He threw his back to the wall just beneath the window and listened. Another thunderclap. Someone was laughing. Julene. He gritted his teeth at the eerie sound, reloaded his rifle, and stood up.
The quad had been destroyed. Ground was torn up everywhere, more dirt than a hundred men could move with shovels in a day, piled up as if scooped from the ground by a god’s hand and then patted into hills. As he watched, a thin line of fire sprayed from beyond one of the mounds and tore through Banasher’s Hall across the way. Taniel saw faces watching the battle from windows. They were gone in an instant, their final looks of horror frozen in Taniel’s mind as the entire façade of the building crumbled.
Taniel dropped back down behind the wall and took a deep breath. This was no normal fight. No, he’d seen Privileged fight before, on the battlefields in Fatrasta. They tossed fireballs and ice and lightning. But nothing like this. Both Julene and this other Privileged were using forces far beyond Taniel’s comprehension. By the power they showed, they both should have been heads of a royal cabal.
Taniel wondered where Ka-poel was. His head rang after another thunderclap, and his thoughts seemed distant. Hadn’t he sent her off after the Privileged? He hoped she hadn’t done anything stupid. He hoped she was safe.
He peeked out once more. He could see the Privileged. She stood on the top steps of a building kitty-corner to his own. The museum, he thought. He slowly lifted his rifle.
The Privileged’s fingers danced. She thrust one hand outward, fingers splayed, toward the center of the quad. That thin fire erupted from her palm. Julene was lifted up from behind the newly formed hills and thrown bodily into the remnants of Banasher’s Hall. Stone folded around her as she hit, the rest of the building crumpling like a house of paper.
The Privileged wiped her hands on her academic gown and went inside the museum.
Taniel leapt to his feet. He was halfway down the hall before he bothered to question himself. What was he doing? These were forces above his ability to fight. No sense in going after her. What could he possibly do?
He thought of the destruction on the quad. Privileged got tired. Privileged couldn’t go on forever. She couldn’t have much left in her.
The building he had taken shelter in was attached to the museum by a narrow, raised stone walkway. Taniel stole a glance, then dashed down the walkway and leapt through a door. He was in a short hall, practically a custodian’s closet with mops and brooms. Another door, this one open, led to the main hall. He caught sight of galleries filled with ancient relics: mummified corpses, the bones of ancient beasts, pottery from some prehistoric civilization, and stones sparkling with gems. He heard the brisk sound of footsteps on marble.
The Privileged marched through the main gallery. Her shoulder still bled from Taniel’s only solid shot. She glanced to either side. She didn’t seem to see Taniel. She definitely didn’t see the movement of the magebreaker above her.
Gothen leapt the banister of a gallery above and landed on the marble not five feet from her. He came up, face alight with victory, a small sword in his hand.
Taniel gave a yell. Yes! He jumped from cover. They had her now. She couldn’t…
The Privileged threw her arms wide. The academic gown fluttered, then began to glow. Gothen’s eyes grew wide.
Taniel halted. He took one step back as Gothen began to shimmer. Taniel tried to yell for the man to finish the job.
The magebreaker fell to his knees. He opened his mouth in a scream. No sound came out, and his mouth kept opening farther. His jaw fell, and then the rest of him began to drop like a wax figure melting before a blazing fire. His clothes burned off, his sword dripping to the floor as molten steel. His body dissolved into a puddle at the Privileged’s feet.
Taniel leapt behind a pillar. He wondered what good he could possibly do, even as he felt for more powder. He spilled powder all over his hand, brought it up to his nose and snorted. He looked down. There was blood on his hand. It was dripping from his nose. He felt the calm of the powder trance steady his hands.
He gritted his teeth and slid the ring bayonet from his belt. He fitted it over the end of his rifle. His hands began to shake again almost immediately. He double-checked his pistols to be sure they were loaded, and prepared to leap to his feet.
Taniel felt something brush his head.
The Privileged stood beside him. She had one finger pressed against his head.
He let out a trembling sigh. “Do it,” he said.
