Conspiracy (2 page)

Metal screeched as their swords came
together. She blocked him—barely. The power of his blow sent a
painful jolt up her arm, but she kept her weapon in place. If he
forced her arm wide, her torso would be exposed, an easy target.
Again, though, she was forced to back up, to give ground.

Sicarius didn’t offer her a chance to
recover or think. She could only react. Their swords came together,
a continuous peal of scrapes and clangs of metal that echoed off
the mountaintops. With reflexes honed by months of training,
Amaranthe blocked him again and again, even in the poor light, but
she could not gain an advantage. Worse, she knew he wasn’t moving
as quickly and unpredictably as he usually did, not even close—he
knew her skills and her style better than anyone, and he knew how
to put himself just out of reach. Usually, he’d stop and offer her
advice, but not tonight. Relentlessly, he drove her back.

Amaranthe dared not glance
over her shoulder to look for the edge of the car; that would be an
eternity during which he could—he
would
—strike.

Sweat streamed down her face and stung her
eyes. She couldn’t pause to wipe it away, not now. Amaranthe tried
to think of something she could do, a way to distract him, so she
could strike a blow, or at least earn an opportunity to take the
offensive, but she had sparred so often with him that he knew all
her tricks.

The cutlass dug into her ribs, and she
winced, jumping back and banging it away with her sword. Sicarius
had used the back of his blade, not the edge, but his point was
clear. It was hard to think up strategies when taking her focus
away from him and his weapon for a split second resulted in his
weapon slipping through her defenses.

The train headed into a curve around a rocky
hillside. The car trembled beneath Amaranthe’s feet. She kept her
balance, kept parrying his attacks, but she could tell from the
amount of roof behind Sicarius that she was getting close to the
edge. She had to try something.

The next time she parried a slash toward her
torso, she turned it into a riposte, feinting toward Sicarius’s
chest, then advancing half a step to strike at his thigh. She made
her attacks rapid—her muscles were weary now, relaxed, and she
could move faster than at the beginning, when tension had tightened
her limbs. Sicarius blocked her strikes easily, as she had assumed
he would, but he didn’t turn the attack back onto her immediately.
She sensed he wanted her to try something, so she followed her
thrusts with a slash toward his sword hand with the edge of her
blade. The hand wasn’t a fancy target, but it was closer and easier
to get to than the well-protected torso.

Sicarius evaded the attack, but he backed up
half a step. Finally. Amaranthe forced him to block three times,
each strike as fast as possible without sacrificing precision, and
she managed to get inside his arm. She angled her sword toward his
shoulder, lifting her front leg with extra emphasis, to show she
meant to lunge in and throw everything behind the attack. But she
slowed the blade, striking at half of her previous pace, hoping
that she’d set him up to expect speed, and that he would move to
block too soon. Then she would glide in over his arm and find her
target.

It might have worked against a lesser
opponent, but Sicarius saw through her ruse.

His cutlass slammed into her sword, sending
her arm wide, and she almost lost the blade altogether. Knowing she
couldn’t yank her arm back in quickly enough to block his next
attack, she skittered backward. Her foot landed halfway over the
edge of the car, and, with her momentum going that direction, her
heel slipped off.

Amaranthe’s sword flew from her hand. She
pitched backward. Fear stole her thoughts, and all she could think
to do was flail, to try and catch something, but there was nothing
but air around her.

A hand clamped onto her wrist. Sicarius
pulled her up and back onto the roof. He plucked her sword from the
air before it dropped away.

Amaranthe stumbled against him and clenched
her eyes shut. The image of her body being cut into pieces beneath
the great metal wheels of the train flashed through her mind. She
wiped sweat out of her eyes with a trembling hand and fought to
bring her breathing under control. More than exertion had her
panting.

After a long moment, she stepped away from
Sicarius. He extended her sword, hilt first.

“
No, no, I’m fine,”
Amaranthe said. “Thanks for asking.”

