“We were,” Styke confirmed.
“Then how can . . . ?”
“I wouldn’t worry too much about the morality of this whole thing. Have the Kez ever struck you as moral stewards of Fatrasta?” It was a moment of rare naivety for Blye, but Styke let it pass. Much had changed since last night. He scowled down the road, catching sight of movement. A few moments later, he could make out a large column on horseback. He recognized the yellow jackets of his men, but among them were the green and tan of Kez soldiers and the gleam of breastplates.
“I sent some of our boys to round up Captain Cardin, like you asked,” Blye explained.
Styke waited until the large group – nearly a hundred, including his lancers and Cardin’s cuirassiers – came to a stop in the middle of the road. The lancers were tight-lipped and bleary-eyed, having ridden all night to fetch Cardin. The cuirassiers stared around them like men haunted, and Cardin himself attempted to remain stately while looking like he was on the verge of tears. Citizens stared at the cuirassiers in the deepening silence, and Styke stepped forward before anyone could gather their wits enough to form a mob.
“None of you participated in what happened last night,” Styke said loudly, as much for the ears of the citizens as for the cuirassiers. “You all disobeyed your commanding officer because it was the right thing to do. Major Prost has ordered you court-martialed for this offense. Correct?”
The cuirassiers nodded glumly.
“Dismount,” Styke ordered. The cuirassiers looked between them, and more than one hand twitched toward their weapons.
“You heard him!” Cardin croaked. “Dismount!” Cardin was the first to do so, planting his feet at attention and standing beside his horse as if he were up for review. The rest slowly complied. Styke could see the uncertainty in their eyes.
“Weapons and breastplates,” Styke said, pointing to the ground at his feet. “Pile them here.”
No one moved. “Are you going to kill us?” someone called fearfully.
Styke repeated himself. Cardin approached, unbuckling his breastplate and throwing it at Styke’s feet, then his carbine, musket, and sword. A line formed, and one by one each of the cuirassiers followed suit. When they had almost finished, Styke turned to Blye. “Have some of the boys fetch wood from the smoldering buildings. Make me a big damned fire in the square.”
It didn’t take long, and soon the flames licked the branches of the big oak trees, and the cuirassiers stood unarmed and at attention in a single line. The rest of the citizens – those who had not fled completely – gathered on the outskirts of the square. Nearly a thousand pairs of eyes watched, and from the muttering, they weren’t certain whether they were watching an execution or something else.
“Remove your jacket,” Styke told Cardin.
Cardin obeyed without a word. He held it out to Styke, who did not take it.
Cardin looked at Styke, then looked at the fire. He fingered the stars at the lapels, then with a look of disgust he strode over and flung his cavalry jacket into the flames. The rest of the soldiers, clearly realizing that this was not an execution, began to strip off their jackets.
Styke turned his back on the spectacle and found Mayor Dorezen watching from the still-smoldering remnants of his home. “I’m surprised you spared them,” Dorezen said.
“They refused to attack us,” Styke said. “They disobeyed that unhinged piece of shit. They’re not our enemies.” He glanced at the remnants of Dorezen’s house and wondered if the mayor blamed him for this whole sequence of events. It had started and ended with Prost, but Styke was the connecting piece between them. He wished for the hundredth time that he had kept his temper – and for the hundredth time he knew he couldn’t have stood aside while Prost beat Tel-islo to death.
Styke continued, “You should take everyone from here and go. As soon as Sirod finds out what’s happened here, he’s going to send a whole brigade to stamp out any witnesses.”
“Holdenshire has offered us shelter,” Dorezen said.
Holdenshire was the next town over. They were close enough that they would have seen the flames last night. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Styke said.
“What can we do?” Dorezen scoffed, his eyes red. “Where can we go? Even if we go a hundred miles, it won’t make a difference. Sirod will find us eventually.”
“As soon as you’ve buried the dead, you need to collect what valuables you can and head northwest. If you get out of Sirod’s territory, he’s less likely to chase you down. Tell everyone you meet what happened here. Make sure that stamping out the survivors will gain him nothing.”
“Northwest?”
“Governor Lindet ejected the Kez garrison from Redstone. I imagine she’ll be sympathetic. Tell her that I sent you.”
Dorezen still seemed uncertain, but Styke had said his peace. He turned to go, then offered one more thought. “These cuirassiers… don’t let anyone attack them. They were innocent of this. Have them help bury the dead, and send them on their way.” With that, he left the mayor and headed back to Blye, only to find the whole group of cuirassiers, Cardin included, were going off on separate tangents in Kez.
Blye leaned over to Styke. “They’re renouncing their military oaths to Kez.”
“I can hear that,” Styke said, raising his eyebrows. He hadn’t asked that, nor had he expected it. Most of these men would probably change their names and rejoin the Kez armies in some far away places, hoping this blew over. The sight of the town must have affected them deeper than he expected. “I think you should take the men to Redstone,” Styke suggested.
“Huh? You’re not coming with us?”
“No, I’m not going with you. You’ll do well in Redstone, and you can tell the governor there I sent you.”
“Where are you going?”
Styke walked over to Deshnar and untied him from the post. He tapped the side of a canvas bag hanging from his saddle horn. It dripped ominously. “I’m going to take Sirod what’s left of his brother. Then I’m going to cut out his spine and show it to him.”
Styke left Fernhollow on his own, and it took him two days to reach Landfall. The capital city sat upon an enormous plateau on the coast, overlooking miles of floodplains and the Pelos Ocean. Styke entered the suburbs from the south, the plateau rising nearly two hundred feet above him. It was almost two miles across and topped by houses, tenements, government buildings, and more.
Unlike the cities of the Nine, Landfall was a more recent creation. A few hundred years ago it held little more than a town, a fort, and a lighthouse. Only in the last eighty years or so had the population exploded and the city overflowed so that suburbs spilled onto the floodplains.
Styke had last been in Landfall over the winter, and even in the suburbs he could feel that a change had come over the city. He listened as he rode, picking up on local rumors – that the port might be closed soon, that Governor Sirod had mentioned martial law. Everyone walked with their eyes down and their shoulders hunched, whispering to each other in the alleys while newsie boys claimed calamity to sell their stacks of papers.
He avoided the main avenues where the Kez grenadiers patrolled the streets, and instead circled through the suburbs at the base of the plateau and caught a keelboat down the Gorge River. He disembarked in Greenfire Depths – the old quarry-turned-slum – and led Deshnar on foot up the switchbacks that took him straight into the center of the city.
Not far from the Depths was a bar that hung precariously over the gorge. It was marked with a yellow sign proclaiming it to be Canyonview Spirits and Livery. Most people would pass Canyonview and assume from its daring location and ramshackle appearance that it had seen better days, that it had maybe even once been a place of fashion for the daring drinker. Styke was privy to the knowledge that it had been built exactly like this only a few years ago. There had never been better days, and there never would be. The owner liked the look, and she liked the location.