Beneath the Surface

by Lindsay Buroker

  “Bodies?” Amaranthe whispered. “Was there more than one down there?”

  “A second, yes.”

  “If enforcers have been under the stage, they may have found the weapons.” She returned her hands to the wall, intending to push herself up to the lip.

  “Or it may be a trap,” Sicarius said.

  Amaranthe halted, a few inches above him. “For whom?”

  His steady gaze held hers.

  “Us? But they think we all left this morning. At least that’s what they’re supposed to think.”

  “That squad of enforcers boarded for a reason.”

  Oh. She’d forgotten about them. She’d been too busy... not concentrating on work.

  “Someone with a spyglass would have been able to count the heads of people in the lifeboat,” Sicarius went on.

  “They couldn’t have known anyone was missing, not for sure. Suppose we were simply keeping our heads down to avoid being shot? Besides, they might not know how many people went overboard last night. And there shouldn’t be any way for them to tell we were under the stage or had anything to do with those dead enforcers. Which we didn’t. For all they know, we’re simply trying to obtain a ride back home. Which is true. Mostly.”

  “Enforcers do not ascribe innocent motivations to me when alternatives are available,” Sicarius said. “A trap is not unlikely.”

  “Are you sure you’re not looking for an excuse to stay in the smokestack with me?”

  “If we attempt to check on the weapons now, in daylight, we may be spotted.”

  “Don’t worry. You don’t have to say it. I know.” Amaranthe patted him on the chest. “It was good for me too.”

  Not sure if he’d appreciate her inability to shift promptly from pleasure to work, she held back her grin as she scrambled to the lip. Daylight was right. The clouds had long since drifted away, and bright afternoon sunlight shown down on the river valley. And on her soot-smeared hands. She grimaced, wondering if the fine black powder coated her face as well. Apparently smokestacks weren’t ideal for smooching sessions. It’d been worth it. Once again, the grin fought to find a place on her face.

  Sicarius’s head popped up beside hers.

  The enforcers were heading back to the stairs.

  “Costumes,” Amaranthe said. “If we—”

  Sicarius vaulted over the lip of the smokestack and landed in a crouch below, his feet touching down without sound. A hand-sized smear of soot blackened the back of his head. Amaranthe glanced at her darkened fingers. Oops.

  The grime didn’t slow Sicarius down. He sprang across the rooftop like a great black panther. The enforcers never saw him coming.

  Amaranthe slid down the outside of the smokestack. By the time her feet hit the roof, both enforcers were flat. She snorted. They might have simply done that to start with, instead of clambering into the smokestack.

  Inside the pilothouse, the helmsman still had his legs propped up on the console. Sicarius hoisted one unconscious enforcer over his shoulder and grabbed the other one, dragging him along the roof toward Amaranthe. She hustled over, intending to help, but he quickly pulled his burden behind the closest smokestack. One man’s eyes were rolled back in his head; the other blinked blearily, but didn’t look like he’d recover to fight anytime soon.

  “I’m going to find rope,” Sicarius said. “Take off their clothes.”

  “I was hoping he’d want to strip me,” Amaranthe told the bleary fellow, but she hurried about her work, removing the garments. When the semi-conscious enforcer tried to object, she tapped her dagger for emphasis.

  When Sicarius returned with a coil of rope, both men wore nothing but their smallclothes. She’d folded the larger set of garments into a stack and started donning the smaller uniform. It was still too large. She stuffed the trouser cuffs into the oversized boots and did her best to hide the fact that the sleeves hung past her knuckles. She fiddled with her hair, trying to fit most of it beneath the hat so people wouldn’t identify her as a woman at first glance. If nothing had changed in the last year, female enforcers were still scarce, doubly so away from the relatively progressive capital.

  Sicarius buttoned his jacket. Of course his purloined uniform fit handsomely, even if he had to do quite a bit of rearranging to find spots to hide his daggers and throwing knives. He finished and approached the men with the rope. He eyed the top of the smokestack.

