Wrath of Empire

Chapter 42

Vlora did as she’d promised Taniel and changed hotels. She rushed a new order of clothes from a local tailor and changed her look, and generally kept her head down so that she could gamble her week on the only real chance she felt she had to find the stones: reconnoitering Nighttime Vale.

Flerring’s description had been spot-on. The Vale was approached by a steep hill on the northern edge of town and entered through a narrow valley between two great pillars of stone. Because the Vale was entirely the property of Jezzy’s Shovel gang, the valley was closed to outsiders and guarded by eight armed men at all times.

Vlora watched them for two days and nights, attempting to find some kind of chink in their routine that would let her slip into the Vale and back out again without being noticed. She grew more and more frustrated at the situation – the approach was out in the open, the guards were rotated in shifts without a gap, and every wagon that entered and left the Vale was guarded to and from the destination. According to a few old prospectors she asked, climbing around the other side of the Vale would take her four or five days.

She began to wonder if maybe Jezzy was in on the recovery of the stone – or if it was just that gold mines were more thoroughly guarded than some military armories. Bad luck either way.

On the third day she picked up a copy of the Yellow Creek Caller to find a surprising bit of information on the front page. The headline read MERCENARY ARMY MARCHES ON YELLOW CREEK. Below was a snappy story on the Riflejacks that said they were spotted in the region marching toward Yellow Creek. She returned to the newsie boy who’d sold her the paper and pointed at the headline. “Is this from this morning?”

“Yes, ma’am. Fresh information.”

“Do you know anything else about this?” she asked.

“I don’t think so.”

Vlora fished a coin from her pocket and flicked it off her thumb. The boy caught it, looked over his shoulder, and took two steps closer. He spoke in a conspiratorial tone.

“Rumor has it the big bosses are frantic with worry. Each of them thinks the other hired a whole mercenary army to take their gold, and both of them are denying it. I heard that it was Jezzy who hired them. Supposedly the army’s led by that Flint lady – you know, the one that the Lady Chancellor has put a bounty on?”

“I’ve heard of her,” Vlora said cautiously.

“Well, everyone is arming up to protect their claims. The big bosses are forcing a production increase and offering huge amounts to anyone who carries a weapon. The guards are doubling. The mayor wants to close all the roads, but Jezzy and Brown Bear Burt want to keep them open to get their gold out. They say it’s chaos in the mayor’s office, and no one knows what to do.”

Vlora left the newsie with an extra coin and strode off swearing under her breath. This was exactly why she’d come ahead of the army – exactly why she’d given herself an extra couple of weeks to try to find the stone before they were forced to bring in a few thousand soldiers and dig it up with violence. She originally thought that the town’s defenses would be little more than an inconvenience, but now she wasn’t so sure. Roadblocks in the harsh terrain could keep the Riflejacks from approaching the city for days or weeks, and when they finally arrived, they would have to deal with street-to-street fighting with people who thought they were there to steal the gold.

Vlora headed to the main street and checked in with the messenger service that she’d used to try to find Olem. The man behind the desk recognized her immediately and went to a locked box in the corner of the room, returning a moment later with a letter.

“It came yesterday,” the clerk said apologetically. “We checked with your hotel, but they said you had left and not given them a forwarding address.”

Vlora tipped the man and took the letter to the corner. She recognized Olem’s writing immediately.

“A little damned late,” she said, lighting the edge of the letter with a match and letting it burn down to her fingertips. She did some quick mental math and decided that they were probably getting close to that six miles. Making camp six miles out could be good, though – it would give the city residents longer to worry about why they were here and who had hired them, which in turn would give Vlora more time to find the stone.

If the Picks and Shovels began fighting among themselves, the Riflejacks might have an easier time of mopping things up.

But none of this, she decided, was ideal.