Styke searched the ridgeline. “I need to find a horse for Celine,” he mused. “She’s plenty old enough.”
“Ben …”
He waved her off. “I’ll think about it. We’re sticking around for now. Attend to our wounded, and keep everyone on their toes in case I change my mind.”
Ibana finally nodded, seemingly content with the idea of a contingency plan. “We lost twenty or so of old bodies and maybe sixty of the new ones. More are wounded. You want me to try to fill our numbers from the refugees?”
“Sure.”
“Okay, I’ll …” Ibana trailed off. “Who is that?”
Styke turned to follow her gaze, and was surprised to see a dozen horses swimming across the current of the Hadshaw River. It was almost dark, and it was difficult to see their riders clearly until they reached the close bank of the river. The riders wore sunflower-yellow cavalry jackets just like Ibana and Styke, but Styke had never seen these men before. He was suddenly apprehensive, resting his hand on the hilt of his boz knife as they made their way toward Styke, coming to a stop with horses dripping.
The man at their front wore a colonel’s stars at his lapel. He was young and fresh-faced, no more than twenty-five, and he examined Styke’s old cavalry jacket with a troubled expression. After a few moments of silence, he finally cleared his throat. “I’m looking for General Vlora Flint.”
“Who are you?”
“Colonel Willis of the Eighteenth Brigade.”
Styke shared a long look with Ibana. “Did Lindet finally send some soldiers to help us fight this thing?”
“She did,” Colonel Willis said, stiffening.
“I hope it’s more than a brigade,” Ibana said.
Willis scoffed. “A brigade? The Second Field Army of Fatrasta is camped about ten miles from here.”
Styke felt a laugh bubble up from his stomach and escape his lips. He bent over, slapping his knee.
“I’m not sure what’s so funny,” Willis said.
“What’s funny,” Styke said, wiping his face, “is that we could have used you twenty-four hours ago.” He couldn’t help but wonder if this field army had planned on being late, hoping the Dynize would wipe out the Riflejacks. It was something Lindet would do.
“I can see that,” Willis said, sparing a decidedly haughty glance for the battlefield.
“Did you know there’s another thirty thousand Dynize camped just south of here?”
Willis pursed his lips. “We’ve been informed, yes. But that’s not my concern.”
“Then what is?”
“I’m here to arrest General Flint.”
CHAPTER 5
Michel Bravis crouched in the doorway of a boarded-up shop in the northern suburbs of the city of Landfall. His eyes were blurry from lack of sleep and more than a few too many swigs from the flask in his jacket pocket. The air reeked of the dead morass of the nearby fens, and somewhere in the distance a pack of dogs began to bay and yip. A single pistol shot rang out, and they were silenced.
The city was eerily quiet, and he wondered just how many of the residents had managed to flee before the Dynize Army occupation. It seemed as though half the homes and businesses on any given street were abandoned. It was too quiet, even for this late hour of the night, and Michel had a constant, twisting pain in the pit of his stomach from the realization that this was no longer the city he had grown up in—the city he had sworn to two different masters that he would protect.
He tried to tell himself that Fatrasta had recovered from their war for independence from the Kez. They’d lost Landfall before, and regained it. But a voice in the back of his head told him that this was different—that everything had changed—and he had to constantly fight a rising terror.
Michel took a swig from his flask, grimacing at the bitter taste of the whiskey, and gave it a shake. Just a few more swallows, and he’d be out of liquid courage for the night.
“You don’t have time to be a coward, Michel,” he told himself.
“Easy for you to say,” he whispered back. “You’re getting drunk.”
“No, I am perfectly sober.”
He squeezed his eyes shut. “No one should have to be perfectly sober in a city occupied by an enemy force.” He opened one eye hesitantly, squinting into the street, where the only light came from a single gas lantern fifty yards down the cobbles. His ears picked up a sound and he tilted his head toward the street, trying to make it out.
