Forged in Blood I

by Lindsay Buroker

  “Climb,” Sicarius ordered. He was relieved Sespian had kept his grip on the line, but they weren’t out of danger yet.

  “Trying,” Sespian growled. “Can you make this thing stop swinging?”

  Before he’d finished the sentence, the cable, which had carried them beneath the tower and out the other side, reached the end of its path and jerked to a halt. Sespian’s grip slipped and he cursed as he skidded several feet before catching himself. His boots were in Sicarius’s face.

  Sicarius gave a shove with his free hand, ordering, “Climb!” again, more insistently this time.

  Already, the soul construct had flung the knife from its mouth and was bounding up the slope again. As the cable reversed its path, swinging back under the tower, the creature reached the crown of the hill. Encouraged by Sicarius’s order—or death’s approach—Sespian found reserves in his muscles and he raced up the cable. Sicarius started up, too, but the construct leaped into the air, again targeting Sespian.

  Sicarius whipped his legs backward, then hurled them forward and up, trying to catch the creature in the chest. He did, his heels slamming against the broad torso, but even with the momentum, his blow barely diverted the six hundred-pound monster. It was like kicking a mountain, and it did nothing except jar his knees. Sespian had seen the construct leaping, though, and he’d yanked his legs up to his chin. Perhaps Sicarius had distracted it an iota, for the beast sailed past without managing more than a swat of the claws.

  That swat, however, cut through the cable below Sespian. Sicarius plummeted to the ground.

  Though surprised, he found his feet and landed in a crouch in the snow, immediately jumping for the nearest tower support. He didn’t see the construct land on the edge of the hill, but he heard it thump down, and that sound was incentive enough to send him up the metal post in scant heartbeats.

  The creature howled, a frustrated edge to the sound, and hurled itself against the support. Sicarius was already climbing onto the snow-covered beam above. He wouldn’t pronounce them safe yet, but the steel posts set in concrete should be harder to bite into than a tree trunk.

  Eyes rounder than marbles, Sespian lay on the beam, his legs and arms wrapped around it. “What took you so long?” he asked.

  Sicarius studied him, concerned by the manic edge to his tone.

  “It was a joke,” Sespian said, taking a few breaths. “You know, because you’re not slow.” He must not have seen what he wanted in Sicarius’s face for he added, “Never mind.”

  “I understood.” Sicarius thought to explain that, after a lifetime of maintaining a facade over his thoughts, it took conscious effort for him to let his expression change, but the creature was prowling below, testing the posts. He stood up. There was more to do before they were safe.

  “Thanks for saving me from painful mauling and certain death. I’d probably try to hug you if I weren’t so busy groping this beam right now.” Sespian peered over his shoulder. His knees were clenched around the steel so tightly he was in danger of losing feeling in his nerves. “I’m not quite sure I can let go either.”

  Sicarius bent and offered him a hand. “You would be permitted.”

  Sespian stared at the hand. “To what?”

  “Hug me.” Sicarius knew it’d been a joke—or an utter-relief-at-not-being-dead outburst, but he made the offer in case Sespian should ever be so moved in the future.

  “Oh. Uhm, I’m not really someone who…” Sespian offered an embarrassed shrug, but he did accept the proffered hand. “But good to know I’d be allowed.”

  Sicarius pulled him to his feet, steadying him when his legs, doubtlessly exhausted from the climb, threatened to buckle.

  When Sespian regained his balance, the corner of his mouth quirked up. “Do many people try? To hug you?”

  “Few. Usually women.”

  “Ah. Amaranthe.” Sespian’s face grew wistful, though it seemed accepting as well.

  “Infrequently.” Sicarius headed for the ladder leading to the top of the tower.

  “Really? If a girl was inclined to hug me, I’d encourage her to do it frequently.”

  “I am not good at… encouragement.” Sicarius climbed the ladder and found the harpoon launcher where he’d left it.

  “I’ve noticed,” Sespian said, reaching the top behind him. “It’s easy though. You spread your arms like this and give a girl your most inviting smile. Do you… have an inviting smile?”

