Ice Cracker II (emperor's edge)

by Lindsay Buroker

  Ice Cracker II

  ( Emperor's Edge )

  Lindsay Buroker

  Lindsay Buroker

  Ice Cracker II

  THE FROZEN WATER TRADE

  Snow skidded across the frozen lake, mounding against the ravaged body. Beside it, blocks of ice had been removed, and frigid black water lurked in the square pools. Gray clouds hung in the afternoon sky, bringing dusk early.

  Amaranthe crunched toward the dead man, the snow and ice slick beneath her boots. At her side, her companion glided across the same surface, making not a sound.Hisstomach doubtlessly wasn’t sending queasy jolts through his body as they closed on the grisly scene.

  “I guess this is the place,” she said.

  Claws had torn canyons into the face and lacerated the dead man’s parka. Frozen blood stained the ice, the snow, and the tools beside him. His gloved hands still clutched the pick he had tried to defend himself with.

  “What do you think did it?” Amaranthe tucked back strands of hair whipping her eyes.

  “Cougar.”

  Eyebrows arched, she turned toward her comrade. As always, an unreadable expression marked Sicarius’s cool, angular face. He wore black from soft boots to fitted trousers to parka, the monochromatic attire broken only his armory of daggers and throwing knives.

  “Cougar?” Amaranthe asked. “We’re less than ten miles from the imperial capital, a city of a million people. This lake is under siege by noisy steam hammers and trucks stocking the icehouses. There’s no good game hunting for a hundred miles in any direction. No cougar is going to wander out of the mountains of its own volition.”

  “I didn’t say it came of its own volition.”

  “Ah,” she breathed. “You suspect…”

  Habit kept her from saying the wordmagicout loud. In the same breath, the empire denied the existence of magic and forbade its use-a mandate punishable by death. Sicarius, who had traveled beyond the empire and had a more ecumenical education, had few such compulsions.

  “I will investigate.” He inclined his head toward the body.

  “Thank you.” Amaranthe was happy to leave corpses to him. “I’ll find our new employer.”

  She hitched the strap of her repeating crossbow higher on her shoulder and touched the short sword hanging at her belt. She did not have to walk far to reach the camp. The man had been killed close to the shoreline where tents perched and fires burned in metal barrels. Bins of coal supplied fuel for the steam vehicles, and plumes of black smoke rose from their stacks. Despite the promise of a storm, clinks and rasps echoed as workers sawed and hacked the ice, struggling to fill truck beds before dark.

  Amaranthe rounded a sleeping tent and strode toward a log cabin at the center of camp. She ducked under one of several ropes crisscrossing the area, attaching tents to the cabin and to each other. A cockeyed flap drew a frown, and she paused to straighten it.

  Snow crunched behind her.

  She spun about. A woman charged, an ice pick raised above her head. Amaranthe ripped her sword from its sheath.

  The pick chopped down like a woodcutter’s axe. Amaranthe leapt to the side, evading the blow while keeping her attacker within reach. The pick slammed into the snow, even as her sword came up to rest on the woman’s collarbone.

  “Problem?” Amaranthe did her best to keep her tone even.

  The woman’s shoulders sagged. She held her arms out, gloved palms open. She wasn’t much older than Amaranthe, twenty-eight or thirty, but weariness stamped her face. Tears welled in her eyes and froze as they ran down cheeks chapped and red from the cold.

  “I had to try,” the woman said. “The bounty…10,000 ranmyas. It’d be enough to… Please, understand. My husband died last year, and this job is so hard. We’re out here fourteen, sixteen hours a day. I never see my children and…”

  “All right. What’s your name?” Amaranthe lowered the sword and leaned around the tent. Still out by the body, Sicarius knelt on the ice, touching something. Good, he had not seen. He was a stickler about killing anyone he considered a threat, and, for good or ill, he had spread his sphere of protection to Amaranthe as well.

  “Merla.”

