Forged in Blood I

by Lindsay Buroker

  “One does if one’s earned a decent bounty. I suppose yours doesn’t qualify. Your scruffy Akstyr has an impressive one these days though. Were you aware that the gangs want him?” Mancrest had shifted his attention to Amaranthe. Was he making an offering she might find useful in hopes of opening up an exchange of information? If so, they wanted the same things. Good.

  “We’re aware of it,” she said. “He should be safe for the moment. And, yes, Sespian is alive and safe too. He’s with—” She caught herself, realizing Mancrest’s interest in helping might shrivel up at the mention of Sicarius.

  “Your assassin,” he guessed, his tone flat.

  “Yes.” She waited, wondering if he’d heard about the father-son relationship yet. Perhaps not, since he’d referred to Sespian as the emperor. Had Forge not spilled that information yet? If not, why not? If Ms. Worgavic had made her way back to the capital, others in the organization would have too.

  Mancrest didn’t say anything else. Amaranthe snapped the lock open and let the gate swing wide.

  Thumps sounded near the door. At first, she thought they’d been made by the men Maldynado was supposed to be watching, but Mancrest blurted, “The stairs. Someone’s coming.”

  “Maldynado,” Amaranthe said, “lock the door, please.”

  He was already moving. “No lock,” he called back, but a heavy scraping sound nearly drowned out the words as he moved a crate in front of the door.

  “They’ll know something is going on in here as soon as they can’t get in.” Mancrest hopped out of the cage, winced when his weight came down on his bad leg, and growled as he reached for his swordstick.

  Amaranthe didn’t point out that they already knew something was going on, due to the two missing men.

  More thumps sounded, someone pounding at the door.

  “What’s the plan?” Maldynado asked.

  Amaranthe thought of the walled up doorway in the storm water tunnel. “Back door?”

  “We’re below street level,” Mancrest said. “That door and a trapdoor in the ceiling are the only exits we have.” He waved toward the sound of Maldynado dragging another heavy crate.

  “The only exits you have now.” Amaranthe winked. She didn’t feel as confident as that wink suggested, but she led Mancrest through the shadows of old crates and rusty equipment. Warrior-caste men seemed to appreciate bravado anyway. As she walked, she kept an eye out for anything that might be useful for knocking down brick obstacles.

  When they neared the back wall—the one that ought to line up with the storm tunnel—she found boxes stacked to within a foot or two of the ceiling. She grimaced as she lifted her lantern to survey the shadows. They might not have time for her plan.

  “What are we looking for?” Mancrest asked.

  Amaranthe was about to say nothing, but her light played across the wall above a box of reference books, and it revealed a different shade of brick, more of a dull red instead of the gray that comprised the rest of the basement. A relatively recent addition.

  “Help me clear away these boxes.” Amaranthe set down her lantern and clambered atop one of the piles.

  “Do men always obey your orders?”

  “Only when they’re curious to see what the result of following those orders will be.” Amaranthe heaved a box to the floor. Dust flew into the air, and Mancrest jumped back, coughing. Her fastidious streak cringed at the idea of making a mess, but the thumps on the door convinced her she didn’t have time for an orderly rearranging. “There’s nothing important in these boxes, is there?” She shoved another one to the floor. “Nothing you’ll be upset about losing?”

  “If the boxes are buried down here, I guess not.” Shaking his head, Mancrest started moving aside the pile of boxes next to hers.

  “And this wall? Would you be upset about losing it?”

  Mancrest paused. “What?” He stared at the bricks—with some of the boxes out of the way, the outline of the walled-in doorway was coming into view. “Oh.” For a moment, he looked like he might object, but then he clenched his jaw and said, “No, curse him. I don’t care what happens to this building. Not after he locked me up down here.”

  “Good.” Amaranthe hopped to the floor. “Keep moving those, will you? I need to locate materials for the second half of this plan.”

  Seemingly forgetting his objection to being ordered around, Mancrest heaved aside the boxes while she hunted for something they could use to blow a hole in the wall. There shouldn’t be much structural support behind the brick addition, but it’d take more than a shoulder thump to topple it.

