Blood of Empire

by Brian McClellan

  By the time Styke reached the villa complex, he was exhausted. His arms and shoulders ached, his eyes hurt from trying to peer into the gloom. He pulled up alongside the single cobbled road that led to the villa and rolled onto the land. After a few moments of rest, he reached back into the canoe to fetch Orz.

  Miraculously, the dragonman was still alive, letting out a loud groan when Styke lifted him.

  Styke had thought to drop Orz on his brother’s doorstep and make his escape. But the noise brought an answering sound from within the walls, and within a few moments there were a handful of clacks and a low squeal as one of the big, iron-strapped doors of the complex opened. An old man with a gray mustache held a lantern high on the end of a pole, thrusting it toward Styke.

  “What’s this here?” he demanded in a low voice.

  Styke swore under his breath. He considered making for the canoe, but the idea of trying to flee yet another scene did not sit well with him. He’d made his decision. It was time to throw himself on the mercy of others. And if that failed, he’d go for his knife.

  The man took another step closer. “I asked you a question! Is that a body?”

  Styke answered in broken Dynize, filling in any words he wasn’t certain of with their Palo counterparts. “I’m looking for Meln-Etzi. Is this his home?”

  The old man took a half step back, calling something over his shoulder into the door behind him. “Yes, this is the Etzi Household.” Then he scurried forward, lowering the lantern to play on Orz’s face. He let out a gasp. “Go fetch the master,” he barked to a young girl who had appeared in the doorway. He lifted his lantern, peering at Styke. This time he actually fled back to the door, standing with one hand on the wood as if to slam it shut in Styke’s face if he made a move.

  “I’m his slave,” Styke attempted.

  The old watchman didn’t answer. A few minutes passed and some small commotion took him inside, only for him to reappear a moment later.

  Styke had expected to find Orz’s brother to be older, but he was surprised at the appearance of a bespectacled man in his midthirties who wore a hastily thrown-on robe over silk pajamas. Like Orz’s mother, the resemblance was uncanny. But while Orz had hard, unbending features, this man seemed soft and thoughtful. He paused in the doorway, his watchman peering over his shoulder as if his master would protect him from this hulking foreigner.

  “Who are you?” Etzi demanded.

  Styke bit his tongue, remembering Celine’s lecture, and bowed his head respectfully. “I am Orz’s slave.”

  A grunt answered. “Do you know who I am?”

  “His brother.”

  Etzi took the lantern from his watchman and thrust it in Styke’s face for a handful of moments, then gave another grunt and knelt beside Orz. He took a deep breath, looking him up and down, then pointed at Styke. “You, carry him inside. You.” His finger twitched to his watchman. “Fetch Maetle. Be quick about it and don’t wake anyone else up.”

  Styke obeyed, lifting Orz with both arms—in a manner somewhat gentler than he’d been treating him so far—and followed Etzi through the door. They didn’t have far to go, ducking through a darkened servant’s entrance just inside the compound walls and emerging into a long kitchen with high ceilings, the likes of which would have been recognizable in any lordling or merchant’s manner hall. Etzi gestured for Styke to set Orz on one of the long preparation tables and then walked briskly around the kitchen, shuttering windows, before turning up the lamps.

  Etzi returned to the kitchen table and stared at the body of his brother, forehead creased, as if Styke wasn’t even present. Styke was glad for the silence—questions would start soon, and he’d never been a very good liar. The longer he had to think of some story, the better.

  The watchman soon returned, followed by a woman in her midtwenties. To Styke’s surprise, she was not Dynize—or at least, not a full-blood Dynize. She had dark brown hair and only a hint of freckles on her cheeks and arms. She carried a satchel over one shoulder and wore a nightgown, still rubbing the sleep out of her eyes as she entered the room.

  She froze at the sight of Orz, letting out a tiny gasp before rushing to his side and, in the process, shouldering Styke aside. He relinquished his spot to stand in the corner of the kitchen, where he could watch all three entrances as well as the figures swarming around Orz’s body. He casually rested his hand on the hilt of his knife.

