Blood of Empire

Chapter 6

“You’re sure about this?”

The question was, Michel knew, about three days too late. He stood in front of Ichtracia in a hired room on the outskirts of Lower Landfall, where their Dynize passports had gotten them past the last of the major roadblocks that governed all highways in and out of the city. The room was tiny and cramped, most of it taken up by a big, flea-ridden bed that usually slept six strangers so that the boarding house could accommodate more bodies when the dockside inns were full.

What little space remained was occupied by a short wooden stool. On the bed was a razor, a bowl containing a small amount of lime-and-ash mixture, and an actor’s face-painting kit. Ichtracia’s clothes – the black mourning vestments that she’d worn for almost a month – lay on the floor to be burned. Ichtracia sat straight-backed on the stool, like a princess sitting for a portrait.

Her gaze flickered up to him briefly. “I said I was, didn’t I?”

“You did.”

“You question me a lot.” There was a note of warning in her voice.

Michel clenched his jaw and tried to ignore it. “I do, because most people only think they can become a spy. Actually doing it is a different matter altogether.” Her forehead wrinkled, her mouth opened, and Michel held up his hand to forestall an argument. “Yes, I know that you’d rather just smash your way back into Landfall and demand answers. But by your own admission you are loath to kill your own people – and even if you weren’t, Sedial is surrounded by dragonmen, bone-eyes, and Privileged. We’re not going to smash anything. We’re doing this my way. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” Ichtracia said after a long hesitation.

“Good.”

“I have a question first.”

Michel paused, frowning at Ichtracia. “What’s that?”

“Why didn’t you tell me about the sacrifices?”

“Because…” Michel hesitated. Telling her that he hadn’t been sure if he could trust her was not going to help their relationship. A half-truth, then. “Because I couldn’t confirm it, and I didn’t think you could, either. It was just something told to me by a dying Blackhat.”

Ichtracia stared at him for a few moments – long enough that he feared she would question him further – before giving him a curt nod. “Go ahead.”

“All right,” Michel said, trying not to sound relieved to move on. “Training. We’re going to move as quickly as we can, which to an outsider might seem positively sluggish.”

“How so?”

“Spies don’t run. They saunter. Everything we do needs to be calculated but look casual. We need to blend in, operate with thoughtful consideration. Our second job will be to make contact with Emerald and find out exactly what’s going on in the city – if he has any evidence of the blood sacrifices. Once we’ve confirmed how, exactly, the Dynize are exploiting the Palo… Well, that’s when the fighting begins. We rally the Palo. We fire them up.”

Ichtracia cocked her head. “You skipped the first job.”

“Our first job is to make you into a spy. It’s not going to be pretty.” Michel picked up the razor, took her long auburn hair in one hand, and began to cut. He talked as he worked.

“We’ll start by changing your appearance. Your mannerisms will be next. I don’t have time to teach you to act like a Palo, so I’ll have to correct you as we go. Your Adran accent is excellent, which is a major boon to us. Your Palo… well, we’re going to have to work on that. We can pass you off as from a northern family with Adran connections and an Adran education. It’s not too far-fetched.”

He worked the razor carefully around her ear. Locks of hair fell to the floor, forming a skirt around the feet of the stool. He was careful to leave about an inch on the top, half an inch on the sides – a common northern look for city Palo women. The shade of her hair was fine, but he wanted to convince both the Palo and Dynize that she was a native – that meant making her unrecognizable. The fact that most of the Dynize upper crust knew her face made this particularly difficult, so he’d need to lighten her hair with the lime and ash mixture.

“We’ll need a name for you.”

“I don’t know Palo names.”

“I was thinking ‘Avenya’?”

Ichtracia repeated the name several times. “I like it.”

“I had a great-aunt named Avenya,” Michel told her. “She helped raise me for a few years before she died. It’s not a common Palo name, but it’s known.”

“Avenya,” Ichtracia said out loud again. “Yes, that will do.”

“Good.” Michel continued his instructions. “When you’re infiltrating a group, confidence is easily half the job. Talk, walk, and act like you belong. Be useful, engaging, charming. Avoid confrontation.”

“Be like you,” Ichtracia said.

Their eyes met for a moment. She had made it very clear that despite their continued codependence and cohabitation, she had not forgiven him for lying about who and what he was. “Yes. Like me.”

She nodded for him to continue.

“Because we don’t know who to trust, we’re going to approach the Palo under our pseudonyms. We’re not their enemies, but if they discover our real identities, they will think that we’re their enemies. So we, in our own minds, must consider them the target of deception. The Dynize probably have hundreds, maybe thousands, of spies and informants in Greenfire Depths, and that makes it doubly difficult to decide who we can trust.”

“Is there anyone?” Most people would have had a tinge of despair in their voices when asking such a question, but Ichtracia seemed to take it as a matter of course.

“To trust?” Michel asked. “There will be. Starting with Emerald.” He finished with the razor and tossed it on the bed. “It’s a hack job, but I couldn’t find scissors on short notice. I can tidy it up when we get to the Depths.”

“You couldn’t find scissors, but you could find a face-painting kit?”

“You’d be surprised at how many people have one on hand at all times, even in a Palo fishing village. Doesn’t matter where you are – people want to look nice for a day at the fair or to impress a loved one.” He picked up the kit and rummaged through it until he found a bit of charcoal. He stepped back, looking closely at Ichtracia’s face. “Your features are distinctly Dynize. Anyone with half a brain can tell by looking at you.”

“You’re going to fix that with face paint?”

“I’m not giving you rosy cheeks and a blue forehead,” he assured her. “I’ve met face painters – professionals who would never stoop to working a children’s street festival. The very best of them could make you look exactly like me.”

