Blood of Empire

by Brian McClellan

  “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me. I’m just doing my job.” Delia tapped one finger against her knee. “They’re also asking for complete disarmament. They want us to hand over everything more dangerous than a bread knife, march straight back to our fleet, and depart for Adro without looking back. Personally, I think we’re in a better position than that. The fleet still commands the waters on this side of Fatrasta and despite our numerical inferiority, we are the Adran Army.”

  It amused Vlora to hear Delia express so much confidence in her soldiers, and Vlora found a tiny part of her warming to the woman. She quashed that warmth. Always be on the lookout for a trap from a person like this. “Your assessment goes along the same lines as mine,” Vlora said slowly.

  “I thought as much. But even so, I need to ask you directly: If we are beset upon by these three armies, do we have any hope of winning?”

  Direct and to the point. Vlora leaned back in her chair, puffing out her cheeks and letting out a long, thoughtful breath. She looked around at her mess of a tent. Notes and maps everywhere, a dozen different plans of battle sketched out as well as a dozen contingencies for each of them. So much preparation time was a luxury she hadn’t had for months, but the Dynize were treating her carefully now and taking the time to make their own plans. She grimaced.

  “This is not a fight I want,” Vlora said.

  “You can’t win?”

  “I didn’t say that. I just said that I don’t want to fight it,” Vlora said. “We can win. We’ve beaten worse odds before.”

  “Against the Kez, who didn’t have blood sorcerers.”

  “Blood sorcerers die just as easily as Privileged, and I still have my powder mages,” Vlora said. “The bone-eyes don’t concern me. The numbers do, but we have our backs to the river and several hundred keelboats that allow us to ferry men quickly. We control the only bridge for tens of miles. Our guns are now on the hillside behind us, putting them out of enemy reach but in position to blast their own artillery to pit should they attempt to bring it forward. And at the end of the day, both our infantry and our cavalry are better than theirs.”

  Delia sat in silence, absorbing the information. After a few moments, she said, “You didn’t mention Nila and Bo.”

  “They’ll have their hands full of the enemy Privileged for the beginning of the battle. But once my powder mages have neutralized them…”

  “Nila’s fire.”

  “Nila’s fire,” Vlora confirmed. “The Dynize still haven’t figured out just how big of a gap there is between their combat abilities and our own. Powder mages are too powerful a trump card, and they don’t want to accept that.” She paused, considering General Etepali. The old woman had shown more freethinking and wiliness than her allies, but she had yet to live up to the reputation she’d claimed upon their first meeting. Either she had exaggerated her own abilities or she still had tricks up her sleeve. Vlora wasn’t looking forward to finding out.

  “But you said you don’t want to fight,” Delia said.

  “I did. Because whatever happens, I will lose a great many soldiers. I care about my soldiers.”

  “You think the losses will be worth the victory?”

  Vlora clenched her teeth. This conversation had revealed something, and she suddenly put her finger on it. Delia was still negotiating as if this were a regular war. She didn’t understand the severity of what they were fighting for. “Any losses are worth it, Lady Snowbound. If the Dynize are able to create a new god, they won’t just win this war. They will reign supreme over the entire hemisphere. They will cause upheaval that reaches the Nine and beyond.”

  Delia gazed back at Vlora, and it was in this gaze that Vlora began to suspect that Delia wasn’t ignorant of this—she simply didn’t believe it. Vlora opened her mouth to continue, but shut it again. Delia hadn’t met Kresimir. She hadn’t experienced the beginning of this current war. She had no context to put this in except for simple politics. Vlora found herself suddenly terrified.

  She didn’t want a dogmatic believer. Those tended to be dangerous in their own right. But she did want someone who would take her at her word, and Delia’s silence told her that she thought Vlora was a fool. A healthy dose of helplessness joined her terror. She resisted the urge to argue. She didn’t have the time or the energy. All she could do was attempt to steer Delia using her own methods.

  “Are you going to attack them?” Delia asked suddenly.

  Vlora hesitated. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Delia, but Vlora didn’t want her to know all of her plans. “I’m going to play this defensively. If I do, we can win. I agree with you that the Dynize terms are unacceptable.”

