Hollow Empire

by Sam Hawke

  “My lady?” Her voice was soft and quavering, as if she feared reprimand. “At your service?” It made me uncomfortable seeing the Talafan staff’s degree of deference compared to the workers in our employ: our housekeeper, Sjease, who had taken over our household in the space of less than a month and now shamelessly bossed us all around at leisure; my guard Lara with her cheeky good humor and long-winded stories about her son; or Tain’s earnest young page, Erel. I’d seen some bad treatment of staff in this city, but even the most self-important wealthy Silastians would find the level of worshipful service apparently expected of Talafan servants disconcerting.

  I held out the poppet. “Is there a child traveling with your party? I think someone dropped this.”

  She looked up with a little jerk, and took the doll so swiftly it was almost sleight of hand. “Of course, of course, thank you, my lady, thank you,” she murmured, and backed away, the poppet already lost in the piles in her arms. I felt strangely relieved at having handed it over. I wiped my hand on the side of my hip as if I could remove the touch of it. I noticed one of the Marutian Dukes, still sitting at the back of the area, was watching me with his head cocked to one side, one hand stroking his beard. Not for the first time, I felt unsettled at having been watched by a stranger.

  “Come, you’ll be late for your niece!” Ectar said, and I wondered if I’d irritated him, but as we proceeded down the steps of the arena he chuckled indulgently instead. It reminded me that he still thought of me as a strange and exotic marvel, not quite of the same species as himself. Though my limbs trembled with weariness, I sped up so his hand fell away from my back. I was not a spectacle for anyone’s entertainment, and I’d had enough of acting that part for the day.

  I was descending a few lengths behind Brother Lu, at the tail end of the ladies’ procession, when he fell.

  The priest was stepping confidently, if stiffly, his arms folded behind his back, when his leg simply … crumpled, like soggy paper, just as he transferred his weight. No one had pushed or even touched him. Nor did he miss his step or slip for an obvious reason, and the steps were clear of debris. But he went down hard, and fast, and with nothing more than a yelp.

  “My God!” Ectar, perhaps embarrassed by his inaction with the choking, sprang forward immediately this time. “Are you all right, Brother?”

  This time, the man couldn’t foist off the assistance; his leg had gone between two steps and he howled in pain. Ectar, sweat breaking out on his wide-eyed face, pulled back the man’s nihep, and one of the women screamed. The ugly break was horrifically apparent in the protrusion of white bone through a jagged, bloody gash in his shin. Vomit rose in my throat and I clapped a hand over my mouth.

  “Get a physic,” I cried, and heard the shake in my own voice.

  Then I let myself be caught up in the crowd of concerned onlookers and away from the Talafan party. I didn’t understand what had just happened but for whatever reason, the ugly poppet sprang back into my mind, its throat tight with string and one leg missing or deformed. The mental image was a sinister and unpleasant thing. I wanted very much to be away from this odd party of hostile priests and corralled women and opaque officials. There was something wrong in this Talafan camp.

  INCIDENT: Mass poisoning at Silverstream village town hall

  POISON: Scatterburr

  INCIDENT NOTES: Scatterburr plants burned as kindling during town meeting; combination of cold weather and virulent Maiso, poor ventilation and blockage in chimney led to concentration of toxic fumes. Four dead, six treated in hospital. No signs of deliberate sabotage, suggest resources toward education on estates about toxic nature of certain plants.

  (from proofing notes of Credo Etan Oromani)

  3

  Jovan

  Closeted in the alcove in my bedroom with a pot of tea, I hovered my pen under Bradomir’s name on my list of confirmed incidents. Long gone were the days when I could spread my work over the table. With extra relatives from the estates staying in the city for karodee, I had retreated from the chaos of the main apartments to spend most of my time in here. I sat among piles of notes on Aven, the mercenaries, the funding trail, every incident that could be connected to the rebellion and every suspicion we held about other countries and potential enemies. And now, an assassination attempt.

