“Out with it,” Taniel said.
“Out with what?”
“You’re rambling. You only ramble when you’re about to ask me to do something I won’t want to do.”
Tamas fell quiet. Taniel watched him struggle internally, emotion barely touching his face. This was the first time he’d been alone with his father in what, four years? He noticed that Tamas was wearing the saw-handled dueling pistols he’d brought him from Fatrasta. They looked well used.
Tamas took a deep breath, his chuckle dying out, and stared at the ceiling.
“I need you to kill Bo.”
“What?”
Tamas explained about the gaes. It was a long explanation, with a great deal of technical detail. Taniel barely listened. There was something about an inspector and a promise. He could tell by his father’s tone that Tamas didn’t want to say it. That it was duty alone that forced his hand.
“Why me?” he asked when his father finally fell silent.
“If Sabon had to die, I’d give him the courtesy of doing it myself. I’d feel like a coward if I had someone else do it.”
“And you think I can kill my best friend?”
“Bo’s very strong, I know. I’ll send help with you.”
“That’s not what I meant. I know I can shoot him. I can probably get close enough without him expecting a thing to do it with a pistol. But do you really think I can bring myself to do it?”
“Can you?”
Taniel looked at his hands. He’d last seen Bo over two years ago, the day he’d gotten on the ship for Fatrasta. Bo had been there to see him off. Yet what was another friend? The world was different now. He’d killed dozens of men. His fiancee had bedded another man. His country no longer had a king. Who was to say Bo had remained the same?
Taniel squeezed his hands into fists. How dare he? How dare Tamas come here and ask him this. Taniel was a soldier, but he was also Tamas’s son. Did that even matter? “I won’t do it if you ask me,” Taniel said. “Not if you ask me as a son. If you give me an order as a powder mage – then I’ll do it.”
Tamas’s face hardened. This was a challenge, and he knew it. Taniel’s father didn’t take well to challenges. Tamas stood up.
“Captain, I want you to kill Privileged Borbador at the South Pike Mountainwatch. Bring me back the jewel he has on his person as evidence.”
Taniel closed his eyes. “Yes, sir.” That son of a bitch. He was really going to make Taniel kill his best friend. Taniel wondered if he should come back and put a bullet in Tamas’s head once he’d finished with Bo.
“I’m sending Julene with you.”
His eyes snapped open. “No. I won’t work with her.”
“Why not?”
“She’s reckless. She got her partner killed, and nearly me too.”
“She said the same thing about you.”
“And you’d believe her over me?”
“She had the courtesy to report to me after you so freely let the enemy go.”
“That Privileged would have killed us all,” Taniel said.
“I’ve given the order.” Tamas turned around, headed for the door. “Marked Taniel, carry out your orders. Then you’ll need some time off to deal with your… personal problems.” He left.
Personal problems? Taniel sneered. He felt something on his arm, looked down. His nose was practically pouring blood. He swore, looking around for a towel. What would help this? Oh yes, some black powder…
Chapter 15
There was a room beneath the House of Nobles, deeper underground than even the sewer systems, that had seen its heyday during the reign of the Iron King. Privileged sorceries held back the musky scent and the darkness and kept the walls from leaking even after the deaths of the men who cast the spells. The room was fifty paces wide, ten paces high, white plaster walls covered in wall hangings long thought lost by those who care about such things. There were tables and chairs, lounges that could be used as beds, crates of canned food, and barrels of water hidden behind silk curtains.
Not even Manhouch had known about his father’s emergency shelter; only a few of the Iron King’s closest advisers, Tamas included, knew about the place, or how to reach it beneath the House of Nobles. The Iron King had been paranoid that the people would rise up against him, or that his spies would turn their knives to his throat. Tamas thought it fitting, then, when it was clear that the place had been in complete disuse since Manhouch XII took the throne, that it should be used to plot the king’s fall.
Since the coup, Tamas’s council of coconspirators had moved their meetings to a less wayward place, far above on the third floor of the House of Nobles, as befitting a government, but Tamas still used the room as a place to find quiet and solitude. None of his staff knew where to find him here, not even Olem and Sabon. He would head back up soon enough.
Tamas sat in the most comfortable of the chairs, his stockinged feet up on a hassock, a bowl of squash soup in his lap – the only thing Mihali would let him have from the kitchens when he passed through – and a miniature map of Surkov’s Alley in his hand. The other hand gently scratched the head of one of his hounds, receiving a periodic lick of affection for his troubles.
He examined the map closely. It had been three days since he’d thrown Duke Nikslaus into the Adsea. It was a three-day ride, trading horses and without sleep, from Surkov Alley – the thin valley through the mountains connecting Adro and Kez – to Adopest. Tamas had received word not an hour ago that the Kez army was gathering outside of Budwiel, the city on the border of Kez at the entrance to Surkov Alley.
Nikslaus and the delegation was a feint, an excuse for a war Ipille had banked on. Preparations had already begun. The Kez meant to invade. Yet it would take them a hundred thousand men to break through Surkov’s Alley. The whole corridor was staggered with troops and artillery placements. Unless Surkov’s wasn’t their target.
He set the map down and repositioned his bowl of soup to a nearby table. Pitlaugh crept away with a light growl. “Hush,” he told the hound. Tamas fetched a bigger map, this one of all south Adro, and looked it over.
South Pike was the only mountain pass big enough for the Kez to bring a whole army through without it taking all summer. Could they be trying for that? Would their commanders decide that the smaller choke point with fewer men was a better target than Surkov’s Alley? He glanced at the bottom of the Adsea on the map, where one small corner of it touched the only Adsea harbor in Kez beside the river delta. They might try coming over water, but the Kez had hardly any navy to speak of in the Adsea. Tamas sighed, folding the map, and sat back in his chair. He looked down at Hrusch. The hound gazed back up at him, head tilted to the side, panting jowls forming a smile.
What could Ipille possibly be thinking? Kez outnumbered Adro five to one in soldiers, yet Adro had so many advantages: industry, more capable military commanders, the Mountainwatch. Adro held all the choke points.
“I should bring Olem down here,” Tamas said to the dog. “I think better when I have someone to muse to.” Then the place would smell of his cigarettes. Tamas leaned over for a spoonful of Mihali’s soup. He’d never tasted anything like it, milky sweet with a hint of dark sugar.
Tamas heard a click on the other side of the room, near the door. The hallways leading to the room formed a series of dead-end corridors and false walls, switchbacks and trap doors, enough to confound and discourage even a determined individual, so it was with some surprise that Tamas sat up and pulled on his boots. He stood up and turned toward the door, straightening his shirt, a hand out to silence Hrusch’s whines.