This close, he saw that she was tired. Her hair was soaked with perspiration. The crow’s-feet in the corners of her bloodshot eyes were deep, lines of exhaustion tugging at her face.
“I want you to stop following me,” she said.
“You killed my friends.”
“The powder mages at Skyline? That was a mistake. No. Not a mistake. I’d have killed them all if I’d have arrived in time to stop Tamas and his foolish coup. I was only there to warn the royal cabal, but I was too late. When I saw that it was finished, I just wanted to be gone.”
“Who the pit are you?”
“My name is Rozalia.”
“What are you?”
She let out a long sigh. “I’m one of the few remaining Predeii. Or I used to be. I’m not in very good shape these days.”
“That means nothing to me.”
“You’re just a foolish boy. You’re all just foolish boys. Privileged and powder mages. None of you know a thing.”
“Then kill me.”
“If I do that, your father will turn out every one of his powder mages. I’ll never be able to rest again.”
Taniel snorted. So she knew who he was.
Rozalia said, “Tell your savage sorceress to stand down. I don’t want to fight her.”
“Pole?” Taniel looked around. No sign of her. “Get out of here,” he called. He thought he caught a glimpse of red hair behind one of the display cases.
“Let me leave in peace,” Rozalia said, “and I’ll leave the country tonight. I swear it. I’m done here.”
“As easy as that?” Taniel’s mind raced. Julene had to be dead after being thrown through an entire building. Gothen was a puddle on the floor. What threat could he possibly be to her? Was she that scared of his father?
Taniel caught Rozalia’s nervous glance toward Ka-poel.
She was scared of Ka-poel? Pole was only a girl.
“Simple as that,” Rozalia said. “I’m leaving this place. Your father has kicked a hornet’s nest and I intend to be gone before the hornets arrive.”
“What do you mean?”
Rozalia shook her head. “You really don’t know, do you? You’re playing with something dangerous—no, more than dangerous. Reckless. But it’s too late now. There’s no chance to restore the monarchy, to undo the damage. Westeven understood, but you others are blind.”
“You’re mad.”
“Ask Privileged Borbador, if you don’t believe me. He’s the last of the royal cabal. He’ll tell you the truth.”
“I will.”
Rozalia lowered her hand. Taniel got to his feet.
“I can’t guarantee that Tamas won’t send someone else after you. But to the pit with this. I’m done.”
“I’ll be on a ship to somewhere far from the Nine within a week,” Rozalia said. “Beyond his reach. Besides, I’ll be the least of his worries.” She turned away.
Taniel kept a wary eye on her as she headed toward the front door of the museum.
“Wait!” He hurried to her side and opened the door. He tried to avoid looking at what was left of Gothen as he passed it.
There were a dozen soldiers within sight. Their rifles were bayoneted and aimed.
“Stand down,” Taniel said. They stared at him. “Stand down, damn it, or we’re all dead men!”
Rifles slowly lowered. Rozalia walked down the steps as if she were a queen with an honor guard. She passed them all and headed toward the front gate of the university. She paused twenty or thirty feet from Taniel a
nd turned back toward him. “Beware Julene,” she said before continuing on.
It was at least an hour later when Taniel caught sight of Julene heading toward him across the quad. This was a different quad, undisturbed, in a quiet corner of the campus. Ka-poel sat cross-legged beside him. He rested with his head against the wall, his hand on his sketchbook. He’d begun drawing Gothen. The man had been brave, and mercenary or not, he deserved to be remembered by someone. Taniel’s head hurt. His body hurt. And the person coming toward him shouldn’t be alive.
Julene looked like she’s been trampled by a herd of warhorses. Her clothing was burned and torn, indecent parts of her bared to the world, though she didn’t seem to care a wit. She strode up to Taniel and paused above him, hands on her hips.
“Where is Gothen?”
“Melted.”
She blanched at this, but recovered quickly enough. “Captain Ajucare said you let her go.”
Taniel nodded. “She’s leaving the country.”
Julene bent over, her face not a hand’s distance from Taniel’s.
“You let that bitch go!” She raised one gloved hand.
