Evrial groaned. When she followed him into the building, she had a feeling she’d regret it, but someone had to keep him from burning down the town.
Amaranthe’s legs and back ached from crouching in the darkness for so long. She wanted to sit down, but didn’t dare. Every few minutes, the enforcers made another attempt to gain entrance. Blood spattered the floorboards in front of the trapdoor. Sicarius hadn’t killed anyone, but he’d injured enough enforcers to deter them from barreling inside. Amaranthe had made attempts at negotiating, but it seemed men who’d just carried out dead comrades weren’t in the right state of mind to consider the words of outlaws. Despite her efforts at informing them otherwise, the enforcers were determined to believe that Sicarius had killed their comrades and had sought the magical devices all along, for his own nefarious uses.
The scent of smoke wafted to her nose. Since Sicarius had thrown a knife, pinning an enforcer’s shoulder to the nearby wall, the men had been careful to stay out of sight, but Amaranthe guessed at least fifteen were out there, plotting his demise. And hers too, since she was crouching in the darkness next to him.
“ It was so nice of the captain to pick up all these reinforcements along with sugar, rice, and persimmons,” Amaranthe muttered. She wondered if the cement had made it on board, and her men for that matter. The vibrations of the paddlewheel hummed through the boat, and she suspected Port Medar had long passed out of view.
“ They’re going to try and smoke us out again,” Sicarius said. “Be ready.”
No hint of worry crept into his voice. Not the way it did when dealing with the ancient technology. Amaranthe wished she could view the enforcers as calmly. Though he might be the superior warrior, they could win through sheer numbers.
“ Ready.” She waved a short sword she’d taken from their prisoners’ gear pile, though in the darkness, Sicarius probably couldn’t see the gesture.
“ It may be a distraction,” he added.
“ I wish Books and the others would show up with a distraction of their own,” Amaranthe said, though she hated that she’d put herself and Sicarius into a situation where they needed rescuing. Oh, Sicarius could probably escape, even if it meant dodging a dozen crossbow quarrels from enforcers poised around the dining hall, and she might be able to slip out in the wake of his destruction, but what then? They’d be unlikely to find a hiding place on the boat, so they’d have to dive overboard, leaving the rockets. Either the enforcers would break them out of ignorance or the artifacts would continue upriver to those who had ordered them for their own nefarious purposes. Neither alternative appealed.
“ Is it questionable that I’m considering sinking the steamboat as our only option?” Amaranthe said.
“ Yes,” Sicarius said.
“ Would you like to recommend a better option?”
“ Escape overboard. We can run upriver ahead of the boat and steal the weapons when the crew is less prepared.”
He might be able to manage that. Amaranthe questioned her own ability to outrun the boat-perhaps during the day she could, but she’d have to sleep, while the tireless steam-powered paddlewheel would keep churning all night. And what of the rest of the team? “You’d go without the others? Without Sespian?”
Sicarius hesitated. “They’d realize where we’d gone and follow our example.”
Movement stirred near the curtain. Something glinted. A can arched toward the trapdoor opening, smoke streaming from a fuse. Sicarius’s knife arm shot out. His blade deflected the projectile, knocking it aside before it crossed through the opening. Crossbows twanged, but he whipped his arm back out of sight before the bolts struck.
The can skidded into a corner, popped, and a sickly greenish smoke flooded the air. A sulfuric odor assailed Amaranthe’s nostrils. She lifted her shirt over her mouth and nose, glad the smoke grenade hadn’t landed inside with them. Even so, a gray-green haze filled the air, obscuring visibility, and its stench teased her gag reflex. Enforcers would be able to get within a few feet without being seen, though she couldn’t imagine them trying, knowing Sicarius waited within.
“ Distraction?” Amaranthe whispered.
“ Check the area,” Sicarius said. “They may be attempting to cut a hole elsewhere so they can bypass us and retrieve their men.”
“ They think their men are dead.” As Amaranthe had found during her attempted chats. When the enforcers hadn’t responded to her pleas to work together and destroy the deadly rockets, she’d attempted hostage negotiation. They’d refused to believe Sicarius took hostages.
She left to check the rest of the area anyway. Even if they believed their men dead, the enforcers would love to sneak around from behind and take her and Sicarius by surprise. Nobody wanted to face him head-on.
As Amaranthe felt her way through the meandering aisles of crates, she thought about lighting a lantern, but she didn’t want to brighten the area, lest it make Sicarius more visible to the enforcers.
Steel screeched back at the trapdoor. She paused. Maybe they were attacking en masse and risking his skill after all. A new thought crept into her mind. What if that smoke held a sedating agent? What if breathing it in would make Sicarius vulnerable to attacks? She almost went back. But, no, he was capable of handling anything the enforcers hurled at him. If the smoke did hold more of a threat than tearing one’s eyes, he’d know it and adapt. He could probably hold his breath for an entire battle.
Amaranthe kept going, trying to keep a map of the under-stage area in her head as she navigated the darkness. The clangs of metal and grunts of effort-and pain-over by the trapdoor guided her. She thought about checking first on the weapons, but they’d pushed the crate back over the grate earlier to block the glow, and she didn’t see any hint of light ahead. Instead she veered toward the front wall and paused to listen. That’d be the easiest place for the enforcers to access since the stage’s other side and back abutted bulkheads.
Amaranthe heard orders being barked, and occasionally something would clunk against the stage. The words were hard to make out. She climbed over a pile of padded leather equipment, navigating as close to the wall as possible.
“ Someone get a blasted cannon! If they’re not going to come out, we’ll tear that stage apart piece by piece.”
“…hit our own men.”
“…dead anyway.”
“…don’t know that!”
Amaranthe tried to decide if the frenetic shouts were authentic or cover for some more threatening action. She pressed her ear to the wall. Soft rasps vibrated through the wood.
Amaranthe jerked back. “Knew it.”
The rasps came from her right, from the side of the stage opposite Sicarius and the trapdoor. Sword in hand, she patted her way in that direction as quickly as possible. Her knee clunked against something hard. She bit back a curse and slowed down. No need to announce to the enforcers that someone was coming…
The blocky shapes of crates loomed ahead of her, and she picked her way around them. At first, she thought her eyes had adjusted more fully to the darkness and she was finally able to see slightly, but she’d been in the dark for an hour or more. No, almost imperceptibly, the light level had increased.
Amaranthe stood as fully as she could, her upper back and head pressed to the top of the stage. Peering over crates, she tried to pinpoint the direction of the light source. Though faint, it had a familiar yellowish tinge. Her stomach sank. Someone had uncovered the grate. Their prisoners must have escaped their bonds.
She glanced at the dark wall where the enforcers were trying to cut through, then back toward the grate. “It’ll take them a while to saw out a hole,” she muttered and headed for the glow. She thought about yelling a warning to Sicarius, but if the enforcers had freed themselves, it’d be better to sneak up and catch them by surprise. Bloody ancestors, she hoped it was just one and not all four.