“We have a lot of bodies to move,” the Deliv said.
Tamas gave his subordinate a glance. “I know, Sabon.”
“Who’s this?” Sabon asked.
“The inspector that Cenka requested.”
“I don’t like him being here,” Sabon said. “It could compromise everything.”
“Cenka trusted him.”
“You’ve staged a coup,” Adamat said again with certainty.
“I’ll help with the bodies in a moment,” Tamas said. “I’m old, I need some rest now and then.” The Deliv gave a sharp nod and disappeared.
“Sir!” Adamat said. “What have you done?” He tightened his grip on his cane sword.
Tamas pursed his lips. “Some say the Adran royal cabal had the most powerful Privileged sorcerers in all the Nine Nations, second only to Kez,” he said quietly. “Yet I’ve just slaughtered every one of them. Do you think I’d have trouble with an old inspector and his cane sword?”
Adamat loosened his grip. He felt ill. “I suppose not.”
“Cenka led me to believe that you were pragmatic. If that is the case, I would like to employ your services. If not, I’ll kill you now and look for a solution elsewhere.”
“You’ve staged a coup,” Adamat said again.
Tamas sighed. “Must we keep coming back to that? Is it so shocking? Tell me, can you think of any fewer than a dozen factions within Adro with reason to dethrone the king?”
“I didn’t think any of them had the skill,” Adamat said. “Or the daring.” His eyes returned to the blood on the stairs, before his mind traveled to his wife and children, asleep in their beds. He looked at the field marshal. His hair was tousled; there were drops of blood on his jacket—a lot, now that he thought to look. Tamas might as well have been sprayed with it. There were dark circles under his eyes and a weariness that spoke of more than just age.
“I will not agree to a job blindly,” Adamat said. “Tell me what you want.”
“We killed them in their sleep,” Tamas said without preamble. “There’s no easy way to kill a Privileged, but that’s the best. A mistake was made and we had a fight on our hands.” Tamas looked pained for a moment, and Adamat suspected that the fight had not gone as well as Tamas would have liked. “We prevailed. Yet upon the lips of the dying was one phrase.”
Adamat waited.
“ ‘You can’t break Kresimir’s Promise,’ ” Tamas said. “That’s what the dying sorcerers said to me. Does it mean anything to you?”
Adamat smoothed the front of his coat and sought to recall old memories. “No. ‘Kresimir’s Promise’… ‘Break’… ‘Broken’… Wait—‘Kresimir’s Broken Promise.’ ” He looked up. “It was the name of a street gang. Twenty… twenty-two years ago. Cenka couldn’t remember that?”
Tamas continued. “Cenka thought it sounded familiar. He was certain you’d remember it.”
“I don’t forget things,” Adamat said. “Kresimir’s Broken Promise was a street gang with forty-three members. They were all young, some of them no more than children, the oldest not yet twenty. We were trying to round up some of the leaders to put a stop to a string of thefts. They were an odd lot—they broke into churches and robbed priests.”
“What happened to them?”
Adamat couldn’t help but look at the blood on the stairs. “One day they disappeared, every one of them—including our informants. We found the whole lot a few days later, forty-three bodies jammed into a drain culvert like pickled pigs’ feet. They’d been massacred by powerful sorceries, with excessive brutality. The marks of the king’s royal cabal. The investigation ended there.” Adamat suppressed a shiver. He’d not once seen a thing like that, not before or since. He’d witnessed executions and riots and murder scenes that filled him with less dread.
The Deliv soldier appeared again at the top of the stairs. “We need you,” he said to Tamas.
“Find out why these mages would utter those words with their final breath,” Tamas said. “It may be connected to your street gang. Maybe not. Either way, find me an answer. I don’t like the riddles of the dead.” He got to his feet quickly, moving like a man twenty years younger, and jogged up the stairs after the Deliv. His boot splashed in the blood, leaving behind red prints. “Also,” he called over his shoulder, “keep silent about what you have seen here until the execution. It will begin at noon.”
“But…” Adamat said. “Where do I start? Can I speak with Cenka?”