  “No.”

  “Any sort of smile at all?”

  “No.”

  “I can see where you’d have a problem then,” Sespian said.

  A boom sounded at the nearest corner of the fort. An instant later, a startled yowl came from below. Sicarius lunged to the edge of the water tank in time to see the soul construct fly out from under the tower and down the hill. It tumbled to a stop at the end of the slope, taking a moment to recover. It shook itself like a wet dog and sat on its haunches.

  “Reinforcements.” Sespian pumped his fist.

  A hundred-odd meters away, atop Fort Urgot’s closest wall, a cannon bled black smoke into the air. Grim-faced men lined the parapet, rifles in hand. Others reloaded the cannon while someone cranked the elevation, bringing the weapon up to aim at the top of the tower. At Sicarius.

  Sespian’s fist drooped. “Or perhaps not.”

  Chapter 14

  After her previous adventures on the bottoms of lakes, the novelty of traveling underwater had worn off, but Amaranthe still flinched at each creak and groan that emanated from the tiny submarine’s hull. On the other side of its convex glass viewing port, fish flitted away as the craft descended, its exterior lamps sending a beam of light into the dark water.

  She sat shoulder-to-shoulder with Retta in the tiny navigation compartment while two guards loomed behind their seats. There was only a few feet of cargo space behind them in front of a bulkhead with a hatchway in it. Amaranthe hadn’t seen beyond it, but Retta had waved in that direction and said, “engine room,” when they’d first entered. Given the overall size of the submarine—most of the lavatories on Mokath Ridge had larger footprints—she could see why the Forge women had called it a “tug.” She didn’t see anything magical about it, and it had a Turgonian feel with steel construction, pipes running along the bulkheads, and levers and gauges similar to what she’d seen on imperial ships.

  “Where did you get this vessel?” Amaranthe asked. She wanted to ask about everything that had happened since she’d last seen Retta and, oh, how do you go about blowing up the Behemoth too, thank you very much, but the guards might find those questions a tad suspicious.

  The frown Retta gave her suggested she’d said something wrong anyway. “This is one of the ones you purchased on the Kyatt Islands.”

  Oops. “Oh, is it? I handled all of the paperwork in town and didn’t get a full tour of the crafts.” There, that sounded plausible, didn’t it? How much information could the guards have been given anyway?

  Retta nodded slightly. Right answer.

  “They’re more Turgonian than I’d realized.” Amaranthe probably ought to keep her mouth shut for the rest of the trip, but she didn’t know if she’d get a chance to be alone with Retta in the Behemoth either. The Forge women hadn’t seemed to trust her fully—maybe they knew Retta had helped Amaranthe escape back down south. These guards might be permanent attachments to her ore cart.

  “It’s to be expected, since all of the submarines in the world today—and, as you know, there aren’t many—are based on Admiral Starcrest’s designs.”

  That “as you know” made Amaranthe pause. Suan had probably been the one trotting around the world, shopping for Forge’s imports. A warning not to ask for more details on this subject? Probably.

  “I can’t believe he’s still alive,” one of the guards whispered in an awe-struck tone.

  Thus far, both of the men had been too busy looming menacingly to speak, and this declaration surprised Amaranthe. The guard, previously the image of gruff pr
ofessionalism, sounded like a wistful youth, lamenting that he’d never met the admiral. Not all that surprising, she supposed. Even Sicarius, who respected few people, could quote Starcrest’s books on military strategies and tactics and had admitted to reading a few of the “based on real events” but largely fictional Starcrest novels as a boy.

  “What’s he like?” the guard asked Amaranthe.

  “Er?”

  “Didn’t you meet him when you were on the Kyatt Islands?”

  “No, I understand he’s very busy with…” Work? Family? Nude sunbathing on the beach? How was Amaranthe supposed to know? Along with most of the rest of the populace, she’d thought he was dead until recently. That’d always been the official Turgonian statement, that he’d been killed in the Western Sea Conflict more than twenty years earlier. Unlike Sicarius, and apparently every other male in the empire, she’d never studied the man’s work either; she’d gone to business school, not a military academy, after all.

