Wrath of Empire

by Brian McClellan

  Prime frowned. “Is that Taniel Two-shot?”

  “You’ve got an excellent memory.”

  “You died with Brude and Kresimir.”

  “My death was greatly exaggerated. Yours won’t be if you don’t pluck those gloves very carefully off your hands. I imagine you’re very hard to kill, but I can decapitate you with a twitch and I will make sure all the pieces are scattered very widely.”

  Prime licked his lips, looking at Vlora ruefully. “Why don’t you just kill me, then?”

  “Because,” Vlora told him, “I wasn’t lying. We’re here to destroy the godstone. We tried to destroy the one in Landfall but were unable to. If we all pool our knowledge together, we might actually be able to accomplish our mutual goal.”

  “You have five seconds to start taking off those gloves,” Taniel warned. “Four … three … two—”

  “Wait,” Vlora said. “I need him to heal me.”

  “You what?” both men asked at the same time.

  “I need you to heal me,” she said to Prime. “I can’t help in my state. I’ve got a bullet wound in my back and another on my shoulder. You at least need to take care of those so I can function.”

  “You would trust him to poke around inside your body? He was ready to kill you,” Taniel said, his disbelief plain.

  “If he’s going to trust us, we have to trust him.”

  “I, uh, am not a very good healer,” Prime said. “I’ve picked it up over the years, but I’m slow and not as thorough as a healer who has more power in the appropriate disciplines.”

  “Make do,” Vlora said. She met Taniel’s eyes. “Let him work.”

  Taniel relaxed, but he did not move. “All right, Prime. Get to work. We don’t have much time, so focus on her back—and do a good job, hmm?”

  CHAPTER 54

  Vlora emerged from Flerring’s cabin into the daylight, blinking to allow her eyes to adjust and reaching to scratch at the tightness that seemed to stretch across both shoulders and down her spine. Prime Lektor emerged behind her and, following close on Prime’s heels, Taniel.

  Vlora had been healed by Privileged on several occasions. The very best of them could make the experience only vaguely unpleasant—not unlike getting stitches from a skilled surgeon—and leave the body feeling a little stiff but good as new. Prime was true to his word in that he was not very good.

  The process had taken him several hours. The bullet wound in her back was healed, true, but it felt as tight as a knot from riding a thousand miles in a badly sized saddle. The skin was taut and uncomfortable, and she would probably have to have it sliced open by a surgeon and rehealed sooner rather than later.

  It was, she decided, still better than bleeding out. Or having to wait for months while she healed naturally.

  “I warned you I wasn’t very good,” Prime said sullenly.

  Vlora side-eyed the Predeii. There was a time when she had genuinely feared him, the way any teenager fears the headmaster of a university. That fear had changed when she found out his true nature and then … well, she’d never really come to grips with his abandoning Adro during the Adran-Kez War.

  “It’ll do,” she said, rotating her shoulder and moving her sword arm. She could fight if she needed to, and that’s all that mattered. “Where is the stone?” she asked.

  “Nighttime Vale,” Prime said.

  Vlora swore. She’d scoured the Vale herself and seen nothing. Either Prime was lying or he had it hidden with sorcery. “You sure about that? I would have seen either it or your sorcery in the Else.”

  “I’m sure,” Prime insisted, drawing himself up. His gloveless fingers twitched, and Vlora could feel his urge to reach into the Else. He still didn’t trust them. “I’m not a novice when it comes to hiding sorcery,” he said. “I hid in plain sight from the Adran Cabal for five hundred years. I can hide a bloody rock from some miners and a powder mage.”

  “That’s fair. Stay here. I’m going to talk to Flerring.”

  Vlora found Little Flerring up in her largest workshop, overseeing the careful packing of black powder. The workshop was in chaos, tools strewn about, powder scattered on the floor as men hurried around with sacks and barrels. “What’s going on?” Vlora asked.

  Flerring glanced at her, then did a double take. “You should be in bed.”

  “I’m fine,” Vlora insisted.

