Blood of Empire

Chapter 13

The Dynize general arrived ten minutes early, riding up to the Adran perimeter with an honor guard of thirty soldiers and two Privileged. Vlora greeted them on foot, flanked by Davd, Nila, and Bo while Norrine and Buden kept watch for any trickery that might be afoot.

Vlora raised a hand in greeting, standing straight with her sword at her side and wearing the returned powder-keg pin on her dress uniform. It was all she could do to remain standing after a long day of reviewing the freshly laid camp, and she half hoped that this enemy general proved to be as prickly as her colleagues and would give her an excuse to cut this worthless summit short.

She made an effort to still her negative thoughts. Just behind her, soldiers had finished setting up the general-staff tent with chairs and refreshment near the earthworks and had begun lighting torches to fend off the coming dusk.

The Dynize general was a stout woman in her midfifties, with a scar that traveled down the side of her face and one eye cloudy from what seemed likely to be the same wound. She wore a turquoise dress uniform and earrings of colorful feathers, as well as a cavalry saber at her side, the hilt festooned with ribbons.

“Lady Flint,” the general said, swinging down from her horse.

Vlora extended her hand. The general gripped it, hard enough that it hurt, though Vlora couldn’t tell whether the act was intentional or if she was simply that fragile. She smiled shallowly through the pain. “General Etepali?”

“Correct.”

Vlora felt her exhaustion weighing on her, chipping at what little restraint she still held. “General, I can’t help but wonder why you requested this meeting. It seems rather pointless, considering that we both know we’ll be fighting a battle tomorrow.”

Several of the general’s retinue gasped audibly.

“I’m not trying to be rude,” Vlora added, “just trying to save us both some time.” The words sounded forced in her own ears, and she realized how dismissive and angry she sounded – well past rude and on to insulting.

Etepali took in a sharp breath and muttered something before finally saying, “You’d treat a fellow general with such disdain?” Her expression spoke of the same haughtiness as the other Dynize generals she’d met, and Vlora found herself letting out an irritated sigh.

“I don’t have time for this,” she said, fully ready to turn her back on the group.

“Wait, wait.” The voice came from somewhere at the back of the retinue. A horse muscled its way through the small crowd ridden by the old woman who’d come as a messenger earlier. She rode up beside her general’s horse and swung down with the restrained enthusiasm of an experienced rider. She said something quickly in Dynize, and General Etepali gave a short bow and backed away.

Vlora found herself frozen, one foot off the ground for her to turn back to her camp. “What’s this?” she asked cautiously.

“She’s not General Etepali,” the old woman said. “I am.” She strode forward, taking Vlora by the arm like a grandmother. “Shall we leave the Privileged and the officers outside and go have us a conversation?”

“I…” Vlora found herself dragged gently past her own guards and toward the general-staff tent. She waved off Davd with a subtle gesture and shot Bo a look before being pulled inside.

The tent had been set up for twenty people. A table at the far end was laid out with Adran spirits and an assortment of breads, sweets, and salted meats that Bo had somehow magicked up from the camp followers. The old woman dropped Vlora’s arm just inside the tent and looked around with a critical eye. “This is very nice, thank you.” She made a beeline for the refreshment table, leaning down to peer at the labels on the bottles before pouring two drinks. She brought one to Vlora, then found a chair and pulled it around and took a seat.

Vlora looked dumbly at the drink in her hand. “I’m sorry, but I’m not entirely certain what’s going on here.”

“My officers,” Etepali explained, “were very insistent that I not meet you in person. I told them that I’d come as an observer and let someone else pretend to be me.”

“You thought that I’d kill you under a flag of truce?”

The old woman sipped her drink, examining Vlora with bright, intense eyes over the rim of the glass. Her silence answered Vlora’s question.

Vlora rubbed her jaw to relax the muscles and crossed the tent, sitting down facing Etepali. “I didn’t mean to be rude out there. But I repeat my earlier question.”

“Why waste time by meeting?” Etepali asked. “Because who wouldn’t want to? You’re Vlora Flint. Hero of the Adran-Kez War. Hero of the Kez Civil War. Mercenary commander extraordinaire!” There was an air of gentle mockery about the last title, as if it didn’t belong with the first two.

“There’s no way that my reputation goes all the way to Dynize,” Vlora said flatly.

Etepali gave Vlora a coy smile. For the second time, Vlora found herself trying to guess Etepali’s age. She couldn’t be any younger than sixty. Perhaps closer to seventy. “You’d be surprised.” She looked at her glass, smirked, and continued, “But no, it doesn’t. I have a biography of Field Marshal Tamas that a spy brought me a few years ago. It mentions you briefly, but otherwise I knew nothing about you before arriving in Landfall. I’ve been reading, though, and there is quite a lot of literature on the famous Vlora Flint.”

“So what about me?”

“You’re interesting. Fiery. Loyal. Principled. Conflicted. You remind me of me.”

