Sins of Empire

by Brian McClellan

  “How?” Olem asked, immediately suspicious.

  “I’m the only one allowed to go. If I try to bring anyone else, the invitation is forfeit.”

  Olem looked nonplussed. “Well, we’ll have to figure out something else, then.” He paused, examining Vlora’s face, then shook his head. “Oh, pit. You want to go in there alone, don’t you? Absolutely not, I forbid it.”

  “You what?” Vlora said, her voice growing dangerously quiet. She grit her teeth, ready for a fight.

  “I forbid it,” Olem said, though with slightly less conviction. He knew he’d made a mistake.

  “I love you dearly, but you do not forbid me anything,” Vlora said in a low voice. “This is a once-in-a-million chance. I’m being invited straight into the den of our quarry, without a fight, without a risk to the lives of my men.”

  “The adder’s nest, more like it,” Olem spat.

  “Have you known me to fear adders?” Vlora forced herself to rethink her anger. Olem wasn’t coddling her. She knew this was a risk she was taking, perhaps foolishly. He was not in the wrong to question it. But she was the commanding officer.

  “No,” Olem answered after a few moments of silence. “I’ve never known you to fear much of anything.”

  “I’ll have my weapons,” Vlora said. “And my powder. I won’t drink and I won’t eat, and I’ll keep a hand on my pistol. If anything happens I’ll carve my way out of it.”

  Olem scoffed. “You’re being pigheaded.”

  “Perhaps. It’s a risk I’m willing to take.”

  “At least let me send Norrine or Davd with you.”

  Vlora lifted a finger like Devin-Tallis. “One invitation. No more.”

  “Shit,” Olem said, pacing the space between her and the outer wall of the fort. “I wish Styke was here. He said he knows a bit about the Depths. If he was, I could at least have him shadow you.”

  “Well, he’s not. Have you heard from him?”

  “Stopped by earlier. Said he had a lead on those dragonmen. Said he’d know more tonight.”

  Vlora stood with her hands on her hips, drumming the butt of her pistol. She wondered if the big bastard was leading them on, or if he really had something. “All right. I’ll meet with him when I get back. It might not be until tomorrow. It’s a party, after all.”

  Olem’s jaw tightened in a way she found endearing, and he finally said, “All right. Keep your sword loose, and don’t trust anyone.”

  “Of course not.”

  “And,” Olem added, “if anything happens to you, I will burn down Greenfire Depths, Lindet and Mama Palo be damned.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Michel nursed a decent-sized bruise while Fidelis Jes stood over him, reading through his report on Bobbin’s betrayal. Jes gave an occasional grunt or “hmm,” but otherwise fumed silently at the papers in his hands. Michel could feel the grand master’s anger almost as strongly as he could feel the throbbing just over his left eye.

  “You’re certain about this?” Jes asked finally, looking up.

  Michel sat up straighter in his seat in the waiting room of the grand master’s office. He glanced over at Dellina, whose sympathetic smile was reassuring but unhelpful, and nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  “Betrayed by our own treasurer,” Jes spat, tossing the report across the room. Papers fluttered to the floor. “And he got away. Dellina, make a note to have our people in the port cities of Fatrasta keep an eye out for someone matching Bobbin’s description. We don’t have the time or resources to track him down right now, but we’ll get him eventually.” He looked down at Michel, eyes narrowed. “It seems, Agent Bravis, that you’ve exceeded my expectations by tracking down the Roses in just a few days, and then failed me by letting the traitor go. All at once. I’m impressed.”

  Not the good kind of impressed, the sardonic voice in the back of Michel’s head said. “Sir, I don’t think Bobbin matters much anymore. We need to hunt him down, of course,” he added quickly, “but what we really want is the person who hired him. This lawyer. He’s the real enemy here, and I’d like to request the chance to catch him.” And once I do, you’re going to forget all about Bobbin and hand me a Gold Rose.

  Fidelis Jes’s gaze did not falter. He stared at Michel, annoyed.

