Wrath of Empire

Chapter 51

The Mad Lancers left the Hock – and the remnants of their dragoon rivals – and soon reached the coast. They skirted the city-fortress of New Starlight late in the evening, using a sunken road to slip by undetected. It wasn’t until they were well past that Styke allowed himself to circle around the end of his army and gaze back upon the city, squinting through the fading light at Dynize flags flying from the turrets that had once flown the flag of the Fatrastan Army.

The city-fortress was not like anything else in Fatrasta. It was built on a wedge of land jutting off the northwest edge of the Hammer and guarded by a sloped curtain wall that cut the entire wedge off from the mainland and housed a small city – enough space for around ten thousand people. Inside that was the fortress itself, a towering knife of white stone, freckled with red, surrounded by seven mighty turrets, the largest of which was topped with an enormous lighthouse to warn incoming ships of the rocks below.

“Is that a castle?”

Styke turned to find Celine beside him, gently patting Margo on the neck. He sized up New Starlight, realizing that it looked far more like a storybook castle than it did the palisades or star-forts that dotted Fatrasta. “I suppose it is,” he said. It wasn’t a pretty castle, not by a long shot, but it had all the trappings of one.

“Who built it?”

“A Starlish duke,” he told Celine. “He was one of the first serious explorers to cross through the heart of Fatrasta, and when he reached here, he enslaved the local Palo and made them build him this fortress. I think that was, eh, three hundred years ago?”

Celine’s eyes widened. “It’s stood that long?”

“There are older castles in the Nine, but it’s a decent enough fortress.” He pointed to the turrets. “Those are big enough to hold modern cannons, and the wall is sloped slightly, which helps take a pounding from straight-shot.”

“Then why do the Dynize hold it?” she asked. “There’s no sign of a battle.”

Styke frowned at the fortress. She was right; there were no signs of a battle. The walls were undamaged, all of the turrets standing. “Sharp eyes.” He pondered the question for a few moments. “The garrison must have abandoned it at the first sight of the enemy. Maybe when they heard about Landfall. Damned cowards.” He resisted the urge to take a closer look. Even a poor garrison could have held New Starlight against an enemy siege – those towers would make short work of just about any fleet attempting a blockade.

But New Starlight wasn’t his problem.

As they watched, a small, mounted force exited the curtain wall and rode east. Definitely Dynize soldiers. Styke remained until the sun was almost gone, searching the horizon for any signs of those dragonmen before turning Amrec to catch up with the Mad Lancers. Celine followed in his wake.

Their camp was a few miles south of New Starlight in a gentle valley large enough to hold most of their army but small enough for a scout to miss until they were right on top of it. As Styke and Celine rode in, the men were just beginning to set up their tents, and Styke proceeded to the other side of the camp, where he found Ibana, Ka-poel, Gustar, and a dozen Mad Lancers gathered around an opening in the hillside.

The opening had, until a few minutes ago, been hidden behind a boulder. The entrance was squat – no more than three feet by three feet – and held together by thick-cut timbers. It looked like the entrance to a tiny mine.

Styke handed Amrec off to a nearby soldier and joined Ibana. “Is it still intact?” he asked.

“We’re finding out,” she answered without looking away from the entrance.

Gustar knelt by the timbers, squinting into the dark hole, a half smile on his face. “A Blackhat cache, buried under a hill in the middle of nowhere.” He shook his head. “How many people even know about this?”

“Five or ten,” Styke said, kneeling next to Gustar and peering into the darkness. He could see a light, somewhere in the depths, bobbing around. “Lindet uses forced labor for this kind of thing so that word won’t get out to the general public.”

“What’s it for?” Gustar asked.

“This,” Styke grunted with a gesture toward their camp. “Lindet is a firm believer in being ready for anything. In addition to regular supply depots, she’s got these caches hidden away all over the country – mostly in the less-populated areas. They’re specifically meant to resupply an army. If this one is untouched, it’ll provide us with canned food, wine, ammunition, and spare weapons to last weeks.”

As if to answer the next unspoken question, the bobbing of the light suddenly came toward them, growing until the lantern was set aside and Jackal’s head and shoulders emerged from the pit. Jackal grinned up at them. “Everything is there,” he reported.

Ibana clapped her hands together. Styke couldn’t blame her. They needed a bit of good luck after the last couple weeks of hard riding and fighting.

“Check the tins and barrels,” Ibana ordered. “If the rats haven’t gotten to any of it, give everyone a double ration of food and wine tonight.”

“No drunks,” Styke added.

“No drunks,” Ibana agreed.

