Lindsay Buroker - Forged in Blood I

“Go, go,” she whispered and risked casting her lever aside. She grabbed the crawling man by the shoulders of his jacket and threw her weight into pulling him.

A pained stream of curses flowed from his mouth, but his legs finally cleared the beam. Maldynado and the other prisoner dropped it, hurling more dust into the air.

A second pistol fired. Amaranthe and the others dropped to the ground and scrambled for the tunnel entrance on hands and knees. This time, the shot hit the ceiling. As if it were the kernel of rice that tipped the merchant’s scales, a second ceiling beam snapped, the ear-splitting noise directly above Amaranthe. She lunged into the tunnel, grabbing the others, pulling and urging them along, though nobody needed prompting at that point.

As Maldynado flopped to the ground beside her, the basement ceiling caved in. Dust flooded into the tunnel, and an ominous groan came from the bricks above their heads as well. This time it was Maldynado who grabbed her arm, and her feet barely touched the ground as he raced toward the storm tunnel. She glanced back, ensuring their prisoners were hobbling after-she didn’t know what she was going to do with them, but she wasn’t going to lose them at that point. In the darkness behind them, it was hard to tell, but she thought the rubble had closed off their escape route.

Maldynado let go of her when they reached the storm tunnel, but she waved toward the bend that led to the river. “Let’s get all the way out of here,” Amaranthe said. “People were shooting at us at the end.”

“Think they figured out who we are?” Maldynado asked.

“Either that, or Deret’s pa is very displeased with him right now.”

Deret, leading the way toward the river, said nothing to this, though he did give the wall nearest the building a long look. The booms and thuds of equipment falling through the floor continued to emanate from the Gazette .

Sicarius slithered through the warm dusty ducts, as soundless as a snake. As he approached the imperial suite, a sprawling complex of rooms large enough to accommodate a family of multiple generations, the resiny scent of Nurian rek rek teased his nostrils again. He stopped at the vent leading to the master bedroom. The grate had been removed. The screws had been knocked out from within-warping and destroying them-the culprit obviously not caring if his presence was detected after his deed was done. And the deed was what? An assassination. It had to be. If another had come to assassinate Ravido, perhaps it’d be best to let the man do his work. Sespian might object, but Sicarius refused to rescue Maldynado’s rogue relative simply so Sespian could kidnap him.

Unlike Hollowcrest’s suite, these rooms had seen recent occupation. Though Sicarius didn’t spot anyone at the moment, the lamps burned, a fire crackled in the hearth, and the sheets and furs on the bed had been turned down. In addition to the Nurian smoke, he smelled the leather of bookbindings, the tang of weapons cleaning oil, and the potato-based starch officers employed for pressing their uniforms.

Sicarius remained motionless, waiting for Ravido to come in and listening for the breaths of someone who might already be hiding in the suite. Nothing stirred. The fire in the hearth burned down.

He would need to return to the others soon. It would not prove propitious if they grew restless and started wandering the Barracks on their own.

A series of resounding clangs thundered through the building, echoing through the ducts with the force of a great bell’s reverberations. Sicarius recognized the cacophony instantly. The Imperial Barracks alarm.

Doors banged and shouts echoed in the hallway. The team must have been discovered, or perhaps security had stumbled upon evidence of the other intruder’s presence. Either scenario would be problematic.

Sicarius backed away from the vent opening, intending to return to Hollowcrest’s chambers, but a figure sprinted through the doorway, veering straight for him. He had a glimpse of black clothing, a dark topknot of hair, a dagger clenched in hand, and a silver medallion on a leather thong flapping against the man’s chest. Then the figure was diving into the vent, and Sicarius had no more time for observation, no time for thought; he could only react with instincts honed since birth.

His black dagger had already found its way into his hand. Like a viper waiting in a rocky hollow, he waited until his prey was least prepared. The man had thrust himself halfway into the duct and was turning on his side to yank his legs in when Sicarius attacked. Though his target’s body blocked all the light, he saw with his other senses, his instincts. The man didn’t know he was there until the dagger dipped into his throat. Metal clattered on the porcelain duct tiles-the assassin’s own blade dropping.

Throughout the building, the alarm bells continued to clang. Knowing the imperial suite would be searched soon, Sicarius left the dead man’s legs dangling out of the duct. Finding the intruder wouldn’t delay security for long-they’d assume he had a partner who’d betrayed him and was still in the Barracks-but they’d have to pause to investigate. He hoped that’d give Sespian and the others time to escape without being noticed. Ideally, they weren’t waiting for him and had already left.

He backed to the first intersection, using the extra space to turn around, and glided back through the ducts to Hollowcrest’s office. The room was dark, though the scent of a recently snuffed wick lingered in the room.

Shouts and heavy footfalls pummeled the hallway outside of Hollowcrest’s suite. Inside, it was silent, but Sicarius sensed he was not alone.

Starlight filtered in through a window in the sitting room outside of the office. Still poised by the vent, he picked out a dark figure in the room at the same time as a whiff of Akstyr’s hair concoction reached his nose.

“There was an istapa ,” Sicarius said, using the Nurian term for those assassins trained not only to fight but to resist mental attacks from practitioners.

Akstyr twitched. “A wizard hunter? Really?”

“Yes.”

“He got away?”

“No.”

“Oh.” Akstyr sounded disappointed, though less for the loss of the man’s life than for the fact that he’d missed meeting a wizard hunter.

“The others have gone ahead?” Sicarius asked.

“Yup, back to the furnace room. I stayed behind to warn you. There’s a practitioner, the one who installed the wards, I bet.”

“He’s here,” Sicarius said, guessing the reason for the alarm. If the practitioner lived in the Barracks, he would have sensed that one of his wards was no longer working. The disarming of one might not have alerted him as dramatically as one being tripped, but if he did a nightly check…

“ She , I think,” Akstyr said.

“We’ll seek to avoid her then. Come.”

Akstyr clambered into the duct after Sicarius. “If she’s checking where that one ward was, we’ll go right by her.”

“There are other ways out. Alert me if you sense a freshly laid trap.”

Akstyr grumbled under his breath, but the continuing alarm clamor drowned out the words.

Long ago, Sicarius had trained with a Nurian wizard hunter, one of Hollowcrest’s carefully selected tutors. He had never expected to see another one in the Imperial Barracks. Was his original theory correct? That the man had been an assassin sent to kill Ravido? And if so, why? If Nurians were here, did they simply want to create chaos, more than there already was, or did they have a different candidate they intended to back, another puppet, this one loyal to Nuria instead of Forge?

Either way, Amaranthe would want this information. It would add further complications to her plans, plans she’d not fully revealed to him yet, a fact that concerned him. She’d used him often as a confidant in the last year, and the only reason he could see her withholding information was because she knew he wouldn’t approve of what she had in mind.