Sins of Empire

Chapter 3

“Progress.”

It was an unimposing word, and not even that particularly fun to say, but it was bandied about in the newspapers so much that you’d think it was the name of Fatrasta’s new god. As if Fatrasta, a land of bickering immigrants, a twice-stolen nation of industrialized robbery, would ever spawn its own god. Landfall, the capital city of Fatrasta, would chew up a god and spit it out and it would barely make the newspapers.

Styke sat squeezed on an uncomfortable wooden bench in a narrow hallway. There were half a dozen others on the same bench – broken, beaten men who looked twenty years older than their age. They stared at the floor or the ceiling, avoiding eye contact, either praying or buried in their own desperate thoughts. Light streamed in through a high, barred window, and someone with a rickety cough hacked out their lungs in a nearby room.

On Styke’s lap was a worn, four-month-old newspaper, with PROGRESS emblazoned across the front of the first page. He considered the word for several minutes and thought of ripping the paper up as a way to vent the disgust it caused in him, but it was hard enough to get a newspaper in the labor camps and he’d traded a week’s tobacco ration for this one.

Instead, he produced a semi-carved piece of wood, clutching it as tightly as he could manage with his mangled left hand. With his right he began working at the wood with a small knife he’d stolen from the mess hall, thumb on the back of the blade, shaving bits off mechanically as he read.

The newspaper reported Adran mercenaries hard at work “taming the frontier.” Landfall was to open three more labor camps around the city to accommodate convicts shipped over from the Nine. Riots had broken out in the Palo quarter over the public hanging of a young radical. Trade had still not normalized with Kez, despite their civil war ending six years ago.

Styke snorted. The world, as he determined from the contents of any newspaper he could get his hands on, had changed little in the ten years since his sentencing. It was still filled with the greedy, violent, poor, angry, and not much else. He shifted his attention from the paper to the carving in his hand, whittling details into the soft pine for the next several minutes.

He held his handiwork up to the morning light. It wasn’t a bad little canoe, if he did say so himself. It was as long as his palm, thin and sleek, the outside covered in Palo markings. Certainly well done despite a dull knife and a crippled hand. He blew shavings off the back of his arm, then folded his newspaper and forced himself to stand, scowling as it took his right leg just a few seconds too long to obey his command.

He walked to the door leading into the courtyard and opened it a crack. Just outside waiting on the stoop was a young girl, though one might have easily mistaken her for a boy behind the mask of grime and filth that came from living in a labor camp. She was barefoot, wearing an old shirt of Styke’s that had to be tied at the neck and waist to keep it from falling off. She looked like a starving sparrow with half its feathers plucked out.

“Celine,” he whispered.

The girl perked up, turning her head. “Ben! You get out?” she asked excitedly.

Styke shook his head. “Haven’t even gone inside yet,” he responded. “Here.” He slipped the canoe through the crack before a guard could notice the door was open. “It might be a couple hours.”

“I’ll wait.”

Styke closed the door quietly and limped back to his seat, suppressing a groan as he lowered himself onto the hard bench. One of the other inmates glanced toward the door, then over at him, but quickly lowered his gaze.

Only a few minutes passed before a door opened at the far end of the hallway and a guard appeared. Styke couldn’t remember his name, but he knew he’d served in the Kez army as military police back before the war. He was a big man, taller than most with forearms as big around as powder kegs. The guard looked out across the sorry lot on the bench and whirled his truncheon absently. He wore the same sunflower-yellow smocks as the other guards, a facsimile of the Fatrastan military jackets that Styke himself used to wear.

He glared at Styke. “You,” he said. “Convict 10642. You’re up.”

Styke climbed to his feet and limped toward the guard.

“Hurry it up there,” the guard said. “I haven’t got all day.”

I wonder, Styke thought to himself, what you’d look like without arms.

“Pit,” the guard breathed as Styke came up beside him, “you’re a big one, aren’t you?”

Styke averted his gaze. He knew what kind of attention his size attracted. It was never good, not here. Guards liked to make examples of the biggest inmates to keep everyone else in line.

I could squash you like a bug. The thought came unbidden, and Styke quickly suppressed it. No room for that kind of thinking here. He was a model inmate, and he’d continue to be until his time was done, or else he’d be here until they worked him to death. A brief memory flashed through his mind – blood-spattered gauntlets on his fists, sword in hand, belting out a lancer’s hymn as he waded, unhorsed, through enemy grenadiers, each one as big as this arrogant guard. He blinked, and the vision was gone.

The guard finally took a step back and held the door open for Styke, directing him down another dusty hall with only a single window. “First door on the right.”

Styke followed the instructions and soon found himself in a small, brick room. It reminded him of a confessional at a Kresim church, though instead of a wicker screen between him and the next room over, there was a thick, iron grate over the window. Above it was a sign in broad letters that said PAROLE. The room was well lit, probably so the judge could get a good look at the monster he was about to let loose on the world.

“Please sit,” a voice said from behind the iron grate.

Styke sat on a low wooden stool, nervously listening to it creak beneath his bulk.

Several moments of silence followed, until Styke lifted his gaze from the floor to peer through the iron grate. He’d been through this process twice before now, and he knew the song and dance. Parole judges were simply whichever senior prison administrator had the time for you, meaning that the difference between freedom and another two years of hard labor depended heavily on whether they’d gotten up on the right side of the bed that morning.

What Styke saw on the other side of the grate made his heart sing.

“Raimy?” he asked.

Four-thumb Raimy wasn’t much to look at. She was a middle-aged woman, small and unimposing, with a pair of spectacles dangling on a chain around her neck, and dressed in what passed for a smart suit in the labor camps. She was the camp accountant and quartermaster. Being one of the few inmates who could read, write, and do sums, Styke had helped her with the books on more than one occasion. He liked the quiet of her office, where Celine could play on the floor and he could stay out of trouble.

