How to Rule an Empire and Get Away with It

by K. J. Parker

  Ondrakja didn’t take the cup right away. Her hand slid over the charm of knotted cord around Ren’s wrist, then along her head, lacquered nails combing through the thick, dark hair like she was petting a cat. “Little Renyi,” she murmured. “You’re a clever one… but not clever enough. That is why you need me.”

  “Yes, Ondrakja,” Ren whispered.

  The room was empty, except for the two of them. No Fingers crouching on the carpet to play audience to Ondrakja’s performance. Just Ren, and the stained floorboards in the corner where Sedge had died.

  “Haven’t I tried to teach you?” Ondrakja said. “I see such promise in you, in your pretty face. You’re better than the others; you could be as good as me, someday. But only if you listen and obey—and stop trying to hide things from me.”

  Her fingernails dug in. Ren lifted her chin and met Ondrakja’s gaze with dry eyes. “I understand. I will never try to hide anything from you again.”

  “Good girl.” Ondrakja took the tea and drank.

  The hours passed with excruciating slowness. Second earth. Third earth. Fourth. Most of the Fingers were asleep, except those out on night work.

  Ren and Tess were not out, nor asleep. They sat tucked under the staircase, listening, Ren’s hand clamped hard over the charm on her wrist. “Please,” Tess begged, “we can just go—”

  “No. Not yet.”

  Ren’s voice didn’t waver, but inside she shook like a pinkie on her first lift. What if it didn’t work?

  She knew they should run. If they didn’t, they might miss their chance. When people found out what she’d done, there wouldn’t be a street in Nadežra that would grant her refuge.

  But she stayed for Sedge.

  A creak in the hallway above made Tess squeak. Footsteps on the stairs became Simlin rounding the corner. He jerked to a halt when he saw them in the alcove. “There you are,” he said, as if he’d been searching for an hour. “Upstairs. Ondrakja wants you.”

  Ren eased herself out, not taking her eyes from Simlin. At thirteen he wasn’t as big as Sedge, but he was far more vicious. “Why?”

  “Dunno. Didn’t ask.” Then, before Ren could start climbing the stairs—“She said both of you.”

  Next time, I’ll hit you somewhere softer.

  They should have run. But with Simlin standing just an arm’s reach away, there wasn’t any hope now. He dragged Tess out of the alcove, ignoring her whimper, and shoved them both up the stairs.

  The fire in the parlour had burned low, and the shadows pressed in close from the ceiling and walls. Ondrakja’s big chair was turned with its back to the door so they had to circle around to face her, Tess gripping Ren’s hand so tight the bones ached.

  Ondrakja was the picture of Lacewater elegance. Despite the late hour, she’d changed into a rich gown, a Liganti-style surcoat over a fine linen underdress—a dress Ren herself had stolen off a laundry line. Her hair was upswept and pinned, and with the high back of the chair rising behind her, she looked like one of the Cinquerat on their thrones.

  A few hours ago she’d petted Ren and praised her skills. But Ren saw the murderous glitter in Ondrakja’s eyes, and knew that would never happen again.

  “Treacherous little bitch,” Ondrakja hissed. “Was this your revenge for that piece of trash I threw out? Putting something in my tea? It should have been a knife in my back—but you don’t have the guts for that. The only thing worse than a traitor is a spineless one.”

  Ren stood paralyzed, Tess cowering behind her. She’d put in as much extract of meadow saffron as she could afford, paying the apothecary with the coin that was supposed to help her and Tess and Sedge escape Ondrakja forever. It should have worked.

  “I am going to make you pay,” Ondrakja promised, her voice cold with venom. “But this time it won’t be as quick. Everyone will know you betrayed your knot. They’ll hold you down while I go to work on your little sister there. I’ll keep her alive for days, and you’ll have to watch every—”

  She was rising as she spoke, looming over Ren like some Primordial demon, but mid-threat she lurched. One hand went to her stomach—and then, without any more warning, she vomited onto the carpet.

  As her head came up, Ren saw what the shadows of the chair had helped conceal. The glitter in Ondrakja’s eyes wasn’t just fury; it was fever. Her face was sickly-sallow, her skin dewed with cold sweat.

  The poison had taken effect. And its work wasn’t done.

  Ren danced back as Ondrakja reached for her. The woman who’d knotted the Fingers into her fist stumbled, going down onto one knee. Quick as a snake, Ren kicked her in the face, and Ondrakja fell backward.

  “That’s for Sedge,” Ren spat, darting in to stomp on Ondrakja’s tender stomach. The woman vomited again, but kept wit enough to grab at Ren’s leg. Ren twisted clear, and Ondrakja clutched her own throat, gasping.

  A yank at the charm on Ren’s wrist broke the cord, and she hurled it into the woman’s spew. Tess followed an instant later. That swiftly, they weren’t Fingers anymore.

