The Powder Mage Trilogy: Promise of Blood, The Crimson Campaign, The Autumn Republic

by McClellan, Brian

  Adamat grimaced. “We’ll get to that in a moment. When I mentioned the Promise, Bo laughed at me. It’s an old legend, passed down among members of the royal cabal. It says that Kresimir promised the original kings of the Nine that their progeny would rule forever. If their lines were cut off, he would return himself and take vengeance.”

  “A fairy story meant to scare children,” Tamas said.

  “Bo said the same thing. The legend was perpetuated by the kings in order to keep the royal cabals in line. Their fear was that as soon as Kresimir left, the Privileged would seize power themselves.”

  “I don’t see how it could be true. What educated man would take that seriously?”

  “Apparently the older members of the royal cabal.”

  Tamas grunted at this.

  “It did get me thinking,” Adamat said. “Bo made a vague reference to the notion that the kings had other ways to keep the royal cabals in line—something that would make Kresimir’s Promise unnecessary.”

  This piqued Tamas’s interest. “Go on.”

  Adamat picked up one of the books. He found a page he’d marked, and handed it to Tamas. When Tamas had finished reading, Adamat had another passage in a different book for him, then another in the third.

  Tamas handed the last book back, his face troubled.

  “A gaes,” he said.

  “A compelling, of sorts. Every Royal Privileged has it. If the king is killed, they are compelled to avenge him. It gets stronger and stronger over time until they either succeed or it kills them out-right. The gaes is manifested by a demon’s carbuncle—a large gem worn on the Privileged’s person that they cannot take off. When I spoke with Bo, I saw him fiddling at a necklace repeatedly. And this.” He flipped to a different page in the third book and handed it to Tamas.

  Tamas scowled as he read. When he’d finished, he flipped the book shut and handed it back to Adamat. “So the gaes is permanent. Nothing can remove it, not even being exiled or removed from the royal cabal.”

  “Indeed. One other thing,” Adamat said. He quickly explained his run-in with Rozalia and the message she’d sent to Bo. “As soon as he heard that message, he bolted back into the Mountainwatch. When I went to find him to ask him what it meant, he refused to see me. I saw him head out of the north gate of South Pike an hour later.”

  “The north gate…?” Tamas said.

  “The mountain gate. The one pilgrims use to reach the South Pike’s peak, where Kresimir first set foot on the mountain. It’s the only route up there.”

  Tamas leaned against the balcony railing and looked up toward the sun. “What do you think of all this?”

  Adamat had thought hard on this question the entire five-day journey back from South Pike. “I’m a reasonable man, sir. A modern man. While the last words of sorcerers give me the chills, there’s no going around it. The whole thing is rubbish. It smacks of religion. There’s a reason the royal cabals distanced themselves from the Kresim Church five hundred years ago.”

  “I agree,” Tamas said. “And this thing with the gaes?”

  “There’s religion and then there’s sorcery. I confirmed this with secondary sources,” Adamat said, gesturing to the stack of books. “Sorcery is deadly serious.”

  “Looks like I can’t spare Borbador after all.” Pain crossed Tamas’s face quickly enough that Adamat thought he’d imagined it. Tamas gave him a look up and down. “You’ve done a commendable job,” he said, offering his hand. “You went above and beyond what I asked.”

  “I’m sorry it came to nothing,” Adamat said, shaking the field marshal’s hand.

  “No need to be sorry about it. Better to know it’s nothing than to not know it’s something. See the reeve about payment. I’ll make sure he’s not stingy. Good day.”

  Taniel jerked awake, a pistol in his hand. He struggled to focus on the figure looming above him.

  “You’re going to blow a foot off sleeping with that.”

  Taniel sagged back to his bed and dropped the pistol on the floor.

  “What do you want?”

  Tamas pulled the only chair over and sat down, kicking his boots up on the edge of Taniel’s bed. “That’s no way to talk to your father.”

  “Go to the pit.”

  There were a few moments of silence. Taniel could barely think. He’d tried not taking powder last night. He’d lasted until about two in the morning before he went looking for his powder horn. Ka-poel had hidden it, along with his snuffbox full of powder and all his spare charges. His pistol wasn’t even loaded. Savage bitch. He’d just barely fallen asleep.

