Брайан Макклеллан - Sins of Empire

“Little good it did.” Jackal got to his feet, unfolding gracefully and stepping toward Styke. Before the war, he’d liked his space. He rarely closed within reach of another human being unless he was about to kill. Yet he reached out, running one finger boldly across the deep scar on Styke’s face. “I’m sorry.”

Styke wasn’t sure he liked this new Jackal. He already seemed too gentle to be the same man he’d fought with in the war. “Wasn’t your fault. Never mind that, anyway. Didn’t mean to take you away from your… service. Just came by hoping you could help me out.”

“The Dynize dragonman?” Jackal asked.

Styke scowled. “How… How did you know that?” he asked, hand falling to the hilt of his knife.

“Because I talk to spirits,” Jackal said matter-of-factly. “Same way I know the little girl hiding behind you is named Celine, and her father was a thief who died in the camps. Same way I know you murdered six Blackhats today, and that you plan on learning Fidelis Jes’s routine so you can murder him when he least expects it.”

“Pit,” Styke swore. There was no way Jackal could know all that just from whatever contacts he had among the Palo. Styke leaned forward a little and sniffed, but could sense no sorcery on Jackal. Spirits? Really?

Jackal’s smile was a little condescending. “Think me a nutter. Everyone else does. But you’ll take my information just like the boys outside will take my soup, won’t you?”

Styke sucked on his teeth. Definitely not the same Jackal he’d once known. Did that mean he could no longer trust him? Had Jackal turned into a Blackhat agent, or did he have his own agenda? “Yeah. I will.”

“You’re wondering if you can trust me,” Jackal said. “And I wonder the same about you. You’re serving two masters right now. Lady Flint, and…” Jackal’s lips moved silently, and he tilted his head as if to listen to an unseen voice. “… someone the spirits won’t even touch. Odd, that.” He shook his head, as if suddenly confused. “I see Ben Styke before me. Broken, changed. Neither of us is the same man we once were, but I believe we once called each other friend. I would like us to do so again. To prove that, I’ll tell you what I know about the Dynize. Come. Sit.”

A few moments later Styke and Jackal sat at either end of Jackal’s bedroll, cross-legged, Celine sitting in Styke’s lap and listening to Jackal speak, enraptured.

“I’ve had to come about this information in the traditional way,” Jackal said, removing a flask from beneath the skull shrine and handing it to Styke. “The spirits won’t touch Privileged or bone-eyes. They don’t particularly like powder mages or Knacked, either, but I can usually get them to take a closer look.”

“Are you saying the dragonmen are bone-eyes?” Styke asked. He didn’t think so – he would have smelled the sorcery on them.

“No, but some of the legends about dragonmen are true. They’re anointed by bone-eyes, and it gives them some protection against sorcery.”

“Anointed?”

“I’m not sure exactly what that means, but considering the bone-eyes use blood magic, it can’t be anything good.”

“Says the man who speaks to the dead.”

“Speaking to the dead, and using the life-force of others in one’s sorcery, are two very different things. Anyway, there are at least four dragonmen in Landfall.”

“Four! Son of a bitch.”

“At least. The Dynize have been here for over a year now, infiltrating the various factions within Greenfire Depths. They have dozens of spies, and recruit the disaffected to their cause.”

“Like those four Palo kids at Mama Sender’s.”

“Exactly.”

“What’s their cause?” Celine asked.

“That,” Jackal said with a scowl, “is harder to say. They tell the youth stories of the glory of the Empire, of the wealth and decadence of their civilization, and promise them riches beyond belief in return for another set of eyes.”

“For what?”

“For everything. The Dynize spies consume information the same way the Blackhats do.”

“Are they preparing for some kind of invasion?” Styke asked. “The Empire has hidden behind closed borders for over a hundred years. Why move on Landfall now?”

“I think we’re getting ahead of ourselves,” Jackal responded. “They may be preparing to open their borders again. As far as we know, they’ve sent spies all around the world to find out how civilization has progressed since they were last a world power.”

“The spirits don’t tell you any more than that?”

“If you mock me, we won’t discuss this any further.”

Styke checked his sarcastic tone. “Sorry,” he said. “It’s a lot to take in.”

“The spirits have a very difficult time penetrating Dynize,” Jackal said after a moment of consideration. “Dynize Privileged protect the Dynize borders from any kind of sorcerous scrying, and it seems to work fairly well on the dead, too. I can’t spy on them any easier than I can spy on Lady Chancellor Lindet behind the protection of her own Privileged.”

“But you think the Dynize may just be feeling us out?”

“Perhaps,” Jackal said.

“So where do the dragonmen come into this?”

“They appeared” – Jackal closed his eyes – “a couple of months ago and began making contact with their spies in the city.”

“This is sounding more and more like the preparation for an invasion,” Styke said. “It’s what I’d do, anyway.” He had a brief vision of whole hosts of dragonmen marching up the coastline on Landfall. Based on the one he fought two days ago, they’d cut through the Landfall garrison like a hot knife through butter.

“They’re looking for something,” Jackal said.

“What?”

“The godstones.”

Styke frowned. A peculiar name. “What are those?”

“I’m not sure,” Jackal said. “The name first came to me two days ago from the lips of one of those boys you killed at Mama Sender’s.”

Styke felt the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. “What does that mean?”

“It’s much easier to wring information out of a spirit as they die – or are born, depending on your perspective – and I happened to catch one of your dragonman’s acolytes as he entered the next world.”

“Oh.” This was all getting to be too much for Styke. Sorcery never bothered him; he could smell it a mile away, and the enchanted armor he wore in the war could shrug off Privileged magic as easily as grapeshot. But this business with spirits made his spine tingle. The dead were dead, and as a man who’d put plenty of them in their graves he preferred they stay there. But he did need information, and this was the best he was going to find. He tried to shrug off his discomfort. “Get anything else out of him?”

“Nothing useful. The dragonman’s name was Kushel. He’s middle-aged, from a city called Heaven’s Pillar in Dynize. It seems he’s been looking for the godstones for most of his life, and he’s convinced he’ll find them here in Landfall.”

Styke leaned back on the bedroll and found himself considering the red marks on the back of Celine’s neck. They, like those on his stomach and chest, had begun to bruise. The bruises would heal, but the thought of this dragonman manhandling a little girl – his little girl – made his blood boil. I’ve killed a lot of people. But I’ve never so much as hurt a kid. He remembered his thought about warriors, and how few of them remained in the world. It might be old-fashioned, but a warrior left the young and infirm in peace and protected those under their responsibility.

“I need more information,” Styke said.

“I can try…”