Sins of Empire

Chapter 17

Vlora wore her dress uniform, sword and pistol at her belt, and met Devin-Tallis in the muster yard at eight thirty. It wasn’t long until dark, and she boarded his tiny rickshaw with some trepidation. He immediately set off from Loel’s Fort, heading down the street and toward the switchbacks that Michel had taken her down just two days earlier. By the time they reached the bottom all sign of daylight was gone, and she was surprised to see the narrow streets lit dimly by a handful of gas lamps she had not noticed earlier.

Within moments of reaching the floor of the Depths she was completely turned around. Devin-Tallis chugged onward, his legs working effortlessly as he pulled the rickshaw through a series of rapid, seemingly unnecessary turns, his feet splashing through the permanent layer of damp sludge that seemed to cover the streets. They traveled onward in silence for several minutes, and Vlora’s heart beat a little faster with every passing moment and the realization that if Devin-Tallis left her suddenly, she had no hope of finding her way back to the plateau on her own.

She unwrapped a powder charge and sprinkled a bit on her tongue, relishing the sulfur taste, then snorting a bit more. The trance lit her mind like a fuse, letting her focus better, her vision sharpening so that she could see the dark spots between gas lamps as clear as if it were day.

Being able to see the sudden sharp angles and dubious construction of the overlapping tenements did very little to calm her. “You said this is a celebration,” she said. “But Vallencian called it a gala. Which is it?”

Devin-Tallis spoke without turning his head. “Both, I suppose. It’s a Palo celebration, the Day of the Two Moons.”

Vlora tried to think of a festival that corresponded to today’s date, but no harvests or astrological events came to mind. “What does that mean?”

“No idea,” Devin-Tallis said. “I asked my father when I was a boy. He didn’t know, either. It’s a festival, and we celebrate.”

“Usually a festival corresponds to something.”

“Perhaps it once did,” Devin-Tallis answered.

That wasn’t much help. Vlora looked up, trying to get her bearings from the sky, but even the little slices of fading twilight that she had been able to see through the jumbled tenements were now gone, obscured by the masonry, boards, and cloth that stitched together the layers of Greenfire Depths. She took a little more powder to calm her nerves. “What kind of a name is Devin-Tallis?”

“A Palo one,” he answered.

“I haven’t met many Palo with two names.”

“It’s not actually two names,” Devin-Tallis said. “Devin is my title. My given name is Tallis.”

“No family name?”

“Some of us have them. It varies among the tribes. My tribe, the Wannin, use a naming system that goes back to when the people you call the Dynize used to rule these lands. It’s very old. We go by our title, and then our name.”

Vlora thought of the way Kressian naming conventions went. The lower classes often only had a single name. They could buy or earn a second name – often an epithet like her “Lady Flint.” Now that she thought of it, their methods were not dissimilar. “What does Devin mean?”

“One who serves.”

“Is that a class thing, or…”

“Ah, no,” Devin-Tallis said. “I pull a rickshaw, and I have since I was strong enough. It makes me good money, and allows me to keep a family. One who serves is a proud name. You might call it middle-class.”

Vlora couldn’t help but chuckle. So often it was easy to think of the Palo as savages – most Kressians did – but then she was reminded that most spoke Adran or Kez or some other Kressian language with little accent, and they grasped Kressian traditions better than Kressians grasped theirs. She wondered, if the Palo were not so divided, whether they would have any trouble pushing the Kressian immigrants into the sea.

It was most likely a possibility that haunted Lady Chancellor Lindet’s dreams.

Vlora remembered someone she’d once known – the green-eyed girl Taniel brought back from his time in Fatrasta all those years ago, along with rumors of a scandal that had caused her no end of grief. “What does ‘Ka’ mean?” she asked.

Devin-Tallis slowed slightly, frowning over his shoulder. “I have not heard that before. I would have to ask. Ah, we are here.” They rounded a corner and came to a sudden stop. Vlora glanced around. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. There were no crowds, no arrival line of rickshaws. Just another side alley with a well-trodden street of stone and muck, ending in a well-lit door made of reeds.

“We’re here?” Vlora asked.

“Yes.”

“You’re sure?”

“This is it,” Devin-Tallis said. “The streets down here are narrow, so every house or hall has several entrances. The Palo don’t care much for grand facades. It is, after all, what is inside that matters.”

Vlora got out of the rickshaw and Devin-Tallis put it off to one corner, then led her to the door at the end of the alley and spoke his name. The reed curtain was pulled aside, revealing a narrow corridor and a pair of armed Palo. Vlora could smell the powder on them, and spotted their pistols a moment later. They gazed back at her stoically, and Vlora spread her senses, trying not to gasp when she felt hundreds of small caches of powder within fifty yards, each of them no doubt representing another armed guard.

Security, it seemed, was not a problem for the Palo.

Devin-Tallis waved her forward. “I will introduce you,” he said, leading her down several narrow corridors, “and then I must return to my rickshaw.”

