Lindsay Buroker - Forged in Blood I

No, that was the problem. He didn’t sense anything. The ward. It’d been right here. His training had included enough exposure to the mental sciences and practitioner-crafted devices that he knew when he was in their presence. Five minutes earlier, a chunk of the stone wall had been emitting a telltale aura. Now, he felt nothing.

The faintest hint of an odor touched his nostrils. Smoke. Pipe smoke, though the particular tobacco blend wasn’t anything imperial men favored. It had a resiny underpinning, one that teased his memory. Nurian rek rek . One of his old tutors had smoked it.

He sniffed the air again, trying to verify that identification, but the faint scent proved elusive. Nobody had been smoking in the tunnel, he decided, but someone might have passed through wearing clothing that had been near a smoker.

“Akstyr,” Sicarius whispered. “Do you sense anything?”

“No. Should I?”

“There is a ward here.” Sicarius pointed to the spot on the wall. Even before, there hadn’t been anything tangible to touch or visible to the human eye, but he was certain that it’d been located there. “Now it is gone. Or it has been triggered.” He was reluctant to admit that he could have failed to notice another person in the tunnels, but had to inform them of the possibility. “Someone else may be down here.”

“I don’t sense anything.” Akstyr shuffled over to the spot. “Are you sure you didn’t imagine it in the first place?”

“I am certain.”

“Really? Because you’re not a practitioner.”

Books sucked in a breath, as if he feared Sicarius would lash out at Akstyr for daring to question. Were Sicarius going to punish the youth for impertinence, he would have done it the day they met. He did let his tone chill when he repeated, “I am certain,” thus to discourage further argument.

Akstyr closed his eyes and ducked his head, his upswept ridge of hair bobbing. He placed a hand on the wall.

“If someone triggered the trap, so to speak,” Books said, “should we abandon this mission? At least for tonight?”

“Hoping to get back to your work?” Sespian murmured.

“Partially. Partially I’m concerned for our safety if someone was skilled enough to sneak past Sicarius without his noticing. Or any of us noticing,” he rushed to add, perhaps feeling he’d offered an insult.

Sicarius ignored the slight. He, too, would find cause for concern if someone had bypassed him without a whisper. Perhaps the person had been there first and had been waiting to deal with the ward until Sicarius left. That idea didn’t grate at him any less, for it would have meant he hadn’t been paying as much attention to his surroundings as he should have been, but he’d find that more plausible than the notion that someone had sneaked past him in the dark.

“I found it,” Akstyr said. “The ward. It wasn’t tripped.”

“That’s a relief,” Books said.

Was it? What had happened then? Sicarius waited for a further explanation.

Akstyr tapped the stone wall. “It’s been disarmed.”

“Disarmed?” Sicarius asked, his tone sharper than he’d intended. Long ago, Hollowcrest and various tutors had drilled into him the importance of maintaining a neutral facade and giving away nothing through expression-or timbre of voice. He wondered, sometimes, if so much time spent amongst men-and women, he added to himself, thinking of Amaranthe-was affecting his ability to distance himself from humanity, from his own frail human side. “Disarmed how?” he asked, making his tone calm and emotionless again.

“It’s like… if this were a mine… someone had left the casing and detonator and stuff in place, but removed the charge,” Akstyr said. “It’s something only a practitioner would know how to do.”

“This could be done swiftly?” Sicarius was certain he’d been gone for no more than five minutes.

“If someone had practiced enough, I guess.”

“Are you telling me that a wizard sneaked into the Barracks just ahead of us?” Sespian whispered.

“Practitioner,” Akstyr corrected.

Ignoring him, Sespian focused on Sicarius. “To what end? Are they trying to beat us to your records? How would they even know we sought them?”

“I doubt this person’s presence has anything to do with me,” Sicarius said.

The others exchanged dubious looks.

Sicarius refused to doubt his statement. Until Amaranthe had voiced her new interest in digging into his past, nobody had been contemplating such matters. Nor had anybody been around spying on their conversation earlier in the day. “It is more likely that another assassin has entered the Barracks.”

Such an occupation would explain the person’s stealth.

“A wizard assassin?” Sespian asked. “Who’s the target?” He didn’t point to himself, but he didn’t need to. After being a target for so long, he must have learned to worry about his life. Good. Paranoia kept one alive.

“Perhaps Ravido or whomever has taken over the Barracks,” Sicarius said.

“Hm, yes.” Books stroked his jaw. “If the newspapers speak the truth, the competition is going to be noticeable-and bloody-over the next few weeks. There’s an entire empire at stake here.”

“We will enter and attempt to avoid the other intruder,” Sicarius said, though their errand to Hollowcrest’s office would take them to the same floor and hallway that housed the imperial suites. If Ravido had taken the Barracks for his own, he may have decided to set himself up in Raumesys’s old rooms, something an assassin clever enough to disarm magical traps would soon deduce.

“What if we’re not able to do that?” Books asked quietly. “An assassin with a practitioner’s skills sounds formidable.”

“We too are formidable.” Sicarius headed for the secret door, though a niggling thought followed him, one that suggested someone who had evaded his notice in the tunnel might be more than formidable.

Soldiers and enforcers patrolled the cobblestone streets on either side of the canal passing in front of the Imperial Gazette building. Amaranthe and Maldynado crouched in the shadows beneath the closest bridge, waiting for night to deepen and for the foot traffic to dwindle. Most of that foot traffic was uniformed. Though numerous eating and drinking houses dotted the waterfront, the sounds coming from within them were muted. Few civilians lingered in the streets. She doubted it had anything to do with the frosty evening air-winter would grow far colder in the coming months, and Turgonians were used to the chill. Those civilians who did brave the streets did so using quick, purposeful strides, their coats pulled tight, their eyes watching the troops.

“Those soldiers are taking the joy out of people’s evenings,” Maldynado said as a squad marched across the bridge above them, the synchronized thuds of their steps echoing from the raised walls on either side of the canal.

Amaranthe eyed the metal support beams overhead. She recalled hearing that soldiers were supposed to break into unsynchronized steps when crossing bridges, thus to keep the vibrations from collapsing the structure, but perhaps that was only for poorly constructed wooden bridges out in the countryside. Still, if the bridge toppled-preferably when she wasn’t under it-it’d provide a nice diversion for her and Maldynado to enter the Gazette building. She didn’t want to light any houseboats on fire this time.

“They’re just following orders,” Amaranthe said when the soldiers passed without bridge mishaps. “It’s their generals we need to worry about. Have you figured out the armband code yet?” They’d seen soldiers with blue, red, and white sashes tied about their right biceps. Not all the soldiers wore them, and Amaranthe assumed they had to do with identifying allegiance to certain would-be successors. The military fatigues were otherwise identical.