Hollow Empire

by Sam Hawke

  “Pemu was … different. She didn’t grow up the way children normally do, in body or mind. Her mother took her down to the hospital in the city when she was little and she wasn’t learning like the others, but they said there was nothing to be done for her.” The administrator sighed, and something wistful exposed itself in her expression, softening the heavy lines crisscrossing her face. “She was healthy, mind! And the sweetest girl, always a smile for anybody. She had such a smile.… But she must have been, oh, close to thirty years, and she had a mind like a child’s. Loving, inquisitive, but not mature, I suppose. I grew up in Silasta, you know, I’ve seen people with the same thing. Nothing wrong with them!” She said the last fiercely, as if we had expressed negative judgment. “She was a good girl. Helped her family. Ran errands here into town, you know. Everyone liked her. Well, why wouldn’t you?”

  There was a long enough pause that I started to fear she expected an actual answer, but fortunately she continued, her voice a softer, ragged thing now.

  “She disappeared one afternoon on the way home. We think the smith was the last one who saw her, she got a few hinges and things there. But she never made it back, and her brother, he came up to the town that evening looking.” She shook her head with a heavy sigh. “They found her bag, with the hinges and all, behind the laneway fence on the western side of the village. Just the bag, nothing more. None of us ever saw her again.”

  “That is very sad,” said Hadrea in a much gentler tone than before. “I am sorry.”

  “What do you think happened?” I asked, and the administrator made an ugly little grunt as she shook her head.

  “We couldn’t find a thing. Never a body, or any more of her things, or even a sign of a struggle. But then she would have gone with anyone who said a kind word, you understand. Wouldn’t have known how to distrust anyone.” She pressed her lips hard together, but not before I saw the quiver she tried to suppress. “There’s a council up at the town by the river; we asked for help and they sent some fellow.” She sniffed. “He kept saying she was simple, that she’d just wandered off and fallen in the stream or something. Never mind there’d have been a body! We’re not in the wilderness here, there’s no predators as would have taken a grown woman and left no trace. No, this was people, sure as every gray hair on my head.”

  I gave her a moment to gather herself, then set my cup down. “What do you think happened?”

  The administrator looked directly at me for the first time. Her eyes were a bright, warm brown, and there was the faintest shimmer of wetness in them as she took a hard breath, in and out. “There were some strange folks in the area. I saw them myself.”

  My heart rate picked up and I tensed in anticipation. “Strangers? Foreigners?”

  “Strangers, yes, but not foreigners.” She looked at Hadrea, a kind of blazing defiance in the set of her jaw and her glimmering eyes. “A man and a couple of women, and they were an odd bunch. I certainly didn’t like the look of him. They were Darfri folks, though; I know because I saw them myself at the shrine, doing some offering or some such.”

  I squeezed Hadrea’s hand under the table but she only looked attentive, not defensive. “They were in the village the day that Pemu disappeared?” she asked, leaning forward.

  “A few days before. Not on the day itself, I suppose, but the day before, and the one before that. I told the man the council sent about them, but he didn’t think it was important. He’d never met someone like Pemu. He didn’t understand how people can be. No one in this village would have laid a hand on that girl, but … I tried to explain. Sweet a girl as ever you could know, but she did have a way of staring, and asking questions, that if you didn’t know her, well, some folks take offense. She was different, and there are those who can’t tolerate that, can’t see a thing they don’t understand without feeling angry or wanting to force it to be something they do understand.” She spread her hands hopelessly. “He didn’t know what I meant.”

  “I know what you mean,” Hadrea said quietly. She had grown up in a place not so dissimilar from this, and she had been a Darfri child among people who had hated her for her differences. “Did you see them with Pemu?”