Tamas paused near the top of the stairs and turned. “If you can speak with the dead, you’re welcome to.”
Adamat ground his teeth. “How did they say the words?” he said. “Was it a command, or a statement, or…?”
Tamas frowned. “An entreaty. As if the blood draining from their bodies was not their primary concern. I must go now.”
“One more thing,” Adamat said.
Tamas looked to be near the end of his patience.
“If I’m to help you, tell me why all of this?” He gestured to the blood on the stairs.
“I have things that require my attention,” Tamas warned.
Adamat felt his jaw tighten. “Did you do this for power?”
“I did this for me,” Tamas said. “And I did this for Adro. So that Manhouch wouldn’t sign us all into slavery to the Kez with the Accords. I did it because those grumbling students of philosophy at the university only play at rebellion. The age of kings is dead, Adamat, and I have killed it.”
Adamat examined Tamas’s face. The Accords was a treaty to be signed with the king of Kez that would absolve all Adran debt but impose strict tax and regulation on Adro, making it little more than a Kez vassal. The field marshal had been outspoken about the Accords. But then, that was expected. The Kez had executed Tamas’s late wife.
“It is,” Adamat said.
“Then get me some bloody answers.” The field marshal whirled and disappeared into the hallway above.
Adamat remembered the bodies of that street gang as they were being pulled from the drain in the wet and mud, remembered the horror etched upon their dead faces. The answers may very well be bloody.
CHAPTER
2
Lajos is dying,” Sabon said.
Tamas entered the apartments of the Privileged who’d been Zakary the Beadle. He swept through the salon and entered the bedchamber—a room bigger than most merchants’ houses. The walls were indigo and covered with colorful paintings that displayed various Beadles in the history of Adro’s royal cabal. Doors led off to auxiliary rooms, such as the privy and Beadle’s kitchens. The door to the Beadle’s private brothel had been ripped apart, splinters no bigger than a finger scattered across the room.
The Beadle’s bed had been stripped of sheets, the Beadle’s body tossed aside for a wounded powder mage.
“How do you feel?” Tamas said.
Lajos managed a weak cough. Marked were tougher than most, and with the gunpowder Lajos had ingested, now coursing through his blood, he would feel little pain. It was little consolation as Tamas gazed on his friend. Half of Lajos’s right arm was gone—lengthwise—and a hole the size of a melon had been torn through his abdomen. It was a miracle he’d lived this long. They’d given him half a horn’s worth of powder. That alone should have killed him.
“I’ve felt better,” Lajos said. He coughed again, blood leaking from the corner of his mouth.
Tamas drew his handkerchief and dabbed the blood away. “It won’t be much longer,” he said.
“I know,” Lajos said.
Tamas squeezed his friend’s hand.
Lajos mouthed the words, “Thank you.”
Tamas took a deep breath. It was suddenly hard to see. He blinked his eyes clear. Lajos’s breathing came to a rasping stop. Tamas made to pull his hand away when Lajos gripped it suddenly. Lajos’s eyes opened.
“It’s all right, my friend,” Lajos said. “You’ve done what needed to be done. Have peace.” His eyes focused elsewhere and then stilled. He was dead.
“The fury of a woman,” Sabon murmured.
“Indeed,” Tamas said.
“There’s no way we could have planned for this.”
“Tell that to them,” Tamas said. He jerked his head at the row of four bodies on the floor, and the fifth that would soon be joining them. Five powder mages. Five friends. All because of one Privileged that had been unaccounted for. Tamas had just put a bullet in the Beadle’s head—a man who he’d shaken hands with and spoken to on a regular basis. Tamas’s Marked stood around him, ready in case the old man had some fight in him. They were not ready for the other Privileged, the one hiding in the brothel. She’d sliced through that door like a guillotine blade through a melon, Privileged’s gloves on her hands, fingers dancing as her sorcery tore Tamas’s powder mages to shreds.
A powder mage could float a bullet over a mile and hit the bull’s-eye every time. He could angle a bullet around corners with the power of his mind, and ingest black powder to make himself stronger and faster than other men. But he could do little to contest Privileged sorcery at close range.
