Sins of Empire

  There was another story about a massive dig site south of the city. Thousands of laborers had been transported there to help excavate an old monolith. The site was closed to the public but rumor had it scholars were being brought in from the Nine. No one really seemed to know what for, though. Seemed like a lot of effort for an old stone.

  Styke flipped through the stories, still pleased by the concept of getting a newspaper the day it came out instead of waiting weeks or months for it to be smuggled into the labor camps. It was all drivel, of course, but it was drivel about his city.

  His head came up at the sound of a clink against the high window on the other side of the room. There was another clink. Then another. And another. Styke drew his knife and laid it on the table, casually setting the newspaper down on top of it, and spread his arms across the back of the bench.

  The door opened. Even through the dim haze Styke could make out the pale, freckled skin of a young Palo man, followed by several companions. There were four of them all told, dressed in wool suits like any other city folk, no doubt trying to blend in as well as they could. Even during the war most Palo had stopped wearing their buckskins in the city limits. Too much bad blood between them and everybody else.

  The four Palo fanned out just inside the door. One carried a pistol proudly on his hip, two others heavy boz knives like Styke’s—though much smaller—while the fourth was already wearing a pair of iron knuckledusters. Came looking for a bit more than talk, it seems. Styke labeled the four of them in his head: Cheeks, Freckles, Soot, and Happy. Happy was the one with the pistol on his hip, wearing a big grin and looking around the pub like he planned on owning it by the end of the night.

  “What do you four want?” Grandma Sender demanded. “Ain’t got no time for the likes of you, not if you ain’t drinkin’.”

  Happy gestured rudely. “Shut up, Grandma. Spoke when spoken to, or you’ll get the back of my hand.”

  “Try it, you little runt,” Grandma said, slamming the cup she’d been polishing down on the bar. “I’ll …”

  “Grandma,” Styke called gently. “They’re here to see me. Don’t worry about them.” With one foot he pushed the chair across from him out from the table and switched from Adran to Palo. “Sit down and leave the old lady alone. We have talking to do.”

  “No fighting!” Grandma Sender warned.

  Happy narrowed his eyes at Styke and swaggered across the room, followed by the rest. He ignored the offered chair and stood across from Styke, arms folded. He wasn’t a small man, as far as most were concerned. Lean, muscular, taller than average. Like most Palo he had bright green eyes and a bit of a squint that came from a thousand generations under the Fatrastan sun. He had the type of face and bearing that would put most women on their backs. If only, Styke mused, he had the charm to go with it.

  “You the one who wanted to meet a dragonman?” Happy asked.

  “I am,” Styke said.

  “You don’t look like a historian.”

  “Funny. You don’t look like a dragonman.”

  Happy spat on the floor. “As if a dragonman would bother with the likes of you. We’re here to tell you to mind your own damned business. Nobody—scholars, historians, or whatever the pit you are—better come looking around for a dragonman unless you want your head staved in.”

  “Says who?” Styke asked.

  Happy puffed out his chest. “Says me.”

  Styke eyed Happy’s three companions. They weren’t professionals, but they weren’t fools, either. One of them examined the room, making sure Styke didn’t have any backup, while the other two kept their eyes fixed firmly on Styke, their hands ready to move toward weapons. They expected to be meeting with some spectacled pipsqueak, but they had come ready for anything.

  “Is there a dragonman in Landfall?” Styke asked, trying to sound only mildly curious.

  “None of your damned business, you ugly bastard.”

  “Now, now. No need for name calling. I’m just asking questions. Asking questions never hurt nobody.”

  “It’ll get you hurt real quick,” Happy replied. He drew his pistol. “We’re here to give you a message and it was supposed to be all gentle-like, but if you’re gonna insist on being inquisitive I can give you a message you’ll remember.”

  Styke sighed. Stupid kids. Too high on their own sense of … something … to look around them. There wasn’t anyone to impress in this little place. It was neutral territory where they could have a frank discussion in private. Instead of taking a moment to wonder why a single old cripple seemed completely at ease being outnumbered four to one, Happy was posturing like an idiot.

