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

by McClellan, Brian

  Taniel avoided the few patrols and made his way toward the rear of the camp. It wasn’t hard to find his objective.

  The command tent was as big as a city administration building and was made up of a dozen smaller tents. Guards were posted at even intervals around the entire tent complex. Light shone through the walls, and Taniel’s Marked hearing could make out the sound—if not the words themselves—of heated argument.

  Someone was still up. That suited Taniel fine.

  He hunkered down behind a soldier’s tent and watched the main entrance. He didn’t need anything fancy. Just someone who’d know their way around the Kez camp. A high-ranking officer would be the best.

  It didn’t take long before whatever argument had been taking place died down. Five minutes later, officers began exiting the tent.

  Taniel watched them go, noting what direction they went.

  A major. Another major. A colonel—good. A general. Even better.

  He shifted in his hiding spot, ready to follow the general at a distance, when someone else caught his eye.

  Taniel recognized the man. Field Marshal Goutlit—Tine’s replacement. Tamas had always referred to Goutlit as a competent bureaucrat, a man who thought of losses as nothing more than numbers on paper and had no qualms about sending ten thousand men to their deaths if it would win him even a trivial victory.

  Goutlit immediately headed south, toward the rear of the Kez camp. One of the guards broke off from the command tent and followed.

  So did Taniel.

  Goutlit’s sleeping quarters was a farmhouse only a few hundred yards from the command tent. The field marshal went inside while the guard took up a station beside the front door.

  Taniel rounded the farmhouse once. Two windows, both with shutters fastened tight. No other door but the front.

  He pressed himself up against the wall of the farmhouse and crept back around to the front. A hand over the guard’s mouth and a knife between the ribs and into the man’s left lung was enough to keep him from making noise. Taniel removed the knife and rammed it into the guard’s heart, then slowly lowered the body to the ground.

  “Pouli,” Goutlit called from inside. “Get in here.”

  The door creaked when it opened. The farmhouse was dark but for a light coming from the only other room.

  “Pouli,” Goutlit said from the other room. “They didn’t bring the girl I asked for. Damned quartermasters can’t do a thing right. Go and fetch her this instant. It’s late enough as it is, I want to be asleep in half an hour.”

  Taniel grabbed the dead guard by the belt and dragged him inside, then closed the door.

  “I said this instant, man. If I have to—”

  Goutlit came out of his room carrying a lantern. He was a balding man of medium height and square shoulders and a strong gaze. He’d removed his jacket and was shaking his head, obviously in a bout of anger. He froze when he saw the body of his guard.

  Taniel was on him in a moment, bloody knife in one hand, the other pressing over Goutlit’s mouth to cut off a strangled cry.

  “Shh,” Taniel said. “Quiet now, or I cut out your heart.” He waved the knife in front of Goutlit’s eyes. “This is how it works: If you call out, I kill you. If you try to run, I kill you. I’m faster and stronger than you and I won’t hesitate. Do you understand?”

  Behind Taniel’s hand, Goutlit whispered, “I only speak Kez.”

  “Don’t lie to me. I met you years ago at a ball thrown by Manhouch and you spoke Adran fine. Now tell me, do you understand?”

  Goutlit inhaled sharply. “Yes.”

  Taniel stepped away from Goutlit, but watched him carefully out of the corner of his eye. He checked outside the door. No alarm. No one suspicious that the guard was not at his post.

  “Can you see me?”

  “What?” Goutlit said. “Of course.”

  So Mihali’s invisibility was gone for certain.

  Goutlit slowly sagged into a chair. “Who are you?” he asked in Adran. “Are you here to kill me? I have money. I can make you a rich man.”

  “I don’t care about your money,” Taniel said. “I won’t kill you if you cooperate.”

  Goutlit, Taniel remembered his father saying, was not a brave man. His strength was arithmetic. He stayed as far from the fighting as possible and only engaged the enemy when he had overwhelming force.

  “I will not betray my country,” Goutlit said, chin up.

