Sins of Empire

Chapter 20

Styke returned to Loel’s Fort at almost two o’clock in the morning. He carried a sleeping Celine on his shoulder, his hips and knees hurting from walking halfway across the city, his ribs aching from his fight with the dragonman, and several tender spots on his chest and stomach that would be vivid bruises within a day or two.

He wasn’t staying at the fort. He didn’t quite feel like he was “one” of the Riflejacks yet, and the dilapidated barracks was still under construction, so he rented a cheap room a block away. He was looking forward to falling into bed and sleeping well into the morning, but first he wanted to leave a message for Lady Flint. It was with some surprise that he found a lantern still on at the staff office, and when he knocked on the door there was an immediate “Come!” from inside.

Olem sat on the other side of a round table in the middle of the staff office, four other officers clustered around it, cards and coins scattered on the table. Olem glanced up at Styke, then across the table at the pretty, middle-aged captain sitting directly across from him. “Your draw. What happened to you?”

“Got into a scrap,” Styke said. He laid Celine down on a sofa in the corner, then stretched down to touch his toes, hearing his back pop in several places. The muscles of his bad knee twinged painfully. He dug a bit of horngum out of his pocket and tucked it into his cheek.

“Trouble?” Olem asked.

“Nothing I couldn’t handle.” Styke wondered when he’d last played cards. It was next to impossible to get a full deck in the labor camps. The camp guards thought it was funny to remove the same three cards from each deck you could buy at the camp commissary. It was annoying, but the convicts just came up with their own games to play that required three fewer cards.

“Heard someone busted up Mama Sender’s earlier tonight,” Olem said. “Some big beast of a guy killed three Palo and crippled a fourth. Took off chasing a fifth. Mama Sender swore he looked just like Ben Styke.”

Styke scratched behind his ear. “Yeah, about that. I should probably send her a few hundred krana.”

Olem threw a card down. “Already took care of it. Nobody in this city cares much about some dead Palo. Just try to clean up better next time. Any luck tracking down a dragonman?”

Styke examined Olem for a few moments. No tone of reproach. Just professionalism. He liked that. Olem seemed distracted, though, and despite everyone else in the room looking tired-eyed the silence at the card table was tense. What were they all doing up this late on a weeknight? Olem’s Knack kept him from needing sleep, but the others doubtless had duties in the morning.

“I did,” Styke said. “Was going to leave a message for Lady Flint and then head to bed. She’s not awake still, is she?”

Olem reached over, plucking a cigarette from an ashtray on the table and sucking on the end, discarding it with a disgusted look when he realized it had gone out. “Lady Flint is down in Greenfire Depths.”

Styke froze mid-stretch. “Alone?”

“Yeah. Got invited to a gala at something called the Yellow Hall. They wouldn’t let her bring an escort or anything, and this is her best shot at getting an in with the Palo.”

“You let her go into Greenfire Depths alone?”

Olem looked up, an angry glint in his eye. “I don’t ‘let’ Lady Flint do anything. She can take care of herself better than anyone in this room.” Including you, his tone implied. Styke wasn’t about to argue with the sentiment, but he still didn’t like it. Here he was, off chasing mythical warriors, when his real purpose – Lady Flint – was off in the most dangerous part of Landfall without a guard. If she got herself killed right now, Tampo might very well sell Styke back to the Blackhats.

Styke made a calming motion with his hands. “Agreed, but Greenfire Depths. I don’t like the sound of it.” Not one bit. One person, all alone in the Depths? This wasn’t an invitation; it was a damned death trap.

“What could we do?” Olem asked. “None of us knows this place. Without her invitation, she wouldn’t even be able to find the Yellow Hall.”

Styke rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. This was bad. He pointed at Olem. “I can. But if she’s meant to be alone there’s no taking an army down there. Let’s go.”

