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

by McClellan, Brian

  The four union workers looked to him when they reached the bottom, and he realized that Fell had not yet come down. He was seized by sudden suspicion. If even one of them was in on this bomb plot, they might make a go at him. He found himself sizing each of them up, planning the best way to defend himself.

  A few moments passed before he realized they were still watching him.

  “Well, get to it.”

  “Uh, sir,” Draily said. “Look.”

  Adamat shook the fear from his head and stepped forward. They stood in a long, arched hallway with walls of stone, and off the hallway to the right were a dozen niches that extended out beneath the hotel. At the far end of the hall was a low, heavy door.

  Draily was pointing into the first niche. Adamat held his lantern inside and squinted. “Nothing but wine,” he said.

  She rolled her eyes. “Is it?”

  “Oh.” Realization set in. Of course. Any of these wine bottles could be the bomb or bombs he was looking for. It would be the best place to hide something like that—in plain sight. Adamat tapped his fingers on his stomach, then said, “Search everything else. I’ll check the wine.”

  The rest of the group moved on to the other niches, and Adamat began to inspect the wine. At first glance he estimated upward of two thousand bottles here, and Adamat wondered if this was the other part of Ricard’s wine collection or whether the hotel was just this well stocked.

  Adamat removed his jacket and hung it from a peg on the wall, rolling his sleeves up. He began examining each wine bottle, starting at the top row. They came in every variety; some were slender, dark-brown bottles, while others were fat green bottles with long necks.

  He looked for consistency; the thickness of the dust, how the labels were positioned, as well as the size and shape of the bottle itself. He felt a growing despair as he went—if the blasting oil had been hidden inside a wine bottle, it might be impossible to find. A hotel such as this went through wine at an alarming rate. Some of the bottles had been here for months or years, and those were easy to tell from the layer of dust, but there were still at least eighty bottles that had been handled recently.

  “You think our bomber is that devious?” Fell’s voice said from the hallway.

  Adamat didn’t look up from his examination. “They’d have to be an idiot not to see the opportunity,” Adamat said. “I don’t know how to go about this without opening four dozen bottles to check their contents.”

  “A last resort, I think,” Fell said. “You know how Ricard is about his wine.”

  “Would he rather drink a glass of blasting oil?”

  “I’ll have to point that out to him.” She paused, then, “You’re certain it’s here?”

  “Ricard was certain,” Adamat said. “That’s all I have to go on.”

  “He may be wrong.”

  “A possibility, sure,” Adamat said. “But if he’s right…”

  “Not worth the risk. That man you pointed out, Will?”

  “Anything?” Adamat stopped his search long enough to look hopefully toward Fell. If they’d just happened upon a conspirator, they might get a lucky break. Investigative science practically depended on lucky breaks.

  “Just nervous,” Fell said. “His father worked for a powder company and was killed in a blast two years ago. Will’s terrified of explosions. I should have remembered it earlier. Poor man pissed himself when I wouldn’t let him leave the building.”

  Adamat returned his attention to the wine bottles. “A pity.”

  He heard a jingle of keys, and Fell said, “Mark where you are and come with me. I’ll set a man to make sure the wine isn’t disturbed. We need to search the Underhill Room.”

  “Oh?” Adamat made a mental note of the wine cellar and followed Fell down the hallway to the thick door at the end of the basement. She unlocked it and pulled it open, the strain of her shoulders testifying to the weight.

  Inside, Adamat was surprised to find another long corridor. He held his lantern high and glanced back at Fell.

  “Go on.”

  He crept down the hall slowly, still clutching his cane, and he wondered briefly how much he trusted Fell. Her loyalty was supposed to be to Ricard for the duration of her contract. But what if that was all a lie? Could she have planned the bombing? She could kill him down here without a problem, then hide the body and tell Ricard he had left. Adamat’s mind whirred through a dozen possible motives and all the reasons why he was wrong. By the time he reached the end of the hall, he was no less wary, and all the more certain that he wouldn’t stand even the faintest chance against Fell in a fight.

