Blood of Empire

by Brian McClellan

  Nila sighed. “Yes, they will. And so will you.”

  “I can’t. Have you seen that?” She pointed a finger toward the Dynize camp.

  “I’ve spent the better part of the morning helping the wounded,” Nila answered gently. She came to Vlora’s side, and Vlora allowed herself to be guided to her cot. They both sat down, and Nila pulled Vlora’s head against her shoulder.

  Within moments Vlora was weeping. She didn’t even feel it start, but suddenly the tears were flowing and her shoulders heaving. She felt a hand on the back of her head, gently stroking her hair, and Nila spoke in a soft, soothing voice.

  “The victory is in how few of those dead and wounded are your countrymen,” she said. “So very few. These soldiers are your responsibility, and if you have to resort to a dirty trick to keep them alive, then so be it. You’ve done it, and you can move on. The Dynize are not your responsibility. They belong to whoever sent them to die by your hand.

  “I know that you miss Olem. We all do. He’s a fantastic commanding officer and a friend to us all. I don’t know where he’s gone. I don’t even know if he’s truly abandoned us. What Davd told you the other day was true—you betrayed him at the Crease. You did it as a lover rather than as a commanding officer, and that’s what hurt him. You have to let that go. Adom willing, when this is all over, you’ll be able to find him and make this right.

  “At this moment, however, you have a decision to make: You can back out of this. Cede command. There are a half-dozen generals in your army who are all the equal of anything the Dynize can throw at us, and not a one of them would think less of you for stepping down after all that has happened. They know you’re in pain. They worry for you. You can let them take care of you for a change.

  “Or,” Nila continued, “you can take responsibility. Claim this carnage as a victory and move on. Galvanize yourself and your troops. Come back stronger than before. Sweep your enemies aside. Forget Olem’s absence. Focus on your goals and leave the self-recriminations for when this is all finished.”

  Nila fell silent, and Vlora wept out her anger, grief, pain, and frustrations. They remained in that embrace for some time, long after Vlora had dried her tears and her mind and heart felt empty, a shell devoid of the torrent that had so recently been raging within her. The ability for rational thought finally returned, and Vlora used it to probe within herself, looking for that ugly, furious thing that had dominated her thoughts for so long. It was still there, lurking in the corners of her mind, but it felt smaller and diminished.

  She finally sat up, looking Nila in the eyes. “Thank you.”

  “Of course. Bo’s good at a lot of things. Dealing with complex emotion isn’t one of them.”

  Vlora barked a laugh. “That would require him to let his guard down.”

  “You say that like it’s not a family trait.”

  “Unfair.”

  “But true.” Nila lifted the hem of her dress and used it to dry Vlora’s cheeks. In all the time they’d known each other, it was probably the most intimate gesture that Nila had made toward her.

  They sat in companionable silence for some time. Vlora stared at her hands, deep in thought, considering everything that Nila had said. She was right, of course. She could step down. Any of her generals could conduct this campaign and do Adro proud in the course of doing so. But none of them had seen the godstone, felt its dark power. None of them knew, firsthand, all the things she knew. They hadn’t met Lindet and Ka-Sedial. They hadn’t defended Landfall.

  The moment she had accepted command of the army, she had taken responsibility. And she had to accept that. She might be physically and emotionally fragile. But she was still sound of mind and great of will. Any excuse that she gave in ceding command might be accepted by everyone else. But she’d never forgive herself.

  Vlora stood and walked to the tent, poking her head outside. Norrine was standing guard just a few feet away, and Vlora wondered if she’d heard the exchange. If she had, none of it showed on her face. “Pass on orders for the general staff,” she told Norrine. “I’m allowing one day for our men to rest. Our medics are to treat our wounded first, then the enemy. Let General Etepali know that we won’t interfere with her retrieving her dead. We won’t be taking any prisoners—anyone we scooped up will be left in her care.”

  Norrine nodded. “Yes, ma’am. Anything beyond that?”

