“He’ll be working, I assure you,” Books said.
Maldynado couldn’t fathom why Books felt that certainty about Akstyr, but only shrugged as Books and Basilard led Brynia out.
He searched the suite and found the egg-shaped artifact in a bedside table drawer. At least it hadn’t gone into the river with the shaman, though as Maldynado gazed at it, with his sister-in-law’s dead body on the floor nearby, he could only wonder if their troubles would abate… or if they had simply taken on a pile of new ones.
• • •
Amaranthe jogged along the muddy path at a speed she’d usually be able to maintain for hours. Now, after ten minutes, the pace was taxing her sorely, thanks to the days of sleepless nights and little food. The torture probably hadn’t helped her constitution either. Fronds whipped at her unprotected body, roots snatched at her bare feet, and she found herself wishing for a way to keep certain appendages from bouncing. She wondered if men had as much trouble running nude.
“That’s right, girl,” Amaranthe huffed to herself. “Concentrate on the important things.”
Branches snapped and rattled behind her. Only the copses of cypress trees and the denseness of the undergrowth had kept her pursuers from spotting her thus far. At least, Amaranthe assumed they hadn’t spotted her, as no bullets had whizzed through the humid air in her direction. The men didn’t seem to be having any trouble following her though. And why would they? Her bare toes left distinct marks in the mud, and there was nothing she could do about it, not if she wanted to keep the path in sight. In the dense, tree-filled marsh, with water forcing numerous turns in the route, she might never find the trail again if she left it.
She longed for night, and the possibilities it offered for hiding, but the sky had grown brighter since she left the
Behemoth
. The start of a new day was upon her. Great.
A crack thundered through the air, silencing birds and insects.
Instinctively, Amaranthe ducked, though the bullet had already pounded into a tree a few steps to her right. Another shot rang out as she sprinted around a bend, hoping the trail ahead would offer copious options for cover. Instead, a pond stretched to the left, and the trees gave way to a field of low vegetation to her right. If she’d possessed the breath for it, she would have cursed. She’d never make it into cover on the far side of the clearing, not with this straight stretch where she’d be in the open.
The pond was about fifty meters across with lilies lining the shallows and thick vegetation crowding the opposite shore. When Amaranthe was in her best shape, she could swim fifty meters under water without coming up for air. She was a long way from her best shape, but she had no other options.
Without breaking stride, she leaped into the shallows. She pointed her toes to slip into the water as quietly as she could and waded out, trying not to make a splash. But, knowing her pursuers would round the bend in seconds, she could only be so careful. Fighting mud that sucked at her feet, she pushed through the shallows until the water kissed her thighs, then took a deep breath and dove.
Cloudy brown water closed in from all sides, leaving little visibility. Before she’d swum more than a few meters, Amaranthe ran into an underwater log. Slick, algae-smeared branches thrust out at her, thwarting her attempts to maneuver around the obstacle. Careful to keep her back from breaching the surface, she finally bypassed it, but painful seconds—and stored air—had passed.
Hands outstretched, Amaranthe groped her way farther into the pond. Fish brushed her bare skin. Remembering the snake, she hoped she didn’t run into anything more inimical. And she hoped she was swimming in a straight line. And, as long as she was hoping for all that, she added a desire to see Pike and his men run past the pond without noticing that the barefoot prints on the trail had disappeared.
Before long, her lungs burned for air. Amaranthe doubted she’d crossed more than a third of the pond. She bumped into another obstacle, a rock this time, and circled it. On the other side, she paused. Maybe it protruded from the surface and would offer cover. She eased her way to the top, staying close enough to kiss the rock. Though her lungs ached, she kept herself from bursting above the surface and taking a great gasp. Instead, she tilted her head back, lifting only her lips above the water. She drew a couple of long, careful breaths. A lily pad floated across her face. Surprised, she inhaled water, nearly choking. She forced herself to drop back down and return to the submerged swim.
Farther out in the pond, the deeper water made for easier going. When she reached the shallows on the other side, she parted two lilies and came up between them, letting no more than her eyes ease above the surface. She hadn’t swum in a straight line, and it took her a few seconds to find the bank she’d left.
