“Landfall smells like hot shit and sweat,” Michel said. “Wearing cologne does very little to help. And I buy very expensive pomade, thank you. As much as I’d love to exchange witticisms with you all afternoon, I’m afraid I am here on government business.”
Flint pointed to a young man dragging a trunk off the keelboat. “Just leave it over there, Dobri. Thank you.” Her attention returned to Michel. “Of course. I was a little surprised at being urgently recalled, let alone being sent keelboats for my infantry. As far as I can tell the city hasn’t been burned to the ground, so what’s the hurry?”
“We’re understaffed,” Michel said, recalling the information he’d read in the file on Lady Flint’s new assignment. “There have been several Palo riots in the last couple of months that our garrison is woefully unprepared to deal with, and the number of immigrants coming into the city means the Blackhats and the regular police are terribly overtaxed.”
“You just need manpower?” Lady Flint asked, seemingly taken aback. “And it couldn’t have waited a few weeks for us to finish our work in the Basin?”
Someone, somewhere, had decided they wanted Lady Flint back in the city quickly. Michel wasn’t about to question his superiors. “They decided that your presence here was more important.”
A figure coming off the keelboat caught the corner of Michel’s eye. He didn’t recognize the face, but the man’s bearing, the silver star on his lapel, and the familiar way with which he fell in beside Lady Flint told Michel that this was Colonel Olem. Another Adran war hero and, if rumors were to be believed, Lady Flint’s longtime lover. Olem lit a cigarette, and breathed a long trail of smoke out his nostrils while he looked Michel up and down.
Flint didn’t acknowledge Olem’s arrival. “So what do you have for me?”
“An arrest.” Michel handed over the file he’d been given that morning.
Olem choked on the smoke from his cigarette. “You brought our entire army down here to arrest someone?” He took the file from Lady Flint’s hands and flipped it open, reading furiously.
Michel turned away, looking at the soldiers unloading the keelboats, considering his words carefully. He was simply here to pass on orders. That didn’t mean he had to like the orders. “The Palo used to be a disorganized collection of tribes and city-states scattered across Fatrasta. They fought among themselves more than they fought the Kressians, and were never more than a minor threat to Fatrastan colonies.”
“That still seems to be the case on the frontier,” Flint said.
“Not in Landfall. They’ve become organized; focused. Freedom fighters like the Red Hand send their agents here to stir up trouble. They strike and hold protests. Their riots are planned. The Palo in Landfall are in open sedition against the Lady Chancellor’s government.”
“I don’t like where this is going,” Flint said.
Michel held up a hand. “We’re not asking you to slaughter anyone in the streets. The Lady Chancellor has no interest in making war against her own people. We just need you to arrest their local leader.”
“A single person?” Flint asked flatly. “I would think such an act would be within the power of the Blackhats.”
Michel met her eyes. “I wish it was that simple. No one knows where she is or what she looks like. Mama Palo is a ghost. Every attempt at arresting her has ended up either a dead end or a fiasco. All we know about her is that she’s an old woman and that she’s united the local Palo beneath her.”
“You want us to bring in someone’s grandmother so you can hang her?”
“Cut off the head of the snake,” Michel said. “Once Mama Palo is dead, the Palo will go back to fighting each other and the Blackhats can bring stability to the city.” At least, he added to himself silently, that’s the theory.
Flint chewed on this for several moments, clearly uncomfortable with the idea. She exchanged a long glance with Olem, some silent communication passing between them.
“There’s a reason you called us back with a whole brigade,” Olem said.
“Yes,” Michel admitted. “Do you know anything about Greenfire Depths?”
“Not really,” Flint said.
“It’s a pit. An immense, ancient quarry on the western side of the plateau. It’s almost a mile across, stuffed with old tenements, filled to the brim with Palo. Palo homes, businesses, churches. No intelligent Kressian enters Greenfire Depths after dark, and Blackhats will only go there in force. Mama Palo is hiding somewhere in that rat’s nest and it’ll take an army to find her and bring her out.” It did seem odd to him that Fidelis Jes would bring so many soldiers into the city to arrest one person. But the situation with the Palo had gotten bad and besides, it almost seemed like Jes was hoping Lady Flint would start slaughtering people in the streets. Not that Michel was going to tell her that.
