Brian McCLELLAN - The Autumn Republic

“They’re still holding, but…”

“But what?”

“I haven’t had any good information from the front for almost a month.”

“You haven’t heard from the General Staff for that long? Pit, the Kez could be at the city gates by tomorrow! Damn it, I…”

“Sir,” Fell said to Ricard. “Have you told him about Taniel?”

Tamas whirled on Ricard, snatching him by the front of the jacket. “What? What about him?”

“There have been… I mean, I’ve heard rumors, but–”

“What kind of rumors?”

“Nothing substantial.”

“Tell me.”

Ricard studied his hands before saying quietly, “That Taniel was captured by Kresimir and hung in the Kez camp. But,” he said more loudly, “they’re just rumors.”

Tamas could hear his heart thundering in his ears. The Kez had taken his boy? They had hung him like a piece of meat, some macabre trophy? Fear coursed through him, followed by the fire of white-hot fury. He found himself sprinting from Ricard’s office, shoving his way through the crowd out into the building’s main hall.

Olem and Vlora caught up with him in the street.

“Where are we going, sir?” Vlora asked.

Tamas gripped the butt of his pistol. “I’m going to find my boy, and if he’s not alive and well, I’m going to pull Kresimir’s guts out through his ass.”

Adamat was on his way to arrest a general.

He sat in the back of a carriage, the ground bumping away beneath him, and stared out the window at the fields of southern Adro. The fields were golden with fall wheat, the stalks bent by the weight of their fruit and swaying gently in the wind. The peacefulness of it all made him think of his family; both his wife and children at home and the one sold into slavery by the enemy.

This might not go well.

No, Adamat corrected himself. This could not go well.

What kind of a madman goes to arrest a general during wartime? The government was in disarray – practically nonexistent – and it was a miracle that the courts were still operating on a local level. All federal cases had been suspended since Manhouch’s execution, and it had taken bribery and cajoling to get Ricard Tumblar, one of the interim-council elders, to sign a warrant for General Ket’s arrest. They’d strong-armed two local judges into signing the same warrant. Adamat hoped it would be enough.

The driver of the carriage gave a terse command and the carriage suddenly slowed to a stop, lurching Adamat forward in his seat. A glance out one window showed him the wheat fields and rolling hills that gradually gave way to the mountains of the Charwood Pile, their peaks far in the distance, while the other window gave him an unobstructed view of the Adsea stretching off to the southeast.

“Why have we stopped?”

One of Adamat’s traveling companions stirred from her slumber. Nila was a woman of about nineteen with curly auburn hair and a face that could charm its way into a king’s court. Adamat was under the impression that she was a laundress. He still wasn’t quite sure why she had come along on this journey, but Privileged Borbador had insisted.

Adamat opened the door and called up to the driver. “What’s going on?”

“The sergeant ordered a stop.”

He ducked his head back inside. Why would Oldrich call for a stop? They were too far north to have run into the Adran army already. They still had over a day to travel before they reached the front.

The carriage lurched ahead again suddenly, only to pull off to one side of the road in order to let traffic continue past them. A stagecoach rumbled on, and then a trio of wagons filled with supplies for the front.

“Something is wrong,” Adamat said.

Nila rubbed the sleep from her eyes. “Bo,” she said, poking the man sleeping on her shoulder.

Privileged Borbador, only surviving member of King Manhouch’s royal cabal, gave a start and then went back to snoring loudly.

“Bo!” Nila slapped Bo’s cheek.

“I’m here!” Bo sat upright, bare hands dancing in the air in front of him. He blinked the sleep out of his eyes and slowly lowered his hands. “Bloody pit, girl,” he said. “If I had been wearing my gloves, I could have killed both of you.”

“Well, you weren’t,” Nila said. “We’ve stopped.”

Bo ran a hand through his ruddy hair and pulled on a pair of white gloves covered in archaic runes. “Why?”

“Not sure,” Adamat said. “I’ll go check.” He hauled himself out of the carriage, glad to be out of close confines with the Privileged. Bo’s elemental sorcery could kill Adamat, Oldrich, and the entire platoon of Adran soldiers that made up their escort in mere seconds. Adamat had watched Bo snap the neck of Manhouch’s executioner with a flick of his wrist. For all of his charm, Bo was a cold-blooded killer. Adamat glanced back into the carriage once and then trudged up a slight incline toward where Sergeant Oldrich and several of his men conferred beside the road.

“Inspector,” Oldrich said with a nod. “Where is the Privileged?”

“Better start calling him ‘counselor,’ ” Adamat said.

Oldrich snorted. “All right. Where’s the lawyer ? We’ve run into something unexpected.”

“Oh?”

“There’s an army just over that rise,” Oldrich said.

Adamat felt his heart leap into his throat. An army? Had the Kez finally broken through? Were they marching on Adopest?

“An Adran army,” Oldrich added.

Adamat’s relief was short-lived. “What are they doing here?” he asked. “They’re supposed to be in Surkov’s Alley still. Have they been pushed back this far?”

“What’s going on?” Bo arrived, stretching his arms behind his back. Adamat was reminded again just how young Bo was – not far into his twenties, at a guess. Certainly not yet thirty. Despite his youth, the Privileged had worry lines on his brow and an old man’s eyes.

Adamat looked pointedly at Bo’s gloves. “You’re supposed to be a lawyer,” Adamat said.

“I don’t like going without my gloves,” Bo said, cracking his knuckles. “Besides, no one will see. The army is still a ways off.”

“That’s not quite true,” Oldrich said, jerking his head toward the rise in the road.

Nila had caught up to them. “With me,” Bo said to her. They headed up to look at the army over the rise.

Oldrich watched them go. “I don’t trust them,” he said when they were out of earshot.

“We have to,” Adamat said.

“Why? Field Marshal Tamas has always got on without Privileged to hold his hand.”

“Tamas is a powder mage,” Adamat said. “Neither you nor I have that benefit. And Bo is our backup. If this doesn’t work – if General Ket won’t come along quietly to face the law in Adopest – then we’ll need Bo to get us out of whatever mess we make.”

Oldrich rubbed his temples with both hands. “Pit. I can’t believe I let you talk me into this.”

“You want justice, don’t you? You want us to win this war?”

“Yes.”

“Then we need to arrest General Ket.”

Bo and Nila returned. Nila frowned to herself, while Bo seemed thoughtful.

“What do you think is going on over there?” Bo asked Oldrich. “That camp should be dozens of miles to our south.”

“Could be anything,” Oldrich said. “Could be the wounded from the front. Could be reinforcements. Could be that our boys were routed and they’re retreating.”

Bo scratched his chin. He had removed his Privileged gloves. “It’s afternoon. If our boys were routed, then they’d be marching toward Adopest right now. I don’t know what it is, but something is wrong. There’s no more than six brigades in that camp. Too many for reinforcements, too few to be the whole army.”