The Deliv army had made their camp in a small town halfway between Adopest and Budwiel. Only about fifteen thousand Deliv soldiers remained, the rest having already begun their march to be home before the winter took a turn for the worse.
The camp was semipermanent, meant to last through the winter, as most of the occupants were the wounded and dying, and the surgeons, nurses, and support staff from both the Adran and Deliv armies, as well as several thousand Kez prisoners. The place reeked of blood, disease, and death, and the burial grounds on the plains outside the town seemed to grow by the acre every day.
Taniel loathed it, and from the moment he and Ka-poel had ridden into the camp he had wanted to be gone.
But he had a promise to keep.
He strolled through the camp, rifle over his shoulder, tricorne hat pulled low over his face and the collar of his greatcoat flipped up. Just another Adran soldier on leave, looking among the wounded for friends or relations. No one stopped or questioned him.
Ka-poel clung to his arm, hidden in her own greatcoat. While he felt exhausted, his body spent from so long at war, she looked more vibrant than ever. Days of sleep had done her well, with her skin flushed and her eyes bright. The death around them didn’t seem to bother her, but Taniel knew that, like him, she longed to be gone.
Taniel spotted a familiar figure waiting beside a carriage near one of the hospital tents at the center of camp and stopped to watch his oldest friend for a few moments.
“Did I ever thank Bo for saving my life up in the mountains?” Taniel asked.
Ka-poel nodded, then pointed at herself and shook her head.
“I did too thank you for saving my life! Did you ever thank me for saving yours?”
She cocked one eyebrow, and Taniel’s face flushed. “All right, so thanks all around,” he said.
She gave a perfunctory nod.
Taniel took a step toward Bo, then hesitated when he saw that Nila was with him. Taniel scowled.
Ka-poel tugged on his arm.
“I asked Bo to come alone.”
Ka-poel seemed to reassess the situation, watching Nila for a few moments, then tugging on his arm again. She mouthed the words, She’s fine.
They approached Bo and his apprentice, and Taniel tipped up his hat. Bo just smiled and stepped forward to embrace first Ka-poel, then Taniel.
“Tan. Little Sister. You look well rested.”
“Being dead will do that,” Taniel answered.
Nila scowled viciously at Bo. “Why the pit didn’t you tell me he was still alive?”
“Does it matter?” Bo asked.
“I’ve spent the last week thinking you were a heartless ass because you didn’t seem to think twice over the fact your best friend had been killed by a god.”
“That was kind of suspicious, wasn’t it?” Bo said. “I’ll have to go into mourning when things quiet down.”
Nila rolled her eyes. “Pit, you’re insufferable. Taniel, why haven’t you come forward? Everyone thinks you’re dead.”
“That’s kind of the idea,” Taniel said.
“But why?”
“Because,” Bo answered for him, “Taniel would have lived beneath Tamas’s shadow the rest of his life. I don’t think either of us has any real concept of what that entails. They would not have let him be Taniel. They would have expected him to be Tamas all over again. Leading Adro. Being her beating heart every moment.”
Taniel kept his silence. There were so many reasons to remain dead. He wondered if he was a coward, taking the easy way out and leaving everyone else to clean up the mess.
“That doesn’t explain why you kept it from me,” Nila said. “You think I can’t keep secrets? Pit, there’s no one for me to tell! You’re my only confidant.”
Taniel waved a hand between the two of them. “I asked him not to tell anyone,” he said. “Bo is a man of his word, but I’ll let the two of you work that out later. Every moment I linger is a greater chance I’m recognized. Did you find her?”
“I did,” Bo said. “Just inside.”
“Good.” Taniel pulled the pistol from his belt and double-checked to see if it was loaded while Bo tugged on his gloves.
“You sure you need me?” Bo asked.
“I’d feel better about this with you. Don’t have to come inside, just… be here in case.”
“She might have already sensed I’m here,” Bo said. “She and I don’t have the best of relationships. Remember, I threw her off the mountain last time we saw each other.”
