Sins of Empire

by Brian McClellan

  “Yes, Colonel.”

  Styke felt the sudden kick to the ribs that accompanied the realization that he’d been manipulated. Of course. He’d played right into Jes’s hands. Instead of forcing Jes to chase him around Landfall, Styke strode straight into the Millinery and offered himself up like a damned dunce.

  That was the foolish thing Old Man Fles had been referring to.

  No backing out now. Styke felt a little bit stupid, but he was not afraid. He was going to die, and Jes would die along with him. The feeling gave him some comfort, but he nonetheless kept his knife hand ready as Dellina parted the mob of Blackhats and led him through the Millinery. The mob dogged their heels, then disappeared as he was led into a small, nondescript courtyard toward the back of the building. The Blackhats reappeared a few moments later, gathered around the catwalk above the courtyard, watching him like so many vultures.

  “May I offer you any fruit or wine?” Dellina asked politely.

  “No.” Styke shrugged out of his old cavalry jacket and handed it to Dellina, who took it without comment.

  “And what weapons shall you be fighting with today?”

  Styke looked around the courtyard. The cobbles showed regular scrubbing, but only in particular splotches, likely from cleaning up blood. He caught the glint of metal down one arched hallway, and spied a weapon rack with dozens of swords, knives, pistols, and muskets, all polished and on display. Styke tapped his knife.

  “Knives it is,” Dellina said.

  This was where Fidelis Jes did his killing, and if the newspapers were any indication, he’d become damned good at it. Styke wondered if he should be feeling fear right about now, but dismissed the thought. He’d not felt it when he charged fifteen thousand infantry in the Battle of Landfall, nor when he charged a full brigade at Planth, backed only by Two-shot’s irregulars and a small-town garrison. He’d not felt fear once during the war, and he refused to surrender to it now.

  “Benjamin Styke,” a voice called.

  Styke felt his heart soar as Fidelis Jes strolled down a short run of steps at the far end of the courtyard. Seeing him approach was like witnessing the arrival of an old friend—if you planned on murdering him painfully—and Styke drummed the fingers of his good hand on the hilt of his knife, humming to himself.

  This was it. A moment he’d dreamed about for ten years.

  “Been a long time,” Fidelis Jes said, falling into a soldier’s stance about ten feet away.

  “Too long,” Styke said quietly. “And not long enough.”

  If Styke was a wreck of a human being, just a shadow of his former self, Fidelis Jes had done nothing but grow stronger and better-looking. His shoulders were wider than Styke remembered, his arms and thighs more massive, his skin pleasantly tanned. He still had that ridiculously thick neck and stupidly thin head, but they seemed less important when the rest of his body was a godlike specimen. Jes had not allowed himself to grow fat or lazy in his position. Styke hated him a little for that, but as far as hate went it was like throwing a glass of water into the ocean.

  Jes grinned like he was about to carve up a particularly succulent turkey. “Pit, you’re uglier than I remember. Bullet didn’t help your face, did it? Or your back or knee.” He clicked his tongue, shaking his head. “The years have not been kind to you, my friend.”

  “Were we ever friends?” Styke asked. For a moment, he genuinely couldn’t remember.

  “Allies.”

  “Not the same thing.”

  “I suppose that’s true,” Jes admitted. He squinted at Styke. “Decided you were ready to die, did you?”

  Styke tapped on the hilt of his knife. “Everyone dies sooner or later.” He studied Jes, searching his eyes and face. They had witnesses—dozens of Blackhats gathered on the catwalks above them—and Jes looked nothing but the confident blowhard that he’d always been. But Styke could see a crack in the armor; Jes’s eyes were too inviting, his smile a little too wide. He bounced on his heels a little too eagerly.

  He was nervous. As he should be.

  “Knives, is it?” Jes asked. His voice cracked slightly, but he cleared his throat and repeated the question.

  “Yes, sir,” Dellina responded. She hurried down the side hall where Styke had spotted the weapon rack and returned with a fixed-blade knife just as big and heavy as Styke’s. She offered it to Jes handle-first and he drew it with one swift motion. Styke expected him to look ridiculous with such a big knife, but Jes gave it a few comfortable, expert flourishes and then began to stretch his arms and legs, like a gymnast readying for a performance.

