“Of course.” Nila took the records from the quartermaster and leafed through them. “Do you need to make copies?”
“They’re all in triplicate. That’s why the column for order signatures is blank. I’ll have another copy made up when someone has time. Anything you’re looking for in particular?”
Nila hesitated a moment. If she mentioned her goal, it might raise suspicion. But the idea of combing through all those reports was incredibly daunting. “Do you know if Captain Taniel Two-shot made any requisition orders?”
“He did.” The quartermaster scratched her head for a minute as if to run through her memory. “There are a few dozen, I think. I can’t tell you the exact days, but any requests made by a powder mage are marked with a ‘pm’ in the order column.”
“You’ve been most helpful. Thank you. Do you mind if I look through the copies here?”
The quartermaster shrugged her bony shoulders. “Fine by me. You’ll have to excuse me for a moment, though. I’ll just be takin’ a piss.”
Nila was left alone with the records. It took her a few minutes to get a feel for how the pages were organized. They were covered in small script and several columns. Names, dates, orders, and whether they were fulfilled. There were notes in half a dozen different handwritings—various quartermasters, she assumed. Once she found the first ‘pm’—a request by Taniel for more powder, which was denied—it wasn’t hard to spot more.
She had just found the fifth powder request when she heard the old quartermaster behind her.
“Right there,” the woman said. Nila glanced up out of politeness, only to see herself trapped in the small building by two big soldiers. The men wore dark-blue Adran uniforms with red trim and tall bearskin hats. Not regular soldiers. Grenadiers.
“Ma’am,” one of them said, “would you come with us, please.”
Nila’s heart was in her throat. “Is something the matter?”
“Please,” he said again. “Come with us.” He glanced behind him, as if nervous. “Try not to make a ruckus, ma’am.”
Nila didn’t see that she had much choice. She could yell and scream, with only a small chance of attracting Bo. But even then, what could Bo do? For the purpose of this mission they were not in a friendly camp. “Of course, just let me gather my things.” Nila scooped up the requisition orders, securing the whole thing with a string, and forced them into her attaché case before following the men out of the building.
“Stay with us, please,” one of the men said in a low voice before moving on ahead. The other, Nila noted, fell back some ten paces. It was almost as if they didn’t want to be seen with her.
She was led past General Hilanska’s headquarters and over a slight rise and into another part of the camp. She examined the various standards, trying to remember the brigades and regiments of the Adran army and failing completely. If not General Hilanska, who were they taking her to see? Or were they taking her straight to the stockade?
The man in front of her suddenly stopped beside a white-walled tent and turned as if taking up the guard. He gestured to the flap. “Go on in.”
The other soldier had disappeared. Nila stared at the tent for a moment, both curious and fearful about what she’d find inside. She clenched her jaw. She was a Privileged now. She was going to have to get used to danger—and taking risks. She ducked inside.
A man sat in the middle of the tent, scribbling furiously in a notebook on his lap. He didn’t look up when Nila entered, only pointed to the chair opposite him and continued to write. Nila looked around carefully. No sign of danger here, though that could all change in a moment in a camp full of soldiers. She took the offered seat.
By the size of the tent, Nila guessed that this man was an officer. He was a big man, well over six feet tall standing, with wide shoulders and thick arms. He had a face that looked like it had been punched one too many times, with a crooked nose and high cheekbones. His chair was wheeled, of the kind used by invalids.
She spotted the man’s army jacket hanging in one corner, with two hawks over the Adran Mountains emblazoned on the shoulder. It also held four bars over a chevron—Nila knew enough to recognize he was a colonel. Had she read something in the newspaper recently about a colonel being paralyzed in a heroic action?
He finally stopped writing and pushed himself up straight in his chair. “You’re the girl that came in with the lawyer this afternoon?” he asked.
“I am Counselor Mattias’s secretary.”
“How long have you been with the counselor?” The colonel watched her face intently.
