The old woman seemed unafraid, even dismissive. “Kill them,” she said in Palo.
That Vlora understood. “Keep the noise down!” Vlora hissed, sidestepping a sword thrust and drawing the tip of her own smallsword across a Palo’s throat.
Mama Palo’s bodyguards were good. Very good. Within moments Vlora could tell that they were trained fighting men, and the fact they lasted longer than half a breath against four powder mages was a miracle in and of itself. But they didn’t last long, and only Buden wound up with a slice along his arm for their efforts and five dead or dying Palo soon lay on the floor.
“Davd, get the door,” Vlora said, motioning toward the entrance. She could hear feet pounding in the hallways outside, and Davd and Olem reached it in time to throw their weight against several people trying to shove their way in. “Buden, clean yourself up. Norrine, secure the old woman. Wait, where …” Vlora’s question was choked off in midsentence as she turned toward Mama Palo’s divan.
Mama Palo knelt beside it, speaking frantically in Palo, hands in the air. Meln-Dun held his pistol against her head, and he pulled the trigger before Vlora could order him to stand down.
Vlora’s instincts were faster than her tongue, and the powder in the pan of the pistol sizzled briefly but did not take as she reached out with her senses and suppressed the blast. She crossed the room in three strides and snatched the pistol away from Meln-Dun, tossing it to Norrine. “No! I made it clear we’re taking her in.”
She was surprised to see real hate in Meln-Dun’s eyes. He sneered down at the old woman. “She deserves to die.”
“Perhaps. But she’s going to hang—this will be state justice, not ours.”
“And that makes it better?”
“It has to,” Vlora spat, “or else we’re all just animals.”
“The Blackhats will torture her. This is a kindness.”
The statement brought Vlora up short as she realized he was probably right. She’d just been asking herself if she could hand an old woman over to face the noose, and she’d decided in a flash that she could. She had, after all, lost good men to Mama Palo’s people. But to hand an old woman over to the Blackhat torturers? “I’m not here to do a kindness.” She put herself between Meln-Dun and Mama Palo and helped the old woman to her feet. “Do you speak Adran?” She repeated the question again for Kez. Mama Palo ignored her.
“She speaks Adran and Kez just fine,” Meln-Dun spat.
“You,” Vlora said to him, pointing to the other side of the room. “Over there. And you, Mama Palo, are under arrest in the name of the Lady Chancellor for crimes against the state.”
“Is it a crime to want to be free?” the old woman said in perfect Adran.
“In this country? Most definitely.” Vlora handed the old woman over to Norrine, then joined Davd and Olem by the door. There was a steady thumping on the other side, and the latch had already broken. The wood itself would give way at any moment. “Hold!” Vlora shouted. “We’ve got Mama Palo. If you want her to see the dawn, you’ll let us out of here peacefully!”
The thumping stopped, until Mama suddenly shouted something in Palo. There was an answering yell, and then the thumping redoubled.
“She told them to kill us no matter what happens to her,” Meln-Dun reported.
“Norrine, keep her quiet!”
“Perhaps,” Olem said, grunting as a particularly hard blow on the door almost threw him on his ass, “you shouldn’t have told her we’re handing her over to the Blackhats.”
Davd began swearing colorfully when a jagged bit of the door splintered off and buried itself in his shoulder. “Here,” Vlora said, taking his place. “Meln-Dun, what exactly was your plan to get out of here?”
“My plan was to kill Mama Palo and show her head to her guards. To take power.”
“That actually works?” Davd asked.
“That’s awfully tribal for a businessman,” Olem said.
“Power is all they understand.” Meln-Dun’s voice was cold, angry, and for a moment he seemed like an entirely different person.
Vlora had a pang of doubt, wondering if she’d backed the wrong horse, before casting it aside. Too late now. “I think you underestimate your own people. You would have just gotten yourself killed very slowly.”
“This door has seconds left,” Olem hissed.
