Blood of Empire

Chapter 33

Two days after kidnapping Meln-Dun, Michel received his first report from Emerald. The file was left behind a false wall in a tenement block near the edge of Greenfire Depths. Michel picked up the blind drop and took it back to the room he and Ichtracia had been given in Jiniel’s headquarters. He went inside and closed the door, turning up the lamp to give the report a good read.

He was on his second read-through when Ichtracia slipped inside and sat down next to him.

“No one will talk to me,” she said.

“Hmm?” Michel reread a sentence, then pulled his attention away from the report and looked at Ichtracia.

“They’re scared,” she added.

“Do you blame them? You snapped the forearm of one of their enforcers with the flick of your fingers.”

“It was barely a twitch, to be honest.”

“Huh?”

“A twitch of my fingers.” Ichtracia held up her bare hand and demonstrated. Her ring and pointer fingers moved in a slight, but dangerous, gesture.

Michel gave her a wry look. “That doesn’t help. Why are you trying to make friends, anyway?”

“Isn’t that what I’m supposed to do? Be friendly and helpful?”

“As a spy, yes.”

“As an outsider,” Ichtracia said. “Whether or not I’m spying on these people, I need to make them realize that I’m on their side. Remember what I said the other day? About finding a people who shared my… particular servitude?”

“I do.”

“I meant it. I want to be closer to them. I want to be on their side.”

Michel was surprised to hear a note of earnestness in Ichtracia’s voice. He set aside the file and looked her in the eye. She was lonely, he realized. He’d found his people, but at the same time it had isolated her. They no longer had the shared experience of being two fugitives on the run. He was fighting while she waited around to enact plans he did not share with people she did not know.

“You’re on my side,” he told her gently. “These people don’t know you. They don’t trust you. Jiniel will take you in on my word, but to be honest, none of these people know me, either.” He let his own unhappiness leak out. “I’ve been listening the last couple of days. Overhearing. Turns out I’m a bit of a legend with these people. They watched me infiltrate the Yaret Household and think I’m some kind of wizard for engineering the downfall of the Blackhats. But the only one who does know me is Jiniel, and we haven’t spoken for years.”

He continued, “These are my people, but I’m an outsider, too. You and I need to stick together. Do what we can to earn their trust. But they’ve got a hundred different projects and missions going on. We’ll go about our own business, using what resources they can spare. Which will be less than we need, I’m sure.”

“You don’t have faith in them?” Ichtracia asked curiously.

“It’s not that I don’t have faith in them. It’s like… like I just said. They’ve got their own missions that they think are more important. They don’t mind working against the Dynize, but they think our claims about blood sacrifices are fairy tales.”

Ichtracia snorted angrily. “If they won’t help, then what do we do?”

“We give them a reason to help. We find evidence.” Michel hesitated a moment, thinking of compartmentalization. Against his better judgment, he needed Ichtracia to trust him more than he needed to keep her in the dark. He handed her the report from Emerald and waited while she read through it.

She handed it back a few minutes later. “Nothing,” she said in disgust. “No trail on missing people. No evidence of blood sacrifice. This doesn’t help!”

“Right,” Michel agreed. “But the rest of it.”

She sighed. “Your setup of Meln-Dun worked.”

“It didn’t just work. It worked amazingly well. These are actual memos from within the Dynize government.” Michel waved the report at her. “The Yaret Household found three separate instances of Meln-Dun working with Adran agents over the last decade that I didn’t even know about. On their own, they’re just a bit of bribery and light racketeering – nothing that the Blackhats would have used to move against him. But taken with Dynize paranoia, these paint Meln-Dun as an enemy of the state.”

“Meln-Dun is down. Mama Palo can begin to operate in the open again. How does this help us?” Ichtracia was clearly frustrated.

Michel smiled, trying to keep any sense of condescension out of his tone. “Because with this,” he said, “we can break Meln-Dun in the way I need him broken.”

