Emperor's Edge Republic (12 page)

“How many people were up there?” Amaranthe’s teeth chattered.

“One.” Sicarius nudged her duffel bag with his foot. “You should change into dry clothing.”

“Yes, I know.” She pulled away from him, reluctantly, he thought, and dug into the bag.

He should have dragged his own gear out before slipping into the water, but the attack on the submarine had been unforeseen.

“And how did this one person know where we were going to anchor?” Amaranthe pulled out a shirt and trousers that had remained perfectly folded despite being stuffed in a bag. “
We
didn’t even know when we came out of the river. Nor did we know exactly when we’d return. Do you think Starcrest told people we were coming back? So someone could have been waiting? But why would he do that?”

“Someone sensitive to the Science could have detected the sub’s approach.”

“Oh, right, because of the magic power source. That thing’s big too. Or it
was
.” Amaranthe frowned toward the lake. No telltale glow illuminated the water. “It must put out a large... aura. Is that the right term?”

“Sufficient.”

“But it takes longer to run along the lake than it does to sail across it in the sub. How did this person figure out where we were going
and
beat us here?”

“A bicycle perhaps. I did not smell the smoke from a nearby lorry.” Sicarius wished he had answers for all of her questions. He had already been making a lot of unfounded guesses. That someone could sense the sub’s power source was not inconceivable, but to have sensed it from miles away? Even with artifacts and constructs being rare here, that would take an incredibly strong practitioner. More likely the person had been watching the river and waiting for them to come in. But who would have known to lie in wait? How many people had Starcrest told of their return? And
why
would one of them have wanted the submarine destroyed? “It is imperative that we report to the president.”

“I agree. And you were right about something else. Spending all that time cleaning the sub wasn’t necessary.” She waved to the cove, where all sign of the craft had disappeared from sight.

Sicarius, gazing out toward the water where the figure had jumped in—where he had
lost
his prey—did not answer.

Amaranthe finished changing and fastened the duffel bag. “I wonder if there’s any chance someone on the president’s staff could do my laundry.” She hefted the bag. “Seeing as we don’t have a place of our own to stay in yet. Or jobs to
pay
for a place.”

Sicarius took the bag from her before she could sling it on her back. They had three or four miles to march, and they could go faster if he carried the extra burden. And since his failure with their attacker meant he had no bags of his own to carry...

“Thank you,” Amaranthe said, sounding faintly surprised. “Is that because you’re being a gentleman and wish to do kind things for me or because you know we’ll go faster if you carry the heavy things?”

“Yes.” Sicarius trotted into the trees, angling toward the trail.

Amaranthe jogged to catch up. “Just so you’re aware, I
know
you’ll give me that answer whenever I ask questions like that, and I do it anyway because the ambiguity lets me choose to apply your response to the option that most suits me.”

That comment was almost twisty enough to challenge a reader of one of Starcrest’s advanced tactics and strategies books. Sicarius had heard enough of them to catch the gist though. “If you wish to see me as a gentleman, Amaranthe, I will not object.”

“Good.” They came out on the jogging path and picked up their pace, running side-by-side. Amaranthe nudged him with her elbow. “Just so you know, a gentleman steps forward to take the blame when a president wants to know how his submarine came to be blown up.”

Sicarius had already intended to accept the blame for that, though he dreaded making the confession to someone who doubtlessly would have been clever enough to outthink that saboteur. Still, he sensed Amaranthe was teasing him and sought an appropriate reply.

“You believe he will not lend you his laundress if he thinks you are responsible?”

Amaranthe chuckled softly. “I fear he’ll instruct said laundress to throw me in the bucket and grate me over the wash board.”

That she could find the humor in this situation wasn’t surprising, and it pleased him, for during that first month after Books’s funeral, he had worried her spirit would remain dampened. For now, though, Sicarius could not share her mirth. As they headed toward the outskirts of the city, he kept all of his senses alert to the night, to any other danger that might be lurking in it. Their vacation was over.