  “Let the general staff know that we’re marching due west tomorrow afternoon. We’re going to relieve Burt’s Palo Nation irregulars and find out what the Dynize wanted so badly in Yellow Creek.” Vlora stepped back inside and smiled at Nila. “Again, thank you,” she said quietly. “I have a lot to cast off. But cast it off I will. This is a war I must win myself.”

  CHAPTER 31

  The Etzi Household infirmary was crowded with people, all of them standing in a circle around the unconscious form of Orz. Ka-poel stood at his head, with Celine beside her, and Styke at his feet. Maetle and Etzi remained on the other side. The latter two stared at Ka-poel as if she were some kind of adder slithering around their feet, while she didn’t seem to notice their attention.

  I can speed up his healing, Ka-poel said, translated by Celine into Adran, but not by much. The sorcery that surrounds dragonmen is similar to the link I have with Taniel—but rather than a constant exchange of sorcerous energy, it is a onetime thing: a blessing of sorts. I think I can strengthen it a bit. Like repairing a ship with material stronger than it was originally made from.

  “Do what you can,” Styke replied. “We need him.”

  Ka-poel looked at Etzi. You’re his brother. If you’re willing, I’ll use some of your strength.

  “Neither Orz nor I have ever been on good terms with bone-eyes,” Etzi responded. “Orz can’t speak for himself, but I certainly don’t want you cutting into me.”

  Ka-poel made a gesture that was somewhere halfway between accepting and rude. I’ll use my own, then. She immediately set to work pricking her thumb with a needle from her satchel and touching the blood to Orz’s lips. She worked slowly and deliberately, all focus on the body before her. The group watched silently for several minutes until Etzi finally spoke up.

  “So the Fatrastans have bone-eyes. None of our spies told us that.”

  Styke bit his tongue. He preferred to be straightforward, but even he knew when to let an assumption lie. If anyone, including Etzi, found out exactly who Ka-poel was, they might lose their only chance of surviving in this damned city. He gently tapped on the small of Celine’s back—a signal for her to stay quiet—and just grunted in response. “Your Ka-Sedial is finding out a lot about Fatrasta that he didn’t know.”

  “And may it give him the worst kind of headache,” Etzi said, as if invoking a curse. He rubbed at his temples.

  Styke eyeballed Etzi. “I thought you were loyal to Ka-Sedial.”

  “I am loyal to the empire,” Etzi replied, ducking his head slightly as if realizing he’d let something slip. “I am loyal to my family and my Household. Ka-Sedial is none of those. Now, what do I do with you?”

  Styke had no response. He had no plan. Everything had been predicated on getting through the city unnoticed and meeting up with Ibana farther down the coast. So far he’d had no indication that Ibana’s army had even landed—which could mean that they hadn’t, or it could mean they’d avoided detection. And now twenty of his men had been arrested by the Dynize. He’d considered a thousand different courses of action over the last couple of hours and had been unable to land on any that weren’t completely suicidal. He just didn’t know enough about the layout of the city, the garrison, or the people to come up with anything proper.

  “You’re going to help us, right?” Celine asked. So much for keeping quiet.

  Etzi blinked at her. “You’re a bold little one.”

  “You have no idea,” Styke muttered.

  “Your brother is going to live,” Celine said. “We’ve saved him, so you’re going to save us. Right?”

  “It is m
ore complicated than my brother’s life,” Etzi told Celine. “It is the lives of my entire Household.” He turned his attention back to Styke. “I will speak bluntly. Fraternal love is only some of the reason I hid you and Orz from the dragonman last night.”

  Styke straightened, listening carefully.

  “Orz probably does not know this himself. If he was only released a couple of months ago, he will not be up on local politics.”

  “Which are?”

  Etzi gave a hard sigh and said something to Maetle in Dynize that was too quick for Styke to follow.

  “It’s your decision, master,” she responded.

  Etzi rubbed his temples again. “Dynize has been on the brink of a new civil war for almost two years. Sedial’s consolidation of power has divided the nation, and his invasion of Fatrasta has both taxed everyone’s loyalty and kept us from tearing one another apart. He’s probably aware through his puppet-spies that the capital is politically volatile right now, but if he knew the true extent of it, he would be back here at the head of his biggest army.”

