In the Field Marshal's Shadow: Stories from the Powder Mage Universe

by Brian McClellan

  They chatted with Deliv dignitaries and made small talk with some of Petara’s merchant friends. Tamas even talked business with a pair of his generals and Petara listened in, fascinated. Someone else might find this kind of thing boring but not her. She was born for strategy and logistics. In a few years this could be her life and the mere thought made her dizzy. She and Tamas, arm and arm, could conquer the world.

  A few hours passed before the servant returned. He carried a wooden crate just big enough for a pair of boots. Petara could feel the sparkling wine do its work, her footing not entirely secure, and Tamas’s own cheeks were flushed from the heat of the ballroom. The servant led them upstairs, far down one of the many side corridors, and into a cool room where he lit the candles and the fire before leaving them alone with the crate.

  Petara eyed it, a thrill of excitement going through her. She only cared a little for the snake itself. Sure, it was a curiosity. Someone with a little less brains might even find it as enthralling as she acted but, after all, it was just a snake.

  She chided herself for the pretense. Tamas was obviously interested in her. Maybe she could have just asked him to go upstairs. Only her training as a proper noblewoman, something ingrained from a young age, made her go through the motions.

  But the pretense was over now. They were alone. Tamas stepped over to the crate and Petara intercepted him, pushing up against him, intertwining her fingers in his. She looked up, lips full, mouth slightly open. “Field marshal,” she said, “I hope I’m not being too forward.”

  “No,” Tamas said. “I think not.”

  Petara felt an involuntary purr in the back of her throat as he pulled her close to him. Their first kiss was long, deep, and lingering. She’d been with dozens, maybe even hundreds of men. Each had their own strength, their own attraction. She’d even been with a few Privileged in her time, but never a powder mage. She could already tell this was going to be an experience to remember.

  Tamas pulled away. She followed him, mouth open, but he took her hand in his and held it up to the light.

  “These fingers,” he said. He lowered his lips to them, kissing her fingertips one by one.

  “What about them?” she asked.

  “They’ve done so much.”

  Petara frowned. “Oh?”

  “Really, I’m quite impressed.” He continued to kiss her fingers, but Petara felt a dip in her eagerness.

  “Are you now?” she asked.

  “Oh, very.”

  She felt a sudden prick against her palm and pulled away from Tamas. “What was that?”

  Tamas showed her his hand. He held a tiny, hollow bone needle between two of his fingers, and she stepped away from him to examine her palm in the light of the candle. The scratch had drawn the smallest bit of blood. Her heart was no longer racing with excitement, and she was overwhelmed by her own annoyance.

  “Why did you do that?” she demanded.

  Tamas produced a clay vial from one pocket and sunk the needle into the wax inside. His steel visage was gone. His face was soft, kindly. Maybe a little bit tired.

  “It’ll only take a moment,” he said. “There. You should be feeling it now.”

  Petara tried to back away but found her feet frozen, her hands stiff. No part of her body would obey her, not even her eyelids.

  “Absolute paralysis,” Tamas said. He removed a pocket watch from his jacket and set it on the table next to the crate. “You should be dead in about two minutes.”

  Petara tried to move, to call for help. To beg. Nothing came out. She couldn’t even breathe. She felt the sweat beading on her brow. She wanted to tell him that the royal guard were patrolling this hallway. That whatever he dared could come to only ruin. He couldn’t possibly get away with this.

  Tamas took a powder charge out of his pocket and unwrapped it slowly, like a thoughtful child unwrapping a candy. He sprinkled the black powder on his tongue then put the wrapper back in his pocket.

  Petara remained frozen in place, her limbs locked. She couldn’t even collapse to the floor. All she could do was watch.

  Tamas drew his dagger and flipped the latch on the crate. He removed a smaller box from within then flipped the latch on that one as well, letting the top spring open.

  He struck faster than the eye could see, the tip of his dagger plunging into the box and staying there for several seconds. Petara was transfixed. She tried desperately to remember how much time had passed, but her mind had grown foggy. How long had he said? A minute? Two? This must all be a joke. Surely he wouldn’t kill her, not where everyone could see his crime.

