Sins of Empire

Chapter 28

Styke entered a small Kresim church under the west rim of Greenfire Depths that matched the directions given to him by Old Man Fles. It was a dilapidated wood building; practically a disaster waiting to happen, long rotted through by the constant damp at the bottom of the quarry. The church was tucked up against the wall, a three-room construction with a steeple atop which Kresimir’s Rope had long ago fallen off. The inside was well lit by gas lamps, the floor covered in rubbish, old pews long stolen or destroyed.

There was an orderly queue of people along one side of the chapel, and at the front, atop what had once been an altar to Kresimir, sat an immense soup pot and stacks of stale bread. Palo boys as young as Celine and all the way into their twenties either waited in line or already enjoyed their morning meal squatting by the wall or sitting cross-legged in the empty chapel. Styke was more than a little surprised to recognize the man standing behind the soup pot, dishing out bowls to the waiting youth.

Styke watched him work for a moment, remaining unnoticed, then pulled Celine to one side of the chapel and squatted down among the Palo, who gave him space without comment. He pointed at Jackal.

“Henrick Jackal,” he told Celine, “was an orphan like you. Now look at him. Taking care of kids on the streets where he fought, killed, and stole. Funny how life works out.”

Celine seemed more than a little impressed. “He looks like a killer.”

Styke found a piece of horngum in his pocket and chewed thoughtfully for a few moments. A little girl solemnly proclaiming a man she’d never met as a killer made him chuckle, but she wasn’t wrong. Jackal was missing an ear and the pinkie on his left hand, but even beyond the obvious war wounds he was an intimidating man. He was well muscled but lean, and held himself with the kind of confidence that tended to intimidate ordinary folks. He wore an old brown duster, parted in the middle to reveal a stomach hard enough to take a kick from a mule, and a pair of old buckskin pants. His red hair was long and braided off to one side, his shallow cheeks covered in the ashen freckles of a Palo.

A spiritualist, Fles had called him.

“Henrick isn’t a Palo name,” Celine observed.

“Neither is Jackal,” Styke said. “But an orphan can call himself anything he wants.”

They waited for almost thirty minutes for the line to die down, but more Palo teenagers entered the chapel to replace each that finished their breakfast and left. Eventually a pair of teens came through the front door lugging a new soup pot, letting everyone in line know they were out of bread but that they had enough gruel to go around.

Styke was just beginning to think this would go all day when a small Palo boy – probably no more than a year older than Celine – suddenly approached them. He held two bowls of soup, and the last two loaves of bread from the platter, and offered them to Styke and Celine.

Styke took the soup, drinking it quickly and mopping the bottom of the bowl with the bread. It tasted awful, but Celine didn’t seem to mind. The boy watched them through their meal, then said in broken Adran, “Jackal wants to see you.”

Styke palmed a few pennies and slipped them to the boy, getting up and stretching his legs. He searched his pockets for more horngum and came up empty, making a mental note to stop by an apothecary.

Jackal had been replaced at his post by a pair of Palo teens, and Styke slipped past them to head into the vestry. It proved to be a dark, closetlike space, barely big enough for a sleeping roll and a small shrine comprised of a human skull, in front of which he found Jackal kneeling. Jackal’s eyes were closed, and he faced the shrine with lips moving silently.

“You never struck me as the praying type,” Styke said.

“I’m not praying. I’m talking.”

“With?”

“A spirit.”

Styke tried to remember what he could of Palo religion. With so many tribes scattered across Fatrasta there tended to be a wide array of beliefs. “I’ve never met a Palo who believed they could talk to spirits.”

“That’s because most Palo don’t.” Between sentences, Jackal’s lips continued to move as if he were carrying on two conversations at once. Finally, he gave a slight nod and opened his eyes, smiling warmly at Styke. “Colonel Styke. When the spirits told me you were still alive, I thought they were playing a joke on me. The afterlife can get awfully boring, and spirits aren’t to be trusted.”

Styke snorted. He wondered if Jackal had finally lost the few marbles he’d started with. “Good to see you, too, Jackal. I thought once the military police were done with me they’d come after you.”