  “Good.” The word was clipped, final. Delia stood up and gave Vlora that same grimace-like smile. “That is what I needed to know. I will suspend negotiations until after the battle. If we can defeat them when outnumbered three against one, I suspect they will be on the verge of giving us anything we want.”

  Vlora waited until Delia was gone to let out a scoff of disbelief. This was pure, sharklike politics. Nothing more, nothing less. A tiny part of Vlora could respect that. Envy it, even. But there wasn’t room here for playing politics. If she won this coming fight, she’d give Delia the ammunition to end the war on whatever terms she wanted. And if she didn’t win… well, they’d all be dead anyway.

  Vlora waited about ten minutes before she left her tent and headed across the river to the pedestal. She found Prime, Nila, and Bo with their heads close together, huddled on the far side of the keelboat, examining a bit of writing. “Anything?” she asked.

  Bo waved her off without looking up. “We’re working on it,” he said with a strong note of irritation. “We’ll let you know as soon as we find out.”

  Vlora left the keelboat and paced on shore, feeling a sudden desperate need to do something. Her first instinct was to plan an attack—to launch something bold against one of the three armies hemming them in, in an effort to even the playing field. She resisted that urge—it was a trick she dare not attempt again with Etepali present—and instead headed back to her tent, to where her plans and contingencies were. She needed to prepare for anything.

  She paused just outside her tent, one of those contingencies floating at the corner of her mind. “Davd,” she asked her shadowing mage, “any news on those keelboats?”

  “We’ve got around three hundred of them,” Davd said.

  The keelboats were packed into the river behind them, hidden by a sorcerous fog, courtesy of Bo. The enemy knew she had them, of course, but she didn’t want the enemy to know how many were there. They factored into several different contingencies and might prove to be the crux of a coming battle. “Still two hundred short,” she muttered. “Tell me if we find any more,” she said, heading into her tent.

  That talk with Delia should have calmed her nerves. Instead she found herself trembling with excitement and trepidation.

  CHAPTER 52

  Styke woke to a gentle knock on his door and opened it to find Jerio standing in the moonlight outside, holding something up to him. Styke looked around. It was probably two in the morning and no one else was around. The night watchman’s torch flickered off the walls of the compound, and a single gas lamp in the corridor illuminated the side of the boy’s face.

  “What is it?” Styke whispered.

  Jerio bobbed his hand up and down until Styke reached out and took the card. “This was delivered for you at the front gate. I’m assisting the watchman tonight, so…” He trailed off, watching while Styke turned the card in his hands and then opened it.

  “Who delivered it?” Styke had to step out of the doorway, closing the door behind him quietly, and walk over to the gas lamp to read the writing. It simply said, Unity Square. There was nothing else on the paper.

  Jerio looked over his shoulder. His eyes widened slightly, and he replied in a whisper, “Their face was covered, but… I think it was a dragonman.”

  “Why do you think that?”
Styke asked, looking sharply at the boy.

  Jerio hesitated a moment before touching both his wrists. “Tattoos.”

  Styke clutched the card in his fingertips. Most people might consider this a strange cypher, but he’d been a fighter long enough to know exactly what it was: a challenge. It was not only unsurprising; it was expected. His discussion with Ji-Patten had been a thrown gauntlet. The dragonman had just answered.

  Styke’s heart immediately began to hammer, his fingers twitching and his rage building. He could practically taste the fight—the blood on his lips, the knife in his hand, tearing at Ji-Patten like a wild animal. The satisfaction of vengeance in a gruesome kill was at his fingertips. He had to consciously keep himself from grinning like a lunatic. “Did you read this?” he asked.

  Jerio shook his head.

  “Did the night watchman?”

  Another shake of the head.

  “Good kid. Where can I find Unity Square?”

