Hollow Empire

by Sam Hawke

  In the end, though, it was not Mosecca I saw.

  A woman in black, long, matted black hair sweeping behind her, disappeared into a half-collapsed building near where Tain had been swept away. I caught my breath. Many Hands had fled in the confusion of the avalanche. As we didn’t know their identities, undoubtedly they would escape justice, just as many of Aven’s supporters had done. Perhaps in another two years we would be battling a resurgence of enemies.

  I still had a spear; I had been using it as a walking stick. Honor-down, I was so very tired. But I was drawn inside anyway, as if my legs were independent of me.

  This building had been damaged by tumbling rocks but not crushed; the frames at either side were buckled and unsteady, but remained upright. Moonlight streamed in where a rock had punched a hole through the roof.

  I heard a crack and whirled around.

  I was no athlete, but I could collapse like the best of them, and I let my body drop again now, as I’d done to distract Erel earlier, and the chunk of metal whizzed by where my head had been and sailed harmlessly into the wall.

  The Wraith walked toward me, face pursed in disappointment at my last-moment evasion. I rolled and scrambled back over a chunk of debris, panic tightening my lungs. I’d been stupid to follow, and so stupid about who I’d trusted. Because I knew that face and it wasn’t the Wraith’s.

  I yelled for help, as loud as I could, but the ruins seemed to swallow the sound up, and no answering cries followed. She tugged free a length of splintered wood and held it like a sword as she picked her way toward me carefully. “I could have just run,” she said, in perfect Sjon. “But you recognized me, didn’t you. Never trust diplomats, you know.”

  I felt my way one foot at a time, stepping backward, keeping my eyes on her. If I could stay out of her range and get back into the open, I could find help. “Or Princesses?” Something wobbled under my foot and I hastily shifted. Honor-down, Abae, I’m sorry for suspecting you.

  Zhafi laughed. “Fair. You’re a fascinating woman, Kalina of Silasta. I think we could have been friends. We’re alike, don’t you think?”

  I hated her for giving voice to it. I’d felt connected to her, admired the life she’d built in difficult circumstances. Perhaps that’s why she’d so easily fooled me. “You cut your hair,” I observed. The Wraith wig had slipped. “You couldn’t resist being part of the big night, is that it? What happened to the real Wraith?”

  Zhafi tossed the wig and scratched her cropped locks with an easy smile. “She was happy to let the boss take over for the evening. She owes me her whole livelihood, you know. I told her to call them the Prince’s Hands but they’re mine, and so is she. I made her rich and powerful. Gave her a vehicle for her … more brutal side. That’s what I love about your culture. There are so many opportunities for all kinds of women in this city. I’ve always known this is where I should have been born. A place where I would be appreciated for my skills, not my face. Like you are.”

  She stepped up onto a small pile of debris under the collapsed roof and balanced without apparent effort. Her confidence stripped me of mine. My lungs were so tight. Blood thudded in my ears and the remembered fear always lurking beneath the surface of my thoughts bubbled over. “If you like it here so much,” I retorted, “did you consider not blowing half of us up? Do you think this culture you admire so much came from starting wars?”

  “What else was I to do? Let my dear brother pack me off to some backwater as the face of the Empire, to rule over a people who secretly hate me?”

  So I hadn’t really misjudged her motivations, just what she would be willing to do to change her position. She had grown up in the halls of power, knowing herself to be cleverer and more accomplished than the brothers in whose shadows she stood. Of course her goal had never been to run away with some boy and leave all that power behind.

  “So you swapped one tyrannical man for another?” I asked. Was that something moving there, in the shadows in the corner? I kept talking, keeping her attention on me. “Did you think the Prince was offering anything but a lifetime of subjugation? I thought you were smarter than that.”

  The good humor on Zhafi’s face slipped. It was with a hard, dangerous look that she approached me, fist opening and closing as if imagining me in her grip. She advanced with a swift lunge, but in her haste, the rubble shifted and her foot plunged to the ankle in a gap between broken beams and debris. I raised my spear, mostly for show, and backed farther over the mound. If I stalled her, someone might hear us and help.

