Powder Mage Trilogy 01 - Promise of Blood

  “What does it need?” Tamas whispered.

  “The people are hungry,” Mihali said. He lifted his hands, spreading them to encompass the city. “The people need to be fed. They need bread and wine and soup and meat. But not just that. They need friendship.” He pointed to a minor noble, some viscount decked out in his finest foppish frills, who poured a bottle of St. Adom’s Festival wine into the cups of a half-dozen street urchins.

  “They need companionship,” Mihali said. “They need love and brotherhood.” He turned to Tamas. He reached out with one hand, putting a palm to Tamas’s cheek. Instinct told Tamas to step back. He found that he couldn’t.

  “You gorged them on the blood of the nobility,” Mihali said gently. “They drank, but were not filled. They ate of hatred and grew hungrier.” He took a deep breath. “Your intentions were… well, not pure, but just. Justice is never enough.” He let go of Tamas and turned to the square. “I will put things right,” he said. He puffed out his chest and spread his arms. “I will feed all of Adro. It is what they need.”

  Mihali stopped one of his female assistants as she passed with a basket of bread for the wagons. “Bread is not enough,” he said. “Take meat and soup and cakes. Serve the poor on silver. Let the merchants sup from wooden bowls. Take food to every part of the city. The wagons will be protected.”

  “How?” Tamas managed.

  “I am Adom reborn,” Mihali said. “Adro must be united. My people will go to battle nourished.”

  “Adom,” Tamas scoffed. He found he could put no strength behind it.

  A man in a worker’s apron approached Mihali. “Sir,” he said slowly. Mihali turned. “Ricard Tumblar sent us over. He told us to help with whatever you need.”

  “ ‘Us’?” Mihali asked.

  The worker gestured. Behind him, other workers stretched out across the square, intermingled with the tables and the line, their aprons dirty with soot and burns and flour and blood. It looked as if the workers from every dock-front factory and riverside mill were there. The worker smiled. “He shut down the factories, sir. But we’ll still get paid as long as we come help.”

  “The Noble Warriors of Labor, eh?” Mihali asked.

  The man nodded. “All of us, sir.”

  Mihali’s eyes grew wide. “Excellent! Come, I’ll show you where to help.”

  Mihali wandered off, giving orders here, offering advice there. Tamas watched him go. “A remarkable man,” he said. “Mad or not.”

  Nila didn’t like Mihali’s cooking.

  It was beginning to destroy her resolve. Every day she could feel her hatred slipping. Every day she paid just a little less attention to Field Marshal Tamas’s habits, watched just a little less carefully for her chance to end his bloody campaign. She didn’t know how she knew, but it was the food that was doing it.

  She tried getting her bread from Bakerstown. It just didn’t taste the same, and Mihali was giving away food for free in Elections Square.

  Nila couldn’t wait any longer. It had to be done tonight. Olem was on duty, but that couldn’t be helped. She liked him, she really did. He’d been kinder to her the last few days than any man she’d met in her time under Duke Eldaminse. But Tamas had to be stopped.

  She did the lower officers’ laundry first, after everyone had gone to bed. She went about her routine as usual, scrubbing and boiling and ironing, and then returning uniforms to their owners’ rooms. She waited to fetch the field marshal’s clothes till last. She always did. They were given special attention.

  The hallway to the field marshal’s office had four guards. They recognized her now. Nila even knew a few by name. Since Olem had begun courting her, no one’s eyes lingered nor did anyone say anything untoward. They let her pass without comment, but it worried her that Olem wasn’t there. What if he was inside?

  The field marshal’s rooms were dark. She made her way by feel and memory, and by a sliver of moonlight coming in through the balcony windows. She satisfied herself that Olem was not anywhere in the darkness, and came up beside the field marshal. He snored softly, sleeping on his back on his cot. Nila drew a hidden dagger from her sleeve and paused.

  Field Marshal Tamas’s brow and cheeks were covered in sweat. He muttered something and shifted.

  She lifted her knife.

  “Erika!” Tamas started in his sleep.

  Nila froze. He settled back down to his cot, still deep in sleep. She took several breaths to steady her hand.

