Wrath of Empire

  Vlora tried to gauge the Fatrastan general, but found herself lacking. Holm didn’t seem like the hard-bitten type forged on the frontier, nor the soldier of fortune Olem described. “To be honest, I thought we should meet as soon as possible, and this is the first time I’ve been able to pull myself away from my duties.”

  “I see.” Holm clicked her tongue as if mildly annoyed. “Well, we’re here now. I’d like to congratulate you on your victory the other day. My scouts arrived just at the tail end, but I’m told it was rather something—holding the line against a superior force until your cavalry could hit them from behind. Exactly what I’d expect from Lady Flint.”

  “I’m flattered, General. But I either win or die. I prefer to do the former.”

  Holm chuckled. “And that’s exactly what I expect an Adran general to say. Imminently practical.” She clapped her hands together. “Excuse my delight, Lady Flint, but this is just too much. I’ve always wanted to meet you. I wish I could show you the hospitality of my camp.”

  “You’ll forgive my refusal, considering the arrest warrant I was served by your colonel the other day. A Fatrastan Army camp seems less than welcoming right now.”

  Holm’s eyes tightened. “Ah, yes. That. I’m … unaware of the circumstances of the warrant, and will freely say I disagree with arresting a foreign war hero who’s fighting Fatrastan battles on our behalf.”

  “Does this mean you’re going to ignore it?” Vlora asked hopefully. “You outnumber the Dynize, but I understand your army was hastily assembled, and I think you could use our experience when you go to retake Landfall. You are going to retake Landfall, aren’t you?”

  “That is my ultimate mission,” Holm said. “Unfortunately, I have every intention of arresting you. I’m a great admirer, but Lady Chancellor Lindet has won my loyalty too many times for me to disobey a direct order.”

  Vlora wondered if Holm knew about Lindet’s abandonment of Landfall, but bit her tongue. Throwing mud over Lindet’s name was not going to win Holm’s friendship. “You’re aware that my men have no intention of allowing me to be arrested.”

  “I’d hoped that you’d come along quietly.” Holm paused thoughtfully, then continued. “I am convinced this is a misunderstanding. If you’re willing to accept my hospitality, you will be treated as a guest in my camp until we are able to meet with Lindet in person. Your wounded will be cared for, your men given safe passage back to Adro—or allowed to fight with the Fatrastan Foreign Legion if they’d like. You’d have my word that no harm would come to you under my care, and I would be an advocate in whatever dispute you have with the Lady Chancellor.”

  Olem leaned forward, whispering, “That’s a better offer than the Dynize gave you.”

  “Much,” Vlora murmured. She considered her run-in with Lindet back in Landfall. “Unfortunately, I don’t think you can promise my safety, General Holm.”

  Holm’s eyebrows rose. “Why is that?”

  “I tried to arrest Lindet for crimes against her own country right before the Dynize arrived. We put our differences aside just long enough to defend Landfall.” And then, Vlora added silently, that bitch fled without lifting a finger to help hold the city.

  “Well,” Holm scoffed. “You certainly have a pair of balls worthy of your reputation.” She held up a hand as if she needed a moment to digest this new information. “I’m aware that Lindet is far from perfect, but crimes against her own country?”

  Vlora considered telling her about the godstones and Lindet’s ambitions, but decided against it. The story was too far-fetched, and even if Holm believed it, she might very well think Lindet deserved to get her hands on them. Instead, Vlora offered a small shrug. “I believe that Lindet will have me executed the moment she gets a chance. And so I must refuse your offer.”

  Holm’s brow furrowed, and Vlora was surprised to hear a note of genuine sadness in her voice. “I’m sorry to hear that, Lady Flint. Am I to understand that I should consider your army that of an enemy?”

  The implications of that were immediately clear. Vlora’s men would be shot on sight, and Holm would probably begin the morning by crossing the river in a flanking action to encircle Vlora’s army—at which point she could either force a fight, or simply wait for Vlora’s men to run out of rations and surrender.

  The question of the Dynize Army made the entire situation much murkier.