A normal sparring partner would have
apologized for nearly sending her plummeting to her death. Sicarius
never bothered with social niceties, though. She had never heard
words such as “thank you,” “you’re welcome,” “good morning,” or
“sorry I almost got you killed” come out of his mouth. He merely
stood there, waiting for her to accept her sword.

Amaranthe took it and sheathed it firmly,
letting him know she was done with train-top sparring matches for
the night.

“
You were thinking too
much,” Sicarius said.

“
I like to think. It gives
my brain something to do.”

“
Think to stay out of a
sword fight, not once you’re in it,” Sicarius said. “I drill you on
routines over and over, so they become an automatic part of your
unconscious memory.”

“
I haven’t noticed that I
can get through your defenses consciously
or
unconsciously.” Amaranthe waved
to the cutlass that he had sheathed in a scabbard on his back.
“You’re using an army blade, so I figured you’d be mimicking a
soldier, but no soldiers move like you.”

“
The emperor’s elite
bodyguard is extremely well trained,” Sicarius said.

“
You think I don’t know
that?”

Amaranthe sounded bitter and frustrated, and
she knew it. Taking a deep breath, she willed the feelings to drain
away. She would never beat Sicarius in a sword fight, not when he
had been trained to kill since birth. They practiced so that she
improved enough to beat other, lesser foes. She had to remember
that and be happy with the progress she made.

“
I’m hoping to come up with
a plan that involves taking them by surprise,” Amaranthe said, “not
fighting them on the roofs of moving trains. If we can’t get
Sespian out of his car without killing people...” She tucked
escaped strands of hair behind her ear, though the wind simply
whipped them free again. “Well, it’ll be hard to convince him we’re
good people who want to help the empire—help
him
.”

It’d been more than two months since Sespian
gave Basilard a secret note, asking to be kidnapped, and Amaranthe
still had no idea what had prompted him to choose her team for the
request. Did he realize that she had been wrongly accused of
plotting against him the winter before, and he wanted to get the
real story? Or had he simply been motivated by the fact that her
men were the best outlaws around and the logical ones to work with?
Or maybe Sespian was working with Forge to lay a trap for her and
her team. Though nobody in that coalition had attacked her directly
yet, the shadowy business entity had to be aware of—and annoyed
by—Amaranthe’s existence by now.

With the exertion past, her body was
cooling, and the chilly wind needled her damp skin. Amaranthe
climbed down the side of the car and slipped inside for its
protection.

When Sicarius joined her, she asked, “Where
are the others?”

“
Dead.”

“
Only for the purposes of
the training exercise, I assume.”

Sicarius pressed something into her hand.
The duck. “You should’ve stayed together or split the team into
pairs.”

“
You gave us four cars to
search, and there are four of us. It seemed logical.”

“
It is difficult to search
and watch one’s back at the same time,” Sicarius said.

“
I was only expecting booby
traps. I didn’t know
you
would be a player in the game.”

“
It’s not a game.” His tone
was cool and clipped.

Amaranthe sighed. The same
night Basilard had been receiving that note at the emperor’s big
dinner celebrating the winners of the Imperial Games, Sicarius had
taken her for a stroll in the Imperial Gardens where he had
surprised the words from her mouth by kissing her. Even though he’d
made it clear he wanted to wait until everything with Sespian was
resolved before pursing a romantic relationship with her, she’d
thought... Well, she’d thought it might have changed something,
that he’d relax more around her, maybe make a joke or even deign to
smile once in a while. But he’d been more controlled and aloof than
ever since reading Sespian’s note. Amaranthe hoped that had to do
with concern over the emperor—his
son
, a fact that nobody knew about
except her—and not because he’d realized the kiss had been a
mistake.

The wind had tugged his short hair in a
thousand directions, and her fingers twitched. She longed to brush
it into a semblance of neatness. Sicarius, however, did not look
like a man who wanted to be touched. He gazed out the door, into
the passing forest, his jaw tight, his eyes hard.