  Etzi had called for Maetle, and Styke could only assume this was she. He couldn’t smell any sorcery on her, but he’d seen a lot of surgeons in his day and she had the air. As if to confirm his suspicions, she disgorged her satchel onto the table beside Orz’s head, revealing bottles, bandages, tiny sacks, and a full complement of small blades, tweezers, saws, and tools that Styke didn’t even recognize. Her equipment was tidily organized, everything labeled, and she quickly arranged a handful of items close at hand and pushed the rest away.

  “Well?” Etzi asked.

  Maetle paused with her hands hovering over Orz’s chest. Styke could still see a slight rise and fall. Maetle responded to her master in Dynize, speaking so quickly that it was hard for Styke to follow. “He’s still alive.”

  “I know that!”

  “And he may yet live. I can’t be certain.” She hesitated. “I’ve read about this sort of thing, but I’ve never dealt with it myself.”

  “A pincushioned fool?” Etzi asked.

  “No,” Maetle shot back. “Dragonmen and the bone-eye sorcery that makes them…” She cleared her throat and continued in a gentler tone. “Sorry, master. The bone-eye sorcery that makes them strong. Supposedly it can help them survive wounds beyond anything a normal person could weather. This… he should have bled out… you, how long has he been like this?”

  Styke’s head jerked up. He realized he’d been starting to nod off even while listening. “A couple of hours.”

  Maetle gave him a peculiar look. “What did you say?”

  “I said…” He realized he’d answered in Adran. He swore inwardly and switched to his poor Dynize, repeating himself.

  Maetle’s gaze remained on Styke for a moment before she returned her attention to her patient and master. “He should be dead already. Bled out. But dragonmen can go into a sorcery-induced trance that slows their heart and the bleeding.”

  “But you don’t know if he’ll survive?” Etzi asked.

  “I don’t. But I need to remove the bolts, clean the wounds, and find out if they punctured anything vital. Shall I begin?”

  Etzi rubbed his chin, staring down at his brother’s body. The silence dragged on. A minute. Then two. Styke felt as if he could see Orz’s breaths growing slower. Finally, none of Celine’s lecture about remaining meek could keep him from losing his patience. “Well, are you going to save him?” he demanded.

  All three of them looked up sharply. The watchman raced across the room and smacked Styke hard across the face. The sharpness of the blow seemed to shake off some of his exhaustion, and he set his teeth. The watchman drew back his hand. “You do not speak to the master of the house in such a manner! You are a slave, you…” He swung again, and Styke caught him by the wrist before the blow could fall. The old man seemed confused, then immediately began to struggle against Styke’s grip.

  “Let him go,” Etzi ordered.

  Styke ground his teeth. “Are you going to save your brother or not?”

  “Let him go,” Etzi repeated. Styke knew the tone well, no matter the language it was spoken in. He’d heard it as a young man in the military, and he’d heard it every day for ten years in the labor camps. It took a supreme act of willpower not to snap the watchman’s wrist. Finally, he released the man.

  The watchman stumbled back, wringing his hands. “What kind of a slave—”

  “That,” Etzi cut him off, “is not a slave. What is your name, foreigner?”

  Styke bit down hard on his tongue. He’d only ever been good at ending confrontations with violence. It would not work this time—at least,
it wouldn’t work in his favor. “Ben,” he answered.

  “This man,” Etzi gestured at Orz, “is already dead. He died when he spit at the emperor’s feet. He was imprisoned and declared an un-person. Now he is here, as if having clawed his way out of a grave.” He used a word next that sounded fairly close to an old Palo legend of the undead. “My duty would be that of any man confronted with a zombie: to call the authorities to destroy it. Tell me, Ben, what would you do in my place?”

  Styke sniffed. “Metaphor means nothing in the face of the truth,” he said in Adran, trying to think of the right words in Dynize.

  “Metaphor is all I have,” Etzi replied, also in Adran.

  It was not the first time Styke had been surprised to hear a Dynize speak passable Adran. He continued in his own language. “Ever buried anyone by accident?”

  Etzi’s eyebrow raised.