  His lantern created eerie shadows in the large, square room at the end of the hall. Fell squeezed past him to light candelabras along all four walls until the entire room had been illuminated. It looked like any of the hundreds of gentleman’s clubs in Adopest—the walls were covered in velvet and the candelabras were polished brass. There was seating for at least a dozen people in the form of divans and couches, and the center of the room held a velvet-lined card table with room for six.

  There was a dumbwaiter in one corner, likely leading up to the kitchen, and a smaller, private stock of wine as well as an untapped keg. A fireplace sat at either end of the room, though upon closer examination they appeared to be wood-burning stoves with stone façades.

  “So this is the Underhill Society?”

  Fell finished lighting the candelabras and blew out her lantern. “Yes.”

  “Has it been here the whole time?” Adamat remembered hearing about the Underhill Society for the first time over thirteen years ago and knew it was much older than that. Ricard had owned the hotel for only six.

  “Only since Ricard bought the hotel. He hasn’t told me where they met before that.”

  Adamat pointed back down the hallway. “Are they…”

  “They can come search the room. It shouldn’t take long. Just don’t mention the… well, you know.”

  Fell’s searchers finished their assigned niches and then moved into the larger room, checked every nook and cranny thoroughly and without comment as to the room’s purpose. Adamat returned to the wine cellar, resuming his examination of the bottles.

  Frustration continued to mount. Every bit of instinct told him that the blasting oil should be hidden among the wine. It was too good a spot for any henchman with half a wit, and if the perpetrator had a whole wit, the oil would have been bottled carefully and put in among the less-used wines. Adamat cursed under his breath and tried to recall the latest fashionable wines among Ricard’s friends and associates—those would be the easiest to rule out.

  The searchers moved up to the next floor, and Adamat only barely noted their passing.

  It must have been almost an hour later when he heard someone on the basement stairs. He noted Fell’s soft footfalls.

  “Any progress upstairs?” he asked.

  Fell set her lantern on a wine barrel in one corner. “None. It’s a large hotel and with only four men it’s a slow business. Progress here?”

  “I’ve narrowed it down to a possibility of three dozen bottles,” Adamat said.

  “Are you sure you’re putting your energy in the right place? After all, I’d think it would be obvious if any of the wine here had been uncorked.”

  “Certainly. But they could have done it off-site and brought the wine here.” Adamat sighed and returned a bottle to its place. “I should have asked Ricard if any of his guests have brought him new wine recently.”

  “Everyone does,” Fell said.

  Adamat eyed the shelves where he’d sorted the most probable bottles. “Have him make a list for me. The only way to know for certain is to open every bottle. Or, more safely, to take the whole lot out of the city and throw it off a high cliff.”

  “Ricard would be… cross. He already lost his collection beneath the old headquarters. You know how he feels about his wine.”

  “The captain of the hotel will already gut me for destroying whatever system he had in
place down here. Might as well infuriate Ricard as well. Get someone to help me carry these upstairs.” He rubbed at his temples. “Pit, how am I going to get this out of the city? From everything Flerring told me, it’s a terrible idea to transport the stuff by carriage. Too bumpy.”

  “Ma’am?” a voice called down the basement stairs.

  Fell stepped into the basement hall and called back. “Yes?”

  “I think we’ve found something.”

  Adamat was on his feet in moments. He followed Fell up the stairs, where Draily waited. The woman led them both into the kitchen and stopped beside the silver cabinet. “Had to get the captain to open it up for me.” She opened one of the doors and knelt in front of it. “You’ll want to look yourselves. I don’t really want to reach in there.”

  Adamat lay on the wood floor beside the silver cabinet and took Fell’s lantern.

  On the bottom shelf, behind the silver serving platters, was a wooden crate. It held glass vials with corks in the top and each one was filled with a clear liquid. Adamat suddenly felt his heart hammering in his ears.

