Ibana shook her head. “He’s not talking, nor is anyone still alive. We’ll take a few captives and work on them later. Maybe give them to Ka-poel and see what she can learn.”
“Maybe,” Styke said. He wasn’t thrilled with the idea of handing anyone over to Ka-poel. He wasn’t entirely sure what she could do or how she could do it, but it sounded … protracted. He did not like torture. “That retreat was organized. They weren’t willing to commit everything to the fight, it seems.”
Ibana kicked at a body at her feet. “Damn it. We’ve sent scouts in every direction. How the pit did they sneak up on us like that?”
“Send a few men to follow them,” Styke said. “Not too closely, but …” He glanced back toward the road, then in the direction they had retreated. “They came from the south, but they retreated to the west. Send a few men the way they came, too.”
“Right.” Ibana stalked off, barking orders, while Styke stared down at the poor bastard she’d been interrogating. One of his arms was hanging by skin and he had three stab wounds through his chest. He’d be dead soon enough.
He glanced up to the ridge, where well over a hundred of the new recruits lay dead or dying. He wondered about that Dynize officer. This ambush had felt strange. It had felt … personal. Were those blasted dragonmen behind it? Or was this something else?
CHAPTER 35
Michel was shaken awake by his own violent shivers. He lay on his back, staring up at blackness, a vague discomfort emanating from somewhere around the middle of his body. His first realization was that his entire body was trembling uncontrollably. No amount of effort could cease the shaking.
His second realization was that he could not move. There was not, as far as he could tell, anything keeping him from moving—nothing across his chest or binding his arms. His body simply did not respond to the commands. He could breathe. He could shiver. He could open his eyes and move his head slightly from one side to the other, though he did not know if his vision was dark or if he was merely in a dark room. Only a well of calmness from deep within—one he did not know he possessed—kept him from spiraling into outright terror.
He lay still for several minutes, attempting to get his bearings and gain control of his shivering body. He was unsuccessful in the first, and only mildly successful in the second. The problem, he realized, was that he was lying on something extremely cold. Cold and hard.
He cleared his throat, wondering if he could speak, and heard someone—or something—stir in what sounded like a different room. Footsteps followed, then Michel could feel a presence just out of his peripheral vision. Although he was fairly certain he knew the answer, he spoke anyway: “Am I dead?”
“You are not.”
Michel let out a very soft sigh. The voice belonged to Emerald, which meant that Michel was likely lying on a slab in the bowels of the Landfall City Morgue. It explained the cold, as well as the darkness. It wasn’t his first choice of a place to wake up to, but it certainly wasn’t his last.
As if in answer to his thoughts, the dim light suddenly grew brighter, illuminating the stone ceiling that Michel had been staring at. “How do you feel?” Emerald said, sitting down beside him.
“I’m … not sure. I’m having trouble thinking, and I can barely move. I don’t feel pain. At least, I don’t think I do. My chest is very warm.”
“That is your body attempting to feel pain. I injected a few drops of pure mala directly into your bloodstream.”
“That explains a lot.” Michel had spent his fair share of time on the mala pipe—in between jobs, of course—but he’d never quite felt this kind of sensation. He wasn’t even aware mala could be injected like this.
“It was also several hours ago. If I had done so recently, you would have some trouble opening your eyelids.”
“Right. I’d rather not do this again.” Michel decided that freedom of movement might be preferred, even if it cost him a lot of pain. “How did I get here?”
“You collapsed less than a block from my door. A passerby thought you were dead and reported the body. You’re lucky I was working, or one of my assistants might have just tossed you with the rest of the corpses.”
Lucky. Right. “What was the damage?”
“You were shot in the chest,” Emerald replied, his voice clinical. “The bullet lodged between your second and third rib. It was not difficult to remove, but you had lost quite a lot of blood by the time you were found. You’ve been drifting in and out of consciousness for two days.”
Two damned days. Michel wondered how much had happened in just that time. He had a thousand questions, but bit them back. In due time. “Have I been on this slab since then?”
“Of course not. I had two of my assistants move you here about an hour ago so you wouldn’t get blood on a bed while I changed your bandages. We were just about to move you back, actually. Too much longer and you’ll catch hypothermia.” Emerald leaned over Michel, his tinted glasses sliding down to the end of his nose as he examined Michel with calm, surprisingly blue eyes. “While you’re here, you should try to eat something. I don’t want you throwing up in one of our beds either. Hold on, I think there’s still a little gruel left over from Horastia’s lunch.”
Michel listened to Emerald’s footsteps recede, trying to come to grasp with what he would need to do to catch up on the last two days—and how he would deal with it all while recovering from a gunshot wound. He began to make a list in his head, shoving his way through the haze of the mala injection, trying to ignore the heat coming from his chest that, without the mala, would probably knock him out cold from the pain.
Emerald returned a moment later and gently put a pillow beneath Michel’s head, then spoonfed him a gruel whose flavor Michel could not place.
“Has anyone noticed I’m gone?” Michel asked between swallows.
“They have. Rumors have been spreading that you were shot and killed in this quarter, and that your body was tossed in the Hadshaw.”
“Among who?”
“The Dynize. The Blackhats, for their part, are confident you’re dead. They’d been shadowing you for days, waiting for you to be alone, and took your little expedition the other day as the perfect opportunity.”
Michel licked his lips, trying to taste the gruel. Any sensation aside from the few this mala haze would allow him seemed suddenly important. “If rumors are spreading among the Dynize, they must have come from Forgula. No one saw me get shot except for Hendres. I wonder if she found me herself, or if Forgula told her where I’ve been staying.”
“That, I don’t know.”
Michel realized how tired just eating and talking was making him. He had to focus the thoughts, ask important questions. “The name Mara—is it Dynize?”
Emerald seemed caught off guard. He paused with a spoon halfway to Michel’s mouth. “It doesn’t sound Dynize. Certainly not one I’ve heard.”
“Then, what is it?”
“Gurlish, maybe? Could be Stren.”
Pit. Michel threw a handful of silent curses toward Taniel for not giving him any more clues to accomplish this mission. He tried to think clearly—there had to be a reason for not finding anyone named Mara among the Dynize. Had Michel remembered the name wrong? Was it some kind of surname, or a nickname? He tried to consider other options, and kept coming around to the fact that he could not fulfill his mission if he could not even find the informant. So what did he do next? Did he flee the danger of the city? Or embed himself deeper with the Dynize?
“What else has happened since I was shot?” Michel asked. “Anything important?”
“Another Dynize minister was killed in a bombing.”
“The minister of rations? She died before I was shot.”
“I said another. It was a minor minister—road engineering, or something like that. He was inspecting a bridge about three miles up the Hadshaw and was killed in an explosion.”
“Shit,” Michel breathed. He wondered if it was another one of Yaret’s allies and was suddenly struck with a thought. “Do you have my clothes?”