He was soon able to recognize the tramp of boots, and he willed himself farther into the darkness of the doorway of the boarded-up store. He heard an authoritative shout in a foreign language, and a few moments later a platoon of Dynize soldiers marched into view, bathed in the light of that single lantern.
It was a strange procession: men and women with fire-red hair, pale skin, and ashen freckles, armed with outdated muskets and curved breastplates, wearing old-fashioned morion helms with their finned, kettle-hat shape. Their uniforms were turquoise, decorated with colorful feathers and bleached-white human and animal bones. The word “exotic” came to mind, but it was a word often associated with “quaint,” and the army that had occupied Landfall was anything but that.
A soldier at the front, his breastplate decorated with a lacquered crimson stripe, called out an order and the platoon turned left at the lantern, heading down the street toward Michel. He inhaled sharply, fighting the urge to reach for his flask, knowing that any movement might attract the eye of a passing soldier.
As the Dynize patrol drew closer, Michel whispered to himself under his breath. “My name is Pasi. I am an Adran immigrant whose wife and children left the city before the invasion. I came down from the plateau to scavenge and was caught out after curfew. I am waiting out the night so I can return home in the morning.” He repeated the alibi to himself twice more and fell silent, hugging the arms of his threadbare wool jacket and waiting for one of the soldiers to spot him.
They marched by, close enough he could have reached them in three strides. Soldiers glanced in alleyways, doors, and toward dark windows, but no one cried out, and the platoon did not stop.
Michel waited until they had turned the next corner before he allowed himself a sigh of relief and the tiniest sip from his flask. “Bloody pit,” he whispered. “That was a heart attack I didn’t need.” He put his hand on his chest until he could feel the thumping of his heart steady out. He settled into a more comfortable position to wait.
He remained in the doorway for over forty minutes, frequently squinting through the dark at his pocket watch, until a figure emerged from the shadows of the alleyway across the street.
“Bloskin!” a voice called out, wavering.
Michel tensed, ready to run if his rendezvous had somehow turned into an ambush. “It’s a good night to see a friend,” Michel responded. The figure hesitated, as if checking the code words against her memory, then came far enough into the street so that Michel could make out some of her features. She had long, dirty-blond hair and a heavy brow, her nose and cheeks broad. Michel wouldn’t have wanted to meet her in a dark alley.
And yet, he realized with in inward laugh, here he was doing just that. “Over here,” he called.
The woman joined him in the doorway, pressing herself into the darkness. “You’re Bloskin?” she asked.
Another of Michel’s aliases. He wondered how many he’d gained just in the last three weeks since the occupation, and hoped that he’d be able to keep them all straight. “I am.”
“Hendres sent me. My name is Kazi Fo—”
“Wait,” Michel said, pressing a finger to her lips. “Don’t tell me your full name. In fact, don’t tell anyone your real name, if you can help it. Not on a night like this. Where are they?”
“I left them across the street. I wanted to make sure it was safe.”
“Well done. You told them my name?”
“I told them you are Bloskin, a Blackhat Bronze Rose. I told them you knew their mother.”
Michel squin
ted at her. “Are you a Blackhat?”
“An Iron Rose. But I don’t have it with me. It’s hidden.”
“Good. Don’t show that Rose to anyone. It’s too dangerous. Why didn’t you leave the city during the invasion?”
Kazi glanced back into the street, taking a half step away from Michel. He could practically feel her distrust. Blackhats were the Lady Chancellor’s secret police. They were inherently distrustful but should always be able to count on each other. The invasion and subsequent occupation had changed all the old rules. “You don’t have to tell me anything about yourself,” Michel reassured. “I was just curious. We all have our reasons.”
“Yes, we do,” Kazi said, her tone standoffish.