  “I got a bit out of Bobbin before he attacked me,” Michel went on. “He didn’t know the name of the man who hired him. But we have a description. I can track him down and keep this thing quiet. With Bobbin gone our unknown enemy no longer has access to the Millinery.”

  “Unless he wasn’t working alone.”

  Michel swore to himself silently. Bobbin was a loner—the single treasurer down on the bottom floor, always ready to share the office gossip but never really connecting with anyone. It hadn’t even occurred to Michel that he might have an accomplice. “I think he was, sir.” Michel tried to sound confident. “I’m fairly good at reading people. He gave me a full confession before he fled. I think he would have named names if there were any. He was mortified at his involvement in the scandal.”

  “Yes, you mentioned that in your report,” Jes said sourly. He looked down at the report scattered around the room. “You’re too easy on him, Agent Bravis. A traitor is a traitor.”

  “I understand, sir. I won’t be taken by surprise so easily next time.” Michel pointed to the bruise. “I’ll have this to remind me to give him what for if I see him.”

  Jes snorted and walked into his office. He came out a moment later with his sword, making Michel’s heart leap into his throat. Jes began to work through a series of thrusts and parries, fighting an invisible opponent, his sword sometimes coming within inches of Michel’s face. Michel’s hands trembled but he dared not move.

  He does this when he’s angry, Dellina mouthed.

  Yes, Michel answered silently, but he also murders people to get his blood going in the mornings.

  Almost a full minute passed before Jes set his sword across Dellina’s desk and paced the room, finally turning to Michel with a soldier’s snap and a more neutral expression on his face. “You’re right,” he said. “Finding where the Roses came from was your task, and you did manage to do that. But if you think you’ve earned my gratitude, you’re sorely mistaken. You’ll have your chance at redemption. Get this lawyer. Bring him in alive.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  There was a knock on the door, then it opened a few inches to reveal the young face of one of the office aides. His eyes widened at the state of the antechamber, and Dellina hurried over to speak with him in hushed tones. She conveyed the message to Fidelis Jes, whose eyes narrowed.

  “Well,” Jes said, clearing his throat, “it’s your lucky day, Agent Bravis.”

  “Sir?”

  “A random sweep brought a ruffian in off the street. She’s confessed to being one of the messengers who used the Iron Roses, and given us a description of the lawyer matching the same one Bobbin gave you.”

  Michel let out a small sigh. This was fantastic news. A corroborating report gave him more credence in Jes’s eyes, and someone else to question. “Did she have a name?” he asked hopefully.

  “No,” Dellina responded. “But there was an address.”

  Jes picked up his sword and pointed it at Michel, then toward the door. “Bring me this troublesome bastard, so I can flay him myself.”

  The lawyer’s office was in the industrial quarter of Landfall, south of the plateau where the foundries and mills worked night and day, fed with raw goods by the keelboats constantly coming down the Hadshaw River. They turned out cigars for the Nine, spun wool for Brudanian colonies, canned fruit for Gurla, and processed a dozen other goods to ship all over the world.

  Some enterprising landlord had constructed an office building right in the center of it all, renting rooms to the accountants and pencil-pushers who kept the surrounding mills running. The address given to Michel by Jes’s aide was for the second floor, at the very end of the hall. The building manager described the lawyer—once again
matching Bobbin’s description—and said he never caught the man’s name. His rent was paid in full every two weeks, in cash.

  Michel left two Iron Roses by the main entrance to the office building and another two by the back—he wasn’t letting anyone get the slip on him, even if the last time was intentional—then headed up to the second floor alone. He wore a nondescript tan suit jacket and matching pants, a flatcap held in one hand, and the collar of his white shirt sharply pressed. He walked up and down the hall of the second floor three times, looking through the windows of the offices, eyeing the suite at the end.

  The suite matched the address Michel had been given, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. He reached into his pocket, fingers curling around the heavy knuckledusters he kept for special occasions, and knocked with his free hand.

  There was no answer. He knocked again, then gently put his ear against the door. Nothing but the sound of men comparing ledgers two rooms behind him.