  “He’s quite devoted to his family,” Retta said. “That’s kept him busy, and he’s taken on a number of subaquatic engineering projects for the Polytechnic’s research division, to help further underwater exploration around the islands and abroad. Now that the children are older, I understand he and his wife have been off-island, investigating ancient ruins and mysteries.”

  The wife, that was the linguistics specialist Sicarius had met in those tunnels, wasn’t it? The one who’d originally decoded the language of the Behemoth. Amaranthe hoped she wasn’t involved with Forge in any way, but hadn’t Retta said she’d learned the language on the Kyatt Islands? What if Forge had the wife—and maybe Starcrest too—tucked into a back pocket?

  “That must be why you didn’t meet them when you were there,” Retta finished, her eyebrow twitching ever so slightly.

  She thought Amaranthe should shut her mouth and stop chancing discovery, too, but maybe it was better to learn this information here, in front of guards who couldn’t be fully knowledgeable about who and what “Suan” was supposed to mean to the Forge organization, rather than later when talking to some high-up official.

  “Yes, that sounds right.” Amaranthe gave Retta an eyebrow twitch of her own, wishing she could mentally convey the suggestion that this would be a good place to relay information in some oblique manner that the guards wouldn’t see through. Too bad Retta wasn’t a true telepath. As far as Amaranthe knew, it had only been some Made tool that had allowed their minds to link and share memories.

  “It’s fortunate that you were able to get a hold of so many of their submarines,” Retta said. Maybe she read minds after all, or could decipher twitchy eyebrows. “Though Admiral Starcrest gave out the plans to his original submarine to all the major governments in the world, no one has yet melded Turgonian metallurgy and engineering technology with practitioner-crafted power supplies the way the Kyattese have.”

  The guards shifted at this mention of practitioners. Amaranthe wondered what she’d see if she opened the hatch in the back. Some flashing ball floating in the air, thrumming with energy? The submarine had leveled off and Retta was steering it along the lake bottom. The Behemoth should be in sight soon. If the guards had been down here before, they must have seen it, at least on the outside, and have some idea of what it might do. Maybe the idea of advanced ancient technology alarmed them less than that of magic-slinging contemporaries.

  “I had to work hard to make that deal,” Amaranthe said, hoping for more details. Anything she could learn about Suan’s background could only help.

  “Oh, yes, I’m sure it was quite difficult finding the right person to bribe in the Kyattese government,” Retta said, “especially with all that Forge money to throw about.”

  Amaranthe was trying to decide whether to respond to that—it sounded like a comment directed at the real Suan, rather than her—when a thump came from the rear of the craft.

  “What was that?” one of the guards blurted.

  “Did something hit us?” the second asked.

  “I don’t think so.” Retta considered the gauges, then peered through the viewing window.

  Nothing except seaweed and silt-covered rock lay within the light’s influence, though Amaranthe had the impression of a presence ahead of them, something denser and blacker than the deep dark water around it.

  “It came from inside,” the first guard, the one who’d spoken of Admiral Starcrest, said.

  “What if something broke?” The second man shifted uneasily, his fingers tightening on the back of Amaranthe’s chair. “I heard… They said if a tank or a seam or something ruptures, the boat could implode, and we’d all die horribly.”

  A second thump came, identical to the first.

  “I’ll check on it,” Retta said.

  She rose halfway out of her chair, but Amaranthe stopped her with a hand to the arm. “We’re getting close to our destination, aren’t we?” she asked, hoping nobody would remember that she wasn’t supposed to know anything about their destination. “I think you should stay in the pilot’s chair.” She tried to give Retta a significant look. She had a hunch about those noises back there.

  Retta glanced out the viewing area again. “You’re right. I can see the Ortarh Ortak now.” She eased back into the seat. “Valter, will you check please?”

  “I don’t know anything about these boats,” the second guard said, his fingers like talons where they gripped the chair. “Something could be broken, and I’d never know it.”

