Hollow Empire: Episode 1 (Night of Knives) Read online

  The sound of his heavy coins striking the floor stung Nadya more than any of his abuse had. One by one, her patron dropped the silver, thunk, thunk, thunk, at the foot of the bed, and each one reminded her of her shame.

  “I’d hoped you’d squeal more,” he told her as he dressed.

  It would take more a man than you, she wanted to say. “I am sorry, milord,” she murmured. “Perhaps next time I might please you better.”

  “There will not be a next time.” Smirking, he slid his black breeches over his skinny legs and jabbed his arms through his surcoat’s sleeves. In the dawnlight creeping through the dirty window, the Baron of Othis looked every bit the aristocrat, his nose thrust so high she thought it a marvel he could see anything but the ceiling. He claimed to be King Dmitri’s man, but the sigils on his sleeves suggested otherwise. The black crosses against red fields were the marks of a house she did not know, but had seen often of late.

  “Is milord displeased?” She tried to sound meek. “Have I done him poorly?”

  Again he smirked. “Hardly. Your talents are legendary, even if you wail not nearly loud enough. What man in Eos sleeps so well as he who spends a night between your thighs?”

  “Thank you, milord. Very kind of you to notice.” She hated to smile for him, but did it anyway.

  Fully dressed, the Baron smoothed his sleeves and slicked his hair back. He was not an ugly man, leastways not as much as many of her usual patrons, but he was plenty cruel, and his appetite for pain was feared in many more arenas than the bedroom. I wonder what God would say if he knew such wicked men survived his plague without a scratch. She pulled her knees to her chin, still naked before him. He came back to her, lording over the edge of her bed like a black tower over a rain-ravaged field. She was certain he meant to hit her again.

  “Be calm, pretty thing.” He licked his lips with vulgar delight. “Last night was enough for me. If my lady wife were half as willing as you, I’d triple her incomes.”

  “Pardon milord, but I thought the Baroness had passed.”

  “She did.” He showed a third smirk, the most diabolical yet. “Six wives in sixteen years. I took a new one over the winter. She is not as talented as you, but she has her graces. She’s alive, for one, and that’s rare enough these days.”

  The coins. She slid a sheet over her knees. Think of the coins. “Will you be leaving, Sire? Is that why I won’t see you again?”

  Nose still in the air, he patted his surcoat flush to his chest and swiped the beads of sweat from his brow. He made for the door, jerking it open with such force she thought the rotting planks might fall to pieces. “If you were wise, mistress Nadya, you would be gone from Eos by month’s end,” he said as he slid into the hallway beyond. “Tis safe enough for now, this quaint little city, but come the Night of Knives, it may not be so. Men might come here, men not so kind as I. After the Night, a woman like you could be just what they’re looking for.”

  Once he was gone, she peeled her bedsheet off and stood stark naked in the center of the room. The floorboards creaked beneath her toes, the sound of each plank sad and familiar. The old chamber had once been the rearmost dressing room of the Bashir, grandest theater in all of Vhur. And now it is a graveyard for harlots, she thought. A theater of a different sort.

  The Bashir’s glory was lost, and this, once the finest of its rooms, was little more than a box whose walls looked like coffin planks. The actors’ old costumes rotted in piles in each corner, while their painted masks hung from the walls on rusted pegs, the eyeholes haunted and guileless.

  She padded through the gloom, the dawn creeping in pallid stripes across her body. Soaking in the cool light, she erected herself before her oval mirror, the same as every morn. Its pane was fractured, the glass at its corners turned black, but at the right angle she could see herself well enough. For years, she had loved to admire herself in mirrors. Her heart used to flutter at the way her raven locks contrasted against her cream-colored shoulders, the way the curve of her hips matched those of the perfect women painted on the Bashir’s halls. Her beauty had not faded since those days. She was young still, and if anything she was more alluring a creature than she ever had hoped. Yet when she looked into the mirror today, she looked not for vanity’s sake, but for blood, bruises, and weals given to her by her patrons. And yet there are none. The Baron beat me plenty. Perhaps the pain was sent by God.

  With a shudder, she cast last’s night suffering out of mind. She slipped into her underclothes and dropped a pale gown over her shoulders, afterward plucking the Baron’s coins one-by-one from the floor. One for breakfast, she counted. One for supper. One for a new nightshirt to replace the one the Baron tore. One for a decanter of wine to lessen the pain. One for Ninema. And four…four for Marik. If sweet Marik could count so high, he would be happy. He has seven-hundred and sixty three to his name.

