Forged in Blood I

by Lindsay Buroker

  The hand jerked back as the prize rolled out. The blunt, stubby fingers made a grasp, but missed, only bumping the coin and causing it to spin out of sight beneath the trouser rack on the opposite side of the aisle.

  A head wearing an outlandish ostrich feather hat dropped into Amaranthe’s view. If she hadn’t known Maldynado was in the building next door—and wearing different clothes—she might have thought it was he. It certainly seemed his style of clothing. But, no, he had better reflexes. He would have caught the coin.

  While the man patted around beneath the opposite rack, Amaranthe eased backward, thinking she’d risk slipping out that way, even if it wasn’t far from the front window. She could take a side aisle toward the rear of the store. But a fresh pair of boots came into view over there. It had to be lunch hour or something. Or this was the trendiest military clothier in the capital. Given that Maldynado had chosen the shopping district, it might very well be true.

  She scrunched up into a tiny ball, hoping the shadows would hide her if Alligator Boots looked her way. He was fishing all over for that cursed coin. Couldn’t someone who could afford to shop in Millinery Square afford to lose a coin?

  Finally, he knelt back with the ranmya in his hand. He glanced under Amaranthe’s rack. She froze, holding her breath. There were shadows. Were there enough? Now and then, Ravido’s voice drifted up from the back of the store—it wasn’t safe to be spotted yet.

  The man squinted into her gloom. What was he doing? Hoping there were more lost coins down there?

  He must have seen her, for he parted the trousers, letting light beneath the rack.

  With no other options, Amaranthe scrambled out. She stayed on her knees, so nobody in the back of the shop—or standing in the street beyond the window—would see her and waved her kerchief up at the man.

  “Those are fine ones,” she said. “I’ll only charge you five ranmyas if you’re interested?”

  The man rose to his feet, the ostrich-feather hat shadowing his features, but not quite hiding his blinks of confusion. “For… what?”

  “Your boots, of course.” Amaranthe waved the kerchief again, hoping the dust smearing it made it look authentic. Of course, boot polish would be better, but she hadn’t come that prepared. “A shine. It won’t take long.”

  “You work here?”

  Right, her ruffled dress didn’t exactly say shoeshine girl. “During my lunch break,” Amaranthe said, though she couldn’t imagine what sort of daytime job she might claim while wearing the childish dress. “A girl’s got to make a ranmya when she can. For a handsome gentleman such as yourself, I’ll do your boots for four ranmyas.” She beamed a smile up at him and gazed into his eyes—hadn’t Sicarius said something about her eyes being warm and innocent once?

  The ostrich-hat turned toward the back of the shop. “Murkos, do you know there’s a shoeshine girl trying to home in on your customers?”

  In the seconds his head was turned, Amaranthe slithered under another rack and into the aisle along the wall. Staying low, she darted for the curtain in the rear.

  “A what?” came the return question. “No, there shouldn’t be. Grab her, will you?”

  Not likely. Amaranthe reached the back curtain, belly-crawled under it so she wouldn’t disturb the fabric, and popped up. Yara was still there, though she stood by the back exit, the door ajar as she peered into the alley.

  “We need to go,” Amaranthe whispered.

  “My oaf is outside chatting with a squad of soldiers,” Yara said.

  “Chatting?”

  Yara closed the door. “Chatting at gunpoint.”

  “Their gunpoints, I presume.” As much as Amaranthe appreciated the idea of Maldynado surrounding a squad of soldiers by himself, she doubted it was the case.

  “Yes, and they’re right in front of the door. Any chance we can go out the front?”

  “No, Ravido is still out there.”

  “Where’d she go?” a familiar voice demanded from somewhere in the middle of the store—the miserly ostrich-hat man who couldn’t let a coin go.

  “Also, it’s possible I’d attract attention going that way.” Amaranthe slipped past Yara. She wanted her own peek outside.

  Unfortunately, her peek didn’t reveal anything more appealing than Yara’s. Eight burly soldiers surrounded Maldynado, four on each side of him, trapping him in the narrow alley. Though he was amiably talking and gesturing as they searched his shopping bags, there were no less than six guns pointed at his chest. The men’s white armbands proclaimed the squad belonged to Ravido, detached from the group out front most likely.

