Брайан Макклеллан - Sins of Empire

Taniel gave her a wan smile.

With all the strangeness Vlora had just witnessed, she found herself especially drawn to the red skin. “How did that happen?”

Taniel put his hands in his pocket, pulling a sour face. “Also a side effect of Ka-poel’s sorcery. I had a run-in with a very powerful Privileged. He almost won. The kickback from Ka-poel’s protection turned him into a smear of blood and dyed my skin red. No idea why.” He touched his elbow. “Goes all the way up to here.”

Vlora shook her head in wonder. Taniel Two-shot was both the Red Hand and Gregious Tampo? A million questions went through her head, so many different things she wanted to say that it made her dizzy. Yet when she tried to speak, nothing important came out. “You’ve been busy.”

“You could say that,” Taniel agreed.

“So what? Are you immortal now?”

“Not that I’d like to find out.” He pulled down the collar of his suit to show a healed scar beneath his neck. “Getting shot still hurts.”

“Glad to hear some things never change, even when you ascend to… whatever it is you’ve become.”

Taniel frowned, looking back out the window and not responding. She could see the emotions leaping across his face, his lips twisting as he opened his mouth to speak, thought better of it, then tried to do so again with the same results. Vlora wanted nothing more than to reach across the space between them and punch him right between the eyes.

She managed to restrain herself. “You’re a son of a bitch, you know that?” From the startled look on his face, that wasn’t exactly what he was expecting her to say. She continued: “That shit you pulled on me in the Yellow Hall. Yapping at me from behind another’s eyes about our past. Telling me that the Palo hated me because they loved you so much.”

“None of that was a lie,” Taniel said.

“That doesn’t make it any less of a shitty thing to bring up after ten years.”

Taniel rolled his tongue around in his cheek. “I’ll admit, there was some old anger there.”

“Get over it,” Vlora said. “You’re supposed to be dead. And now I find you here, half a world away, up to your neck in… I have no idea what you’re up to your neck in. But I’ve been working for Lindet for over a year and a little warning would have been nice. I’ve been hunting the Red Hand. It would have been nice to know it was you!”

“You’ve been working for Lindet killing the people I’m trying to protect.”

“So I’m your enemy?”

Taniel pursed his lips.

Vlora went on. “You’re a Palo now, then?”

“My wife is.”

Vlora snorted. “Ka-poel – I assume you mean Ka-Poel – is Dynize. I remember that much. I’ve still got your letters. Been using them to navigate this stupid place and…” She let out a sudden laugh, unable to help herself. The irony of using Taniel’s letters to aid in her campaign against people he was fighting for was just too much. She got herself under control, trying to get her mind to focus. A million questions, but only some of them were truly important. “The Palo getting organized. All the grief and worry they’ve been causing Lindet. That was you and Ka-poel?”

“Most of it,” Taniel admitted. “And Pole considers herself Palo. She was raised here, you know.”

“If that was the two of you, why didn’t I run into more resistance when my Riflejacks were putting down uprisings in the swamps? Even you could organize the rabble better than what we faced.”

If Taniel noticed the backhanded compliment, he did not acknowledge it. “By my count, there are over seven hundred Palo tribes stretched across the whole of Fatrasta. Probably more that we don’t even know about. Uniting them is a giant pain in the ass. We barely have a line of communication to those out in the Tristan Basin, let alone the wilds beyond them.”

“Just enough to get them riled up, eh?”

“Not intentionally,” Taniel said.

One question down. “All right, so that wasn’t you out in the Basin. Then what the pit are you doing here? You say you’re protecting the Palo? Uniting them? Why?”

“To give them a fighting chance against the Kressian incursion.”

“You are Kressian,” Vlora said. She could hear the anger in Taniel’s words, and she felt her own rise to match it.

“I’m dead, remember?” Taniel said. “Besides, the Palo need all the help they can get. They’re not stupid. They’re not lacking in courage. They just don’t have the training to stand up against Lindet.”

“So you’re fomenting a revolution?”

Taniel’s face twisted. “It’s more complicated than that.”

“Indulge me.”

“First of all, Lindet is brilliant, and I don’t use that word lightly. In terms of planning, she’s on par with my father.”

“Everyone knows she’s smart,” Vlora conceded.

“No. She’s brilliant. She has all of Field Marshal Tamas’s ability to plan and none of his moral qualms.”

“Tamas had moral qualms?” Vlora asked, half-joking.

“Compared to Lindet? Yes.”

“You’re Taniel-bloody-Two-shot. Why don’t you just put a bullet in her head and be done with it?”

“That’s what makes this complicated,” Taniel said. “Lindet has contingencies for everything, including powder mages. She’s accompanied by at least two Privileged at all times. Yes, I probably could kill her with Ka-poel’s help, even though she’s also got contingencies against blood magic. But this country is a tower of cards, and killing Lindet will make the entire thing fall down – she’s made certain of that.”

“I thought you’re only worried about the Palo.”

Taniel made a frustrated sound. “I’m worried about Fatrasta, both the Palo and the Kressians. The fates of everyone who lives here are tied together. I won’t cut off my nose to spite my face. Ka-poel and I have spent the last five years trying to figure out how to remove Lindet from power and the best we’ve come up with is outright revolution.”

“And here I thought you were trying a peaceful route,” Vlora said sarcastically. She wasn’t sure what to make of this – any of it – but she didn’t like it. It seemed almost funny that ten years ago she would have been on board with a coup in a heartbeat. She would have been idealistic, hopeful, determined – just like Taniel sounded. She was the one who’d changed, not him. No, not funny, she decided. Terrifying.

“I am,” Taniel insisted. “Mostly. Uniting the Palo is the first step to a peaceful revolution. Our goal is to force Lindet into a corner. I’ve studied her moves for the last twelve years and I readily admit she’s smarter than me. But I’m not an idiot, either. I can see patterns. Everything she does is for Fatrasta. Not the people, or the country, but the concept. She wants this country to work and so far it’s done so by her will alone. If the whole of Fatrasta turns against her, she will abdicate.”

Vlora was not convinced. Something was bothering her about this whole exchange, and she couldn’t quite figure out what. “Was Mama Palo one of yours?” she asked.

“She was,” Taniel said.

“You let her die.”

Taniel’s eyes tightened. “Technically, you killed her.” He paused, blowing out softly through his nostrils. “I did not see you coming. Four powder mages accompanied by a Palo guide, right into the center of the Depths? That was ballsy, even for you. I would have stopped you if I had known it was coming.”

“You could have rescued her from the gallows.”

“To what end?” Taniel asked.

“To save an old lady’s life! To rescue the one person who’s been uniting the Palo against Lindet! To stop the Blackhats from having another victory. To…” Vlora trailed off, suddenly angry with Taniel for his lack of action, and angry with herself for being complicit in Mama Palo’s death. Taniel tilted his head to one side, and Vlora narrowed her eyes. “What?”