  “You’re not fine. You bloody well got shot.” Flerring crossed the room and grabbed Vlora by the shoulder, pulling down the collar of her shirt to look at the wound. Her eyes narrowed. “There’s sorcery here.”

  Vlora had no interest in explaining Prime Lektor’s role. “Taniel arrived with an old friend. I’ll be fine.”

  “Don’t spill that, you twat!” Flerring roared at one of her men. “You’re overfilling the barrels!” She turned back to Vlora. “We’re packing up. The town is half-torched, and everyone is out for blood. I’m going to sell off what stock I can and get out of here before the Dynize come too far north. Fatrasta is too hot for my blood.”

  “The temperature or the conflict?”

  “Both.”

  “Right.” Vlora took Flerring by the arm, pulling her close. “That blasting oil. I need it.”

  “I don’t—”

  “I need it today,” Vlora hissed. “We have a man who knows where the artifact is. I want it destroyed as quickly as possible. You’ve had your week.”

  Flerring looked toward her men packing her supplies and made a sour face. “I don’t want to stick around any longer than we have to.”

  “Send your men ahead. You made a promise.”

  She could see the conflict in Flerring’s expression. Flerring scowled, turning her head with a quick intake of breath, before finally speaking. “All right. I’ll keep a few of my boys and all the blasting oil I’ve scrounged behind and send everyone else on. The location better be ready for blasting, because I don’t intend on staying any more than a couple of days.”

  “Take all your supplies to the Nighttime Vale. I’ll be waiting.”

  Vlora rejoined Taniel and Prime Lektor, and the three of them rode back into town, doing a long circuit around the base of the mountains to avoid the armed men prowling the streets and the bucket brigades still trying to put out fires.

  “Who won?” Vlora asked Taniel as they crossed the entrance to a narrow valley. Nearby, a couple of drunk miners watched the town, passing a jug of grog between them and alternately weeping and giggling at some lost fortune.

  Taniel looked up, deep in thought as he rubbed the cloth of Prime’s confiscated gloves between two fingers. “Brown Bear Burt,” he said, nodding toward the center of Yellow Creek. “I understand you killed Jezzy with a controlled explosion. Not much to do for Burt but to mop up Jezzy’s forces and put out the fires.”

  “I hope there’s a damned lot of fires,” Vlora murmured to herself. She wanted Burt distracted until they were well and gone. He’d promised not to get in her way, but the promise of a miner baron didn’t reassure her.

  “There were,” Taniel answered, as if she had spoken to him directly. “But he also has a lot of men.” A half smile crossed Taniel’s face and he seemed to withdraw into his own thoughts again. Vlora leaned over and smacked him on the arm.

  “What do you mean he has a lot of men? I thought Jezzy outnumbered him?”

  Taniel blinked back at her. “Oh, yeah. That’s what everyone thought. They also thought he was from Landfall.”

  “He’s not?”

  “He’s not,” Taniel confirmed.

  Vlora’s mind scrambled, trying to figure out what could be keeping Taniel distracted like this. Her thoughts went to the conversation they’d had riding into Yellow Creek three weeks ago. “Palo Nation?” she asked.

  Taniel nodded. “I didn’t know until I caught a glimpse of him on my way to find you. He’s Palo Nation, and so is the army he’s had camped up in the mountains until he brought them down to restore order last night.”

  Vlora felt her stom
ach lurch. “How big of any army?”

  “About two thousand riflemen. The Palo Nation doesn’t field real armies. They field highly organized groups of skirmishers armed with rifles that rival the Hrusch.”

  This was getting better and better. The Palo Nation had just taken control of Yellow Creek, leaving Vlora once more in enemy territory—and she did assume they were the enemy. Everyone was the enemy right now, because everyone wanted to get hold of the godstone. So much for Burt’s promise. What else was he hiding? “We can’t let them know about the stone,” she said. She looked at Prime. “Your wards to keep the stone hidden, are they still in place?”

  “No reason they shouldn’t be,” Prime answered.

  “Are they looking for the stone?” Vlora asked Taniel.

  He seemed to withdraw into himself once again, his face troubled. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

  “Then why are they in Yellow Creek? If they had the firepower, why haven’t they seized control of the town before today?”

