Брайан Макклеллан - Sins of Empire

Put him in charge of information, and he could bring the whole organization to its knees.

Michel slapped himself sharply, letting the pain bring him back to his senses. He still hadn’t managed to put the real Michel back into his marble, and he could feel it slipping through. He needed to focus. He was a Gold Rose, and he needed to act and think exactly like one. He needed to blend in and do his job.

Except now he didn’t just have to work and wait. He had an active assignment from Taniel to find these so-called godstones.

“Sir,” a voice said. Michel glanced up to find Agent Warsim approaching from down the fortifications. Warsim had been present for about a third of Michel’s new briefing as he, too, had been promoted – to Michel’s second in command. He wore his new Silver Rose proudly around his neck and nodded respectfully. “Didn’t expect to find you up here, sir.”

“Just, uh…” Michel glanced down into the courtyard, where Blackhats rushed back and forth, prison wagons being loaded down and sent out and men coming in with reports. He couldn’t say he came up here to try to sort out the two different sides of his personality. “Watching the chaos for a moment.” He shaded his eyes with one hand and wondered if he was ever going to get a good night’s sleep again. He’d managed just two hours this morning after Dellina’s briefing ended.

“I’ve assembled your Roses as you asked,” Warsim said.

“I did? Oh, right. Very good. We’re supposed to be looking for this Styke, correct?”

Warsim shuffled his feet nervously, a confused expression on his face. “That’s right, sir.”

“Okay, where?”

“Um, everywhere, sir.”

“I meant us, specifically.”

Warsim seemed to process this latest question. “Everywhere, sir.”

Michel opened his mouth, then closed it again. “Hm.” Warsim was by no means an idiot, but he’d never struck Michel as particularly smart, either. His advancement to Silver Rose was a fluke – or rather, Michel had requested it personally. Michel needed someone he knew reasonably well, who wouldn’t ask questions, and took very little personal initiative. “Okay, where is everyone else searching? Let’s start with eliminating those areas.”

“I’m afraid that it’s not very organized,” Warsim said, producing a thick file from beneath his arm and flipping through it. “Controller Britt has his men searching all of Styke’s old haunts and known associates. Other than that…” He ended with a shrug.

“It’s a bloody free-for-all?”

“Yes, sir.”

Michel turned away and rolled his eyes so hard it hurt. The most feared organization on this side of the planet, and the Blackhats fell to pieces once Fidelis Jes went out of sorts. Controller Britt was the seniormost Gold Rose, with two thousand men under his command, so he had claimed the easy stuff. Everyone else was now scrambling, hoping to be the first ones to find Styke and, probably, get some kind of favor with Jes and Lindet.

It was the first inkling Michel had that there was a pecking order even among the Gold Roses, and it did not please him. “Maybe I won’t be getting to do as I like after all,” he muttered to himself.

“What’s that, sir?” Warsim asked.

“Nothing.” Michel resisted the urge to give himself another slap. Focus. You can be a Gold Rose and accomplish your real goal. If you can’t, you’ll have done all this work for nothing. Michel turned his attention back to the chaos, trying to come up with some kind of plan. “You’ve got a military background, don’t you?” he asked Warsim.

“I do, sir. Major in the infantry right after the war.”

“You understand drilling, lines, grids, patterns. Correct?”

Warsim shifted. “I suppose so, sir?”

“Fantastic. Because I bloody well don’t. Take our men down to the docks. Lots of places to hide down there. Search every ship at moor. I want reports on my desk every hour.”

“Yes, sir!” Warsim turned to go, but Michel stopped him with a word.

“Oh, and Warsim?”

“Yes, sir?”

“How many men do you think we have left in the Millinery?” He watched as the last of the prison wagons left the courtyard, a lone Iron Rose crossing the cobbles in its wake.

“Practically no one, sir. Everyone’s out looking for Styke.”

“Right. Get going.”

Michel chewed on the inside of his cheek as he watched Warsim sprint down the stairs and then through the Millinery gate and down the street.

Michel could go down and oversee the search himself. It’s what all the other Gold Roses were doing. He could get some rest and try to digest everything that Dellina had briefed him on last night, including state secrets that he was sure Taniel would love to get his hands on – half of which he’d already forgotten.

He could bide his time, waiting for this Styke thing to blow over and securing his new place among the Gold Roses, becoming indispensable and trusted until he could just walk in and ask for any secrets he could possibly want to know.

The Millinery was all but empty. The chaos might be enough to conceal anything he got up to between now and whenever Warsim started to bring him reports.

And what the pit, Michel felt the need to do something really dangerous.

The Millinery archives had two sections. One was almost like a private library for the Blackhats. It contained criminal records, city ordinances, duplicates of police reports, and a hundred other useful types of information that anyone from Bronze Rose on up had access to at all times. It occupied three floors of the west wing of the Millinery and had a half dozen attendants, but Michel had often gone an entire day there without meeting another soul.

The second section of the archives was on the fourth floor of the west wing. It was accessible by a single stairway in one corner of the lower archives, which itself was blocked by a thick iron gate.

Michel entered the archives on the first floor and made his way up, careful to avoid the two attendants and three Blackhats he passed. By the time he’d reached the third floor his hands shook, and he wondered what he had gotten himself into.

“You’re a spy, Michel,” he muttered to himself. “Pull it together.”

“I can be nervous if I want to.”

“Oh, shut up. You’re trembling like the first time you ever nicked a purse. You can do this.”

“Can I? If I get caught it won’t be for nicking a purse. I’ll be tortured and killed.”

“No you won’t, you fool. You’re a Gold Rose now. You’re supposed to be here.”

Dellina’s briefing the night before had included a brief overview of the upper archives. Extremely brief. The upper archives were for necessary use only, and someone would give him the tour once this whole Styke mess was over.

“What if someone asks why you’re here? What will you say then?”

“You’ll come up with something. You always do.”

“That’s a terrible plan.”

“Says you.”

“You should wait,” he whispered.

“Coward,” he muttered back at himself, and headed toward the locked stairwell in the corner. He passed row after row of high shelves, stacked two rows deep with crates and paper boxes – all the secrets of Landfall. He reached the iron gate, checked over one shoulder, and knelt down in front of it to examine the lock.

It was not a basic keyhole. There was a slight, rounded indentation with seven wavy lines, each appearing to catch a separate mechanism. The lock itself was thick enough that blasting powder might not even be able to break it, and the mechanisms were protected behind polished steel.

He checked the hinges and the iron gate, noting that it didn’t budge even in the slightest. “If I were a betting man, I’d say this is warded.”