At another time, Vlora would have liked this woman. She knew that right away. But she was tired and irritable, and that terrible urge for violence was still planted firmly inside of her. All she could think about was a few hours of restless sleep and the inevitable battle that would come tomorrow. “I suppose I should take that as a compliment.”

The old woman puffed out her cheeks, letting a breath blow through her lips slowly before answering. “I don’t mean to be self-aggrandizing, but you don’t know who I am. You couldn’t. So I’m going to tell you.” She drained the last of her drink – single-malt Adran whiskey, now that Vlora had taken a chance to sip her own – and continued. “I, too, was a young general. Decorated to the rank at thirty-five, during the height of the violence of the Dynize civil war. I’ve fought in over sixty battles. I’ve commanded half of them, and I’ve only lost two.” She held up a pair of fingers to emphasize the point.

“Are you trying to intimidate me?” Vlora asked, slightly taken aback.

“Of course not. I’m just giving you context. When I read that biography of Field Marshal Tamas, it was like seeing a ghostly reflection of myself in a mirror. Not his life experiences and campaigns, of course. But the way he thought. His passions. His strengths and weaknesses. It was startling. And then I found out that he had three children: a warrior, a mage, and a general. Now, I would be as interested as anyone else to meet the warrior and the mage.” She cast a glance toward the flap as if to indicate she knew exactly who Borbador was. “But the general…” She shook her head with a small smile. “I never had children of my own. Men aren’t my interest, if you catch my meaning. If I had a daughter, however, I like to think she’d be a lot like you.” She leaned back, took another sip of whiskey. “That, my dear, is why I wanted to meet you.”

Vlora blinked at the old woman in surprise. “That’s it?”

“Of course that’s it. I’m old, Vlora. Can I call you Vlora? Yes, well I’m old, Vlora, and I’ve fought so many battles that I’m far less interested in the results than in who fought them.”

“You’re not like the other Dynize generals I’ve met.”

“Sedial’s lapdogs? Of course not. Assholes, the lot of them – just like their master.”

Vlora snorted.

“You’re surprised I’d call the Great Ka an asshole?” Etepali shrugged. “He is. I’ve told him to his face, and I’m not the only one who wishes that someone else had gotten credit for ending the civil war. My cousin Yaret, well, he…” She laughed. “Sorry, I’m going too far off topic.”

“No, no… this is quite interesting.”

Etepali gave her a knowing smile. “Looking for Dynize gossip? Somewhere to twist the knife? I’m not going to defect, Vlora. We will have a battle tomorrow. It’s possible that one of us will die during the fighting, and I wanted to meet you before that happens.”

Vlora frowned down at her glass. She thought about the silver powder keg at her lapel, and she set down her glass and carefully unbuttoned the powder keg, holding it up to the lamp light. “What happened to the man who took this from me?” she asked.

“I had him shot.”

“Why?”

“Because by his own admission he led a cavalry charge against a single, half-dead woman and then played dead when it didn’t work out for him. I don’t have room for that kind of cowardice in my army.”

“He was following orders, I assume.”

“Then he should have followed them all the way. He should have died trying to finish you off instead of pulling a corpse over himself and hoping your Privileged friends didn’t notice him. By the way,” she said, swirling the amber liquid in her glass, “this is very good. May I have the rest of the bottle?”

Vlora made a fist around the powder-keg pin. “It’s yours.”

Etepali beamed. “Wonderful. I appreciate your generosity.” She fetched the bottle and stood behind her chair as if to signal that the meeting was over, and shook the bottle at Vlora. “If I win tomorrow, I hope that you’ll share the rest of this bottle with me in the evening.”

“Before you take my head for Ka-Sedial?”

Etepali snorted. “As much as he thinks he is, Ka-Sedial is not the emperor. And I’m not a barbarian. You won’t be mistreated in my care.”

“That’s something, I suppose.”

The old woman wagged her finger at Vlora. “It’s more than something. It’s my promise. A word is worth a lot, Vlora. Don’t forget it in your grief and anger.”

Vlora looked up sharply, but Etepali had already turned her back. She disappeared out through the tent flap in a few strides, leaving Vlora alone in the large tent, a half-finished glass of whiskey in her hand. A few moments of loneliness passed before the flap stirred again and Vlora was joined by Bo.

“That was awfully short,” he said.

“It was, wasn’t it?” Vlora asked distantly.

“Did she make demands?”

“None.”

“She left here with a two-thousand-krana bottle of whiskey.”

“I gave it to her. For this.” Vlora held the powder-keg pin up to the light.

“So what did she want? Don’t tell me she came all the way over here to pilfer some Adran booze.”

“She wanted to meet me.”

Bo scrunched up his nose. “The whiskey was more worth her time, I’d say. Is something wrong?”

Vlora swirled the glass under her nose absently and then finished it in three large gulps. The burning sensation in the back of her throat felt good. “I have the oddest feeling that I’m missing something.”

“About Etepali?”

“About this entire meeting. A subtext I didn’t read.” She set her glass on Etepali’s chair and struggled to her feet. “Tell them to clean this up. I’m going to bed. We have a battle to win in the morning.”