The Justice in Revenge

by Ryan Van Loan

  “But I didn’t get the chance to say it,” I said, wrapping my arms around my legs. “Feelings are involuntary, but saying it is a choice. I missed it. I missed him.”

  I don’t know how long I sat there, rocking back and forth on that scrap of land. It was a long while, I know that. The bells tolled the day of the month at midnight and the night was still black, with no hint of the coming of the sun, when the sound of the Artificer’s gear-driven ornithopter beat a steady tattoo over the Crescent’s waters. By then I’d cried myself hollow and though Sin’s healing burned through me, I felt nothing at all. I’d started the night bent on exacting vengeance and now that was all that was left to me. I was just an empty husk. A husk with a burning ember. The ember was a word.

  Revenge.

  63

  The Chair nodded to her serving man at the door, who stood ramrod straight in the shadow of the nearby pillar and didn’t bow or look at her twice. Didn’t acknowledge her in any way. I’ll have a word with Germo. I don’t care if he’s been running the household since I was a child: his underlings lack respect. Suppressing her annoyance, the Chair walked into the drawing room. The woman waiting there was facing away from her and backlit by a roaring fire that popped and crackled. Something tickled at her nose and she sneezed, searching for the handkerchief in the pocket of her dressing gown.

  “I’ll flay the servant that’s been lax about dusting in this drawing room,” she said by way of apology. Not that she ever truly apologized, not even to the Parliamentarian. It was the fool woman’s fault for insisting on meeting in her late husband’s favorite room—she knew how the Chair had felt about Jerome. “Judging by the explosions that rocked half the city, it’s been a busy night.… I was expecting you two bells ago. So tell me, Parliamentarian, do you have news?”

  * * *

  “I do.”

  I turned around and watched the Chair’s white eyebrows climb up toward where her hairline was slowly ceding to age. Her thin braids—it looked like she’d had them redone not long ago—bounced as she shook her head, her parchment-thin skin darkening with anger.

  “Fool child,” she hissed. “What do you hope to accomplish? Bursting in unannounced, ordering my servants around, pretending to be the Parliamentarian?” I shrugged, and the tendrils of anger rippling beneath her skin bloomed, blood suffusing her face so that she was nearly as black as me. “Why do you have your face covered like a Burning Lands savage?”

  “So many questions.” I felt the thick silk across my face and smiled, not that she could see it. Not that I felt like smiling. But formalities had to be observed. “As for the covering, it is dusty in here, after all. For the rest? I wanted to have a talk, just you and I. One honest conversation.”

  “So you thought ambushing me in my dead husband’s drawing room would be a good start?” The Chair snorted. “You’re not that big a fool, girl.”

  “Neither are you,” I told her. “A fool, that is. Anywhere else, the answers you’d give would be obsequious at best. But here? In the heart of your power, with none to hear, none to substantiate anything I might say later? If honesty can’t be found here, then where?”

  The Chair nodded slowly. “That’s your angle; what do I get from this exchange?”

  “Me out of your life.”

  “I’m already getting that,” she said. “Remember? You sail north as soon as this blasted storm blows over.”

  “I’ve never liked the cold,” I said. “Salina says there’s a need for an inspection of the kan plantations out along the Shattered Coast. Since I was there just this past year, I’m a likely choice. In exchange, I’ll give you the proof you need to hang the Doga. I can still be on that ship tomorrow and by the time I return summer will have come and gone.”

  “You want a plum assignment instead of the dregs I planned to serve you?” The old woman shrugged. “Done.”

  I canted my head. “Just like that?”

  “If your proof is that strong? It’s a cheap price and quickly paid.”

  “The price paid or the quality of the price?”

  “What?”

  “Never mind,” I said, waving away her frown. All right, now that the personal is out of the way, onto business, shall we?”

  “This wasn’t the business you came to conduct?” she asked.

  “Not by half,” I told her. “Have you asked the Parliamentarian what she’s been up to, with all her side speculations?”

  “What?”

  I stepped away from the fireplace, sweat dripping down my back, and she blinked owlishly, her gaze following me into the shadows.