  Amaranthe closed the door. Yara was right; there was no way they could walk outside without being seen. If they caught the soldiers by surprise, she, Yara, and Maldynado might get the best of eight men in a fight, but with twenty more waiting out front, she didn’t like the odds overall.

  “I don’t suppose telling them that their general is in here buying them new uniforms would excite them to the point of forgetting about us,” Amaranthe muttered.

  Yara’s only response was a withering look. Probably a no.

  Amaranthe peered about the back room, searching for inspiration. The recently tailored uniforms hanging on the wall and the cloth swatches on the worktable might be flammable, but she couldn’t picture creating anything spectacularly explosive using them. Aside from scissors and needles, there wasn’t much else to note. A couple of featureless ceramic busts held wigs, while others supported fur caps in the middle of receiving embroidered designs that signified prominent battles the owner had served in. Amaranthe touched one of the wigs. Explosions might not be the only way to escape.

  She considered the uniforms again. On some of them, the rank pins hadn’t been removed. She selected one that might do for someone around six feet tall and handed it to Yara with a smile.

  “Congratulations on your promotion to—” she glanced at the brass swords on the collar, “—captain.”

  “Are you insane?” Yara whispered. “Nobody’s going to believe we’re officers. Or men.” She waved toward Amaranthe’s chest.

  “It’s cold outside. We can bundle up. We only need to pass scrutiny for a minute. I’ll think of something to distract them.”

  “Why don’t I find that comforting?” Yara growled, but she snatched the uniform.

  “I’m certain I don’t know.” Amaranthe gave a cheery wink and grabbed the shortest uniform on the wall.

  “They’d be more likely to be distracted if we ran out naked,” Yara muttered, fiddling with buttons.

  “We want to distract the soldiers, not Maldynado.”

  “…look around, don’t you think?” someone asked from the front. “…was a shifty looking girl… stealing from you.”

  Stealing? Shifty? Hmmph. Amaranthe tore off her distasteful dress, hid it in a waste bin, and pulled on the uniform trousers. She donned a white shirt, not bothering to button or tuck it in before throwing on the jacket. There wasn’t time to dally over the subtleties of the costume. All she could do was make sure the rank pins on the collars matched those on the hats she grabbed. She’d be the lieutenant to Yara’s captain. She hoped the men outside didn’t stop to wonder why an LT was doing all the talking, or to look too closely at the ill-fitting uniforms. Too bad it wasn’t dark out. That would have hidden a lot of discrepancies.

  “What about boots?” Yara whispered.

  Amaranthe didn’t see any lying around. The military cobbler’s shop was probably next door. “Just wear your own.”

  “We’re going to be the most disheveled officers in the army.”

  In the midst of pulling up a pair of suspenders, Amaranthe froze. The “something to distract them” she’d been trying to think up had popped into her mind. “Yes,” she said, smiling. “Yes, we will.”

  Yara shook her head in an I-don’t-want-to-know manner and pointed at Amaranthe’s face. “You look too much like a girl.”

  Yes, between Yara’s height, more angular features and her
short hair, she’d have an easier time passing for a man at a glance, but Amaranthe…

  She grabbed a pair of scissors and cut off a swath of hair on one of the wigs. She dug into a brown glass jar labeled wig glue and cobbled together the worst fake mustache anyone had ever seen.

  “That is not going to fool anyone,” Yara said.

  “Sure it will,” Amaranthe whispered as she glued hair to her upper lip, “because I’ll be standing behind you and staggering.”

  “Staggering?”

  “I’ll check in the back,” someone said from the other side of the curtain.

  Their time was up. Amaranthe grabbed Yara’s elbow and propelled her toward the door. “We’ve just been mauled in a surprise attack, and we’re injured. Stagger!”

  Yara growled again, but she shoved open the door and staggered appropriately. Amaranthe clutched her abdomen, hunched over, and tumbled outside and down the steps after her. She bumped into Yara’s back, adding realism—she hoped that was the right word for it—to the staggering.

