Dark Currents (37 page)

“I didn’t want you to aggravate your injuries.” He guided her toward the back of the command tent.

“That’s considerate.”

“Yes.”

She almost laughed. It was as if he wanted her to know he was going out of his way to be thoughtful.

They stepped around a pair of gagged and unconscious men tied to a tree. Two officers and a woman—Sergeant Yara—were standing in front of the tent, gesturing expansively. The noise from the vehicles and the shouts about camp made it impossible to hear the discussion.

Another tent went down. Someone fired at the cab of a second stolen lorry, and metal clanged like a bell.

Maldynado, or maybe Akstyr was driving that one, veered out of camp and up the road, though not before flattening several crates of supplies.

“Are you sure killing them wouldn’t have annoyed them less?” Sicarius asked.

“Not entirely, no.”

Sergeant Yara took a step toward the chaos, as if she meant to lead the pursuit herself.

One of the officers stopped her with an outstretched hand. “I’ll take care of it. You stay here.”

“That’s one of our vehicles,” Yara said. “I can help.”

“It’s too dangerous for a woman.”

“I doubt the makarovi are the ones stealing our vehicles.”

“You shouldn’t even be up here,” the officer said. “Stay with Lieutenant Berkvar. Sergeant Betlor’s team should report in soon. Keep updating the map.” He jogged away.

Amaranthe squeezed Sicarius’s arm. This was probably the closest they would get to finding the sergeant alone. He left her to slip around the tent. Amaranthe moved around the opposite side, carefully choosing her steps through the churned mud.

“Too dangerous for a woman,” Yara grumbled. “I’m tired of hearing that. Do I look frail and incapable, LT?”

Sicarius chose that moment to grab the lieutenant in a headlock, his arm snaking around the man’s throat, cutting off air. He dragged the officer behind the tent.

Yara ripped a sword free, but Amaranthe closed in and poked her in the back with stiff fingers to mimic a pistol. Since her men were trashing the camp, she decided pulling an actual weapon would not help matters.

Yara glanced over her shoulder. “You!” Disgust curled her lip. Sicarius returned to the front of the tent, and she added, “And you!”

“Us,” Amaranthe agreed. “Inside, please.”

Not sure if others awaited within, she nudged Yara, encouraging her to lead the way. Fortunately, only cots and a map-strewn table occupied the tent.

“Sit, please.” Amaranthe pointed to a cot. “I need to talk, and it’d be appreciated if you’d listen.”

“What polite outlaws.” Yara pulled away from Amaranthe and spun, hand hovering near her sword.

Sicarius appeared at the sergeant’s side. He did not draw a weapon, but his presence convinced Yara to lower her hands. She did not sit down.

Amaranthe nodded for Sicarius to guard the entrance, then met Yara’s eyes and launched into her spiel. “We weren’t fast enough to save the soldiers, but we got the makarovi out of the dam and over the falls. You may be able to verify that if some of the corpses get washed up on the shore downriver with, er, interestingly placed puncture wounds, as if from a giant hook.”

Skepticism twisted Yara’s face, but Amaranthe hurried on before she could interrupt. “Also, my man, Books—Marl Mugdildor—single-handedly deactivated the contraption tainting the water. He’s a good person who doesn’t deserve a bounty on his head. I doubt the device left inside the dam on the pipe will be trouble without the main artifact, but, with the makarovi gone, it should be easier to destroy now. Books saved the city a lot of trouble. He deserves a pardon. And, if you’re later able to gather evidence that corroborates our story, we would appreciate it if you would inform any of your superiors or co-workers who might listen. Since the emperor is aware of you, a note sent to his office would also be appreciated.”

“Oh, really?” Yara jammed her fists against her hips. “Perhaps I could arrange a parade for you as well. Or commission a statue that we could put on display at the entrance to the pass? No, better, a giant carving of your team’s faces in the side of the mountain. How would that be?”

Amaranthe almost quipped that Maldynado would love Yara forever if she could arrange the mountain carving, but she suspected they did not have much time before someone returned to the tent.

“We need to know where the shaman’s hideout is,” she said. “He has Books.”

Her lack of response to the sarcastic tirade deflated the sergeant. Yara’s hands lowered, though she still glowered.

