Ice Cracker II (and other short stories) (The Emperor's Edge)

by Lindsay Buroker

  The cowled figure turned its faceless head toward Tollen, who backed away.

  “Our blades will not kill them,” Sicarius said. “They are not from the mortal realm.”

  Tollen whipped out one of his pistols and fired at the hooded head. The ball clanged off and thudded into one of logs on the front of the cabin.

  “Nor firearms, apparently,” Amaranthe said, her mouth dry.

  “Attack me!” Tollen cried.

  The creatures hovered motionless.

  “Da!” Nelli raced up and grabbed his arm. “What are you doing?”

  Sicarius looked at Amaranthe.

  “The rest of the translation?” she asked him. “What else did the ifrit say?”

  “At dawn, the death fixers will kill everyone in camp if the terms of the trade have not been met. If anyone tries to leave before then, they will not allow it.”

  “Trade?” Nelli demanded. “What trade?”

  Tollen stood, chest heaving, head drooped. He dropped the sword.

  “Nelli, Tollen, perhaps we should discuss it privately.” Amaranthe nodded at the people gathering in the doorway.

  “We can talk in the loft.” After a long wary look at the invaders, Nelli steered her father inside.

  Before going in, Amaranthe collected her sword and walked halfway around the cabin. Death fixers did indeed surround the entire structure. Snow flitted off the roof, and she looked up. The three remaining mare-cats paced above.

  “We can kill them but not the ifrit or the death fixers,” Sicarius said when she returned to the door. “We’ll have no more luck escaping than these people.”

  “I know.”

  Before Amaranthe could pass through, he clasped her elbow.

  “You weren’t surprised at the translation,” Sicarius said. “You know what’s going on. Tell me what the trade is; we have to make sure it’s honored.”

  “I will. In a minute.” She looked over her shoulder at the fiery ifrit, who waited, a smile playing about its lips. Then she met Sicarius’s eyes. “Trust me.”

  Several silent heartbeats passed. Finally, he released her arm.

  “Wait downstairs.” Amaranthe climbed the ladder to the loft. Though he looked like he wanted to follow, Sicarius closed the front door and waited there.

  She joined Nelli and Tollen around the table in the loft.

  “The fiftieth birthday is the deadline, I assume,” Amaranth said to Tollen.

  “Yes,” he said woodenly.

  “Deadline?” Nelli asked. “Deadline for what?”

  “Your soul, that’s the price?” Amaranthe asked. “You traded your soul for a good life for your daughter?”

  “The ifrit was supposed to take it when I died,” Tollen said. “I was a soldier on the border—skirmishes every month. The promise of war ever present. I never thought I’d live the twenty-five years the deal gave me. I wanted to make sure Nell was taken care of—always.”

  “Da?” Tears pooled in Nelli’s eyes. “Your soul?”

  “It was worth it. I always thought I’d die long before this, serving the empire, a warrior’s death. Yet the day approached, and I lived still. As soon as the unearthly started happening around here, I knew what was behind it. I tried to shoot myself and hang myself, but I couldn’t. Some invisible force grabbed my hand and stopped me.”

  “If the soul dies with a suicide, there’d be nothing left to give the ifrit,” Amaranthe reasoned.

  “Apparently. When Sicarius showed up, I thanked the ancestors. I thought the solution had come, a chance for an honorable death, but then you—both of you—stood in front of him. I couldn’t attack through my own daughter. And then the bastard saved Nelli’s life. I don’t know what to do.” Tollen thumped his pistol on the table in frustration. “If I had known others would die, I never would have… I would have figured out a way. I just thought the ifrit would come to collect personally. I didn’t know it’d destroy everyone around me at the same time. It must be angry—angry to have been kept waiting.”

  “Da…” Nelli put a hand on his forearm. Her fingers trembled, but she lifted her chin. “We’ll all fight together. Maybe there’s a chance we can win. We won’t give up.”

  “Whatever happens, Nell, I want you to know I love you. I…”

  Amaranthe walked to the railing, leaving them privacy to say their goodbyes. Sicarius waited by the door, all in black, armed and deadly, not much different than the ifrit’s minions outside. And what does that make me, she wondered. The counterpart to the ifrit?