Michel needed trust right now, people he could depend on. But his list of trusted contacts was pitifully small, so why should hers be any longer? If he wanted to know more about Kazi, he’d have to ask their mutual contact. “Get out of here,” he said. “Get some sleep. There will be more families tomorrow.” He grabbed her sleeve as she turned to go. “Cover your head. Your hair stands out in the darkness. Also, careful of the patrols. They’re changing up their routes.”
He waited until Kazi had headed back toward the secret paths up to the Landfall plateau, before crossing the street and entering the alley she’d emerged from a few minutes prior. The alley was littered with old crates, barrels, and other refuse, and he couldn’t immediately pick out anyone hiding there.
“I’m Bloskin,” he said in a loud whisper. “Kazi has gone home. You’re with me now.”
Slowly, figures emerged from their hiding places. The first was a man, medium height with long, dark hair under a flatcap. He held a bundle in his arms, which Michel quickly realized was a child, no more than a year old. Five more children of various ages followed.
“Kazi said you know my wife,” the man whispered urgently.
Part of Michel’s job as a spy had always been knowing when to tell the truth and when to lie—and when to walk the gray places in between. “I don’t, actually. I don’t know who you are, except that your wife is a Silver Rose, and we need to get you out of the city. That’ll have to be good enough, unless you want to risk the Dynize purges.”
The children huddled around their father, who seemed at a loss. He looked around at the waiting faces before finally nodding at Michel. “We don’t have any choice but to trust you. But this is my family. If you so much as—”
“Don’t threaten me,” Michel said with a tired sigh. “It’s childish. You can either let me do my job, or I can go find somewhere to sleep. Now, are we getting you out of the city or not?”
“Is Bloskin even your real name?” the father asked. Michel could hear the tension in his voice, and he wished that for once this process could be simple.
“No, and I suggest you not tell me yours.” Michel squinted at his pocket watch, trying to discern the time in the darkness. “Kazi got you here late, so if we’re going to go, we need to do it now. Make a decision.”
The father’s mouth formed a hard line. “We’ll go.”
“Right, follow me. And no one make a peep.”
Michel led the family back the way they’d come and began to cross streets and duck through alleys in a pattern that might look to an observer to be entirely random. They crisscrossed their own path several times, but he led them steadily north through the suburbs until the streets began to widen and the tenements and stores began to thin. They were soon among small, two-story houses, ducking through one of the many Palo quarters of the city, where the streets weren’t cobbled, the gutters were filled with trash, and the Dynize patrols were fewer.
For eight nights Michel had done a variation of the same route—carefully planned out during the day—and managed not to cross paths with a single Dynize patrol. On this night, however, the patrols were constant and the group was forced to hide almost every hour.
They waited for the third of the patrols to pass by, crouching beneath one of the stilted houses on the floodplains north of the city. Over a hundred strong, and led by a soldier whose breastplate was lacquered black, the patrol carried torches, which they thrust into the alleys and under the houses as they went, and Michel quietly urged the children to move farther into the darkness.
“They’ve changed the routes,” Michel whispered to the father. He swore to himself and listened to the ticking of his watch in his breast pocket, knowing time was running short.
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know. Could be they’re getting wise to people leaving the city. Could be that they just change their routine every week or so. Either way, it’s going to be more and more dangerous to leave the city from here on out.”
“Are we going to be able to get out?” There was a tinge of desperation to the father’s voice.
Michel hesitated. If he was smart, he’d leave the seven of them here to try and make it on their own. He’d flush his safe house in Upper Landfall, cut off his contacts with Hendres, Kazi, and anyone else, and find the deepest hole in Greenfire Depths to wait out this occupation.
He didn’t need to help these people. His own mother was safely out of the city, and as a spy he’d never been close to anyone else.
But despite his alternate loyalties, he didn’t believe anyone deserved to be snatched up by foreign occupiers, least of all children.