  “Nila,” someone whispered.

  Nila closed her eyes. The door to the office opened a crack. “Nila,” the voice whispered again. It was Olem.

  She returned the knife to her sleeve and took the field marshal’s uniform from where it hung over a chair. She slipped out the door. She would find out what Olem wanted and be rid of him. She still had to wash and return the clothing. There’d be another opportunity then.

  Olem waited for her in the hallway. The other guards pretended not to notice as he took her hand and gave her a kiss on the cheek. His lips were warm.

  “Thought I’d missed you,” he said, walking with her down the hall.

  “No.” She forced a welcoming smile on her face.

  He linked arms with her. “I’m glad,” he said. “I don’t get much time off. With my Knack and all, the field marshal likes me to put in extra hours.”

  “Of course.” She paused. “You should take more time for yourself.”

  “I would like to. But only to be with you.”

  That wouldn’t do at all.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Sure about what?”

  “That you want to be with me?” She stopped and slipped her arm out of his. “Why do you come to me, Olem? I’m not a good prospect. I’ve no family or connections, and you’ve not tried to force yourself on me. I don’t understand you.”

  The corner of Olem’s mouth lifted. “When the time’s right, I won’t have to force you.”

  She smacked his shoulder, her cheeks flushing despite herself.

  He laughed. “Come here,” he said. “I want to show you something.” He took her arm again and led her down a side hallway. “You know,” he said, “I wondered about you after you disappeared from the Eldaminse townhouse.”

  “You did?”

  “I wondered especially when we couldn’t find the Eldaminse boy.”

  Nila tripped, and would have fallen if Olem didn’t have her arm. Her heart began to hammer in her chest.

  Olem continued, “Then I saw you at the barricades. I couldn’t get to you. I couldn’t leave the field marshal in the chaos of things, but I asked the men not to hurt you when they fetched the boy.”

  Nila felt her whole body shaking. Olem knew. He’d known all along that she was a royalist. Why had it taken him so long to call her out? Why wasn’t she leaning over a headsman’s block instead of strolling down the hall with him?

  Olem stopped beside a soldier at a door at the end of one hall. The soldier saluted him, and he acknowledged by touching a finger to his forehead. The soldier opened the door for them.

  Here it was, Nila thought. She was about to be put under guard. Hidden away until the next round of beheadings. Would they send her straight to Sabletooth? She still had her knife. She could attack Olem… but he’d expect that. She’d wait until he was gone and another guard had taken his place.

  The room was dark except for a single lantern on a table by a window. It didn’t look like a prison cell. There was a bed, a writing desk, and a divan. An old woman dressed in servant’s clothes snoozed in a chair next to the bed.

  “Go on,” Olem said quietly.

  She entered the room. Olem crossed over to the lantern and picked it up. There was something on the table next to the lantern. A toy horse made of wood. Nila found herself kneeling by the bedside. There was a form there, sleeping soundly, bundled up to the chin beneath blankets.

  Jakob looked healthier. His hair had been cut and dyed, his cheeks fuller, and there were now smile lines at t
he corners of his mouth.

  “Tamas is not the heartless man most people think he is,” Olem said. “He won’t kill an innocent child. He sent no one to the guillotine under the age of seventeen on the day of the Elections. He had a rumor started that all the children of the nobility were strangled quietly in order to explain away their disappearance.”

  Nila brushed her fingers across Jakob’s forehead. “What happened to them? What will happen to him?”

  “Sent away,” Olem said. “Some to Novi or Rosvel. Some to the countryside.”

  “Can I see him when he’s awake?”

  “No. He mustn’t know anyone from his former life. He mustn’t grow up thinking he’s something special. He’ll be sent to live on a farm, where his life will be hard but not dangerous or complex. He might marry a laundress someday. But he’ll never be king.”

  Nila knelt beside Jakob’s bedside for several minutes before Olem drew her away. The lamp was returned, and the guard locked the door to the nursery behind them. Around the corner, Nila clutched the field marshal’s uniform to her chest.

