Wrath of Empire

by Brian McClellan

  “The people who really run the empire, you mean?” This could be a very good experience for Michel. He needed to keep his eyes and ears open—but not lose focus on the current issue with Forgula.

  Tenik gave him a sly smile. “We would never presume.”

  “I’m sure you wouldn’t. What role do the Privileged play in Households, by the way?”

  “They don’t belong to Households,” Tenik said. “Technically, all Privileged are property of the emperor.”

  “I saw a Privileged with Ka-Sedial yesterday.”

  Tenik wrinkled his nose. “Sedial is different. He speaks with the emperor’s voice on this expedition, so the Privileged report to him. I didn’t see this Privileged, but I’m surprised Sedial openly has one as an escort. Emperor’s voice or not, he has so far been careful not to flaunt his power on this expedition lest he encourage several of the lesser Households to ally against him.” Tenik shook his head. “I’ll look into the matter.”

  They rounded a corner and continued on for another hundred paces, where they reached a double set of ornate doors. Tenik pushed one open without knocking, revealing a room that belied the quiet of the rest of the building.

  What had once been the foreign dignitary room had been, at first glance, converted into a boxing arena. It was already well suited to observation, with high banks of windows and tiered seating where bureaucrats could observe important meetings. More chairs and another set of tiered seating had been added all around the room, and the enormous table where Lindet had met with Ka-Sedial had been removed.

  The arena-like feel was what reminded Michel of boxing. The room was filled with people, stinking from so many bodies, filled with the noise of their cheers, jeers, and the placing of wagers. Tenik shouldered his way through the crowd, pulling Michel along behind him until they reached the object of everyone’s attention.

  In the center of the room, where the enormous meeting table had once stood, was an octagon over twenty feet across and filled with smaller octagonal tiles of various colors. Carved ivory and jade figurines stood on some of those tiles. It was, to Michel’s eyes, the likeness of a general’s war map, and it didn’t take him long to realize that the two people standing beside the octagon were the “generals” in this war game.

  The players moved around the map freely, using long sticks to carefully adjust the positions of the figurines in a seemingly preordained order. A third person, like the referee in a boxing match, occasionally would reach out with a long pincer stick to remove one of the pieces.

  Michel was immediately taken with the game. Tenik had explained the basics the night before, and he’d thought the concept sounded slow and boring. But this moved quickly, each player taking their turn in a matter of seconds while the crowd’s noise grew from silence, to whispers, to a roar—all depending on the actions of the players.

  He tore his eyes away from the game as Tenik tugged on his sleeve. They moved back through the crowd to the edge of the room, climbing up into an open spot on the tiered seating where they could get a decent look at the room.

  Michel took one look around and immediately realized how out of place he looked. His blond-dyed hair and his part-Kressian, part-Palo features made him stand out in a room full of redheads. Even his suit—brown cotton trousers and jacket—seemed drab and strange among all the teal and ivory worn by the Dynize.

  More than a few were watching him as he did a slower examination of the room. Some whispered to each other curiously, while others were obviously annoyed at his presence.

  “Tell me,” Michel said out of the corner of his mouth, “do foreigners often attend these games?”

  “Not that I can recall.”

  Michel cursed himself for not thinking about how out of place he would be—and Tenik for not warning him. He needed to stay in the shadows while he looked for Taniel’s informant, not damn well stand on a stage.

  He forced himself to ignore the glares and the whispers. “Names,” he told Tenik. “I need to know who these people are.”

  “There’s a lot of people here.”

  “I’m going to have to learn them eventually.”

  “Where do you want me to start?” Tenik asked.

  Michel’s wandering gaze finally found his target. Forgula stood about twenty yards away, down at the other end of the tiered seating with her neck craned to see over the heads of people in front of her. To his surprise, he recognized the woman just behind her.

  “I thought you said there wouldn’t be a Privileged here,” Michel said.

  “Eh?” Tenik looked around. “Where do you see a Privileged?”

  “Behind Forgula. That’s the woman I mentioned earlier.”