  “Maldynado?” Amaranthe called. “How’re you doing over there?”

  “Between keeping these rowdy prisoners subdued and piling as much junk as possible in front of the door?” came the response.

  “Yes.”

  “Fine, but I heard someone in the stairwell holler to get Lord Mancrest, and I believe the words ‘battering ram’ also came up.”

  Amaranthe didn’t think a ram would prove effective in that tight stairwell, but if Deret’s father came down and started hollering at his son through the door, that might have a scheme-withering effect. If Deret decided they should give in and let the others in, that wouldn’t leave Amaranthe and Maldynado in a good place. “If you’re done piling up junk, come give me a hand.”

  “Be there in a minute.”

  Amaranthe paused beside a rusty press beneath a drop cloth. She eyed the furnace and boiler. It wouldn’t be the first boiler she’d caused to explode, but she feared it was too big and too surrounded by other heavy objects for three people to push over to the wall. She kept looking. Perhaps there was a smaller press, or perhaps… Her thoughts took a jog to the left when she spotted the jars of ink again. Nodding to herself, she lugged two of them through the crooked aisles toward the back wall. On the way, she caught sight of Maldynado and his so-called rowdy prisoners. Both were sitting on the ground, their wrists and ankles still tied. She paused, setting down the heavy jars.

  “Ten ranmyas says they get caught in the next ten minutes, and these outlaws get shot,” one said.

  “I’m not taking that bet,” the other said. “That’s a foregone event. The real question is whether Lord Mancrest will give his son a spanking when he finds him out of his cage.”

  The two men shared snickers. Maldynado was leaning against one of numerous crates he’d shoved in front of the door, wiping sweat from his brow. “We’re not getting caught,” he told the prisoners. “But if we did, I’d pay a lot more than ten ranmyas to see Deret spanked.”

  “Maldynado,” Amaranthe said, causing him to start.

  “I was taking a break. A quick one. I swear. Look at all I did.” He flung his arms wide to highlight the size of the stack he’d piled up.

  “You and your prisoners aren’t in trouble.” Amaranthe smiled at the tied men, figuring it couldn’t hurt to start talking to them if she hoped to draw them to her side later. “But I need help.” She picked up one of the jars of ink and nodded for Maldynado to grab the other.

  “I’d rather see her spanked,” one of the prisoners said as she moved away.

  His cohort guffawed. “I’d pay fifty ranmyas for that.”

  Maldynado snickered. Amaranthe raised an eyebrow at him.

  “Sorry,” he said, “I could thump them around so they couldn’t say such things, but you mentioned winning them over. I thought that might be easier if we didn’t mash up their faces or perforate any important organs.”

  “Thoughtful of you.” Given that spanking comment, she wouldn’t mind some light thumping, but she decided she shouldn’t encourage brutality.

  When they reached the wall, Deret was still pushing boxes aside. Amaranthe and Maldynado deposited their loads and went to retrieve more jars of ink. By the time they’d made their last trip, Deret had cleared the area. He stopped to mop sweat from his face and eye the semicircle of giant jars.

  “You think the storm tunnel is on the other side?” Maldynado waved to the
outline on the wall.

  Amaranthe pictured the street, the tunnel, and their location within the building in her mind. “I’d guess ten or twelve feet away.”

  “What if this side stub is bricked in all the way?”

  “Let’s hope it’s not.”

  A resonating bang came from the stairway. Huh, the soldiers might have gotten a battering ram into the stairwell after all.

  “Deret, printing press ink is flammable, right?” Amaranthe had better make sure she had her facts right before she started making fuses.

  “Yes. It’s made of soot, walnut oil, and turpentine. When we run the presses, we have to be careful not to let the bearings on the rollers overheat or…” Deret’s eyes narrowed. “Why do you ask?”

  Maldynado laughed. “The more pertinent question, old boy, is which one of us will get blamed when she blows up your father’s building?”

  Deret looked back and forth from the bottles of ink to the brick wall. “Oh.”

  Maldynado elbowed Amaranthe. “He’s volunteering.”

  “Really?” Amaranthe asked. “I didn’t get that.”

