Promise of Blood tpm-1

by Brian McClellan

  She did the lower officers’ laundry first, after everyone had gone to bed. She went about her routine as usual, scrubbing and boiling and ironing, and then returning uniforms to their owners’ rooms. She waited to fetch the field marshal’s clothes till last. She always did. They were given special attention.

  The hallway to the field marshal’s office had four guards. They recognized her now. Nila even knew a few by name. Since Olem had begun courting her, no one’s eyes lingered nor did anyone say anything untoward. They let her pass without comment, but it worried her that Olem wasn’t there. What if he was inside?

  The field marshal’s rooms were dark. She made her way by feel and memory, and by a sliver of moonlight coming in through the balcony windows. She satisfied herself that Olem was not anywhere in the darkness, and came up beside the field marshal. He snored softly, sleeping on his back on his cot. Nila drew a hidden dagger from her sleeve and paused.

  Field Marshal Tamas’s brow and cheeks were covered in sweat. He muttered something and shifted.

  She lifted her knife.

  “Erika!” Tamas started in his sleep.

  Nila froze. He settled back down to his cot, still deep in sleep. She took several breaths to steady her hand.

  “Nila,” someone whispered.

  Nila closed her eyes. The door to the office opened a crack. “Nila,” the voice whispered again. It was Olem.

  She returned the knife to her sleeve and took the field marshal’s uniform from where it hung over a chair. She slipped out the door. She would find out what Olem wanted and be rid of him. She still had to wash and return the clothing. There’d be another opportunity then.

  Olem waited for her in the hallway. The other guards pretended not to notice as he took her hand and gave her a kiss on the cheek. His lips were warm.

  “Thought I’d missed you,” he said, walking with her down the hall.

  “No.” She forced a welcoming smile on her face.

  He linked arms with her. “I’m glad,” he said. “I don’t get much time off. With my Knack and all, the field marshal likes me to put in extra hours.”

  “Of course.” She paused. “You should take more time for yourself.”

  “I would like to. But only to be with you.”

  That wouldn’t do at all.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Sure about what?”

  “That you want to be with me?” She stopped and slipped her arm out of his. “Why do you come to me, Olem? I’m not a good prospect. I’ve no family or connections, and you’ve not tried to force yourself on me. I don’t understand you.”

  The corner of Olem’s mouth lifted. “When the time’s right, I won’t have to force you.”

  She smacked his shoulder, her cheeks flushing despite herself.

  He laughed. “Come here,” he said. “I want to show you something.” He took her arm again and led her down a side hallway. “You know,” he said, “I wondered about you after you disappeared from the Eldaminse townhouse.”

  “You did?”

  “I wondered especially when we couldn’t find the Eldaminse boy.”

  Nila tripped, and would have fallen if Olem didn’t have her arm. Her heart began to hammer in her chest.

  Olem continued, “Then I saw you at the barricades. I couldn’t get to you. I couldn’t leave the field marshal in the chaos of things, but I asked the men not to hurt you when they fetched the boy.”

  Nila felt her whole body shaking. Olem knew. He’d known all along that she was a royalist. Why had it taken him so long to call her out? Why wasn’t she leaning over a headsman’s block instead of strolling down the hall with him?

  Olem stopped beside a soldier at a door at the end of one hall. The soldier saluted him, and he acknowledged by touching a finger to his forehead. The soldier opened the door for them.

  Here it was, Nila thought. She was about to be put under guard. Hidden away until the next round of beheadings. Would they send her straight to Sabletooth? She still had her knife. She could attack Olem… but he’d expect that. She’d wait until he was gone and another guard had taken his place.

  The room was dark except for a single lantern on a table by a window. It didn’t look like a prison cell. There was a bed, a writing desk, and a divan. An old woman dressed in servant’s clothes snoozed in a chair next to the bed.

  “Go on,” Olem said quietly.

  She entered the room. Olem crossed over to the lantern and picked it up. There was something on the table next to the lantern. A toy horse made of wood. Nila found herself kneeling by the bedside. There was a form there, sleeping soundly, bundled up to the chin beneath blankets.