  After a time, she looked back at the table. Father and daughter had stopped talking.

  “Be ready,” Amaranthe mouthed to Sicarius and turned back to them.

  She could have said “kill him,” she supposed, but Tollen wanted a warrior’s death, not a surprise dagger to the back. And there was one peace she could give to the family.

  “Your missing brother—” Amaranthe set her sword on the table before Tollen, “—was he a corporal when he disappeared?”

  Frowning, he looked up at her. “Yes…”

  “You’ll find his remains in a canebrake in Deadscar Ravine to the south of Fort Erstden.” Amaranthe met Nelli’s eyes; the daughter would be the one to lead the hunt and build the funeral pyre. To Tollen, Amaranthe said, “You were right. Sicarius killed him.”

  The stunned silence probably only lasted a heartbeat, but it felt much longer.

  Tollen roared and grabbed the sword. He skipped the ladder and leaped out of the loft, weapon raised overhead. Nelli rushed after him. Amaranthe did not. She did not want to watch what she had orchestrated.

  A very brief clash of steel echoed through the cabin. Tollen didn’t scream or cry out; it was Nelli’s weeping that told Amaranthe it was finished.

  Slowly she descended the stairs, conscious of the gawking stares all around. His expression never changing, Sicarius handed Amaranthe her sword.

  Nelli knelt in the blood-soaked sawdust, cradling her father’s head. Tollen, drawing his last ragged breaths, spotted Amaranthe. She took small comfort from the fact that he looked more peaceful than pained.

  “Thank you,” he rasped. “Your father…wouldn’t be…disappointed.”

  *

  Dawn found Amaranthe trotting out of camp and onto the lake where Sicarius stood, a cloudless blue sky as his backdrop.

  “Thanks for waiting,” she said. “I talked to Nelli and Merla. Merla is going to be promoted to Operations Manager.”

  A slight eyebrow twitch implied what she already knew: he didn’t care.

  She lifted a gloved hand in acknowledgement, and they started across the lake together. Before noon, they would be back in the city, the night’s events like a dream. No, she thought, too real for that. A memory.

  “I apologize for using you as an executioner,” Amaranthe said.

  “It doesn’t bother me.”

  “I know, but it bothers me.”

  “Is your friend going to mention our work to the emperor?” Sicarius asked.

  “After we killed her father and served up his soul for some vile underworld creature?” Amaranthe snorted. “I didn’t ask.”

  “Oh.”

  She didn’t get the opportunity to tease him often, so she let Sicarius walk in stony silence for a moment before adding, “But Merla said she would.”

  The look Sicarius gave her wasn’t exactly a smile, just a faint stretching of the lips, but it was enough.

  THROUGH FIRE DISTILLED

  A green-feathered crossbow quarrel protruded from the distillery owner’s chest. Tall and gangly, with mussed salt-and-pepper hair, the man reminded Books of himself, albeit deader. Fresh blood saturated the brandy-stained shirt, and a rivulet meandered down the sloping cement floor and into a drain near the steam engine. The chug of the pistons and flap of the flywheel drowned out any disquieting dripping, but Books shifted with unease.

  This had just happened.

  He rested his hand on the hilt of his short sword as his gaze probed the di
stillery. Wooden barrels, apple crates, copper stills, and myriad pipes cluttered the cavernous room with potential hiding places. Dusk hovered beyond the high windows, and the intermittent lanterns created more shadows than they drove back.

  “That’s a problem,” his comrade said when she stepped in and noticed the body. Amaranthe adjusted the repeating crossbow on her back and tapped her sword scabbard thoughtfully.

  “A dead body usually is,” Books said, surprised he no longer felt shock at such things. Two years ago, he would have, but he had been a simple professor then, a content man with a handsome son who should have been starting classes at the University this fall. Contentment was more elusive these days.

  “Especially,” Amaranthe said, “when it belongs to the person hiring you to investigate his—”

  Boom!

  Books ducked, and a pistol ball clanged off the nearest still. He started for the door, but four men blocked the way. Two brandished cutlasses, and two more aimed pistols.

