Sins of Empire

by Brian McClellan

  Taniel’s eyebrows rose. “Is that so?”

  “We handed over Mama Palo. That was our job. I refused further employment.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” Taniel said, sounding genuine.

  Vlora waited for a few moments, then said, “What are your suspicions?”

  Taniel gave her a tight smile. “How would you like a job?”

  The question shouldn’t have taken Vlora off guard, but it did. She reeled mentally, taking a deep breath and leaning back in her seat to get her wits about her. She’d made up her mind to leave Fatrasta, maybe forever, and she was ready to board a ship by the end of the week. “What kind of a job?”

  “I’m not sure yet. I might need an army sometime in the next couple of years. I could put you and the Riflejacks on retainer and have you wait around up north. Could come in handy.”

  It sounded like a mercenary’s dream job. Be paid to wait around for pending orders. They wouldn’t have to keep up appearances, manage a garrison, or anything. Her men wouldn’t like the prospect of staying away from home for another two years—but they’d love the freedom of terrorizing the brothels and pubs of northern Fatrasta on someone else’s krana.

  “We’re planning on heading home,” Vlora said. She could hear the hesitance in her own voice, and Taniel pounced on it.

  “I’ll pay you whatever Lindet was paying you.”

  “You’ve got money?”

  “Remember how we agreed to split the inheritance after the war? You got the domestic holdings, I got the foreign ones?”

  “Yes,” Vlora said slowly. She could have kept it all if she wanted. Despite their falling-out during the war, she was still Field Marshal Tamas’s adopted daughter—and Taniel was technically dead. Legally, everything Tamas had before his death belonged to her.

  “Did you ever bother to check those accounts?” Taniel asked.

  “Not that I recall.”

  “Tamas was fabulously wealthy. He was the king’s favorite for most of his life and didn’t so much as buy himself a drink if he didn’t have to. His foreign holdings could have bought him a sultanate in Gurla.”

  “Wish I’d known that before I became a damned mercenary commander,” Vlora muttered. She ran through the logistics in her head, already drifting toward the problem of keeping her men sharp while on a sort of permanent leave, and avoiding Lindet’s questions. Northern Fatrasta might be like a whole different country, but it was still ruled by Lindet. But there was one thing stopping her. “I can’t,” she finally said.

  Taniel had the temerity to look hurt. “Why not?”

  “I’m not getting involved in another revolution.”

  “It’s not going to be a coup.”

  “I don’t care,” Vlora said. “A revolution is a revolution, and I’ve got no interest. I’ve seen the outcome of good intentions, and I’m not going to put either myself or my soldiers through any of it.”

  Taniel frowned, looking pensively at his gloved hands for some time. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  The two of them sat in silence, eyes locked, studying each other. Vlora wondered what he was hiding—what he wasn’t telling her. What did he know about the Dynize and the Palo and Lindet? What were his plans? Taniel had never been ambitious, and beyond the defense of Adro she had never witnessed him involved in a cause to which he was truly committed. To what lengths would he go to reach his goals? More important, what were Ka-poel’s goals and motives in all of this?

  A dozen more questions sat on the tip of her tongue, and a dozen times as many fears. Taniel was unreadable, but at least Vlora had once known him intimately; she might be able to foresee his intentions. Ka-poel was the truly terrifying one of the pair—both for her power, and her unpredictability.

  Why were they here, struggling on behalf of a people who could not win a fight they did not want? Vlora guessed that the answer was in the question, that he and Ka-poel were the Palo’s only hope. But was there something more?

  Vlora realized suddenly that they hadn’t moved for several minutes. Her throat went dry at the thought, her first instinct to be wary of ambush. “I’d like to return to the fort now.”

  Taniel gave a sad nod and thumped on the roof of the cab. “Loel’s Fort,” he commanded.

  “Won’t be going anywhere for a while, sir,” the driver responded. “Traffic’s all backed up.”

  Vlora stuck her head out the window, looking up and down the street and a long line of cabs, carriages, and wagons. Drivers were shouting at one another, some standing up in their seats to try to see what the holdup was. Urchins darted among the wheels, taking the opportunity to snatch goods out of the back of wagons before retreating to nearby alleyways.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “Not sure, ma’am,” the driver said.