  Styke continued, wishing he had more time, trying to balance delicacy with urgency. “Happens occasionally. Someone slips into a coma, or comes down with a disease of the heart that makes them sleep as if dead. I’ve heard one story of a woman digging herself out of her own grave. Other stories tell of strange sounds at night in the graveyard and when the body is dug up, there are claw marks on the inside of the coffin.”

  “What is your point?”

  “My point is that sometimes you think someone is dead. But they’re not. All that matters now is what’s in front of you.”

  The watchman had retreated to the door that led back out into the courtyard, as if waiting for permission to run for the city guard. Maetle remained by Orz, one hand resting gently on his chest, eyes glued to Styke. Etzi stared into the middle distance between Orz and Styke, forehead still furrowed, spectacles perched on the tip of his nose.

  “You called for a surgeon,” Styke said. “You wouldn’t have done that if you didn’t care.”

  The tension was suddenly broken by a hammering on the front gate of the complex, followed by a call for the watchman. Everyone in the room looked to Etzi, who himself glanced toward the source of the sound in annoyance.

  The hammering continued.

  “It’s the city guard, master,” the watchman said in a low voice, casting meaningful glances at Orz’s body. “They can deal with this.”

  Styke found his hand gripping the hilt of his knife, his stomach wrapped in knots. This was it. How he’d die. In a stranger’s home in a strange land, failing the men he’d left back at the inn to get drunk. The authorities would clean this up in a few days. No one back home would ever know what had happened. No glory. No memories. Just the disappearance of Mad Ben Styke and the Mad Lancers.

  “Answer them,” Etzi said sharply. “Say nothing of this. Leave them outside and then go to my rooms to fetch me.”

  “Master?”

  “Go! Maetle, turn off those lanterns. Ben, lift my brother.” The orders were barked in a low tone, decisive and quick. Etzi ducked under one of the preparation tables and came back up with a handful of flour. Styke had no sooner lurched forward and lifted Orz than the flour was tossed across the table. Etzi snatched up a flat blade and scraped the mess—including water and blood from Orz—onto the floor, then threw down more flour. At a casual glance it looked like little more than a common kitchen mess.

  “With me,” Etzi said, striding to the corner of the room. He opened a door to a spacious pantry and quickly shuffled several crates, then reached down and slid his finger into a ring. Lifting it revealed a dark, narrow hole. “Old smuggling cache,” he explained quickly. “You’ll have to drop him in there and follow him down before he swallows too much water.”

  “You are joking,” Styke said in Adran.

  “I am not.”

  A primal fear stuck in Styke’s throat—fear of the dark, fear of the sound of water gently lapping just a few feet below them. There was no adrenaline to fuel him into the water now, and he blanched. He could feel the silliness of it even as the fear swept through him. “I won’t even fit.”

  “You either go down there or you start by killing me and then however many city guard you can manage until they put you down. It’s your choice. The knife or the hatch.”

  Styke was taken aback. Etzi had no fear in his eyes, just businesslike expectation. It was a strange thing to loom over such a bookish person without eliciting the tiniest bit of worry. He gave a growl and shifted Orz from two arms to one, slipping his hands under his shoulders and lowering him, feetfirst, down the hatch. He got down as far as he could before dropping Orz, his body slipping into the water. Styke followed, forcing his shoulders diagonally through the narrow space. As soon as his head was below the floor, the hatch was closed and he could hear things being moved back on top of it.

  He was in complete darkness, his feet touching slick stone about five feet below the waterline. He lifted Orz with one arm and reached cautiously with the other, getting a feel for the area. It appeared to be an open rectangle—just enough room for a rowboat to come and go, probably pushed in by someone in the water until it was directly below the hatch and then unloaded. There was a thick layer of slime on everything, including the iron rungs of the ladder, indicating it hadn’t been used in quite some time.

  Styke tilted his head, listening carefully to the muffled voices out in the courtyard.

  “Foreigner… dragonman… betrayal… searching…” He only picked up bits and pieces, but it became quickly apparent that they were searching for him. Protestations from Etzi. Questions. Demands. Voices raised. Then the sound of feet on the kitchen floor. At least a half-dozen pairs. Styke gently pushed himself away from the ladder in case the hatch was opened.