  “I feel like there’s so much to say,” Jes said.

  Styke jerked his knife from its scabbard and held it loosely in his good hand. “Not really.”

  “You don’t want to ask about what I’ve accomplished while you were locked up? You don’t want to hear about Fatrasta’s wealth? Her glory? You don’t want to ask after Lindet?”

  “I see a rotten city with a fresh coat of paint,” Styke said, considering his words carefully. “Lindet was always better at gaining power than she was at actually doing anything decent with it.”

  “Ripe words coming from you, Benjamin.”

  Styke shrugged. “I never claimed to do anything but destroy. You and Lindet talked the talk.”

  “Maybe if you’d given talk a chance you’d be something grand. Not a burned-out old cripple.” The words were spoken in a gentle tone, but Styke could hear the dagger behind them. Jes’s face smiled, but his eyes had begun to smolder, and Styke wondered if this performance was for the Blackhats watching them, or for Jes himself.

  “You wanted me to kill kids,” Styke said, loud enough the Blackhats could hear it.

  “Everyone has to die,” Jes responded without the slightest bit of remorse. “You just said so yourself. You made sure everyone knew that you were the monster Fatrasta needed, until it was inconvenient to you.”

  “Slaughtering children is inconvenient.”

  “Not to a real soldier,” Jes shot back. “A real soldier follows orders.”

  “Like you? You’ve never been a soldier. Just Lindet’s shadow, with no real substance of your own, wielding a stiletto in the darkness and killing fools every morning to try to convince yourself you’re good enough. You’re not. You never have been. One day your seams will loosen and the stink will escape and Lindet will toss you on the midden pile the same way she did me.”

  Jes’s head snapped back, the smiling calm replaced by bared teeth. He swished his knife through the air in a figure eight and began to pace back and forth. The secretary made herself scarce, withdrawing to the edge of the courtyard.

  “Benjamin Styke,” Jes spat. “So clever. So strong. But you can’t even protect your friends. Tell me, what drove you here? Burning down Gamble’s bar? Smashing up Fles Blades? Wrecking Sunin’s livery? Killing that old buzzard Hovenson? I wasn’t sure what would get your attention, so I decided to do it all at once.”

  Styke forced his face to remain stony but felt a catch in his throat. Jes listed off a dozen more names and the ills his Blackhats had done to them, presumably that very morning. They were all old friends and officers, people who might have shown him succor in time of need. Styke’s stomach tied itself in knots and he could only think of a handful of names that weren’t on the list, Jackal among them. He hadn’t even made contact with any of these people aside from Fles, to try to protect them from possible reprisal, but even that hadn’t been enough.

  All his lancers had suffered because of him.

  “So,” Jes asked, continuing to pace, “which was it?”

  Styke rolled his wrist, loosening his knife hand. “Honestly, I didn’t even know about any of that. I just woke up this morning and decided I’d turn your rib cage into a hat.”

  Jes did a little skip and jump. He wasn’t playing anymore. His eyes had grown focused, studious, and they darted from Styke’s face, to his bad hand, to his crippled leg. “Whose blood are you wearing?” he demanded.r />
  Styke gave him a toothy grin. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

  “No matter. I’ll find out after I’ve cleaned this up.”

  Jes surged forward without warning, dropping into a knife fighter’s stance and slashing at Styke’s face. Styke heard the clang of their blades and felt the impact all the way up his arm. He stepped sideways, swiping with his left hand only to receive a shallow cut on his forearm for his efforts. They separated, clashed again, separated, then circled each other warily, Jes’s eyes narrowed with concentration.

  The dragonman had been furiously strong and fast, but he’d made one mistake: He’d let Styke grapple with him. Jes remained out of arm’s reach, leading with his blade. He was cautious and measured, somehow seeming to watch Styke’s legwork, knife hand, and eyes all at once. Jes’s movements had the finesse of someone who killed for art, rather than survival, and he could read Styke’s movements like a book.