The now-former quarry boss was being kept in a dank little cell underneath Greenfire Depths. The stone down there was cold, oozing water that drained down through a crack in the floor. When Michel put his hand on the slimy wall, he could feel the vibration of the steam pumps that kept the lower levels of the Depths from flooding. They were well below the Hadshaw River here – below even the nearby ocean.

Michel let himself into the cell, hanging his lantern on a hook in the low ceiling and turning to face the man huddling in the corner. It had been two days since his kidnapping, and Meln-Dun did not look well. He was pallid and shivering. His bed was a mess of damp straw barely held together by something vaguely resembling a mattress cover. All he had for his waste was a bucket in one corner. By the smell of it, it hadn’t been changed since he arrived.

Ichtracia had wanted to come along, but this kind of questioning was most effective if Michel could work one-on-one with the prisoner. He gave Meln-Dun a sad smile. “I’m sorry about the lodgings.”

“No you’re not.” Meln-Dun’s words were angry, but they had no bite. He looked more pathetic than anything else – a man who didn’t take much to feel as if he’d been broken. Michel had to remind himself that most people ended up that way. No matter how much courage a man thought he had, it amounted to nothing when he’d lost everything dear to him. “What are you here for? To torture me?”

Michel peered at Meln-Dun. Per his instructions, it appeared he hadn’t been touched. “You think that’s what I do?”

“I don’t know. I can hear them talking, you know. They’re planning on killing me. They hate me. They want to make sure my death lasts a long time.”

The “they” clearly referred to the guards posted outside the cell. Michel wondered whether he should put a stop to that kind of talk. If they actually planned to go through with their threats, it could ruin all his hard work. If, on the other hand, it was a bit of wishful chatter… well, that could be useful. “Of course they hate you,” he said with a sigh. “You sold out their leader’s predecessor to Lindet, then sold yourself to the Dynize.”

“I did what I had to.”

“For yourself. Yes, I understand that. I’m here to talk to you about what else you can do for yourself.”

Meln-Dun studied him through distrustful eyes for several moments. “What do you want from me?”

“Information.”

“I don’t have anything of use to you.”

“That’s for me to decide.”

Meln-Dun’s lip curled. “I’m not going to tell you anything.”

Michel put on a strong air of world-weariness. It wasn’t a hard act. He found a dryish spot on the wall to lean against and let out a heavy sigh, careful that he look as unconcerned as possible. “That’s your choice,” he replied.

“It… it is?”

“Sure. I’m not interested in bloodying my knuckles with your face. I’m just here to ask a few questions.”

“And if I don’t answer them?”

Michel shrugged. “Not my problem.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I turn around and walk out of here. Nothing changes. You stay down here, shivering in the darkness, listening to the brutal fantasies of the guards and eating whatever slop they feed you until you catch pneumonia and die alone.”

Meln-Dun’s teeth began to chatter audibly.

“Or,” Michel continued, “you answer my questions. I leave you a light, get you an extra blanket and a dry mattress. Small kindnesses, you know?”

Meln-Dun stared at him as if he were a demon crawled from the very pit. “What’s going to happen to me?” he whispered.

“I just painted a pretty vivid picture,” Michel replied. “I mean, they could lose their patience and execute you, of course. Nice and fast. That would probably be better.” Michel was careful to phrase the actions in terms of “them” versus “me.” Two different entities. Give the prisoner something hopeful to grab on to.

“I mean if I help you.”

Michel took a deep breath. “You’re never going to be a free, powerful man again, Meln-Dun. But if you help me, it gives me leverage to help you. Best-case scenario is that, once the war is over, you are retired to the countryside with a permanent guard but some amount of comfort and autonomy.”

This best-case scenario didn’t seem to sound all that best-case to Meln-Dun. He visibly withdrew into himself, his face twisting in horror, hands clutching at his knees. “You’re not going to win, you know,” he said, his voice stronger. “The Dynize. They’re going to beat you.”

“If I were you, I wouldn’t root for them.”