  Taniel left the dead guard and pounced on Goutlit. The man let out a high whimper and tried to press himself into his chair. “If you don’t help me, I won’t think any more about snuffing out your life than you would of killing a mouse in your pantry.”

  Another whimper.

  “No need to betray anything,” Taniel said. “No one will ever question your loyalty. Though you may want to come up with some reason as to why Pouli here wound up dead.” Taniel left Goutlit, smelling mildly like piss, in his chair and finished getting Pouli’s boots off and then took the man’s pants and jacket. They’d be a bit too big, but they’d have to do.

  “Tell me about Kresimir,” Taniel said.

  Goutlit remained silent.

  “The god,” Taniel said roughly, “living in your camp. Where is he?”

  “He’s living in the old keep. About a mile south of here. He was in Budwiel, living in the mayor’s mansion, but two days ago it was destroyed by Adran sorcery.”

  Taniel chuckled. “Adran sorcery, huh? Does the General Staff believe that?”

  Goutlit licked his lips. Enough of an answer.

  “So he’s in Midway Keep?”

  Goutlit said, “That’s it.”

  “Guards?”

  “Prielights.”

  Elite guards of the Kresim Church. As far as Taniel knew, the Church had made no public proclamation about the war. It seemed like they were ready to defend their god, though. “How many?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Inside or out?”

  “Both.”

  “Does Kresimir ever come into the camp?”

  Goutlit shook his head. “Never. We always go to him.”

  “Is it true he wears a mask with no right eyehole?”

  “Yes.”

  Taniel tongued his teeth. Interesting.

  “Who are you?” Goutlit asked as Taniel put on the dead guard’s pants.

  Taniel tightened his belt. “Change your pants. You smell like piss. And get your jacket.”

  Goutlit’s hands shook as he changed his clothes. Taniel watched, just to be sure the man wouldn’t try to slip out a window.

  Taniel spotted the liquor cabinet in the corner. He crossed to it and found a bottle of Starlish whiskey, pouring out half a measure. He held the glass out to Goutlit.

  The Kez field marshal drank it hungrily in two great gulps, then doubled over coughing. Taniel cringed and listened for any voices outside the farmhouse. Nothing.

  “You’re him, aren’t you?” Goutlit asked.

  “Who?”

  “The eye behind the flintlock. Taniel Two-Shot.”

  Taniel felt his chest grow cold. So. The rumors Mihali had heard were true. Kresimir was looking for him. “Let’s go,” Taniel said, shouldering the guard’s musket. “Remember—any false word or movement and you are a dead man.”

  Goutlet straightened his jacket. The whiskey seemed to have given him courage. “What do you want of me?”

  Taniel opened the front door. The god was coughing blood at night, Mihali had said.

  “You’re going to help me steal Kresimir’s bedsheets.”

  CHAPTER

  36

  Are you sure this is wise, sir?” Olem asked. “We’re awfully close to the city.”

  Tamas gazed through his looking glass at the city of Alvation. It was an unwalled city, spilling along the north side of a shallow river that flowed from the northeast and wound along the Northern Expanse. Most of the buildings were two or three stories, smoke rising from their chimneys, with stone-shing
led roofs. It was a major intersection of the Great Northern Highway and the Charwood Pass—a Mountainwatch toll road that took trade up over the Charwood Pile and into Adro.

  He guessed Alvation to number around a hundred thousand souls. Not as large a city as those in the south of Kez or on the coast of Deliv, but not a small one, by any means.

  “No, not entirely,” Tamas answered.

  Olem lay at Tamas’s side. Vlora on his left. Behind him, the rest of his powder mages made camp in an abandoned farmhouse while Tamas, Olem, and Vlora crouched in a dry irrigation ditch and observed the city from three miles out.

  An abandoned farmhouse. This close to the city. Something was surely wrong here.

  “I don’t see any sign of the Kez army,” Olem said.

  “There.” Vlora pointed. “Do you see where the Charwood Pass first enters the city from the west? A little way east of that. Blue-and-silver uniforms. The Kez impostors.” Vlora was in a powder trance, like Tamas himself. They’d both be able to see farther and clearer than Olem.