“You’ll get out,” Michel finally said. “But we have to move fast.” The patrol passed, and Michel led the family out from beneath the stilted houses. He picked up the smallest of the children, cradling her face against his neck, then began to hurry them all along at a quicker pace. They crossed the sandiest, deepest part of the floodplains and entered the fens. The wetlands were bisected by hundreds of drainage ditches built by convicts in the labor camps. The ditches made poor highways, but it kept them out of sight of the road as they moved farther and farther away from the city.
Wet, muddy, and stinking, the group emerged on the opposite side of the fens and crossed the final highway before the coastal plains became cotton and tobacco fields for as far as the eye could see. As in the city, patrol frequency out here had increased, and it wasn’t until Michel and his charges were hiding in a farmer’s shed on the northern side of the highway that he allowed himself to breathe a sigh of relief.
Outside, the sky was beginning to lighten. It would be daybreak soon, and that would complicate his return to the city. He glanced at the small faces huddled in the shed, and then at the father, whose eyes were tired and his expression bleak. “How much farther?” the father asked.
“Until what?” Michel responded. “Safety? Long time until then.” He heard the bitter note in his voice and silently scolded himself. He was here to help, not deepen the man’s fears. “Sorry,” he said in a gentler voice. “This is as far as I take you. I’ve got to get back before it’s light. You’ll head about two miles due north. There’s a farmhouse with distinct yellow paint on the east wall. They’ll hide you for a day, and tomorrow night get you to a carriage that will take you along the back roads and safely out of range of the Dynize patrols.”
There was a long silence, and Michel could see the man steeling himself to try and herd six children across two miles of open land before the sun came up. Michel didn’t envy him the task.
“How can I thank you?” the father asked.
The question surprised Michel. Most of these smuggled families were so exhausted by the trek that good-bye was a simple nod and then disappearance into the dark. “Just … if you find your wife, or reach the armies, or the Lady Chancellor or anyone, you can tell them that people are still fighting in Landfall. And we’d rather not be abandoned.”
“Come with us,” the father said. “If an escape route can take seven, it can surely take eight.”
The offer was tempting. But Michel had made his decision. He was going to stay in Landfall through this thing, for good or ill. There were more people to keep out of Dynize hands. He slapped the father on the shoulder. “Get moving.
If daylight hits you, find a ditch to hide in. Watch the horizon for patrols. Remember that the farmhouse you’re looking for has a yellow wall.”
The father nodded, and Michel opened the shed door and watched the silent, frightened children file out and follow their father into the cotton fields. Michel watched them merge into the night, then turned back toward Landfall.
From here, the massive Landfall Plateau and the city that covered its face and skirted its knees seemed almost peaceful. There was no sign of the bombardment that had scarred the eastern face of the plateau, or the rancid smoke of the fires to the south where bodies were still being dumped. The only sign of the battle was a trickle of smoke rising from Greenfire Depths, where the fires were still not out from the Palo riots.
Michel almost turned and ran to catch up with the father and his children. Better to escape now, while escape was still an option, a small voice told him. “Stop being a coward,” he told it. Taking his last swallow of whiskey, he crossed the highway and headed back into the fens to make his way toward the city.
CHAPTER 6
Michel jerked awake, reaching for the pistol on the bedside table, knocking an empty wine bottle and his pocket watch to the floor with a clatter that made his head hurt. He fumbled for a grip and sat up in bed, pointing the pistol toward the doorway, his head hammering in his chest and his eyes crossed badly.
“It’s me,” a voice said gently.
Michel took several deep breaths and lowered the pistol. “Sorry,” he said. “Nerves a little frayed.”
Hendres stepped inside the tiny room that she and Michel shared in a tenement on the south side of the gorge in Upper Landfall. Hendres was young—or at least what Michel thought of as young, though in her midtwenties she was probably just as old as he. She had brown hair, cut short beneath a bowler cap, and wore a reddish-brown day laborer’s suit much the same as Michel’s. Her face had old pockmarks down the left side. She had intelligent eyes and a military bearing about her, and had somehow managed to make the rank of Silver Rose in the secret police despite her young age.
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