Брайан Макклеллан - Sins of Empire

“I feel like there’s so much to say,” Jes said.

Styke jerked his knife from its scabbard and held it loosely in his good hand. “Not really.”

“You don’t want to ask about what I’ve accomplished while you were locked up? You don’t want to hear about Fatrasta’s wealth? Her glory? You don’t want to ask after Lindet?”

“I see a rotten city with a fresh coat of paint,” Styke said, considering his words carefully. “Lindet was always better at gaining power than she was at actually doing anything decent with it.”

“Ripe words coming from you, Benjamin.”

Styke shrugged. “I never claimed to do anything but destroy. You and Lindet talked the talk.”

“Maybe if you’d given talk a chance you’d be something grand. Not a burned-out old cripple.” The words were spoken in a gentle tone, but Styke could hear the dagger behind them. Jes’s face smiled, but his eyes had begun to smolder, and Styke wondered if this performance was for the Blackhats watching them, or for Jes himself.

“You wanted me to kill kids,” Styke said, loud enough the Blackhats could hear it.

“Everyone has to die,” Jes responded without the slightest bit of remorse. “You just said so yourself. You made sure everyone knew that you were the monster Fatrasta needed, until it was inconvenient to you.”

“Slaughtering children is inconvenient.”

“Not to a real soldier,” Jes shot back. “A real soldier follows orders.”

“Like you? You’ve never been a soldier. Just Lindet’s shadow, with no real substance of your own, wielding a stiletto in the darkness and killing fools every morning to try to convince yourself you’re good enough. You’re not. You never have been. One day your seams will loosen and the stink will escape and Lindet will toss you on the midden pile the same way she did me.”

Jes’s head snapped back, the smiling calm replaced by bared teeth. He swished his knife through the air in a figure eight and began to pace back and forth. The secretary made herself scarce, withdrawing to the edge of the courtyard.

“Benjamin Styke,” Jes spat. “So clever. So strong. But you can’t even protect your friends. Tell me, what drove you here? Burning down Gamble’s bar? Smashing up Fles Blades? Wrecking Sunin’s livery? Killing that old buzzard Hovenson? I wasn’t sure what would get your attention, so I decided to do it all at once.”

Styke forced his face to remain stony but felt a catch in his throat. Jes listed off a dozen more names and the ills his Blackhats had done to them, presumably that very morning. They were all old friends and officers, people who might have shown him succor in time of need. Styke’s stomach tied itself in knots and he could only think of a handful of names that weren’t on the list, Jackal among them. He hadn’t even made contact with any of these people aside from Fles, to try to protect them from possible reprisal, but even that hadn’t been enough.

All his lancers had suffered because of him.

“So,” Jes asked, continuing to pace, “which was it?”

Styke rolled his wrist, loosening his knife hand. “Honestly, I didn’t even know about any of that. I just woke up this morning and decided I’d turn your rib cage into a hat.”

Jes did a little skip and jump. He wasn’t playing anymore. His eyes had grown focused, studious, and they darted from Styke’s face, to his bad hand, to his crippled leg. “Whose blood are you wearing?” he demanded.

Styke gave him a toothy grin. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“No matter. I’ll find out after I’ve cleaned this up.”

Jes surged forward without warning, dropping into a knife fighter’s stance and slashing at Styke’s face. Styke heard the clang of their blades and felt the impact all the way up his arm. He stepped sideways, swiping with his left hand only to receive a shallow cut on his forearm for his efforts. They separated, clashed again, separated, then circled each other warily, Jes’s eyes narrowed with concentration.

The dragonman had been furiously strong and fast, but he’d made one mistake: He’d let Styke grapple with him. Jes remained out of arm’s reach, leading with his blade. He was cautious and measured, somehow seeming to watch Styke’s legwork, knife hand, and eyes all at once. Jes’s movements had the finesse of someone who killed for art, rather than survival, and he could read Styke’s movements like a book.

They continued to circle for several moments. Styke sliced the air in figure eights in front of Jes’s face, while Jes did the same to him, both attempting to convince the other of a feint. Styke managed to nick Jes’s arm. Jes cut Styke’s middle knuckle. The blades crashed and clanged off each other, and Styke noted the deep gouges forming in the blade of Jes’s knife – and the lack of the same in his own.

Should have bought a Fles blade.

The errant thought cost Styke his focus, then his footing. He stumbled back to regain it, swiping erratically to keep Jes at bay. Jes followed closely, his knife taking a gouge out of Styke’s left thigh before Styke could readjust himself and lash back, drawing a long, deep cut down Jes’s arm.

To his surprise, Jes leaned into the cut and, unbelievably, dropped his knife. He caught it with the other hand, out of sight below Styke’s own arm, and then slashed upward, catching Styke’s chest with the hooked tip of his knife and then bringing it across below Styke’s good hand. Styke felt his fingers go suddenly numb, the hilt slipping from his grip. He tried to catch it, leaning forward, only to feel a hard pinch on his thigh.

He looked down as Jes jerked the thick blade out of Styke’s leg. Styke lost his footing, holding his wrist, and collapsed backward.

The whole sequence had taken just a few heartbeats. Styke felt tears in his eyes and his brain trying to catch up. He was on his back, the tendon of his good hand slit, his right leg on fire.

It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. He was supposed to grab Jes, even if he took a knife to the gut to do it, and then choke the life out of him in a few moments. They were going to die together, and Styke was going to be happy to go out that way. Instead, he heard the clatter of his knife being kicked across the cobbles and then saw Jes’s face hovering above him.

Styke snatched upward with his crippled hand. Jes batted it away brutally with the blade, nearly severing a finger, then reversed his grip and slammed his knife down into Styke’s shoulder.

“Scream,” Jes said quietly.

Styke grunted. He couldn’t find any words, not now. He swallowed a sob, wishing Jes would lean over closely so he could bite his nose off. But Jes just lowered himself to one knee beside him, slowly twisting the knife deeper and deeper.

“I said scream!”

Every breath was ragged now. Styke could feel every little cut needle sharp, and his leg and arm refused to respond to any commands. He remembered the dying dragonman, and bit his own lip hard and spat the blood into Jes’s face. Jes jerked the knife out of Styke’s shoulder and pressed the pitted blade against his throat.

Styke felt the raw edge and silently urged Jes to slice deep.

“You gonna finish it?” he hissed.

And just like that, the blade was withdrawn. Jes stood up and left Styke’s field of vision. Styke closed his eyes, forcing himself to swallow. This is how it’ll be, then? Jes is going to let me bleed out on the Blackhat cobbles? Styke wrestled with the thought, trying to give his death some sort of value. This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen.

But, he supposed, this was a soldier’s death. Slowly, painfully, drop by drop on the battlefield.

A bad way to go. Somehow, though, a proper one.