  “She called you her friend,” Tamas said.

  She? Petara wondered. Who?

  Tamas’s hand dipped into the box and came out with the limp body of a small snake, no longer than his forearm and as thick around as a man’s thumb. It was a pretty creature with a repeating pattern of scales across its back that looked like so many green eyes. The tip of Tamas’s dagger had pierced its brain, killing it.

  He stepped over and lifted her hand up where she could see it. “Erika spoke of you often,” he said, lifting the snake and pressing on either side of its jaw with his thumb and forefinger. The tiny mouth opened to reveal two fangs. Tamas pressed them against the palm of her hand where he had cut her. She felt the twin needles bite into her flesh. “She said you were one of the smartest women she knew—clever, forward thinking, with an iron resolve. She trusted you, and said you could help us forge a new world. She went to a Kez guillotine with no knowledge of your betrayal.”

  Tamas examined his handiwork. From Petara’s viewpoint there was no longer a scratch on her palm. Just two tiny pinpricks. The horror of it dawned on her even as her mind grew more frantic and confused. The venom on the needle was from this very snake. Tamas would tell everyone that she had opened the box overeager, and against his wishes tried to grasp the creature. It had bitten her, and there was nothing he could do about it.

  “I would ask you why you did it, but now...” Tamas shrugged, waving the tiny fangs of the snake under her eyes.

  Because I wanted you for myself. Because she didn’t deserve you.

  Tamas leaned forward. The tired kindliness was gone from his eyes. They were harsh, angry. He put his lips next to her ear. “I bet you’re wondering how I knew. Well. I know a lot of things. The ‘hunting accident’ that killed your husband? Lord Lindberg’s financial ruin and apparent suicide? Lady Soliat foreswearing her title and joining a Kresim convent?” Tamas snorted. “I don’t care about your murders or machinations. I’ve killed and ruined enough nobles myself to make even you blush. What I care about is that Erika called you her friend, and you sent a courier to Duke Nikslaus to let him know where she would be so he could arrest her. That’s all that matters.”

  Tamas dropped the limp snake and crushed it under his boot. Petara felt his fingers on her chest, and she was pushed gently backward, her body finally collapsing onto the bed behind her. Her vision became cloudy, her eyeballs burning from not being able to blink. There was a pain deep in her chest.

  Tamas appeared above her. “It would be so much more fitting to kill you with all the others. But that’s still years away, and I wanted this to be personal. Goodbye, Lady Petara.”

  Petara tried to croak out something—anything—but her body still disobeyed her. How had this night gone so wrong? What was her misstep? How had he known about her involvement?

  It had been a trap, and she’d walked straight into it. Pit, she’d led him by the hand up to the room where he would kill her.

  She was still fighting with the indignity of it all when darkness finally claimed her.

  Tamas stared coldly down at the corpse for several seconds before remembering the bitterness of the kiss. He made a face and spit into the fireplace, wiping his lips of Petara’s taste and hoped that Erika would forgive him for that.

  He thought she might.

  He checked the clay vial before returning it to his pocket. How would it look if he ac
cidentally pricked himself with that venom? He shook his head, chuckling mirthlessly, letting his gaze fall back on the body. Petara really had been a striking, intelligent woman. She would have made a formidable ally. He might even had married her if he’d never come across her involvement in Erika’s death.

  But Tamas did not forget. He did not forgive.

  Tamas glanced at Petara’s corpse one last time before opening the door.

  “Help!” he called. “Help! There’s been a terrible accident!”

  The Face in the Window

  Two years before the events of Promise of Blood...

  Taniel stepped down the gangplank of the merchant galleon into his exile.

  He pulled at the collar of his cut-across coat and unbuttoned the front, letting it hang loose as he hurried to the end of the dock. He had not expected the Fatrastan spring to be so hot and humid and was eager to find a cool pub where he could hide from the sun and wait.