“I’m not sure what you’re asking.”
“It’s a direct question,” the colonel said. “How long have you been with him? Are you in his confidence?”
Nila knew she had to make a decision. Throw everything in behind Bo—be there if he was exposed and killed—or pretend that she was nothing more than a hired secretary.
“Some time. I am in his confidence, sir.”
The colonel’s eyes narrowed. “Indeed? Then what’s the Privileged up to?”
Nila forced herself not to bolt for the tent flap. “I don’t know what—”
“Stop,” the man said. “I’ve known Taniel Two-shot since he was a boy. You think I wouldn’t recognize his best friend?”
“I’m sorry, sir,” Nila said. “I don’t know your name.”
“Colonel Etan.”
“Colonel Etan. If you think you know someone, shouldn’t you invite them to your tent directly?”
The shadow of a smile touched Etan’s face. “Is Borbador here looking for Taniel?”
Nila couldn’t avoid a direct question like that. This man claimed to know Taniel. This may be the best way to get information out of him. Or it could all be a trap. “Yes,” she said.
Etan gave a soft sigh, closing his eyes. “Thank Adom.”
“I’m sorry?”
Etan opened his eyes again. “I’ve spent the last several weeks trying to find out what happened to Taniel. Nobody has seen him since he was raised up like a trophy above the Kez camp. Hilanska has refused to ask any questions. He won’t even request Taniel’s body back from the Kez.”
Nila’s throat felt dry. “So Taniel is dead?”
“I don’t know,” Etan said. “He was alive when he was raised up on that beam. He was alive the last time anyone saw him up there, and then when Kresimir killed Adom, he—”
“Wait, what?” Nila couldn’t help herself. She leaned forward in her chair. “Kresimir killed Adom? What are you talking about?” Was this man mad?
Etan waved his hand. “It’s a very long story. One that hasn’t gotten back to Adopest, it seems. Pit, Hilanska is keeping a tight lid around here. To answer your earlier question, I deemed it unwise to bring Borbador here. I’m hoping that you are being watched less closely than the supposed ‘lawyer’ is.”
“You want me to pass him a message?”
“Yes. Don’t trust Hilanska.”
“I don’t think Bo trusts anyone.”
Etan scowled at his legs. He didn’t seem to hear her. “Hilanska is a superior officer and I do him a disservice, but he’s been acting very strangely lately. As I said before, he won’t look into Taniel’s whereabouts. He adamantly refuses to believe that Tamas might still be alive. What’s more, he’s been putting all of Tamas’s most loyal men into their own companies and promoting his own longest-serving soldiers. And he’s been raving about a Kez pincer movement that could come over the southern mountains—he sent two whole companies into the valleys in the southwest, where they won’t be able to do a damned thing when the Kez do attack.”
Nila couldn’t pretend to understand the inner politics of the army, but she imagined it not unlike anywhere else that people were constantly jockeying for rank or status—even like the noble household where she had been employed before the coup. She did know that Bo wouldn’t care one whit for the army politics. But Etan was clearly distraught, and she didn’t think it would help to tell him that.
“Are you able to help us find Taniel?” she asked gently.
Etan glanced at the attaché case in her hands. “I’ve gone through all of Taniel’s requisition forms. I was there when he made some of them. I don’t think they’ll help you, but I suppose another set of eyes wouldn’t hurt. I’ve done everything within my power to discover his fate—I’ve been watching for anyone who might come asking, as well. Bo might have to go to the Kez to get any more information.”
“That would be suicide,” Nila said. Not that it would stop Bo.
“It might. I’m sorry that I could not be more help. I’m leaving for Adopest in the morning. If there’s anything I can do to aid your search, contact me through one of the grenadiers of the Twelfth.”
“Thank you,” Nila said.
She left the colonel and headed back across the camp toward where they had left their carriage. What else could she do now but wait for Bo and tell him about Etan? Etan’s advice had been unhelpful, but she hoped it would make Bo more optimistic to know they had a friend in the camp and that Taniel had last been seen alive.
