Hollow Empire

by Sam Hawke

  “Spite’s as good a motivator as any,” she agreed, but she still looked grim. “Could be we’ve had a lucky break here. Could be it’s something else.”

  I wheeled in my dismay at her attitude with deliberation, forcing myself to speak calmly when all I wanted to do was shout. “Are we going to bring his sister in then? It can’t hurt, can it? All we’re doing is protecting an innocent woman, there’s no harm in that. I’m not suggesting we let Aven out.”

  That garnered a small, tired smile. “Yeah, I thought you wouldn’t be real keen on that option.”

  “Warrior-Guilder Aven, bursting out of jail to save us all from the mess she caused?” I wheezed out a laugh of my own. “Can’t say it’s the ending I’ve been dreaming of.”

  “We can get the sister,” she said. “But I’m not ordering it myself. The Council’s already asking questions about how the investigation’s being handled. We do this with full authority or not at all.”

  INCIDENT: Poisoning of Chancellor Ardana Iliri

  POISON: Lendulus

  INCIDENT NOTES: Chancellor Ardana struck by dart while recreationally swimming in river south of Moncasta. Initially mistaken by guards for an insect bite, causing delay in treatment. Suspected Marutian assassin (name unknown) apprehended trying to cross border into Doran. Chancellor undergoing treatment, this proofer [text obscured, page damaged]

  (from proofing notes of Credola Ettenna Oromani)

  19

  Jovan

  Tain and I were in his office meeting with Moest, Erel taking swift notes in the corner as usual, when a blackstripe knocked at the door and cleared his throat. “Excuse me, Honored Chancellor? I’ve been told there’s a litter just arrived at the Manor from the Guardhouse, and Captain Chen’s here to see you.”

  “Tell them to send her on in here,” Tain replied. He was flicking through the messages Moest had brought: responses by bird from Telasa, Moncasta, and West Dortal, confirming there were no signs of approaching armies from across the borders, no acts of sabotage, no violence on the streets.

  “We could still be facing a follow-up attack in a more traditional form,” Moest continued. “I would not say it is impossible. The Talafan delegation left at first light today but it will be days before they can clear the north border; likewise with the Doranites. There’s a possibility an attack could come after other countries’ officials are out of Sjona to minimize the chances our enemy would have to contend with either of their armies if their people were trapped here.”

  “But?” Tain looked up wearily.

  “But we must also consider that our enemies may not have the support of a full army. We could be looking at continued acts of internal sabotage, designed to cause havoc and mass harm. Or some sort of supernatural attack, if the secondary attack at the arena was not an isolated one.”

  “An-Ostada says she doesn’t know who that was,” Tain said grimly. “But someone trained her, obviously.”

  I felt a flicker of unease. Hadrea seemed no worse for wear after her extended recovery sleep, but I worried about this terrible rift between her and her peers and An-Ostada. The Speaker was the only person in the city who could teach Hadrea about her gifts, and we might well need them all working together if we had to defend against further attacks like the one the woman with the urn had tried. She had come to me late at night and in the darkness of the bedchamber, exhausted from the seemingly endless day before, and, overwhelmed by the warmth and strength of her body, I’d been too cowardly to start a conversation about it. I had just been grateful to feel alive and connected to her. Later, later we could talk about how fresken fit into this mess.

  Footsteps sounded from the corridor outside, and we all looked up to see Chen being led in, closely followed by my sister. She had meant to try to speak to the assassin this morning; my heart leapt at the brightness in her face. She must have learned something important for them to have come straight up here.

  “Captain.” Tain got to his feet and clasped Chen’s shoulders in greeting. “Not more bad news, I hope.” He kissed my sister on her forehead. “You still need rest,” he chided her gently.

  “Speak for yourself,” she retorted, putting a hand on his thin cheek. “We need our Chancellor right now. Can’t have you collapsing, can we?”

