Brian McCLELLAN - The Autumn Republic

“Good idea. Get everyone out that way as quickly as possible, and hope that their soldiers haven’t already cut us off. This is my fight.”

“This is our fight,” Nila corrected. “Fell! Get everyone out the back. Empty the top floor if you can, because there’s no going this way.”

Ricard’s secretary gave a sharp nod and began to urge the people back down the hallway.

“You sure you’re here with me?” Bo asked.

“Of course, you fool. I’m your responsibility now. Who the pit else is going to teach me how to be the best Privileged of the century?”

“This isn’t a few thousand Adran infantry. These are cabal Privileged.”

Nila swallowed hard. “I know.”

“All right. Here we go.” Bo climbed to his feet, his prosthetic jerking and wobbling beneath him. “Lourie! Hey, Lourie!”

“Borbador!” A voice came back from downstairs. “Why aren’t you running yet? That last shot could have been for you, but I figured I’d give you a sporting chance. Is your powder mage friend dead?”

“You missed, actually.”

There was a pause. “That’s a pity.”

“Lourie, do you have a favorite eye?”

“What?”

“Just answer the question,” Bo shouted.

“Why?”

“Because I’m going to keep that one in a jar after I strangle you with your own entrails.”

“What are you doing?” Nila hissed.

“Just having a conversation,” Bo said. “What does it sound like?”

Lourie’s voice returned, “Oh, come now, Borbador. You weren’t using that leg too much.”

“You won’t be using your eye too much either.”

“Bo,” Nila said. “What the pit is going on? Why aren’t they trying to kill us?”

“Because they’re taking up positions. The moment we open up on each other, people are going to die. They want to be very certain it’s not them.” Bo leaned back, closing his eyes, hands held out in front of him with one elbow on the marble banister for support. His fingers twitched and moved, tracing tiny patterns in the air.

“What are you doing?”

“A few quick wards,” Bo said. “And finding out where they’re all positioned.”

Nila could feel him tugging at the Else. Whereas her own experiences with sorcery had been torrents of power pulled from the other side, Bo seemed to be threading the Else carefully, using just a trickle of sorcery for his purposes. She couldn’t tell exactly what he was doing with the wards, or even how he was making them, but she marveled at the quick, almost casual precision.

“Borbador,” Lourie shouted, “why don’t you join the Brudanian cabal and I’ll come up there and we can kill the bloody minister together? You’re wasting your talents, Borbador. You can’t fight a god. Why I–”

Bo’s fingers twitched and there was a terrifying scream from below them. Silence followed for a moment, and Bo said, “I was also trying to figure out which one was Lourie.”

“I’ll take that as a no,” Lourie shouted up to them.

“Damn it,” Bo grunted. “I missed. Run.”

Tamas struggled to his feet, coughing and choking, thrashing blindly in the dust that filled the air. He briefly spotted his charger running from the wreckage of Sablethorn, following the fleeing crowds of revelers, and checked himself to be sure nothing was broken as a result of being thrown off his horse. He seemed whole, but his head was pounding and his left elbow didn’t want to bend.

How many had been crushed by the collapse? How many were dead, or trapped beneath the rubble?

The tower had been leaning ever since the earthquake many months before. Had this been a freak accident? He hoped – he prayed – that it was. But instinct told him it had been arranged by Claremonte and that something else would follow. For now all he could do was regroup and prepare for the worst.

Tamas pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and tied it around his mouth against the dust. “Olem! Olem! Pit.”

“Sir, are you all right?” It was General Arbor, emerging from the rubble, a soldier a quarter his age limping along with his help.

“Fine, fine. Do we know how many are buried?”

“I think most of us got away in time, though we can’t be sure. Lost my damn teeth!”

“Glad that’s all you lost. Have you seen Olem?”

“No.”

Tamas was suddenly launched from his feet. One moment he was speaking to Arbor and the next moment he was on the ground, his own voice sounding distant as he shouted for a report. He shook his head, ears ringing, trying to figure out what had happened. It felt, and sounded, like a munitions depot had exploded beneath his feet.

His vision swam and his head pounded, the whole world sounding like a muffled bell. He put his hands on his ears and hid his head, trying to regain his senses. With some effort he got to his feet.

General Arbor was up already, the body of the infantryman he had been helping crushed beneath a piece of basalt. Arbor’s face was red, and spittle flew as he barked commands that Tamas couldn’t hear. Arbor took him by the elbow and Tamas pointed to his ears. The general nodded.

“Sir.” The voice seemed small and distant, but Tamas turned to find Olem at his side. The bodyguard was coated in dust and splattered with blood, but it didn’t look like it was his own. “Sir, we’ve got to go! We’re under attack!”

“Who?”

Before Olem could answer, Arbor raised his hand and pointed toward the rubble of Sablethorn. Tamas flinched away from a sudden blinding light, and he held up one hand as he tried to see. Slowly, the light faded and resolved itself into a glowing figure a dozen feet above the wreckage. Sorcery swirled around her in white ribbons, and the clothes she wore dissolved beneath her own unveiled power.

Tamas gaped. Never had he seen anything like this. Not from Adom or from Julene or even from an entire royal cabal working in concert. He didn’t recognize the woman, but he could guess all the same; this was Cheris, Claremonte’s other half, the second face of the god Brude.

“Get the people back!” Tamas shouted. “Arbor, bring my soldiers into line. I want everything you can give me. Rifles, artillery. Everything!”

“Sir, we should retreat,” Olem said.

“Blast your retreating. I fight here and I die here. Get to the brigades waiting outside the city. Tell them to sack Claremonte’s headquarters at the palace. Kill everyone wearing a Brudanian uniform. For pit’s sake, avoid Claremonte himself!”

“Sir, you can’t–”

“That’s an order, man. Go!” As Olem sprinted away, Tamas drew his pistol and leveled it at the god, squeezing the trigger. The bullet disappeared into the swirling sorcery and had no visible effect. Tamas threw a powder charge into his mouth and chewed, feeling the power course through his veins.

The god rotated toward him, her face serene. Tamas drew his other pistol, aiming it at her eye, and pulled the trigger.

She was gone in the blink of an eye. Tamas stared hard at where she had just been, his pistol still held warily before him. “Where’d she go?”

“Here,” a voice whispered in his ear.

He whirled, but he was too slow. A hand like a steel vise closed around his neck and he felt himself lifted in the air, the breath choked from him. He was turned so that he looked into the eyes of the god.

“I gave you a chance.” Her voice was silky and feminine, but with an echo to it as if spoken inside the immense halls of a cathedral. He could hear the resonance of Claremonte within it. “I did not want this.” Tamas was lifted higher. He grasped at the fingers holding him, but he might as well have tried to pry away the unyielding hands of a marble statue. He struggled with all his strength, the power of ten men flowing through his veins, but it was as nothing to this god.