Lindsay Buroker - Dark Currents

Maldynado pointed at the destroyed constructs, half of them buried by rubble. “Nice work, Booksie. Though you owe me powder and a new rifle.”

“You didn’t lose your rifle,” Akstyr said, taking up the rear.

“I know,” Maldynado said, “but it’s all bunged up, and that’s Books’s fault.”

“It’s still functional,” Amaranthe said.

“But scratched and dented. You don’t expect someone like me to run around with a weapon like that do you? I had it custom made. The inlay alone took a master engraver three days.”

“Maldynado?” Books said. “You’re an ass.”

“But sort of a lovable ass, right?”

“Like the odd dreadful in-law one gets when one marries,” Books said.

“So…you think of Maldynado as family?” Amaranthe smiled over her shoulder at him.

Books stumbled. Dear ancestors, did he?

Maldynado threw Books a wink.

Books eyed his and Amaranthe’s backs then glanced from side to side at his escorts. Basilard’s lips curved upward, and, while nothing would move Sicarius to smile, one of his eyebrows did arch slightly.

“Well, I…” Books thought of his long-dead father, a man he had barely known, a man who had always seemed to prefer spending time with his soldier friends to his nagging wife and a boy who loved words not swords. For the first time, Books thought he might, if not condone those choices, understand them. “My father used to say some families are made by shared blood and some families are made by spilled blood. I used to dismiss it as some pugilistic glorification of a combat unit, but I can see where spending enough time with the same folks, facing dangerous situations day in and day out, would tend to make one feel a familial kinship toward those comrades, even when they are people one wouldn’t normally choose to spend time with in casual, everyday life.”

“What did he say?” Maldynado whispered to Amaranthe. “I forgot to listen halfway through.”

Books sighed.

“He said he loves you all like brothers,” Amaranthe said, “and thanks for coming after him down here.”

“Oh,” Maldynado said. “Good.”

Books’s first thought was to dispute the preciseness of Amaranthe’s translation, but the approving nods of the other men made him pause. Maybe it was good to have a woman in the “family.”

A hollow, grinding noise came from the tunnel ahead.

“Please, not more fighting,” Books muttered.

Sicarius left Books for Basilard to support and stepped in front of Amaranthe, a throwing knife at the ready.

A rusty metal ore cart rolled around a bend, its iron wheels following the track down the center of the tunnel. If not for the fact it was moving, it would have appeared normal. No weapons or advanced features protruded from it.

The cart rolled to a stop a few paces in front of Sicarius.

“Maybe it’s here to give us a ride out,” Maldynado said.

“I wish,” Amaranthe said. “Let’s-”

“It feels like it’s been touched by…” Akstyr jogged past Sicarius to peer inside.

Amaranthe lifted a hand, as if to issue a warning, but Akstyr was already plucking something out.

“Just a piece of paper.” He pulled a single page out and checked both sides. “I can’t read this.”

Basilard stood straighter, as if he might also leave Books to take a look.

Not wanting to lose his support, Books waved a hand. “Bring it here. Maybe it’s in Mangdorian.”

Akstyr shrugged and headed their way. “If it’s secret Science stuff, you have to translate it for-”

Sicarius slipped the paper out of his hand as he passed. Books would not have noticed except Akstyr threw him a startled glance. Sicarius skimmed the note, crumpled it up, and pocketed it.

Basilard stiffened.

“A message?” Amaranthe asked.

A message? Who was down here except the dead shaman and what remained of his contraptions? Unless she thought Tarok had arranged for the note to be delivered before his death.

“It’s nothing,” Sicarius told Amaranthe.

Amaranthe lifted a shoulder. Too tired to argue, perhaps.

Sicarius turned a cool, assessing gaze toward Basilard, who did not quite keep the suspicion off his face as he returned it.

“We all ready to go back to the city?” Amaranthe asked, her words breaking the staring contest.

“Extremely so.” Books closed his eyes. “Extremely so.”

• • • • •

Late morning sun pried through the clouds, illuminating the countryside as the sloping foothills gentled to flatter lands dotted with farmsteads. The stolen lorry chugged along with all the men except Sicarius crammed in the cab. Amaranthe lay in the troop bed, propped on a rucksack leaning against a bench. If she did not move anything, she did not hurt. An improvement. Despite his injuries, Books sat with the others, chatting and even laughing. She still felt bad about the bounty on his head, but it seemed he had come to peace with being a part of a band of mercenaries.

Sicarius leaned against the back wall of the cab, his arms across his chest, his gaze roving the countryside and the road behind them. The soldiers had been pulling up to the mine entrance as her team slipped away. She wondered what they would make of the mechanical carnage left inside. More, she wondered if anything else would come of her words to Yara. The soldiers might have been too late to help, but their arrival might mean Amaranthe’s trip into their camp had not been a waste of time. If the enforcer sergeant had relayed Amaranthe’s ideas, and the soldiers had been acting on them… Perhaps her team had succeeded in earning recognition or at least planting a seed in someone’s mind that they might not be villains. She eyed Sicarius. Mostly not villains anyway.

Sicarius noticed her watching him and came to sit on the bench beside her. “You are well?”

“Well enough. Thank you for asking.” Amaranthe tried to remember if he ever had. “And thank you for…everything up there.”

Sicarius grunted. It was not a particularly inviting grunt, but she decided to say more.

“I know my plans aren’t always the epitome of precaution and wisdom, but I appreciate your willingness to trust me enough to give them a try. And I appreciate you risking your life to protect mine, no matter how stupid I might be to put mine-and yours-in danger to start with. I would have died in that tower, if not for you.” Amaranthe pictured him taking her hands and saying it would devastate him if he lost her.

Instead he said, “Likely,” and returned to surveying the farms drifting past.

She sighed. Of course, she had not told him how much it would mean to her to lose him after she had nearly gotten him blown up above the canyon. Sicarius had been trained to be hard to read, to keep his thoughts to himself. What was her excuse? She might have died in these mountains, and she would have left the world without letting him know what he meant to her. Though it might hurt to love him and not be loved in return, wouldn’t it be worse to never find the courage to let him know how she felt? Until it was too late?

“Sicarius,” Amaranthe said quietly.

He bent low, eyes toward her face.

With the men laughing and talking up front, and the lorry clacking and chugging as the stack billowed black smoke into the air, this was scarcely a romantic spot. But maybe it did not matter. His response would not likely be to wrap her in his arms and kiss her. Whatever response he gave-if he gave one at all-she anticipated it would sting.

“I…uhm…” Amaranthe forced herself to meet his gaze. “I love you.”

A long moment passed. She did not remember breathing.

Sicarius nodded infinitesimally. “I know.”

Amaranthe looked away and cleared her throat. “Of course. I figured you did. I just wanted to make sure. That’s all.”