  “Tell me,” Vlora said, “did you bring Privileged?”

  Holm’s reply was frosty. “That is not information I will tell you if we are enemies.”

  “Our scouts say they have three Privileged,” Olem cut in.

  Holm opened her mouth, a scowl on her face, but Vlora simply held up her hand. “I’m not threatening you—and I have no intention of murdering your Privileged unless we engage in combat. I just wanted to warn you that the Dynize do not have either bone-eyes or Privileged with them. But they are bloody disciplined, and breaking them will take more than overwhelming force.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because whatever happens to me, you’re going to fight those Dynize sometime in the next few days. And I’d rather you win than them. Frankly, I think the battle will be more in their favor than you expect.”

  Holm chewed on this information, a worried frown on her face, eyeing Vlora. “I’ll take this information under advisement.”

  “I—” Vlora was cut off by the sound of hooves galloping toward them from the direction of her camp. “Excuse me,” she told Holm, striding back toward her bodyguard. She found one of her messengers waiting with them, his chest heaving from a hard ride. “Is it the Dynize?” Vlora demanded. “A night attack?”

  “No, ma’am,” the messenger said in a hushed tone. “You told me to let you know the moment Taniel and Ka-poel arrived.” He gestured into the darkness behind him, and Vlora was able to make out two figures on horseback hanging back in the darkness. She could suddenly sense Taniel’s powder magic, as if it had appeared from nothing—as if he were letting her know about his presence.

  Vlora looked at Olem. “They’re here.”

  “Should we return to camp?” Olem asked.

  “No,” she said, jerking her head toward the road. “They’re here.”

  “Oh.”

  Vlora returned to Holm. “General, I’m afraid I have to cut this meeting short. Will you allow me to reconsider your offer?”

  “Has something changed?” Holm asked, peering over Vlora’s shoulder toward the messenger.

  “Maybe.”

  “I can give you until tomorrow afternoon. Then I will consider the Riflejacks an enemy army.”

  “Thank you.” Vlora turned to leave, then paused. “Am I to be assured the Landfall refugees have your protection?”

  “We’ve already begun to pass out what supplies we can spare. I will take care of them the best I can—and I will not let the Dynize have them.”

  “Again, thank you,” Vlora said. “I will answer you tomorrow.” She left the general at the keelboat landing and headed back to her bodyguard to fetch her horse. She and Olem rode ahead, toward the two figures waiting in the darkness.

  She could see that both Taniel and Ka-poel were tired. Their horses were haggard, their clothes covered with the dust of the road. They both wore greatcoats over frontier buckskins, with rifles, swords, and pistols strapped to their saddles. They looked like a pair of bounty hunters chasing an outlaw.

  “Good evening,” Olem said, tipping his hat.

  “Morning, more like it,” Taniel responded. “Good to see you again, Olem. Glad you’ve healed up since Landfall.” Ka-poel waved. “We would have been here yesterday,” Taniel explained, “but the Dynize have the roads south of their army buttoned up pretty tight.”

  “What news?” Vlora asked.

  Taniel shared a look with Ka-poel, then gave Vlora a tight, tired smile. “We found them. We know where the other two godstones are.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Ben, wake up.”

  Styk
e stared at the stars, his saddle beneath his head as a pillow while he stretched out on a bedroll tossed sloppily on the damp grass to keep him dry. He waited to answer until a boot nudged his ribs. “I’m awake.”

  Ibana leaned over him, peering into his eyes, and gave him a gentle slap on one cheek. “Then answer when I call.”

  “It’s the middle of the night,” Styke replied. He’d never had a problem sleeping until the labor camps. The pain of his old wounds, the uncertainty he felt toward the guards and the other inmates; he’d gained the ability to take catnaps but still had difficulty with real, deep sleep. Since he got out, his rest had been inconsistent—some nights as easy as lying down, while other nights sleep was elusive until late in the morning. This night was one of the latter.

  “I damn well know it’s the middle of the night. But there’s something you should see.”

  “Is it important?”