  “Merla, I understand. My mother died when I was little, and my father worked a job like that. I never saw him growing up, but I knew he cared about me. I’m sure your children love you and understand, too.” Amaranthe sheathed her sword. “Don’t try again. My comrade, Sicarius, is nearby, and-”

  “Sicarius,” Merla breathed, her ruddy cheeks turning pale. “Two million ranmyas.”

  “Yes, his bounty is a lot more impressive, but he won’t think twice about killing you. He wouldn’t think at all; he’d just react, and then where would your kids be?”

  “No, of course, I wouldn’t even think to-I mean-”

  “Amaranthe!” A new woman jogged toward them.

  Merla flinched and ran away.

  “Nelli.” Amaranthe nodded to the newcomer.

  “I’m glad to see you.” The smile didn’t reach Nelli’s eyes, but then happiness was not to be expected, not if she had lost as many men as her note said. “I wasn’t sure if you’d remember me or come even if you did. You and your team have become quite renowned.” She glanced about, pushing wisps of black hair back under her parka hood. “Are you alone, or did you bring them?”

  “Just one.”

  At that moment, Sicarius stepped around the tent, startling Nelli. She skittered back, though he made no threatening move. He just had that cold look that intimidated everyone. After a year working with him, Amaranthe still had not seen the man smile.

  “Well,” Nelli lifted a hand in what might have been a wave or an apology to him. “I suppose he’d be the one to bring.” She turned back to Amaranthe. “You have to help. The enforcers, if they can even be bothered to leave their cozy headquarters building, just come and fill out reports. My people are being killed by…by…it’s something different every time. It’s got to be some kind of…” She licked her lips, and Amaranthe recognized the imperial reluctance to voice the word.

  “Magic?”

  Nelli nodded.

  Fat snowflakes started falling, and a breeze gusted across the lake, ruffling the fur around Amaranthe’s parka hood. “We’ve seen such things before, even here, in the heart of the empire.”

  “I knew it.” Nelli nodded again, more vigorously. “I knew you’d have the experience. What’s your price? I’ll pay anything to have the problem fixed.”

  Amaranthe lifted her eyebrows. “Miss Magnusun would be shocked to hear you say that. Offering to pay any price without negotiating?”

  “I’ve done well for myself, Am, and we’re not talking about tools and supplies here. My workers, people I know and care about, are being killed.”

  “Sorry, I know.” As a formality, and because her old business-school mate expected it, Amaranthe withdrew a neatly penned estimate for their services. “It’s amazing what you’ve accomplished since graduating. Your company is the biggest in the city, I understand, supplying ice year around to three satrapies. How did you find the startup money for all this equipment?”

  “My father.” Nelli frowned at the bill. “Is this a joke? I pay the ice grunts more than this. If you can rid us of this curse, I’ll give you a lot more.”

  “We’re not in it for the money.”

  Now, it was Nelli’s turn to arch her eyebrows. “Miss Magnusun would bereallydisappointed in you.”

  Amaranth twitched a shoulder. “I do understand that you deliver ice to the Imperial Barracks. If we perform to your satisfaction, and you ever have the chance to mention our deed to the emperor or one of his advisors…” Another shoulder twitch.

  “But you
’re fugitives. Isn’t the emperor the one who put the bounty on your head? Both your heads?” She flicked a glance toward Sicarius, who stood silently, scanning the camp. “Or… Oh. Are you trying to clear your name? Redeem yourself? Were you wrongfully accused?” Again Nelli’s gaze went to Sicarius, who wasn’t even looking at her. “But, no, he wouldn’t…”

  No, nobody who had seen the list of dead Sicarius had left in his path would suspect him of being wrongfully accused of anything.

  “It’s a long story,” Amaranthe said. “One for after-”

  “Nelli,” a stern male voice said. “Who are these people?”

  Sicarius was already looking at the sturdy gray-haired man walking up. He looked familiar, but Amaranthe’s gaze locked on the two pistols hung at his belt before she could place the face. She tensed, hand going to her sword. Only military men were allowed to use black-powder weapons, and a soldier was as much danger to them as a bounty hunter.