  “It’s not like them to act out in the open south of the Ironhook Mountains. I don’t know what they’re up to.”

  “I think I liked it better when you seemed to know everything,” Vlora snapped, feeling her tension get the better of her. “Hurry up, old man,” she told Prime. “We need to get a move on. I damn well hope no one stops Little Flerring on her way up here.”

  They continued on their circuit around the town and entered Nighttime Vale. A handful of Palo wearing dusters and holding rifles had replaced Jezzy’s guards, but they were the only other people in the Vale and did not seem to notice the small party passing by.

  “I’ve cloaked us in sorcery,” Prime explained. “I always do when I come this way. It’s best to keep the artifact hidden.”

  Vlora couldn’t sense even the slightest hint of sorcery. The thought made her sick to her stomach.

  Prime turned sharply after they passed the entrance to the Vale and led them up the side of the mountain, not more than fifty paces from where Vlora had crossed over the cliffs a few nights before. There was no construction here, none of the mining equipment or tents that were ubiquitous throughout the rest of the valley. There was just the foot of the mountain covered by a landslide of stone rubble from somewhere farther up the mountainside.

  Prime stopped and pointed at the mountain. “It’s difficult to see, but if you look carefully, you can trace the path of the landslide that deposited these stones here.”

  Vlora squinted up into the sparse cloud cover, barely able to see the peak through tufts of wispy white. If she squinted just right, she could imagine that the mountain’s peak had once been more squared than pointed, and that one corner of that square had sheared off and tumbled all this way to rest in the Vale.

  “The godstone,” Taniel said, voicing the same conclusion that Vlora had just reached. “It was up there?”

  “It was, yes,” Prime answered. He looked at them sullenly, scowling at the gloves that Taniel still held in his hands. “You claim that you’re here to destroy it. But it can’t be destroyed. I’ve spent the last five years trying to figure out how to do so and came up with nothing.”

  “Have you actually tried to destroy it?” Vlora asked. “Or have you been studying it to further your own power?”

  “I must study it to learn its weaknesses.” Prime sniffed. “I have never been after power, my dear Vlora. I only seek knowledge.”

  Vlora looked at Taniel. “You remember what Bo likes to say about that?”

  “Knowledge is power,” Taniel quoted, giving Prime a sallow smile.

  Without his gloves, Prime looked like nothing more than an overweight, cranky old man. He scowled at them both, then shook his head. “You cannot destroy it,” he repeated. “I don’t believe it can be done.”

  Vlora thought about all the black powder they had piled around the godstone in Landfall, only for it to cause not even a scratch. “We’ll see. Take us to the damned thing.”

  Prime scoffed. “You think you’re so smart, but you can’t even see that which is in front of you. Dismount and take three steps forward.”

  Vlora did as instructed, feeling outward with her sorcerous senses for an illusion, or a trap, or anything. She could sense nothing, but as she took that third step, her vision seemed to shift. It happened so suddenly that it made her dizzy, forcing her to fall against a nearby boulder.

  “Vlora?” Taniel called.

  She waved him off and felt her eyes widen as she took in this new perspective.

  The slope of old rubble was no longer there, but rather cleared away from her to the base of the mountain to create a flat work area upon which there was a small cabin, an outhouse, and a canvas canopy covering an obelisk that looked exactly like the one in Landfall.

  Her breath caught in her throat, and the sight of the thing gave her a sense of foreboding that she hadn’t felt since the end of the Adran-Kez War. Her chest was tight, her vision blurry. This stone—this thing—that had eluded her for the last month was suddenly here, right in front of her face, and she was speechless.

  The obelisk lay on its side. It was not as large as the one in Landfall. Eyeing the dimensions, she guessed it to be around thirty feet long and less than four feet wide, tapering at the end. It was covered in ancient script that had been cleaned meticulously of all dirt and grit, and it was made of a light-gray limestone that made Vlora wonder if it was cut from the same stone as its larger twin back in Landfall.

