The Emperor's Edge 2: Dark Currents

The Emperor's Edge 2: Ch. 3

When Books and Maldynado returned to the rumbling, clanking, hissing belly of the pump house, Books searched for Amaranthe with a bounce in his step. He strode into the warm boiler room, which had been claimed as the recreation/training/dining room for the group.

A knife whistled through the air, almost giving him a second shave for the day.

He jerked back as the sleek steel thudded into a scarred log propped upright in the corner. The knife, hilt quivering, joined others. Several more littered the concrete floor.

Books glowered at the thrower.

“You should knock.” Seventeen-year-old Akstyr was the age Books’s son would have been if he were alive, but there were no similarities. Dressed in oversized shirt and trousers, Akstyr wore a perpetual sneer and would have looked like he made a living mugging old ladies even without the spiked black hair and arrow-shaped gang brand on his hand. “Bad to walk up on a man handling his weapons.”

“There’s no door.” Books smothered the urge to tack on “young man,” instead tapping the brick archway for emphasis.

“Then you should at least look before popping in. We’re having a lesson.”

Basilard, the putative instructor raised an apologetic hand toward Books. The ex-pit-fighter, with a briar patch of scars crisscrossing his pale face and shaven head, appeared as thug-like as Akstyr. Yet the mute man rarely caused trouble, so Books was inclined more favorably toward him than Akstyr or—

Maldynado bumped into Books as he passed into the room, a half-devoured pastry dangling from his lips. “You tell them about the bodies yet?” he asked, the food churning in his mouth on display like concrete in a mixer.

“Bodies?” Akstyr hurled another knife into the log.

“Not yet.” Books crossed the room to check the boiler, figuring it would be safer over there than near the practice area. He peered into the furnace and was mildly surprised someone had shoveled more coal in recently. “Is Amaranthe here?”

“Nah.” Akstyr collected his knives. “She and Sicarius are out, asking about a job.”

“I’d prefer to wait so we only have to tell the story once.”

“Not me.” Maldynado grinned and launched into gory descriptions of the bodies, speculations about an evil man-eating tunnel beast, and—his favorite part—how Books had fallen into the water, gotten tangled up, and screamed like a girl being mauled by a bear. He acted out the last part, which put Akstyr on the floor in guffaws. Even the saturnine Basilard smiled with appreciation for the flamboyant storytelling.

Books turned his back to them and checked the gauges on the boiler. He fiddled with the pressure regulators and pretended he could not hear Akstyr and Maldynado’s continuing mirth.

Basilard joined him, held out a throwing knife with one hand, and twitched a sign with the other: Practice?

Though Books was not as apt at reading Basilard’s hand codes as Amaranthe—who seemed to know what others were thinking whether they used words or not—he had seen that sign often enough to know it.

“I appreciate your willingness to instruct,” Books said, “but the four hours of training Sicarius inflicts on us every morning are sufficient for me.”

At five-and-a-half-feet tall, Basilard stood a foot shorter than Books, but he had the sturdy stoutness of a brandy still. Books poked at the coals in the furnace, so he could pretend he did not see the man’s stern frown.

You practice more, Basilard signed, which Books took to mean he needed more work than the others. No great illumination there.

“If the fate of the group ever rests on me being able to hurl a knife into a person at twenty paces, I suspect we’ll be doomed, extra practice notwithstanding. I’m not even sure I could—” Books didn’t finish his thought aloud—that he did not know if he could kill anyone. Thus far, the job had not required it, not from him. Amaranthe had never implied he need do more than defend himself. Still, Akstyr and Maldynado had fallen silent, and Books sensed them listening, waiting for more laughter fodder.