Adamat stopped his hackney cab in Bakerstown long enough to grab a meat pie, then continued on past Hrusch Avenue, where the dusty smell of oil, wood, furnaces, and gunpowder whirled between the gunsmith shops and foundries. Here the noise was louder than usual, the crowds thicker. A boy sat on the step of every shop with a bundle of papers, taking orders and reporting numbers as well-dressed gentlemen rubbed shoulders with the lowliest infantryman. A hawker stood on the street corner and yelled that the new Hrusch rifle would protect a man’s home. The gunsmiths were selling the rifles as fast as they could make them.
Adamat flipped through the day’s paper. It said that Taniel Two-Shot was in the city, returned a hero from the Fatrastan War for Independence. Now he was chasing after a rogue Privileged. Some said the Privileged was a surviving member of the royal cabal. Others said it was a Kez spy, keeping an eye on Tamas’s powder cabal. Either way, an entire block had been leveled already, and dozens had been killed or wounded. Adamat hoped the Privileged would either be caught or would leave the city altogether before more blood could be shed. There was going to be enough of that in the coming face-off between Westeven and Tamas.
The royalists had barricaded off Centestershire, nearly the whole middle of Adopest. They’d launched a preemptive attack against Tamas’s forces, only to be driven back. Now it seemed the population was holding its breath. General Westeven, nearly eighty years old, had rallied the entire royalist population of the city, gathered them in one spot, and made enough barricades to stop a damned army. All in one night, or so it seemed. Field Marshal Tamas had responded by bringing in two whole legions of the Wings of Adom mercenary company and surrounding Centestershire with field guns and artillery. Not a shot had been fired yet. Both men were experienced enough not to want to turn the middle of Adopest into a battlefield.
It was a damned nightmare, Adamat decided. Two of the Nine’s most celebrated commanders facing off in a city of a million people. No one could come out a winner from that.
Yet life went on. People still needed to work, to eat. Those not involved directly in this new conflict stayed well away from it. Tamas had done an admirable job at keeping the peace in the rest of the city.
To complicate matters, the Public Archives, where Adamat was most likely to find copies of the damaged books at the university, were behind the royalist barricades. It was not a place he was prepared to go alone.
The carriage came to a stop in front of a three-story building off a side street at the far end of High Talian, the slums of Adopest. There was but a single entrance on this street, with a faded olive-green double door. Half of it was closed, blocked from inside, the paint peeling and the masonry crumbling around the doorpost. The other half was open, and a man of small stature leaned against the opposite post.
Adamat fetched his hat and cane from the carriage and held them in one hand, the other seeking a handkerchief from his pocket, which he used to cover his mouth as he stepped out. He paid the driver and approached the doorway, listening absently to the clatter of hoofbeats behind him as the carriage pulled away.
“Where in Kresimir’s name did you find an apple this time of year, Jeram?” Adamat wiped his nose and stuffed the handkerchief in a pocket.
The doorman gave him a slant-toothed smile. “G’evening, sir. Haven’t seen you for a month or two.” He took a crunching bite of his apple. “My cousin in the south of Bakerstown gets fresh fruit all year-round.”
“They say we might go to war with the Kez if negotiations don’t go well,” Adamat said. “You’ll have to wait until next fall for another apple.”
Jeram made a sour face. “Just my luck.”
“How go the fights today?”
Jeram pulled a worn piece of paper from the brim of a threadbare hat and studied it to make out the most recent markings. “SouSmith’s done three in a row, Formichael has won twice today. The two of them look ready to drop, but it’s the foreman has a death bug in his britches, says the two of them are gonna fight it out this hour.”
“Five fights between the two of them already?” Adamat snorted. “It’ll be piss poor, they’ll barely be able to stand.”
“Aye, that’s what the tables are saying, and there’s not much wagers yet. Everybody that’s betting has put it on Formichael.”
“SouSmith hits hard.”
Jeram gave him a sly glance. “If he can land a punch. Formichael’s better rested, younger, and half SouSmith’s weight.”
“Bah,” Adamat said, “you young ones always think the old have nothing left in them.”