  “No,” the administrator said wearily. “It was only a feeling. I didn’t even speak to the man. Asked around and couldn’t find a soul who had. But he’d a coldness about him, and a fervor. Handsome enough, but the type I could see taking offense easily. And I didn’t like the way he treated the women with him. Ordered them about, had them bringing him things, though he wasn’t any fancy lord or even a proper family. He had tattoos, I saw them when he was down by the stream that first day, washing, but they weren’t any family or Guild tattoos, they were just nonsense. And he didn’t like people looking at him, I saw that right away.”

  Nonsense tattoos, like the assassin’s? “So no one spoke to the man. What about the women? They must have spoken to someone, even if it was just to buy supplies or rent a room, right?” I tried to keep my tone calm but we were dancing on the edge of answers here, I could feel it.

  “They were camping, I think, but the miller up the road there sold one of the women some bread and said she was an odd one. Too quiet, sort of passive. Like an oku that learned to walk and talk, the miller said, if you’ll excuse the unkindness. He told me when I asked that he’d asked about why they were here and she said her sister was sick and they were stopping to rest a bit longer. Well, I don’t know about that.”

  “You don’t think the sister was sick?”

  She huffed a little. “I’ve seen ‘sick’ like that before, and it’s nothing a few days’ rest will cure. She’d been using those funny smokes and powders and things they use in the cities. Up in Telasa, even over the border, I’ve heard. Horrible stuff.”

  “Drugs,” I supplied, and she nodded angrily.

  “City business for people with too much time on their hands. No place for it in a good working community like this. Oh, everyone knows some of the old Speakers and such use those things, but they’ve no business getting young people involved. I’m always on the watch for it after we’ve had travelers or peddlers through. Twenty years I’ve been administrator here and I’ve never heard so many stories as I have these past few years.”

  Sensing she was hitting stride on a different rant, I steered her gently back. “So one of the women was using drugs, you think?”

  “She had the look anyways. Thin, twitchy, eyes all looking at things that weren’t there. Giggling or tearing up just wandering round the street. When the man was doing … I don’t know, his offering or what have you, at the shrine, she was just standing there, mouth open, like she was catching insects.” She leaned forward suddenly. “You asked what I think happened. Well, I’ll tell you. It’s haunted me since, I don’t mind saying. I think some of these drugs make people act like they wouldn’t act if they were seeing straight. Do things they wouldn’t normally do. I think people like that, ’specially ones with a cruel edge anyway, might hurt a person in that state. I think that man saw Pemu and maybe he thought it was funny or maybe he didn’t like the way she looked or talked, and I think he took her on a whim, just led her away from us, back to their camp.” She didn’t bother to try to stop her lips trembling this time, and her voice went high and soft. “I think they tormented her and killed her, is what I think.”

  We were all silent a moment as this ugly thought sat between us. But then I shook my head. We were past the point of coincidences. However possible the scenario she painted was—and I’d seen the kind of ugliness she was envisioning—this was not an isolated case. Something was happening out here. Drugs, missing women, dead spirits. I frowned, picturing the village layout in my head. “The western laneway where you found Pemu’s bag,” I said. “Where was that, relative to the Darfri tree?”

  The administrator looked up in surprise. “Oh. Close, I suppose. Fifty treads or so?”

  “And was Pemu Darfri?”

  “No.” She looked between us. “What’s all this about? Is
there some sort of … some sort of nasty magic involved?” If possible, she looked even more horrified at this thought, and something shifted, hardened, as she looked at Hadrea. I almost regretted asking the question. This would do nothing to help the Darfri in this town, who doubtless already had been served a balancing dose of resentment along with the changes she’d listed.

  “I don’t know,” I said truthfully. “But Pemu’s not the only one who’s disappeared from the estates these past few months. Have you heard anything else? Any other missing persons in other local places?”

  She shook her head. “Not as I’ve heard. The man they sent from the town might be able to tell you. But he wouldn’t be equipped to deal with anything … supernatural.”

  The problem was, of course, that neither was I.

