Sins of Empire

by Brian McClellan

  Ka-poel remained silent, studying him, then Celine, and finally Amrec.

  “Did Taniel get my note?” Styke asked. “I guess I left it for Tampo, but the two of them are the same, aren’t they?”

  She stuck her bottom lip out, nodding as if impressed, spreading her hands toward him. Very good. She mimed writing, then reading, and pointed at him again with a nod.

  “So he did get it.”

  Another nod.

  “So he knows I quit? I appreciate what he did for me, but I’ve got other obligations now. If we cross paths again, I’ll try to do him right, but for now …”

  Ka-poel snorted. She folded her arms and shifted her stance, putting her weight on her back foot. It almost made Styke laugh, but he could still smell the rotting flesh of her sorcery.

  “I suppose you think that’s not good enough?” he asked.

  She gave him a look that was less than impressed, then made a flat-handed gesture that he didn’t quite understand. She reached into her duster pocket and removed an envelope, crossing the space between them to hand it over. Styke eyed her warily, breaking the seal with his thumb, then running his eyes across the writing. It was written in Adran, and said, You still owe me a favor. I intend on collecting it.—T

  Styke handed the letter over his shoulder. “Put this in my saddlebags,” he told Celine. Taniel still expected something, but seemed willing to hold on to that debt until later. “What’s his game?” Styke asked Ka-poel. “He’s playing long, isn’t he? Huh. Never mind that. What’s your game?”

  Ka-poel gave him a cocky smile, chest rising and falling in a silent chuckle. Styke rubbed his nose, not enjoying the smell of her sorcery at all. She pointed at him, then at her palm, then at herself, lips moving silently. Styke didn’t like the implication.

  “What the pit is that supposed to mean?”

  She pointed over his shoulder, and it took him a moment to realize she was pointing at the note he’d just handed to Celine.

  “Are you saying I owe you a favor?”

  She mimed shooting a pistol at him.

  Part of him wanted to wring her neck, then boot her down the road. The other part, the part dedicated wholly to self-preservation, said that would be a very bad idea. “You’re a funny little thing, you know that?”

  She grinned and mouthed the words I know. She pulled her hand out of her pocket and, in a quick move, ran a knife across her left thumb. Styke shied away, but she was quicker than he’d expected and stepped over to him in a flash, reaching up on her tiptoes to smear the rising well of crimson across his forehead. He grabbed her by the shoulder, shoving her away, using the other hand to wipe at his forehead. She danced out of his reach, and he looked at the blood now on his hand and his face.

  “What the pit was that for?” he demanded. “I don’t like sorcery, girl, and I won’t stand for—” His words were arrested by the sound of hoofbeats, and Styke took Amrec by the bridle, head tilted to listen to the approach of the riders. Blackhats? Or Mad Lancers?

  Ka-poel gave him one last smile and slipped around the corner of the building. He considered going after her but had no interest in running headfirst into a group of Blackhats. Instead he hunkered in the shade of the building and rubbed at his forehead, trying to get all the blood off. He listened to the hoofbeats grow louder, and waited for them to pass him by.

  They did not.

  He forgot the blood. The hoofbeats were coming around the outskirts of the village, and it sounded like a lot of them. He pulled his knife, ready to throw himself at the first person to come around the corner, and bit off a yell as the first rider rounded it.

  Ibana rode on a white stallion almost as big as Amrec, saddle weighed down with carbines, pistols, and cavalry swords. She was followed by others on horseback—Gamble, Sunin, Jackal—all his officers and then more, falling in as Ibana pulled up in front of him. They kept coming, rank upon rank, spreading out in a fan, until he could no longer count all of them. Well over two hundred cavalry, all heavily armed on stout warhorses and wearing the faded yellow cavalry jackets and black pants they’d been issued at the beginning of the Fatrastan War for Independence.

  Sunin’s uniform was too big, Gamble’s too small, but each and every one of them had it. They even had their lances, tied to their saddles and waving yellow streamers in the air. The sight of it overwhelmed him, tears threatening his vision. He sheathed his knife, barely daring to breathe, mouth open like a gawking schoolboy.