Jeram chuckled. “Right, then, what’ll it be, governor?” He removed a folded paper from his back pocket, covered in smudges and long-erased lines. He set it against the doorframe and poised a piece of charcoal over it.
“What are the odds?”
Jeram scratched his cheek, leaving a bit of charcoal there. “I’ll give you nine to one.”
Adamat raised his eyebrows. “Give me twenty-five on SouSmith.”
“Risky,” Jeram grunted. “Figures.” He scratched down the numbers and folded the piece of paper, then jammed it back in his pocket. Adamat knew the paper was just for show. Jeram had a memory almost as good as Adamat’s, and without a Knack—he never forgot a face, never forgot a number, and had not once delivered wrongly on a bet, though many times was accused of such. That didn’t happen often nowadays, not since the Proprietor took over this boxing ring. He didn’t take kindly to anyone accusing his bookies.
Inside, the only light came from rectangular slat windows high up under the eaves. Adamat pushed past a series of curtains that muffled sound and hid the inside from prying eyes. The whole building was one big room, long since gutted, with a few stalls and cordoned-off rooms to give the fighters some privacy to recover from fights. In the middle was the building’s namesake: the Arena, a round pit twelve paces across, four paces below floor level.
A latticework of haphazard seating surrounded the pit, going back to either side of the building and nearly to the roof. Adamat ducked beneath the rear seating, crossed to the other side, and elbowed his way in among the men crowding the edge of the pit. The stands were full, men shoulder to shoulder in all the seats, enough for a few hundred gentlemen with their canes and hats, street workers with frayed jackets, and even a pair of city police officers, their black capes and top hats hard to miss among the crowd.
A fight had finished perhaps ten minutes ago, and the Arena workers were throwing down sawdust to soak up the blood, readying for the next one. A quiet murmur filled the room as men talked among themselves, resting their voices to cheer the violence ahead. Adamat breathed in sweat and grime and the smell of anger. He let his breath out slowly, shuddering. Bareknuckle boxing was a barbaric, feral sport. He grinned to himself. How fun. He took another breath, catching a whiff of pig. Not long ago the Arena had been a sty, and before that? A series of shops, maybe, back when High Talian was supposed to be the newest, richest, most fashionable part of the city.
A pair of shirtless men left the fighters’ stalls at the end of the room. They entered the Arena side by side and without ceremony. The workers cleared out, and the fighters faced each other. The man on the left was smaller, leaner, his muscles corded and defined like a warhorse. His curly brown hair bobbed into his face now and then, and he blew it away each time. Formichael. The Proprietor’s favorite fighter—or he had been when Adamat had last come by the fights. He was a warehouse worker, young and handsome, and it was whispered the Proprietor was grooming him to be something more than a simple thug.
The man on the right looked twice Formichael’s size. His hair had a touch of gray at the sides, his face bore a poorly shaved beard. His eyes were piggish, set deep in his face, and they examined Formichael with the singular intensity of a killer. His arms looked big enough to win a wrestling match with a mountain bear. Pits marred his knuckles where they’d broken—and been broken by—men’s jaws, and his face was covered in the puckered scars of bad stitching jobs. He flashed
a set of broken teeth at Formichael.
Despite SouSmith’s advantage in size and experience, he was obviously tired. His chin sagged from a long day of hard-won fights, the corners of his eyes betraying exhaustion, and his shoulders drooped ever so slightly. What’s more, experience had long worn out its welcome. SouSmith was getting old, and his chest and stomach had given way to flab from excess drinking.
The foreman descended to the second step of the ring and conferred with the two fighters. After a moment he stepped back. He held up his hand, and then dropped it, leaping back.
Three hundred men yelled as the two fighters lashed out at each other. Fists met flesh with dull slaps that were drowned out by the surge of voices.
“Kill ’em!”
“Make him bleed!”
“The gut! Flush him in the gut!”
Adamat’s voice was drowned out in the cacophony of wordless cries. He didn’t even know what he said, but his heart poured all his frustration with Palagyi, his anger that his wife and children were away, into his shouts. He leaned forward, fists flailing in mockery of the two men, screaming at the top of his lungs with the rest of the rabble.