  In a slow, deliberate movement, Styke reached into his pocket and drew out a roll of krana notes. He peeled off a handful and laid them down on the table. “I’m just curious. Tell me a little bit about this dragonman and you can walk out of here with a pocket full of cash. I’ll go on my merry way and nobody gets hurt.”

  Happy glanced over his shoulder at Soot incredulously, then toward a dark stall in the opposite corner of the room and back at Styke. “Who the pit do you think you are?”

  “I’m just looking for a little information. Who’s this dragonman? Why’s he in Landfall now, when they haven’t been seen for decades?” Styke spoke quickly to keep Happy on his toes. Five minutes ago he wouldn’t have believed there was a dragonman in Landfall. But someone had sent these four.

  Happy put one hand on the table and leaned forward, his pistol inches from Styke’s cheek. “You don’t get to ask questions, ugly. In fact, I think I’m going to ask them myself. Why do you want to know? Why do you care about the dragonmen? You better spit it out quick, because I’m losing my patience.”

  “You hear what I said?” Grandma Sender demanded from behind the bar. “I speak enough of your bullshit language to know you’re getting your spirits up. No fighting in here! You five have trouble, take it out to the street.”

  “Shut up!” Happy yelled. His voice cracked. Something was off here and he knew it. Styke wasn’t intimidated by four thugs or a pistol in the face, and that just didn’t mesh with Happy’s normal experience.

  “Mind your manners,” Styke snapped. “Answer my questions and you can walk out of here with two hundred krana and all your limbs.”

  Happy’s finger twitched to the trigger of his pistol. “I will take that money and I’ll shove this pistol up your—”

  Styke snatched up his knife and bolted Happy’s wrist to the table with the blade. “Never reach for the money first,” he said, jerking the pistol out of Happy’s hand.

  Happy and his cohorts stared at the blade sticking out of Happy’s wrist for several long seconds, then Happy began to scream. There was a mad scramble as the other three went for their weapons, and above it all Styke could hear Grandma Sender yelling, “No fighting, no fighting!”

  Styke threw the table—and Happy along with it—at Soot. They both went down in a pile of limbs while the other two Palo leapt for Styke. He came off his bench and sidestepped a knife thrust from Cheeks, dropping the Palo with a punch to the temple.

  Freckles managed to coldcock Styke in the jaw with the knuckledusters. Styke shook off the pain and leaned into another punch to his stomach. He grunted, then caught Freckles’s arm and twisted hard. The sound of snapping bone was followed by Freckles’s scream.

  Cheeks recovered from Styke’s punch and barreled back into the fight knife-first. Styke sidestepped the thrust and wrapped one arm around Cheeks’s waist, pulling him close like a woman at a dance, and slammed his forehead against Cheeks’s nose. The Palo slumped to the ground.

  Styke strode over to where Soot and Happy were still caught under the heavy table. He righted it, then jerked his knife out of Happy’s wrist. Soot scrambled toward his own knife, but Styke stepped on his arm. He leaned over Soot, taking him by the throat, and squeezed till he felt blood. Soot twitched several times and then was still, and Styke had to wipe the blood off his ring so it wouldn’t slip from his finger.


  The whole fight had taken less than twenty seconds, and Happy’s face was frozen in terror as he crawled through a smear of his own blood, cradling his wrist, trying to reach the pistol Styke had taken from him. Behind them, Grandma Sender screamed obscenities at them all. Styke picked the pistol up and checked the pan. “It’s not even loaded, you asshole.” He raised his knife.

  Happy rolled over. “By Kresimir, don’t do it! I’m not the one you want. He is!” He thrust his finger toward a dark corner of the room. Styke hesitated, suspecting a trick. There was nobody in that corner.

  The hairs on the back of Styke’s neck suddenly stood on end as the very shadows themselves seemed to move. A man stood up, appearing as if he had emerged from nothing, adjusting the cuffs of his fine black suit. He was squat and muscular, with short, fire-red hair and a tuft of beard on his chin. Black tattoos snaked onto his wrists and neck but otherwise he might have been mistaken for a Palo businessman having a drink in the pub.