  More than a month by ship from Adro, then another two weeks touring the Fatrastan coastline, and Taniel didn’t care if he never saw a ship again. The quarters had been too cramped, and the only thing to keep him occupied had been drawing in his sketchbook and shooting seagulls. The view of the coastline had been nice enough, but Taniel was a soldier and a powder mage, not some foppish noble’s son. The landscape meant little to him beyond defensible positions.

  This was the frontier—a wild place with immense trees that had never seen a woodsman’s ax, red-headed natives that would kill you at a wrong glance, and immense open spaces where you might not see another soul for weeks.

  It might have been exciting, if Taniel wasn’t so angry with his father for sending him here in the first place. A ‘tour,’ Taniel’s father had called it. Time for him to see a little bit of the world between terms at the university.

  Taniel saw it more like an exile. It would be half a year until he saw his fiancé and his homeland again. Half a year before he was back with his friends, skipping out on university classes to float bullets with Sabon, or spending nights with Vlora. It was going to be a long six months.

  New Adopest, the city beyond the dock, bustled with excitement that Taniel couldn’t quite place. People spoke in hushed whispers, and boys and men were running back and forth. Everyone seemed to have a rifle or musket. Strange to see so many weapons in a city. Even one on the edge of the wilderness.

  He’d seen the whole of New Adopest from the water, and it wasn’t immense. Perhaps fifty thousand souls. The docks took up more space than the city did. All around him ships were unloading immigrants or taking on raw goods to ship back to the Nine. The city had been founded by Adran colonists over a hundred years ago, but then the Fatrastan territories had been sold to the Kez less than six months ago. Taniel couldn’t imagine that made the colonists very happy.

  He caught sight of a bronze statue of King Ipille of Kez, standing thirty feet high to look out over the harbor. As he watched, a young man climbed the base of the statue and dropped his pants to piss all over Ipille’s feet. Taniel chuckled at that, and waited for the Kez gendarmes to appear out of the crowd and chase the man off.

  None did.

  Perhaps it was a festival day. That would keep the gendarmes occupied, and would certainly explain all of the excitement around the city. His father had talked about colonial towns having a certain vibrancy that the big cities of the Nine lacked. Maybe that was it.

  “Taniel! Taniel!”

  Taniel glanced around for a moment, confused, before remembering his chaperone. The idea of some stranger looking over his shoulder suddenly seemed distasteful, and he wondered if he could lose her in the city.

  He pulled his bicorn hat over his face and headed at a brisk walk toward the closest pub. He had almost reached the building and its dark doorway with the promise of cool ale and anonymity, when he felt someone tug on his jacket.

  “Taniel? Oh, yes, it is you. I can see your mother’s face in you, my dear.”

  Taniel sniffed and tried to stifle his annoyance. “Dine?” he asked the old woman at his elbow.

  She gave a half-bow, half-curtsy. “Dina, my dear,” she said, putting emphasis on the ‘a.’ “You’re Tamas and Erika’s boy.” It wasn’t a question, and Taniel wondered if he really did look that much like his mother. That’s what his father had always said, but his memories of her were sketchy at best.

  Taniel tipped his hat. “Ma’am, a pleasure to meet you.”

  Dina looked to be about fifty and wore a man’s jacket and a loose-fitting skirt that went down to her ankles. Her Adran was slightly accented and Taniel had to remind himself—regretfully—that his mother was, or had been, half-Kez, and as his mother’s cousin, Dina probably came from that side. Dina’s boots looked like they had plenty of wear to them, and she wore a Rope of Kresimir pinned to one breast.

  A priestess. Delightful.

  “A pleasure indeed,” Dina said. She paused, a hand on his shoulder, and looked him up and down. “I haven’t seen you since you were a boy. You probably don’t remember me at all.”

  He didn’t.

  “Look at you,” she continued. “A man, now.” Her eyes fell on the flintlock rifle slung over his shoulder, and when she next spoke it was in a loud whisper. “Tell me, do you take black powder like your parents?”