  Doors were slammed. “Search here,” he heard someone say from the kitchen. There was the shuffling of pots and pans, the sliding of drawers and the creaking of cupboard hinges.

  “If you’re going to empty that, you should put it back,” Etzi said in a perturbed tone. “Oh, for the love of the emperor. Do you think I’ve hidden a giant and a dead man in the silverware drawer? You, hang that back where you found it!”

  The door to the pantry opened. A sliver of light cut down through the floorboards into Styke’s hiding spot. He drew his knife slowly, so as not to make a sound in the water. Someone kicked over a crate. The door shut again. Styke let out a cautious breath, and the pounding of footsteps followed several men out of the kitchen. Styke put his knife back and pushed himself up against the slimy stone wall of the smuggler’s nook, listening to the distant sounds of rooms being ransacked.

  Time crept by and Styke summoned his last reserves of strength just to hold Orz’s head above the water. He had no idea how long he’d been there, or how long it had been since he’d heard the noise of searchers. He was just beginning to think it was over when the kitchen door opened again and he heard two distinct sets of footsteps crossing the floor, accompanied by two voices.

  One was Etzi, speaking in a tired, conversational tone: “… happy to serve the emperor in any way possible, but if you could avoid waking up my entire Household next time, I’d be most grateful.”

  “I’ll do what needs to be done,” the second voice answered in a harsh, clipped tone. Styke recognized it. It belonged to the dragonman who had ambushed them at Orz’s mother’s house. He realized that one of the sets of footsteps had a distinct limp, and it brought a smile to his face. The smile quickly disappeared when he realized that the dragonman must not have admitted his role in the murder of Etzi’s mother.

  “And I’ll lodge a complaint to the emperor if this happens again,” Etzi responded. “You know, I have a very talented surgeon on staff if you’d like someone to look at that leg.” The door from the kitchen to the courtyard opened and the voices grew too muffled to understand.

  Over an hour must have passed before there was a flurry of footsteps, the scraping of crates, and then the hatch above Styke opened. He was momentarily blinded by a lantern being lowered down, then looked up to see the faces of Etzi, Maetle, and the watchman. Etzi seemed irritated. Maetle concerne
d. The watchman resigned. “Come on,” Etzi said in Adran. “Hand him up to us. I hope he’s still breathing.”

  Styke squeezed himself out of the hatch after Orz had been hauled up, then stood dripping water on the floor while the three Dynize conferred among themselves. The watchman was sent away, then Etzi turned to Styke. His face was thoughtful, and he looked at Styke with a considering eye. “The dragonman. You gave him the limp?”

  Styke shrugged. He didn’t have energy for anything else.

  “He claimed Orz had given him the limp and killed his men. But they wouldn’t have been able to stick Orz with so many bolts without an ambush, and he clearly wouldn’t be fighting after that. So it must have been you. Well, I’m glad my brother has been keeping good company. Come, carry him to Maetle’s room. You can rest there.”

  “And Orz?” Styke asked.

  “You need to keep quiet and hidden. I don’t trust the emperor enough to not have spies in my Household. Maetle will do what she can. It’ll be a miracle if he’s still alive in the morning.”

  CHAPTER 28

  Styke rolled off his uncomfortable reed mat and sat up, hitting his head hard on a piece of furniture. He rubbed furiously at his forehead, taking a few moments to orient himself in the darkness before remembering that he was in Maetle’s office, sleeping underneath her desk. He craned his neck and crawled out from underneath it, climbing slowly to his feet. He guessed it was around five o’clock in the morning.

  The Etzi Household surgeon had her own quarters in the western corner of the compound. It wasn’t large—a bedroom, office, and infirmary—but it was sequestered away from the rest of the sleeping areas. The last thing Styke remembered was laying Orz on the infirmary bed and collapsing onto the reed mat while Maetle began work on the dragonman. He stepped across the room, poking his head into the bedroom and listening to a woman’s soft snores, before stepping into the infirmary.