  “Sit, take tea,” Tain urged them. In some ways it seemed strange, in the midst of this disaster, to still be sitting and taking tea like civilized people, but we still needed to eat and drink even when the world was falling apart. So we sat, and Chen told us what they had learned from questioning not the assassin, as I had expected, but Sukseno, the treacherous Order Guard. Kalina sat beside her, twitchy and energetic.

  “He didn’t seem motivated by the threat to his own life,” Chen finished. “But only by the risk to his sister’s.”

  “So we should get her to safety, as soon as we can,” Kalina said, apparently unable to keep from speaking any longer. “She hasn’t done anything wrong, so keeping her safe from any retaliation makes sense in any case.”

  “We don’t know, of course, whether or not this sister is just an innocent party or not,” Chen said, with an oppressive frown at Kalina. “We’ve only his word for it. And as someone who’s betrayed his Guild and the Order, can’t say as I’m thrilled with his trustworthiness. The sister could be neck high in this for all we know.”

  “I don’t think she is,” Kalina insisted. “I believed him when he said she hadn’t anything to do with it. And he said he had information, not just about the Hands, but about who they’re taking orders from.”

  I almost spilled my tea, and set it down to avoid the accident. “Who? Did he say who?”

  Chen was frowning again, but Kalina nodded. “A woman. A foreign woman he says is controlling it all. He seemed to think the ‘Prince’ bit is just a name, not a person.”

  I frowned. That didn’t fit with the note Merenda had intercepted, or with what the Darfri woman had said.

  Moest was watching with great interest. “This is the Guard who was caught trying to free Credola Aven?”

  “Yes.” And the one who strangled a man right in front of me.

  “This is good news, then, isn’t it?” Tain asked. He took a sip of tea and looked around at all of us over the rim. “Why do you not look like this is good news? This is the information we’ve been searching for for two years, isn’t it?”

  “It’s just that I’d be mighty cautious with anyone who’s working to Aven’s tune,” Moest said, shifting uncomfortably on his cushion. “It may look like she’s not masterminding this, that she’s been left behind, but I won’t believe that till I see it for sure. She’s no one’s fool. Maybe this is the break we need, or maybe it’s just another trick. We get the sister out, he gives us some information about some foreign agent of some sort, and then he pushes for what he really wants, and what do you know, it’s about getting Aven out of jail.”

  “No one is letting Aven out of jail,” Tain said.

  “And if more things like the arena happen?” I found myself saying. I could see it rolling out in front of me, horribly real. “The Hands kill more of us? What then? If the price is letting one person out of jail, would the Council really not consider it?”

  Kalina swallowed.

  “Fine. We’ll treat anything he says with caution,” Tain said. “Chen, you bring this information to the determination council and see what they think, and if it needs to go to Council, then it goes to Council. Like Lini said, we pick up the sister and get her somewhere safe. If he was lying and she is involved, worst case is we’ve got a new prisoner. And best case, we get some information we need, and keep an innocent woman safe. I don’t see how we do anything else.”

  “Wasn’t suggesting we ignore it,” Chen said. She’d refused tea, and stood now with a wince, obviously keen to move. “Just wanted to make sure we had appropriate expectations, eh? Could be this is what changes everything. Could be it’s just another cog in their machine and we’re being pulled through. As long as we’ve
got our eyes open, is all I’m saying.”

  She excused herself to go straight to the Governance Chambers, where the determination council was housed, and Moest also stood.

  “I’m due back at the Guildhall myself,” he said. “I’ll report straightaway when I hear from the scouts. Are you happy for me to reduce the patrols on the wall for now? Unless it’s a flying army, no one’s going to be within marching distance for days and I’ve got more critical preparations to do with my squads, so I could use the extra people.”

  “I don’t want any surprises,” Tain said. “So as long as the towers are staffed and no one decides we should relax just yet, that’s fine.”

  He gave us all a nod in farewell and strode out as well, leaving the three of us looking at one another with apprehension and hope, both.