  Tamas searched until he found the spot she’d indicated. A group of some fifty soldiers moved through the stalls of an open market, pointing and shouting. They had several large carts and were filling them from the vendors’ stalls.

  “Nikslaus is bleeding the city for all they’ve got,” Tamas said. “Sending his men out to collect a tax.”

  Tamas traced the outside of the city with his looking glass, then to where the city met the Charwood Pass. He squinted to see into the long shadows cast by the late-day sun. Figures milled about. More soldiers. Tamas spotted barrels, carts, horses.

  “I sense a lot of powder in the city,” Vlora said.

  “There’s an army camped there.”

  “More than usual.”

  Tamas didn’t know what that could mean. Perhaps the Deliv had been stockpiling powder here in preparation for a war with Kez or Adro. “Interesting.”

  Vlora said, “At the base of the mountain. Looks like their headquarters for besieging the Mountainwatch.”

  “I see it,” Tamas said.

  “Where the pit is the Deliv army?” Olem asked.

  Tamas continued to examine the city. It was a question he’d asked himself a few times. “King Sulam might be gathering an army even now. Or Nikslaus took the city fast enough that word hasn’t yet reached Sulam.” It was a possibility he didn’t want to consider. The Deliv had a proud history of having a swift, efficient army—even if their current one was rather outdated. “Likely, Nikslaus plans on being over the mountains before Sulam responds. Then he can pin it on the Adran army and bring Deliv into the war.”

  Olem said, “They’re occupying the city, sir. The people have to know that it’s Kez soldiers in disguise.” He chewed on his fingernails—he’d been doing that ever since smoking his last cigarette.

  “I don’t know,” Tamas said. “Nikslaus isn’t an idiot. He’ll think of something.”

  “Should we bring the army forward? Call for an attack?” Olem asked. “If we position at night, we may be able to blindside them.”

  “If they don’t already know we’re here.” Tamas cursed quietly under his breath. “They’ve got Gavril, remember?” The city had no walls, which made it easier to take without artillery, but the Kez were entrenched. They had all the supplies, and knew the lay of the land. Urban warfare would be chaos.

  “Sir,” Vlora said. “Look at the church steeple near the center of the city.”

  Tamas scanned along until he found the church.

  “Above the bell tower,” Vlora said.

  Tamas took a sharp breath. Above the bell tower of an old stone Kresim church hung dozens of bodies. Men, women, white Kez, and black Deliv. Children. He felt his stomach turn, and for a moment Sabon’s dead face flashed before him.

  “Bloody Nikslaus,” Tamas said.

  “Should we go back, sir?”

  “Back?”

  “To the army. We’ll have to come up with something to take the Kez by surprise.”

  Tamas examined the bell tower again, then the city as a whole. He ran his gaze along the tops of the buildings, considering angles of attack. He would have to get his men close to the city under cover of night, then cross the shallow river and catch as many of the Kez out in the open as they could.

  The best he could hope for in that situation, even if the Deliv rose up and sided with Tamas, would be a weeks-long urban melee with the Kez. And he couldn’t afford that, not with thirty thousand Kez infantry still coming on from the south.

  “Congratulations, Olem. You’ve just been promoted to colonel.”

  “Sir?” Olem’s mouth hung open.

  “I need someone to head back and give commands to the Seventh and Ninth, and they’re not going to take it from a captain.”

  “But sir, the ranks?”

  “I think we can skip ‘major’ and all that.”

  “Thank you, sir, but I think—”

  Tamas held up a hand to forestall any protestations.

  “I have things to do, Olem. First”—Tamas collapsed his looking glass—“I’m going in to find Gavril and get him out. I have an old friend in the city who might help me. Then I’ll kill Nikslaus. Then, and only then, we’ll go to battle.”

