Blood of Empire

Chapter 24

Styke waited until his small group of Lancers had drunk themselves past the ability to do much damage. Then he slipped out the side door of the inn’s bunkhouse, rounded behind the latrines, and met Orz on the side of the road. The dragonman wore long sleeves and a cape and hood to cover his tattoos. He seemed to blend with the shadows effortlessly. Styke hoped that their outing didn’t require too much stealth, as he had neither the training nor the size for sneaking.

Orz handed him a hood. “Over your head,” he said quietly. “Just to keep your face hidden. The fewer questions asked, the better.”

“Are we going to run into any problems?” Styke asked, following instructions.

“We shouldn’t. The curfew for slaves is at dusk. If we’re actually stopped, it should be enough that you’re with me. But I’d prefer not to be bothered.”

“Right.” The dragonman had managed to acquire for Styke some local clothing big enough to fit him – cream-colored pants and jacket accented with turquoise and sapphire. The clothes were much looser than anything he’d ever worn and he’d spent the last couple of hours wearing them in the hope that some practice would keep him from tripping on all the hanging cloth. He pulled the sleeves down to his wrists and shoved his hands into his pockets. “I’ll do what I can not to be noticed.”

Orz gave him a wry glance. “Will they be fine without us?” he asked, jerking his head to the inn behind them.

“Should be,” Styke replied. “Jackal is in charge. He doesn’t drink much these days. Ka-poel is sober, and if I can count on anything these days, it’s that those assholes jump at Celine’s word faster than they jump at mine.”

“A daughter they never had?”

“Lots of them have kids. Half of those died during the Revolution, mostly at Kez hands. They spoil her, but she’s too clever to let that go to her head.” Styke adjusted the fall of his loose pants, took a couple of experimental steps. “Are we going far?”

“It’s a couple of miles.” Orz pointed to the south. “My parents, if they’re still there, live just on the other side of the palace. When my brother took over the Household, they had a falling out. My mother picked a spot to live close enough that she could scrutinize anything he did but far enough away that she wasn’t technically under his influence or protection. Shall we?”

Styke gestured for Orz to lead, and fell into step just a half pace behind the dragonman, remembering what Celine had told him earlier. He kept his head bent, shoulders hunched, with the hood pulled far enough forward to shadow his face without obscuring his vision. He watched Orz’s shoulders for a few moments, noticing a hurriedness to his stride that hadn’t been there before – a trace of nerves, perhaps – and then turned his attention to memorizing landmarks and street names.

“Do you get along with your parents?” he asked.

Orz shot a glance over his shoulder.

“I’d like to know what we’re walking into,” Styke explained.

Orz snorted. “I do not. Not with my parents, nor with my brother.”

“Any good reason?” Styke chewed on his words, thinking them over. He’d never been one for talking about this sort of thing. But it seemed necessary. “Or just old family wounds? I’m familiar with both.”

“I don’t even remember the old family wounds. Small things that made us hate each other, I’m sure. But the schism between us – my brother and me – and my parents is deeper than that. When my emperor…” He paused, clearing his throat as they were passed by a handful of men and women giggling among themselves on a night out. “When our emperor was murdered, my parents switched sides. Not just pragmatically as adherence to the treaty, but with enthusiasm. They gave their minds, hearts, and souls over to Ka-Sedial within hours of the news. Not even a grain of remorse. They bullied my brother into doing the same. I couldn’t forgive them for that.”

This new bit of knowledge set off warning bells in the back of Styke’s head. “You’re sure this is a good idea, then? How do we know they won’t turn you over to Ka-Sedial’s people the moment we show our heads?”

“We don’t.”

Styke reached out and seized Orz by the arm without even thinking about it, jerking the dragonman to a stop. Orz whirled on him. “I’m helping you do this because you brought us out of the jungle. But if they turn on us – if this comes back to my men…”

Orz looked down at Styke’s arm, nostrils flaring. “I will not allow it to come back to your men. I’m not going in blind. I know that they may betray us and I will be watchful. If they do not agree to come immediately, we will leave them behind.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“And your brother? Are you going to warn him?”

“There is no need. Ka-Sedial won’t send assassins against a Household head. My brother is well liked and supports Ka-Sedial publicly.” He raised his gaze to meet Styke’s eyes. “I don’t do this because I am a fool. I have friends – people I knew in my youth who I haven’t seen for ten years – who will likely disappear because of my actions in Fatrasta. They’ll be tortured and killed. They may not even know why. But these are my parents. I have to at least try to spare them a similar fate.”

Styke let his arm fall and they continued walking. He felt a tightness in his chest now, a new wariness that went beyond being in a strange place. This was a risk they didn’t need. But they wouldn’t have gotten this far without Orz. Styke owed him several times over now. No choice but to take a deep breath and help him with the errand.

And hope it all didn’t go tits up.

