Blood of Empire

by Brian McClellan

  They went through a nondescript white door and were suddenly stopped by a pair of heavily armed Palo. Both men wore two pistols and a sword, and both took a pistol in hand as the door opened. They relaxed at the sight of Devin-Mezi but kept their eyes on Michel and Ichtracia.

  “The visitors that Mama requested,” Devin-Mezi introduced.

  Whether the two had been told what Ichtracia was, or were just naturally wary, they fell in behind Michel and Ichtracia without a word. Michel reached into his bag and handed them his unloaded pistol. “I’ll want this back,” he told them before being herded through another door.

  They might as well have stepped into a nobleman’s townhouse, so different was this next room from the rest of the Depths. It was a wide, open room with immaculate plastering, well-lit by gas lanterns, and genuine art on the walls. Mattresses covered the floor, each taken over by a sleeping form, and Michel was more than a little surprised by the sight of it. This had the feel of one of Taniel’s safe houses, and the extra bodies told him that it might well be Mama Palo’s headquarters.

  They picked their way through the impromptu bunkhouse and went down a hallway. There was more art on the walls; the plaster and trim were all the familiar materials used by the upper crust of Landfall. Michel’s curiosity about the new Mama Palo grew tenfold. Whoever she was, she had good taste.

  Devin-Mezi knocked on a door at the end of the hall. A muffled voice answered, and she opened the door. Michel took a deep breath, shared a glance with Ichtracia, and followed Devin-Mezi inside.

  The room was spacious enough to have once been a drawing room. It had been commandeered as a bedroom and office with a large, four-poster bed shoved into one corner and a desk and several tables taking up the rest of it. Michel’s impression of a headquarters immediately solidified at the sight of all the maps and papers spread across every surface. There were even rifle crates piled in one corner, stamped with the Hrusch family logo.

  The last thing in the room to fall under Michel’s eye was the woman sitting behind the desk. Like many Palo, she could be considered petite, just a shade over five feet tall with waist-length hair combed out over one shoulder. She was young, a couple years younger than Michel at best, but she had an aura of command about her, even sitting there in her nightgown with hair down. Her chin was resting on one fist, the other hand holding a book up to the lamplight, and it was only her eyes that moved when the small group paraded into the room. Her name was Jiniel, and the moment Michel saw her, he had to stifle a grin and a spike of fear all at the same time.

  A normal reaction, he decided, for someone seeing an old lover for the first time in years.

  “Cousin,” Devin-Mezi said, “this is the guy calling himself Puffer. Careful with the woman. I’ve taken her gloves, but she still might be dangerous, she—”

  “Out,” Jiniel said.

  “Cousin?”

  “Not you. The other two. No need for guards.”

  “Cousin, are—”

  Jiniel snorted loudly, and the sound sent the two guards scurrying. Once the door had shut behind them, Jiniel set down her book and stretched, letting out a severe yawn. “The woman’s name is Ichtracia. She’s a Dynize bone-eye.” Devin-Mezi swore, and had begun to go for her knife before Jiniel held up one hand to forestall a fight. “If she’s here with Michel, that’s enough for me.”

  “Michel?” Devin-Mezi muttered, turning toward Michel with a look of confusion. Her jaw suddenly dropped. “You’re Michel Bravis?”

  Michel had never heard his name spoken with a tinge of awe before. He wasn’t sure where it came from, but he knew within moments that he liked it. “That’s me.”

  “I had no idea, I—”

  Michel cut her off gently with a question he’d been wondering since their first introduction at Meln-Dun’s quarry. “Did you really work for the Yaret Household?”

  “I did. I was there the same time as you. I only ever saw you once, but you look nothing—”

  “Michel,” Jiniel interjected, “is our best spy. I’d be shocked if he still looked anything like he did a month ago. He certainly looks nothing like he did three years ago. How are you, Michel? It’s been too long.” There was a note of exhaustion to Jiniel’s voice that elicited a bit of worry in the back of Michel’s mind. He was not, truth be told, all that surprised to find her here as Mama Palo. Despite her age, she was one of the cleverest people he’d ever met. Add in a great deal of intelligence and charisma, and she was a natural successor for Ka-poel’s authority in Landfall. But in the time he’d known her, she’d always had the most boundless energy. To hear such weariness seeping into her voice was not good.