“They did,” Jackal said, his face not changing expressions. “Ibana held them off long enough for me to get away, and then her father pulled some strings to get her released from their custody.”

“Smart,” Styke said. “I appreciate you coming after me when they put me up against the wall.”

“Little good it did.” Jackal got to his feet, unfolding gracefully and stepping toward Styke. Before the war, he’d liked his space. He rarely closed within reach of another human being unless he was about to kill. Yet he reached out, running one finger boldly across the deep scar on Styke’s face. “I’m sorry.”

Styke wasn’t sure he liked this new Jackal. He already seemed too gentle to be the same man he’d fought with in the war. “Wasn’t your fault. Never mind that, anyway. Didn’t mean to take you away from your… service. Just came by hoping you could help me out.”

“The Dynize dragonman?” Jackal asked.

Styke scowled. “How… How did you know that?” he asked, hand falling to the hilt of his knife.

“Because I talk to spirits,” Jackal said matter-of-factly. “Same way I know the little girl hiding behind you is named Celine, and her father was a thief who died in the camps. Same way I know you murdered six Blackhats today, and that you plan on learning Fidelis Jes’s routine so you can murder him when he least expects it.”

“Pit,” Styke swore. There was no way Jackal could know all that just from whatever contacts he had among the Palo. Styke leaned forward a little and sniffed, but could sense no sorcery on Jackal. Spirits? Really?

Jackal’s smile was a little condescending. “Think me a nutter. Everyone else does. But you’ll take my information just like the boys outside will take my soup, won’t you?”

Styke sucked on his teeth. Definitely not the same Jackal he’d once known. Did that mean he could no longer trust him? Had Jackal turned into a Blackhat agent, or did he have his own agenda? “Yeah. I will.”

“You’re wondering if you can trust me,” Jackal said. “And I wonder the same about you. You’re serving two masters right now. Lady Flint, and…” Jackal’s lips moved silently, and he tilted his head as if to listen to an unseen voice. “… someone the spirits won’t even touch. Odd, that.” He shook his head, as if suddenly confused. “I see Ben Styke before me. Broken, changed. Neither of us is the same man we once were, but I believe we once called each other friend. I would like us to do so again. To prove that, I’ll tell you what I know about the Dynize. Come. Sit.”

A few moments later Styke and Jackal sat at either end of Jackal’s bedroll, cross-legged, Celine sitting in Styke’s lap and listening to Jackal speak, enraptured.

“I’ve had to come about this information in the traditional way,” Jackal said, removing a flask from beneath the skull shrine and handing it to Styke. “The spirits won’t touch Privileged or bone-eyes. They don’t particularly like powder mages or Knacked, either, but I can usually get them to take a closer look.”

“Are you saying the dragonmen are bone-eyes?” Styke asked. He didn’t think so – he would have smelled the sorcery on them.

“No, but some of the legends about dragonmen are true. They’re anointed by bone-eyes, and it gives them some protection against sorcery.”

“Anointed?”

“I’m not sure exactly what that means, but considering the bone-eyes use blood magic, it can’t be anything good.”

“Says the man who speaks to the dead.”

“Speaking to the dead, and using the life-force of others in one’s sorcery, are two very different things. Anyway, there are at least four dragonmen in Landfall.”

“Four! Son of a bitch.”

“At least. The Dynize have been here for over a year now, infiltrating the various factions within Greenfire Depths. They have dozens of spies, and recruit the disaffected to their cause.”

“Like those four Palo kids at Mama Sender’s.”

“Exactly.”

“What’s their cause?” Celine asked.

“That,” Jackal said with a scowl, “is harder to say. They tell the youth stories of the glory of the Empire, of the wealth and decadence of their civilization, and promise them riches beyond belief in return for another set of eyes.”

“For what?”

“For everything. The Dynize spies consume information the same way the Blackhats do.”

“Are they preparing for some kind of invasion?” Styke asked. “The Empire has hidden behind closed borders for over a hundred years. Why move on Landfall now?”

“I think we’re getting ahead of ourselves,” Jackal responded. “They may be preparing to open their borders again. As far as we know, they’ve sent spies all around the world to find out how civilization has progressed since they were last a world power.”