  INCIDENT: Potbelly Market poisoning (19 victims)

  POISON: Moonblossom

  INCIDENT NOTES: Nineteen deaths and forty-eight non-fatal cases recorded in the hospital were traced to consumption of a red sugar-gum sweet sold in Potbelly Market during karodee. Sweet sellers arrested but early indications are that underestimated demand during busy time led to hasty preparation of sweets and toxic food dye using red color from moonblossom berries, likely negligent rather than intentional. Craft and Art Guilds both tasked by Council with developing standards for dyes to be used in food and fabric, including in relation to toxic substances. (Note: this proofer is satisfied sweet producer’s mistake was unintentional but intends further investigation into source of moonblossom paste.)

  (from proofing notes of Credola Reen Oromani)

  22

  Kalina

  “I begin,” Etrika said, as she settled herself on a cushion and pulled the teapot gratefully toward her, “to understand why your brother wanted to flee the city.”

  Tain, looking harried, sat beside her.

  “Council meeting went well, then?” I asked, bringing them each a cup.

  “Never in all my years have I heard so many people think of so many ways to chase themselves around in verbal circles. What’s the word I want here, dear?” She took a grateful sip of tea. “Oh yes. ‘Dithering,’ I think that covers it. Honestly, if it were up to this old lady, we’d throw the lot of them in the lake and have done with it.”

  Tain gave a faint grin and Dee, who was finishing up making the bread with Sjease in the kitchen, giggled. It was a sound we hadn’t heard in days, and it both heartened and saddened me. In some ways this state was worse than when Silasta had been under siege. Then, we had been faced with a visible threat: a giant army, surrounding the city. We had known what they wanted and what they would try to do. How could a whole city prepare for bombs in the night? How could we face an enemy who seemed to have infiltrated every stratum of society? Worse, an enemy using our own people against us, to an end game we didn’t understand?

  “No word on the missing boat hand,” Tain said, after a grateful sip of tea. Two days ago there had been something of a breakthrough when a vessel coming south from Telasa had been caught with a crate onboard concealing some kind of dried plant, but the captain of the vessel insisted he had no knowledge of the crate. One of his long-term crew had disappeared the same day as the seizure and hadn’t been seen since. “So I think everyone’s convinced she smuggled it aboard.”

  “Does it mean it came from the Empire?”

  “The spymaster’s agents in Izruitn reckon there’s a lot of street people and war refugees addicted to something that sounds an awful lot like Void, though that’s not what they call it. I’d say it’s pretty likely it’s crossing the border from that direction.”

  “Are they still sure they have the ringleader in jail, then?”

  Etrika didn’t buy my falsely casual tone, and gave me a level look over the rim of her teacup. “They are getting desperate, dear. The Warrior-Guilder and the Captains are all very focused on their raids and their informants, and all the Families seem rather more concerned that none of their own members be hauled up in front of the determination council.” She sighed. “Perhaps some of the Council still believe Aven is the ringleader, but it doesn’t seem to matter, one way or the other. Whether she’s giving the orders or not, this Wraith character and her people seem perfectly able to carry out their plans without contact with her.”

  Tain set down his tea, looking guarded. Like me, he could not discuss Aven without dredging up memories he’d rather have forgotten. The guilty, pained expression that passed across his face now told me he was still obsessing over the possibility that he had divulged information to her in their conversations that she had somehow used as part of this plot. “I keep telling them we have to be prepared to face an additional external threat, even if we don’t know where it’s coming from. Some of the room agrees, but right now the Hands have us all running scared. We might have picked up some of the dealers and the muscle this week but no one’s got us any closer to the Wraith. And we know she’s capable of mass destruction, so that’s got to be the threat we’re focused on, I guess.”

  Even with the memory of the assassin’s ominous warning waiting behind my eyelids every night, I could understand that. Whoever the “we” he had told me was coming might be, the Wraith was already here.

  “Has Aven said anything else?”

