Брайан Макклеллан - Wrath of Empire

“I know,” Burt said with a sigh. “I’ve spent the last few years trying to take this town over by wile, to turn it into a beachhead for my country without Lindet finding out. Everything changed when the Dynize invaded, though. If they head our way, we will eject the prospectors and dynamite the passes. They might take the town, but my people will be safe up in the high places.”

“Even if they have Privileged?”

“We are not … undefended when it comes to sorcery.”

Vlora wondered what Taniel would say when she told him about this conversation. She would have to do it slowly, so she could cast his expression to memory. She stood up, putting out her hand. “We’ll do our best to be gone well before the Dynize arrive. Thank you, Burt. And I hope this is the start of a long friendship.”

Michel sat on a stool, the only piece of furniture in a looted, upscale tenement apartment on the northwest edge of the Landfall Plateau. His eyes were closed, his mind wandering, as he considered the options available to him from this point out.

The apartment was, as far as Michel could tell, the nicest of Taniel’s safe houses. It had tall ceilings and enormous, south-facing windows in the great room, and even a master bedroom with a balcony that looked off the plateau. At some point over the last couple of months it had been thoroughly tossed – a safe in the corner of the master bedroom had been ripped out of the wall, the furniture and silver stolen, and even the gas lines turned off and ripped out of the wall. It was the first time Michel had been to this particular safe house and he was more than a little disappointed to find it in this state.

But it did give him a place to think.

His whole mission with the Dynize was to snatch Mara – Ichtracia – and get her the pit out of Dynize territory. The fact that she was a Privileged made this more like trying to extract a rabid bear rather than an informant. Even if she was a normal person, all his old Blackhat routes were compromised. He needed a new escape route.

And he found himself less eager to use it than he had expected. The Dynize government was a viper’s nest, with Sedial as the king viper ready to kill anything that moved. But part of Michel desperately wanted to finish what he’d started. Hunting down Blackhats had brought out a mean streak in him, a deep satisfaction at rounding up the people whom he’d helped to oppress Landfall for so long. Watching the way the Dynize treated the occupied city, and especially the Palo, had deepened Michel’s hatred of Lindet’s regime. Je Tura’s indiscriminate bombings, his killing of women and children – these gave Michel a real urge to finally put him in the ground.

He bounced a coin on his knee, thinking about Tenik, and wondering if Tenik and Yaret would ever forgive him for disappearing right on the eve of finally clearing Landfall of the Blackhats.

“Guess we’ll have to find out.” Michel got to his feet, carrying the stool over to the corner of the great room. He set it against the wall, using it as a stepping point to lift himself onto the gaudy trim that went around the middle of the wall. He braced one leg on a hole in the plaster where someone had torn out a gas lantern, then kicked another hole in the plaster to get him up near the ceiling. He produced a knife, and began to stab through the ceiling until he hit something solid.

His legs trembled from the effort of bracing himself, and the half-healed gunshot wound in his chest began to burn. He quickly cut through the ceiling plaster and then used the handle of the knife to bash the rest of it until the ceiling finally gave way, a large metal box about the size of two saddlebags falling to the ground in a cloud of plaster dust.

Michel followed it down and cracked the seal on the box with his knife. He opened it cautiously, his face away from the lid until he was sure it wasn’t booby-trapped, and finally took a good look at the contents.

He gave a low whistle. “Taniel, you were really damn ready for anything, weren’t you?”

Michel found a large stable in the shadow of the plateau, a steady stream of carts moving in and out or parking in the street outside with loads of pumpkins or barrels or boxed uniforms for the Dynize Army. A sign over the door said HALFORD HAULING, and from what Michel had heard, the old man who owned the place had made himself a fortune just since the invasion by negotiating with some quartermaster to move supplies for a Dynize regiment.

Michel was dressed in a laborer’s cotton suit – his favorite disguise – and walked straight in through the front gate of the stable with hat in hand. Dozens of workers repaired wheels, transferred cargo, or tended to horses, and no one seemed to notice him as he slipped into one of the cart-parking stalls and found a young man checking equipment in the corner.

The young man had thinned since Michel saw him last, five or six months ago. His wisp of a beard was still a disgrace, and he still had that plain face of someone who could disappear into the crowd, but he moved with a purpose and confidence that he had not possessed before.

“Hello, Dristan,” Michel said, leaning against the wall beside him.

Dristan frowned and looked up at Michel, blinking a few times, clearly lost in his own thoughts. “Do I know you?”

“We only met briefly,” Michel said, “but we have met. I heard you drive for Halford now. That’s quite a step up from where you were before the invasion.”

Dristan got a sort of worried look, staring at Michel sidelong like one might a long-absent cousin who’d come looking for money. “I think you have the wrong man.”

Michel pointed at Dristan playfully. “That, I do not. The last time we saw each other, I was getting pissed at six o’clock in the morning in a pub in Lower Landfall.”

The color suddenly drained from Dristan’s face. He looked around quickly for anyone who might overhear, and he hissed at Michel. “Pit, I remember you now. You’re the spy who was supposed to train me.”

“I am.”

“Well, you listen to me. You never came looking for me, so I got a good job with Halford, and they just gave me my own route, and I don’t want nothing to do with anything spy business. The Blackhats are finished in this town, and I won’t let you take me down with them. Hear me?”

Michel held his hands up. “I’m not trying to take you down with anything, Dristan. I just want to hire you for a single route.”

“I just said I won’t do anything for the Blackhats.”

“I’m not with the Blackhats anymore. Pit, I changed sides just like old Halford, and the Dynize are making me rich. Ask around. There’s plenty of gossip about a Blackhat turncoat.”

Dristan eyed Michel with suspicion. “What do you want?”

“Like I said, I want to hire you. I just need someone to move a package for me.”

“If you need something hauled, you go inside and talk to Halford.”

“No, I won’t. I want you . I already checked your route. You’re taking supplies to the front about forty miles north of here. It’s, what, a week round-trip?”

Dristan swallowed hard.

Michel continued. “Next time you go north, I want you to take two people with you. They can hide in your supplies, or ride out front with you, or however the pit you want to do it. Just get them past the Dynize checkpoints with that little official card I know you carry around with you.”

“And what do I get in return? Are you going to blackmail me?”

“Not in the slightest. I’m not with the Blackhats anymore, and have no interest in forcing you to do anything illicit.”