“The spirits don’t tell you any more than that?”

“If you mock me, we won’t discuss this any further.”

Styke checked his sarcastic tone. “Sorry,” he said. “It’s a lot to take in.”

“The spirits have a very difficult time penetrating Dynize,” Jackal said after a moment of consideration. “Dynize Privileged protect the Dynize borders from any kind of sorcerous scrying, and it seems to work fairly well on the dead, too. I can’t spy on them any easier than I can spy on Lady Chancellor Lindet behind the protection of her own Privileged.”

“But you think the Dynize may just be feeling us out?”

“Perhaps,” Jackal said.

“So where do the dragonmen come into this?”

“They appeared” – Jackal closed his eyes – “a couple of months ago and began making contact with their spies in the city.”

“This is sounding more and more like the preparation for an invasion,” Styke said. “It’s what I’d do, anyway.” He had a brief vision of whole hosts of dragonmen marching up the coastline on Landfall. Based on the one he fought two days ago, they’d cut through the Landfall garrison like a hot knife through butter.

“They’re looking for something,” Jackal said.

“What?”

“The godstones.”

Styke frowned. A peculiar name. “What are those?”

“I’m not sure,” Jackal said. “The name first came to me two days ago from the lips of one of those boys you killed at Mama Sender’s.”

Styke felt the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. “What does that mean?”

“It’s much easier to wring information out of a spirit as they die – or are born, depending on your perspective – and I happened to catch one of your dragonman’s acolytes as he entered the next world.”

“Oh.” This was all getting to be too much for Styke. Sorcery never bothered him; he could smell it a mile away, and the enchanted armor he wore in the war could shrug off Privileged magic as easily as grapeshot. But this business with spirits made his spine tingle. The dead were dead, and as a man who’d put plenty of them in their graves he preferred they stay there. But he did need information, and this was the best he was going to find. He tried to shrug off his discomfort. “Get anything else out of him?”

“Nothing useful. The dragonman’s name was Kushel. He’s middle-aged, from a city called Heaven’s Pillar in Dynize. It seems he’s been looking for the godstones for most of his life, and he’s convinced he’ll find them here in Landfall.”

Styke leaned back on the bedroll and found himself considering the red marks on the back of Celine’s neck. They, like those on his stomach and chest, had begun to bruise. The bruises would heal, but the thought of this dragonman manhandling a little girl – his little girl – made his blood boil. I’ve killed a lot of people. But I’ve never so much as hurt a kid. He remembered his thought about warriors, and how few of them remained in the world. It might be old-fashioned, but a warrior left the young and infirm in peace and protected those under their responsibility.

“I need more information,” Styke said.

“I can try…”

“No. I need it straight from the dragonman. I need to draw him out again.”

Jackal hesitated. His eyes dipped tellingly to the scar on Styke’s face, then to his mangled hand. “We’ve both changed,” Jackal said gently. “If it was the old Styke, I’d believe you could fight a dragonman, but in your state…”

“Yeah,” Styke said, the words biting, “I know I’m a cripple. But I’m Mad Ben Styke, and I’m no fool. You can get word to him, can’t you? Your spirits can tell you where he is, and your boys can deliver a message?”

“This isn’t a good idea.”

“You haven’t even heard the idea,” Styke said. “I want you to tell Kushel that I’ve got his knife, and he can take it from me at the muster yard in Loel’s Fort.”

Jackal pursed his lips. “That’s an obvious trap.”

“Of course it’s an obvious trap. I’m not facing this bastard alone. If he’s a legendary warrior, he can fight this old cripple for it on my own terms. And if I lose, at least I’ll have the satisfaction of knowing Lady Flint will put a bullet in his head.”

“He won’t fall for it,” Jackal said.

Styke removed the bone knife from his belt, as well as his own big knife, holding them side by side so Jackal could see. “The stories say these weapons are part of a dragonman’s identity. If someone I hated had my knife, you bet your ass I’d cut my way through a brigade of infantry to get it back.” He returned the knives, his eyes falling once more on the bruises on Celine’s neck. “Just send the message.”