Hollow Empire

by Sam Hawke

Something would happen. Our enemies would not let an opportunity like this pass, with so many people gathered in one place, not after all their efforts to ruin our day.

  And yet.

  I paced and watched and speculated, and paced and watched some more. All the while, the rock in my stomach grew heavier. The trickle of people kept up through the afternoon before eventually slowing. As it turned to dusk, workers lit huge beacon lamps at various points on the arena, visible like giant candles even from outside. Beyond, the streets were all brightly lamplit and almost all shops, bars, and even bathhouses would be open late tonight, hoping to lure in the unprecedented number of patrons, but there remained plenty of dark hiding places.

  Kalina came out and joined me. “No sign of anything inside,” she said. “I…” She looked tentatively at me, as if fearful I might break. “I found Hadrea. She’d been looking for us. I told her to find Tain and stick by him.”

  “Good.” My voice sounded too jolly, too false, but it was the best I could manage. “I’m glad. I feel better him having her nearby.” That was true, at least. For all her temper and her recklessness, Hadrea was smart and observant and swift and strong, and she would protect Tain fearlessly.

  “I haven’t seen anything suspicious so far,” Kalina said. “What about out here?”

  “Nothing.”

  Baina and her team arrived, ready for the explosives display. Chen had said if she were planning something, she would use a distraction. Well, the display would be that, and the arena was full, and it was much harder to see now, with the slowly darkening sky and the brightness and shadows cast by the giant lights. So we tracked in after them. They were all searched on the way in, as were we. The officials were still being vigilant, at least.

  The team was chattering, sounding more anxious than jubilant. We loitered near enough them to hear some of their nervous whispers, which were hushed quickly under Baina’s glare. “Time to move,” she said firmly, and she took off in an unexpected direction, looking over her shoulder. I didn’t get out of the way in time and she accidentally caught me with her shoulder, knocking me off my feet. “Oh! Credo Jovan.” The engineer peered at me suspiciously. “What are you doing here?”

  “Nothing.” I got to my feet. “Just making sure everything’s all right here.”

  “Well, look, be careful, mind,” she said, already starting to move on. “Don’t go knocking people over in the dark. This stuff’s dangerous, you know that. And it’s worth a bloody fortune!”

  “Good luck with the display,” Kalina said, and Baina acknowledged her with a wave as she moved on.

  “We should go back in there,” she said, watching the team move on. “It must be during the display they’re going to attack.”

  But I was still shocked into stillness where I’d half gotten to my feet. It felt like there were insects buzzing around my skull, excited and distracting, stopping me from thinking.

  “Jov?”

  My throat constricted. That stuff’s dangerous. Someone had said that to me the other day.

  “Jov?”

  “The committee.” The committee had been worried because Chen’s report listed a break-in at Baina’s workshop. They’d been worried about the chemicals being dumped. “Someone stole materials from Baina days ago.”

  Kalina and I stared at each other for a treacly moment before my brain snapped back into action.

  Baina’s materials were capable of significant destruction; I knew better than anyone, having used one of her devices to blow out the priceless and irreplaceable old Council chamber roof two years ago. I swallowed, and looked at the seating. “We need to get under there,” I said to my sister. There were entrances to the under-tier section in each of the entryways, but even faster: from this angle, in the thin gaps between spectators’ heads and legs, I could see through to the underside beneath the seats at head height. There was no backing to the underside of the benches. Kalina followed my gaze, and did not hesitate.

  Kalina slid beneath the first row of seating, disappearing into the darkness below, and I followed clumsily, squeezing myself through the gap as fast as I could.

  We dropped down to the underside of the tiers. I shuffled back until we were able to stand, then stretched out my back. The dull ache in my ankle was slowly defeating the effects of the darpar I’d taken, and a sharp pain lingered beneath my shoulder blades from the frantic searching under benches. It was dark and strange under there, most of the lamp and moonlight filtered out by angles and by the legs blocking the gaps between the seating above. “Didn’t Chen send people to check down here?” Kalina said.