“Please,” Amaranthe said. “If you hate me and you hate Sicarius, fine, but Books has done nothing to harm the enforcers or the empire. The only one with reason to hate him is the one holding him prisoner, doing ancestors only know what to him. Books risked his life to destroy that artifact. To help the city and make your job easier.”

Yara sighed. “The northern-most of the abandoned Kaker Mines. Base of the mountains.”

“Thank you.” Amaranthe nodded. Time to play her last tile. “The shaman’s artifact is destroyed, but he’s not done attacking the city. He believes the empire responsible for the slaying of the Mangdorian royal family years ago, and he’ll not stop until he’s exacted revenge.” She could not yet know how much of that was true, but she had to worry the soldiers if she wanted them to help.

“We didn’t have anything to do with that.” Yara frowned at Amaranthe, then considered Sicarius, and her frown deepened. “Did we?”

Amaranthe had not meant to implicate Sicarius, and she had to smother a wince at the quickness with which Yara put together the pieces. She imagined his eyes boring into the back of her head. Oh, well. It was not as if he could have stuffed this secret back into the Imperial Intelligence files to lock it away; too many people already knew.

“It’s what the Mangdorians believe,” Amaranthe said. “That’s all that matters. If I were you, I’d make sure these soldiers get to those mines before it’s too late.”

“If you were me,” Yara said, “you never would have betrayed the city and killed your co-workers.”

Amaranthe gritted her teeth. She wanted to issue a biting retort, but if there was any hope whatsoever of Yara acting on these words, Amaranthe dared not irritate her more. “Don’t make the mistakes I did then. Warn the soldiers. Protect the city.”

She strode out, trusting Sicarius to guard her back.

B
ooks woke with a gasp, escaping some nightmare where he was falling—and suffocating. He lay on his back with cold darkness enveloping him. He blinked, trying to make out shapes, but his eyes failed to penetrate the blackness.

Memories hiccupped into his thoughts: the lake, the shaman, the artifact. He was alive, but was he truly in the dark or had he gone blind? Fear chilled him further. Maybe he had worked in the artifact’s blaze for too long.

“Easy,” he told himself. No panicking. Especially considering the numbness that had taken over his body in the lake was gone. “Definitely a positive development,” he muttered.

Either the shaman had healed him or the effects had worn off. The details did not matter. Figuring out where he was and getting back to the others—that mattered.

Cold seeped into his back from a rough, uneven floor. Stone. He rolled to his knees and landed in a puddle. A quick pat-down informed him the helmet and his tools were gone, though he still wore the diving suit.

He explored further. On three sides, dirt and rock walls rose to meet a low dirt and rock ceiling. Faint reverberations coursed through the stone, as if machinery labored somewhere in his underground prison. A different texture comprised the fourth wall of what he realized was his cell. Smooth and hard, it sent a buzz up his arm when he touched it. When he pressed harder, a stronger buzz coursed through him, making his hair stand on end. It reminded him of the power he had felt when he broke the artifact, and he decided not to risk hurling himself at it.

Books swept his foot along the floor, hoping to find something that could suffice as a latrine. No luck. A rusty bolt clattered across the ground. He found a few more scraps, but nothing larger than a hand-length scrap of twisted iron. It had a sharp edge, and he might have used it to file his way free if his captor had been considerate enough to put him in a cell with an iron gate instead of a magical barrier. He kept it on the chance the shaman might be foolish enough to come inside.

He pulled the top half of the diving suit down and was surprised when his movements did not bring pain. He pushed a sleeve up to check his wound. No fish tooth marks violated the flesh of his arm. The shaman had healed him. To what ends?

Books pushed the suit lower so he could relieve himself. At that moment, footsteps sounded to his left. A familiar white globe of light floated into view, illuminating a rough-hewn tunnel running past his cell. A rusty ore cart rail bisected the center of the passage.

He started to clamp things off, but a defiant thought curled his lip. Let the bastard find Books peeing on the floor of his hideout.

“What do you want me to do?” a female voice asked. Books’s eyes bulged. A
familiar
female voice.

“Just identify him.”

Two figures strode into sight behind the light globe. Books fumbled, hurrying to button himself in, though he feared she had already seen him in action. Heat flamed his cheeks. Why did these things happen to him? No villain would presume to walk in on
Sicarius
while he was peeing.