“You’re joking.”

“It wouldn’t last through a rainy day or a particularly sweaty afternoon, but yes,” Michel said. “They’re damned artists, and I’m not going to do anything so severe. What I can do is apply a bit of shading to your nose and cheekbones. A little back here” – he brushed his fingertips across the nape of her neck, then over her brow – “and a little here. Very subtle alterations to the angles.”

“And this isn’t immediately obvious to anyone who looks at me?”

“I sure hope not,” Michel said, only half joking. “It should stand up to most scrutiny, and it shouldn’t be so heavy that if you do get caught in the rain, anyone will really notice that much of a difference. They’ll just think something is a bit off, but pass it off as nothing. A person’s brain will trick them in all sorts of ways if they think they already know who you are.”

He put one hand under her chin and tilted it up, examining her for several minutes before he finally lifted the bit of charcoal. Their eyes met briefly, and he found her expression oddly determined. He’d already taken note of the thrill she seemed to get when no one recognized her, and he wondered if this next step was just an extension of that. The problem was, they were going into Palo life in the Depths. No more private rooms. No servants or free access to booze and mala. No comforts to which a high-ranking Privileged might be accustomed. He’d tried to impress this upon her for days without any emotional response from her.

He considered something he’d been thinking about since they left Landfall with Sedial’s goons on their heels. He opened his mouth, reconsidered, then licked his lips several times before rushing ahead. “I have a question for you.”

“Yes?” One of her eyebrows flickered upward.

“Why do you trust me?”

“I don’t,” she said firmly.

“Clearly you do,” he replied, somewhat more forcefully than he’d intended. “You followed me out of Landfall on my word, hid in a fishing town for weeks with barely a complaint, and now you’re letting me change your entire face and take you into one of the most dangerous places in Fatrasta…”

“Greenfire Depths is that bad?”

“Yes, it is. And don’t change the subject.” Michel had momentum now, and he didn’t want to lose it. “Aside from wanting to see your sister, what could possibly convince you to come with me?”

“Are you trying to get me to say I’m in love with you?”

The question brought him up short. He froze like a panicked deer, mouth suddenly dry. The idea hadn’t even occurred to him. He fumbled for an answer.

“Because I’m not,” she said calmly. “I’m not even sure I like you after all of this. But I suppose I do trust you. Back in the fishing village, when you told me and Taniel that you planned on going back into Landfall to save your people? That was the first time I’ve truly felt like I saw the real you. I think I’ve found your true intentions, and that intrigues me.” She took a deep breath. “And there’s the blood sacrifices.”

They hadn’t spoken about it since her outburst at the fishing village. “You think there’s truth in what je Tura told me?” Michel asked carefully.

“You do.”

“Yes, but I’m just a spy. I only have my suspicions. You’re a Dynize Privileged.” She was evading the question. Michel fixed her with a look that, he hoped, told her that he wasn’t going to let her get around it.

Several moments passed. Finally, she said, “I do think there’s truth in it. Since I was a child, my grandfather has made it very clear that I am a tool. His little Mara. Blood holds the key to unlocking the stones, and as a Privileged and his granddaughter, my blood is stronger than most. But I’m not there, so…”

“Why didn’t you mention it before?”

“Because it never occurred to me that he would turn to other options. Stupid, I know. Sedial would never let my absence damage his plans.”

“So you think he’s using the blood of others to unlock the stone?”

“A lot of others,” Ichtracia said flatly.

“How many?”

“Thousands.”

Michel shivered. “Pit.”

“Exactly.” Ichtracia raised her chin imperiously. “I don’t much care about the Palo. I’m not here to fight for their freedom. But I can’t help but feel as if the murder of all those people could have been avoided if I’d just volunteered. I can’t let that pass.”

“It’s not your fault, you know.”

“I know,” she snapped. There were tears in the corners of her eyes, but she wiped them away before they could fall. The gesture smudged the face paint Michel had just applied, and he made a mental note to fix it. “I’m not a fool. But something has been twisting my guts around ever since you mentioned the sacrifices. I have to do something about it. You know, I want to meet my sister more than anything. To find out I have kin, and to find out that she is fighting for something, rather than sitting in a mala haze. It shames me into action. I can meet her when this is all over.”

Michel decided it would be prudent not to push her any further. He gave her a curt nod.

She wiped her eyes once more and suddenly smiled. “I do not like you, Michel, but I do enjoy you. Watching you work. I can’t help but be impressed. You convinced an entire Dynize Household that you were a spy, and then convinced them that you’d changed your ways for good. And then I find that you hadn’t actually been a spy for the people we thought you were a spy for in the first place. If I hadn’t been personally involved, I would have found that very funny. I think it will be a pleasure to see what you do next.”

“Weirdly, that puts a lot of pressure on my shoulders,” Michel answered.

“Good. You deserve it. Are you done already?” She gestured at her hair and face.

He shook away his thoughts and stepped back up to her. “We still need to dye your hair.”

“Fine. Go on. Have I answered your question?”

She did trust him, but she didn’t like him. And they were still sharing a bed. An emotionally confusing answer. “Yes. Thank you.”

“Then answer one for me: What do you plan on doing to hide your hand?”

Michel swallowed hard. He’d been avoiding this subject for days, and it made his stomach churn. “The same thing I do with the rest of my body: hide it in plain sight.”

She gave him a quizzical look.

“That sorcerous surgery technique you used on me…”

“If you want me to reattach your finger, we would need the finger in the first place.”

Michel chuckled nervously. “That’s not quite what I had in mind.”