“You’re not coming in?”

“I am,” Devin-Tallis said with a smile, “middle-class. The Palo have their own system, and only the elite are invited into the Yellow Hall. Ah. Here we are. I will come back and check on you in a few hours. If you wish to leave, simply send someone to find me.”

Vlora had become increasingly aware of the low buzz of conversation at the edges of her powder trance, but a wave of voices suddenly burst upon her as if she’d entered a banquet hall. They passed two more guards in the gaslit corridor and then Devin-Tallis opened a heavy wooden door for her. What she saw nearly made her gasp.

They stood at the top of three steps leading down into an enormous room, easily a hundred paces across, with dozens of nooks and crannies. Chandeliers hung from the ceiling, and there were hallways and balconies above them that implied the building was much larger than this one hall. Light came from gas lanterns; food and drink, including wine and iced coffee and tea, were provided by smartly dressed servants. The walls and floor were made of the same dark yellow limestone from which the capitol building had been constructed, though the architecture here looked much older.

Guests filled the entire hall, dancing, speaking, lounging on couches along the walls. She had expected a sea of freckled faces with bright red hair, but instead found that only about half the people in the room were Palo. The others were Kressians from a variety of backgrounds, from white Adrans and Kez, to dusty Rosveleans, to black-skinned Deliv, and they all seemed to mingle freely.

“Welcome,” Devin-Tallis said, “to the Yellow Hall.”

Michel spent all day setting his trap. The grand master’s office lent him Iron Roses to cover the entrance to the office building, to watch the windows, the back door, and the street. He had men follow the secretary home – which turned out to be just a few blocks away on the edge of the industrial quarter – and positioned people outside her door. This was his chance at wrapping up this investigation in just a few days. It would get him his Gold Rose.

He was not going to fail.

It was almost nine when Agent Warsim, Michel’s sometime partner, scurried across the street and joined Michel in his hiding place beneath the shadow of a nearby factory. Warsim wore his Bronze Rose and carried a pistol and truncheon. “The boys think they’ve spotted Tampo,” he said in a low whisper.

Michel bit nervously at his nails, eyes on the street, and headed out into the waning sunlight. He arrived a half a block from the office building in time to see a man in a sharp black suit and top hat, carrying a silver cane under one arm and an attaché case under the other, slip in the entrance.

Michel looked up and down the road, making fists to keep his hands from trembling. Pit, this was it. Tampo wasn’t going to escape. He let himself inside and ascended the staircase, followed by Warsim and three Iron Roses. The building was quiet, most of the offices empty, and on the second floor there wasn’t a single lantern lit except for the flicker of light coming from underneath the door of the suite at the end of the hall.

“Give me your pistol,” Michel said, taking the weapon from Warsim. The five of them crept down the hall, careful not to make any noise, and came up against the suite door. He listened for a moment, then nodded to the biggest of the Iron Roses. “Open the door!”

Styke followed the dragonman through the city for almost two hours. He hung back – far back – so as not to draw attention, keeping his shoulders hunched and his hat pulled low. It was hard to follow anyone for a man of his size, but he kept Celine as a lifeline. She had her eyes on the dragonman, and Styke had his eyes on her.

The dragonman ranged all over. His path seemed random at first, and Styke was worried he knew he was being followed, but it soon became apparent that the dragonman was meeting with people. He stopped by a brothel in the industrial quarter, spent an hour in the Treasury building in Upper Landfall, then went down to the docks, where he visited three different ships in the course of fifteen minutes.

Styke got more than one good look at the dragonman in the light of day, and he was more convinced than ever that he was a Dynize. The Dynize were related closely to the Palo, both in looks and language, but there were subtle markers that someone with a good eye – and enough historical education – could see right away. The dragonman’s eyes were slightly more oval, his cheeks a bit too gaunt, and his ears were pierced at the top of the ear instead of the lobe.

The mystery became to Styke not that the dragonman was a Dynize, but rather why he was a Dynize. Even before Styke’s time at the labor camp the Dynize had been isolationists, the borders of their continent closed to outsiders – including merchants and missionaries. No one had seen them anywhere outside their country for more than a hundred years, even though Fatrasta lay practically on the Dynize doorstep. What were they doing here now?

Styke didn’t even know the Dynize had dragonmen. The stories said the Palo developed their own warriors after the Dynize pulled out of Fatrasta. It seemed, though, based on the tattoos, that they’d taken their dragonmen straight from Dynize society. Which meant that the Dynize might have a whole nation’s worth of dragonmen, and even if they were one in ten thousand, the prospect of an army of mythical warriors was… off-putting.

But all that seemed like a pretty huge assumption. Styke needed to stop getting ahead of himself and get the drop on the dragonman. It would be best to take him alive, but even tossing a dead body at the feet of Lady Flint would answer some questions. At the very least it would get her to trust him, which, Styke reminded himself, was his primary mission.