  Without recovering the dart, and in the absence of a proper examination at the hospital, I could not prove Bradomir’s death was murder, nor even intimate such to the Council. I had made my case to the Warrior-Guilder and the captains of the Order Guards and the blackstripes, respectively, but had made little ground. While no one had said outright that they disbelieved my account, the meetings had felt more like polite indulgence than serious discussions. Tain was already well protected, they had told me. Yes, they would search any premises before he attended in the future, even the rafters of a theater. But a single incident witnessed by no one but me was not proof of a broader plot, and their doubts were palpable.

  Fresh from Thendra’s confirmation at the hospital, I’d been barely managing my compulsions that day and had been unable to keep some of my more obvious tics from surfacing during the meeting. Physical signs of anxiety always made others perceive me as less trustworthy, even hysterical. Even among people who trusted my devotion to Tain and to Sjona, that had an impact. The bloody play (despite, or perhaps because of, its dramatic pre-opening) was proving wildly popular, fanning public speculation about me, and even though these men and women had known me for years, its influence crept into our interactions. I wasn’t a joke to them, not quite yet, but the Chancellor’s eccentric friend had become a person to be managed, rather than listened to.

  A tap on the doorframe interrupted my train of thought.

  “Credo Jovan?” Al-Sjease, our household manager and my secretary, peered around the corner. Tall and slender, with a smooth, androgynous face and wooly braids bursting from a stripe down the middle of their head, Sjease wore an expression somewhere between exasperation and tolerance, one I’d grown to know all too well over the course of the last two years. “You aren’t dressed. The rowing final—I did leave you a reminder. Did you forget the time?”

  I sighed and gulped down the last of my tea. “Yes. Sorry. I did see the note, but I got sidetracked.” I rubbed my forehead.

  Seeing my expression, Sjease’s own softened. “Are you feeling all right, Credo? You seem … distracted.”

  “Just a headache,” I said, waving a hand dismissively, and Sjease accepted the lie without comment. I hadn’t wanted a housekeeper—or indeed a servant of any kind—and had worried that it would risk exposing our family’s secrets. But Kalina and I couldn’t be home with Dija every evening, so I’d had to accept it. Over time, my initial concerns about bringing a stranger into our home had faded. If Sjease was curious about my strange behavior and obsessions then they hid it well enough to fool me.

  “I laid out your clothes earlier, but if you need assistance?” They scooped away my cup and pot and their eyes twinkled as I grumbled a negative. Within the first week on the job Sjease had pronounced my clothes chest “utterly devoid of personality” and their quest to clothe me more fashionably had worn me down over time. I knew better than to argue by now. So while Sjease swept out of the room with my tea things I grudgingly changed from my plain clothes into the more colorful outfit on my bed.

  Long gone were the days when a gleam of metallic thread in the cording of a plain paluma could pass for formal wear. Now blending in among my peers meant lace and beading and exotic dyes in my clothes, and new cuts and fabrics and fastenings every few months, it seemed. This garment, with its loose sleeves and structured torso, barely resembled a paluma anymore. It was so snug the cording was more decorative than functional, though it still had enough room around my middle to accommodate the belt of pockets Kalina had sewed to fit a useful array of my tools of trade.

  “Not bad,” Sjease said when I emerged a short time later. Deft fingers adjusted the scalloped edging around my nec
k with practiced ease, and added a pendant necklace I’d pretended not to see on the bed.

  “Very handsome,” Kalina agreed as she looked me over with a suppressed smile. “Is everyone ready, then?”

  We collected our assortment of accompanying relatives—Dija and her mother and grandmother, her two brothers, and two excited third cousins—and the collection of personal guards we were required to ferry around to every official function. I even managed polite small talk with the group on the way down to the lake. The streets were loud and merry, overwhelming my senses with color and noise and competing smells both fair and foul. Massive karodee flags by the lake crackled and flapped in a colorful dance in the heavy spring winds. Glazed pots bursting with riotous flowers and swinging merry ribbons decorated every shop front and doorframe, heralding the arrival of spring and the recovery of our city. Silasta thrived once more, and its residents celebrated that. Well, most of its residents.

