Blood of Empire

Chapter 22

Michel spent the better part of the next day with Dahre’s crew, canvassing the Depths for alternative leads and discussing the best plan of attack for cornering Mama Palo. He made plausible excuses to slip out of the quarry to make his own arrangements – studying maps, walking out an escape route, and even buying a pistol. He kept Ichtracia close in case the whole thing went badly.

Against his own instincts he began to fill her in on his plans. Things were moving too quickly now to keep her entirely in the dark. She took the explanations in stride, weathering them as she had everything else, with a steely-eyed acceptance and, maybe hidden beneath it all, a touch of nerves.

They returned to their apartment at dark. Michel went over everything in his head again and again as he lay in bed, listening to Ichtracia’s gentle snores. His own nerves, he decided, were too thinly strung by the uncertainty of all this.

Michel was just beginning to drift off when the sound of footsteps in the hall brought him back to wakefulness. It took him a moment of confusion to figure out what his subconscious was telling him – dozens of people walked back and forth down this hall every day, after all. The steps, he decided, had very definitely stopped outside of their door.

He’d only just made this connection when he heard another noise – the click of a latch. In an instant Michel’s adrenaline was pumping, his heart hammering. A thousand explanations passed through his head as to why someone might be coming into their room unannounced: an innocent mistake, an assassin, a message from Emerald. It was the second that he feared, though he wasn’t entirely sure who would try to kill him. If it was the Dynize, they’d have just swarmed the building with soldiers and kicked the door in.

All of this flashed through his mind in the few moments it took for the door to open. It happened quickly enough that he didn’t have the chance to so much as poke Ichtracia. Her steady, deep breathing continued beside him, and he tensed himself, eyes open to slits, and watched the silhouette of a figure appear in the doorway. His brand-new pistol was beneath the bed, out of reach, and unloaded anyway. His knuckledusters, however, were just beneath his pillow.

He kept his own breathing steady so as not to betray his wakefulness as a second figure appeared in the doorway. Michel caught sight of the very distinct glint of a knife. The first figure paused by the foot of their mattress, turned back to the second. Something was whispered between them.

Michel lashed out with one foot, felt it connect with a knee. The figure cried out and tumbled to the floor. Michel was on his feet in a flash. He snatched up his knuckledusters, trying to seat them onto the fingers of both hands while getting his bearings in the dark room. The first figure let out a string of curses in Palo, while the second one attempted to leap at Michel but was blocked by the flailing heap his companion had made on the floor.

Michel saw another glint on the floor and stepped on the blade of a knife before it could be retrieved by its owner. He’d only just managed to do so when she surged to her feet, catching him in the stomach with her shoulder and throwing him hard against the wall. His breath was snatched from him in a wheezy grunt, and he pounded his fists on her back.

They wrestled for several moments, Michel’s attention fully on the woman with her arms around his waist, when he felt fingers take a handful of his hair and jerk his head to one side. Something sharp touched his neck and he felt a bead of something wet on his skin – for the sparest of moments he was convinced that his throat had been slashed. He froze, hand going to his throat, but was shaken hard by the second attacker’s fingers in his hair.

“Move,” a voice hissed, “and you’re a dead man.”

Michel felt his eyes bugging out, his whole body trembling. He was far from a true fighter, and all their movements had been a frenetic scramble up to this point. That knife at his throat, however, had taken all the fight out of him, and he found his body frozen in self-preservation. A small voice in the back of his head told him that he knew how this would go – a few questions and then a bloody smile. Fighting back was all he could do. But his limbs wouldn’t answer his commands.

He raised both hands and sagged against the wall. The figure at his waist pulled away and stood up, and in a moment of shock, Michel caught sight of her face in the light of the hall. Devin-Mezi. He let out a disbelieving scoff. “What the pit?”

“Wake your friend up,” Devin-Mezi ordered. “We’re going for a walk. Get the door,” she told her companion. “And the light.” She took control of the knife at Michel’s throat, then tugged his knuckledusters off his splayed fingers. The man closed the door behind him and reached over their heads to turn up the lantern. Two things struck Michel the moment there was enough light to see by:

The first was that her companion was none other than Kelinar – the very same turncoat who’d offered to sell Mama Palo’s whereabouts to Meln-Dun’s searchers. Michel barely had time to register this when he noted that Ichtracia was not only awake but sitting up.