  “This is the friend from school I told you about, Da, and-”

  “Sicarius!” The old soldier’s eyes widened.

  His hand went for a pistol, and a throwing knife appeared in Sicarius’s hand. Amaranthe lunged in front of Sicarius even as Nelli blocked her father.

  “He’s here to help, Da. They both are.”

  “Wait,” Amaranthe gripped Sicarius’s arm. “Please, just wait.”

  “Help?” Nelli’s father roared. “He’s an assassin! An imperial criminal. He’s killed dozens-hundreds! — of the soldiers who’ve tried to catch him.”

  “Which makes him an excellent person to stop whoever is killing our people,” Nelli said. “Look, he works with Amaranthe now. You remember her. We sold candy apples in front of the house for a month that one summer. Remember?”

  Amaranthe recalled the man’s face now. Sergeant Tollen had not been around much, but she had seen him a couple times. Though older, he still appeared hale.

  He looked back and forth from her to Sicarius, and, though a dour glare marked his face, he moved his hand away from the pistol. Sicarius lowered his throwing knife.

  Amaranthe let out a slow breath, meeting Nelli’s eyes through the falling snow. Maybe her old friend was right, and she needed to start charging more.

  “Emperor’s warts,” the sergeant said, “this is ludicrous, Nelli. He may have been the one to kill your uncle. Ordin led a scouting party to find this criminal and never came back. We never even found the body for a funeral pyre.”

  Amaranthe looked at Sicarius. His face was a stone mask. If he had history with this man, Sicarius was not going to show it here.

  “We don’t need his help,” the sergeant muttered.

  “I’ll check around the camp,” Sicarius said.

  Amaranthe nodded, relieved. She wanted to ask him if he had discovered anything odd about the cougar-mauled man, but now was a good time for him to leave the vicinity. The wind kicked the snow sideways, and he soon disappeared into the flurries.

  “Why don’t you tell me what’s been going on?” Amaranthe suggested.

  “Yes.” Nelli released her father’s arm. “Da, could you make sure the machinery is battened down and the workers all come in? It looks like fierce weather tonight.”

  Sergeant Tollen was still staring after Sicarius, but he pulled his gaze back to his daughter. His eyes softened. “Yes, all right, but be careful. Stay within my sight. Don’t trust, no, don’t even go near that man. Not for a heartbeat.”

  “Yes, Da.” She gave him a mock salute.

  He snorted, but touched her shoulder as he walked away. Amaranthe felt a pang, remembering similar gestures from her own father.

  Nelli started walking, leading Amaranthe through the camp and out onto the ice.

  “He retired two months ago,” Nelli said. “He’s been working as my operations manager this winter. It was wonderful until this all started. I hardly ever saw him when I was a girl, but we’ve finally had a chance to spend time together.”

  “Sounds nice.”

  They stopped before a ragged gap in the ice. Unlike the neat square blocks removed elsewhere, this hole looked like something large had simply plunged through. A thin veil of new ice had formed over the water on the bottom.

  “One of our trucks is down there,” Nelli said, raising her voice to be heard above the rising wind.

  “I assume that’s not the desired parking spot.”

  Nelli snorted. “We drive on the ice constantly this time of year. It’s more than two feet thick right now. But the empty truck went right through.”

  “Did the driver get out?”

  “No.”

  Amaranthe grimaced.

  “This was the third incident. The first two were-”

  Something black-and large-darted across the ice.

  Amaranthe jerked a hand up. “Did you see that?”

  Snow streaked sideways, reducing visibility to a few meters, and she squinted, trying to identify the shape.

  “I-maybe,” Nelli said. “What is it?”

  The wind shifted, blowing snow into Amaranthe’s eyes. Flakes gummed her lashes and stung her eyes, but she ignored them.

  She slung the repeating crossbow off her shoulder and loaded five quarrels into the magazine. She had poison for the tips, but successfully applying it with the wind whipping across the lake was improbable. Besides, she had no idea what she was shooting at. Sicarius might be out here somewhere.