  Vlora chewed on her bottom lip, reassuring herself that this was a coincidence. It had nothing to do with her or Taniel. It wasn’t a trap of some kind. Her nerves were just strung too tightly. “Where are we?”

  “Eastern lip, ma’am. Right above the bay.”

  More than two miles’ walk back to Loel’s Fort, and the heat of the afternoon was getting worse.

  “I’ll see what’s going on,” Taniel said, getting out of the cab. Vlora got out after him, paying the driver before running to catch up.

  “I’m heading back to my men,” she told him. “Olem will need help organizing our travel back to the Nine. You never really realize the logistics of moving a whole brigade until you’re actually in command.”

  “Tamas loved that sort of stuff,” Taniel said wistfully. He tapped his cane on the cobbles, frowning up at the rooftops as they wound their way through the crowd. A stiff breeze came in off the ocean, nearly taking Vlora’s hat off. Taniel suddenly stopped and turned to her. “I’m not your enemy,” he said.

  “And I’m not yours.” They stared at each other once again. They might not be enemies, Vlora thought to herself, but she couldn’t exactly call them friends.

  “I’m glad. Does Olem know I’m still alive?”

  “He does.”

  “Tell him hello for me. Consult with him, if you’re willing. Reconsider my offer.”

  Vlora bit her tongue. She knew that Olem would agree with whatever decision she wound up making. But as much as he hated ships and wouldn’t be looking forward to the voyage home, he had to be aching to see the Nine again. “I’ll talk to him.”

  “Thank you,” Taniel said. He smiled to himself. “You know, sometimes I wish I had remained alive. That I’d just retired quietly and gone out into the world. That I could have stayed myself—I could have come back and visited, and Ka-poel and I could have taken dinner with you and Olem at a dockside club in Adro. I wish I could have lived a normal life.”

  “I don’t think either of us would have been able to handle a normal life,” Vlora responded.

  “No. Probably not. I …” Taniel trailed off.

  They’d continued walking, albeit slowly, as they spoke, and the eastern edge of the Landfall Plateau had come into view. A crowd had gathered in the street, all of them pointing and talking excitedly, looking at something down in the docks below.

  No, Vlora realized. Not the docks. Farther out, beyond the edge of the bay. She pushed her way to the front of the crowd, craning her neck to see. There was a ship out there, easily half a mile from the shore. It was immense, a ship of the line with three decks of guns on either side and a forecastle that would have rivaled a tenement in height. The gray sails were drawn, and even at this distance she could make out tiny figures scrambling around the deck.

  “Why are they stopped so far out?” she asked.

  “Look at the flag,” Taniel said flatly, stepping up to her side.

  “What about it?” Vlora lifted her eyes, and it took a moment for the wind to catch the flag above the ship’s highest sail, unraveling to reveal a black background with a cluster of red stars arcing across the center. “Oh,” she whispered.


  That flag did not belong to Adro or Kez or Brudania, or any of the countries of the Nine. It wasn’t the emblem of a Gurlish province or any colonial power on the world.

  It was the flag of the Dynize Empire.

  “Take powder,” Taniel said with a note of urgency.

  “Why?”

  “Just do it.”

  Vlora removed a powder charge from her pocket, cutting one end with her thumbnail and snorting a little in each nostril. She rubbed her nose and returned the rest of the charge to her breast pocket. Within moments her senses had sharpened, and she was able to pick out the details of the individuals on board the ship as if they were a few feet away. Men and women scurried across the decks, preparing longboats for lowering. It was strange to see a ship entirely manned by people with the red hair and ashen freckles of the Palo, and she had to remind herself that they weren’t actually Fatrastan natives.

  “What am I looking for?” she asked.

  “The horizon.”

  Vlora lifted her gaze, and what she saw took her breath away. Far out beyond the closest ship, miles and miles from shore where even the best looking glasses would have trouble spotting them at the edge of the horizon, she could see more ships. There were dozens of them, perhaps forty or more, and each was capped by a tiny black and red dot that could only be the Dynize flag.