  “Isn’t it exciting, Uncle Jovan?” one of Dija’s brothers asked, face split into a grin as he swiveled his head around this way and that, eyes shining. His first visit to the capital must have seemed a thrilling change of pace from life in Telasa, the smaller northern border city. He didn’t seem to need an answer; something else took his attention and he grabbed at his older brother’s arm to point it out, sparing me having to fake an appropriate level of excitement.

  Once we were on the crowded lower streets approaching the lake, I found an anonymity I’d sorely missed in the constant giddy press of excited bodies, the food carts and street games, and the laughter, whoops of encouragement, and ever-changing wagers. A performer collecting a crowd for their balancing act called out for our attention, a man asked me to “Buy us a drink, mate, go on?,” and a girl with a slick smile tugged at the cording on my clothes with a murmured, “Fancy a game of spots?,” but otherwise our group went largely unnoticed.

  Large colorful marquees decorated the grassy east bank of the lake, and the competitors’ boats waited at the start point. Etrika, Dija’s grandmother and Etan’s first cousin once removed, took off her hat and fanned her face with it. “Find me a spot to sit down, would you, loves?” she said to the boys. “An old lady needs a rest after all that walking.”

  I sent her a sharp look. Etrika was barely seventy, a hale and formidable woman. She had been happily walking around the city for weeks, refusing a litter, and during the rushuk ball match last week she’d leapt out of her seat, swearing so enthusiastically I’d worried she’d been about to start a fight with the referee. “There’ll be plenty of room in the Council marquee for family—” I began, but she met my look with innocent wide eyes and cut me off.

  “Oh, no, no. I couldn’t be expected to stand around with all those Councilors and important people. Not at my age, Jovan. My constitution, you know.” She fanned herself once or twice more, for good measure.

  “Yeah, mine too,” I muttered, and she winked.

  I would have skipped the event if I could, but Tain and Merenda, his cousin and heir, would both be there. His blackstripes would be on high alert, access to the marquee would be carefully restricted, and no one with a weapon would be anywhere near the Chancellor. And Tain’s ongoing health issues meant everyone had grown accustomed to him rarely eating in public, so my actual proofing duties were limited. But given our mysterious enemy was armed with quiet and lethal substances like rucho darts, I wouldn’t take any chances.

  A servant ushered Dija, Lini, and me inside the grandest of the marquees. He was dressed the same as the others, but with muscular arms straining the seams of the tunic and the posture of a swordsman, not a butler, I’d have known him as a blackstripe even if I didn’t recognize his face. “The staff first, then Merenda,” I murmured to Dija. My apprentice nodded and slipped away from us into the milling crowd, a convincing look of wonder on her round face, as if she were a small child being given a treat.

  Probably half the Council was here already, as well as many of our international guests. An explosion of gold and glimmering jewels visible through a gap identified the Crown Prince of Talafar, Prince Hiukipi, flanked by Imperial soldiers with hard, attentive faces and stiff uniforms bearing the Emperor’s symbol: a crenelated crown. Kalina made a small noise of satisfaction. She’d been trying to get a meeting with the Prince since his arrival, and the strange accident that had befallen the priest had only increased her interest. “Go work some charm,” I encouraged her. “See what you can find out.”

  Kalina headed determinedly in that direction and I accepted a cup of warm and sweet-smelling kavcha from a servant and sipped, my gaze roaming as I mentally cataloged the spices. I marked out the blackstripes in the crowd and watched Dija speaking earnestly to a servant bearing a heavy tray. I’d taught her to first count the number of servants in the room, to note their faces and their manner, and report back to me what each was carrying. Then she was to stick close to Merenda and observe anything out of the ordinary. Everyone was used to seeing her publicly attached to the Heir, and I knew they whispered that warm, gentle Merenda was a better influence than Dija’s odd uncle.

  “Isn’t the tent interesting?” Dija asked breathlessly, returning to my side. She had tucked a yellow flower into the side of her glasses and her fingers fluttered; she looked for all the world like a girl at her first party, overwhelmed with the glamour. She recited the food available in the same excited tone. “There’s fried fishballs and honey figs, and those little nut pastries with corin that Auntie Kalina likes, and bread with orange paste, and sugar crisps … can I eat anything I like, Uncle Jovan?” Several passing Councilors exchanged indulgent smiles with me. Where Etan and I had both cultivated an air of dull ordinariness, my apprentice’s cover was something different.