  This sounded very much like information Styke could use. If he had the brains to figure out how. He was a soldier, not a politician. “It’s that bad?”

  “It is. The death of my mother, the search for you and Orz, even the arrest of your soldiers—these things happened practically hours ago and they’ve already sparked a wave of debates on everything from slave policy, to the use of sorcery by the government, to questioning Sedial’s authority all over again. I went to the games earlier today to hear the gossip. Assassinations happen from time to time, of course, but they don’t usually happen in the… I suppose you’d call them the ‘middle-class suburbs.’ She was a retired Household head. She should not have been collateral damage.”

  “So you hid us because you might be able to use us?”

  Etzi gave him a sallow smile. “As I said, times are uncertain. Despite my brother’s disgrace, he is still a dragonman. And you are the man who saved him, so…”

  “I’ll try to stay useful.”

  “I’m not entirely certain how,” Etzi said. A troubled look crossed his face, and after several moments of silence he produced a piece of paper from his pocket and tapped it against his brother’s leg. “Tell me something, Ben.”

  Styke shrugged at him to go on.

  “When someone in Fatrasta goes to university for an education, do they usually go on to work in their field of study?”

  “Usually…,” Styke said. “But not all the time.”

  “My own education was in the legal system.”

  “Oh?” The word must have sounded more sarcastic than Styke had meant, because Etzi chuckled dryly.

  “We don’t operate entirely on traditions and imperial word,” Etzi said. “In fact, the emperor rarely involves himself in day-to-day politics. He lets Sedial and the Household Quorum—our governing body—take care of all that. Sedial is far away right now.”

  Styke could see the thoughts turning behind Etzi’s eyes. “And universities?”

  “Sorry,” Etzi said, passing a hand over his eyes. “I was a legal student. I was very good at it, and I’d intended on making my career as a lawyer. I wouldn’t—I thought at the time—inherit the Household until I was quite old. But then Orz was disgraced, my parents stepped down as heads, and I found myself here.” He gestured at the compound surrounding them. He tapped the paper against his brother’s leg once more and unfolded it. “Laws are often put into place by the powerful to control the weak. But they can also be used against the powerful—especially when those powerful people aren’t present. Do you know what this is?”

  Styke shook his head.

  “Maetle took it out of Orz’s pocket last night. It was sealed in wax, well-protected from the elements. It’s stamped with Sedial’s seal and signed by his own hand, and says that Orz is working on a conditional pardon on a task from the Great Ka himself.”

  Styke finally began to follow. “What do you mean to do with it? Claim publicly that Orz was unjustly attacked by assassins?”

  “Exactly.” Etzi had a strange look in his eye now. Styke had seen that look before—on Ibana, when she thought that one of his insane ideas might actually work.

  “But the assassin could only have been waiting for him at Sedial’s command,” he protested.

  “Give me a timeline of events. When did he betray Ka-Sedial’s orders?”

  Styke ran through a very basic outline of the past six weeks, leaving out the fact that he’d been separated from an army intent on capturing the very city in which they stood. It wasn’t an entire lie—but it did make it out to seem like Styke and his men had come from Starlight to help Orz in return for his sparing Styke’s life. Both Celine and Ka-poel looked at him a couple times during the story but neither tried to correct him.

  Etzi nodded along. When Styke had finished, he said, “Based on your own version of events, a messenger from Sedial could not have beaten him back to Dynize.”

  “Sedial must have given the order through a puppet.”

  Etzi snapped his fingers. “Exactly! Puppets are not acknowledged by the legal system. Everyone knows they exist. Everyone knows they are wrong. But the bone-eyes have always had power and they avoid being held accountable by pretending—through laws—that puppets don’t exist.”

  “So you’re saying that any order given through a puppet is illegal?”