  “It has,” he agreed, waving his three-fingered hand at her to answer her question. “Sorry for coming in like this. Your cousin here tried to knife me earlier tonight.”

  “So I heard.” Jiniel leaned forward, resting her elbows on her desk and nestling her chin behind her hands. She looked hard at Michel, then at Ichtracia. “I’m sorry about that. We had no idea it was you—just some asshole mercenary here to ruin our plans.”

  “That’s fine. I didn’t know you had a cousin. Or that you were the new Mama Palo. I forgot to ask Taniel the last time I saw him.”

  “I’m sure he had other things on his mind.”

  “He definitely did,” Michel agreed. He noted that Jiniel’s gaze was still on Ichtracia and glanced over his shoulder to find her hanging back near the door, hands thrust in her pockets. She hadn’t said a word in the brief time since they entered, and the look of appraisal on her face said that she was sizing up Jiniel the same as Jiniel was doing to her. She shot Michel a quick glance full of a thousand questions. They’d have to be answered later, he decided. For now, he needed to explain her presence. There was an awful lot to go through, and he wasn’t sure whom to trust and how much to trust them.

  “Why do you have a Privileged with you?” Jiniel finally asked.

  A moment’s consideration passed before he decided to tell Jiniel. He didn’t have much choice. But that didn’t mean he had to spread it around. He gave Devin-Mezi a significant look, and Jiniel spoke up immediately. “Give us some privacy, Cousin.”

  Devin-Mezi hesitated only a moment before showing herself out. Once she was gone, Michel let out a breath he didn’t even know he’d been holding in. “You don’t trust her?”

  “I do,” Jiniel answered. “But the less she knows, the better.”

  “Compartmentalization,” Ichtracia said.

  “Exactly. I see that Michel has started training you how to think like him.”

  “It’s an… education,” Ichtracia replied.

  “It is. He trained me, too. Michel, are you going to tell me why the granddaughter of the Great Ka is running with you?”

  Michel sucked on his teeth. “She’s Ka-poel’s sister.”

  He couldn’t think of a time in the past that he’d seen Jiniel genuinely surprised, so the look on her face now was one that he cast to memory to enjoy for the rest of his life. He let the statement sit for a moment, then leapt into a very brief explanation of their adventures over the last few months. Jiniel remained silent throughout the whole thing, her fingers steepled in front of her face. Once Michel had finished, with a few interjections from Ichtracia, Jiniel opened a desk drawer, removed three glasses, and poured a finger of Palo whiskey into each. Michel took two glasses, handing one to Ichtracia. They all downed the unspoken toast in silence.

  Jiniel chuckled and ran a hand over her face. “I thought I had had a pit of a year. But you… by Kresimir, that is some story.”

  Michel rubbed the stubs of his missing fingers gingerly. “When I say it all at once, it certainly is.” He looked back at Ichtracia again. This was not the first time he’d been in the room with an ex-lover and a current lover at the same time, but that didn’t make it any less uncomfortable. He was willing to bet that both women had already sussed out that much about the other—Jiniel spoke to him too warmly; Ichtracia hovered too close. Nothing
was said, of course, but the very energy in the air put him on edge.

  “These sacrifices,” Jiniel said, pouring them each another round. “You’re certain about them?”

  It was the one part of Michel’s story that had gotten a deep frown from Jiniel, and he was not surprised to hear her come back to it so quickly. “That’s the problem. I have the word of a Blackhat, and Ichtracia’s own certainty.”

  “But no evidence.”

  “No evidence.”

  Jiniel sighed heavily. “I haven’t heard anything. Disappearances, yes. But those happen in times of war and chaos. People die, drift away, or are nabbed by enemy agents.”

  “These would be… a few thousand disappearances in total since the invasion.”

  “That’s not very many people in a city this big,” Jiniel said. “I’m sorry. Nothing has snagged our notice.”