“All right. So much for not making any noise.” Vlora closed her eyes, focusing on the powder that she sensed just outside the door. There were at least seven people out there, and she found their powder and, with a thought, ignited it. She used her sorcery to warp the blasts, containing it, focusing the explosions in small spaces to minimize the chance of starting a fire.
The blasts rattled the ceiling, causing plaster dust to sprinkle on their shoulders. The thumping stopped, and Olem immediately leapt away from the door, jerking it open, his pistol at the ready.
There were a lot more than seven people in the hall. At least nine had been killed by the blast, and another eight milled around, mouths open, fingers in ears as they tried to get back their hearing. The closest drew his sword, but Olem put a bullet in his chest. Vlora shot a second, and then Davd forced his way between them and a roar of his blunderbuss put the rest of the hall on their backs.
The hallway was a bloody mess of mangled bodies and crying, moaning wounded. Vlora forced herself to ignore the carnage. “Quickly,” she said, leading her mages down the hall. She felt powder moving toward them and ignited it, using the same technique to warp the blast inward. She felt her energy ebb slightly with every effort, the sorcery bleeding away at her reserves in little jumps as she used it.
They cleared three more halls and made the ground floor, where Meln-Dun examined the latest carnage with an edge of disgust. “I thought you said no killing.”
“I said I didn’t want to kill,” Vlora snapped back. “Maybe if you had a better exit strategy we wouldn’t have to.” She swore, furious with both Meln-Dun for his half-wit plan and with herself for agreeing to it so eagerly. She’d been too desperate to spare her men a fight.
Three men with swords faced them in the main hall where Vlora had attended the party less than a week before. She took them alone, snorting powder for a fresh trance before carving through them as quickly as she was able, making it as painless as possible. These men, unlike the ones upstairs, were clumsy and overenthusiastic. They never stood a chance.
She would have preferred to disable and move on, but her training was not in that kind of combat.
As Ben Styke had told her, she was a killer.
They fought through another six guards before getting out of the Yellow Hall. Meln-Dun led them down several side corridors before finding stairs to take them up, assuring them that the Cobweb gave them a far better chance of escape than being on the ground.
Vlora lagged behind, checking and rechecking her men with every step. Both Davd and Buden were wounded, and Norrine practically had to carry Mama Palo, but they were all present and accounted for. They reached the Cobweb, where Olem dispatched a Palo in a pale green uniform, and then they were running along the same corridor that had brought them to the Yellow Hall.
They made it all the way to their exit unopposed, and Vlora almost shouted with joy when she saw starlight overhead and they came out on the Rim. She looked back on the uneven lights of Greenfire Depths, her heart thumping hard.
They had made it. Six men in and six men out, and they had snatched Mama Palo from the very heart of her power. The old woman threw herself to the ground, forcing Norrine to lift her like a sack of potatoes and toss her over a shoulder. The sight angered Vlora, and she found herself wishing the old woman would go with some dignity.
It would certainly be more convenient.
Vlora didn’t know how many Palo they had slaughtered on the way out. At least forty, she estimated. The poor bastards probably didn’t know what hit them, and she wondered if there was any way to keep her name out of the entire affair.
A powder mage
in Greenfire Depths? They would have to know it was her.
The Blackhats were waiting outside the gates of Loel’s Fort. Vlora escorted Mama Palo into the back of the Blackhat prison wagon herself, and watched as a silent pair of Iron Roses locked the door. There was a whole company on guard, almost as many as they’d brought for Ben Styke. She searched their chests until she saw the dangling medallion of a Bronze Rose.
“Where’s Michel Bravis?” she asked. “He was supposed to be here.”
“Agent Bravis is busy,” the Bronze Rose responded. “He’ll be pleased about this, though. We’ve been working a long time to bring this bitch in.”
Vlora bit her tongue, then couldn’t help but ask, “What’s going to happen to her?”
The Bronze Rose’s eyebrows went up. “An example, that’s what.”
“Torture?” Olem asked, a dangerous note to his voice. He didn’t like the prospect any more than Vlora did. She reached out in the darkness to gently touch his hand in warning.