  Grandma Sender, her arms thrown up over the mess of bodies on her floor, paused mid-tirade. “Where the pit did you come from?”

  The stranger ignored her. “Why do you want a dragonman?” he asked. The words were strangely thick, like he had a mouth full of molasses, and it took several moments for Styke to realize why. He wasn’t speaking Palo.

  He was speaking a sister language, one so close they could be mistaken for the same; Dynize.

  Styke forgot Happy on the floor beneath him. A killer knew a killer at first glance, and this one had a lot of blood on his hands. He held himself confidently, head slightly cocked, his body relaxed but his attitude screaming imminent violence. Styke turned toward this stranger—a dragonman—and held his knife out to his side.

  “Just looking for answers.”

  “Well,” the dragonman said. “You won’t find them. Not here.”

  Styke had always been good at assessing a threat. He knew when to push and when to retreat and it had made him an unbeatable cavalry commander. But he couldn’t read the dragonman at all, and that was disconcerting. “I think I will. Might have to pry them out of you, though.” He gestured to the bodies of the Palo kids he’d just torn through. “These are yours, aren’t they? Didn’t even step in to give them a hand.”

  The dragonman’s eyebrow twitched slightly, an arrogant tic that said it didn’t matter much.

  Styke felt a little bile in the back of his throat. These poor Palo kids were probably acolytes of some kind. In Styke’s mind, that made the dragonman responsible, just like Colonel Styke had been responsible for every lancer under his command. “I don’t like you,” Styke said. “And I think I’m going to enjoy killing you.”

  The dragonman took a step forward, then stopped. His face reminded Styke of a cat, completely unreadable, eyes searching Styke for strengths and weaknesses. He seemed to hesitate and then, without warning, he suddenly went for the door, as quick and casual as a panther who’d decided not to fight a bear for its kill. He was out and gone in a flash, and Styke swore, limping after him. By the time he reached the street, the dragonman was already disappearing into the late afternoon crowd.

  “Celine!” Styke jammed a new piece of horngum in his mouth, chewing violently to numb the spasm in his leg.

  She joined him quickly, and Styke pointed after the dragonman. “Did you just see the Palo that came out of the door? The one in the black suit?”

  “Yes.”

  “Follow him. Don’t let him see you, but don’t lose him. I’ll be right behind you.”

  Celine took off into the crowd and Styke fell back, following at a leisurely pace. He wiped blood off his sleeve and face, grumbling under his breath. He didn’t like being duped, or given the slip like that. He also didn’t like getting answers that raised more questions.

  Like what the pit a legend like a Dynize dragonman was doing alive and walking around in Landfall.

  CHAPTER 17

  Vlora wore her dress uniform, sword and pistol at her belt, and met Devin-Tallis in the muster yard at eight thirty. It wasn’t long until dark, and she boarded his tiny rickshaw with some trepidation. He immediately set off from Loel’s Fort, heading down the street and toward the switchbacks that Michel had taken her down just two days earlier. By the time they reached the bottom all sign of daylight was gone, and she was surprised to see the narrow streets lit dimly by a handful of gas lamps she had not noticed earlier.

  Within moments of reaching the floor of the Depths she was completely turned around. Devin-Tallis chugged onward, his legs working effortlessly as he pulled the rickshaw through a series of rapid, seemingly unnecessary turns, his feet splashing through the permanent layer of damp sludge that seemed to cover the streets. They traveled onward in silence for several minutes, and Vlora’s heart beat a little faster with every passing moment and the realization that if Devin-Tallis left her suddenly, she had no hope of finding her way back to the plateau on her own.

  She unwrapped a powder charge and sprinkled a bit on her tongue, relishing the sulfur taste, then snorting a bit more. The trance lit her mind like a fuse, letting her focus better, her vision sharpening so that she could see the dark spots between gas lamps as clear as if it were day.

  Being able to see the sudden sharp angles and dubious construction of the overlapping tenements did very little to calm her. “You said this is a celebration,” she said. “But Vallencian called it a gala. Which is it?”

