Her toe bumped against a sharp rock, interrupting her musings. Writing while traversing a goat trail across a mountainside in Northern Turgonia had its downsides.A frosty wind blew down from a snowy peak to the left, tugging at the pages in her journal. Not far to the right, a cliff dropped hundr...
More than once, she’d found the assassin in there with her. They’d never been doing anything except playing strategy games, but Evrial had been forced to hold back a snippy comment that perhaps Amaranthe and Sicarius should be roommates. But she didn’t particularly want to stay with any of the me...
Beyond the banks, elevated fire pits illuminated men sawing blocks of ice out of the frozen water. Their clinks and clanks carried to the shore. Since their harvest season was short, they would work through the night, but Amaranthe did not think she needed to worry about the men. As long as thing...
They had reached the top of the ridge first. Three sleds trundled up the switchbacks below, dogs huffing and straining. For her steam engine, the incline had been no trouble. She patted the side of the boiler. “Good girl.” “Does it perform better if you speak to it?” Cedar lowered a spyglass, a s...
This island had a tree-covered butte in the middle, the remains of a volcano that had blown its top during some past century. Yanko hoped it was a dormant volcano and that hunting for the lodestone wouldn’t involve any trips through lava tubes. He’d had enough of that. A desire to get to the arti...
Amaranthe followed Sicarius to one of only two doors in a short hallway. The one they stopped in front of was made of stout oak and featured a hand-carved image of a spear-toting man hunting a bear alongside a tree-lined river. “Yes,” Sicarius said. Since Mancrest was warrior caste, it made sense...
Maldynado, Basilard, and Mahliki followed on their heels. Tikaya had supposedly manipulated the cubes so they wouldn’t appear to trouble them on their run to the lifeboat, but Amaranthe kept her finger on the trigger. The Behemoth was already airborne, hovering over farmlands on the other side of...
Amaranthe whispered as the sounds of footfalls faded. “You don’t look well.”Retta crouched beside her in the alcove, with Books and Akstyr pressed in behind them. They’d used Akstyr’s guard jacket to fashion a bandage for her, but she must have torn something anew during the last scurry for cover...
They had their knees pulled up to their chins and their backs to the biting wind as the train barreled toward the mountains at fifty miles per hour. A few feet away, on the opposite side of the car, Basilard and Yara hunkered in a similar position. The coal hills wouldn’t provide much cover in a ...
Yet Maldynado stood outside the captain’s cabin, with his fist raised. The steamboat had turned off the Goldar River earlier that night and would reach Lake Seventy-three before long. This might be Maldynado’s last chance to leave the emperor with a good, or at least amenable, impression of him. ...
At least the storm had passed. Overhead, budding branches created a latticework framing a blue sky. While admiring that sky, Amaranthe slipped on a wet, mossy stone. The barrel of her rifle caught on a tree and the butt jabbed her in the ribs. She winced at her klutziness. “Any reason we’re in su...
Her lantern was buried, and she couldn’t see a thing, but she sensed two people at the top of the stairs leading to the basement. They were armed. Somehow, she doubted they were patrons of the archives, simply curious about the noise. Rubble blocked the doorway on her side, so they wouldn’t be co...