  He checked the door, finding it unlocked, and pushed his way in, adopting his best “clueless busybody” look, and was immediately arrested by the sight of a woman frowning at him from behind a secretary’s desk. She was a young, severe-looking woman with her hair pulled into a tight bun behind her, a pencil in one hand, and a pile of papers in one corner of the desk.

  “Hello!” Michel said happily in a slightly high-pitched voice he’d perfected back during his second stint as an informant. “Good afternoon, I’m so sorry … so sorry to barge in here but the door was unlocked.”

  The woman lifted her chin, her frown deepening. “May I help you, sir?”

  Michel took the address out of his pocket. “Is this … this 214 Canal?”

  “It is,” she replied sharply.

  “Oh, thank heavens. I was told there was a lawyer here. I can’t … I can’t remember his name but I was told he was very good and he might be able to help me.”

  “I think you have the wrong place,” the secretary answered.

  “I don’t … I don’t think so. I double-checked the address. I always … always do. This is a law office, is it not? The landlord said I had the right place.”

  The secretary looked like she’d sucked on a lemon. “It is,” she answered, “but we don’t practice publicly.”

  “Are you … you sure? Are you the lawyer, ma’am?”

  “I am not. I am the secretary.” She didn’t offer her name.

  Michel looked around the room. It wasn’t large—just a reception area, with a door on the right and a door on the left, meant for a secretary to handle two separate offices. “The owner, is he in? I really must … really must speak to him. It’s most urgent and I was told he could help me.”

  “He is not in.”

  Michel tried to judge whether she was telling the truth, but her obvious annoyance could mean anything. He swayed backward, as if he was about to step back into the hall, then grabbed for the door on his right, throwing it open. The office was bare, filled entirely with boxes, and not a person in sight.

  “Sir!” The secretary leapt to her feet.

  Michel crossed the reception area and opened the other door. Inside was a desk with nothing but an oil lamp and several more boxes stacked in one corner. There were no other doors or entrances. This was the entire suite. The secretary had been telling the truth. Michel suppressed a frustrated growl.

  The secretary snatched him by the arm. “Sir, I am afraid this is quite untoward. You cannot barge in here and—”

  Michel cut her off with a wail. “I’m so sorry, ma’am! I just really need to speak with the … with the lawyer right away and I just want to see him and it’s my wife and I just don’t know where to turn!”

  The secretary dragged him bodily toward the door, pushing him out into the hall. “Sir,” she said sternly, straightening her skirt, “I am willing to let this impropriety slide because you are obviously not in your right mind. I just don’t know who you think you are looking for, but this is not it. Mr. Tampo is not in and—”

  “Tampo! Yes, that was his name. I must see him!” Inwardly, Michel cheered. He had a name now. And if he had a name, he had a scent. “When will he be in next?”

  “Well, I never … hm. Mr. Tampo may be in tonight. He does not have regular office hours but if you come to call around sundown he likes to work when there’s no one else around. I don’t know what you want but I’ll let him deal with you. Now if you will remove your hand, good day, sir!” She slammed the door, and Michel barely pulled his fingers out of the way in time.

  He stared at the closed door for several moments, unable to help the feeling of elation. He had a name, he had an address, and he had a time. By tomorrow morning he’d have this whole Sins of Empire affair wrapped up, before the Blackhat propagandists even marched out their scapegoat.

  Michel could practically feel the Gold Rose hanging from his neck.

  CHAPTER 16

  It took Old Man Fles three days to arrange a meeting for Styke. The information came in the form of a note, telling Styke that someone would meet him at Sender’s Place in order to discuss the dragonmen. The note contained no other information about who, exactly, Styke was supposed to meet. But it would have to be good enough.

  Sender’s Place was an old pub on the Rim overlooking Greenfire Depths. It was in the basement below a proper gentleman’s club and in Styke’s day had been soldier-exclusive—a place where the infantry could drink away the horrors of battle while their officers smoked and played cards in their posh velvet couches just upstairs. It all took place under the watchful eye of Grandma Sender, who brooked no fights or pulling of rank. To the veterans of Landfall, it was a damned institution.