  “Vlora was looking for you.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “I wouldn’t tell her where you were.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “I threw Duke Nikslaus into the Adsea.”

  Taniel opened his eyes and sat up. His father was cleaning his nails. He looked pleased with himself.

  “I think I’ve started a war,” Tamas said.

  “Should have blown his head off. The Adsea’s too good for him.”

  Tamas took a deep breath. “No, a bullet is too good for him. I want that man to suffer. I want that man to feel humiliation. But I want it to last.”

  Taniel grunted his agreement.

  “It was calculated,” Tamas said.

  “What was?”

  “King Ipille sending Nikslaus. He wanted me angry. He wanted me to beat him or kill him. He wanted an excuse to start a war.”

  “So did you. From the very beginning you wanted to go at them.”

  “I’ve been thinking,” Tamas said. “Over the last few months. I’ve been thinking that we should avoid war. Especially after the earthquake. We need to rebuild our country, feed our people. Too late now.”

  “Can we take them?” Taniel’s head was starting to clear. That wasn’t a good thing. It pounded harder than a smith’s hammer.

  “Maybe,” Tamas said. “The Church is threatening to take sides. The Kez side, more specifically. They didn’t like me throwing Nikslaus in the Adsea. That pompous bag Charlemund says he’s trying to convince them otherwise. I believe him. I have to believe him. He was Adran before he became an arch-diocel, after all.”

  Taniel swung his legs out of bed and groaned. His body hurt. His head hurt. Whatever luck or sorcery or what-have-you that saved his life at the university had not spared him the aches of the aftermath.

  “I have a new chef,” Tamas said.

  Taniel gave his father a long look. Why should he care? His whole body ached. He just wanted powder, and Pole had hidden it all.

  “He says he’s Adom reborn,” Tamas went on. “I should have had him arrested, but his cooking is too damned good. Rumor has it he’s been making food for half the regiments. Don’t know how he does it, but the men like him. I’ve got a war about to start and a mad cook quickly becoming the most popular man in the army. And…”

  “Out with it,” Taniel said.

  “Out with what?”

  “You’re rambling. You only ramble when you’re about to ask me to do something I won’t want to do.”

  Tamas fell quiet. Taniel watched him struggle internally, emotion barely touching his face. This was the first time he’d been alone with his father in what, four years? He noticed that Tamas was wearing the saw-handled dueling pistols he’d brought him from Fatrasta. They looked well used.

  Tamas took a deep breath, his chuckle dying out, and stared at the ceiling.

  “I need you to kill Bo.”

  “What?”

  Tamas explained about the gaes. It was a long explanation, with a great deal of technical detail. Taniel barely listened. There was something about an inspector and a promise. He could tell by his father’s tone that Tamas didn’t want to say it. That it was duty alone that forced his hand.

  “Why me?” he asked when his father finally fell silent.

  “If Sabon had to die, I’d give him the courtesy of doing it myself. I’d feel like a coward if I had so
meone else do it.”

  “And you think I can kill my best friend?”

  “Bo’s very strong, I know. I’ll send help with you.”

  “That’s not what I meant. I know I can shoot him. I can probably get close enough without him expecting a thing to do it with a pistol. But do you really think I can bring myself to do it?”

  “Can you?”

  Taniel looked at his hands. He’d last seen Bo over two years ago, the day he’d gotten on the ship for Fatrasta. Bo had been there to see him off. Yet what was another friend? The world was different now. He’d killed dozens of men. His fiancée had bedded another man. His country no longer had a king. Who was to say Bo had remained the same?

  Taniel squeezed his hands into fists. How dare he? How dare Tamas come here and ask him this. Taniel was a soldier, but he was also Tamas’s son. Did that even matter? “I won’t do it if you ask me,” Taniel said. “Not if you ask me as a son. If you give me an order as a powder mage—then I’ll do it.”

  Tamas’s face hardened. This was a challenge, and he knew it. Taniel’s father didn’t take well to challenges. Tamas stood up.