The clearing she’d left lay empty. Grateful to those men’s unobservant ancestors, Amaranthe lifted her head far enough to take a breath.
Pike stepped out from behind a tree at the end of the clearing, a rifle raised.
Amaranthe tried to dive back under, but it was too late. The gun fired, and pain blasted the side of her head.
The blow spun her around—she was lucky it hadn’t taken her head off—and she gave up hiding in favor of sprinting. She lunged out of the water and into the undergrowth hedging the pond. Her foot caught on a root, and she sprawled to the ground. The fall might have saved her life, for another shot cracked. She didn’t hear what it hit and didn’t care. So long as it wasn’t her.
Amaranthe crawled through the foliage, not lifting her head above the fronds. Another shot came. She didn’t know if it was Pike, taking advantage of the rifle’s repeating mechanism, or if more soldiers had joined him. She veered to the right, thinking he might expect her to flee straight away from the pond, and scrambled laterally to the bank, trying not to rustle branches, lest he see twitching leaves from across the water.
Blood trickled down the side of her face and dripped from her chin. Pike’s shot may not have caught her full-on, but it’d been enough to add another wound to those already plaguing her.
A snap sounded ahead of her. Amaranthe froze. Emperor’s warts, Pike must have known where she’d gone from the beginning and ordered his men to circle around the pond.
Nestled between two leafy shrubs, she drew her feet under her. She was tempted to sprint blindly into the trees and hope for the best, but if these were indeed soldiers, they’d know what they were doing. They’d know how to spring a trap. Even now, she had a sense of a noose tightening.
Amaranthe clenched her teeth. She was
not
going back to that table. She might be naked, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t take down a foe.
Sicarius
wouldn’t run from these men. He’d pick them off one at a time. She told herself that she could do the same.
After a few deep breaths with which she tried to will the tension out of her muscles, Amaranthe eased toward the noise she’d heard. She parted a few fronds and found herself staring at a beach overlooking an inlet in the pond. She expected a soldier to be crouched there, or perhaps in the nearby reeds, but she didn’t see anyone. Then her eye caught movement next to a log. An alligator ambled out of the undergrowth and slipped into the muddy water. The great beast had to be more than ten feet from nose to tail. Amaranthe gulped at the realization that such creatures lived in the swamp. Did they eat people? She wasn’t sure. Either way, she was glad she hadn’t encountered one on her swim.
A crunch sounded behind her.
Amaranthe turned in time to spot a man’s hat above a nearby bush. He was moving slowly, using his rifle to part the reeds and search for her. She dropped to her belly and wriggled beneath a briar bush comprised of a tangle of dense vines and small white flowers that emitted a putrid scent. Nestled amongst the leaf litter, she waited for the soldier to draw near.
Moments passed. Water—or maybe that was sweat—slithered down her spine. A black boot came into sight. It stepped over a bulging root and came down lightly, toe first. The soldier must suspect his prey hid nearby. Amaranthe resisted the urge to squirm deeper under cover. She dared not shake the briar bush now.
The boot drew even with her spot, and a second one joined it. Amaranthe pressed her palms into the moist earth, summoning what energy she could, hoping to spring as soon as the man passed.
He stopped. Amaranthe’s heart thundered against her ribs, trying to batter them into the soil. Maybe her legs were sticking out. Maybe he’d seen her tracks. Maybe—
The man continued past.
Amaranthe let him draw another two paces away, then scrambled from beneath the bush, lunged to her feet, and jumped, all in one motion. She landed on his back, one arm snaking around his neck at the same time as her other darted to his waist, snatching a knife housed on his belt. The man tried to twist and smash the butt of his rifle into her head. Amaranthe whipped the blade up to his throat first. She let it bite into his flesh, so he’d know the threat to his life was serious.
“Drop your rifle,” Amaranthe whispered in his ear.
The soldier’s head came up, and he didn’t obey. Maybe he didn’t like taking orders from a woman. Too bad. She pressed the blade in deeper. A rivulet of blood flowed down the steel edge. Under normal circumstances, she
wouldn’t
follow through with the threat, but she didn’t see how she could hope to escape if she didn’t eliminate her pursuers. Though the practical part of her mind thought that, she couldn’t bring herself to slice the man’s throat.