  Ondrakja reached out again, and Ren stamped on her wrist, snapping bone. She would have kept going, but Tess seized Ren’s arm, dragging her toward the door. “She’s already dead. Come on, or we will be, too—”

  “Come back here!” Ondrakja snarled, but her voice had withered to a hoarse gasp. “I will make you fucking pay…”

  Her words dissolved into another fit of retching. Ren broke at last, tearing the door open and barreling into Simlin on the other side, knocking him down before he could react. Then down the stairs to the alcove, where a loose floorboard concealed two bags containing everything they owned in the world. Ren took one and threw the other at Tess, and they were out the door of the lodging house, into the narrow, stinking streets of Lacewater, leaving dying Ondrakja and the Fingers and the past behind them.

  PART 1

  1

  The Mask of Mirrors

  Isla Traementis, The Pearls: Suilun 1

  After fifteen years of handling the Traementis house charters, Donaia Traementis knew that a deal which looked too good to be true probably was. The proposal currently on her desk stretched the boundaries of belief.

  “He could at least try to make it look legitimate,” she muttered. Did Mettore Indestor think her an utter fool?

  He thinks you desperate. And he’s right.

  She burrowed her stockinged toes under the great lump of a hound sleeping beneath her desk and pressed cold fingers to her brow. She’d removed her gloves to avoid ink stains and left the hearth in her study unlit to save the cost of fuel. Besides Meatball, the only warmth was from the beeswax candles—an expense she couldn’t scrimp on unless she wanted to lose what eyesight she had left.

  Adjusting her spectacles, she scanned the proposal again, scratching angry notes between the lines.

  She remembered a time when House Traementis had been as powerful as the Indestor family. They had held a seat in the Cinquerat, the five-person council that ruled Nadežra, and charters that allowed them to conduct trade, contract mercenaries, control guilds. Every variety of wealth, power, and prestige in Nadežra was theirs. Now, despite Donaia’s best efforts, and her late husband’s before her, it had come to this: scrabbling at one Dusk Road trade charter as though she could milk enough blood from that stone to pay off all the Traementis debts.

  Debts almost entirely owned by Mettore Indestor.

  “And you expect me to trust my caravan to guards you provide?” she growled at the proposal, her pen nib digging in hard enough to tear the paper. “Hah! Who’s going to protect it from them? Will they even wait for bandits, or just sack the wagons themselves?”

  Leaving Donaia with the loss, a pack of angry investors, and debts she could no longer cover. Then Mettore would swoop in like one of his thrice-damned hawks to swallow whole what remained of House Traementis.

  Try as she might, though, she couldn’t see another option. She couldn’t send the caravan out unguarded—Vraszenian bandits were a legi
timate concern—but the Indestor family held the Caerulet seat in the Cinquerat, which gave Mettore authority over military and mercenary affairs. Nobody would risk working with a house Indestor had a grudge against—not when it would mean losing a charter, or worse.

  Meatball’s head rose with a sudden whine. A moment later a knock came at the study door, followed by Donaia’s majordomo. Colbrin knew better than to interrupt her when she was wrestling with business, which meant he judged this interruption important.

  He bowed and handed her a card. “Alta Renata Viraudax?” Donaia asked, shoving Meatball’s wet snout out of her lap when he sniffed at the card. She flipped it as if the back would provide some clue to the visitor’s purpose. Viraudax wasn’t a local noble house. Some traveler to Nadežra?

  “A young woman, Era Traementis,” her majordomo said. “Well-mannered. Well-dressed. She said it concerned an important private matter.”

  The card fluttered to the floor. Donaia’s duties as head of House Traementis kept her from having much of a social life, but the same could not be said for her son, and lately Leato had been behaving more and more like his father. Ninat take him—if her son had racked up some gambling debt with a foreign visitor…

  Colbrin retrieved the card before the dog could eat it and handed it back to her. “Should I tell her you are not at home?”

  “No. Show her in.” If her son’s dive into the seedier side of Nadežra had resulted in trouble, she would at least rectify his errors before stringing him up.

  Somehow. With money she didn’t have.

  She could start by not conducting the meeting in a freezing study. “Wait,” she said before Colbrin could leave. “Show her to the salon. And bring tea.”

  Donaia cleaned the ink from her pen and made a futile attempt to brush away the brindled dog hairs matting her surcoat. Giving that up as a lost cause, she tugged on her gloves and straightened the papers on her desk, collecting herself by collecting her surroundings. Looking down at her clothing—the faded blue surcoat over trousers and house scuffs—she weighed the value of changing over the cost of making a potential problem wait.

  Everything is a tallied cost these days, she thought grimly.

  “Meatball. Stay,” she commanded when the hound would have followed, and headed directly to the salon.

  The young woman waiting there could not have fit the setting more perfectly if she had planned it. Her rose-gold underdress and cream surcoat harmonized beautifully with the gold-shot peach silk of the couch and chairs, and the thick curl trailing from her upswept hair echoed the rich wood of the wall paneling. The curl should have looked like an accident, an errant strand slipping loose—but everything else about the visitor was so elegant it was clearly a deliberate touch of style.

