Брайан Макклеллан - Sins of Empire

Willowhaven was dark and foreboding. Even the candles in the windows seemed cold and distant, imbuing the house with a bleak loneliness. The lack of any movement inside, whether from servants or the Lady Chancellor herself, was disconcerting. Styke wondered if she’d chosen to spend this night in the city and decided it didn’t matter.

He needed to send a message regardless.

He entered through the side door of the carriage house, passing by the straw-filled stalls of the workhorses, running one hand absently along the warm noses that poked out to greet him. He patted the last one and stamped gently on the floor before reaching down and finding an iron ring by feel and memory.

Within moments he was ten feet below ground level, feeling his way through the dark, damp passageway that led toward the house. He emerged sometime later from behind a salt barrel in the manor’s pantry, and slipped past the snoring form of the on-call chef. Styke felt his heart begin to hammer in his chest and slid the borrowed knife from his pocket.

Few people kept a chef on call in the middle of the night, but a midnight snack was one of the few joys Lindet had ever allowed herself.

She was most definitely home.

Styke crept up the stairs, light on his feet, avoiding all the worst creaks. The candles in the windows cast small, flickering amounts of light on the ironwood floors and banister, illuminating the art-covered walls and the old-style pillars with busts of long-dead philosophers and saints. The decoration was as it always had been in Willowhaven – rich, but demure – and Styke felt nostalgia tightening his chest.

He reached the master bedroom at the end of the hall and paused. The door was slightly ajar. He pushed on it gently, grip tightening on his knife.

The room was as he remembered it – obscenely large, with ironwood-paneled walls, an enormous four-poster bed with mahogany curtains, flanked on either side by a nightstand. There was a wing-back chair by the window, a lantern burning low beside it, and Styke could see the ember tip of a lit cigarillo. A shadow moved within the wings of the chair, and a delicate hand reached out to turn up the lamp.

“Hello, Ben.”

Styke was immediately struck by how Lindet had lost the soft edges of her youth. She had grown gaunt over the years, and at thirty-three all the softness had been hammered out of her until only iron remained. She wore a pair of spectacles that cast shadows on her face. Her skin was naturally pale, her hair like strands of yellow silk. Her lips were thin, her chin strong, and even in her nightclothes she exuded a calm, dismissive air that gave Styke the urge to apologize for entering and back out of the room.

He stepped inside, slowly closing the door. “Lindet.”

People always commented, privately, on Lindet’s eyes. They were a steady blue like the sky on a clear day, and those who saw them often swore that an actual fire burned deep within. Some called it sorcery, some an embodiment of Lindet’s ambition. The reflection of the lamp on the lenses of her spectacles cast a double likeness, one that seemed to dance independent of the flame that cast it. Styke noted something hanging over one arm of her wing-back chair.

It was his faded yellow cavalry jacket. The one he’d handed to Fidelis Jes’s secretary before he’d fought the grand master. Lindet’s left hand clutched the jacket tightly, her knuckles white, the only break in her cool facade. Styke wanted to cross the distance between them. A single stroke, a splash of crimson for the ten years he spent alone in the labor camps after all he did to help her win Fatrasta’s freedom.

Instead, he did a slow circuit of the room, checking the bed and closets for hidden assassins until he was satisfied he and Lindet were alone. Lindet’s eyes followed him around the room, that perpetual flame beneath her spectacles her only movement save for the occasional rise and fall of her chest. The ash on her cigarillo grew long.

“You ordered my execution,” he finally said.

Lindet took several moments to answer. “Who told you that?”

“Who else would have ordered it?”

“The way I understand it,” Lindet replied, “you disobeyed a direct order. I didn’t have to order anything. My officers simply carried out protocol by having a mutinous colonel put in front of a firing squad.”

Styke’s memories of the day were hazy. He remembered a lot of shouting, a skillful disarmament of his Mad Lancers under false pretenses before he was separated from them and forced up against a stake and tied in place. He hadn’t fought back at first. Nobody expected to have to fight their own allies. When he finally realized what was happening, it was too late.

Fidelis Jes had been there, and he’d brought a lot of men.

“Nothing happens without your say-so,” Styke said. “Certainly not my execution.”

Lindet snorted. “I am not omnipotent. And you did disobey a direct order.”

“So you didn’t order me killed?”

“No.”

Styke fingered his borrowed knife. “I don’t believe you.”

“That’s not my concern.”

“It should be.”

Lindet’s eyes dipped to the knife and she finally ashed her cigarillo over a pewter mug next to the lamp. She took a deep breath, as if this whole thing was quite troublesome, and said, “I received a message at two forty-seven that you had disobeyed a direct order and were to be shot. I dispatched a messenger at two fifty-six countermanding the order. My messenger arrived after the second volley. You were immediately taken down from in front of the firing squad and treated by the present physicians. They declared you dead and for three days you were left to rot.” Lindet spoke in a monotone, as if she were reciting from a journal.

“But I didn’t die.”

“No,” Lindet said. “I recovered what was left of you as soon as I was able –”

“Three days later,” Styke interjected.

“I’d just won a war. It was a busy time. As I said, I recovered your body three days later and was rather startled to discover you still alive. You were treated and sent to the Sweetwallow Labor Camp with orders that your name be struck from the record and Colonel Benjamin Styke declared dead.” Lindet’s forehead wrinkled, and she dropped the cold monotone. “But you were not dead. I made sure of that. I never wanted you dead, Ben.”

Styke turned away from Lindet, examining the room in the shadowing flicker of the lamplight. He remembered this room well. It still looked the same – it still smelled the same – and he wondered how she could bear to stay here.

“I believe,” Lindet said, “that I am incapable of having you killed.”

Styke heard the scoff escape his mouth. “I believe you’re capable of having the gods killed if it suits your purpose.”

“The gods have nothing to do with you and me,” Lindet responded. “You’ve always been a pain in the ass. You’ve always flaunted orders, ignored your superiors, protected my enemies, and killed my allies. Everyone in my inner circle hated you – they hated you so much – but I wouldn’t let them touch you. I protected you until Fidelis Jes realized the same thing I did, that I was incapable of having you killed, and took the initiative.”

“And you let him,” Styke accused. “Even if I didn’t die, you still killed me. No, I take that back. Sending me to Sweetwallow was worse than having me killed. You took everything away from me, even my name.” His fingers tightened on the knife again.

“Sometimes kindness can be cruel.”

“You like to think that, don’t you? You like to think that your unbending will is all that stands between this country and oblivion, and that only you can see the way through. It’s why you suppress the weak, marginalize the poor, crush the Palo, and crave control.”