  Ibana dismounted, fetching a carbine, pistol, and heavy cavalry sword from her saddle and coming over to Styke.

  “You came,” Styke said, unable to think of any other words.

  Ibana rolled her eyes, thrusting the bundle of weapons into his arms. “Of course I did, you big fool. We all did. You’re Mad Ben Styke, and without you we aren’t the Mad Lancers.”

  Styke looked over her shoulder at his old officers, and all the familiar faces gathered behind them. He remembered seeing some of them that night at Sweetwallow, but the memories were hazy and he hadn’t truly believed they’d all come to rescue him. Yet here they were.

  The faces stared back at him, expectant, and it took him several moments to realize they were waiting for him to say something. He shook his head and glanced at Ibana, wondering what she told them about their current mission. “We’re not going to fight the Blackhats,” he said, raising his voice.

  He was greeted by silence. No mutters. No scowls. Just soldiers waiting for their orders.

  “I never much fancied us as mercenaries,” he said. “But the Mad Lancers always rode to protect Fatrasta, and Fatrasta, in case you noticed, doesn’t really want us right now.” Some of the riders exchanged looks, no doubt remembering what they’d lost at the hands of the Blackhats the last few days. “The only one who wants us is Lady Flint. She’s been hired to protect Landfall from that Dynize fleet sitting out beyond the bay. It may come to a scrap. It may not. Regardless, she’s going to pay us, feed us, and kit us up. She’s also dead set on keeping us and the Blackhats from each other’s throats. I’ve made my peace with that, and if any of you have a problem you can talk to me about it, or you can turn around and ride back to Landfall. That’s up to you.”

  “We don’t need any protecting from the Blackhats!” someone in the back shouted.

  Styke searched for the source of the voice, but couldn’t find it. “Like pit we don’t,” he said. “But I don’t mind having them off our asses long enough for us to become the Mad Lancers again. We’re old, we’re rusty. Pit, I’m healed up a bit but I’m still a damn cripple. I’d rather ride a free man as part of the Landfall garrison than skulk around in the shadows waiting to get overwhelmed. Now, like I said, if you have a problem no one will hold it against you if you go. Ya hear?”

  The gathered cavalry responded with a stoic silence. Leather creaked; horses shifted and whinnied. Sunin, looking almost ninety, her hair white and wispy, skin as wrinkled as a prune, leaned over in her saddle and spat a wad of chew into the grass.

  “We don’t ride for Lady Flint or Fatrasta,” she said with her northern Fatrastan twang. “We ride for Ben Styke.” The riders behind her nodded sagely, a mutter of approval going up. “If you want us working for Lady Flint, we’ll work for Lady Flint. We’ll follow orders. But don’t think for a moment we’ll forget the state we found you in the other night.”

  “That how you all feel?” Styke demanded.

  A chorus of “yeah” and “bet we do” rose up over the lancers.

  “Because you’re all a bunch of fools,” Styke grumbled. “Always have been.”

  “Yeah, but they’re your fools,” Ibana said.

  “Suppose so. I guess that settles that.” He thought of Ka-poel, and the crimson welling up from her thumb. He rubbed at his forehead. “Is there blood on my face?” he asked.

  “No,” Ibana responded.

  Styke glanced down at his hand. There wasn’t any blood there, either. He wondered if he’d imagined the whole thing—Ka-poel, Taniel�
�s letter. He wondered if perhaps his mind was slipping. “Where’s my banner?”

  Ibana returned to her saddlebags, untying a long, oiled leather tube. She removed a bundle of cloth from the tube and, holding one end, let the rest unfurl. The banner was black on yellow with a crimson border, the center dominated by a grinning human skull spit upon a lance. Styke held out his hand, taking the banner for himself, rubbing the rough material between his thumb and forefinger.

  “Jackal,” he said. “Your lance.”

  He fixed the banner in place and then handed the lance back to Jackal with a nod.

  “Bannerman,” Styke said. “Lead us to Jedwar. We have a command to pick up.”

