“You know him?”
“I do indeed, my lord. He is the very man you seek: the eye behind the flintlock. Taniel Two-Shot.”
“I feared…” The words came from Kresimir’s mouth as a whisper.
Taniel got to his feet. It was like trying to stand beneath the weight of the entire keep, his knees buckling beneath him, legs shaking from the effort.
“I’ll kill you,” he said to Hilanska.
“Was he sent here?” Kresimir asked.
The general seemed troubled. “No, my lord. He should be under arrest in the Wings of Adom camp right now.”
“Why?” Taniel demanded. “My father trusted you!” Everything that had happened: the arrest, the court-martial, the attack on Ka-poel. Had that all been Hilanska?
“He mentioned someone named Pole,” Kresimir said.
Hilanska frowned. “I don’t know anyone… ah. There is a girl named Ka-poel.”
“Is she a great sorcerer? Why did I not know of her?”
Taniel surged forward. The guards clustered around, menacing him with pikes and air rifles. “Not another word, Hilanska!”
“She’s just a child, practically. Two-Shot’s companion. A savage.”
“And a sorcerer?”
“A Bone-eye. A savage magician of some kind. Negligible powers.”
“Kill her.”
Taniel snarled wordlessly. He felt a pike blade catch his shoulder, tearing through his skin and flesh as he forced his way through the circle of Prielight Guards. One of the guards threw himself in front of Taniel. Barely even slowing down, Taniel snatched the guard by the throat and crushed his windpipe.
Hilanska turned to run, but he was too slow. Taniel leapt after him, fingers grasping, ready to crush the traitor’s skull between his palms.
And he would have, had Kresimir not stepped between them.
The god raised a hand, and Taniel felt that same sluggish weight fall upon him.
He tore through it, batting away Kresimir’s hand. His body didn’t feel like it was his own, and he gave in to the rage flowing through him.
Taniel expected his fists to strike steel when he touched the flesh of the god. Instead, Kresimir crumpled before him, crying out. Taniel’s knuckles cracked hard against Kresimir’s jaw, then his face. Kresimir’s mask clattered to the ground, and Taniel found himself straddling the god, pounding away.
Kresimir’s nose was a fountain of blood, and his teeth gave way to the beating.
Taniel’s fingers curled around the god’s throat when the Prielights pulled him away. He flailed about with his fists, sending several of the Prielights to the floor before he himself was beaten down.
“Don’t kill him!” Kresimir shrieked, scrambling to get to his feet. His face was crimson, his white robes soaked with blood. “Don’t kill him,” he said again. Kresimir returned the mask to his face and backed slowly away from Taniel. “Hang him high. I want the world to see what becomes of a man who thought he could kill God.”
The Prielights dragged Taniel across the hall. He kicked and screamed, throwing what punches he could. As he was pulled out of the hall, he could hear Kresimir speaking once again to Hilanska:
“Tomorrow I burn the Adran army.”
“Are you sure, my lord? What about Adom?”
“He will burn with the rest.”
Adamat spent the night in the arms of his wife and rose early to make his way to the riverfront.
It was only about seven o’clock, but a thin crowd had already turned out. By the blaze of the sun rising in the east over the abandoned Skyline Palace, Adamat could tell it would be a beautiful day. Few clouds hung above him. The sky was blue and gold.
He found a spot where the crumbling wall of the old city overlooked the Ad River as it came into Adopest but before it hooked around the bend and met up with the Adsea. Adamat sat on the wall and dangled his feet over the edge, eating a meat pie he’d bought from a vendor in the street. He still felt burdened by the loss of Josep. Perhaps Faye was right – the other children needed him now. He had to somehow protect them from this new threat.
He hoped that Josep would forgive him.
No sign of ships on the river to the north. Perhaps Ricard had oversold it. Surely the Trading Company merchantmen couldn’t sail all the way down the Ad River so quickly?
Yet still he waited. Ricard had not given an estimate of when Lord Claremonte’s ships would arrive, and Adamat did not want to miss it. He had no plans, no grand schemes to throw Lord Claremonte from his goals. Adamat could only watch. Something told him that this day would be one to live in his mind forever.
By eleven o’clock, the crowd had thickened to the point that carriages could no longer navigate the streets. Noise filled the air as people shouted among themselves. No one really seemed to know what was going on. Their only information came from the newspaper article that Ricard had run the night before.
There was certainly excitement in the streets, and the police were out in full force. More than one old veteran wore faded Adran blues and sported a fifty-year-old musket on his shoulder. Other men had brought their whole families out and were picnicking on the old city wall. Pastry bakers and meat pie vendors were hawking their snacks to the crowd.
Adamat bought a newspaper from a newsie lad and perused Ricard’s front-page article. It was a rousing speech that called the people out to defend their city against the oppressions of foreign invasion and tyranny. Adamat lowered the newspaper to watch a pair of children splashing in the muddy water of the Ad like it was a carnival day.
He flipped through the newspaper while he waited for Claremonte’s ships. Unsubstantiated rumors out of Kez that Field Marshal Tamas was still alive. Fresh news from Deliv that an Adran army was besieging one of their cities – preposterous.
The slow rise of shouts throughout the throng brought Adamat’s nose out of his newspaper.
Ships on the horizon.
They began as white dots slowly creeping down the river and steadily drew closer as the afternoon went on. They were moving at an almost reckless pace, especially for merchantmen navigating a freshwater river. They came on at full sail with the current, the wind at their backs.
It was two o’clock before the ships finally reached Adopest. Adamat had never sailed on an oceangoing vessel and had only been to ocean port cities a handful of times in his life. Most of his knowledge of them came from books, but he could tell the lead vessel was a fourth-rate ship of the line, and he counted twenty-three gun ports on just one side. It seemed to be the biggest of the ships, and it waved the green-and-white-striped flag, in the center of which was a laurel wreath, that was the emblem of the Brudania-Gurla Trading Company.
The ships furled their sails and drifted downriver. Adamat could see sailors rushing about the deck, and Brudanian infantry staring passively back at the crowd awaiting them in Adopest. The gun ports were open.
If Claremonte was invading, his ships could destroy most of the city without even disembarking crews and soldiers.
There was no motion among the longboats. The infantry seemed content to stand on the ships and do nothing, and the sailors were…
Adamat watched them carefully. What was going on? He cursed his limited knowledge of seafaring. Crossbeams were lowered, sails unhooked and stowed, and very soon it dawned on Adamat that they were taking down the mast.
He didn’t even know that ships could do that. It made sense, though. While the bridges along the northern Ad had been replaced for the passage of masted ships, the ones in downtown Adopest had not. If Claremonte wanted to get his fleet onto the Adsea, where it would be most effective, he’d have to drop the masts completely, float down the river, and reinstall them on the open water.
Adamat desperately wanted to do something. This immense crowd of people seemed to have no direction. Like him, they simply watched while the masts were lowered. What more could they do? The ships sat at anchor out in the river, and they were heavily armed. It would have taken the Adran army to stop them.