Lindsay Buroker: Beneath the Surface

“ Please, my lord,” came a young woman’s voice, “if we’re tardy, we’ll be punished.”

“ Again,” another woman said. Neither sounded older than twenty, twenty-five.

“ There are things in life worth risking punishment for,” Maldynado said.

Evrial imagined a suggestive smile on his face, and he was doubtlessly touching his chest. Knowing him, he’d found a way to unbutton his shirt to display the swell of pronounced pectoral muscles.

“ Are you changing clothes?” Amaranthe whispered.

“ Er, what?” Evrial blushed, glad for the darkness. It wasn’t like her to let her mind wander when it should be focused on work. “I mean, there’s no room. I couldn’t change without making noise.”

Amaranthe pushed a stack of clothing into her hands. “Try anyway. They won’t hear anything over the sound of how beautiful Maldynado is.”

Evrial held back a snort, barely. She unfolded the clothing and, by touch, soon realized she was holding a dress. She grimaced. “I hate dresses. They always snag on something.” She remembered running through the briar patches behind the smithy as a girl, trying to keep up with her brothers. “I haven’t had to wear one since…” She realized she was complaining-whining, she’d say if Maldynado were doing it-and clamped her lips shut. The situation was what it was.

“ Since when?” Amaranthe’s voice came from the floor-she must already be changing shoes.

“ Nothing.”

The voices continued outside, but an expectant silence came from Amaranthe’s side of the closet. Or maybe it was only in Evrial’s imagination that it was expectant. Either way, she felt compelled to explain. “My mother used to make me wear them as a girl and later on, too, when we visited grandmother and grandfather’s ash cairn.”

“ She stopped doing it?” Amaranthe asked. “Or…?”

“ She’s dead.”

“ Oh. How’d it happen?”

“ Are you always this nosy, Lokdon?”

“ Always.” Amaranthe’s voice held a smile.

“ She was murdered when she was in the city trying to sell the family’s wares. It’s why my brother and I became enforcers. My father never approved of the career, not for me, but I think he understands it.” Evrial extricated her foot from the bucket, propped it against a shelf, and unbuttoned her utility belt and trousers. She wriggled out of the clothes, wincing when her elbow clunked against a shelf. Wood bars fell into her-mops. She growled and tried to straighten them without making more noise.

“- hear something?” one of the girls outside asked.

“ Bloody balls,” Evrial whispered and almost crouched to grab her knife. She caught herself. What was she going to do? Stab some twenty-year-old girl?

“ Nah,” came Maldynado’s voice, followed by a response too low to hear through the door. Whatever it was, it caused the girls to giggle.

“ It’s good that you still have your father,” Amaranthe whispered. “I lost both parents before I was eighteen. I was too young to remember Mother much, but Father… He was sick, and the disease ate at him over the months. It was hard.”

“ Oh,” Evrial said, for lack of a better response. Somehow she hadn’t pictured Amaranthe as someone who’d ever lost anyone. She was too… optimistic. And spunky. Evrial had imagined her as a spoiled city girl, having a mother and father who were still alive and living in some upper-middle class brownstone near the University.

“ I think they’ve left,” Amaranthe said.

Evrial almost said, “Who?” but realized the corridor outside had grown quiet. “Right.” She wrestled with her clothing, nearly tearing her sweater in the removal process, and banging more elbows. One bang resulted in bars of soap tumbling off the shelf around her. “Can we risk a candle now?”

Before she’d finished the sentence, the door opened, allowing in light from a lamp mounted across the corridor. The soft illumination didn’t do much more than cast shadows into the cleaning closet, but Amaranthe was visible, unbelievably neat and trim-given the limited space for changing-in a white fitted dress and apron. After checking the corridor, she pulled the rolling laundry-and-cleaning-supply cart out of the closet, leaving more room. Evrial rushed into her own dress and a pair of white slippers designed to mash five toes into the space for three. She much preferred enforcer boots.

Evrial picked up her utility belt. “Where do I put my knife?” She’d left her short sword in the cabin, but to wander about without a single blade was asking for trouble. Of course, so was masquerading as a maid.

“ You need a thigh holster with a dress. That’s what I’ve used when Maldynado has picked out… disguises for me.” Amaranthe made a disapproving clucking sound and stepped back into the closet to pick up the soap bars and mops littering the floor. “If you don’t mind a bit of advice, never let that man shop for you.”

“ I figured that out already.”

Evrial picked up a soap bar and set it on the shelf with the others-she had made quite a mess changing in the dark-but Amaranthe plucked it from the chosen spot and put it on another shelf, lining it up just so with others. Evrial shrugged and figured out a way to loop her belt twice around her thigh to ensure the knife was at hand.

“ Are you sure there’s time for all this?” Evrial whispered when the tidying continued for more than a few seconds. “It wasn’t this clean when we came in here.”

“ I’m sure Maldynado will keep those ladies busy.”

Evrial didn’t want Maldynado keeping any ladies busy, but Amaranthe brushed off her hands, smoothed her dress, and returned to the corridor. When they stood by the wall lamp, she paused to wave at her dress. “Is everything tucked in and proper looking?”

“ It’s fine.” A twinge of jealousy rose within Evrial at the fact that Amaranthe, despite all the training she did, managed to look feminine in a dress. Evrial always felt… hulking in such attire, when she could find clothing to fit at all. “Mine?”

Amaranthe gave her a toe-to-head perusal. “Well, you’re the most intimidating maid I’ve ever seen.”

Evrial scowled.

“ Sorry, you look fine. Just keep your face down and try to appear servile.”

Pushing the cart ahead of her, Amaranthe headed for the corner and the dead end Evrial had seen earlier in the day.

“ In regard to faces,” Evrial said, “aren’t you worried someone will recognize yours?”

“ I doubt any of the Forge people spend much time looking at the faces of their servants, but I’ll keep my eyes down too.” Amaranthe knocked on the first door.

“ They might have a special place in their memories for the person who blew up their secret meeting place.”

“ I didn’t blow it up. I flooded it.” When nobody answered, Amaranthe tried the knob. It was locked. “And I didn’t show my face before I did it.”

“ I don’t suppose that cart comes with a universal key?”

“ Not that I noticed. That’s why we stopped in the laundry room.” Amaranthe produced a rectangular palm-sized punch card dotted with holes. “I borrowed this from one of the automated machines.” She slipped the card into the door crack next to the knob. She tilted it toward her, pushed it in further, then bent it the other way as she turned the knob and leaned into the door. It popped open. “A handy trick,” she said and slipped the punch card back into a pocket.

“ One I do not recall learning at the enforcer academy.” Evrial supposed Amaranthe had been an outlaw long enough to become proficient in numerous means of illegally entering premises. Yet another sign that she should rethink her association with these people.

“ Oh?” Amaranthe peeked into the dark cabin, then slipped inside. “Perhaps you were absent that day.”