“It sounds,” Flint said, “like you’re asking me to invade your own city.”
“The Lady Chancellor leaves the details to you,” Michel said, giving Flint a tight smile. He didn’t like the whole idea, but he was certainly glad it wasn’t his job. “She gives you full authority to operate within the Depths—short of burning the whole thing down, of course.”
“That is, unfortunately, the best way to find a needle in a haystack,” Flint muttered. “Assuming we agree, what kind of support can you give us?”
“Any intelligence we have on hand. We can provide logistical support for your men—food, lodging, ammunition, et cetera. We’re also willing to pay you for an entire year’s contract.”
“That sounds fair,” Olem commented.
His input seemed enough for Flint. “All right,” she said. “How long do we have?”
“A month. But the Lady Chancellor would be very pleased if you found Mama Palo before that.”
“I’ll need every scrap of information you have on the Depths,” Flint said. “Maps, information on factions, businesses. Everything you can give me.”
“It’ll be done,” Michel said. “We have a few agents within the Depths. I’ll make introductions.” He produced a small square of stationery from his pocket, handing it to Flint. “Here’s my card if you need to find me. I’ll check in as frequently as I can. Is there anything else I can do for you?”
Flint ran her fingers over the embossed edge of the card, frowning. “I did have one question. Have you ever heard of a Palo wearing the skin of a swamp dragon and carrying bone axes?”
“No,” Michel said after a moment’s consideration. It sounded familiar—a story he’d been told as a child, perhaps—but nothing sprang immediately to mind. “I don’t think I’ve heard of that before. Any reason you ask?”
“We ran into one of them putting down the uprising at Fort Samnan. Fought like a madman, killed or wounded nearly forty of my men. I’ve never seen anything like it short of a powder mage or a Privileged.”
Michel shrugged. It sounded like nonsense. Stories from the frontier were frequently embellished, even by otherwise levelheaded people. He preferred to let them slide without any real scrutiny. Even if they were true, his territory was Landfall and its citizens—not whatever god-awful things were lurking out there in the swamps. “I should get back to work,” he said, gesturing at the business card in her hand. “Call on me if there’s anything you need.”
He made his good-byes and drifted through the disembarking soldiers, then across the marketplace as he forced his mind to shift from one task to another, Flint and her men already put out of his mind by the time he reached the main thoroughfare.
Lady Flint would be, he decided, left to her own devices. Finding the Iron Roses, and doing so in a sufficiently short time so as to please Fidelis Jes, was going to take all his effort. And he might have to piss a few people off to do so.
Vlora watched the Blackhat retreat toward the market street before turning to Olem.
“What did you think of that?” she asked.
Olem puffed thoughtfully on his cigarette, reading the newspaper clipping that Michel had handed Vlo
ra. “Not a bad fellow. For a spy.”
Vlora frowned after Michel. “Seemed more like a bureaucrat to me. They wouldn’t waste a real spy on us, would they?”
“Definitely a spy,” Olem said. “You notice his face? Plain, clean-shaven, ordinary? Think you could describe him to me right now, even though he just walked away?”
“No,” Vlora said after a moment’s consideration. “I couldn’t.”
“Nobody with such a forgettable face works for the Blackhats as a regular old pencil-pusher,” Olem said. “And the Silver Rose? That’s middle management. Someone his age only gets a Silver Rose if he’s distinguished himself.”
“I didn’t know Blackhats have ranks,” Vlora said.
“Iron, Bronze, Brass, Silver, and Gold. But from what I understand their ranking system is skewed. The power belongs to the Gold Roses, and then there’s everyone else. It’s not that dissimilar from the Riflejacks,” he added with a grin. “Lady Flint is in charge, then the rest of us poor sods.”