  After stashing all but one of the coins in an iron box beneath a pile of moldering costumes, she went to the harlequin’s mask, grinning on the wall behind the mirror. The ugliest one, she mused. Marik hates the harlequin. The same as a thousand times before, she twisted the harlequin’s pointed nose, triggering the secret door to slide open. The shadows in the tunnel beneath the mask were all-consuming, the stink of rat urine sharp and stinging. All the better, she thought as she ducked inside. No one looks for him here.

  None knew the actors’ tunnel better than Nadya. In half the time it would have taken the other girls, she slunk through the darkness and rounded fully a quarter of the Bashir’s rear passages. When the shadows paled and a square of light appeared, she pushed on a wooden panel and emerged into a room not unlike her own. Ninema’s room lay behind the eastern stage, a mirror of its sister chamber, though far gloomier for lack of a window.

  “Mother!” she heard Marik’s voice, and her heart soared.

  “Marik!”

  Prying himself away from Ninema’s clutches, little Marik came to her. Her son was a boy of six, skinny as kindling, and just as likely to break. He hobbled when he walked, crossing the creaking floorboards gingerly, and when he sank into her arms she fretted for how fragile he felt.

  “Marik, sweet thing.” She blinked back a tear. “How is my little lion today?”

  He looked up at her, his eyes so like his father’s. “Mother, Ninny and I…we came to find you last night. But…”

  “Last night? Oh my dear, a friend came to visit.” She hated lying to him. “He and I had much to talk about. It would have bored you, all our banter. But you will be happy, my love. He left us with four more coins.”

  Ordinarily, the promise of coins smoothed her lies over, but not so today. Marik looked as stern as a grown man, the line of his mouth sharp as a guardsman’s rapier. “Mother, I heard you cry. Did your friend hit you? There was a crash. It sounded like all the masks fell off the walls. And then Ninny said we had to leave.”

  She looked to Ninema. The waifish girl was among the Bashir’s prettier harlots, but for the scar on her chin and the pox marks on the backs of her arms. “Ninny,” she said, clutching Marik close so he would not see her anger, “why did you bring him? You knew I had a visitor.”

  “I am sorry, m’lady,” the girl stammered. “I would not have, but you know Marik. He has a way. I… I thought you might like to see him.”

  “I would, but not when I have visitors. He could get sick again. Or worse, he might see things.”

  “See what things, mother?”

  “Nothing, little lion. Nothing at all.”

  “You’re fibbing.”

  “Marik!” she snapped, and then felt terrible for it. “My love, you must try to understand. We need the coins, and the visitors are the only ones who bring them. Without money we would starve. We have talked about this before.”

  Marik’s sternness fell from his face. He looked like a little boy again, his cheeks thin as parchment, his big grey eyes welling with tears. “Are you angry?” he asked. “Please don’t be.”

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nbsp; “No. Not angry. Never with you.” She kissed him on his forehead. “But I have to go now. We need food and drink for supper. I will see you again soon, before my next visitor.”

  “But mother, you’ve only just come.” His pleading felt like a dagger pressed against her heart. “Stay and play with us. Ninny found an old book in the cellar. It has pictures from the Dead Days, and…”

  “Marik, you know I’d rather you not…”

  “Please? Ninny can’t read it, but you can. You promised you’d tell me about it one day. Please, mother. You don’t have to read it. Just stay and play. Ninny made me a doll. She says it looks like King Dmitri. Stay with us. We can pretend we’re rich.”

  Nothing would make me happier. She felt like she was dying inside. When I was his age, playing was all I ever wanted to do. But mother rotted away right before my eyes, and then father, and there was no playing after that. “My lion.” She hugged him again, his bones sharp beneath his potato sack shirt. “I wish I could stay, but we need supper. It is daylight now. I know you want to come with me, but the sun would burn you. I must go alone. Ninny will stay with you. Won’t she, Ninny?”

  Ninema smiled. Hers was a pretty smile despite her scar. Nadya understood why the girl was so popular among the patrons. “Of course, m’lady,” said Ninema. “You know I love Marik. Don’t I, little lion?”

  “Yes.” Marik looked miserable. “I guess so.”

