“Your majesty,” Tamas said, dropping to one knee.
“Stand up,” Manhouch said.
“Yes, my lord.”
Manhouch strode toward Tamas and did a quick circle. Tamas stood stiffly during the brief inspection. The king finished his circuit to stand in front of Tamas, studying his face for several moments before he returned to the opposite side of the billiards table.
“Captain Tamas,” he said. He shuffled through a number of documents spread out across the billiards table. “On your first campaign at the age of sixteen, you were commended for valor in the field on seven separate occasions, suffering eleven wounds in that campaign alone. On the next campaign, as a sergeant, you single-handedly ended the siege of Herone. As a lieutenant in charge of just thirty marksmen on special assignment you captured the town of Lukanjev and held it against two companies of Gurlish cavalry.”
“There are at least thirty letters here from infantrymen and non-commissioned officers whose lives you saved at one point or another. Commendation, commendation. Thirteen recommendations for rank advancement. Thirteen!” The Iron King flipped absently through the rest of the papers before finally throwing them down in apparent disgust. “Tell me, Captain, why are you not a general?”
Tamas guessed it was a rhetorical question, but answered it anyway. “Because I’m a commoner, sir.”
“That’s right. You’re a commoner. And my noble cousins would rather hang themselves with their own belts than take orders from someone of lesser birth.”
“As you say, my lord.”
“Nothing to be had for that at the moment, though,” Manhouch said, stepping away from the table. “Last night, you and the duchess-heir of Leora killed eight members of the cabal guard and wounded a member of the Adran royal cabal.”
How the pit did he know about Erika, Tamas wondered. He felt a surge of panic. If the king knew, the cabal might know, and Erika was surely in danger. “My lord, the duchess-heir …”
Manhouch cut him off. “I don’t really give a damn about the Leora girl. Privileged Dienne is not aware of her identity, and I’m not about to admit that I spy on my own cabal just to impart such a trivial bit of information. Now then,” he continued, “you did not have my attention before because you were a nothing more than a diversion. Something to annoy the cabal. But last night one of my spies witnessed your altercation with Privileged Dienne and saw you shoot her through the hand.” Manhouch barked a laugh.
Tamas did not see what was so funny. “It was instinct, my lord.”
“Instinct, when faced with a Privileged, is to flee. Instinct is to cower. You did none of those things.”
“Fleeing from a battle usually makes things worse.”
Manhouch nodded sharply. “Something that few people truly understand. Captain Tamas, you now have my attention.”
The question, Tamas asked himself, was whether he truly wanted the king’s attention. Tamas tried to consider where this conversation would go. The king wanted something. Otherwise Tamas would not be here. But what? He bowed his head. “My duty is to serve, your majesty.”
“Everyone’s duty is to serve,” Manhouch said. “Even I, king of Adro, live to serve my people. It’s the way of civilization.” He began to pace the room, clearly agitated. “But the cabal does not see it that way. They feel that they are above reproach, even from me. They need to be disabused of this notion.”
Tamas suddenly knew where this was going, and he did not like it one bit. Working moisture into his mouth, he repeated, “My duty is to serve.”
“You’re a remarkable soldier,” Manhouch said. “You may, if you survive the next few decades, one day make it to general. To do so you will need a powerful patron. One who doesn’t give a damn about who leads his armies, as long as they win their battles.” Manhouch stopped pacing and crossed the room to stand beside Tamas. “And I, Captain, need killing done.”
“He wants you to what?” Erika demanded.
Tamas was in Budwiel, a week after his meeting with the king. He had decided that Adopest was not safe and had sent word for Erika to meet him here, at a small apartment he kept under a false name on the Kez border. She was still in his arms, both their jackets already on the floor, when he told her the news.
“Kill Privileged Dienne,” Tamas repeated.
Erika stepped away from him and snatched the blanket off of his bed, throwing it around her bare shoulders. “You’d be mad.”
“I shot her once. I can do it again.”