Vlora took Olem’s cigarette from him, taking a long drag and blowing the smoke toward the open sea. She got her first chance to really look around at their location. They stood on the slice of land between Landfall Plateau and the bay. Behind them the Hadshaw River wound through a gorge that split the Landfall Plateau in two. Before them, the river fed into a wide, tranquil bay protected from the ocean by a mixture of natural and man-made breakers. The smell of salt rode heavily on the air and gulls cried overhead.
Farther along the inlet from the keelboat landing was the proper dock, out in deep water with immense sailing ships at moor. Directly across from it was Fort Nied, an old fortress pitted and scarred by the Fatrastan Revolution.
“Find out more about him,” Vlora said. “And dig up as much information as you can about Greenfire Depths and this Mama Palo. We can only trust the Blackhats as far as their own interests, which might include censoring whatever information they give us. I want the real story.”
“On it,” Olem said.
“Where are our cavalry?” she asked.
“I haven’t heard anything from Major Gustar, but I doubt Landfall has the stables to house a thousand horses at the spur of the moment. I’ll send word to them to camp north of the city, and we’ll send them supplies. They’ll be nearby.”
Vlora wanted all her men here, but she’d have to make do with the infantry. She was suddenly nervous, the corner of her eye twitching like it did when an uncertain battle lay before her. “I don’t want any surprises.” She pressed a palm to her eye. “Also look into getting us a few hundred men to replace the losses we took in the Tristan Basin. I’d prefer Adrans.”
“Will do.”
“Thank you.” She let a concerned look cross her face, feeling vulnerable, and turned toward Olem. “Tell me I haven’t just put us on a powder keg and lit the fuse.”
“You haven’t just put us on a powder keg and lit the fuse,” Olem said.
“Are you lying to me?”
Olem seemed thoughtful for a moment, turning himself away from the incoming sea breeze to light another cigarette. “More or less,” he said.
“That’s not at all reassuring.”
CHAPTER 7
Styke turned his face away from the street, studiously examining the table of trinkets in the market stall in front of him to avoid attracting the attention of a passing Blackhat. Styke remained hunched over, the brim of his hat pulled down to obscure his face, until long after the Blackhat disappeared into the crowd, before turning back and watching the Adran mercenaries unload their cargo off the keelboats.
Just an hour ago he’d managed to find an old newspaper article about the Riflejacks that gave him more information than Tampo’s brief. The Riflejacks started off as Field Marshal Tamas’s personal bodyguard during the Adran-Kez War, turning into a full brigade of picked men by the end of the conflict. When the Adran government decided to reduce the size of the army, General Flint offered them all a job working as mercenaries and they followed her out of the country, almost to a man.
Styke searched the faces of the Riflejacks, examining their body language, studying their uniforms and weapons, and found himself impressed. These were killers. Real soldiers. The men who spat in the Kez king’s face and threw the Grand Army out of Adro ten years ago.
And Styke had to figure out a way to join them.
He remembered working with real soldiers. The feel of lances at his back, the smell of powder from a coordinated carbine volley, and then the rush as he dug his heels into Deshner’s sides and three hundred armored cavalry slammed into an enemy flank. The enemy broke—they always broke—and the Mad Lancers had ridden their officers down like dogs.
He made a mental note of the two that the Blackhat had been speaking with and guessed they were General Flint and Colonel Olem. Even at this distance his nose twitched. Styke had a Knack—a minor sorcery—that allowed him to smell magic. It didn’t help him one ounce in the work camp because anyone with useful sorcery tended to avoid being sent to the camps. The reek of sulfur about her told him she was a powder mage as clear as the smell of shit helped him find the outhouse.
Olem had a smell to him, too, though it was less pronounced. He smelled like rich, freshly turned soil. He, like Styke, also had a Knack. Styke would have to find out what it was.
“Hey,” a voice said, “you just going to stand there blocking up my stall or you going to buy anything?”
Styke turned to find a red-faced man with a long beard and an apron looking up at him from behind one of the market tables. His stall was decked out with herbs, roots, mushrooms, and truffles. The sign over the stall said OPENHIEM’S APOTHECARY.