They passed around the outer walls of the palace and cut east, leaving the wide avenues and entering an area that seemed to have more in common with the suburbs of Landfall. The houses were smaller, closer together, each of them fronted by a road and backed by a canal, built on foundations of stone surrounded by packed dirt. The houses here were mostly light-colored brick with reed-and-thatch roofs. The occasional group of children still played in the floating gardens despite the late hour. About half of the houses had already gone to bed, while the others were lit by lanterns.

They turned onto a short road that wasn’t even a street anymore, just a dirt and gravel path that dead-ended at the water and was lined by more of the closely packed brick houses. Orz stopped abruptly.

“Do you see anything?” Styke searched the windows, roofs, and gardens of the dead end but saw nothing out of the ordinary.

Orz shook his head. “If Ka-Sedial warned one of his puppets, then my parents are already dead. If not, then we have beaten Sedial’s men by at least a week. Come. It is the second-to-last house on the left.”

The house was one of the few with a lantern still burning. As they approached, Styke caught sight of a single elderly woman sitting in a small room furnished with a table, two chairs, and a small, clay stove. The woman must have been in her late sixties, the freckles on her arms and face so thick that her skin looked entirely ashen. The resemblance was immediately apparent; she had the same cheekbones as Orz, the same thoughtful eyes. Her head was bowed over a length of knitting that extended between her knees and under the table.

Orz examined the old woman without a trace of emotion crossing his face. He lifted one hand. “I will be no longer than ten minutes.” Without further explanation, he crossed to the door and stepped inside. Styke positioned himself by the open window, where he had a good view of the interior, including the look on the old woman’s face as Orz closed the door behind him and threw back his hood.

The old woman’s mouth opened, her jaw slack. Several seconds passed before the corners of her eyes tightened and she looked back down at her knitting. “You are dead to me,” she said.

“Mother,” Orz replied as if she hadn’t just verbally cast him out.

The old woman began to knit furiously. “Did you escape?”

“No.” She looked up sharply. Orz rounded the table to stand beside her, putting one hand on her shoulder. “Where is Father?”

“He’s dead. Five years now.”

The only response from Orz was a hard swallow. “They didn’t tell me.”

“Because you are dead, too. If you didn’t escape, how are you here? Why are you here?”

“I was released. By Ka-Sedial.”

“That’s a lie,” the old woman said, brushing his hand off her shoulder. Styke could see a flash of pain in Orz’s eyes and was tempted to look away. This wasn’t a drama that should be witnessed by other parties. But he remained glued to the window, unable to stop watching.

“It’s not,” Orz said stiffly. “Ka-Sedial released me. And then he betrayed me. I’ve come to warn you before he punishes you for my sins.”

“I’ve already been punished for your sins,” the old woman snapped, finally looking up at her son’s face. “We were ostracized. Humiliated. Your father’s heart gave out from shame. That you would spit on our emperor. Our god!”

Styke could see Orz drawing into himself throughout the lecture, his eyes growing more distant, his jaw tightening. “He is not my emperor, and he is far from a god. He is nothing but a puppet for Ka-Sedial, that…” He visibly wrestled for control of himself. Farther up the path, Styke heard a door shut and a figure walk off toward the main street. He attempted to sink deeper into the shadows.

The old woman suddenly shot to her feet, crossing the room as if it were difficult to be so close to her son. “The war ended, Orz. Were you so in love with it that you couldn’t stop fighting?”

“Fighting?” Orz demanded, gesturing broadly to the east. “Do you think any of us stopped fighting? What do you think is going on at this very moment? I came from Fatrasta, where our mighty armies are stripping a land that is not our own.”

“Ours by right,” the old woman sniffed. She glared at her son, crossing to the table and unhooking the lantern. She took it with her and hung it in the opposite window above the stove. She opened the stove and added a few twigs, blowing life into some leftover coals. “I suppose you’re here,” she said angrily. “I’ll make you tea.”

“I’m not staying long enough for tea,” Orz replied coldly. “I came here to warn you. To take you away before you could be hurt.”

“Take me away to where?” she replied bitterly.

“Somewhere you can hide until this is over.”

“Until what’s over?” She turned to peer at his face.

“The war.”

“To what end? You speak as if you expect us to lose. The treason –”

“Realism is not treason, no matter what the bone-eye propagandists want you to think,” Orz talked over her. “We may win. We may lose. Ka-Sedial has attracted more attention than he cares to admit – I doubt you’re getting any truth of the war in our newspapers.”

“We’re winning. What else do we need to know?”

Styke marveled at the willful ignorance of the old woman. She clearly wasn’t stupid, but there was a set to her jaw that spoke of someone who had decided how the world was and refused to let it change.

“Kressian attention,” Orz said. “Fatrastan resistance. Military technology that we can’t match. I saw a lot in Fatrasta.” Styke thought he detected a hint of something in Orz’s voice. As if he was trying to convince himself that Ka-Sedial might lose.