  “How did you end up making drugs for the Prince, anyway?”

  Zhafi freed her leg but paused and regarded me, head tilted and eyes narrowed, re-evaluating how much I already knew and what I might have told others. Ironically only now, too late, everything had started to make sense. There was a word for that, in muse, when you glimpsed your opponent’s strategy and disconnected moves became parts of a larger whole. I’d never been that good at muse.

  “You grow the leaves on that land you generously donate to the orphanages, right?” I tried to put gradual space between us. “And they process it for you as cheap labor. Ingenious. And you had all those people in your poorhouses to test it on. But why Crede and the Prince in the first place? His idea of a great empire is ten times as oppressive as the one you wanted to escape.”

  She feigned a stumble as she straightened, but I’d been waiting for her to try something and ducked in time. Whatever she’d thrown missed my head and thudded into another pile.

  “Did the Prince promise he’d let you rule here when he went back home to Crede? Is that it?” I laughed. “He despised women. He called you ‘cunning and ambitious’ and said he was just using you, did you know that?”

  If I’d hoped to shock her, I’d failed. “He was a religious fanatic, Kalina, he could barely hide his contempt. But he was going to put his bastard on a throne here, and marry him to me. How long do you think that foolish boy would have run things? Sjona would have been strong in my hands.” She sent a sharp, angry look up at the remaining roof above us; it was quivering. This time it was me who used her distraction to throw something at her; she easily dodged. But as she did I saw a flicker of movement behind her, something in the shadows. I’d seen it before but now I understood. Burgeoning hope made me more nervous, my words faster and more desperate.

  “That story you told about Lord Tuhash. It was all nonsense, wasn’t it? You never cared about him. You passed him over to your Hands to be killed and used against my brother without a second thought.” It all seemed so obvious now. “Did you originally intend to murder him and pretend you’d run away together? But then when you used him up for the party stunt you got the idea that if your maid Esma wore your clothes and was badly injured enough in the explosion, everyone would mistake her for you, and not come looking after you?”

  “You’re clever,” Zhafi said, scrutinizing my face like Jov examining a challenging meal. “Not clever enough, but I don’t love how close you came to ruining everything. Lucky for me you’re just an invalid.” Zhafi cleared the gap between us too fast for my tentative spear-up in response, and swung her makeshift sword; it smacked into my thigh and I fell hard on my side into the rubble. Unwilling tears blurred my vision of her standing above me, stick raised.

  I slammed my fist down on the plank beside me with all the force I could muster, and the other end flew up like a lever, hitting her knee. She buckled and dropped her weapon in her attempt to regain balance. I grabbed a handful of her clothing and yanked, bringing her down in a tangle with me amidst the wreckage. At first I had the advantage, but Zhafi was stronger. She rolled me onto my back and I clutched her wrists, trying desperately to stop her hands closing around my throat.

  “I’m … not … just … an invalid,” I forced out. We had been speaking in Talafan but I switched to Sjon, deliberately. “I’m … a diplomat, Princess. You know what diplomats are good at? Talking to people.” My gaze shifted to a point behind her head. “Persuading people.�
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  Zhafi’s eyes widened. She jerked her head around just in time to see the figure who had emerged from the shadows, and the arc of a metal bar, swung with brutal force. Then it crushed into the side of her skull like a mallet into a vegetable, and she crumpled.

  Mosecca stood over us, chest heaving.

  I sat up, coughing, panting, and got shakily to my feet.

  “She killed my boy.” Mosecca stared at the broken body with a quiet, shaking rage. “He was besotted from the moment we came to court. Princess this and Princess that. She dragged him into this. You heard her, she never cared about him for a moment. He was just a tool to be used.”

  I didn’t know how to respond. Zhafi’s head injury was terrible; I couldn’t even look at it. Lacking strength or inclination to talk with her executioner, I staggered out of the building and up a side street, blindly, numbly.

  That was when I saw my brother.

  He sat slumped on the ground by a broken chunk of boulder, his legs splayed bonelessly like a doll’s, back and head hunched.