He expected an argument, or an indignant response about giving out orders. Instead Olem threw down his cards, scooped up a pile of coins, and wordlessly buckled on his belt. “Any of you know where Davd or Norrine is?” he asked the table. He was answered by a round of headshaking and gave a frustrated grunt.

Styke went over to the sofa, nudging Celine awake. “You told me that you know Greenfire Depths. Can you find the Yellow Hall?” he asked gently. It took her a moment to wake up, then she was on her feet. “It’s been a while,” he added. “The Depths change, and I’m rusty.”

“I can find it,” Celine assured him.

Styke nodded to Olem. “Let’s go find Lady Flint, and hope we’re not too damned late.”

Vlora spent hours mingling with the Palo elite and their Kressian business partners. She relaxed for the first time since entering the city, laughing at jokes, smiling, doing her best to drop the stony demeanor that had earned her her epithet. She was surprised to find most of the elite well educated, some of them even having gone to universities in the Nine, and by the end of the evening she could have been convinced that this was a whole different class of people from the insurrectionist tribes she’d put down in the swamps.

The guests retired one by one, leaving through the front door and down side halls, until only a handful remained. Vlora said her good-byes to Vallencian and Meln-Dun, pleased that Tampo was nowhere in sight, and found Devin-Tallis sleeping in his rickshaw outside. Water dripped through the tenements, and somewhere distant she could hear the patter of rain on the roofs well above them.

She woke Devin-Tallis, and they were soon heading down the narrow streets. “Was the celebration to your standards?” he asked.

Vlora settled into her seat, feeling more at ease and confident, slightly buzzed from one too many drinks. She had let her guard down, but now felt pleased to have done so. “I think I made some friends tonight,” she said.

“Very good, Lady Flint. Ah, I found out what ‘Ka’ stands for while I waited for you.”

“Oh?”

“‘Ka’ is one who protects. It’s a Dynize epithet, meant only for bone-eyes from the royal family. None of the tribes use it.”

Vlora tilted her head. “The Dynize haven’t been here for a very long time. How could anyone possibly know it?”

“Our languages are similar. Besides, I asked one of the old-timers. The Palo, we have so little property that we pass down knowledge like you would family heirlooms.”

“Sounds like it comes in handy.”

“It does, Lady Flint.” Devin-Tallis smiled over his shoulder at her. “See, Lady Flint. There is more than just fear in Greenfire Depths. There is knowledge, even friendship. I think that you…” He trailed off, suddenly slowing.

“Is there something wrong?” Vlora asked, leaning forward, her pleasant buzz dissipating like a morning fog.

Devin-Tallis looked one way, then the other, then turned toward her. He opened his mouth and let out a quiet groan, and it took her a moment to see the blood leaking from between his lips. Vlora scrambled from her seat, throwing herself forward to catch Devin-Tallis as he fell, lowering him into the rickshaw with one hand and jamming a powder charge into her mouth with the other. The power lit her veins and darkness became like day to her eyes, revealing two things at once.

First, that Devin-Tallis had a long, slender dart sticking out of his neck. Second, that they were not alone. The corridors around them were filled with shadows, at least a dozen Palo men and women holding cudgels, knives, and swords. They seemed confident that she could not see them and crouched in waiting while one of their number reloaded a blowgun.

Vlora drew her pistol and put a bullet between the culprit’s startled eyes before he could bring the blowgun to his lips.

The crack and flash of the pistol seemed to freeze everyone in place. Vlora glanced at Devin-Tallis and could see he would be dead within moments. She tasted the powder on her tongue, rubbed the grit of it against the roof of her mouth, and reveled in the strength it gave her. “You’ve made a terrible mistake,” she said, drawing her sword.

The words acted like a signal, and everyone seemed to fly into motion at once. Palo poured from the alleys, weapons raised, war cries on their lips. She let the first one run straight onto her blade and then jerked it with the strength of a powder mage, disemboweling him instantly, spraying gore into the eyes of his companion, whom she cut down as he tried to wipe away the blood. She flipped her pistol around in her left hand, ignoring the way the barrel burned her already wounded palm, and slammed the butt across the temple of another assailant while her sword worked in the opposite direction, opening the throat of a fourth.