Vonsha and the shaman stopped before Books’s cell. She wore a dagger at her belt and carried a lantern. Her stance said “not a prisoner,” though it stung him to admit it. She did seem surprised to see him, so maybe she was not in on the larger scheme.

Something skittered along the floor behind them, a silver spider-shaped creature the size of a fist. A coin-sized circle on its front glowed red. As the spider passed below the shaman’s light, Books realized it was not a creature at all. The tiny “legs” moved mechanically, and metal, not skin, comprised the carapace. It disappeared into the darkness, heading deeper into the tunnel. Neither person facing Books reacted to it.

“You recognize him?” the shaman asked. His green eyes were calm instead of raging today. Lines creased the corners of those eyes, making him older than Books had first guessed. Fifty or sixty perhaps. Old enough to have mastered his craft.

Vonsha hesitated before answering. “He’s one of the party that came through the pass.”

She knew more than that. Was she protecting him? Maybe she truly liked him. But the fact that she was here with an enemy of the empire…

“I know
that
,” the shaman said. “Is he close to the assassin? Is he a murderer too?”

“I haven’t murdered anyone,” Books said, figuring he better speak for himself before he was condemned for more than wrecking the artifact. “I just came to thwart the threat to the city’s water supply.”

“Yes, we know about
that
,” the shaman said.

A tendon flexed along Vonsha’s neck, as if Books’s statement annoyed her equally. But she defended him. “He’s not a killer; he’s a history professor.”

“He’s working with that gutless butcher, Sicarius.”

“I know, Tarok,” Vonsha said. “But I don’t think Books would—”

Something clanked in the distance, and the shaman glanced the way the spider construct had gone.

“What are you
doing
with him?” Books mouthed to Vonsha.

She had time for nothing more than an apologetic shrug before the shaman’s attention returned to them.

“What are you to the assassin?” he asked Books. “Will he come for you?”

Of his own accord? Not likely. Amaranthe would, but Books did not know if she was alive. He dared not volunteer either piece of information. “I don’t know.”

“He’s the one who killed Yereft, too, isn’t he?”

“I don’t know who that is.” Books guessed it was the other shaman Amaranthe mentioned.

“Who is the Mangdorian who travels with you?”

“Nobody who’d be friends with someone like you. Why are you doing this? Attacking the empire?” Yes, there. Books ought to be asking questions. Amaranthe would have had this fellow’s story by now.

“Chief Yull was a friend,” the shaman said. “I’ve sought his killer for a long time, and now that I know who it is, he won’t escape me.”

Chief Yull? Books had a feeling Amaranthe had forgotten to tell him something crucial, but he could puzzle things together.

“You need to kill innocent people and make the whole city sick to get at one person?” Though Books was responding to the shaman, he watched Vonsha. She lifted her chin and stared back. Did she have a reason to want revenge on Sicarius too?

“I’m no killer,” the shaman—Tarok she had called him—said. “I simply make the artifacts. That’s the deal.” He hitched a shoulder. “They can be used for a number of purposes.”

“You knew what that device would do when you put it in the lake. Doesn’t your religion forbid you from hurting people?”

“
I’ve
not harmed anyone,” Tarok said.

“Your artifacts have.”

“Many people make devices that can be used for good or evil. You cannot blame the blacksmith when the swords he crafts are used to kill.”

“And can you also not blame the person who leads a pack of monsters into a dam to kill all the employees?” Books asked.

Tarok looked away, as if that particular part of the plot might not sit well with him. Books wished he knew how to use that information.

“Your people have killed thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of mine,” Tarok said. “You pushed us out of fertile valleys and into these inhospitable mountains. And that assassin…” The shaman’s calmness faded, and he gritted his teeth, glaring. “Do you know what manner of demon you travel with?”

Books did not answer. How could he? Sicarius was one person he could never defend, not on a question of morality.

“Tell me,” Books said instead.

While Tarok launched into a diatribe, Books nonchalantly leaned against the wall near the cell entrance. He checked up and down the tunnel, trying to see whatever device maintained his prison. Nothing on the far wall. He leaned his cheek closer to the barrier. The air crackled with energy. There. Less than a foot from the barrier, a small white box protruded from the wall on his side of the tunnel. Though it lacked the telltale glow of the device on the pipe in the dam, it did not appear like something Turgonian miners would have left behind.