“I’m the one who threw her off the mountain,” Taniel said. He could already feel his heart begin to pound and wondered if this was a mistake.
“She won’t remember it that way.”
“Who are you talking about?” Nila asked. “What are we doing here?”
“Confronting a demigod,” Bo said.
Nila blanched. “Excuse me?”
Taniel lifted the tent flap to the hospital. “Ladies first,” he said to Ka-poel. To Nila: “Don’t worry. She doesn’t have any hands. The two of you can wait out here.”
The tent held three times as many beds as it did occupants, and Taniel wondered whether that was a good or a bad sign. Regardless, the lack of nurses fit their purposes, while none of the wounded seemed coherent. Well, almost none of the wounded.
Julene sat on a cot on the far side, the corner flap of the tent cracked so that she could see outside. She didn’t turn as he and Ka-poel approached.
“I see they cut you down,” Taniel said.
“No thanks to you.” Julene’s voice seemed to have recovered from months staked out in the sun without water. Taniel circled her cot, craning his head to look at her arms. They ended in bandaged stumps. A part of him had wondered if they would grow back after long enough. After all, her sorcery made her stronger than just about anything short of a god.
“You asked me to kill you. Not to cut you down,” Taniel said. Nor would he have promised to do the latter. She’d killed friends. She’d tried to kill him. She’d summoned Kresimir into this world, causing so much death and destruction.
Julene shifted on her cot, lifting her right stub and jabbing it toward him. “And you’ve come to fulfill your promise?”
Taniel drew his pistol in answer.
“I see.” Julene stared down at where her hands had once been, then glanced at Ka-poel. “You’re just something else, aren’t you? I can’t believe I didn’t see it. Have you loaded that thing with one of her bullets? The ones you used to kill Privileged up on South Pike?”
“I have,” Taniel said. He licked his lips. He wanted to lift the pistol and pull the trigger, but something was holding him back. Perhaps it was regret. Caution. Unwillingness to further the bloodshed. He was not certain. “Did they know what you are when they cut you down?” he asked.
Julene shrugged. “The Deliv cabal has been glancing in on me, but I just told them I was a mercenary who’d offended Kresimir, and he kept me alive with his sorcery.”
“And they believed you?”
“Why wouldn’t they? It’s mostly truth. Besides, even if they knew I was a Predeii, they’d know I’m not a threat without hands.”
“You have a lot of knowledge, though.”
“That’s why I’m not telling them,” Julene said, the scar on her face tugged by her shallow smile. “Best get on with it, shouldn’t we?”
Taniel glanced at Ka-poel. Her face was placid. He lifted his pistol.
“I don’t suppose you’d consider going back on your promise, would you?” Julene asked mildly.
Surprised, Taniel lowered his pistol. “You think I would? After all the grief you’ve caused?”
“It was worth asking.” Julene shrugged, as if she didn’t much care one way or another.
“You want to live like this?”
Julene turned her arms over. “I might be able to get it back. The Else, that is. I can still see it, I just don’t have fingers to touch it. And even if I didn’t, maybe I deserve this. Maybe I
deserve spending the next thousand years on the Deliv cabal’s torture racks, giving them every ounce of my knowledge.”
Taniel examined the side of her face for several silent moments. He wondered if Julene was truly sorry for what she’d done, or if this was all an act. She regretted summoning Kresimir, that’s for certain. But the murder? The chaos? Did she regret all that?
Taniel stuffed his pistol back in his belt.
Julene’s eyes flicked from him to Ka-poel, then back, widening slightly. “Don’t toy with me, Two-shot. Finish it or don’t, but for those months I spent hanging from Kresimir’s beam, for these hands of mine, you owe it to me not to toy.”
“I don’t owe you anything,” Taniel said. “But I’m no executioner. I’m only here because I promised to kill you when you wanted an end. Now that you don’t want an end… I’m tired of the blood. Tired of the fighting. Another gunshot won’t solve anything. But you have to promise me one thing.”
“What?”
