Брайан Макклеллан - Wrath of Empire

A frightened voice answered in Palo. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Is what he said true? Did he buy your debt?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“That goddamn pig. Don’t flinch away. I’m not going to take you to bed or kill you. Do you know where the army camps are to the west of the city?”

“I do, ma’am.”

“Take this note to the guards at the camp of the Falcon Third Regiment. There is a man there named Devin-Cathetin, who I trust. He’ll give you a job. Nothing you don’t want to do, hear me? Go directly there, and don’t use any of the carriages in the city, and don’t go back to Sedial. I suggest you change your name and forget your friends and family if you don’t want to end up dead. You can leave by the back door. Go!”

Footsteps fled down the hallway beneath Michel, and he heard the back door open and close. In the sitting room below him, Ichtracia dropped into a chair with a sigh. He slowly backed away from the stairs, heading back to the bedroom, where he found his shirt and boots and quickly began getting dressed.

He wanted to ask Ichtracia a thousand questions, but two burning bits of information kept his heart racing in a near panic: Would she put him out to please her grandfather, and was she this Mara person whom he’d been looking for this whole time?

He finished lacing his boots and looked up, only to find Ichtracia standing in the doorway with one arm up on the door, her robe open, another hand on her hip. Her eyes were puffy and red, her mouth turned down at the corners. Michel got to his feet and took a step toward her nightstand, with the Privileged’s gloves sitting on them, wondering if she’d come up here to take her anger out on him.

“How much did you overhear?”

“Some,” Michel said as innocuously as possible. “It was quite loud.”

Ichtracia sniffed. “You were eavesdropping.” She walked past him quickly, but instead of her gloves she retrieved her mala pipe and flung it at the far wall. It shattered, sending bits of glass, ash, and mala across the room. “You’re a damned spy. If you weren’t listening from the top of the stairs, I would think less of you. Well, out with it! What do you want to ask? Am I going to turn you inside out and hand you to Sedial?” She scoffed and crossed to the window, where she glared out into the street as if to be sure Sedial was gone. “Do you want to ask why I hate him? Come, I can see the damned question on your lips.”

Michel tried to work some moisture back into his mouth. “Who is Mara?”

“What?” Ichtracia blinked at him, looking genuinely confused. Perhaps he had misheard the word. His inexperience with the language had defeated him, and now he’d asked a question that could arouse her suspicion. Too damn late now.

“Who is Mara?” he asked again. “I heard Sedial say the name.”

Ichtracia still seemed baffled. This was certainly not the question she’d expected him to voice. “It’s not a name.” Michel’s mind began to turn faster, trying to fit pieces into place in the hope that this new information might help him find Taniel’s informant. Until Ichtracia continued. “It’s not exactly a name. I’m Mara. It’s an old word – a pet name that Sedial has used for me since I was a little girl.”

Michel began to pace immediately, the near panic of earlier blowing into a full panic now. She was Mara. The goddamned nickname of a Privileged, and Taniel hadn’t thought that either of those bits of information were important? Did he think that leaving out the Privileged bit was the only way to convince Michel to take the job? That otherwise Michel would have gotten out of the city as fast as his feet could carry him?

Because he was damned well right.

“Why do you want to know about that name?” Ichtracia asked, taking a step toward him.

Michel took the same step back, edging toward the door. He’d spent three days with her now, and he suddenly didn’t recognize her anymore. It terrified him almost as much as those gloves sitting on the nightstand. “I have to go.”

“What? No. Answer my question.”

Michel glanced at the gloves, then at Ichtracia’s face. “Yaret needs me right now,” he said with more confidence than he felt, heading for the front door.

It took a day to set up the duel. Vlora stayed in a back room of Burt’s brothel, nursing the cuts on her hands and only leaving once, to send a secure courier to Olem with instructions to inch the army closer to Yellow Creek.

The morning brought a cold wind sweeping down from the mountains, chilling Vlora through her clothes as she stepped outside with an entourage that included Burt and fifty of his armed posse. Most of them were Palo, but more than a few were Kressian or Gurlish. The sun wasn’t even above the trees yet, and traffic was sparse. Children lined the rooftops, watching them pass, and Vlora guessed that word about this duel had spread.

They walked down the main road, passing the hotel where Vlora had spent the first week of her stay. The fidgety manager stood on the stoop, eyes glued to the procession. They kept onward, finally turning off the street and entering a dusty park, where a public gallows stood ominously creaking in the wind. The corner of the park was full of tombstones.

Men and women lined the other side of the park, all of them similarly well armed, and they outnumbered Burt’s people by at least a dozen. Nohan stood at the center of the group beside a dark-skinned Deliv woman in a corseted crimson dress. She was dressed more like a courtesan at a dinner party than someone out early in the morning to watch two people fight to the death.

Vlora leaned over to Burt. “Is that Jezzy in the red dress?” she asked.

“That’s her.” Burt puffed on a cigar. He wore a dashing brown suit, complete with cane and bowler cap, and he, too, seemed to be treating this as a matter of entertainment rather than dire consequence.

“Does she know what I am?”

Burt grinned around his cigar. “She has no idea. She bet her best gold mine against seven of my smaller claims without batting an eye. Either she knows something I don’t, or she doesn’t know that I know her man is a mage.” He looked skyward, as if making sure the order of the sentence sounded right, then nodded to himself. “Whoever wins, this is going to be a lot more interesting than she expects.”

So Burt was betting against the house. It didn’t surprise Vlora, not much, but she was slightly annoyed at how cavalier he was about this thing. He might lose a handful of small claims, but she could be dead in ten minutes.

Vlora eyed the armed men. “Is this going to turn into a battle?”

“It shouldn’t. The deputies are steering clear this morning, but nobody wants a real confrontation. This is just a bit of fun.”

“And all the weapons?”

“Precaution.”

Vlora eyed Nohan. He didn’t look great. He still limped from their tussle, and his arms seemed stiff. He didn’t look like he’d gotten much more sleep than she had – probably he’d been out hunting her each of the last few nights. She had little question that he was running a damned powerful powder trance.

Vlora was confident, but she knew that being too confident could get her killed. This was a trained powder mage who delighted in killing. He was bigger, stronger, and just as fast. Even if she won, she was unlikely to leave this fight unscathed.

She tested the tightness of the stitches Burt’s surgeon had redone on her arms, knowing that she’d probably rip them all out. Taking a powder charge between her fingers, she crushed the paper and reached up her sleeve to rub the powder beneath her bandages, feeling the fire as it reached her bloodstream. She took another charge and sniffed it, turning away from the others lest Jezzy see the act and try to cancel the duel.