Брайан Макклеллан - Sins of Empire

“Pick him up,” Jes suddenly ordered.

Styke’s eyes shot open. Jes stood above him again, this time surrounded by his Blackhats. Hands reached down and grasped Styke, forcing him up to his feet, half-carrying, half-dragging him toward the edge of the courtyard before dumping him unceremoniously facedown in a wheelbarrow. He could smell rust, old blood, and rotten flesh.

There was a sudden silence, and then he heard Jes’s voice right beside his ear.

“You once terrified me,” Jes whispered. “But now that seems like a bad dream. I can’t kill you. She won’t allow it. But I can make sure that your legend dies before you do.” Jes’s presence withdrew, and Styke heard him say in a loud voice, “Take this piece of trash back to Sweetwallow Labor Camp. And make sure he stays there.”

Vlora stood at attention in the office of the grand master of Fatrasta’s secret police and wondered when she’d last had to salute someone. Years, certainly, maybe even all the way back to the Adran-Kez War. That was the last time any general in the room had outranked her, and the last time Adro had a field marshal.

She certainly wasn’t going to give a trumped-up spy that honor, no matter how annoyed he looked.

Fidelis Jes’s brow was beaded with sweat. He wore a clean shirt, but she could see blood soaking through it in more than one place. He fidgeted in his chair, looking from her to the immense knife on his desk and back again as if she was expected to explain its presence.

She recognized that knife. Ben Styke had used it to kill a dragonman.

“You asked for me?” she said lightly.

Fidelis Jes swept the knife off his desk and deposited it in a drawer before clearing his throat. Vlora noted the enormous ring on the thumb of his left hand, worn over the glove so it wouldn’t fall off. Styke’s skull ring. “Lady Flint, I understand that you’ve been employing convicted war criminal Benjamin Styke. I want an explanation and I want it now.”

“I’m not sure an explanation is warranted,” Vlora responded coolly. She didn’t like Jes’s tone one bit, but she wasn’t in a mood to get combative. She had too much on her plate right now to risk pissing off the Lady Chancellor’s right-hand man. Though by the looks of things, she was already too late on that account.

Jes slammed his palm on his desk. Behind her, Vlora heard his secretary jump and made a mental note of the fact. Jes was not known for outbursts. “You have been employing an enemy of the state. If that does not warrant an explanation would you care to tell me what does?”

“I was employing an old, crippled soldier. He came to me asking for a job and with a name like that, who wouldn’t hire him on?” Vlora had a sudden suspicion and voiced it. “Tell me, is it even public record that Styke is a war criminal? Because I don’t hire on strangers without looking into their background and all my men could find was that he disappeared ten years ago.”

“Don’t get smart with me, General.”

“Don’t waste my time.”

There was a slight intake of breath behind her and Fidelis Jes’s eyes narrowed. Vlora ground her teeth, annoyed with herself. She was letting her temper get the better of her – but if there was one thing she wouldn’t stand it was being condescended to.

“Before lecturing me on what I should or shouldn’t know,” Vlora said quietly, “consider your own practice of censorship and misinformation. I’m no stranger to propaganda but you Blackhats have taken it to an art. You shouldn’t be surprised when someone is unaware of information you purposefully destroyed. Now, I’ve purged Styke’s name from the books of my mercenary company and ordered my men to arrest him the moment he’s spotted. He’s one man. If you’re unsatisfied with my efforts to reconcile the situation I’ll exercise the withdrawal clause of my contract and my men will be out of the city by the end of the week.”

Fidelis Jes looked like he’d swallowed something sour. He clenched and unclenched one fist on the desk, looking at the thick ring on his thumb, then said, “I don’t think that’s necessary.”

“I’m glad to hear that. I’ve quite enjoyed working with the Fatrastan government and I like to keep a good thing going.” It was a bald-faced lie, but Vlora had learned that a lie or two did wonders for professional relationships. Besides, she’d made her point: She would not be called in here and bullied like a schoolgirl.

“Then you’ll tell me what you hired Styke for, and all of his actions while in your employ.”

Perhaps her point hadn’t been made clearly enough. Vlora wondered just what made Styke so important. He was incredibly dangerous; she’d seen that with her own eyes. But he was still just one man. And if Jes had his knife and ring, it must mean that Jes had him. Was Styke already dead? “We hired him to have an insider’s view of the city; to keep someone on hand who could do dirty work for us if the need arose.”

“And did it?”

“I sent him chasing ghosts. He was still working on that first assignment as of this afternoon.”

Jes eyed her for several long moments. He seemed to have gotten control of himself, and he dabbed his forehead gently with a handkerchief before folding it and setting it aside. “Details.”

“I sent him chasing after the Dynize,” Vlora said. It was close enough to the truth. She had no interest in explaining the last two weeks to Jes. She had work to do, and she was itching to get out of this office.

“What?” Jes said sharply, his eyes snapping up to hers. “What do you know about the Dynize?”

The intensity with which he asked made Vlora raise her eyebrows. Apparently not as much as you. “Very little. Just that they’ve installed spies in Greenfire Depths.”

“Preposterous.”

You’re either much worse at your job than I’ve been led to believe, or you’re playing me for a fool. Either way I don’t like it. “We don’t know why or how many, but it’s been interfering with my work, so I set Styke to the task of dealing with it. Now that he’s out of the picture, I’ll have to put some of my own men on the job.”

“No,” Jes said. “You’re to ignore the Dynize. Whatever you do, do not engage them directly.”

A bit late for that. And what happened to preposterous? “They’re interfering with my work,” Vlora repeated.

“You’ll have to just deal with it,” Jes said. “The Dynize are to be left unmolested.”

Vlora wondered what kind of plans Jes had for the Dynize. Obviously he knew about their presence. Was he watching them? Trying to trap them? Were they here on the behest of the Blackhats to stir up trouble in Greenfire Depths? What the Blackhats had planned for the Dynize was just as murky as what the Dynize themselves were up to, but it made her plenty angry. “Even,” she asked, “if dragonmen are stalking and murdering my soldiers?”

“Dragonmen?” Jes repeated quietly to himself. He sounded genuinely surprised, and Vlora felt a jolt of smug satisfaction. “No,” he finally said. “Steer clear of them.”

Vlora snorted. This was not how she wanted this conversation to go. She was not to be bait in some game being played out of her sight. “Why?”

“That’s not your concern.”

“It is my concern. My men are dying.”

“They’re soldiers,” Jes said coldly. “That’s what they do.” Vlora opened her mouth, but before she could respond, Jes went on. “What is your concern is the apprehension of Mama Palo. Your Blackhat liaison reports that you have your men tearing down and rebuilding entire tenements instead of searching for Mama Palo.”