Brian McClellan: The Face in the Window

Taniel stepped down the gangplank of the merchant galleon into his exile.

He pulled at the collar of his cut-across coat and unbuttoned the front, letting it hang loose as he hurried to the end of the dock. He had not expected the Fatrastan spring to be so hot and humid and was eager to find a cool pub where he could hide from the sun and wait.

More than a month by ship from Adro, then another two weeks touring the Fatrastan coastline, and Taniel didn’t care if he never saw a ship again. The quarters had been too cramped, and the only thing to keep him occupied had been drawing in his sketchbook and shooting seagulls. The view of the coastline had been nice enough, but Taniel was a soldier and a powder mage, not some foppish noble’s son. The landscape meant little to him beyond defensible positions.

This was the frontier-a wild place with immense trees that had never seen a woodsman’s ax, red-headed natives that would kill you at a wrong glance, and immense open spaces where you might not see another soul for weeks.

It might have been exciting, if Taniel wasn’t so angry with his father for sending him here in the first place. A ‘tour,’ Taniel’s father had called it. Time for him to see a little bit of the world between terms at the university.

Taniel saw it more like an exile. It would be half a year until he saw his fiancé and his homeland again. Half a year before he was back with his friends, skipping out on university classes to float bullets with Sabon, or spending nights with Vlora. It was going to be a long six months.

New Adopest, the city beyond the dock, bustled with excitement that Taniel couldn’t quite place. People spoke in hushed whispers, and boys and men were running back and forth. Everyone seemed to have a rifle or musket. Strange to see so many weapons in a city. Even one on the edge of the wilderness.

He’d seen the whole of New Adopest from the water, and it wasn’t immense. Perhaps fifty thousand souls. The docks took up more space than the city did. All around him ships were unloading immigrants or taking on raw goods to ship back to the Nine. The city had been founded by Adran colonists over a hundred years ago, but then the Fatrastan territories had been sold to the Kez less than six months ago. Taniel couldn’t imagine that made the colonists very happy.

He caught sight of a bronze statue of King Ipille of Kez, standing thirty feet high to look out over the harbor. As he watched, a young man climbed the base of the statue and dropped his pants to piss all over Ipille’s feet. Taniel chuckled at that, and waited for the Kez gendarmes to appear out of the crowd and chase the man off.

None did.

Perhaps it was a festival day. That would keep the gendarmes occupied, and would certainly explain all of the excitement around the city. His father had talked about colonial towns having a certain vibrancy that the big cities of the Nine lacked. Maybe that was it.

“Taniel! Taniel!”

Taniel glanced around for a moment, confused, before remembering his chaperone. The idea of some stranger looking over his shoulder suddenly seemed distasteful, and he wondered if he could lose her in the city.

He pulled his bicorn hat over his face and headed at a brisk walk toward the closest pub. He had almost reached the building and its dark doorway with the promise of cool ale and anonymity, when he felt someone tug on his jacket.

“Taniel? Oh, yes, it is you. I can see your mother’s face in you, my dear.”

Taniel sniffed and tried to stifle his annoyance. “Dine?” he asked the old woman at his elbow.

She gave a half-bow, half-curtsy. “Dina, my dear,” she said, putting emphasis on the ‘a.’ “You’re Tamas and Erika’s boy.” It wasn’t a question, and Taniel wondered if he really did look that much like his mother. That’s what his father had always said, but his memories of her were sketchy at best.

Taniel tipped his hat. “Ma’am, a pleasure to meet you.”

Dina looked to be about fifty and wore a man’s jacket and a loose-fitting skirt that went down to her ankles. Her Adran was slightly accented and Taniel had to remind himself-regretfully-that his mother was, or had been, half-Kez, and as his mother’s cousin, Dina probably came from that side. Dina’s boots looked like they had plenty of wear to them, and she wore a Rope of Kresimir pinned to one breast.

A priestess. Delightful.

“A pleasure indeed,” Dina said. She paused, a hand on his shoulder, and looked him up and down. “I haven’t seen you since you were a boy. You probably don’t remember me at all.”

He didn’t.

“Look at you,” she continued. “A man, now.” Her eyes fell on the flintlock rifle slung over his shoulder, and when she next spoke it was in a loud whisper. “Tell me, do you take black powder like your parents?”

“I’m a powder mage, yes.” And proud of it, too. Taniel could shoot the hat off a farmer at over a mile with a musket. Farther, with a proper rifle and little wind. A snort of gunpowder let him see in the dark and made him faster and stronger than ordinary soldiers.

Dina seemed a little put off by this. “Ah,” she said, before forcing a smile back onto her face. “Well, we won’t let that stand in the way of good company. Let’s take you home for the night and get you a good meal. Regretfully, I’m going to have to put you back on a ship tomorrow morning.”

“What?”

“You’re going back to Adro tomorrow.”

Taniel felt his sour mood shift and had to struggle to keep the grin off his face. Home? He could leave this gods-forsaken land behind and…

Dina kept talking. “War has broken out.” She lowered her voice and leaned close. “The colony has rebelled against the Kez crown and declared that they’re a free country. It’s the damned busybody merchants and the commoners who are going along with it.” Louder, she said, “You can stay with me and my husband tonight, but I…”

“War?” Taniel cut her off. “With Kez?”

“Well, yes.”

He felt his eye twitch, and he forgot every thought of home.

“Where do I sign up?”

Taniel had to shoot the buttons off a scarecrow at eight hundred yards to convince a colonial major that he was, indeed, a trained powder mage. It irked him that the man’s ears perked up at the name of Taniel’s father, but Taniel buried his pride, and three weeks later he was a captain in the Fatrastan militia, assigned to a company heading out toward the wetlands.

He wondered whether his father would be perturbed that Taniel had gotten involved in someone else’s conflict, or proud that he’d taken the initiative.

Taniel hoped it was the former.

He stepped along in marching ranks beside the almost two hundred members of his new company. With his rifle shouldered and his knapsack tied to his belt, he was the only one keeping any kind of a marching rhythm. The rest of them trudged or shuffled at their own paces, the column stretching out almost half a mile down the winding road.

He took a glance behind him. The tall trees-oak, maple, and ash-were well into their early summer greenery, keeping visibility low.

Word had it that the Kez army was patrolling these roads. If fifty cavalry rounded the bend in the road behind them, the whole company would be run down before they could scatter.

Sloppy soldiering.

But then, these men weren’t soldiers. They were farmers and vagrants fighting for money or land, so that the so-called Fatrastan Coalition could win their independence from Kez.

“You smell that?” Dina asked.

Taniel cast her a sidelong glance. Despite the sweat on her brow, Dina walked along at an easy gait as if she were on an afternoon stroll. The old priestess didn’t seem like much, but she’d needed less rest on this march than any of the militiamen.