Chapter 18
The ink had dried on the counterfeiting plates, and Amaranthe tucked them into the crate beside the stacks of bills. She, Books, and Maldynado had removed the drying lines and paper cutter. Of course, someone ambling into the fish cannery would find the printing press loitering in the corner a tad odd. Sicarius had not returned since receiving his note the day before, and Amaranthe feared he would not return at all.
Footsteps thundered on the dock. Akstyr grabbed the door frame and swung into the cannery.
“Enforcers!” he blurted. “Coming down the hill.”
“Spitted dead ancestors,” Books cursed.
“Don’t worry.” Given the number of people who had delivered messages to their secret counterfeiting hideout, Amaranthe was surprised enforcers hadn’t come down their street sooner. The meeting with Forge and Hollowcrest was that night; the cannery had served them long enough. “We’re ready. Everyone grab something, and let’s go.”
Books and Akstyr lifted the crate.
“How many enforcers?” Maldynado belted on his sword.
“It doesn’t matter,” Amaranthe said. “We’re not killing any more of them. Door. Now.”
Books and Akstyr hustled onto the wharf. Maldynado sprinted to his chicken pen and threw open the latch. His charges streamed out, squawking uproariously. Amaranthe cringed at the noise. Maldynado tried to usher them to the door.
“Leave them,” she hissed.
“Not for some enforcer to throw in a stew.”
Amaranthe grabbed Maldynado’s arm and dragged him through the doorway. Using the building for cover, she headed for the edge of the dock. She waved for the others to follow and slipped over the edge. When she ducked beneath, the five foot clearance left her hunched, but it was enough. Maldynado followed. Akstyr handed the crate down to him, then came after. Books, the last over, skidded on the ice beneath the snow and landed on his backside.
“I’m too old for this,” he muttered as Amaranthe helped him up.
“There’s never a good age to fall on your butt,” Maldynado said. “That’s why the rest of us stayed upright.” He grimaced as his head brushed the underside of the wharf. “Mostly upright.”
“There’re at least ten coming,” Akstyr whispered. “Where are we going?”
“Across the lake?” Books suggested.
Chin on the top of the crate, Akstyr said, “I’m not hiking to the other side with this.”
“Just be glad we didn’t decide to forge coins.” Amaranthe pointed to the shoreline beneath the head of the dock. “We’ll hide in the shadows until they’re in the building.”
Before they had gone halfway, synchronized footfalls pounded the boards above them. Snow trickled through the cracks in several places.
They reached the shore as the footfalls faded. Amaranthe peered over the edge of the dock. A single man paced in front of the building. The rest had gone inside. Before long, enforcers would move their investigation outside, looking for trails. Her team had to move now, or chance being found later.
Only a few yards separated their dock from the neighboring one. If they stayed low and did not make any noise, maybe the enforcer guard would not see them.
“Slow and subtle,” she whispered, “we’re heading over there.”
Hugging the shoreline, Amaranthe eased toward the next dock. She resisted the urge to sprint—sudden movement was more likely to draw an unfriendly eye. No shouts arose from the cannery, and she made it to the protective cover of the dock.
She hunkered behind a piling and waited for the others to catch up. Between the ice and the weight of the crate, Books and Akstyr crossed ponderously.
Voices sounded on the street.
“Corporal, take your men and check the warehouses in the nearby docks,” someone said.
Amaranthe winced. Back up.
“Hurry,” she mouthed. She waved for Maldynado to help with the crate, even as she watched and hoped the enforcers on the street didn’t look down to the lake. With luck, the men searching the cannery would be content with the evidence they found and assume the building’s occupants had left hours before.
“Find their tracks,” an enforcer called from inside the cannery. “The fire barrels are still warm. They haven’t been gone long.”
So much for luck.
A chicken strutted down the dock alongside the cannery.
“Oh, good,” Maldynado said. “Isabel got out.”
Amaranthe envisioned the chicken hopping down to squawk cheerfully at them. Did other leaders have these kinds of problems?
“We better put a couple more docks behind us,” she whispered.
But, before they reached the far side of their current dock, two pairs of standard enforcer-issue boots skidded down the snowy bank and onto the ice. The owners, two men armed with repeating crossbows and swords, landed on the frozen lake and looked about.
“Uh oh,” Akstyr muttered.
Amaranthe inched forward. They ought to be able to subdue two men if they could surprise them.
Before she could close, the nearest enforcer spotted them. “Down here!” he called to the street.