  “Yes, but they were looking for people hiding down here.”

  “And what exactly are we looking for?” Kalina asked in a low voice, as I strode to the nearest support pillar and scanned it.

  “Anything that looks like it doesn’t belong there,” I muttered. “Something strapped on to a pillar or wall, probably.” There was no solid continuous wall at the back, only support pillars and the high fencing erected around the arena that acted like an external wall. “If you wanted to cause maximum damage you’d destroy a support pillar.” I looked up.

  Nothing on this one. I moved on to the next. Outside, the crowd roared and cheered again as a competitor finished their round. I walked around the pillar; nothing.

  “Clear here,” she said, from yet another. The anxious, sick feeling of having missed something began to grow in my stomach again. Had I been wrong again? Was there really no threat? Was all this for nothing?

  “And here.” I ran to the fence and along it, searching for any sign of something being attached. Anything at all.

  “Nothing under here,” Kalina said quietly. She had her head craned up, looking at the seats from below. It was a weird sensation being under all of those bodies. I pictured again the devastation if part of the structure exploded. Maybe I really had imagined it all, dreamed up a dramatic attack where there never was one.

  There was a sudden crack and we both jumped, but it was only the first of Baina’s decorative explosions. Peering through spectators’ feet we saw white fire shoot into the air and shatter into tiny sparkling pieces, like someone had pulled stars out of the night sky and scattered them in the air above the water. There were a few nervous shouts and screams but after the third pop the crowd was making only gasps of appreciation.

  Grief hollowed out my stomach for a moment, distracting me from the worry. Etan had been at least partially responsible for the chemical work that had underlain Baina’s experiments and successes, but no one would remember his name years from now. Of course, that was how he would have wanted it.

  “We’re in the wrong section,” Kalina said suddenly into the strange quiet. She was counting on her fingers, looking up. “Honor-down, Jov. We were so worried about Tain, but what if … Jov, listen. All our allies—the Council, the King of Doran, the Talafan, the western delegations … they’re all sitting in the same place.”

  Our eyes met.

  “Fuck.”

  As one, we started to run.

  “They’re the next section across,” I panted. “We’ll have to risk going through the entries, there’s no time to go out into the arena again.” There was a small half door at the end of the section, leading into the next entryway. It wasn’t locked, thankfully, but as we shoved it open and half-ran, half-crouched through, the Order Guards manning that passage saw us at once.

  “Hey,” one said; I kept running and kicked in the half-door entry on the opposite side of the passage before anyone could grab me. “Come with us!” I bellowed at the Guard over my shoulder. “We need help!”

  Someone made to grab Kalina but I hauled her through the entrance with me. She gasped and staggered to the side as her leg gave out from under her, and a jolt of guilt pierced me.

  “I’m fine!” she barked. Outside I heard the Order Guards giving shouted directions: You, stay here and keep monitoring the entrance! You get backup! One man ducked into the space, his baton held out, an
d stepped toward us. A whistle sounded, but it was buried in another round of cheering and applause, and people stamping their feet in enthusiasm on the benches. The sound was deafening from underneath.

  “Stop where you are.”

  I spun back to face the Guard. “We need to search under here,” I said. “Make yourself useful. Anything out of the ordinary, look for a—”

  I broke off forcibly as Kalina’s hand slapped across my mouth. She gestured. In the dappled light, something was moving, the light shifting. Someone was moving. We stood in silence, watching, as a figure slipped through a sudden patch of bright light; a section of fence had been damaged to allow entry.

  The Order Guard, who had also frozen, stepped forward and shouted. “You there!”

  The figure whirled round. It was a plainly dressed man, carrying something carefully in his hands. He saw us, and instead of running away or toward us, he ran toward the nearest support pillar. Only as flame flared did I realize what he’d been carrying: fabric or cord of some kind dangled from a clumpy shape protruding from the join point of a support beam and a pillar, and now the end of it was alight, burning like a wick. The man pulled a long knife from his belt and spun to face us boldly. “Shit,” I muttered, dread sinking in. He looked familiar in the half light; I was suddenly sure I knew him from somewhere. Something about his posture … The skinny man with the high voice, the third Hand.