“Drop it,” Amaranthe said, trying to frost the words with iciness that would make Sicarius proud.
This time, the man complied. He tossed his rifle into the foliage where it clattered against a branch and rattled leaves. Amaranthe growled, knowing he’d done that on purpose, hoping noise would alert his comrades. Already, she felt vulnerable with her back to the swamp and no friendly eyes to watch it.
“What are you going to do, girl?” the man asked. “Sit there, with your legs wrapped around me all day? If you’d drop the knife, I wouldn’t mind breasts smashed into my back, but—”
The only warning they had was a soft rustle from ahead. A split second later, the alligator reared out of the reeds, twisting its body to snap its maw around the man’s thigh. With a powerful yank, the creature tore Amaranthe’s prisoner away from her.
She let go and scrambled backward. The soldier screamed as the alligator dragged him along the beach and into the water. It happened so quickly she couldn’t have helped him if she’d wanted to. One second, he was twisting and clawing at the ground, trying to find a way to pull himself free, and the next he disappeared beneath the surface. Water churned, then grew still, with only a few air bubbles floating to the surface to mark his passage.
“That answers my question,” Amaranthe whispered. “Yes, alligators eat people.”
Behind her, men thrashed through the undergrowth, pushing their way toward her location. Amaranthe grabbed the rifle and knife, and ran into the brush. Maybe she’d get lucky, and her pursuers would think the man had simply encountered the alligator without running into her. She doubted it.
D
awn had come, though the fog shrouding the river made it seem like night still. Maldynado hoped the passengers all slept in, though he doubted that likely. Numerous people had heard that gunfight, and he expected that rumors were already flying about the steamboat. The officers had to be alerted. As he headed down to check on Akstyr, Maldynado could only hope Sespian had spoken to the captain and that the meeting had gone well.
On the hurricane deck outside of engineering, Maldynado slowed down, a hand going to his pistol. Someone’s legs were sticking out of the boiler room doorway.
Footsteps sounded behind Maldynado. He spun around. A balding man with a nightshirt flapping about his ankles charged toward him, a homemade spear raised above his shoulder. Startled—and weary from being up all night—Maldynado barely managed to jump out of the way. He grabbed the spear and used his foe’s momentum to fling him in a circle. The man dropped the weapon and caught himself on the wall. Maldynado snatched the spear and used it to force the man back to the railing. Though he felt bad about attacking someone in a nightshirt,
he
hadn’t started the brawl. He curled his lips into a snarl and raised the spear, as if he meant to run the man through. The would-be warrior cursed and flung himself into the river of his own accord.
Maldynado examined the “spear” more closely. It appeared to have been made from the frame of a lounge chair.
“You still have a problem,” came Akstyr’s strained voice from the doorway. He stood on the threshold, straddling the downed figure while thrusting one of his hands in the direction of a lifeboat.
A second man crouched there, this one wearing more clothing and carrying a better weapon—a pistol. The muzzle pointed in Maldynado’s direction. He gulped, glad that Akstyr was somehow holding the man in place.
“Take care of it, would you?” Akstyr asked. “I’m tired and not as good at this as usual.”
“Right.” Maldynado eased out of the line of fire before angling toward the frozen figure. He’d gotten used to Akstyr’s abilities—sort of—but it was creepy seeing a person stuck in tableau like that, and who knew if the man might throw off whatever shackles held him for long enough to get off a shot?
Gingerly, Maldynado plucked the pistol out of the frozen hand. He tossed it overboard, then hoisted the man after. “Let him go so he can swim.”
Akstyr already had. The man sputtered and splashed before the fog swallowed him from view.
“Been having an eventful time on stoker duty?” Maldynado asked.
“You got that right,” Akstyr growled. Together they tossed the unconscious man overboard too. He woke when he hit the water, sending a stream of curses across the river. “Two security men came running down to protect the engine room on account of passels of highwaymen over-running the steamboat. Supposedly they’re led by an impostor impersonating the emperor and shooting up the passengers because they mean to rob everyone.” Akstyr crossed his arms. “You know anything about that?”