  “Since when do the Dynize leave their home country?” someone beside her asked.

  Vlora wet her lips and turned to Taniel, speaking in a low voice. “Since when do the Dynize have a fleet?”

  “They don’t,” Taniel said, dumbfounded. “They shouldn’t. This changes everything.”

  Vlora was running in a moment, not even bothering to hail a cab as she sprinted down the street, ignoring the shouts that followed her as with powder-enhanced speed she blew past people. She had to get back to the Riflejacks and Olem.

  Taniel was right. This changed everything.

  CHAPTER 48

  Styke sat in one corner of Lady Flint’s office in Loel’s Fort, his borrowed knife in his lap, rocking on the back two legs of the chair, his face pointed at the ceiling and his eyes closed as he waited for Lady Flint to return from Mama Palo’s execution. Across from him Ibana paced restlessly, thumbs hooked through her belt loops, repeating the same phrase every five minutes or so.

  “This is a terrible idea.”

  “You mentioned that,” Styke answered.

  “Well, I’m mentioning it again. Couldn’t you have just sent her a damned letter or something?”

  Styke opened his eyes and kept them glued to the sagging plaster ceiling, listening to the chair beneath him creak in protest as he rocked himself gently with one foot. “I could have,” he said. “But I didn’t.”

  “I hadn’t noticed,” Ibana responded sarcastically.

  Styke sucked in a mouthful of air, puffed out his cheeks, and slowly blew it back out. Ibana was right, of course. This was a terrible idea. Olem had told him before his fight with Fidelis Jes that he was no longer welcome here, and that the men had been ordered to arrest him on sight. The last thing he needed was for them to try exactly that and have this turn into a fight. He should have left Ibana with the other lancers. “Look,” he said, “if you want me back, if you want me to take command of the Mad Lancers, then I’m going to set a few things to rest first.”

  Two things, to be precise. The first he’d taken care of not long after his conversation with Lindet by leaving a note for Tampo at the only address the lawyer had given him—a bank box on the western edge of the plateau. This was the second thing, and for some reason he’d decided it was far more important. He’d also, stupidly, decided to do it in person.

  Ibana was about to respond, an argumentative look on her face, when Styke heard a commotion in the muster yard outside. They both froze, and Styke slowly lowered the front legs of his chair to the ground and got up, borrowed knife in hand.

  “Where’s Olem!” Lady Flint’s voice demanded from somewhere outside.

  Styke couldn’t hear the answer, or make out Flint’s barked order, but he could tell she was heading in his direction. He braced himself and gestured Ibana away from the door.

  Lady Flint opened it a moment later, stepping inside while shouting over her shoulder, “Get everyone. Send a messenger to Fidelis Jes and Lindet telling them I want to see them.”

  “Which one?” someone asked.

  “Either. Both. I don’t care. I—” Flint cut herself off, pausing just inside the door at the sight of Ibana, eyes falling on Styke half a second later. Her pistol seemed to leap into her hand, and a shout on the tip of her tongue was arrested only by Styke barking one word:

  “Wait!”

  Styke stared down the barrel of Flint’s pistol for an agonizing ten seconds, Ibana coiled as if ready to spring, hoping the whole time that nobody did anything rash. Slowly, bit by bit, Flint’s finger came off the trigger. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “We came to talk,” Styke said, gesturing for Ibana to relax.

  “Everyone wants to talk with me right now. It’s getting bloody well old. How did you get in here?”

  “Olem let us in.”

  Vlora whispered a litany of curses before finally lowering her pistol. “I still may shoot you. Who’s this?”

  Not a great start, Styke decided, but it was better than getting a bullet through the eye. “This is my second in command, Ibana ja Fles.”

  “The swordmaker?”

  “That’s right,” Ibana said.

  “I have one of your knives,” Flint said. “It’s some damn fine work. Pit, you’re tall. Damn it, Styke, I thought I only had to deal with one giant.” Ibana pursed her lips, but her shoulders relaxed and Styke gave a silent sigh of relief. Nothing like a little flattery to help cool the air. “Okay,” Flint said, “if Olem let you in here he must think it’s important. I’m a bit busy, so you have thirty seconds.”