  She was studying the row of books on their glass-fronted shelf. When Donaia closed the door, she turned and dipped low. “Era Traementis. Thank you for seeing me.”

  Her curtsy was as Seterin as her clipped accent, one hand sweeping elegantly up to the opposite shoulder. Donaia’s misgivings deepened at the sight of her. Close to her son’s age, and beautiful as a portrait by Creciasto, with fine-boned features and flawless skin. Easy to imagine Leato losing his head over a hand of cards with such a girl. And her ensemble did nothing to comfort Donaia’s fears—the richly embroidered brocade, the sleeves an elegant fall of sheer silk. Here was someone who could afford to bet and lose a fortune.

  That sort was more likely to forgive or forget a debt than come collecting… unless the debt was meant as leverage for something else.

  “Alta Renata. I hope you will forgive my informality.” She brushed a hand down her simple attire. “I did not expect visitors, but it sounded like your matter was of some urgency. Please, do be seated.”

  The young woman lowered herself into the chair as lightly as mist on the river. Seeing her, it was easy to understand why the people of Nadežra looked to Seteris as the source of all that was stylish and elegant. Fashion was born in Seteris. By the time it traveled south to Seteris’s protectorate, Seste Ligante, then farther south still, across the sea to Nadežra, it was old and stale, and Seteris had moved on.

  Most Seterin visitors behaved as though Nadežra was nothing more than Seste Ligante’s backwater colonial foothold on the Vraszenian continent, and that merely setting foot on the streets would foul them with the mud of the River Dežera. But Renata’s delicacy looked like hesitation, not condescension. She said, “Not urgent, no—I do apologize if I gave that impression. I confess, I’m not certain how to even begin this conversation.”

  She paused, hazel eyes searching Donaia’s face. “You don’t recognize my family name, do you?”

  That had an ominous sound. Seteris might be on the other side of the sea, but the truly powerful families could influence trade anywhere in the known world. If House Traementis had somehow crossed one of them…

  Donaia kept her fear from her face and her voice. “I am afraid I haven’t had many dealings with the great houses of Seteris.”

  A soft breath flowed out of the girl. “As I suspected. I thought she might have written to you at least once, but apparently not. I… am Letilia’s daughter.”

  She could have announced she was descended from the Vraszenian goddess Ažerais herself and it wouldn’t have taken Donaia more by surprise.

  Disbelief clashed with relief and apprehension both: not a creditor, not an offended daughter of some foreign power. Family—after a fashion.

  Lost for words, Donaia reassessed the young woman sitting across from her. Straight back, straight shoulders, straight neck, and the same fine, narrow nose that made everyone in Nadežra hail Letilia Traementis as the great beauty of her day.

  Yes, she could be Letilia’s daughter. Donaia’s niece by marriage.

  BY K. J. PARKER

  The Fencer Trilogy

  Colours in the Steel

  The Belly of the Bow

  The Proof House

  The Scavenger Trilogy

  Shadow

  Pattern

  Memory

  The Engineer Trilogy

  Devices and Desires

  Evil for Evil

  The Escapement

  The Company

  The Folding Knife

  The Hammer

  Sharps

  The Two of Swords: Volume 1

  The Two of Swords: Volume 2

  The Two of Swords: Volume 3

  Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City

  How to Rule an Empire and Get Away with It

  BY TOM HOLT

  Expecting Someone Taller

  Who’s Afraid of Beowulf?

  Flying Dutch

  Ye Gods!

  Overtime

  Here Comes the Sun

  Grailblazers

  Faust Among Equals

  Odds and Gods

  Djinn Rummy

  My Hero

  Paint Your Dragon

  Open Sesame

  Wish You Were Here

  Only Human

  Snow White and the Seven Samurai

  Valhalla

  Nothing But Blue Skies

  Falling Sideways

  Little People

  The Portable Door

  In Your Dreams

  Earth, Air, Fire and Custard

  You Don’t Have to Be Evil to Work Here, But It Helps

  Someone Like Me

  Barking

  The Better Mousetrap

  May Contain Traces of Magic

  Blonde Bombshell

  Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Sausages

  Doughnut

  When It’s A Jar

  The Outsorcerer’s Apprentice

  The Good, the Bad and the Smug

  The Management Style of the Supreme Beings

  An Orc on the Wild Side

  Dead Funny: Omnibus 1

  Mightier Than the Sword: Omnibus 2

  The Divine Comedies: Omnibus 3

  For Two Nights Only: Omnibus 4

  Tall
Stories: Omnibus 5

  Saints and Sinners: Omnibus 6

  Fishy Wishes: Omnibus 7

  The Walled Orchard

  Alexander at the World’s End

  Olympiad

  A Song for Nero

  Meadowland

  I, Margaret

  Lucia in Wartime

  Lucia Triumphant