Tamas, Sabon, and Lajos had been the only men with time to react, and they’d barely fought her off. She’d fled, echoes of sorcerous destruction following her through the palace as she went—probably nothing more than a show to keep them from following. Her parting shot had been Lajos’s mortal wound, but it had been randomly flung. It very well could have been Sabon, or even Tamas himself, who’d died there on the bed a moment ago. The thought chilled Tamas’s blood.
Tamas looked away from the door. “We’ll have to follow her. Find her and kill her. She’s dangerous on the loose.”
“A job for the magebreaker?” Sabon said. “I wondered why you’ve kept him around.”
“A contingency I didn’t want to use,” Tamas said. “I wish I had a mage to send with him.”
“His partner is a Privileged,” Sabon said. “A magebreaker and a Privileged should be more than a match for a single cabal Privileged.” He gestured at the wrecked door.
“I don’t like to fight fair when it comes to the royal cabal,” Tamas said. “And remember, there’s a difference between a member of the royal cabal and a hired thug.”
“Who was she?” Sabon asked. There was a note in his voice, perhaps reproach.
“I have no idea,” Tamas snapped. “I knew every one of the king’s cabal. I’ve met them, dined with them. She was a stranger.”
Sabon took Tamas’s anger without comment. “A spy for another cabal?”
“Not likely. The brothel girls are all checked. She didn’t look like a whore. She was strong, weathered. The Beadle’s lover, maybe. I’ve never seen her before in my life.”
“Could the Beadle have been training someone in secret?”
“Apprentices are never secret,” Tamas said. “Privileged are too suspicious to allow that.”
“Their suspicions are often well founded,” Sabon said. “There has to be a reason for her presence.”
“I know. We’ll deal with her in good time.”
“If the others had been here…” Sabon said.
“More of us would be dead,” Tamas said. He counted the bodies again, as if there might be fewer this time. Five. Out of seventeen of his mages. “We split into two groups for precisely this reason.” He turned away from the bodies. “Any word from Taniel?”
“He’s in the city,” Sabon said.
“Perfect. I’ll send him with the magebreaker.”
“Are you sure?” Sabon said. “He just got back from Fatrasta. He needs time to rest, to see his fiancée…”
“Is Vlora with him?”
Sabon shrugged.
“Let’s hope she gets here soon. Our work is not yet done.” He raised a hand to forestall protests. “And Taniel can rest when the coup’s over.”
“What must be done will be done,” Sabon said quietly.
They both fell silent, regarding their fallen comrades. Moments passed before Tamas saw a smile spread on Sabon’s wrinkled black face. The Deliv was tired and haggard, but with a hint of restrained joy. “We succeeded.”
Tamas eyed the bodies of his friends—his soldiers—again. “Yes,” he said. “We did.” He forced himself to look away.
A painting stood in the corner, a monstrosity with a gilded frame on a silver tripod befitting a herald of the royal cabal. Tamas studied the painting briefly. It showed Zakary in his prime as a strong young man with broad shoulders and a stern frown.
A far cry from the old, bent body in the corner. The bullet had entered his brain in such a way as to kill him instantly, yet his lifeless throat had gasped the same words as the others: “You can’t break Kresimir’s Promise.”
Cenka was white as a mummer’s painted face after the first of the Privileged cried out as they died. He’d demanded that Tamas summon Adamat here, to the heart of their crime. Tamas hoped that Cenka was wrong. He hoped that the investigator found nothing.
Tamas left the cabal’s wing of the palace, Sabon following close behind.
“I’ll need a new bodyguard,” Tamas said as they walked. It pained him to speak of it, with Lajos’s body still cooling.
“A Marked?” Sabon asked.
“I can’t spare one. Not now.”
“I’ve had my eye on a Knacked,” Sabon said. “A man named Olem.”
“He’s a soldier?” Tamas asked. He thought he knew the name. He held his hand just slightly below his eyes. “About this tall? Sandy hair?”
“Yes.”
“What’s his Knack?”