Styke got out of the way to let them work, and soon Jackal was overseeing a chain of men rolling out barrels and handing up crates to empty the deep cache. He watched them work for a few minutes, feeling suddenly tired from the events of the last few weeks. His body reminded him that he was no longer the Mad Ben Styke who could go a week without sleep and still fight a battle.

Looking around, his eyes fell on Ka-poel sitting on the hillside above the entrance to the cache. He was surprised to find her watching him, and when their eyes met, she got to her feet and walked away into the darkness.

Styke snorted. He still couldn’t decide what he thought about what had happened last night. Walking into the Dynize cavalry camp unopposed, seeing all of those soldiers sitting cross-legged like they were waiting for a mummers’ show in the park, unable to move or speak. The officer whom Ka-poel used as a mouthpiece. The memory floated in the back of his head like a bad dream, fuzzy on details, and he briefly wondered if he had dreamt it.

He continued to watch his lancers as they unloaded the cache for several minutes before confiscating one of their lanterns. He found Celine brushing down Margo with Sunin’s help. “Finish that and come with me,” he told her.

They walked into the darkness, lantern held high above Styke’s head. Styke followed the coppery smell of blood sorcery, sniffing at the air every few moments until they found Ka-poel at the top of the valley, sitting on the ground with the contents of her satchel spread out across a rock. There was wax, bits of hair, tiny figurines, and sticks, dirt, and even some fingernails. It reminded him of the sort of non sequitur items his little sister used to collect as a child.

Styke set the lantern on the rock and sat down across from her, watching her face. She lifted her eyes to him for a brief second and squinted before returning her attention to a half-made wax figurine in her lap.

Styke patted his knee, letting Celine sit, then addressed Ka-poel. “What did you do with the Dynize cavalry yesterday?”

Ka-poel continued her work, finishing the figurine and gently pressing a dirty toenail into the soft wax, before brushing off her hands and lifting her gaze once more to him and Celine. She drew her thumb across her neck, then flashed several more signs.

“I killed them,” Celine translated. “Just like you asked.”

“Why did you keep them as long as you did? Why didn’t you finish them sooner?”

“I told you. I needed answers.” Ka-poel raised her chin, as if daring him to continue that line of questioning.

So he did. “And?” He drummed his fingers on the rock, looking over her assortment of disgusting knickknacks.

Ka-poel stared at him, her hands folded in her lap, before finally lifting them into the light of the lantern. “I have been trying to uncover my past,” Celine translated. “When I was a child, my nurse took me from Dynize. I remember very little of that time – I remember a palace, and great halls, and I remember fleeing through the night and across the ocean in a small ship manned by sailors who knew they would die.”

Ka-poel’s eyes took on a faraway glint, her brow wrinkling with the telling. She continued. “My nurse took me into the swamp, and we joined one of the tribes there. She died very soon after from disease. Her death deprived me of my own history, and I have wondered who I am for over two decades.”

“So who are you?” Styke asked. Her look was guarded, and he knew that pushing too hard on a subject like this was likely to make a person button up for good. But he was still angry about the things he saw last night, and he didn’t have the patience to be gentle.

Ka-poel waggled her finger, as if to say, My story isn’t done. She continued. “My nurse sang me songs. I remember those. She called me a princess, and I always thought that was …” Celine struggled with the sign Ka-poel made, her small face scrunching in confusion.

“Hyperbole?” Styke suggested.

Ka-poel nodded. “I thought it was hyperbole. When the Dynize came, I had reason to suspect that perhaps … perhaps that wasn’t the case.”

Styke gently smoothed Celine’s hair, watching Ka-poel’s face carefully. She was normally stoic, sometimes bemused or playful. But she seemed genuinely troubled right now, and that set him on edge. She was too powerful to be troubled.

“A bone-eye has been calling to me,” Ka-poel finally finished.

“What do you mean, ‘calling to you’?” Styke asked, feeling goose bumps on the back of his arm.

“Sorcery,” Ka-poel clarified.

“I gathered as much. But how? Does he know where you are? Is he able to track us?”

Ka-poel hesitated. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. But I was never trained in what I do, so there are many simple things that the Dynize bone-eyes are capable of that I am unaware of. So … maybe.”

That didn’t make Styke happy. Not even a little bit. Having someone like Ka-poel around – someone so powerful that they could take physical control of a company of cavalry – and have her admit that she had not mastered simple parts of her own sorcery was not only disconcerting, it was also downright dangerous.

“I have figured out,” she said, “that this bone-eye can only call to me through shared blood.” She paused. “Those lancers – well, their officers – I was asking them about the powerful bone-eyes who came over with the invasion.”