  Jakob looked healthier. His hair had been cut and dyed, his cheeks fuller, and there were now smile lines at the corners of his mouth.

  “Tamas is not the heartless man most people think he is,” Olem said. “He won’t kill an innocent child. He sent no one to the guillotine under the age of seventeen on the day of the Elections. He had a rumor started that all the children of the nobility were strangled quietly in order to explain away their disappearance.”

  Nila brushed her fingers across Jakob’s forehead. “What happened to them? What will happen to him?”

  “Sent away,” Olem said. “Some to Novi or Rosvel. Some to the countryside.”

  “Can I see him when he’s awake?”

  “No. He mustn’t know anyone from his former life. He mustn’t grow up thinking he’s something special. He’ll be sent to live on a farm, where his life will be hard but not dangerous or complex. He might marry a laundress someday. But he’ll never be king.”

  Nila knelt beside Jakob’s bedside for several minutes before Olem drew her away. The lamp was returned, and the guard locked the door to the nursery behind them. Around the corner, Nila clutched the field marshal’s uniform to her chest.

  Olem stood, hands clasped behind his back, face serious. “You must hate us,” he said. “For destroying your world. I’m sorry for that. But Tamas… all of us… we did it so that the commoners can know a good life someday. So that we are no longer slaves.”

  “I was happy, I think,” Nila said.

  “The best kind of slavery,” Olem said. “But still slavery.” He fell silent for a couple of moments. “I’ll understand if you want a transfer away from the field marshal. It must be hard for you, knowing what he did to people you once served. He’ll be furious. He says you’re the first laundress to starch his collars right since he was in Gurla.”

  “And you?” Nila said.

  Olem struck a match and lit a cigarette, letting out a long sigh. “You can’t like someone knowing your secret. The field marshal pardoned the royalists, but there’s still no trust of them in the army. I won’t tell anyone. And I’ll leave you alone.”

  Nila searched Olem’s face for insincerity. She couldn’t find any. She had no doubt that if she said the word right now, he’d never speak to her again. His cigarette rolled between his lips. He took a long puff, then took it out, looking away. Giving her time to think it over.

  “Are you sure you weren’t a gentleman in another life?” she asked.

  “Absolutely,” Olem said, turning back to her. His face was still uncommonly serious.

  Nila tried to tell herself that this changed nothing. That Tamas was still a monster who endangered Adro every moment he remained alive. But Olem had revealed that Tamas was human. That he had compassion. Nila could not look into the eyes of another person and take their life when she knew they still had humanity.

  She hated Olem for it.

  “I’d prefer,” she said, clasping her hands behind her back so that Olem couldn’t see them shake, “that we not speak again.”

  Olem stiffened. His eyes fell, and his serious demeanor dropped long enough for her to see his sadness before he straightened his back. “Of course, ma’am.”

  Nila watched him walk down the hall and brushed a tear from the corner of her eye. To do what needed to be done, she had to be cruel. No t
ime to cry. There was still laundry to do before the house awoke.

  Chapter 32

  Taniel approached the bastion gate wondering how the St. Adom’s Day Festival was progressing in Adro. They’d received a shipment of food that morning: barrels of ale, salted pork, and beef of the highest quality. Much better fare than normally seen on the Mountainwatch.

  Mozes was already at the gate, and armed to the teeth with knives, pistols, and a rifle. Rina, the Watch kennelmaster and one of Bo’s women, stood opposite of Mozes, crouched among her dogs. The beasts gave a quiet whine when Taniel approached. He squatted a few feet away and examined them in the torchlight.

  There were three big, long-haired mastiffs. They wore black spiked collars, and were attached to Rina by nothing more than leather harnesses. Bigger than wolves, they could pull her off the mountain easily if they wished.

  “What are the hounds for?” Taniel asked.

  Rina didn’t look up from her hounds. “The tunnel,” she said. Her voice was low, gentle. “I trained these three in the mines. They’ll cross forty yards and bring down a Privileged in a second. Musket fire doesn’t bother them.” She scratched one behind the ears. He turned toward her, massive head cocked, tongue rolling.