  “I need to find out,” Michel said, “and if it is true, the word needs to be spread.”

  “Of course! But I barely have enough resources to keep our organization going. We’ve been running from Meln-Dun’s men, attempting to sift through Dynize propaganda to find out how they really intend to treat us, and dogging what few Blackhats were left after that purge you conducted through the Dynize.” Jiniel paused, her face scrunched up in a scowl. “What you’re saying is such an outlandish story that we need some kind of evidence to move forward on it.”

  “And what can you do if we can find evidence?” Ichtracia spoke up. She moved to sit on the corner of Jiniel’s desk, crossing her arms and looking down at Jiniel as if daring her to comment on it.

  “Fight back.” There was a note of helplessness in her voice. “Do what we can.”

  “I have a plan for that,” Michel said, “but I’ll need your resources.”

  “Then give me something to work with.”

  Proof of Sedial sacrificing citizens in a blood rite of some kind. When Michel crammed the thought into so few words, it sounded simple. But if no one had noticed anything wrong yet? Maybe he was chasing a breeze, and the ghost of je Tura was laughing at him from the afterlife. He tapped his chin. Not no one. No one important. He needed to find the unimportant people who might have noticed. “I’ll come up with proof. For now, I need you to call off this trap you’re preparing for Meln-Dun’s men.”

  “Call it off?” Jiniel scoffed. “It’s happening tonight—and it’s not just a little trap. We’re going to ambush his goons at the same time we send a strike team into the quarry.”

  Michel inhaled sharply. “You’re planning on assassinating him?”

  Jiniel nodded.

  “Don’t.”

  “The plan is in place.”

  “You have to scrap it.” Michel paused, considering. “Wait. No, don’t scrap it. But I think I can make it unnecessary.”

  “What are you planning?” Jiniel asked cautiously.

  “Something that will eliminate Meln-Dun’s threat to us without having to kill fellow Palo and without bringing the Dynize down on our heads.”

  “I’m listening.”

  Michel gave her a tight smile. “Compartmentalization.”

  “I forgot how much I hate it when you use that word,” Jiniel said.

  “Right?” Ichtracia added.

  “Okay, Michel,” Jiniel continued after a moment of thought. “If you can make my attack unnecessary, well… I’ll be damned impressed.”

  “I’ll do it,” Michel promised. “Give me twelve hours.”

  CHAPTER 27

  Styke swam until he could feel his strength beginning to wane, and then pulled Orz down one of the countless tiny canals of Talunlica. It was a waxing crescent moon that shone a pale light across the city, giving him just enough light to navigate by and—he hoped—just enough darkness to hide within. He found a tiny inlet, shallow enough for him to touch his toes to the bottom, and broke a bit of reed weaving off one of the floating gardens to hook underneath Orz’s arm. He put his own shoulder beneath Orz’s other arm and lowered himself into the water so that everything below his nose was covered.

  Occasionally he could hear distant shouting. There were a few splashes early on, and torchlight in the distance, but the Dynize did not seem readily equipped to organize a search. Styke mulled over his options. The dragonman had survived their conflict, which meant that he had seen Styke’s face. He would know to look for an immense foreigner. Once he had a little bit of time to gather more searchers and widen the net, he might find Styke hiding in the water—or even discover Styke’s men at the inn.

  Styke vacillated between abandoning Orz in an attempt to reach his men and get them out of the city, and remaining with the dragonman. His thinking drifted slowly toward the former option. Orz was as good as dead, bone-eye sorcery or not, and even if he could survive, he was just deadweight.

  He paused midthought as he felt Orz’s body shift. Lifting them both a little out of the water, Styke pressed his ear up against Orz’s mouth. “You still breathing, you tattooed asshole?” Styke whispered. For a few moments he thought that Orz had finally given up the ghost, but to his surprise the dragonman took a sudden deep breath.

  “Bolts… have to get… out.”

  “Those bolts are the only thing keeping you from bleeding out right now,” Styke told him. “I can’t speak for the infection this damned lake water is gonna give you, but I doubt that’s our first worry right now.”