  “Cover!” Even as she barked the order, Amaranthe grabbed his arm and dragged him behind the steam engine. She already had her short sword out.

  Just as Books reached for his, a second shot fired. It cracked against the flywheel, ricocheted, and shattered a window. Glass flew, and he threw up an arm to protect his face.

  They rounded the back of the still only to jerk to a halt before two large, muscled men. One raised a broadsword, but the other, more startled, dropped a crossbow. It struck the floor, and a green-feathered quarrel skittered under the pumping pistons.

  Books lunged at the unbalanced fellow, leaving the more prepared opponent for Amaranthe. He stabbed at the man’s hand, trying to end the fight before it began. But his opponent leaped back and found time to draw a cutlass.

  They retreated and advanced, fishing for each other’s blades, trading testing blows. Beside Books, Amaranthe engaged her man.

  Like so many before, he hesitated at the sight of an armed woman. Without pause, she hammered his longer blade wide and darted in. He backed into the still and ran out of room. Before he could align his blade to defend, Amaranthe thrust hers into his chest.

  Books’s opponent advanced and lunged, slashing at his neck. Books parried, but the power of the blow forced him to the side, and his shoulder banged against the wall. With his blood surging, he barely felt it, but he lowered his sword and pretended a true injury. He retreated several steps. His assailant charged after, apparently forgetting about Amaranthe in his eagerness for the kill.

  As they reached the flywheel, she stepped in behind the man. Her blade flickered, cutting through his hamstring. His legs crumpled, and she finished him. Books started to say thanks, but movement froze his mouth.

  Two men, pistols reloaded, popped around the flywheel. Amaranthe tore her crossbow from her back and dropped to a knee. Books threw himself out of the way, and her quarrel zipped into one man’s cheek.

  “Cursed ancestors!” They backed out of sight.

  “They’ve got crossbows!”

  “You’ve got guns,” someone growled. “Get back in there.”

  “It’s a repeating crossbow,” Amaranthe called, “and I’ve got a full magazine, plus a box of quarrels in my pocket. Oh, and sorry about your friend there, but the tips are laced with deadly poison.”

  Mutters came from the door, but no one else poked their heads around the flywheel or tried to approach from the other direction.

  Amaranthe threw a wink at Books. He sucked in a deep breath and tried to still trembling hands. How could she so obviously be enjoying herself?

  “Isn’t that just a temporary paralysis poison?” he whispered.

  She held a finger to her lips. “Don’t tell them that.”

  Between the crossbow, the sword, and the gray military fatigues, she should have looked like a hardened warrior, but she always wore a smile and, more often than not, a warm glint of humor sparkled in her brown eyes. Any man would have proudly taken her home to meet the parents.

  She peered over the churning piston rods. “More of them. At least eight by the door. They’re milling around, talking.”

  Books grimaced. “Sorry I’m not more help. You should have brought one of the others.”

  “I should have brought all of the others,” she said. “This was supposed to be an investigation of a haunted distillery and apple orchard, not an ambush.”

  Yes, investigation and research were much more his realm.

  “Besides, you looked glum this morning,” Amaranthe continued. “I thought you could use a distraction from whatever’s plaguing you.”

  “So you arranged a band of twenty mercenaries to attack us?” Books raised his eyebrows. “Very thoughtful, thank you.”

  “Nah, it’s only—” she checked on them again “—twelve now.”

  “Give it time.”

  “See, glum.” She quirked an eyebrow his way. “Anything you want to talk about?”

  “Now?”

  “Well, we are stuck here.”

  “It’s nothing,” Books said. “It’s just, today is—would have been—my son’s birthday.”

  “Ah.” She gripped his shoulder. “That’s not nothing.”

  “I know, but it’s not—” He broke off, not able to say important. “It’s not our primary concern now. We need to escape.”

  “Or figure out what’s going on.” Her gaze lifted toward a set of stairs on the other side of the distillery. They led to a room with a couple small windows, an office most likely.