  Tenik searched for a moment. “Ah. Saen-Ichtracia. I should have known.”

  “About what?”

  “A Privileged with Sedial? She’s his granddaughter.”

  Michel made a mental note that this was not someone he wanted to cross paths with. “She’s pretty.”

  Tenik laughed softly. “They call her ‘the people eater.’”

  “Do I want to know why?”

  “She’s survived seventeen separate assassination attempts. The first was when she was seven. She strangled the assassin with the string from one of her nursery toys.”

  Michel let out a soft whistle. “Because of her grandfather?”

  “She’s a member of the imperial family and a Privileged. She gained enemies simply by being born.” Tenik clicked his tongue thoughtfully. “Her nickname, it also has a double meaning. You know about Privileged, right?”

  “They’re damned dangerous.”

  “Not that. The sorcery, it makes them ravenous.”

  “For sex?” Michel scoffed. “I thought that was a myth.”

  “No myth,” Tenik said. “As far as I’ve been able to tell, our Privileged are less … discerning than yours. Try not to catch her eye. If you do, she will use you like a damp rag and discard you. Whether you survive the encounter will be left up to chance.” Michel turned to look at Tenik, expecting a tongue-in-cheek smile, but the cupbearer was dead serious.

  “You’re joking.”

  “A friendly warning,” Tenik said. He went on. “The man beside her is a cupbearer for the Jerotl Household—minister of public works. The woman behind her is a captain of the Sedial Household guard.”

  Tenik spent the next ten minutes pointing out people and telling Michel their names, Households, and their occupations. Michel repeated each name that was told to him, trying to get the pronunciations down and casting them to memory. Within minutes he was trying to juggle two dozen names. Soon that number doubled. The game below them carried on, and the noise in the room began to grow in pitch, suggesting to Michel that some sort of conclusion was forthcoming.

  Michel’s eyes kept returning to Forgula. Tenik had described her as a capable woman, and as Michel examined her, he began to see through the deception of his first impression that she had a gentle face. While it was true that some baby fat still clung to her cheeks, she had the thin, hard body of an athlete and her eyes were just as intense as those of the Privileged standing behind her. She grimaced at the game, occasionally smiled, and once bore her teeth toward the players with an open malice.

  There was a weight to her right sleeve, suggesting to Michel that she carried a blackjack—the same weapon she’d beaten him with last week. His forehead and arm were finally beginning to heal, and he reminded himself not to allow this to get personal. He was here, he told himself, just until he could find Taniel’s informant. The opportunity to have some vengeance on Forgula by disrupting whatever she was doing with Marhoush was a secondary concern.

  Unfortunately, the informant’s name, Mara, was not among those that Tenik shared with him by the time the roar of the spectators suddenly drowned out the next name that Tenik whispered into Michel’s ear. Roughly half of the room broke out into a cheer, while others looked away with disgust and disappointment.

  Michel felt his own disappointment,
swearing under his breath. He tried to remember what little Taniel had told him about Mara, that she was part of a Dynize higher-up’s retinue. “Retinue,” he decided, meant “Household.” But now that he knew roughly how big a Household could be, that information was practically useless.

  There had to be a more efficient way to do this.

  Michel discarded the thought and turned to Forgula, whom he saw shaking hands with the crowd.

  “Her cousin won,” Michel said.

  Tenik nodded. “He’s a very good player, but he got lucky.”

  “You were watching the game?”

  “Weren’t you?”

  “I was listening to you.”

  Tenik slapped him on the shoulder. “If you come to more games, you’ll have to learn to talk and watch. Good morning!” he called to someone a few rows down the seating, waving a greeting. He whispered the person’s name in Michel’s ear, which Michel promptly forgot.

  Michel’s attention was still on Forgula as she began to move through the crowd, exchanging a few words here, touching an arm there, then a longer conversation. She snubbed one woman, warmly greeted another, then put her arm around a man who spoke in her ear.

  Michel noted the faces of each of the people she spoke with, and how they interacted. “This room smells like politics,” he said to Tenik. “These games are the political underbelly of Dynize, aren’t they?”