  “Not technically illegal. It just doesn’t hold any legal weight.” Etzi bounced the paper up and down in his hand. “This carries legal weight.”

  “So you’re not going to hide him?” Styke asked.

  “It would be foolish to try. The longer I keep him hidden, the more they can claim that I know I’ve done something wrong. But if I take his presence public, with this conditional pardon…”

  “You’re taking the fight to Sedial’s representatives in the city.”

  Etzi grinned in a way that reminded Styke of Orz. “And that bastard who murdered my mother.”

  Styke knew right away that he was out of his depth. He didn’t know the legal system in his own country, let alone in this strange place. He could do nothing but trust that Etzi knew what he was doing. But this all dealt with the Orz problem and Etzi’s Household. “And me and my men?” he asked.

  Etzi’s mind was clearly elsewhere. “You saved my brother from assassins. Legally, I’m honor-bound to protect you.”

  Styke bit his tongue, considering what to tell Etzi. On one hand, the army down south might never even have landed—they might have sunk, or headed back to New Starlight, or landed somewhere far from here. On the other hand, if word suddenly arrived about Styke’s army, all of them carrying the same skull-and-lance banner that he had in his saddlebags, it might get both him and Etzi’s Household executed as spies.

  It didn’t feel right to treat a host in such a way. But Styke’s primary concern had to be staying alive—at least until he knew whether Ibana had actually landed and decided to wait out his arrival. “So what do I do?”

  “You remain here, as my guest. Sedial’s representatives in the city will ask for clarification from him directly, which will take at least six weeks. I muddy the water legally, Orz heals—he just needs to be able to ride—and we get you all moving again.”

  “And my men?”

  “As I said, I’ll muddy the waters. I’ll put effort into seeing them released as accessories to whatever task it is that Orz is up to.” He paused, frowned. “Dynize is a tinderbox right now. I suspect that either Sedial’s allies will try to keep this quiet, letting me have my way in order to keep from stoking more discontent…”

  “Or?” Styke asked.

  “Or they will make an issue out of it.”

  Styke examined Etzi’s face. There was a resolve there that he hadn’t seen last night. It made him like the man, for all his bookish nature. “You’re sure that you’re up to protecting us?”

  “At the end of the day, I can claim ignorance. I protected my brother, who I thought had
been pardoned.” Etzi paused thoughtfully. His nostrils flared and he leaned across Orz. “No. That’s not just it. That dragonman murdered my mother. All politics aside—all relations and intrigue and everything else be damned. I will not let that go. Do you understand?”

  “I think I do.”

  “Good. I’ll ask you to hide in here for another day while I prepare.”

  CHAPTER 32

  My love is dead.

  It was the last entry into Field Marshal Tamas’s journal for almost thirteen months, and Vlora found herself staring at that page for hours on end. She examined the paper, stained with thirty-year-old teardrops. She studied the letters, written in a trembling hand. She sat in contemplation, staring at nothing with the journal open to that page on her lap.

  Two days had passed since what the men had taken to calling the Midnight Massacre. It wasn’t a name that would reflect well on Vlora in the history books, but she did not contest it. How could she? In those two days she had searched Tamas’s journal for his mistakes—for any campaigns that had gone poorly, atrocities attached to his name, Pyrrhic victories. She’d found records of every one of those things, but he’d never written in terms of absolute regrets. The closest he’d ever come to self-recrimination was ending three of his entries with the words “I will learn from this.”

  She knew that he had regrets. She’d spent her teens in his household, listening to stories about the Gurlish campaigns over the dinner table. It made her wonder if perhaps he knew that others might study this journal for posterity and he was presenting a confident face for history.

  Which made this one, raw entry all the more emphatic. My love is dead. Nothing more. Just a date—the date that he would have been informed that his wife had been executed by the Kez. Everything about that page spoke of grief, as one might expect. Had Tamas been a normal person, this page would be nothing more than a record of the death of a loved one. But Tamas wasn’t normal, and the following entry—those thirteen months later—would no doubt give goose bumps to anyone with even the faintest knowledge of recent history.