  “We’re not throwing them in there,” Amaranthe said. “They’d be horribly burned if they couldn’t stop themselves before they hit the bottom. Besides...” She nudged his arm. “That’s our smokestack.”

  Sicarius nodded once and tied the enforcers even more thoroughly than the bundle of rockets three decks below. The men would be lucky if they could do anything besides tip themselves over. So long as they didn’t wriggle out from behind the smokestack and catch the helmsman’s eye. Amaranthe frowned, suddenly finding that scenario all-too-likely. She and Sicarius would have to hurry, though she didn’t even know what they’d do. They had to make sure the enforcers hadn’t stumbled onto the weapons or, if they had, ensure they didn’t try to move them. To break one of those rockets, unleashing the deadly cubes within, all in ignorance...

  “Come,” Sicarius said.

  He jogged toward the steps leading down beside the pilothouse. Surprised, Amaranthe glanced inside. The helmsman no longer dozed in his chair. Frowning, she paused to peer through the window. The man lay on his side, ankles bound, wrists tied behind his back. Well, they needn’t worry about him noticing the enforcers.

  “He didn’t want to relinquish the rope,” Sicarius said from the stairs.

  “I see that.” Amaranthe trotted after him.

  Fortunately, with most of the passengers ashore, they didn’t see many people. Fewer crew members walked the decks as well. Those they did pass were busy loading supplies or cleaning and making repairs. When Amaranthe and Sicarius descended the last set of stairs to the lower deck, they passed their first set of security guards, two men prowling about, checking doors leading to common areas.

  Sicarius strode past them, his head up, a haughty tilt to his chin. Figuring that was less suspicious than avoiding eye contact, Amaranthe mimicked him.

  “Those arrogant enforcers think they’re so much better than us,” one of the security men whispered loudly in their wake.

  Amaranthe wondered if the security guards knew enforcers said the same thing about soldiers.

  Ahead, the doors to the dining hall were propped open. An invitation to, as Sicarius had suggested, walk into a trap? The crew certainly wouldn’t be preparing for a meal with most of the passengers gone.

  Sicarius continued toward the doors with a determined stride, his chin up, face forward, though Amaranthe knew he saw everything going on around him. He walked into the dining hall as if he were truly an enforcer, someone who’d been ordered to report promptly. Amaranthe trotted in on his heels, though she couldn’t help but let her fingers stray to her knife.

  Just past the threshold, Sicarius glided to the side to avoid two men carrying a third. Amaranthe didn’t see them until he’d moved, so she almost stumbled into the back of the closest. That brought scowls from both enforcers. They were carrying a dead comrade so Amaranthe could understand their moods. She ducked her head, gesturing an apology, and skittered sideways. The pair continued past without noticing Sicarius. A second body lay by the open panel beside the stage, waiting to be taken out, but the only other living person in the room was a boy in kitchen whites. He walked between the tables, setting silverware for the evening meal.

  Maybe Amaranthe and Sicarius would be able to check on the weapons without raising an alarm after all.

  A thump followed by a muffled curse came from beneath the stage. A second voice issued a string of words, unintelligible through the wood, and Amaranthe’s hopes sank. Who knew how many people were in there? Were they hunting for more of their fallen comrades? Or—more likely—searching for the weapons? The crate Sicarius had sh
oved over the grate wouldn’t hide the storage cubby forever, especially if one of the enforcers thought to head to engineering to look at the same schematics Sicarius had.

  He crouched beside the panel, staying out of sight of anyone who might be inside, and waited for Amaranthe to join him. “Plan?”

  She knelt at his side. “You have one? Excellent. Please share.”

  He gazed back without comment. Right, coming up with crazy schemes was her idea.

  Under the stage, shadows danced on crates and walls as enforcers with lanterns moved about. Voices drifted out.

  “...too much junk.”

  “...need to search...”

  “...where?”