  A moment of silence passed, and Michel turned to find Tenik watching him carefully. “You’re very perceptive.”

  “It’s my job,” Michel answered. “I have to know just enough about everything to keep from getting killed. And instinct tells me to get out of here as quickly as possible.”

  “Instinct?”

  “Instinct, and the looks your compatriots are giving me. I’m unwelcome here.”

  “That is true.”

  Michel wondered again if coming here had been a mistake. He was a spy, and he should be operating from the shadows. Let the Dynize upper crust wonder about the foreign spy in Yaret’s Household, but keep himself hidden.

  But not all spying, he reminded himself, was from the shadows. Hiding in plain sight was a useful strategy. If it didn’t get you killed.

  Someone passed him on their way down the tiered seating, knocking hard into his shoulder and almost throwing him to the ground. A word was hissed as Tenik caught him. Michel regained his balance. “What did that mean?” Michel asked.

  “He called you a dirty foreigner.” Tenik’s eyes narrowed at the assailant’s back.

  “Is he an enemy of the Household?” Michel asked.

  “An ally, unfortunately. He’s a footman for the minister of agriculture. I will speak to him later.”

  “Let it go,” Michel suggested.

  Tenik shook his head firmly. “You’re a member of Yaret’s Household now, whether our allies like it or not. And someone like him”—he nodded to the assailant—“is not high enough a station to get away with insulting you. His minister isn’t even here. She’s back in Dynize, schmoozing the emperor instead of helping with the cause.”

  “Just out of curiosity, who is high enough station to get away with insulting me?” Michel asked, eyeing Forgula as she continued to wind her way through the crowd. He studied everyone she made contact with—who knew about her contact with the Blackhats? Was there a conspiracy? Was she a traitor? Was her master vying for more power?

  Tenik considered the question for a moment before answering. “That is a complicated answer. If you are insulted, you should let it go. I can deal with it.”

  “That sounds like my mother telling me to ignore the boys who beat me up in school,” Michel responded. He caught the eye of another Dynize staring in his direction, and realized with a start that it was Ichtracia. The Privileged was watching him with open curiosity, and Michel felt a shiver run down his spine. “I think I’ve learned enough for one day,” he said to Tenik. “We should go.”

  He began to head down the tiered seating, only to see Forgula directly below him, speaking urgently with a young woman in a soldier’s uniform. Michel turned to work his way around her just as she looked up toward him. He swore silently, resisting the urge to slink away, and decided to walk directly past her on his way out. He decided Forgula was someone to whom he shouldn’t show weakness.

  Michel looked her in the eye and gave her his most charming smile.

  A look of disgust crossed her face. “Tenik,” she said sharply.

  Tenik was just one step above and behind Michel. “Good morning, Devin-Forgula,” he said, touching his forehead in greeting.

  “Don’t ‘good morning’ me, Tenik. I’ve just received news of another explosion. At least thirteen soldiers dead or wounded down in Lower Landfall.”

  Tenik stepped down beside Michel and scowled. “I’m sure that Yaret has been informed.”

  “Has he?” Forgula took a half step toward Tenik. “Because his cupbearer is attending a game with a foreigner instead of out there looking for the men killing our troops.”

  Michel bit his tongue. She had no idea she’d been followed the other day, and he had to resist the urge to throw her meeting with Marhoush back in her face. He could see the same struggle on Tenik’s face. “You’ve no right to question Tenik’s actions,” Michel said.

  “Why is he talking to me?” Forgula asked Tenik.

  Michel felt his heat rising, and before Tenik could answer, he said, “Why can’t you ask me? You were good enough to attack an unarmed man, but too good to talk to him?” His jaw snapped shut at the end of the sentence and he immediately regretted opening his mouth. But, as his mother liked to say, in for a penny, in for a krana.

  Forgula’s nostrils flared. “Silence your new pet, Tenik.”