• • • • •

Mahliki strode down the carpeted hallway with as much determination as she could, given that she carried a fifty-pound brass diving helmet. She intended to thunk it down on her father’s desk. For emphasis. She had tried one of the diving suits in a bathing pool in the basement, and she had been ready to launch her expedition for two days. But she hadn’t been allowed out of the
hotel
for two days. She had tried multiple times to walk out, but kept bumping into security guards that referred her to Colonel Dak Starcrest, a cousin she vaguely remembered hearing about a time or two growing up, but not anyone she had met before this winter and certainly not someone she wanted to be restrained by. That plant was growing out of control all along the waterfront, doing thousands if not millions of ranmyas of damage, and she might as well be locked in the dungeon.

Mahliki staggered up a short stairway that led to a balcony overlooking the grand foyer three floors below. The door to her father’s office was at the end of the hall, an end much farther away then she would have liked. In reflection, a diving glove might have been a sufficient prop to throw down on the desk.

A side door opened, and she almost crashed into the gray-haired man who walked out, studying an open book almost as big and heavy as her diving helmet. She halted at the same time as he looked up, saw her burden, and stumbled back into the doorway. His thick brows rose, and his gray eyes widened behind his spectacles.

“Pardon me, Vice President Serpitivich,” Mahliki said, relieved she hadn’t dropped the helmet on his foot.

“No, pardon
me
, Lady Mahliki. I’m clearly in the way of an important... delivery?”

“Something like that.” If her arms hadn’t been quivering from fatigue, Mahliki would have chatted longer—despite early tensions between her father and his election-opponent-turned-vice-president—she liked the older man. He had a lot of the academic eccentricities that ran in her family. “Do you know if my father is in his office?” The last three times she had tried to hunt him down for this talk, he hadn’t been around.

“I believe so. Although...” Serpitivich closed his book—the title promised it a history of the city’s waterworks and sewer system. “You may wish to come back at another time. He has a... visitor.”

The idea of carrying the helmet back to her room and then back up these stairs again later was
not
appealing. Mahliki was about to announce that Father was about to have two visitors, but Serpitivich spoke again first.

“Perhaps...” He shuffled his book under one arm and extended the other. “I could help you carry that somewhere in the meantime. Or you could leave it in my office and retrieve it later.”

“Thank you, but I’ll leave this on his floor if he kicks me out.” Mahliki smiled. Yes, Father would deserve that if he had been the one giving instructions to confine her to the premises. “Besides, I wouldn’t want to interrupt your scintillating reading. Sewers and waterworks, eh? Must be fascinating.”

Serpitivich’s eyebrows shifted upward again. “Oh, you saw the title? Yes, there’s a portion of the old city, a very poor portion, that isn’t on the sewer system. I have long wanted to run infrastructure to that area to improve the living conditions, in hopes of attracting a more affluent element to the neighborhoods or even inspiring the current residents to greater economic aspirations. Now that I have the means to effect such change, it’s simply a matter of making the numbers work. I have a few ideas if you’re interested in—” he adjusted his spectacles, almost dropping the book in the process.

“That sounds like a worthy project,” Mahliki said, taking advantage of his fumble. She needed to escape the conversation before her arms gave out. “If you write up a treatise on it, I should enjoy reading the paper.” She smiled at him, then made polite nods and returned to her mission.

“Why, I’ll certainly let you know if I write such a paper,” he called after her.

Mahliki had made such offers to more academic sorts than she could remember, including her own parents. It wasn’t exactly a brush-off—especially since it had resulted in more than one paper landing on her desk, including one that an earnest Polytechnic professor had mailed across an ocean and a continent for her perusal—but it did buy time and help her avoid being mired down in long conversations on subject matters that weren’t her passions. Even if the papers came, she was a fast reader and could skim the contents in less time than those prolonged conversations often took.

As Mahliki walked closer to Father’s door, she noticed it stood ajar with lamplight flowing out. Good. Whoever his guest was, the meeting couldn’t be so important as to require utter secrecy. It was, however, odd that the guard who usually stood outside the door was missing. Father hadn’t stepped out, had he?