“And what did you discover?”

“I am being called by an old man. His name is Ka-Sedial, and he was the one who came to meet your sister the day before their invasion.”

Styke was on his feet before he knew it, towering over Ka-poel, fists clenched. “Be very careful what you say next,” he said through clenched teeth. He could feel his heart hammering in his chest. The very idea that someone would discover that he and Lindet were brother and sister had never even occurred to him. Only they knew the secret, and neither was about to tell a soul.

His leap had sent Celine tumbling, and without taking his eyes off Ka-poel, he helped her to her feet and gestured for her to watch Ka-poel’s hands.

“Sit down,” Celine translated Ka-poel’s next signs. “Blood is my business. You can’t hide your relation from me.” She sniffed, as if the smell of imminent violence coming from Styke was nothing more than an inconvenience. “I will keep your secret.”

Slowly, Styke lowered himself to the ground.

“This is an exchange,” Ka-poel said. “Do you understand? I keep your secret, and you will keep mine.”

Styke tried to calm his pounding heart, remembering the conversation before his sister was mentioned. “This Ka-Sedial?”

“Yes. He is my grandfather.”

“And what does that make you?”

Ka-poel smiled distantly, laughing to herself. “It makes me a princess. The Dynize emperor is my cousin.”

Styke almost laughed himself. A damned princess, riding along with him. It seemed like something out of a fairy tale, yet so much of this already did. He wondered if it explained her power – if the Dynize royal family was stronger than most. “Why is he calling to you?”

“He is trying to be …” Celine struggled with the next word, and Ka-poel had to spell it out in signs. “Paternalistic.”

“What does that mean?” Celine asked Styke.

“It means he’s trying to be fatherly. Reaching out for a lost granddaughter.” Styke didn’t take his eyes off Ka-poel. “Are you answering?”

“I am not,” Ka-poel said. “I may, tentatively, but I’m not sure if that will reveal our position. He knows who I am – he knows that I am that girl stolen away so long ago. But I don’t know why my nurse stole me away. She took me for a reason, and I want to discover why. But if I ask him, he will lie.”

“How do you know?”

“Because he may know who I am, but he does not know what I am. He does not know my power. I can see through his intentions like a pane of glass, and I know he wishes to use me.”

Styke grunted. “I don’t mind being used, but never against my will.”

“I am of a similar mind,” Ka-poel acknowledged.

Styke lifted his head, looking down the valley toward the soldiers unloading the cache. It was late, and he knew he needed to rest if they were going to ride all day tomorrow. “This thing,” he said, changing directions and gesturing to the wax figurines and bits of detritus on the rock, “I suggest that you learn some … restraint. There is no reason to torture people at length.”

“They feel no pain unless I make them,” Ka-poel said, frowning.

“Physical, perhaps. But emotional? I looked into that woman’s eyes. She knew she was being controlled and she tried with every fiber of her being to fight it. If you must do that to people, make it short. Suffering is needless.”

“I had cause.”

“We all have cause,” Styke said with a shrug. “This bone-eye, Ka-Sedial. What will you do with him?”

Ka-poel looked down at the camp herself, her frown deepening. “I will let him croon over the distance. I will let him wonder what I am up to. And in the next few days, I will find the godstone that he seeks and I will break it. Only then will I answer him, and I’ll allow him to know what I have done.” She smiled, an expression neither bemused nor playful. “Then I will demand that he explain why my nurse – a woman who loved me – felt the need to carry me off so long ago.” Ka-poel’s attention returned to the detritus spread in front of her, clearly a dismissal.

Styke left her with her figurines and headed back to camp deep in his own thoughts. Celine rode on his shoulder, clearly lost in thoughts of her own. “Do you understand never to speak of what you heard back there?” he asked.

“Yes,” Celine responded. “I’m no snitch.”

Well, at least her dad had taught her something. “Good. If you have questions, you may ask. But only when we are completely alone.” He took her back to Margo and Sunin, then found Amrec and began the mechanical work of brushing him down for the night. He thought of Ka-poel’s expression during their conversation, and of his own search for vengeance these past few weeks. He wondered if she had difficulty, trapped in her own body without a voice, unable to communicate beyond a bit of slate and a little girl’s translations.

He finished his work and prepared for sleep. They would find this godstone soon, and it would be her work to destroy or disable the damned thing. And then, it seemed, she had questions of her own to answer.

Sorcery had never scared him. But he did not envy this grandfather of hers. Not when she finally turned her attention on him.