Blood of Empire

by Brian McClellan

  The messenger left at a sprint, and Vlora fell back into her chair to stew on all of this. Of everything she had been told, one piece of information kept floating to the forefront of her thoughts: Delia had betrayed her. If true, it would not come as a surprise. But how? What kind of a deal could she have cut with Ka-Sedial in such a short amount of time?

  Her body wanted nothing more than to crawl back into bed and claim a few more hours of sleep, but her mind, she knew, wouldn’t allow it. Grabbing a lantern and lighting it, she headed out and across to the general-staff tent to review her battle plans.

  She had work to do.

  CHAPTER 54

  Styke sat in the Etzi compound canteen, breaking his fast with warm flatbread and snake-meat kabobs while Celine and Jerio played in the corner. It was a large, sprawling room with several dozen tables and two open doors into the kitchens. Most of the Household had already had their breakfast and begun their day, leaving Styke to eat in relative quiet as he shook the sleep from his head.

  Celine and Jerio, he noted, had begun to allow other children into their little group. There were around half a dozen of them now, and as far as he could tell, they were playing at some kind of imaginary war. Celine was very obviously in charge, with Jerio as her second in command. The other children followed faux orders seriously, gathering into a line to “assault” a position on the other side of a table that they dutifully clambered over at Celine’s shout.

  Celine led the charge.

  Styke finished his breakfast as the kids tended to their wounded and then regrouped for another attack. He checked his fingernails for blood, then leaned back in his chair to watch the door. He had expected an outburst by now—it wasn’t all that far from noon, after all—but none had come.

  As if in answer to his thoughts, the door to the canteen opened. Etzi strode in, pausing just long enough for his eyes to adjust to the lower light and then focusing on Styke. “Get dressed,” he said stiffly. “We’ve been summoned to the Quorum Hall.” He left without saying another word.

  Styke took his time wiping crumbs from his chin and shirt and then climbed slowly to his feet. This summons was not unexpected. What was unexpected was that it came without any extra hullabaloo. No raised alarms. No rumors sweeping the city. No one in the compound acted cagey like they were keeping information from him, and he hadn’t seen Etzi since yesterday.

  He ambled over to the kids, getting Celine’s attention with a wave. She broke off from her troops and joined him, breathless from another tumble over the enemy position. He touched her shoulder, frowning to himself. “I’m going with Etzi to the Quorum Hall.”

  “Again? I thought you were gonna try to finish the army today,” she said, referring to the cavalry unit he’d been carving.

  “Hopefully it won’t be long. I’ll work on it, promise.” He turned away, letting Celine return to her friends, but waited a moment to catch Jerio’s eye. The boy approached at a slight jerk of Styke’s head.

  “Keep an eye on her,” Styke said in a low voice. “If something happens to me, you keep her safe. Understand?”

  “Yes, sir!” Jerio snapped a very serious salute.

  Styke watched them prepare for another charge, then headed to his room to don his dress uniform. He joined Etzi in the courtyard where the Household head had already climbed into a waiting carriage. Styke noted that the size of Etzi’s honor guard seemed to increase with each subsequent visit—there had been just a handful the day they were ambushed with Zak’s execution. Now there were thirty of them on foot and another four on horseback. Styke almost demanded his horse, but dismissed the notion when Etzi gestured through the door for him to climb inside.

  They were soon rolling down the causeway that attached the compound to the city. Etzi sat in a glum silence for the first several minutes of the trip. Styke let him remain that way until he could no longer contain his own curiosity.

  “Why have they summoned us?” he asked.

  Etzi’s gaze flicked to Styke’s knife, lingered there, and then moved up to his face. “They found a head in the Quorum Hall this morning.”

  Styke pretended to be surprised. “Oh?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is that why they’re summoning us?”

  Etzi paused for a beat. “Should it be?”

  Styke returned his gaze silently, expressionless. Etzi had made it clear that he didn’t want to know more than he needed to. Styke didn’t see any reason to change that now.