  “Silence yourself,” Tenik said. Michel, it seemed, wasn’t the only one sick of Forgula’s shit. Tenik crossed his arms, staring her down. “He’s right. You’ve no place questioning what I do and how I do it. My Household is combing the city for the empire’s enemies while Sedial ignores our pleas for more soldiers. This foreigner has handed us more enemy agents in the last few days than anyone in your Household.”

  “You have no idea the sacrifices my Household makes to hold this city,” Forgula hissed. She turned her nose up. “I won’t speak another word in the foreigner’s presence.”

  Michel noted that the room had grown silent. Well over a hundred sets of eyes were watching the confrontation. Whispers had already begun, and he thought he saw money change hands somewhere in the crowd. The Dynize, it seemed, enjoyed a good show as much as any Kressian.

  “You’re a damned coward,” Michel told her.

  Forgula’s eyes widened slightly. In Fatrasta, “coward” was a trigger word to start a fight. She glared at him, but did not move. “Slime,” she retorted.

  Michel sought his memory for the worst Palo insults his mother had taught him as a boy. “Horse eater,” he threw back at her.

  There was a sharp intake of breath from the watching Dynize. Someone behind Michel swore, while a woman in the crowd laughed out loud. Forgula’s arm jerked stiffly, and the moment Michel had been waiting for arrived—her blackjack came to hand and she swung her arm.

  Michel barely got his own arm up in time to keep the blow from hitting him below the eye. His forearm went numb, and he couldn’t help but gasp at the pain that shot down his arm. He stumbled into her, his numb hand grasping without feeling at her jacket. With the other hand, he dipped into his pocket and slipped his fingers into his knuckle-dusters. She shoved him backward, then raised her blackjack one more time.

  Michel’s jab with his knuckle-dusters was hurried and sloppy, but he still managed to catch her a glancing blow on the chin that sent her wide-eyed and reeling into the arms of her companions.

  Someone to Michel’s right kicked him hard in the side of the knee. He nearly toppled to the ground, not letting himself take his eyes off Forgula as Tenik suddenly dove into the middle of the chaos and shouted for silence. Michel felt Tenik grab him b
y the sleeves and jerk him along, half pulling, half dragging him through the crowd and out a side door into a narrow corridor. He was shoved into a chair and left while Tenik ran back inside.

  Tenik returned a moment later. “What the pit did you think you were doing provoking her like that?” he hissed.

  It was the first time Michel had seen Tenik genuinely angry. They were alone in this corridor, and Michel let himself lean back and test his numb arm, wincing in pain. “Ow,” he responded.

  “You’re lucky she didn’t stave your head in,” Tenik said. “You’re lucky you—” Tenik stopped, looked closely at Michel, then gasped. “You did that on purpose.”

  Michel forced himself to chuckle. He didn’t feel it, not with the pain shooting up his left arm.

  “Why?” Tenik demanded.

  “I wanted to see how easily she was provoked,” Michel answered.

  “I could have told you that!”

  “I also wanted to make it very clear to her that I hit back.” Michel worked the knuckle-dusters off his fingers and waved them at Tenik before putting them back in his pocket. He reached into the opposite pocket with the numb fingers of the other hand and showed Tenik a thick leather booklet. “And I wanted the chance to steal her pocketbook.”

  “Like pit …” Tenik stared at him for several moments. “How did you know she carried one?”

  “I saw her write in it earlier.”

  “If she realizes that you—”

  “She already wants to kill me,” Michel said. “I can see it in her eyes. She’s not going to admit to anyone that I stole from her, so what’s the harm?”

  “Forgula can do a lot of harm,” Tenik warned.

  Michel leaned back on the bench, cradling his damaged arm, hoping the feeling would come back soon. “I haven’t picked a pocket for a couple years. Still have the talent for it, though, even with numb fingers.”

  “You disgust me.” There was a note of respect in Tenik’s voice. Michel decided he only half meant it.

  Before Michel could retort, the door to the foreign-dignitary room opened and Michel swallowed whatever he had to say. Saen-Ichtracia, the granddaughter of Yaret’s political enemy and a damned Privileged sorcerer, stepped into the hall and closed the door behind her. She tilted her head to one side, pulling a wry face, and stared at Michel.