General Ket’s men.
One of the soldiers took a swig from a bottle in his hand and punched Taniel in the face. The blow was hard and well placed, forcing Taniel down farther. By the soldier’s stripes on his shoulder, he was a captain.
Taniel stared at the floor, watching long tendrils of bloody saliva drop on the wood. “Who the pit are you?” he spat.
The captain sniffed. “General Ket told us we’d get this little piece here. We thought we’d start early.” He set the bottle on the nightstand and began to loosen his trousers. “And you’re going to watch.”
Taniel looked at Ka-poel out of the corner of his eye, trying to ignore her nudity. Her face was bruised and black, her lip split and bloody. She’d been beaten badly.
He surged to his feet. Someone was quick enough with a truncheon to bash him across the shoulders. Taniel didn’t even feel it. His right hand grasped the captain’s chin, fingers in the man’s mouth. His left hand grabbed the captain by the forehead.
Taniel felt the pop and tear of muscles, bone, and tendon as he tore the captain’s jaw off. Deep inside, the sound frightened him, but all objections were silenced by his rage.
He took a truncheon blow across the side of the face and turned on the wielder. His fist hit the soldier’s nose hard enough to kill him instantly. Red filled Taniel’s vision like a thick fog, and his body moved as if on its own accord.
Taniel couldn’t remember killing the last three, but he was soon surrounded by five corpses, their blood still warm on his hands and shirt. He dropped to his knees beside Ka-poel. She was breathing lightly. Her eyes fluttered open.
“Shh,” Taniel said when her mouth opened. He covered her with a blanket and then snatched his only other jacket from the bedpost, throwing it on over his blood-soaked shirt. He grabbed his sketchbook and his kit and threw them in his bag, then lifted Ka-poel in his arms. There was nothing else in this room that mattered.
He spotted her satchel, discarded in the corner, and grabbed it as he left.
Taniel sprinted the entire way to the Wings camp. As soon as he reached the pickets, he began to call for a doctor. Confused infantrymen regarded him from their posts as he raced by.
The brigadiers’ tents were not hard to find in the center of the camp.
“Is this Abrax’s tent?” Taniel demanded.
The two sentries exchanged a glance.
“Brigadier Abrax! I must see her now!”
“Two-Shot?”
Taniel whirled to see Abrax approaching from the way he’d come. She was probably just returning from the Adran camp, and he realized they’d spoken less than twenty minutes ago.
“What the pit are you…” Her eyes took in his bloody shirt and Ka-poel’s bruised body. “What happened?”
“I need a doctor for her. Now!”
“Get a doctor,” Abrax barked at the sentries. “Bring her into my tent. There, set her on the cot. What happened to her? Holy saints, what happened to you? You’re covered in blood. Did you do this to her?”
“No!” Taniel roared the word before he was able to control himself. “No. I didn’t. She’s all that matters. See to her, please.”
“It’ll be done,” Abrax said.
“I’ve just killed five men,” Taniel said. “Soldiers in the Third Brigade. It was in self-defense, but they’ll be coming for me shortly.”
Abrax blinked at the news. She opened her mouth, then shut it. “You were attacked?” she finally managed.
“Yes.”
“Details, man. Now!”
“Five men jumped me in my quarters. They had Ka-poel like this… they were going to… while I watched.” Taniel heard his words flow out in broken, rushed sentences.
“You were unarmed?”
Taniel nodded.
Abrax put her hand to her mouth and studied Taniel. “You’re in shock. Sit down. Were you in a powder trance?”
“No.”
“Five men,” she breathed, almost too low for Taniel to hear. “With his bare hands.” She glanced at Ka-poel. “The doctors will be here soon. Stay here.”
Abrax crossed to the head of the tent. “Stewart!” she bellowed as she went. Abrax stepped outside, but she spoke loudly enough that Taniel could hear her clearly. “Ah, there you are. Get our best internal investigators. Send them to the Adran camp immediately. There has been a quintuple murder and I want to know the exact circumstances leading up to it.”
“We going after someone? Or trying to determine how the victims arrived at their deaths?” a male voice asked. Stewart, Taniel assumed.
“We’re not going after anything but the truth. And they’re not victims, they’re potential rapists. Dig up everything you can on them. I want to know exactly what type of people they were and what they were doing before their deaths.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And close the camp to the Adran provosts and stifle any rumors going around.”
“Of course. Anything else?”
“Stay close. I’m sure I’ll need something.”
Abrax returned to the tent a moment later. Taniel thought to stand, and realized that he’d taken Ka-poel’s hand at some point. He decided to stay by her side.
“Thank you,” he said.
“Believe me this,” Abrax said, her face flushed, her brow furrowed. “If you’ve lied to me, I’ll put the noose around your neck myself. But I won’t see a man lose his life because he defended himself and his loved one.”
The doctor came moments later. Taniel refused to leave the tent, but did avert his eyes as the doctor examined Ka-poel. She struggled a little – he hoped that was a good sign.
“I’ve given her something to help her sleep,” the doctor said after her examination. She glared at Taniel. “She’s suffered a brutal assault.”
“It wasn’t him,” Abrax snapped.
The doctor’s glare lost its bite. “She wasn’t raped, and she had blood beneath her nails, and her knuckles are bruised. She gave them a good fight. That might help you catch them.”
“They’re dead already,” Taniel said flatly.
“Good. Her languid state is from exhaustion. She might have fought them for hours. Her left arm is broken, and she might lose an ear. No concussion, though, and that’s remarkable.”
Taniel returned to Ka-poel’s side, barely noticing that Abrax lowered herself into a chair nearby to watch them.
Taniel wasn’t sure how late it was when he heard angry shouting outside the tent. Abrax lifted herself warily from her chair and went outside.
“What did I say about a closed camp?” Abrax demanded.
“Brigadier Abrax,” a sharp voice said.
Taniel put his head in his hands. Doravir.
“You’re harboring a man wanted for the murder of four infantrymen and a captain of the Third Brigade. Release him to our custody now.”
Chapter 31
Nila felt her fingers shaking as she tried to position the needle beside her target.
“Don’t be nervous,” Bo said. His voice was soft and soothing. He sat cross-legged on a faded pillow in one corner of the room beside the only window, a musty old tome of a book cradled in his lap while he watched her. “If you mess up, it’s all right. I’ll only be burned from the inside out by otherworldly fire, consumed like a bale of hay soaked in lantern oil.”
“You’re not making this any easier,” Nila said. She took a deep breath and stabbed the needle into one of his Privileged’s gloves. The positioning looked right. It had to be perfect for the gloves to work properly.
“I know,” Bo said. She could hear his grin in his tone.
“Why can’t you do this yourself?”
“Because I hate sewing. And you’re a laundress. You’re probably far better at it than I am anyway.”
And Nila owed him. Even if he didn’t say it, Nila was certain it had crossed his mind.
She was painfully aware that Bo had offered to shelter her and Jakob for three days. That had been nine days ago, and she wasn’t entirely certain why he hadn’t forced them out into the street. A Privileged seemed the last type of person to whom she would want to owe a favor, so when he mentioned that he had several pairs of ripped gloves that needed mending, she volunteered.