  It wasn’t the type of place anyone would try to start a fight.

  It was about seven o’clock in the evening and Styke sat on a stoop across the street from the entrance to Sender’s Place, his hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched and flatcap pulled down to cover his face. It seemed, from the look of things, that old Grandma Sender had fallen on hard times. The windows of the gentleman’s club upstairs were boarded up, the paint peeling and the front stoop occupied by a beggar and his mutt.

  “I’ve been here before,” Celine told him.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah, my dad used to fence stuff here.”

  “To Grandma Sender?”

  “No. A man he met in a back room. Grandma was nice, though. Always gave me a sweet.”

  “I always liked Grandma Sender,” Styke commented. He was sad to see the ramshackle state of the place, and suspected it was held less sacred than it used to be. Oh well. Maybe it hadn’t been the best place to set up a meeting. “All right. You stay out here. You see anyone suspicious head toward the stairs, you throw a pebble at that window there. If there’s more than one, throw more than one pebble. Got it?”

  “Right.”

  Styke headed across the street and put his hand on the iron handrail leading to the underground entrance.

  “Ben!” Celine called.

  He turned back.

  “Be careful.”

  He nodded and headed down the stairs, ducking into the cool darkness. The pub was just as he remembered it—dimly lit, the faint smell of mala smoke hanging in the air, drunks sleeping off their afternoon hangovers on the corner benches, and old Grandma Sender herself, looking the same as she had ten years ago, standing behind the bar polishing glasses. Only the press of warm bodies and the sound of rowdy drinking songs were missing.

  Styke let his eyes adjust to the dim light. He counted a dozen occupants, most of them drunk or on their way there, only a couple of them having dinner. None of them were Palo. He felt a smile tug at the corner of his mouth as the smell of the place brought back memories. He’d met Ibana here, more than fifteen years ago. She’d broken his nose, and Grandma Sender had thrown them both out for the night, so they’d bluffed their way into a card game upstairs and cleaned every krana out of two Kez generals.

  “You just going to stand there eyeing the pla
ce or you going to have a drink?” Grandma Sender said, not looking up from her polishing. “Don’t think about robbing us, we got nothing left.”

  Styke went to the bar. “Hard times?” he asked, laying down several banknotes. “Whiskey and a pipe.”

  Sender peered at him, scowling. “I know you?” She was a rough old woman, no doubt nearing seventy by now, skin wrinkled, leathery, and pale. She had one eye that seemed to perpetually squint.

  “Doubt it,” Styke said.

  She shook her head. “Yeah, it’s bad times.” The money disappeared off the bar. “Used to be a veterans’ pub. All the veterans either work down in the mills or been sent to the camps.”

  “No more veterans in Greenfire Depths?” he asked.

  “Some,” Grandma Sender admitted. “But not as many as you’d think. Taken over by the Palo these days and that lot is useless as far as I’m concerned. They won’t drink a drop if the owner of the place isn’t a Palo themselves so all I get is the rejects.” She put a full glass in front of Styke, then packed a pipe with cherry-scented tobacco and handed it over. “You a veteran?” she asked. “You look familiar.”

  “Just another one of the weary dead, Grandma,” he said. He laid another krana down and nodded to the corner of the bar farthest from the door. “Light. Over there.”

  Grandma Sender lit one of the myriad of gas lamps above the spot Styke had indicated and then left him alone with his whiskey and pipe. He produced the morning’s newspaper and sat back with his feet up on a chair. There was a report on the front page about the Riflejack Mercenary Company taking residence in the old Loel’s Fort and getting to work rebuilding a few nearby tenements. It would be the closest rebuilding project to Greenfire Depths in years and was stirring up a decent amount of support from the locals. Styke wondered what Flint was really there for—he hadn’t been allowed that far into her good graces—but figured the positive press was some kind of red herring. It usually was in Landfall.