  “Just open the hatch and describe what you see.” Retta flicked a couple of controls. The black shape ahead was growing more pronounced, something that spread for hundreds of meters in either direction. Amaranthe hadn’t been imagining it; they were approaching the Behemoth. She surreptitiously wiped a palm on her dress.

  “I’ll go,” the Starcrest enthusiast said when his comrade didn’t move.

  The other guard, Valter, was dealing with sweaty palms of his own as he stared at the seams of the hull, the whites of his eyes visible all the way around the irises. It seemed unsporting to attack such a man, but if Amaranthe’s guess about those thumps was right, she wouldn’t hesitate.

  The first guard reached the hatch and spun a wheel to open it. She twisted in her seat, readying herself. The guard stepped through the hatchway and peered to his left. A pair of legs swung down from above, wrapping about his neck. Someone else yanked the cutlass, knife, and baton from his belt holders. The neck grip kept the guard from hollering anything, but Valter heard the scuffles and thuds. He whirled about, yanking out his own sword.

  Before he’d taken more than two steps, Amaranthe vaulted out of her chair and onto his back. She wrapped one arm around his neck, locking it with the other to apply pressure. At the same time, she clasped her legs around his waist, so he wouldn’t be able to shake her off. The hem of the dress restricted her movement, and she almost didn’t get the position she needed. Fortunately, he was more worried about her grip on his neck and she had time to readjust her legs for a better hold.

  The guard grabbed her arms, trying to break the lock, but she’d practiced with Sicarius and knew to keep her grip so tight that he couldn’t thrust his fingers between her arm and his neck. He flung a hand behind his head, trying to smash her with his fist. His knuckles brushed her temple, but she buried her face in the back of his neck, making it hard for him to do any damage, and kept applying pressure. His struggles would grow feeble once his air supply dwindled.

  The guard wasn’t ready to give in yet though. He turned his back to the hull and drove her into the unyielding metal. The blow jarred Amaranthe from teeth to toes. She might have released him to pursue another attack strategy, but Akstyr stepped out of the engine room and pointed a dagger at the man’s nose.

  “Stop thrashing around out here, or I’ll carve out your tonsils.” Akstyr sneered. “By going through your nostrils.”

  The man stared at him for a moment, then passed out, plummeting to the deck like a felled tree. Amaranthe released him and r
olled away.

  “Do you find it difficult to make people believe your menacing threats when your robe is open like that?” Books stepped through the hatchway and waved at Akstyr’s askew attire.

  “No.” Akstyr scowled and tugged the flap over to cover up things Amaranthe hadn’t wanted to see. It seemed robes weren’t much better than dresses for fighting in. “He paid attention, didn’t he?”

  “Because his face was purple and he couldn’t breathe, I believe,” Books said. “Also, his eyes were a little glassy, so I’m not sure he saw more than the knife.”

  “What are you people doing down here?” Retta alternated between glowering at Books and Akstyr and looking through the viewing window. They’d rounded a curve in the Behemoth’s massive dome-shaped body, and a white light had come into sight, a stark contrast to the dark water and the black sides of the craft. “My assistant is going to be inside, manning the controls so we can dock, and there’s always at least two guards in that room. Strangers can’t stroll inside.”

  “Ah, but we’re not strangers.” Books bent and unbuttoned the green uniform jacket of the unconscious guard, dusted it off, then held it aloft. “We’re employees in the—” he eyed a patch on the sleeve, “—Brackenshaft Armed and Armored Protection Coalition. Goodness, what a pretentious name to refer to uneducated louts with pointy sticks.”

  Amaranthe smiled, pleased and relieved that her men had found a way on, though she knew it meant that the guards who had been escorting them out of the building were probably tied up in a closet somewhere. She’d originally envisioned having a few days to get to know her way around the Behemoth and interact with Forge people, maybe gathering crucial insider information before enacting a plan to destroy the craft. Now, they’d be lucky if they had until dawn before their identities were discovered.

  Retta growled again, apparently neither pleased nor relieved by Books and Akstyr’s appearance. “What are you planning to do down here, Lokdon? I went along with this against all the voices in my head telling me it was crazy, and—you haven’t done anything to my sister, have you?”