Brian McCLELLAN: Promise of Blood

The Deliv soldier appeared again at the top of the stairs. “We need you,” he said to Tamas.

“Find out why these mages would utter those words with their final breath,” Tamas said. “It may be connected to your street gang. Maybe not. Either way, find me an answer. I don’t like the riddles of the dead.” He got to his feet quickly, moving like a man twenty years younger, and jogged up the stairs after the Deliv. His boot splashed in the blood, leaving behind red prints. “Also,” he called over his shoulder, “keep silent about what you have seen here until the execution. It will begin at noon.”

“But…” Adamat said. “Where do I start? Can I speak with Cenka?”

Tamas paused near the top of the stairs and turned. “If you can speak with the dead, you’re welcome to.”

Adamat ground his teeth. “How did they say the words?” he said. “Was it a command, or a statement, or…?”

Tamas frowned. “An entreaty. As if the blood draining from their bodies was not their primary concern. I must go now.”

“One more thing,” Adamat said.

Tamas looked to be near the end of his patience.

“If I’m to help you, tell me why all of this?” He gestured to the blood on the stairs.

“I have things that require my attention,” Tamas warned.

Adamat felt his jaw tighten. “Did you do this for power?”

“I did this for me,” Tamas said. “And I did this for Adro. So that Manhouch wouldn’t sign us all into slavery to the Kez with the Accords. I did it because those grumbling students of philosophy at the university only play at rebellion. The age of kings is dead, Adamat, and I have killed it.”

Adamat examined Tamas’s face. The Accords was a treaty to be signed with the king of Kez that would absolve all Adran debt but impose strict tax and regulation on Adro, making it little more than a Kez vassal. The field marshal had been outspoken about the Accords. But then, that was expected. The Kez had executed Tamas’s late wife.

“It is,” Adamat said.

“Then get me some bloody answers.” The field marshal whirled and disappeared into the hallway above.

Adamat remembered the bodies of that street gang as they were being pulled from the drain in the wet and mud, remembered the horror etched upon their dead faces. The answers may very well be bloody.

“Lajos is dying,” Sabon said.

Tamas entered the apartments of the Privileged who’d been Zakary the Beadle. He swept through the salon and entered the bedchamber – a room bigger than most merchants’ houses. The walls were indigo and covered with colorful paintings that displayed various Beadles in the history of Adro’s royal cabal. Doors led off to auxiliary rooms, such as the privy and Beadle’s kitchens. The door to the Beadle’s private brothel had been ripped apart, splinters no bigger than a finger scattered across the room.

The Beadle’s bed had been stripped of sheets, the Beadle’s body tossed aside for a wounded powder mage.

“How do you feel?” Tamas said.

Lajos managed a weak cough. Marked were tougher than most, and with the gunpowder Lajos had ingested, now coursing through his blood, he would feel little pain. It was little consolation as Tamas gazed on his friend. Half of Lajos’s right arm was gone – lengthwise – and a hole the size of a melon had been torn through his abdomen. It was a miracle he’d lived this long. They’d given him half a horn’s worth of powder. That alone should have killed him.

“I’ve felt better,” Lajos said. He coughed again, blood leaking from the corner of his mouth.

Tamas drew his handkerchief and dabbed the blood away. “It won’t be much longer,” he said.

“I know,” Lajos said.

Tamas squeezed his friend’s hand.

Lajos mouthed the words, “Thank you.”

Tamas took a deep breath. It was suddenly hard to see. He blinked his eyes clear. Lajos’s breathing came to a rasping stop. Tamas made to pull his hand away when Lajos gripped it suddenly. Lajos’s eyes opened.

“It’s all right, my friend,” Lajos said. “You’ve done what needed to be done. Have peace.” His eyes focused elsewhere and then stilled. He was dead.

Tamas closed his friend’s eyes with the tips of his fingers and turned to Sabon. The Deliv stood on the other side of the room, examining what was left of the door to the harem where it hung on the frame by one hinge. Tamas joined him and looked inside. The women had been corralled away an hour ago by his soldiers, taken to some other part of the palace with the rest of the Privilegeds’ whores.

“The fury of a woman,” Sabon murmured.

“Indeed,” Tamas said.

“There’s no way we could have planned for this.”

“Tell that to them,” Tamas said. He jerked his head at the row of four bodies on the floor, and the fifth that would soon be joining them. Five powder mages. Five friends. All because of one Privileged that had been unaccounted for. Tamas had just put a bullet in the Beadle’s head – a man who he’d shaken hands with and spoken to on a regular basis. Tamas’s Marked stood around him, ready in case the old man had some fight in him. They were not ready for the other Privileged, the one hiding in the brothel. She’d sliced through that door like a guillotine blade through a melon, Privileged’s gloves on her hands, fingers dancing as her sorcery tore Tamas’s powder mages to shreds.

A powder mage could float a bullet over a mile and hit the bull’s-eye every time. He could angle a bullet around corners with the power of his mind, and ingest black powder to make himself stronger and faster than other men. But he could do little to contest Privileged sorcery at close range.

Tamas, Sabon, and Lajos had been the only men with time to react, and they’d barely fought her off. She’d fled, echoes of sorcerous destruction following her through the palace as she went – probably nothing more than a show to keep them from following. Her parting shot had been Lajos’s mortal wound, but it had been randomly flung. It very well could have been Sabon, or even Tamas himself, who’d died there on the bed a moment ago. The thought chilled Tamas’s blood.

Tamas looked away from the door. “We’ll have to follow her. Find her and kill her. She’s dangerous on the loose.”

“A job for the magebreaker?” Sabon said. “I wondered why you’ve kept him around.”

“A contingency I didn’t want to use,” Tamas said. “I wish I had a mage to send with him.”

“His partner is a Privileged,” Sabon said. “A magebreaker and a Privileged should be more than a match for a single cabal Privileged.” He gestured at the wrecked door.

“I don’t like to fight fair when it comes to the royal cabal,” Tamas said. “And remember, there’s a difference between a member of the royal cabal and a hired thug.”

“Who was she?” Sabon asked. There was a note in his voice, perhaps reproach.

“I have no idea,” Tamas snapped. “I knew every one of the king’s cabal. I’ve met them, dined with them. She was a stranger.”

Sabon took Tamas’s anger without comment. “A spy for another cabal?”

“Not likely. The brothel girls are all checked. She didn’t look like a whore. She was strong, weathered. The Beadle’s lover, maybe. I’ve never seen her before in my life.”

“Could the Beadle have been training someone in secret?”

“Apprentices are never secret,” Tamas said. “Privileged are too suspicious to allow that.”

“Their suspicions are often well founded,” Sabon said. “There has to be a reason for her presence.”