Raimy coughed. She shuffled through her papers, picked up her pencil, and promptly fumbled, letting it roll across the desk and onto the floor. Instead of retrieving it, she carefully plucked a new one from her front jacket pocket and tested the tip.

“Benjamin,” she said.

“How’s it going, Raimy?” he asked.

She gave him a wan smile. “Cough’s bad. You know the dust on these dry days. How’s your knee?”

Styke shrugged. “Hurts. Friend of mine got that cough once, back during the war. He added honey to his whiskey. Didn’t clear it up completely, but it sure made him less miserable.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” She cleared her throat, the sound turning into a coughing fit, then shuffled through her papers once more before continuing on in a formal tone. “Convict 10642, Benjamin Styke. Your ten-year parole hearing has begun. Is there anyone to speak for you?”

Styke glanced around the tiny room. “I’m not allowed letters or outside communication, so I’m not sure if anyone even knows I’m still alive.”

“I see,” Raimy said. She checked a box on the paper in front of her, muttering, “no advocates,” before continuing on in her formal tone. “Benjamin Styke, you were sentenced to the firing squad for disobeying orders from your superior officer during the revolution. Your sentence was reduced by the grace of the Lady Chancellor to twenty years of hard labor. Is this correct?”

“I wouldn’t say reduced,” Styke said, holding up his mangled hand and spreading the fingers as well as he could. “They gave it two goes before deciding it would be easier to have me dig trenches than soak up bullets.”

Raimy’s eyes widened and the formal tone disappeared. “Two volleys from the firing squad? I had no idea.”

“That was my crime,” he confirmed, lowering his hand. “And my sentence.”

Raimy coughed, dropped another pencil, and fetched a new one before checking a box. “Right. Well, Mr. Styke, I’ve spent the last hour reviewing your case. You’ve gone seven years since a violent incident and five since any marks have been made against your record. Considering the, uh” – she cleared her throat – “average life span of an inmate at Sweetwallow Labor Camp is only about six years, I’d say you’ve done very well for yourself.”

Styke found himself sitting on the edge of the stool, ignoring the protests from his bad knee as he leaned forward. “Have I been granted parole?” he breathed, not daring to show the elation growing inside him.

“I think…” Raimy was cut off by a sudden knock on the door on her side of the grate. She frowned, setting her pencil down carefully, and stood up to answer it. “One moment,” she told him, then stepped outside.

Styke could hear muted voices on the other side of the room, but nothing loud enough to understand. The voices suddenly grew louder, until Raimy broke into a coughing fit. Silence followed, then Raimy came back inside the room.

She had another piece of paper in her hand, and she carefully set it flat on the table, then slid it beneath the rest of his file. She stared at the desk, one finger drumming nervously.

Styke didn’t know what this meant, but it couldn’t be good. He was almost falling off his stool now, and wanted to reach through the iron grate and shake her. “Parole,” he said helpfully.

Raimy seemed to snap out of her reverie and looked up at him, smiling. “Ah, where was I? Yes, well, I have good news and bad news, Mr. Styke. The bad news is that I must, in good conscience, deny you parole.” She continued on quickly: “The good news is that I am able to offer you a transfer to a labor camp with a less… dangerous reputation. Soft labor, as some of us like to call it.” She let out a nervous chuckle, coughed, and continued: “The beds will be softer, the hours shorter, and the facilities better.”

Styke stared, his heart falling. “Another labor camp?” he asked flatly. He felt in shock, as if he’d been punched in the gut. “This is my life. Do you think I care if my bed is a little softer?”

A bead of sweat rolled down Raimy’s temple.

“I know you can let me out,” Styke said, slapping the wall with his good hand. The sound made Raimy jump. “I know it’s up to your discretion. I’ve kept my head down for ten years. I’ve taken beatings without a protest, I’ve starved when the gruel is thin. Bloody pit, I taught you to read after you faked your way into a job as the camp quartermaster. I thought we were friends, Raimy.”

Raimy remained still. Her hands lay flat on the table, her eyes straight ahead like a deer caught in the garden. Her only movement was a violent tremble moving up and down her body. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly.

“Sorry? Sorry for what?”

“I didn’t know you were that Ben Styke.”

“What do you mean by that Ben Styke? How many of us do you think there are?” Styke stood up, barely feeling the twinge in his knee through the anger. His head grazed the ceiling of the parole cell. For some reason, the tremble going through Raimy’s body made him even angrier. They’d spent countless days together in her unguarded office, even had a few laughs together. She’d flirted with him. And now she was shaking, terrified, even though she was behind an iron grate? “Are we friends?” he demanded.

“Yes,” Raimy squeaked.

Styke wrapped his good hand and the two working fingers of his bad hand around the bars of the grate. He tightened his grip and, with one solid yank, ripped it out of the wall. Raimy’s mouth fell open but she remained transfixed as he set the grate to one side and leaned in over her desk, fishing through her papers until he came to the last one.

It was a note on stationery from the office of the Lady Chancellor. It had three sentences:

Mad Ben Styke, formerly Colonel Styke of the Mad Lancers, is a violent murderer guilty of several war crimes. He must be denied parole. Make it convincing.

It was signed by Fidelis Jes, head of the Lady Chancellor’s secret police.

Styke could hear someone yelling in the hallway. They’d heard the racket, and the yelling was soon followed by the pounding footsteps of the guards. Styke crumpled up the note and flicked it into Raimy’s face. “You can stop your damned trembling, then. I don’t hurt my friends.”

He turned away from her, spreading his arms wide, and waited for the first guard to come through the door.