Брайан Макклеллан - Wrath of Empire

Dvory swallowed hard, but did not respond.

Styke sat forward and put his elbows on Dvory’s table. He said in a quiet voice, “Two days ago, we were ambushed by a force of Dynize dragoons. They ambushed us. Me, Ibana, Jackal, all the rest. They took us by surprise. Now, I know you don’t want to deal with a force of dragoons alone, not one skilled enough to sneak up on the Mad Lancers. They might not be able to crack a whole field army, but they can make your life miserable. But if you give us a couple of days to rest, we’ll be on our way without taxing your supplies – and then I intend on hunting down those dragoons and butchering them. Like I said … I’m doing your job for you.”

“We’re heading west,” Dvory said. “We move on tomorrow.”

“We’ll move with you,” Styke said. “And sleep inside your pickets. You can use a few of the old lancers as scouts if you want.”

Dvory seemed genuinely torn. He fiddled with the butt of his extinguished cigarette, his face looking like he’d just swallowed a lime. “If I allow this,” he said, “are we square?”

“We’re square.” Then Styke reached across the table and shook hands with a man who had once betrayed him. He forced a smile on his face and tightened his grip just a little.

Ibana wasn’t going to let him hear the end of it.

Dvory showed Styke out of the tent, and Styke was only slightly surprised that the initial two guards had become twenty, all of them with bayonets fixed and all of them pretending that they hadn’t been waiting for some kind of signal as the two men exited. Ka-poel stood by a nearby torch, arms folded, flames dancing in her eyes. Her face was unreadable.

“Who is this?” Dvory asked, gesturing to her.

“My servant,” Styke said.

“A Palo, eh? I heard your tastes had gotten … significantly younger since you left the labor camps.”

Styke leaned sideways as if whispering to a friend, a smile plastered on his face. “Speak like that of my girl again and you will live out the rest of your life as a torso and a head in a flour sack.”

A bead of sweat rolled down Dvory’s forehead. “What are you doing out here?” he asked, quickly changing the subject.

“Asking for your help.”

“No. Here, on the Hammer.”

“Killing Dynize.” Styke joined Ka-poel, touching her elbow and pointing in the direction they’d left their horses. “Good-bye, Dvory. Don’t forget to tell your pickets to expect my men.”

When they were finally out of sight, Styke turned aside and spat into the grass. His mouth tasted of bile, his nerves shot, and he suddenly realized just how close he’d actually come to killing Dvory. Every muscle was sore and tight from the tension.

“I just asked a favor of a man who once betrayed me,” he told Ka-poel.

Ka-poel pursed her lips, pinching two fingers together and thrusting them in front of Styke’s face. It took several moments in the poor light to realize that she held a single human hair. It took him another few moments to realize the significance.

He barked a laugh. “Does that belong to Dvory?”

She nodded.

He felt a little of the tension leak off, and rolled his shoulders to loosen his muscles. “Leave him alone for now,” he said. “You can keep the hair – it might come in handy. If I don’t kill him for betraying me, I can still kill him for his smug, stupid face.”

“You look like you haven’t slept in days.” Taniel sat on the chair by one of the tiny windows of his cell, contemplating the gallows sitting just outside. His sketchbook sat in his lap, and he examined Vlora with a frown. Her hair was unkempt, her jacket dirty, and she could only imagine the bags under her eyes.

She leaned her head against the bars of Taniel’s jail cell. “They both know who I am.”

He frowned as she spoke. “Who?”

“The powder mage, Nohan. He put two and two together and called me out. Says he’s going to kill me and take the bounty that Lindet put out on me.”

“Can he?”

“Not in a fair fight.”

“Right. Why didn’t you just kill him when he threatened you?”

“Because I don’t want to end up in here with you,” Vlora replied.

“So buy him off,” Taniel said, as if the answer were simple.

Vlora stared at Taniel, furious with him for suggesting it, and furious with herself for not just doing it in the first place. “I will not buy off a man who has tried to kill me. It’s personal now – and I don’t think he would take me up on it. Apparently we have a history.”

Taniel didn’t ask further, so Vlora didn’t bother to explain. He sketched furiously, his hand moving over the page manically, and she could tell that sitting in this cell was bothering the pit out of him. “Who else knows who you are?”

“Prime Lektor.”

Taniel’s sketching stopped. He looked up, staring at the wall, then looked over at her. “You saw him again?”

“Twice more. Definitely him, even though I can’t sense his sorcery. The first time, I tried to follow him and he disappeared into thin air. I know where he lives, but I’m not touching a Predeii’s house. It’s probably warded as tight as a king’s palace. The second time I saw him – well, he spotted me first. Now he knows I’m here.”

“That’s not great,” Taniel said with a frown.

Vlora rubbed her eyes. “Do we really know anything about him? Why does he want the stone? He’s a scholar, isn’t he? Maybe he’s just studying it?”

“He’s also part of the group that summoned Kresimir and caused the Bleakening,” Taniel warned.

“But if we have our facts right, he didn’t want Kresimir to come back the second time. He helped turn Adro into a democracy.”

“We can’t trust him.” Taniel looked down at his sketchbook. He suddenly dropped his charcoal and ripped the page out, crumpling it and tossing it into one corner of the cell. Vlora raised her eyebrows. It was the first time she’d ever seen him destroy a drawing in anger – even the terrible ones from his youth. “I need to get out of here,” he said.

Vlora didn’t disagree.

“I can try to break out tonight,” he said, “but there’s a ton of miscreants in here and a heavy guard on them. I’ll probably end up killing my way out.” He didn’t seem happy about this idea. “I don’t like killing decent people, and the deputies here are probably the only ones in the whole city.”

Vlora didn’t like the idea, either. “We have to give it another week.”

“You’ll get killed,” Taniel countered. “You can handle a rogue powder mage, but Prime is out of your league.”

“I won’t.” Her mind raced. “I can change hotels and keep my head down. Flerring tipped me off to men going mad at one of the mining sites. If I can get inside, I might be able to find the stone; by the time I find the stone, you’ll be out. We can deal with Prime and then bring Olem and the boys into town to claim the stone.”

“It’s risky,” Taniel said slowly.

Once again, Vlora didn’t disagree. But she could still move around the town freely, and she could still hide from both her antagonists. “Give me one more week,” she said. “Then we deal with both of them together, and Flerring will have enough blasting oil for us to try to destroy the stone. Have you heard any more news from your Palo friend?”

“Not much that’s useful. You really want to do this on your own, don’t you?” he asked with a sigh.

Vlora wanted to tell him that she couldn’t trust him anymore. She wanted to tell him that he was no longer human and that he was no longer the Adran patriot who had been a hero of two wars. She wanted to tell him that she did need to do this herself. “I want to do this without you having to kill decent people,” she reasoned. “And without drawing any more attention.”