  “Bloody pit,” he said.

  “It’s there?”

  “Yes.”

  Fell gave an audible sigh of relief.

  “Fetch Flerring the Younger,” Adamat said. “Probably best to have one of her professionals deal with the stuff. Post a heavy guard on this room, but try to do it quietly. And get me the kitchen staff. I want every single one of them here for questioning by this evening.”

  Fell barked orders to her people. Adamat felt her hand on his arm. “Excellent work, Inspector.”

  “Don’t thank me yet,” Adamat said, still lying on the floor, unable to take his eyes off the innocuous-looking bottles of blasting oil.

  “Why?”

  “There are two bottles missing.”

  CHAPTER

  38

  Tamas crept through the riverside rushes, knee-deep in the cold water of the Addown River.

  He had one pistol in his belt, the other held with the barrel pointed skyward, and the sword at his side leaving a slight furrow against the current of the river. The night was crisp, his breath visible to his powder-enhanced senses. Somewhere off to his left, a fish jumped in the water, and he heard Andriya start behind him.

  “Shh,” Tamas said quietly. “Don’t get twitchy on me.”

  Tamas was ready to reprimand him for a smart remark, but Andriya behaved himself. They pushed forward, frogs going silent at their advance but no sign of alarm in the fortress up ahead of them.

  Fortress, Tamas reflected, was a stretch. The stone building was only two stories tall, with a twelve-foot wall that stretched from the riverside a hundred feet to the main highway. The whole thing was little more than an inspection station where government officers could check both carts on the road and barges in the water for contraband and tax dodgers heading between Adopest and Budwiel.

  Before the revolution, it would have been staffed by just eight to ten servants of the crown. The Kez, when they swept past this point, had reinforced the whole building. Small-caliber cannons had been mounted along the wall and a sixteen-pound artillery piece had been placed on the end of the stone wharf that stuck out into the Addown. Tamas guessed that they’d left no less than a forty-man garrison.

  Tamas approached the base of the wharf, his eyes on the top of the inspection station. Torches lit the wall, and he could see the bobbing of a bayonet that betrayed the presence of a guard.

  Something touched his arm and Tamas stopped, looking back. Andriya pointed into the rushes, and after a moment Tamas could see a nest where a yearling goose eyed him angrily.

  He waded deeper into the water to avoid the nest, then shoved his pistol in his belt and tightened his sword against his thigh. He reached up until he could feel the stone ledge above him, and with a quick motion he was up on the wharf.

  Tamas drew his belt knife and padded toward the artillery piece sitting at the end. A Kez sentry leaned against it, his soft snores reaching Tamas’s ears. He stiffened as Tamas’s knife took him between the ribs and a moment later his body lay behind the cannon. Tamas looked back toward the inspection station just in time to see Andriya, silent as a gliding owl, slip over the battlements above the second story. Tamas heard a pain-filled grunt and had to remind his hammering heart that he could hear far better than the guards inside.

  He stole through the door to the inspection station. The garrison, if he remembered, correctly, would be on the second floor. He paused at the foot of the stairwell, a sound catching his ear, and went back past the door to the wharf.

  Four Kez soldiers were playing dice in the tiny mess hall by the light of a single lantern. Tamas eyed them through a slit in the door. They were intent upon their game and likely a little drunk. He decided to take care of the sleeping ones upstairs first.

  He was just about to step away when the door suddenly pushed open, nearly hitting him in the face. He leapt back, and a fifth guard stared at him in surprise.

  Tamas slammed his knife into the man’s throat and drove him backward into the room, shoving him across the main table. The other four guards jumped to their feet, shouting and scrambling for weapons. Tamas was faster. He pulled his knife hand back and dragged it across a second guard’s throat before leaving it in the heart of a third. He leapt the table in a single bound, the powder trance singing in his veins. His foot came down on the bench opposite and he barely had time to swear as it gave way beneath him.