  Jerio had to repeat the directions twice for Styke to really understand them in Dynize. The square wasn’t far—a handful of city blocks—but from the mental map he’d created of the city he was fairly certain that it was an isolated public space surrounded on three sides by water. A good spot for a duel. He dismissed Jerio and returned to his room, where he began to quietly dress. His mind churned with strategies and worries. Was this an ambush? Would Ji-Patten come alone? Would Styke be able to win this fight? What happened if he lost?

  The last thought buzzed around in the back of his head like a persistent fly. It wasn’t a familiar worry—he never really considered it as an option. He was, after all, Ben Styke. Even without Ka-poel’s sorcery, he had smashed a dragonman’s head in with his ring.

  Was that luck? a little voice asked. What if luck turned the other way? What if the dragonman proved just a little too strong or fast? He sought to mentally bury the voice. Risk be damned. There was vengeance to be had.

  Styke’s eyes fell on Celine’s sleeping form. She was snuggled up against Ka-poel in the spare bed, both of them snoring softly. He thought of the set of horses he was still carving for her and her friends, and scowled down at the boz knife lying on the floor between his bare feet. He thought of the idea that Celine had friends—it was the first time since he’d taken her under his wing at the labor camp that he’d seen her thrive with children her own age.

  He never made a conscious decision. One moment he was picking up his knife, ready to head to the next fight. The next, he was kneeling beside the bed, his brow furrowed in a scowl, reaching out gently to touch a shoulder.

  “Ka-poel,” he said softly.

  Her eyes opened, reflecting the moonlight coming in through the window. He gave her a moment to extract herself from Celine and climb out of the bed. They both went into the compound corridor outside, where he could see her hands. What is it? she asked.

  “The dragonman, Ji-Patten. Have you made plans for him?”

  She pursed her lips, head tilting to one side. You gave me orders to keep my head down.

  “I also asked you to make plans for him. Did you?” Styke insisted.

  Yes.

  “I need to deal with him,” Styke said, his eyes flicking toward the door of their shared room where Celine was still sleeping. “But the risks…”

  Ka-poel blinked at him, clearly taken aback. Risks? The gesture didn’t convey sarcasm, but the crooked smile certainly did.

  “Yes, risks,” Styke said through clenched teeth. “I’m not invincible. Nor do I want to be. I’ve already gotten one of my men killed, and for once in my damned life I’m going to consider the consequences before I act.”

  The smile disappeared, replaced by a thoughtful frown. I’m trying to save my strength for the godstone.

  “Does it take a lot for you to control a dragonman?”

  The bone-eye sorcery that makes them strong also protects them from other bone-eyes, much like the protection that I have been giving you and your men. You want him to slit his own throat in the middle of the night? Willing him to take such a definitive action will be difficult, but not impossible. It was a long series of gestures, and Styke had her repeat herself twice before he’d gotten it all.

  “But will it also alert every bone-eye in the capital that one of their own is acting against them?” he asked.

  It will likely alert Ka-Sedial himself.

  Styke considered the note with the words “Unity Square.” “What if I don’t need anything quite so grandiose?”

  Ka-poel tilted her head to one side and gestured. What did you have in mind?

  Styke’s memory had been spot-on: Unity Square was a public garden not far from the Etzi Household. It had flower beds, manicured lawns, stone pathways, and even a fountain. All of it thrust out into the lake, connected to the rest of the city along one side by an avenue that was almost entirely devoid of traffic at three o’clock in the morning.

  It was not a good ambush spot—no high buildings, walls, or towers within crossbow range, and the only privacy was a copse of trees around the fountain. Bad for an ambush, good for a duel. No doubt the reason that Ji-Patten had chosen the place. It put to rest Styke’s worries that he was walking into a trap. Ji-Patten, for all his underhanded dealing, was still a warrior. Warriors had pride, especially in their fraternity. This wasn’t about killing Styke for a master. This was about killing Styke for honor. Like a goddamn fool.

  Styke glimpsed a figure near the fountain as he approached. There were no lights in the garden, but the moon was bright and Ji-Patten was unmistakable. His tall, muscled figure lounged casually against the fountain, flipping an object—one of his bone knives—up into the air and catching it. Styke kept his hands out of his pockets as he approached, letting his eyes search the darkest corners of the park, breathing deeply to maintain his calm.