  CHAPTER 50

  First thing in the morning, Michel left his small apartment in Fallen End and went to the local bank a few blocks over. He was on edge as he walked inside, his nerves still frayed from the visit to the monolith the day before, and was functioning on just a couple of hours of restless sleep. Whispers had filled his night, and none of them had been pleasant. He wondered how those researchers managed to stay near the godstone—and that more of them didn’t go mad from exposure.

  The bank was small, sleepy, with just two clerks, a single vault, and a row of lockboxes along the back wall behind the clerks. Michel hadn’t been inside it in four years, and hoped he remembered the right number. He took bank stationery, wrote down the lot number of the monolith dig site—and specific directions that it was two miles south of Landfall—along with the word “CAUTION.”

  “Number 132,” he said, handing the note along with a single krana over to the teller. Michel tapped the brim of his hat and left.

  He had, no doubt, several folders on his desk with reports about how much nothing his new underlings had found in their search for Styke. He’d have to attend to those at some point. He should have done it last night, but the monolith had unnerved him enough to send him straight to home, a warm bath, and bed. Though none of that had helped him sleep.

  Instead, he’d spent the disquieting hours putting his marble back together. His self—his real self—was safely stored away. With that note dispatched to Taniel, Michel could go back to being the good little Blackhat, heart and soul. He’d be a model Gold Rose, rooting out Fatrasta’s enemies from a new place of privilege, worming his way up the ladder. Pit, in a few years maybe he’d be one of Fidelis Jes’s confidants.

  The higher he climbed, the easier it would be to help Taniel burn the whole thing down.

  “No,” he said to himself sternly as he walked, hands in his pockets, along the morning streets of Landfall. “You’re Agent Bravis now. Not a whisper—not even a thought—of the man you were.”

  “Taniel,” he answered in agreement, “is on his own with that … thing.”

  “And I’m going to forget it ever existed.”

  “Right.”

  Michel stopped by an early market, collecting several canvas bags of food, even stopping by a discount bookseller to grab a few penny novels at random. He found himself whistling, walking slow, ignoring the urgency he knew he should be feeling to get back to the Millinery and help find Styke. For the first time in a long time, he actually wanted to get to Mother’s home after she returned from her usual perusal of the local bookstores.

  He walked all the way to Proctor, a full forty minutes. He paused by the back alley to his mother’s home and, still whistling, went around to the front, knocking once and letting himself inside. For once he was going to weather her lectures with a smile. For once he’d allow himself the small fantasy of telling her who he really was—though it would, of course, remain just a fantasy.

  He immediately went to her small table, clearing away books and old canvas totes to set her food down, then turning toward her chair by the window. He froze, the whistled tune dying on his lips as he realized that the figure he’d spotted out of the corner of his eye in his mother’s rocker was not, in fact, his mother.

  It was Fidelis Jes.

  Michel straightened, clasping his hands behind his back to hide their sudden tremble, and tried to act casual as he knocked a whole box of books off Mother’s table. “Sir!”

  Fidelis Jes rocked softly in her chair. He seemed back to his old self—hair slicked back, shirt pressed, face immaculately stoic. He gazed out the window down the street, a contemplative look on his face. His sword was unbuckled but still sheathed, lying across his knees, one hand resting on the hilt. Why the pit was he here? A thousand possibilities went through Michel’s head, none of them good, but the grand master remained silent.

  “Sir,” Michel managed again, hoping he didn’t stutter, “this is an unexpected honor. Is there something wrong? Has something happened with the Styke business?” He grimaced, telling himself to shut up. People went to Fidelis Jes. He did not come to them. This was unprecedented.

  And the fact it was his mother’s house was more than a little terrifying.

  Michel took a step back and craned his head to look up into the loft. His mother wasn’t there. Had she been taken away? Was she out running errands? Just as Michel’s nerves were about to get the best of him, Fidelis Jes finally spoke.

  “The Styke business has been called off. For now. The Dynize have our attention.” Jes turned his gaze on Michel—stony, penetrating. There was no anger or pleasure in the grand master’s eyes. Michel could not read him in the slightest. “Tell me, Agent Bravis, how has your own search gone?”

  “Ah, not well, I’m afraid,” Michel said, speaking too loudly. “You see, there are a lot of reports on my desk I need to go through but Warsim will let me know as soon as we find anything and again let me tell you what an honor it is to have this …” Michel trailed off, licking his lips. Fidelis Jes remained expressionless.