  A screech pierced the wind, and a black creature raced toward them. Even on four legs, its head rose above theirs.

  Amaranthe lifted the crossbow and fired. Yellow eyes flashed, and the black shape bounded away. It darted into the storm and vanished.

  A long moment passed before she relaxed her grip on the trigger.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” Nelli yelled. “You made that look easy.”

  “Of course.” Amaranthe was glad the snow and her gloves hid her shaking hands. Though vaguely feline-shaped, that hadn’t been a cougar, panther, or any other animal she recognized. She readied the crossbow to fire again, but said, “Let’s get back to camp.”

  When Nelli didn’t start walking, Amaranthe frowned and turned around. Heavier than ever, the snow obscured the bank. A vertiginous moment washed over her. Was camp over that way? Or that way? Somewhere the sun was setting, but the clouds smothered any light left in the sky.

  She bit her lip. She couldn’t even see the hole in the ice any more. A wrong step could send one of them plummeting into the frigid lake.

  A black shape loomed at Amaranthe’s elbow. She spun toward it, the crossbow ready.

  A hand dropped on hers, pushing the weapon down.

  “The storm is getting worse,” Sicarius yelled over the wind. “You should come back to camp.”

  “We were just about to. Ah, care to lead the way?” Amaranthe shouldered the crossbow, grabbed Nelli with one hand, and put the other on Sicarius’s shoulder.

  Without hesitation, he led the way. Soon, they stepped off the ice and onto a packed path through the snow. Sicarius found one of the ropes and followed it to the log cabin.

  They walked inside, and relief flooded over Amaranthe. She pushed back her hood and breathed in warm air that smelled of sawdust and burning coal.

  A man slammed the shutters shut on the last of four windows and locked it with a thick bar. A cast-iron stove glowed in a corner. The open cabin was parceled into an office space, a tiny kitchen and table, and a sleeping loft. Kerosene lamps hung from the walls and rafters. Several people, including Merla and Sergeant Tollen, were already hunkered inside, and Amaranthe’s relief dwindled. Great, a night stuck together in a small space with two men who would be happy to kill each other. Add, for good measure, a woman who would be thrilled to collect the bounty on either her or Sicarius’s head.

  Amaranthe forced a smile. “I guess the investigation waits until tomorrow.”

  Sergeant Tollen glowered their direction.

  “Any idea what that thing you shot at was?” Nelli asked.

/>   “A mare-cat,” Sicarius said. “There are at least four of them out there.”

  “Mare-cat, as in nightmare cat?” Amaranthe asked after a moment of puzzled silence. “I’ve heard of them, but they’re over eight hundred miles north of here, right? Across the Frontier Divide?”

  “That’s their habitat, yes.”

  “And they’re kind of a cross between a panther and a bear? Except with longer claws and fangs than either?” Amaranthe swallowed, suddenly very glad her shot had not missed. She doubted she seriously wounded the creature, but she had deterred the attack.

  “I’ve never even seen a mare-cat.” Tollen folded his arms over his chest and raised skeptical eyebrows. “And I’ve seen a lot.”

  “Where were you stationed?” Amaranthe asked.

  “I spent most of my years on the southern borders, guarding against the Kendorians and the savages from the desert.”

  “Then you’ve probably seen magic before?” she guessed.

  Tollen hesitated before spitting the, “There’s no such thing as magic,” line expected from a soldier.

  Amaranthe took that hesitation to mean yes. “Well, something otherwise unexplainable is drawing unlikely predators to your camp. I readThe Gazettethis morning, and there was nothing mentioned about strange creature sightings elsewhere.”

  “The enforcers who came out yesterday said the same,” Nelli admitted. She looked at Sicarius. “I assume those creatures are deadly?”

  “Very.”

  “I’ve got to get the rest of my people in here then. Tents won’t deter a predator that size. It’ll be crowded, but better than the alternative.” Nelli nodded to her father. “Will you help me, Da?”

  “We’ll come, too,” Amaranthe said.

  “We don’t need your help,” Tollen growled, thrusting out a hand to stop her.

  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.