Брайан Макклеллан - Wrath of Empire

As the Dynize patrol drew closer, Michel whispered to himself under his breath. “My name is Pasi. I am an Adran immigrant whose wife and children left the city before the invasion. I came down from the plateau to scavenge and was caught out after curfew. I am waiting out the night so I can return home in the morning.” He repeated the alibi to himself twice more and fell silent, hugging the arms of his threadbare wool jacket and waiting for one of the soldiers to spot him.

They marched by, close enough he could have reached them in three strides. Soldiers glanced in alleyways, doors, and toward dark windows, but no one cried out, and the platoon did not stop.

Michel waited until they had turned the next corner before he allowed himself a sigh of relief and the tiniest sip from his flask. “Bloody pit,” he whispered. “That was a heart attack I didn’t need.” He put his hand on his chest until he could feel the thumping of his heart steady out. He settled into a more comfortable position to wait.

He remained in the doorway for over forty minutes, frequently squinting through the dark at his pocket watch, until a figure emerged from the shadows of the alleyway across the street.

“Bloskin!” a voice called out, wavering.

Michel tensed, ready to run if his rendezvous had somehow turned into an ambush. “It’s a good night to see a friend,” Michel responded. The figure hesitated, as if checking the code words against her memory, then came far enough into the street so that Michel could make out some of her features. She had long, dirty-blond hair and a heavy brow, her nose and cheeks broad. Michel wouldn’t have wanted to meet her in a dark alley.

And yet, he realized with in inward laugh, here he was doing just that. “Over here,” he called.

The woman joined him in the doorway, pressing herself into the darkness. “You’re Bloskin?” she asked.

Another of Michel’s aliases. He wondered how many he’d gained just in the last three weeks since the occupation, and hoped that he’d be able to keep them all straight. “I am.”

“Hendres sent me. My name is Kazi Fo –”

“Wait,” Michel said, pressing a finger to her lips. “Don’t tell me your full name. In fact, don’t tell anyone your real name, if you can help it. Not on a night like this. Where are they?”

“I left them across the street. I wanted to make sure it was safe.”

“Well done. You told them my name?”

“I told them you are Bloskin, a Blackhat Bronze Rose. I told them you knew their mother.”

Michel squinted at her. “Are you a Blackhat?”

“An Iron Rose. But I don’t have it with me. It’s hidden.”

“Good. Don’t show that Rose to anyone. It’s too dangerous. Why didn’t you leave the city during the invasion?”

Kazi glanced back into the street, taking a half step away from Michel. He could practically feel her distrust. Blackhats were the Lady Chancellor’s secret police. They were inherently distrustful but should always be able to count on each other. The invasion and subsequent occupation had changed all the old rules. “You don’t have to tell me anything about yourself,” Michel reassured. “I was just curious. We all have our reasons.”

“Yes, we do,” Kazi said, her tone standoffish.

Michel needed trust right now, people he could depend on. But his list of trusted contacts was pitifully small, so why should hers be any longer? If he wanted to know more about Kazi, he’d have to ask their mutual contact. “Get out of here,” he said. “Get some sleep. There will be more families tomorrow.” He grabbed her sleeve as she turned to go. “Cover your head. Your hair stands out in the darkness. Also, careful of the patrols. They’re changing up their routes.”

He waited until Kazi had headed back toward the secret paths up to the Landfall plateau, before crossing the street and entering the alley she’d emerged from a few minutes prior. The alley was littered with old crates, barrels, and other refuse, and he couldn’t immediately pick out anyone hiding there.

“I’m Bloskin,” he said in a loud whisper. “Kazi has gone home. You’re with me now.”

Slowly, figures emerged from their hiding places. The first was a man, medium height with long, dark hair under a flatcap. He held a bundle in his arms, which Michel quickly realized was a child, no more than a year old. Five more children of various ages followed.

“Kazi said you know my wife,” the man whispered urgently.

Part of Michel’s job as a spy had always been knowing when to tell the truth and when to lie – and when to walk the gray places in between. “I don’t, actually. I don’t know who you are, except that your wife is a Silver Rose, and we need to get you out of the city. That’ll have to be good enough, unless you want to risk the Dynize purges.”

The children huddled around their father, who seemed at a loss. He looked around at the waiting faces before finally nodding at Michel. “We don’t have any choice but to trust you. But this is my family. If you so much as –”

“Don’t threaten me,” Michel said with a tired sigh. “It’s childish. You can either let me do my job, or I can go find somewhere to sleep. Now, are we getting you out of the city or not?”

“Is Bloskin even your real name?” the father asked. Michel could hear the tension in his voice, and he wished that for once this process could be simple.

“No, and I suggest you not tell me yours.” Michel squinted at his pocket watch, trying to discern the time in the darkness. “Kazi got you here late, so if we’re going to go, we need to do it now. Make a decision.”

The father’s mouth formed a hard line. “We’ll go.”

“Right, follow me. And no one make a peep.”

Michel led the family back the way they’d come and began to cross streets and duck through alleys in a pattern that might look to an observer to be entirely random. They crisscrossed their own path several times, but he led them steadily north through the suburbs until the streets began to widen and the tenements and stores began to thin. They were soon among small, two-story houses, ducking through one of the many Palo quarters of the city, where the streets weren’t cobbled, the gutters were filled with trash, and the Dynize patrols were fewer.

For eight nights Michel had done a variation of the same route – carefully planned out during the day – and managed not to cross paths with a single Dynize patrol. On this night, however, the patrols were constant and the group was forced to hide almost every hour.

They waited for the third of the patrols to pass by, crouching beneath one of the stilted houses on the floodplains north of the city. Over a hundred strong, and led by a soldier whose breastplate was lacquered black, the patrol carried torches, which they thrust into the alleys and under the houses as they went, and Michel quietly urged the children to move farther into the darkness.

“They’ve changed the routes,” Michel whispered to the father. He swore to himself and listened to the ticking of his watch in his breast pocket, knowing time was running short.

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know. Could be they’re getting wise to people leaving the city. Could be that they just change their routine every week or so. Either way, it’s going to be more and more dangerous to leave the city from here on out.”

“Are we going to be able to get out?” There was a tinge of desperation to the father’s voice.

Michel hesitated. If he was smart, he’d leave the seven of them here to try and make it on their own. He’d flush his safe house in Upper Landfall, cut off his contacts with Hendres, Kazi, and anyone else, and find the deepest hole in Greenfire Depths to wait out this occupation.