  They continued to circle for several moments. Styke sliced the air in figure eights in front of Jes’s face, while Jes did the same to him, both attempting to convince the other of a feint. Styke managed to nick Jes’s arm. Jes cut Styke’s middle knuckle. The blades crashed and clanged off each other, and Styke noted the deep gouges forming in the blade of Jes’s knife—and the lack of the same in his own.

  Should have bought a Fles blade.

  The errant thought cost Styke his focus, then his footing. He stumbled back to regain it, swiping erratically to keep Jes at bay. Jes followed closely, his knife taking a gouge out of Styke’s left thigh before Styke could readjust himself and lash back, drawing a long, deep cut down Jes’s arm.

  To his surprise, Jes leaned into the cut and, unbelievably, dropped his knife. He caught it with the other hand, out of sight below Styke’s own arm, and then slashed upward, catching Styke’s chest with the hooked tip of his knife and then bringing it across below Styke’s good hand. Styke felt his fingers go suddenly numb, the hilt slipping from his grip. He tried to catch it, leaning forward, only to feel a hard pinch on his thigh.

  He looked down as Jes jerked the thick blade out of Styke’s leg. Styke lost his footing, holding his wrist, and collapsed backward.

  The whole sequence had taken just a few heartbeats. Styke felt tears in his eyes and his brain trying to catch up. He was on his back, the tendon of his good hand slit, his right leg on fire.

  It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. He was supposed to grab Jes, even if he took a knife to the gut to do it, and then choke the life out of him in a few moments. They were going to die together, and Styke was going to be happy to go out that way. Instead, he heard the clatter of his knife being kicked across the cobbles and then saw Jes’s face hovering above him.

  Styke snatched upward with his crippled hand. Jes batted it away brutally with the blade, nearly severing a finger, then reversed his grip and slammed his knife down into Styke’s shoulder.

  “Scream,” Jes said quietly.

  Styke grunted. He couldn’t find any words, not now. He swallowed a sob, wishing Jes would lean over closely so he could bite his nose off. But Jes just lowered himself to one knee beside him, slowly twisting the knife deeper and deeper.

  “I said scream!”

  Every breath was ragged now. Styke could feel every little cut needle sharp, and his leg and arm refused to respond to any commands. He remembered the dying dragonman, and bit his own lip hard and spat the blood into Jes’s face. Jes jerked the knife out of Styke’s shoulder and pressed the pitted blade against his throat.

  Styke felt the raw edge and silently urged Jes to slice deep.

  “You gonna finish it?” he hissed.

  And just like that, the blade was withdrawn. Jes stood up and left Styke’s field of vision. Styke closed his eyes, forcing himself to swallow. This is how it’ll be, then? Jes is going to let me bleed out on the Blackhat cobbles? Styke wrestled with the thought, trying to give his death some sort of value. This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen.

  But, he supposed, this was a soldier’s death. Slowly, painfully, drop by drop on the battlefield.

  A bad way to go. Somehow, though, a proper one.

  “Pick him up,” Jes suddenly ordered.

  Styke’s eyes shot open. Jes stood above him again, this time surrounded by his Blackhats. Hands reached down and grasped Styke, forcing him up to his feet, half-carrying, half-dragging him toward the edge of the courtyard before dumping him unceremoniously facedown in a wheelbarrow. He could smell rust, old blood, and rotten flesh.

  There was a sudden silence, and then he heard Jes’s voice right beside his ear.

  “You once terrified me,” Jes whispered. “But now that seems like a bad dream. I can’t kill you. She won’t allow it. But I can make sure that your legend dies before you do.” Jes’s presence withdrew, and Styke heard him say in a loud voice, “Take this piece of trash back to Sweetwallow Labor Camp. And make sure he stays there.”

  CHAPTER 36

  Vlora stood at attention in the office of the grand master of Fatrasta’s secret police and wondered when she’d last had to salute someone. Years, certainly, maybe even all the way back to the Adran-Kez War. That was the last time any general in the room had outranked her, and the last time Adro had a field marshal.

  She certainly wasn’t going to give a trumped-up spy that honor, no matter how annoyed he looked.

  Fidelis Jes’s brow was beaded with sweat. He wore a clean shirt, but she could see blood soaking through it in more than one place. He fidgeted in his chair, looking from her to the immense knife on his desk and back again as if she was expected to explain its presence.