  “We better do something about those enforcers,” Amaranthe whispered. “And move those weapons. I don’t know how or where, but too many people are searching in this area. Books will probably need them elsewhere anyway, if he’s going to seal them in cement.” She winced, wishing she’d thought of that earlier. She and Sicarius could have been down here, moving the weapons, before the enforcers started sniffing about. Or they could have tried. She had no idea how the circus troupe had gotten them tucked in that hole in the first place. They’d have to move a lot of the crates around the grate to angle them out, and then it’d take two people to carry each rocket. There had been ten or twelve of them. She couldn’t see her and Sicarius moving them alone, not without a lot of uninterrupted time. She needed the others back. But even if she had them... How would they amble through the steamboat toting glowing yellow rockets without anyone noticing? In the empire, carrying anything that glowed, even a key fob, could earn one a crossbow bolt in the chest.

  Sicarius was watching her think. Amaranthe tried to wipe the concern off her face.

  “We’ll figure it out,” she said. “Enforcers first.”

  He drew a knife and slipped through the square entrance. When Amaranthe joined him, he whispered, “Guard the door. Once they realize I’m here, they may try to escape.”

  Only as he was disappearing into the darkness between two piles of gear did Amaranthe realize she hadn’t specifically told him not to kill anyone. Yelling after him now would only alert the enforcers. She thought about scrambling after him, but set her jaw and stayed put. Unless he had something to do with the missing Forge ladies, Sicarius hadn’t killed, or even lastingly harmed, anyone since his escape from Forge’s underwater hideout. Amaranthe suspected those women had disappeared not because of Sicarius—or nosy maids—but because they’d realized they were sharing a steamboat with the deadly weapons they’d ordered their expendable employees to pick up.

  Amaranthe nodded and settled in to wait by the entrance. The more she thought about it, the more certain she grew that Sicarius wouldn’t strike to kill unless he were trapped and overwhelmed. Even up on the roof, his first reaction had been to hide from the enforcers, rather than taking them down. Only when she’d suggested costumes had he gone after the two men, and his efficient attack hadn’t spilled blood. His normal logic would have been to kill the men, rather than leave them bound and gagged where they could be discovered or free themselves. But he hadn’t mentioned it. Amaranthe smiled to herself. She didn’t know if it was for her sake—he’d known how she felt about leaving bodies in their wake for a long time but had done so anyway—or because Sespian was traveling with him now, rather than standing vulnerably in Forge’s line of fire. It didn’t matter.

  Something thunked nearby. From her spot beside the trapdoor, Amaranthe couldn’t see anything other than a few feet of wall and a curtain, but she could tell someone had entered the dining hall. She eased her dagger out and shifted deeper into the shadows.

  “...seen Rokkov and Ganz yet?” a man asked.

  “No, those worthless slag heaps are dawdling somewhere, making us do all the work.”

  Two sets of footsteps drew closer to the stage. Already crouching, Amaranthe leaned forward on the balls of her feet, ready to spring. A few feet away, clothing rustled. Someone grunted.

  “Well-fed bastard,” the second man growled, thumping against the side of the stage.

  Oh. Amaranthe relaxed an iota. The second body, of course. These were the men assigned to carry the dead off the boat. They probably wouldn’t look under the stage.

  “Be respectful, Private. That’s one of our brethren, even if he’s from another district.”

  “I’d be more respectful if he and his mate had left a note telling us what they were doing down there,” the grumpy enforcer said. He raised his voice to holler, “Sarge?”

  Amaranthe tensed again. Was he addressing someone on the deck outside? Or one of the men searching under the stage? And if the latter, what if Sicarius had already taken him down? Since she’d gone in, she hadn’t heard a noise aside from the scraping of crates being pushed about, but Sicarius could have rendered half of the search team unconscious by now.

  “What?” came a muffled call from the far side of the stage.

  Amaranthe let out a soft exhale.

  “What d’you want us to do after we take this last body into town?”

  “See if you can find blueprints for the steamboat,” the sergeant called back. “We haven’t found a cursed thing down here, but something poisoned those men.”

  Amaranthe swore to herself. If Sicarius had learned about the below-deck storage compartment in a few seconds, it wouldn’t take the enforcers much longer.

  “Slagging Sicarius, that’s who,” the grumpy enforcer said.

  “Probably so, but why?” the sergeant responded.

