Lindsay Buroker: Beneath the Surface

“ Not unless I lose my job.”

Which, Evrial feared, was a possibility. She’d been in trouble with her employer and her family when she’d taken off to meet Amaranthe Lokdon and her team of mercenaries. All she’d wanted to do was make sure the emperor was safe, but somehow she’d ended up embroiled in a kidnapping scheme and an assault on an underground lair full of business people plotting against the throne. All that might have been tolerable if not for the shocking news revealed at the end, that Emperor Sespian Savarsin wasn’t the rightful emperor at all, but the son of the deceased Princess Marathi and the former court assassin, a man who, as far as anyone knew, had absolutely no royal blood and no right to have a son on the throne.

When most of the staff’s backs were turned, Evrial eased into the kitchen. She hustled toward the swinging door, hoping to pass through without being seen. Only one woman lifted her head and frowned as she passed.

Evrial stepped into a corridor on the other side, its narrow utilitarian confines intended for crew rather than passengers. She glanced in both directions and glimpsed a woman’s slippers and the tail of a gray cloak disappearing up a ladder. Evrial jogged after the figure, climbing the brass rungs without making a sound. She paused on the next floor, didn’t see anyone in the service corridor, and continued up one more deck. A cart of laundry blocked her view of the corridor, but she heard the patter of soft footfalls. She climbed out of the ladder well in time to see the cloaked woman struggle to open a heavy hatch, almost upending a basket of salamis and flat cakes. Her hood slipped down to her shoulders.

Evrial sucked in a breath, recognizing the sharp-nosed face. It belonged to one the people who’d been seated at that secret business meeting. That made her one of the more prominent heads of the Forge organization, the people plotting to put a loyal figurehead on the throne.

Staying low, Evrial crept forward, a vague notion of accosting the woman arising in her mind. Before she’d reached the laundry cart, her target glanced back.

Evrial ducked, hoping she’d reacted quickly enough to stay out of sight. Hinges squeaked, and the hatch thudded shut. Evrial pushed the cart aside and ran to the end of the passageway. She eased open the hatch without trouble and peeked through the crack. The wide, wood-paneled corridor was empty.

“ Emperor’s warts,” she whispered.

Cabin doors stretched along the walls in either direction, but they were all closed.

“ She got away, huh?”

Evrial jumped in surprise, losing her grip on the hatch. It clanged shut.

Maldynado stood behind her in the corridor, his hat brushing the ceiling, the feather crooked against the wall. His broad shoulders brushed the walls as well, and Evrial caught herself staring at his collarbone and the hint of firm pectoral muscles revealed by the V-neck shirt.

“ What?” Maldynado asked.

Evrial cleared her throat, embarrassed that he’d caught her staring. “I didn’t know you were following me.”

“ You thought I’d loiter in the kitchen and graze off the appetizer platters while you wandered off, looking for trouble?”

“ No, I mean, I didn’t hear you.”

“ Oh.” Maldynado offered a bright smile. “Good. Basilard and Sicarius always tell me I have the stealth of a drunken elephant, but I think they’re hypercritical because they were born with cat’s paws instead of human feet.” He pointed his chin at the hatch. “Did you figure out who she is?”

Distracted by the idea of Sicarius having cat feet, it took Evrial a moment to answer the question. “One of the Forge women.”

Maldynado straightened, clunking his head on the ceiling. He barely noticed. “Really? The boss’ll want to hear about that.”

Yes, and Evrial wished her prey hadn’t eluded her so she’d have more information to share. “I wonder why this woman is sneaking around instead of simply going to the dining room for meals.”

“ Maybe she knows we’re here and is worried we’ll flood her cabin with the river,” Maldynado said, “the same way we did with their under-lake meeting chamber.”

“ Nobody’s supposed to know your team is here. Lokdon sent me to buy the tickets, everyone boarded after dark with their hats pulled low, and they’ve been sneaking out for their food. Although, some members have been roaming around of late.” Evrial eyed him up and down.

“ What do you expect? Books is my roommate, and he’s got his papers all over my bunk. And on the floor. I can barely turn around in there. I ought to come sleep with you.” Maldynado wriggled his eyebrows.

“ I have a roommate, too, you know. I don’t think your employer would care to listen to your spelunking attempts.”

Maldynado lifted his hands. “I was just talking about sleeping arrangements. I don’t know what you’re suggesting, my lady.”

Evrial snorted. “Let’s just go talk to her. If more Forge people than that old lady are here, and they know we’re here, we might be in for trouble.”

“ Yes, I suppose it was too much to hope that we’d have a week’s vacation to recover from our wounds before arriving to that mess back home.” For once, Maldynado’s face held only grimness and not a trace of humor.

Amaranthe Lokdon darted from shadow to shadow, hugging the railing and avoiding the freshly lit lanterns burning on the steamboat’s hull. The wooden doors between those lanterns were closely placed at this end of the vessel, indicating the smallness of the cabins. Engineering lay right below, and the reverberations from the paddlewheel’s pumping pistons vibrated through the textured steel decking.

A door opened a few meters away. It wasn’t one of the rooms her team had claimed, so Amaranthe turned her back to it, propped her arms on the railing, and pretended to be fascinated with the farmlands drifting past on that side of the river. Though she gazed forward, she watched the door with her peripheral vision. A man and woman walked out, arms linked. They didn’t glance in her direction. Good. Amaranthe patted the brown paper bag tucked beneath a flap of her parka. It seemed she might get away with her discreet outing without having to explain herself to anyone.

After the couple disappeared down the nearest stairwell, Amaranthe trotted to her own door, holding her parka closed-and protecting the bag-with one arm. She slipped out the key and inserted it in the lock… only to find that someone had unlocked the door since she left fifteen minutes earlier. Sergeant Yara must have returned from her exercise session. That was all right. She probably wouldn’t betray Amaranthe to any fitness-obsessed assassins. Yara and Sicarius had never, insofar as Amaranthe had noticed, held a conversation.

She opened the door and stepped inside, a greeting for Yara on her lips, but she found herself face-to-face with Sicarius. Arms crossed over his chest, he stood in the center of the small cabin. He wore his usual fitted black clothing and knife-and-dagger collection. His cool expressionless stare had a where-have-you-been mien to it. Or maybe her imagination conjured up that nuance. Her guilty imagination.

Amaranthe pursued the age-old strategy employed by those seeking to avoid answering questions-she preempted them with her own unrelated rambling. “That’s odd. I distinctly remember locking this door before I left.” She tapped her chin thoughtfully. “And Yara is my only roommate and the only other key holder, but I don’t see her here.” She made a show of surveying the cabin. She peered under the lower of two bunks mounted on the back wall, then beneath a table bolted to the floorboards near another wall, and she finally pulled open the table’s single drawer to peek inside. “Nope, she’s not here.”