  “I had reason to look into some of her accounts recently—they’re doing very well, by the way—and saw a number of short-term investments, high-risk, high-reward sort of affairs. They didn’t make sense for her portfolio.”

  The Chair’s lips worked soundlessly, then she clasped her hands together and shook her head. “I don’t know what game you intend to play tonight, girl, but I’m the one that holds all the cards, so I’ve no reason to indulge your fancy.”

  “Come now, I thought we were having an honest conversation.”

  “That would require you to not be a Godsdamned obfuscator,” she growled.

  “True. Let me unfuscate … unobfuscate? Let me clear things up,” I said.

  “I don’t think that’s possible,” the Chair said. “You’ve the streets in your bones and there’s nothing so crooked as a street that runs through the Tip.”

  “Rebellion isn’t cheap,” I continued over her. “You were right about the Doga—she was plotting to overthrow the Empress using this Sicarii.” The Chair’s eyes lit up in the flames of the fireplace. “To do so she needed lire, and lots of it. Your Parliamentarian set up a number of accounts to help the Doga enrich her private coffers, to pay bribes to undermine the Board and to pay for the additional Constabulary she was trying to recruit beneath the Empress’s eye. Hard to do that if she raised taxes, but with money off the books?”

  The Chairs eyes narrowed. “Esmerlda would have no such need—”

  “Next,” I interrupted her, “you’ll tell me you didn’t know she was a worshipper of Ciris.”

  She opened her mouth, but choked on whatever word she was going to say and coughed, wiping at her nose with her silk handkerchief. Muttering again about the dust, she glared at me. “I agreed to a tell-all. Where’s your proof?”

  “In your eyes just now,” I told her. “I said you were no fool and I think you’ve suspected. I think you found the path to bringing the Doga down trickier than anticipated, and given the number of ventures on your plate, you found reasons to look the other way. Old age creeping in?”

  The old woman’s eyes blazed as she drew her lavender gown tighter around her.

  “If one were to go to a certain familial banker and seek out his son-in-law, who has a truly hideous gambling problem, they could find the same financial transfers I did,” I explained.

  “So you say.” She licked her lips. “Esmerlda is no fool, either. I suspect they wouldn’t find a damned thing.”

  “It’s true, I paid off his gambling debts,” I said.

  “The transfers!” The Chair screwed up her lips, pulling at the neck of her gown with one hand. “They wouldn’t find anything there.”

  “This parchment, with all of the account numbers, dates of transfers, and corresponding amounts, says otherwise,” I said, pulling a thick envelope from beneath my jacket. “It’s yours.” I pulled it back. “But in return I want you to will everything the Parliamentarian owns to Eldritch Nelson Rawlings.”

  “Eld? Why Eld?” The Chair’s frown said she didn’t understand.

  “Eld’s dead.” I bit my lip to keep from crying.

  “What are you talking about?” She coughed into her handkerchief. “How? When?”

  “Every single one of you thought to use us all as instruments of your will, tools to be cast aside when they are no longer needed,” I said, ignoring her question.

  “You. T
he Parliamentarian. The Doga. Sicarii. The Gods.” My snarl was hidden by the silk mask I wore, but it must have shown in my eyes, because she took another step back. I bit my lip until I felt blood on my chin.

  “That’s where you fucked up,” I said. “I’ve never been anyone’s tool. You see”—I moved forward and she stood up straighter as if to protect herself—“I’m not certain you understand what you’ve done. I could forgive you for trying to use us, to use the factory fire against me, even though that separated Eld and me. Save that everything you did led to tonight.

  “Those explosions”—I gestured past the wall, toward the heart of the city—“were his death knell. He’s dead. And Sicarii with him.”

  “Everything begins to make sense,” the Chair said after a moment. “You’ve lost your mind with grief and somehow you imagine seizing the Parliamentarian’s fortune will assuage your guilt at your friend’s death.”

  “It’s not for me. It’s payment for her betrayal of Servenza.”

  “I can’t will her fortune to Eld,” the Chair chuckled mirthlessly.

