Lindsay Buroker - Forged in Blood I

Akstyr’s exhausted head tilt made her regret being picky, but maybe he could make it smaller if he moved it, and maintaining it would require less effort. He could block the door, nothing else.

“There were some coming out of the lift too.” Akstyr’s arm was still extended toward the wall, though it was drooping, even the fingers. He couldn’t maintain that effort much longer. “This kept them fooled from both directions.”

“Are we out of the lake yet?” Books asked.

Yes, best to figure out how to do something with the Behemoth , so they could make their escape before Akstyr’s will gave out and those cubes swarmed inside.

“Almost,” Retta said, “but I don’t know if I can steer us anywhere. The engines are behind that wall.” She waved to the smoke. “I’m sure we’re not irrevocably damaged-according to the documentation I read, the Ortarh Ortak can repair itself automatically, so long as it has time to-”

“Where’re those lifeboats you mentioned?” Amaranthe didn’t care about the cursed thing’s ability to regenerate itself. If anything she’d prefer it to crash and explode so nobody could tinker with it every again, so long as she and her men escaped first.

The irked expression Retta gave her was almost as heated as Akstyr’s wall, but she twitched her finger a few times, and an image popped into existence beside Books and Amaranthe. It was the map of the interior again. Green pinpricks of light appeared at irregular intervals all over the schematic.

Books pointed. “That one’s right above us. Is there ceiling access?”

Amaranthe couldn’t imagine how a “lifeboat” could be located in the center of the ship-most of the green dots were along the perimeter-but maybe there was a tube it could travel through to escape.

“No.” Retta waved toward the door where the cubes hovered. “You have to go back out, around, and up.”

“Of course you do,” Books said.

“I can’t hold this much longer,” Akstyr whispered. He dropped all the way to the floor and lay crumpled on his side, only that one arm still raised.

Amaranthe knelt beside him. “Can I do anything to help? Do you need water?” He looked like a man who’d run twenty miles through a desert.

“Just get me out of here so I don’t have to maintain it any more. Please.”

Amaranthe swallowed. She didn’t think she’d ever heard him say please. It had to be a testament to how close he was to pitching over the edge of the precipice.

Shots rang out from the direction of the lift.

“Down,” Amaranthe cried even as she flung herself to the floor beside Akstyr.

Bullets ricochetted off the walls. Many bullets. The flames had blinded them to the newcomers’ arrival, but Amaranthe cursed herself for having been caught unaware. Keeping her head to the floor, she searched all about, as if some hiding spot might have appeared in the room in the time she and Books had been gone. It hadn’t. Retta remained standing, sweat streaming from her temples as she continued to work the floating controls.

“Those cabinets,” Amaranthe said. “Books, can you open them?”

A shot fired, this time from their side. Flat on his stomach, Books had wriggled to the closest wall, and had the rifle trained in the direction of the lift. He hadn’t heard her request. She grimaced, not certain if returning fire was a good idea or not. It would let those on the other side of the flames know exactly where her people were. Still hunkered by Akstyr, she didn’t want to draw fire. His eyes were glassy, distant. She wasn’t certain he knew people were shooting at them.

Without warning, the curtain of fire dropped.

“Akstyr,” she blurted. She couldn’t blame him for getting tired, but this wasn’t the time to drop the only camouflage they had.

“It wasn’t me,” he whispered back. “Someone made me drop it.”

“Huh?”

Four guards had charged out of the lift, each facing a different direction, each with a rifle poised and ready. Two women stood on the pad behind them. One was Ms. Worgavic-emperor’s warts, who’d driven her down here? — but the other was the bigger concern at the moment. A tattooed woman in a buckskin dress stood beside her, eyes half-lidded in intense thought as she gazed about her.

“Drop your weapons,” the lead guard ordered.

Outnumbered or not, Amaranthe wasn’t keen to obey. If she hadn’t been beside Akstyr, uncertain whether he could move to flee or protect himself, she would have fired back and sprinted for those cabinets.

“The cubes!” Books barked.

Cursed ancestors, she’d forgotten about them. With the flames gone, they’d decided to float into the room.

“Bring back the fire,” Amaranthe called toward Worgavic and the shaman. “They’re targeting everybody, your people too!”

She grabbed Akstyr and pulled him toward Books and the wall farthest from the door, hoping the guards would be too busy looking at the cubes to worry about shooting people getting out of the way. And if her team was farther from the cubes than the other group, they’d go over there first, right? Maybe.

“Retta,” Amaranthe hissed. “This way.”

“I’ve almost got it fixed,” Retta said, her fingers still flying. “We’ve broken the surface of the lake. We either have to-”

“Shoot them,” Ms. Worgavic said, her words icy as they cut over the rest of the voices in the room, “then get back in the lift before those things get over here.”

Shoot them ? The torturing hadn’t been bad enough? As the guards swung their firearms toward them, Amaranthe whipped up her own rifle in response. She wouldn’t get all of them, but if she could get Ms. Worgavic…

“Akstyr,” Books whispered. “Do something!”

“I can’t.”

Amaranthe fired. The bullet should have taken Ms. Worgavic in the chest, but it bounced off some invisible shield. She wanted to clench her fist and shake it in frustration, but three other rifles were coming to bear on her. She buried her head under her arms, knowing it wouldn’t be enough.

Several men yelped, then something clattered to the floor. Their weapons?

“Nice,” Books said, “you did that right, Akstyr?”

“Made them too hot to hold, yes, but-”

A shriek came, a far greater cry of pain than the previous yells. The cubes had closed on the party by the lift, and two beams streaked out, one catching a man too busy trying to pick up his dropped rifle to react in time. The shaman frowned at the deadly floating devices and lifted her hands.

Amaranthe jumped to her feet. “Let’s get out of here while they’re distracted. Retta, time to go.” She took a step in that direction-she’d pick Retta up and fling her over her shoulder if she had to.

Before she finished her step, a huge cone of fire shot from the lift, from the shaman’s outstretched arms. Her eyes seemed to glow red, reflecting the wicked orange light. The flames engulfed the cubes, but they spanned half the room and also engulfed-

A feminine scream of sheer terror and pain came from the center of the inferno. Retta.

Amaranthe lunged in that direction, as if she could do something, pull the other woman out of the flames, but heat blasted against her face. She couldn’t get close. A hand clamped around her arm, Books pulling her back. Akstyr was slumped against the wall, his arm up as a ward against the heat. They were on the edge of the inferno, the route to the doors blocked by a curtain of flames. All Amaranthe could do was plaster her back to the wall alongside Books and Akstyr and wait.

Retta’s screams stopped, and Amaranthe clenched her eyes shut. All she’d done here was get people killed.

Someone else screamed-one of the guards?