Their carriage had been moved off the road and down into a gully and the horses unharnessed. She sat in the carriage to read through the reports, going through every page one by one, carefully examining each line to be sure she didn’t miss any of Taniel’s requisitions. The column that interested her the most was the one where the quartermasters entered their own notes about the requisition. Up to a certain point in time, each of Taniel’s requests for black powder had been denied “by order of the General Staff.”
Until about a month previous. He was given powder, and the note column said, “Special permission, General Hilanska.” Nila set that page aside to show to Bo.
It grew dark, and Nila finally had to set aside her work. It seemed strange to her that neither Bo nor Adamat had returned yet. In fact, she hadn’t seen Sergeant Oldrich or his men either. She leaned her head against the wall of the carriage, wondering if she should go look for them or just rest here until they returned.
Nila thought she heard a soft click from the opposite door of the carriage. She turned, but the carriage door was still closed.
“Hello?” she asked. When there was no response, she put her hand to her door latch and it occurred to her that in a camp of many tens of thousands, there didn’t seem to be anyone close to her carriage.
The opposite door suddenly swung open. Nila glimpsed a dark coat, a covered face, and the dull glint of steel in the moonlight. The carriage rocked as someone dove inside. A hand darted toward her.
Nila threw herself across the carriage, felt a knife catch in her skirts. She twisted away and heard a low curse in a man’s voice as her attacker tried to drag his blade from the cloth. She rolled onto the flat of the blade and kicked out at the man’s shoulder.
He pulled back with a grunt, the knife no longer in his hand, only to leap bodily upon her.
She caught him under the shoulders. He batted at her arms, pushing them down, one hand snaking around her neck. She felt his fingers close about her throat and remembered Lord Vetas’s hot breath upon her shoulder when he had done the same.
The man hissed suddenly, jumping away from her, his jacket on fire. Nila felt the pressure leave her throat, saw the flame dancing on her fingertips, and she leapt on top of the man, fueled by the coals of her rage. He tried to grapple with her, his attention taken by his burning coat, but Nila forced herself inside his guard.
Her hand still aflame, she grasped the man’s face and pushed.
Skin and bone seemed to give way beneath her fingers. The man’s scream died in his throat and his body stopped moving. The cushion and the man’s clothes were still on fire and she beat at the flames with her skirt until they were gone.
The body, most of its head melted into a sickening black goop on the carriage bench, lay still beneath her. Nila slowly backed away. Her head hit the roof of the carriage and she ducked down, unable to pull her eyes away from the corpse lying in the smoldering remains of its own clothing.
She looked down at her hand. It was covered in cooked bits of bone and flesh.
“Nila, are you—”
Bo jerked open the door she had been resting against just a few moments before and stared down at the body. His face was unreadable in the darkness.
“Come here,” he said gently, taking her by the wrist and pulling her outside. She only noticed the acrid smell of smoke and burned flesh, hair, and wool as Bo led her away. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and gently cleaned her hand, emptying some of his canteen onto her fingers. He went back to the carriage and fetched her attaché case.
“I…” She seemed barely able to take a breath. Her heart thundered and her hands shook.
She’d just killed a man by burning through his entire head. With her hand.
“We’ll leave the luggage. I’d set fire to the carriage, but it would just attract attention all the sooner. They’ve arrested Oldrich and his men. We have to go find Adamat.”
Nila looked at her hand, clean now of the charred gore. The phantom stickiness of the blood clung between her fingers. She forced herself to look up into Bo’s eyes. She had to be strong. “And if he’s captured as well?”
“We’ll save him if we can. If not, he’s on his own.”
“And all of Oldrich’s soldiers?”
Bo looked about them furtively. “Not even I can get fifteen men out of an army encampment. They’ll have to face the firing squad for us. Now, let’s go.” He pulled at her arm.