  “You can if you’re her benefactor.”

  “She’d never have—” the old woman began. She coughed, eyes narrowing above her handkerchief. “Wills made under duress are null and void.”

  “I’ll let the lawyers fight it out.”

  “If Eld’s dead, then what you ask makes no sense.”

  “It’s the principle of the thing,” I lied. I took a tired breath, letting my thoughts filter slowly through my mind. Between the past week and the fighting and losing Eld, my wits were a dull blade in want of a whetstone. I can’t afford to be dull. Not yet. I pulled out a quill, a small inkwell, and a rolled-up piece of parchment and set them on the small table beside her. “Sign, and you own the Doga and the traitor in your midst, simple as that,” I said.

  The Chair’s brow furrowed, but after a pause to wipe at the snot running freely from her nose, she reached for the quill.

  “Mind you don’t get your crud on the document,” I added.

  She glared at me, then scanned the document and gave a phlegm-filled sniff before writing her signature in a bold, flowing hand across the bottom of the parchment. I blew on it carefully in the absence of sand and a blotter, rolled it up, and slipped it back into my pocket.

  “I tried to play your game, you know,” I told her. “I thought the way to win was to play it better than all of you, never realizing that by taking a seat at the table I’d already lost.” Quenta and Marin shone bright in my mind. “Worse,” I added, “due to the Doga’s greed, and mine, Sicarii nearly succeeded. Nearly upended everything I’ve worked my life for. That should have been what brought me here tonight, but it was Eld.”

  I sighed.

  “It was all for Eld.”

  “Very touching,” the Chair said, edging toward the door.

  I pulled a sheathed sword from beneath my jacket and she froze. I almost laughed at her expression as I lightly tossed it to her. “Recognize it?”

  She caught the weapon and held it awkwardly for a moment before half drawing the blade. Her eyes widened. “Th-this is my husband’s, Jerome’s, from his service in the navy.” She looked at me. “But it’s hanging over the mantel in my library.”

  “Is it?”

  “Is that—is that blood on the blade?” She touched a spot of what looked like rust on the steel; her finger came away red.

  “It is,” I told her.

  She coughed hard and took a rasping breath, staring at her hand. “Whose blood? Eld’s? Sicarii’s?”

  “The Doga’s,” I said.

  “What?!?” Her gaze flashed to my face, to the blade, and back, horror rising in her expression. “What have you done, you foolish child?”

  “Think how surprised she was,” I told her.

  I could still hear her screaming for her Secreto after Sin and I had broken her legs with my slingshot. I told her of the traps I’d laid in the passages around her room, made it clear none were coming for her. The chaos she’d sought to create had come home to roost. She confessed to everything but even as she talked, I don’t think she believed what was happening. Not to her, the Doga of Servenza, cousin to the Empress of the Servenzan Empire.

  She believed when I ran her through, though. Reality has a way of asserting itself. So does a foot of steel through the ribs.

  “You’re mad,” the Chair gasped.

  “No. Sicarii was mad. The Doga was mad. You’re mad, in your own way. All of you driven insane by power and its pursuit.” I chuckled. “The Doga’s dead, aye, but you’re focusing on the wrong details.”

  The Chair sniffed and wiped at her nose. “Elucidate me.”

  “Have you heard of a new invention called forensics?” I shook my head. “Probably not, since the Artificer just invented it a few months ago. It can match the little swirls off your fingers”—I held up my hand and wriggled mine—“to other things you’ve touched. Now those swirls are all over the weapon that murdered Her Grace, the Doga of Servenza.”

  The old woman collapsed into a nearby chair, sword clattering to the ground. Her cheeks had undergone a transformation during our talk; now they hung pale and lifeless as she crossed her arms. “What do you want?”

  “You have to understand just what it is I’ve done. The Doga’s dead, by your hand or as good as, the murder weapon bloody with your prints. The Parliamentarian left enough documents behind to suggest she was the real Sicarii, the one bribing the gangs and bending them to her will—at your direction. She murdered the captain of the Secreto.…

  “Well, actually, I did, and let me tell you, that sister was a pain in the arse to cart halfway across the city, missing head or no. But I framed the Parliamentarian—”

  A thump outside the door drew our attention. The Chair looked at me, her eyes asking a question.