“They’ll free me.” Meln-Dun raised his chin. “They’ll free me when they flush you out. All of this will be explained to them, and –”

Michel lost his patience, tossing a careful selection of Emerald’s report onto Meln-Dun’s lap. “I’m guessing you can read enough Dynize to see what those say?”

Meln-Dun slowly lifted the reports, flipping through them as he peered at the words.

“Those,” Michel explained, “are internal memos regarding the traitor Meln-Dun.”

“These aren’t real.”

Michel shrugged again, as if it didn’t really matter. “I could mock those up, probably. Getting the grammar right might be hard unless I found a native speaker willing to do some forgeries for me. I didn’t need to, though. We stole those right from the capital building.”

Meln-Dun read through the report again and then looked up sharply at Michel. “You set me up. Everything you told me when you woke me up the other day –”

“Was all true,” Michel said with a gentle smile. “Except for the part about me working for Dahre. You were set up, and the Dynize did come and try to arrest you about an hour after we left. Whatever suspicions they had – and I gave them quite a lot to work with – were cemented when they arrived only to find that you’d fled with all your valuables.” Michel scratched the back of his head. “You’re dead to them now, Meln-Dun. Doesn’t matter what the truth is. They think they know, and if they ever find you, they will execute you without a second thought.”

Meln-Dun stared at Michel in horror. This was, he admitted to himself, a form of torture. Michel produced a newspaper from his pocket and handed it over. “Third page. The Dynize have already taken over your quarry. Several of your foremen have been apprehended for questioning. They’re not leaking any more information, of course. They want to keep the betrayal quiet. But they’ve quietly put a price on your head.”

“What are your questions?” The sentence seemed to tear itself from Meln-Dun’s throat. Michel had finally gotten through to him.

“Are the Dynize kidnapping Palo for their own purposes?”

There was a flicker in Meln-Dun’s eyes, so quick that Michel might not have noticed it if he weren’t watching carefully. Recognition. Then fear. Meln-Dun turned away, looking at his feet. “I don’t know anything about that.”

“You’re sure?” Michel prodded gently.

“I’m sure.” The protestation had a firm, desperate finality to it, as if Meln-Dun was hoping that if he exclaimed hard enough, it would put the matter to rest. “What else do you want to know?”

“I want to know about the disappearances,” Michel pushed.

Meln-Dun suddenly surged to his feet. “I know nothing about them!” He stared at Michel, his whole body trembling, until he melted back onto his bed. He turned his face to the wall.

Michel watched him for the next couple of minutes. They remained there in silence, the only sound that of trickling water and Meln-Dun’s unsteady breathing. Michel knew beyond a doubt that he’d touched something. But whatever it was – if Meln-Dun knew the truth that Michel feared was behind the abductions – it was too sinister for the greedy old snake to address head-on. Michel needed to give him time that he didn’t have.

“Do you know why you haven’t been tortured and killed?”

Meln-Dun shook his head fearfully.

“Because I’m holding the wolves at bay, Meln-Dun. Because I think you’re more useful to the Palo cause alive than dead. I can convince them of that, but only if you point me in the right direction.” No response. Michel swore inwardly. “I’ll give you twenty-four hours. Give me an answer, or I’ll let Mama Palo decide what to do with you.” Michel opened the door. “I’ll leave you the light, and the papers. Give you something to read. To think about.” He closed the door behind him, nodded to the guards, and headed up to street level.

Ichtracia was waiting for him, sitting against the wall in an empty room above the holding cells. “Anything?” she asked, getting to her feet. There was an anxiety in her tone and mannerisms. She wanted to know – to be vindicated in her hatred of her grandfather. For some reason, that thought gave Michel a moment of sadness.

“Something,” Michel replied. “Definitely something.”

“You don’t sound like it was something.”

Michel considered the conversation. “I think we’re on the right track. I think Meln-Dun was privy to the disappearances, maybe even had a hand in them.”

“No evidence, though? He didn’t give us a trail to follow?”

“Not yet.” Michel glanced back down toward the cells. Twenty-four hours. “Not yet, but he will.”