“Nah,” the Bronze Rose said with a note of regret. “She’s going to hang within days. The grand master doesn’t want any chance of a rescue attempt or riots. For the best, I suppose.”
“For the best,” Vlora echoed, allowing herself a silent sigh of relief.
The Blackhats were gone within moments, and Vlora found herself watching until the prison wagon was out of sight. She wondered about how quickly it had all gone. An hour ago Mama Palo had been challenging Lindet herself for control of a significant part of Landfall, and now she was just another criminal ready for the noose.
All thanks to Vlora and her mages. It soured her stomach a little, and she needed somewhere to spit, and a drink to get the bad taste out of her mouth.
“Lady Flint.”
Vlora looked up to find Meln-Dun beside her. The anger and spite the Palo had shown during the kidnapping was gone, replaced with his normal placid calm. She wondered whether she’d seen a truer side to him, or if the stress of the mission had brought out something dark. The latter was not unheard-of.
“Well done,” she told him.
“To you as well. I can’t thank you enough, Lady Flint. It may take a week or two to calm things down in the Depths, but I’ll have my people begin a purge of Mama Palo’s followers immediately. I think a time of peace and prosperity is due in Landfall.”
“I certainly hope so,” Vlora answered. “And you’ll be able to get your family back safe?”
“Yes, I believe so. I’ll see to that tonight.”
Vlora raised her eyebrows as Meln-Dun turned to leave. “Do you need an escort?”
“Ah,” Meln-Dun said, “I don’t think so. With the chaos of Mama Palo’s disappearance I should be able to rally my own forces without trouble. Thank you again, Lady Flint. You have my gratitude.”
The Palo businessman left by the main gate, leaving Vlora alone in the muster yard as her mages had gone to tend to their wounds.
Well, not quite alone.
Olem stood beside her, a weighing look in his eyes as he watched Meln-Dun leave. He wore a small frown, and tapped an unlit cigarette against his lip. The night was suddenly quiet within the fort, muted sounds of a city at sleep drifting over the walls. It was so peaceful that Vlora wondered if the entire raid had been a dream.
“This went off without a hitch,” she said quietly. “Why do I feel shitty?”
“Having to kill a whole lot of people is a pretty large hitch,” Olem answered. A match flared to life, and a moment later she smelled cigarette smoke.
“But I’m a bloody mercenary. I’ve killed hundreds of people. Maybe thousands. This shouldn’t bother me.”
“You’re a killer,” Olem agreed, “but you’re a decent person.”
The two statements seemed mutually exclusive to her. “Do you think about the people you’ve killed?”
“Seems like a pretty good path to madness.”
There was a brief pause. “You didn’t answer the question.”
Olem sighed. “Sometimes. I try not to.”
“Same here.” Vlora looked out the gate, hoping that Mama Palo would make it to the noose unmolested. She may have been the enemy, but she was an old lady who had the guts to challenge the most powerful woman on this continent. That was something Vlora had to respect.
She intertwined her fingers with Olem’s and said, “I’m sick of this place. Let’s leave.”
“I think,” Olem responded, “we should get paid first.”
CHAPTER 40
Michel returned to Landon Plain the next morning with three dozen Iron Roses, eight Bronze Roses, and two prison wagons. Taniel had told him that he’d get his Gold Rose today, but he wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. Which, he reasoned, would make things more authentic.
He spent the entire ride trying to put his thoughts and memories back into the marble, but to no avail. He could feel himself slipping, mentally, thinking of the Iron Roses riding beside him in the wagon as his enemies instead of underlings. He caught himself worrying about Taniel—no, he corrected himself, Tampo—instead of champing at the bit to bring him in. It left him confused and irritable, and it took all his effort to keep from muttering about it under his breath.
Landon Plain was bustling when they arrived, but the moment the prison wagons with the white roses emblazoned on their sides and their accompaniment of Blackhats rolled onto a street the Palo scattered like a flock of geese, leaving goods, animals, and even rickshaws where they lay.