  “What—” one of the soldier’s near the stairs asked.

  Fortunately, none of the guns swung toward Amaranthe and Yara, not yet anyway. Maldynado, still surrounded by soldiers, his shopping bags on the ground with their contents strewn about, stared at Amaranthe, but didn’t say anything.

  “They’ve got General Marblecrest,” Amaranthe blurted, making her voice as deep as she could. “General Flintcrest’s men.” She flung her arm toward the door, even as she tumbled to her knees. “Hurry, the others are knocked out. Some slagging magic.”

  Before she’d finished speaking, soldiers were charging for the stairs. Only a sergeant and private with their guns trained on Maldynado hesitated.

  “But, sir, we’ve got a prisoner. It’s Lord Marblecrest’s little brother. He might be in on it!”

  “I’ll watch him,” Yara said gruffly, doing her own male-voice impression as she reached for the soldier’s pistol.

  The private started to hand it to her, but the sergeant was peering at Yara’s face. “Wait. Who are—”

  With the sergeant’s attention on her, Maldynado launched a fist at his jaw. It connected with enough force to spin him about. Maldynado rammed his shoulder into the man’s back, sending him face-first into the side of the stone building. Before the private could react, Yara grabbed his pistol with one hand and slammed her heel into his nose with the other. He reeled back, and she thrust him into the other wall.

  Confident her comrades could handle those two, Amaranthe sprinted past them, scooped the fallen clothing into the bag, and grabbed the handles. “We need to get out of here. If Ravido’s still inside, it’s only going to take them a second to—”

  The back door of the uniform shop slammed open.

  “Go, go,” Amaranthe barked.

  Yara took off promptly, though Maldynado paused to snatch a bag that Amaranthe had missed. “Can’t forget this one.”

  “There they are!” someone shouted from the doorway.

  Amaranthe shoved Maldynado toward the nearest intersection and took off at a sprint. Yara reached the corner first and raced around it. A pistol fired, a ball blasted into the brick building, inches above her head. Shards of red dust flew everywhere.

  Amaranthe took the corner so quickly she almost smashed into the far wall.

  “Careful,” Maldynado warned from right behind her. “Those bags have already been—” another weapon boomed, though he’d already ducked around the corner, escaping the line of fire, “—manhandled enough by ill-mannered louts with no fashion sense.”

  Amaranthe had no idea how he could spout all that while sprinting. She followed Yara, who was weaving into alleys at random in the maze between thoroughfares, content to let her lead until a sturdy drainpipe came into view ahead. Conscious of the shouts and boots pounding the cobblestones behind them, she surged forward, tapped Yara’s elbow, and mouthed, “Up.”

  “Up?” Yara slowed, neck craned as she considered the flat roof four stories above them.

  “Up,” Amaranthe confirmed, darting past her and shimmying up the drainpipe. The climb would take a moment, so there was no time to spare.

  Maldynado leaped and caught the pipe several feet up, scurrying up as nimbly as a cat scaling a tree. “Like this, my lady.”

  Yara hadn’t experienced Sicarius’s urban obstacle courses yet, but it didn’t seem she’d let Maldynado show her up. She clawed her way up after him.

  Amaranthe reached the rooftop and pulled herself over, dropping into a low crouch to scan the area. Though she didn’t expect anyone to be up there waiting, Sicarius had, more times than she could count, drilled her to always be aware of her surroundings. Nobody was up there. She could, however, hear the soldiers racing down the alley perpendicular to the one she’d just left. If they rounded the corner before Yara and Maldynado reached the roof…

  Maldynado popped over the side, spun about, flattened to his belly, and caught Yara’s hand as soon as it was close enough. He hauled her up and over the edge as the soldiers rounded the corner.

  “This way,” Amaranthe whispered, then led them in the opposite direction from their pursuit.

  She’d been across the rooftops in that section of the city before, often in the dark, and she chose a route where the jumps between buildings weren’t too far apart and the vertical rises and falls weren’t too challenging. More than once, Yara cursed, arms flailing as she struggled to keep up without losing her balance, but she stuck with them.

