Teef clenched his fists, but kept them out in front of him. “We’d give you a run,” he said, lip curling, “if all our boys were here, we’d give you a pit-damned run.”
“Sure you would,” Adamat said. “Who hired you to kill me?”
Teef’s jaw clicked shut.
Adamat took a deep breath. He didn’t have time for this right now.
Adamat felt himself pushed gently aside. He lowered his cane as SouSmith stepped up to Teef. The boxer was at least a head taller than Teef, and twice as wide. Adamat bit his tongue. SouSmith was covered in a cold sweat, and he clenched his teeth in pain. He reached out and took one of Teef’s hands.
“I’ll break this one first,” SouSmith rumbled.
“Ricard,” Teef said. The name came out like a startled curse word.
“Not good enough,” Adamat said.
He heard a snap as SouSmith bent Teef’s finger back far enough to touch his wrist. Teef screamed in agony. One of the other Barbers stood up and reached out for Teef, only to receive SouSmith’s boot on his chest. He was kicked halfway across the floor. Adamat put out a hand, steadying SouSmith when he stumbled. SouSmith regained his balance and twisted Teef’s wrist.
The Barber sank to the floor screaming. Adamat tapped SouSmith on the shoulder with his cane. The boxer stepped back.
“Who hired you?” Adamat said.
“The Proprietor!” Teef squealed through a string of curses. “He came in here looking for your head!”
“At least make your lies plausible.” Adamat flicked his cane against Teef’s wrist. He felt a pang of pity as Teef screamed again, but forced it down. Teef’s blades came to Adamat’s home, where his wife and children slept, and tried to kill him. His family would have been killed in their beds, every one of them, if they had been there. Adamat knew how the Barbers worked. They were as cold and ruthless as Lord Vetas. Adamat raised his cane to bring it down hard.
“A priest.”
Adamat stopped. “A priest? Come now.”
“It was a priest,” Teef said. He sucked in shaky breaths, chest heaving as he talked, tears running down his face. “He came in here yesterday morning. He was crying the whole time, kept asking Kresimir for forgiveness.”
“What did he look like?” Adamat asked.
“A priest. White robes and sandals. Blond hair. A little taller than you. A mole on his right cheek. He wouldn’t look me in the eye.”
Siemone. Adamat felt his mouth go dry.
“How much?”
“Five hundred thousand krana.”
Adamat nearly dropped his cane. “What? For me?”
Teef wheezed a laugh. “Two jobs. Fifteen thousand for you.”
“And the rest?” Adamat looked around. He’d trusted it to good fortune that there’d been only a few of the Barbers around. He realized now why there weren’t more: they were at a job. The thought made his skin crawl. That made at least forty Barbers unaccounted for, maybe more.
Sabon stepped forward and dragged Teef to his feet by the front of his shirt. “Is it Tamas?” Sabon said. He shook the Barber. “You double-crossing swine! Is it?”
“By the pit, no!” Teef said. “There’s not that kind of money in the world.”
“Who is it, then?”
“A chef,” Teef said. “Some big fat man in charge of the feast. My employer wanted him cut down in public. We don’t normally do that, but for the amount he offered…” Teef trailed off.
Sabon dropped him. Teef tried to catch himself, called out in pain. Sabon gave him a look of disgust. “You’ve made a terrible mistake,” he said. He glanced at Adamat. “Take them to Sabletooth. I have to go.”
Sabon was gone without another word, and Adamat saw that it was now just he, SouSmith, and the four Barbers. He exchanged a glance with SouSmith. The boxer shrugged. Adamat lifted Teef’s chin with the tip of his cane. “What’s so important about a chef?” he asked. Mihali, he recalled the chef’s name. Had the arch-diocel remembered the beating Mihali gave him in Tamas’s presence? It was a lot of money for revenge.
Teef shook his head. Adamat moved his cane threateningly. Teef’s head shake was more emphatic. “I don’t know, Kresimir damn you! It was just a job.”
“And you have no idea where the money came from?” Charlemund. Siemone wouldn’t do dirty work for anyone else. Charlemund had been trying to frame Ricard all along.
Teef hesitated just a second too long.
“I suggest you remain ignorant,” Adamat said. “Or your fate will be worse than it already is.” Tamas would destroy Teef. Adamat almost pitied the Barber. Almost. He stepped away from Teef as a troop of soldiers entered the room. “Get them to Sabletooth,” Adamat said. “All of them. I have to go to find the field marshal.”
“It’ll take hours to get across the city with the festival on,” SouSmith shouted after him.
Adamat barely heard as he ran out of the building. He needed to tell Tamas about Charlemund before it was too late.
Chapter 35
Taniel’s chest heaved, his legs ached. A few short hours of rest just before dawn was all they’d taken in the last two days. Only his powder trance let him keep the pace, but he always found himself outdistancing his companions. Two of the Watchers had collapsed from exhaustion. They left them where they were and continued on. Those men would find their own way back down the mountain.
The going was easier than Taniel’s last ascent. Some snow had melted, the rest had been cleared by the Mountainwatch. There’d been some travel between the Mountainwatch and Novi’s Perch for resupply since winter. Campfires and old horse droppings remained from resupply caravans sent to the monastery.
Those didn’t concern Taniel. What concerned him was the more recent passage. They’d yet to catch sight of the Kez, but they’d found two camps. There was scat and tracks enough for at least a hundred men and pack animals to boot. That many men shouldn’t have been able to sneak past the Mountainwatch, yet somehow they had.
They found the third camp midday. It was tucked away off the main trail, down by a waterfall that was still half-frozen despite summer being almost upon them. Taniel checked the ashes of a cook fire. They were still warm.
He took stock of the camp. It brought back memories of camps not so unlike this in faraway Fatrasta when he and the natives tracked Kez patrols and lay ambushes for them. Only that hadn’t been in the high mountains, and those patrols weren’t filled with Privileged. And Wardens.
His chest went cold as he kicked something with his toe. He picked it up, flipped it around in his hand. It was a metal ball just about the size of a man’s fist. An air reservoir from a Warden’s air rifle.
“How far behind them?” Bo asked when the rest of the group had caught up to Taniel. Bo looked less well each day. His cheeks were sunken, his eyes underlined by black bags. Their punishing pace had done him ill.
“Hours,” Taniel said. He tossed Bo the air reservoir. “I should have expected this.”
“Where there are Kez Privileged, there are Wardens,” Bo said.
He dropped the metal sphere, only to have Ka-poel swoop in and pluck it from the ground. She examined it closely and tucked it into her rucksack.
“We’re gaining on them,” Taniel said.
“Close to the top, too,” Bo replied. “We’re not far from Novi’s Perch.”
“Everyone rested?” Taniel asked Fesnik. The young Watcher staggered to the waterfall to refill his canteen.
Fesnik groaned. “Pit, no. We supposed to be able to fight after a climb like this?”
“Fight and win,” Taniel said. He nudged Fesnik with his toe.
“Right, right,” Fesnik said. He climbed to his feet. “Come on,” he called to the others. “We’re moving again.”