“Let it all go. Any grudges you hold for Borbador or anyone else in Adro, they’re finished. Over. You’ve no business here.”
“Agreed,” Julene said, almost too quickly. They watched each other for some time before she raised her chin to Taniel. “I’ll remember it, Two-shot.”
He and Ka-poel left Julene in the tent and joined Bo and Nila outside.
“I didn’t hear a gunshot,” Bo said.
“I didn’t kill her.”
“Is leaving her alive a good idea?” Bo asked, looking slightly nervous. He had begun to peel off his gloves but now had stopped.
“I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t think she’ll bother you any more, though.”
“You better believe I’m going to have her watched, regardless.”
“Don’t blame you,” Taniel said.
“Is that it, then?” Bo asked. “Are you leaving?”
Taniel exchanged a glance with Ka-poel. It was almost time for that, yes. But not quite. “I’ve got one last thing to do,” he said.
EPILOGUE
Vlora stood outside of her carriage, looking up at the three-story town house situated on a quiet street on Adopest’s east side.
It was late in the afternoon, almost four o’clock, and Vlora cocked her head to listen for the church bell that had been rung every hour for the many years that she’d lived in this home. It was several moments before she remembered that every church in Adopest had been destroyed, and the thought of never hearing that bell again brought her sadness.
“Would you like me to come in?” Olem asked from the carriage.
“Give me a few minutes,” she said, closing the carriage door. She walked past the overgrown garden and up the front steps, slipping a brass key from her pocket.
Long practice made her stop in the foyer and listen for voices to call her name, but nothing answered her presence in the old home but the familiar creak of the floorboards beneath her feet. Dust filled her nostrils, and she wondered if anyone had been here since before the night of the coup so many months ago. Her inquiries had told her the servants were dismissed last winter.
She was a general now, but felt no sense of accomplishment from it. The newly minted House of Ministers had showered her with praise and given her the promotion with Tamas only a week in his grave. Now, six weeks later, it didn’t seem any less strange. The youngest general in Adran history, even younger than Tamas himself when he first achieved the rank. She wondered if everyone else saw it as the political stunt that it was.
Use them before they use you, she heard Tamas’s voice say in the back of her head. Show them you earned it.
She went up the stairs and sought the first room on the right—her room for six years of her life, after Tamas had saved her from the street. She remembered a time from before the coup. Before Taniel was sent to Fatrasta and before that blasted nobleman.
Laughter echoed in her memory and she tilted her head, wondering if she had heard it for real. No. Of course not.
The bed seemed so much smaller than she remembered. How had she and Taniel fit in there on those nights when Tamas was gone? Had Borbador still been in the house? Or had that been after he was taken away by the cabal magus-seekers?
The memories seemed distant now, and she left the room and continued down the hall, pausing beside the door to Tamas’s office.
His desk was coated in dust, a map of Adopest still held down at the corners by Tamas’s favorite teacup and a handful of musket balls. Vlora crossed to the desk and rolled up the map carefully before returning it to its place on Tamas’s bookshelf. She unbuttoned the gold epaulets on the shoulders of her uniform and set them on the desk where the map had been.
She felt tired. Dizzy. Weeks straight of shaking hands. Of parades and memorials. Tamas’s funeral as well, which had been attended by two kings, a queen, and what the newspapers had said were eight million mourners. It had even been presided over by the newly pardoned Arch-Diocel Charlemund.
She opened the window of Tamas’s study and watched the dust swirl in the sunlight. Slowly, she went through the various knickknacks Tamas had collected in Gurla. She ran a finger down the spines of his leather-bound books on warfare, religion, and economics. She remembered the contents of this study like she remembered the palm of her own hand, and tried to recall the first time she had ever been in this room.
The memory seemed distant. Perhaps even manufactured in the back of her mind, pieced together from the scraps of a hundred other memories. It was a faded thing, like cloth left in the sunlight for too many years.
There was a creak on the floorboards and Vlora opened her eyes, not remembering that she’d closed them. Her cheeks were streaked with tears, but she did not wipe them away.