  “I’m not talking about that search,” Jes said. “I meant the other one. The one you are conducting that gave you the strongest urge to search the upper archives within hours of receiving your Gold Rose.”

  Oh. Oh shit.

  “I’m not sure what you mean, sir. Dellina didn’t give me any instructions regarding the upper archives.”

  “No,” Jes said. “She did not. But the man who was clever enough to work his way up to Gold Rose, even during a time of crisis, could figure out how to enter the archives. It’s not difficult—which is why the archives are heavily warded. We keep records of when someone enters, and one of the archivists noted a man of your description fleeing just an hour after you entered.”

  Michel swallowed. Okay, this wasn’t so bad. He could manage this. A plausible excuse was all he needed—information he craved, something that might get him into trouble, but not too much trouble. His mind raced, looking for the proper story to spin while keeping his face carefully neutral.

  “Tell me, Agent Bravis. Why were you in the upper archives when we so dearly need everyone searching for Styke?”

  “I thought …”

  “You might find information there to help you track down Styke?” Jes finished, a slight smile touching his lips.

  “ … Yes, sir.”

  “A likely excuse, certainly. Then why did you visit Professor Cressel at the monolith dig yesterday afternoon? Was that some kind of wrong turn? A mistake? Or did you think you’d find Styke there, too?” Jes’s tone turned mocking, and he suddenly slid to his feet, taking his sheathed sword in hand like a truncheon and doing a quick circuit around Michel the same way he’d done the first time Michel was called into his office. It reminded Michel exactly what he was to the grand master: a piece of meat.

  “Think fast, Agent Bravis,” Jes whispered into his ear. “I’m very interested in your excuses.”

  Michel tilted his head back slightly, Jes’s whisper raising his hackles like nails on a chalkboard. It said, very clearly, that there weren’t any excuses. Nothing would get him out of this. He tried to focus on something—anything—to get his mind around what was happening. He scrabbled mentally for some sort of bedrock.

  “Where’s my mother?” he croaked.


  “Hm,” Jes said, doing another circuit and stopping just behind Michel’s left shoulder. Michel cringed inwardly, waiting for a blade or a fist or just about any kind of violence. “Tell me, Agent Bravis, why are you looking for the godstones?”

  Michel cleared his throat. “Where’s my mother?” he asked again.

  “That’s not important,” Jes responded. “Who do you really work for, Bravis? Is it Brudania? The Deliv royal cabal? Adro? Well?” The last word came out a shout, and Michel finally flinched. Jes continued the circuit, coming back into Michel’s frame of vision and stopping in front of him. He took the end of his sword, tapping Michel on the shoulder, then the elbow, then the side of his knee. They were the taps of a butcher checking for the tenderest spots of meat.

  “You know this isn’t going to go well for you, Agent Bravis. If you tell us everything it will … well, it’ll still be very painful. But much, much shorter. I can assure you of that.” Jes laughed to himself, as if this whole thing was really quite funny. “I’m genuinely impressed. You worked your way up to a Gold Rose only to betray yourself the very first day. I can’t imagine how impatient you must have been to slip up so quickly. It’s a combination of skill and stupidity that I haven’t seen for a very, very long time.”

  Michel felt a tear roll down his left cheek. His fists were balled so tightly that his fingernails drew blood. He took several deep breaths, trying to come to some sort of acceptance that his life was over, but all he could think about were the books on the table behind him, and the fact that Fidelis Jes had sat in his mother’s rocker. It was that unspoken threat that got to him worse than anything Jes was saying now, and it made his stomach twist into a knot.

  “Where,” he demanded, “is my mother?”

  Jes turned around, stepping toward the door. “You should have worried for her health before you did all this, Agent Bravis. And to think, you were so promising …”

  Michel dug into his coat pocket, fingers wrapping around the familiar brass of his knuckledusters. He took a quick step forward, drawing back with all his might and swinging his fist. His best bet was to make Jes kill him right now—end it quick, with the least amount of pain and maybe, just maybe, Jes would have no use for his mother.