  “Mo… moth… mother.”

  “Sorry,” Styke replied. He closed his eyes and saw, once again, the old woman’s body being torn apart by crossbow bolts. He remembered the lantern she had hung in the window—a signal, probably. He also remembered, very distinctly, that she’d sent Orz out for water right before the ambush. Styke wondered if she’d had a change of heart at that last moment. They’d never know. Not that it mattered.

  Orz’s breath began to come a little stronger, ragged and loud. Styke craned his head to try to get a good look at the nearby street. They were just off one of the countless little dead-end streets much like the one they’d escaped. Farther down the canal someone was smoking in the evening air, facing the opposite direction, but otherwise the area was abandoned and the occupants asleep. “Should I be worried about swamp dragons, or do they stay out of the lake?” he whispered to Orz.

  There was no answer.

  “Shit.” Styke craned his head again, this time trying to pierce the darkness and get a good look at the silhouette of the surrounding mountains. It wasn’t an accurate way to get his bearings, but it would be a start. He lifted Orz’s arm and hooked the dragonman’s limp fingers around the reeds of the floating garden, then swam out a couple of feet to get a better look. It took a few minutes, but he was eventually able to spot the black shadow of the godstone stabbing into the sky—probably a quarter of a mile to his northwest.

  He had just one option: Get Orz to Ka-poel. She might be able to strengthen the blood sorcery that had kept him alive this long. But to do so, he’d need to risk the avenues, where frequent city guard patrols would spot him within minutes. He considered swimming, or a boat. Both avenues were more than likely to get him lost and confused.

  He swam back to Orz. “You have any suggestions on how to get out of this?”

  Orz took a ragged breath but did not answer.

  Styke eyeballed a canoe tied up behind one of the nearby houses. Perhaps there was another option. He disentangled Orz from the reeds and set off across the canal with the dragonman in tow. Reaching the opposite bank, he found a couple of brick steps just above the waterline and leveraged himself, then Orz, onto dry land—careful to move slowly to make the least amount of noise.

  “Sorry,” he whispered to Orz, then dumped him off the land and into the bottom of the canoe. There was a loud thunk, and he grimaced into the darkness, waiting for a face to appear in a window, or a door to open.

  Minutes passed. No one came to investigate the noise.

  Styke found a paddle and untied the canoe before lowering himself in. Using deep, slow strokes,
he pushed off and began to head down the middle of the canal.

  He was working on a map of the city that he’d built in his head. There wasn’t a lot to go on—his earlier view from above the city, then their walk to the palace complex, and finally the trip to Orz’s mother’s house. But it would have to be enough, he decided. He certainly wasn’t going far.

  Once he was moving, he rooted around in the bottom of the canoe, finding an old wool blanket tucked under the stern. It reeked of fish, but he tossed it over his head as a hood and continued to paddle.

  Pulling out into open water gave him a better chance to orient himself. He’d managed to make quite some distance in his panicked swim. There was a wide channel, at least half of a mile between his current location and where he believed was the site of the ambush. The houses over there were lit, the streets filled with moving lanterns. There were a couple of boats in the water, but they hugged the shore as if the searchers had not expected him to get far with a body in tow.

  After getting his bearings he decided to cling to the bank, keeping a wary eye on the distant searchers. His progress was slow but fairly quiet, and the occasional soul that he passed in the night gave him little more than a friendly wave. He returned those waves and continued on.

  As he’d decided earlier, heading back to the inn would be too risky by water. He didn’t know the canal routes at all, and getting lost would put him at great risk.

  He did, however, have a pretty good idea where to find the Minister of Drainage.

  He rounded several small islands and suburban promontories, leaving the lamps of the searchers behind him, before spotting a watchtower ahead in the darkness. It was—he hoped—the same watchtower that marked the Etzi Household. Eventually the complex defined itself in the gloom: a large, walled villa at the end of a man-made cape. It looked to be about the size of a small village, with dozens of buildings rising above the short walls. Easily big enough to house a small army or, as Orz had put it, a minor Household.