  “Jov!” I stepped toward him. “Are you—” My words dropped away into nothing as he looked up, exposing what he had been hunched over.

  A head was in his lap, dark curls spread out as if on a pillow, the face turned away from me. I stopped, unable to move. Just as I’d recognized my brother by the top of his head, so too would I know that head anywhere. But if I took one step closer, if I looked one more time, then I’d know, then I’d be sure, then it would be real.

  “Jov,” I said again, stupidly.

  He looked up at me and it was worse, a thousand times worse. His eyes … I’d never seen anything like the look in them.

  I wanted to scream but there was nothing left in my chest, no will left in my body. I slumped down beside my brother and rested my head on his shoulder. I closed my eyes, and we sat there together with the night breeze cooling our skin. In the distance the world clattered on without us.

  INCIDENT: Poisoning of Credola Freja Iliri, Heir to Chancellor Hana Iliri

  POISON: Rucho (death feather)

  INCIDENT NOTES: Heir participated anonymously in dance audition at Performers’ Guild, but collapsed and died on stage. Needle containing traces of rucho discovered in wings by this proofer. Official report was heart failure by physical exertion but suspect another dancer responsible for assassination. Consider re-emergence of Red Piper??

  (from proofing notes of Credo Jaya Oromani)

  27

  Jovan

  There were sounds. Sensations, on my skin. Distant voices. The weight in my lap. I registered them, but they floated away again, unimportant.

  My sister was there. I couldn’t remember her arrival, but she was there, at my side, just as she always had been. Did she say something?

  It didn’t matter.

  At some point I noticed my eyes were open. That seemed pointless, so I closed them again.

  The weight in my lap.

  She said something, she was moving, and I wanted to tell her not to, because moving made time go on. If time went on, I would think again, and for now, for once, my head was silent and empty. Was this how it felt to be normal? She should stay. The three of us, we were bound together, it had always been that way. It would always be that way. If she moved, if I moved, then it would be broken, and it would not come back together. No, that was a thought. Thoughts were not good. I let it go. I would hold my head still and let them all go.

  At some point I was crying, perhaps. I noticed my body was shaking and breathing was hard, but my face felt dry. It seemed wrong. I wanted to stop, but perhaps that was only something I could do before? Maybe I couldn’t do that anymore.

  It would really be easier not to breathe.

  INCIDENT: Poisoning of Al-Anaka esSilverstream

  POISON: Beetle-eye

  INCIDENT NOTES: Silverstream village “Speaker” (religious/cultural position in some areas of countryside) found in comatose state, unable to be woken. Drawn to our attention by Oromani stewards due to reports that Al-Anaka had made public drunken threats to bring substantial (but unspecified) complaint to the Council. Described symptoms and witness reports of behavior before death suggest beetle-eye poisoning. Further examination of local administrator and officials necessary.

  (from proofing notes of Credo Adrea Oromani)

  28

  Kalina

  We sat there together in the silence. Sometimes Jov cried; ugly great squeaking breaths, his mouth hanging open and his chest heaving, like a fish on the shore. He did not seem aware he was doing it.

  Eventually I discovered, as he must have, that it is possible to run out of tears.

  The longer we sat there, the further apart we grew. Instead of sharing our grief, Jovan had retreated into some private world, into which I could not follow. I was here with the two people who had always mattered the most to me and it felt like I’d lost them both. My initial shock was transforming into something with raw, bleeding edges that hurt to touch, and a tight, spinning core building inside me.

  Looking at Tain’s silent, still form, it felt like a hot clamp had seized my spine and shaken it. It hurt, my whole body hurt. I thought I might be sick. I had to stand up, had to look away, but the knowledge was a brand in my brain. The thing growing inside me was filling all the spaces, pressing on my skin, until I could have burst.

  It was anger.

  This wasn’t fair. Not fair, not right, that everything we’d done, all we’d lost, fought for until we bled, could end in this.

  My whole body shook. I opened my mouth to scream and nothing came out but a tiny, low howl. Again and again, until I was bent over double, leaning on my own legs, my voice reduced to a guttural choke but my fury unabated. I spun on the spot, looking for something, anything, I could smash, destroy, shred. I wanted to hurt something.

