Promise of Blood (20 page)

“The storm drains.”

“Very resourceful.” Tamas glanced at the mercenaries behind him. “Stand down. Inspector Adamat is under my employ. Check the rest of the library.” The mercenaries headed off, and Tamas turned back to Adamat. “Have you solved my riddle, Inspector?”

“I have a lead, sir. Nothing definite yet. The books I’m looking for have come up defaced or entirely missing.”

“I expect you to do more than spend your days leafing through books.”

“That’s often exactly what investigating entails, sir,” Adamat huffed. “One follows any lead one can.”

“Very well. Carry on. Wait.”

Adamat paused.

“What do you know about the Black Street Barbers?”

Adamat summoned up his knowledge of them, thinking it over for a moment. “Their leader is a man named Teef. Among Adro’s underworld they’re considered the top assassins. They’ll take any job, is the rumor, as long as it pays well. At least a dozen Barbers have tried killing Adran kings over the last few hundred years, when the price has been right. None have succeeded, not with the royal cabal there to protect them. I’ve met Teef. He’s the… least mentally unbalanced of the crew. Frankly, the entire gang belongs in an insane asylum. I hope you’re not thinking of…”

Tamas nodded briskly. “Thank you.” He strode away.

“… employing them,” Adamat finished quietly.

Adamat retrieved his cane from where he’d dropped it when the mercenaries arrived. He glanced the way Rozalia had gone and pondered her cryptic message. “Time to go to Shouldercrown,” he said to SouSmith.

“Jakob!” Nila pushed past a royalist soldier and tripped over brick rubble that had spilled out into the street from the latest artillery blast. She lifted her skirt and was back on her feet, stumbling along as she shouted the boy’s name.

There was blood on her dress. The cannonball had whistled over her shoulder and taken the head off a man named Penn as they’d sat over a meager breakfast. She could still hear the sound in her head like a horrible kettle, instantaneous death passing inches from her ear. The cannonball had knocked a hole in the wall behind Penn, straight through Jakob’s room in one of the more intact buildings behind the barricades. Penn’s body still sat in his chair, shoulders slumped, one hand clutching a spoon. Jakob should have been in bed. He wasn’t.

Nila found one of Jakob’s Hielmen guards picking grit out of his uniform. His name was Bystre, and he was about thirty-five. A steadiness about him reminded her of the bearded sergeant back at Duke Eldaminse’s townhouse.

“Where’s Jakob?” she asked.

“He’s not in bed?” Bystre said.

“No.”

“Pit, he must have wandered again.”

A canister shot exploded overhead, sending everyone diving for cover. Nila found herself on the ground, beneath Bystre.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“I’ll be fine. Find Jakob.”

He helped her to her feet and they ran through the street, calling Jakob’s name. Nila heard the crack of muskets and was struck by the choking smell of spent powder. Down the street was one of the barricades. Royalist soldiers and volunteers crouched behind it, shooting at unseen Adran soldiers on the other side.

The parley had been five days ago. Every day since, Field Marshal Tamas’s soldiers had pressed the attack. Cannon and musket fire resounded day and night. The air reeked of sulfurous black powder.

Someone shouted a warning. A moment later, blue uniforms swarmed over the top of the barricade like water bursting through a dam.

“Run,” Bystre instructed. “Fall back to the next barricade!” he shouted at nearby volunteers.

Bystre grabbed Nila by the arm. “We have to find Jakob,” he said. He spun suddenly, his plumed hat falling from his head as an Adran soldier appeared from a nearby alleyway. Bystre drew his sword, parrying the thrust of a bayonet. The soldier cracked him across the jaw with a rifle butt. Bystre fell to the ground. The soldier stood over him, bayonet ready.

Nila could barely lift the paving brick she grabbed. She swung it up over her head and brought it down on the back of the Adran soldier’s neck. The man collapsed to the ground without a sound. Bystre held his jaw and tried to shake off the blow.

She pulled him to his feet.

“There!” she said. She caught sight of Jakob running across the street, closer to the barricade. A bullet kicked up dirt in front of the boy, startling him, and he fell with tears in his eyes.

