Hollow Empire

by Sam Hawke

  “Tain?” He jumped as if I’d struck him, then looked at me with an expression suggesting he was on the brink of a cross exclamation, then thought better of it. “There’s not much to be done in this.” I gestured up at the sky. “We can’t do anything for the dead, and the Hands are long gone. We should get under cover.”

  He nodded, eyes still on the work on the building, but instead he sat on the stone and dropped his chin onto his hands. After a moment’s hesitation, I shrugged and sat down beside him. I was already soaked through anyway. He shuffled to free the bottom of his cloak and held it up by one hand over my head, like a particularly pathetic parasol.

  “Thank you, good sir,” I muttered, and he let out an involuntary snort of laughter that faded into the rain so quickly I might have imagined it. We sat there in the dark and cold and wet for what felt like an age.

  “They killed Sukseno,” I said after a while. “But they left the assassin. You know that means we were right. The Hands either don’t care about the assassin because they didn’t hire him, so didn’t care to either rescue or kill him. Or else they wanted to silence him but assumed he was killed in the blast. But by all the fortunes they were afraid of what Sukseno might tell us. They wanted to make sure of him.”

  He nodded, and some of the anger flared up in his face again. “Our complacency. We’re so used to the Hands sneaking around in the background, it never even occurred to us they’d try a direct attack.”

  “One of Baina’s engineers on her team must be a Hand, because they’ve been entirely too free with these devices to not have a person who’s worked with those chemicals before.”

  “Oh. I forgot to tell you,” he said, frowning. “Sorry. Yeah. The determination council thought so too, even before this latest. They’ve been watching every member of Baina’s team, and Baina herself, for several days.”

  “You’re supposed to be reporting back on everything that goes on in Council,” I said, cross. “It’s hard enough putting this together without you withholding things.”

  A muscle in his jaw clenched. “I didn’t withhold,” he grumbled. “I just forgot. There’s a lot going on, in case you haven’t noticed.”

  I opened my mouth to snap back, then closed it firmly. This was just tiredness talking, tiredness and bickering. It was always hardest to hide our moods from those closest to us. “Never mind.”

  He took a drink from the flask, then linked his hands behind his back and stretched, then shook his shoulders loose. “Anyway, I know someone on the Council’s going to say this but I don’t think we can assume it was just revenge or retaliation, what they did to Sukseno. I think you’re right and they knew he was trying to make a deal to talk about who they’re really taking orders from.” He seemed to have regained some energy. He had another swig from the flask and stood, looking more resolute.

  I hated to add to the burden just as he seemed to be getting himself together, but the stone dread in my stomach had turned when he’d said the words “revenge or retaliation.” “Something happened with Dee this afternoon,” I told him, and relayed what had happened.

  “Mosecca? One of the Princess’s ladies?” He blinked at me. “But the Talafan are gone.”

  “It was her. I didn’t imagine it,” I said quickly. “I’ve seen her a few times. I only just got a good enough look to recognize her today. I don’t know how she managed to stay behind but I’m sure it was her. And it fits, don’t you see? Those stupid rumors about Jov, and it’s possible that Zhafi told her the full story about what happened at the masquerade, too, which means she could blame me, too, for my part.”

  “And you really think she’s … what? Using those dolls to do magic?”

  “I don’t know! I tried to ask Ectar about witches,” I said. “After what happened with the bird. And he was really freaked out by it. He said it was forbidden.”

  “Honor-down, just what we need.” He paced back and forth in the rain in front of me, like he was channeling my absent brother. The exhausted defeat I’d seen a short time ago seemed to have been subsumed by something else, something brighter and harder and more fragile. “Witches trying to murder you as well as everything else. It wasn’t your fault! The Hands and their employer or owner or whatever they are, they’re the ones who are responsible for Tuhash and Zhafi, not you, not Jov. Certainly not Dee! She’s just a kid!”

