Deadly Games (40 page)

Grimly, Amaranthe fired her harpoon launcher.
They couldn’t let him run off and gather reinforcements.

The projectile zipped down the corridor and
sliced into the man’s shoulder before he disappeared around the
corner. He stumbled and landed belly-first on the deck. His pistol
flew free and clanged against the bulkhead, going off with an
echoing bang.

Amaranthe winced at the noise.

Maldynado ran past her and checked the
corridors leading from the intersection. “No one else. Yet.”

The guard tried to crawl away. Maldynado
stepped on his arm to pin him. The man scrabbled for a knife at his
belt, but Maldynado took it from him easily.

“Want me to...?” He made a throat-slashing
motion.

Amaranthe sighed. The poison should kill the
man in a couple of minutes, but she had no idea if that would be a
more merciful end than a dagger to the throat.

The man twisted his neck to look at her. Fear
haunted his eyes.

“Sorry,” Amaranthe said quietly.

A part of her was tempted to ask Akstyr if he
could do anything to keep the man from dying, but there was no
time. Someone would come to investigate that shot.

“Leave him,” Amaranthe told Maldynado. “After
that entrance, I’m sure the whole vessel knows we’re here.”

She waved for Merva to come forward. The
younger woman gave her the same wary look Amaranthe had seen so
many people use on Sicarius. Having such an expression directed at
her made her uncomfortable. I’m not a monster, she wanted to say.
I’m just trying to do the right thing....

“Can you take us to the navigation area?” she
said instead. Finding the captain—or whoever was in charge of this
place—would be better than wandering around randomly. If they found
someone important, perhaps they could use him or her as a hostage
and avoid more bloodshed.

“I think it’s on the second floor,” Merva
whispered.

They hid the harpoon launchers in the
transition chamber, drew their swords, and headed away from the
fallen guard. They passed numerous closed hatches and ducked under
and around knots of pipes. Another four-way intersection came into
view ahead of them, and, beyond it, a ladder rose to a second
level. Voices drifted from the corridor to the left of the
intersection. Agitated voices.

Amaranthe lifted a hand for silence and
passed Merva. As if by magic, the clomps of her men’s heavy boots
softened to imperceptible footfalls. She glanced back, intending to
sign an order for someone to watch their hindquarters, but Books
was already doing it. He stalked backwards, his sword at the
ready.

At the intersection, Amaranthe poked an eye
around the corner. She almost yanked her head right back. Not ten
feet away, six white-jacketed men and women stood before a closed
hatch marking the end of the corridor. Only the fact that all their
heads were turned away from the intersection kept her there for a
longer look.

Their hair ranged from blond to black,
straight to wiry and tightly curled. Representatives from several
nations and, Amaranthe feared, practitioners as well.

They were gesticulating and talking, more
than one at a time with frequent, emphatic points at the hatch.
Were her men inside? Or other escaped prisoners?

Symbols were etched in a plate above the
doorway. Amaranthe waved for Books to take her spot and decipher
the language.

Engine room
, he signed after a
peek.

Amaranthe fingered the hilt of her sword, but
she did not want to attack practitioners. They would have far more
tricks than Turgonian guards. Besides, she did not know if what lay
behind the hatch was something that should concern her or not.

Let’s sneak past,
Amaranthe signed,
then put a finger to her lips and pointed to the ladder for Merva’s
sake.

She waited until all of the practitioners’
heads were turned and eased through the intersection, figuring
sudden movement would be more likely to draw someone’s eye.

A clang sounded down the corridor behind
Books. Guards searching the vessel? The practitioners were too
engrossed in their argument to notice.

Amaranthe waved for Maldynado and the others
to follow, one at a time. A bead of moisture slithered down her
ribcage. More than nerves made her sweat; now that they had left
the icy water, the suit kept her far warmer than she needed.

Akstyr slipped across without incident.
Good.

Out of habit, Amaranthe lifted a finger to
her mouth to nibble on a nail, but the gloves stopped her. Books
crossed, and Merva stepped into the intersection. Amaranthe curled
her fingers into a fist. It was working. Everyone would—

A thunderous boom erupted, and the corridor
heaved.