She frowned. If several were up top, waiting to help, subduing these two was less likely.
“Drop your weapons and your...uh...chicken crate,” the younger of the two said, “and come out with your hands open, or it’ll be crossbow quarrels up the nose.”
Amaranthe’s eyebrow twitched—that wasn’t the line taught at the academy. She glanced back and nodded slightly to her men. She hoped the group had been working with her long enough to recognize it as meaning, “We can’t get caught with all these counterfeits so if the odds are in our favor smash these lads into the ice.”
“Very well,” she told the enforcers and stepped out.
If it had just been the two men, she would have led a charge, but as soon as she came out from under the dock, four enforcers on the street came into view. They also bore crossbows. A couple of familiar faces stared down the shafts—no one she ever worked with but men she had passed in the hallways at headquarters. Footsteps announced the arrival of two more enforcers on the dock above, bringing the total to eight. Eight versus her four. Wonderful.
The enforcers stirred with surprise as several seemed to recognize her. Weren’t expecting me, eh? They must have come for the money, probably traced Akstyr’s note to the area. Apparently no one had put her together with the counterfeiting scheme. Until now.
“Isn’t she the one with the death mark on her head?” someone asked.
The enforcers shifted their crossbows from the vague direction of Amaranthe’s party to dead center at her chest.
“Fire!” one of the men on the street shouted.
Amaranthe thought it was the order to shoot. She crouched, ready to throw herself into a defensive roll, but no quarrels launched from the crossbows. Instead, yells erupted from the cannery. Smoke roiled from the broken windows, and screams of pain followed.
“Help!” someone cried.
Four of the enforcers on the street sprinted toward the burning building, leaving only two above and two below to deal with Amaranthe and crew.
It was the best chance they would get.
She charged the distracted enforcers in front of her. Her heel struck ice under the snow, and she lost her footing. The charge turned into an ungraceful dive, and she tumbled lengthwise at the group. She collided with two pairs of legs. An enforcer crashed to the ice. The other flailed and tried to keep his balance, but Books bowled into him. Soon a jumble of thrashing bodies and limbs writhed about on the ice.
In the confused tangle, Amaranthe grabbed someone’s crossbow even as a hand latched onto her ankle. She kicked out and clipped an enforcer in the jaw. His head cracked ice, and he stilled.
Crossbow quarrels hammered the frozen lake. Maldynado and Akstyr charged up the snowy slope to get at the bowmen.
With the crossbow in hand, Amaranthe skittered away from the fray and got her feet beneath her
.
“Get back, Books,” she barked.
He obeyed, and the enforcer saw her crossbow. His hands opened and spread.
On the street above, Maldynado and Akstyr had flattened their opponents.
“Go help your comrades with the fire,” Amaranthe told the sole conscious enforcer. She twitched the crossbow for emphasis.
He looked at his inert partner and the two unmoving men on the street, nodded curtly, and scrambled across the ice toward the cannery.
Amaranthe strapped the crossbow to her back. “Books, help Maldynado with the crate. Akstyr, let’s grab the other crossbows. We’re going back to our first hideout.”
So loaded, they hastened inland. They ran between two buildings, through an alley, up the hill, and into the next block before Amaranthe found a vantage point to peer back along their trail. No one was following them. Flames ate at the cannery’s walls. A loud snap echoed across the lake, and the building’s roof collapsed. More destruction in her wake. She sighed as she led the men away from the scene.
Three blocks farther on, Sicarius fell in beside them.
“You missed the opportunity for daring heroics,” Maldynado told him.
Amaranthe knew better. That fire had not started by magic. And she suspected the cries for help that had come from the building had less to do with burning rafters than with a dark figure stalking the shadows.
“How many dead?” she asked grimly.
“Two or three,” Sicarius said. “It was meant primarily as a distraction. Most of the men made it out.”
He watched her as he spoke, no doubt wondering if she would yell at him again. Amaranthe could not. By now, she understood the ruthlessness of his methods and she was still using him. When people died, she could only blame herself. Besides, she was relieved he had come back at all. After reading that note, she had not been sure.
She wanted to ask him about Hollowcrest, about his ‘old job,’ why he’d returned to help, and if he was truly on her side or working toward some other agenda. But she could hardly do so, not without confessing her privacy-defying reading habits.
“Glad you came back,” was all she said.
The Emperor's Edge (a high fantasy mystery in an era of steam) Page 40
