He crouched beside the panel, staying out of sight of anyone who might be inside, and waited for Amaranthe to join him. “Plan?”
She knelt at his side. “You have one? Excellent. Please share.”
He gazed back without comment. Right, coming up with crazy schemes was her idea.
Under the stage, shadows danced on crates and walls as enforcers with lanterns moved about. Voices drifted out.
“…too much junk.”
“…need to search…”
“…where?”
“ We better do something about those enforcers,” Amaranthe whispered. “And move those weapons. I don’t know how or where, but too many people are searching in this area. Books will probably need them elsewhere anyway, if he’s going to seal them in cement.” She winced, wishing she’d thought of that earlier. She and Sicarius could have been down here, moving the weapons, before the enforcers started sniffing about. Or they could have tried. She had no idea how the circus troupe had gotten them tucked in that hole in the first place. They’d have to move a lot of the crates around the grate to angle them out, and then it’d take two people to carry each rocket. There had been ten or twelve of them. She couldn’t see her and Sicarius moving them alone, not without a lot of uninterrupted time. She needed the others back. But even if she had them… How would they amble through the steamboat toting glowing yellow rockets without anyone noticing? In the empire, carrying anything that glowed, even a key fob, could earn one a crossbow bolt in the chest.
Sicarius was watching her think. Amaranthe tried to wipe the concern off her face.
“ We’ll figure it out,” she said. “Enforcers first.”
He drew a knife and slipped through the square entrance. When Amaranthe joined him, he whispered, “Guard the door. Once they realize I’m here, they may try to escape.”
Only as he was disappearing into the darkness between two piles of gear did Amaranthe realize she hadn’t specifically told him not to kill anyone. Yelling after him now would only alert the enforcers. She thought about scrambling after him, but set her jaw and stayed put. Unless he had something to do with the missing Forge ladies, Sicarius hadn’t killed, or even lastingly harmed, anyone since his escape from Forge’s underwater hideout. Amaranthe suspected those women had disappeared not because of Sicarius-or nosy maids-but because they’d realized they were sharing a steamboat with the deadly weapons they’d ordered their expendable employees to pick up.
Amaranthe nodded and settled in to wait by the entrance. The more she thought about it, the more certain she grew that Sicarius wouldn’t strike to kill unless he were trapped and overwhelmed. Even up on the roof, his first reaction had been to hide from the enforcers, rather than taking them down. Only when she’d suggested costumes had he gone after the two men, and his efficient attack hadn’t spilled blood. His normal logic would have been to kill the men, rather than leave them bound and gagged where they could be discovered or free themselves. But he hadn’t mentioned it. Amaranthe smiled to herself. She didn’t know if it was for her sake-he’d known how she felt about leaving bodies in their wake for a long time but had done so anyway-or because Sespian was traveling with him now, rather than standing vulnerably in Forge’s line of fire. It didn’t matter.
Something thunked nearby. From her spot beside the trapdoor, Amaranthe couldn’t see anything other than a few feet of wall and a curtain, but she could tell someone had entered the dining hall. She eased her dagger out and shifted deeper into the shadows.
“…seen Rokkov and Ganz yet?” a man asked.
“ No, those worthless slag heaps are dawdling somewhere, making us do all the work.”
Two sets of footsteps drew closer to the stage. Already crouching, Amaranthe leaned forward on the balls of her feet, ready to spring. A few feet away, clothing rustled. Someone grunted.
“ Well-fed bastard,” the second man growled, thumping against the side of the stage.
Oh. Amaranthe relaxed an iota. The second body, of course. These were the men assigned to carry the dead off the boat. They probably wouldn’t look under the stage.
“ Be respectful, Private. That’s one of our brethren, even if he’s from another district.”
“ I’d be more respectful if he and his mate had left a note telling us what they were doing down there,” the grumpy enforcer said. He raised his voice to holler, “Sarge?”
Amaranthe tensed again. Was he addressing someone on the deck outside? Or one of the men searching under the stage? And if the latter, what if Sicarius had already taken him down? Since she’d gone in, she hadn’t heard a noise aside from the scraping of crates being pushed about, but Sicarius could have rendered half of the search team unconscious by now.
“ What?” came a muffled call from the far side of the stage.
Amaranthe let out a soft exhale.
“ What d’you want us to do after we take this last body into town?”
“ See if you can find blueprints for the steamboat,” the sergeant called back. “We haven’t found a cursed thing down here, but something poisoned those men.”
Amaranthe swore to herself. If Sicarius had learned about the below-deck storage compartment in a few seconds, it wouldn’t take the enforcers much longer.
“ Slagging Sicarius, that’s who,” the grumpy enforcer said.
“ Probably so, but why?” the sergeant responded.
Sicarius had been right. He didn’t have to do anything to get blamed for nearby mayhem. Would people ever be able to get past that?
“ He needs a reason?” Grumpy asked.
“ To crawl around beneath a stage, I’d say so. Get going, Private. Finish up and tell me what those blueprints say.”
“ Yes, Sarge.”
More grunts sounded as the enforcers toted the dead man away. Sicarius had probably taken down everyone except the sergeant during the conversation. That was good, Amaranthe supposed, but when a half squad of enforcers failed to come out from underneath the stage, someone was going to figure out what was going on. She and Sicarius needed to find a way to move those weapons fast, before anyone got a look at that schematic. Or, maybe she should have attacked those two men, to keep them from leaving the dining hall.
She poked her head through the trapdoor. Too late. They were gone. She doubted she could have knocked them out with Sicarius’s quick efficiency anyway. More likely, someone would have gotten a shout out, and she’d have given away her position sooner rather than later.
“ What a nice relaxing trip upriver this has turned out to be,” Amaranthe muttered.
Someone touched her shoulder.
“ Got them all?” she whispered, trusting it’d be Sicarius-an enforcer would have clubbed her shoulder. Or head.
“ They’re all tied in the back,” Sicarius said.
“ I don’t suppose you’ve found any other ways out of here?”
“ Not unless the storage area can be accessed from elsewhere. None of us crawled below to check.”
“ Let’s do that because we may have visitors soon.” Amaranthe summarized the conversation she’d overheard. “If we’re going to move those weapons, it’ll have to be now.”
Sicarius led her through the maze of gear and boxes, including a jaunt along the back wall, where he’d wedged four enforcers into a nook between large crates that brushed the stage’s wooden support beams. One man lacked a uniform jacket-it’d been removed and cut into strips for gags and bonds. Nice of him to donate material for everyone.
As one, the enforcers’ eyes widened when Sicarius entered their view. They exchanged worried glances with each other. After nearly a year with him, Amaranthe forgot how unnerving those knives and emotionless stares could be.
Sicarius moved past the enforcers without comment. The grate lay on the other side of the stage, so he’d probably only come this way to let the men know he was still in the area-and escape attempts would not be wise.