Taniel didn’t even remember drawing his pistol. One second his hands were in his lap, folded, the next he held a pistol, the end of the barrel pressing into the soft spot where Julene’s jaw and neck met. Her eyes went wide.
“Go away,” he said.
Chapter 14
The Lighthouse of Gostaun had been dated by most historians back to the Time of Kresimir. Some claimed that it was older still, and Tamas wouldn’t have been surprised. It was certainly the oldest building in Adopest. The stone was carved by the wind, its granite blocks pitted and scored by centuries of exposure to the elements, mercilessly whipped by every type of foul weather to come off the Adsea.
Tamas stood on the balcony of the lantern room, his hands clutching the stone railing. Something was wrong. The royalists were scattered, the granaries opened to the public. Already they had begun reconstruction efforts in the city, employing thousands to clear rubble from the streets and rebuild tenements. He should be concentrating completely on the approaching Kez ambassadors, yet he could not keep from looking to the southwest.
South Pike Mountain smoked. It began as a black sliver on the horizon the day of the earthquake two weeks ago. Since then it had grown tenfold. Great billowing clouds of gray and ebony rose from the mountaintop, spreading as they gained height and blowing off over the Adsea. Historians said that the last time South Pike had erupted had been when Kresimir first set foot upon the holy mountain. They said that all of Kez had been covered in ash, that lava had destroyed hundreds of villages in Adro.
Words like “omen” and “bad tidings” were being spoken by men far too educated to take such things seriously.
He turned away from the distant mountain and looked south. The lighthouse itself was no more than four stories, but it stood on a bluff that put it well above most other buildings in Adopest. A side of the hill had given way during the earthquake, revealing the foundation of the lighthouse but sparing the structure itself. Beneath him, artillery batteries flanked the docks. Tamas didn’t think those cannons had ever been fired. They were mostly for show, a remnant of older traditions, not unlike the Mountainwatch itself. In its long history, the Nine had come close to war countless times, but not since the Bleakening had there been actual bloodshed. Off in the distance a Kez galley floated at anchor, flags flying high.
“Have those batteries tested tomorrow,” Tamas said. “We might have need of them soon.”
“Yes, sir,” Olem said. Olem and Sabon stood at his shoulders, bearing his quiet reflection with patience. A full honor guard waited down on the beach for the Kez delegation. Servants rushed around the beach, making last-minute preparations to a welcoming repast for the visiting dignitaries. Food was brought out, parasols and open tents staked in the sand, liveried men trying to keep them from blowing away with the wind coming in off the Adsea.
Andriya and Vlora were hidden at either end of the beach, eyes sharp for Privileged, rifles loaded. Tamas was taking no chances with this delegation, and the wrenching feeling deep in his gut told him he was right. There were Privileged with them, his third eye had revealed as much—though at this distance it was impossible to sense how many or how strong.
A longboat was making its way from the galley to the shore. Tamas put a looking glass to his eye and counted two dozen men. There were Wardens among them, easy to pick out for their size and their hunched, misshaped shoulders and arms.
“Ipille dares to send Wardens,” Tamas growled. “I’m tempted to blow that boat out of the water right now.”
“Of course he dares,” Sabon said. “He’s bloody king of the Kez.” Sabon coughed into his hand. “The Privileged with them likely feels the same way about you as you do of him. He knows you’ll have powder mages on the beach.”
“My Marked aren’t godless, sorcery-spawned killers.” Only the Kez had figured out how to break a man’s spirit and twist his body to create a Warden. Every other royal cabal in the Nine blanched at experimenting with human beings.
Sabon seemed amused by this. “What scares you more: a man who’s next to impossible to kill, or a man who can kill you at a league’s distance with a rifle?”
“A Warden or a powder mage? I’m not frightened of either. Wardens disgust me.” He spit on the lighthouse stones. “What’s gotten into you today? You’ve been philosophical enough lately to drive a man to tears.”
Olem gave a strangled laugh. “Breakfast,” he said.
Tamas turned on the soldier. “Breakfast?”