“Celine,” Styke said absently, glancing over his shoulder. He found the girl two stalls down, eyeing a bin of apples, pacing back and forth in front of the fruit seller. She was wearing a new outfit: trousers and a shirt and hat. An old woman at the local bathhouse had scraped the grime from her face and arms. She almost looked like a real child now, and not that feral thing he’d adopted in the camp.
The fruit seller was watching her, too. He made a shooing motion with one hand, clearly expecting her to steal something. In response, Celine took a few steps closer to the apples, stuck her tongue out, and plucked a cloth doll off the table of the next vendor over. The fruit vendor seemed so surprised at the change in direction that Celine had already faded into the afternoon crowd before he could open his mouth.
“Hey, big man. You hear me?”
Styke’s attention returned to the apothecary in front of him. He eyed the roots, then pointed at one of them. “Is that horngum?”
“It is,” the apothecary said. His tone shifted from annoyed vendor to salesman in an instant as he looked over Styke’s facial scars and obvious limp. “The best thing out there for pains and aches of all kind.”
“Is it fresh?”
“Of course it’s fresh!” the apothecary said indignantly.
Like Celine, Styke had cleaned himself up. His beard was gone, his hair cut, body washed and massaged. A new set of clothes clung tightly to his frame, the biggest the tailor had ready-made, and three more sets had been measured and marked out for him to retrieve later in the week. He felt like a new man—and at the same time vulnerable; a naked cur, ready to be called out by the city police at any moment and rushed back to the work camps.
He dug into his pocket for the roll of krana bills Tampo had given him. A few moments of haggling, and the apothecary handed him the entire root.
“Now then, you’ll want to boil down a small portion into a tea …” the apothecary began.
Styke took a thumb-sized bite and began to chew. The horngum tasted sour, like a dozen lemons jammed into his mouth all at once. He felt his cheek twitch and the right side of his jaw went completely numb. Slowly, his body began to have a pleasant tingle and he found that when he told his leg to move it obeyed him almost immediately. The apothecary looked on in horror.
“Yup,” Styke said. “Definitely fresh.
”
He found Celine back around the side of the next stall over, eyeing a brand-new dress laid out by a seamstress. Styke took her by the arm, noting the pilfered doll in her pocket, and pulled her away from the seamstress’s stall. “You can steal,” he said quietly, “but if they catch you they’ll put you back in the work camps. And I won’t ask Tampo to go in for you.”
Celine lifted her chin. “I don’t get caught. My dad was the best thief in Landfall.”
“And how did that work out for him?”
Celine cast him a sullen, sidelong glance. “He got sucked into the swamp at the work camp.”
“Right. Remember that,” Styke said. He put his hat on her, then grabbed her by the back of the shirt with his good hand and lifted her onto his shoulder, letting her settle in comfortably before he continued. He wondered briefly how they looked—a little girl in boy’s clothing, balanced on the shoulder of a giant, her skinny arm wrapped around his scarred head.
“You remember this city?” he asked.
“Yes,” Celine said matter-of-factly. “Dad was only in the camps for six months before he drowned. We used to go all over the boroughs, so I know each of them pretty well.”
“Good. It’s been a long time since I was here last. The city feels different … like an old saddle I sold long ago and have only now bought back. The market”—he gestured around him—“it’s all the same.” He pointed to the slanting, eastern face of the plateau. “That road there is new; so is that one. The main road over to the foundries has been widened. Everything is … wrong.”
“My dad used to say it was progress. The Lady Chancellor ripping up the old buildings and putting in new ones, whole blocks at a time.”
“Don’t say that word.”
“What word?”
“Progress. Say ‘shit,’ ‘damn,’ or ‘pit’ all you want, but ‘progress’ is a curse around me. Such a stupid bloody word.” Styke shook his head, feeling Celine tighten her grip momentarily. “Lindet’s trying to rebuild the city in her image, but it’s all on the surface—the front half. She put any new tenements up in Greenfire Depths?”