Lindsay Buroker - Forged in Blood I

Wind gusted across the abandoned stadium, rattling chains on flagpoles and stirring the fresh snow coating the rows of stone benches. In the chilly, predawn air, Amaranthe Lokdon stood atop the highest wall, the cold rim of a spyglass pressed to her eye. The empty arena opened to her right, while the cold black lake stretched to the left. A million-people dense, the capital of the Turgonian Empire, long ago nicknamed Stumps for its bevy of beheaded statues, spread out in front of her for miles and miles.

One might have expected dormancy at that early hour, but numerous trolleys and steam vehicles navigated the city, and a disturbing number of uniformed people marched along the sidewalks. Some of the soldiers bore flintlock rifles, but many carried the sleek, new weapons Forge had commissioned, weapons that could fire several self-contained cartridges with no need for the separate loading of powder and ball. Out on the lake, all manner of military vessels plied the frosty waters with a number of them forming a blockade across the river to the south.

A locomotive chugged past the stadium, slowing as it approached the city, sooty plumes wafting from the smokestack and blending into the gray sky. It was a black military transport, and Amaranthe had little doubt that it was full of troops, though she didn’t know if they were for General Ravido Marblecrest or one of the other potential candidates to the throne. All she knew was that none of those troops were coming to support Sespian; as far as everyone in the city knew, he was dead.

“You are silhouetted against the sky,” Sicarius said from behind her shoulder.

Amaranthe hadn’t heard him join her on the wall. Not surprising. “It’s a little early and cold to worry about snipers gamboling about, don’t you think?”

“No.”

Of course not. Neither the frosty heart of a glacier nor the molten core of a volcano would have ever kept him from his duties when he’d been Emperor Raumesys’s assassin. Nor, she reminded herself, had such ever kept him from fulfilling his duties when he’d been working for her. With her, she corrected. Though he acknowledged her right to lead the team she’d assembled, he still had a tendency to do things his own way when something truly mattered to him.

“If the people behind those snipers were smart, they’d be more interested in recruiting us than shooting us,” Amaranthe said. “We’ve proven a great aptitude for defeating soldiers through cunning, athleticism, and an uncanny knack for blowing things up at the right time.” She admitted it might be more luck than an uncanny knack, but thought her word choice might draw a semi-amused snort from him. As a whole, her men had been grim during the last few days of their overland trek, with the newly amorous Maldynado and Yara being the only exception. They’d been too busy playing swat-and-grope with each other to be bothered by the rain, snow, and hail that had pounded the team as it dodged patrols and skirted checkpoints full of soldiers. She’d struggled to keep her own grimness off her face as well, reflections of the ghastly dreams that stole her nights and sometimes, when she let her mind wander, tried to steal the days as well.

No hint of amusement came from behind her.

“With all this going on-” Amaranthe waved toward the boats, train, and troop-filled streets, “-I doubt anyone will notice us up here.” She lowered the spyglass and crunched about on the snow to face him. “Most of the officers leading troops about down there aren’t aware that we have tiles in the game, and I doubt Ravido is going to waste time looking for us until he finds out Sespian is here.” Maybe not even then if Forge published the news about Sespian’s… dubious parentage, and the Company of Lords dismissed his claim to the throne.

As always, Sicarius’s face might have been chiseled from granite for all the insight it gave into his thoughts. Though the weeks of travel and battle had wreaked havoc with everyone else’s wardrobe-Maldynado was still lamenting the loss of his most recent hat-Sicarius looked the same as always, adorned with copious daggers and throwing knives, and lean and muscular beneath his perennial black shirt and trousers. Somehow he’d even obtained a fresh pair of the soft black boots that allowed him to glide through the shadows without so much as a whisper. Once, in a fit of mischievousness, Amaranthe had absconded with those boots for long enough to try them on and find out if they held any magical silencing properties. Alas, the size difference had only granted her with magical clumsiness, and she’d tripped, rammed her hip against a table, and knocked over a chair. After recovering from the ungainly move, she’d found Sicarius watching her from behind. She’d returned the boots sheepishly, unable to come up with an explanation that he wouldn’t find utterly silly.

“Forge knows we are here,” he said.

“They’re not the types to send snipers though. I don’t think they can knock me from the wall with dastardly political or financial machinations.”

Without comment, Sicarius hopped down from the wall. The cool glance he sent back over his shoulder meant he expected her to do the same.

Amaranthe sighed and followed him down the stairs and out of the stadium. Since escaping from Pike’s torture chamber, she’d teased more conversation, and even some playfulness, out of him, but he wasn’t in the mood for it today. Rightfully so, she supposed. It was time to be serious.

“See anything good?” Akstyr asked, when she rejoined the team in the shadows of a tree between the stadium and the train tracks. Actually the team occupied the shadows of a few trees. With the addition of Sespian and Yara, her group had grown of late. Eight people, including herself. It seemed like a tremendous number of expectant eyes turned in her direction, though she feared the number would be far too low to make a difference in the city, in deciding who sat upon the throne when the snow melted in the spring.

No, she couldn’t think that way. They could make a difference. Upon many occasions, small numbers of people had been responsible for great changes in history.

“I saw a good… challenge,” Amaranthe said.

Akstyr brushed a few snowflakes out of his spiky ridge of hair-it was green this week. “A challenge? That means a whole lot of injury and death with absolutely no pay, right?”

“There may be some pay.” Amaranthe watched his face as she spoke, expecting a sullen expression and a threat to leave for the Kyatt Islands, the one place he believed he could study the mental sciences in peace.

Akstyr only said, “Ah,” with resignation hunching his shoulders as he dipped his hands into his pockets.

Books lifted his head from an open journal long enough to say, “That’s not precisely the dictionary definition,” before his gaze was inevitably dragged back downward. The book-stuffed rucksack hanging from his shoulders must have weighed close to a hundred pounds. Amaranthe wondered if he’d ever thanked Sicarius for the months of arduous training that allowed him to carry such a load. Probably not.

“Where to first, boss?” Maldynado asked. He and Yara stood a few paces away, not quite touching but standing shoulder-to-shoulder in a pose that said, “Yes, we are a we now, thank you very much.”

Amaranthe wished she could get Sicarius to stand next to her that way, when there were actual witnesses looking on, but that would probably have to wait until they were finished here and the fate of the empire had been resolved. One way or another. She glanced at Sespian, who’d been in the middle of a sign-language conversation with Basilard when she walked up. They’d stopped and waited attentively.