  She recognized that knife. Ben Styke had used it to kill a dragonman.

  “You asked for me?” she said lightly.

  Fidelis Jes swept the knife off his desk and deposited it in a drawer before clearing his throat. Vlora noted the enormous ring on the thumb of his left hand, worn over the glove so it wouldn’t fall off. Styke’s skull ring. “Lady Flint, I understand that you’ve been employing convicted war criminal Benjamin Styke. I want an explanation and I want it now.”

  “I’m not sure an explanation is warranted,” Vlora responded coolly. She didn’t like Jes’s tone one bit, but she wasn’t in a mood to get combative. She had too much on her plate right now to risk pissing off the Lady Chancellor’s right-hand man. Though by the looks of things, she was already too late on that account.

  Jes slammed his palm on his desk. Behind her, Vlora heard his secretary jump and made a mental note of the fact. Jes was not known for outbursts. “You have been employing an enemy of the state. If that does not warrant an explanation would you care to tell me what does?”

  “I was employing an old, crippled soldier. He came to me asking for a job and with a name like that, who wouldn’t hire him on?” Vlora had a sudden suspicion and voiced it. “Tell me, is it even public record that Styke is a war criminal? Because I don’t hire on strangers without looking into their background and all my men could find was that he disappeared ten years ago.”

  “Don’t get smart with me, General.”

  “Don’t waste my time.”

  There was a slight intake of breath behind her and Fidelis Jes’s eyes narrowed. Vlora ground her teeth, annoyed with herself. She was letting her temper get the better of her—but if there was one thing she wouldn’t stand it was being condescended to.

  “Before lecturing me on what I should or shouldn’t know,” Vlora said quietly, “consider your own practice of censorship and misinformation. I’m no stranger to propaganda but you Blackhats have taken it to an art. You shouldn’t be surprised when someone is unaware of information you purposefully destroyed. Now, I’ve purged Styke’s name from the books of my mercenary company and ordered my men to arrest him the moment he’s spotted. He’s one man. If you’re unsatisfied with my efforts to reconcile the situation I’ll exercise the withdrawal clause of my contract and my men will be out of the city by the end of the week.”

  Fidelis Je
s looked like he’d swallowed something sour. He clenched and unclenched one fist on the desk, looking at the thick ring on his thumb, then said, “I don’t think that’s necessary.”

  “I’m glad to hear that. I’ve quite enjoyed working with the Fatrastan government and I like to keep a good thing going.” It was a bald-faced lie, but Vlora had learned that a lie or two did wonders for professional relationships. Besides, she’d made her point: She would not be called in here and bullied like a schoolgirl.

  “Then you’ll tell me what you hired Styke for, and all of his actions while in your employ.”

  Perhaps her point hadn’t been made clearly enough. Vlora wondered just what made Styke so important. He was incredibly dangerous; she’d seen that with her own eyes. But he was still just one man. And if Jes had his knife and ring, it must mean that Jes had him. Was Styke already dead? “We hired him to have an insider’s view of the city; to keep someone on hand who could do dirty work for us if the need arose.”

  “And did it?”

  “I sent him chasing ghosts. He was still working on that first assignment as of this afternoon.”

  Jes eyed her for several long moments. He seemed to have gotten control of himself, and he dabbed his forehead gently with a handkerchief before folding it and setting it aside. “Details.”

  “I sent him chasing after the Dynize,” Vlora said. It was close enough to the truth. She had no interest in explaining the last two weeks to Jes. She had work to do, and she was itching to get out of this office.

  “What?” Jes said sharply, his eyes snapping up to hers. “What do you know about the Dynize?”

  The intensity with which he asked made Vlora raise her eyebrows. Apparently not as much as you. “Very little. Just that they’ve installed spies in Greenfire Depths.”

  “Preposterous.”

  You’re either much worse at your job than I’ve been led to believe, or you’re playing me for a fool. Either way I don’t like it. “We don’t know why or how many, but it’s been interfering with my work, so I set Styke to the task of dealing with it. Now that he’s out of the picture, I’ll have to put some of my own men on the job.”