“I can’t move,” she whispered.
“Bayonet must have grazed your spine,” Styke said gently.
“Am I dead?”
Styke felt his brow furrow, his chin quiver. His vision was suddenly blurry. “You’re dead,” he confirmed. He reached down, running a finger across Rezi’s cheek.
“How long?”
“You might linger a day, if you’re strong.”
“To the pit with that,” Rezi wheezed. “Don’t make me do that.”
Styke scooped his arms beneath Rezi’s back, lifting her as he stood up, and carefully carried her to the cot in the corner of her office. He set her down and looked at her face. Tears streaked down her cheeks, and her teeth clamped in pain. He marveled that she did not scream.
“I love you, Rezi,” he said, bending and place a kiss on her forehead. He kissed both of her eyes, tasting the tears, and then covered her face with a pillow and leaned on it.
He stayed that way for several minutes, until long after any sign of life had passed from her. His own face was soaked with tears, snot ran over his lips, and his jaw hurt from clenching his teeth. The sound of screams outside finally roused him from his reverie, and he forced himself to stand up. He put the pillow beneath Rezi’s head and straightened her hair, then walked to the landing and fetched her boz knife. With one glance backward, he headed out the door.
He emerged into a flickering vision of the very depths of the pit. The darkness was slashed by buildings all over the city going up in flames. Figures dashed between the buildings, someone loudly trying to form a bucket brigade until her shouts were cut off. Somewhere nearby, a child cried. It was nearly impossible to make sense of the scene.
Styke focused on the screaming, striding past the burning general store to the small, neat house beside it. He found a woman kneeling in the dirt, still wearing her night clothes, cradling the body of her husband as she screamed for help. Her name was Mija, and she and her husband had owned the hardware store that now burned mere feet away. Figures dressed in plain clothes but clearly carrying the muskets of Kez soldiers, ignored her pleas while they looted the home and threw the furniture into the street.
One of the soldiers emerged from the house, carrying a screeching toddler by the leg. Mija let out a wail and leapt to her feet, running toward the soldier, who stiff-armed her and held the toddler at arm’s length as one might a chicken intended for slaughter. The soldier drew his belt knife.
Styke remembered Prost’s reputation – and the reputation of his soldiers – and doubled his pace, striding toward the looters. He was close enough to hear another soldier voice her objection, but the soldier with the toddler just shook his head.
“Orders are orders.”
Styke came out of the darkness quick enough that no one had time to react. He caught the toddler by the other leg and rammed Rezi’s boz knife between the ribs of the soldier. He did a half skip toward the soldier who had objected and disemboweled her with a twist of the knife. Mija stared at him, open-mouthed, as he handed her the child.
“Hide,” he ordered, and went inside her house.
He found three more looters and left their corpses where he killed them. He moved on to the next house, then the next, the rage already so hot inside his chest that he could barely feel it. He slaughtered mechanically, efficiently, without remorse or second thoughts. He killed anyone he didn’t recognize, and he stepped over dozens of bodies that he did, trying not to dwell on the fact that he’d wasted too much time in his grief over Rezi.
He lost count of the soldiers he murdered. At some point he took a heavy cuirassier’s sword off one of the bodies and carried that with him as he stalked like death through the night. There was very little fighting – every soldier he happened upon seemed shocked by any real resistance – and it eventually dawned on Styke that something must have happened to the colonial garrison. The lancers would have seen the flames by now and hurried over.
He wondered if Blye and all the others were already dead. He wondered if these bastards had slaughtered Deshnar.
He continued on, working his way as quickly as possible around the city square toward the mayor’s house. He sent the blacksmith’s family running to hide in the darkness, but he was too late to stop the murder of the young cobbler and her husband. He skipped a house already engulfed in flames and crept around the back of the burning mayor’s house to find a small crowd gathered in the garden.
The mayor was a portly, thoughtful man by the name of Dorezen. He and his family stood at the end of a half dozen musket barrels, forced so close to the flames of their own house that the blaze singed their clothes. Dorezen and his wife tried to shelter the five children from the heat, tears streaming down Dorezen’s face as he stared defiantly at the soldiers who held him there.
Major Prost stood just behind his soldiers, watching impassively as the house burned. His hands were clasped behind his back, and it was clear the Privileged had done an excellent job with the healing because he periodically gestured forcefully toward the house, as if directing a symphony only he could hear.
Styke paused at the edge of the light of the flames, examining the group. There were six soldiers, two sergeants, a captain, and Prost himself. The soldiers watched Dorezen grimly, jaws set, with the looks of men who knew that their orders were distasteful but would follow them anyway. Styke had seen those looks a lot during his time on the frontier.
“You cowardly pigs,” Dorezen spat. “There are people dying out there!”
Prost made another gesture toward the flames. “And you’ll join them if you don’t shut your mouth,” he said. Something collapsed inside the home; then the roof fell in and the flames roared so loudly that Styke couldn’t hear what Prost said next. The sound died down after a few moments. “You will be the only survivors,” he said, “and you will tell everyone that you see from this day forward that Fernhollow was destroyed by Palo.”
“That’s insane!” Dorezen said. “No one will believe it!”
“No one is meant to believe it,” Prost responded. “They are meant to look into your eyes as you lie about the fate of your town and see the fear within. They are meant to know what happens when the Crown is humiliated.” He paused. “There will be no other witnesses; no investigation; no one to counter your story. The newspapers will spread the word, and eventually, no matter how much they believe otherwise, people will start to think that maybe it was the Palo who destroyed Fernhollow. And then, who knows? Perhaps we can unite Kez and Fatrastans against the Palo problem.”
“This is your brother’s doing, isn’t it?” Dorezen demanded.
Prost spun, fixing Dorezen with a glare. “It is mine!”
“No, it’s not. You’re not smart enough to grasp political nuance. You’re a sadist and drunk.”
Styke circled the edge of the firelight until Prost and his soldiers’ backs were to him. He crouched down, thoughtful, leaning on the heavy cavalry sword and noticing for the first time a gash across his shoulder, soaking his shirt with blood.
Prost drew himself up, chest puffed, and snarled at Dorezen. “Do you want to join your friends in the fire? I’ll start with your children, if it helps make my point.”
Styke sprang forward, crossing the distance between him and Prost at a run. He snatched up a sergeant first, slashing his throat with a quick savageness with Rezi’s knife and tossed the body aside. The second sergeant died before the first had stopped moving. The captain turned toward Styke, surprise on his face as Styke discarded Rezi’s knife and lopped off the top of the captain’s skull with a two-handed stroke of the heavy cavalry sword.