“And you have to be sure that shot is lethal this time.”
“There’s that,” Tamas admitted.
“Why does he want her dead?” Erika asked.
Tamas retrieved his jacket from the floor, wishing he had kept his mouth shut until after they had some time together.
“Don’t put that on, I’m not done with you,” Erika said. “Tell me why he wants her dead.”
Tamas took a deep breath. This was a bad idea. He shouldn’t have told Erika any of this. Pit, she shouldn’t even be here. As far as the he was concerned, he was still a wanted man. He knew that he couldn’t trust anyone at court or in the city.
“Because,” he said, “the cabal has been flexing their muscles. They’ve ignored his summons. Disobeyed his orders. They have more than a hundred and fifty full-fledged Privileged. That’s enough to raze the entire country if they wanted and they know it. They’re growing drunk with their own power. Privileged Dienne bungled a major operation on the last campaign in Gurla, so she’s the best choice for an … example.”
“It has the added benefit,” he continued, “that Dienne’s job is to see me dead or disgraced. It’s not me against the cabal. It’s just me against her. This is no longer impossible.”
“You’re still a madman to try it.”
“I have no choice. The king forbade her from killing me outright but even he admits that his grasp on the cabal is tenuous. She’ll try for my head sooner or later.”
“You said it’s her assignment. Does that mean if you kill her this will be over? Or will they just send someone else? What if she gets reinforcements?”
Tamas hesitated. “I’m not sure. The king claims that no one else actually knows about our fight with the cabal guards. He says that Dienne will try to kill me on her own to avoid losing face with the rest of the cabal. Oh, and he knows you’re involved.”
Erika dropped down on the bed and bit absently at one of her fingernails. “How does he know?”
“He has prominent members of the cabal followed, and his spies told him about our fight. Somehow they knew who you were.”
The information did not seem to faze her. “How will you kill her?”
Tamas patted the rifle he had leaned against the doorpost. “Bullet to the head from a half mile. It’s my only real option.”
“Can’t do that,” Erika said.
Tamas frowned. “What do you mean?”
She pointed to his rifle. “The cabal can’t know you were involved.”
“That’s the point, isn’t it?”
“Is that what the king told you to do?”
“No,” Tamas said. “He just said to kill her.”
“Nothing about how he wanted it done?”
“None,” Tamas said.
Erika got up and crossed the room, pulling a bottle out of her bag. “Everberry cordial,” she said. “All the way from Fatrasta, and not a drop of alcohol in it.” She produced two wine glasses wrapped carefully in newspaper, then poured them each a glass of the black cordial. “The cabal can’t know about your involvement,” she repeated, handing Tamas a glass and leading him by his hand to the bed. “If Dienne simply dies, the cabal may lose interest in you. At least long enough for you to get back your footing. However, if they suspect that a powder mage killed her they will come for your head. Your shot would have to be flawless, made to look like it came from a nearby window. Are you that good?”
“Not yet,” Tamas admitted. He sipped the cordial, savoring the sweetness.
She took the glass from his hand and set it on the bedside table, moving into his lap. “Then we’ll have to think of something else.”
“Wait, wait. What do you mean, we? I’m not going to let you have anything to do with this.” Tamas tried to push her gently from his lap, but her arms were firmly around his neck.
“At what point,” she whispered in his ear, “will you realize that you will never be in the position to let or not let me do anything?”
“You can’t become involved any further. This is serious.”
“I already am involved. And I’m deadly serious, my love,” Erika said.
Tamas felt a shudder go down his spine at the word love. “Don’t say that,” he said quietly.
“Don’t say what?”
“Love. This can’t last.” As much as he wanted it to.
“Why not?”
Tamas looked away. “You know why not.”
Erika snatched him by the chin and jerked his face toward hers, staring him in the eye. “Am I wasting my time, Captain Tamas? Am I with a man who doesn’t want me?”