  “It is for you.”

  Reluctantly, Styke found his boots and climbed to his feet, glaring at Ibana through the darkness. “I was enjoying the quiet.”

  “It’s not going to be quiet much longer. Rumor has it Flint has a plan up her sleeve, and it includes us making a move before sunup.”

  “Is that why you woke me up?” Styke made a fist, then stretched out his fingers, repeating the motion to loosen the muscles.

  “No. Something else.”

  “Pit.” He thought about ignoring her and throwing himself back to the ground in a futile effort to get a few more hours of sleep. If this was really important, Ibana would have woken up everyone. “Okay, fine. What do you want to show me?”

  Ibana led him through the lancer camp and out through their eastern pickets. They didn’t exchange another word until they were well beyond earshot of the guards; then she said, “How is your hand?”

  “Fine.” Styke, midstretch, buried his left hand in his pocket. “Why? Celine telling you stories?”

  “She’s worried about you.”

  “Yeah? Well, I’m more worried about you telling a little girl that I need to stop feeling sorry for myself.”

  Ibana paused briefly before continuing their walk. “And I need to teach her how to keep secrets.”

  “Not from me, you don’t.”

  “Every girl keeps secrets from her dad,” Ibana said with a note of bemusement. “Just like every boy keeps them from his mom.”

  Dad. What an odd notion. Styke had no way of knowing if he had a few bastards scattered around Fatrasta, but he’d certainly never thought of himself as a father. But with Celine, it felt right. “I wouldn’t know.”

  Another pause. “Sorry.”

  Styke rolled his eyes. Thirty years or more since his father murdered his mother. It was underhanded to play that card, but he was tired and irritable and Ibana hadn’t yet told him why she was dragging him all the way out here. “It’s fine. What’s going on here, anyway? You didn’t wake me up to ask after my health.”

  “No,” Ibana said, “I didn’t.” She gestured ahead of them, and Styke looked up to see the distant outline of a small farmhouse with a light flickering in the single window. He scowled, curious, but allowed Ibana to lead him onward until they were almost to the house. It was an old farmsteaders’ plot, a one-room home with rotting timber walls and a low sod roof.

  “Who lives here?” Styke asked.

  “No idea. We found it empty, but it seemed apt for our needs.”

  “What needs were …?” Styke trailed off as Ibana opened the door and they both stepped inside. Everything of value had been cleared out of the house, leaving bare walls and a dirt floor. A single lantern hung from the rafters and illuminated three men. Styke recognized two of them: Markus and Zac were a pair of Brudanian brothers in their midthirties, ugly as sin and dressed in rags that helped them blend in when they were out scouting. The brothers were old Mad Lancers, two of the original group that had helped Styke terrorize the Kez Army all those years ago.

  The third figure was a bigger man, kneeling between the brothers with a burlap sack over his head and hands bound behind his back.

  “Afternoon, Colonel!” Markus said cheerily, snapping a salute.

  “It’s the middle of the night, you twit,” Zac told him.

  “Don’t make no difference. Night, afternoon, all just a construct of the modern man.”

  “Oh, don’t start this shit again.”

  “It’s true! If it weren’t for man, the sun in the sky wouldn’t care what we called each particular time of day. Why, I bet—”

  Styke cleared his throat and Markus’s mouth shut. Styke glanced at Ibana, who’d taken up a spot by the window and now stood watching the small group impassively. “What’s all this?” Styke asked her.

  Ibana nodded at the two brothers. They exchanged a glance, and Zac spoke up. “It’s a little bit of a story, Colonel, sir, if you don’t mind me telling it.”

  “Make it short,” Styke said, though his curiosity was piqued. He squinted at the kneeling man, wondering who was hidden beneath that burlap. He had the distinct impression he knew the prisoner.

  “You remember the day they took you to the firing squad?”

  Markus punched his brother in the shoulder. He hissed, “Of course he remembers, fool. Don’t be insensitive!”

  “Right, well …” Zac cleared his throat. “Markie and I, we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about that day.”