  “What are their names?”

  She pointed to the biggest one. “Kresim.” The next, “Lourad.” She patted the one who she’d been scratching. “And this is Gael.”

  Taniel held a hand out to Kresim. The dog sniffed once and turned away.

  “They’re not trained to be friends,” she said.

  “They like you enough.”

  She nodded. “I’m the master.”

  “I see.” Taniel stood up. Bo arrived with Katerine, who gave them all a look of disapproval. Bo squatted beside Rina and slid a hand up around her waist. Lourad growled low in the back of his throat.

  “Tst,” Rina hissed at the dog. Lourad lay down on the ground.

  Bo backed off a step. “Damned big hounds,” he said to Taniel. “Things make me nervous.”

  “You’re bedding their master,” Taniel said. “That’d make me nervous. I’m surprised you can stand after all the drink you’ve had.”

  Bo craned his head toward Katerine. “She has ways of sobering a man up.”

  “None pleasant, I’d imagine.”

  Bo cringed.

  Ka-poel emerged from the darkness of the town a few moments later dressed in her buckskins. Taniel had not seen them on her since Fatrasta. She normally preferred her long dark duster and wide-brimmed hat. The buckskins clung to her body, reminding Taniel she was a woman and not just a girl. Something he’d not noticed before. He noticed his hands were shaking from lack of powder, and took a sniff from his box. That steadied somewhat. He inhaled deeply and tried to resist taking more until it was needed.

  Ka-poel was followed by Fesnik, leading a pair of donkeys laden with powder barrels, and a few steps behind him was Gavril. They all gathered around the Watchmaster.

  “We’ve got enough powder to collapse their tunnel,” Gavril said. “We can trust you to set it off when we’re at a safe distance?”

  “That much powder,” Taniel said. “We’d have to be too far away.” Vlora could do it from that distance. She’d always been able to detonate powder from farther away than any mage Taniel knew-her unique talent.

  “We’ll use blasting cord, then,” Gavril said. “This will be quick. No one makes any noise until we’ve checked the tunnel-Rina, that includes your dogs. Who knows what kinds of traps they have waiting for us, or how many workers and soldiers they’ve got in there. Once that’s done we’ll set the powder, and then we hightail it out of there. We leave the donkeys if we have to.”

  “What’d they do to deserve that?” Fesnik said.

  Gavril rolled his eyes. “Everyone ready?”

  Nods went around, and they left silently by the front gate.

  The mountainside below was completely black all the way to Mopenhague, where the Kez army still camped. They proceeded into the darkness, going slow enough to let their eyes adjust. A sniff of black powder made Taniel’s brain buzz and brought his senses into sharp focus. The darkness held few secrets for him. For that he was glad-he still remembered the howling from the other night, and the sense he’d gotten of evil creatures prowling the mountainside.

  Taniel went on ahead, Ka-poel following twenty paces back. They moved silently down the mountainside, their eyes sharp for Kez guards. Taniel reached the ruins of the first redoubt. It had been taken and retaken, then left for nothing and finally smashed by artillery and sorcery. He expected guards, but when he climbed among the stone rubble it was empty.

  He checked each redoubt carefully. Were he the Kez, he would have left a small guard at each of them to raise an alarm of a counterattack-however unlikely. In the fourth redoubt he found a body, head removed by a cannonball and the corpse stinking in the tatters of a Kez uniform: a soldier missed by those who’d scoured the mountain for bodies the last week.

  There were still no guards.

  The digging started not far past the last redoubt. Taniel scouted the area for some indication of the enemy. There were no lights, no signs of people, nor when he put his ear to the ground could he hear the sharp clicks of shovels and picks beneath him. Taniel frowned. Something was off about this. He sent Ka-poel back to let the others know they could come forward. Nothing moved on the mountainside. Far below, the Kez camp glittered with campfires. Taniel heard the crunch of rock beneath well-worn boots as the others joined him.