  Parting from her sweet son wounded Nadya, the feeling not unlike suffocation. Every time she let him out of her embrace, she worried it would be the last. She backed away toward the tunnel, the shaft so cold and dark and full of rats, and it felt like falling into an abyss. “Goodbye for now, my sweet.” She tossed a coin to Ninema, who fumbled and dropped it. “I will return with food and drink. Ninny will eat like a queen tonight. And you and I like kings.”

  “Be careful,” Ninema warned. “The Scarred Sisters are about, I heard a visitor say. The Bloody Monks too.”

  “Yes mother. Be careful. Please come back,” said Marik.

  One step into the darkness, and she halted halfway into the tunnel. She was not sure why, but she remembered something the Baron of Othis had said. “Ninny,” she said, glancing back into the room, “have you ever heard of the Night of Knives? Maybe one of your visitors mentioned it? Maybe you heard it on the street?”

  The girl shook her head, blonde strands of hair framing her face like straw. “No, m’lady. The Night of Knives? Is that a play they used to put on? Sounds romantic.”

  Nadya shivered. The way the Baron had said it had not recalled romance to mind. “I’m not sure, but it’s no actors’ play. The actors are all dead. There are no shows anymore. No…it was something else. A visitor mentioned it to me, and I wondered.”

  “No m’lady. I’ve not heard of it. If I do, I’ll tell you.”

  Later, dressed in an old dancer’s gown and shrouded in a drab, dung-colored robe, Nadya emerged into the day. The sun was high and bright, and the morning’s clouds clearing off. As cities went, Eos was not as grim as most places in Vhur. Half the buildings were still upright, the streets were mostly cobbled, and people walked in the open without apparent dread. Most noticeably, the city still had all its churches. Some hundred of the things, she thought as she walked. Many more than Eos needs, and many more than God wants. She saw the churches everywhere as she headed to market. To her right, a bastion of grey stones and stained-glass windows climbed higher than all the hovels around it, its hollows wide enough for thousands to worship within. To her left, a sharp black spire swallowed all the light, looking less like a place of God and more a dagger meant for slaying the sky. Ahead were even more of God’s dwellings. They poked above the rabble of common dwellings like tall, angry men striding through a nervous crowd. That men still had faith enough to occupy the churches never failed to surprise her. For though there is a God, he is wroth with us, she thought. Eos may thrive, and Othis too, but death curtains the rest of Vhur, and everyone still dies. It seems strange for so many to cherish a deity so cruel.

  The market was bustling when she arrived. City folk meandered among the tents, wagons, shanties, and mounds of baskets, plucking up their daily bounty of merchants’ wares. She looked at their faces and hands, and when she saw neither boils nor lesions, she fluttered from one merchant to the next, buying her goods with whispers. Many of the merchants knew her here, and they knew what she did in the Bashir, but so long as she paid without haggling they made no scene about it. She filled her basket with apples gleaned from the orchards of Othis, with nut bread, potatoes, sweetmeats, and even a decanter of wine. After the food, she traded another coin for a shirt, a real one, not a sack, to fit Marik, as well as a wool blanket. For autumn is only just arriving, she knew. It will be cold soon, and the Bashir has few hearths to huddle by.

  She did her shopping in swift fashion, gliding like a ghost from vendor to vendor, murmuring her wishes and passing her coins. No guardsmen molested her, and none of the Pontiff’s servants took notice. Nearby, a Scarred Sister shrouded in filthy rags lectured a blacksmith, who cowered beneath her sermon. She heard the shouts of a Bloody Monk as he scourged himself while standing in the window of a black tower, but the tower was distant, and the Monk far too occupied with bleeding to notice anything below.

  Once her basket was full, she hurried to leave. It had been long enough now that her fears were probably pointless, but then, six years is not so long, and Marik and I are only an hour’s walk from Othis. As quietly as she had arrived, she slipped down an alley and wended her way back toward the Bashir. Away from the market, Eos became itself again. Beggars crouched in the shadows, their bony palms extended as though the sunlight might turn their fingers to gold. A guardsman marched down the street, his mismatched armor stripped from some fallen highborn, the butt of his halberd dragging a shallow rut in the mud between the cobblestones. More worrisome yet, Nadya heard coughs erupting from several windows overhead. She scurried by, praying as she went. Let it be water sickness. Let it be dust fever. Anything but the Lichy. Anything but that.