Adran soldiers had taken the barricade. They were barely a hundred feet from Jakob. Nila was half that distance. She lifted her skirts and ran. She could hear Bystre right behind her. The soldiers on the barricade were more interested in securing their victory than they were in a stray child in the street. Nila fell to her knees beside Jakob and swept him up in her arms. Bystre helped her to her feet, and they both ran toward safety.

Nila stopped short when she realized Bystre was not beside her anywhere. She turned to see him staring back toward the fallen barricade.

“It’s lost,” she said.

“Him!” Bystre drew his sword.

“What are you…” She saw it. Field Marshal Tamas stood on the barricade with his men, surveying the street beyond. Beside him, she saw someone familiar. The bearded sergeant who had saved her that night in the townhouse kitchen.

“Bystre, we have to get Jakob to safety.”

“Nothing is safe from that treacherous bastard.”

“General Westeven…”

“The General is dead.”

Nila didn’t know what to say. She knew General Westeven had been wounded at the parley, but the royalists had been told he’d survived. Only he could match someone like Field Marshal Tamas in strategic maneuvering. Now their cause was truly lost.

Nila looked toward the next barricade. Royalists waved her forward to the relative safety. She clutched Jakob to her chest. He held his hands over his ears, and she could feel his shoulders heave as he sobbed.

“Bystre,” she said, pleading. Where was Rozalia? She was their only hope now. She could bring down her Privileged sorceries on Tamas and his army and drive them from the streets.

Bystre snatched up a spent rifle from a dead soldier and checked the bayonet. He dusted the powder from the pan and, clutching the rifle with both hands, charged alone toward the fallen barricade.

The bearded sergeant pointed toward Bystre and lifted his rifle. Field Marshal Tamas turned. He tilted his head, as if bemused by the enraged Hielman rushing toward him. He drew a pistol and pulled the trigger. Bystre jerked and fell, his body rolling once with forward momentum before twitching and falling still. The bullet had pierced his eye at more than one hundred paces. Field Marshal Tamas waved the smoke from the barrel of his pistol.

Nila screamed.

She saw the field marshal gesture toward her and waited for another bullet to come and pierce her brain. It never came. Instead, Adran soldiers ran down the barricade and toward her. She stared at them, in shock, until she remembered Jakob in her arms.

Nila turned to run to the next barricade. She had a lead on the Adran soldiers, but they were far faster. She tripped and struggled on the hem of her dress. Forty feet away, the royalists fired from behind the next barricade to give her cover. Bullets ricocheted off the paving stones around her, the scent of gunpowder making her choke. Thirty feet to go.

Someone hit her from behind. She fell, turning to see Adran soldiers upon her. She screamed and struggled, but Jakob was pulled from her arms. One of the soldiers turned to her, bayonet ready to shove through her belly. He twisted the rifle at the last second and pushed her away with the stock and the soldiers retreated, taking a screaming Jakob with them.

Nila struggled to her feet and staggered after them. They couldn’t take him. Not now, not after she’d protected him this long. She stopped beside Bystre’s body. He lay on his belly, his one remaining eye staring sightlessly across the street. Flies had already started to buzz around the bloody hole in his skull. She fell to her knees and vomited.

Someone pulled her out of the street and into a rubble-strewn alley before the shooting resumed.

Nila sagged against the partially intact wall of a tenement. “You let them take him,” she spat at her rescuer.

Rozalia glanced out into the street, her gloved fingers poised at the ready until some unapparent danger had passed. She let her hands fall.

“This is no longer my fight,” Rozalia said.

“You could have stopped them,” Nila accused. “You could have killed Tamas right then. You could have protected Bystre.” She heard her voice crack and felt the tears on her cheeks. She wiped them away with a grimy sleeve.

“General Westeven is dead,” Rozalia said. “There is no reason to prolong this fight any longer.” She paused for a moment, staring back into Nila’s accusing eyes. “Yes, I could have killed Tamas, but damage has been done on a scope you cannot imagine. At this point, killing Tamas would only multiply that damage.”

“Bystre,” Nila said.

