Брайан Макклеллан - Wrath of Empire

He struggled to breathe, looking up at Valyaine. Slowly, Valyaine lowered his fists. He took one step to the side, picking Styke’s knife out of the mud, then tossing it to him hilt-first. “I never wanted you dead, Ben. I just wanted things to end. You think about that real hard. Go slaughter Dynize until you swim in blood. If you still want more, you can come back here and gut me. I’ll even open my shirt for you.”

Valyaine turned around and walked back into the arena.

Styke struggled to his feet. He’d killed men before for walking away during a fight. He watched until Valyaine had disappeared, then limped across the street to where Ka-poel and Celine waited with Amrec. Passersby stared. He ignored them.

Celine had a strange look on her face, Ka-poel a scowl. Styke took the reins from Celine and realized that she’d probably never heard anyone talk like that to him – like an equal who was sick of his shit. She asked in a quiet voice, “Why didn’t you kill him?”

It was an echo of the question she’d asked when he failed to kill Tenny Wiles. Styke sighed, knowing he was never going to hear the end of this from Ibana. Because he beat me fair and square almost came to his lips, but instead he said, “Because he wasn’t wrong,” and limped down the street with Amrec in tow.

Everything hurt – he hadn’t been beaten that hard since the labor camp, and it wasn’t a good kind of memory. He felt around with his tongue, making sure he had all his teeth, and gingerly touched his face. Broken nose. Split lips. Maybe a cracked rib. He still had a hard time breathing. He’d need a big supply of horngum before he left town.

They’d gone a few blocks when Styke suddenly spotted something out of the corner of his eye. He handed the reins to Celine, who still sat alone on Amrec’s saddle, and limped down the street toward an old man he’d spotted leading a horse.

“You there,” he said, tapping the man on the shoulder.

“Eh?” The old man turned, looked up at Styke, and did a double take. “What do you want?”

Styke did a quick circuit of the horse, looking at teeth, eyes, hooves, and legs while the man looked on, bewildered. “It looks like a midget Rosvelean draft horse,” Styke said.

“Not bred that way. She’s just a runt. Can I help you with something?”

“How does she do with noise?”

“What’s this about?” the man demanded.

“Noise?” Styke said. “How does she do with it? Quick movements, large crowds, all that?”

“She does great,” the man retorted. “She’s a damned miniature warhorse, just too small for a soldier. What the pit do you want?”

Styke ignored the man’s frustration. “Name me a price and I’ll buy her right now.”

The man looked around suspiciously before eyeing Styke for a long moment. “A thousand krana.”

It was three hundred more than the horse was worth. “Done,” Styke replied. “You bring her and any kit you have for her out to the Mad Lancer camp by nightfall. Tell Ibana ja Fles that Ben Styke bought a horse for the girl, and she’ll pay you.”

“I … I …”

Styke left the man standing there stuttering and returned to Ka-poel and Celine. Ka-poel had a small smile on her face, and Styke avoided looking her in the eye.

“Who was that?” Celine asked.

“Just some man,” Styke replied.

“What did you want with him?”

Styke took Amrec’s reins, patting Celine gently on the arm. “I wanted to buy his horse. She’s yours. Should be there by the time we go to bed tonight.”

The look of joy on Celine’s face made him forget all about his broken nose, Valyaine, and the entire damned war. Unable to stop grinning, Styke led them back to the Mad Lancer camp.

Vlora caught sight of Prime Lektor again three days after speaking with Taniel in the Yellow Creek jail.

Finding him was purely luck. Vlora was returning from another fruitless morning of searching the nooks and crannies of the mountains surrounding Yellow Creek. The newsies on her normal route had sold out of their papers already, so she went out of her way to find a street corner where the boys still had some stock. She had just found a paper and folded it over to read while she walked when her gaze swept across the familiar profile.

Prime sat outside a café in the one small area of town that could be considered posh – if one squinted a little. It was midday, and he was enjoying a coffee, biscuits, and a newspaper while he faced away from the sun.

Vlora forced herself to act casual, turning slowly to cut across traffic and heading around to a nearby storefront where she could get a good look at his face without crossing his line of sight. Once she could clearly see the inkvine birthmark that cut across the left side of his face, she knew he was definitely Prime Lektor.

Vlora waffled. A part of her wanted to walk over, pull up a seat, and ask Prime straight out why he was here. It was a foolish thought, one that she had no problem talking herself out of, and instead she circled around behind him and took a seat on a nearby stoop where she could keep an eye on him over her newspaper.

She only half read the articles as she watched the back of Prime’s head. The news was all two weeks old, and was filled with rampant speculation regarding the war, Dynize military might, rumors of Lindet’s assassination, and more. Nothing looked reliable and it frustrated her to no end, so she turned her attention purely on Prime.

One of the odd quirks of sorcery was that a powder mage could sense a Privileged, but a Privileged could not sense a powder mage. Vlora did not know if the same rule applied to the Predeii, but considering that Prime didn’t just turn around and incinerate her, she assumed that it did.

The immediate problem was that, while she definitely recognized Prime Lektor, she could not sense his sorcerous presence. He was cloaking himself from any such scrying. It would make him difficult to follow or predict.

She tried to think of any possible reason for his presence in Yellow Creek – aside from the godstone. Nothing came to mind, and that left her with a number of pressing questions. What were his intentions regarding the stone? Had he already found it? Was he alert and ready in case he was found, or was he complacent in his power? There were no easy answers, which meant Vlora would have to find them the hard way, the dangerous way.

It was about thirty minutes before Prime folded his paper, finished off his coffee, and stood up. He was dressed as a frontier gentleman, with a tan cotton suit and matching top hat, a cane, and a pair of spectacles perched on the front of his nose. He surreptitiously took a look around before tucking the paper under one arm and heading down the street.

Vlora followed at a distance.

She didn’t have to go far. Prime took a right at the next intersection and walked up to the front door of what passed for a townhouse in a frontier city. The building was a narrow two stories, a mix of wood and plaster construction with a sharply slanted roof and cheerful bright green shutters. Prime let himself in, leaving Vlora lurking at the corner and completely uncertain about what to do next.

She carefully cast her senses toward the townhouse, feeling around with a light, tentative touch for wards. There were all sorts of passive things a Privileged could do to protect a location. Doorknobs could be warded to stun or kill anyone who touched them, floors could inform the Privileged when someone had walked upon them, and whole buildings could be prepped to explode when entered. Wards were also, as far as Vlora was aware, next to impossible to hide completely.