  “I believe him,” Kalina said. “I know that’s not scientific but that’s my read. He’s devoted to Aven.”

  “I trust your read,” I told her. “What about the assassin? Did you get anything out of him?”

  She glanced over at Erel, who was still taking notes. The boy paused, his pen hovering, and looked questioningly at Tain, who frowned. “Have you figured out the book, or do you need help?”

  “I need help,” she admitted.

  “Then it’s time to bring in Budua and whoever else she suggests, I’d say.” He glanced back at Erel. “Erel, note down that Credola Kalina found a book in the rubble and has now confirmed it belongs to the prisoner. We are going to approach members of the Administrative Guild with specialties in language, customs, and religions of other countries to get their views.”

  “He feels very strongly about it,” she said. “Chen says it’s the first thing he’s responded to. He hated me touching it, called me all sorts of names in a language I don’t know, but he said one word twice so I remember: chamutah. But also ‘thief’ and ‘traitor.’”

  There was a moment of confused silence. Even Erel stopped scratching notes to look up at Kalina. “‘Traitor’?” I asked. “Could you have misheard?”

  “I don’t think so.” Her voice shook with remembered feeling. “It was like I completely disgusted him. And he knew our name, that’s what he first responded to.”

  I spun my teacup absently, thinking hard. Assassins from unknown places, local gangs working for foreigners, spies reporting “in service to the Prince,” Darfri taking lessons from mysterious men … I was sure this was a single conspiracy against Sjona, but honor-down, there were a lot of moving parts. And something else I hadn’t really considered. “When you talk to Budua, can you also get her to talk to one of the historians and see if there are any records of a noteworthy scandal involving our family specifically at any point? Business or personal. And Dee can check our journals.” I didn’t have much confidence there, though, because I had read the Oromani family journals multiple times, and though they were extensive, they focused on our proofing duties and political issues concerning the Chancellor’s family, rather than much personal detail about the Oromanis themselves. Could our own family have given offense or committed some sin against a foreign trading partner, long ago, who had nursed a grudge? Thin, perhaps, but perhaps there was more to why we were targeted than isolating Tain.

  “I’ll do that,” she said, nodding.

  Tain had to go and meet Eliska about the infrastructure cleanup so I walked out with Erel, who kept glancing at me nervously as if he had something to say as we walked out of Tain’s study. “What’s up?” I asked him eventually, tiring of his palpably tense presence just beside me.

  “What? Nothing, Credo!” He swallowed. “Uh, by the way, how is Dee?” His tone was no more than politely curious to the casual onlooker, but I saw the way he wrung his ink-blotted fingers together while he waited for my reply, and my mild irritation melted away. I smiled.

  “She’s going to be all right, Erel,” I reassured him. “She saw some things up close that are a bit hard to deal with, but you did, too, and here you are.” I didn’t ask where Erel had been during the blast, but hoped it was somewhere well away from the worst zones. Certainly he had been in the rubble piles helping get victims out, though, so either way he had seen far too much for a boy his age. In some ways the rescue process had been more traumatic than the initial blast.

  “I … I didn’t know what else to do,” he admitted in a mumble, avoiding my gaze. “At least this way I’m busy. And the Chancellor needs me still. He’s so tired, and he’s not well.” Then, as if he’d been caught insulting Tain in some way, he hastened to clarify, “Anyone would be tired! He’s working himself to the bone trying to deal with everything. It’s normal to forget things and get a bit mixed up.”

  “I know.” Honor-down, no one knew better than me. I put a hand on the lad’s shoulder. “You’re a great help to him, Erel. I don’t know what he’d do without you.” Just as Sjease had taken an enormous burden off me and Kalina, I knew Erel had done the same for Tain. It occurred to me, in a rush of shame, that I had not thought to ask him whether his family was safe, and I hesitated to do so now—what if someone close to him had been killed, and I made things worse?—then decided it was worse to never even bother to ask. “Your family, were they … was anyone hurt in the blasts?”