  “Captain, I want you to kill Privileged Borbador at the South Pike Mountainwatch. Bring me back the jewel he has on his person as evidence.”

  Taniel closed his eyes. “Yes, sir.” That son of a bitch. He was really going to make Taniel kill his best friend. Taniel wondered if he should come back and put a bullet in Tamas’s head once he’d finished with Bo.

  “I’m sending Julene with you.”

  His eyes snapped open. “No. I won’t work with her.”

  “Why not?”

  “She’s reckless. She got her partner killed, and nearly me too.”

  “She said the same thing about you.”

  “And you’d believe her over me?”

  “She had the courtesy to report to me after you so freely let the enemy go.”

  “That Privileged would have killed us all,” Taniel said.

  “I’ve given the order.” Tamas turned around, headed for the door. “Marked Taniel, carry out your orders. Then you’ll need some time off to deal with your… personal problems.” He left.

  Personal problems? Taniel sneered. He felt something on his arm, looked down. His nose was practically pouring blood. He swore, looking around for a towel. What would help this? Oh yes, some black powder…

  CHAPTER

  15

  There was a room beneath the House of Nobles, deeper underground than even the sewer systems, that had seen its heyday during the reign of the Iron King. Privileged sorceries held back the musky scent and the darkness and kept the walls from leaking even after the deaths of the men who cast the spells. The room was fifty paces wide, ten paces high, white plaster walls covered in wall hangings long thought lost by those who care about such things. There were tables and chairs, lounges that could be used as beds, crates of canned food, and barrels of water hidden behind silk curtains.

  Not even Manhouch had known about his father’s emergency shelter; only a few of the Iron King’s closest advisers, Tamas included, knew about the place, or how to reach it beneath the House of Nobles. The Iron King had been paranoid that the people would rise up against him, or that his spies would turn their knives to his throat. Tamas thought it fitting, then, when it was clear that the place had been in complete disuse since Manhouch XII took the throne, that it should be used to plot the king’s fall.

  Since the coup, Tamas’s council of coconspirators had moved their meetings to a less wayward place, far above on the third floor of the House of Nobles, as befitting a government, but Tamas still used the room as a place to find quiet and solitude. None of his staff knew where to find him here, not even Olem and Sabon. He would head back up soon enough.

  Tamas sat in the most comfortable of the chairs, his stockinged feet up on a hassock, a bowl of squash soup in his lap—the only thing Mihali would let him have from the kitchens when he passed through—and a miniature map of Surkov’s Alley in his hand. The other hand gently scratched the head of one of his hounds, receiving a periodic lick of affection for his troubles.

  He examined the map closely. It had been three days since he’d thrown Duke Nikslaus into the Adsea. It was a three-day ride, trading horses and without sleep, from Surkov Alley—the thin valley through the mountains connecting Adro and Kez—to Adopest. Tamas had received word not an hour ago that the Kez army was gathering outside of Budwiel, the city on the border of Kez at the entrance to Surkov Alley.

  Nikslaus and the delegation was a feint, an excuse for a war Ipille had banked on. Preparations had already begun. The Kez meant to invade. Yet it would take them a hundred thousand men to break through Surkov’s Alley. The whole corridor was staggered with troops and artillery placements. Unless Surkov’s wasn’t their target.

  He set the map down and repositioned his bowl of soup to a nearby table. Pitlaugh crept away with a light growl. “Hush,” he told the hound. Tamas fetched a bigger map, this one of all south Adro, and looked it over.

  South Pike was the only mountain pass big enough for the Kez to bring a whole army through without it taking all summer. Could they be trying for that? Would their commanders decide that the smaller choke point with fewer men was a better target than Surkov’s Alley? He glanced at the bottom of the Adsea on the map, where one small corner of it touched the only Adsea harbor in Kez beside the river delta. They might try coming over water, but the Kez had hardly any navy to speak of in the Adsea. Tamas sighed, folding the map, and sat back in his chair. He looked down at Hrusch. The hound gazed back up at him, head tilted to the side, panting jowls forming a smile.

  What could Ipille possibly be thinking? Kez outnumbered Adro five to one in soldiers, yet Adro had so many advantages: industry, more capable military commanders, the Mountainwatch. Adro held all the choke points.