“No,” Nila said.
“What do you mean, ‘no’?”
“You—we—brought them into this. We’ll get them out.”
“Damn it, Nila,” Bo hissed. “We’d have to have help, and we simply don’t have it.”
Nila tilted her head to one side. “Yes we do,” she said.
CHAPTER
5
Adamat was only able to spend about three hours asking questions before the provosts came for him.
He was in the middle of speaking with a young sergeant about her cousin in the Third Brigade under General Ket’s command when he felt a hand at his elbow. He turned, expecting to find Nila or Bo there with some kind of news, but instead looked over and up—and up some more—at the military police officer standing beside him. The man had a barrel chest, and when he spoke, his voice sounded like an echo.
“Inspector Adamat?”
“Yes.”
“You’re to come with me.”
Adamat grasped the head of his cane tightly and raised his eyebrows. “I’m sorry, I’m just in the middle of an interview. You’ll have to wait.” He turned back to the sergeant, hoping that was enough to put off the provost.
“Now,” the man’s voice rang out.
The sergeant leaned over to Adamat. “Inspector, you better go with him.”
Adamat let out a small sigh, gathered his hat in his hands, and faced the provost. “What’s this about?”
“You’re to come with me.”
“Yes, I gathered that much. I’m an Adran citizen and I have the right to ask why I’m being gathered by an officer of the peace.”
The provost tilted his head to one side. “This is a military jurisdiction and you have no such rights as would be afforded to you by an Adran provost. Now, will you come along or shall I drag you?”
Not as daft as he looked, unfortunately. Adamat gave him a firm nod. “I’ll come along, but under protest.”
“Protest all you like. This way.”
Adamat made sure to grumble loudly in an inconvenienced sort of way as they headed through the camp. Inside, though, his heart was hammering. He had expected the provosts to come after him sooner or later. After all, if Hilanska was indeed keeping secrets, he wouldn’t want someone snooping around. Adamat hadn’t expected them to be so quick about it.
Had Hilanska questioned Oldrich? Or perhaps one of his soldiers had recognized Bo? There were too many things that could go wrong, it was impos
sible to plan for them all. Perhaps the girl had lost her nerve and run to Hilanska herself.
Adamat dismissed the last option. That laundress, whoever she was, had steel in her eyes.
The camp stockade was nothing more than a trio of prison wagons near where the brigade’s cavalry hitched their horses for the night. Adamat was led over to the closest and one of the guards unlocked the door.
The big provost took Adamat by the shoulder and pushed him toward the wagon. Adamat gritted his teeth, wanting to reprimand the man, but knew this was no time to be making enemies. All three wagons were already full—of Oldrich and his men.
Adamat’s cane was taken away and he stepped inside.
Oldrich regarded him sourly. “I see the Privileged’s plan is off to a wonderful start,” he said when the guards had gone on to do their rounds.
“When did they come for you?” Adamat asked.
“Not more than half an hour ago.”
“Did they say why?”
Oldrich shook his head. “They got us while we were split up. Some of the boys were at the mess, two others at the latrine. It was all done very quiet, and they were sure to outnumber us by three to one.” He leaned over to the bars of the prison wagon and spit. “It’s bad when they come quietly. The provosts love to flaunt their power.”
“They’re acting like we’re enemies of the state,” one of the other soldiers said. There was a round of nods, and he added, “We wouldn’t get treated like this by the field marshal.”
Oldrich looked over his shoulder. “The field marshal isn’t here,” he said. “You boys just remember—you were following orders. If anyone’s going to take the fall it’ll be me.” He examined Adamat, as if wondering if it was worth getting court-martialed or worse on his behalf.
By the sullen silence among the men, Adamat guessed that they’d had this conversation already.
“When are they going to question us?” Adamat asked. He had little experience with provosts, but he could only imagine the worst: Hilanska wanted to cover something up. He’d torture them all to find out what they knew, and then have them executed quietly.