  “It was inherent in the lack of a strenuous objection. Please note, I am objecting. Strenuously.”

  “We can face the soldiers if you wish, Deret,” Amaranthe said, though she fervently hoped he did not wish—especially if someone had run off to fetch the elder Lord Mancrest and if Mrs. Worgavic was still with him. She was the last person to whom Amaranthe wanted to reveal her presence.

  Still eyeing the ink, Deret rubbed his jaw. She shifted from foot to foot, but didn’t rush him, though the banging at the door surely made her wish to do so.

  “No,” Deret finally said. “I meant what I said earlier. I’m done arguing with my father—and those Marblecrest lackeys.” He scowled at Maldynado.

  “Don’t look at me like that.” Maldynado prodded his thumb to his chest. “I’m disowned, remember? And when Ravido finds out I was present—though not, I assure you, responsible—for his wife’s death, I’ll be lucky if I’m not dismembered.”

  “Mari’s dead?” Deret gaped at him, then turned the gape onto Amaranthe.

  “I’m not responsible either,” Amaranthe said. “I was busy being tortured by Hollowcrest’s former master interrogator at the time.”

  “What?” Deret continued to gape, though his gaze shifted back to Maldynado, as if to check if this were a joke. Maldynado shook his head solemnly. Deret swallowed, pity entering his eyes.

  Amaranthe hadn’t wanted that. She’d just meant to—bloody ancestors, she shouldn’t have brought it up at all. They needed to get out of here.

  “It seems we have much information we should exchange with each other,” Deret said.

  Glad he was ready to drop the conversation too, Amaranthe managed a smile. “That’s why we came looking for you.”

  “And here I thought it was because you’d grown weary of the company of that assassin and sought emotionally stimulating conversations.” Deret picked up one of the jars of ink.

  Amaranthe tried to read whether there was hurt lacing his flippant words—and whether that hurt might be a problem. She thought the humor reached his eyes, but she couldn’t be sure.

  Deret must have understood her uncertain silence, for he patted her arm and said, “I’m teasing. I’m actually seeing a nice girl—or I was until Father detained me.” He growled and set the jar down by the wall.

  Amaranthe told herself that it was good that he’d found someone else, though a silly part of her felt stung that he’d so quickly dismissed her and fallen for another. Come on, girl, she thought, you’re not some spell-bindingly alluring maiden from the stories of eld, the kind soldiers pined over for decades while they were away at war. So long as one certain man didn’t dismiss her, that was all that mattered.

  Deret pushed the other jars toward the wall. “You two stand back a bit. I’ll handle this. I’ve inadvertently started enough fires with the presses that I’m practically an expert.”

  Maldynado pumped a fist. “Yes.”

  Amaranthe cocked her head at him.

  “He is volunteering to take the blame.”

  Deret snorted and waved for them to back away. “Turpentine is noxious stuff. You don’t want to inhale any more than is necessary.”

  “You be careful, too, then. Especially if there’s a new lady worrying about you right now.” Amaranthe pushed Maldynado toward the blocked door. “Let’s get your rowdy friends.”

  The two prisoners had been attempting to free each other. One clenched half of a broken pair of scissors in his mouth and was trying to saw the rusty blade across his comrade’s wrist bonds. Amaranthe doubted they’d free each other within the hour—or month—that way, but she removed the tool from the man’s mouth anyway.

  “Sorry, gentlemen, but we’re taking a walk.” She nodded for Maldynado to hoist the bigger man to his feet. “You’ll have to try to escape later.”

  Amaranthe had no more than helped the second fellow to stand—her pistol nudging his back to encourage alacrity—when an explosion roared through the basement. The ground bucked, and she staggered, catching her balance on a press. Crates and machinery crashed to the floor. The wooden ceiling trembled and groaned. She eyed the old boards through the clouds of dust that arose, choking the little lamplight they had. Maybe setting off an explosion in the basement of a centuries-old building wasn’t a good idea after all.

  The noise in the stairwell disappeared. The creaks from the presses on the floor above sounded loud in the new quiet, one broken only by soft wheezing coughs and dirt and debris trickling from the ceiling, or perhaps that brick wall.

