“This is it.” Sicarius stopped before a tottering wooden structure on a dilapidated dock.
The building hunched over the lake like an old soldier, arthritic from a lifetime’s worth of battle wounds. Icicles hung from the eaves, and frost edged the panes of broken windows. Age-yellowed buoys and frayed nets dangled from the walls, someone’s idea of decorating. Amaranthe touched a splintered piece of cedar siding. It fell off. The odds of this building keeping that creature out were not good.
She leaned over the edge of the dock. A few feet below, ice and snow gathered around the pylons.
Akstyr peered in a window. “A fish cannery?”
“There are bunks inside, and it has a large work space,” Sicarius said. “It’s winter. Nobody human will bother us.”
And the inhuman? Amaranthe would wait until she had him alone to ask.
She withdrew a ten-ranmya bill and handed it to Maldynado. “Will you find the nearest market and buy as much food as you can, please?”
“Will do.” Maldynado trotted up a street running perpendicular to the waterfront.
“You’re sending him to purchase supplies?” Books asked. “That overgrown fop from the warmonger caste has probably never shopped in his life.”
“He’ll get a good deal,” Amaranthe said.
A sizable lock on the front door of the cannery precluded a direct entrance.
“I bet I can get in.” Akstyr produced a large clip with at least three dozen keys of various shapes and sophistication dangling from it. “I’ve got a couple of skeleton keys that-”
“Unnecessary,” Sicarius said.
He led them to the lake side of the building. The lock in the back also remained in place; however, the door had been removed and was leaning against the wall.
When Amaranthe stepped inside, glass crunched beneath her boots. Weak light filtering through grimy windows, revealing rows of long counters littered with salt, dented cans, and torn labels. Rotting wooden bunk beds lined one wall. Here and there, rats scurried beneath the fish-gut-spattered sawdust spread across the floor. Only the cold kept the smell tolerable. Sort of.
“Lovely place,” Books murmured.
“At least it comes without a meddling landlady,” Amaranthe said.
“This is true.”
“Pick out a bunk and settle in,” she said. “As soon as Maldynado gets back, we’ll get started. Sicarius, a word?”
He stepped over to a corner counter with her as Akstyr and Books explored their new home.
Amaranthe stacked a few of the scattered cans into a neat pile. “You went shopping for this building before we knew there was a man-slaying creature roaming the streets. Do you still think it’s a suitable hideout.”
Sicarius lifted his gaze toward the rafters. Some thirty feet up, solid beams ran from wall to wall below the peaked ceiling. If one could clamber up there, one might be safe. As long as that creature couldn’t jump that high.
“I don’t see a ladder,” she said.
“You can climb the support posts,” Sicarius said.
Amaranthe eyed the dented and scarred wood of the nearest post. “ You can do that, I’m sure. The rest of us might find that feat challenging, especially with a monster crashing through the door.”
“Hang rope.”
“I guess that works.” The last of the rusted cans went into her organized pile. One counter down, thirty to go. “I’m going to send Books and Akstyr to get a press. I’ll take Maldynado ink and paper shopping. I want to start researching the Forge people, but that’ll probably have to wait until tomorrow. We need to get the press set up, and we need to get money plates made. I don’t suppose you know an engraver and can get that done?”
“Easy,” Sicarius said.
“Really?” She had expected this to be a sticking point. Maybe she ought to just let him go and do it, but… “Easy because you know a criminal engraver who owes you a favor, or easy because you’ll pick someone with the skill set, force him to do it, and kill him afterwards?”
“The latter.”
“Oh.”
“Asking someone to help you commit a crime and then leaving him alive to point you out to the enforcers is foolish.”
“Well, we’ve got three people already who are going to be privy to our plans. Perhaps adding another wouldn’t ma…” A chilling thought whispered into her mind. She glanced at Books, sitting on a bunk, and Akstyr, poking around in discarded debris. “Please tell me your logic doesn’t require killing everyone we work with over the next couple weeks.”
“You can’t trust random people acquired from the street. Don’t get attached.”
“Sicarius.” She gripped his arm, distantly aware that she had never dared touch him before. “I did not talk these folks into helping just to have you kill them at the end.”
“Once our need for them is done, they’re disposable.”
“And does that go for me too?” As soon as she asked the question, she regretted it. If the answer was yes, what would she do?
“You’re not disposable,” he said. She almost had time to wonder if he might actually care, but then he added, “It’s your plan.”
“Lucky me. Well, here’s an addendum to my plan: it will not involve killing the men we’ve coerced into helping us, nor will engravers be found in bed with their throats cut.”
“Propose an alternative.”
Amaranthe rubbed her chin and gazed thoughtfully about the building. Akstyr was stretched out under a table, digging through dirty sawdust. He came up with a copper coin and grinned.
“Akstyr,” she called.
He stuffed the coin in his pocket and threw her a suspicious look. Nonetheless, he slouched over.
“What?”
“Where’d you get all those keys?” She jerked her chin at the ring on his belt.
“Made ‘em.”
“Are they copies? Or originals?”
“Copies.”
“Am I correct in assuming you’re not a trained locksmith?”
“Yup. It’s pretty easy to make copies of keys, using…” he shrugged, “ways.”
Amaranthe took that to mean magic. “So, using these ways, you can carve things out of metal. Could you engrave something?”
“Oh, sure. I used to leave my gang sign all over the city that way. This one time, a man was in the water closet at the baths, and
I-”
Amaranthe lifted a hand. “Sufficient details, thank you.” The width of his grin convinced her she was right in cutting off the story. She fished out a ten-ranmya bill. “Think you could copy this into metal?”
“Sure, using the Sci-er, my way is even easier than tracing. It’s like burning a brand with your mind. As long as I’m just making an exact copy and not getting artistic.”
He reached for the bill, but Sicarius plucked it out of the air first.
“Copying this won’t get us anywhere,” Sicarius said. “It needs to be in reverse.”
“Like a stamp, of course.” Amaranthe sighed. “Too bad the Imperial Mint is in Sunders City, otherwise we could just steal plates. Though that would-”
“I’ll make it,” Sicarius said.
Amaranthe and Akstyr stared at him.
“Make what?” she asked. “The reverse drawing?”
“Yes. I’ll need good paper and a fine pen. I hear Maldynado on the dock. Go get the supplies.”
She wanted to question him further-why would an assassin know how to draw?-but Maldynado staggered inside with arms full of bags, wrapped meat, a jug, and a crate with…
“Are those air holes?” Books asked.
Amaranthe hastened over to help Maldynado unload. The crate squawked.
“Chickens?” she asked.
“You could have sent someone to help me carry things,” Maldynado said.
“You bought all that for ten ranmyas?” Books asked.
“Actually, I got it for free,” Maldynado said smugly. After setting the crate down, he fished out Amaranthe’s bill and returned it. “I was just going to buy some cans of corned meat, but I started talking with the shopkeeper, and she told me about this problem she was having. Apparently, some farmer rode his dogsled-” Maldynado rolled his eyes at this notion of antiquity, “-out of the fields and across the lake to barter for supplies. He brought lots of fresh farm things to trade.”