Lindsay Buroker - Beneath the Surface

Focused on his work, the enforcer didn’t notice her approach. She rushed toward him, thinking to tear the saw from his hands and shove him back outside, but spotted a dark figure at the last moment. Tucked between two crates, another enforcer stood guard across from the hole.

He spotted her as soon as she entered the light. He raised a short sword. Amaranthe whipped out her dagger and flung it toward the beam his hair brushed against. He jerked back, clunking his head on the low ceiling. Amaranthe dove in beneath his sword, grabbing his wrist to slam his knuckles into a crate even as she smashed the heel of her hand into his chin with her other hand. The blow drove his head back into the ceiling yet again, and his sword clattered to the floor. She silently apologized for the headache he’d endure in the morning, but it was better than the fate his comrade had met. She dragged him into the open, wrenching his arm behind his back. He tried to fight back, swinging at her face with his free hand, but his knuckles clunked against another beam. In the tight space, her smaller size gave her an advantage. When he tried to stand to achieve better leverage, she drove her elbow into the back of his knee. He dropped to the deck and scrambled toward the hole, apparently having had enough.

While she’d been busy with the guard, Books had handled the man in the hole. He’d torn the saw away and had a fistful of the enforcer’s hair. “Thank you for attempting to join our small but elite group, but you’ve been uninvited.” Books shoved the sawyer back through the hole.

“ Small but elite?” Sespian asked mildly.

“ Yes,” Amaranthe said. “Haven’t you seen our fliers?”

“ Shoot them!” someone hollered from the other side.

“ You’ll hit your own man,” Amaranthe yelled back. “Get out,” she told her prisoner, poking her dagger into his back.

He couldn’t claw his way out fast enough. His head smacked the wall one more time before he escaped through the hole. He’d barely cleared it before a barrage of crossbow bolts zinged through the opening.

Amaranthe and the others had anticipated it and weren’t in the line of fire, but she gulped at the array of quarrels that sank into a crate. Through the hole, she glimpsed uniformed men reloading their crossbows and moving around, trying to find angles that might allow them to hit their targets. Amaranthe guided her men by touch, pushing them back several feet so those random shots wouldn’t find flesh.

“ What now?” Sespian whispered.

“ We guard the entrance.” Amaranthe patted about, found a crate, and heaved it in front of the hole. That wouldn’t deter the enforcers for long, but it would make it harder for them to fire inside. “I’ll handle it. Why don’t you two check on Akstyr, see if he’s subdued the other men? Then… what’s your plan for the cement, Books?” She didn’t know how long the new hole from engineering would remain undiscovered-Basilard might already be fighting to defend it-but she questioned whether they’d be able to, under any circumstances, tote the weapons out now. All it would take was one stray crossbow bolt…

“ We dragged as many bags of cement in with us as we could before someone asked why enforcers were helping unload the cargo,” Books said.

“ Dragged them in where?” Amaranthe asked.

Books thumped his boot against the deck. “Down with the rockets. We grabbed some tools too. If we can cut through to one of the water tanks in the boiler room, we might be able to mix the cement right down there.”

“ Might? ”

“ It was a hastily composed plan,” Books admitted.

“ It’s a good compact space. We can set the cement right in there.” Sespian thumped on a crate. “There’s plenty of wood around here to make a mold.”

“ And then what?” Amaranthe asked. “The weapons are still-”

A series of thunks interrupted her. Another barrage of crossbow quarrels.

“ Stop firing,” someone barked. “They’ve blocked the entrance. Get more smoke bombs.”

“ That’s not enough, Sergeant. We need to light the stage on fire, smoke ’em out.”

“ That’ll light the entire steamboat on fire, you idiot.”

“ Then we need bigger cutting tools. There has to be something in engineering.”

Amaranthe grimaced. If the men hadn’t found the hole Basilard guarded yet, they would soon. “That plan will leave the weapons on board,” she continued. “Once the cement hardens, they’ll be on board forever.”

“ We plucked a blow lamp out of engineering,” Books said. “I thought we might cut the hull away beneath the cement block once it hardens.”

“ Cut the hull away? There’s nothing but water under there.”

“ Yes, that’ll leave a hole in the bottom of the ship, through which the block can fall and find a resting spot in the mud at the bottom of the river.”

If Amaranthe hadn’t been holding weapons in both hands, she would have rubbed her face or massaged her temples. Or something. “You’re the one who’s lectured me about prudence, Books. That sounds… imprudent.”

“ Our options are limited. As is our time-the cement will take some hours to harden.”

“ Hours? ” Amaranthe blurted. While the enforcers’ attacks hadn’t been effective thus far, she couldn’t believe they wouldn’t come up with an alternative given that much time.

“ The sooner I get started-”

“ Yes, yes, go,” Amaranthe said. “You’re right. What else can we do?”

Thumps and grunts sounded as Books groped his way back to the grate.

“ I didn’t take as many engineering courses as I should have, given my architecture interests,” Sespian said, “but I’m fairly certain cutting a hole in the bottom of a ship will cause it to sink as well.”

Amaranthe sighed. “That’s my understanding of holes and boats too.”

“ It’s amazing how many conveyances your team destroys for the good of the empire.” He sounded more amused than condemning. That was something at least.

“ Yes, and unfortunately Maldynado isn’t here, so we can’t blame this one on him.”

A horn blasted somewhere. An alarm? A warning?

Amaranthe tilted her ear toward the blocked hole. Voices that had been plotting in hushed tones fell silent. Boots pattered against the deck-men running to look at something? She was tempted to push the crate aside and peek outside, but a voice stayed her hand.

“ Mind that hole, Private,” a man said, not more than five feet away. “If they escape, it’ll be on you.”

“ Yes, Corporal.”

A laugh rang out in the distance, from the doorway to the dining hall perhaps. “For once seeing the marines is good news.”

Amaranthe slumped, wishing she could sink into the floor and disappear. “The marines?”

“ Perhaps,” Sespian said, “someone has come downstream to escort their important cargo to the capital.”

Whatever the case, Amaranthe feared a marine vessel would have the tools and manpower to disassemble the stage. Or utterly destroy it. And those hiding within.

Inside the cigar factory, rows of tables stretched beneath a high, beamed ceiling. Outside, twilight approached, and the shadows grew long. Evrial stood near the door, wrinkling her nose at the sweet pungent aroma thickening the air, while Maldynado roamed through the spacious interior looking for… who knew what? What sort of distraction could they create that didn’t involve fires or explosives? When Maldynado paused to tick a finger against one of the stoves stationed in the corners of the room, Evrial scowled at him. He resumed his stroll.

He paused in front of a tall, narrow window overlooking the waterfront. “One enforcer is pushing a wheelbarrow of coal up the dock. I think the other is building fires in the furnaces.”