  “Funny things can happen to people when they lose a child,” I said quietly. “He was her only son. I don’t blame her for hating us. The court women live very different lives to us, Tain, but one thing I know is how important their sons are to them. They carry on the family name and ambitions. And anyway, parenthood is universal. Our city took that from her, and as far as she knows, my family was the most to blame.”

  “You’re going to have double the guards,” he said, voice speeding up, his posture straightening. “We’ll get an artist to draw up a likeness and post it on every streetlamp if we need to. We’ll catch her.” He stopped pacing, put his hand on my shoulder, and gave me his best reassuring grin. But his eyes were too bright, his voice too fast, and a suspicion had uncurled inside me. I snatched the flask from him and opened the lid, and he cried out in response, trying to snatch it back. That was all I needed. I was no proofer, to test the bottle, but I could read Tain as easily as my brother could read food and drink, and sour anger and worry froze me on the spot.

  “I know what’s in here,” I told him. “That’s darpar, Tain. I’m not Jov, I might not be able to tell you exactly what the symptoms are or what it’ll do to you, but I can tell you that I know perfectly well how it changes how you act, how you move, so don’t think you can fool me.”

  Tain opened his mouth to argue, closed it, dropped his hands away from the bottle, and sighed. “Lini, of everyone in the world, you’re the last I could ever fool. Don’t know why I’d ever bother trying.” He scrubbed his fingers through his hair and then sat back on the rocks. I joined him, frowning, but he raised a reassuring hand and flashed me a weak but disarming grin. “You’re right. It’s been a bit of an issue. Turns out this stuff’s addictive. I used it during the siege and it was all right—maybe because I didn’t take much—but this time it’s been a bit trickier. But Jov talked to me about it before he left and I’m following his instructions to come off it gradually. You can’t do it all at once. Don’t worry, he already got plenty mad at me about it.” He gave me another weak smile.

  I frowned. “He didn’t say anything to me about it.”

  “I didn’t think he’d protect my feelings, to be perfectly honest, but I have to say I’m grateful for the attempt.” He seized one of my hands with his; it felt strong but bony, as if even his hands had lost flesh. “Even if it was ultimately a useless game. There’s no keeping things from you.”

  “Just … no more, all right? There’s enough going on without me having to worry that you’re poisoning yourself to keep everyone else happy.”

  “I’ll do everything Jov told me to wean myself off it. I promise. You think I want to hear the lecture he’ll give me if it’s still on my breath when he gets back?”

  Reluctantly, I grinned. “Tain Iliri. Fearless in the face of a desperate, cruel enemy. Scared into good behavior by the promise of a lecture.”

  “Be fair. Your brother’s power to both shame and bore is very strong.”

  I snorted, but my amusement faded quickly. Now that we knew who to look for we could keep Mosecca from getting close to me. But my brother, the man she thought had killed her son, was out on the estates. If she could send animals to do her bidding, perhaps the distance between them was no hindrance.

  I remembered the great bird, the talons in my flesh, and how easily it had flown away despite the blow from Hadrea, effortlessly gliding above the land, clearing vast distances so quickly it had taken only moments to lose it from sight. I shivered, and not from the rain and the cold, but from a fear and a dread that had taken visceral root inside me.

  * * *

  Erel returned not long a
fter, bearing warmer clothes for us and promises that the Manor staff would be sending down food and tea for the people who had been working out in the downpour to secure the building and take care of the wounded. Despite there not being much we could contribute, he seemed as reluctant as I to leave Tain here, and Tain would not leave until the essential work was done. At least one advantage of the weather was that it had masked the sound and the subsequent commotion so that we were not having to deal with hundreds of bystanders and frightened Councilors in addition to everything else.

  Most of the injured Guards had been taken urgently to the hospital and I expected to find the same of the assassin, but he had only been moved inside the Guardhouse near the bodies of the dead, in a hastily cleared room. A couple of physics were looking over him when we came in, and one of them addressed Tain in a low voice, face downcast. Once I got a proper look, I understood why.

