Free Forged in Blood I by Lindsay Buroker Page A

blocked door. “Let’s get your rowdy friends.”
    The two prisoners had been attempting to free each other. One clenched half of a broken pair of scissors in his mouth and was trying to saw the rusty blade across his comrade’s wrist bonds. Amaranthe doubted they’d free each other within the hour—or month—that way, but she removed the tool from the man’s mouth anyway.
    “Sorry, gentlemen, but we’re taking a walk.” She nodded for Maldynado to hoist the bigger man to his feet. “You’ll have to try to escape later.”
    Amaranthe had no more than helped the second fellow to stand—her pistol nudging his back to encourage alacrity—when an explosion roared through the basement. The ground bucked, and she staggered, catching her balance on a press. Crates and machinery crashed to the floor. The wooden ceiling trembled and groaned. She eyed the old boards through the clouds of dust that arose, choking the little lamplight they had. Maybe setting off an explosion in the basement of a centuries-old building wasn’t a good idea after all.
    The noise in the stairwell disappeared. The creaks from the presses on the floor above sounded loud in the new quiet, one broken only by soft wheezing coughs and dirt and debris trickling from the ceiling, or perhaps that brick wall.
    Still pushing her prisoner, Amaranthe continued in that direction. “Deret? Are you all right?”
    The noxious odor he’d promised clogged the air, a charred burnt smell with a piny underpinning. It stung her throat and eyes, bringing on tears. Her prisoner balked, but she prodded him onward. At the same time, she tugged her shirt up over her mouth and nose.
    “Did it work?” Maldynado choked out around a cough. “It better have, because it smells worse than an entire battalion’s worth of unwashed socks piled up behind a field latrine.”
    “You’ve been spending too much time with Akstyr,” Amaranthe said.
    “Nah, he would have worked donkey droppings into that claim.”
    The lantern by the brick wall had either gone out of its own accord or Deret had cut if off. Amaranthe lifted her own light high, trying to pierce the cloak of dusty air. The boxes nearest to the explosion had been blown asunder, and bits of old newspapers and books littered the floor. Amaranthe grimaced at this destruction of property—she hoped some university library had copies of the documents somewhere—but forgot her regrets as soon as she spotted the jagged hole leading to a black tunnel.
    “Deret?” Amaranthe peered along the wall in both directions.
    “In retrospect,” came Mancrest’s raspy voice, “I should have laid a longer fuse.” He staggered out of a nearby hiding spot, leaning heavily on his swordstick. Soot smeared his face and clothing, and his hair stuck out in blackened spicules.
    “Neophyte,” Maldynado said brightly.
    “Are you—” Amaranthe had planned to inquire after Mancrest’s health, but the bangs started up at the door again, and she switched to, “—ready to go?”
    Mancrest cast a glower in the direction of the cage. “More than ready.”
    Amaranthe peered into the dark passage behind the wall. “Is there any more ink left? I think we’ll have to do that again to reach the storm water tunnel.”
    Deret rubbed his finger into his eardrum, as if he were having trouble hearing her. “ Again ?”
    “Women are never satisfied,” Maldynado said. “Not only do you have to impress them once, but you have to keep doing it again and again. You better learn these things if you’re going to enter into a relationship with one.”
    “As if you’re such an expert,” Deret grumbled.
    Already on her way back to grab two more ink jars, Amaranthe missed part of the conversation, but came back to Maldynado explaining his new relationship with Yara.
    “She’s the tall, muscly one?” Deret asked.
    Amaranthe tried to remember if he’d ever met her. She didn’t think so, at least not when Yara had been a part of their group, but