The Palo Herald was quiet as the Blackhats surrounded it, and Michel felt an anxious trepidation. What would he find inside? Bodies? Live Palo left as scapegoats? An ambush?
“All right,” Michel said, getting out of the back of the prison wagon and pointing to two of the biggest Iron Roses he could find. “You two, take that door. You six, sweep under the docks. You four take the warehouse next door. Where’s Warsim?”
“Here, sir,” Agent Warsim responded, getting out of the next wagon.
“You take the lead.”
Michel rounded to the far side of the prison wagon to watch the attack, a trio of Bronze Roses remaining close in case of a fight. He licked his lips, then nodded to Warsim as he and several big Iron Roses crept up beneath the sign that said PALO HERALD. As one, they kicked in the door and rushed inside while the rest of the group sprang into action.
Within moments Michel heard the crash of more doors being kicked in, and coordinated shouting from the crawl space beneath the warehouse. He listened to the tramp of feet, watching the open front door of the newspaper office with bated breath.
There was a long silence, broken only by the crash of something being knocked over, and then a single shout.
Warsim appeared in the doorway. “All clear!” he called.
Michel let himself breathe, jogging over to the building. “What’s going on?” he demanded. “Where is everyone?”
“We’ve got nothing, sir,” Warsim reported. “It’s empty.” He scowled, and Michel waited for the bad news.
“And …?” Michel prompted.
“There’s a body upstairs.”
Michel rushed into the warehouse and took the stairs two at a time up to the little room where, just yesterday, he’d spoken with Taniel. The room seemed dimmer than it had before, the walls closer together. And just inside, slumped beside a chair in the middle of the room, was a corpse lying facedown in a congealed pool of blood.
Michel slowly circled the body and waved away the buzzing flies. The corpse wore an expensive suit, now soaked through with blood, with a cane lying on the ground beside it. Michel picked up the cane and, using it and the toe of his boot, turned the body over. It held a spent pistol in one outstretched hand, and there was a bullet hole in the left temple. The wall behind the body was covered in blood and bits of brain.
The face, despite being covered in blood, belonged unmistakably to Gregious Tampo.
“Do we have a Knacked?” Michel asked, trying not to wretch.
“Sammlen, sir. He’s down
stairs,” Warsim answered.
“Bring him up here.”
Warsim returned with Sammlen a moment later, and Michel pointed to the body. “What is it you use to sense sorcery? Your third eye, right?”
“That’s right, sir. It’s not easy, but I can do it.”
“Tell me if there’s any sorcery here.”
“Sir?” the Knacked asked, looking confused.
“Just look!”
The Knacked took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and then opened them halfway with an intent gaze on the corpse. He held it there for almost twenty seconds before shaking his head and blinking away a few tears. “No, sir. Can’t see any sign of sorcery.”
Michel circled the body one more time. This was definitely not Taniel. It definitely was Gregious Tampo. The height and weight looked right; the face was definitely his. Michel wanted to know exactly how this had been done—was that some other poor fool there, or had Taniel killed himself to give Michel an edge? It seemed impossibly unlikely. And besides, wondering wasn’t Michel’s job. His job was to get a Gold Rose.
“Did we find anything else?” Michel asked.
“No, sir.”
“Do another sweep.”
Michel let them search for almost an hour, tearing the printshop apart, before meeting Warsim outside next to a pile of everything of value they had found. The pile consisted of eighteen crates of Sins of Empire, eleven muskets, five pistols, ammunition, receipts from news distributors in Landfall, a whole library of antigovernment propaganda distributed by other revolutionaries throughout the last ten years, and a single handwritten diary belonging, apparently, to Gregious Tampo.
Down the street of the warehouse complex Michel spotted Palo faces in windows and peering around corners, no doubt curious as to what was going on. He ignored them, flipping through the diary while his Blackhats waited in silence. “I don’t know if a corpse is going to be enough to get me my Gold Rose,” he whispered to himself.
“Then you better have a damned good story to go along with it,” he answered.