Amaranthe stumbled back and threw an arm out,
trying to keep herself from falling, but the smooth walls offered
no hand holds, and the suit affected her balance. She hit the
floor, her helmet flying from her fingers. It clanked down the
corridor, bouncing as it went, and she cursed under her breath.

Quakes rattled the fortress. Half of her team
had fallen to the floor as well, making her glad for her decision
to leave the harpoon launchers behind; someone might have cut
himself on a poisoned blade.

Curses in foreign languages—
multiple
foreign languages—spilled from the adjoining corridor.

Amaranthe rolled onto her knees and grabbed
her helmet. She waved and pointed toward the ladder, silently
urging her team to hurry. She hoped the commotion had kept the
practitioners from hearing them.

Merva and the men filed up the ladder.
Amaranthe went last, her oversized boots making the ascent
awkward.

Clomps sounded in the corridor she was
leaving. The practitioners? No, Turgonian words punctuated the
footfalls. Those were guards coming.

Ignoring the awkward boots, Amaranthe flew up
the last few rungs. She rolled into the corridor above just as a
man below demanded, “Have you seen the intruders?”

Her first ludicrous thought was that he was
talking to her, but the voice was not that close. The guards had to
be at the intersection. She was tempted to stick around to listen
to the conversation, and see if she could find out what was going
on in the engine room, but those men would soon move on with their
hunt.

At the top of the ladder, another
hatch-filled metal corridor stretched.

“Which way to navigation?” Amaranthe
whispered.

Merva spread her hands, palms up.

“That way.” Maldynado pointed down one
corridor. “Or that way.” He pointed the other direction.

“Twit,” Books said.

Amaranthe chose a direction at random. The
passage angled to the left, and a well-lit chamber opened up at the
end. Something shimmered in the air before it. Some sort of magical
hatch?

Books pointed to a plaque above the doorway.
“Navigation.”

Amaranthe slowed as they approached. She did
not see anyone inside yet, but such an important station should be
manned.

Another boom rocked the fortress, though not
as fiercely as the first, and she remained upright this time.

What is that?
she signed to Books.
Some kind of attack from the marine ship?

Charges dropped in a waterproof
container?
he suggested.

Amaranthe inched closer to the chamber. The
far wall held an eight-foot-wide oblong porthole above a console
filled with levers, gauges, and a head-sized illuminated dome.
Water pressed against the porthole, and an orange glow from the
lights outside bathed the silt and rock of the lake floor. A school
of the translucent guard fish flitted past.

One man walked into view from the side, and a
second rose out of a high-backed chair that had hidden him from
sight. They leaned over the controls and argued in their own
language. One pointed at the porthole. Muskets leaned against the
console between them.

Amaranthe used their distraction to inch
closer, though she was careful not to touch the shimmering field.
Energy crackled in the air and nipped at her cheeks.

On a side wall, an open weapons locker held
cutlasses and the empty musket slots. A row of yellow vials hung in
a small rack. If those contained the same concoction that had
rendered so many people unconscious, they might prove useful.

The voices of the two men grew more agitated.
Outside the porthole, a metallic box floated into view. It couldn’t
be heavy since it drifted down instead of plummeting. Amaranthe
squinted, trying to decipher a black stamp on the box. An oil can
over crossed swords, the symbol representing the army’s engineering
division.

Books grabbed her arm and tried to pull her
further back into the corridor, but too many others occupied the
space. Before they could organize a retreat, the metallic box
exploded with a blinding flash.

The force hurled her backward. Someone caught
her, but they tumbled to the deck in a tangle of limbs anyway.

In the chamber, the navigators also toppled,
and their muskets clattered to the floor. One man lunged to his
feet and pointed at the porthole, curses flowing from his lips. At
least, Amaranthe assumed they were curses. Nobody said happy things
in that tone of voice.

She spotted the reason for their ire: a
hairline crack streaked across the porthole glass.

Amaranthe climbed off of Books, and he
touched her arm, nodding for them to retreat to speak. The rest of
the group followed.