  I’d seen compression injuries like that after the first explosion. Some during the siege, as well. People could come back from a grievous injury to one limb, or part of it—Chen had lost everything below her knee and had recovered, and hers was far from the only artificial limb around town—but not something like this.

  Everything below his hips was ruined.

  “We can’t amputate,” the physic, a short man I didn’t know, with spectacles and a balding pate, told us in a low voice, as if not wanting to upset the patient. He needn’t have bothered; the assassin had his eyes closed and his body was motionless but for his shallow breaths. “He’s on our best pain-numbing agent, and that’s about all we can do in the circumstances. Blood loss … organs shutting down in trauma shock … I’m sorry, Honored Chancellor, but it’s only a question of time before he succumbs to one or the other.” He shrugged. No wonder they hadn’t moved him to the hospital. Not only would further moving his wreck of a body likely accelerate his death, nothing was to be gained by taking him there instead of here to die.

  Taking with him any chance I had of learning who he was.

  “We can send someone for you if he wakes up,” a Guard suggested, but who knew how long we’d have if he did? Maybe, delirious on pain medication and with only a short time left to live, he’d be willing to speak.

  So we waited. Periodically Tain had short, tense meetings with various officials in the corner, or went off somewhere to inspect something. Erel drifted off to an exhausted sleep once or twice, his gangly, youthful form on an awkward bed of folded blankets. Physics came in and out to check on the assassin and the other patient, a Guard, whose injuries they considered too serious to risk transport. Some of his colleagues and then a tearful elderly couple came to see and murmur gentle words over him. I couldn’t sleep, despite my bone-deep tiredness; I could only sit, and stare, and worry. Tain was right; no matter what we did, what we seemed to achieve, they always seemed to be ahead of the game.

  But they had left this man here to die, neither bothering about finishing him off nor troubling to rescue him. Was he so unimportant to them? Perhaps my certainty that his identity was critical to the mystery was a mistake after all. Maybe he really was just a hired hand, loyal only to the code of his profession, such as it was. Maybe I was a fool for sitting here in the cold, betting on the thinnest chance that he would even wake up again, let alone speak to me.

  “Any change?” I asked the physic, for what felt like the fiftieth time, when he next came in. He adjusted his glasses and gave me a tolerant sort of look as he shook his head. Erel, who had looked up blearily, closed his eyes again.

  It was perhaps an hour later, when all my joints pounded with a constant deep ache and my muscles were cold and stiff, that he woke. I had been staring at him without really seeing much, close to drifting off myself; most of the activity in the Guardhouse had ceased for the night, though the blast site would continue to be guarded from the outside by some unfortunate soldiers who’d drawn that wet and depressing duty from their Guilder. He stirred suddenly, his mouth working, then took some louder and deeper breaths. By the time his eyes had flickered open, I was already up and by the bedside.

  “Can you hear me?” I asked, in Trade, and his eyes focused on my face in apparent response. “You’re hurt. Someone is coming to help.” I looked over my shoulder. “Erel! Wake up! Find the physic, he’s around somewhere.”

  The man looked at me a long moment. He began to moan, deep in his throat, and the sound grew louder and louder. His muscles worked and jerked and his eyes moved blearily in and out of focus, and still the moan grew until it was a hoarse scream of pain.

  A flurry of activity followed; Erel found the physic and Tain came in too, and Chen. She’d managed to get changed at some point, as she was wearing her uniform now, and looked neat and capable and in charge.

  “Stay back from the patient, please,” the physic said irritably, as Tain, Chen, and I had been crowded close around the man, whose cries paused only for the space of a gulped breath before starting again. My stomach turned. It was a horrible sound, an apt reflection of the horror of waking up to find the lower half of your body gone. The physic took a bottle from a trolley beside the pallet and muttered a soothing string of words—barely audible—as he administered one spoonful, then another.

  “It is more than it is safe to give,” the physic said, heaving a sigh. “But he should not spend his last hours in that kind of pain.”

