Брайан Макклеллан - Sins of Empire

Michel waited by the docks of Lower Landfall, watching a procession of keelboats emerge from the Hadshaw Gorge and drift lazily toward their landing site near the market. The keelboats were flat, low-in-the-water crafts with peeling paint and a line of freestanding rowers on either side of their long, cigarlike frames. The decks of each boat were awash with dark red and blue – the uniforms of the mercenaries being transported on board.

Fatrasta had a long history of getting into bed with mercenary companies, from Brudanian soldiers carving land away from the Palo in the early decades of colonization, to the more recent Wings of Adom helping the Fatrastan Revolution against the Kez. The Lady Chancellor employed dozens of mercenary companies across the continent, in addition to Fatrasta’s own military. Personally, Michel didn’t trust anyone whose loyalty could be bought with a stack of krana notes.

“I’m not thrilled with this,” he muttered to himself.

He rolled his eyes at the inevitable answer. “You’re not thrilled with much of anything these days. Lady Flint has a great reputation. You should be happy they didn’t assign you to some asshole.”

“She might still be an asshole. Fidelis Jes said she was an arrogant bitch.”

“Fidelis Jes is…” Michel paused, lest anyone nearby overhear his one-person dialogue. “… doesn’t seem to have a great opinion of most people. Remember, this is just a light assignment. Take care of this and you can find those Iron Roses.”

The keelboats drifted closer, their rowers occasionally dipping into the water to control their heading in the gentle flow of the river. The first keelboat finally pulled up next to the landing and a keelboater leapt onto the bank, securing the craft to land and running out the gangplank.

Soldiers almost immediately began to disembark, lifting their packs and rifles and coming onto the shore, stopping for a stretch, forming orderly groups in what Michel could only imagine were their companies. He stood with his hands behind his back, black cap pushed forward to shield his eyes from the glare of the afternoon sun, and remained, for better or worse, mostly ignored by the arriving mercenaries. He wore his formal uniform, with the black shirt with offset buttons, and silently cursed the man who decided that the Blackhats absolutely had to dress in black.

He eyed the first boat, then the second, and, with growing annoyance, the third. Dozens of them would be arriving throughout the rest of the day – the number it took to transport the whole brigade of mercenaries from the Tristan Basin – and he had no interest in waiting that long out in the heat.

Michel’s waning patience was rewarded as the fourth boat pulled up to the landing. He recognized the first person to walk down the gangplank from the description in the dossier the Blackhats kept on her.

Everything about Lady Vlora Flint seemed to contradict her name. She was a short, slight woman of about thirty years of age with black hair tied back beneath her bicorn hat. She had a pretty face, worn by a decade of campaigning in the sun but looking little older for it, and blue, calculating eyes. Her uniform fit her like a second skin, sharply pressed despite several days on the keelboats. One hand rested comfortably on the grip of a pistol in her belt, while the other had a thumb hooked in her belt.

Someone less informed than Michel might laugh at such an unassuming woman at the head of a company of mercenaries. And they would be in for quite a nasty surprise.

Michel mentally considered Flint’s Blackhat dossier, noting how little information it contained beyond the public record. Her life, after all, was almost entirely in the public eye – from her broken engagement to Adran and Fatrastan war hero Taniel Two-shot shortly before his death in the Adran-Kez conflict, to her exit from the Adran political arena just four years ago. As a powder mage, and the adopted daughter of Field Marshal Tamas, she was about the most dyed-in-the-wool soldier one was likely to find anywhere in the world.

Michel cleared his throat. “Good afternoon, General Flint.”

Flint paused a few feet off the gangplank, twisting at the waist to elicit a series of loud pops from her spine and letting out a satisfied sigh. She eyed his black cap. “Good afternoon. Do I know you?”

He showed her his Silver Rose before tucking it back into his shirt. “Michel Bravis, of her Lady Chancellor’s secret police.”

Flint shook his hand, squeezing it just hard enough to let him know she was in charge of the conversation but not so much as to overcompensate. He wondered if she practiced her handshake. “A Blackhat, eh? To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Not much of a pleasure, I’m afraid,” Michel said, giving her his best sympathetic smile. “I’ve come from the Lady Chancellor’s office. I’ll be your government liaison while your company is stationed here in the city.”

“I see,” Flint said. “Here to keep an eye on me, are you?”

“That’s the short of it,” Michel said. “The long of it is that I’ll give you your assignments, make sure you’re paid, see to the comfort of your men, and offer you the assistance of the secret police when you’re in need of it.”

Flint raised one eyebrow. “That’s… refreshingly honest.”

“I try to keep these things painless,” Michel said.

“Field Marshal Tamas always said a smiling spy was no different than a rug salesman,” Flint said, sniffing. “But you don’t smell like cheap pomade and cologne.” A smile softened the remark.

Michel rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet, keeping the grin on his face, trying to get some sort of a read on General Flint. She was known as a hard one – hence the moniker of “Flint.” But her sense of humor surprised him, which among high-ranking military types was about as common as a flying horse. She certainly didn’t seem arrogant. He’d have to keep a close eye on her.

“Landfall smells like hot shit and sweat,” Michel said. “Wearing cologne does very little to help. And I buy very expensive pomade, thank you. As much as I’d love to exchange witticisms with you all afternoon, I’m afraid I am here on government business.”

Flint pointed to a young man dragging a trunk off the keelboat. “Just leave it over there, Dobri. Thank you.” Her attention returned to Michel. “Of course. I was a little surprised at being urgently recalled, let alone being sent keelboats for my infantry. As far as I can tell the city hasn’t been burned to the ground, so what’s the hurry?”

“We’re understaffed,” Michel said, recalling the information he’d read in the file on Lady Flint’s new assignment. “There have been several Palo riots in the last couple of months that our garrison is woefully unprepared to deal with, and the number of immigrants coming into the city means the Blackhats and the regular police are terribly overtaxed.”

“You just need manpower?” Lady Flint asked, seemingly taken aback. “And it couldn’t have waited a few weeks for us to finish our work in the Basin?”

Someone, somewhere, had decided they wanted Lady Flint back in the city quickly. Michel wasn’t about to question his superiors. “They decided that your presence here was more important.”

A figure coming off the keelboat caught the corner of Michel’s eye. He didn’t recognize the face, but the man’s bearing, the silver star on his lapel, and the familiar way with which he fell in beside Lady Flint told Michel that this was Colonel Olem. Another Adran war hero and, if rumors were to be believed, Lady Flint’s longtime lover. Olem lit a cigarette, and breathed a long trail of smoke out his nostrils while he looked Michel up and down.