“It doesn’t matter,” the old woman said, snatching a pot down from above the stove. “Here, fill this with water from the fountain, I –” Her words were cut off by a cough, and several things happened at once. Styke saw a flutter beyond the opposite window, then the deceivingly quiet shatter of the glass lantern. A familiar soft strumming sound was the next thing that registered, causing the hair on Styke’s arms to stand on end.

In the same heartbeat, a hail of bolts slammed through the old woman, shredding her frail body. Styke flinched back, and when he raised his head back to the window, she was on the floor and Orz had stumbled back against the wall, clutching at his stomach. He had at least one bolt in his stomach, one in a shoulder, and another in his chest. Somehow, he stayed on his feet.

Styke had barely begun to move when the house next door suddenly discharged six shadowy figures. They were dressed much like he was but in darker clothes and carrying strange crossbows. Two took up stations on the path while a third kicked in the door.

Styke froze. The group was so focused on Orz that none of them seemed to notice him kneeling in the dark.

Through the window, he watched in amazement as Orz’s bone knives appeared in his hands. The dragonman managed to cut down the first two assassins to enter the house. The third assassin casually braced himself and fired a pair of bolts point-blank into Orz from the pathway. Orz stumbled back, tripped, and fell over the table onto his mother’s corpse.

The third assassin stepped into the light, and Styke immediately spotted the black tattoos on the man’s neck. This new dragonman grinned grimly down at Orz. “You shouldn’t have come back, old friend.” Orz wheezed something in response. The dragonman bent over, picking up one of Orz’s knives from where it had been dropped. He gestured at Orz’s mother. “She was all too willing to help set the trap. A good woman. A loyal woman. She’ll be remembered for that loyalty.”

Styke ground his teeth at the sudden change of fortunes. None of the remaining assassins had noticed him yet – the dragonman was inside and two were crowded around the door, crossbows held at the ready. The fourth was checking on her fallen comrades. The way Styke saw it, he could cut and run and hope none of them noticed his departure. He’d have to get back to the inn, sober everyone up, and get them moving. Then hope that Ka-poel could take Orz’s place as their Dynize figurehead and get them safely to the Mad Lancer rendezvous.

It was the smart thing. Orz had done a lot for them, but he hadn’t done enough to warrant a fight with another dragonman. Besides, with so many crossbow bolts in him he looked like a hedgehog. He was dead already.

Styke’s heart fluttered. He remembered Orz’s refusal to fight him over his mother’s grave. He felt the injustice of Orz having to watch his own mother die. His fingers twitched, teeth clenched.

“Shit,” he whispered, discarding his hood and drawing his knife.

The two assassins at the door didn’t even have the chance to turn. He punched his knife through the neck of the one on the left, withdrew it in one quick motion, and slammed it hard into the other’s kidneys. He put his shoulder to the man’s back and lifted him, charging forward with the body as a shield.

The dragonman danced aside – or attempted to. Styke arrested his charge just a few steps into the room and, with one palm outstretched, shoved the dying assassin off the end of his knife and into the dragonman, who had nowhere to dodge in such a tight space.

The fourth assassin was on her feet by the time Styke turned. She raised her crossbow, catching the blade of his knife across the stock. He reached past both weapons with his left hand and snatched her by the throat, whipping her around and tossing her at the dragonman. The dragonman, extricating himself from the first body Styke threw at him, simply ducked and darted at Styke fast as a bullet.

Styke managed to catch the dragonman by the wrist, blocking a knife headed for his ribs, while the dragonman did the same to his own knife hand. The two remained locked that way for several seconds, struggling in a contest of strength. Styke felt his arms begin to tremble and had a brief vision of Ka-poel’s smug face looking down at his corpse.

He slammed his forehead against the dragonman’s nose. The dragonman’s head snapped back, blood exploding across both their faces. Styke managed to bury an inch of his Boz knife into the dragonman’s thigh, while the tip of the bone knife zigzagged a bloody line down his own arm. They spun, grappling, tripping and slipping on the corpses. Styke jerked his knife downward and sideways to open the wound, using the momentum to shove the dragonman backward against the now-hot stove.

Neither the sudden smell of cooking flesh nor the knife tearing through his thigh brought more than a grunt from the dragonman. Styke tried to lean harder, working his blade for an artery, but the dragonman suddenly slipped to one side and rolled backward across the stove and out the very window the crossbow bolts had come through less than a minute before.

Shouts came from the street, and Styke could picture the dragonman going for one of those strange crossbows. Kicking the dying assassins out of his path, he snatched Orz by the back of his shirt and lifted him onto one shoulder as he ran through the front door. He caught sight of people standing on the path, gawking at him, as well as a single shadowy figure in the space between the houses. Styke didn’t waste time trying to get a closer look. Jamming his knife into its sheath, he sprinted for the end of the road.

“I hope whatever bone-eye sorcery they carve into you guys keeps the swamp dragons away,” he huffed as he ran. He threw Orz ahead of him just as his feet left firm ground and he turned the leap into a sloppy dive, hitting the dark, murky water hard enough to take the breath out of him.