  I saw her.

  The sky had clouded over again, obscuring the moon, but by dim starlight Mosecca was visible, dragging something out of the edge of the wrecked building. A leg. Mosecca was pulling the Princess’s body from the building. Needing an outlet for the thing inside me before it ate me alive, I stalked over.

  Mosecca dropped Zhafi’s leg and stepped back warily, but rage made me swift, and I grabbed her arm so tight she cried out. I didn’t care, I only wanted someone else to hurt.

  “What are you doing?” She tried to shake off my grip.

  “What are you doing?” My voice was a weird, hoarse whisper, because if I let it go, if I let it go louder, it would be a scream.

  “I’m making sure,” she hissed.

  I let go of her arm. Some of the anger was fizzling out. Mosecca had lost everything, too. The rage was already in her, she was no good target for mine. But I hauled it back, clawed it back, wrapped it tight around me, because if the anger wasn’t there, if it wasn’t holding me upright, then what was left of me?

  The two of us stood over Zhafi’s body, united in hatred. “I’m making sure,” Mosecca said again, and this time she sounded lost and desperate.

  I squatted beside the body and groped through sticky blood and dirt on the side of her neck. Her face was a crumpled paper sculpture, of course she was dead, but I felt for a pulse anyway, to make sure. For Mosecca. For me.

  Blood oozed slowly over my fingers on the neck. Mosecca sat beside me, quiet. “I can’t feel anything,” I said, and withdrew my fingers, then froze. Blood was still oozing. Still flowing. I pressed harder against the slippery slick skin and this time I felt it: the faintest, weakest beat.

  “Not dead,” I whispered, and anger surged again. Her brain was exposed, a gray and white and red wreck, yet she clung to a life she had used with such reckless disregard for others. The ultimate selfishness.

  Mosecca looked at me directly for the first time. “I tried to kill you, and your family.” She said it matter-of-factly, without emotion. “I am sorry. Now you give me justice for my boy. I owe you a life debt.”

  I started to shrug—what good did that do me, now? But Abae
’s voice sounded in my head. Blood magic and sacrifices, and lives given for lives. After everything we’d seen tonight, all the magic and strangeness and horror hidden beneath the surface of this world, why should this one thing be out of reach? “My friend,” I blurted out. “Can you do something for him? You are a witch, yes?”

  She followed my gesture to Jov and Tain. “He is dead?” An edge of sympathy in her voice. But the sidelong look she cast Tain’s body was thoughtful. Her eyes darted to my bloody fingers, to the body on the ground, then back.

  “You can do something,” I said slowly. My sluggish body thudded back to life. “This! Do this, and your life debt or whatever, you’ve paid it! Please!”

  She shook her head. “It is likely too late.”

  But an unrealistic, stupid hope had flared in me. “It is not too late. It is not too late until we’ve tried. You take this evil excuse for a person and you do whatever it is you need to make this right, make it her who’s dead, not him. You do it. You do it!”

  My own rage was reflected back at me in her bared teeth and eyes burning with ferocity. But then I understood. It was a smile.

  “Something good to come of her blood,” she whispered. “I will try.” She laughed, a breathy little giggle. “I will try.”

  We seized hold of Zhafi’s legs and dragged her unceremoniously to where my brother sat, Tain still across his lap. Mosecca sucked her breath. “His chest,” she said, unnecessarily.

  “Yes.” I didn’t look at it.

  “You get me anything I need,” she warned.

  “Yes.”

  Jov was still lost in whatever mental world he had created to escape this and barely reacted as Mosecca barked orders—those sticks, there! A stone, not that one—yes—and I sprang to them, taking advantage of the wide range of materials between the wreck of the building and what had once been a garden. Mosecca sang under her breath as she worked, swiftly binding two parcels from a piece of her clothing and shaping them into rough poppets, stuffed with some things she had carried and some she demanded I find. When filled to her satisfaction, she dragged the poppets through the bloody mess of Zhafi’s face, and then more carefully in some of Tain’s blood. His face, by contrast, looked peaceful. Beautiful.