  Olem stood, hands clasped behind his back, face serious. “You must hate us,” he said. “For destroying your world. I’m sorry for that. But Tamas… all of us… we did it so that the commoners can know a good life someday. So that we are no longer slaves.”

  “I was happy, I think,” Nila said.

  “The best kind of slavery,” Olem said. “But still slavery.” He fell silent for a couple of moments. “I’ll understand if you want a transfer away from the field marshal. It must be hard for you, knowing what he did to people you once served. He’ll be furious. He says you’re the first laundress to starch his collars right since he was in Gurla.”

  “And you?” Nila said.

  Olem struck a match and lit a cigarette, letting out a long sigh. “You can’t like someone knowing your secret. The field marshal pardoned the royalists, but there’s still no trust of them in the army. I won’t tell anyone. And I’ll leave you alone.”

  Nila searched Olem’s face for insincerity. She couldn’t find any. She had no doubt that if she said the word right now, he’d never speak to her again. His cigarette rolled between his lips. He took a long puff, then took it out, looking away. Giving her time to think it over.

  “Are you sure you weren’t a gentleman in another life?” she asked.

  “Absolutely,” Olem said, turning back to her. His face was still uncommonly serious.

  Nila tried to tell herself that this changed nothing. That Tamas was still a monster who endangered Adro every moment he remained alive. But Olem had revealed that Tamas was human. That he had compassion. Nila could not look into the eyes of another person and take their life when she knew they still had humanity.

  She hated Olem for it.

  “I’d prefer,” she said, clasping her hands behind her back so that Olem couldn’t see them shake, “that we not speak again.”

  Olem stiffened. His eyes fell, and his serious demeanor dropped long enough for her to see his sadness before he straightened his back. “Of course, ma’am.”

  Nila watched him walk down the hall and brushed a tear from the corner of her eye. To do what needed to be done, she had to be cruel. No time to cry. There was still laundry to do before the house awoke.

  Chapter 32

  Taniel approached the bastion gate wondering how the St. Adom’s Day Festival was progressing in Adro. They’d received a shipment of food that morning: barrels of ale, salted pork, and beef of the highest quality. Much better fare than normally seen on the Mountainwatch.

  Mozes was already at the gate, and armed to the teeth with knives, pistols, and a rifle. Rina, the Watch kennelmaster and one of Bo’s women, stood opposite of Mozes, crouched among her dogs. The beasts gave a quiet whine when Taniel approached. He squatted a few feet away and examined them in the torchlight.

  There were three big, long-haired mastiffs. They wore black spiked collars, and were attached to Rina by nothing more than leather harnesses. Bigger than wolves, they could pull her off the mountain easily if they wished.

  “What are the hounds for?” Taniel asked.

  Rina didn’t look up from her hounds. “The tunnel,” she said. Her voice was low, gentle. “I trained these three in the mines. They’ll cross forty yards and bring down a Privileged in a second. Musket fire doesn’t bother them.” She scratched one behind the ears. He turned toward her, massive head cocked, tongue rolling.

  “What are their names?”

  She pointed to the biggest one. “Kresim.” The next, “Lourad.” She patted the one who she’d been scratching. “And this is Gael.”

  Taniel held a hand out to Kresim. The dog sniffed once and turned away.

  “They’re not trained to be friends,” she said.

  “They like you enough.”

  She nodded. “I’m the master.”

  “I see.” Taniel stood up. Bo arrived with Katerine, who gave them all a look of disapproval. Bo squatted beside Rina and slid a hand up around her waist. Lourad growled low in the back of his throat.

  “Tst,” Rina hissed at the dog. Lourad lay down on the ground.

  Bo backed off a step. “Damned big hounds,” he said to Taniel. “Things make me nervous.”

  “You’re bedding their master,” Taniel said. “That’d make me nervous. I’m surprised you can stand after all the drink you’ve had.”

  Bo craned his head toward Katerine. “She has ways of sobering a man up.”

  “None pleasant, I’d imagine.”

  Bo cringed.