  Taniel and Prime joined them. Taniel did not seem as affected by the sight of the thing as she had been, though his breath did grow short. Prime merely scowled at it, like a man returning to a hated live-in relative.

  “So they found you, eh?”

  The voice made both Vlora and Taniel whirl, drawing their pistols. A woman had stepped out of the cabin and stood by the doorway, her arms crossed. She looked to be in her late thirties: a slim woman of medium height with a shaved head and an old scar that lifted the corner of her lip and crossed her cheek to her temple. Her arms ended in strange gloves that, upon closer examination, were unmoving bronze hands held in place by leather straps.

  Vlora had never met this woman, but she knew exactly who she was from Borbador’s stories.

  She was another Predeii, personally responsible for the summoning of Kresimir during the Adran-Kez War. If Bo was correct, she was as much a catalyst of the war as Field Marshal Tamas. Vlora was not happy to see her.

  “Hello, Julene,” Taniel said, lowering his pistol.

  “Two-shot,” Julene purred. “It feels like we were hanging from Kresimir’s ropes together just yesterday. How have you been?”

  Taniel seemed neither perturbed nor particularly surprised to find Julene here. Vlora was both, and she kept her pistol raised for several seconds after Taniel had put away his. “That was ten years ago,” Taniel said.

  “When you’ve been alive as long as I have, Two-shot, a decade feels like nothing more than a long weekend.” Julene’s gaze fell to Vlora and she pursed her lips. “I told Prime he should have killed you the moment he spotted you in town. But he’s a damned coward. What do you call yourself, Prime? A pacifist?”

  “I went to finish her off,” Prime snapped, “but this one showed up.”

  Julene took two steps toward Taniel, her nostrils flaring and her eyes narrowing. “Your blood witch is getting stronger,” she said. “I can barely see the wards protecting you.” She let out a sudden, half-mad, barking laugh. “Bad luck for you, Prime. You finally get up the guts to kill someone and the one powder mage in the world who can stop you happens to be about.”

  Vlora looked from Prime to Julene. “Some warning that you weren’t alone would have been nice,” she told Prime.

  “You didn’t ask,” he responded.

  Julene held up her metal hands. “I may be near immortal, but I’m not much of a threat. I still can’t touch the Else.”

  “That only makes you slightly less dangerous,” Taniel said. His casual manner was bet
rayed by the tension Vlora could see in his arms and the intensity of his gaze, like a dog with hackles raised. Vlora took a half step back. If this came to a fight, she was so badly outclassed that it was almost laughable. Taniel would be on his own against these two.

  “We’re here to destroy the godstone,” Vlora interjected.

  All eyes snapped to her. Julene turned her head to one side. “You what?”

  “You heard me.”

  “I heard you. I just don’t believe you. If you cornered Prime, you obviously know what the godstones do, and if you know, then you have no intention of destroying them. Mortals don’t give up that kind of power.” The wild look in Julene’s eyes was suddenly gone, replaced by a focused gaze and a very distinct air of distrust.

  “She’s not lying,” Taniel said quietly. “Both Lindet and the Dynize are looking for the damned thing. We intend on reducing it to rubble before either of them can reach it.”

  “You can’t destroy it,” Prime insisted once again. “It’s too powerful. Kresimir made these things to last until long after all life on this planet is extinct. I can’t even pick apart the simplest of the wards surrounding it, and I’ve been doing this for millennia!” Prime’s voice rose in crescendo, and Vlora wondered if he truly had been trying to destroy the stone. He sounded frustrated as pit that even his powerful sorcery paled next to that of a god who’d been dead for a decade.

  Julene had grown quiet, returning to her place in the doorway and watching Vlora and Taniel warily. “This is the work of a god,” she said. “You would destroy it just to keep it out of the hands of others?”

  “I would destroy it either way,” Vlora said, forcing down her fear and fixing Julene with a look that dared her to question her resolve.

  Taniel stepped between them, waving his hand in front of Julene’s face. “Everyone should calm down. If I’m not mistaken, and unless the two of you are lying through your teeth, we should all be on the same side. We don’t want the godstone to fall into the hands of any of the local powers: Hence, it should be destroyed.”