  “I should bring Olem down here,” Tamas said to the dog. “I think better when I have someone to muse to.” Then the place would smell of his cigarettes. Tamas leaned over for a spoonful of Mihali’s soup. He’d never tasted anything like it, milky sweet with a hint of dark sugar.

  Tamas heard a click on the other side of the room, near the door. The hallways leading to the room formed a series of dead-end corridors and false walls, switchbacks and trap doors, enough to confound and discourage even a determined individual, so it was with some surprise that Tamas sat up and pulled on his boots. He stood up and turned toward the door, straightening his shirt, a hand out to silence Hrusch’s whines.

  Tamas’s heart beat faster at the sight of the creature that stepped through the door. It was a man, or had been at one time. He wore a long, dark jacket and a stovepipe top hat, though those were hardly enough to conceal his deformities. He was a hunchback with thick, powerful arms and legs. His face was almost handsome, but for an overlarge, misshapen brow. He had no facial hair, and lank blond hair fell down either side of his head.

  “Warden,” Tamas said, surprised at the evenness in his own voice. Wardens were often used as errand boys for Kez Privileged, but their creation so many hundreds of years ago by the Kez royal cabal had a single purpose: to kill powder mages.

  Tamas had no pistol or rifle with him. His sword remained, but he knew what little good those did against a Warden. He was a fool for going anywhere without a guard, even in the most secure place in all of Adro. He checked his pockets. No powder charges, not even his fine cigar box with false, powder-filled cigars. Those were in his jacket. Across the room, hanging on a coatrack next to the Warden.

  The Warden perused the room carefully, sure that they were alone, before he removed his hat and hung it from the coatrack. His jacket and then his shirt and bow tie followed, leaving him in a pair of black pants. He took off his shoes, a grin spreading across his face as he did so.

  Muscles moved on their own accord under his skin, tightening and loosening, sometimes jumping in spasms. They writhed in tight balls in some places, while they seemed hardly present in others, the sk
in tight against the bone, and then it would all shift and change again. It was like watching a mass of snakes inside a bag of silk.

  The Warden flexed his shifting muscles and stretched. “Mage,” he said. His voice was deep, vibrant.

  “That’s quite the shit-eating grin,” Tamas said. He took his sword belt from where he’d hung it on the back of his chair and drew the sword, tossing the sheath aside. Pitlaugh stood beside him, and the old wolfhound had teeth bared, growling dangerously. Hrusch retreated behind a sofa, growling at the Warden from perceived safety.

  “It’s not often I’m given a powder mage so cleanly,” the Warden said. “Nor one with such a reputation. I usually have to eat the dregs the sorcerers can comb from the Kez countryside.”

  Eat? Tamas felt vaguely sick.

  The Warden smiled. He stretched out his arms as if to embrace Tamas from across the room, the warped limbs long enough to wrap around a mortar barrel.

  “How did you find me?” Tamas asked. He stepped away from his chair and held his sword out to the side. Pitlaugh moved between Tamas and the Warden, and a vision went through Tamas’s mind of the Warden tearing apart his hounds. “Pitlaugh,” he said. “Back.”

  The wolfhound backed down reluctantly, giving Tamas and the Warden a wide berth.

  The Warden shook his head, the grin still on his face. “I won’t risk you surviving this.” He cracked the knuckles of one enormous, malformed hand. “But I will let you die with the knowledge that every one of your precious mages will be hunted down and devoured, body and soul.”

  The Warden bent his head like a fighting bull and charged. Thirty paces separated them, yet the creature covered that space in hardly any time at all, one big hand reaching out to grab a hassock as he came, flinging the furniture at Tamas as if it were a toy.

  Tamas ducked the hassock and sidestepped the Warden. He aimed for the heart with his blade, striking hard. A meaty fist pounded into the side of his head, sending him stumbling across the room.

  The Warden didn’t give him a chance to recover. He changed directions in a split second and flung himself toward Tamas, ignoring the sword aimed at his chest. Tamas jabbed with all his might, then threw himself out of the way of the Warden’s bulk. He ducked, rolling on one shoulder and to his feet.