  Sicarius had been right. He didn’t have to do anything to get blamed for nearby mayhem. Would people ever be able to get past that?

  “He needs a reason?” Grumpy asked.

  “To crawl around beneath a stage, I’d say so. Get going, Private. Finish up and tell me what those blueprints say.”

  “Yes, Sarge.”

  More grunts sounded as the enforcers toted the dead man away. Sicarius had probably taken down everyone except the sergeant during the conversation. That was good, Amaranthe supposed, but when a half squad of enforcers failed to come out from underneath the stage, someone was going to figure out what was going on. She and Sicarius needed to find a way to move those weapons fast, before anyone got a look at that schematic. Or, maybe she should have attacked those two men, to keep them from leaving the dining hall.

  She poked her head through the trapdoor. Too late. They were gone. She doubted she could have knocked them out with Sicarius’s quick efficiency anyway. More likely, someone would have gotten a shout out, and she’d have given away her position sooner rather than later.

  “What a nice relaxing trip upriver this has turned out to be,” Amaranthe muttered.

  Someone touched her shoulder.

  “Got them all?” she whispered, trusting it’d be Sicarius—an enforcer would have clubbed her shoulder. Or head.

  “They’re all tied in the back,” Sicarius said.

  “I don’t suppose you’ve found any other ways out of here?”

  “Not unless the storage area can be accessed from elsewhere. None of us crawled below to check.”

  “Let’s do that because we may have visitors soon.” Amaranthe summarized the conversation she’d overheard. “If we’re going to move those weapons, it’ll have to be now.”

  Sicarius led her through the maze of gear and boxes, including a jaunt along the back wall, where he’d wedged four enforcers into a nook between large crates that brushed the stage’s wooden support beams. One man lacked a uniform jacket—it’d been removed and cut into strips for gags and bonds. Nice of him to donate material for everyone.

  As one, the enforcers’ eyes widened when Sicarius entered their view. They exchanged worried glances with each other. After nearly a year with him, Amaranthe forgot how unnerving those knives and emotionless stares could be.

  Sicarius moved past the enforcers without comment. The grate lay on the other side of the stage, so he’d probably only come this way to let t
he men know he was still in the area—and escape attempts would not be wise.

  Someone had disturbed the crate Sicarius had moved on top of the floor entrance, revealing a few inches of the grate. Yellow light seeped up between the iron bars.

  “Did they see that?” Amaranthe whispered. “Or was the crate bumped when you attacked someone?”

  “A man was in the area. He nudged the crate but hadn’t noticed the glow yet.” As he spoke, Sicarius stood as much as he could in the low space and, blond hair brushing the beams above, lifted the crate aside, not letting it bump or scrape on the floor such that the enforcers might hear. Judging by the way the tendons in his hands stood out and his thigh muscles bunched against the fabric of his trousers, it was heavy. It occurred to her that with Sespian away from Forge’s clutches, he had little reason to continue to work to thwart the organization, yet he’d been as helpful as ever since rescuing her, if not more so. The weapons probably mattered little to him, so long as his son wasn’t likely to be caught by them. Once again, she wondered if Sicarius hoped to earn Sespian’s trust by helping him regain the throne.

  “I may not have said it,” Amaranthe whispered, “but I appreciate your continued willingness to work against Forge with me.”

  Sicarius produced the grate key and slipped it into the lock.

  “You haven’t mentioned.... Well, what are your goals now? Do you want to see Sespian on the throne again?”

  “No.”

  Amaranthe stared at him. She hadn’t expected such a definitive answer. “You don’t?”

  “If he wants it, I’ll protect him, but I’m not... flawless. He’ll be a target as long as he’s emperor.”

  He sounded grim, so Amaranthe said lightly, “You’re not flawless? What flaws do you think you have?”

  “A need for sleep. I can’t watch over him every moment of the day.” Sicarius opened the grate and lowered his legs into the shallow hold.

  “Wait,” Amaranthe said before he could disappear below. “Why are you still working with us against Forge?” If not for Sespian’s sake, might it be for hers?