  The sounds of pursuit faded, but Amaranthe stayed on the roofs as long as possible, suspecting more soldiers would be scouting below. Even if she hadn’t been identified, word would get out quickly about Maldynado’s presence in the area.

  The clang of a trolley bell floated above the din of the city. Amaranthe veered in that direction, reaching Third Street in time to spot the two-car vehicle ambling up the track toward their corner. The wooden sign dangling above the cab promised the trolley was on its way to the waterfront.

  Amaranthe pointed. “That’ll work.”

  “You are insane,” Yara said, no longer asking but making statements. Breathing heavily, she added, “It’s coming down the… middle of the street. That’s at least a… ten foot jump.”

  “Ah, but we’re higher. It’ll be easy. Just get a running start and soften your knees when you land.”

  With the trolley approaching, there was no more time to debate it. If Yara didn’t want to jump, Amaranthe trusted she’d find another way down and back to the waterfront. For her and Maldynado… this would keep them from being seen. There were pedestrians on the street, but nobody in uniform—at the moment. It wouldn’t take long for those soldiers to set up a search net though.

  “Ready, boss.” Maldynado hefted his shopping bags and jumped first.

  He sailed through the air, landing lightly behind the smokestack without dropping a bag. Amaranthe leaped after him, dropping into a low crouch, trying to keep her touchdown soft so people in the trolley wouldn’t hear a heavy thump. Fortunately, there weren’t many passengers aboard in the middle of the workday.

  She looked up in time to see Yara run off the edge of the roof, arms flailing, an expression of anger on her face. She was angling toward the second car, but Amaranthe feared she’d thrown too much power into her leap. If she overshot, that’d be a painful landing.

  Amaranthe ran across the roof of her own car and leaped onto the second. Yara was already landing. She’d spun in the air, obviously realizing she’d over jumped, and caught the lip of the car. Her torso hit, and a painful-sounding oomph shot from her lungs. Amaranthe dropped to her knees and grabbed her hands. With Yara’s legs dangling in front of the windows, there was zero chance she wouldn’t be noticed, but Amaranthe pulled her up as fast as she could.

  Yara flopped onto her back, that expression of anger still riding her face as she glared up at Amaranthe. It shifted over her shoulder.

  “Where were you?” Yara demanded as Maldynado plopped down besi
de them.

  “Sorry.” Maldynado tucked a dangling garment back into one of his bags. “The boss’s new scarf got caught on a screw.”

  “I’m going to start sleeping with her if you can’t be bothered to save me when I fall,” Yara growled.

  Amaranthe blinked in surprise at this threat. Maldynado only grinned. “I get to watch, right?”

  “You people are insane.” Yara must have decided that would be her word of the day.

  “You’re just now noticing?” Amaranthe forgot sometimes how much Sicarius’s training had inured her to daunting feats of athleticism. A year ago, she also would have found it nerve-rattling to fling herself from rooftop to rooftop. Somewhere along the way, such exercises had become commonplace.

  “Soldiers ahead.” Maldynado flattened himself to his belly.

  Ravido’s men—Amaranthe recognized a few of the faces from the uniform shop—spewed out of an alley, halting on the sidewalk to look in both directions. She and Yara also dropped flat. The height of the trolly ought to keep anyone on the street from noticing them, but if some of the men farther back in the alley had a better angle to see up there…

  A scrape sounded beneath the trolly roof. A handsome fellow wearing a fur cap stuck his head out of the window and peered at the collection of people who’d landed above his seat.

  With her ear flattened to the roof, Amaranthe was looking right at him. She had no idea if he’d raise an alarm or simply gape at them for their audacity, so she groped for something to say that would distract him, at least until the trolley moved away from the soldiers.

  “Can you believe how much the fares have gone up this year?” She vaguely remembering reading that they had in a newspaper article that fall.

  The man blinked a few times. “You’re a woman.”

  Oh, right. Amaranthe had forgotten about her officer costume. She touched her upper lip and was surprised to find the hastily constructed mustache still adorned it, if crookedly. “Yes. Yes, I am.”

  “Are you all women?” the man asked.

  “Yes,” Yara said, as Maldynado issued an emphatic, “No.”