“Absolutely not,” Tamas growled. This was too quick, he told himself. They’d barely known each other for a couple of months. She was extraordinary, but she was still a noble. She would never be allowed to marry him. “But I want you more than a passing fancy. And I’m a commoner.”
“If I hear you say you’re a commoner once more, so help me Kresimir, I will pull out your tongue. You’re a man with ambition. With strength. Use it. And when you’re Field Marshal Tamas no one will question you taking a foreign duchess as your wife.”
“And in the meantime?” he asked.
Erika shoved him down and straddled him on the bed. He grabbed her by the waist and threw her aside, rolling on top of her, satisfied with a surprised squeal. She grabbed a hand full of his hair.
“In the meantime,” she said, “We have a Privileged to kill.”
Tamas watched from a second-story window as twenty-odd cabal guards crept down the street toward him.
He was back in Adopest, three weeks after the king had ordered him to kill Privileged Dienne. It was nearly two o’clock in the morning, the night lit by a full moon, and the streets in the factory district were all but silent.
The street below ended just a few yards past Tamas’s hiding spot in a cul-de-sac of four large, multi-story tenements. The lanterns were dark, nothing moving but stray cats fleeing before the cabal guards. The whole block had been struck by plague last year and remained abandoned.
A perfect place to kill a Privileged.
The guards passed below his window, and he wondered how many more were flanking the streets on either side of the tenements. Not many, he suspected. Privileged Dienne would want to keep this quiet until she was sure she had dealt with him.
He edged toward the window, as close as he dared, and looked toward the main thoroughfare. There, not fifty yards from where he stood, was the same carriage he had seen Dienne flee in a few weeks prior.
She had honored his request for a meeting, it seemed, even if she hadn’t come alone as he requested.
Not that Tamas had expected her to.
He double-checked his preparations. Set up just inside the open windows of the apartment were eight flintlock muskets. Each was loaded and propped to aim into the cul-de-sac. They would jerk and fall when he set them off, but accuracy was not important.
Only the illusion of conspiracy was important.
Tamas took his own musket and aimed it at the guard wearing a captain’s red epaulette on one shoulder. The man whispered and gestured to his troops, positioning them by the windows and doors of the center-most tenement. One of them braced himself and kicked the door in with a crash that rattled the windows, and about half the platoon of cabal guards rushed into the empty building.
Tamas lit a match and set it to the end of a quick-burning fuse. The spark traveled like lightning out the window, following the fuse between the tenements, above the heads of the guards.
One of them noticed the spark, shouting and pointing upward. By the time any of his compatriots had looked up, the spark was gone through the window of the tenement now filled with a dozen or more cabal guards.
Tamas lifted his musket again, sighted toward the carriage waiting at the end of the street, and pulled the trigger. The shot blew through the window, and the carriage rocked from the motion of a body collapsing against the wall. Chaos erupted.
Guards shouted in confusion, pointing at Tamas’s vantage. He reached out with his senses and touched the powder in each of the eight muskets, causing a volley to pepper the street. A second roar of muskets erupted from the windows across the street as Erika touched the powder of her own small firing line.
Cabal guards threw themselves through tenement windows and doors, looking for cover. Most of them wound up in the building at the end of the cul-de-sac, trying to regroup with the bulk of their platoon.
They did so just as Tamas’s fuse hit the stack of powder barrels in the tenement basement.
Tamas had dropped his musket and sprinted for the far end of the apartment, when the explosion blew him off his feet. He went right through a flimsy plaster wall, landing in a heap in the room next door.
He got to his feet, coughing on plaster dust, hoping that Erika was all right. His head pounded and his vision took a moment to clear. They had, it seemed, overdone it on the powder.
He went to the window and looked down into the main avenue on the other side of the tenement from the cul-de-sac he had just attacked. The street was lit by flames caused by the explosion, and a few passing night laborers stared open-mouthed before running off at a sprint, shouting about the fire.
A few dark shapes did not run away from the fire. Cabal guards crossed the avenue, and Tamas heard the door below him kicked open.