“
I’m sorry we couldn’t go
after him sooner,” Amaranthe said, feeling a need to break the
silence. Shortly after giving Basilard that note, Sespian had left
on a two-month trip around the empire to inspect the major military
stations along the borders and coasts. There was a precedent—most
emperors did such a trip once a decade—but Amaranthe wondered if
someone had wanted Sespian out of the capital for a while. Books
had spoken of an older woman who’d been there at the dinner with
Sespian, acting like a chaperone. Since then, Amaranthe had tasked
Books with researching Forge, trying to get names and addresses of
key members, but it was a far-flung group, and her team had yet to
pinpoint a leader. “I’m surprised you didn’t go that first week,”
Amaranthe added, “and try to sneak into the Imperial Barracks
yourself, to see if you could get him without our help.”

Sicarius’s eyes shifted toward her, and
something lurked in their depths. Wryness? Chagrin? It was so hard
to tell with him.

“
Or did you?” Amaranthe
asked.

“
Wards.”

“
What?”

“
A new addition to the
Barracks.”

Amaranthe arched her eyebrows. “Magic?”

The Imperial Barracks was not only the
centuries-old building atop Arakan Hill where the emperor and his
staff slept; it was also the headquarters for those that ran the
satrapy and managed the affairs of Turgonia itself. Hundreds of
people worked there. To imagine magic being used openly... magic in
an empire that killed anyone suspected of employing it and, at the
same time, denied its existence...

“
It’s not apparent to
anyone who hasn’t been trained to be sensitive to the Science,”
Sicarius said, perhaps guessing her thoughts. “Even then, it’s well
hidden.” He flexed his hand, as if in the memory of some
pain.

“
I’m sorry.”

Amaranthe lifted her own
hand out of an urge to grasp his and offer some comfort, but she
stopped before touching him. Maybe he wouldn’t appreciate it. She’d
known him for almost nine months now, and nothing she had learned
in that time suggested he found human touch desirable. Amaranthe
let her hand drop with an inward sigh. She
did
think too much.

“
We’ll get him, Sicarius.”
She clasped her hands behind her back and settled for standing
side-by-side with him, gazing out into the night. “We’ll get him,
and we’ll help him with Forge. Whether he thinks he wants our help
or not.”

Sicarius said nothing. Amaranthe hoped it
wasn’t only in her mind that he appreciated her efforts.

* * * * *

Akstyr leaned against the wall of the rail
car, his head brushing the metal roof. He sat on eight feet of
greenhouse kits with his book open in his lap, though he was
struggling to concentrate on it. His lamp wobbled on his pack,
threatening to tip over with every clickety-clack of the train.
That was plenty distracting, but it was the thoughts bumping around
in his head like drunken soldiers that made reading hard.

Across the way, Books didn’t seem to be
having any trouble skimming his newspaper and scribbling notes in a
journal. Farther back in the car, Maldynado wasn’t having any
trouble napping—as the obnoxious snores proved. But those two
didn’t have anything to worry about. They hadn’t been plotting with
Basilard over the summer, thinking up ways to get Sicarius killed
to collect on that bounty.

A trapdoor in the roof scraped open.
Greenhouse frames and crates of glass covered the entire floor of
the car, reaching to the ceiling in many places, and the only way
in or out was through that door.

Basilard dropped inside, followed by
Sicarius.

Akstyr stared at the pages
of his book. After being the one to bring up the kill-Sicarius
idea, Basilard had decided he didn’t want to do it after all.
Akstyr didn’t figure Basilard had said anything to Sicarius—or
Akstyr would have had a dagger shoved down his throat by now—but
the simple matter of Basilard having that knowledge made Akstyr
nervous. What if Basilard let something slip eventually? What if
Sicarius figured it out on his own? Even if Akstyr hadn’t done
anything, he’d been
thinking
of doing something, and Sicarius seemed the type
to kill a man for having a notion against him.