  After that the patient’s cries and moans slowly died back and then stopped. His eyes closed again. While the physic checked on the Guard, we stepped in closer again.

  “Can you hear me?” I asked him again, and at first I thought he would not respond, but then his tongue darted out to lick his dry lips, then again, and he turned his head a tiny bit to look at us, his eyes roaming over us all.

  “Yes,” he said, croaky but clear enough.

  “There was another explosion,” Tain said slowly. “You’ve been hurt by falling stones.”

  The pain relief was obviously starting to work. “How … bad?” the assassin asked.

  “It’s bad,” I said, and his gaze met mine. “Help us,” I said quietly. “You have nothing to lose now. You’re not going to have a career as an assassin after this.”

  “Not … assassin.” Perhaps it was only the effect of the pain relief, but his expression twisted up so that he looked almost hurt. “I am … a soldier.”

  Tain bristled beside me but I laid a calming hand on his, hushing him. But if I had hoped the man might say more, it was another disappointment; his eyelids dropped closed and he didn’t open them again. His panting breaths became smoother and even. Too much pain relief might have made his agony more bearable but it also made it hard for him to stay conscious.

  We loomed over him for a while longer but he continued to sleep. The physic shooed us away from the pallet again and, frustrated, aware that might have been the only conversation we would have, I returned to my position by the wall. Erel started to fall asleep again, and when his head had completely fallen on his chest I nudged Tain. “I’ll stay here in case he wakes again,” I said. “But you take Erel back. There’s no point the three of us sitting here all night, and he won’t leave if you don’t. He’s seen enough people die.”

  Tain looked like he might argue, but then crouched by the boy and gently woke him. Erel, hiding yawns behind his hands, made a weak protest, but looked more relieved than anything, and I shot Tain a grateful look as he walked out. “I’ll update you later,” I muttered.

  But truth be told, I’d lost any real hope in learning anything more from him before the man died. He considered himself a soldier, not an assassin; well, that fit with his attitude. His previous behavior had shown us he was more zealot than mercenary. Maybe that was all we would ever know.

  At that moment, as if summoned, his body twitched and I levered myself up, hopes rising again. He twitched again, and again, his eyes rolling about rapidly behind the lids, then let out a burbling burp. I stood beside him, optimistic again, and he opened his eyes. This time it was no gentle fluttering,
but a sudden shocked opening. The groan intensified and then his chest jerked, tendons stood out on his neck, and foul-smelling sick erupted from his mouth and nose. Some of it splashed on me even though I leapt back in disgust. His body was twitching, his face contorted. He vomited again, with less volume but also less strength, and he was unable to turn his own head, so most of it stayed on his face. I stared, horrified. Where had these new symptoms come from?

  And then I knew, with a sickening twist in my stomach, where they’d come from. These were not the symptoms of traumatic pressure injuries: he’d been poisoned. Not by the Hands, who could have slit his throat like Sukseno’s if they’d wanted, but by someone after that, someone who did it while he was under our medical care, just like the assassin had done to the victims at the arena. And I don’t know what to do. Honor-down, if only Jov were here! I opened my mouth to shout for a physic but the words died in my throat. Caution, after all, had been braided firmly into Oromani souls, and at least a dozen people had been in this room and nearish the patient in the time I’d been here, but the person with the closest contact had been the physic. Still, what else could I do? “This man’s been poisoned!” I cried out. “Someone, help!”

  The Guard who had been sleepily monitoring the patient—even with his legs crushed, after his initial capture and murder of his cellmates, Chen was taking no chances—leapt to attention, and raced out of the room.

  The assassin moaned, slumped and drooling on his pallet, and a terrible certainty took root inside me. It was too late for an antidote, even if we knew what poison had been used. He was dying, and quickly. Despite everything, it didn’t feel like justice or vengeance or a deserved end. It just felt like another painful, unnecessary bit of violence. “I didn’t do this,” I blurted out, staring at him in horror. “You tried to kill everyone I care about, but I didn’t do this.” I didn’t know why it was so important to me that he knew that.