  Styke took a deep breath, wondering why some words were so much easier to say than others. He chewed on them for a moment, glanced at Ibana—whose impatient look was no help at all—then said, “I came to apologize.”

  “For tricking me into hiring a convict and making me look like a fool in front of my employers?”

  “No. Not for that.”

  Flint blinked. That wasn’t what she’d been expecting. She closed the door behind her warily, putting her back to it, still holding her pistol. She was such a small thing, nearly two feet shorter than either him or Ibana. Her blocking the exit might have made him laugh if he didn’t know what she was capable of. “Then what?” she asked flatly.

  “You hired me under false pretenses,” Styke said. “But not the ones you think. I did not escape from Sweetwallow like Jes told you. I was released.” He’d considered long and hard what he wanted to tell Flint, and why. He’d decided that, while he owed Tampo his freedom, he owed Lady Flint his pride. After ten years in the camps, the latter was not something he’d ever thought to see again.

  “I’m listening,” Flint said.

  “I was released from the camps by a lawyer named Gregious Tampo. He bribed the parole board, and as a condition for my freedom sent me to work for you. He wanted me to keep you out of trouble until he didn’t need you anymore, and then kill you.”

  To Styke’s surprise, Flint’s face began to change the moment Styke mentioned Tampo’s name. Her mouth dropped, then her brows lowered into a scowl, and then she threw her head back and let out an angry sigh. It was not the reaction Styke was expecting.

  Flint scratched her head with the barrel of her pistol and then brandished it at Styke. “Did he actually tell you he wanted me dead?”

  Styke looked at her askance. She was taking this awfully well for someone whose trust had been betrayed. “No,” he said. “But that was obviously the end goal. He needs you for something. I never got the order to cut your throat, so I assume he still does. I’m here to warn you.”

  “Duly noted,” Flint said.

  “That’s al
l there is,” Styke said, getting to his feet and putting his knife away. “I thought you should know.” He felt strange. Pleasant, but strange. He wasn’t used to giving excuses or explaining himself to anyone. In his old life he’d never had to, and in the camps no one cared. The same went with apologizing. “You said you’re busy, so we’ll go now.”

  Flint’s pistol came back up, wavering from Styke to Ibana. Styke tensed, glancing at Ibana, whose hand had gone to the sword at her hip. “Neither of you is going anywhere,” Flint said.

  “I told you,” Ibana growled at Styke.

  “Shut up,” Styke responded. “I don’t want to fight you, Flint. I came in good faith.”

  “I never offered any good faith,” Flint snapped. “And if you think I’m not pissed as pit that I took a spy into my midst, you’re dead wrong. But I’m not looking for a fight, either.” She lowered her pistol, her mouth tightening into a straight line. “I respect the fact you came back. I should cut you to ribbons, but I’m not going to, and here’s why: Tampo doesn’t want me dead.”

  Styke exchanged a glance with Ibana. “How do you know?”

  “Because Gregious Tampo isn’t Gregious Tampo. He’s a powder mage by the name of Taniel Two-shot, and he’s been playing everyone in this damned city for fools.”

  “Uh,” was all Styke could manage. He tried to wrap his mind around this information. Styke’s memory wasn’t great, but he’d fought beside Taniel during the war. Gregious Tampo was definitely not Taniel. “Two-shot is dead. You said so yourself.”

  “Taniel faked his death at the end of the Adran-Kez War,” Flint replied. She finally stuffed her pistol into her belt, taking a small sniff of powder, removing the tremor from her voice. “He and the bone-eye you met back during the Fatrastan Revolution are here, now.”

  Styke scowled, licking his lips, thinking back over the meetings he’d had with Tampo. “No,” he said. “I would have sensed it. My Knack can smell sorcery.”

  “Ka-poel’s sorcery is stronger than anything you’ve ever encountered,” Flint said, sounding almost resigned to the fact. “It fooled your Knack and it fooled my third eye. It’s fooled a damn lot of people, but Tampo—or rather, Taniel—doesn’t want me dead. If he sent you here to keep me out of trouble he probably thought he was protecting me.”