“Go around,” a gruff voice said, “Keep your eyes open! You two, see to the Privileged!”
Tamas didn’t bother with the window. He backed up and ran at the wall, shoulder first, bursting through the aged brick and plaster and soaring out into the cold night air. He hit the avenue below and rolled.
His shoulder ached as he regained his feet, and he questioned the wisdom of that maneuver even as he whirled to face the two cabal guards that rushed toward him. He drew his sword, waving dust out of his face, and parried the first swing of a guard’s heavy saber. He drew his belt knife with his off-hand and stepped inside the man’s guard, opening his throat.
The second guard was more wary. She circled Tamas, crouched, eyes shifting as she watched for his next move.
Tamas didn’t have time for this. Once she’d made a half circle, Tamas turned and sprinted, followed by the guard’s startled shout. He turned at the next intersection and surged ahead.
Privileged Dienne’s carriage nearly flattened him. The two horses, eyes rolling in fear of the explosion, plowed forward while the driver frantically tried to get them under control. Tamas threw himself out of the way of the panicked animals, then changed directions to chase after them.
Catching the carriage while in a full powder trance took little effort. Tamas leapt onto the running board at the back, snatching the rail with one hand, swiping at his pursuer with the sword in the other.
His swipe missed, but the guard could not hope to keep up as the carriage careened ahead. Tamas sheathed his sword and climbed on top of the carriage. Holding the roof rack, he swung feet-first into the compartment.
Tamas came into the carriage ready to grapple with an enraged, wounded Privileged. He drew his knife the moment his hands left the roof rack, and he landed heavily on the cloaked figure on the bench, ready to plunge the weapon into Dienne’s chest.
He needn’t have worried. The body below him was still as a corpse, shirt soaked with blood. Tamas’s bullet had ripped through her heart and lungs, killing her almost instantly.
The only problem was, the corpse was not Privileged Dienne.
It was a young woman with auburn hair
, too young to be a full Privileged but wearing the gloves. Dienne’s apprentice, perhaps.
“Oh, pit,” Tamas said. He leapt for the door, throwing himself from the moving carriage only a moment before sorcery tore it in half.
He landed in a clumsy roll, feeling his ankle turn beneath him. He forced himself up, a sharp pain shooting up his leg, and ran for the nearest alley, batting at his ass to put out the flames on his greatcoat.
He searched windows and alleys for Dienne, trying to determine the direction of the next attack.
Two cabal guards emerged from the alley, putting themselves in his path. He drew his sword at a dead run, trying his damnedest not to fall from the pain in his ankle. If he stopped moving Dienne would kill him with the merest flick of her fingers. That thought was the only thing that made him fling himself to the side just a moment before the cobbles erupted in a geyser of flame.
He gave a triumphant shout that turned into a scream as his ankle turned below him. He fell, slamming his knee hard enough to rattle his teeth. His sword was pinned beneath him, and he rolled, trying desperately to free it as the two cabal guards closed in on him.
Erika arrived like a flash, her sword a blur. She took one with the flick of her sword at his neck and the other in the belly, just below the cuirass. She spun toward Tamas and snatched him by the arm, dragging him to his feet even as he tried to wave her off.
“Dienne’s still out here!” Tamas said.
“I know.”
Erika yanked him into the mouth of the alley where Tamas snatched at his kit, cracking a powder charge and shoving it into his mouth. The pain in his knee and ankle gradually subsided, reduced to a distant throb. He gingerly put weight on the ankle.
“Can you run?” Erika asked.
“No. I won’t be able to do much more than hobble.”
“All right. But we have to move.”
Tamas nodded his thanks, cursing himself for allowing Dienne to trick him. He had depended on the king’s assurances, on her not bringing any other Privileged into the conflict. He hadn’t even considered an apprentice.
“Guards?” he asked.
“All accounted for,” she said. “We got more than we expected in the initial blast and the rest were easy to clean up in the confusion.”