  “No, I’m afraid not,” Etrika said. “The determination council people came in and gave us an update today. If she is behind all of this, she’s certainly not saying so. I believe she made one of the interrogators cry yesterday. Now, I’m not an unsympathetic woman, but I think perhaps someone might have chosen the wrong career, hmm?” Etrika reached across and patted my hand with her spotted, wrinkled one. “And what about you, dear? Has there been any word from your brother?”

  I pinched my lips closed and shook my head. I had known he would not be able to send a message except in the most urgent and dire circumstances, so the silence should have been a comfort. But it wasn’t. I missed his counsel, his presence, his brain, and I worried desperately that Mosecca and her strange magics might have followed him from the city somehow. She’d proven herself capable of using even the most innocuous of creatures to endanger us.

  Tain’s shoulders drooped. He was doubtless thinking the same thing. The morning after the Guardhouse explosion he had tried to convince me we should send a troop of soldiers after them to protect them, just in case, but the truth was, doing that was more likely to draw attention to them than not. Sjease kept me well informed of gossip among the Families through their various sources, and the rumors about Jovan’s whereabouts all assumed he was either hiding in his apartments, avoiding the shame and dishonor, or (the more sinister version, usually quickly halted within range of Sjease) with Tain in the Manor, working the Chancellor’s will in secret. For now, unless our enemy was sitting in this room with us, they likely did not know where Jovan was. There was a comfort in that. Mosecca was a threat, and a frightening one at that, but she was one grieving woman, and Jov had Hadrea. I wasn’t sure there was a person alive who could better protect him from attacks, supernatural or otherwise.

  We finished our tea, and Dee and Sjease stacked the bread rounds and packed some up for Tain to take back with him, and for a while the illusion of an ordinary afternoon held. But eventually, after Etrika had excused herself and Dee had settled in the corner with an international botanical textbook and a sketch of the seized plant that Tain had procured for her, trying to find a match, the same worries returned.

  Tain gestured at the book I had open in front of me. “Did you get anything out of that?”

  The dead man’s book. I was reading it as much out of habit as any expectation that it would magically convey new information, but the depth of feeling the assassin had shown as he died had reminded me of an earlier theory. “I’ve been wondering if it’s a cult.” He blinked. “I’ve read about it happening—people in a remote place who are self-sufficient and isolate themselves from the rest of society. There was a place I read about on the other side of a Marutian swampland that got foun
d after a long drought, where they’d not seen other people in fifty years, and basically treated the village elders as gods. What if it’s something like that?”

  “And it’s a cult who hate us?”

  “Think about it like this. What if a person or a family with money was involved in a big scandal, or a loss of honor, some social embarrassment. Fortunes know there’ve been enough of them over the years. Whole families have had to leave before, haven’t they, when their status becomes untenable, as a last resort?”

  Tain’s gaze met mine. He knew better than anyone about that particular last resort. I hurried on. “Imagine if a group of them left—not just Silasta but Sjona. They’ve got money but no status because for a big enough scandal word would spread to all the cities. They’re bitter and resentful, thinking that Silastian society ruined their lives. What if they started their own community, cut off contact with the outside world over time? If it was long enough ago they could have grown in numbers over time, and all the time feeding an old grudge.” We don’t forget. We are patient. We are coming.

  He leaned over the book, tracing the unfamiliar letters amidst the familiar. “And if that happened a long time ago? Over time, language might change, mightn’t it? We need new words for things all the time, and the way people use words doesn’t stay static.” At my surprised expression, Tain raised an eyebrow. “You told me that last week.” He adopted a sanctimonious tone and wagged his finger. “And you say I don’t listen! Unfairly maligned, again!”

  I grinned. “Sorry. Habit.”

  “Not just a pretty face, you know,” he said. He looked back at the book. “So if that’s it, what, they just made it their life’s work to get back at the city?”

  “It sounds stupid when you say it out loud.” I pushed the book away and buried my face in my hands. Honor-down, I was tired again. I’d barely left this chair today, but stress and fear used all kinds of invisible muscles and energy.