Wrath of Empire

Chapter 38

“You look like you haven’t slept in days.” Taniel sat on the chair by one of the tiny windows of his cell, contemplating the gallows sitting just outside. His sketchbook sat in his lap, and he examined Vlora with a frown. Her hair was unkempt, her jacket dirty, and she could only imagine the bags under her eyes.

She leaned her head against the bars of Taniel’s jail cell. “They both know who I am.”

He frowned as she spoke. “Who?”

“The powder mage, Nohan. He put two and two together and called me out. Says he’s going to kill me and take the bounty that Lindet put out on me.”

“Can he?”

“Not in a fair fight.”

“Right. Why didn’t you just kill him when he threatened you?”

“Because I don’t want to end up in here with you,” Vlora replied.

“So buy him off,” Taniel said, as if the answer were simple.

Vlora stared at Taniel, furious with him for suggesting it, and furious with herself for not just doing it in the first place. “I will not buy off a man who has tried to kill me. It’s personal now – and I don’t think he would take me up on it. Apparently we have a history.”

Taniel didn’t ask further, so Vlora didn’t bother to explain. He sketched furiously, his hand moving over the page manically, and she could tell that sitting in this cell was bothering the pit out of him. “Who else knows who you are?”

“Prime Lektor.”

Taniel’s sketching stopped. He looked up, staring at the wall, then looked over at her. “You saw him again?”

“Twice more. Definitely him, even though I can’t sense his sorcery. The first time, I tried to follow him and he disappeared into thin air. I know where he lives, but I’m not touching a Predeii’s house. It’s probably warded as tight as a king’s palace. The second time I saw him – well, he spotted me first. Now he knows I’m here.”

“That’s not great,” Taniel said with a frown.

Vlora rubbed her eyes. “Do we really know anything about him? Why does he want the stone? He’s a scholar, isn’t he? Maybe he’s just studying it?”

“He’s also part of the group that summoned Kresimir and caused the Bleakening,” Taniel warned.

“But if we have our facts right, he didn’t want Kresimir to come back the second time. He helped turn Adro into a democracy.”

“We can’t trust him.” Taniel looked down at his sketchbook. He suddenly dropped his charcoal and ripped the page out, crumpling it and tossing it into one corner of the cell. Vlora raised her eyebrows. It was the first time she’d ever seen him destroy a drawing in anger – even the terrible ones from his youth. “I need to get out of here,” he said.

Vlora didn’t disagree.

“I can try to break out tonight,” he said, “but there’s a ton of miscreants in here and a heavy guard on them. I’ll probably end up killing my way out.” He didn’t seem happy about this idea. “I don’t like killing decent people, and the deputies here are probably the only ones in the whole city.”

Vlora didn’t like the idea, either. “We have to give it another week.”

“You’ll get killed,” Taniel countered. “You can handle a rogue powder mage, but Prime is out of your league.”

“I won’t.” Her mind raced. “I can change hotels and keep my head down. Flerring tipped me off to men going mad at one of the mining sites. If I can get inside, I might be able to find the stone; by the time I find the stone, you’ll be out. We can deal with Prime and then bring Olem and the boys into town to claim the stone.”

“It’s risky,” Taniel said slowly.

Once again, Vlora didn’t disagree. But she could still move around the town freely, and she could still hide from both her antagonists. “Give me one more week,” she said. “Then we deal with both of them together, and Flerring will have enough blasting oil for us to try to destroy the stone. Have you heard any more news from your Palo friend?”

“Not much that’s useful. You really want to do this on your own, don’t you?” he asked with a sigh.

Vlora wanted to tell him that she couldn’t trust him anymore. She wanted to tell him that he was no longer human and that he was no longer the Adran patriot who had been a hero of two wars. She wanted to tell him that she did need to do this herself. “I want to do this without you having to kill decent people,” she reasoned. “And without drawing any more attention.”

“Even if it gets you killed?”

“I’ve fought worse.”

“I know,” Taniel said softly, “but you’re my friend. I don’t want you to die.”

Vlora almost told him her thoughts, overwhelmed by a feeling of guilt over her mistrust of him. She bit her tongue. “I’m glad,” she managed.

Taniel paced the cell. “The Palo Nation definitely has a presence in the camp, but I can’t figure out how big. According to my Palo friend, their representative is an underling to one of the big bosses. Most of the Palo have aligned with Burt, so I’m guessing it’s one of his lieutenants. If I can get word without raising any suspicions, we might have ourselves some allies.”

“I would suggest,” Vlora said, “not telling the Palo Nation about the godstones.”

“I hadn’t intended on it,” Taniel replied. “Have you heard from Olem?”

“Nothing yet,” Vlora said. “They can’t be far off.”

Taniel took a deep breath and fell onto the cell bed, arms outstretched. He still wore long sleeves and his right glove to hide his reddened skin. Despite his earlier claim of not needing much sleep, he looked tired, with deep crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes. She wondered what was going on with Ka-poel. Taniel claimed he could sense her, even at a distance. She imagined that was as stressful as it was useful.

Her own exhaustion – and separation from her lover and partner – were dragging at her. Her bruises hurt all the time; her body was exhausted from too little rest. She had to run a light powder trance and drink a bottle of wine just to think clearly.

Vlora turned to Taniel, remembering her thoughts about Prime from the other day. “You said the sorcerous compass Ka-poel gave you isn’t working?”

“That’s right,” Taniel responded. He chuckled. “Compass. Right. That makes sense. Well, it’s behaving like I’ve put a magnet underneath a real compass. I know that the stone is here, but it’s not pointing in any direction in particular.”

“Maybe that’s Prime’s doing.”

“How?”

“Perhaps Prime is hiding the stone on purpose, to keep anyone from finding it until he’s finished with it.”

Taniel stroked the two-week-old stubble growing on his chin. “That sounds right. So if you find Prime again, you can follow him to the stone.”

“I don’t want to find Prime. I want to find the stone, then deal with him once I have you with me.”

“That seems wiser,” Taniel said.

Vlora pushed herself away from the cell glass. She felt like a wagon stuck in a muddy rut, unable to pull out of it even with her best effort. She had to get back to work before she went mad. “I’m going,” she told him, holding up a single finger. “One week. You’ll be out without having to kill, and I’ll have found the stone.”

“One week,” Taniel agreed reluctantly.

Vlora left him there, ducking out of the jail and weaving into traffic, her eyes on the rooftops for the telltale puff of smoke from a fired rifle. By deciding to do this alone, she hoped she hadn’t just proclaimed her own death warrant.