  “Me too,” Styke said slowly.

  “On that day, the Blackhats came and took our weapons, then carried you away. They put you to the firing squad before we could organize ourselves and afterward they didn’t even leave us a body. We had a funeral for you the next day.”

  “That’s touching,” Styke interrupted, “but I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

  “He said short, you prick,” Markus whispered. He cleared his throat and took up where his brother left off. “What he’s getting at is this, sir: There were four of us missing from the funeral.”

  Styke felt his eyes narrow and now he couldn’t take his gaze from the kneeling form. He was beginning to have his suspicions about who was under that burlap bag, and about where this story was going. It was not a direction he wanted to follow.

  “Thing is, sir, we gave up our weapons because four of us convinced the rest that the Blackhats were going to give them right back. And those four that made that argument … well, they weren’t at your funeral. So a couple years ago, me and Zac decided to track them down. Did some asking, dug around a little bit in back channels. All four of them wound up with a windfall from Lindet’s regime right after the war. They got paid off for something, sir.”

  “You’re saying they betrayed me?” Styke asked bluntly. He resisted the idea—he didn’t want to consider that any of his lancers would turn on him—but slowly, it began to make sense. His memories of the day were fuzzy at best, but he remembered an argument among the lancers before they were disarmed. There was no way Fidelis Jes could have managed that without inside help.

  “They betrayed us,” Ibana said.

  The brothers looked at Ibana for a long few moments before Markus ducked his head toward Styke. “Three of them weren’t hard to track down. We’ve been keeping an eye on them since. But this one”—he nudged the kneeling figure with one boot—“he hasn’t been seen since. We found him with the refugees yesterday.”

  Styke took a step toward the kneeling man and jerked the sack off his head, discarding it in the corner. The face that blinked up at him was familiar, if aged a decade. He was in his forties, roughly the same age as Styke, and had graying brown hair and a wispy beard. He had a thick neck and muscular shoulders, which had made him a fantastic lancer, and he blinked up at Styke’s face impassively. His left eye was swollen nearly shut by a recent shiner, and Styke wondered which of the brothers had given it to him.

  “Sergeant Agoston.”

  Styke remembered Agoston as an implacable figure, unruffled by burned villages and slaughtered enemies. He’d been a sword-for-hire befor
e the war and joined up with the lancers for the spoils, always ready to go through the pockets of the dead after a battlefield. Styke had considered Agoston a friend—not close enough for secrets, but a man he’d share a beer with at the end of the day.

  Agoston glanced at Ibana, more irritated than afraid, and gave a deep sigh. “Styke,” he replied. “I’m not a sergeant anymore. Haven’t been since the war.”

  “Yeah? And what have you been up to since the war?”

  “A little bit of this, a little of that.”

  Agoston’s nonchalance suddenly touched something within Styke, and he could feel a rage building deep in his stomach. “And this story the brothers are telling me? What do you make of that?”

  “A bunch of rubbish.”

  Ibana snorted. “He’s lying.”

  “I am not,” Agoston protested.

  “I played cards with you for eighteen months, asshole. You look down and to your left when you bluff.”

  “I do not …” Agoston looked down and to his left, then grimaced. He sniffed, his mouth forming into a hard line.

  When it became clear he would say no more, Styke began to pace. The anger was building, and he forced his voice to remain neutral, matching Agoston’s calm demeanor. “You betrayed the lancers, Agoston. You got me sent to the firing squad. Did you know what Fidelis Jes was planning?” There was a long, empty pause, and Styke added, “Don’t pull this silent bullshit on me. You can either answer the question or we can take a few minutes and bury you alive beneath this hovel.”

  Agoston glanced around the room once more, and Styke could see the calculations going through his head: his chances of escaping, or putting up a good fight, or at least making them finish him off quickly. The corner of his lip curled, and Styke remembered something about his own experience playing cards with Agoston: He always got surly when he was losing. “Two million krana.”

  Styke raised his eyebrows. “Pit. You’re joking, right?”

  “Fidelis Jes really wanted you dead.”