  “Oh, did I forget to mention? That blood was the Doga’s … and your manservant’s.”

  “W-w-w—” she wheezed.

  “I couldn’t just stab you or shoot you full of holes, as pleasant as that would be,” I told her, leaning forward. “I wanted to put Serpent’s Flame in the doorjamb instead of mere poison, but that wouldn’t fit the story we’ve just crafted, you and I.”

  “W-why?” she choked, falling off her chair and rolling onto her back on the floor.

  I pulled out a different piece of parchment and slowly unrolled it. “You know,” I told her, “the forger was right, she really was worth the coin. I could have had her forge your signature as well as this little beauty and Jerome’s sword—the real one is still over your mantel, by the way, I’ll collect it on my way out—but then we’d have missed our little conversation.”

  I dropped the paper, watched it float lazily down beside her, and squatted next to her. The Chair’s dark eyes blinked at me, trying to focus. “It’s your confession. To everything. The financial troubles you’ve been having—”

  She coughed and I laughed. “Aye, you’re doing well, though your accounts have been altered recently to look otherwise. That, along with your desire to supplant the Doga and the realization—too late—that Salina sniffed out your plot and turned the Parliamentarian over to the Secreto, led you to assassinate your ruler.”

  I stood up and walked over to the fireplace.

  “These”—I pulled out a thick sheaf of papers and tossed all but one into the fire—“are another matter entirely. A little something to keep you guessing as you drown in your own fluids.”

  I bent over and let the single piece of paper catch aflame, and then carefully stamped it out. Sin better have been right that the cipher wasn’t too complex.

  “You all did this to yourselves,” I whispered. Behind me the Chair made a throaty protestation that sounded like a drowning woman gasping her last breath before sinking beneath the waves. I slid the fireplace aside on hidden runners, exposing the secret passage, and stepped inside. I had one more task before morn.

  “The work is mine, but writ in your hand, signed in blood.�
�� Behind me the crack and pop of the fire was the only reply.

  Epilogue

  “Buc!”

  I stood up from where I’d been leaning on the seawall to watch Salina navigate the floating docks in her amber skirts. She held two drinks out in front as if they would help her keep her balance. And maybe they did, because she didn’t slip despite her heels and the rough surf. She surprised me by setting both steaming mugs down atop the wall and enveloping me in a hug.

  “Oof!”

  “Buc, I’m so sorry,” she whispered in my ear. “He was such a good man.” I could feel the dampness of a tear on her cheek. “The best.”

  “The best of all of us,” I choked. I pulled back and she let me go. “Did you—?”

  “It’s all taken care of,” she said. “Here. Kan for me and tea for you,” she said, reaching for the mugs. “I know what kan does to your mind.”

  “Actually, I’m spent, Salina. Would you mind switching?”

  “Of course not,” Salina said, suiting the action to the word.

  “You know, the last woman who switched glasses with me ended up poisoned.”

  “Thanks, Buc,” Salina growled, stopping so fast that tea sloshed onto her sleeve.

  “She came back to life,” I said with a shrug. “The harbormaster?”

  “Oh, that’s right.” Salina snorted. “Did wonders for her temperament.”

  “I bet.”

  I took a sip of the kan and felt its false warmth and energy course through me, Sin mitigating its effects on my thoughts. We’d had a conversation, he and I, and the days of him being in control in the background were over. I called the shots. He hated it and I had a feeling the war between us wasn’t over, that this was merely a cease-fire, but I had nearly taken down Sicarii and the massed gangs of Servenza without him. I could do so again.

  “Not if you want to defeat the Gods, you can’t.”

  “So you’re open to turning traitor, Sin?” I smiled in my mind and he shivered. He knew that after last night, I was what I’d always professed to be: emotionless. “Either way, you betray me and I’ll lock you away like before, but this time I’ll throw away the key.”