Брайан Макклеллан - Sins of Empire

Mama Palo knelt beside it, speaking frantically in Palo, hands in the air. Meln-Dun held his pistol against her head, and he pulled the trigger before Vlora could order him to stand down.

Vlora’s instincts were faster than her tongue, and the powder in the pan of the pistol sizzled briefly but did not take as she reached out with her senses and suppressed the blast. She crossed the room in three strides and snatched the pistol away from Meln-Dun, tossing it to Norrine. “No! I made it clear we’re taking her in.”

She was surprised to see real hate in Meln-Dun’s eyes. He sneered down at the old woman. “She deserves to die.”

“Perhaps. But she’s going to hang – this will be state justice, not ours.”

“And that makes it better?”

“It has to,” Vlora spat, “or else we’re all just animals.”

“The Blackhats will torture her. This is a kindness.”

The statement brought Vlora up short as she realized he was probably right. She’d just been asking herself if she could hand an old woman over to face the noose, and she’d decided in a flash that she could. She had, after all, lost good men to Mama Palo’s people. But to hand an old woman over to the Blackhat torturers? “I’m not here to do a kindness.” She put herself between Meln-Dun and Mama Palo and helped the old woman to her feet. “Do you speak Adran?” She repeated the question again for Kez. Mama Palo ignored her.

“She speaks Adran and Kez just fine,” Meln-Dun spat.

“You,” Vlora said to him, pointing to the other side of the room. “Over there. And you, Mama Palo, are under arrest in the name of the Lady Chancellor for crimes against the state.”

“Is it a crime to want to be free?” the old woman said in perfect Adran.

“In this country? Most definitely.” Vlora handed the old woman over to Norrine, then joined Davd and Olem by the door. There was a steady thumping on the other side, and the latch had already broken. The wood itself would give way at any moment. “Hold!” Vlora shouted. “We’ve got Mama Palo. If you want her to see the dawn, you’ll let us out of here peacefully!”

The thumping stopped, until Mama suddenly shouted something in Palo. There was an answering yell, and then the thumping redoubled.

“She told them to kill us no matter what happens to her,” Meln-Dun reported.

“Norrine, keep her quiet!”

“Perhaps,” Olem said, grunting as a particularly hard blow on the door almost threw him on his ass, “you shouldn’t have told her we’re handing her over to the Blackhats.”

Davd began swearing colorfully when a jagged bit of the door splintered off and buried itself in his shoulder. “Here,” Vlora said, taking his place. “Meln-Dun, what exactly was your plan to get out of here?”

“My plan was to kill Mama Palo and show her head to her guards. To take power.”

“That actually works?” Davd asked.

“That’s awfully tribal for a businessman,” Olem said.

“Power is all they understand.” Meln-Dun’s voice was cold, angry, and for a moment he seemed like an entirely different person.

Vlora had a pang of doubt, wondering if she’d backed the wrong horse, before casting it aside. Too late now. “I think you underestimate your own people. You would have just gotten yourself killed very slowly.”

“This door has seconds left,” Olem hissed.

“All right. So much for not making any noise.” Vlora closed her eyes, focusing on the powder that she sensed just outside the door. There were at least seven people out there, and she found their powder and, with a thought, ignited it. She used her sorcery to warp the blasts, containing it, focusing the explosions in small spaces to minimize the chance of starting a fire.

The blasts rattled the ceiling, causing plaster dust to sprinkle on their shoulders. The thumping stopped, and Olem immediately leapt away from the door, jerking it open, his pistol at the ready.

There were a lot more than seven people in the hall. At least nine had been killed by the blast, and another eight milled around, mouths open, fingers in ears as they tried to get back their hearing. The closest drew his sword, but Olem put a bullet in his chest. Vlora shot a second, and then Davd forced his way between them and a roar of his blunderbuss put the rest of the hall on their backs.

The hallway was a bloody mess of mangled bodies and crying, moaning wounded. Vlora forced herself to ignore the carnage. “Quickly,” she said, leading her mages down the hall. She felt powder moving toward them and ignited it, using the same technique to warp the blast inward. She felt her energy ebb slightly with every effort, the sorcery bleeding away at her reserves in little jumps as she used it.

They cleared three more halls and made the ground floor, where Meln-Dun examined the latest carnage with an edge of disgust. “I thought you said no killing.”

“I said I didn’t want to kill,” Vlora snapped back. “Maybe if you had a better exit strategy we wouldn’t have to.” She swore, furious with both Meln-Dun for his half-wit plan and with herself for agreeing to it so eagerly. She’d been too desperate to spare her men a fight.

Three men with swords faced them in the main hall where Vlora had attended the party less than a week before. She took them alone, snorting powder for a fresh trance before carving through them as quickly as she was able, making it as painless as possible. These men, unlike the ones upstairs, were clumsy and overenthusiastic. They never stood a chance.

She would have preferred to disable and move on, but her training was not in that kind of combat.

As Ben Styke had told her, she was a killer.

They fought through another six guards before getting out of the Yellow Hall. Meln-Dun led them down several side corridors before finding stairs to take them up, assuring them that the Cobweb gave them a far better chance of escape than being on the ground.

Vlora lagged behind, checking and rechecking her men with every step. Both Davd and Buden were wounded, and Norrine practically had to carry Mama Palo, but they were all present and accounted for. They reached the Cobweb, where Olem dispatched a Palo in a pale green uniform, and then they were running along the same corridor that had brought them to the Yellow Hall.

They made it all the way to their exit unopposed, and Vlora almost shouted with joy when she saw starlight overhead and they came out on the Rim. She looked back on the uneven lights of Greenfire Depths, her heart thumping hard.

They had made it. Six men in and six men out, and they had snatched Mama Palo from the very heart of her power. The old woman threw herself to the ground, forcing Norrine to lift her like a sack of potatoes and toss her over a shoulder. The sight angered Vlora, and she found herself wishing the old woman would go with some dignity.

It would certainly be more convenient.

Vlora didn’t know how many Palo they had slaughtered on the way out. At least forty, she estimated. The poor bastards probably didn’t know what hit them, and she wondered if there was any way to keep her name out of the entire affair.

A powder mage in Greenfire Depths? They would have to know it was her.

The Blackhats were waiting outside the gates of Loel’s Fort. Vlora escorted Mama Palo into the back of the Blackhat prison wagon herself, and watched as a silent pair of Iron Roses locked the door. There was a whole company on guard, almost as many as they’d brought for Ben Styke. She searched their chests until she saw the dangling medallion of a Bronze Rose.

“Where’s Michel Bravis?” she asked. “He was supposed to be here.”

“Agent Bravis is busy,” the Bronze Rose responded. “He’ll be pleased about this, though. We’ve been working a long time to bring this bitch in.”