In the darkness, she couldn’t see her sword spinning through the air, but she could tell from the dark figure’s reaction that it struck. The woman collapsed in the doorway.
Amaranthe ran down the stairs, jumping to the floor to bypass Yara, and dragged the woman inside, away from the threshold. She checked the square outside, afraid someone might have heard the fight and would be running to investigate, but nothing stirred nearby. Everyone at the station was probably focused on the train.
The train! Reminded of the need to hurry, Amaranthe shut the door, groped about to find the lantern, and ran for the stairs.
At the last second, she remembered Yara and kept from crashing into her. “Are you injured?”
“I’m fine,” Yara said. “Your warning saved me.”
“Welcome. Hurry, upstairs. We have to get-”
A light flared to life at the top of the stairs. Maldynado stood, wearing a dazed expression as he held his lantern up and squinted down at them. Blood smeared the side of his face.
“Where’s the cursed coal?” a voice called from outside.
There was no time to discuss anything. Amaranthe charged up the remaining steps and grabbed Maldynado’s arm.
“Answer,” she said, figuring a male worker would be more likely than a woman.
“Coming,” Maldynado called, a hint of a slur to the word.
“Bastard’s drunk,” the speaker from the train growled. “Inept civilians.”
“Stand there,” Amaranthe whispered to Maldynado, pushing him toward open double doors on the wall closest to the train. “Give them a wave. Here, let me have your lantern so they can’t see you well.”
“No, no,” Maldynado said, wobbling a little. “I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.” He braced himself against the doorjamb.
“You can complain later,” Amaranthe said. “Just don’t let them get concerned enough to check in here.”
She hunted about for levers to extend the chute and drop coal into the waiting car below. Bins lined the walls, leaving little room for moving about. Amaranthe weaved past cables attached to a lift system for raising coal to the top level. She was lucky that she hadn’t moved far enough from the stairs to get tangled in the ropes during the fight.
The largest bin in the room connected to the chute. Amaranthe ducked behind it and found her levers. A brass plaque with pictures showed which ones to move to extend and retract the chute and to dump coal. No need for literacy for this job.
She pushed a lever, and gears on the wall rotated, their grinding audible over the idling train. The chute thunked into place. Amaranthe hesitated, not certain if she should push the pouring lever to maximum.
“Take your time, Crisplot,” the complainer from the train yelled. “It’s not like we’re on a schedule here.”
Amaranthe shoved the lever all the way forward. Maybe a landslide would flood out, burying the mouthy man. Nothing happened.
Grumbling, she poked around the front of the bin. Maybe there was some flap she had to lift to enable to flow.
“Am I going to have to come up there?” the complainer hollered. “I’ll see to it that your pay is docked if I do.”
“I’ll check on him,” came Sicarius’s voice from the water tower. He and Basilard must have already extended the hose to refuel the locomotive’s tanks. Good.
Amaranthe found a safety release up front and flipped it. A spring twanged, and a door at the top of the chute slid up. The bin contents stirred and clacked about inside, and coal poured into the train car outside. There. That ought to placate the engineer, or whoever was bellowing.
When Amaranthe came back around the bin, she found Sicarius waiting beside Maldynado.
“We had a slight delay, but we’re fine,” she told him.
“ Fine? ” Maldynado touched his temple. “I don’t think it’s right of you to make general statements like that before a thorough medical examination has been performed on all members of the group.”
“There are two soldiers riding on the locomotive with the engineer and fireman,” Sicarius said. “A corporal is directing coal and water loading.”
“Just one man?” Amaranthe asked.
“Yes.”
“The one yelling?”
“Yes.”
“Trouble maker.”
Sicarius did not deign to respond.
Yara climbed into view, holding a lantern. She stared at Amaranthe.
“Something wrong?” Amaranthe asked.
“That was an assassin,” Yara said.
“Yes, I gathered that from the dead man she left marinating in his own blood. Do you recognize her?”
“The Crimson Fox,” Yara said.
Amaranthe tried to place the name. “That’s someone with a bounty on her head, right?”
“Yes, she is- was — regarded as the best female assassin in the satrapy. Some say the empire.”
Amaranthe snorted. “ Some say? Like who? Her?”
“It’s a twenty-five-thousand-ranmya bounty.” Yara was still staring at Amaranthe, her eyes wide with… awe?
Amaranthe decided not to mention how much luck had played into that squabble. A little awe from Yara might help her position. “We don’t have time to turn people in for bounties right now, so some soldier’s going to have a good time this weekend.”
“Wait.” Maldynado touched his wounded temple. “You’re saying the person who hit me was a woman?”
“You’re lucky she didn’t kill you.” Yara’s awe-struck expression disappeared when she faced Maldynado. “I’m not surprised to find that your employer does the real work in this outfit.”
“When you’re as pretty as I am, there’s no need to do real work.”
“You’re calling yourself pretty?” Yara asked. “You have a black eye, a split lip, and there’s blood smeared all over your face.”
“I’d still have an easier time getting a date than you. What’d you cut your hair with? Your service sword?”
Amaranthe lifted her hands in a placating gesture. “Let’s focus, please. We can squabble when the emperor is safe.”
While they glared at each other, Amaranthe peeked past Maldynado and into the bin. Coal continued to flow into the open car while the irritated corporal stomped back and forth with a rake. Busy pushing and scraping to distribute the load, he kept his head down. Amaranthe risked sticking hers out to better see up and down the train.
In front of the coal car, the hulking black engine idled, its long cylindrical shape stretching ahead like a hound’s nose. She couldn’t see into the cab where the engineer and fireman waited, which was good because they wouldn’t be able to see into the coal bed without leaning out of the side entrances, but someone watching from the train station would have a decent view. She checked the boardwalk and grimaced. Soldiers were filing into some of the passenger cars. Of course, if they were going to the capital, it made sense for them to get a ride.
“Reinforcements,” Amaranthe muttered. “Lovely.” She kept herself from sighing at Sicarius, irked anew by his string of assassinations. She had certainly messed up often, and he hadn’t held it against her.
Some of the soldiers on the boardwalk were stationed at the doors, and they were checking identifications, orders, and faces carefully before letting people on. No civilians boarded. As Amaranthe had suspected, this was a private train, and it would have been difficult, if not impossible, for her team to walk through a door, even if they’d had sophisticated disguises.
“When do we get on?” Yara asked.
“Soon,” Amaranthe said. “After that corporal says he has all the fuel he needs and tells the engineer to get moving.”
“Won’t the people on the boardwalk see us jump into the coal car?”
“It’s dark,” Amaranthe said. “We’re hoping not.”
“Hoping?”
“Are you doubting the woman who slew the Crimson Fox?”
Amaranthe was joking, or at least hoping to distract Yara from her concerns, but the sergeant considered the body again and said, “I guess not.”
Huh, something to be said for establishing a sense of awe in one’s colleagues.
“The Crimson Fox?” Sicarius asked.