And she was wearing her gloves.

Kelinar’s left arm snapped backward, the bone splitting through the flesh and splattering blood across the wall. He tried to reach for his arm but froze in place, his mouth opened in a soundless scream. The knife flew out of Devin-Mezi’s hand and clattered against the wall. She, too, froze in place, though both of her hands still appeared to be able to move. She clawed at her throat, unable to make a sound.

The two assailants remained suspended that way for several moments before Michel was able to get the thundering of his heart under control. He pushed Devin-Mezi away from himself and took control of both of their knives. There was a thumping on the wall.

“You there, quiet down! Some of us have to sleep!”

“Sorry,” Michel called back. “Right away!”

A few choice curses came back through the wall, and then silence. “Let them breathe,” Michel said quietly to Ichtracia. She still sat in bed, her fingers twitching gently, her face screwed up into the kind of mild annoyance one might feel upon losing a small amount of money at the horse races. She gave him a curt nod, and Devin-Mezi and Kelinar both took in a sudden gasp of air. Kelinar collapsed to the ground, curling up around his ruined arm, while Devin-Mezi sank against the wall.

“Scream,” Ichtracia said, “and I will pop your heads like boils. Understand?”

Devin-Mezi nodded urgently. Kelinar trembled and dry-heaved, clutching at his shattered arm.

Michel tried not to look at the blood pooling beneath Kelinar. His own hands trembled from the rush of the fight and he had to take several deep breaths to steady himself. He could break down later. Now he had to ask questions. He shifted his gaze to Devin-Mezi. “Who the pit are you, and why did you just try to knife us?”

The would-be assassin stared at Ichtracia, wide-eyed, her fingers trembling. Michel had to remind himself what it was like for a civilian to come across a Privileged – terrifying at best.

“Didn’t go how you expected it, did it?”

Devin-Mezi shook her head. “We weren’t going to knife you,” she whispered. “Just ask some questions.”

“And what were you going to do after asking questions?” Michel shot back. He knew how this worked. Go for a walk, she’d said. That was Blackhat shorthand for Make them walk to their own grave.

Devin-Mezi shook her head again.

“Why were you trying to knife us?” Michel asked again, this time firming up his tone. He let the silence hang for two beats before adding, “If you don’t start answering questions, I’m going to have my friend do the same thing to each of your fingers as she did to his arm.”

“Too competent,” Devin-Mezi muttered. “Too quick.”

“You want to explain that?”

She spoke under her breath, eyeballing Ichtracia a few moments before her jaw tightened and her eyes narrowed. “I’ll die first.”

Michel worked through his own emotions for a few moments before he waved Ichtracia off with a subtle gesture. She didn’t look too eager to start torturing people, and despite having sat through plenty of Blackhat “questionings,” he had no stomach for it himself. It would be, he decided, a last resort. Ichtracia swung out of bed and he watched her dress absently, his thoughts churning through cause and effect.

There was a chance that Devin-Mezi was a Blackhat. She might have recognized him and decided to kill him. Any Blackhats left in the city would certainly have reason to do so. That phrase, “Go for a walk,” was definitely Blackhat shorthand, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. It was commonly known around Landfall and might have easily been picked up by anyone who spent any time on the wrong side of the law.

Maybe she was simply who she said she was. Perhaps one of Meln-Dun’s people had recognized Michel as a Blackhat and they’d decided to bump him off. But again, this was the Depths. Meln-Dun, of all people, wouldn’t need to act in secret.

So if she wasn’t a Blackhat and she wasn’t working for Meln-Dun, who was she?

Michel glanced at Kelinar – a low-level lieutenant of Mama Palo’s who’d agreed to sell out his comrades. Or was he? A few things clicked into place, and Michel snorted a laugh. “You’re setting up Meln-Dun, aren’t you?” Michel asked. Devin-Mezi looked at him sharply. It was all he needed to see to confirm his suspicion. “You’re a mole. A plant. And this poor bastard is your accomplice.”