  When she spotted Lysenna weeping outside the theater, she knew something was wrong.

  Hastening to the Bashir’s double doors, she set her basket aside and knelt on the cobblestones where Lysenna wept. The poor woman looked as thin as Marik, her bones stretching her skin near to breaking. Her pale skirts were pooled all about her, spots of blood like red ink dappling the hem. “Lysenna!” She laid her hand on the sobbing woman’s shoulder. “What is the matter? Did a patron hurt you? You’re bleeding.”

  “It’s not my blood.” Lysenna sobbed. “It’s…it’s Elga’s. They came... her boy… they thought he was here. They beat her, and…oh God.”

  Her boy? Nadya’s throat tightened. Why would they? Realization dawned in her eyes. Midday seemed like midnight, for all the darkness falling upon her heart. “Who were they?” She gazed hard at Lysenna, her sympathy lost. “The Bloody Monks? Someone from Othis?”

  “Yes, Othis.” Lysenna looked surprised. “Not the Monks. How did you know?”

  She gave no answer. Leaving her basket in the street, she flung the Bashir’s doors open and swept inside. Marik. Her heart banged against her ribs. Please, God. Let him be safe. In the grand foyer, several of the girls crowded around Elga, who was sprawled on the rust red carpet, her blouse saturated in scarlet. The woman might have been dead, but she dared not stop to find out. She ran past them all, sprinting down an aisle and toward the skinny black door beside the stage.

  “Nadya!” Hanna, plumpest of the harlots, called after her. “Where are you going?”

  “Marik!” she shouted back.

  Beyond the black door lay a maze of corridors. She sped past some twenty doors and red curtains, the paintings of naked performers like a blur on every wall. The lanterns in the passageways were dim, but she would have known the way to Ninema’s room whether blindfolded, eyeless, or two bottles deep in her wine. Flying down a last dark hallway, she speared Ninema’s door
with her shoulder and burst into the costume chamber. The shadows were deep within. A single lamp burned like a yellow eye somewhere behind a curtain. If Marik or Ninema were here, she could not see them. “Marik!” she screamed. “Marik, where are you? Marik, please. Say my name if you can hear me!”

  With slender fingers, Ninema brushed the curtain open. There sat Marik, playing on the floor beside her, as peaceful as Nadya had left him. She ran to him, scooped him into her arms, and wept into his hair. “What happened?” She stared at Ninema.

  Ninema trembled. “They came, m’lady. The men with black crosses and red hoods.”

  “What did they want? Tell me. Tell me quickly.”

  “They came for a boy, m’lady. They told me…they said…”

  “Ninema,” she snapped, and the poor girl jumped, “I need you to tell me who was here. Say it now, and do not be afraid.”

  Ninema drew a deep breath, batted her lashes, and became still. “They came through the front. They pretended to be visitors. I wasn’t there. I listened through the walls and watched through the eyelets. They said they were looking for a woman and her son. Hanna brought Elga out, and they beat her. They called her a liar, and they said they would be back at sunset. I don’t think it was Elga they were looking for, m’lady. They wanted black hair, but Elga’s is brown beneath her wig. They said beautiful, but…but Elga is plain. It wasn’t Elga they wanted, was it?”

  There was no denying it. Nadya had long waited for this moment, and now it is here. “No, Ninny, they did not want Elga. Her boy would have been ten, but he died last year. They were looking for a boy of six. They were looking for Marik.”

  “Me?” Marik did not know to be afraid.

  “Yes you, my little lion.”

  “Why him? What will you do?” Ninema looked so innocent when she asked it.

  “They will not have him.” Her eyes darkened. “This is the last you will see of us. I cannot tell you what to do with your life, but if you are wise, you will leave this place. Take all your coins and go. Do not look back.”

  “But I have nothing else,” the poor girl whined.

  With Marik in her arms, Nadya spun toward the back room, where lay the entrance to the tunnel. “If you cling to this place, it’ll be the death of you,” she warned as she twisted the jester’s nose to open the secret panel. “Those men will come back, just as promised, and they’ll hurt you.”

  “But what about you? What about Marik? Where will you go?”

  She ducked into the tunnel. Marik scuffed his elbow on the wall, but did not complain. “Goodbye, Ninema. Thank you for all you’ve done. My son and I will never forget. If they catch you, be strong. And give them only lies, never the truth.”

  Cassidy