The Emperor's Edge 3: Deadly Games

The Emperor's Edge 3: Chapter 6 Part 2

The building trembled as a locomotive rumbled into the station down the street. From the darkness of The Brewed Puppy rooftop, Amaranthe watched a tenement building across the street while she waited for Sicarius to join her. The stench of burning meat wafted up to her, mingling with an omnipresent thick yeasty smell oozing from the building’s pores, and Amaranthe judged the old woman’s dismal opinion of the eating house’s quality to be accurate.

With her elbows propped on a low wall and a spyglass raised to her eye, she checked each window, searching for a man with a woman and two young boys. She did not know if she would recognize Raydevk based on a vague memory of the man’s father, but if she found the right combination of people...

She paused. Could that be it? Beyond a third-story window, a woman sat, knitting on a couch in a clutter-filled, one-room flat. Toys littered the floor at her feet. While Amaranthe was trying to judge if the carved wood blocks and automata represented boys’ or girls’ playthings, two youngsters scampered into view from behind a room partition formed by furniture draped with clothing. They chased each other around the woman’s chair, but an upraised hand and word from her halted that. She thrust a finger toward another clutter-partition, this one with a curtain hanging on a rod to delineate a door. The children disappeared into the dark space. Their sleeping area, Amaranthe assumed.

Voices sounded below as a couple exited the eating house, and she shifted her elbow to move the spyglass from her eye. Something gooey made her sleeve stick. She drew her arm back with a grimace and picked off tar.

She yawned and glanced around her rooftop perch, thinking of Sicarius’s warning to check her surroundings frequently. Moonlight gleamed against a stovepipe and provided enough illumination to confirm nothing stirred nearby. No doors led to the lower levels of The Brewed Puppy—she had climbed up via a drainpipe—and she doubted anyone except Sicarius would sneak up on her. She returned her attention to the brick building across the way.

“Is he there?” came Sicarius’s voice from behind her.

Amaranthe almost dropped the spyglass.

“Not yet,” she said, putting her back to the wall so she could face him.

It took her a moment to pick him out, standing in the shadows of a chimney. Had he just arrived? Or had he been testing her? Seeing if she would notice him before he announced himself? And why did she always feel like he was an army instructor, bent on training her to be a better soldier?

“You found a uniform?” Amaranthe asked.

He glided out of the shadows, soundless, like a haunting ancestor spirit. The moonlight did not reveal the color of his outfit, but it appeared less dark than his usual black, and she thought she detected familiar silver piping and buttons. A boxy cap covered much of his blond hair.

“Yes,” he said.

She touched his sleeve when he knelt beside her, and her fingers met the familiar scratchy wool of an enforcer uniform. She wore hers as well, the only article of clothing she had retained from her old life.

“Did you...uhm, where’d you find it?” Amaranthe had asked him not to maul anyone for a uniform, though he did tend to do things his own way.

“Clothesline.”

“Oh, good.” Her hand bumped an enforcer-issue short sword hanging from his belt. He had not found that on a clothesline, but it was a typical part of the uniform, so she decided not to ask. She wore one, too, as well as handcuffs. She pointed at the window she had identified earlier. “I think I’ve spotted the wife and children. Maybe we should...interview her before the husband gets home.” Yes, “interview” sounded friendlier than interrogate. “She might know what he’s up to. I can talk to her, see what I can learn, and you can snoop and see what you can learn.”