  “I’m a powder mage, yes.” And proud of it, too. Taniel could shoot the hat off a farmer at over a mile with a musket. Farther, with a proper rifle and little wind. A snort of gunpowder let him see in the dark and made him faster and stronger than ordinary soldiers.

  Dina seemed a little put off by this. “Ah,” she said, before forcing a smile back onto her face. “Well, we won’t let that stand in the way of good company. Let’s take you home for the night and get you a good meal. Regretfully, I’m going to have to put you back on a ship tomorrow morning.”

  “What?”

  “You’re going back to Adro tomorrow.”

  Taniel felt his sour mood shift and had to struggle to keep the grin off his face. Home? He could leave this gods-forsaken land behind and...

  Dina kept talking. “War has broken out.” She lowered her voice and leaned close. “The colony has rebelled against the Kez crown and declared that they’re a free country. It’s the damned busybody merchants and the commoners who are going along with it.” Louder, she said, “You can stay with me and my husband tonight, but I...”

  “War?” Taniel cut her off. “With Kez?”

  “Well, yes.”

  He felt his eye twitch, and he forgot every thought of home.

  “Where do I sign up?”

  Taniel had to shoot the buttons off a scarecrow at eight hundred yards to convince a colonial major that he was, indeed, a trained powder mage. It irked him that the man’s ears perked up at the name of Taniel’s father, but Taniel buried his pride, and three weeks later he was a captain in the Fatrastan militia, assigned to a company heading out toward the wetlands.

  He wondered whether his father would be perturbed that Taniel had gotten involved in someone else’s conflict, or proud that he’d taken the initiative.

  Taniel hoped it was the former.

  He stepped along in marching ranks beside the almost two hundred members of his new company. With his rifle shouldered and his knapsack tied to his belt, he was the only one keeping any kind of a marching rhythm. The rest of them trudged or shuffled at their own paces, the column stretching out almost half a mile down the winding road.

  He took a glance behind him. The tall trees—oak, maple, and ash—were well into their early summer greenery, keeping visibility low.

  Word had it that the Kez army was patrolling these roads. If fifty cavalry rounded the bend in the road behind them, the whole company would be run down before they could scatter.

  Sloppy soldiering.

  But then, these men weren’t soldiers. They were farmers and vagrants fighting for money or land, so that the so-called Fatrastan Coalition could win their independence from Kez.

  �
�You smell that?” Dina asked.

  Taniel cast her a sidelong glance. Despite the sweat on her brow, Dina walked along at an easy gait as if she were on an afternoon stroll. The old priestess didn’t seem like much, but she’d needed less rest on this march than any of the militiamen.

  Taniel had been impressed, and more than a little annoyed, that she had come along when he enlisted in the Fatrastan militia. She had insisted that the men needed spiritual guidance, and Major Bertreau agreed.

  She had promised to be his chaperone, she said. Wouldn’t want to let his father down, she said.

  Kresimir forbid, anyone let his father down.

  “What in Kresimir’s holy name is that smell?” a militiaman asked. A few others grumbled the same question, and Taniel lifted his nose to the wind. Nothing but road dust and unwashed frontiersmen. What could it be...

  There. The scent hit him like a runaway cart full of cow shit. It was a heavy, earthy smell, like damp leaves and manure that had been sitting all winter and then suddenly disturbed.

  “That’s the swamp,” Dina said, chewing on a bit of reed she’d plucked from the roadside. “The Tristan Basin, they call it. Over six thousand square miles of forested wetlands. The smell gets worse as you go.” She glanced at him, as if that might change his mind about going into the interior.

  “How much do you know about the swamp?” Taniel asked.

  “My husband and I did some preaching here when we were younger. You see, back then....”

  “I see. I’d better check in with the major.” Taniel jogged up the column before Dina could launch into one of her long-winded stories.

  Major Bertreau sat on her charger where the road emerged from the trees and crested the hill they’d been climbing. Her face was passive, but shifting eyes betrayed her nervousness and she gently ran her fingers along the thick scarred bruise on her neck. The scar that none of the men dared talk about.