“I will never allow a king to have power over Adro again,” Tamas said. “I simply won’t have it. If you want a king, he will be that in name only.”
Maxil scowled. “A puppet monarchy?”
“At the very best, and I’m stretching my patience to offer that.”
“No,” Maxil said. “Adro must have a proper king.”
“Never again,” Tamas said.
“You’re refusing us? That’s it? No negotiation? We’ve left the army in your hands. We’ve made you the next royal cabal head. You’d be the second most powerful man in Adro. Are you that greedy that you must keep it all to yourself?”
Tamas chuckled. “You poor sods. I didn’t do this for power. I did it to destroy the monarchy. I did it to free the people. I’m not going to turn around and put a boy king on the throne so that you can go back to your country villas and continue to bleed the country dry.” He looked at Westeven. “I’m sorry, my friend. No king, no foreign country must ever have power in Adro again.”
“I will fight you to the end,” Westeven said.
Tamas bowed to his old friend. “I know.” Tamas felt someone touch his shoulder. Julene was there, her face serious.
“There’s something wrong,” she said.
“What?” Tamas said. He exchanged a frown with General Westeven.
The familiar popping sound of fired air rifles erupted from the barricades. Julene leapt between Tamas and General Westeven, shoving Tamas back. Bullets crackled against an invisible barricade. Julene fell back, throwing fireballs as quickly as she could summon them. They smashed into the barricade, causing blooms of fire.
The other Privileged launched herself into action just a moment after Julene. Hardened shields of air stopped the crack of bullets from Tamas’s quickest soldiers, covering the sudden retreat of the royalist delegation. The ground rumbled, the air seemed to shake, and the cannon closest to Tamas suddenly cracked, the wheels falling off, the broken metal hitting the ground with a thud.
Tamas leapt to his feet. They’d attacked him. They’d attacked him under a flag of truce! Westeven knew better than that. Westeven… Tamas’s eyes found his old friend. Westeven’s body was being dragged toward the barricades. He was missing an arm, his whole chest blackened. Was he already dead? He’d been hit by one of Julene’s fireballs. Tamas felt sick.
“Senseless,” he spat. “Brigadier Ryze! Prime the artillery. We attack at once!”
Chapter 11
“The Public Archives are just above us,” Adamat said. Somewhere behind him, SouSmith’s lantern wobbled to a stop, and the sound of sloshing stilled.
“You sure this time?”
Adamat held his own lantern up to the rusted iron ladder rungs in front of him. There was a plaque on the bricks between the rungs, supposedly to say which building this accessed, but the letters had been worn away long ago. The storm drains beneath Adro were not kept in the best of shape. It was a miracle most of them had survived the earthquake – and a testament to Adran engineering.
“I may have a perfect memory,” Adamat said, his voice echoing in the long, shoulder-height tunnel, “but all these damned drains look alike.”
“Heh. I liked the women’s bathhouse.”
“I bet you did,” Adamat said. “Wonder anyone’s using it, what with Tamas lobbing shells all over this section of town.” He rubbed his finger over the plaque, trying to make out any kind of letters. “This has got to be it.”
SouSmith sloshed up beside him. The big boxer was bent almost double. Adamat’s knees and thighs ached from trying to move around in the storm drains, but SouSmith had to be hurting far worse.
“I’ll check,” SouSmith said. He handed Adamat his lantern and pulled himself up the iron rungs. The ladder squeaked in protest of his weight. “Lantern,” SouSmith said, reaching down a hand.
Adamat heard a grate move to one side, and SouSmith disappeared. Somewhere above them, closer than Adamat would have liked, he heard the deep thump of artillery.
“Come,” SouSmith said, his voice muffled.
Adamat followed him up the ladder and found himself in a high-arched basement. The walls were made of cement, damp and moldy, and a half inch of stagnant water covered the floor. No one had been in this room for a decade.
“This is it,” Adamat said.
“Really?” SouSmith looked doubtful.
“I used to play in these drains as a boy,” Adamat said. “Mother’d get furious. I must have explored half the basements in Adro.” He grinned at SouSmith. “I knew we were close when we found the bathhouse.”
“Spent a lot of time under there, eh?”
“For certain. I was once an adolescent boy, after all.”
They passed through a series of identical arched storage rooms before they found a narrow flight of stairs leading up. The door rattled when Adamat tried it.
“SouSmith,” he said. He stepped back, letting the boxer squeeze past him. SouSmith braced his hands on either wall and kicked the door. The lock snapped and the door crashed inward, then fell off its hinges. They glanced at each other as the sound echoed through the building.
They left their lanterns beside the basement door and carried on cautiously. Adamat had his cane, SouSmith a pair of short-barreled pistols. They came out of a long corridor into the main floor of the Archives.
The building was as large as a parade ground and stacked four stories high. Shelving stretched from one wall to the next. Adamat headed down an aisle. Outside the brick walls, he could hear the sound of rifle and musket shots. The air was dusty, the smell of the books almost overwhelming – the scent of glue, paper, and old vellum, of age and mustiness.
“No one here,” SouSmith said.
Adamat glanced back. SouSmith was inspecting the shelves of books with something akin to suspicion. When a man solved his problems by punching them, books were often a foreign thing. “Not surprised,” Adamat said. “General Westeven has given large grants to at least a dozen libraries throughout the Nine, including this one. He won’t let it be touched.”
They came out of an aisle and found themselves in the middle of the library. A wide space, free of shelves, was filled with tables for the patrons. Light came from a skylight that went up all four stories directly through the center of the Archives. The tables were all clear.
Except for one. Adamat placed a finger to his lips and signaled for SouSmith to follow. A number of books had been laid out on a table in one corner. They were open, as if left there only moments ago. His frown deepened as they approached. The books were obviously missing pages, and whole paragraphs had been blotted from them. He flipped one of the books to the cover. In Service of the King.
Adamat drew his cane sword in one swift motion and spun around. He heard the click of SouSmith’s pistols.
A woman had stepped out between them. She wore a wool riding dress and jacket and had gray in her shoulder-length hair, and wise, dark eyes that reminded Adamat of a raven. She wore Privileged’s gloves and had a hand pointed at both himself and SouSmith. An artillery blast made the building tremble, kicking up dust from the shelves of books.
Adamat licked his lips. SouSmith’s eyes were wide, and his finger brushed at the trigger.
“You’ll get us both killed,” Adamat said to SouSmith.
“Don’t like this,” was the response.
“Neither do I. Who are you?” he asked the Privileged, though he already had some idea.
“My name is Rozalia,” she said.
“You’re the Privileged that Tamas is hunting.”
Her silence was enough of an answer for Adamat. His eyes darted to the books on the table.
“Are you going to kill us?”
“Only if I have to.”
Adamat slowly lowered his cane sword. He gestured to SouSmith to put away his pistols.
“You’re a Knacked,” Rozalia said.
“Yes.”
“Are you looking for me?”