  The Order Guard abandoned his attempt to arrest us and with a cry he charged instead at the Hand, but the smaller man was much faster and easily slipped the angle of his shoulders to avoid the baton strike, then struck back. An explosive round of cheering above us saved the Guard; the man’s knife went awry when he looked up suddenly, and the blade thrust under the Guard’s arm instead of into his stomach. Kalina came from nowhere and kicked the man in the back of the knees. Even with her relatively tentative force he buckled and fell into the Order Guard, dropping the knife; the two of them wrestled furiously to the ground and Kalina recovered the knife. I had edged around the scuffle and made a run for the lit fuse. I tore off my hat and used it like gloves to try to smother the flame, but my attempts were fruitless. “Here!” Kalina cried, and slid the knife to me across the ground. With a few frantic sawing motions and swearing as the flames bit at my wrists, I managed to sever the fabric so the burning end fell harmlessly to the ground.

  The Order Guard was on the top of the struggle on the ground and holding his own. The wick design would have given the Hand enough time to get safely clear of the explosion, but I couldn’t just leave the device there. I squinted up at it frantically, trying to see how it worked and how it was attached. The explosives might have used the same combination of chemicals my uncle had put together years ago, but how they were combined in the strange parcel and tube I could not have said. There was a slick, smooth covering wrapping it so I couldn’t tell what parts held what components or how they were designed to combine. “Get it down,” my sister gasped. “Hurry!”

  It was at the limit of my reach but I tugged at it as best I could. “It’s…” I struggled, feeling around the edges of it. “I think it’s bolted in.”

  I felt in my pouch, thinking to perhaps use Malek’s acid, but my hands stopped mid-groping—I didn’t know exactly what was inside the casing and what might happen if any Malek’s acid came in contact with it. “Shit. Shit! I can’t get it down, Lini. We need help.”

  The Guard on the floor had the better of his opponent, who was now covering his head, cowering. “Here,” Kalina said, quickly untying and slicing off a section of cording on her dress. “We can tie him up.”

  The man grunted angrily as the Order Guard forced his arms behind his back while Kalina shakily held the knife pointed at him, and grimaced with pain as he tied the knots. But he peered up at me and his teeth gleamed between the bloody rivulets streaming down his face. He was grinning. Then a wheezy little laugh emerged, and still he stared. “You’ll never get them all, though,” he said.

  “Them all what?” the Order Guard demanded. “What in the bloody hell’s going on here, anyway?”

  But cold fear had blossomed in my chest. Was this the only device? How many more Hands, how many more devices? I couldn’t see any others attached to any of the other visible support pillars or beams. “Stay here,” I said to the Order Guard, “until you get more help. There could be other devices and I haven’t disabled this one. Don’t let anyone get near it with anything burning, all right?”

  He nodded.

  “Kalina, you have to get the guests out,” I said. I squeezed her hand. She couldn’t run, now; I could see from the tremors in her limbs and the look in her eye that she had tapped out her supplies of energy. “Get out, call for help, get everyone out of this section but especially the foreign delegations, they might target them some other way. Scream the place down if you have to.”

  I looked grimly back the way we’d come. “I have to check if there are others. Send me help, get people under here, but first priority is to get the spectators out of the stands. You—you just—” My voice choked off, and her eyes filled with tears, but she nodded.

  “I will. Go.”

  I took off at a run, but not through the doorway; if one Hand had come in through the fence, chances were good that was how another might. I squashed through the gap the man had left and then ran the perimeter, heart pounding, head swimming, looking for another broken section. Thank the fortunes for the bright and clear moon; if there had been clouds I’d never have been able to see. Inside the arena I thought the volume of cries and stomping of feet had increased. A few people outside were staring at me and pointing as I sprinted past. “Get the Guards! Get help!” I yelled at them as I ran, but they only stared back mutely.

