when nearly all of the able-bodied young men signed up to serve, at least for a time.
She walked over to examine the Explorer. Maldynado was already there, lying on the top of the hull with his head stuck inside. He had finally put his boot back on. His foot had either recovered enough to do so, or maybe his toes had simply gotten cold. He slid to the ground in front of Tikaya, wincing as his left foot touched down, but he was able to stand on it without an aid now.
“You’re walking. Dak must be a better medic than advertised.” She walked around the Explorer as she spoke. There was no sign of any damage on the outside. There were cables attached to the craft for hoisting it over to a pair of rails that could presumably take it out to the water—so long as that water wasn’t completely blocked by the plant. Though she knew the submarine was sturdy, she shuddered at the idea of riding into that dense stand of irritated foliage.
“Hardly that,” Maldynado said. “I simply have a fantastic constitution.”
Rias strode over with Dak, the engineers and a dozen soldiers trailing behind them. “It’s time to assemble the team.”
“The team?” Tikaya asked. “Tonight?”
“Given the plant’s accelerated growth rate of late, delaying even a day could mean the difference between success and failure.”
Tikaya wondered if they had already delayed too many days to succeed. Mahliki almost hadn’t escaped from the last underwater excursion, and the plant had barely been out of the harbor then. It had also been far less aggressive. She kept the thoughts to herself. These men were nodding at Rias. They wanted encouragement not pessimism. It wasn’t as if there was a viable alternative, short of abandoning the city—maybe the continent. Someone had to go down.
“I hope you’re planning to appoint some hearty young men to the task,” Tikaya said, “while you remain here on dry land to attend to your presidential duties.”
Rias had the look of a man bracing himself for a battle. Tikaya realized she would be his opponent in this and stared at him with chagrin.
“Nobody knows the controls like I do,” Rias sai
d, “and there’s not enough time to teach anyone.”
“Amaranthe and Sicarius know them.”
“They’re not here.”
Tikaya started, realizing she hadn’t seen either person all day. “Where—they didn’t get caught in the hotel, did they?”
Dak shook his head. “I didn’t see them when I was warning people.”
“Amaranthe went off to see Deret Mancrest, last I heard,” Maldynado said. “But she didn’t come back, and Sicarius went to look for her.”
Rias spread his hand. “They have troubles of their own. Other people can run the government. I’m the only one for the submarine.”
“Other people? If that were true, they wouldn’t have sent a letter three thousand miles asking for you.” Tikaya tried not to sound shrill and frustrated, but it was hard. Her fear of losing him came back full force, the emotion rising into her throat and lodging there.
Rias stepped closer to Tikaya, drawing her aside for a private moment. Dak lifted his hands, ushering the other men back. He didn’t say anything, but Tikaya guessed what they were all thinking. Let him calm the woman, so we can get about our work...
“Do you remember how we electrified the hull of the first submarine we made?” Rias asked. “To fight the overeager sea life in your harbor?”
“Yes.”
“In addition to making other weapons, I ensured that feature works even without the artifact. I’m not planning a suicide mission.”
Tikaya thought of the way Mahliki had been forced to apply the electricity for several seconds before that single vine started to char and wondered how much power it would take to drive back the jungle in the waters below, especially now that the plant appeared quasi sentient. She imagined the huge limbs batting the submarine around, each one contacting the hull only briefly, not long enough to be damaged. How would they fight that?
“You look grim.” Rias’s eyes crinkled, as if this were some game. “No faith in an old admiral who’s survived a lot of battles over the years?”
“This is different. Even after twenty years of studying that race, I hardly know...” Tikaya sighed and laid her hand on his arm.
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