“You know what they’re saying?” she whispered
when they had backed to the ladder. Voices still floated up from
below, but she could not tell if any belonged to the guards
searching for them.

“They’re cursing the Turgonian devils outside
and the blond devil inside,” Books whispered.

Blond. That
had
to be Sicarius.

“They want to move this vessel,” Books went
on, “but he’s killed the engineers and barricaded himself in the
engine room.”

Those
were
her men inside, giving
those practitioners trouble. But if they were trapped, they needed
her help. Amaranthe rubbed sweat from her brow and ignored an urge
to claw off the stifling suit. They might need to flee outside
again.

“All right,” Amaranthe said, “here’s the
plan: you and Akstyr take Merva and find the rest of the athletes.
Maldynado and I will get inside navigation and deal with those
two.” And maybe the practitioners in front of the engine room, too,
if she could pilfer a couple of those vials.

Books lifted a finger, as if he meant to
object—or perhaps warn her of the lack of prudence in her
scheme—but shouts came from the level below, and he dropped his
hand. “Very well.”

“One more question,” Amaranthe said. “I know
these helmets are waterproof. Are they air-proof, too? If one chose
to wear them in here?”

Books’s brow crinkled. “I imagine they’d have
to be. So long as you don’t run out of the air in your dedicated
supply, you should be fine.” He nodded to the tank on her back.

“Thanks.” Amaranthe waved for him to take off
with the others. “Be careful.”

Books, Akstyr, and Merva left, leaving
Amaranthe and Maldynado alone to face the practitioners. She took a
deep breath and pointed toward the navigation room. “I’m going to
distract those two while you grab a couple of the yellow vials in
the weapons locker, got it?”

“Got it, boss.”

Amaranthe returned to the barrier and knocked
on the wall. The two men, who had been arguing over the crack,
whirled and gaped. She spoke quickly, wanting to head off any
lunges for weapons—or magical attacks.

“Greetings. It looks like you gentlemen could
use some help. Do you speak Turgonian?”

“Help!” one man yelled. He wore spectacles
that rested so low on his nose that Amaranthe could not imagine
them offering anything more than an enhanced view of his own
pores.

“Was that a question,” Amaranthe asked, “or a
call for assistance?”

“Are you with
them
?” He stabbed a
finger toward the ceiling with such vigor that his spectacles fell
the rest of the way off his nose. He caught them with a growl and
thrust the frames back over his ears.

The second man, a rangy fellow with pale hair
combed over a balding pate, watched the exchange in silence. Long,
bony fingers flexed at his side, as if he might be thinking of
hurling some spell at Amaranthe.

“With the marines?” she asked, her eyes wide.
“No, they want us dead. I’m Amaranthe Lokdon. I run The Emperor’s
Edge mercenary outfit. Haven’t you heard of us?”

The two men exchanged blank looks. That was
fine. As long as they weren’t thinking of attacking her.

“I assumed you had,” Amaranthe said, “because
you kidnapped two of my men.”

“Oh,” Spectacles growled. “Sicarius. You run
with his group?”

“He runs with
my
group.” Amaranthe
turned to Maldynado. “I make all the decisions and do all the
planning. Why is nobody ever aware of that?” She hoped her whining
made her sound innocuous, like someone who wasn’t a threat, like
someone who could be invited in to chat further....

“Because you’re friendly and nice, and
he’s...someone who likes to kill people who are friendly and nice?”
Maldynado suggested.

“That must be it.” Amaranthe faced the
practitioners again, empty hands spread. “Gentlemen, it looks like
you’re in a dungeon with few prospects for escape. Am I correct in
deducing that my men are making trouble in your engine room?”

“We’re taking care of them,” Spectacles
said.

Another boom rattled the fortress. The men’s
wary eyes lifted toward the ceiling. If the marines kept dropping
charges, one was bound to land on top of the vessel eventually.

“I could get them to walk out right now,”
Amaranthe said, “and you people could amble in, fix up those
engines, and escape this lake before the marines get lucky.”