Брайан Макклеллан - Sins of Empire

“By Kresimir, you made a damned bloody mess,” Fles said, sipping his tea in the doorway, holding a kitchen knife in one hand. Celine hid behind him.

Styke looked down at the bodies and the growing pool of blood on the stone floor of the quarry. Some of the Palo down the street continued to stare, while others turned away. They saw the black uniforms and decided this wasn’t their problem.

“Quit your bellyaching,” Styke said, “and help me with these bodies. Celine, go get a bucket of water to clean up this blood. There should be some lye above the stove.”

Fles sighed, downing his tea. “Friend with a pig farm owes me a favor,” he muttered, “but we better move quick.”

Two hours later, Styke had changed his bloody clothes and disposed of the six corpses. He walked into the only public post office remaining in Greenfire Depths and waited in line until he got to the front. A half-Palo, half-Rosvelean woman with brown, freckled skin greeted him. “Package or letter?” she asked.

“Package,” Styke said. He opened his fist above the woman’s desk, letting six Iron Roses clatter onto the wood. “I need the mailing address for the office of the grand master of the secret police.”

Michel stood outside a printshop in Middle Heights, a large, upper-class borough right in the center of the Landfall Plateau. He ran his eyes over the file in his hand – a comprehensive list of every single printer, both independent and government owned, in the entire city. “Huffin and Sons, Huffin and Sons,” he murmured, running his finger along the edge to try to keep the letters from going in and out of focus. “Ah. Huffin and Sons.” He put a mark through the center of the name and let his hand drop, looking up at the sun in the eastern sky.

He checked his pocket watch to find that it was well past nine in the morning and tried to remember if he’d slept. “No,” he said quietly, “I definitely haven’t slept for at least forty-eight hours now.”

“You caught a few winks in that cab this morning,” he reminded himself.

“Oh, right.”

“And another cab last night.”

“Okay. So I’ve gotten a good two and a half hours of sleep in the last forty-eight. Fantastic. That’ll keep me on my feet all week.”

He ran a hand through his hair and noticed a nearby shopkeep staring at him. “Probably shouldn’t talk to yourself in public, either, Michel.”

“Oh, shut up.”

He flipped the shopkeep a wave and headed into the boulevard to catch a hackney cab and was soon heading back to his office at the Millinery. He checked his list again once he was inside. Two hundred and eighteen printers in the greater Landfall area. He’d covered roughly half in just twenty-four hours, which he found pretty damn impressive. But he hoped that Fidelis Jes didn’t call him in anytime soon to discuss his use of time, because he was most definitely grasping at straws.

This Tampo fellow was no fool, Michel reasoned, looking out the hackney cab window at the passing faces going about their daily lives. He printed all those pamphlets and then went into hiding. He won’t resurface now that he knows we’re looking for him. No way he’s stupid enough to keep printing Sins of Empire.

“But,” Michel muttered to himself, “maybe he made a mistake. Or maybe he figures we’re so wrapped up keeping the lid on the boiling kettle that is this city, we won’t have the resources to check every single printshop.”

Which they didn’t, Michel reflected. Fidelis Jes had everyone looking for Ben Styke, a name out of Michel’s childhood – Mad Ben Styke, hero of the revolution! Fancy that. That tough old bastard still alive after so many years.

Michel was drifting again. “Focus!” he said, looking down at the list. A little over a hundred printers to check. He could do that in another twenty-four hours or so – maybe forty-eight, if he took it a little easier. Some of these were way on the outskirts of town. Once he had that done he could get back to some real work, whatever the pit that meant, and maybe get some sleep.

“I thought this damn job was going to make my career. Now it’s looking like it’ll tank it.”

The cab arrived at the Millinery, and Michel wondered if he shouldn’t have just gone straight home. He was wobbly on his feet, and needed to get some sleep. Maybe he’d plant his face on his desk for a couple of hours, then get a cup of coffee and head back out.

Michel paid his driver and stepped outside, watching as three prison carriages pulled out of the street, followed by at least two dozen Iron Roses, all armed to the teeth. He blinked, wondering if he was seeing double, and wandered over to the old gatekeeper sitting on his chair just inside the double doors of the Millinery. “Hey, Keln, what’s going on over there?”

Keln chewed slowly for a moment, then turned and spat a wad of tobacco into the street. “Six Iron Rose medallions just showed up on the grand master’s desk.”

Michel raised both eyebrows. That was news. “Shit. Where’d they come from?”

“Greenfire Depths,” Keln said. “We’re trying to keep it quiet, but…” Keln leaned over conspiratorially. “Word has it they came from the Ben Styke fellow that Fidelis Jes has everyone looking for. You didn’t hear it from me, though.”

“Cross my heart.”

“Yeah, the boys are heading down to Greenfire Depths to try to recover the bodies.”

“Any chance of that happening?”

“They sent word ahead to our Palo contacts. If the bodies are still in the Depths, the Palo will hand ’em over. They don’t want no trouble.”

And, Michel thought, we’ll make a public show of force and quietly pay them a few thousand krana per corpse . “Best of luck to them.”

“Yeah. The Depths are really causing us a headache lately, aren’t they?”

Michel hoped his expression wasn’t too clueless. He tried to run through all the problems originating from Greenfire Depths – aside from the usual Palo protests and riots – and came up short. “Eh?”

“Lady Flint,” Keln prompted.

Pit. Michel had completely forgotten about Flint. He hadn’t heard a word from her in days. Knowing his luck she was lying facedown in a gutter somewhere. “Right,” he said. “Lady Flint.” He paused, trying to come up with a not-so-obvious way to get the information out of Keln and gave up. “What happened with Lady Flint?”

Keln’s eyebrows rose. “Aren’t you her Blackhat contact?”

“What happened with Lady Flint?” Michel asked again, forcefully.

“A bunch of Palo punks tried to kill her.”

Michel stared at Keln for a few moments while his tired brain tried to catch up with that information. “Well, shit,” he said, and set off running for another cab.

Michel had the presence of mind to head back and get all the information he could about the attack – which wasn’t much – before heading out to Loel’s Fort. He arrived just an hour later and was surprised to find Lady Flint standing a few blocks down the street from the fort, overlooking a construction site while hundreds of her men cleared away rubble from a demolished tenement.

Michel leapt from his cab, heading over to stand beside Lady Flint, hoping he didn’t look too panicked. An assassination attack on one of his wards and he didn’t even find out for two days? He would have castigated anyone beneath him for such an oversight.

At first glance, he wondered whether Keln had been pulling his leg. Flint looked unharmed. There wasn’t a scratch on her or her uniform, and she seemed to be in a pleasant mood while she discussed something quietly with another uniformed mercenary – an engineer, if Michel had to guess – who then went and began giving orders to the men down in the rubble of the tenement.