Брайан Макклеллан - Sins of Empire

“They don’t care,” Taniel said. “They’re not interested in Fatrasta, just the godstones. The fact Lindet isn’t handing them over means she knows exactly what they do, and that’s almost as terrifying as the Dynize getting ahold of them.”

“So,” Vlora demanded, her patience wearing thin, “what do the bloody things do?”

Taniel tilted his head to the side. “What the pit does it sound like they do?”

“I don’t know! Make gods? If I knew I wouldn’t be… asking.” The final word slipped out in a whisper, and Vlora found her mouth suddenly dry. “No. You must be joking.”

“Have you ever wondered,” Taniel asked, “where the gods came from?”

“I thought Kresimir made them.”

“Where did Kresimir come from?” Taniel countered. “Where did the Gurlish gods that our cabals murdered during the occupation forty years ago come from? Gods are not born. They’re made. Dozens have come and gone in the history of our world. It’s not public knowledge, but the cabals know. They’ve been looking for the godstones for centuries, and it just happened to be Lindet and her Privileged who found them.”

Vlora didn’t know what to believe. This seemed far-fetched, even for all the things she’d seen in her life, but she was talking to two living, breathing godkillers and all she knew was that she didn’t want to believe them. She took a step backward involuntarily, sagging against a cannon. “So whoever has the godstones can create a god?”

“Do you think Lindet would trust anyone else to become a god?”

“She wants them for herself,” Vlora breathed.

“And Ka-sedial wants them back.”

“For himself?”

“Or his emperor. The Dynize civil war was sparked by the murder of their last god. The only way they ended their war was the promise to make a new one.” Taniel leaned forward. “The Dynize are not motivated by greed or ambition. They are motivated by the desperation of dying faith, and that’s more dangerous than anything else in the world.”

Vlora looked back out past the breakers, at the masts on the horizon, her breath coming fast and short. “I saw what a god can do during the war. I’m not letting that happen again.”

“Agreed,” Taniel said, his face steely. Behind him, Ka-poel nodded.

“This is why you’re here,” Vlora said, voicing a sudden realization. “It’s not about the Palo or Lindet or Fatrasta. You’re here because of the godstones. To keep them out of Lindet’s hands.”

“To keep them out of anyone’s hands,” Taniel countered. “Don’t get this wrong. We fight for the Palo because we believe in their cause. But the godstones are more important than any ethnic or political squabbles.”

Vlora couldn’t help but agree. This was bigger than her, or Lindet, or even the Dynize. The godstones could change the entire face of the world, and she feared – no, she knew that it would not be for the better. “I won’t let them have them,” she said, summoning all of her inner strength to stand up straight.

“The Dynize?” Taniel asked.

“Any of them,” Vlora responded. She headed back down to the fort yard, calling for her horse and an escort of two hundred men. Employer or not, she and Lindet were about to have words.

It took several hours for Michel and his mother to reach Greenfire Depths.

He ditched his Blackhat uniform within minutes of making his escape, and then they took cab after cab across the city, crisscrossing their own path, changing drivers, even walking a few blocks along the Rim before reaching a thirty-unit, worn-down tenement clinging to the cliffs on the western edge of the Depths.

Even after all his precautions to lose whoever might be pursuing them, Michel did not feel safe as he jimmied the key in the lock of his own personal safe house. His mother stood beside him, silent after her initial outburst of questions in the first cab, staring down the hall as if shell-shocked. Michel finally managed to knock the rust off the lock of the apartment and kicked the door open.

“What is this place?” his mother asked.

“Inside,” he said, glancing up and down the empty hall before closing the door behind them.

The apartment was hot and stuffy, every surface coated in a thick layer of dust. He coughed his way through the three bedrooms and opened all the windows, checking the rooms for any sign of occupancy. No one had been here for a very long time.

About four years if he remembered right.

“Is this, what do the spies call it, a safe house?” his mother asked.

Michel was surprised she knew the word, then remembered that she spent all day reading penny novels. “Right,” he said.

“Is this a Blackhat place?”

Michel barked a laugh, then shushed himself and crossed to a window that overlooked Greenfire Depths. He could smell smoke, and smoke in the Depths was never a good thing. He stuck his head outside and listened, hearing the distant sound of yelling and the crash of broken glass. The Palo were rioting, and he wasn’t the least bit surprised – all the afternoon newspapers reported the hanging of Mama Palo.

This wasn’t a safe time to be in the Depths, not for someone like him. He looked more Kressian than his one-fourth Palo, and that could be dangerous. But, he reasoned, it was far more dangerous to be out of the Depths right now. “Stay here,” he told his mother, then went up two flights of rickety stairs and knocked on the fourth door on the left. He waited several minutes, knocking frequently, before a suspicious-looking Palo woman opened her door a crack. Michel held up a folded ten-krana note.

“I’m a Son of the Red Hand,” he said. “I need a message taken to the Yellow Hall immediately.”

The woman stared at him, stared at the krana note, then said, “There’s rioting down at the Yellow Hall.”

“I know. This is important. I live two floors down in the empty apartment.”

She stewed on this information for a few moments. Michel’s persona – his real persona, the one that had lived in the marble in the back of his head all these years – was just as careful as his Blackhat one. He and Taniel had a dozen backup plans, including safe houses, passwords, message chains, and bank boxes. He didn’t remember half those plans, but he did know that he needed to get word to Taniel immediately that his cover had been blown.

When the woman didn’t answer, Michel pulled out another twenty krana. She gave a perfunctory nod and said, “Meln-Dun’s people have taken hold of the Yellow Hall, but I can get a message to the Red Hand.” She snatched the money, and a moment later the door opened and a small boy ran into the hall and held out his hand expectantly.

Michel found a nub of pencil in his pocket and scribbled a note, handing it to the boy, who immediately took off down the hall.

He returned to find his mother sitting on the dusty sofa in the corner of the main room, staring at her hands. She looked up at him as he entered, a question on her lips, but remained silent. He looked out the windows one more time, listening to the distant shouts. The smell of smoke was getting stronger, and that didn’t bode well at all. A fire in the wrong place and Greenfire Depths might go up entirely.

Michel sat down on the sofa beside his mother and stared at the wall. His life – the one he’d worked so hard to build the last four years – was over. There was a hole in his chest and he wondered if perhaps he’d gone in too deep with the Blackhats. He should be celebrating right now, ready to return to what he once was.