  “Let’s try some of everything,” I agreed, and let her lead me around until we had sampled everything being offered to guests. I kept an eye on Tain, who was with Kalina in conversation with the Talafan, and Dija relayed a detailed story about what had happened in the previous rowing heat one of our cousins had been in, providing her observations about the food and assessment of the ingredients in between commentary about the various teams.

  “Oh, look, they’re getting ready to start!” she said, taking a delicate nibble of a fishball on a stick. Then, as if as an aside, “The Honored Heir wouldn’t like these, you know, she told me the other day how she gets a headache from too much pepper. I should tell her.”

  “It wouldn’t do to have a headache during the race,” I agreed, keeping my tone neutral, but giving an approving smile at her subtle signal about the masking flavor that made the fishballs a risk. “Go on, then.”

  When I checked on Tain again he had left the Talafan and was chatting with one of the Doranite Chieftains. His face brightened and he beckoned me over. I wove through the fray, keeping my senses attuned for anything out of the ordinary. There were so many people here. The tense, suffocating feeling of dread I’d felt in the theater returned, and the urge to start pacing twitched in my feet.

  “The elusive Credo Jovan at last.” A Doranite servant translated in heavily accented Sjon the booming greeting of one of the Chieftains as I approached. I had met and briefly conversed with the King of Doran on his arrival several weeks before, but had exchanged only bare greetings with the half dozen Chieftains accompanying him. The Chieftain who had hailed me was a good head taller than I, with spiked hair and decorative colored-glass fragments glued across one of her cheekbones. She wore a glossy brown fur across her shoulders in defiance of the warm spring weather. “We heard much about you across the border.” The servant paused, gave a sidelong, uncomfortable glance at the grinning Chieftain, and shifted weight between his feet before translating the last, his head lowered. “The … uh, the Chancellor’s little attack pet, yes?”

  Tain stiffened. “Credo Jovan is my most trusted adviser and dear friend,” he said, drawing me to his side with a hard hand on my shoulder. “And one of our most esteemed members of the Council. You have heard his name because he
was instrumental both in defending our city and securing ongoing peace. None of us would be enjoying these festivities if not for him.”

  Rather than being cowed, the Chieftain laughed, clapped her own enormous hand on my other shoulder, and said something in a jovial tone. “Oh yes, a very useful pet!” the servant clarified reluctantly, his creamy brown face flushing. “We attended your most excellent play last night, you know. We do not have such things at home. We are too busy training to beat you at rowing!”

  I had already followed the line of the Chieftain’s gaze down to the lake before the servant finished translating. Enormous-shouldered Doranites were swinging their arms in powerful circles, warming up beside the water. The course was marked out as a set of arches and bobbing buoys, bright little jewels on the shining surface. The nearby Sjon team, and the pale-skinned Talafan, looked like children by comparison.

  “The race is about to start,” Tain said to the Chieftain, his tone still stiff. “Please, why don’t you have a seat.”

  Apparently unoffended by being brushed off, the Chieftain grinned and nodded. “I would not miss this! It will be over quickly. Like the climbing! Why do you have so many climbing sports when your country is so flat? You cannot compete with true mountaineers.” She shook her head and slapped her thigh as if it were a great joke.

  Tain steered me away. “Sorry,” he sighed, once we were out of earshot. “I know we need to keep things smooth with the other countries, but honor-down, they make it hard sometimes. The Talafan Prince was bloody rude to Lini, and I’ve no idea what passes for manners in Doran, but I think it’s lost in translation.”

  I shrugged. “What was it the Ambassador told us the other week? ‘Good manners in Doran is waiting until the other person takes off their best cloak before trying to take their head off’?” I gave Tain a wan smile. “Anyway, I prefer it when they’re open about it. I’ll take insults over assassins any day.”