  Etzi cleared his throat and finally averted his gaze. “The head belongs to Ji-Patten. They haven’t been able to find the body. The Quorum Hall is under guard at night, so no one has been able to explain how the head got there. I’ve been at an emergency session all morning.” Etzi suddenly looked tired and worn. “A third of the Quorum thinks you did it. Another third refuses to believe that anyone, let alone a foreign soldier on his own, could possibly kill a dragonman.”

  “And the other third?”

  “Divided. Foreign agents, not ruling out yourself, or infighting among Sedial’s group, or even a mythical creature prowling the streets. We’ve kept information from leaking to the public so far, but it will happen sooner or later. There is nothing more terrifying than the fear of the mob. The head was found with a word written in blood on the floor—‘traitor.’ It was written in Dynize, which casts doubt on the possibility of its being a foreign agent.”

  Styke didn’t respond, quietly feeling pleased with himself. He’d found a Dynize dictionary in Maetle’s library the other day and checked to make sure he’d spelled and conjugated the word right. Nothing like casting a little doubt among one’s enemies.

  Etzi sighed. “To answer your question, I have no idea why you’re being summoned. The messenger woke me up from a much-needed nap. The Quorum wasn’t supposed to gather again until after dinner. There’s either a mistake or…”

  “Or they think I murdered one of their dragonmen.”

  Etzi scowled. “It must be a mistake. If you’re being arrested, they would have shown up at my compound with several of his comrades.”

  They fell into an uncomfortable silence for the rest of the trip, arriving outside the Quorum Hall, where Etzi and Styke disembarked. Styke adjusted his overly warm jacket, tugging at the collar as he looked around the square. The crowd was thinner than usual, and he wondered if perhaps the rumors of Ji-Patten’s discovered head had already begun to send the populace into a fear spiral—certainly not something he’d intended, but it could be a useful side effect.

  He followed Etzi down the long hall, and they soon entered the Quorum Hall, only to find it practically empty. A handful of janitors cleaned the tiered seating, while small pockets of Household heads and representatives spoke in hushed tones. No one paid any mind to Etzi and Styke’s entrance.

  “I thought you said the Quorum summoned us?” Styke said.

  “I did,” Etzi replied, a look of confusion crossing his face. “Stay here.” He hurried up the steps and out through another exit from the Quorum Hall, leaving Styke waiting on the speaker’s dais. He pursed his lips, looking across to the few other occupants of the room, an uneasy feeling growing in his gut. His mind immediately leapt to suspicion. Had they been lured out of the compound for some reason? Were Sedial’s people making some kind of play? Or was he just being paranoid?

  Etzi returned a few moments later, shaking his head. “I just spoke with the Quorum clerk. He didn’t send out a summons.”

  “Could this be a ruse?”

  “To what end?”

  “To get us out of the compound.” Styke felt his shoulders tense. Celine. “We have to go back.” He was already moving by the time he finished the words, half jogging out of the Hall. Etzi was close on his heels, and they reached the carriage and honor guard a moment later. “Back to the compound,” Etzi barked. “And quickly!”

  Styke settled in across from Etzi as the carriage began to jolt along the cobbles. He was a bundle of nerves now, his hand resting on his knife, the other
clenched in a fist. A decent portion of Etzi’s Household guard was with them right now, leaving the compound with just the men and women who worked there during the day. It was practically defenseless. He could feel a growing desperation and resisted the urge to shout out the window at the driver. He should have ridden Amrec, damn it.

  The carriage turned a corner and suddenly lurched to a stop, nearly throwing Etzi on top of Styke. The lurch was accompanied by the swearing of the driver and several exclamations from the soldiers jogging alongside.

  “Sir,” a voice said, “we have a problem.”

  Etzi climbed out, and from Styke’s viewpoint he could see the Household head pale visibly. He followed him into the street.

  Their path had been blocked—the road cordoned off with carts, barrels, and any other large detritus that came readily to hand. This bit of road wasn’t exactly an alley, but it wasn’t an avenue, either—a rather narrow bend in the road with poor visibility and, more importantly, not nearly enough room to turn a carriage around. Crowded into the blockade was a mob of at least fifty men and women armed with clubs, torches, and machetes. They stared at Etzi’s carriage in eerie silence.

