Taniel spotted the cave from quite a ways down the road. It was easy to see – the entrance was as big as a house. He found a good knoll not long after. It was a small hill, perched just higher than the trail, between the trail and the cliff edge. He climbed it carefully and settled down in the snow. It was perfect for a marksman. He could see the cave entrance completely and he was hidden by snowbanks.
The only downside was that it sat on the edge of the cliff. It might have been ten thousand feet to the bottom, for all Taniel knew. He dug his fingers into the snow. If Bo got wind of Taniel, he’d be swept off the knoll with the flick of Bo’s fingers.
Taniel watched from his vantage for several minutes. His powder trance allowed him to see details of the cave even though it was far off. The entrance pointed just slightly off center from him. It appeared bored into the side of the mountain, with a thin footpath leading up to it and a steep hill of ice and snow on the left. It was perched right on the edge of the cliff.
The cave was occupied. A thin trail of smoke curled from within, rising straight into the windless sky, and the footpath was heavily trodden. Taniel opened his third eye to confirm it – Bo was there, his pastel glow wavering beside a fire inside the cave. Taniel crawled back off the knoll and opened his gear.
Taniel began getting ready. He moved methodically, double-checking everything, cleaning the flintlock and pan of snow and checking the barrel before he began. He bit the cartridge and primed the pan, and then poured the powder and ball into the muzzle. A little powder on his tongue to deepen the powder trance, and then he rammed down the cotton. Lastly, he brought out his sketchbook and flipped open to one of the first pages – Bo. A sketch Taniel had done on the voyage to Fatrasta. Bo was clean-shaven with short hair and wide cheeks, a smirk on his lips. Taniel tapped the likeness with one finger and climbed back up onto the knoll to wait.
He remained there as the sun passed its noon height and began to descend to the west. The air cleared, and from his knoll he could look out to his right and see all of Kez, distant plains and cities shimmering on the horizon beneath the setting sun.
The passing time gave Taniel’s mind the chance to wander. He couldn’t help but think of Vlora. As young lovers they’d spent afternoons shirking their training to take to bed in cheap inns. He smiled at those memories and felt his heart beating faster. No, that wouldn’t do. He had to keep calm as he waited for his quarry. He remembered one of those times, returning to find Tamas waiting. Tamas had informed him that Taniel and Vlora would marry when they were old enough, and that had been the start of their engagement.
Unbidden, images of Vlora in bed with another man came to his mind. His hands trembled until he pushed those images away. He forced himself to seek the calm of his powder trance. Think objectively. Did he love her? Perhaps. He’d always enjoyed her company. But did he really love her?
Taniel often wondered about love. It sometimes seemed a foreign concept – something out of poems. Vlora was the first woman he’d grown truly close to since his mother’s death, when he was six. He had few memories of his mother. Most of what he knew of her had been told to him afterward: that she was a powder mage and a member of the Adran nobility, though her mother had been Kez. She’d been a hard woman on the outside, as hard as Tamas, but he distinctly remembered a gentle nature that emerged when they were at home. Even when Taniel had a governess to watch him, his mother had always been present.
That had changed after her death. Taniel had gone through a string of governesses, whom he strongly suspected Tamas had been sleeping with. And then the governesses stopped, as if Tamas had had enough. The next woman to enter their lives was Vlora. He remembered competing with Bo to try to impress her. It was the only time in his life he’d been able to best Bo for a woman’s affections. Did that mean she was the only one for him? No. It was too big a world for that.
It was surprising to him how little he thought of her now, so many weeks after ending their engagement. He touched his pocket, where he kept the rumpled likeness of her he’d torn from his sketchbook. No, he did not love her. He’d been hurt by her betrayal, but mostly in his pride. Their marriage had been a foregone conclusion for so long that it seemed strange not to have it looming in the future anymore.
He wondered what her assignment was now. Was she still attached to Tamas’s staff? Tamas wasn’t overly sentimental, not by any stretch of the imagination. He’d be angry that the wedding was called off, but he’d not want a talented powder mage like Vlora far off.
Taniel found himself grinding his teeth together. Not sentimental. Ha. Sent his own son up here to kill his best friend. Why would he do that? Was it punishment for letting Rozalia live? Was this some kind of test, to see if Taniel was still loyal?
No, it wasn’t any of those things. It was pure expedience for the old bastard. Taniel was the best shot in the army. He could shoot a man’s hat off at three miles on a windy day. If that wasn’t an option, Taniel could get close to Bo without raising suspicions, and put a knife in his gut. When would Tamas learn that expedience was not always right? He’d certainly had a dose of it when he threw Nikslaus into the Adsea. Taniel couldn’t help but feel proud of his father for that. The pride was short-lived.
“You’re going to have to take a shit eventually,” Taniel muttered to himself as the day wore on. He remembered a time, crouching on a knoll in the king’s forest outside of Adopest. He’d been fourteen. Bo had figured out where the queen and her handmaidens liked to bathe in the river. They’d concealed themselves on a knoll for almost twenty-four hours before the women had come down to the river. Bo had been armed with a looking glass; Taniel had a horn of powder and the eyesight of a powder trance. It was risky, and they both knew the beatings they’d get if caught. Yet the queen was said to be one of the most beautiful women in the Nine.
And she was. The wait – and the risk – had been well worth it.
There was movement in the cave. Bo emerged. He stood in the entrance to the cave and rubbed his hands together, looking out over Kez not a foot from the edge of the cliff. Taniel wondered how Bo could do that without quaking at the fall. He took a deep breath and steadied himself for the shot.
Bo turned to examine the hillside. He removed a thick fur hood, and Taniel examined his childhood friend down the barrel of his rifle. Bo’s hair had grown long in the Mountainwatch, and he sported a thin, unruly beard. He’d lost a lot of weight since Taniel had last seen him. Bo studied the hillside and then looked down the road toward Taniel.
Taniel resisted the urge to duck. Bo was looking right at him. Bo shielded his eyes from the sun and tugged absently at his Privileged’s gloves. The arcane symbols on the back of the gloves caught the sunlight, and Taniel wondered whether Bo had surrounded himself with a shield of hardened air. Bo’s strongest elemental aura was air.
Did Bo know he was here? Was Bo waiting, laughing to himself, ready to strike Taniel down when he betrayed his position? Was he watching Taniel with his third eye? Taniel couldn’t sense Bo’s third eye, or any kind of shield. Taniel’s finger tightened on the trigger.
Bo stood there for another minute or two, squinting down the road before he turned to go back inside.
Taniel swore to himself. Why the pit didn’t he pull the trigger? He’d had a good shot. He sighed. He knew the answer.
“To the pit with it,” he said aloud, and stood up.
He came off his knoll and gathered his gear, then headed up the path toward Bo’s cave.
Pit, what was he going to say? ‘Hi Bo, how have you been, I came up here to kill you? But don’t worry, I’ve changed my mind. I hope everything is fine between us.’
Taniel gathered his thoughts and his resolve – or what was left of it, anyway. He shook his head. He’d been forced to choose between duty and his friend. He hoped that made him a good friend, because he was a piss-poor soldier.