But, no, as she approached the threshold, she heard voices drifting out. Father’s and... a woman’s. One of those business people angling for some concession? Hadn’t he been directing them to the new Chief of Domestic Economics?

Mahliki softened her steps—as much as her burden allowed—and stopped a few inches from the door.

“...look so tired, dear,” a woman said—Mahliki didn’t recognize the voice. “And your brow is all furrowed together. Do you have another headache?”

Mahliki’s mouth fell open. Who was calling her father
dear
? Unless Grandmother Starcrest had decided to visit the capital, this couldn’t have a promising explanation. Father wouldn’t be... cheating on Mother. Surely, not. They were too loving and supportive of each other. It was almost gooey. Mahliki and her siblings had rolled many an eye as they were growing up. Father wouldn’t... he
couldn’t
.

Mahliki wished there were a table in the hall that she could set the helmet on. Her arms ached, and her palms had started sweating. She wouldn’t walk away from this conversation for anything though.

“What you need,” the woman went on, “is a true confidant here. Someone who was born and bred in the capital and understands the Turgonian culture. That... foreign woman, what use is she here? There are no ancient pots to study, or whatever it is she does.”

Mahliki was torn between holding her breath and not moving an inch, lest one of the old floorboards beneath the runner creak, and wanting to barge in and punch whoever this woman was in the face.
Father
should be punching her in the face. Or at least shoving her out the door.

An inside door thumped shut. The lavatory? Or maybe that big closet Father had converted into a file room.

“Are you still here, Sauda?” Father sighed, and a chair creaked. “Lieutenant Pustvan, I thought I asked you to escort the lady to the foyer.”

“Yes, My Lord, but she threatened me when I tried to take her arm.” Ah, there was the door guard. “And I wasn’t sure how much bodily force you wanted me to use given her... status.”

“She threatened you? You weigh a hundred pounds more than she does.”

“Well, she threatened parts of me. Parts I’m partial to.”

The woman issued a haughty sniff, as if she had done no such thing. Mahliki could have disliked her from the tone of that sniff alone. She definitely sounded like someone who deserved a punch in the face. And, cursed sand sprites, the stupid helmet was getting heavy.

“You may bully me out of here if you wish, Rias, but that does not invalidate the truth.”

Rias?
Only family members and close friends called Father that. None of the staff here ever called him anything except “My Lord” or, when they were trying to be modern and progressive, “Lord President.” The proper title was supposed to be Mister President, but everyone in the warrior caste seemed to find the notion of leaving lord out of the address positively insulting. A few of his old friends called him Lord Admiral, but very few other people here presumed first-name intimacy. So who in all the oceans was this woman?

Mahliki leaned closer to the door, trying to see through the three-inch opening.

“Yes, Sauda,” Father said. “I acknowledge that. As I said, leave the paperwork on my desk, and I’ll speak with an attorney.”

“But Rias,” the woman purred, “there’s no need for that. I thought the gift I sent would make my feelings clear on the matter. I am willing to accept you back, despite your... dalliances in other countries. Our agreement goes back more than forty years and certainly predates anything that’s transpired in the last twenty.”

The chair squeaked. “
Dalliances?
Such as a marriage of twenty years and three children?”

“A marriage you had no legal right to pursue, Rias.”

On tiptoes in the hallway, Mahliki couldn’t make out more than Lieutenant Pustvan’s arm and the right half of the woman’s back—her long black hair was swept up in an elaborate coif, and she wore a mink fur coat. That hair had to be dyed, Mahliki decided, as the reality of who this was sank in. Father had never spoken of his former wife, but Mother mentioned it whenever she told her version of the story about how they had met and fallen in love—over frozen and mutilated bodies.

The woman backed up, and Father came into view. Mahliki skittered back—or tried to. Her heel caught a wrinkle in the carpet runner and the awkward helmet threw off her balance. She kept from pitching onto her backside, but her sweaty palms betrayed her. The solid brass helmet clunked to the floor like an elephant falling through a roof. At least it didn’t crash
through
the floor and into someone’s bedroom below.