  “What is this?” Etzi demanded. “Move them aside!”

  Several members of his guard blanched. The four on horseback rode forward hesitantly, and the captain of the guard demanded to speak with whoever was in charge of the barricade. Styke took several steps back through Etzi’s guards and looked back around the corner, only to find that another, smaller mob had begun to assemble a barricade behind them. Styke swore and hurried back to Etzi.

  “They’re cutting us off,” Styke said. “This is a damned trap. We’ve got to move now.” He could see Etzi freeze in indecision, like a rabbit who’d just spotted a predator bearing down on him. Styke snatched him by the arm, giving him a shake.

  “Sir,” the captain of the guard called. “They want the foreigner.”

  Styke growled under his breath, turning back to the barricade. More people poured out of nearby buildings to join the mob, swelling the numbers. There were few guns among them, but he did see a handful of musket barrels poking out of windows above the street. His gut twisted. This was it, then. Styke’s punishment for the murder of Ji-Patten. It had certainly been organized quickly enough.

  Etzi seemed to shake himself from his panic. “Tell them that I am a Household head and to disperse immediately!” he called angrily. “This damned rabble can terrorize the citizenry, but I am a member of the Household Quorum!” He was shouting now, at the mob itself rather than at his guard captain.

  Styke took a firm grip of Etzi’s arm. “This isn’t a mob,” he warned. “Look at them. No shouting. No incoherence. I’ve faced mobs, and they’re not this organized. They’re cutting us off from behind. It’s a trap set by Sedial’s people.” This wasn’t law or politics. They were out of Etzi’s realm now, and that moment of panic in the Household head had shown Styke what kind of mettle he was dealing with.

  Etzi would have no choice but to hand him over, and Styke struggled not to blame him for that. No time for blame. He mentally tracked his own path through the mob, finding where it was thinnest. He spotted a door that would take him into one of the nearby buildings. Once inside, he’d either hold out against the rabble or find a rear exit. After that, he’d have to make his way to Etzi’s compound to fetch Amrec, Ka-poel, and Celine.

  “Give us the foreigner, or face the consequences!” someone shouted. Etzi’s guards looked to him for orders. Styke watched, tensed, for that look of defeat in Etzi’s eyes and prepared to draw his knife and charge the rabble.

  “Consequences?” Etzi suddenly roared, catching Styke off guard. “You speak of consequences! Your blood is on your own hands, you ingrates! To me, my soldiers, to me! Fix bayonets! Hurien, hold our withdrawal! Kepuli, abandon the carriage and lead us back the way we came. Cut down anyone who gets in our way!”

  Styke suddenly found himself swept into the center of the guard, shoved shoulder-to-shoulder with Etzi. The group marched in lockstep back around the corner, fixing bayonets as they moved while a small portion of Etzi’s guard leveled their weapons at the mob now behind them. Someone in the rabble gave a shout, and the muskets above them opened fire. One of Etzi’s guards fell, and the rest shot blindly into the mob.

  Styke lost sight of their rearguard as he and Etzi rounded the corner and approached the half-finished barricade going up to block their retreat. The guard lowered their bayonets as one and charged with a shout. They hit hard and fast, and it became clear that whoever had organized this rabble had underestimated Etzi’s ability to think on his feet. The mob dissolved beneath the points of their bayonets, fleeing for the main avenue or nearby alleys. Less than half of them stood their ground.

  Styke drew his knife, only for Etzi to snatch him by the forearm. “No!” Etzi snapped. “This blood is for us to spill—I don’t want a single knife wound on any of Sedial’s stooges.”

  Reluctantly, Styke returned his knife to its sheath.

  The fight between Etzi’s guard and roughly twice their number in armed commoners was short and bloody. Those who hadn’t fled the initial charge were enthusiastic, but they had no chance against a wall of bayonets from a group of guardsmen who, Etzi had once told him, were mostly veterans of the civil war. Once the mob was dead, wounded, or scattered and the barricade claimed, Etzi began to bark orders.

