Брайан Макклеллан - Sins of Empire

Taniel suddenly smiled, shaking his head. “We wait.”

Michel resumed his pacing, doing two quick rounds before returning to Taniel’s side. “You’re sure you want to do this?”

“Go if you want,” Taniel said. “But Ka-poel and I will stay.”

Michel swore to himself. Every instinct told him to run. The Blackhats would skin him alive over the course of a very, very long time if he was found here by anyone aware of who he really was. Fidelis Jes might be alive or dead, but it didn’t matter – he would have told someone about Michel’s betrayal, if only his secretary, and they’d be out for Michel’s blood. “Is this it?” he asked.

Taniel looked at him in surprise. “Is what it?”

“This godstone? Is this the culmination of all my work? Is this what I toiled for years to discover? Was this my true purpose in joining the Blackhats?”

Taniel seemed to consider the question for several moments before answering slowly. “This was one of many perceived purposes. It would have been preferable to leave you among them, but yes… the discovery of the godstone was the most important thing we had in mind when we sent you to work for the Blackhats.”

The revelation gave Michel a sense of peace that he hadn’t expected. It felt as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders and he mentally examined the marble that he’d kept his real self in for so many years before discarding it with an almost giddy laugh.

“What’s so funny?” Taniel asked.

“Nothing,” Michel said. “I’ll stay.”

As Taniel predicted, Major Cole’s scouts saw the Blackhats just a few minutes later, and Michel himself noted the dust cloud a little after that. Like Michel, Taniel, and Ka-poel, the Blackhats didn’t bother with the road, riding instead straight across the farmland directly toward the dig site. By the look of things, there were a damned lot of them, and as they drew closer Michel could see that they were heavily armed.

His decision to see this whole business with the godstone through to the end seemed less and less like a good one.

And then it got worse.

“Major Cole!” one of the guards shouted across the din of laborers preparing the land-barge for moving. “We’ve got a thousand Blackhats coming in, with Fidelis Jes himself! They say he wants a report from you personally!”

Michel’s mouth tasted of ash. He looked at Taniel.

“You’re right,” Taniel said with a low whistle. “Time to go. Get Ka-poel, I’ll fetch the horses.”

Waiting until Major Cole’s attention was elsewhere, Michel made his way over to the side of the land-barge. “Ka-poel!” he hissed, repeating her name three times before she finally looked up from her studies with a frown. She tried to wave him away. “No,” he replied. “Fidelis Jes will be here any moment. We have to go now .”

Ka-poel gestured rudely at him before smacking her fist against the monolith in frustration, then heading toward the other side. Michel threw himself under the land-barge, crawling on all fours beneath the creaking, weighty axles, sweat pouring down his face by the time he made it to the other side. Ka-poel was already down, and she helped him to his feet and the two ran for Taniel.

They met him at the corral as he brought out their horses. They were mounted a few moments later, and riding out of the camp when a guard waved them down. “Sir! Major Cole wants to know where you’re going!”

“We’re heading out to meet the grand master,” Michel threw over his shoulder, not bothering to look back.

“But you’re going in the wrong direction!”

“No,” Michel muttered to himself. “We’re definitely going in the right direction.” They broke out of the camp and had gone about a hundred yards when he said, “Wait. No, we’re going in the wrong direction. Taniel, where the pit are we going?”

“East,” Taniel responded over his shoulder.

“I can see that! But east is the ocean. East is the Dynize!”

“We hug the coast and head north back to Landfall. Vlora will need the help, and if we can get any of her men we’ll be able to come back and take the godstone from Fidelis Jes.”

Michel wanted to shout how stupid an idea that was, and how much he wanted to head away from the burning city, but his words turned into a strangled shout as he spotted a number of Blackhats peel off the main contingent and head to cut them off. “Taniel!”

“I see them.”

Ka-poel rode close and snatched Michel’s reins and then bent over her own horse, urging her onward. The three practically flew across the plains, Taniel and Ka-poel riding like the wind while Michel just clung to his saddle horn, hoping he didn’t fly off and break his neck when they leapt a ditch. The Blackhats drew closer and closer, and Michel’s certainty they would be caught grew deeper until Taniel suddenly veered northwest.

“Why are we heading toward them?” Michel asked.

“I have a plan,” Taniel said. Michel spared a look up from the back of his horse’s neck to see that Taniel’s eyes were on Landfall, not the approaching Blackhats.

“Focus!” Michel shouted. He squeezed his eyes closed and heaved, wondering if he had anything left in his stomach to throw up. Their gallop suddenly slowed, and he opened his eyes again to find the Blackhats upon them, Taniel’s hands held in the air. Michel felt a sudden sinking feeling, dizziness threatening to pitch him from the saddle. “We’re surrendering?” he managed.

“We’re surrendering,” Taniel confirmed. “For now.”

Michel’s bowels felt like water, and he tried to seek a way out of this to no avail. There were about thirty Blackhats to the three of them. Michel was useless in a fight, and he knew that most of Ka-poel’s sorcery depended on preparation. That would leave thirty men to Taniel, which, he considered optimistically, might not be that difficult if they were all carrying powder.

He decided that must be Taniel’s plan, and gritted his teeth, waiting for Taniel to detonate their powder, killing the lot of them. The moment never came.

“Agent Bravis,” a voice called out.

Michel didn’t think he could feel any sicker. The voice disproved him. “Grand master,” he answered, staring at his saddle horn like a sullen child.

Fidelis Jes rode to the front of his column of Blackhats, head held high, face flushed from a hard ride. “Gutsy,” he said, a small note of admiration in his voice. “We intercepted a message from Major Cole that you were in the camp about twenty minutes ago. Imagine my delight when you tried to run.”

“Delight imagined, sir,” Michel said. He wondered if he should just get this over with now – he could charge the grand master, weaponless, and hope that Fidelis Jes’s bodyguards gunned him down in the process. It was the best idea he could come up with on the spur of the moment, and it didn’t sound all that appealing.

Better than dying slowly in a torture chamber, though.

Jes rubbed the back of his neck, which was covered by his collar, and Michel allowed himself the fantasy of a dark purple bruise back there. How the bastard had managed to survive being punched in the spine by knuckledusters was beyond him, but when it came to Fidelis Jes his survival seemed almost a given. Jes cast a curious glance at Taniel and Ka-poel, his gaze lingering on the latter. “You have a lot of explaining to do, Agent Bravis. You’ll be coming with us to Dalinport, where you’ll have plenty of time to do so.”

“The road to Dalinport is blocked,” Taniel said. “The Dynize have landed.”

“I’ve brought enough men to put down the Dynize in our path,” Jes said.

Ka-poel gestured at Taniel, then tapped the backs of her hands and held up four fingers. “Privileged, eh? That will certainly help.”