Брайан Макклеллан - Wrath of Empire

The carriage was moving, but Michel had no way of knowing in what direction. “Thank you,” he said.

“Hmm?” Ichtracia looked down at him, her eyes cold, her thoughts obviously far away. “Oh, that.” She snorted a laugh. “Having the chance to annoy Forgula is thanks enough.”

Michel thought of the laugh when he’d punched Forgula back at the war game. Was there some kind of old rivalry between the two? Past hatreds? Shouldn’t they be on the same side? “I have to go to Yaret’s Household,” he said.

Ichtracia ignored him. “Tculu, will he survive long enough to reach the house?”

“He’s still talking, ma’am,” the footman replied. “I think that’s a good sign.”

“Saen,” Michel said, trying to inject some force. “I have to get to Yaret’s Household, please. I have to warn them.”

Ichtracia’s attention snapped toward him with a startling suddenness. “About what? The bomb?”

Michel’s throat went dry. Ichtracia knew. She knew because she was Ka-Sedial’s granddaughter, and Ka-Sedial had arranged the assassination. He had just stepped out of one fire and into a much, much hotter one.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that,” Ichtracia said. “I didn’t put the damned thing there. You’ve been unconscious for about a half hour. Fifteen minutes ago, a bomb exploded, destroying Yaret’s house. We heard the explosion, and word just reached us by courier.”

Michel stared at her, trying to come up with a reply. Maybe she wasn’t involved, but … had he been too late? Had that girl gotten his note to Yaret in time? “We have to go help,” he whispered.

“Do we? Yaret isn’t a friend of mine, and I’ve been given no orders to return and aid them.”

Michel had no strength to feel grief, or outrage, or anything but the pain coming from his chest. He sagged, doing everything he could to keep his eyes open as the carriage finally came to a stop. The door opened, and at Ichtracia’s order he was carried, none too gently, down the drive of a small estate and in through the front door. A candelabra was swept unceremoniously off a large dining room table and Michel was laid down in the middle, with Ichtracia standing over him like she was about to quarter a deer.

“Fetch me my tools,” she told a footman before looking at Michel. “I’m going to do what I can for you,” she said. “You’ve lost a lot of blood, but it looks like you’ve already been patched up once. If we can keep you conscious, you should make a full recovery.”

“Are … are you a healing Privileged?”

“I am not.” Ichtracia took a satchel from one of the footmen, set it next to Michel’s head, and began to lay out tools. “My great-grandfather was a Privileged,” she explained. “He pioneered a combination of sorcery and surgery that greatly increases a patient’s chances of surviving. It is not nearly as effective – and much more painful – than healing sorcery. But it works.” She pulled on her Privileged’s gloves, the sight of which caused Michel to involuntarily attempt to get up and run. One of Ichtracia’s fingers twitched, and Michel was pressed against the table by unseen forces. “Tculu,” she said, “fetch Michel some whiskey from the cabinet. Give him a healthy swig, then put your belt between his teeth.”

Michel could barely keep up. Ichtracia moved quickly, clinically, like Emerald but with a more refined sense of businesslike purpose. “Why are you helping me?” he asked.

Ichtracia looked down at him as if the answer were obvious. She put a hand on his forehead, her gloves soft to the touch, and wiped the sweat from his brow in an almost gentle manner. “I’ll go to a lot of effort for a man who can make me laugh,” she said softly. “Besides, you asked me to dinner. I may be a Privileged, but I’m not a monster. I’ll never turn down a meal with an interesting person.”

Any further questions were cut off by the footman pressing a bottle to Michel’s mouth and pouring whiskey straight between his lips. He coughed, sputtered, trying to swallow as much as he could. The glass rim of the bottle was quickly replaced by the sour taste of the footman’s belt being forced between his teeth.

Michel went bug-eyed as he felt sorcery hold him so tightly he could barely breathe. Ichtracia lifted a scalpel, examined it carefully, and then went to work.

What, Michel wondered as the cutting began, had he done to deserve this?

“Where are you going?”

Styke looked up from packing Amrec’s saddlebags and saw Ibana watching him from a few paces away, hands on her hips, eyes narrowed. He checked to make sure a bottle of whiskey was safely wrapped in the rearmost saddlebag, then tightened the lashings to his bedroll. “I’ve got an errand to run,” he said.

Ibana came around Amrec to stand beside him, looking concerned. For three days they had followed in the shadow of the Third Army, drilling in the mornings and evenings and tending to the wounded. They planned on heading back out on their own, first thing in the morning.

“What’s this errand?”

Styke hesitated. “It’s personal.”

“It can’t wait?”

“No. I’m just going a few miles. I’ll be back before you’re ready to ride out in the morning.”

Ibana didn’t seem to buy it. “You’re not doing something stupid, are you? You have more people to kill?”

“Nope, nothing like that.”

She gazed at him suspiciously.

“I swear,” he added.

“Those dragonmen are still out there. Our scouts saw them the other day. If you go off on your own, they’re going to kill you.”

“That,” Styke said, “is why Celine and Ka-poel are staying with you.”

“Neither of them will stand for it. Pit, I won’t stand for it. What are you up to, Ben? Why can’t you tell me?”

Styke finished checking the saddle, then ran his hand along Amrec’s flank, up his neck, and over his nose. Amrec nuzzled him gently. “Like I said, it’s personal.”

“Take an escort, at least.”

“Not a chance. ‘Personal’ means not having fifty men with me. Besides, I’m more likely to lose those blasted dragonmen with just me and Amrec.” He turned and fixed Ibana with a steady stare, waiting for her to continue the argument. He wasn’t much for arguments and was satisfied to let her win most of them. But this … this was important. “If Ka-poel tries to follow me, you truss her up and throw her over the back of a horse.”

“Do it yourself,” Ibana snorted. “I’m not touching a blood sorcerer.”

“Coward.”

“Fool.”

They stared at each other for a moment; then Styke pulled himself up into the saddle. “See you tomorrow morning.”

He rode northwest across the Third Army camp and headed through their pickets on the far side, where it was less likely that anyone trailing the army would see him leave. About a mile out, he found a small river and rode down into the water, where he turned Amrec south.

“This is going to be real uncomfortable for you for the next couple miles,” he told Amrec, “but you’ll get carrots and sugar cubes when we make camp.”

They stayed in the river for four hours, taking it slowly so that Amrec didn’t slip. Styke hummed while his eyes scanned the riverbanks for Dynize scouts or dragonmen. He picked out familiar landmarks, dusting off hazy, long-buried memories and forcing himself to dig among them.

The light was just beginning to wane, the river becoming more dangerous, when Styke caught sight of a particular bend and a narrow, arrow-shaped boulder balanced on a knoll about twenty yards from the river. He directed Amrec out of the bank and took him up to a nearby grove, where he used an old shirt to carefully dry Amrec’s hooves before leaving him tied to a branch with a feed bag over his nose.