“I don’t expect you to understand,” Rozalia said. Her voice softened suddenly. “You are a brave girl. A smart girl. I only expect you to move on. Tamas has the boy. Westeven is dead. The other royalists will drag this out for as long as they can, but Tamas will win eventually. Get out while you still can. There is a path through the rubble in the southwestern corner of the barricades. Neither side knows about it. Take that way out. Gather what money you can and live a full life far from here.” Something wistful entered Rozalia’s eyes. “Fatrasta is nice this time of year.”

“What will he do to Jakob?” Nila asked.

Rozalia held out a hand. Nila accepted and got to her feet.

“Jakob,” she said again when Rozalia did not answer. “What will Tamas do with him?”

“Tamas is pragmatic,” Rozalia said. “If he were to allow a monarchal heir to survive, he could have this situation all over again. He’ll do away with the boy quietly.”

Nila dried the tears in her eyes. She felt something harden in her heart at the thought of Jakob’s blond head dropping into a basket.

“Leave Adro,” Rozalia said. “That’s what I’ll do, when my work here is done. Here.” She dug something from a pocket sewn into her jacket and pressed it into Nila’s hand. A hundred-krana coin.

“Thank you,” Nila said. Rozalia waved dismissively and picked her way down the alley, away from the barricades. Nila waited a few moments, thinking of the coin in her hand and the silver hidden outside the city. She could still see Bystre from the alley. His body lay unmoving beneath the constant exchange of gunfire between royalists and Adran soldiers. Nila made a fist around the coin. It was enough for new clothes and a coach all the way to Brudania. Along with her silver, it was enough for a new life.

She saw Field Marshal Tamas in her mind as he coolly gunned down Bystre.

She couldn’t start a new life, not with memories of what had happened.

Chapter 12

Shouldercrown Fortress rested on the jagged ridgeline of South Pike Mountain. Its bastion walls were sloped and smooth despite the harsh weather at this altitude, a testament to the powerful sorceries that had built and warded them five hundred years ago. To the southeast, the amber plains of Kez rolled out in the distance. To the northwest, the far mountains that ringed Adro could be seen past the hills and forests. Adopest nestled like a diamond on the teardrop tip of the Adsea. To the north, South Pike’s peak smoked ominously.

Adamat turned away from the edge of the bastion. Seeing the whole world laid out like that made his head spin, and he wanted to head back into the town—a whole town inside the bastion, that’s how large it was!—yet the Mountainwatch soldier had told him to wait here for Privileged Borbador. They could have offered him a room. It was far below freezing at this height. Seemed they wanted to see him shiver.

Adamat was exhausted physically and mentally. Even with modern roads the trip was five days by coach, and they had barely stopped to rest. His body hurt from sitting on an uncomfortable, constantly jostling seat. His head pounded from too little rest. Rozalia’s cryptic warning about a woman trying to summon Kresimir had given him nightmares the few times he caught any sleep. What was wrong with him? He was a modern man. An educated man. Kresimir was a myth, an embodiment of monastic power that kept the peasants in line.

“What are you doing?”

SouSmith paused in the middle of loading one of his short-barrel pistols. The weapon looked like a toy in his big hands. “What does it look like?”

“You think he’s going to kill us?” Adamat asked. “Just for asking a question?”

“Last Privileged almost did us in.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“This is a Privileged, SouSmith. If he doesn’t want to talk to us, he waves a hand and sweeps us from this bastiontop.”

SouSmith shrugged. “You paid me to be a bodyguard, eh?”

“Yes.” Adamat sighed. SouSmith didn’t seem to understand. This was a Privileged. There was no guarding anybody against one of these.

“Even a Privileged has to come through me to get ya.” SouSmith resumed loading the weapon.

Adamat stifled a smile and realized the words had banished some of his nervousness. He was up here on the roof of the world, a five-day journey from Adopest. He was at a Mountainwatch. Everyone knew the Mountainwatch was filled with convicts and cutthroats and the very hardest men in the Nine. They tended the high passes, manned the mines and the timber yards, and they were Adro’s first defense against a foreign invasion. Adamat trusted his country with the Mountainwatch far more than he trusted them with his life.