Styke pulled his head out of his own thoughts for a moment, looking around for Celine. He’d lost her a few times, but she wasn’t hard to spot in her yellow shirt and boy’s trousers. She kept well ahead of him and he didn’t begin to worry until he’d gone almost a full block and saw no sign of her anywhere.

They were still down in the docks. This area was packed with warehouses and silos, half of them on the boardwalk, forming a myriad of alleys and switchbacks. It wasn’t the ideal place to follow someone.

But it was a great place for an ambush.

Styke felt his heart beating a little faster. Celine would have called out if she ran into trouble, wouldn’t she? She was a smart girl, more than quick enough to get away from most adults. But this was a dragonman, a killer as bloody and remorseless as Styke himself.

He found himself doubling his pace, head whipping back and forth as he rushed past alleys, looking for any sign of Celine. He kept one hand out in front of him, pushing dockworkers and sailors out of the way, the other hand on the hilt of his knife. She was here somewhere, he knew it, and he’d find her.

“Ben!”

Styke only needed to hear the sound once. He about-faced, backtracking through the evening traffic, even shoving a pack mule bodily from his path, his mind racing. His name had been yelled in desperation.

He checked the face of an alleyway and came up short.

The dragonman stood less than twenty paces away. His head was cocked, an expression of annoyance on his face, and he held a squirming Celine by the back of the neck. In his other hand was a polished bone knife, curved and wicked like a ceremonial dagger.

Styke felt his chest tighten at the sight of Celine. The dragonman was clearly hurting her, and he clearly didn’t care.

“Ben, was it?” the dragonman asked casually. “You’re going to answer some questions.”

Styke drew his knife, knuckles white on the hilt, and took a step forward. “Like the pit I am.”

The Iron Rose kicked in the door, cudgel in one hand, pistol in the other. His companions knocked in the two office doors of the suite, and Michel heard a string of protestations and a startled yell from one of them. He ran a hand over his mouth, trying to keep the enormous grin off his face.

He was a professional, after all.

He counted to ten seconds, then followed the Iron Roses inside suite 214, looking around. Tampo was in the office on the left, sitting behind the desk with Agent Warsim behind him. Tampo’s jacket was pulled halfway down, trapping his arms so he couldn’t move. Tampo would be feeling more than a little terror right now, and Michel was willing to let that last another couple of moments.

He did a quick circuit of the opposite room, using a knife to pry open one of the many crates that were stacked haphazardly around. He blinked down at the contents, frowning, before that big grin he’d been trying to suppress finally broke through his defenses. “Bring me that lantern.”

One of the Iron Roses brought him the lantern from Tampo’s desk. Michel held it over the crate, light spilling across the contents, to reveal stacks of Sins of Empire. With so many crates in this room and the next, there were probably thousands of copies here. There was now no doubt this was the man who’d arranged the printing of the pamphlet.

And Michel had him at gunpoint in the other room.

He suppressed the urge to dance over to Tampo’s desk and instead walked, measuring his steps. He set down the lantern and leaned forward, gazing into Tampo’s eyes. The lawyer was frozen in terror, his mouth working but nothing coming out. The trousers of his fine suit were soaked with urine. Sedition against the Lady Chancellor wasn’t so clever now, was it? Michel found himself unsure of where to start. Was he supposed to question him? Take him straight to the Millinery?

“Looks like we’re both in for a long night,” Michel said, sitting on the edge of the desk. “Tell me, is your real name Tampo? Because I couldn’t find it in any of the public records, and I had people searching all afternoon.”

The lawyer’s mouth continued to work. Michel frowned. He’d expected someone timid – revolutionaries often were once you took the piss out of them – but he hadn’t expected someone so frozen by their own terror that they couldn’t speak. He must realize how close to the end of his life he had come. Michel didn’t particularly relish what was going to happen to Tampo. He didn’t like torture, though it certainly had its uses, but he was exceedingly pleased to be the one to bring Tampo down. It was going to earn him his Gold Rose.

He leaned forward, smacking Tampo on the cheek gently. “Have anything to say?”

Tampo’s jaw trembled, and he whispered something between his chattering teeth. Michel leaned forward to better hear it. “Speak up.”

“I don’t know who you think I am,” the man said. “But I’m the janitor.”

All the joy Michel had been floating on disappeared. This couldn’t have been a mistake. Janitors didn’t wear five-thousand-krana suits. They didn’t carry canes. “Excuse me?”

“The lawyer who works here said he’d give me a hundred krana to come in tonight wearing his clothes.”

Michel licked his lips. He snatched up the man’s right hand, examining his fingers closely. They weren’t the fingers of a lawyer. They were rough, burned, and blistered from years of manual labor, paint on his knuckles and dirt under his nails.

This was not Tampo.

“Son of a bitch!” Michel kicked over one of the crates, pointing at one of the Iron Roses. “Go get me the secretary. Now!”