“He ate six bowls of porridge this morning,” Olem said. He tapped the ash from his cigarette and watched it blow off with the wind. “I’ve never seen the colonel put down so much so fast.”
The Deliv gave an embarrassed shrug. “That new cook is really something. It was like drinking milk straight from the teats of the saint herself. Where’d you get him?”
Tamas swallowed. He felt a cold sweat on his brow. “What do you mean, ‘Where’d I get him?’ I’ve not hired a new cook.”
“He said you appointed him head chef yourself,” Olem said. He put a hand out in front, miming a large belly, and took on an air of self-importance. “ ‘… to fill the hearts, minds, and souls of the soldiers and give them strength for the coming years.’ Or so he says.”
“A fat man, this tall?” Tamas gestured above his head.
Olem nodded.
“Long black hair, looks like a Rosvelean?”
“I thought he was a quarter Deliv,” Olem said. “But yes.”
“You’re mad,” Sabon said. “He’s not got a drop of Deliv in him.”
“Mihali,” Tamas said.
“Yes, that was him,” Sabon confirmed. “A devil of a cook.”
“Chef,” Tamas said distractedly. “And devil he may be. Find out who he is. Everything about him. He said his father was Moaka, the na-baron of… oh, something or another. Find out.” He would not have strange men infiltrating his headquarters with nothing more than a lamb soufflé.
“I’ll get right on that, sir,” Olem said.
“Now!”
Olem jumped. “Right away, sir.” He flicked his cigarette away and went for the stairs. Tamas watched him go, then turned back to the slowly approaching longboat. He felt Sabon’s eyes on his back.
“What?” he asked, more annoyance in his voice than he’d intended.
“What the pit was that about?” Sabon said. “A lot of fuss for just a damned cook.”
“Chef,” Tamas said.
“You think he’s a spy?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I’m having Olem find out.”
“What’s the good in having a bodyguard if you send him off when the Kez show up?”
Tamas ignored the question. So Mihali hadn’t been a figment of his imagination. But what about what he had said? He’d warned Tamas to investigate the Privilegeds’ dying admonition—something he should hav
e no knowledge about.
Tamas wasn’t a religious man. If he were to ascribe to any one belief, it would probably be one most popular with upper society and philosophers these days—that Kresimir had been a timepiece god. He’d come and set the Nine in motion and had moved on, never to return.
Yet now the holy mountain itself rumbled in anger. What could this mean?
Superstitions. He couldn’t let them get the best of him. He’d have Mihali arrested this very night, and that would be the end of it.
They watched the approaching longboat for a few minutes before Sabon pointed down to the beach. “The rabble-rousers are here.”
“About damn time.”
They headed down to the docks to join Tamas’s council. With aides, assistants, bodyguards, and footmen, it seemed like all of Adopest had turned out. Tamas missed the days when secrecy demanded that they meet in person: just seven men and a woman plotting to overthrow their king.
The members of his council gathered at the front of the group to meet him on the boardwalk.
“Tamas, my dear,” Lady Winceslav said as he approached. “Be so kind as to ask His Eminence and the other gentleman”—she gestured disdainfully at the arch-diocel and the eunuch—“not to smoke so heavily around a lady.”
“You could ask them yourself,” Tamas said.
“She has,” Ricard said. “Seems His Holiness doesn’t know how to act around the ladies.”
Lady Winceslav harrumphed. “Sir, I don’t think you do either.”
Ricard removed his hat and gave her a bow. “I’m just a poor workin’ man, marm. Excuse me.”
The arch-diocel and the eunuch both seemed to enjoy Lady Winceslav’s discomfort. Charlemund turned to Tamas, blowing smoke rings. “Did you know this fellow had his manhood removed at birth? I didn’t know they still practiced such a thing, not for a thousand years.”
“The Church favored castrati for their choirs up until fifty years ago,” Ondraus said, looking over his book at the arch-diocel. He smirked. “There are still a few famous singers like Kirkham and Noubenhaus who are castrati. They’re popular in cathedrals all about the Nine. I’m surprised you didn’t know that.”