Formichael connected with a vicious jab to SouSmith’s ribs. SouSmith stumbled to the side, and the younger man surged forward and pounded on the same spot, perhaps on an old broken rib, fists flashing in the dim light. SouSmith reeled, trembling, toward the side of the pit until he was up against the wooden slats that separated him from the crowd. Fingers reached out from the onlookers, nails gouged at his bare head, spittle splattered on his cheek. Adamat watched, the fighter’s head just beyond his reach. “Go on,” he shouted. “Don’t let him back you into a corner!”
Something audibly cracked, and SouSmith fell to one knee, hand up in front to ward off Formichael’s blows.
Adamat’s voice fell to a whisper. “Get up, you bastard,” he growled through his teeth.
Formichael punched SouSmith’s hands and arms, beat them down until the older man was on both knees, suffering under the onslaught. Formichael’s face flushed with the promise of victory and he slowly let up until the punches were mere taps, then altogether. He stood, chest heaving, examining the man at his feet. SouSmith didn’t look up.
Bah, Adamat thought. Finish him already.
But there was nothing of that in Formichael’s plans. Grinning, he bent over and grabbed one of SouSmith’s arms, pulling him up into a single, brutal punch. SouSmith went back to his knees, his whole body shuddering. Formichael would string this out, letting SouSmith’s exhaustion keep him down and continuing the beating until SouSmith was nothing but a pulp.
Formichael delivered several more single punches before letting SouSmith fall back down to his hands and knees. SouSmith’s face was a mess of blood and pulped flesh. He spit into the sawdust. Formichael turned, raised his arms to the crowd, bathed himself in the roar of voices. He faced SouSmith once again.
The big man rose to his feet in less than a heartbeat, all twenty-five stone following his fist into Formichael’s pretty young face. The impact lifted Formichael off the ground. His body flattened out in midair and then bounced like some child’s toy off the wooden slats before tumbling to the ground. He shuddered once before falling still. SouSmith spit on Formichael’s back and turned away, plodding up the stairs and toward the fighters’ stalls. Hands reached out to slap him on the back in congratulations; curses lashed out for bets lost.
Adamat collected his winnings and then waited until enough of the crowd was milling about to slip unnoticed back to the stalls. He entered SouSmith’s room and closed the curtain behind him. “That was quite the fight.”
SouSmith paused, a bucket lifted over his head, and gave Adamat a single glance. He tipped the bucket, letting the water wash away a layer of sweat and blood, then scrubbed his body with a soiled towel. He tilted his head at Adamat, the skin around his eyes puffy and bruised, his lips and brows split. “Aye. Make the right bet?”
“Of course.”
“Bastard’s trying to kill me.”
“Who?”
“Proprietor.”
Adamat chuckled, then realized SouSmith wasn’t joking. “Why do you say that?”
SouSmith shook his head, twisted the red-brown water out of his towel, and dunked it in a clean bucket. “Wants me to sink.” SouSmith was far from stupid, but he’d always spoken in short sentences. A man had trouble collecting his thoughts after years of being punched in the head.
“Why? You’re a good fighter. People come to see you.”
“People come to see young whips.” SouSmith spat into one of the buckets. “I’m old.”
“Formichael will think twice next time he’s told to fight you.” Adamat remembered the still body on the Arena floor. They’d had to carry him out. “If he’s still alive.”
“He’ll live.” SouSmith tapped the side of his head. “He’ll be afraid.”
“Or maybe he’ll just be sure to finish it quick,” Adamat said.
SouSmith took a deep breath, then let out a chuckle that turned into a grunting cough. “Not bad either way.”
Adamat watched his old friend for a moment. SouSmith was a different man than his appearance suggested. He was no average thug, not like the other boxers. Behind his beady eyes was a sharp intelligence; behind his gnarled fists the soft hands of brother and uncle. Many read him wrong, one of the reasons for his winning record. One thing no one read wrong, though: Behind it all, even deeper than his loyalty to his family or his cleverness, he was a killer.