“I don’t follow,” Ichtracia said. She was dressed now, and turned back toward the other two with a sneer fixed on her lip.

“My guess,” Michel said to her, keeping his eyes on Devin-Mezi, “is that they both work for Mama Palo. She’s infiltrated Meln-Dun’s group and has been guiding them toward a trap. Her friend here is the bait. What’s the plan, Devin-Mezi? To get Dahre and his crew into one spot and kill them all? Look, you’re going to have to say something eventually.” He glanced significantly at Ichtracia.

Devin-Mezi followed his eyes. “More or less,” she finally said.

“Pit.” Michel rubbed his eyes and touched his neck, where he found blood still dripping from a scratch there. It was beginning to sting. But nothing like poor Kelinar’s arm. “Where is Mama Palo?”

“Do what you want,” Devin-Mezi snapped back. “I’m not going to tell you.”

“Haven’t you wondered why I’ve got a secret Privileged with me?” Michel demanded. “Has it occurred to you that maybe I’m not what I claim to be, either?”

“We should kill them,” Ichtracia cut in. “They know what I am.”

Michel couldn’t tell if she was being serious or helping him feed Devin-Mezi’s fear. Either way… “Look, I’m trying to find Mama Palo for my own purposes. I’m only working for Meln-Dun to piggyback onto his search. Understand?”

Devin-Mezi stared hard at him. “What are you, then? A Dynize agent?”

“Hardly.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Believe anything you want.” Michel shrugged. “But I don’t have a lot of time. This trap of yours, they plan on springing it tomorrow night?”

She didn’t answer, but he could see confirmation in her eyes. She glanced toward her knife still dangling from his hand. “You’ll have to kill us both,” she insisted. “I’m not giving you any answers.”

Michel took a deep breath and glanced at Ichtracia. They were in a world of hurt now. She’d used her sorcery, which would quite likely alert Sedial – if not to their presence, then at least to the presence of a Privileged. Devin-Mezi also knew of their presence, even if she didn’t know who they were. He knew he should cut his losses and leave her and her companion rotting in a ditch. But if he didn’t have the stomach for torture, he definitely didn’t have the stomach for cold-blooded murder.

“Let them go,” he told Ichtracia.

“What?” Both Ichtracia and Devin-Mezi said the word at the same time, with equal amounts of surprise.

“I’m not going to torture you, and I’m not going to kill you,” Michel said. “You don’t believe me, but we’re on the same side. So instead of drawing this out any longer, I’m going to let you go. Take your friend there to get his arm seen to, then go inform Mama Palo that I’m trying to find her.”

“She doesn’t know you,” Devin-Mezi replied, suspicion dripping from the words.

“She should,” Michel replied. He didn’t know who the new Mama Palo was. He could only hope it was someone high enough up the organization to know his name, or the names of one of his aliases. His own, he decided, was too risky to give out. Instead he gave one of the latter. “Tell her that Puffer is trying to come in. He wants to talk, and he wants to talk soon.”

“Puffer?” Devin-Mezi asked. “Like the fish?”

“Exactly like the fish. It’s an old code name of mine. If Mama Palo has been around long enough, she’ll know it.” Michel jerked his head toward Kelinar. “Go on, before I change my mind. I’ll be here for three hours. Come back and find me once you get an answer. Come alone.” He ignored Ichtracia’s doubtful expression and watched while Devin-Mezi collected her companion off the floor. Kelinar was still sobbing quietly when she led him out the door. Michel stepped into the hallway and watched until they were gone, then darted back into the room.

“What the pit was that?” Ichtracia asked, removing her gloves.

“That was me trying to make contact,” Michel answered. “I appreciate your intervention, but we need to move.” He immediately began to throw their things into his shoulder bag. Ichtracia followed suit, collecting her meager possessions into her pockets and handing him her one extra set of clothes.

“Where are we going? I thought you told her we’d be here.”

“This building has two exits. There’s a decent spot up three levels where we can see both of them. We’re going to go spend the rest of the night there.”

“And if she comes back with more assassins?”

“Then we disappear,” Michel replied. “And all our plans will be ruined.”