  He stumbled upon landing and threw himself into a roll, tumbling across the room. He came up beside the fourth guard just as the man turned on him with a pistol. Tamas reached out with his senses and fizzled the ignition of the powder as the hammer came down. He wrenched the pistol out of the man’s hand and slammed the butt into the guard’s face hard enough to hear his skull crack.

  The fifth guard ran for the door. Tamas drew his boot knife and threw, flat-handed. The knife hit her just beneath the shoulder blade. She let out a yell, stumbled, and reached back for the hilt. Tamas crossed the room and broke her neck.

  He scrambled for both of his knives and took up a position beside the door. The silence was deafening. Where were the reinforcements? Where were the sleeping guards?

  A single pair of boots sounded on the stone stairwell. Tamas hazarded a glance, only to see Andriya appear. The man was covered in blood, but by the looks of him none of it was his own. “You’re making too much noise,” Andriya said.

  Tamas let out a soft sigh of relief, cleaned his knives, and led Andriya back upstairs. They passed the bunk room, where Tamas could hear a soft death rattle.

  “Take care of that,” he said.

  On the roof, two sentries lay in pools of their own blood, and Tamas shielded his eyes from the flickering torches and surveyed Surkov’s Alley to his south. To his surprise, he saw nothing—no fires, no camping companies of Kez reserves. In the distance, he could see the torches of Midway Keep, and far beyond that the glittering lights of Budwiel.

  The entire Kez army was now to his north.

  He snatched one of the torches and waved it twice. Within moments the ground to the north of the inspection station was writhing with the dark figures of Adran soldiers as they flooded forward. He was joined a moment later by Andriya.

  “Didn’t we do this once before?” Andriya asked. “Going behind the enemy’s lines? I seem to remember it didn’t end so well.”

  Tamas glanced toward Andriya. Somehow, he had gotten even more blood on him. Olem, he reflected, might not be as good a killer as Andriya, but he was far better company. “You should change your uniform.”

  “I don’t have a spare.”

  “That was shortsighted.”

  Andriya licked a bit of blood off the tip of one finger, a not entirely human smile playing upon his lips. “We climb the walls of Budwiel tomorrow. I want the bloody Kez to know what’s coming for them when they see me.”

  “If you insist.” There was no “sir” when Andriya had his bloo
d up like this. Killing Kez was his favorite thing in this world. “Just stand upwind from me.”

  Tamas turned to watch more of his army emerge from the darkness. The vanguard had surrounded the inspection station now, and on the road he could see the long, dark snake of his army marching forward through the dark. On the river to his right, several cargo barges moved into view, cutting quietly through the water, loaded down with heavy artillery.

  “The Kez army be damned,” Tamas said. “Nothing will stop me now.”

  Nila’s first instinct after regaining consciousness was to scream.

  She nearly bit her tongue in half to keep herself from doing so. Her hands were bound behind her back and her eyes opened on nothing but darkness. Fear threatened to swallow her whole, adrenaline tearing through her veins and overwhelming the stiffness of her limbs and the saddle soreness at her very core.

  She slipped into the place between the real world and the Else almost instinctually—in fact, it was several minutes before she realized what she had done. Her breathing was calm, her heart no longer fluttering. The world floated before her in a translucent haze. Bo had described this as a good place to be calm and to think, but had warned her that her brain would not receive the information that it needed to analyze the world around it. Sounds were muted, and even the feel of the ground beneath her legs seemed distant.

  Cautiously, she let herself leave that place, sinking back into the real world. With it came all of the pain and aches of being alive and she couldn’t help but let out a slight whimper.

  A nighttime camp came into focus around her. She could hear low voices, the crackling of a nearby fire, and the soft whinny of horses off in the darkness. She lay on her side, her left arm numb, and the smell of vomit stung her nostrils. A trail of crust along the corner of her mouth told her that the vomit was hers.