Forged in Blood I Read Free Page B

blend wasn’t anything imperial men favored. It had a resiny underpinning, one that teased his memory. Nurian rek rek . One of his old tutors had smoked it.
    He sniffed the air again, trying to verify that identification, but the faint scent proved elusive. Nobody had been smoking in the tunnel, he decided, but someone might have passed through wearing clothing that had been near a smoker.
    “Akstyr,” Sicarius whispered. “Do you sense anything?”
    “No. Should I?”
    “There is a ward here.” Sicarius pointed to the spot on the wall. Even before, there hadn’t been anything tangible to touch or visible to the human eye, but he was certain that it’d been located there. “Now it is gone. Or it has been triggered.” He was reluctant to admit that he could have failed to notice another person in the tunnels, but had to inform them of the possibility. “Someone else may be down here.”
    “I don’t sense anything.” Akstyr shuffled over to the spot. “Are you sure you didn’t imagine it in the first place?”
    “I am certain.”
    “Really? Because you’re not a practitioner.”
    Books sucked in a breath, as if he feared Sicarius would lash out at Akstyr for daring to question. Were Sicarius going to punish the youth for impertinence, he would have done it the day they met. He did let his tone chill when he repeated, “I am certain,” thus to discourage further argument.
    Akstyr closed his eyes and ducked his head, his upswept ridge of hair bobbing. He placed a hand on the wall.
    “If someone triggered the trap, so to speak,” Books said, “should we abandon this mission? At least for tonight?”
    “Hoping to get back to your work?” Sespian murmured.
    “Partially. Partially I’m concerned for our safety if someone was skilled enough to sneak past Sicarius without his noticing. Or any of us noticing,” he rushed to add, perhaps feeling he’d offered an insult.
    Sicarius ignored the slight. He, too, would find cause for concern if someone had bypassed him without a whisper. Perhaps the person had been there first and had been waiting to deal with the ward until Sicarius left. That idea didn’t grate at him any less, for it would have meant he hadn’t been paying as much attention to his surroundings as he should have been, but he’d find that more plausible than the notion that someone had sneaked past him in the dark.
    “I found it,” Akstyr said. “The ward. It wasn’t tripped.”
    “That’s a relief,” Books said.
    Was it? What had happened then? Sicarius waited for a further explanation.
    Akstyr tapped the stone wall. “It’s been disarmed.”
    “Disarmed?” Sicarius asked, his tone sharper than he’d intended. Long ago, Hollowcrest and various tutors had drilled into him the importance of maintaining a neutral facade and giving away nothing through expression—or timbre of voice. He wondered, sometimes, if so much time spent amongst men—and women, he added to himself, thinking of Amaranthe—was affecting his ability to distance himself from humanity, from his own frail human side. “Disarmed how?” he asked, making his tone calm and emotionless again.
    “It’s like… if this were a mine… someone had left the casing and detonator and stuff in place, but removed the charge,” Akstyr said. “It’s something only a practitioner would know how to do.”
    “This could be done swiftly?” Sicarius was certain he’d been gone for no more than five minutes.
    “If someone had practiced enough, I guess.”
    “Are you telling me that a wizard sneaked into the Barracks just ahead of us?” Sespian whispered.
    “Practitioner,” Akstyr corrected.
    Ignoring him, Sespian focused on Sicarius. “To what end? Are they trying to beat us to your records? How would they even know we sought them?”
    “I doubt this person’s presence has anything to do with me,” Sicarius said.
    The others exchanged dubious looks.
    Sicarius refused to doubt his statement. Until Amaranthe had