Free The Emperor's Edge by Lindsay Buroker

brought her here, sent her on a mission.”
    “One which she did not complete. She’s allied with Sicarius.”
    Sespian pushed past him to the window. Footprints trampled the snow below. Even from the third floor, the spots of blood were visible. But the courtyard was empty, Amaranthe nowhere to be seen. The front gate was locked, the guards in place. She had not fled that way.
    “Where is she?” Sespian whispered.
    “Sire—”
    Sespian waved Hollowcrest to silence and charged out the door. He raced through the halls and down the stairs. More than once he skidded on the polished marble floors and banged into the walls, but he did not slow.
    When he ran out the front door, cold air wrapped around him, but he hardly noticed it. He veered off the walkway and followed the wall of the building. Only when he reached the spot below Hollowcrest’s office did he slow.
    The gas lights in the courtyard provided little illumination this far from the walkways. Blood spattered the snow, but only under the window. There was no trail leading away. The darkness, and dozens of boot prints, thwarted Sespian’s attempts to pinpoint Amaranthe’s tracks.
    A shard of blackness against the white ground demanded his attention. He bent and brushed aside snow, revealing the midnight black dagger.
    A twinge of old fear wound through his gut. What had she been doing with Sicarius’s weapon? Hollowcrest couldn’t be right, could he?
    Voices at the front of the building returned him to the moment. Feeling dizzy, Sespian staggered back to find Hollowcrest and two guards talking on the stairs. When Sespian approached, Hollowcrest sent the men inside.
    “What happened?” Sespian asked.
    Hollowcrest met his gaze. “She broke her neck in the fall. The guards have taken her body away for incineration.”
    “No. She’s too good. She wouldn’t… I don’t believe it.” The headache that always lurked behind Sespian’s eyes intensified. Perhaps all that running had been too much. He put a hand on one of the statues for support.
    “Sespian,” Hollowcrest said, “she wasn’t what you wanted her to be. She was a traitor. I brought her here because I suspected she was not the loyal enforcer she appeared to be.” He reached out and touched the knife in Sespian’s hands. “She was in league with Sicarius.”
    “No,” Sespian whispered.
    He leaned forward, panting. The running had strained him more than it should have. Spots floated across his vision, and blackness probed the edges. The constant pain in his head intensified. He hunched over, clutching at his temples—and collapsed into unconsciousness.

Chapter 6
     
    S hackles bound Amaranthe’s wrists behind her back. Two guards dragged her through dark narrow hallways and down a dank stairway framed by walls of roughly quarried stone. Lanterns burned at distant intervals, hanging from old torch sconces. As the group moved in and out of the shadows, Amaranthe felt as if she had stepped back hundreds of years in time.
    Warm blood trickled down her temple. Numerous glass cuts afflicted her face and scalp. Worse pain came from her battered muscles, courtesy of the pummeling they received in the three-story fall. This discomfort was only the beginning, she knew.
I can survive this. Whatever torture they inflict on me, I will survive, and I will plan, and I will escape.
    Then she entered the dungeon.
    She was expecting shackles, instruments of pain, and moldy, bloodstained walls. The archaic atmosphere ended at the doorway, however. Inside, a honeycomb of whitewashed tunnels and chambers spread out. They were brightly lit by gas jets and smelled of lye soap. The first man she saw likewise did not meet expectations.
    Amaranthe had anticipated towering, monosyllabic guards led by a sadistic, whip-cracking overseer who had not seen the sun in twenty years. Instead, a gray-haired man in crisp black military fatigues greeted her with a smile.
    “Ah!” he said cheerfully. “A female. You’re our