Brian McCLELLAN - The Autumn Republic

Tamas let a smile crack his stony visage.

“Sir?” Olem asked.

“My son. Second Minister of Adro. Strange twist of fate.”

“He doesn’t look happy about it.”

“He’s not. Not at all. He’ll keep his promise, though.” He had better , Tamas added mentally.

The soldiers had fallen in, and a hush descended on the square, quieter than the day Tamas had stood on that same balcony and announced to the crowd that the reign of Manhouch was over. Tamas let out a slow breath, blinking away the wonder, and realized that he’d now come full circle. The plans of so many years had finally come to fruition.

“Is it over, Olem?” he asked, hearing the emotion in his own voice. “Is it finally over?”

Olem didn’t answer. Ricard had raised his hands. “People of Adro! Friends! Brothers! Sisters! I’m humbled to stand before you today as your new First Minister.” The cheers lasted for several minutes before Ricard could finally speak again. “My friends, the tyranny of kings is over. The doubt and anticipation of the last eight months of tragic war is over. Today, on the last day of autumn, we have become a republic. I am proud to be here, the first among equals.

“My friends, none of this would have been possible without the extraordinary efforts of the Protector of Adro, Field Marshal Tamas, and his powder mages and soldiers. You owe them your freedom. Your lives. Your love.”

The cheers were deafening. Tamas felt a tear roll down his cheek, but he did not move to wipe it away. He kept his eyes fixed on Ricard.

“My friends! I…”

A sound reverberated across the square, cutting Ricard off and causing a stir among the gathered crowd.

“My friends,” Ricard started again.

The groaning and creaking continued, and Tamas turned to see the crowd chattering restlessly. A cloud cast a shadow over the assembled masses, and Tamas removed his hat to look about him. Where was the sound coming from?

The groaning grew in intensity, and the slightest movement caught Tamas’s eye as a creak gave way to the grinding of stone on stone.

“Scatter!” he bellowed.

Sablethorn, the mighty prison of the Iron King, tilted and wobbled like a wooden top before ponderously tipping and falling across the square. He sat upon his horse transfixed, watching it descend upon him as if reality itself had slowed. His mouth opened, and he stared for a moment before he was suddenly jerked to the side as his horse bolted, and he looked to see Olem galloping ahead, Tamas’s reins in his hands.

He twisted in his saddle to see the spire topple, the structure crumbling as it fell. Black basalt blocks the size of oxen tumbled across Elections Square. The tip of the spire smashed through the balcony and ripped through the front of the People’s Court.

Tamas jerked his reins from Olem’s hands and pulled up, whirling toward the destruction. “Taniel!”

He threw his arms up to protect his face as the dust cloud enveloped him.

“Inside, inside!” Taniel yelled, grabbing Ricard’s delegates and advisers and shoving them through the balcony door into the office. “Run!”

A female voice screamed, “Ricard!” and Taniel turned to see Adro’s First Minister gaping at the black spire as it plummeted toward him. Taniel dashed across the balcony, snatched Ricard by the shoulders, and lifted him bodily, plowing both of them through the glass of the balcony window and into the office behind it. They landed in a heap among a shower of glass. Taniel rolled them both across the floor to get farther away from the window, looking up in time to see the black stone slam through the balcony where they’d just been standing. The air erupted into a blast of plaster dust.

Taniel felt a surge of sorcery so close it tickled the back of his neck, and he threw Ricard off of him. He leapt to his feet, sword in hand, only to find Bo standing near the office fireplace with his fake leg braced, hands outstretched.

“Taniel,” Nila said. “You should move.”

Taniel looked around, then up, to find the roof above him split by the spire’s capstone, a black chunk of basalt the size of a small house suspended just above his head. Ricard was on his feet now and Taniel shoved him back, out of the way.

Bo grunted, and rolled his gloved fingers. The stone lifted and was flung out into Elections Square.

Ricard brushed himself off. “There are people down there!”

“People up here, too, and I wasn’t gonna hold that very long,” Bo said.

Ricard seemed to think better about arguing with Bo and instead called for Fell. “Is everyone safe?”

“I think so.” Adamat’s voice came out of the gloom of the dust.

“Downstairs, quickly,” Ricard said. “There will be people trapped beneath the rubble. Dear Adom, what the pit happened? Was that an accident?”

Taniel followed Ricard out into the hallway where the dust had begun to clear, and Adamat was pale as a ghost. “No,” Adamat said. “That was no accident. Brude’s other half was in Sablethorn.”

Taniel froze in his steps. “Fell. Get my rifle. Now!” He began to run toward the stairs, everything else forgotten. If Brude was down there, whatever half it was, there would be no one to stop him. Taniel didn’t think even he could do much, but he remembered Kresimir’s blood on his knuckles. If he really was a god-killer, then he might be the only one who could do anything.

Taniel felt something hit him from behind, knocking the breath from him and slamming both him and his attacker against the wall. He threw the other person away from him and struggled to his feet, only to find Nila crouched beside him, both her bare hands wreathed in blue flame.

The sorcery that cut through the air where he had just been standing had sliced a cannonball-sized hole in the floor and the ceiling. The blast had come from beneath him, and he could sense multiple Privileged somewhere below. Taniel scrambled along on his hands and knees. “Back to the office!” he yelled.

Bo, crouching awkwardly with his prosthetic, snatched him by the sleeve. “Get your rifle and take the back stairs. They’ll need you out there. I’ll take care of this.”

“You’re sure?”

“Trust me.” Bo slapped him on the shoulder, and Taniel ran back down the hallway, taking his rifle from Fell and fixing the bayonet as he ran, passing through two doors until he reached the servants’ stairwell behind Ricard’s new office.

He took the stairs a flight at a time, leaping like a madman from landing to landing. At the bottom he ran down a short hallway and kicked a side door open, then sprinted out into the dust-filtered sunlight. He stood blinking for several moments, trying to get his bearings, when the concussion of an immense blast threw him straight back into the building.

“She’s down there, Nila. The bitch who took my leg.”

Nila was about to ask how Bo knew, but the awareness at the edge of her newfound sorcerous senses told her enough. There were Privileged two floors beneath them. Their presence was muted in the Else, as if they’d been taking great care to conceal themselves, but they were most certainly there. And based on what Bo had told her about cabal Privileged, they probably had a company of soldiers with them as well.

“What do we have protecting the People’s Court?” she asked.

Bo responded, “Two companies of Adran soldiers.”

“They’ll get torn to ribbons by three Privileged.”

“Five Privileged. And I agree.”

Nila tried to think of who they could depend on to help them, and found a knot in her stomach. She and Bo were the Adran Cabal. And Tamas’s powder mages had their hands full with whatever power had just toppled Sablethorn. Her heart thundered in her ears. She had her back to the marble banister and there were five floors of the People’s Court between her and the ground. After watching the top of Sablethorn destroy the balcony and nearly flatten Taniel, she felt as exposed as if she were stripped naked. “What do we do?” she asked. “Follow Taniel out the back?”