  Devin-Tallis spoke without turning his head. “Both, I suppose. It’s a Palo celebration, the Day of the Two Moons.”

  Vlora tried to think of a festival that corresponded to today’s date, but no harvests or astrological events came to mind. “What does that mean?”

  “No idea,” Devin-Tallis said. “I asked my father when I was a boy. He didn’t know, either. It’s a festival, and we celebrate.”

  “Usually a festival corresponds to something.”

  “Perhaps it once did,” Devin-Tallis answered.

  That wasn’t much help. Vlora looked up, trying to get her bearings from the sky, but even the little slices of fading twilight that she had been able to see through the jumbled tenements were now gone, obscured by the masonry, boards, and cloth that stitched together the layers of Greenfire Depths. She took a little more powder to calm her nerves. “What kind of a name is Devin-Tallis?”

  “A Palo one,” he answered.

  “I haven’t met many Palo with two names.”

  “It’s not actually two names,” Devin-Tallis said. “Devin is my title. My given name is Tallis.”

  “No family name?”

  “Some of us have them. It varies among the tribes. My tribe, the Wannin, use a naming system that goes back to when the people you call the Dynize used to rule these lands. It’s very old. We go by our title, and then our name.”

  Vlora thought of the way Kressian naming conventions went. The lower classes often only had a single name. They could buy or earn a second name—often an epithet like her “Lady Flint.” Now that she thought of it, their methods were not dissimilar. “What does Devin mean?”

  “One who serves.”

  “Is that a class thing, or …”

  “Ah, no,” Devin-Tallis said. “I pull a rickshaw, and I have since I was strong enough. It makes me good money, and allows me to keep a family. One who serves is a proud name. You might call it middle-class.”

  Vlora couldn’t help but chuckle. So often it was easy to think of the Palo as savages—most Kressians did—but then she was reminded that most spoke Adran or Kez or some other Kressian language with little accent, and they grasped Kressian traditions better than Kressians grasped theirs. She wondered, if the Palo were not so divided, whether they would have any trouble pushing the Kressian immigrants into the sea.

  It was most likely a possibility that haunted Lady Chancellor Lindet’s dreams.

  Vlora remembered someone she’d once known—the green-eyed girl Taniel brought back from his time in Fatrasta all those years ago, along with rumors of a
scandal that had caused her no end of grief. “What does ‘Ka’ mean?” she asked.

  Devin-Tallis slowed slightly, frowning over his shoulder. “I have not heard that before. I would have to ask. Ah, we are here.” They rounded a corner and came to a sudden stop. Vlora glanced around. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. There were no crowds, no arrival line of rickshaws. Just another side alley with a well-trodden street of stone and muck, ending in a well-lit door made of reeds.

  “We’re here?” Vlora asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “This is it,” Devin-Tallis said. “The streets down here are narrow, so every house or hall has several entrances. The Palo don’t care much for grand facades. It is, after all, what is inside that matters.”

  Vlora got out of the rickshaw and Devin-Tallis put it off to one corner, then led her to the door at the end of the alley and spoke his name. The reed curtain was pulled aside, revealing a narrow corridor and a pair of armed Palo. Vlora could smell the powder on them, and spotted their pistols a moment later. They gazed back at her stoically, and Vlora spread her senses, trying not to gasp when she felt hundreds of small caches of powder within fifty yards, each of them no doubt representing another armed guard.

  Security, it seemed, was not a problem for the Palo.

  Devin-Tallis waved her forward. “I will introduce you,” he said, leading her down several narrow corridors, “and then I must return to my rickshaw.”

  “You’re not coming in?”

  “I am,” Devin-Tallis said with a smile, “middle-class. The Palo have their own system, and only the elite are invited into the Yellow Hall. Ah. Here we are. I will come back and check on you in a few hours. If you wish to leave, simply send someone to find me.”

  Vlora had become increasingly aware of the low buzz of conversation at the edges of her powder trance, but a wave of voices suddenly burst upon her as if she’d entered a banquet hall. They passed two more guards in the gaslit corridor and then Devin-Tallis opened a heavy wooden door for her. What she saw nearly made her gasp.