Брайан Макклеллан - Sins of Empire

“Where are you going? What are you going to do?” Olem called after him.

“I’m going to make an appointment to kill a man.”

Michel was left alone in the tiny office above the Palo Herald printshop. His hands and feet were tied, his knife and knuckledusters taken by the big Palo woman, and the door to the office locked from the outside for good measure. His jaw ached and head pounded from the two blows to his head, and his ribs and chest hurt from a handful of kicks and punches they’d thrown in when he tried to talk his way out of… whatever it was they had planned for him. His bribery attempt had gone little better, earning him a cut over his ear.

He’d expected the beatings to begin immediately and continue until he broke down and told them who he was and what he worked for, but the moment they found his Silver Rose they trussed him up like a hog and carried him up to the office. He could see one of the Palo, a middle-aged man with a fierce scar beneath one eye, standing guard just outside.

He could probably pick through his ropes. He might even be able to jimmy the lock with something he found in the office. But he didn’t think his chances of taking on a Palo guard – maybe even more than one – were very good with his head swimming.

If he lived through this, he was going to be very sore in the morning.

The hours crawled along as midday came and went, the tiny room heating up to an unbearable degree. Sweat poured from every pore, leaving him completely soaked through. He considered plan after plan, discarding each for the high probability of failure. He’d always been better at talking than running or fighting, and even though they’d discovered his Silver Rose he was still willing to do just that. If he couldn’t bribe them or convince them to let him go, maybe he could get them to ransom him back to the Millinery.

Having to be ransomed back to the Millinery would send his career into a tailspin. Of course, a destroyed career was better than winding up in several pieces on Fidelis Jes’s desk…

He considered every possible story he could tell his captors, and none of them seemed promising. His head continued to pound, his tongue dry. He was beginning to think he would faint when there was a brief commotion from downstairs and then slow, even steps on the stairs outside the office. He wasn’t sure how long it had been since he’d been captured, but he hoped they were going to move him. Another minute in this heat would kill him sure as torture.

The door opened, and Michel looked up to see a man in a fine black suit, top hat in one hand and cane in the other. He was tall, thin, with black hair and a neatly trimmed mustache. Michel felt his heart drop into his stomach.

Tampo. Gregious Tampo. Michel noted the irony that after all this time and effort spent in hunting the bastard he had wound up on the wrong end of what would surely be a long and painful torture session. He licked his lips, wondering how long he would be able to hold out against questioning. Not long, probably. He’d always suspected that deep down, he was a coward.

Guess it was time to find out.

Tampo frowned at Michel, squinted in the low light, then pulled out a snuff box and took a pinch, holding his fingers delicately beneath his nose and sniffing. He looked again and sighed. “Get him some tea.”

A few moments later Michel’s arms were unbound and he gratefully chugged the contents of a waterskin, far too thirsty to care if it was poisoned. Tampo watched him drink, then turned and headed back downstairs, leaving Michel alone and unguarded. Hesitantly, not sure what kind of trap could be worse than his current predicament, Michel followed him down to the printshop.

The Palo made themselves scarce at a nod from Tampo, and Tampo turned to face Michel, leaning casually against the printing press in the center of the room. Michel glanced around furtively, trying to work out an escape route. The Palo were probably within earshot, but if Michel could get the drop on Tampo maybe he could make it back to his cab just outside the city.

If the cab was still waiting.

Fuzzy-headed and sore, Michel didn’t like his chances of escape. Tampo’s expression was neutral, even friendly, and Michel wondered whether he was going to get a chance to talk his way out of this after all.

“This is awkward,” Tampo finally said.

“I imagine it is, isn’t it?” Michel responded.

“Has it been you that’s been after me all this time?”

Michel frowned at Tampo. This was the first time he’d actually seen him, but there was something awfully familiar about him, like he was a childhood friend long forgotten. “I’ve been on the case for about eight days,” he responded.

“Shit,” Tampo said. He picked his teeth with one immaculately clean fingernail, then knocked his cane against the base of the printing press. He seemed more annoyed than angry, and Michel was wondering when the other shoe would drop. “Well, I suppose there’s really nothing we can do about it, is there?”

Michel was deeply confused. He’d half-expected Tampo to come in swinging that cane. Not for him to offer him tea and a double-helping of mild annoyance. Tampo shook his head, pinched the bridge of his nose, and remained that way for several seconds. Michel was just beginning to think something was wrong when Tampo’s face… changed.

The change was not enormous. His eyes grew a little wider apart. His hair suddenly seemed to have some premature gray, and his mustache disappeared entirely. His nose became a little more hawkish, his cheekbones higher and haughtier, his lips thinner. In the course of about five seconds, Tampo became an entirely different man. The two men – Tampo, and the one that now stood before Michel – could have been cousins, but they would never have been mistaken for each other.

And Michel immediately knew why Tampo was so frustrated. He found himself sighing, too, partly in relief, partly at the stupidity of it all.

“Hello, Taniel,” Michel said. “Why the pit didn’t you tell me you were going to print a bloody pamphlet?”

Styke entered the front gate of the Millinery, unopposed. A guard, slack-jawed, watched him limp through the archway, then yelled something unintelligible over his shoulder as Styke approached the old man sitting watch behind a counter just outside the gate. The old Blackhat snoozed quietly, slumped sideways in his chair, notebook slipping from his fingers.

“I understand Fidelis Jes takes appointments for fights,” Styke said.

The old Blackhat snorted, rubbed his nose, and pushed himself upright in his chair while stifling a yawn. “Right, right,” he said. “I’ll take your name. Wait is a couple weeks. You can back out anytime before then if your blood cools.”

“I’m going to fight him today.”

The old Blackhat’s eyelids fluttered and he scowled down at his notebook. “Don’t you read the papers? The grand master only duels during the mornings, and he’s all booked up. No exceptions.”

“He’ll make an exception for me.” Styke picked at the dried blood on his arms, watching it flake off and fall to the cobbles. He wondered if Old Man Fles would make it to the morning, and if it was cruel of him to allow the Old Man to die alone. But he wouldn’t be alone, Styke reasoned with himself. Fles would die surrounded by friends. Unlike Styke, who wondered briefly if he’d always been destined to die surrounded by enemies.