Lindsay Buroker: Blood and Betrayal

“I see,” Sespian said as they continued along the path. Softly, perhaps more to himself, he added, “Loyalty may be an admirable trait in men, but I do wish more of them would direct it in my direction.”

With Forge scampering around the capital, infiltrating the Imperial Barracks, Sespian must have trouble knowing whom he could trust. Maldynado felt for the kid and wanted to help, but-

He stopped a hair shy of crashing into Sicarius.

Sicarius had stopped to face the emperor. Though it was always hard to tell with him, he looked like he had something to say. He glanced at Maldynado, didn’t utter a word, then strode ahead several paces where he knelt to examine the ground.

Sespian’s forehead crinkled. Maldynado gave him a shrug. He couldn’t explain Sicarius either.

“Fresh tracks.” Sicarius stepped off the trail they’d been following around the lake, touched the broken tip of a thin branch, and veered into the foliage on a short peninsula.

Maldynado pushed past ferns to follow him, wondering how Sicarius managed to move through the same vegetation as he did, but without making a sound. After he ducked a branch growing a mossy beard so long it’d make the hairiest old men in the Veterans’ Quarter jealous, the water came into sight again. Sicarius had stopped on a muddy bank at the end of the peninsula. Maldynado didn’t need to be a tracker to spot all the prints. Many different sizes and styles of boots were represented. If Amaranthe had come ashore here…

Sicarius knelt and touched the ground. He brought a finger to his nose.

“Blood?” Maldynado asked.

“Yes.”

“Amaranthe’s?” It was a dumb question-people’s blood didn’t have an identifying smell, did it? — but Maldynado somehow hoped that asking would lead Sicarius to say, “No, she’s fine. This belonged to the bloke she punched in the nose.” It was an unwarranted hope though. Maldynado would bet on Amaranthe in a one-on-one match-up against almost anybody-even if she wasn’t stronger or faster than her foe, she’d scheme up some plan to defeat him-but against the ten or twelve people responsible for these footprints?

“Likely,” was all Sicarius said.

He touched one of the footprints. From where he stood, Maldynado didn’t see anything special about it, but Sicarius grew still. “Major Pike was here.”

Maldynado put a hand on the nearest tree for support. “The Major Pike you described as Emperor Raumesys’s master interrogator?”

“Yes.”

A twig snapped as Sespian pushed his way out of the foliage behind Maldynado. He took in the scene with a grim set to his mouth.

“They must have seen her fall.” Sicarius pointed to a mark near the water. “When she came ashore there, Pike was waiting.”

“She came ashore, as in her broken, battered body floated up to the bank, or she walked ashore?” Maldynado asked.

Sicarius strode back into the underbrush, quickly disappearing from view.

“Oh, no,” Maldynado said, “no need to answer our questions. We’re just speaking to give the wildlife something to listen to.”

A crow squawked on the other side of the trail.

“Yes, like that.”

Sespian hadn’t said a word, and he didn’t react to Maldynado’s sarcasm. His eyes were cast downward, toward the trampled mud where Sicarius had found the blood. Maybe he felt partially responsible for Amaranthe’s predicament. Did emperors have the capacity to worry about commoners? Not a lot of Maldynado’s own warrior-caste brethren did, but Sespian seemed a sensitive sort. Too sensitive maybe. If he had the brawny assertive mien of his predecessor, Emperor Raumesys, he might not have so many people picking on him as someone easy to remove or shunt aside.

“We’d better go after him.” Maldynado pushed into the foliage, figuring he’d lose track of Sicarius if he didn’t follow immediately. As it was, he reached the trail and didn’t see anyone. He searched for fresh boot prints, but the ground was harder packed there, and he couldn’t decide which way the kidnappers had gone. He listened for a rustle of leaves or snapping of twigs that would announce Sicarius’s passage, but of course that never came. Near the water’s edge, a frog started croaking, but nothing stirred in the underbrush.

Sespian, making less noise than Maldynado would have expected, stepped back onto the trail. “Which way?” he asked.

Uhm. Maldynado pointed into the woods opposite of the peninsula and headed in that direction. If Sicarius had stuck to the path, Maldynado should have seen him. Besides, he didn’t want to appear clueless in front of the emperor.

Maldynado pushed through dense, tangled undergrowth for several minutes and was about to confess that he’d been guessing when the crow cawed again. Complaining about assassins passing nearby? He angled toward the call.

Up ahead, the trees thinned. Afraid he’d simply walked in a circle and returned to the lake, Maldynado almost turned around, but curiosity or perhaps intuition prompted him to continue.

Between one step and the next, the trees ended. Maldynado found himself squinting into autumn sunlight slanting down from a swath of open blue sky. A huge circular expanse stretched before him with all the trees, bushes, grass, and moss cleared. No, not cleared, he realized as he walked off an edge, almost tripping because of a height difference from one step to the next. The entire circle, easily hundreds of meters in diameter, was a foot lower than the surrounding earth. The foliage hadn’t been cleared; it’d been smashed. Compacted beneath a weight so great, even stout trees had crumpled beneath it, their trunks flattened into the ground.

“Bloody bears,” Sespian breathed. “They landed here? I didn’t realize how big that craft was. Or how heavy. How could something with such mass fly?”

“I don’t know.” Maldynado tilted his head. “Bloody bears?”

Sespian flushed. “When I was growing up, one of my bodyguards always said, ‘bloody balls.’ I adopted it until my mother heard and said it wasn’t appropriate for young princes to say balls. ‘Bears’ was my work-around. The word still slips out at times.”

That story did little to change Maldynado’s mind that Sespian might be a tad soft for the position of emperor. “Do yourself a favor and don’t say things like that around military men, Sire.”

The flush deepened.

“The tracks end over there,” Sicarius said from behind and to the side of them.

Surprised by his soundless return, Maldynado nearly spat a, “Bloody bears,” himself.

“Lokdon was walking, hemmed in by soldiers,” Sicarius said. “The tracks disappear fifteen feet from the shelf.” He pointed at the foot-deep depression ringing the circle. “The boundary marks the hull of the craft, presumably.”

“How’d they get inside?” Sespian asked. “A ramp?”

“Unknown.”

“So, they have her.” Maldynado sank into a crouch, his elbows on his knees. Curse his dumb ancestors, why hadn’t he done better at piloting that dirigible? If he’d gone straight ahead toward Sunders City at top speed instead of trying to lose their pursuers in the wetlands, they might have made it. The enemy might have broken away to keep from being seen by outlying residents. “We have to go after her.”

Sicarius had moved away from Maldynado and Sespian and stood on the compacted earth, his gaze toward the south. The direction the craft had gone.

“How will your team find her?” Sespian asked.

Your team, he said, not we. Of course. What did some outlaw mercenary leader matter to him?

Maldynado caught himself before he said something snide. The emperor’s own mission called to him, that was all. And that mission might save the entire empire. Sespian couldn’t cast it aside to help rescue one person.