  Then I saw it. Another broken section, just like the first, masked partially by bushes growing close to the fencing. No time to waste; I hurtled past the bushes, heedless of the scratches to my face and neck, and threw myself through the gap and into another half-lit under-tier section. A light bobbed in one direction. I swore and ran toward it.

  The man with the torch saw me just in time to stand up, alarmed, but not in enough time to do anything about my furious charge. I smashed into him with my shoulder, sending him flying and me crashing heavily on top of him. He was bigger and stronger than me, though, and somehow he turned us over so it was me on my back, winded, one hand pinned under his bulk. He punched me in the face and I felt the impact as a heavy, sickening crack, but my pinned hand had just enough wiggle room, and a moment later he was reeling back, coughing and panicking, as powder exploded into his face. I buried my own face in the earth, holding my breath, and as he staggered off me, shrieking, I crawled away, still not daring to breathe. The torch was abandoned on the ground and I rolled it in the dirt until it was utterly dead, thanking the fortunes I’d been fast enough.

  Then my relief caught in my throat. I had just enough time to register a flare of light in the distance and then the terrible boom of an explosion.

  INCIDENT: Council poisoning

  POISON: Clouddust

  INCIDENT NOTES: Water for handwashing at Council table contained clouddust serum; six Councilors used the water before symptoms—blistering and painful burns—were detected. Credola Fonda Leka (known for strong hygiene practices) suffered the most severe damage to skin of her palms. Chancellor Keiki unaffected, this proofer suffered only mild and temporary effects. Disgruntled servant arrested and sentenced by determination council. Grudge appears to relate to working conditions and is not more broadly politically driven.

  (from proofing notes of Credola Tasuri Oromani)

  14

  Kalina

  The first explosion rocked the entire structure, sending its evil, destructive wave through the connected sections of the arena like a ripple on a pond. I hadn’t even seen the blast itself, just heard the terrible crack, a flare of something bright in the corner of my eye, then I was falling into people and down over suddenly unstable benches and footing, unsure which
way was up or down and struggling to breathe. Before I could orient myself, a kind of hollow pop sounded, along with another flare of light at my peripheral, and then a third. My ears felt like they were being compressed with heavy pillows, thick and impenetrable, but also painful.

  Someone shifted their weight and relieved some of the pressure on my chest. I was able to lever myself out of the squash enough to breathe, but everything hurt and the air felt hot and wet in my lungs. I rolled out and away onto a clear section of ground, coughing, half-blinded with the pain and dizzy with the confusing hollow ringing in my head. One of my hands hurt more than the other and I realized that was because I was still holding in a crushing grip the speaking trumpet I had seized from an official. Not that I’d done much good with it.

  I blinked, rubbing my gritty eyes, swallowing down the urge to vomit. My vision went black for whole moments at a time as I tried to look around, so I wasn’t sure whether I was not fully conscious or there was something wrong with my eyes, too. Turning my head rapidly to try to get a picture of what had happened only made the urge to vomit stronger. I got to my hands and knees, tried not to weep at the pain, and looked slowly around.

  The group of Doranites, including the King, were getting to their feet nearby, shaken but apparently uninjured. At least some of our guests had listened to my frantic directions, but no one had made it far before the explosion had gone off. Dread and disorientation slowing my movements, I looked back over in the other direction.

  The blast had torn through the next section over; a terrible hole gaped open in the middle of the seating, twisted benches and debris and bodies—and bits of bodies, horrible bits—scattered around it. Fires had caught, smoking and burning, and people in the lowest levels were scrambling to get off in a panicked, messy rabble. People seated higher were less fortunate. Those who could still move were trying to haul themselves down the wobbling remains of the structure. The top half had destabilized and collapsed into the exit passageway. It was strangely quiet, considering I could see people’s mouths open, their faces contorted into screams of terror and agony. My ears must not be working properly. Pieces of the arena hung broken like eggshells. Even as I tried to stand, my brain finally catching up and starting to comprehend the awfulness of what I was seeing, additional parts of the section wobbled and buckled.