  Ka-poel emerged from the darkness of the town a few moments later dressed in her buckskins. Taniel had not seen them on her since Fatrasta. She normally preferred her long dark duster and wide-brimmed hat. The buckskins clung to her body, reminding Taniel she was a woman and not just a girl. Something he’d not noticed before. He noticed his hands were shaking from lack of powder, and took a sniff from his box. That steadied somewhat. He inhaled deeply and tried to resist taking more until it was needed.

  Ka-poel was followed by Fesnik, leading a pair of donkeys laden with powder barrels, and a few steps behind him was Gavril. They all gathered around the Watchmaster.

  “We’ve got enough powder to collapse their tunnel,” Gavril said. “We can trust you to set it off when we’re at a safe distance?”

  “That much powder,” Taniel said. “We’d have to be too far away.” Vlora could do it from that distance. She’d always been able to detonate powder from farther away than any mage Taniel knew—her unique talent.

  “We’ll use blasting cord, then,” Gavril said. “This will be quick. No one makes any noise until we’ve checked the tunnel—Rina, that includes your dogs. Who knows what kinds of traps they have waiting for us, or how many workers and soldiers they’ve got in there. Once that’s done we’ll set the powder, and then we hightail it out of there. We leave the donkeys if we have to.”

  “What’d they do to deserve that?” Fesnik said.

  Gavril rolled his eyes. “Everyone ready?”

  Nods went around, and they left silently by the front gate.

  The mountainside below was completely black all the way to Mopenhague, where the Kez army still camped. They proceeded into the darkness, going slow enough to let their eyes adjust. A sniff of black powder made Taniel’s brain buzz and brought his senses into sharp focus. The darkness held few secrets for him. For that he was glad—he still remembered the howling from the other night, and the sense he’d gotten of evil creatures prowling the mountainside.

  Taniel went on ahead, Ka-poel following twenty paces back. They moved silently down the mountainside, their eyes sharp for Kez guards. Taniel reached the ruins of the first redoubt. It had been taken and retaken, then left for nothing and finally smashed by artillery and sorcery. He expected guards, but when he climbed among the stone rubble it was empty.

  He checked each redoubt carefully. Were he the Kez, he would have left a small guard at each of them to raise an alarm
of a counterattack—however unlikely. In the fourth redoubt he found a body, head removed by a cannonball and the corpse stinking in the tatters of a Kez uniform: a soldier missed by those who’d scoured the mountain for bodies the last week.

  There were still no guards.

  The digging started not far past the last redoubt. Taniel scouted the area for some indication of the enemy. There were no lights, no signs of people, nor when he put his ear to the ground could he hear the sharp clicks of shovels and picks beneath him. Taniel frowned. Something was off about this. He sent Ka-poel back to let the others know they could come forward. Nothing moved on the mountainside. Far below, the Kez camp glittered with campfires. Taniel heard the crunch of rock beneath well-worn boots as the others joined him.

  They were on the road just above the entrance when one of the donkeys brayed behind them. Taniel felt his heart leap into his throat. He dropped to a sitting position, the barrel of his rifle resting on his foot so he could sight down the mountain. He waited for a Kez head to come into sight, for shouts of warning and then the trumpet of a general alarm.

  A few minutes passed. He looked back at Bo and Gavril. Gavril’s face was unreadable; Bo looked annoyed.

  Bo signaled to Taniel, and then touched a finger to the middle of his forehead. Taniel nodded.

  Taniel opened his third eye. The brief dizziness passed and he turned his attention to his surroundings. The chalky, colored residue of sorcery covered the entire mountain like spatters of whitewash on the ground beneath a freshly painted fence. It was all old magic, though, and had begun to fade. He looked toward the tunnel.

  What he saw there was not old, and it had certainly not begun to fade. Twin streaks of color passed through the ground, under his feet, and up the mountain. Taniel closed his third eye and scrambled down the rocks to the tunnel, Ka-poel right behind him.

  “What…? Taniel!” Gavril whispered. Taniel ignored him. He climbed up above the tunnels, and dropped down to the ground at their entrance. Above him, Ka-poel clicked her tongue. He checked for enemies before gesturing to her. When she jumped down, he caught her and set her on her feet.