  They were on the road just above the entrance when one of the donkeys brayed behind them. Taniel felt his heart leap into his throat. He dropped to a sitting position, the barrel of his rifle resting on his foot so he could sight down the mountain. He waited for a Kez head to come into sight, for shouts of warning and then the trumpet of a general alarm.

  A few minutes passed. He looked back at Bo and Gavril. Gavril’s face was unreadable; Bo looked annoyed.

  Bo signaled to Taniel, and then touched a finger to the middle of his forehead. Taniel nodded.

  Taniel opened his third eye. The brief dizziness passed and he turned his attention to his surroundings. The chalky, colored residue of sorcery covered the entire mountain like spatters of whitewash on the ground beneath a freshly painted fence. It was all old magic, though, and had begun to fade. He looked toward the tunnel.

  What he saw there was not old, and it had certainly not begun to fade. Twin streaks of color passed through the ground, under his feet, and up the mountain. Taniel closed his third eye and scrambled down the rocks to the tunnel, Ka-poel right behind him.

  “What…? Taniel!” Gavril whispered. Taniel ignored him. He climbed up above the tunnels, and dropped down to the ground at their entrance. Above him, Ka-poel clicked her tongue. He checked for enemies before gesturing to her. When she jumped down, he caught her and set her on her feet.

  Two gaping holes faced him on the mountainside. The darkness was too deep even for a Marked’s senses, but he suspected what he might see. A pair of tunnels, each about a foot taller than a man, bored out completely by sorcery as if by a gigantic drill. He sighted along the tunnels, up the mountainside, and guessed at their destination.

  Bo and Gavril joined them after a minute.

  “There’s no one here,” Gavril said, bewildered.

  “Thanks for pointing that out,” Bo snapped.

  “Shut up,” Taniel told Bo.

  “Where are all the sappers? Where’s the Privileged?” Gavril said.

  Taniel lifted a hand. “Up there.”

  “You mean they’re finished?”

  “Yes.”

  “And they come out…?”

  “Above the Mountainwatch,” Taniel said. “Up on the ridge. Last night I thought I saw something up there. I dismissed it as a trick of the moonlight. Now I don’t think I was seeing things.”

  Gavril stared up toward the ridgeline far above them. “The sorcery required to carve these…”

  “
Julene,” Bo said. “And probably half the Kez Cabal along with her.”

  “Then why didn’t they attack yet?” Gavril said. “The northeast pass is barely guarded. There’s not even a watch on that wall half the time. They could have hit us from up there with a thousand men and there’d have been little we could do about it.”

  “She doesn’t care about the Mountainwatch,” Bo said. “Never has. What she cares about is getting to the top of the mountain.”

  “It still doesn’t make sense,” Taniel said. “She could have destroyed Shouldercrown and then headed up the mountain. Unless…”

  “She’s in a hurry,” Bo finished. He stared up toward South Pike’s peak through the darkness for several moments. “I’ve heard stories floating around the cabal, as old as Kresimir, that the most powerful Privileged could use the auras of other planets, the moon, the stars, and the sun to amplify their sorcery. She needs the summer solstice.”

  Taniel felt sick to his stomach. He took a shaky breath. A quick hit of powder helped. “But,” he said, “even if she’s in a hurry, why didn’t she tell Field Marshal Tine about the tunnels? How could she hide them even from him?”

  “I think there’s more going on in the Kez camp than we know,” Bo said. “Julene is using the royal cabal, for certain. Perhaps not Tine, though.”

  Gavril scratched his chin. “How could she hide this? And if she didn’t tell him about it, why two tunnels?”

  “She hid it from us,” Taniel said. “And I think this is a backup plan. If she can’t summon Kresimir, she still wants to be able to take the Mountainwatch. I don’t think she banked on us just walking down here to find it.”

  They stared at the tunnels in silence for a few moments. “Can she really summon Kresimir?” Gavril asked.

  “She can try,” Bo said. “Whether she’ll be successful… that all depends on how many Privileged she has with her.”

  “I don’t like the idea of waiting to find out,” Taniel said. He turned to walk back up to the Mountainwatch.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’ll need some supplies if I’m going to chase her up the mountain.”