  “You, get the city guard! Kepuli, give Ben and me four men to get back to the compound. Use the rest to relieve our friends.”

  “Just four, sir?”

  “I said four, didn’t I? We’ll take the main avenues, where they’ll be loath to confront us. Now, go!”

  Styke watched the guard captain gather his forces and head back around that corner. His adrenaline was up, his fury at the ambush just now following on the heels of unfulfilled bloodlust. He reluctantly followed Etzi and his four guards back to the main avenue, where they headed toward the compound using a long, very public route.

  At one point he saw a column of city guards rushing toward the scene of the ambush. None of them seemed to even notice Etzi and Styke. The rest of the way back was uneventful, and they were soon inside the compound, where Etzi ordered the last of his guards to man the wall.

  Styke found Celine still playing with Jerio and the others in the canteen. He looked in on her, resisting the urge to go give her a hug, and quietly backed out.

  It did not take him long to pinpoint the fear he had felt during that ambush—the fear, not for his life, but that Celine would be left without his protection in a strange land. His heart was still hammering when Etzi’s Household guard returned almost an hour later. They shouted for Maetle to attend the wounded, and they were carrying half a dozen covered litters between them—the dead from the ambush. Styke overheard Etzi’s captain reporting that the city guard had driven off the rest of the mob, taking in a few for questioning.

  Maetle appeared to tend to the wounded, and Etzi faded into one of the corridors, watching the triage pale-faced. Styke skirted the courtyard and came around from behind to join the Household head. Etzi blinked at Styke, then looked back at the dead and wounded. His expression was distant, shell-shocked. It seemed to take him a few moments to realize that Styke was even there. Then his expression hardened. “Did you kill Ji-Patten?”

  “Do you really want to know?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hold on,” Styke said, returning to his room. He fetched one of Ji-Patten’s knives and returned to Etzi in the corridor. “I was going to give it to Orz. A memento as to how your mother has been avenged.”

  Etzi took the knife in both hands, rotating it with his fingers, his gaze lingering on the bone-white blade. “How did he die?”

  “Like a dog. Ka-poel ambushed him, and I finished him off.”

  “She broke a dragonman?”

  “Yes.”

  Etzi took a few deep breaths, then put the bone knife in his pocket. “Good. He didn’t deserve a better death.” />
  “That’s how I saw it.”

  Etzi looked up at Styke sharply. “This”—he thrust a hand toward the courtyard—“is an escalation. I cannot say whether it was planned before Ji-Patten’s murder or in direct response to it, but that does not matter. Sedial’s stooges have attacked a Household head. He has overplayed his hand, and I will make certain that he feels the consequences.”

  Styke felt, not for the first time, that things were spiraling well beyond his control. But this time he also felt that they might very quickly get beyond Etzi’s, Sedial’s, or anyone else’s control as well. Now, more than ever, he needed the Mad Lancers behind him. He silently urged Jackal to return with word of Ibana. “I appreciate you not handing me to the mob.” He meant it. No need to puff up pleasantries to please his host. Etzi had likely saved his life, at the cost of many of his own guards.

  “Do not thank me,” Etzi answered angrily. “I am doing my duty toward my Household and my guest. That they thought I would hand you over without a fight isn’t just folly on their part—it is an insult against me. I only have one regret.”

  “What’s that?”

  Etzi wiped a hand across his brow, gaze lingering on the wounded scattered across the courtyard. “That this feels like the first step toward more violence—and that we are at the center of it.”

  CHAPTER 55

  Michel squatted in the offshoot of a tunnel in the Landfall catacombs, watching the bobbing of lights pass just below him as hundreds of Yaret’s Household members streamed by. Cupbearers walked up and down the column, giving instructions in low, calm voices, paying special attention to the inevitable handful of people who gave in to panic in the damp, cramped darkness of the tunnels. Michel checked his pocket watch by the light of his own lantern. It was almost four o’clock in the morning.