  He reached the edge of the small grove and stopped, drawing his knife.

  “I’m surprised you came, foreigner,” Ji-Patten said, taking his own knife in hand and holding it casually at his side.

  “I’m surprised you’re going around your master for a fight.”

  “Who says I am?” Ji-Patten replied. Both their tones were casual, almost friendly, but Styke could hear an eager tension in Ji-Patten’s voice. He imagined that Ji-Patten was just as ready to end this as he was—to rid himself of a troublesome foreigner stirring up contention among the political elite in the city.

  “I do,” Styke said. “If your master wanted me dead, I would have woken up with a knife between my ribs anytime in the last ten days.”

  Ji-Patten shifted slightly. A bit of nerves, maybe? “And leave Etzi with more ammunition in his crusade?” he spat back. “With this, well”—he gestured at the empty park—“no witnesses. They won’t even find your body. You’ll just… disappear.”

  “And Etzi will have a note, written in your hand and delivered by you, drawing me out for a duel in the dead of the night,” Styke said. “You’re not dumb, dragonman. You’re just single-minded. I sympathize. I’m usually the same way.”

  “The note can be dealt with,” Ji-Patten said, lifting his knife. His irritated tone told Styke exactly what he needed to know: This duel was, if not against orders, then certainly without sanction. “Come, foreigner. We’ve talked long enough.”

  Styke finally stepped into the grove, adjusting the grip on his boz knife. Ji-Patten didn’t waste another breath. He leapt from his spot against the fountain, over the tangled roots of one of the trees, sprinting at full speed. The movement would have been hard to follow in the daytime, and was hardly more than a dark blur in the moonlight. Styke didn’t bother trying to intercept him. He took two long steps to one side, putting a tree between himself and the dragonman.

  Ji-Patten’s knife hand lashed out, reaching toward Styke, just as his shoulder slammed into the trunk of that tree. There was a heavy grunt, the branches shook, and Ji-Patten bounced away, spinning so hard that his knife flew out of his hand and off across the cobble path outside the grove. He stumbled
to his feet, looking like a man who’d had four too many drinks and couldn’t be convinced to sleep off the booze on a pub bench.

  Styke kept his distance, watching. Ji-Patten threw both arms outward to either side as if maintaining a balancing act. He stared hard at Styke, and even in the darkness he was clearly confused. He took one step forward, then a second, and fell directly on his face.

  “He’s dealt with,” Styke said loudly.

  It took a few moments for a small figure to emerge from the shadows across the avenue and reach the park. Ka-poel entered the grove at a stroll and paused beside Styke, looking down her nose at the dragonman. Styke felt a pang of sympathy for Ji-Patten. He could think of nothing more terrifying for a seasoned warrior than to be helplessly manhandled by forces he could not control. He remembered Markus crying over the body of his brother, and stifled the sympathy.

  He took a step to Ji-Patten, tucking one toe beneath the dragonman and flipping him over onto his back. He did a quick search and found the dragonman’s spare knife, pocketing it. He then knelt on one of Ji-Patten’s arms and gripped him by the chin.

  “Will Ka-Sedial hear us?” he asked Ka-poel in Kez.

  She shook her head.

  “Normally,” Styke said, switching back to Dynize and addressing Ji-Patten, “I would have taken you up on your offer. I love a good fight, and I’ve killed three of you shitheads already. But your murdering my man the other day reminded me about my responsibilities—and it made me realize that you don’t deserve the dignity of a fair fight.”

  “What have you done to me?” Ji-Patten demanded in a harsh whisper.

  Styke jerked Ji-Patten’s head toward Ka-poel. “Wasn’t me.”

  Ji-Patten’s eyes narrowed at Ka-poel for a brief moment before widening. “No. The bone-eyes belong to us.”

  “Not all of them,” Styke answered. He twirled his Lancer ring, feeling along the lance-and-skull with his thumb. He didn’t feel sympathy, but this whole thing did feel dirty. Underhanded. He discarded the thought. “The mobs breaking out in the city. They’re your doing, correct?”