  Nila sat beside Jakob’s bed and listened to the soft sound of his snores. The boy’s chest rose and fell slowly, his face peaceful. It reminded her of the cherubs she’d once seen painted on the ceiling of a church. Outside the open window she could hear the sound of a carriage clattering by on the cobbles.

  They’d moved from Bo’s apartment in the factory district to a small house in one of the few fashionable areas of High Talien, in Adopest’s northwest side. From what Bo had said, he had several such “safe houses” scattered around the city. She had wondered at one point where he had gotten the money for all this before remembering that he was a member of the Adran royal cabal.

  It was easy to forget, sometimes. Cabal Privileged were known for their cruelty and power. Not for their quiet humor, flirting smiles, and silent generosity.

  But he was leaving tomorrow. Heading south, he’d said, to rescue Taniel Two-Shot.

  Nila would find herself alone once again, sole guardian to the little boy sleeping before her. What was she going to do with him? Go to Fatrasta? To Novi? Live out the quiet life of a single laundress and tell everyone that Jakob was her little brother?

  Would Jakob be able to live with that as he grew older? After all, he’d been a duke’s son. Not more than a couple of months ago there had been the very real possibility of him becoming king. She would have been his caretaker and surrogate mother, maybe even a noblewoman by decree of the new king. She would have had wealthy suitors and servants and actual power.

  How life would have been different.

  But it wasn’t.

  Now she had to figure out where they would go when Bo left the city. It occurred to her that the silver she’d buried in a graveyard outside the city might not even still be there. Someone might have found it and taken it, and then where would she be? She didn’t want to think about it.

  She heard the front door of the house open and shut, and her heart beat faster until she reminded herself that they were under Bo’s protection—at least for another day—and that Lord Vetas could no longer harm them.

  Bo stepped into the room, treading quietly. He knew that Jakob went to bed by eight in the evening. He gestured for her to join him in the kitchen.

  “Can the boy watch himself for a few hours?” Bo asked after she’d closed the door to Jakob’s room. The words were rushed, and his eyes were alight. He was excited about something.

  He wanted to take her somewhere. Where could it be? She felt her cheeks grow a little warm. “Well, he’s sleeping. He might get scared if he wakes up and no one’s in the house with him.”

  “Can he read?”

  “A little.”

  “Good. Write him a note. I need your help. We’ll be back in just a few hours.”

  �
��I could wake him and take him with us.”

  “You won’t want him with us,” Bo said.

  Nila felt her cheeks flush.

  “Not for that,” Bo said, giving her a lopsided smile.

  Nila’s cheeks felt on fire. Was that disappointment in the pit of her stomach?

  She suddenly wondered how young Bo really was. He seemed so confident, and his status as an Adran Cabal member made her think of him as quite a bit older, but there were times he looked barely twenty.

  “Come on,” Bo said.

  She wrote a note for Jakob and left it on the kitchen table beside a glass of water, then joined Bo in the carriage. He pounded on the roof, and they were off.

  “Do you know what you’re going to do when I leave?” Bo asked as the carriage jostled along through the streets.

  Nila looked down. She had hoped that, perhaps, he would stay a little longer. “I haven’t decided yet.”

  “I can’t imagine you have much money,” Bo said.

  “A little. I have some silver buried outside of the city that I took the night Tamas’s soldiers came to the Eldaminse house. I hope it’s still there.”

  “And if it’s not?”

  Nila swallowed. “I don’t know.”

  They rode along for several moments in silence, and then, “I’ll leave a couple hundred for you when I go,” Bo said.

  A couple hundred could buy her and Jakob passage to Novi, or pay for a week in an inn.

  “Thank you,” Nila said, not sure what else to say. “That will go a long way toward helping us start a new life.”

  “A long way? It should go the whole way.”

  Nila frowned at Bo.

  “A couple hundred thousand krana?”

  “Hundred thousand…” Nila sputtered. She and Jakob could live the rest of their lives comfortably off a couple hundred thousand krana. “What, why would you…?”

  Bo waved a hand as if it were nothing. Nila turned to stare out the window, partially so that Bo could not see the tears forming in her eyes.