“He doesn’t need sleep. Ever.”
“That’s useful,” Tamas said.
“Quite. He has a strong third eye as well, so he can watch for Privileged. I’ll have him briefed and by your side for the execution.”
A Knacked wouldn’t be as useful as a powder mage. Knacked were more common, and their abilities were more like a talent than a sorcerous power. But if he could use his third eye to see sorcery, he would be of some benefit.
Tamas approached the barred doors of the chapel. A pair of Tamas’s soldiers emerged from the shadows by the wall, muskets at the ready. Tamas nodded to them and gestured at the door.
One of the soldiers removed a long knife from his belt and slid it between the doors to the chapels. “He flipped the Diocel’s latch,” said the soldier fiddling with the knife, “but he didn’t even bother to stack anything in front of the door. Not very enterprising, if you ask me.” He flipped up the lock and he and his companion pushed the doors open.
The chapel was large, as were all the rooms in the palace. Unlike the rest of the palace, however, it had been spared the seasonal remodeling customary of the king’s whims and remained close to what it must have looked like two hundred years ago. The ceiling was vaulted impossibly high, with boxes for the royalty and high nobles set about halfway up the walls in between columns as wide across as an oxcart. The floor was tiled in marble designed in intricate mosaics of various shapes and sizes, while the ceiling contained paneled depictions of the saints as they founded the Nine Nations under the god Kresimir’s fatherly gaze.
Two altars sat at the front of the chapel, raised slightly above the benches, next to a pulpit of blackwood. The first altar, smaller, closer to the people, was dedicated to Adro’s founding saint, Adom. The second, larger altar, sided by marble and covered with satin, was dedicated to Kresimir. Beside this altar huddled Manhouch XII, sovereign of Adro, and his wife Natalija, Duchess of Tarony. Natalija stared behind and above the altar, her lips moving in silent prayer to Kresimir’s Rope. Manhouch was pale, his eyes red, lips drawn to a thin line. He spoke in a d
esperate whisper to the Diocel. He stopped as Tamas approached.
“Wait,” the Diocel called, one hand rising as the king jogged down the steps from the altar and stormed toward Tamas with purpose. The Diocel’s old face was fraught, his robes wrinkled from a hasty rush to the chapel.
Tamas watched Manhouch march toward him. He noted the one hand held behind his back, the fury of emotions playing across Manhouch’s aristocratic young face. Manhouch looked barely seventeen thanks to the high sorceries of his royal cabal, though in reality he was well into his thirties. It was supposed to reflect the monarchy’s agelessness, but Tamas had always found it hard to take such a young-looking man seriously. Tamas stopped and regarded the king, watched him falter before coming closer.
Five paces away, Manhouch revealed his pistol. It came up swiftly. His aim was sure at that range—after all, Tamas himself had taught the king to shoot. It was an unfortunate reflection on his detachment from the world, however, that Manhouch attempted it at all. He pulled the trigger.
Tamas reached out mentally and absorbed the power of the powder blast. He felt the energy course through him, warming his body like a sip of fine spirits. He redirected the power of the blast harmlessly into the floor, cracking a marble tile beneath the king. Manhouch danced away from the cracked tile. The ball rolled from the barrel of his pistol and clattered to the ground, stopping by Tamas’s feet.
Tamas stepped forward, taking the pistol from the king by the barrel. He barely felt it burn his hand.
“How dare you,” Manhouch said. His face was powdered, his cheeks blushed. His silk bedclothes were rumpled, soaked with sweat. “We trusted you to protect us.” He trembled slightly.
Tamas looked past Manhouch to the Diocel still beside the altar. The old priest leaned against the wall, his tall, embroidered hat of office balanced precariously on his head. “I suppose,” Tamas said, shaking the pistol, “he got this from you?”
“It wasn’t meant for that,” the Diocel wheezed. He stuck his chin up. “It was meant for the king. So he can take his life honorably and not be struck down by a godless traitor.”
The Powder Mage Trilogy: Promise of Blood, The Crimson Campaign, The Autumn Republic Page 2