“You don’t have to go,” she said to the figure in the doorway.
Taniel wore faded buckskins and held an old, secondhand rifle in his hands. He had grown out his beard and his hair. His eyes were brighter than she’d seen in years and he looked as if a weight had been lifted off his shoulders.
“I do,” he said with a smile. “I’m free, Vlora.”
She stepped around Tamas’s desk and walked up to him, examining his face and eyes. She glanced back at the epaulets she’d left on the desk and she thought she understood.
“They made you a general,” Taniel said.
She glanced at the epaulets again, a bitter taste in her mouth.
“The country will need you. Tamas’s death has left a gap.”
“One I can’t hope to fill.”
“Just concentrate on the tasks at hand,” Taniel said.
Vlora responded, “Beon je Ipille has gone into hiding and there are rumblings of a Kez civil war. General Hilanska still needs to be brought to justice. Bo wants to combine Privileged and powder mages in the new republic cabal, and Gavril wants to make sweeping reforms to the Mountainwatch. There is… a lot to do.”
Vlora had expected a more emotional response from Taniel at the mention of Hilanska, but he just nodded and reached over to touch the gold epaulets she’d left on the desk.
“Tamas would be proud.”
Vlora looked down at her uniform, at the variety of accolades that she wanted every day to rip off the front. “You sure?”
“I am. Will you sell the house?”
Vlora blinked at him. “What do you mean?”
“I read about the will in the newspaper. With me dead, Tamas left everything to you and Bo,” Taniel said, touching the door frame with two fingers. “I’d sell it, personally. Too many memories.”
“Pit, no. I’m moving into it.”
Taniel seemed surprised, but after a few moments he smiled again. “That makes me glad, for some reason. We had a good time here, didn’t we?”
“We did.” They stood quietly for several moments before Vlora said, “Forgive me?”
“Only if you forgive me.”
“I already have.”
They hugged, and Vlora felt Taniel’s lips pressed to her forehead. She felt dampness
in her hair, and when they separated, Taniel wiped tears from his eyes.
Vlora took his hand. “Good luck. Take care of yourself.”
“You too.”
He left her in the quiet of her new home.
She remembered a night not long after Tamas had taken her in, when she’d had nightmares. Tamas had come to her room and put her back in bed. He had kissed her on the forehead, which no one had ever done for her before, and told her that nothing would ever harm her or Taniel while he lived.
Even with the blood and slaughter and death, she hadn’t had a nightmare since.
“Were you talking to someone?” Olem asked, entering the office.
Who would keep the nightmares away now, she wondered, but even as she did so, she could hear Tamas’s voice in her head. You will, he seemed to say.
“No one,” she answered Olem. “Just shadows of the past.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you so much to my editor, Devi Pillai, for the patience and foresight to help me get through my first series of books. She doesn’t get nearly as much credit as she should for being the best at what she does. Also thanks to my agent, Caitlin Blasdell, for talking me down from the ledge on multiple occasions during the writing of this series.
My wife, Michele, was there for me along every step of the way, from tossing around ideas for the magic and characters, to going over my copyedits before I sent them back. She’s the greatest, and shouldn’t let anyone tell her otherwise.
Thanks to Howard Taylor, Justin Landon, and David Wohlreich for looking over and discussing early drafts of the book with me. Friends like that are invaluable.
Thanks to my parents, who listen to me prattle on at great length about the tiny details of my job so that my wife doesn’t have to listen to it too much. Also thanks for their unending support and love for my writing. Similar thanks goes to all my friends and family, who come to my signings and listen to me yap.
Finally, the utmost appreciation goes to Gene Mollica, Michael Frost, and Lauren Panepinto for their work on the amazing covers for all three books in the trilogy, and to James Long, Alex Lencicki, Ellen Wright, Laura Fitzgerald, Lindsey Hall, and all the rest of the staff at Orbit and Orbit UK who do all the thankless work to make these books into something awesome.