  The first shot had dulled Books’s interest in the haunted-distillery mystery, but the room did look like a better place to make a stand than behind a steam engine. Besides, maybe it had a nice window to the outside that would allow them to climb down and escape into the orchards. Unfortunately, getting there would involve crossing open territory where every one of those twelve men could take shots.

  “Think us a way up there, professor.” Amaranthe raised her voice toward the door. “By the way, folks, we’re not on anyone’s payroll yet, seeing as you’ve killed the owner who was going to hire us. There’s really no need to risk your men’s lives attacking us. We could all just walk away.”

  “We ain’t going anywhere until we get the other half of our money,” someone growled. “Or the equivalent in brandy.”

  Chortles of agreement followed.

  Books eyed the machinery-filled wall they were trapped against. He could rig the boiler to explode, but that would bring down the building and kill everyone, themselves included.

  “We don’t have it!” Amaranthe called back.

  “Maybe not, but we know who you are. There’s only one woman mercenary leader working around the capital. Amaranthe Lokdon, and you’ve got a bounty for 20,000 ranmyas on your head. That’s a heap more than we were offered for this gig. And I’ll bet your gangly friend there has a bounty on his head, too.”

  “Technically we’re fugitives, not mercenaries.” If the mention of the bounty worried her, Amaranthe did not show it. “While we do take occasional freelance jobs to pay the bills, our ultimate goal is to impress the emperor with tales of our patriotic heroics so he’ll grant us pardons.”

  That earned so many laughs the building seemed to reverberate with the noise.

  “Why doesn’t anybody ever believe that?” Amaranthe asked.

  “I have an idea.” Books tugged her closer to the furnace. “Draw some fire.”

  “Next to the boiler? Is that wise?”

  Books ticked his sword against the wrought iron cylinder. “A pistol ball isn’t going to bother this. Failures are caused by internal pressure.”

  “If you’re sure…”

  Amaranthe leaned around the boiler and shot toward the door. She ducked back as a pistol fired in response. The ball clanged against the iron plating above her head.

  “Look out!” Books shrieked. “They ruptured the boiler. It’s going to blow!”

  The wide-eyed concern Amaranthe launched his direction said his act had been convincing.
She caught on promptly though.

  “Wouldn’t the explosion be instantaneous?” she whispered.

  Books raised a finger to his lips. “Don’t tell them that.”

  Pounding feet, shouts, and curses came from the door.

  “Get back, get back!” someone cried.

  With the mercenaries distracted, Amaranthe and Books charged across the open floor toward the stairs. He glanced out the door. The men were darting behind trees. The front door was still not an escape option, but Books and Amaranthe ought to have time to—

  A shot cracked, and a pistol ball skipped off the cement floor in front of his feet. Urging his legs faster, he pelted up the stairs after Amaranthe.

  They made it to the top, only to find the door locked.

  “Cursed distiller’s ancestors,” Books spat as Amaranthe rattled the knob.

  “Shoot them when they come out!” someone in the trees ordered.

  Books glanced at the door again. It would not take the mercenaries long to figure out they had been duped, and that he and Amaranthe were not coming out.

  “Lock picks?” he asked.

  Amaranthe hammered a sidekick at the wood. The bolt gave, and the door flew open.

  They leaped inside as a pistol ball cracked into the railing, shattering a baluster. Amaranthe slammed the door shut, and the knob clunked to the floor.

  “Lock picks.” She nodded.

  “Indeed.”

  A startled squeak made Books whip around, eyes searching the small office. A desk squatted in the center, a lamp burning on one corner. In the back, jugs of applejack and bottles of brandy shared shelf space with tomes on brewing and distilling. A toolbox rested on the floor by the door, a screwdriver and a hinge set next to it. A lone window looked out on the darkness, unfortunately not large enough to crawl through.

  “Under the desk,” Amaranthe whispered.

  Books spotted a pair of boots scrunched against thin legs. He walked around the desk, pulled out the chair, and peered beneath.

  A boy of nine or ten hunkered there, staring out with wide, terrified eyes. For a moment, Books saw his own son, and he blinked several times to clear the illusion. Other than similar scruffy haircuts, the two looked little alike, though this boy needed help, as Enis once had. Back then, Books had failed to pay attention and provide it in time.