“I have a question for you,” Adamat said.
“Thought you missed me.”
“You once told me you were part of the street gang Kresimir’s Broken.”
SouSmith froze with the corner of the towel still in one ear. He lowered it slowly. “I did?”
“You were very drunk.”
SouSmith’s movements were suddenly cautious. He glanced toward the stall’s single desk, to a drawer where he no doubt had hidden a pistol. Yet a man his size didn’t need a pistol.
Adamat made a reassuring gesture. “You were very drunk,” Adamat said again. “I didn’t believe you at the time. I was there when they pulled those boys out of the gutter. I didn’t think anyone had escaped what went after them.”
SouSmith examined him for a few moments. “Maybe one didn’t,” he said. “Maybe one did.”
“How?”
SouSmith countered with his own question. “Why?”
“I’m doing an investigation.” Adamat had already decided to tell SouSmith the whole story. “For Field Marshal Tamas. He wants to know what Kresimir’s Promise is.”
SouSmith looked impressed. “One man I’d not cross,” he said.
“Agreed. You have any idea what it means?”
SouSmith returned to cleaning himself up. “Our leader was a royal cabal washout.” SouSmith opened the desk drawer. He removed a grimy old pipe and a tobacco pouch. SouSmith lit up his pipe before he went on. “A loudmouth. A jackass. Wanted attention. Said our name was supposed to remind the royal cabal of their mortality.”
It was the longest sentence Adamat had heard SouSmith utter in years. “Did he tell you what it meant?”
“Break Kresimir’s Promise,” SouSmith said, puffing on his pipe. The smell of pistachio-flavored tobacco filled the tiny room. “And end the world.”
“What’s the promise?” Adamat asked.
SouSmith shrugged.
Adamat tapped the side of his jaw with one finger as SouSmith leaned back. He wasn’t going to say any more. Not about this. Adamat let his thoughts slip toward Palagyi. The twerp of a banker still had men lurking about. He was unpredictable. A man with SouSmith’s size and reputation could keep the idiot in line. At least until Adamat’s loan was due and Palagyi had the law on his side. Besides, SouSmith could be very useful in tight places—such as the Public Archives, behind the royalist barricades.
“Any chance you’re in need of a job?” Adamat asked.
SouSmith e
xamined him through those small eyes. “What kind of a job?”
Chapter 9
Taniel found his father’s command post just out of range of the royalist barricades. The empty streets were full of rubbish, the paving stones damp from a brief rain the night before. The city smells threatened to overcome his senses, enhanced from the near-constant powder trance he’d been in for two weeks. The world smelled of shit and fear, of empty piss pots and distrust.
Ka-poel was at his side. Even after all this, she was still mystified by the sight of the city—so many buildings, each one so tall on every side. She didn’t like it. Too many people, she had indicated with a series of gestures. Too many buildings. Taniel sympathized. His real talent as a powder mage was being able to float a bullet for miles—to make long shots across the widest battlefield. What good was that when his view was obstructed on all sides?
Gothen stood on Taniel’s other side. The magebreaker scratched the back of his head where he still had hair. He watched the barricades with a hand on the grip of one of his three pistols.
“Coming in with me?” Taniel asked.
Gothen shook his head. “Your father makes me nervous.”
“You’re not the only one,” Taniel muttered.
Tamas had set up his headquarters in one of the hundreds of abandoned homes near the center of the city. Soldiers milled about outside. They didn’t wear the familiar dark blue of Adran infantry. Their uniforms were red and gold and white, their standard a saint’s halo with gold wings. These were the Wings of Adom. The majority of them were Adran, as it was an Adran-based mercenary company, but one could see all kinds in their ranks. Taniel crossed the street and paused just long enough for one of the guards to get a look at his powder keg pin before heading inside, Ka-poel on his heels.
The salon of the house had the look of a command tent. There were maps on every available surface, gear stacked in the corners, even rifles and ammunition crates. Tamas stood behind a table, examining a map of the city while two of the Wings’ brigadiers—brigade commanders—stood off to one side. Tamas’s bodyguard lounged on a sofa in the corner, smoking.