The first four went down in as little time as it took them to reach her. She darted to the side, her footwork uncertain in the mucky street, and parried a sword that slashed at her face. She countered two more strokes and then ducked low, ramming her sword through the man’s stomach and then shoving, skewering the woman behind him.

Without a powder trance, Vlora knew she would be considered a top-notch fighter among any company, and it became instantly clear that these attackers, while they had not been stupid enough to bring any powder with them, were not in any way prepared to fight a powder mage. She had trained her whole life as a soldier and a duelist. Her actions were cold and precise, the blade of her weapon aimed to kill or disable instantly, and she was fueled by the anger of seeing the innocent family man behind her die in his rickshaw.

She cut down two more before the concerted effort of four of the attackers managed to halt her forward momentum, presenting a wall of blades in a narrow corridor, forcing her to retreat lest she skewer herself upon their swords. She backed up, biding her time and checking her rear to be sure she wasn’t being outflanked, waiting for one of them to make a mistake.

Behind them, she watched a fifth scramble for the blowgun that had been dropped by one of their companions, and she cursed herself for not bringing a second pistol. She fought a rising panic, knowing she needed to break through these blades and take them down or turn and flee, but fearing the possibility of running into even more attackers.

Vlora heard footsteps in the mud behind her and swore. She’d been outflanked. She pressed her back to a wall, holding her pistol in one hand and her sword in the other, trying to look in both directions at once.

She caught sight of a shadow behind the Palo who recovered the blowgun. The shadow grew so suddenly she thought her eyes were playing tricks on her until the hooked tip of a boz knife suddenly jutted from the Palo’s chest. The Palo coughed, crying out, and was lifted into the air and thrown at his companions.

The shadow became Ben Styke, wearing his old yellow cavalry jacket, his face somehow uglier and meaner in the shadows of the gas lanterns. Behind her, footsteps became louder as Olem rounded the corner, his pistol raised. He shot one of her assailants in the chest. The dual distraction was all Vlora needed and she darted forward, dispatching the three remaining Palo in as many breaths.

Her chest heaved as she caught her breath, heart thumping from the adrenaline of the fight more than the effort. She nodded to Styke, briefly touched Olem’s shoulder, then headed over to the rickshaw, where Devin-Tallis had already gone still. She plucked the dart from his neck, broke it between her fingers, and cast it aside. “Poisoned,” she said, not bothering to hide the disgust in her voice.

“Pit,” Styke breathed, surveying the line of corpses down the corridor. “You weren’t kidding when you said she could handle herself.”

Olem came up beside Vlora, putting one hand gently on her waist. She resisted the urge to lay her head on his shoulder, her body still trembling. “Are you all right?” he asked quietly.

“I’m fine,” Vlora said.

Styke took two steps toward her, squinting in the dim light as he looked her over. “Didn’t even get a scratch. Pit, remind me not to cross you.”

“If they’d gone for me instead of my driver first, I’d be dead,” Vlora said through clenched teeth.

“Your gala didn’t go well tonight, I take it?” Olem asked.

“No, it went fantastic. Better than I could have hoped. I have no idea what provoked this.” She kicked one of the corpses, letting out an angry grunt.

Beside her, Styke bent to clean his knife. He gestured to someone Vlora couldn’t see, and Celine emerged from the shadows to join him, her eyes wide at all the carnage. “This,” Styke told her gently, “is what happens when boys try to play with a woman like Lady Flint.” He stood up. “We should go,” he said. “If they’re smart, they’ll have a backup team in case they missed and your rickshaw made a run for it.”

Vlora touched Devin-Tallis’s forehead, then nodded. Whoever ordered this, she decided, had very little time left to live. She would make sure of that.