“He wants you to what?” Erika demanded.
Tamas was in Budwiel, a week after his meeting with the king. He had decided that Adopest was not safe and had sent word for Erika to meet him here, at a small apartment he kept under a false name on the Kez border. She was still in his arms, both their jackets already on the floor, when he told her the news.
“Kill Privileged Dienne,” Tamas repeated.
Erika stepped away from him and snatched the blanket off of his bed, throwing it around her bare shoulders. “You’d be mad.”
“I shot her once. I can do it again.”
“And you have to be sure that shot is lethal this time.”
“There’s that,” Tamas admitted.
“Why does he want her dead?” Erika asked.
Tamas retrieved his jacket from the floor, wishing he had kept his mouth shut until after they had some time together.
“Don’t put that on, I’m not done with you,” Erika said. “Tell me why he wants her dead.”
Tamas took a deep breath. This was a bad idea. He shouldn’t have told Erika any of this. Pit, she shouldn’t even be here. As far as the he was concerned, he was still a wanted man. He knew that he couldn’t trust anyone at court or in the city.
“Because,” he said, “the cabal has been flexing their muscles. They’ve ignored his summons. Disobeyed his orders. They have more than a hundred and fifty full-fledged Privileged. That’s enough to raze the entire country if they wanted and they know it. They’re growing drunk with their own power. Privileged Dienne bungled a major operation on the last campaign in Gurla, so she’s the best choice for an … example.”
“It has the added benefit,” he continued, “that Dienne’s job is to see me dead or disgraced. It’s not me against the cabal. It’s just me against her. This is no longer impossible.”
“You’re still a madman to try it.”
“I have no choice. The king forbade her from killing me outright but even he admits that his grasp on the cabal is tenuous. She’ll try for my head sooner or later.”
“You said it’s her assignment. Does that mean if you kill her this will be over? Or will they just send someone else? What if she gets reinforcements?”
Tamas hesitated. “I’m not sure. The king claims that no one else actually knows about our fight with the cabal guards. He says that Dienne will try to kill me on her own to avoid losing face with the rest of the cabal. Oh, and he knows you’re involved.”
Erika dropped down on the bed and bit absently at one of her fingernails. “How does he know?”
“He has prominent members of the cabal followed, and his spies told him about our fight. Somehow they knew who you were.”
The information did not seem to faze her. “How will you kill her?”
Tamas patted the rifle he had leaned against the doorpost. “Bullet to the head from a half mile. It’s my only real option.”
“Can’t do that,” Erika said.
Tamas frowned. “What do you mean?”
She pointed to his rifle. “The cabal can’t know you were involved.”
“That’s the point, isn’t it?”
“Is that what the king told you to do?”
“No,” Tamas said. “He just said to kill her.”
“Nothing about how he wanted it done?”
“None,” Tamas said.
Erika got up and crossed the room, pulling a bottle out of her bag. “Everberry cordial,” she said. “All the way from Fatrasta, and not a drop of alcohol in it.” She produced two wine glasses wrapped carefully in newspaper, then poured them each a glass of the black cordial. “The cabal can’t know about your involvement,” she repeated, handing Tamas a glass and leading him by his hand to the bed. “If Dienne simply dies, the cabal may lose interest in you. At least long enough for you to get back your footing. However, if they suspect that a powder mage killed her they will come for your head. Your shot would have to be flawless, made to look like it came from a nearby window. Are you that good?”
“Not yet,” Tamas admitted. He sipped the cordial, savoring the sweetness.
She took the glass from his hand and set it on the bedside table, moving into his lap. “Then we’ll have to think of something else.”
“Wait, wait. What do you mean, we? I’m not going to let you have anything to do with this.” Tamas tried to push her gently from his lap, but her arms were firmly around his neck.
“At what point,” she whispered in his ear, “will you realize that you will never be in the position to let or not let me do anything?”
“You can’t become involved any further. This is serious.”
“I already am involved. And I’m deadly serious, my love,” Erika said.
Tamas felt a shudder go down his spine at the word love. “Don’t say that,” he said quietly.
“Don’t say what?”
“Love. This can’t last.” As much as he wanted it to.
“Why not?”
Tamas looked away. “You know why not.”
Erika snatched him by the chin and jerked his face toward hers, staring him in the eye. “Am I wasting my time, Captain Tamas? Am I with a man who doesn’t want me?”
“Absolutely not,” Tamas growled. This was too quick, he told himself. They’d barely known each other for a couple of months. She was extraordinary, but she was still a noble. She would never be allowed to marry him. “But I want you more than a passing fancy. And I’m a commoner.”
“If I hear you say you’re a commoner once more, so help me Kresimir, I will pull out your tongue. You’re a man with ambition. With strength. Use it. And when you’re Field Marshal Tamas no one will question you taking a foreign duchess as your wife.”
“And in the meantime?” he asked.
Erika shoved him down and straddled him on the bed. He grabbed her by the waist and threw her aside, rolling on top of her, satisfied with a surprised squeal. She grabbed a hand full of his hair.
“In the meantime,” she said, “We have a Privileged to kill.”
Tamas watched from a second-story window as twenty-odd cabal guards crept down the street toward him.
He was back in Adopest, three weeks after the king had ordered him to kill Privileged Dienne. It was nearly two o’clock in the morning, the night lit by a full moon, and the streets in the factory district were all but silent.
The street below ended just a few yards past Tamas’s hiding spot in a cul-de-sac of four large, multi-story tenements. The lanterns were dark, nothing moving but stray cats fleeing before the cabal guards. The whole block had been struck by plague last year and remained abandoned.
A perfect place to kill a Privileged.
The guards passed below his window, and he wondered how many more were flanking the streets on either side of the tenements. Not many, he suspected. Privileged Dienne would want to keep this quiet until she was sure she had dealt with him.
He edged toward the window, as close as he dared, and looked toward the main thoroughfare. There, not fifty yards from where he stood, was the same carriage he had seen Dienne flee in a few weeks prior.
She had honored his request for a meeting, it seemed, even if she hadn’t come alone as he requested.
Not that Tamas had expected her to.
He double-checked his preparations. Set up just inside the open windows of the apartment were eight flintlock muskets. Each was loaded and propped to aim into the cul-de-sac. They would jerk and fall when he set them off, but accuracy was not important.
Only the illusion of conspiracy was important.
Tamas took his own musket and aimed it at the guard wearing a captain’s red epaulette on one shoulder. The man whispered and gestured to his troops, positioning them by the windows and doors of the center-most tenement. One of them braced himself and kicked the door in with a crash that rattled the windows, and about half the platoon of cabal guards rushed into the empty building.