Adamat doubled over from pain. He’d not expected the man to hit so fast or so hard. He nearly dropped his cane, and it was all he could do to remain standing.
“I’ll have the police on you!” Palagyi wailed.
“Try it,” Adamat wheezed. “I still have friends there. They’ll laugh you into the street.” He regained his composure and pulled himself up enough to slam the door. “Come back in two months!” He locked the door and slid the deadbolt.
Adamat held his stomach and staggered back to his office. He’d have indigestion from that blow for a week. He hoped he wasn’t bleeding.
Adamat spent a few minutes recovering before he gathered his letters and set out into the streets. He could feel tension growing around him. He wanted to attribute it to the coming conflict that he knew would happen – the revolution that would sweep the city when Manhouch was declared dead, and the chaos that would follow. Adamat prayed that Tamas would keep it in check. A task that might very well prove impossible. But no, the tension was likely just Adamat’s growing headache and the pain in the pit of his stomach.
Not far from the postmaster’s, Adamat stopped on a street corner to catch his breath. His stride had been unconsciously hurried, his breathing hard, a worried sense of danger lurking in the back of his mind.
A newsie lad, no more than ten, sprinted into view. He stopped on the corner next to Adamat and took mighty gasps before throwing his head back and shouting:
“Manhouch has fallen! The king has fallen! Manhouch faces the guillotine at noon!” Then the boy was gone, onto the next corner.
Adamat snapped himself out of a stunned silence and turned to watch others do the same. He knew that Manhouch had fallen. He’d seen the blood of the royal cabal on Tamas’s jacket. Yet hearing it spoken aloud on a public street made his hands tremble. The king had fallen. Change had been forced on the country, and the people would be forced to choose how they’d react.
The initial shock of the news passed. Confusion set in as pedestrians changed their plans midstride. A carriage turned around abruptly in the street. The driver didn’t see the small girl selling flowers. Adamat rushed out, grabbed her by the arm, and pulled her away before the horses could trample her. Her flowers spilled into the street. One man shoved another in a sudden, hurried dash across the street and was in turn shoved to the ground. A fistfight began, only to be quickly put down by a truncheon-wielding police officer.
Adamat helped the girl pick up her flowers before she ran off. He sighed. It’s begun. He put his head down and pushed on toward the postmaster’s.
Chapter 5
Tamas stood on a balcony six floors above the enormous city square called the King’s Garden, his face in the wind, watching the crowds gather. His two hounds slept at his feet, unaware of the importance of this day. He wore his freshly pressed dress uniform; dark blue with gold epaulettes on each shoulder, and gold buttons – each of them a small powder keg. The lapel, collar cuffs, and wings of his uniform were of red velvet, his belt of black leather. He wore his medals at the insistence of his aides: gold, silver, and violet stars of various shapes and sizes awarded to him by half a dozen Gurlish shahs and kings of the Nine. He held his bicorne hat under one arm.
The sun was just barely above the rooftops of Adopest, yet he guessed there were already fifteen thousand people below watching as crews constructed a line of guillotines. It was said the Garden could contain four hundred thousand, half the population of Adopest.
They would find out today.
His gaze fell across the Garden to the tower that rose like a thorn against the morning sky. Sabletooth had been built by Manhouch’s father, the Iron King, as a prison for his most dangerous enemies, and as a warning to all the rest. It had taken almost half of his sixty-year reign to build and its color had given the Iron King his nickname. It was three times the height of any building in Adopest, an ugly thing, a nail of basalt that looked like it had been ripped from the pages of a legend from before the Time of Kresimir.
At the moment Sabletooth was full to capacity with nearly six hundred nobles and many of their wives and oldest sons, as well as another five hundred courtiers and royal dignitaries that couldn’t be trusted on their own. When Tamas closed his eyes, he thought he could hear wails of anguish, and he wondered if it was his imagination. The nobility knew what was coming to them. They had for a century.
Tamas turned away from his view of the city when the door behind him clicked. A soldier stepped out onto the balcony. His solid blue uniform with a silver collar matched Tamas’s, with a gold sergeant’s triangle pinned to the lapel, and stripes of service above his breast to indicate ten years. The man looked to be in his midthirties. He wore a finely trimmed brown beard, though military regulation forbade it, and his hair was cut short above his ears. Tamas gave the man a nod.
“Olem, sir. Reporting.”
“Thank you, Olem,” Tamas said. “You’re aware of the duties I need you to perform?”
“Bodyguard,” Olem said, “and manservant, errand boy. Anything the field marshal bloody well pleases. No disrespect meant, sir.”
“I take it those were Sabon’s words?”
“Yes, sir.”
Tamas suppressed a smile. He could like this man. Too free with his tongue, perhaps.
A thin ribbon of smoke rose from behind Olem.
“Soldier, is your back on fire?”
“No, sir,” Olem said.
“The smoke?”
“My cigarette, sir.”
“Cigarette?”
“All the latest fashion. Tobacco as fine as snuff, sir, and half the price. All the way from Fatrasta. I roll them myself.”
“You sound like an advertisement.” Tamas felt annoyance creeping on.
“My cousin sells tobacco, sir.”
“Why are you hiding it behind your back?”
Olem shrugged. “You’re a teetotaler, sir, and it’s well known among the men you won’t abide smoking either.”
“Then why are you hiding it behind your back?”
“Waiting for you to turn around so I can have a hit, sir.”
At least he was honest. “I had a sergeant flogged once for smoking in my tent. Why do you think I’ll treat you any differently?” That had been twenty-five years ago, and Tamas had almost lost his rank for it.
“Because you want me to watch your back, sir,” Olem said. “It goes to logic that you won’t hand out a beating to the man you expect to keep you alive.”
“I see,” Tamas said. Olem hadn’t even cracked a smile. Tamas decided he did like the man. Against his better judgment.
They examined each other for a moment. Tamas couldn’t help but watch the ribbon of smoke rising from behind Olem. The smell reached him then. It wasn’t terribly unpleasant, less pungent than most cigars, but not as pleasant as pipe tobacco. There was even a minty tinge to it.
“Do I have the job, sir?” Olem asked.
“You really don’t need sleep?”
Olem tapped the middle of his forehead. “I have the Knack, sir. Runs in the family. My father could smell a liar from a mile away. My cousin can eat more food than a hundred men, or none at all for weeks. My particular Knack? I don’t need sleep. I even have the third sight, so you know it’s the real thing.”
Men with a Knack were considered the least powerful among those with sorcerous ability. It usually manifested itself as one very strong and particular talent, though some were quite powerful. There were plenty of men who claimed to have a Knack. Only those with a third eye – the ability to see sorcery and those who wield it – were truly Knacked.
“Why haven’t you been swept up as a bodyguard before?”
“Sir?”
“With a talent like that you could be running security for some duke in Kez and making more money than a dozen soldiers. Or perhaps serving overseas with the Wings of Adom.”