  Still pushing her prisoner, Amaranthe continued in that direction. “Deret? Are you all right?”

  The noxious odor he’d promised clogged the air, a charred burnt smell with a piny underpinning. It stung her throat and eyes, bringing on tears. Her prisoner balked, but she prodded him onward. At the same time, she tugged her shirt up over her mouth and nose.

  “Did it work?” Maldynado choked out around a cough. “It better have, because it smells worse than an entire battalion’s worth of unwashed socks piled up behind a field latrine.”

  “You’ve been spending too much time with Akstyr,” Amaranthe said.

  “Nah, he would have worked donkey droppings into that claim.”

  The lantern by the brick wall had either gone out of its own accord or Deret had cut if off. Amaranthe lifted her own light high, trying to pierce the cloak of dusty air. The boxes nearest to the explosion had been blown asunder, and bits of old newspapers and books littered the floor. Amaranthe grimaced at this destruction of property—she hoped some university library had copies of the documents somewhere—but forgot her regrets as soon as she spotted the jagged hole leading to a black tunnel.

  “Deret?” Amaranthe peered along the wall in both directions.

  “In retrospect,” came Mancrest’s raspy voice, “I should have laid a longer fuse.” He staggered out of a nearby hiding spot, leaning heavily on his swordstick. Soot smeared his face and clothing, and his hair stuck out in blackened spicules.

  “Neophyte,” Maldynado said brightly.

  “Are you—” Amaranthe had planned to inquire after Mancrest’s health, but the bangs started up at the door again, and she switched to, “—ready to go?”

  Mancrest cast a glower in the direction of the cage. “More than ready.”

  Amaranthe peered into the dark passage behind the wall. “Is there any more ink left? I think we’ll have to do that again to reach the storm water tunnel.”

  Deret rubbed his finger into his eardrum, as if he were having trouble hearing her. “Again?”

  “Women are never satisfied,” Maldynado said. “Not only do you have to impress them once, but you have to keep doing it again and again. You better learn these things if you’re going to enter into a relationship with one.”

  “As if you’re such an expert,” Deret grumbled.

  Already on her way bac
k to grab two more ink jars, Amaranthe missed part of the conversation, but came back to Maldynado explaining his new relationship with Yara.

  “She’s the tall, muscly one?” Deret asked.

  Amaranthe tried to remember if he’d ever met her. She didn’t think so, at least not when Yara had been a part of their group, but it wouldn’t be surprising if, as a journalist, Deret had been keeping track of the team, including recent acquisitions.

  “Oh, yes,” Maldynado drawled. “Very athletic.”

  “Are we preparing for the next explosion?” Amaranthe asked, dumping a jar into Deret’s hands. “And watching the prisoners?” She gave Maldynado a pointed look.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Deret said at the same time as Maldynado proclaimed, “Naturally, boss.”

  Deret grabbed a lantern and disappeared into the tunnel. Amaranthe intended to follow and help him if he needed it, but a thunderous snap rent the air.

  “Was that the door?” she whispered. It’d sounded louder and closer than that.

  “Must be,” Maldynado said. “What else would it be?” He knocked on a brick. “Hurry up, Deret. I think your old man’s about to join us.”

  “I need some cloth and another jar,” Deret called back, his voice echoing in the enclosed tunnel.

  Amaranthe eyed Maldynado’s shirt. It had… tassels wasn’t quite the right word, but the fluffy fringes looked like they could be shorn off for Deret’s fuse without leaving flesh exposed. She unsheathed her dagger and lifted a finger, intending to ask.

  “Don’t even think about it.” Maldynado took a large step back. “My wardrobe has suffered dreadfully as a result of knowing you. Do you know that I haven’t been able to keep a hat for more than two weeks since we met?”

  “Please, you’d find it tedious to wear the same hat for more than two weeks anyway.” Amaranthe veered toward the prisoners, lifting an apologetic hand as she sliced into one’s jacket.

  “True,” Maldynado said, “but I prefer to retire a hat to a closet for possible later consideration, not watch it be blown up in a steamboat explosion.”

  “Fussy, fussy.” Amaranthe took the purloined cloth and another jar into the tunnel.