  “Oh, no, Credo,” he said earnestly. “My Tashi took a job back home in Imudush a few months ago, to be closer to my nieces and nephews. All the family’s still up there.”

  “You must miss them.” Inked-in members of families were typically even more fiercely loyal than those born into them, and he was still young to be all on his own.

  “I’m all right, Credo,” he said, puffing up his chest a little, and I suppressed a smile. To be fifteen, and so concerned to be seen as self-sufficient! “The Chancellor treats me very well. Like a member of his own family.”

  I patted his shoulder. Tain did think of Erel that way. He liked children and would secretly have liked, I suspected, to have brought in one of his younger relatives to train up as his Heir, but the chaos of the post-siege time had meant his older cousin, stable and sensible, was the appropriate choice. He’d been looking forward to Merenda bringing her children into the city. In the meantime, I think he’d enjoyed having Erel around, and not only because the latter remembered when Tain’s appointments were and kept his paperwork in order.

  My smile faded and the memory of the Heir’s broken body, flung from the height of the arena, soured my stomach. I wondered, as we walked the corridor in silence, whether word had yet reached Merenda’s brother and daughters. Tain would have to replace her, if we made it through the season.

  * * *

  Erel’s comment about Tain earlier in the day stuck in my mind, and I carved out time to prepare some nutritious food for him in the evening. Dija assisted, her eyes a little red and carrying a brittle silence around her mother that suggested they had been fighting again about her staying here. The Talafan had left the city this morning and hundreds, perhaps thousands, more had done the same over the course of the day, in a great fearful exodus. Ana wanted to leave, but had not given up on bringing her daughter back with her. For now we existed in a kind of tense temporary truce, and I had avoided her as much as possible.

  As it had been during the siege, these moments of normalcy, carved out amidst the trauma, were slightly surreal. Cooking for Tain was an ingrained routine that gave my body something to do and a way for me and Dija to talk about familiar things and avoid confronting the terrible pressure of what had happened looming over us. We prepared several packed meals and then made time to play muse over sweet nighttime tea before bed, and for a brief stretch, life almost felt like it made sense again.

  Partway through a game in the evening, our houseguards interrupted. “An-Hadrea at the door to see you, Credo,” Dom announced.

  “Yes, of course,” I said. I glanced back down at the muse board. Dija must have been distracted, she’d overextended with that red tile. I moved my blue to threaten it.

  Hadrea came inside and shrugged her cloak off. Thoug
h we were well into spring, the morning and evening winds were still cold, and I shivered as she brushed my arm with her hand in greeting. Though she had insisted she had taken no harm from the incident at the arena, there had been an over-intensity about her since that I distrusted, a look not dissimilar to the one Tain wore sometimes. It called to mind the sensation of walking on a cliff path in high wind. “Your skin’s icy,” I said, touching her cheek and making room for her with us at the muse board. “Where’ve you been?”

  “It is colder than it should be, this year, I think. An ill wind for the start of the season.” She looked distant, as if her mind were elsewhere, but then shook her head and looked down at the board. “Who is winning?”

  “Uncle Jov,” Dee piped up. “He always wins. But I’m getting better. Do you want to play next?”

  I moved my blue again—what was Dija thinking with that red? Had she forgotten they were vulnerable?—and looked up innocently. “Hadrea doesn’t like muse.”

  Hadrea shrugged. “You city folk. You have worked out how to turn even games into something you can pore over like a book. Games are for outside.” She stretched out next to us like an animal relaxing by an oven. “Is Kalina here?”

  “She’s at the Guildhall still. She’s got a fragment of language she’s trying to identify and she’s been in with the scholars and historians all day.”

  “I have been down in the Darfri districts,” Hadrea said in a more serious tone. “I have found the woman Kalina said you were looking for.”

  “Where?” I started to stand, pleased, but Hadrea shook her head, glancing warningly at Dija.